Characters and rational.
Adventure was designed around characters who knew nothing about the supernatural world to allow for players who knew nothing about the setting or the game system (as this was a con game)
Thus the characters were all 18-21 year old student types, partially generated up to their 1st story. Each character sheet had 2 extra copies of their first story in the plastic wallet, which they handed to 2 other players. Once every one had 2 other people ‘guest star’ strips they were asked to read it, work out how their character would have got involved with that story, come up with an aspect and 2 skills relevant to those events that were used to complete the character sheets. This allows the players to get a taste of character generations with out looking most of the slot.
8 characters were made available;
4 true mortals (A jock, a rich kid, a boy scout and trainee doctor)
and 4 who had supernatural potential that had not yet really fully expressed (A changeling who had not used any of his powers, a White court virgin, a focused practitioner with ritual and ‘Happy Clappy Christian’ with the power of god)
The plot line.
The players are all invited to the same private party being held in ‘The Raz’ a local student nightclub/ dive. [Due to twists given to the characters by the players this was changed in 2 case; one so that the PC was being employed behind the bar, and the other had been asked to come along and act as an onsite medic incase any of the quests over did it.]
Officially the party is to celebrate the 19th birthday of Clover Zander; the daughter of local VIP/entrepreneur (and incidentally head of the local White Court Vampires). Clover is currently a ‘virgin’ and this party is a chance for her to have a peruse of the ‘local talent’ to see if there is any one there she faces for her ‘first nibble’. She not totally naive as a White Court Virgin, and know that there is a high possibility that the ‘nibbled’ person is not going to see another dawn, so she is looking for some one who might be ‘interesting’ but not a major loss. She is guarded by Andy Wynn, a massive red headed ‘knight’ who is enthralled to Daddy.
She has approached a friendly ‘drug mage’ (G-Man) and his ‘handler’ (A changeling called Cassandra) to source a ‘tipple’ that will be used at the party. She has asked them to create a potion what will reveal the true nature of the people at her party (A little like the effect of looking at them with “The sight”) to make sure she doesn’t accidentally snack on some one important (Which could be embarrassing and make problems for Daddy).
Unfortunately G-Man decided that rather complete the order he would use a significant amount of the resources for the potion to get royally stoned and as a result has not made the potion. In desperation Cassandra has been pulling in favours and has managed to find a source of something that she hopes will do close to what Clover wanted. She arranges for one of her Mules, Lorna, to collect the potion and take it to the night club. Lorna has decided to try this out before she delivers it, and by the time she arrives at the club she is fully under the effects.
What the drug does:
Stage one (after a glass) – gifts a very limited version of “The Sight” in that it allows the consumer to see the ‘inner nature’ of those they look at. Amongst the PCs this came out as:
The jock appeared initially as a if he was dressed for a game of American football, but as the party progresses this turned into chain mail amour. The rich kid’s clothes tuned into very fashionable suits, and the trainee doctor became ‘House’. The Changeling ended up looking like Legolas, the happy clappy appeared in priestly robes and slowly became ‘pope’ and finally the focused practitioner appeared like the walt Disney witch, with pointy nose and warts.
Stage Two (After 2 pints) Any supernatural abilities the character has start to express uncontrollably.
Stage Three (After 3 pints) Any latent supernatural abilities the character express – Changelings are forced to chose. Mortals suffer epileptic fits and collapse.
Attempts to ‘analyse’ the drug using normal forensics states it is a strange combination of plant toxins and what looks like spider venom. Magical analysis shows it is a potion and will reveal its effects.
Also at the party is a werewolf Duggy – initially he looks like Lon Chainey, and gets worse and more wolf like as the evening goes on. He really like the drink and with knock back a couple of pints of the stuff if left to.
Lorna arrives having already consumed 2 pints of the drink. She leaves it on the bar and the bar staff serve it out. She is clearly ‘off her head’ and complements people on their costumes before heading to the toilet. PCs who partake of the drink will start to feel the effects over the next 30 mins. Around the time the players start to suffer the effects, there will be a complaint that some one is monopolizing the toilet, and they will discover that Lorna has collapsed and seems to be having a fit.
In the middle of this distraction, Clover arrives. She is annoyed that people are not paying attention to her, and will use her abilities to make sure she is the focus – this is after all her party. The normal party goers will focus on her, leaving the PC’s to deal with Lorna, and Duggy who has just gone into full wolf man mode. Realising this is not good, Andy will command the rest of the party guests to leave, leaving the PCs to deal with the mess. His main role will be to protect Clover, but he will assist if the PCs are struggling bring the Werewolf down.
Annoyed at her party being ruined Clover will charge the PCs with the task of find out where the drug came from and what is going on.
With a bit of investigation they can trace through Cassandra back to Beeky, who lives in a flat over looking Sefton park. When they arrive at the flat they discover a typical student dive behind a door designed more as a bank vault (multiple locks – big metle plate – definitely something they do not what to try and kick down). The room is occupied by a thin man with long lanky hair and wearing ripped jeans and a faded T-Shirt of a band that no one can remember. This however is NOT Beeky. This is Beeky’s owner Hash. Beeky is in the old bed room. The bedroom has black out curtains over the window and a large box like cover in the center. Under the cover is a massive parrot cage and inside it is Beeky.
Beeky is a construct – part parrot, part bramble, and extremely vicious. He will bite whoever removes the cover. (No saving throw – he is THAT vicious and has had a lot of practice at just exactly where you need to hold the over to remove it .)
Once the cover is off the brambles will start to grow, they will positively explode if some one has removed the black out curtain. The bottom of the cage (and the thorns on the brambles) are covered in the red fluid which is the concentrated version of the drug.
Beeky will try to entangle the PCs and escape form his cage, however although he can regrow his tenti-brambles, he is very vulnerable to fire.
Hash will leg it as soon as Beeky is uncovered – he KNOWS how nasty it is.
However if the PCs can defeat Beeky then there will be no more drug.
