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 . . .

The Turtles are regrouping to work on finding Solomon, perhaps by going to his apartment and finding something for Theroikon to sniff and track via smell. When heading for the apartment, they want to be careful in case Solomon had rigged the place to blow or there’s some kind of horrible juju. It’s a rather nice place that Solomon has got, top floor of a fancy looking apartment building overlooking a nice swimming pool. Theroikon uses his bird form to investigate the apartment, drawing a bit of attention towards himself via a small girl. He waits for her to leave before coming back to look through the drawn blinds the best that he could. There are no weird vibes that seem to be felt around, but there are quite a few cameras sitting around.

Got to Catch Them All, Solomon!

Ekaterini Tsakalidis, Tercallus, Theroikon, and Winfred Timotheos
Solomon Gold’s Apartment
Sunday January 22nd, 2012, 1830 hours
10650 Dean Martin Dr, Las Vegas, Nevada, 89141, Suite 311

None of the turtles really look out of place as they head up, with Ekaterini contemplates changing form. It’s definitely a warded apartment with plenty of different things on and sigils carved around the doorjamb before being filled with plaster of some kind, so while it’s still smoothed over it’s a different enough colour to be obvious. They debate who’s going to enter the apartment first for several minutes until Winfred finally just takes the key and enters first.

The key turns, the lock opens, and door swings open to a musty apartment with a faint coppery scent throughout the apartment. Winfred knocks as the door opens and cries out Candygram. Theroikon flies inside and changes into human form, smelling blood all over the place, searching for the place where it smells strongest, where they find a body in the bed off of the kitchen.

They’re still somewhat covered by the bedsheets, but it looks like, to Ekaterini, someone very slowly slit her throat, very, very slowly and it looks like someone carved her heart out as well. Cal utilizes his psychometry, sharing his vision with Ekaterini. A full on vision where they get to see things from the woman’s point of view. She’s dressing in a green lingerie which complements her eyes and hair quite nicely, calling out for a Sol. A very large man comes into view, over six and a half feet tall and very, very dark. He’s crying blood from his eyes and has a knife in his hand, speaking in a language neither of them understand. She’s crying as she’s tortured slowly over a span of twenty minutes, until it ends with him cutting out the heart and taking a bite from it. It’s been about two days since she died and around the same time that he wigged out and beat Silver’s wife.

It’s not something that they’ve really seen recently, but it seems like some kind of possession. It seems like the lingerie is still on the floor among other things and the heart is completely absent. The other room in the apartment is a converted office with numerous things laying all around. Ekaterini investigates the knickknacks, finding a few magical items while Winfred tries to determine whether or not he’ll be able to bring the girl back. Apparently however she was killed also tore the soul away from body, he could resurrect them but would only be in physical manner but a vegetative state, nothing to drive her.

Ekaterini asks for Pokie or Julie to hack the computer that Solomon has got there, Julie being the one to do it, plugging in a small jump drive that gets them into the operating system. Recent information says that Solomon has purchased an old mine, last worked in the 1870s during the California gold rush and located about 60 miles outside of town. He visited it recently via directions on his phone which is still active. Calling through the phone company to activate his GPS, pretending to be his wife to get the information. The last known location is near the recently purchased mine.

The team immediately goes into theorizing area about how the Aztecs may be involved. If it’s because of the Smoking Obsidian Mirror or the Obsidian Sword. Solomon had attacked Silver’s wife while Silver was present, that he’d been trying to drag Solomon off her but couldn’t. There’s only one odd looking jar-type thing on the other desk and looks to be made from clay and already opened, the beeswax seal has been cracked. There’s nothing inside that any could see, but has a copperish smell and it looks like he drank from it. Cal spelunks into the jar’s past with Ekaterini again, and he gets the overwhelming urge to do something they can’t. Solomon was cracking open the jar with proper tools, the seal breaks and black smoke emerges from jar and the next thing they know is that Solomon is resisting bringing the jar to his mouth and drinking from it. The next thing they see is something staring at them inside the vision and cocking its head, frightening them out of the vision.

There’s runes on the lid, identified as Aztec symbols. The mine was purchased from a mineral rights auction page alongside the property rights about a week or two ago, the previous holder having nothing against them. The e-mail hasn’t been tampered with and it seems like a simple case of a guy buying a mine about two weeks ago and going crazy. They dismiss Winfred’s asking if the mine was some kind of sacred place and immediately go to search social media to determine who the woman was, she was a hooker, and if they should be cleaning up after Solomon’s crazy attack. With Winfred now in the hallway, to maintain plausible deniability about not having no clue what they’re doing inside.

They send an e-mail to Silver asking what’s going on and what it is and if he knows what is going on or if he was possessed. Silver says that it definitely looks Aztec and that it matched other things that he’d have brought in several days ago, evidently Solomon hadn’t bought them but instead found them. Plus, many other things. Evidently Silver got lots of other cursed things into his pawn shop, normally dolls and other things, but mostly dolls. They debate more about whether to clean up the crime scene as they’re looting the magical items around the apartment. They decide to leave the body for now, having locked the door behind them.

