Dramatis Personae
- Devin Broadhurst (played by Rob D.): There was a blurb here the entire time. But it disappears every time you look away from the screen. Tagline: “You saw it, but forgot it.”
- Gabriel MacAlister (played by Douglas Cole): Built like the natural athlete he is, he is tall, strong, and solidly good-looking, but deeply scarred from much combat. He’s missing his lower leg, which he lost fighting zombies. It is capped by a carbon fiber prosthetic that doesn’t seem to interfere much with his activities. A quiet and hard-working man, always ready to lend a hand with any work, which he will do without complaint or obligating the other person to respond. He is an expert martial arts teacher, and has been following in the footsteps of a carpenter for some time now. Emphatically not a pushover or weak personality, but also not one to purposefully show off. Has been in many horrible places and seen many horrible things; he’s a bit of a compulsive planner as a result, as well as always feeling that most folks don’t really know how lucky they are. He was cursed to carry a magical sword for a while, and gave into its Wrath before it was parted from him magically. He’s since given it up, in exchange for unknown burdens. Tagline: “To serve others is the highest calling; to protect the meek the noblest endeavor, and our works are judged by the effort that went into them”
- Kamali Blackshear (played by Merlin A.): Kamali is a young man in his late teens. He is healthy and is of mixed ethnicity of Caucasian South African and native South African. He is a determined youth who believes in a justice of his own, likening himself to the knight of the round table whom he has read deeply into. Just as they stood against the darkness of their age so too does Kamali seek to do the same. For his sister, for his friends, and for the world. Tagline: “A knight without a sword carrying a faith nobody believes.”
- Lorenzo DeModouco (played by Christian G.): A man with movie star looks and a voice that belongs on the radio. Slowly coming to grips with the fact that he isn’t exactly human, but a “Lupus Dei” – “Wolf of God” – otherwise known as a Benandanti. He’s still cheery and always trying to make others happy, but has become a shrewd student of human behavior, which he uses for the benefit of the rest of his team. Lorenzo’s recently joined the Boston Fire Department as a volunteer as a means to get access to places he normally shouldn’t be able to go as well as medical gear and information that might not be available to the public. He’s become a master of spear fighting and like the rest of his brothers is a highly capable combatant. Tagline: “You can take me to the gates of Hell, but I won’t back down and I won’t be turned around.”
- Markus Walker (played by Christopher D.): Only recently awakened to the world of Ceteri, Markus is a couple things. A survivor of Lorna Rd, an officer of the law, a physical mage. It’s hard to tell where each one leaves off and where the other comes into play. He tries his best to follow the law, but it’s hard when there’s no Massachusetts State laws on monster hunting. Tagline: “Honesta quam magna.”
Previously . . .
It’s been six months since the Battle of Dogtown and the Round Table was successfully assembled within the Heart of the Labyrinth, Excalibur is now stuck in the middle of the table with Kamali being the only one that can pull it from the table. The weapons loaned to the boys are back in the cave, only for use for that one mission against Friendly.
Monsters are weird, cranked to eleven. All the outbreaks have left the orphans exhausted, having to spend a large amount of time just hunting them down in addition to having to deal with their normal jobs. A large upswing of fae and undead have appeared, along with new vampires swarming into town trying to take advantage of the power vacuum.
Grindylow, Kelpie Nigh
Gabe, Kamali, Lorenzo, and Markus
Dorcester Shores Reservaton
Friday, October 15th, 2000, 6:00 pm
Boston, MA 02122
Lorenzo, Gabe, and Kamali are out in the field again, investigating disappearances of children at Dorchester Shores Reservation. It’s getting towards sunset. Markus is off-duty, but he’s still wandering around the area looking for information for two recent disappearances and he is barely able to see the Orphans through the trees when screams for help start echoing through the night. Kamali and Lorenzo run towards the sound while Walker flicks open his holster for easy access to a firearm and follows the strangers.
