Characters:
Dingus Nerdingham - Serendipity, Curious, Grocery Delivery, Could Be A Chemist, Has A Dog
Joe Schmoe - Enhanced Dodge, Violence Phobia, Bicycle Courier, Former Nurse, Caving
Zoe Lastgirl - Enhanced Dodge, Very Unfit, Food Delivery, Could Be A Carpenter, Accordion
Beef Hardbody - Very Fit, Darkness Phobia, Rideshare Driver, Could Be A Linguist, Basketball
I Really Need The Money...
The climate is imploding causing food shortages and mass displacement, the world is gripped by a global pandemic that has been declared not a big deal by those in charge, and "inflation" (which is definitely not just corporate price-gouging) has led to a formal policy to reduce employment to make labour's bargaining position more precarious... But hey, those are Big Problems, and you just need to worry about making enough money to get by, which is why these four individuals found themselves working gig jobs that they were vastly overqualified for.
Joe had burned out of nursing during the "not pandemic", and took on the much less stressful job of being a bicycle courier in a major city with no cycling infrastructure. Beef had found it impossible to get hired as a professor of linguistics due to issues with the established dogma in the field, and found himself taxiing other people around for barely enough money to get by. Zoe had wanted to learn a trade, but then encountered systemic sexism and quit to deliver food instead. Dingus had his chemistry degree, but had bombed the few interviews he'd had because the interviewers didn't like that he had brought his dog (don't they care that he has abandonment issues and can't be left alone?!).
Each of them had been lucky enough to, at one point or another, end up working for a wealthy client. The man, a businessman in a suit with short undercut black hair, had given them a $100 tip and asked if they would be interest in working as waitstaff at a corporate gig later that week. He understood it was short notice, so naturally the pay would be more than generous: $3000 cash for one night. Each was given a business card by "Tad Crawley", who apparently worked for "Chester-Dreier-Kovacs" in marketing management, the logo simple boring red block letters over a grey oval.
Everyone agreed, because goddamn that was a lot of money. Cursory googling of CDK found that they were some sort of biomedical company, but it was completely unclear what they did. Dingus asked what their corporate policy was on animals in the workplace, and Tad told him, one eyebrow raised, that they were not allowed. Joe figured they looked to be some sort of middleman providing supplies to medical facilities. Zoe, conscious of the risks of a young woman going alone to an unknown location, went and bought a concealable can of mace, even if it cut into her food budget.
A Profitable Evening
The gig workers arrived at the CDK corporate offices, a boring square corporate tower, the night of to find another two dozen or so people who had been made the same offer, and were led into the side entrance by Tad Crawley, now wearing a different suit. Dingus, who had obviously brought his chihuahua despite being told not to, attempted to smuggle it in inside his backpack, but was immediately spotted. He REALLY wanted the $3000, so, reluctantly, he tied it up in an alley behind the tower for the night.
Tad escorted them through the building to a changing room divided by a row of lockers, and provided a series of pressed uniforms (white shirt, red vest, black pants and a black bowtie), each sealed in a plastic bag, and left them to get changed. There was little in the way of privacy, so the women did their best to form a wall and got changed a few at a time. Sadly, the uniforms had no pockets, and in an effort to smuggle in the mace in her bra, Zoe ended up spraying it all over her uniform's shirt (luckily, nobody got a direct hit, though it left quite a few people coughing and teary-eyed).
A while later, Tad returned and led them to a cargo elevator large enough to fit the almost 30 people in one trip, swiped an RFID badge over a sensor, and they rode it to the top floor. The doors opened to reveal a food prep a "kitchen", though it was missing most appliances; the food for the evening had evidently been supplied pre-cooked in labelled boxes and plastic containers that only needed to be plated and loaded onto trays. He left them to it ("If you don't do the job, you don't get the money, so I trust you to do a good job!"), and the workers got to organizing themselves.
They hadn't been told how much time they had, but assumed it must be pretty soon because it had already been nighttime when they arrived. Dingus decided to "sample" the various offerings, and was immediately caught by someone else who yelled at him to stop stuffing food down his throat as it might cost them their pay. While everyone else got to work unpacking all the food (and drinks, there were bottles in the boxes as well), Dingus heard a noise through the kitchen doors and went to investigate, earning him yet more ire with his coworkers.
