Characters:
Dingus Nerdingham - Serendipity, Curious, Grocery Delivery, Could Be A Chemist, Has A Dog
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
A Tricky Jump
The ghost of Count Orlock continued to play the organ, and Beef's group (Gil (from the Simpsons) and Abby) couldn't find any clues in the room, so he suggested they go check out the stone tower with the gargoyles. Gil seemed hesitant, and was proven correct when he failed to jump across the broken floor and fell down to the library, landing face-first on the wooden frame of a couch, breaking his nose. Beef shouted down that they'd take the stairs down to meet up with Gil, but then he and Abby both slipped and fell in, with Beef landing badly enough he broke his leg.
Abby was fine, having landed on the cushioned part of a couch, and they took in their surroundings. A fire blazed in a brick fireplace on one wall, and the other three were lined with shelves stocked full of books. They had landed on the only furniture in the room, the two couches, one of which had a newspaper open on it. There was also an open book on the floor in front of the fireplace.
Beef, able to limp around on his good leg, took a look at the newspaper and saw the headline "The Dreadful Murder of Count Orlock". Figuring it might have some clues, he sat down to read the article. It stated that the Count had been killed on the top floor of the mansion, and that the murderer was still at large. Beef also grabbed the open book (an encyclopedia, it turned out), and stashed it for possible future use, then headed out to take the stairs back up to the second floor.
Meanwhile, Leigh went back to the blood-filled bathtub, dipped her hand in, then walked back to the closet with a secret trap door and marked it with an X in blood. Unwilling to try the room that reeked of death, she, along with Foncy and Generico, backtracked to the other wing of the mansion, where Zoe had already been. First, they found the empty dining room, with the defeated dog that lay near the door, unconscious. They proceeded through a hallway and arrived at the library, just missing Beef's crew.
Leigh read the newspaper, and was annoyed that it didn't mention any of the Count's "secret weaknesses". Continuing on, they found the armoury, where Zoe had already been, but after a comprehensive search, were unable to find any working guns. Having now explored every room on that wing of the mansion, their group returned to the stinking room, and Leigh gingerly opened the door, plugging her nose with her other hand.
Inside was a kennel, and the source of the stench were three rotting dog corpses that had wasted away locked in their cages. A fourth cage had been broken open from the inside. On the south wall were two shelves packed with various bottles, though the labels couldn't be read from this far away. Despite the tempting bottles, and the unexplored doorway on the far side, the group opted to go upstairs.
The Hunt For Bones
Zoe, Lisa, and Cliff walked emerged from the elevator in a storage room. Old chests and wooden crates cluttered the floor, and a broken grandfather clock with the hands stuck at midnight sat in a corner. Figuring they just needed bones and a crypt, and neither seemed likely to be in these boxes, they pushed on to a sewing room. A half-finished dress rested on a mannequin, while loose thread and cloth were splayed across the floor and the light fixtures.
This time, Zoe elected to search, and while they didn't find bones or an "anti-ghost gun", they did find a curious humanoid burlap doll that looked suspiciously like her. After some internal debate, she grabbed it before walking into the next room. Dingus opened a door to find himself in a games room, with card tables, a pool table, and four shelves of porcelain dolls whose eyes seemed to follow him, just as Zoe and her group walked in from another door.
Lisa got spooked out by the dolls, but Zoe was too busy rolling her eyes and trying to immediately ditch Dingus to give them much attention. They agreed to let Dingus go with them (for now), and headed into the next room. A stag head was mounted above the mantle, and a fine china tea set sat on top of a table, surrounded by chairs. A number of dusty old portraits of men and women lined one wall, and Dingus got the feeling one of them was watching him.
As there were no bones to be found, the group continued on through a random door to an empty room, the unfinished wood floor coated in blood oozing from what was probably a body going by the bits of torn clothing on the chunks. It had been so shredded that it was impossible to determine if it actually was a body and not just a bunch of meat. Lisa and Cliff both puked, but the other two kept their composure, and after they had recovered, the group continued on.
