It’s been a long time coming, but I finally got to run my Dresdenatural game again this past Saturday. Clay got a measure of closure for the events from his “What Shaped You?” phase, I actually Took Out a PC, and everyone got to yell “BIIIIEEEEEELLLLL!!!” like Anna Paquin on multiple occasions.
Warning! This writeup features blatant ripoff-er,
homages to various characters from the first season of
True Blood,
Police Academy,
Supernatural, and
From a Buick 8.
Session 5Bill Stockburn,
Clayton Haycock James, and
Carter MewsReward: Significant Milestone
NOWClay knew he was dreaming because he was walking, not riding, but the green sign that read “Stackhouse, LA” seemed real enough. It was early morning, and the swampy fog just added to the town’s dreamlike quality. His blurry reverie was cut short when a local police cruiser pulled up beside him. Clay recognied the Look on the chunky cop who got out and prepared for the worst. To put it delicately, the Look led to the sort of things that Stallone had to put up with in First Blood. The word “boy” was used. “Not from around here”. “Give you a ride outta town.” Clay knew the drill. He put his hands on the cruiser’s hood and looked down at his reflected face.
It wasn’t his face. Clay’s mind whirled as he recognized the face from his nightmares, the face that changed his life, that had introduced him to the supernatural. He had no name for that face. His company back in Afghanistan just called the teenager “that Hajji kid” when they found him lost in a cave during a patrol and brought him back to their base. The morning after that, Clay was the last living member of his company.
The shock made the dream start to fall apart. Time blurred, details went fuzzy, but the next thing Clay saw was that he-as-the-kid was in a police holding area. A handful of drunks circled him like hungry sharks. Everything blurred again, and Clay saw the drunks lying dead on the floor before he woke up with a start.
OPENING TITLE!Bill pressed Clay about the dream and the boys headed east to Louisiana. Scott had left the gang after Arizona in search of Jimmy Pale Wolf, whom they hadn’t heard from since their sojourn into the NeverNever, so they were riding light but all night when they passed the
exact same “Stackhouse, LA” sign from Clay’s dream. Save for Carter, who bought off his Compel, the guys were too tired after their cross-Texas drive to bother dealing with a motel. Bill (with a Declaration) realized this wasn’t his first time in Stackhouse (True Blood fans, get your minds out of the gutter). He had staked a vampire who was stalking this waitress, and he remembered where the undead bastard had been nesting. Bill and Clay rolled up near the old Civil-War-era house to find signs that it wasn’t abandoned. They aborted and laid out their sleeping rolls in the trees nearby while Carter headed off to steal some Red Bull and beer. Everywhere was closed this late at night, so he burgled the local bar, “Bordeaux’s”, and narrowly escaped being spotted by the owner after waking him during his thefting. Part of this was a Compel, but I think part of it was Carter thinking how useful it was when they had beer down in the Underworld. Coors Light and Red Bull in hand, Carter sped back and hid in the woods with his comrades.
Morning WoodsThe next morning, the homeowner made her Alertness roll against Clay’s bungled Stealth and accosted him with a frying pan held in shaking hands. Bill recognized her as the same waitress he saved from the vampire stalker. Bill’s player caught on right away after I told him her name was “Suzie (not Sookie, not by any means, oh no) Bontemps”.
“Suh-zeh?” Bill asked, in his best Stephen Moyer voice.
“BIIIEEEEEELLLLLL!” I screeched in my best Anna Paquin impression.
The above should make sense to anyone who’s seen True Blood and heard Vampire Bill say “Sookie”. Now back to the story!
All was well! Suzie, still a waitress at Bordeaux’s, invited the gang inside and they swapped stories. Suzie wasn’t aware of anything odd going on, although she did catch on that whenever Bill Stockburn and his gang were around, odd things did tend to happen. Unfortunately, their breakfast was broken up by a police cruiser rolling up on the old house.
Deputy Curtis Wilcox, a tall, handsome, bull-necked local cop with an eye on Suzie (and an instant dislike for Clay in particular), had come by to tell her some bad news. Suzie’s brother, Jason, had been found dead last night, beaten to death along with everyone in the drunk tank down at the station. Again, exactly like Clay’s dream. Clay used the commotion from Wilcox and Bill comforting Suzie to sneak upstairs and check Jason’s room. He didn’t find anything eerie, but he did surmise that Jason 1) liked to drink, 2) worked construction, and 3) was a man-slut.
The team split up after that - Suzie let Bill come with her down to the station to sign the papers, while Clay and Carter took the beer out to the old bridge where Jason’s construction site was.
Your Tax Dollars At WorkClay and Carter found the construction site quiet save for two befuddled workers being questioned by Detective Andy Flowers (Stackhouse’s only detective). Clay recognized Andy from his dream too! He was the pig who had accosted him on the road, and here he was, questioning the construction workers about the events of last night. Unfortunately for “Detective Andy”, the two guys didn’t have anything for him. Clay and Carter rolled up after the detective left. After some Deceit from Carter and some beer-based bribery (stolen beer is
always a good investment!), they convinced Rene and Lafayette they were delivery people stymied by the lack of a bridge. Rene and Lafayette were really, really bad at defense rolls, and let on that the rest of their crew might be dead, but they’d be damned if they’re not eking out as much pay as they can without actual work before people caught on. They learned all the dead men from the drunk tank allegedly beat each other to death, and they were all in the holding cell to begin with for drunk and disorderly charges the night before. Why weren’t Rene and Lafayette there? Well, Rene didn’t hang out with Jason ever since Jason fucked Rene’s wife, Renee, and Lafayette was in Shreveport all weekend trying to score drugs.