A group of musicians in tuxedos carrying instrument cases were setting up on a small stage in the corner of what looked to be a lounge (surprising, for the penthouse of a corporate office), with a floor-to-ceiling window behind them looking out over the city. There was seating for maybe 30 or 40, in booths set on tiers to that the patrons would have a clear view of the musicians, the stage, and the skyline. The tables were glossy black with gold trim, while the carpets, walls and seating were all dark red (to hide the wine stains, obviously), but before he could gawk anymore, Tad came over and and told everyone that the clients would be arriving shortly, so everyone should get ready.
Over the next half hour or so, the guests filtered in, and they were the type you'd expect from a US pharma company: mostly a bunch of old white guys in suits (many speaking with heavy european accents), though there were a handful of women, and only a single black man and one middle easterner. As the band started to play soft jazz, the workers loaded up their trays with appetizers and worked the room, while others took drink orders, and everything seemed to be going smoothly.
Beef had just bought an ancient bald gnome of a man a drink, when the man tugged aggressively on his sleeve and demanded, with a heavy accent, for "the bry". Thanks to his degree in Linguistics, he realized that the man spoke with a heavy central Romanian accent, and wanted some brie. When Beef brought it out, the man rewarded him with a crisp fifty. Meanwhile, Dingus had been assigned to carry trays, and he stumbled going up a stair, but managed to just catch himself and didn't spill a tray of wine glasses on a pair of men.
Curious about what they were speaking about, he lingered, and got a closer look at the guests: one of them looked truly ancient and hunched-over, maybe 80 or 90? His conversation partner was much younger, mid-30s, and had conventional "magazine good looks" but dressed in oddly out of date fashion, perhaps from the 70s. The younger man noticed Dingus was eavesdropping and roped him into the conversation, condescendingly asking what he really did for a living.
Dingus replied that, while he was currently picking and delivering grocery orders, his real dream was to land another job as a chemist. The ancient croaked that he did not want to speak to the peasantry and pleaded for the younger man to "rid him of this boring man. Wrapping up the conversation, the younger one handed Dingus a business card, and told him to give him a call; he might have an opening in the future. As Dingus walked away to continue tonight's work, he heard the man chuckling behind him.
Zoe, meanwhile, was doing her best to mollify a woman who had been informed that they were out of the ortolan. Despite her best efforts at apologizing (for something that wasn't her fault), Zoe was unable to calm the guest, who would scream at her for the next several minutes. Across the room, Joe Schmoe jumped when someone grabbed his ass. Turning around, he discovered that a very drunk guest was trying to get him to stay with her, and none of her companions seemed interested in intervening. Though he was able to escape, the woman's drunken begging was plenty embarrassing for both of them.
At the end of the night, the workers got their cash (though some, including Joe, Zoe, and Dingus had their pay cut due to complaints against them). Everyone split up immediately; apparently nobody was too interested in making friends. Dingus went back into the alleyway where he had tied up his dog, but found that it had been attacked by some wild animals, and was no longer breathing.
The Good Life
Dingus, naturally, spent his entire night's pay on a replacement chihuahua. Beef finally got some car maintenance he'd been putting off done. Joe swapped out his old beaten up bike for a brand new roadbike. Zoe, apparently the wisest of the group, worked as little as she could, watched movies, and splurged on nicer food. And just like that, the windfall was gone.
Another Lucky Break
Having written off that night as a weird experience they'd gotten some cash and a few good stories out of, the workers went back to their normal lives. Joe tried asking around with the other bike couriers if anyone had ever gotten a job with CDK, but none had, though they were all interested when he mentioned the outrageous pay.
Several months later, they all received another call from Tad (Zoe: "Who calls these days?"), offering them another one night gig. Now, this time it would be on Halloween night, and he realized that this would be a scheduling conflict for a lot of people, so the pay this time would be $6000. Dingus asked if the pet policy had changed, and Tad muttered "Wait, hold on, you weren't supposed to be on the call-back list...", but Dingus interrupted and, trying to disguise his voice, said not to worry about it and that he'd see him there.