A Hidden Key
By the time Beef's group made it back to the second-floor landing, they'd forgotten which way the body was supposed to be, so they headed right and into a master bedroom. Similar to the other one Beef had found in his panicked sprint away from the ghost, this one also had a human skull with cracked and missing teeth facing them from the bed, and a fancy gold lighter on a dresser; Beef took both. They took the door on the far side, which opened into an operating theatre, where a corpse, it skull cut open, lay out on the table, blood still dripping off.
Both Gil and Beef began to tremble and stutter uncontrollably at the sight of the body, but Beef nonetheless approached it to investigate. He saw a glint of metal behind some raw stitches on the torso, and hesitantly riped them open, revealing a key which he naturally took and stuck in his pocket. Taking a closer look at the rest of the body, Beef noticed a pair of puncture marks on the neck. Badly spooked, the group got out of there and backtracked.
Continuing their exploration, Beef's group had arrived outside on an odd stone walkway. Though it was outside, the new addition to the mansion's top floor blocked any view it might once have had. As the rain poured down on them, Beef spotted a large black gemstone with red flecks on the ground and scooped it up before hustling through the door at the far end of the walkway. The room beyond was bare save for a thick layer of soot that covered all surfaces.
It looked like there had been a bonfire in the middle of the room, but the fire somehow hadn't spread. Beef sifted the pile of ashes in the center of the room and fished out a warped metal cross and a scorched but still functional lighter. As they went to leave, they heard the grandfather clock in the lobby toll eleven times.
A Helping Hand
Zoe opened the door to a ruined solarium, with shattered glass from the broken window on one wall scattered about, dead tropical flowers in ill-maintained planters around the room, and a chainsaw resting on a loose pile of dirt in the center. Since Dingus already had a spear, and Cliff had the shotgun, Zoe took the chainsaw for herself.
The backtracked and took a new door; this one lead outside, and the rain was now pelting down. The slick stone walkway had a railing of iron spikes, and the view looked out over the "ocean" (which looked real...), while stone gargoyles looked down from above. A woman in a ridiculous poofy dress was quietly weeping while holding a handkerchief to her face. Taking a better look, Dingus realized that, despite the driving rain, the woman and her clothes were entirely dry.
As she still hadn't noticed them, Dingus turned to Zoe and whispered that he'd found a girl who was looking for her mom, and this might be her. Zoe replied that the last crying woman she'd seen had tore someone's throat out, so she wasn't going to be the one to talk to her. Dingus took the initiative, and greeted the woman, only for her to turn to face them and let out a fearsome shriek before dissolving into mist. This sent Dingus running back into the mansion in terror, and Zoe was more than happy to see him gone.
Zoe and her group continued to the far end of the walkway and found an abandoned rookery, with many open bird cages and a hole in the far end of the ceiling. As they moved to investigate the hole, she stepped on a loose floorboard which caused the wall to collapse, but managed to dodge out of the way, unharmed. Cliff and Lisa weren't as lucky, despite being further back, and got injured by loose debris.
The next door Zoe opened was strange. From the outside, it was a normal heavy oak door, like all the rest, but from the other side, it was reinforced metal, and the room beyond was a modern panic room including a cot, red plastic rotary phone, plastic bottles of water, and canned food. Zoe picked up the phone and got a dial tone, then dialled 0 "for the operator". After several rings, a woman answered, and it immediatley became clear that she was one of the guests watching them on the TVs.
Fortunately, the woman had placed some money on Zoe to win, and gave her some hints: the bones they needed were from the body that had been torn to pieces (apparently the entire room had been groaning when they walked right past them). She also mentioned that they shouldn't go right back there, though, or else the other guests would realize something was up. Oh, also the crypt was in the basement, and there was a chute down there on the main floor. The woman cheerfully said "now go get your ten million dollars!" and then the line went dead.
When Dingus caught his breath and calmed down, he found himself in the storage room Zoe had told him about earlier. A search through the crates found a suit of medieval plate armour, which he immediately donned. By the time he finished getting it on, Zoe's group had already found him on their route to the elevator, and Dingus once again attached himself to them, much to their chagrin. On the ride back down to the ground floor, Zoe said it made sense that Dingus would have put on the suit of armour, because it was the stupidest thing he could have done.
