Synopsis
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May 14 2004 Game
Tuesday
The day after the expedition to the boat. The party agrees with Cpl. Dougie that he should return to his base and that everyone should stick to the same story, i.e., the group was just trying to stop Lt. Jenkins who had gone mad and was trying to explode the device in a way that would kill thousands. Dougie agreed but asked that the party be willing to back him up. The party agreed.
The party then called their boss, Vilneas, who set up a meeting the following day to debrief.
That afternoon Ray hirers a hacker to investigate Vilneas. His normal hacker, Rick, taking the standard �I can�t believe what I just f---ing saw� three day hiatus of locking himself in a closet in a Motel 6 and singing Christmas carols until three in the morning.
Wednesday
When the party turns up for the debriefing Vilneas is in a right-state. He�s clearly agitated, hasn�t been sleeping nor apparently bathing. He asks the party to accompany him to a Starbucks where they can talk privately. There he tells them that his department is being investigated by the Department of Justice and that the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) was sending a team to interview him and the party on Friday morning. He asks the party to tell the OIG that they have not experienced anything supernatural. He is concerned that they will shut the team down if the party discusses any of their supernatural encounters. Ray manages to catch a glimpse (and video recording) of one of Vilneas� documents. It contains of list of names many of which are crossed out. Frank�s name is here as well as the name Sarepedon.
That afternoon, like any good investigator Frank goes for a little psycho-therapy to ease his aching brain pan. When he finishes his session he is handed a note by the receptionist from someone named Sarapedon who claims to be a veteran of a thousand psychic wars and warns Frank that another such war is coming. Frank informs the rest of the party of the strange message and suggests that the party may be being followed.
Meanwhile, Greg like any good inept investigator attempts to buy armor piercing cop-killer bullets off an undercover cop and spends the night in jail until Vilneas can get the matter straightened out.
Ray, cautious about being followed uses his cybernetic camera to repeatedly record the scene behind him. When he goes to review the footage later that day he sees a cowled figure appearing in the center of the frame in a most improbable way. The figure has no face and inexplicably remains centered in the frame. Such things make Ray�s brain pan hurt as well and he is tempted to ask Frank for the name of a good psychotherapist � preferably one who has no connection to veterans of psychic wars.
Baffled by the developments, the party elects to contact the astrophysicist who was so helpful in solving the problem of the device on the boat but he is of little help.
The evening news reports that Cpl. Dougie has been arrested as an accomplice of Lt. Jenkins.
Thursday
Ray checks on his hired hacker only to find him dead, apparently killed by black ice anti-hacking software. The party takes his computer for later investigation by their own hacker who is hopefully more skilled, but no less disposable.
The party continues to investigate Sarepedon. Frank eventually calls Vilneas and asks to speak with him about it. Vilneas conveys that he is aware of Sarepedon as a psionic who is a bit paranoid. Vilneas is not aware of a pending psychic war, but his mental state remains questionable.
The evening news reported that Cpl. Dougie was found brutally murdered in his cell. Alas poor Dougie, �better him than us� was the general sentiment.
Friday
The party shows up for their interviews with the OIG. Vilneas is in the same clothes he was wearing when the party saw him on Wednesday. He has developed a rather pungent aroma and must be convinced to clean up before the OIG interviews. While Vilneas goes to clean up the party meets with the OIG investigators, Agent Smith, Agent Jones and the quiet and distracted Special Agent-In-Charge Hassin. Frank volunteers to be interviewed first (apparently the psycho-therapy mentioned above didn�t take). Smith and Jones ask if Frank has seen anything supernatural. When Frank says �no� they thank him and leave, leaving Frank alone with Hassin. Frank has trouble talking about the rest of the interview, suffice to say that Hassin is a rather unpleasant chap. He had a copy of video recording made by Ray and given to Vilneas showing a gentleman flying around an airplane hanger and he had a corrupted man-machine interface chip. When Frank denied that these were evidence of the supernatural, Hassin promptly, to use Frank�s words, �summoned a demon out of the wall� and asked if that was sufficient evidence of the supernatural. The party later realized this creature was just one of your run-of-the-mill ghouls. You know, the type of thing one often sees coming out of the wall in a government conference room. Frank then showed excellent judgment and terminated the interview.
In the hall, Frank subtly attempted to convince Ray and Greg that it might be in their best interest to avoid the whole interview-thing. Agents Smith and Jones had other ideas. Throwing subtlety into the trash where it belongs, Greg promptly extended his cybernetic chitinous claws and attempted to disarm Agent Jones. A firefight ensued and the party was forced to flee.
