Some Kind of Monster
The conflict turned into a chase as Magog rampaged through another wing of the hospital, trying to block the hunters’ pursuit with rubble. Clay pounded after the denarian, while everyone else got to their bikes. Bill climbed on Carter’s - he was done with this “not shooting people” nonsense and he wanted a stable firing platform.

Magog left patients, staff, news crews, and police staring in his wake. The gang roared after the denarian and the cops sprang into action a few desperate moments later. Leonard State Hospital was surrounded by miles upon miles of flat farmland broken up by right-angle roads as straight and even as graph paper. There was no place for him to hide out there, so he went for the maximum security SSP building. At the very least he could buy some time to recover by unleashing violent lunatics on the crowd and seeking asylum (ahem) within. He powered through the police barricades, shrugging off incoming fire and tossing squad cars and their occupants aside like a living avatar of Michael Bayesian mayhem.

It was the best plan the deranged monkey could manage, and he nearly got away with it, besting half the group early on in the contest and pulling a third victory against everyone else but Scott just as he reached the outer wall to the prison loading dock. Scott had one chance, and he burned fate points to put his “Hard to Start, Hard to Stop” bike down hard on the deck, powersliding it into Magog’s legs and sending the beast to the asphalt. Scott beat the demon in a Speed roll next, grabbed the opportunity, and punched the thing right in its ugly face. Magog pummeled the parking lot into craters but Scott was (just barely, thanks to a free tag on Magog’s “Holy Crap It’s a Concussion”) too fast for the ape. Then Bill and Carter rounded the retaining wall and Bill blew out Magog’s knee with a well-aimed pistol shot. Magog was Taken Out, and Clay, Scott, and Ajaz beat the beast until he shifted back into a bloodied and unconscious Tannhauser.

The Frayed Ends of Sanity
Only seconds had passed, but the police would be quick to regroup and then everyone would be going to jail. Clay hijacked a Hostess truck from the loading dock while Bill and Ajaz loaded Tannhauser into the back. Scott and Carter led the way on their bikes, and the rolling interrogation room charged forth into moonlit Kansas farmland, four squad cars right on their heels with the promise of more to come if they didn’t lose them quickly.

Carter and Scott split up, drawing off three of the police cruisers. We cut back and forth between Carter’s chase (a contest), Scott’s pursuit (also a contest), Clay’s contest against the lone remaining trooper, and the conflict between Tannhauser, Bill, and Ajaz in the back of the truck.

Scott got the upper hand early on, using his bike’s superior acceleration to simply outdistance the cruiser on the straight heartland roads. The cop car had the advantage in top speed, though, and with nowhere to go, Scott saw his lead eaten bit by bit by the cruiser’s relentless acceleration. It was neck and neck (both sides had 2 accumulated victories) until Scott saw a tractor’s lights up ahead. Scott rolled Balls, playing a deadly game of chicken. The startled farmer swerved, blocking the entire road. The trooper braked, skidded, turned, and caromed off the tractor, rolling to a wreckage-strewn halt in the cornfield.

Carter was a slightly better driver than Scott this time, and was able to simply outpace one of the police cars behind him. Then Carter got some distance, shut off his headlights, and turned down a side road while the cruiser was trying (and failing) to Create an Advantage around calling in backup. It was a bad time to lose a roll by more than 3 points, and the cruiser sped by Carter’s hiding place.

Meanwhile, Clay was having a weird stuttering chase with his own state trooper. With no hope of outrunning the cruiser, Clay tried time and again to lure the cop close enough to run him off the road. The trooper wasn’t falling for it, but in turn his backup had been drawn off by Scott and Carter. He was content simply following the Hostess truck and waiting for a helicopter and more cruisers. That’s when Clay broke the vehicular siege by slowing down again as the two vehicles drew close on a turn. Instead of gunning the diesel’s engine, Clay stopped entirely. The cruiser reacted too slowly, and stopped just short of the truck. Clay grinned and backed right into the police car before the trooper could move. The Hostess truck happily rumbled off, trailing bits of cruiser off its rusty black rear bumper.

