Dramatis Personae

• Arnold Zahn (NPC): Son of Ares. Has a deathwish. Drunk. Tagline: “How about that drink?”
• Julie Wilms aka The Assistant (Winfred’s Ally): Human, probably. Former covert agent turned convert. Now spends her time assisting, guarding, and herding Winfred. Tagline: “Time to go, Sir.”
• Sarah J. Pokorny (NPC): Daughter of Thoth. Magician. Capable as hell. Tagline: “I may be in a wheelchair but I’ll kick your ass.”

Previously . . .

Two days have passed after destroying the Thule Society’s ability to operate in Vegas for the time being. Still in the Chairman’s Suite at the Pallazo, Julie is speaking with a moving company to get them moved over to his actual residence. In the middle of Cal’s piano recital, he looks up and can feel that there’s people coming for them, through the hallway and from the balcony. An armed assault in a pincer maneuver.

Kill or Be Killed

Ekaterini Tsakalidis, Tercallus, Theroikon, and Winfred Timotheos
The Venetian Resort Las Vegas Chairman Suite
Saturday January 18th, 2012, 1000 hours
3355 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89109

Julie starts by running towards the media room to get to a firearm cache that she’d stowed away. Ekaterini throws a soap slick towards the group coming in from the hallway, catching the group inside a large area with Julie and Zahn managing to avoid the suds. One of the men from the lower balcony fires at Theroikon with full auto. Nadine pops Ekaterini’s soap suds power, dispelling it. Theroikon debates his options before charging at the nearest group of opponents, slashing at the demigod’s throat, startling them and causing her to drop the sword and take a grievous wound to the neck. A mage casts a spell at Winfred that he shrugs off by his will alone while spells cast on Pokie gets reflected back, the mages gets burned from within, they’re still alive but not happy. Winfred gets shot at, a silver shield appears in thin air as one of Pokie’s conditional spells activates, though it doesn’t protect entirely as he takes several rounds to his face and limbs, still barely clinging to life but unconscious. Pokie throws up another blocking spell in existence in response to more gunfire coming their way, the reflective shield bouncing the bullets back at the Aryan bikers, taking out several of them. Several Aryan bikers fire into the melee between Theroikon and his opponent, getting hit several times while Thero’s opponent goes to grab her weapon from the ground. Cal activates his time dilation ability to speed up himself and slow his opponents before taking cover behind Pokie’s shields. Zahn charges into melee with the mages, fast-drawing his sword and slices through the mage’s neck. Pokie improvises a spell to boost Theroikon’s abilities, massively boosting him for the next thirty seconds before spinning around in place to prep for another forcefield. Two-thirds of the thug trio head for the dead bikers, grabbing weapons, while Kevin gets next to Ekaterini.

Julie, grabbing her firearms, races out to the balcony and fires at one of the men, missing completely in her haste. Ekaterini throws another soap slick on the ground of the lower balcony before fast-drawing her pistol from her god stash, firing a three-round burst at the same person as Julie, who dodges again but the errant shot strikes the demigod behind him in the heart, killing the demigod. Their aetheric power creeps slowly towards Ekaterini. Nadine casts another spell, afflicting Zahn with internal burning. Theroikon regenerates somewhat and goes butcher on the demigod in front of him, ripping her heart out from her body, killing her. The mages are terrified of Zahn and try to inflict more burning death on him, only taking some damage from one of the spells before splitting the mage from his head. Several more shots head out for Theroikon, rendering his other arm temporarily useless as he takes a round in the shoulder and leg. Callum steps forwards and uses his time corrosion cone, to little effect, before taking a defensive stance. Pokie tries for another on-the-fly spell to give herself another level of speed, moving even faster and then allowing Julie to move a lot faster. Kevin charges into Ekaterini’s soap slick, falling on his back while Shira blows off several Aryan heads with Casey not far behind, taking out several opponents.

Julie, now hyped up on speed, blows off a man’s skull then steps forwards and blows off several more heads. Ekaterini takes cover behind a pillar and gives one of the Aryans around Theroikon a wedgie, which fails. Nadine casts another burning death spell on Zahn who manages to resist it this time. With Theroikon’s regeneration healing his limbs, he moves over and lashes out with his foot, missing one, injuring one, and killing the third before doing it again, killing the other two. Zahn resists a spell from the remaining caster before beheading him. Theroikon dodges more bullets from the Aryan bikers with ease this time. Callum accelerates Zahn and Winfred’s natural regeneration and then runs around Pokie’s shields and hugs the wall for cover. Pokie hits Ekaterini with another level of speed who runs up and wedgies Nadine with her abilities and attacks Nadine with Static Electricity who drops to the ground, seeming to have a heart attack.

