Dramatis Personae

• Jamie J. Billings (NPC): Nonverbal. Mathematics savant. Communicates via a PDA. Shy. Tagline: “I Can Show You The Math.”
• Lynne C. Duane (NPC): Holder of Bachler’s degree in neurobiology Daughter of a famed neurosurgeon. Athletically gifted. Arrogant and overconfident. Tagline: “Of course I’m right. I’m smarter than you.”
• Tabitha E. “Tabbs” de Orellana (NPC): Latina from the Bronx. Aptitudes for mechanical engineering, chemistry, and materials science. Speaks her mind. Bossy and cocky, but not arrogant. Tagline: “No me respondas.”
• Warren P. Clark (NPC): Computer and electronics nerd. Very tall for his age (almost 6′) and big. Tagline: “Oh. What does this button do?”

Previously . . .

When coming back to, the group were waking up in the camp infirmary, a rather well stocked place. Fiona is already asking how long they’ve been asleep, the nurse there, Yvette Dalton, speaks with all of them explaining they found them via a GPS tracker that was in Counselor Steve’s belongings. They were dehydrated and needed several IVs, having been found in the bunker. They placed Steve in his cabin who is being taken care of by another nurse. They contacted the kids guardians and parents much to Fiona’s chagrin. After everyone’s vitals are stable and they all have a banana bag as a precaution, they’re considered to be fine as getting bandaged up. They’re all released after being checked out and sent out, if they can stomach food then they should go get something from the mess hall. Fiona suggests heading back to see what’s up with the weird bunker/cavern while Harlowe would prefer to get some food instead while Fiona and Lynne get into an argument.

Bless This Mess (Hall)

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Camp Mareki
Saturday June 17th, 2000, 1830 hours
1898 Montauk Hwy, Montauk, NY 11954

In the mess, they’re having hotdogs and French fries and they can hear someone singing in Italian. When they get their food, the hotdogs look like custom made brioche buns for the hotdogs and nearly every kind of condiments made from scratch, including chili and onions. As the group gets their food and sits down, it’s pretty obvious that they’re the objects of interest. Warren meets eyes with a young Asian kid at the next table and initiates an eating contest which he loses.

Fiona and Lynne get into an argument about why the Nurse was said that they were found in the bunker instead of the cavern which dissolves into them calling each other names which puts Harlowe off the massive amount of chili on his plate and instead looks to get some fruit which Tabitha grabbed, Harlowe thanks her in broken Spanish while Benjamin, Lynne, and Fiona continue to argue while Benjamin shows the rocks that he collected from the cavern. They don’t make fancy light shows when bounced on the floor anymore. Benjamin still can’t identify what the rocks are made from.

After dinner, they head off to the group meeting place where they head off to every night, get news and announcements. The Head Counselor isn’t there so one of the other counselors is there making the announcements about how Cabin C(erberus) had gotten lost and their counselor injured but was looking better, coming out with a bandaged head, arm in a sling and on crutches. They’re going to be doing an art day next, or at least art appreciation day.

After announcements are over, they are ushered back to their cabin where Fiona is still rip roaring to head over, if not that night then maybe next day. Tabitha reassures Fiona that the cavern was real and takes one of the rocks from Benjamin, suggesting they sneak into the fancy lab for the science kids which Benjamin isn’t too happy with, preferring to investigate things properly with permission. Tabitha plays a game of chess with Harlowe as they wait their turn for the showers, with her beating him soundly, he blames the head injury. Jamie is frowning at them while also looking at his PDA which had gotten broken, Warren takes time and gets the machine fixed for Jamie who is rather happy before going to bed.

Everyone has the same dream of being in a void of shifting impossible colours of everchanging lights and feeling like something is chasing them, Harvey isn’t wearing pants either.

I Will Do Science To It

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Camp Mareki
Sunday June 18th, 2000, 0830 hours
1898 Montauk Hwy, Montauk, NY 11954

During the next day, they get to the mess hall to find an omelet bar with every kind of fixings they can get into there and fresh fruits and juices. Fiona comments that they taste almost like the food at home which draws the attention of the camp chef who fixes the best omelet ever for her to prove his skills. Harlowe has a bowl of plain oatmeal with some blueberries while Tabitha makes sure they all get food. The rivalry between Fiona and Lynne continues as she explains what a fistula is to Warren before Fiona gets the chance.