Believing himself to be a chosen one Kamali strides forwards with firearm in hand, commenting that he doesn’t believe that the horrific creatures hovering over the children are their parents and asks what they’re doing there, receiving only hissing in return Kamali turns to immediately firing upon the aquatic menaces, but the rounds seem to do nothing to the creatures.
Lorenzo moves closer to Kamali, deciding that if the bullets are doing nothing then he might as well go on the defensive. Markus in the meantime pulls his weapon from his holster and run up towards the boys, ordering them to drop their weapons while the monsters scramble ashore towards Kamali and Lorenzo. Kamali fast draws his sword and slashes back, his weapon caught in its hand, turning it unready while Lorenzo attempts to spear the monster in its eye. Markus orders them once again to drop the weapons while Kamali retorts back. The monsters, on the other hand, decide that this is another nice new target and rush them, Markus barely seeing the horror in the darkness coming for him.
Kamali barely escapes a bite while Lorenzo doesn’t as he’s bitten on the leg, getting him in the artery. The leg is down and Kamali is trying to attack the one biting Lorenzo. Three shots to the head and a failed karate chop that drops his guard. Markus, on the other hand, is more concerned with shooting the advancing monsters in the face, dropping it to the ground while the other two advance and strikes one in the mouth with his pistol while judo parrying the second.
Kamali has his leg crippled by a bite on the funny bone in his thigh and is taken down alongside Lorenzo, shocked by this turn of decidedly non-hilarious events, Kamali goes on the defensive while Lorenzo manages to spear one in the chest. Markus, on the other hand, has attempted to slam one into the other, resulting in little more than just dancing with the creature and again uses his pistol to whip away their claw while Kamali and Lorenzo defend themselves against the creatures.
Lorenzo finally managed to take one down with another shot to the chest while Markus slams one monster into another monster. They don’t take well to this, attempting to attack him once more but still slaps their fists away with his handgun, shocking them mildly and still somehow managing not to go down to the three. Lorenzo and Kamali manage to defend against their attacks as Lorenzo manages to get Kamali his sword via a seesaw trick with his spear and Kamali goes back on the offensive stabbing one of the monsters with his sword, though his blade doesn’t seem to deal too much damage to the sea-ly beast.
Markus again starts to throw them into each other, knocking one down and managing to barely damage them, still slapping away the final one with his pistol. The comedy starts again as Kamali sidesteps one allowing them to lunge past leaving him open to an attack to the back while Lorenzo manages to dodge the blow. Gabe finally manages to wobble onto scene and heads towards the conflict as Kamali whirls around and pierces it in the back to no avail while Lorenzo stabs towards another, taking it out with a single blow again.
Markus continues his dance with the monsters, deftly moving out of the way and keeping hold of one of them. Kamali manages to dodge the blows coming from his sides while Gabe hobbles straight towards the group confronting Markus and slashes at the back and neck with spear and sabre, nearly beheading the watery tart. Kamali moves and fires at one of them, managing to hit with two rounds while Lorenzo attacks once more driving his spear just barely off center of the creature. His attempt to fire off some bullets is a failure as the gun jams. Instead the creature latches onto Markus and rips out his throat.
Gabe barely manages to parry off a blow while Kamali and Lorenzo manages to fend off their attacks as well. Gabe steps up and slashes at two targets with a rapid strike. The spear misses while the sword digs into the torso of the creature feasting on Markus, but it isn’t dead. Kamali fires at the creature finally doing some damage to the vitals while Lorenzo’s target dodges. Markus barely breaks from his stun as the creature mounts on top of him. Gabe acrobatically retreats away from another attack, managing to parry away the blow.
Another rapid strike from Gabe, hitting the necks of both his opponents, beheading both with a single strike each. The battle goes back and forth between Kamali, Lorenzo, and the last living creatures. Gabe attempts to pray over Markus, asking for healing, unfortunately he gets a busy signal and all the office can see is a man in armor with sword and spear praying before him. Markus gets the urge to kick upwards between the stranger’s legs while Kamali stabs at the creature once more with his katana, finally killing one of them while Lorenzo strikes down the last.