Having pushed aside a number of children and old women to flee the building, the party promptly contacted Vilneas and advised him to flee as well. They met up at a Motel 6 � probably not the same one where Rick was currently singing the third verse of Oh Silent Night, but you never know. After hearing about Hassin�s shenanigans, Vilneas expresses some concern that an employee in the department, Frank Barbarton, may be responsible for providing the video footage and man-machine interface to Hassin. It seems Barbarton was a former field agent with Vilneas for a short time. Barbarton only went on one mission with Vilneas and his team (consisting of those two plus Jess Kaynite � one of the names on the list Vilneas was looking at � and some other big dude whose name currently escapes your humble narrator). Barbarton has not been coming to work for the last two weeks and was acting strangely before that. He had access to Vilneas� office and Vilneas never really trusted him.
Vilneas then promptly walked out of the hotel room, apparently lost in thought. Frank was still firing questions at him when he walked into traffic and had an intimate meeting with the radiator of a Buick. Frank managed to keep him alive but he is in a coma in Mercy Hospital.
Before he was taken to the hospital, the party did what any investigator who had so recently found themselves in a questionable employment status would do, they took his wallet and keys. Well, really just the money from his wallet. Who needs all those cards for free cups of coffee? Keys in hand, the party helped themselves to Vilneas� 12 year old Ford Escort and drove to his house. Several interesting discoveries were made there. The party found a file folder with a number of interesting but very confusing notes written in Vilneas� hand. One of which turned out to be a very baffling and difficult to understand list of passwords to files on his computer. And by baffling I mean painfully obvious to anyone paying the slightest attention. A review of the computer files showed Vilneas to be familiar with a number of supernatural phenomena as well as the contact information for his former colleague Jesse Kaynite. The party also found two interesting books, one of which appears to be a spell book which Frank is feverishly attempting to master. No one has bothered to explain to him yet that there is no such thing as magic spells. The other is simply titled �cave.� Which the party figured out meant �Beware� in Latin, and as they are always quick to judge a book by its title, they have not yet opened it.
Saturday
With Jesse�s contact information in hand the party proceeds on a road trip to Washington state to have tea and crumpets with Jesse. On the way: Ghouls. The party figures they are being followed. The common belief is that Hassin or Sarepedon or the cowled figure from Ray�s video or someone unknown is tracing the party from Frank�s recently revealed psychic sensitivity.
Sunday
They party arrives at Jesse�s house. She seems pretty straight forward and honest and answers the party�s questions. Sarepedon is a psychic warrior but a bit of nutter. She�s also a psychic and a fairly accomplished wizard. However, she doesn�t seem to have been driven insane by this knowledge. At least not at first. As the interview progresses, it becomes clear that she is hearing things. She ushers the party out and explains that she has left the hunt for the supernatural behind and has shielded her house to prevent any of �them� from finding her or getting at her.
The party leaves Jesse�s but is dead tired after two solid days of driving to get to her place. They take up a room in a hotel. Unfortunately, they may not get their deposit back considering the 20 zombie corpses they left in the room after check-out. The entire hotel staff and guests were turned into zombies. The party also encountered two horrible flying beasties, some type of wizard they�d never seen before, and Agents Smith and Jones. All of them are now so much maggot chow. Vince showed up in response to the party�s call for help standing toe-to-toe with the cyberneticly enhanced Agent Jones. For awhile anyway. He would�ve lasted longer had the gods not played a cruel trick and deprived him of certain abilities to which he was entitled. But the gods have never had a fondness for humans and they rarely go out of their way to allow them to succeed. In the end, Ray shot the already wounded Agent Jones dead with a very skillful (i.e., lucky) shot to the head. Eventually, the party slipped and slided their way through the vast pools of zombie blood to escape the hotel in Vince�s car, leaving Vilneas� Escort behind.
Greg�s Notes:
The big dude was officially known as "Big Stupid Bill"
Any Mention of Delta Green? I looked up Delta Burke on the internet and found some disturbing nude celebrity pics. Sanity wracking to be sure, but not relevant to cthulhu mythos.
Here are some more names of doctors who don't practice medicine:
Charlie
Alestair
Faisel Bramerton 1910-?
Ward against psychics 50-foot radius?
