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 . . .

After evening announcements, the group is back at their cabins with fancy new audio players. Some people are reading the instruction manuals while Devin is worried about Lynn who has been quiet for the most part. Wanting to know more about what happened during their nightmares that morning, but it stresses her out enough that she ends up laying in her bed and crying causing no amount of disconcertion to Benjamin. Fiona takes over asking Lynn about the clown, that it’s not someone she knows and tells her to go away. Fiona heads out to look for a photograph of the campers and counselors to see if the creepy clown is in any fashion only to be told to go back into her cabin by a nearby counselor. Harvey’s attempt goes over no better and Hobbs is barely any better before he goes back to reading the instruction manual to his player and indicates for the catbird to go try comforting Lynn after Tabitha fails. Lynn squeezes the catbird tight and cries into its fur.

Harlowe, after reading the manual, suggests that they take the AC adaptor from their audio players and let it record which Warren and Harvey accomplish with a bit of ease and leave it running overnight.

Trashed

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Camp Mareki Cabin C
Saturday, June 24th, 2000, 0830 hours
1898 Montauk Hwy, Montauk, NY 11954

Now Saturday, they’re greeted by Steve in the mess hall who tells them that some hoodlums had gotten up to some shenanigans overnight where cabins, vehicles, and science labs were damaged. There’s several state troopers taking reports. None of the kids saw anything, so Steve tells them not to worry and that there’s everything in hand.

There are places where the police have been cordoned off, and the mess hall had the power knocked out resulting in plenty of food getting spoiled leaving them just to make gruel for breakfast much to Harlowe’s joy.

Afterwards, Fiona goes to check the photographs for a clown much to no avail while Benjamin explains that it’s probably a red herring and a dead end for investigation. They look at the cabins on the way through to a computer lab. The cabins have been damaged by claw marks, but mostly on empty cabins, with only a single full cabin having been damaged, Cabin H(ydra). Harvey manages to gather some genetic evidence from the scenes as they pass. Lynn, feeling better, tells them that she’s feeling something really angry and there’s lots of terror around as well. She tells the group that she thinks they could follow it.

Up On That Hill

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Turtle Hill
Saturday, June 24th, 2000, 1030 hours
2000 Montauk Highway, Montauk, NY 11954

The group wants to get some gear and follow the feeling before telling Lynn to lead the way. Meandering through the forest towards the tip of the island at the foot of Turtle Hill before she loses the feeling. Harlowe senses something isn’t right; he can feel it. He can hear something roar and come through the trees to the near them. A giant thing made from plants and animals with a familiar looking racoon at the head of it. Harvey instinctively raises the device as it rushes towards them and raises its paws up as a giant briar-growth forms up behind them cutting off their escape.

Lynn attempts to flee the monster, running backwards. Benjamin takes a look at the situation and land and heads towards the beach. Tabitha moves towards the creature and throws a pinecone at it. Fiona runs towards the water, hoping that it’ll do something good. Harvey follows Benjamin and Fiona and runs towards the water. Harlowe sizes up the situation and starts to make a plan while Jamie follows the others towards the beach while Warren runs towards the monster.

The monster runs up and attacks Warren, who manages to dodge the blow as he falls back. Lynn turns and runs towards the beach with the rest now. Benjamin thinks about throwing a rock at the creature before deciding that running towards the cliff is a better idea yelling out at the creature drawing its attention. Tabitha throws more pinecones at the creature, hitting it for a bit of damage while the animals trapped inside start screaming all at once. Fiona keeps racing for the water alongside Harvey while Harlowe attempts to harness his powers once more, this time forming a wall around the creature to keep it from racing straight after Benjamin as Warren steps back from the sudden wall.

It strikes the force field, attempting to break through as the rest runs towards the water making funny noises, excepting Tabitha who throws another pine cone at it only for it to bounce off the force field. Harvey readies his energy detector device while Harlowe asks why Tabitha is now hiding behind him, they argue before Tabitha asks if he can do another force field, a smaller one around the creature binding it in place and he barely manages to do so. Jamie continues to run towards the water while Warren grabs a stick from the ground.

It attempts to break free from the force field to no avail while Lynn and Benjamin move along the beach to get into place. Tabitha excitedly keeps pushing on Harlowe’s arm while Fiona steps into the water calling out for the trout they released from the cave, as she calls out they can see something swimming towards the beach with a rather large wake behind it. Harvey uses his energy sensor device on the creature to record the findings, getting all kinds of weird spiky readings. Harlowe, on an incredible high in a weird way that he’s never felt before, starts hallucinating iconic wrestlers telling him to surround it with another forcefield, creating what looks like a bubble of weird jello around it damaging it. Jamie runs into the surf as well while Warren runs towards Harlowe.