Screaming from the water’s edge where a capsized boat lay. Lorenzo charges into the water to grab a spare boat while Kamali steps foot on the capsized vessel, a warning from the children comes too late and it turns out the boat is the form of a Kelpie. Kamali is now stuck and the boat goes into a death roll. Kamali attacks the boat, forcing it to let go of the children and return to its normal form.
Markus, however, has backed himself up against a tree and is trying to apply pressure to the improvised tracheotomy that he suffered, in shock and still trying to get an idea of what is going on. Commanding them to drop their weapons, barely recognizing each other from back on Lorna Rd, though Markus denies this. Instead he tries to keep them at bay and eventually passing out from blood loss, the moment that Lorenzo was waiting for as he patches up the cop’s neck and they drag each other back to the Firehouse.
Aftermath
The first thing that Markus sees when he wakes up is a rather transparent dog drooling on his leg which is still there after he closes and opens his eyes. They managed to heal up themselves and Kamali is sitting on the computer researching what they just faced that night. Turns out it was actually Grendylows, cousins to the ogres and faes. Apparently they have some good news and bad news for the officer. The good news was that they aren’t infectious, the bad news is that they left his car at the scene. Markus suddenly has the urge to shoot something as the session ends.
After Action Report (GM)
Like C-Team, it’s good to be back running Ceteri B-Team. B-Team started out with a combat. Why? Because they are monster hunters and that’s what they do. The grindylow (child-eating aquatic fae of an unseelie persuasion) was fairly balanced (I thought) despite lack of iron weaponry, but the PCs could not roll high enough to save their lives and I rolled an inordinate amount of critical successes. After stripping away the meta-currency of the campaign for season 2 (something 90% of the PCs wanted to do), things got ugly. Seriously. GURPS combat is always “swingy,” but the NPCs constantly rolling high made it uncertain – at least until Doug showed up and went gonzo with sword and spear killing three grindylow in four combat rounds. Overall, a good start with Chris D.’s new character – having a law-abiding cop interact with a group of monster hunters the first time is always fraught with peril. Next game should be interesting as well since Markus is going to get “the speech” from the boys.
Other Notes
None.
Soundtrack
“Bottom of the River” by Delta Rae (Opening Song)
“Don’t Get Captured” by Run the Jewels
“In the Air Tonight” by Natalie Taylor (Closing Song)
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Uuuugh, child-eating monsters. Those are naaasty, especially to players who are parents (or some other variety of human who doesn’t hate children, which seems to be a fairly common position).
Boston and Massachusetts in general is a very cool place for a Wainscot fantasy occult campaign.
Also, Honesty is the worst. Worse than child-eating fae. If heroic Monster Hunters ever suspect someone who has learned about the Secret of having Honesty, treat it like a zombie bite in gritty zombie movies. Just execute right away, it’s ultimately kinder for them and safer for everyone else. It might seem ruthless and even callous, but it’s simply not ethical to allow sympathy for one person to doom everyone you might have saved to death, while you and every other Monster Hunter rots in prison or has to spend their days on the run from the law, unable to fight monsters.
Seriously, in any world with a Secret of world-shattering importance, which is not known to mortal legislators and authorities, a character who is legally obligated to follow all laws, a code of law which doesn’t allow for the existence of supernatural threats beyond the competence of the police, will be a natural enemy to all Monster Hunters. He will inform the police of crimes (including vigilantism, weapons violations, trespassing and generally acting like a PC in a MH campaign), he will not participate in cover-ups, won’t disppear from crime scenes, he won’t lie about what happened, he has to follow procedure on the integrity of crime scenes and chain of evidence, etc.
Really hope Marcus Walker expresses his respect for the law and the right thing to do in terms of a Code of Honour, not GURPS Honesty.
Well, Ceteri uses the rules for Mask of Humanity – so brushes with the supernatural fade pretty fast, but yeah, I get your point. Also, this is an older recap – Markus has gotten a lot better since he’s been around for 6+ sessions.