Session Two: Following Clues

"So this is why you always carry a box of Kleenex"

(This time I took notes, see.)

The game opens, and Maxwell is giving backrubs, probably because he's a nice guy and does that sort of thing. Quickly, it's decided that Maxwell, Star, and Malcolm are going to go check out Murder Site #2, the campgrounds. When they get there, it's covered with cops who are trying to keep out the public, like angels, while investigating. The PCs are stonewalled until Maxwell owns up to the tent found at the site. Then PCs are arrested. While Star and Maxwell wait to get taken down to the station, Malcolm does some sniffing around, and runs into a reporter, but he's a bit scattered.

Dana is at the Holiday Inn, fretting. She gets a call from Malcolm that the other two are being booked, mostly for possession of pot. (Oops.) Dana does her lawyerly best to get on moving down to the police station. She sees Star, and there's some chit chat while papers are processed.

Jered waits for Claire to come in over at the Library. She eventually shows up, "Morning Boss..." Jered, after cursing the GM for playing someone too silly, sends Claire off on a few errands - she's to search the golf courses, and talk to the reporter at the paper. In the mean time, Jered discoveres that Karl Lewis, Last Week's Bad Guy (tm) recently took up residence in town, and has been arrested on B/E charges in Saginaw not to long back. In his investigation, he goes over to Garrett Hall's Ice Cream store, where his fears are confirmed - the guy has been acting weird for over a month now.

Maxwell gets questioned by Detective Murphy of the Michigan State Police, but of course, not without his lawyer, the everpresent happy fun Cherub of Judgement, and lets not for get the big black so-called Paralegal, who is bouncing off the walls. There is some discussion about rights and whatnot, and eventually some actual questioning. Then the detective lets Maxwell go and has the charges dropped, since they can't hold him on anything. But then again, there's Star...

Dana tracks down Star, where they have her held in another room for questioning. There is some paper and conversation back and forth, and Dana discovers that yeah, okay, Star likes to be relaxed. The detective comes in and gives Star the business. Eventually she spills her whole story and they take her down to identify some people. The four fat guys from the night before are down in the hold cells, but as the detective points out, they can't find any visible signs that these loons were involved. The hold Star for a visit in front of the Judge for her possession of pot charge. She gives Dana everything she owns in the world ($.37, some shiny buttons, a token, some tickets, a bus ticket stub, and some other really cool stuff) to get her out of this. Dana complies, hoping that her Boss isn't watching this.

Maxwell and Malcolm decide to go looking for that "old guy". They do the logical thing, which is go to the Library. After screwing around, Malcolm gets a library assistant to help him out, who eventually says, "Oh! Mr. Cain! He's in the back." Doh. They go into the back, and talk. There are names traded, and Karl's address is given out. Maxwell and Malcolm, smelling a lead, go off like a shot.

Dana, while waiting for Star to pay her fine, is hanging around the police department. She figures, while she has some time to kill, she'll do some investigating of her own. She gets information about the sedan from the DMV through the police station (surprisingly the Deputy has already looked this up...) and learns some stuff about Karl Lewis. She also gets where he lives in town as well.

Jered gets a call from Claire about the golf course, and Douglas Horne's disappearance. He learns some more information about his attack.

Maxwell and Malcolm get to the apartment building. It is run down, and really nasty. They step in, and the hallway smells of old piss. There are a few people just sitting around, staring at them as they walk in. Karl's apartment is the third apartment on the left on the second floor. They open the door, and Maxwell lurches back, retching. The sticky sweet smell of death and refuse waft out of the door like a bad disease.

Malcolm enters the apartment. It is bare of all furniture. On the walls, someone has written strange symbols in blood and feces. Old rotting food, the rotting bodies of animals, and refuse litter the floor. Across the room is a closed door. He walks over and opens a window.

Maxwell tries to get a neighbor. He gets an older woman with a gun down the hall, but he gets his way into her apartment. Maxwell calls Jered, with suitable warning.

Dana and Star pull up to the apartment building, a little surprised that Malcolm and Maxwell are already there. Star pets Tyrone (who barks at Dana), and isn't real cool about poking about up in there. Dana has no such worries, and after wrinkling her nose, she goes upstairs to join Malcolm. She ends up staring at the walls, going, "Hmmm." After inspecting the doorknob to the inner room, they decide to go down and get some kleenex.

Jered pulls up. He has a handkerchief soaked in aftershave. That seems to do the trick. He sees everyone else, and accompanies Malcolm and Dana back up into the apartment. He sees the symbols, and identifies them as a Satanic Rite of Protection. Then they open the door.

The smell that wafts out is amazing. After it passes, the intrepid and strong stomached trio walk into the room. Inside is where the Summoning Ritual took place. The walls are black and covered in white hebrew letters. In the center of the room is a pentagram drawn in blood, with black candles at the five points. There is a naked dead girl in the center, split throat to pelvis and decaying on the floor. Jered names her as Catherine Henderson. The room contains a cot, a boombox which has a very bad Slayer tape, and a charred book. Jered takes the book, and the angels argue for a while about what to do now. Jered walks away, taking the book with him back to the library.

Dana and Malcolm leave, knowing full well that all PCs in the modern world need modern-day Trump, better known as Cellphones. They stop at cellular one, haggle over contracts, and Malcolm walks away with a beeper.