Meanwhile, Beef's group found an unfinished dead-end room, with only part of the flooring down and exposed insulation. Curiously, there was a lever on the north wall, but they decided against pulling it. They did grab a hammer and some lumber, then headed all the way down to the foyer to drop off the supplies. The grandfather clock read 11:20, leaving them only 40 minutes. As they were getting ready to leave, they heard a clanging from the west, and were shortly joined by Dingus, Zoe, and the others.
They went over the bone-burning equipment they had found: salt, two lighters, and some lumber for firewood. Partway through the conversation, Zoe "suddenly realized" that the body that had been torn to shreds was probably the Count's, so they needed to go back up there and grab the bones; everyone else thought her reaction seemed oddly fake, especially when Lisa and Cliff pointed out that they'd all agreed that they definitely weren't the bones only a few minutes ago.
Dingus asked why Beef hadn't followed him earlier, and Beef lied, claiming that Dingus had been too fast for him to catch up with. Dingus replied that that had changed, as his new outfit was pretty cumbersome. After some discussion, Dingus decided to try to find the crypt, which would have to be either on the ground floor or in a basement connected to the ground floor, while Zoe went upstairs to get the bones. Beef just tried to get some rest in the foyer, as it probably wasn't good to be walking around with all this lumber on a broken leg.
Secret Tunnels
Leigh's crew continued exploring and came across a nursery, and suddenly they heard a baby crying. They went up to the crib to investigate but Generico yelped and Leigh had a panic attack when there was no baby there. After resting a moment, they continued down a hallway to a laboratory with a number of unlabelled jars of preserved organs and animals, as well as a dissected frog on a tray. As they looked through the jars, Leigh found one containing a human head, its eyes staring lifelessly at them, but everyone agreed this was much less scary than the ghost baby.
After some backtracking, they found a chapel with heavy wooden pews (an odd thing to be on the second floor...) and a stained glass window. As they crossed the threshold, lightning struck and the boom of thunder freed a cross on the wall and it swung down to hang inverted. Generico, apparently a catholic, started muttering prayers in a panic and then vomited, but neither Leigh nor Foncy were religious so neither were particularly spooked.
Leigh's group, losing their nerve, decided to just head back down to the foyer and try to meet up with another group because they weren't making any progress. They found Beef's crew resting, and got each other up to speed, then followed the sound of clanking to find Dingus and warn him about the hazards on this floor, only to find him already puking his guts out by the blood-filled bathtub. In retrospect, closing the faceplate had been a horrible idea.
Now that they had someone in armour that wouldn't get bitten by the "zombie dogs" that Leigh was confident were hiding in a corner, they went into the kennel. There were no zombie dogs, but a spider the size of her fist landed on her shoulder and spooked her so badly she joined the puke club. Dingus searched the shelves and found a set of blueprints for the mansion which depicted a series of hidden passageways and secret staircases in many of the rooms, including the kennels where they currently were!
Looking around, he noticed a trap door under one of the cages holding a dead dog and, with some help, got it out of the way. The narrow passage beyond was pitch black, so they decided to go find Beef and make some torches with the lumber he was carrying and some of the chemicals from the lab upstairs (Dingus declared himself to be a "master chemist", but Leigh wasn't buying it).
In the bloodstained room upstairs, Lisa was tasked with picking up the body chunks, then they returned to the foyer and joined back up with Beef. They decided to look for the "hell chute" Leigh had described, which took them through the ballroom and the dancing ghosts. Despite already having seen a ghost existed, this shook the group badly: Beef was paralyzed with fear, Gil and Abby joined the puke gang, and Lisa (who was carrying the body) sprinted off in terror... directly into the hell chute. Zoe, who had been chasing her, stopped short when she saw Lisa fall through the trap door and looked down.
There was no light from below, and there was no response when Zoe shouted "Lisa!", though she could hear heavy breathing. Zoe lowered herself down, but still had to drop a ways; fortunately she landed on something soft. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and she noticed there was actually some very dim light from small candles on the walls. Zoe stumbled over to Lisa, who was in shock in a corner, and gave her time to recover.
