We played 2 weeks ago and the gang went up against Magog in Scott and Clay's mental institution.
Session 14 - Welcome Home (Sanitarium)Who was there? Scott, Carter, Clay, Bill, and Ajaz.
Reward: +1 skill point (max is still +4, must justify advance with relevant aspect).
Leonard State Hospital, KansasRaymond McKee opened his eyes. The thing wearing his face was still there.
“I’m still here, Ray,” the thing said. “The time for that is past. You can’t just wish me away anymore.”
McKee stared, his pupils dilated from scrunching up his eyes, from the meds, from the fear. “But look at what you’ve done! You’re insane!”
“Insane? Look at where we are, Ray!” the thing replied. “And you mean look at what we’ve done. Just think about all the good work still to come.”
“No,” Ray managed. “I won’t let you. I’ll stop you.”
The thing wearing his face was still smiling - Ray hadn’t seen his own smile for a while now. “You can try, but it won’t work. Not with the meds they’ve got you on.”
“I can stop you,” McKee answered. Steel was in his eyes now, and Ray knew he had hit upon the answer by the flash of panic in the thing’s face.
“Now hold on, Ray, uh, um, think of… think of all you have to live for!” the thing tried. “Don’t do anything we’ll both regret-”
Ray was up off his bed in an instant. He had the thing against the wall, surprised at how easy it was. He slammed his elbow into the thing’s face - his face. He dipped his hand into its pocket and came out with the boxcutter. The blade slid up his arm easily. Ray fell back, shocked at the spray, the red, the pain.
“No!!!” The thing fell to its knees in time with McKee’s slump. It reached for Ray, but it was too late. It stared until Ray stopped breathing. Then it got up, picked up the crimson boxcutter, and turned away.
“Sucker,” it said.
OPENING TITLE!48 hours earlier, the Hacienda Courts Motel, outside Stillwater, OK - The gang had put some distance between themselves and Louisiana since the incident with the cryptids, and were finishing up a nutritious brunch of beer, beef jerky, BBQ, and gas station sushi when the phrase “vampire-like slayings” from the background television caught their attention.
“...The three murders happened last night at Leonard State Hospital, the largest mental health facility here in Kansas,” the reporter carried on. What she said about bodies drained of blood would have been enough to get the hunters out of their motel room, but then Carter saw someone in the background of the cameraman’s field of view, someone who put Leonard State at the top of their to-do list.
Tannhauser was one of Pantagruel’s henchmen, the only other denarian the Crowley-Lampkin CEO had under his thumb, and there he was, accidentally photobombing a newscast while wearing a rumpled detective’s coat with a shiny fake badge.
Welcome HomeThe four-hour drive to Kansas passed all to quickly for Scott and Clay. See, Leonard State wasn’t just any asylum - they had been patients there, until they’d tossed a White Court orderly out of a third-story window and escaped. Speculation was rampant as to what could have killed the inmates the previous night, but the group quickly decided to prioritize Tannhauser. No, not just prioritize him, they decided they would
capture him. He might know what was behind the killings, but beyond that, he was in tight with their nemesis, the denarian Pantagruel. All this cross-country driving, chasing down outdated intel that Black Court vampire sold them in exchange for his miserable char-broiled life (at the end of session 11)? It had gotten them no closer to Pantagruel. It was time they went out and got some fresh information.
Leonard State was a media circus (aspect!) and the site of an active investigation (also an aspect!). The campus was swarming with news vans and cops. The good news was that it was a huge campus, containing a correctional facility, a juvenile facility, a voluntary psychiatric hospital, and two buildings housing Leonard’s sexual predator treatment program, in addition to all the administrative buildings and housing needed to run the place (“Largest Asylum in Kansas” and “We Have All Kinds Here”, also aspects!). The gang parked their bikes on the outskirts and figured they should split up to case the joint.
