Shouldn't Do That [Judgement Night]
Feb. 6th, 2013 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daidoji_giseiThis is an account of the first session (1/22/13) of Judgement Night, the rpg campaign I am now running. I suspect it will be very boring to read (it was certainly boring to write!), but I think it will be useful to my players in the long run and, for reasons unclear to me, some of my friends are interested in knowing what is going on in the campaign.
I tried to come up with a clever title for the session, but finally gave up and decided to pick a song title from the CDs I was playing as background music. (Thank you again, Ami, for all of those Hawkwind CDs!)
*************
Judgement Night Session 1
First, I introduced the player characters to the players. Three of the PCs would have been familiar with each other, having been trained in the Star City Chapterhouse, and one was relatively unknown, having recently been transfered in from a chapterhouse out east.
Bobby Jetter (Investigator): Bobby had previously been an EMT, and he has yet to discuss why he quit that to become a Fire Saint. He is marked with scars from his jaw-line down to his pelvis, and he hasn't talked about that either--but it's been noted that in the hand-to-hand combat classes when the instructors talked about how you never, ever want to go hand-to-hand with a demon they were always careful not to look at Bobby. Average height, dark hair, average build but fairly well-muscled.
Gianni (Johnny) Mirandola (Wardwight): Gianni is considered obsessed with his work, even by Fire Saint standards. He insists that wards are like symphonies, and at one point drove his fellow wardwight students up the wall by trying to explain to them how the Janus ward was just like Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. Short curly black hair, dark eyes, olive cast to complexion, 5'9", average build.
Howard Legrasse (Investigator): To the casual observer, Howard is fairly normal for a Fire Saint, except for his fascination with the idea of a "King Demon", who may or may not exist. He's a heavy smoker, which plays havoc with his endurance. Tall, skinny, nondescript.
Reynardo (Ray) Villas Boas (Gunslinger): The odd man out, Ray was recently transfered to Star City with no explanation. This typically (but not always) indicates that the transferee is a problem child of some sort, but in the few weeks he's been at the chapterhouse he hasn't caused any notable trouble. Wiry build, dark complexion, black curly hair, 5'10".
* * * * *
The game opened with the PCs having lunch in the deli area of the Star City Food Conspiracy. I explained to them that it was traditional for a team to dine together before getting an assignment, and regardless of what the characters might have felt about the tradition none of them particularly wanted to explain to Gunny that they were ignoring it. Nothing exciting happened here; they made small talk and at one point one of the employees, Pearl, walked by, wished them luck, and asked them to pass on to Gunny the word that her coffee was back in stock.
After this we moved on to their meeting with the team's handler, Gunny Nguyen. Gunny was trained as a Gunslinger and her skill is legendary in the chapterhouse. Her days of field serviced ended when a demon mangled her leg, and now she serves as the chapterhouse's senior handgun instructor and as handler to several teams. They met in her office, which is dominated by a wall of trophies from her days of competition shooting.
Gunny handed them all a report of a call that the duty officer had taken the previous night. Looking over it appeared to be a case of a drunk guy seeing a possum in his back yard and mistaking it for a demon, and indeed the person taking the call had noted at the bottom of the report "drunk guy who doesn't know what a possum looks like--no action recommended". Gunny agreed that it was probably a possum, but as she explained to them, she had grown up in that part of town, she still had extended family in the area, and since she had a team of newly-professed Fire Saints at hand she was sending them out to take a look.
The team checked out a car from the motor pool and went to the address of the person who called in the report. (None of them own a car, which will become, ah, noted later on.) There was no one at home, and there was no car in the driveway, so they went around to the back yard of the house to investigate. After consulting the report and studying the area the two investigators quickly noticed that the 'demon' was sighted in the area of the trash can area of the backyard-neighboring house, which supported the possum hypothesis.