Once Lisa recovered, she and Zoe began to explore the basement in search of the crypt. Instead, they found a wine cellar with a red stain on the floor around a drain. Zoe grabbed a bottle which turned out to be a fine vintage, and they took a drink and relaxed for a moment. Continuing, they found a filthy, cramped bedroom, with an uncovered deeply stained mattress with a diary on top of it, and an ornate brass key on top of a crude cabinet.
The diary was clearly supposed to have been written by the manservant Frederick, but whoever had written it clearly hadn't put in much effort. Despite supposedly being the Count's murderer, the diary was entirely sympathetic to the Count, and mocked the manservant relentlessly for being poor and jealous. The only relevant clue was that Frederick had murdered the Count on the top floor, but they already knew that. Zoe grabbed the key before turning back to continue exploring.
After some backtracking, they arrived at a room that had collapsed into an inky-black cistern, with only a narrow brick walkway connecting it to another door. As they walked the path, something rose up out of the water in the distance before descending again, and Lisa froze in terror. Zoe dragged her onwards before taking another rest break.
Short On Time
Upstairs, Leigh and Dingus found Beef's group by following the sounds of vomiting and screaming, and Leigh, with Dingus' instructions, was sent off on her own to go grab the "torch chemicals" (henceforth referred to as "torchium") which could be applied to the lumber. Dingus and Beef stayed behind because they would just slow her down (the former due to the suit of armour, and the latter due to his broken leg). She took a long looping path through much of the second floor in order to avoid the giant hole in the floor.
Leigh returned with the torchium, noting that the grandfather clock in the foyer now read 11:40, and Dingus actually managed to create some bright, mostly smokeless, long-lasting torches without setting anyone on fire. They descended into the secret tunnels below the dog cages, with Leigh and her group going ahead because, again, the others would slow her down. Unfortunately, the tunnels and forked unpredictably, so despite trying to go down at all paths, she ended up emerging from a false wall in the armoury.
Leigh tried the tunnels again, this time taking every path up, but in fact arrived on the third floor sewing room. Growing increasingly frustrated, she tried a different path and made it back to the armour again. THIS time, she made marks on the walls as she went, which helped her to avoid backtracking, and she found a new passage with low ceiling, which forced her to crawl.
With the blueprints in hand, Dingus had no trouble navigating the tunnels and he and Beef's team (plus Cliff, who hadn't followed Zoe) made it to a cellar in the basement, pushing their way past storage crates that blocked the exit. The room they found themselves in had a packed earth floor, and a jumble of shabby, cobweb-covered furniture was piled in one corner. A folding table and two rickety chairs sat in the open, with a jerry can full of gas and a lighter on the table. They grabbed both, but pressed on without searching.
Dingus and Beef tried one of the two doors out, but it was locked! Beef produced his key, and opened it. The next room had a fine dining table set with a banquet, at odds with the unfinished stone walls and dim candle lighting. One of the silver platters held a human heart, but other than a brief shriek from Gil, they were unfazed and continued on.
Leigh crawled out of the drum of a dryer, finally in a room she hadn't seen before. It was filled with piles of dirty laundry, with a pair each of industrial washers and dryers in garish pastel colours. She tried to open the door to the south, but found it locked.
Meanwhile, in the dining room, the handle of the door to the north jiggled, as if someone on the other side was trying to open it. Beef called out to ask who was there, and when Leigh said it was her, Dingus readied his spear and asked her to prove it by rapping. Her improvisation was subpar, but it was good enough for Dingus, who let her in. Reunited, they immediately split up again to speed up their search for the crypt.
Midnight
The door Zoe had dragged Lisa through opened into a natural stone cave, with multiple other doors fixed into the walls. A faint rapid grinding noise was coming from the ceiling, so the instant Lisa recovered, they went toward one of the other doors, only for the noise to grow much louder before thousands and thousands of beetles dropped from the ceiling and onto the unfortunate pair. With a short yelp, they charged through the door and into a furnace room.
The furnace blazed to one side, a pile of coal sat in a far corner, and everything was covered in a thin layer of coal dust and ash. As they walked through, the dust swirled up, but they kept from coughing too much. The next room was entirely unlit, and the light from the furnace in the room behind them revealed only that there were multiple passages ahead. Instead of fumbling in the dark, they looked for another way to go.