Inside the truck, Ajaz had restrained Tannhauser and Bill had covered the interior with wards. The denarian came around and of course immediately tried to break free of his physical and metaphysical bonds. Bill had been host to Pantagruel once; his Lore was more than capable of containing Tannhauser. It was quickly apparent that Tannhauser’s best defense skill was Balls when Ajaz opened with your standard “choke the shit out ‘em with a chain” Menace attempt. His Princess Leia antics had little effect on the denarian; Tannhauser figured they wanted something from him, else they’d have chopped him up and been done with it. His own Menace rolls left something to be desired as well. A busted knee, head wound, and multiple lacerations and contusions doesn’t make for an intimidating figure, especially when you’re talking to the people who gave you those wounds.

Clay suggested (yelling from the cab) that they try targeting his Wits - they’d have to be lower. And they were, although only by a single point. The Balls was more Magog than Tannhauser, while the Wits was more Tannhauser than Magog, but it was still better than trying to torture or intimidate their way to victory, especially since everyone was more or less out of fate points.

Bill got the first hooks into Tannhauser by getting him to reconsider his loyalty to Pantagruel. Magog and Tannhauser would forever be simple stooges to Pantagruel’s ambition, ready to be tossed aside as soon as he got whatever he wanted from them. That dealt the first consequence, “Moment of Indecision”, to Tannhauser, which Ajaz kind of squandered by falling back into intimidation. I knew he was trying to target Wits, but everything Ajaz said just came out more appropriate for a Menace roll, and Tannhauser’s superior resistance in that arena cost Bill and Ajaz some good arguments shut down by beefy defenses. Still, they were averaging a boost every exchange to invoke for free, and eventually Bill widened Tannhauser’s mental cracks to where the Crowley-Lampkin employee fixated on screwing over Pantagruel before he met his fate. He knew he couldn’t realistically get Bill and Ajaz, not in his condition (although he tried breaking through the wards a few more times and came close), and he had no illusions about living through the Hostess truck road trip, but Tannhauser could still take Pantagruel down with him. As Carter and Scott rejoined their comrades at a busy gas station down the road, Tannhauser began to talk. Security codes for Crowley-Lampkin’s Chicago office, the company’s disposition of secretive treasure hunters, its private security contractors, everything the gang could use to take down Pantagruel and keep him down for a long time.

Crash Course in Brain Surgery
The final question was laid bare: What should they do with Tannhauser? He was a bastard even as a human and they didn’t want to leave him with his coin. Bill had done enough; he left the truck and the decision in his friends’ hands. It came down to Clay in favor of killing the host with the trinitite knife to retrieve the coin, and Scott, whose player I think wanted to kill Tannhauser but who accepted a compel on “Driven by Redemption”. Everyone deserves a second (or third) chance, even a nasty fucker like Tannhauser. Scott laid his holy touch upon the denarian. The demonic screams rocked the truck but Tannhauser relented, his denarius rolling gently to a stop next to a landslide of toppled Twinkies.

Nobody touched the coin, because Clay and Scott each had a fate point left to refuse the inevitable compel. That was an excellent bit of tactics. They scooped it up safely and we left the gang planning their biggest hunt yet: Crowley-Lampkin’s home offices in Chicago!

Fade to Black
What about the tulpa? Unfortunately, the session’s events resulted in too many people seeing too much weird shit with too many chances for it to be attributed to the tulpa. The malevolent thoughtform would kill three more people in increasingly impossible ways (removing hands and feet and hiding them in different locked rooms, or filling the victim with stillborn eight-eyed ectoplasmic crows), culminating in Ray McKee’s apparent suicide. With Ray gone, the tulpa’s power was reduced, but it had enough momentum from the rumors circulating the institution that it continued to exist beyond its creator. The gang surmised that they could potentially kill it once enough time had passed and everyone believed it was just a ghost. At that point, it would literally be a ghost, and the PCs could pass the case onto someone else to handle, lying about the entity’s true origins lest the knowledge it was a rogue tulpa taint the attempts to destroy it. So, not a complete victory, but early on in the session the players were clear about making Tannhauser their priority, and they definitely held to that.

The tulpa itself was a trap. Pantagruel simply had one of his employees read his old book. Poor Ray managed to actually make a tulpa, so of course he’s seeing things. Oh no! He needs help! So Pantagruel sticks him in the same asylum Scott and Clay had stayed in, the tulpa’s malevolent aspects take hold, and you have murders. Tannhauser’s there to scoop up the PCs when they inevitably show up. It’s a bit Cobra Commander in its complexity, I admit, and ultimately that whole rationale didn’t matter so I’m glad I didn’t have to hang more of the plot off of it.