While investigating the trash area, they noticed that the screen door in the back of the house was wide open, and the inner door also seemed to be open. The investigators further noted that the parking lot was empty and the front yard had both "Building for Sale" and "Apartment for Rent" signs. From this they concluded that the house had been converted into apartments, which indeed was the case. They also decided to investigate the open door, in case the alleged demon/possum had been by.
Ray and Bobby took the lead, and standing in the doorway they saw that it was the door to the basement stairway; to the right was another door which was ajar and when they looked they saw it led to a kitchen area. There was a noticeable smell coming up from the basement, and I told Bobby that because of his previous EMT experiences he recognized it: blood mixed with open intestines.
Leaving Gianni at the top of the stairs in case they needed to stop something coming in or out, the rest of the team carefully went down the short flight of stairs. They found a very unfinished basement: the floor was a simple concrete slab and the walls were cinderblock masonry that in some places weren't even complete, leaving part of the walls just dirt. They also found chalked on the floor not far from the stairway a demon-summoning ward and, sprawled on the floor next to it, the dead body of a man. (N. B.: Demon-summoning wards are instantly recognizable because they are squares; normal wards are circles.)
As there appeared to be no one else in the basement, Gianni was called down and they began to investigate the area. It was swiftly determined that the deceased had died from a single deep slash to the lower torso, and the wound was relatively recent. Also, there was a piece of chalk on the floor the same color as the demon-summoning ward, and the fingers of the body had traces of the same color of chalk on them. There was no wallet or other means of identification on the body, but there was a small key-ring with five keys. The keys had "B", "1", "2", "3", and "4" on them.
Howard decided to investigate the far end of the basement, where the gas furnaces and water heaters were located. Bobby decided to look at the place where the wall was incomplete, to see if anything was being concealed in the dirt, and asked Ray to back him up. Gianni was at the bottom of the stairs, still covering their entrance/exit. As it happened, there was a demon hiding behind that wall, so Bobby quickly found himself the target of a demon attack.
The demon was vaguely frog-shaped, was about three feet tall, covered with very short white-and-peach fur, and armed with claws. Bobby took some slight damage from it, but acting together the team was able to finish it off without much fuss. (At this point I stopped the game for a moment to explain to them that as they were all Fire Saints I wasn't imposing any penalties to represent them trying to avoid shooting each other: they had been trained for this kind of situation. If they ever got into a fight with a mixed group (example: them and some police officers against demons) there would be penalties, because they wouldn't be able to predict what the non-Fire Saints were doing.)
After taking care of the demon the team decided that they clearly needed to investigate the house more closely. Going upstairs they entered the door into the kitchen and looked around. Everything was consistent with this being an unoccupied apartment. Going though the rest of the apartment they first discovered that the living room had a door that let out into the stairway that went up to the second floor apartments. They also discovered a stack of paint cans and drywall repair supplies in the bedroom area. At this point they noticed that there were sounds coming from the ceiling as if someone was moving around in the upstairs apartment.
The team quickly headed up the stairs and found that the door to apartment 4 was standing ajar. (At this point one of the players quipped that the demon world obviously consisted solely of barns, because no demon knew how to close a door.) The players debated a bit on whether they should announce themselves before going in, and I'm sorry to say that I don't remember anymore what they decided. But somehow the team found themselves entering the upstairs apartment. The door opened into the small kitchen area, which led into the living room. From the living room there were doors to two bedrooms and a bathroom. There was no immediate sign of anyone else in the apartment but them.
Entering one of the bedrooms, the team found a sleeping bag, a small pile of clothes, and, in the middle of the floor, a man's wallet. Examining the wallet they found an expired driver's license for a man named Curtis Mayfair, $20 in small bills, and the business card of a real estate agent: Eli Weaver, Weaver Realty. The name on the card matched the name on the signs outside the building. The picture on the license more or less matched the face of the dead body in the basement: Mayfair had evidently been living a hard life. They also noted that the window in the bedroom had been covered with aluminum foil and cardboard. ("'I'm worried about aliens' foil or 'I work the night shift' foil?" one player asked. " 'I work the night shift' foil", I told him.)