June 12, 2004 Game
Party returned from Washington state to meet up with Rick who seemed to be no worse for wear. The same could not be said of Vince and Greg who had to undergo minor-surgery in the back of Vince�s car (I hear OxyClean will get out the blood and bits of intestine from the upholstery).
The party�s extensive injuries required several days of rest and further tinkerings by Doctor Frank. Using the industrial strength duct tape he recently purchased for just such an occasion, Vince and Greg were patched up � including Greg�s secret hidey-hole.
Having spent so much time laid up, the party was anxious to get out and do some serious adventuring. Instead they got down to some serious shopping. After buying Armor Piercing bullets, grenades, vast quantities of illegal drugs, and some tea cozies to liven up the lab the party was ready for anything. Well, almost.
First, they had to do some investigating. Rick hacked into DOJ files and looked into Hassin�s background. In addition to finding out that he is involved in the investigation of the shooting in Washington state, the party learned that he previously was mentioned in what apparently was an unpublished news report regarding the overhaul of the High Technology Division of the FBI. That report led to Argus Fellen, current resident of the Bellview state psychiatric facility in Oakland.
The party�s other lead, CEETA employee Frank Bramerton was temporarily shelved and the party went to have a chat with Fellen. After breezing through security the party had a pleasant talk with the surprisingly sane Fellen (although Greg later revealed that Fellen had a gun pointing at the party behind a pillow during their entire conversation). Fellen revealed that Hassin shut down his unit and got Fellen fired. Hassin accused Fellen�s unit of conducting illegal biological experiments with items provided for analysis by CEETA. Fellen later revealed that Hassin questioned him about some type of lightning gun that Fellen had worked on. During the interrogation by Hassin, Fellen hallucinated that Hassin�s head changed into that of a snake. Undoubtedly just crazy talk. Hassin had apparently seen the lightning gun before because he described things that were not in any of Fellen�s reports. Fellen then followed Hassin and found him making trips to the morgue and on weekend grave robbing expeditions with some family friends of the ghoul variety. He also discovered an apartment in Hassin�s name but that he does not use. Fellen�s wife and child were killed a day after he was institutionalized but he doesn�t know this. He thinks Hassin hasn�t killed him because he has video tape of Hassin digging up bodies.
Rick later found a report in Vilneas� deleted computer files showing that he had gotten the lightning gun off a ghoul with cyberware wandering by the docs. Vilneas provided it to the FBI High Technology Division for analysis.
The party then headed to one of Frank�s favorite hang-outs, the city morgue, to see if they could figure out why Hassin went there. They eventually discovered a secret tunnel behind the freezer banks. After much bungling, they managed to get the secret door open. Ray promptly fell through the opening and landed on his head, just in time to greet a ghoul wearing powered armor and carrying a rail gun. �What the . . . .?� could be heard echoing off the tunnel walls.
Ray�s cry of pain and shock did not help to encourage the less hearty members of the party (a.k.a. those feeble little girls Frank and Rick) to immediately enter the tunnels. However, Greg and Vince sprang into action and happily absorbed round after round of flechette ammunition, not to mention the occasional knife or bullet. Good times. Rick eventually came down when he heard there was a cool stealth suit covered in ghoul blood and sweat to be had (mmm, smells nice).
Eventually, all but one of the ghouls was killed. This encouraged Rick to take of his own shoes and don the ghoul pajamas. Although we lacked any stealth abilities, he was now harder to see � at least he was until he put on his armored long coat over the jammies. Despite Greg�s obvious revulsion, Rick did not suffer any immediate or obvious affects from wearing the ghoul jammies.
The party followed the remaining ghoul through the tunnels and to a bar called the Viper Pit. The party scoped out the Viper Pit, didn�t see the ghoul, saw lots of snakes and left. In the meantime, Rick hacked and learned that the Viper Pit was owned (very indirectly) by Hassin. Using these business and corporate entities, Rick was able to discover that they also own a mansion outside of town (and no, the address was not 123 Serious Bad Guy Drive).
Having too much fun in the ghoul tunnels to leave, the party followed the tracks of the 4 ghouls back to a cemetery where they discovered ghouls digging up bodies and eating them. Hard to believe, I know, but it�s true. The ghouls were taking cyberware from the bodies and passing it to another armed and armored ghoul who provided it to someone in a big black Ford SIGV (Standard Issue Government-type Vehicle). Resisting the urge to let the poor helpless ghouls go about their business, Greg tripped over a gravestone and caught their attention. The unarmed ghouls were quickly dispatched, but not before one gave Vince a slurpey and affectionate ghoul hickie.