We all felt Tannhauser/Magog was plenty tough. Good defensive skills all around, tough even with his vulnerability in play, and able to dish out pretty heinous damage. What Tannhauser should have done was call the real cops and tried to get the PCs arrested. But he’s a thug, and his denarian form is even more of a thug, so he just waded in. The chase contests were suitably light - I still am tinkering with some ideas for more involved chases, but for what the Magog chase and subsequent police chase were supposed to be, both in narrative importance as well as game time, the normal contest rules were fine.

The players were smart, exposing only those characters who had fate points left to the denarius. Once they had it safely away, they couldn’t agree on whether to keep it with them (so they knew where it was and thus would be dead before someone got to it), bury it ala Harry Dresden, or sink it off the Florida coast or something. I think I might be able to force them to keep it with them by making Tannhauser’s information very time-sensitive. Like, they’ve got to hit Chicago right now or Pantagruel’s going to figure out that his tulpa trap went south. He probably will arrive at that conclusion anyway because you have to assume he’d be checking in with his goons, but if the gang hits him fast maybe the codes they got from Tannhauser would still work. Or they could stop and plan and prepare and deal with a harder nut to crack. I think it’s an interesting choice.

I count 5 deaths, actually. London, Poppa Capp, that farmhand that was working on the generator, Duke, and Marshall.

The farmhand that Ajaz got with the throwing knife, definitely. He didn't do anything except be vaguely associated with some nasty people. I don't think that having a job on the same piece of land as a dogfighting ring deserves the death penalty.

Might have spared Poppa Capp, or might not have. Depends on whether or not it was practical to punch him out. I mean, I'd rather not kill him, but I wouldn't feel too guilty if I did.

Probably wouldn't have gone through the cages shooting everything that looked nasty, either. Too much risk of misjudging an animal.

Doh! 6 deaths. Poppa Capp, London, Marshall, Duke, the farmhand from the night before, and the guard killed by a flaming whip. So 3 dead by PC hands, 2 from Ajaz alone. I did talk about Taking Out and how you determine what happens to them, and he chose murder. Poppa Capp was potentially a victim of Brown Jenkins, not necessarily the mastermind, but I think Carter wasn't taking the chance. Magery of any sort has been pretty powerful so far and he's not a frontline guy.

I don't think there was a risk of misjudging the animals, though. Not with Bill rolling a Lore of 4 with a bevy of stunts for certain specializations (demons, cryptids, etc.).

No, I’m Chaos, He’s Mayhem. We’re a Double Act
My memory of the ensuing combat’s timeline is pretty spotty. A lot of stuff happened and it was really late.

In the barn, Ajaz and Carter were frantically backpedaling for the ladder out of the cellar. Carter threw one of Scott’s holy seltzer bombs at the swarm to great effect - blue fire coursed over the cursed creatures, applying the condition “Dispersed” to the swarm. Ajaz brandished his flaming chain whip, keeping the things at bay long enough for the two hunters to get out of the chamber. The screaming, dying Baby Jenkinses alerted one of the guards, who trotted over and fired some 12 gauge slugs through the barn door.

Bill shot Poppa Capp in the face, but a compel on “Grab Bag of Ammo” resulted in simply rock salt, not slugs or buckshot. Still, the self-styled voodoo ringmaster toppled out of his chair onto the floor. Thurgood Marshall and Mr. Duke both went for Capp, knowing he had been handling the money. They saw each other and drew weapons - Duke yanked a Sig from a holster (since I forgot to take the PCs’ weapons, I made everyone else armed too) while Thurgood raised his cane, pulled the hidden trigger, and click! He rolled a -4 and his hidden cane-gun failed to fire. Not to be outdone in the incompetence department, Duke completely missed as well.

The gunshots from inside the fight club drew the second guard’s attention, but Fred was already outside. He dropped that guard with a collapsible baton and ransacked the pickup, coming up with a deer gun in each hand (there were more appropriate weapons; this was a compel on “Has No Idea What He’s Doing”). Fred hit nothing, and got a back full of cactus cat spines for his trouble. The little cryptid had zeroed in on the guards’ beer and turned out to be quite territorial.