Joe inquired as to the job, and they'd be waitstaff again, though this time, the uniforms would be slightly different; fake blood, rubber masks, you know, halloween stuff. They'd also be starting earlier in the day, as they needed to put up the decorations as well. Joe also found it weird that they'd get called in twice, and Tad awkwardly admitted that his boss had pissed off their usual caterer and the replacement, so they were out of options.
Those who had them cancelled their plans; Zoe told her niece she wouldn't be able to make pumpkin carving, and Joe told his buddies he couldn't make the spooky movie marathon. Beef had been planning on driving drunk people home, so this sounded better. Dingus just put his new dog into its costume before leaving. When they showed up, they found that only 14 people had made the cut this time, and everyone was shocked to see Dingus had gotten called back. In particular, Slaps Bigmeat, 6'8" and wearing a Hatsune Miku t-shirt, the guy who'd given Dingus shit last time for stuffing his face, scowled fiercely.
While they waited, Zoe struck up a conversation with a tired-looking woman in a hoodie, who turned out to be named Leigh, about how odd this job was, but they both agreed that the money was too good to pass up. Before the conversation ended, Leigh made sure to plug her Soundcloud, as she was an aspiring rapper. Again, Tad led everybody through the side entrance into the changingi room, where they got changed into their festive uniforms.
Tad took them up the cargo elevator, and this time there were boxes of cheap decorations (fake spiderwebs, plastic bats, etc) and some TVs and AV equipment in addition to the food. Zoe asked if there was a ladder anywhere to reach high places, and Tad exasperatedly said he'd go see if he could find someone who knew where one would be. After only a few minutes, he came and grabbed some of the workers to retrieve some ladders that had been brought up to the penthouse by another elevator, and everybody got back to work.
Everything went smoothly, and they managed to have 20 whole minutes of break time before guests started showing up. The clientele was largely the same as the last time (IE old, white, male), in costumes just as cheesy as the decorations. Zoe tried to keep an eye out for the woman who'd screamed at her in the past, while Joe did his best to avoid anyone who looked like they were getting noticeably drunk, but at 10, a man dressed as a mummy (bandages over a suit jacket...) took the stage and produced a microphone.
The Games Begin
The speaker welcomed the guests on this All Hallows' Eve, which prompted polite cheers and applause. He declared that now was the night when the barriers between worlds were thinnest, and now they would have some spooky fun and, at a gesture, a drum roll played from speakers. The man declared that this year's entertainment was about to begin, then snapped his fingers, and spotlights shone down, blinding the workers (Dingus, who had been paying rapt attention to the speaker, grabbed his platter and pretended that he had been working).
Yes, tonight these wonderful volunteers would be partaking in a game for their amusement, and the guests would watch their progress through the TVs on stage, which turned on and displayed CCTV footage of an old dilapidated house. In case the guests were concerned that the competitors would be lacking motivation, the speaker announced that the winner of the games would receive TEN. MILLION. DOLLARS! A panel on the wall slid aside, revealing a rickety antique elevator and he declared that any who wished to compete should enter.
Dingus sprinted off immediately, his tray clattering to the ground, and, once inside, mashed the "Close Door" button, but it appeared to be disabled. The crowd cheered as the others ran to the elevator, but Beef wanted to know what these games were about before getting in the spooky elevator. When the speaker said that it would only ruin the surprise, Beef shrugged and jogged into the elevator, followed by Joe, who was hesitant. Once everyone was aboard the (fairly cramped) elevator, the metal grating closed, the panel shut, and it descended in darkness before juttering twice, then came loose and plummeted.
The Forest
Terrified, Beef lost his lunch, and elevator slammed into the ground... but nowhere near as hard as it should have. The grating opened, and light poured in as another panel opened in the wall. As the contestants emerged, lightly covered with vomit, they found that they were on a hill overlooking... a wild forest with the gothic mansion they'd seen on the TVs above on a cliff, with the sun setting behind it. Beyond the cliff was the sea, and stormclouds were rolling in. While they were trying to figure out what was going on, the Speaker's voice came on over concealed speakers.