Zoe found a coal shovel, wrapped her uniform vest around the head, then lit it in the furnace to use as a torch in the dark passages. They wandered through a maze of narrow stone halls until they arrived at the end, occasionally hearing movement in the distance. Suddenly, something screeched behind them and leapt at Lisa! Zoe spun around and saw a cat walking back off into the shadows, but Lisa was still left screaming and shuddering in terror.
Once she recovered, they continued on to a staircase up, which came out in a secret door in the foyer, concealed behind the marble statue. Looking at the grandfather clock, she saw that it was 11:59. Hurrying, she ran back through the maze hoping to find the crypt.
The other group, having split up, found a variety of potentially useful things: Leigh found a dead-end stone room with a white pentagram drawn on the floor with salt, a beheaded chicken slumped in the centre beside a curved dagger with a spiked hilt. At each of the points was a 6' candle stand, one of which had been knocked over. She took the sacrificial dagger, then turned and left.
Beef wandered into the room under the hell chute, then found the wine cellar, and the squalid bedroom, where he read the diary.
Dingus found the pantry and, after testing it with Chemistry, took a bag of salt. Leigh's group walked into flooded cistern, where Cliff was frozen in fear after seeing the shape descend below the water. Once he recovered, they continued on to the beetle cave, and took the south door. A skeleton with a centipede writhing in one eye socket had died reaching out from behind a prison door, with a revolver and stick of dynamite behind it. As Dingus and Beef regrouped, the clock rang 12 times, and the organ music stopped. They looked at each other, then ran out into the flooded cistern.
Death
Zoe ran back into the Bug Cave at the same time as Leigh's group, and headed out the door to the east. The room beyond was a vast natural chasm spanned by a rickety rope bridge that swayed in the breeze. Leigh ran across the bridge, followed by Zoe, but Lisa, Cliff, and the others only made it part way before the bridge shook violently and they had to back off. Zoe backtracked and swapped her chainsaw for the Count's body with Lisa before going back across the bridge again while Leigh pressed on.
Dingus and Beef arrived at the bridged chasm, joining the growing crowd that was unable to cross. Dingus attempted to cross but his plate armour made the bridge sway violently and he stepped back while Beef effortlessly sprinted across. As he watched his "friend" make it to the other side, Dingus heard a moaning and turned to see the ghost of Count Orlock floating towards the group. Everyone else tried to cross at once, but only Cliff and Lisa made it (though she had dropped the chainsaw on the far side of the bridge when she'd seen the ghost), the others turning back when the bridge began to shake too much.
The ghost reached out to Dingus and plunged its hand into his chest. Though he felt a chill, he was otherwise fine. Without reacting, the ghost turned and thrust its hand into Generico, who shrieked and then collapsed, stone dead. A moment later, it touched Abby, and she collapsed. This caused another stampede which resulted in Foncy and Dingus making it across, leaving Gil to be the Count's next victim.
Zoe and Leigh passed through a hallway of broken statues, and were soon joined by Beef, Cliff, and Lisa at the top of a stone spiral staircase. They descended and arrived at a circular chamber where five coffins lay in niches on the walls with plaques reading names: Isabella, Harold, Manfred, Charles, and Yorick. Leigh remembered that the Count was named Harold, and Zoe brought out her salt, while Beef lowered his torch and set the bones alight. Looking back over his shoulder, Dingus saw the Count scream out in agony as he was engulfed in ghostly flame, and slowly burned away.
After realizing Lisa had dropped her chainsaw, Zoe ran back to grab it while Beef let out a victory shout. Worried about being stranded on the wrong side of the bridge, Dingus started back towards the mansion, but found that a fire was spreading towards them from that direction and high-tailed it back to the crypt, just barely outrunning it. At the crypt, a warning horn honked and one of the "stone" walls retracted into the ceiling, revealing a walkway lit only by emergency lights at foot-level.