The second guard died when he went to check out the damage he did to the barn’s occupants (which was none, actually). Ajaz sent his flaming whip through the barn door, the guard’s guts, and the ritual components on the shelf. Now the barn was on fire, thanks to flaming whip + motor oil. Carter took the guard’s Ithaca Roadblocker and snuck into the tall grass. Ajaz got to his bike and prepared to go Ghost Rider on everyone.

Back inside the chicken house? Chaos. Scott threw one of his holy seltzer bombs - the spraying water caught Scooby across his flank and burned the Black Shuck like acid. Scott wasn’t particulary fond of Scooby. He might have been a cute reference to a lovable cartoon but quite honestly, anything burned by holy water is not something you want to tolerate. Clarice sicced her chupacabra on the unholy dog, preventing Scott from immediate reprisal. It wasn’t teamwork, it was just how things turned out. In fact, Scott proved he had no love for the Aintrys either when he pistol-whipped Eustace to the floor when the greasy-haired redneck ran for the exit.

Poppa Capp got unsteadily to his feet and grabbed up a garden hose, then sprayed both Tinys and their bamboo box. The two Japanese men stared in horror as the contents - a gremlin - reacted poorly to being doused in water. Big Tiny dropped the cage and they both ran for the exit.

Scott pistol whipped both of them too.

Clay created an advantage to get Brown Jenkins in a grapple, then proceeded to systematically mangle the horrid creature. Jenkins broke free when John Boy tackled Clay, but it had already taken nearly all its consequences by then. Clay got in one last swipe with his trinitite knife, disemboweling the creature, then he and John Boy crashed through the chicken house wall out into daylight. Clay got the upper hand, bounced the largest Aintry’s skull off a trailer hitch, and that was that.

Bill cut the Chupacabra vs. Black Shuck (coming to SyFy next saturday!) short with a clean headshot on the goatsucker. Left uncontrolled, Scooby might have gone for Scott next, but it was bound to Sonny, and the stoner-turned-hunter was already running for the hole Clay and John Boy made. The remaining Scoobies ran for their van.

On the other side of the chicken house, Thurgood Marshall III and Duke continued shooting at each other. This time, Thurgood rolled a +4 and plowed a centerfire round right through Duke’s chest. The washed-up fed collapsed, but had enough life left in him to zap his killer with a lightning worm (from the Fate Toolkit) in a bottle. Thurgood fried (Weapon:7 attacks will do that) and dropped lifeless as Duke bled out next to him.

Brooklyn retrieved G-Nome while London went for the pair’s other fighting critter, a Zuni fetish doll. What they didn’t know, however, was that Brown Jenkins had passed the homicidal doll a knife before the fights started and it slashed London’s wrist wide open. She dropped the cage, the doll broke free, jungle drums played in the background. Brooklyn couldn’t save London and so she and G-Nome ran for the Challenger outside. The Zuni doll ran for another cage. This one was covered with a thick cloth, but whatever was inside it was giggling and shouting “Put me in, coach!”

• Carter’s player: “Awww man. Is it Chucky?”
• Me: “Hell yes it is. Two dolls possessed by homicidal spirits? Batman Team Up Time!”

Problem was, Bill was waiting for something to shoot. Chucky ate a load of 00 buck (enough to appear dead, at least). The Zuni doll ran for the tall grass outside. Bill let him go and started shooting anything in cages that wasn’t simply a hapless animal. Stirge? Bang. Headcrab? Bang. Wumpus cat? Bill held his fire. It was just a cougar with a funky tail.

Poppa Capp escaped out into the yard while the gremlin, now many gremlins and bursting through the cage as it multiplied, wriggled their way towards the garden hose. They would have been my second opportunity to use my swarm rules, but unfortunately Ajaz rode his motorcycle through the door, showering sunlight across the gremlins. They burst into flame while the nephilite brandished his firey chain, continuing his swath of destruction through to the other side of the chicken house.

On a side note, my original plan to cut the massive number of NPCs down to size and focus the battle against one swarm was all tied up with the Cottingley Fairy. The little tinker-hell thing was nowhere near a threat on its own, but the plan was for it to zap back to the Nevernever, then come back with a few hundred of its friends and act like the cloud of carnivorous airborne piranha they were. It would have been a little joke - the tiny fairy turning out to be the most lethal thing on the farm - but Ajaz’s player correctly pointed out, however, that the protective circle they put up would block crossing over to the spirit world. Instead, the fairy made a beeline for anywhere but the chicken house. It probably hit the circle barrier like a bug on a windshield.