"A dreadful storm was rushing in from the coast, and if the wanderers hoped to have a chance of surviving the night, they would need to seek shelter in the abandoned mansion on the cliffside. The old owner was said to be an eccentric, so who knows what might lie within. Much to their dismay, the wanderers would soon realize that they were not alone..." As his voice faded, wolves howled in the distance, and lightning flashed in the distance, followed by a peal of thunder.
Dingus looked behind them, and saw that the wall at their backs was unpainted concrete, and that the elevator was still there, looking more or less fine. Zoe and another good chunk of the group started off into the forest, followed shortly by the rest, except for Dingus and Beef. Dingus inspected a nearby tree and discovered that it was, in fact, a real, living tree. Beef pounded on the "Up" button on the elevator while wiping vomit away from the corner of his mouth and saying that he wasn't feeling good and wanted to quit. After a moment, the pair agreed to work together, and started off toward the mansion, well behind the rest.
Joe moved to the front of the pack, when he heard a woman calling out for help, off to the side. He turned and went towards the voice, followed by a handful of the other contestants, until they arrived to find a woman in a gothic dress with her leg caught in a bear trap, but up close, something was off. She was clearly only pretending to be in pain, and was acting badly. Joe asked what was going on, and upon seeing him, the woman cried that she needed help and medical attention, raising a hand above her head as though she were about to faint. On guard, Joe nonetheless moved up to free her, only for the woman to grab his neck and tear out his throat with her bare hands, laughing maniacally.
Joe's Player is now playing Leigh
Zoe, upon seeing this, sprinted away as fast as she could. She spotted more bear traps on the ground, and carefully avoided them. Cries from behind suggested that others hadn't been as perceptive. In the rear of the pack, Dingus and Beef heard the wolves howl again, this time much closer. This was all the encouragement they needed; Beef picked up Dingus and they overtook some other contestants, Doing their best to ignore the screams and howling behind them as Beef ran.
Emerging from the forest, Zoe got a better look at the mansion: it was rickety and mostly wooden, with gargoyles peering down from above from their perches between iron spikes. There were three floors, and a strange addition made from a different colour wood stood out on the second and third. The windows on the bottom floor were all boarded up, but the ones on the upper floors had not been. She continued up the steps and through the front door, into a coatroom, but found that the doors further in were locked.
The rest of the surviving contestants charged up after her, with one unlucky man getting pounced a mere 20 feet from safety, and the doors swung closed and an electric lock clanked closed. Zoe, who had been there the longest, noticed a security camera watching them. After only a few moments the inner doors opened automatically, revealing a long foyer with doors splitting off, a marble statue of a victorian-era man with his hand on a sword, and a grand staircase. As soon as they walked in, the doors swung shut behind them, and the Speaker's voice once more echoed from concealed speakers.
The Mansion Of Count Orlock
"On October 31st, year of our lord 1926, the good Count Harold Orlock was savagely betrayed and murdered by his greedy manservant, Frederick. It is said that the misshapen servant, whom Orlock had taken pity on a youth, tore the Count to shreds, like an animal. It is said that on the anniversary of his death, the Count's spirit returns, and, come midnight, takes revenge on any in his mansion. If one wishes to survive, they must put the Count to his final rest, by salting and burning his bones, in his grave..."
As the voice trailed off, an organ began to play, and they heard the muffled sound of a small child crying, both somewhere upstairs; Dingus ran up them immediately, before anyone could stop him. The others, happy to see him gone, spotted a grandfather clock, which read 10:10, leaving them with an hour and fifty minutes to put the Count to rest. Zoe cautioned the others to be careful, but most of the contestants split off to explore the mansion anyway.
Those who stayed in the foyer came up with a plan: they would need to find salt, a source of fire, the grave, and also the Count's bones (if they weren't in the grave). They decided to split up to cover more ground, so Beef went up, Zoe went left, and Leigh went up. Upstairs, Dingus arrived at a landing with doors off to every side, and a trap door in the ceiling. The organ was coming from the left, but he decided to investigate the crying straight ahead. Going through the door, he arrived on a narrow walkway that looked down over a ballroom on the lower floor. Continuing down, he found an old-timey gymnasium.