Carter and Ajaz, disguised as feds, recruited April McBeal, a local news anchor, to hunt down Tannhauser, ironically claiming that he was impersonating a federal agent. Meanwhile, Bill downed a mixture of powdered Viagra, a vampire knucklebone, and NyQuil, set a dreamcatcher up on his handlebars, and laid down next to his bike for a nap. When he awoke, the ritual would fire and Bill would be able to see supernatural influences.
Scott and Clay marveled at Bill’s investigative acumen (“I think he just wants to take a nap”), then did some literal digging for info about the hospital since they’d been involuntary guests there. They discovered the aspect “Underfunded and Understaffed”, but most importantly they learned that the warden had been murdered just hours before! He probably died while they were driving north to Kansas. It explained the ridiculous level of active police officers and news cameras. A little bit of crackerjack-box badge work and some practiced Menace rolls found a talkative orderly on a smoke break who explained the warden wasn’t drained of blood like the first three vics. Nope, Warden Hallflower was skinned, then that skin was hung up in his closet, complete with a zipper sewn into the back. Okay, probably not a vampire then.
Bill woke up with a raging old man boner (we are the classiest gamers), a thick NyQuil fog, and the temporary ability to see lines and clouds of supernatural currents. He picked out Tannhauser’s footprints right away - the human shoes were completely enveloped by huge primate footprints, and Bill guessed right away that Tannhauser was carting the fallen angel Magog around in his head. Bill also discerned clouds and trails of some other entity’s travel about the campus. Tannhauser was definitely not the only beastie walking around here.
Just then, April McBeal (and her yellow jumpsuit) called Ajaz. “That guy you were looking for? He just went into the inpatient hospital,” she said. I immediately followed the info with a compel: “I’ll meet you there.” Potential hostage, collateral damage, and media attention all rolled into one!
Stone Cold CrazyThe gang - at this point comprised of 2 faux feds, 3 bikers, a reporter and her cameraman - headed into Leonard’s Psychiatric Services building (“More Hospital Than Prison”, “Voluntary Admittance”, “Aura of Fear”) and immediately came to a halt in front of a metal detector overseen by an orderly and one of the asylum guards.
Everyone was packing weaponry (maybe even April and her cameraman). It was at this point that Scott simply charged through the metal detector, taking a chance on the hospital’s aspect of “Underfunded and Understaffed”. Meanwhile, I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne: “Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky.” Okay, not really. I
did remember my John Rogers, more specifically Crimeworld, and how it speaks about failing forward, letting one player take on more trouble to get the rest of the team through the obstacle. This was a picture perfect example of that, and it wasn’t even a heist! So Scott led the orderly and the guard away while everyone else simply walked around the metal detector and into the building, following Tannhauser’s footprints.
Scott lost the foot chase contest but completely dominated the hand-to-hand contest that followed. He was just leaving the vacant room where he’d stashed his defeated foes when the last thing he wanted to have happen happened.
“Scott? Scott! What are you doing back here, man?!” Someone recognized him.
“Uh, hey, um.. Zach!” Scott replied. We ran with that, so a Zach Gallifanakis-alike in bathrobe and slippers led a group of eight pajama-clad patients down the hallway. There were awkward hugs. Zach knew Scott would stop whoever was killing the patients, just like before when he stopped the bad dreams (Zach’s final rationalization of the White Court attacks from years before). After the session, this would become something of an accidental emotional gut punch. In the here and now, however, Scott told Zach to keep his presence a secret, which Zach totally promised to do. He and the patients cut it short then; they wanted their meds and Scott wanted to get back to the group.
Off-screen, Zach totally forgot all about keeping Scott’s secret once he got to the pharmacy. The recognition was a compel, after all. That led to Tannhauser starting to look for the hunters on the hospital security cameras. He found them standing outside a patient’s room he had stopped by earlier - Raymond McKee.