Julie wants to make sure what they’re doing is going to be going into an old mine. They either need a lot of equipment or getting information on what the black smokey thing is. Winfred knows Ruby C. Garrison, a regular mortal without knowledge of the occult world, plenty of information about the Meso-American world that has been relying on Winfred to get relics into museums. He knows her as his foundation paid her through college where she got her educations and PhD.

Giving her a call, Ruby is all in on this, but she’s disappointed that she hasn’t seen him for a while and asks if it was a social call or if he needed some arm candy or something. He tells her that he’s got something for her to investigate and forwards the pictures to Ruby who is quite interested in the jar and asks if they can bring it to her at the Nevada Museum of History and keeps pushing for him to bring it. He silently shuts down the phone and then silences it. . . and then shuts it down when text messages start coming in.

The final question on how to deal with the body is finally answered when Winfred can’t stand the idea of someone not knowing what happened to the girl and tries to bring her back to life, actually succeeding in drawing back the soul somehow, she wakes up screaming where Pokie knocks her back out and wipes out her memory of the past several days. He brings her back to his apartment and has the Thugtrio look after her before heading for the history department of the museum.

She’s Just Drawn That Way

Ekaterini Tsakalidis, Tercallus, Theroikon, and Winfred Timotheos
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Sunday January 22nd, 2012, 2030 hours
4505 S Maryland Pkwy, Las Vegas, NV 89154

Inside, it’s almost spectacularly clean at the same time of there being a mess there. Ruby breasted boobily across the room to hug Winfred who is deeply uncomfortable with the situation which Pokie dislikes and makes a comment under her breath about not liking Ruby. Julie just rolls her eyes and steps outside the room saying that it’s Winfred fault for adopting all these people. She asks about the jar which Ekaterini hands over and looks at the jar. It’s got a symbol of a double headed serpent which represents eternal life or immortality, but it’s reversed and not something that she’s seen before. It basically reads as “Do not open, [something] within.”. She points at something that they didn’t notice before, more pictographs that tells a story. She gives the name of He-Who-Cannot-Die or Akinamouliki which is really weird in general purposes since Aztecs were big on life, death, rebirth but this. . . thing was taken out of the cycle.

She takes several 3d scans and regular pictures, tests it, scraps it, samples it. Saying that she’d like to take some time to investigate the smaller pictographs which’d take some time to investigate. She’d be able to whip up a transcript, but converting it would take some time as she looks into it further. She’d most likely be able to get more information to them by the next day and it is nearly time for dinner anyhow.

A quick trip through the McDonald’s drive through later they get home and sleep, Winfred having a somewhat terrifying nightmare. Pansy and Shira have hit it off spectacularly, sitting over in a corner having quiet conversations. There seems to be a strange kinship between those that Winfred invites back and more or less adopts.

At about eight in the morning, they head into the kitchen and gets some breakfast from Julie who is a near master chef. Pansy is still around, who isn’t too sure what’s going on but she’s feeling safe and with Shira there reassuring her that she’ll be alright and if she wants to go home then she can. Either way, she’s really trusting of Winfred and the Thugtrio.

Pokie is still rather jealous of Ruby and says that she’ll be staying home, plus they’re going to a mine so probably unlikely for her to get around there. She does stand up, leaning against the counter, kisses Winfred on the cheek and asks him to come back safely. They grab Zahn, telling him there might be blood and death, possibly even for him.

At the Museum, they meet with Ruby who hasn’t been to bed yet. She’s got at least a half dozen empty cans of Red Bull on the counter. She enjoys the doggie bag of Julie’s food and starts a cup of coffee brewing and tells them a story of where this sorcerer, this nauallis, and evil sorcerer would reverse many rituals and do crazy stuff. He was killed, drained, separated and sent forth along with several other jars containing his body and his heart in addition to the soul plus blood. They sent him north along with magical artefacts. There’s really odd inflections in some of the pictograms but it seems like he wants to drink the blood of a god. They can do a lot of nasty stuff, change into jaguars, control evil, drain your soul, seemingly. She tells them a final thing, that it’s kind of a map leading them to the other two jars. It looks vaguely like a map, but with Aztec symbols which she approximates the information on there and asks them to give her their locations as she’d like to start a dig there. Ekaterini and Theroikon facetiously promise to do so while Winfred says he probably won’t.

Theroikon manages to overlay the information on a map to discern what is going on and where the locations are. They’re about ten miles in opposite directions from the mine, which almost everyone wants to investigate as the mine smells like trouble and has had its treasure excavated. They know that a generic ritual may work to exorcise things back into the jar, and they’d have to bleed Solomon half-dead to get the blood into the jar. They head back and speak with Pokie about cleansing rituals, managing to get a charm made to help with the cleansing of Solomon.