Ray looked over the bathroom and found a few cheap toiletry supplies and two towels that had seen better days. The window here had also been covered up. Bobby and Howard moved on to look at the other bedroom, with Gianni looking at the living room. Ray moved to join Gianni.
At this point the characters in the living room heard a soft thump from the first bedroom and a figure clothed in black dashed out of the bedroom, heading towards the kitchen. The figure was moving extremely fast, but it had to pass within a few feet of Gianni on its way and so he tried to tackle it. Through sheer strength, fancy akido-like moves, or a combination of the above, the figure threw Gianni off of them and into Ray, entangling both. Meanwhile Howard and Bobby had rushed out of the bedroom and caught a glimpse of the figure rushing into the kitchen. Bobby gave chase, using his parkour quality, but when he got down the stairs and into the driveway outside he could see no sign of the figure. (The person in black was quickly dubbed 'the ninja' by the players, and I will refer to it as such from now on. Of course, any L5R rpg player knows there are no such things as ninja.)
At this point there was some discussion of who, or what, the fleeing figure was. The possibility of the ninja being an Eaten was mentioned, and I told the players something that their characters would know: an Eaten will preferentially fight with the sword that created it, and they will try to keep it as close to them as possible. (I don't recall what was said that made me think they should know this, but it may have been in connection with the fact that Mayfair's death wound was consistent with a sword slash.) The PCs decided to seal the buiding with a ward and then search the place from top to bottom, looking for clues and/or any sword the ninja may have left behind. They also decided they would appropriate the $20 from Mayfair's wallet, as they wanted to start saving for a car of their own.
The search yielded nothing beyond evidence that Mayfair had been working in the building doing small repairs and painting rooms. After reporting the death to the police the PCs returned to the chapterhouse and, making use of their police liaison, discovered that Mayfair had a long list of small- to medium-sized criminal offenses. His last had been in connection with the sale of meth, and after being released from prison the previous year had had been put in a rehabilitation program.
As it was only late afternoon (from the PCs frame of reference) they decided to visit Eli Weaver. Weaver's office was downtown, not all that far from the chapterhouse itself. It was small and slightly shabby, but it was large enough for Weaver to have a receptionist--a young woman with bright red hair (as in, obviously dyed red) and two nasal piercings. She informed Weaver that there were some Fire Saints wanting to speak with him, and he immediately was willing to speak with them.
The players had decided that Howard and Bobby, the investigators, would go in and speak with Weaver while Gianni and Ray stayed in the outer office and talked to the receptionist. (As it turned out Amanda (her name) didn't know anything useful about Curtis Mayfair, but she still found it necessary to give Ray her phone number--by writing it on the palm of his hand.)
Weaver's inner office was, like the outer one, small and slightly shabby. There was what appeared to be a small shrine to fire in the corner of the office, consisting of a large Himalayan salt light and a dish for burning incense. He was quite cordial to the Fire Saints and seemed eager to answer all of their questions. Weaver was shocked at the news of Mayfair's death, and even more shocked that he appeared to have been summoning demons in the basement of the apartment building he was supposed to have been doing fix-up work in. Later he was shocked to learn that Mayfair had been living in the building as well; Weaver said that Mayfair had asked for permission to stay there while working but the agent had refused as this would be unfair to the building's owners.
When asked, Weaver explained that that he had met Mayfair in connection with a businessman's philanthropy club known as the Flames of Hope, which tried to help ex-cons turn their lives around by helping them find employment. Weaver told the investigators that Mayfair had seemed very determined to start a new life and he had given him no problems as an employee.