Since none of the kids are from the art cabins, they’re all science kids after all. . . and Harlowe, they get to have art appreciation lessons. Benjamin speaks the counselor for Cabin G, Ken Valdez, to take the rock to the lab so they can take a look at it as the beauty of natural world. They get taken to the science lab and are allowed entry along with a PIN for entry and everything, getting to go through an hour long lecture on how to use things before heading off.

Benjamin is their best bet for it as they keep going through the rocks on the machines, using the water jet to try to break through it. As the water jet keeps hitting the stone, nothing happens but the stone starts to glow again like an aurora borealis in a rock. A few minutes later the jet shuts down with the stone still intact and glowing. Benjamin wants to move the rock to take a picture of it but Warren already has safety equipment on, so he grabs it with some tongs and starts moving it, they can hear the metal of the tongs starting to vibrate. Benjamin gets several pictures, both with and without lights. When the picture comes up on the screen, it still sorta glowing and looks strange in the way that it looks fake or lens flare. The rock still keeps glowing, but every one in a while it lets out an energy discharge and the glow fades a bit more.

Tabitha has one of the other rocks and is currently experimenting with it, using Harlowe as a gofer. When Benjamin asks they should tell someone about it, Tabitha says probably not as they’d need to take it away. None of the acids she’s using gets through the thick exterior. Harlowe, looking things over, grabs the one from the water saw and another one and starts clacking them together. At first nothing happens but then they start attracting and distancing them from each other faster and faster and faster until a pulse of energy explodes out while they’re at their widest point knocking Harlowe down and embedding the rock into the wall. Harlowe suggests they shouldn’t do that again while Tabitha says they definitely need to do that again.

Everyone else is suitably impressed while Jamie and Warren’s calculations puts it at about half a stick of TNT. Warren pulls at the rock embedded in the wall and manages to get it out but it slips from his hands and it flies out towards Harlowe who drops to the ground only for it to sling back. He lifts up a hand and a translucent wall of impossible colour like an oil-slick blocks it shocking everyone. Several people look at the wall and attempts to that disappears after almost half a minute.

Fiona sets down and starts touching the stone that’s glowing, feeling like it’s slightly bouncing while Harvey is able to determine that it’s absorbing energy and bouncing it back out while still retaining some. It’s definitely radiating something but it readings that he’s never seen before. Harlowe, the pragmatist, finds something to cover the hole in the wall and gets to cleaning while the rest figure out how to package up the stones in a safe method with Harlowe suggesting they should just get an egg carton to pack them in which Warren runs out to grab. Meanwhile, Benjamin gets some rocks from outside to complete their cover of using the lab and gets some quartz crystals from outside and mica after a small bit of digging, he’s always had a sixth sense for this sort of thing.

After things, they get to go to arts and crafts where they get to choose what they want to do. They’ve got access to pretty the entire spectrum there where Fiona moves to go painting which isn’t looking too lovely as a mess of browns, Harvey moves to do an incredible looking drawing, Benjamin does a mosaic using the rocks he found though it’s not that fancy looking. A quick look at Harvey’s drawing shows that he’s drawing the Torus cavern that they were in, thinking that he was drawing the stone they had just been experimenting on until they tell him. Warren makes a decent looking wooden sculpture, Tabitha makes something from papier-mâché, Jamie does some drawings, while Lynne’s paintings come out far better than Fiona’s. Harlowe makes a board, a fairly decent looking one.

The water colours that Lynne was painting starts to run off the page while Fiona stares hard at them. She quickly looks upwards rather innocently while Lynne blames her for doing it somehow.

There’s going to be a contest held for the best work in each category, which will most likely be Harvey for drawing at this point, but it won’t be announced until after dinner. Fiona keeps pushing them to go back down into the bunker, suggesting that the rocks can do a lot of stuff. Benjamin reluctantly agrees to head out if the rest are going, same with Harvey. They’ve got some disposable cameras they can use and Benjamin can gather together stuff they need to investigate a cave. They head off, with Harlowe pointing out where things are in relation and Harvey leading the way to find the crack sealed off with security tape announcing caution.