Most importantly the party made it back to the ghoul's power armor and recovered it. Untold riches undoubtedly await. Combined with the two cyberknives, cattleprod mace, and the rail gun, the party should be ready to retire.
Synopsis of July 17, 2004 Game
We started with some much needed healing. Frank (who was not his usual self, rather more distracted and absentminded) did a masterful job patching up his wounded comrades. Then . . . a bit of shopping. The party loaded up on Frappacinos and armor piercing ammo and enjoyed a day at the Cyberpunk mall.
While Vince and Greg shopped Ray was recovering from his wounds and Frank�s surgery. Meanwhile, Rick was investigating the home of Hassin only to find it had its own internal security network. He tried to hack into it and suddenly fell into some type of coma. Then, Frank, showing an uncharacteristic lack of common sense, answered a knock on the door of the lab. He was quickly yanked out the door by some hired goons and thrown in the back of a car. Ray stumbled to the door just in time to see Frank looking out the back window like a scared puppy as Hassin laughed in the seat next to him. On the doorstep to the lab was a simple wooden box containing the neatly folded skin of Vilneas, the group�s old boss.
The party immediately assumed Frank was dead and good riddance. Then, it occurred to them that they might need a doctor at some point in the future. Plus Frank had the only keys to the mini-bar in the lab. A plan was hatched to go to Hassin�s house and rescue him. They hoped that they might also figure out what was going on with Rick, but as he didn�t have access to the mini-bar he was much less important at the moment. So the party stole a van (there seem to be many of them around for the taking) and drove to Hassin�s place.
The plan was simple: debate different methods to get into Hassin�s mansion for an hour or more, then launch a frontal assault. After debating for almost and hour, this plan was scrapped. The new plan was debate for another 20 minutes then sneak in over the garage on the side of the property. This would�ve worked brilliantly if Greg hadn�t lost his footing and fallen off the garage with a big noisy ruckus. A ghoul-guard came out, there was some violence, then no more ghoul.
The party went in a second story window into a huge library. One end of which was covered in a huge tapestry depicting a person with an axe fighting a giant snake-like man. Snakes seemed to be a popular decorating motif throughout the mansion.
They left the library and came across a serpent man � a five foot tall snake with arms and legs. After an initial bit of shock, the poor snake man was exterminated.
The party then proceeded upstairs where they found many odd things. Including a room full of flayed corpses and some associated skins, a room with many experimental and high quality cybernetic pieces (some of which were quickly grabbed for later inspection) and what appeared to be an operating room. In here were three �patients.� One, an old woman who had undergone an unspeakable surgery involving the replacement of her stomach with a bag full of rusty nails, screws and razor blades. Obviously, she had to be put down; especially when she started running at the party. The second was a 30ish man unconscious on a bed with a cybernetic arm of a type never seen by any of the party. Not knowing if he would be crazy and dangerous as the old lady, Greg promptly shot the sleeping man in the head. The third person was Frank. As he had not been visibly altered yet, Greg resisted the urge to shoot him as well. He was stripped naked and tied to the bed with straps that couldn�t be cut or released in any way the party could figure out. Eventually they found fire worked and Ray was able to use a soldering iron found in the room with the cybernetics.
As they were trying to get Frank off his heavy metal bed trouble in the form of a spell-casting serpent man appeared. He somehow teleported into the surgery room and filled it full of a strange mist. The only logical solution was for Ray to throw a grenade where he�d last seen the snake wizard and duck down behind Frank. It worked perfectly. Oh sure, Frank got a few pieces of shrapnel in his head but he didn�t seem to mind. Of course he was still unconscious so what was he going to say?
Ray finally got Frank off the stretcher and they party proceeds downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs they met Hassin who seems to be rather proud of himself at the moment. Vince and Greg quickly puts an end to his gloating with a few well placed assault rifle rounds and a couple grenades. Unfortunately, the reason for Hassin�s happiness quickly becomes clear as a 15 foot tall humanoid snake walked through the door from the library. The Elder God Yig had arrived. A few quick SAN checks and the party is off and running back up the stairs.
They decided the only way out was to jump out the second story window � throwing Frank before them. A mad dash to the front gate followed. Yig seemed to be unwilling or unable to chase them out of the house but he threw a few nasty spells and psychic attacks at the party as they ran, disabling Greg. Ray managed to pull Greg and Frank out and throw them into the back of the van driven by Vince. The party escaped and was off for some nice frosty chocolate milkshakes.