Sunday, October 9, 2016

Cthuesday: Consumption

It occurred to me that I haven't posted the write-up of last week's game.  We ended up having a few last minute withdrawals, and so we ran with only two players.  Which was a new situation for me - I don't remember the last time I ran for a table smaller than three players.  Possibly never.  The scenario did not exactly go as I, or author Brian Sammons, intended, but everyone had fun nonetheless so that's what matters.

Dramatis Personae:

  • Roxanne Bennett (played by Kai), an African-American stage magician
  • Janet Whitley-Rose (played by Julie), a widowed woman using her money to hunt ghosts

While driving on the Aylesbury Pike, sometime after their investigation of the Corbitt House, Janet hit a woman who stumbled out of the fog with her car.  Investigating, they found the woman dead - of blood loss; one of her legs had been sawn off, with a belt in place as a tourniquet, which had loosened during her flight.  The woman had been using a broken broom handle as a crutch.  Her tongue had been removed, the stump cauterized.  

They decided to wrap the woman's body in a blanket and stash it in the backseat of the car for now.  

Following the woman's bloody trail through the melting snow and mud, they found the burned out shell of an old two-story house, and behind it, a shack built of reclaimed wood.  Inside the shack, a horror show; a pyramid of ten skulls, their eye-sockets stuffed with mementos of the corpses they'd been taken from.  A bloody bed, ropes hanging from the bedposts.  A grisly hacksaw on the ground, a flayed torso hanging on the wall.  Finding some bloodstained luggage, tattered but once-nice, Roxanne piled the skulls inside, along with the hacksaw.  Checking outside, they found a still-wet bloody knife in the snow and a man's booted footprints, which they followed in the direction of Arkham before losing the trail in drier ground.

Returning to the car, Janet and Roxanne decided the best course of action would be to drop the body and the bag of evidence at the police station as discreetly possible and leave.  

This is where things began to go wrong.  

Pulling up the curb in front of the police station, Roxanne tried to kick the three bags and the corpse out of the car without attracting any attention - and failed, bringing the police running.  She tried to casually throw her registered handgun into the gutter discreetly, and failed, the gun discharging and shooting out one of the tires on the car.  

I've never seen players roll so many 95s and up in such quick succession in Call of Cthulhu before.  

The two women were brought into the station and questioned separately about how they came to be in possession of a woman's corpse, minus one leg, and a bag of human skulls, by detective Michael Cooper.  He assured them that he believed their story, and was calling in a local doctor to give them a once over before they were released to go home.  

Dr. James Bell, a black-bearded gentleman, gave Roxanne a once-over and suggested giving her a mild sedative to help calm her nerves.  Roxanne recognized this as a line of BS and the "sedative" he mentioned as a paralytic.  She jumped him, trying to strangle him with his own stethoscope.  Bell threw her off and made for the door, but was caught blind-sided when Roxanne threw a chair at him.  Bell stunned, Roxanne picked up the syringe of paralytic, shook it up real good to ensure the presence of plenty of air bubbles, and emptied the syringe into Bell's thigh.  

Cooper and Janet burst into the room almost simultaneously.  Roxanne explained that Bell must have had a stroke, quietly kicking the empty syringe into a corner of the room.  Cooper tersely asked the two women to wait in a cell while another medical examiner was called.  

Janet and Roxanne eventually dozed off in the cell, at which time Cooper entered the cell quietly (both players failing their Listen rolls by drastic amounts once more) and casually murdered both of them, caving their skulls with a nightstick wielded with superhuman strength.  He quietly moved the bodies to a waiting hearse, where the local undertaker delivered the two bodies back to the shack for rendering by the cannibal secret society's sociopathic chef.  

No comments:

Post a Comment