At this point we were out of time, so we stopped play. The top questions on the player's minds seemed to be, in no particular order:
1. Had the drunk guy seen a possum, or had he really seen one of the demons that Mayfair had summoned?
2. Who had killed Mayfair and why?
3. What was the ninja? Why was it in the building, and why had it fled from them?
4. Why was Mayfair summoning demons?
I tried to come up with a clever title for the session, but finally gave up and decided to pick a song title from the CDs I was playing as background music. (Thank you again, Ami, for all of those Hawkwind CDs!)
*************
Judgement Night Session 1
First, I introduced the player characters to the players. Three of the PCs would have been familiar with each other, having been trained in the Star City Chapterhouse, and one was relatively unknown, having recently been transfered in from a chapterhouse out east.
Bobby Jetter (Investigator): Bobby had previously been an EMT, and he has yet to discuss why he quit that to become a Fire Saint. He is marked with scars from his jaw-line down to his pelvis, and he hasn't talked about that either--but it's been noted that in the hand-to-hand combat classes when the instructors talked about how you never, ever want to go hand-to-hand with a demon they were always careful not to look at Bobby. Average height, dark hair, average build but fairly well-muscled.
Gianni (Johnny) Mirandola (Wardwight): Gianni is considered obsessed with his work, even by Fire Saint standards. He insists that wards are like symphonies, and at one point drove his fellow wardwight students up the wall by trying to explain to them how the Janus ward was just like Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. Short curly black hair, dark eyes, olive cast to complexion, 5'9", average build.
Howard Legrasse (Investigator): To the casual observer, Howard is fairly normal for a Fire Saint, except for his fascination with the idea of a "King Demon", who may or may not exist. He's a heavy smoker, which plays havoc with his endurance. Tall, skinny, nondescript.
Reynardo (Ray) Villas Boas (Gunslinger): The odd man out, Ray was recently transfered to Star City with no explanation. This typically (but not always) indicates that the transferee is a problem child of some sort, but in the few weeks he's been at the chapterhouse he hasn't caused any notable trouble. Wiry build, dark complexion, black curly hair, 5'10".
* * * * *
The game opened with the PCs having lunch in the deli area of the Star City Food Conspiracy. I explained to them that it was traditional for a team to dine together before getting an assignment, and regardless of what the characters might have felt about the tradition none of them particularly wanted to explain to Gunny that they were ignoring it. Nothing exciting happened here; they made small talk and at one point one of the employees, Pearl, walked by, wished them luck, and asked them to pass on to Gunny the word that her coffee was back in stock.
After this we moved on to their meeting with the team's handler, Gunny Nguyen. Gunny was trained as a Gunslinger and her skill is legendary in the chapterhouse. Her days of field serviced ended when a demon mangled her leg, and now she serves as the chapterhouse's senior handgun instructor and as handler to several teams. They met in her office, which is dominated by a wall of trophies from her days of competition shooting.
Gunny handed them all a report of a call that the duty officer had taken the previous night. Looking over it appeared to be a case of a drunk guy seeing a possum in his back yard and mistaking it for a demon, and indeed the person taking the call had noted at the bottom of the report "drunk guy who doesn't know what a possum looks like--no action recommended". Gunny agreed that it was probably a possum, but as she explained to them, she had grown up in that part of town, she still had extended family in the area, and since she had a team of newly-professed Fire Saints at hand she was sending them out to take a look.
The team checked out a car from the motor pool and went to the address of the person who called in the report. (None of them own a car, which will become, ah, noted later on.) There was no one at home, and there was no car in the driveway, so they went around to the back yard of the house to investigate. After consulting the report and studying the area the two investigators quickly noticed that the 'demon' was sighted in the area of the trash can area of the backyard-neighboring house, which supported the possum hypothesis.
While investigating the trash area, they noticed that the screen door in the back of the house was wide open, and the inner door also seemed to be open. The investigators further noted that the parking lot was empty and the front yard had both "Building for Sale" and "Apartment for Rent" signs. From this they concluded that the house had been converted into apartments, which indeed was the case. They also decided to investigate the open door, in case the alleged demon/possum had been by.