Julie does nothing while Theroikon gets hit with the aetheric mist from the demigod whose heart he ripped out, he’s drained from the effort of absorbing the energy but not unconscious. He attacks the two remaining Aryans next to him, but they manage to dodge his attacks. Zahn moves away from Nadine towards the balcony while the Aryans fire at Theroikon who manages to parry their firearms. Callum moves towards Theroikon while drawing a knife, throwing it at one of the Aryan bikers, hitting him in the digestive tract. Pokie casts a healing spell, healing Winfred completely.

Julie fires at the biker’s heads while jumping over a pool, but misses every but one shot killing one. Ekaterini grabs Nadine, who is having a heart attack, and checks to see if she’s regenerating from anything. Theroikon is still fatigued from everything but kicks at the Ayran bikers, killing the last of them.

Ekaterini drags Nadine in and binds and gags her before stripping her of everything, Winfred takes charge as Ekaterini passes out from exhaustion and damage when the mist hits her, apparently managing to absorb a full domain. He stops the group from trying to cover up the crime and instead asks if Pokie can deal with a few things, grabbing the dossiers on himself and the two demigods that the Thule has kidnapped previously and asking if Pokie could alter the information on them to remove the comment of divine abilities with Julie helping with the fabrication. He orders Zahn and the rest to stay on the couches as he calls up the front desk and informs them that they had men break into their room and attack them, asking if they’d call the police.

With Theroikon hiding in the form of a hawk outside, Winfred greets the police and SWAT, giving them a story about how multiple men broke into his hotel room and attacked him and his guests. They’d only been there since they’d been getting multiple threatening letters and Julie moved him there since she felt it was safest, and they’d gotten more protection in the form of Zahn, Kevin, Casey, and Shira. He was speaking with Ekaterini about various business and philanthropy opportunity. He makes sure that they’ve gotten the dossiers about himself and two others. He says that he’s sure that Julie could produce the threatening letter if asked. After several hours of waiting and giving their stories, he asks over Nadine, expressing regret about her presence there before then thanking them for everything that they’ve done and to let him or Julie know if they need anything.

Aftermath

It feels different when they get to the Regency Towers, it feels somewhat different to them. Apparently, Julie spent a lot of Winfred’s money to shore up the magical defenses, while everyone else in the building benefits from it. Winfred’s penthouse apartment is easily double the size of the Chairman Suite with plenty of room for all and time enough for even Pokie to rest up.

After Action Report (GM)

The Thule Society was forced to pack up quick thanks to the PCs brilliant (improvised) plan – but they didn’t just go away. They went away angry and decided to try to get something out of the failed plan. They’d spent a year setting up in Los Vegas and when they were handed a severe defeat that threatens not just the branch in Vegas, but the whole Society they knew they had to tuck tail and run, but not before they tried to kill those who had handed them defeat. The combat in today’s game was supposed to be very one-sided. Not impossible, just extremely difficult. And for the most part it was, but there were some mitigating factors. 1) Tercallus got off a crit on Danger Sense making the surprise attack much less of a surprise; 2) Pokie made some incredibly rolls when casting unfamiliar spells. She was seriously NPC MVP. Nothing higher than 9 on the dice rolls for her the entire time for magic. She realized that she couldn’t fight (she’s in a wheelchair), but she damn sure could help others fight and she gave all she had hoping she’d survive. 3) Zahn just kept surviving death spells and sucidially rushed forward; 4) Ekaterini missed one of the biker thugs with her pistol, I rolled for her miss, hit one of the demigods, and scored a skull hit on the demigod who promptly rolled a 18 on his HT roll to survive; 5) Tercallus using his ability to alter the temporal flow along with Pokie adding ATR to that as well resulted in some shenanigans for sure. Those five things made turned the tide of combat mostly. Theroikon was he was boosted by Pokie was also scary as hell – he was literally healing 20 HP per second and doing a massive amount of damage.

Worse, Chris D. turned the attack on the Thules sealing their fate and giving the FBI/LVPD someone to interrogate. Yes, it raised the PCs profile – the police and FBI will be taking a closer look at them, but it made it so much worse for the Thule. I’m not sure how to proceed with them for the moment other than they pull out of Vegas and stay out for a while. The higher ups will not be happy. This is where the Harrowing will take place and being able to absorb those energies is a key to their power for the next century.

Other Notes

None.

Soundtrack

“Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan
“Ballroom Blitz” by Sweet (Combat)
“More Power” by 7kingz
“Eminence Front” by The Who (Closing Song)