Battle Royale
Everyone ran down the walkway, with Lisa in the lead, and emerged into a spotlit wrestling arena with a ring in the center. On a table in the ring were a collection of medieval weapons. Lisa grabbed a flail, Cliff clung to his shotgun, and Foncy took a sword, while Leigh hesitated, wondering over which polearm would be most useful. Zoe caught up, hefting her chainsaw. Leigh explained it was "like that show", and Beef took a halberd she had been looking at.
As Leigh took a voulge and stared daggers at Beef, a briefcase on a platform suspended by chains descended from the darkness above, followed by a ladder which clattered to the ground. The familiar voice of the Speaker resonated from speakers all around them. He congratulated them on their success, but regretfully pointed out that only the winner would receive the ten million dollars, and so told them to get to it, "chop chop".
Zoe pointed out to those present that they could just split the money and get out with more than a million each, while surviving a fight to the death was pretty bad odds. Beef, with his crippled leg, voiced his agreement. Everybody else nodded agreement, just as Dingus caught up arrived, clanking and panting in his armour, holding his spear. Though Cliff asked if they wanted to share the money with this fucking guy too, Beef convinced the group that nobody had to die (but they were thinking about it). Dingus was very confused.
Leigh set up and climbed the ladder to grab the briefcase while everyone else looked on, but opened it to find it was empty. The Speaker's voice once again returned, and he expressed his disappointment, but continued that "seven on one should still be a fair fight. Who drew the short straw again?". A door slid open on the far side of the arena and the woman who'd ripped out Joe's throat sauntered down the entry ramp to the ring. Zoe revved her chainsaw, while Dingus, still exhausted and confused, just asked what was going on.
The woman lunged at Zoe with supernatural speed, but tripped, and was left wide open. Between the chainsaw, shotgun, and multiple pointy weapons, she was hacked to pieces in seconds. They heard the Speaker wince and say that maybe they should all go at once juuuust in case. A crowd of the guests from the party, still in costume, charged down the entry ramp towards the survivors baring fangs. Between Dingus' armour, which rendered him immune to biting attacks, Beef's cross, and an unbreakable sense of solidarity, the workers cut down the vampires without losing any more of their own.
As the Speaker attempted to crawl away, Dingus impaled him with his spear and shouted, in a nasally voice, "are you not entertained?!?". The vampires were still moving despite grievous injuries, and Lisa pointed out that they had to be beheaded and staked through the heart. They finished this grim work, and then left out the exit ramp, which emerged in the party room... somehow. Covered in blood, the workers scrounged several thousand dollars each from the purses and wallets of the vampires; Thad was nowhere to be seen. They took the staff elevator, which was apparently unlocked and got the hell out of there, not even bothering to change back into their street clothes ("It's halloween, we'll blend in").
Several weeks later, the workers each received a cheque with their payment for the night's work in the mail.
Notes:
Most of the items the PCs picked up gave them mechanical bonuses. In order:
- Encyclopedia: +3 to any IQ-based rolls provided you have time to search through it
- Voodoo Doll: +1 to all rolls, but if the doll ever takes damage, the bearer takes the same
- Cracked Skull: Can take 1 damage instead of gaining a Fright Check Failure (the check still counts as failed, but you don't suffer the cumulative -1 to checks going forward)
- Bloodstone: May spend any amount of HP on a roll for a bonus at a 1:1 ratio
- Cross: Repels the ghost
- Plate Armour: DR6 everywhere, stealth is impossible, halved Move
- Hammer: deals sw crushing
- Blueprints: +5 to Perception for the purpose of finding Secret Stairs/Doors
- Sacrificial Dagger: thr+5 imp, AD (2), take 2HP damage on any failed attack
Leigh's player asked if the fourth cage was opened from the inside, and I thought he'd figured out that that was where the dog in the dining hall had come from. But no, he was actually worried about a dog still being in the kennels that would ambush them.
There was some concern that Beef was growing too powerful due to having so many items.
The initial concept for this game was "Squid Game but the bourgeoisie are literal vampires".
Despite the posting date, this game was run almost immediately after the first session, so it's not quite as out of season as it may seem.
Our games are going on hiatus while several people prepare potential games (I'll be running a Cyberpunk 2077 game eventually, and there's also a fantasy politics game and another 30k game in the works).
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