Maxwell and Star go over to the local hospital, so Maxwell can get patched up from where he stuck his arm through the sedan's windshield. Star plays with some little kids, and feels much better and happier. Maxwell gets taped up. Then they go to Maxwell's place. Maxwell leaves a message for Dana, while Star goes off to become clean.

Jered goes back to the library. He carefully reads the book, which turns out to be a diary. He reads about Karl looking for Immortality, and then deciding to bind a demon to grant him this. It looks like Karl summoned the demon, but he should have read the KULT source book where it CLEARLY says that summoning and binding are two different things, and the later takes more points of magical skill. After the summoning, the book ends. Afterwards, he gets a call from Claire, who says she visited the Newspaper reporter. He's really bizarre, and convinced something supernatural is going on. Jered checks the reporter's background, and discovers that he's been with the paper for seven years, doing alot of very dull work.

Dana and Malcolm go to where all diabolicals hang out - Denny's. You're guarenteed to meet a demon at Denny's. It's written into the fabric of the universe, God's Will, as it were. There's a black biker with a gold nosering in the back, eating a Dennyburger and generally ignoring them. Malcolm goes over to harass him for a bit, and the biker blows him off, finishing with, "Happy Hunting?" Malcolm goes back over to Dana, wondering what the hell that was supposed to mean.

Jered goes over to Ed Landau's (the Reporter's) house. He answers the door with a shot gun, showing how much the Brady Bill holds weight with demons in the area. He lets Jered in, and the house is filled with every cheesy holy symbol Ed could find. Ed talks about the killings, and how they've all been tourists. Worse, he's been observing some people going in and out of the old shut down MacLaughlin Paper Mill down on the bay. He hands Jered a packet of photographs, hoping that someone will try to make the cops listen to him.

Jered, halfway home, calls the cops and has them go over to Karl's apartment.

Dana and Malcolm are in the middle of a car chase. They've decided to stalk to biker guy, knowing full well the weight of the power of Denny's. They chase him all over the downtown area, making a bunch of illegial U-turns and generally ignoring traffic laws. They chase the biker into a blind alley. When they get there, his bike is there, but he is gone.

Dana gets dropped off at the Holiday Inn. She gets a message from Maxwell to come on over. And there's a second message on her machine. "You are running out of TIME!" the voice says. Then hangs up. Dana panics.

Malcolm goes over to Maxwell's place and starts explaining the Law of Denny's to Maxwell. Then Dana calls and comes over. There's some more bantering, and a commercial on TV, before Jered also calls and comes over.

Jered shares the photographs. While passing them around, Dana notices that one of the pictures has a pair of cronies taking a rather beat up looking Daimon out of the black sedan just outside the paper mill. She starts jumping up and down that she needs to get there NOW. In explaination about this guy she's tracking, she shoves in a video tape of an HBO Comedy Hour Special starring Daimon Lightner. So they watch, and yes, he's funny, and he amuses. AND he's good looking. Weird that there's a stand up comic who makes it on HBO hanging out with these guys in Alpena.

The group goes to the Paper Mill, taking two seperate cars. Jered and Malcolm, in the pickup truck with the windows rolled down, smell the place long before they see it. And it smells Nasty. Both cars pull up to the fence and see this:

The road ends at the chain link fence. The fence is closed off by a lock and a length of chain. Before them is underbrush, a parking lot with two cars and a motorcycle, and a run down building with double doors. In front of the building is a crucifix made out of a telephone pole and a board. There is a man attached to the crucifix - and not by rope. There is loud music and voices wafting out of the door and into the night.

The Angels go through the fence to the right. They sneak around, and cut down the guy on the crucifix. He's horribly burned. When Maxwell pulls out the nails out of the guy's hands, Malcolm notices that there is no disturbance to the Symphony. He also notices that he has a black heart, and enjoys inflicting pain on others. Weird. Jered calls his servant, and in time, she shows up.

Dana, Malcolm, and Maxwell sneak around to the back of the building, and go in through a basement window. They go down a long musty dark hallway, with the music getting increasingly louder. At the end of the hallway, on the right, is a stairway going up. The music and voices are clearly coming from up there. On the left there is a door. The door is barred, chained, locked, and there is a chair shoved under the doorknob. On the door, written either in paint or blood - it's hard to tell in the light, are the words:

"Do Not Open. Very very very bad demon inside. Dangerous."

The Angels try to figure out what sort of demon they are keeping locked up that would need this sort of thing. They go upstairs, and Maxwell takes a look-see. He sees people, having sex, dancing, shooting up, in various states of undress, around a huge bonfire. Along one wall is a long table, with quite literally, mounds of blow. Maxwell goes downstairs and confers. They decide to, more or less, charge the party.

As they walk into the room, the entire scene unfolds. There is literally mounds of garbage, rotting food, wrappers, body parts (animal and human), bones, and skulls. At the far end of the room, is an enormous wooden throne on a dias, and inhabiting the throne is an enormous, obese man, with a big bean burrito in his hand. Standing next to him, brandishing a fully automatic machine gun, is the man from Denny's. See? God's Will. The man with the gun is grinning.

The obese man smiles, and gestures as his resonance takes hold. It's area effect, and Maxwell and Malcolm suddenly feel very very... hungry. He gestures. "Ah, the Angels. How good of you to join us. Maybe you would like to.................. CONSUME."

A burst of essense, a hand gesture, and Maxwell and Malcolm... begin to consume.



Flaming edge graphics from Our Domain Gallery of Graphics
The "In Nomine" and "flaming feather" graphics are
(C) 1997 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated.
Used with fnord.