No Man, G-Nome Got It Worse Than Anybody
Speaking of protective barriers, the group wondered if it’d work on Scooby too, since Sonny was peeling out of the farm and driving like a maniac down the dirt road. He made his Notice check against Carter’s earlier Stealth roll of 3, though, and the van skidded to a stop. Fred got out and started digging up the twine, looking to break the spell so they could escape with their dog intact. They hadn’t gotten the circle cracked before Brooklyn drove past them doing at least fifty on the gravel road. Her Challenger screamed over the circle and kept going. G-Nome, however, was stopped by the circle. The car’s rear window turned red, then the car skidded to a dusty halt, then Brooklyn, shaking and covered in gnome gristle, got out and vomited.

Poppa Capp made it to his U-Haul just in time to see that Carter had been waiting for him. The 10-gauge Roadblocker thundered and the U-Haul was the second vehicle to get a crimson paint job. Carter rolled the messy, messy corpse for any valuables.

It was mostly cleanup after that. Bill finished off the remaining hostile caged cryptids and then the gang hunted down that friggin’ Zuni doll with a riding lawnmower. Any attempts to stick around and properly loot the area were cut short with compels. Now that Brown Jenkins and Poppa Capp were dead, the police found the chicken farm. Amidst the red and blue lights and the orange glow from the dying fires, a tiny rat with the face of a child scrambled up into the open door of a squad car…

Autopsy
I’ve got very few complaints. Everything that caught me off guard was based around my expectations; how my players would react to the fights, the creatures I thought would be threats, the speedy escalation to violence, etc. The entire session was pretty much a study in barely-controlled chaos, and the group said they all liked it, so there you go. The session was really a present for Bill’s player. He loves cryptids and weird critters, and although I had a big list of beasties, most of them just weren’t powerful enough to threaten an entire group until I thought of the fight club idea. It was a session about conflict and discovery - conflict, for obvious reasons, and discovery, to see what kind of thing I would unleash next.

It was also Ajaz’s player’s first time gaming with us. He’d played two games of Hackmaster over Hangouts, and he got a weekend of Fate, Star Wars d6, and Savage Worlds with us. He hit the ground running and fit right in. I have another coworker who might be able to come next session, in which case maybe I’ll be able to speak at length on running Fate for larger groups.

For Next Time
We didn’t get into the specifics of what little they DID find, but I figure if the group wants to chain something directly from this session, they could decide to go deal with Scooby once and for all. I could add on to that and even have the Scoobies ask the PCs for help with an actual monster. Or, they could track down where some wannabe like Poppa Capp even got a Brown Jenkins. He must have learned what he learned from someone… or something.

Yeah, that looks like a pretty big upgrade.

Especially if the gaze-revealed Aspects are taggable.

In my mind, they would not be taggable. To play it the other way, you could learn ONE taggable aspect instead of all of them. That'd be okay I think.

In Which the Evidence Room is Treated like a Wal-Mart
Carter and Bill probably didn’t need to break into the Margrave courthouse at this point, but they really wanted to make sure the local cops didn’t end up sitting on some ancient weapon or powerful artifact. You know, for their own safety. Plus, even though most ghosts cause electronic equipment to short out, Van Owen’s panic room might have had footage of who the ghost was. If they could positively ID the ghost, they could probably find the remains and ace the spectre once and for all. At the very least, there might be more clues as to what the shade wanted. Normally, vengeful spirits will move on once the person, people, task, or object keeping them in our realm is taken care of.

I didn’t have John Rogers’ Crimeworld supplement in front of me, but I remembered enough that I set the courthouse job up like a series of challenges. The objective was the evidence room. It had video cameras, physical locks, and was guarded. Moving around inside the courthouse itself would be restricted, as they had internal surveillance cameras. Getting inside would be easy as long as Carter didn’t try the main entrance.

Bill kept a lookout, ready to provide a distraction should Carter get in over his head. The first thing Carter did was sabotage the building’s air conditioning unit. A few minutes later, some of the courthouse staff and a few cops were outside scratching their heads. It was enough of an opening for Carter to climb inside an open window. His Stealth was high enough that he didn’t have trouble moving around inside the building, even with the cameras. Thing is, he needed to get the evidence room guard out of the cage, and he needed the officers watching the camera feeds gone. He thought back to the morgue and how easily a simple fire alarm cleared their path, so he took it one step further and luckily made his Tools roll to create a controllable but smoky fire in a wastebasket. Alarms raised, the evidence room cleared out and Carter had access.

