Second Session: Circus of the Darned

I didn't get around to posting about last week's game. Better do it quick before this week's game!

When we arrived at the game shop last Sunday, I only had two players: my daughter Gamera (playing Alanna the flying waitress) and Tim (playing Fred the Vampire Hunter). Only a few blocks from the shop I realized I'd left all my character sheets at home and so had to run back. In the intervening time, Gamera's friend Kitty (Aqua the water-controlling marine biologist) showed up.

I'm still feeling my way around this setting. They aren't a team that goes out on missions yet. I wanted to encounter some weirdness that would allow them to use their super-powers in their personal lives. Gamera reminded me that her character Alanna had a wacky roommate and that gave me my idea.

I lifted some plot from an online RPG I was involved with several years ago called "Dark Redemption" Dark Redemption One of the subplots of that game invovled a cyber-cafe run by a powerful vampire. Since Tim's character is a vampire hunter, I decided it was a logical place for him and Alanna to run into each other.

So.

We started out with Fred the Vampire Hunter doing some detective work. He had stated the previous session that he wanted to search the thugs who had attacked the group in the warehouse to see what he could find out about them. So we wrangled that out and discussed what he learned.

Next, Alanna has a conversation with her wacky roommate, Daphne; who talks her into going out for the evening. Daphne is meeting her boyfriend Raoul at the Club Cyba-Netsu and thinks that Raoul can find a friend to be Alanna's date. They arrive at the club and I describe the atmosphere. Alanna meets Raoul, and quickly pegs him as a Drama Queen. Then she spots Fred coming into the club.

Fred has heard about the Cyba-Netsu, a kind of goth club with a computer theme. Although not all goths are really vampires, Fred knows that vampires like to hang around goths because (A) it's protective camoflague and (B) goths worship vampires and so it's like free lunch. The first vampire he spots is the one at the table with Alanna; so he goes over to chat a bit.

But before too long, a waiter comes up to tell Fred the Manager would like to see him. The manager is Miss Aoi Kuriyama, an evil vamipre babe who looks like Yoko Ono. Kuriyama gives Fred some "friendly advice" about giving up his vendetta against vampires. We have a nice little dance of polite menace and veiled threats. Tim loved it.

Meanwhile, what of Aqua? Well, earlier on I had planted some information. A co-worker at Ocean World told her about how he once worked for a group of researchers who it turned out was using electrical implants to turn dolphins into weapons or something like that. Shortly afterwards, Aqua gets a job offer from a foundation doing cetean research. She turned them down.

I didn't really have anything for her to get involved with. So I suggested that Alanna give Aqua a call and invite her to the club. It was a little contrived, but it got everyone together in time for the big scene.

Daphne had gone on the floor to dance with Raoul. Alanna suddenly realizes that they're both gone. Suspecting foul play, Fred goes to investigate and finds Raoul in the alley behind the club with his teeth in Daphne's neck. A fight ensues, which includes Alanna whacking Raoul with her sketchbook and calling him a loser. One of the bouncers shows up to break things up and he suggests that Fred leave. Fred smiles politely and leaves.

Then he hunts Raoul down and kills him.

Fallout from the game:

Those three characters have gotten to know each other a little better and are starting to actually establish social bonds.

The local vampire community is now aware of Fred's presence and will be taking steps to take him down.

The game is starting to take a supernatural bent which I hadn't wanted, but which I should have forseen when I let Tim play a vampire hunter. I need to moderate that.

Oh, and I introduced a potential future menace. Kuriyama had another visitor that evening; a tall, white-haired man who was not a vampire. Fred is curious as to his identity. Actually, the man is an agent of Nephilim, which wants to make its own deal with Kuriyama. We'll be seeing more of him in the future