Meanwhile, Leigh (with Slaps Bigmeat, a fancy lad named Foncy Redwater, and a very italian man named Gabagool Generico) walked through a disused hallway with a trail of footsteps down a carpet so dusty that little motes puffed up with every step, and opened a door to a green-tiled bathroom, with a shower curtain concealing whatever might have been inside a porcelain tub with gold feet. Something was making a dripping noise in the tub, so he opened the curtain to reveal that the taps were leaking blood! Slaps ran off screaming, while Generico started stammering uncontrollably but was otherwise alright.
Beef (with a sad sack named Gil and a dead-eyed woman named Abby) arrived on the second floor landing and decided to go left, to check out the organ, but the floor in the next room was collapsed, leaving a yawning hole that looked down on a library. There were still platforms around the edges they could jump between, so the group leapt across, then opened the door the organ music was coming from. Inside, a colossal pipe organ dominated one wall, and seated in front of it was a fancy victorian-era man who looked the same as the statue in the foyer... but he was transparent and glowed green! Beef exclaimed that it was a g-g-g-ghost and then ran off, jumping over the hole and sprinting into the unknown to the left.
Zoe (with a muscular woman named Lisa and a round man named Cliff) found a fancy dining room, with a long table set with place settings of rotten food. More importantly, she spotted a salt shaker! As she moved to grab it, she saw a mangy dog chewing a bone on the far side of the table. Zoe tried to bribe the dog with a plate of rotten food, but it lunged at her instead, so she threw it as a distraction. Lisa picked up a chair but hung back, while Cliff slipped on the rug and fell down.
The dog chomped down on Cliff's leg, and Lisa broke her chair over the dog, which knocked it out. A quick inspection of the bone it had been chewing on revealed that it wasn't human, so not what they were looking for. Zoe took the salt shaker and, feeling there must be some way to light the candelabra on the center of the table nearby, looked for matches, but came up empty. From upstairs, they heard the sound of someone shouting and heavy footfalls.
Upstairs, Dingus looked around the gymnasium and found a spear being used as a barbell; he removed the weights and took the spear for protection, then moved on. The next room was a private movie theatre, with five rows of plush red seats, and a projector facing a torn screen. A greek tragedy mask leaned on the projector, but he ignored this, continuing towards the sound of the girl crying. He found her in the next room, which was a ruin where a bunch of furniture had been flung as if by something with great strength, and moved to approach the girl...
By the time Generico had recovered from his panic attack, Slaps was long gone, and Leigh resolved to just continue her search to the right. Opening the next door, a foul stench of rot and death surged out, and Leigh slammed it shut, then tried another door. This one didn't reek, and opened to reveal a large ballroom, with a walkway looking down from the second floor. As they looked around, a couple in fancy clothes suddenly appeared and began to dance towards the contestants, until they danced straight through them. Everyone kept their cool this time, fortunately, and the ghosts vanished as quickly as they'd appeared.
They returned to another hallway, and found a supply closet. Before they moved to investigate the shelves, though, Foncy pointed out a hinge on the floor, and some experimentation discovered that it was a trap door that dropped away into darkness. They cut an X into the door as a warning, then continued on the ground floor for now.
Zoe's group continued exploring, and discovered a oujia board in the middle of a hallway, the planchette having been thrown aside. Lisa exclaimed that they had to take the board, as they could use it to contact the ghost that was in the mansion and ask it questions! She ran over and scooped it up, and they opened a door off of the hallway, where they found a brick room covered in weapon racks which held dozens of muskets and other old-fashioned guns. The search for fire continued, and this time they found some: a modern box of waterproof matches.
During the search, Cliff found a double-barreled shotgun that was loaded, and started to pick it up, when Zoe saw and confronted him. No, Cliff didn't know how to use a firearm, but it was better than nothing! In the end, she couldn't convince him otherwise, and he took the shotgun. The only other door out of the armoury revealed a rickety old elevator, with all of the buttons missing but the second. They all crowded in, Zoe hit the button, and the elevator slowly moved up... diagonally. Oddly, the wooden door moved with it, and they couldn't see a hole in the wall where they'd been.