Carter was still stymied by the video cameras watching the evidence room, however. He didn’t have an easy way past it and he didn’t have the tech skills to wipe footage if he snuck back out to the security office. He spent a FP and produced a tiger mask he kept from Van Owen’s house (basically an invoke for effect on Arcane Acquisitions Expert). This mask acted like a chameleon-esque veil, and with it Carter was able to enter the evidence room right under the camera’s nose. All the big items from Van Owen’s were here now, as well as the tapes from the panic room. Carter accepted a compel here - he was greedy enough that he’d take something big, big enough that the courthouse security cameras would see him leaving.

Outside, one of the deputies milling about spotted Bill loitering and walked over, tried to roust Bill with a tried-and-true mixture of condescension, good-ole-boy douchebaggery, and intimidation. Bill decided to self-compel his “Last of the Gunslingers” aspect and hip-fired his Judge into the deputy’s chest. Rock salt puffed from the cop in a gritty white cloud and he went down moaning. Bill hobbled to his bike and punched the throttle as more officers ran after the old man, then spun and raced for their cars. Looked like Carter was going to have an easy escape.

Carter exited the courthouse carrying a magic anvil, carefully strapped it down to his bike, and peeled out in the other direction.

Slow Ride
With his headstart, Bill was able to lose the cops but the PCs were definitely wanted men now. With their new information, they decided Pastor Koons might be able to help them ascertain the ghost’s identity, so they headed towards the parsonage. I had them make two rolls - one Drive roll to see how fast they could get there, and a Streetwise roll to see if they evaded the police. They aced the Streetwise roll, but failed the Drive and chose not to pay a cost to succeed.

The bikers were just a few blocks away from Koons’ parsonage when they heard the staccato bursts of a Thompson gun.

G-g-g-g-Ghost
Aldo Koons lay dead in his driveway, lit by his Ranger’s flickering headlights. His head had been machinegunned to pieces, his front lawn speckled with gore. Standing over the pastor’s corpse was a headless ghost dressed in 50-year-old fatigues raising an equally ghostly M1 Thompson submachinegun. The ghost used a spray attack but the multiple targets reduced its Shoot rolls to where the PCs easily dodged them. Clay leapt from his bike, trinitite knife in hand. The knife caught on the shade’s shoulder, leaving a long ectoplasmic gash. Carter fishtailed his bike, trying to slam the ghost with the magical anvil strapped to the back. Bill started laying down a hasty ritual circle, but the ghost tied his rolls. Bill could only corral the spectre, not entrap it entirely.

Scott’s bike was “Hard to Start, Hard to Stop”, and this time it spilled him painfully onto the driveway with a “Road Rash” consequence instead of driving straight for the ghost like he’d planned. Undeterred, Scott opened his Sight again and was dumped into another war-torn hell, facing a tall Norwegian mercenary across ten feet of mass grave. A bombed-out church burned happily roughly where Koons’ body was, his Ford Ranger corresponding to a bullet-ridden Jeep in the spirit realm. Much younger echoes of Koons, McGraw, and Van Owen were firing into the jungle, using the dead Jeep for cover from barrages of incoming rounds.

The ghost was outmatched. It already had a consequence from Clay’s new knife, and it had to contend with an ex-con who could kill it with his bare hands on its own turf as well as two more guys working to trap it inside a circle. The ghost survived another round but took a moderate consequence, then conceded before Bill could close the circle. In the real world, the spectre just flickered out. On the other side, however, Scott saw napalm scour his valley clean of life. He was thrown back against Koons’ Ranger, his jacket smoking with ectoplasm from his narrow escape.

Still no Maalox.

Funny Pictures
Now that the gang was standing around a bloody crime scene, they decided (okay, they accepted compels) to search Koons’ body, vehicle, and house for anything that might help them kill this ghost. Clay found the answer in a decades-old folded-up picture Koons had in his pocket. It was somewhere in Africa, maybe the Congo. Van Owen was there, shotgun over one shoulder, shit-eating grin on his face. Diamonds poured from his other hand. McGraw and Koons were there too, looking almost as pleased. Finally, the Norwegian merc was there, Thompson raised in triumph.