The creature attempts once more to escape, still surrounded by the fields, while Benjamin looks at the wake in the water coming closer rather alarmingly fast before he uses his powers to start undermining the cliff face in front of him to no avail as the earth doesn’t listen. Tabitha takes a moment to prepare herself in case of attack. Fiona feels something coming towards her, the trout. She tries to call out to the creature suggesting that there’s a better way, hallucinating a conversation between herself and the trout that says it grants wishes before it explodes. Everyone else sees Fiona just holding a regular fish. Harvey steps further out into the surf, keeping it above the water level. Harlowe is being confused by the visions that he’s seeing and does nothing as Jamie and Warren are prepping.

The creature keeps attacking the fields and harming itself while the group on the beach keeps looking around and Benjamin freaks out while desperately attempting to dig into the cliff face. Fiona embraces the hallucination and holds up her fish covered arms and calls out to the creatures to unite and break free from the racoon’s control. Harvey investigates Lynn instead, determining that the readings are the same as the previous night as the device is now reading Maximum Fish. The wrestlers keep screaming at Harlowe who suggests that they should just powerbomb the creature if they’re so adamant about it when a highly visible force construction of The Rock grapples the creature much to everyone’s shock.

The creature attempts to break free from the wrestler to no avail while Lynn starts bleeding from various orifices screaming that she isn’t feeling so well. Benjamin moves back towards the creature. Fiona dives into the tide pool to check out what other resources are available to her. Harvey steps to Lynn to catch her in case she falls into the water. Harlowe just keeps watching as the creature struggles.

The creature manages to get through the wrestler, but harms itself in the process. Lynn does end up passing out and Harvey catches her while Benjamin runs towards the monster more. Fiona keeps searching the tide pool for something useful. Harlowe watches it attempt to break through the force field, waiting to create another when it strikes once more, breaking apart against the force fields at the same time it broke through the field, the plant matter and animals scattering leaving just a confused looking racoon behind that Harlowe traps with a force field as the rest flee. There’s a mix of animals that weren’t in the cave and not every animal in the cave is in the creature.

Aftermath

Tabitha looks over Lynn and says that it seems like Lynn is having a seizure. Placing her hands on Lynn they can see them both starting to glow as the blood starts to flow backwards into Lynn. Tabitha nearly collapses and curses in surprise. The others keep observing Lynn while Harlowe keeps creating a new force field over and over again while he’s containing the creature until Benjamin can create a hole large enough for them to deposit the racoon inside.

From a ways away, they see Steve running up towards them completely out of breath. Asking if they’re alright, he felt like they weren’t alright and he wasn’t sure how he even knew where they were. Fiona takes over saying they’re fine and that they were wondering what to do with a seemingly rabid racoon. Steve ushers them away from the hole and takes them back to camp where they call animal control in to contain the creature. As the nurse checks them over, they watch as the racoon gets dragged away in a cage, just staring at the kids with anger roiling off of it.

After Action Report (GM)

This was a short, but fun game. I had a blast building Amalgam the meta-powered raccoon-animal Voltron. The PCs did the smart thing and actually ran. I blocked them in a bit, but they were not stupid. This was the correct thing to do RP-wise, but left both myself and the players a little bored with the first battle. Chris D.’s character stole the show a bit and went crazy with the monstrous beast using his forcefield powers and power stunting to create a binding effect along with a reactive field which made the monster hurt itself every time it tried to pass through it to break down the outer barrier. It was really effective. Of course hallucinating Macho Man Randy Savage, the Rock, and Hulk Hogan was me being a tad silly, but still it was awesome. Most of their hallucinations at this point is Lynn’s telepathic powers coming to the fore and her being unable to control them.

The end of this session marks the first of four time skips with it lasting about 2 sessions longer than I thought it would. After the session was over we did a postmortem on the first six sessions of the campaign. The PCs communicated that they would like more guidance from me as a GM instead of having just a full sandbox/do anything style experience. Guideposts at the crossroads was how it was put to me and I rather liked that. They wanted to make sure NPCs didn’t overshadow PCs – and I’m good with that too as I try not to have that occur, but this game was meant to be somewhat filled with extra NPCs and we came to a good agreement there. Finally, I expressed some of my desires – I wanted a game where the PCs were heroes and trying to do the right thing. I talked about how I found villain-games a bit boring, but didn’t mind anti-heroes with strings I could pull. We settled on a “working through puberty and powers” approach for the next time skip with the PCs being molded into heroes by circumstance. Overall, these postmortems are amazingly productive and useful for the GM/players and I highly suggest other GMs do them every 5-7 sessions of their game.

Other Notes

None.

Soundtrack

“Rocky Raccoon” by the Beatles
“Pomp and Circumstance” by Sir Edward Elgar
“A Summer Place” by Andy Williams