Ray and Bobby took the lead, and standing in the doorway they saw that it was the door to the basement stairway; to the right was another door which was ajar and when they looked they saw it led to a kitchen area. There was a noticeable smell coming up from the basement, and I told Bobby that because of his previous EMT experiences he recognized it: blood mixed with open intestines.
Leaving Gianni at the top of the stairs in case they needed to stop something coming in or out, the rest of the team carefully went down the short flight of stairs. They found a very unfinished basement: the floor was a simple concrete slab and the walls were cinderblock masonry that in some places weren't even complete, leaving part of the walls just dirt. They also found chalked on the floor not far from the stairway a demon-summoning ward and, sprawled on the floor next to it, the dead body of a man. (N. B.: Demon-summoning wards are instantly recognizable because they are squares; normal wards are circles.)
As there appeared to be no one else in the basement, Gianni was called down and they began to investigate the area. It was swiftly determined that the deceased had died from a single deep slash to the lower torso, and the wound was relatively recent. Also, there was a piece of chalk on the floor the same color as the demon-summoning ward, and the fingers of the body had traces of the same color of chalk on them. There was no wallet or other means of identification on the body, but there was a small key-ring with five keys. The keys had "B", "1", "2", "3", and "4" on them.
Howard decided to investigate the far end of the basement, where the gas furnaces and water heaters were located. Bobby decided to look at the place where the wall was incomplete, to see if anything was being concealed in the dirt, and asked Ray to back him up. Gianni was at the bottom of the stairs, still covering their entrance/exit. As it happened, there was a demon hiding behind that wall, so Bobby quickly found himself the target of a demon attack.
The demon was vaguely frog-shaped, was about three feet tall, covered with very short white-and-peach fur, and armed with claws. Bobby took some slight damage from it, but acting together the team was able to finish it off without much fuss. (At this point I stopped the game for a moment to explain to them that as they were all Fire Saints I wasn't imposing any penalties to represent them trying to avoid shooting each other: they had been trained for this kind of situation. If they ever got into a fight with a mixed group (example: them and some police officers against demons) there would be penalties, because they wouldn't be able to predict what the non-Fire Saints were doing.)
After taking care of the demon the team decided that they clearly needed to investigate the house more closely. Going upstairs they entered the door into the kitchen and looked around. Everything was consistent with this being an unoccupied apartment. Going though the rest of the apartment they first discovered that the living room had a door that let out into the stairway that went up to the second floor apartments. They also discovered a stack of paint cans and drywall repair supplies in the bedroom area. At this point they noticed that there were sounds coming from the ceiling as if someone was moving around in the upstairs apartment.
The team quickly headed up the stairs and found that the door to apartment 4 was standing ajar. (At this point one of the players quipped that the demon world obviously consisted solely of barns, because no demon knew how to close a door.) The players debated a bit on whether they should announce themselves before going in, and I'm sorry to say that I don't remember anymore what they decided. But somehow the team found themselves entering the upstairs apartment. The door opened into the small kitchen area, which led into the living room. From the living room there were doors to two bedrooms and a bathroom. There was no immediate sign of anyone else in the apartment but them.
Entering one of the bedrooms, the team found a sleeping bag, a small pile of clothes, and, in the middle of the floor, a man's wallet. Examining the wallet they found an expired driver's license for a man named Curtis Mayfair, $20 in small bills, and the business card of a real estate agent: Eli Weaver, Weaver Realty. The name on the card matched the name on the signs outside the building. The picture on the license more or less matched the face of the dead body in the basement: Mayfair had evidently been living a hard life. They also noted that the window in the bedroom had been covered with aluminum foil and cardboard. ("'I'm worried about aliens' foil or 'I work the night shift' foil?" one player asked. " 'I work the night shift' foil", I told him.)