Suddenly Scott’s visions made sense. Margrave was built on blood diamonds, blood money Van Owen and the rest must have smuggled back with them. For whatever reason, they put their money into this town. Maybe they just wanted a nice place to retire.

Either way, Earl McGraw was the last person alive from that picture. Now that the headless ghost had shot Van Owen and Koons, McGraw’s life was probably measured on an egg timer. The gang, themselves wanted for burglary and assaulting police (at the very least), had to convince Margrave’s former sheriff of their good intentions and then protect the man against an assault by a pissed-off ghost with a machine gun and decades of combat experience.

Then the compels came home to roost. The guys decided to search instead of run for it, so Sheriff Edgar McGraw and the deputy they’d beat up back at Van Owen’s place rolled up on the red-handed PCs.

Shot in the Face and You’re To Blame
Honestly, I thought that maybe the PCs would have tried to reason with the younger McGraw, but Bill decided that rock salt makes an effective opener and ender to any conversation. Junior hadn’t even gotten out a “Freeze!” when Bill shot him in the face with a load of rock salt. The sheriff keeled over backwards into his squad car. Clay beat down the deputy for the second time that day, then the gang was off and running. Now they were in a race against the ghost and the cops.

In Which the Gang Tries Home Invasion
Retired Margrave sheriffs apparently only go out and make nuisances of themselves when the weather is nice or if they don’t have to do any real work. That’s why Earl McGraw was at home watching TV when the PCs rolled up. After learning that it seemed to just be him and his wife at home, the group dithered about whether they should sneak in the back door or knock and try to bluff their way in, or come at them right off with the truth, or what. Scott rang the doorbell, punched Mrs. McGraw in the mouth, and drew down on Earl before the old man could get out of his recliner.

He explained they were there to help.

Clay showed McGraw the pictures and that got the old sheriff talking. McGraw and Koons had been approached by Van Owen for some sort of CIA (“at least he said it was CIA”) op into the Congo. They had some mercenaries with them, foremost among them Roland Tembo, a Norwegian who was a surgeon with a submachinegun. Despite heavy losses, the unit stole a fortune in diamonds from the Congolese. Tembo got hit with a heavy case of conscience, so Van Owen blew his head off with his shotgun. Those diamonds, followed by Van Owen’s lucrative career pilfering magic shit for Crowley-Lampkin, led to Margrave’s restoration efforts and a retirement opportunity for all three men.

McGraw couldn’t deny the (lack of) evidence from the shootings. He was willing to give these crackpots a shot at marking up his garage with some sort of ritual, as long as they handed him his gun back. The group decided they could always just outbid him on initiative if he tried to shoot them. The unlikely allies headed to McGraw’s garage and set to work. Their plan: Perform a ritual to summon Roland Tembo’s murderous spirit, then hit with a combination of ghostknife (taken from a murdering ghost in the very first session), trinitite shiv, and old-fashioned exorcism.

Exorcism By Combat
Summonings are a multi-part process. First, if you’re smart, you need to set up a ritual circle to protect yourself from the summoned entity. This is a Create Advantage that acts as narrative permission to roll your Lore in defense against the spirit’s attempts to break free. Second, you need to know what material components will draw the spirit to your chosen site. For a quick and dirty summoning, I usually just call for a Lore roll, but this was the Big Bad for the session. I wanted something a little more flavorful, so I went to my random spell component chart I’d made months earlier. I had the PCs roll 3 times, and the probabilities turned out reasonably well.

• Caster’s Fuel: No problem. Bill siphoned some gas from his bike to create the initial circle.
• Target’s hair/clippings/feathers: With a moment of thought, they used a .45 ACP shell, the picture of Roland from Koons’ house, and the ectoplasm scraped from Van Owen’s corpse.
• Geometric Salt: Child’s play to finish the ritual off with lines of power drawn in salt.

These spell components act as a compel on the entity, forcing it to manifest in the desired location. After that, you do whatever you wanted to do; bargain, attack, whatever.