Return to the Underground

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Cave Underneath a Casemate
Sunday June 18th, 2000, 1130 hours
2000 Montauk Highway, Montauk, NY 11954

While Benjamin leads the way afterwards, he takes pictures heading towards where they remember falling but don’t find any kind of sinkhole, it’s completely solid but they do notice bits of ceiling has collapsed in several areas. Fiona crawls on hands and knees patting the floor to determine if it’s solid or not. Harvey investigates above the ceiling using Warren as a step-ladder not finding anything obviously hidden and like the piece of rebar that they had used previously and some blood on the floor from Steve. It doesn’t make sense to Benjamin who investigates the concrete.

Harlowe pulls out one of the stones from where they’ve stored them to try to see what happens if they bounce it, but it doesn’t even get close before the concrete bubbles downwards into a staircase causing Benjamin to go hog wild with the camera as it forms. They ground heads downwards, seeing the strange torus shaped room with dead animals which elicits more pictures. Harvey mentions that they may need to go somewhere to develop the photos while Benjamin attempts to haul out a large stone causing Harlowe to say “calm down, Sisyphus.”. They do a quick experiment, when the stone is removed from the presence of the hole then it closes like it was never there. Tabitha says that they cannot reveal it just in case the military gets a hold of it which causes Harlowe to suggest they already have it. Either way Lynne agrees they shouldn’t tell anyone.

Jamie, instead, wants to talk about the field of energy that Harlowe produced which Harlowe says it was probably just a reaction of the rocks though Jamie insists that it was Harlowe. They suggest maybe throwing something at Harlowe to test it which isn’t exactly high on Harlowe’s list of good ideas when Fiona throws a pinecone at him unexpectedly. He lifts up a hand and forms a shield. The rest, knowing that they got hit with the same energy, suggests that they might have something similar causing several more pinecone injuries to people to determine that no, it’s just Harlowe, though the pinecone to Harvey’s skull gives him an idea of how to modify the Geiger counter to determine what he’s doing.

More Sciencing

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Camp Mareki
Sunday June 18th, 2000, 1330 hours
1898 Montauk Hwy, Montauk, NY 11954

After a nice lunch which they’re a half hour late for, they head to the lab where Warren and Harvey modify a Geiger counter. They have to use one of the stones to calibrate it. Once it’s calibrated, it picks up the weird energy signal via the spliced in oscilloscope. Some people are irradiated a bit more than others, Harlowe is basically glowing with it. Fiona gives Lynne’s hair a yank to check for radiation poisoning. They debate bringing it with them since it’s camp property before deciding to take it with them after running some tests involving another round of water saws and clackers, with Tabitha giving Harlowe some eye protection this time. They check out the radiation levels and while they’ve increased it still doesn’t match how much is coming off of Harlowe or Harvey. The clackers react like previously and explode apart into the wall, hitting the picture from before causing Harlowe to place another picture on top.

Aftermath

They go around with the Geiger Counter in a backpack checking out for more sources of the energy, finding that Steve is also hot, hotter than the kids. Nowhere else in the camp lights up as being hot as they search for four or five hours.

For dinner they’re serving macaroni and cheese and ham, sandwiches, and bespoke ice cream of every sort of flavour. . . except vanilla much to Harlowe’s dismay. At the announcements after dinner, they make an announcement that Harvey has won the contest and is given good quality microscope, petri dishes, and similar, putting their cabin in the lead for the camp activities.

After Action Report (GM)

Another really great session from start to finish. The players packed in an extra hour into our time limit and really acted like the kids their characters are. I introduced some of the more fantastic elements this time around with Harlowe and Harvey unconsciously showing their powers. I hinted that maybe Fiona showed hers too, but it wasn’t as obvious as it was with the others. I set up a couple of things via foreshadowing and the players picked up on it instantly and blurted out what I had in mind. Grrr. I love and hate when they do that.

I guess I need to make an activities list for the campers at some point since that seems like it would come up.

Other Notes

We had to start about an hour later than normal to accommodate a player (Chepe), but that was fine.

Soundtrack

“Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys
“Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons
“Underground” by David Bowie