Ray looked over the bathroom and found a few cheap toiletry supplies and two towels that had seen better days. The window here had also been covered up. Bobby and Howard moved on to look at the other bedroom, with Gianni looking at the living room. Ray moved to join Gianni.
At this point the characters in the living room heard a soft thump from the first bedroom and a figure clothed in black dashed out of the bedroom, heading towards the kitchen. The figure was moving extremely fast, but it had to pass within a few feet of Gianni on its way and so he tried to tackle it. Through sheer strength, fancy akido-like moves, or a combination of the above, the figure threw Gianni off of them and into Ray, entangling both. Meanwhile Howard and Bobby had rushed out of the bedroom and caught a glimpse of the figure rushing into the kitchen. Bobby gave chase, using his parkour quality, but when he got down the stairs and into the driveway outside he could see no sign of the figure. (The person in black was quickly dubbed 'the ninja' by the players, and I will refer to it as such from now on. Of course, any L5R rpg player knows there are no such things as ninja.)
At this point there was some discussion of who, or what, the fleeing figure was. The possibility of the ninja being an Eaten was mentioned, and I told the players something that their characters would know: an Eaten will preferentially fight with the sword that created it, and they will try to keep it as close to them as possible. (I don't recall what was said that made me think they should know this, but it may have been in connection with the fact that Mayfair's death wound was consistent with a sword slash.) The PCs decided to seal the buiding with a ward and then search the place from top to bottom, looking for clues and/or any sword the ninja may have left behind. They also decided they would appropriate the $20 from Mayfair's wallet, as they wanted to start saving for a car of their own.
The search yielded nothing beyond evidence that Mayfair had been working in the building doing small repairs and painting rooms. After reporting the death to the police the PCs returned to the chapterhouse and, making use of their police liaison, discovered that Mayfair had a long list of small- to medium-sized criminal offenses. His last had been in connection with the sale of meth, and after being released from prison the previous year had had been put in a rehabilitation program.
As it was only late afternoon (from the PCs frame of reference) they decided to visit Eli Weaver. Weaver's office was downtown, not all that far from the chapterhouse itself. It was small and slightly shabby, but it was large enough for Weaver to have a receptionist--a young woman with bright red hair (as in, obviously dyed red) and two nasal piercings. She informed Weaver that there were some Fire Saints wanting to speak with him, and he immediately was willing to speak with them.
The players had decided that Howard and Bobby, the investigators, would go in and speak with Weaver while Gianni and Ray stayed in the outer office and talked to the receptionist. (As it turned out Amanda (her name) didn't know anything useful about Curtis Mayfair, but she still found it necessary to give Ray her phone number--by writing it on the palm of his hand.)
Weaver's inner office was, like the outer one, small and slightly shabby. There was what appeared to be a small shrine to fire in the corner of the office, consisting of a large Himalayan salt light and a dish for burning incense. He was quite cordial to the Fire Saints and seemed eager to answer all of their questions. Weaver was shocked at the news of Mayfair's death, and even more shocked that he appeared to have been summoning demons in the basement of the apartment building he was supposed to have been doing fix-up work in. Later he was shocked to learn that Mayfair had been living in the building as well; Weaver said that Mayfair had asked for permission to stay there while working but the agent had refused as this would be unfair to the building's owners.
When asked, Weaver explained that that he had met Mayfair in connection with a businessman's philanthropy club known as the Flames of Hope, which tried to help ex-cons turn their lives around by helping them find employment. Weaver told the investigators that Mayfair had seemed very determined to start a new life and he had given him no problems as an employee.
At this point we were out of time, so we stopped play. The top questions on the player's minds seemed to be, in no particular order:
1. Had the drunk guy seen a possum, or had he really seen one of the demons that Mayfair had summoned?
2. Who had killed Mayfair and why?
3. What was the ninja? Why was it in the building, and why had it fled from them?
4. Why was Mayfair summoning demons?
no subject
Date: 2013-02-07 05:05 pm (UTC)