"I’m Your Dream, Make You Real"Tannhauser’s phantom footprints led the hunters into Ray’s room before the prints continued elsewhere down the corridor. McKee looked up as the motley entourage entered. Ray was in his mid-20s, but with sunken, haggard eyes. He tried to shove the old book he was reading under his pillow but Clay was too fast. He handed the tome to Bill, who recognized it. Bill didn’t just know the title, he recognized the actual specific copy of the book. Pantagruel had read it back when Bill was host to the denarian. This was Pantagruel’s book, and it was all about tulpas, thoughtforms brought to life from nothing more than the right kind of meditation and imagination.
Normally the gang doesn’t hold back with the truth about monsters, but this time Clay urged them to tread carefully. He figured that the tulpa had killed those 3 patients and the warden, and that if Ray believed in the tulpa, they could maybe get him to disbelieve in it. So Bill and Clay went at Ray with their best MiB-style rationales, while Carter and Ajaz lent an air of legitimacy via their stolen badges. They got Ray doubting himself (easy enough to do in a psych ward), then got the book from him. Clay hit the nail on the head one more time as he realized the tulpa’s murders were a bizarre form of self-preservation: the media circus and the sensational murders, coupled with the lack of rational thought you get at a mental hospital would all fuel the tulpa’s existence beyond Ray’s own belief. How do you kill something that exists because you believe in it? The simple fact that the gang believed in the tulpa enough to try to kill it was enough for it to survive their attempts.
BatteryScott rejoined the group then, walking fast and furtively down the hallway. The gang was (mostly) glad he hadn’t been put back in a padded cell.
Then Tannhauser turned the corner, putting a stop to the chicken-egg problem posed by the tulpa. Scott’s compels had come home to roost, and as Tannhauser’s form ripped and stretched into the horned demon ape Magog, the players realized the tulpa was about to get a whole lot more belief. April McBeal pointed her slack-jawed cameraman at the denarian and shouted, “Are you getting that?!”
Here’s the stats I used for Magog/Tannhauser. The gang had learned well the lessons that Roland Tembo’s ghost had taught them (in session 12); everyone opened with a barrage of Create Advantage actions, either to aid their impending defense or to pass to the PCs brave enough or dumb enough to take on the evil monkey. Scott was feeling a bit of both, but Magog defended with style and casually knocked the holy ex-con to the floor. He followed up with a massive attack that left Scott “Pummeled” and with half the gang’s accumulated free invocations burned already just to get Magog’s strike down to a Moderate consequence.
They hit back hard, but they didn’t want any gunfire because that would draw the police down on them. Bill barred the hallway doors just in case any hospital staff wandered towards the fight, then started chalking a circle around the melee. Clay just charged the damn dirty ape, trying to keep him off balance so Scott could get back in the battle and use his Holy Touch. Ajaz wrapped Magog with his whip, refusing a compel to set his whip - and the building - on fire. Carter tried some deceit; he drew his (perfectly normal, albeit suppressed) pistol and shouted “I’ve got something just for you!”, trying to trick Magog into thinking the thing was loaded with holy relic bullets or something.
It all worked out pretty well. They were keeping Magog to only a boost here or there, until he used one of his stunts to pull down the ceiling on them, then used two free invocations to grab Ajaz and slam him into the ceiling and floor, dislocating his shoulder. It was a good plan, but Ajaz was saved by a -3 on Magog’s dice, only taking 5 stress for his troubles. It could have been a lot worse.
And it got worse - for Magog. Scott reached up and blessed the broken water pipes, and suddenly Magog was howling in pain under a torrent of surprise holy water. They had used a similar trick in Kansas City on the Red Court, and I ruled it the same way here. Any attack would negate Magog’s supernatural defenses now, so Carter stopped threatening his former coworker and shot him in the head. It didn’t kill Magog, because most of the time you’d need more than a 9mm to stop even a mundane gorilla, but it put the fear of God and Glock into the demon. Clay added injury to insult with an uppercut that left a demonic canine tooth stuck in the drop ceiling.
Even a fallen angel can make mistakes. Magog ran, bursting through Bill’s circle with that charging bowshock thing of his, then tearing through the hospital wall out into twilight. So much for keeping the police out of it.
