Greetings again, folks. Circumstances have prevented us from playing Exalted, but it's occurred to me I've come close to slacking off on these Prometheus write-ups so I'm gonna take advantage of some newly-free time to do something about that.
And, um... yeah.
So we left off with the throng leaving N'awlins for Waco, Texas. The road trip itself is uneventful. There is a conversation about an 'artifact' left by the VW Bus' previous owner, an old dancing hula-girl figure (you know the sort) where the top half has been removed and replaced with the upper half of a Buddy Christ figure. The group decides this is way too appropriate for a Promethean throng's personal Mystery Machine, so they keep it and name it "Composite Christ".[0]
The group also talks about what they're going to do about the staked vampires they've got stashed in the back. Rudolf insists on keeping them and potentially trading them to other vampires. The group's a little concerned that one of them is starting to dry up like a long-dead corpse and curl in on itself, and that their wounds appear to be healing.[1]
They get to Waco and spend a couple of hours driving around until they find an RV campsite where they can park the van for a while. Father John uses his Mesmerism abilities to put a post-hypnotic suggestion on the guy who runs the place so he doesn't notice they're parked there illegally. Rudolf digs his fingers into one of the vampires' unhealed wounds (ew) to get some congealed blood residue that he wipes on the back of his neck. As he's certain that vampires are consummate predators of the highest order, he's equally certain that they'll have senses sharp enough to notice even the slightest trace of vampire blood on him.[2] That way he'll be able to get the attention of someone to whom they can trade their captives. Though on the subject of vampires, as they're heading into town proper to investigate the landmarks identified on the map, Father John ducks into a church and uses his priest outfit to get some holy water just in case.
But eventually they find the spot, the Odell Auto Parts junkyard. Walking around the outside, the spot a stack of cars that appears to be completely rusted over. In fact, they clearly spot newer models of cars in the stack that a far more rusted than should be possible given the materials making up their construction. Rudolf points out that this may be the "Mountain of Rust" mentioned in the notes.
They head around to the entrance to knock on the door of the Odell house to see if they can get someone to take them out into the yard, claiming to be looking for van parts. A young man named Dennis comes out and says he'll help them find what they're looking for. He takes them into the yard and once he's a short distance away from the house Father John hits him with Fixed Stare and uses Suggestion to make him 'go back inside and read [his] bible' so they can get some privacy.
It works, and he leaves them be, and they seek out the Mountain of Rust. They find it, but also find three of the junkyard dogs waiting for them. One of the dogs comes at them and Father John uses Flight Instinct to drive it off, at which point the other two attack and the group feels a familiar park coming off of one of the dogs as it spends a point of Pyros to enhance its attacks (which shouldn't be possible for a number of reasons).[3] Steve injures one with his knife and Father John uses his Transmutations to drive them off altogether.
This gives the group a few minutes to look over the rusty vehicles. They discover that the newer models actually aren't properly rusting as such as they have a rusty film that's settled onto the frames, very much like bizarre moss. Steve climbs over the structure to see if there's anything on top or hidden inside. Rudolf is pretty sure what they're looking for is underneath, though getting to it is the challenge there. There is a crane that would do the trick, but doing it without being noticed would be next to impossible.
Father John checks the area for spirit and finds a rust-spirit. He manages to get it to tell them that there's someone else besides Dennis living in the Odell house, who only goes out at night. As near as they can tell the other person is his father, but the spirit clearly has trouble telling the difference between them.
While up on top of the pile, Steve sees more dogs closing in on them. They also hear yelling inside of the nearby house. They go back up to the house, seeking answers. The door opens and Dennis comes out, telling them his father is currently calling the cops -- which is a thing he normally does right before he gets his shotgun.
The group demands to know what's under the Mountain of Rust, and when Dennis says he doesn't know what's going on, Rudolf pulls his gun on him. But Steve quickly reaches over and hits the clip release before Rudolf can shoot him, and they decide to get the hell out of there and come back later.
They quickly plan to go back after dark, though Rudolf makes it clear that he's pretty much giving the rest of the group one chance to convince him not to just kill everyone to save time. Jack buys a birdwatcher's guide that comes with a cheap pair of binoculars so he can set up a stakeout nearby, and sees that the dogs are regularly patrolling in circles around the Mountain of Rust. Father John goes to a church and gives confession, guilty about his recent gratuitous use of his mind control powers.[4] Rudolf goes out and hires (and rips off) a hooker just to blow off steam.
Steve, however, goes to do what he originally came to Waco to do, and he starts poking around local VFW's, looking for veterans who might know about the people in the photograph he found. He pretends to be the son of the guy who once had his tattoo, wanting to know more about the father he never got to meet. An old man in one of the bars identifies some of the people in the photo, recalling which ones came home and which ones he lost track of. The one with the tattoo was named Grant Kirby, a name that feels very familiar to Steve.[5] The old man tells him there's a weekly veterans' meeting that night that he could attend.
Meanwhile, back with the rest of the throng, Jack and Father John do some research and discover that Waco has been seeing a series of ax murders. Bodies chopped up, pieces missing... no suspects yet other than suspicions of a cult in the area, high school kids worshipping something called the "Neverborn Shadow." The two of them also call upon their Elpis Merits to try and gain visions and hints into upcoming milestones.
Jack sees himself in a high school hallway, surrounded by kids, and being a normal human. But a bunch of the kids are wearing some familiar cloaks, and one of the non-cloaked kids suddenly manifests disfigurements like his. Father John's vision puts him in a church, yelling at his creator who is also in priest robes (and a complete unknown), calling him out for abandoning something he should have taken care of.
The group reconvenes in the junkyard and Steve updates them on his discovery. He wants to go to the meeting, as this is the perfect chance to find out more about his past, but insists he'll be back as soon as he can. At the meeting, Steve gets to know the vets and they share stories about 'his father'[6] and Grant's girlfriend, with whom they'd lost touch after the war. But it turns out that Grant still has family in the area, so Steve makes a note to look them up.
So while he's doing that and they're waiting, the group gets some ground beef and taints it with a lethal amount of baking cocoa and tosses it over the fence to try and poison the dogs while they wait. When Steve returns the group is watching as four of the dogs just sit there, staring at the tainted meat. A fifth one comes up and eats all of the meat before crawling off to quietly die of the aftereffects. And we left off with the group reeling from apparently having seen one of the dogs literally sacrificing itself for the others.
[0]-- Though if my notes and memories are reliable at all, I believe we also interchangeably referred to it as "Composite Jesus."
[1]-- For those of you unaware, Chronicles of Darkness vampires, even when staked, can subconsciously heal damage and will eventually use up the blood still in their systems. But this group of Prometheans doesn't know that.
[2]-- Funnily enough, he would actually be more correct in second edition than in first.
[3]-- I'll be honest, I can't recall if the enhanced dogs are something from the books or note. Skimming my notes doesn't reveal anything, and while elements of the junkyard are taken from the old Mysterious Places supplement, there's nothing Promethean-specific in there. And I don't have PDFs of the 1e Promethean books and I'm not especially inclined to dig through the print books looking for mutant animals or anything. That said, they line up pretty well with 2e's Cryptids so if I ever had to slap a label on them I'd just retcon them into that.
[4]-- This happens to be one of his Milestones, "Give a genuine and honest confession to a priest."
[5]-- In fact, this was the real name of, well, most of Steve's parts, and learning that is a Milestone for him.
[6]-- I actually can't recall if we addressed this at the time, but if I'd had it to do over again I might've suggested Steve pretend to be Grant's grandson rather than his son just to help the dates match up, but oh well.
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