The presence of Detective Andy sealed the deal for Clay at this point. He was sure something hinky was going on, but everything leading up to the deaths so far seemed pretty mundane. Hopefully Bill was having better luck.
Bad Boys Bad BoysAgainst his better judgement, Bill walked into the Stackhouse police station and was immediately called out by Sheriff Sandy “Bud” Dearborne, who recognized him from the vampire stalker fiasco. He eyed Bill with suspicion, but Suzie and Bill convinced the small-town lawman that the quicker Bill could get to the bottom of things, the quicker he could leave town. Bud grudgingly agreed to let Bill see the drunk tank and follow Suzie to see her brother.
The holding cell and morgue weren’t hiding any supernatural secrets for Bill, although given his high Lore roll and the increasing
lack of evidence, Bill figured that some sort of compulsion or mentalism might be at work. He’d need to get a look at the security footage from the murders - which in itself was messed up. The
police should have had
someone there to respond to 5 men beating each other to death. It is not easy to kill someone with your bare hands, and the evidence Bill had seen pointed to the victims acting with berserk animal savagery. It was
beyond animal - they must have punched each other until every finger was broken and kept fighting past the point when their eyes and jaws were smashed.
Carol Hooks, the sweet little dispatcher, started playing the footage for Bill when the first sign of an active hand in all this occurred. The video showed an empty drunk tank. Carol skipped ahead. Here was Deputy Wilcox, escorting Jason Bontemps and some other guys whose identities weren’t important to the story into the holding area. Here were these 5 drunks, sitting around in a somewhat reconciliatory mood, since they had gotten their licks in during the punch-up that brought them to the station and they were now all in the same boat. Here was Jason and one other man getting up to see who was walking back to the cell... Carol’s movement was subtle, natural, and almost unconscious. Bill couldn’t stop Carol before the diminutive woman’s finger moved smoothly to the “erase” button. He had only barely spotted her doing it, but the damage was done. There was no use making a scene in the center of this increasingly strange police station, so Bill let Carol off the hook (ahem) and left.
Bill started putting it together. Suzie started her shift at Bordeaux’s and Bill met back up with Clay and Carter. They figured Carol was either the Big Bad or she was a victim of whatever or whoever was messing with Stackhouse. Since PCO Hooks was on duty, now was as good a time as ever to get her address from Suzie and go burgle her domicile.
The Feds Who Stared At GoatsWe cut back to the Stackhouse, LA sign, where a black Crown Vic was pulled off the road.
Major Jeffrey Flynn was packing up his tracking spell components while his two minders, Agents Dana Fox and Patrick Roberts, continued lamenting their shit detail, the stupidity of using Flynn (because his Cassandra’s Tears predictions were full of shit), how screwed they were if they
didn’t retrieve Project BLACKBOX’s pet warlock, and if they could get away with just shooting their target and explaining that it was an unavoidable situation.
The only thing that could possibly interrupt their excessive complaining were the kinds of needs that accompany hours and hours on the road, and so the three feds stopped at Bordeaux’s to “gather intelligence”.
To the Mead Hall!The first thing the PCs noticed when they entered the bar was that Bordeaux’s was out of Red Bull. The second thing was Detective Andy, who was getting 11:30 drunk despite it only being 5:30. The third thing was the feds. Bill got Carol’s address from Suzie as quickly as he could, but Andy had already started grumbling about all the nosy no-good strangers in town just loud enough for it to be intentional. What Andy didn’t know was that it was really, really easy to get Clay to fight cops. Clay, Bill, and Carter all blasted Andy with their scathing wit. It started off as just good fun, but when Clay asked Andy how in the hell could 5 people beat each other to death inside a police station and nobody see anything, well, something in Andy snapped. This wasn’t the normal kind of “let’s fight!” snappage. No, this was a supersized “timeline X and timeline Y are missing chunk Z and nothing I can think of connects them” snappage. Detective Andy Flowers threw a spinning drunken rage-punch at Carter!
Carter: “Wait, why me!?”
Me: “Andy’s seen Way of the Gun. He knows you always punch the girlfriend first.”
Carter: “Hey!”
*laughter*Luckily, Carter not only dodged the wild blow, he made it
look like Andy actually knocked him to the floor! Agent Fox was out of her seat in an instant, but Agent Roberts stopped her from joining battle. Clay actually got Andy to back down with an insane Intimidation roll right after that, and Andy took off out the door so he could cry in his car. Fox stooped to help Carter to his feet, quietly advising him that he should press charges. She
almost slipped one of Flynn’s tracking spell links past Carter’s excellent Alertness roll, too. Carter let her plant the hex bag but shrugged off her advice. The boys left, since they had Carol’s address now and the feds were making them uneasy.
If I See Any Starfighter Coin-Op Games I’m Shooting ThemOn their way to the Starlite trailer park where Carol lived, Carter planted the tracking link on a big rig headed to Shreveport. That would slow the feds down. Grinning with mischief, they easily broke into Carol’s double wide and found that things were “off”. Out of place. It was as if Carol’s brain wasn’t firing correctly. Newly-washed dishes had been put back in completely different cabinets than their older brethren. The fruit basket held hot dog rolls, the toothpaste was in the bedroom nightstand, and so on. Carol wasn’t the Big Bad, but she was definitely a victim. From the way Andy was acting, he was probably a victim too. Hell,
all the cops in Stackhouse were likely mindraped by this faceless warlock (yes, they figured a warlock was the most likely option). If they could nab one, they could break the enchantment and get some answers.
(continued!)