And They Call It A Mine

Ekaterini Tsakalidis, Tercallus, Theroikon, and Winfred Timotheos
Cold Strike Gold Mine
Monday January 23rd, 2012, 0800 hours
41°14’10.6″N 74°43’44.6″W, Nevada

Getting to the mine is no large issue, they have to hike half a mile in and it’s not too rough of terrain. There’s some old stone buildings that may have been a former part of the mine along with a tent, recently put up. They make some noise as they come up, seeing a tall black man step out of the tent to stare at them. Ekaterini tries to fast-talk Solomon who instead responds in a seemingly unknown tongue and waves a hand, as several mummified corpses emerge from the ground wielding macuahuitls and shields wearing ceremonial warrior garb.

Julie moves protectively towards Winfred, to keep an eye on anything that comes close. Ekaterini runs immediately forwards, up against a stone wall about two yards away from Solomon and draws her rapier from her stash. Theroikon attacks one of the mummified warriors from behind, dealing little damage to the undead. Solomon casts a spell that causes Zahn to have a heart attack and pass out/die. Cal steps forwards accelerating himself and activating regeneration around him, to help Zahn recover and steps closer to Julie and in front of Winfred blocking his sight. Winfred steps out to the side of Cal and activates one of his charms to throw a stun bolt charm at Solomon, but misses as multiple undead comes running towards the group. Two undead attack back at Theroikon who parries one and dodges the other.

Julie fast-draws her shotgun and fires it twice at the undead coming for them, hitting it twice but not doing enough damage to down it. Solomon casts a spell on Ekaterini who manages to barely resist it but still takes quite a bit of damage on it. Cal steps closer to Zahn who gets back up and accelerates the temporal flow around him, dropping his personal temporal acceleration, throwing a knife at Solomon managing to hit him in the pelvis, temporarily crippling him and taking him to the ground. Several undead gets inside the field created by Cal, slowing down immensely while several more attack Ekaterini who parries their blows.

Julie steps to the side and fires several times, dropping one of the undead. Ekaterini steps forwards and stabs at Solomon on the ground, nicking him in the chest causing him to bleed. Theroikon and the undead evaluates each other. Solomon attempts to heal himself with a spell but fails. Zahn stands up steps forwards and lops off the head of the closest undead warrior. Cal steps forwards, fast draws another knife from his stash and throws it at a nearby undead warrior into its chest. Winfred steps forwards, activating his pacification field taking out nearly all but one undead inside his field’s area of effect. The sole undead warrior not affected attacks Zahn but drops his weapon as he defends.

Julie steps up and unloads two shotgun slugs into the unaffected undead warrior, blowing the skull apart. Ekaterini thrusts again at Solomon, who is barely hanging onto consciousness. Theroikon’s muscle bulge from increased strength as he slashes at the two undead warriors in front of him, taking one down. Solomon tries to heal himself again, but fails and smoke starts seeping out of him. Zahn attacks two undead but they manage to get out of the way of his blows. Cal draws a kukri from his stash and chops at one of the undead, chopping at their leg. Winfred, with the jar in hand, moves next to Solomon and presses it against the wound in his pelvis to increase the flow of blood into the jar as more black smoke oozes out.

Julie moves forwards and runs around the general melee, firing into the undead’s skull again, blowing it apart into Cal’s face. The black smoke speeds away from the melee, leaving Solomon on the ground surrounded by the turtles while Theroikon follows it where it goes into the next mine and waits for them there.

Aftermath

They find the artefacts that Silver was looking for in the tents along with a few other items. Solomon is quite confused now, wondering where he is and why they’re surrounded by them. Winfred explains that they were sent there to either kill him or turn him into the police since he assaulted Silver’s wife and he asked what exactly Solomon expected from screwing around with ancient Aztec artefacts, did he expect gold in there? When told that he heard sloshing instead of rattling, Winfred gently puts down the jar half-full of Solomon blood and gives him a dope slap to the back of the head.

After Action Report (GM)

Today’s session was really good for me as a GM because I knew what the players wanted to do ahead of time and I was able to set up maps, make bad guys, etc. Even better, they actually followed through with their plans and even though they elaborated a bit on the intiatial plan it didn’t crazily deviate. Got to introduce new NPCs and got in a good combat where bad rolls lead to it ending early. The PCs did ok against their first non-human opponents and that was good to see. Chris D.’s Winfred has decided to adopt any NPC with a name…as I GM I *must* name NPCs. This is eventually going to be a problem. But that’s for future me to worry about. I worry that it might have felt a little railroadish (in the negative aspect of that particular word as it relates to RPGs), but I think the PCs were ok with it because it was their decision. I was just putting them on the tracks. Again, overall, great game.

Other Notes

None.

Soundtrack

“Close to You (Mirrormask Cover)” by the Carpenters (Winfred’s Nightmare)
“I’m Gonna Live Till I Die” by Sarah Vaughan
“Dangerous” Fred Eaglesmith