Hello again. For your evening's entertainment, so on and so forth, I've got another Promethean session for you.
Honestly, it's been weird going back over these and rereading them. There are a lot of little elements that stuck with me after the game wrapped up and probably about as many that didn't. Like, most of the stuff with the Baron in New Orleans had slipped my mind until going back over the old write-ups and checking my old notes for clarifications. I mean, it's been almost fifteen years but even still.
Anyhow, if anyone is reading these, I thank you for your time. It's been an interesting trip down memory lane for the moment.
Speaking of which, going over some of my old notes for something relevant to this session, I realize my original write-up for last session back in the day left out some details that I recorded in my game notes. No, I don't know why I left them out in the original LJ write-up I was working from. But I've gone back to make a few tweaks, particularly towards the end, and fix a typo I spotted in the process.
And with that, let's get to it.
So where we left off, the throng had just lost track of the cult's van. They head back to pick up Rudolf, who had decided to stay back at the bar when they began the chase, but on the way they hit up a pay phone (hey, remember pay phones?) with an intact phone book and start making calls to try and find the campground where they might be headed. There are two candidates in the direction the cult was headed and the part of the city they were in, so they call them both. The first one's office is closed and they hang up on the answering machine, but at the second they happen to catch someone who'd stayed late and was asleep on the office couch. The guy's too tired to think to argue with them and when they ask about who's out there, he says it's just some Boy Scouts, which the group assumes is actually the cult.
They head back to Zanzibar's to pick up Rudolf, and while they're there Father John checks the crowd for anyone who might know more about the Neverborn Shadow. But as near as anyone can determine, everybody in the club who knew anything about the group has already left, either in the van with the rest or (in Joseph's case) chasing after them.
Father John explains to the rest of the group that the Neverborn Shadow cult seems to be at least partly led by a spirit, which means he's probably going to have to do the most work to deal with it since he's the only Ulgan who's not already hip-deep in their whole deal. Steve, in reaction to the discussion of spirits, makes a gratuitous Ghostbusters joke that leaves Father John confused. The throng hops in the VW Bus and heads out to the campsite where the Boy Scouts are.[0]
Steve and John sneak up on the gathering through the woods to find... a bunch of Boy Scouts, actually being Boy Scouts. They return to the others to report on this, but as they do so Steve's enhanced sense of smell (thanks to one of his transmutations) picks up on another bonfire nearby.[1]
Meanwhile, at that other bonfire, a party is happening. It's the current iteration of the cult, a couple dozen high school kids getting drunk and listening to rotten music around a roaring bonfire while Derek spouts some rhetoric about how 'abandoned' kids like them need to stick together. Jack mingles with the group[2], impressing them with his ability to chug beer after beer and not even get wobbly. Then he spots Joseph watching from the shadows nearby. He feigns exhaustion and sickness and staggers off to pretend to throw up so Joseph can approach him.
Joseph introduces himself and gives what I'm assuming is a quick rundown of his whole deal (my notes are unclear on how much he said). Jack asks him to warn the others to stay back. He finally has a chance to understand who he is and what brought him into the world, and he doesn't want the rest of the group to screw that up. He insists he can take care of himself, and that he knows he was the result of one of the former ritual sacrifices and wants to plant himself as the ideal candidate for it this time so he can relive the experience. Joseph agrees to pass the message along and Jack returns to the gathering.
Nearby, as the rest of the throng makes their way through the forest, a spirit looking like a bat made out of television static appears before them. Most of the group freaks out and reaches for their weapons, but Father John recognizes this as Joseph's spirit familiar and gets them all to calm down. The spirit relays what sounds like a recorded message explaining Jack's desire to let all this play itself out. They ask the spirit how many cultists there are, and it tells them about two dozen or so. They send the spirit back and continue to approach through the trees.
Back at the party, Derek explains to Jack and a few others that in a week's time they're going to perform the Harvest. According to him, only someone who truly understands abandonment and betrayal like no other will be prepared to become the physical host of the Neverborn Shadow entity itself. Jack learns that they want someone who understands what it's like to be truly hollow, to have lost everything.
Jack finds this upsetting and ducks off to the side to have a quiet cry and to gather his thoughts. Another Promethean with Ulgan disfigurements approaches him -- it's the guy that Steve saw outside of Zanzibar's, though Jack has no way of knowing that. He says he's been following the cult for a while because they understand about being abandoned and left alone, and that he himself had been abandoned by his creator like Jack had. He has a talk with Jack about the usefulness of throngs and the nature of the Pilgrimage, and he expresses a strong belief that Jack will one day find his creator and get some answers out of him. Shortly after that, he takes off.
Nearby, Father John is approaching, using the Chameleon Skin Transmutation to do the first recon.[3] He gets a good feel for the situation as the rest of the group catches up, and they can spot Jack out in the crowd. They try to work out a plan for how to deal with this (Rudolf, naturally, just wants to charge in and unleash hell on the cult), which leads into this quote I saved of Steve asking Father John an important question about spirits:
Steve: "You guys have experience fighting these things. Can you make them, what's the word... (thinks briefly) ...solid?"
At the gathering, Derek gets everyone's attention and lets them know that soon the Harvest will begin and the avatar of their master, known as The Orphan, will be among them. The Neverborn Shadow spirit itself manifests, appearing as a massive shadow growing upwards from his shoulders almost like a cobra's hood.
Rudolf and Steve decide that now is the time to do something. Rudolf bursts forth from the shadows, firing his shotgun into the air and playing it up as a robbery. The kids all run off except for Jack and Derek, and the spirit leaps off of Derek's shoulders as the fight begins.
I don't have a blow-by-blow of the battle or anything, but I can share a few highlights...
- ...Derek pulling an uzi to shoot back at Rudolf, only to have his gun turned to glass by Ander who then smashed it across his face...
- ...the spirit attempting to possess Rudolf and Steve as they lay into it, and actually temporarily possessing Steve...
- ...Father John and Joseph teaming up to try and drive it off with an abjuration...
- ...Jack turning on Derek, taking on the Shape of the Barghest and causing him to piss himself...
The fight ends with Rudolf incapacitating Derek and discorporating the spirit with his electricity powers. And we leave off with Derek barely alive and everyone at the site of the campground, with the obvious question of what to do now.
[0]-- Cue a series of jokes about someone dressed like a priest sneaking up on Boy Scouts in the woods. Man, those have aged well.
[1]-- For the life of me, I actually can't recall why I did the 'it was Boy Scouts all along' fake-out there. The only thing that makes sense in retrospect is that in the moment, I realized a mistake in how I'd planned leads or something and came up with 'this lead doesn't pan out but it just happens to lead them by the actual solution.' I dunno. It's also possible I thought I was being clever.
[2]-- In the process, he qualifies for the Milestone "Be accepted at a gathering of high school students."
[3]-- For the record, Father John is naked right now. The name 'Chameleon Skin' is pretty literal. This is kind of relevant later on.
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