Beef gathered himself, calming down as he gulped in deep breaths of fresh air, and realized he was now outside on a narrow walkway. Gargoyles loomed above him, and a tower in front, while dozens of wolves howled below. Rain started to fall and a gale whipped up as he turned to leave the way he had come, forcing him toward the tower, but he pushed his way through and made it back inside, into a fancy bedroom, where two skeletons, a parent and child, lay on the bed, the adult shielding the child from something.
Still on edge, Beef froze, wary of the skeletons rising to attack him... but nothing happened. He walked through, giving the skeletons a wide berth, and returned to the room with the hole in the floor. He jumped back over to the room with the organ and ghost, and (after jumping when seeing the ghost again) found the rest of his group, who had been unsure what to do next. The ghost didn't seem to notice their presence, and Beef spotted a clock on the organ that read 10:30.
Back in the ruined room, Dingus asked the child why she was crying, and guessed her age at between 5 and 8. Through sobs, the girl replied that she woke up there, and didn't know where she was, and she wanted her mommy. With that, she broke back into tears and, despite Dingus' efforts, would not answer any more questions... so he left her there and backtracked to the second-floor landing, then pulled the pull-rope and climbed the ladder up into the attic.
The ceiling was low, so Dingus was forced to half-crawl over to open one of several doors. Oddly, it opened into a richly-appointed study, with papers scattered over the desk and one half-written in an antique typewriter, while an antique globe sat in the corner. Taking a closer look, he found that the desk contained dozens if not hundreds of compartments, and decided to search it. After a few minutes, he had found a concealed safe with a combination lock which he was unable to open.
Further searching was equally fruitless, so he went to the typewriter and read the unfinished paper, which turned out to be a letter, apparently from Count Orlock's wife to a relative. In it, the author lamented that life was intolerable after her husband's death. She couldn't even bring herself to go to the conservatory as that would require passing through the room where he had been murdered, and all of her prized plants had withered and died.
Notes:
This was meant to be a one-shot, but I was late to the session (a half-hour Vampire Survivors run ended up taking 50 minutes), so we needed another session.
Chargen was very straightforward. Each player got to pick a PC from a list of 4 (first come first serve), then a gig job skill (Biking was in surprisingly high demand), a professional skill, a hobby skill, and finally they got to choose whether they wanted a random good and bad quality. Naturally, everybody chose to roll; nobody got Luck, the main thing they wanted.
The PC names were originally just joke placeholders that the players were supposed to change, but nobody wanted to.
Apologies to any Romanian speakers; I have no idea what a non-fluent Romanian-speaker would sound like when trying to pronounce brie, but I assume they would do so correctly because French is also a romance language.
Dingus' chihuahua would have survived on a 12 or less, but sadly, the raccoons got it.
As this was online, I actually got some sound effects in advance (the wolf howls, thunder, organ, and girl crying) and played them through a secret bot in the chat. Sadly the default setting was uncomfortably loud for some of the players.
I should probably have given Joe a dodge roll to avoid being grabbed and murdered by the woman, because he was suspicious.
Joe's player taking over Leigh was down to pure randomness.
Helping another player was worth a +5 bonus in this game.
In retrospect, it was an obvious mistake to have so many spare NPCs because I obviously didn't want to run the extra 13 survivors in this phase. Ideally, I should probably have had another "game" prior to the mansion to weed out a bunch more. There was a secret traitor who randomly got wolf'd in the forest.
The mechanics of actually exploring the mansion were a mixed bag. On the one hand, the timer worked very well, forcing the players to take suboptimal moves as the time ticked down. On the other, it was a bit too gamey because I stole much of the actual gameplay from the boardgame Betrayal at the House on the Hill. The boardgame-style mechanics didn't mesh particularly well with GURPS in practice.
The players who had played Betrayal recognized the layout etc almost immediately.
Dingus racked up 3 "negative reputation points" by the end of the session.
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