Roland appeared, still somewhat worse for wear after their fight at the parsonage (its Moderate consequence wasn’t healed yet). The ghost tried to seize initiative with a fate point but Scott outbid it (in what would be a recurring theme this conflict). This time, however, the PCs were low on FP and the ghost had nearly a full stock for the scene. It was a tough fight - Clay darting in and out with the trinitite knife while Scott and Bill tag-teamed an exorcism with create advantage and Lore attack actions (the only time you can use Lore to attack, pretty much). The ghost had primary skills 1-2 points higher than the PCs, and it started to get the upper hand, dealing consequences to Carter and Clay. Earl McGraw emptied his revolver into the thing, but his bullets spun straight through the ghost. Roland leveled his Thompson at the old man, but Carter pushed him out of the way! Carter was rewarded for his heroism with bullets, and took another consequence. Scott’s portion of the exorcism actually exorcised Roland’s gun - the Thompson went dry with an echoing “click”. Roland tried to break free with a Balls vs. Lore roll - no good! The circle of gasoline erupted into blue-white flame, blocking the spirit’s escape. The exorcism started to take hold now, and little by little Roland started looking more like he did in life. His head started to mist back into existence, his torn fatigues coalescing into clothing from a more peaceful time. Bill’s Lore was too high for him to break free, and Scott had effectively disarmed him. Clay waited until he could see Roland’s face, then slammed the trinitite knife through the top of the ghost’s ectoplasmic skull. Roland’s spirit went up in an orange conflagration, leaving the gasoline sputtering out and McGraw’s garage a smoky, bullet-riddled, blood-spattered mess.

McGraw decided that Carter taking a bullet for him canceled out Scott’s wife-punching. He couldn’t deny what he had seen, and told the gang he could stall his son and the other cops for a few minutes (he obviously didn’t know Bill had marred his kid’s good looks with some rock salt, else things might have gone differently). He went outside, pushed his hat high on his forehead, and spat into his front lawn as the bikers drove into the night.

ROLL CREDITS!
This was the best investigative adventure I ever ran. I also managed to use a single villain and make him a credible threat despite the action economy. That was definitely a first for me - most of the time my single villains get completely curbstomped. The advice in Fate Core about setting major villains’ skills 2 points higher than the PCs is spot on.

I didn’t feel like I had too many weak compels, either. The guys had enough FP to last until the last conflict, and then everyone ran out. If they had picked either the exorcism or the stabbing as their ghostbusting focus, I think they would’ve had fared slightly better but I understand that they probably wanted to cover their bases. Besides, if you make one guy the obvious attacker he’s going to get Roland’s full attention. If you have a guy running an exorcism AND a guy with a ghost-knife trying to stab you, and you only have one action, well, it’s not so cut-and-dried anymore.

Mystery-wise, the plot wasn’t terribly convoluted in hindsight. Van Owen betrays Roland back in the 60s, uses the blood money to make his American Dream come true, ghost finds him and starts killing the people who were involved with his death. The players furnished their own red herrings as well as their own motivations for why all this was happening. All I had to do was listen and try to steer them to the plot. Remember, when you run a mystery game, you want the PCs to solve it. Make it a simple situation, allow room for PC speculation to pad it out, and let compels complicate it further. It’s easier said than done, though, which is why my typical investigation-based sessions either run really long or flounder somewhere in the middle.

I was also happy that I had something for everyone to do. Scott and Carter took the lead during the investigation, but Clay and Bill backed them up and each had a spotlight moment gathering clues. Carter’s not a combat monster, but he had his moments while thieving. Plus, he took a bullet for McGraw. Carter’s usually pretty mercenary - I wonder if he’s planning on an aspect change or if it just seemed like he was the right guy in the right place at the right time?

Finally, I think the level of police involvement was just about right. They weren’t really a challenge in a fight but they had control over so much of what the PCs needed that it forced conflict. Not shooting conflict (except for the shooting conflicts), but conflict in general. It made the session more than just “gather clues, speak to NPCs, kill a monster”.

For Next Time
I think I know better than to try to predict what I’ll run next time. I’ve got some ideas involving a Cryptid Fight Club, a certain infamous witch who lives in a walking hut, and a Sasquatch team-up with Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Here's a trio that makes me laugh every time I see them on the character sheet:
Knows the Score
Gets the Women
Kills the Bad Guys

(they're from the trailer for Machete)

This is really cool. I had made a simple one for Fate Core, but yours is exponentially more sophisticated.

Thanks to both of you!