Something Bloody This Way Comes
| Something Bloody This Way Comes | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 "Undead" Gunslinger | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | The Cabal | ||||||||
|
Voltage Zenith Delphi Gav Jacinto |
F7 Blood Shade 2 F6 Blood Spirits Weakened F14 Great Form Blood Spirit | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | Everyone | ||||||||
Summary
Team is hired by a vampire of indeterminate age to help him finish off the dregs of a cult he has been fighting for an indeterminate amount of time while he deals with the main group. Team simultaneously completes but weakens a Great Form Blood Spirit Summoning and kills the incomplete version of a "God" of Blood.
Background
Each of the team members found a very stand-out bulletin posting inside of their nearest stuffer shack that mystically disappeared once they had entered the info given on it into their commlinks. The coordinates they were given lead to an abandoned church out in Redmond that the team members made their way to with the promise of work.
The Meet
The team arrived at the abandoned First Church of Seattle to discover a real, genuine horse hitched outside. Upon entering the building was rundown save for the freshly polished and repaired doors leading into the sanctuary. Inside was their J amidst the crumbling theurgist iconography who turned and was able to both look at none of them and all of them at once. Delphi deduced he was a vampire looking much younger than he truly was and that he was highly magical. The team mostly did the normal back and forth for details but exceptionally on edge from the vibes he gave off and the info Delphi shared about their aura. He offered them 10k and after Delphi's haggling threw in that he could acquire a real leather hat for Zenith from a contact of his. To earn their keep the team needed to stop a Blood Ritual that was poised to be completed at Midnight with the Total Blood Moon Eclipse at its peak. After some apprehension for the somewhat low reward the team agreed to the terms and were given the info on where the place likely was in Puyallup.
The Plan
Proceed as quickly and safely as possible through unknown and likely dangerous territory so as to stop the ritual from occurring.
The Run
The team arrived in the general search area and through a mix of Tracking, Perception, and Astral Perception were able to find a pretty hot trail to follow. The trail went cold in front of a destroyed building, the appearance was actually a large scale illusion that the team was able to see through and went into the likely hostile structure. All but Delphi were greeted with a pristine glass hallway acting as a pseudo hall of mirrors leading to a door at its end, Delphi however saw the world as it truly was and that they were actually in a concrete hallway filled to the ankles with blood. They proceed quickly to the end of the hallway once the other members were informed of the reality of their situation, at the end of the hallway was a knee high Physical Barrier and a door that would keep the blood from spilling out of the hallway. On the other side of the door almost as if it had been ripped from its place in the world was a completely pristine laundromat, once the team entered the room all sound was briefly removed except for the internal sounds of the runners. Immediately after sound returned the room's lighting shorted and every washing machine began to shake violently, seconds later 3 lights came back on and shown directly down onto 3 of the washing machines filled with crimson that shortly chimed to end their cycle. As the doors swung open blood and steam poured out as 2 blood spirits and a blood shade emerged from their own individual machines. These spirits were quickly cut down by the team in a hail of gunfire and melee combat as one tauntingly claimed they were simply sacrificial lambs. Through the next door was a long hallway covered top to bottom with the skins of myriad individuals. As the team progressed through here the arms of extremely weak blood spirits emerged from all around to grab at them but the team was able to easily clear a path through the fragile horde. The final room was a massive, multi-story freezer filled with the meat from the cult's dead members and murdered individuals from Seattle and in the middle was a large spiral staircase leading to the roof where the ritual was taking place, Delphi paying Zenith a small sum of Nuyen for losing a bet on whether the ritual was going to be on the roof or underground. The team began ascending the staircase and eventually passed a threshold where they could see through the glass of the building that the sun was nearly completely eclipsed at which point they broke into a sprint.
At the top of the stairs were two massive stone doors that Gaz was able to break apart with a sledgehammer. Zenith being the quickest to act vaporized the leader's head with a well placed Ex-Ex revolver round, however this final act of extreme violence was the final catalyst to complete the ritual causing the blood painted Juggernaut Hide to roll itself into a ball as something began to stir. Voltage lobbed an HE grenade at it which cracked the hide open enough for Gaz to unload some rounds into the bloody, crimson core disrupting the ritual in seen and unseen ways. As the bullets ripped into it the magical backlash caused the remaining cultists to implode into balls of gore around the ritual circle as a massive bloody figure began dragging its freshly formed body from the shell. The teams disruption of the ritual however left the Blood "God" Tchernobog half-finished, lashing out and speaking in ancient tongues as Voltage lobbed another grenade at it, missing and sending it soaring over head. However due to the creatures roof spanning size the grenade still managed to hit it weakening it even further. At this point Zenith decided to end it before it could be a real danger and dove directly into the creatures mouth, allowing them to deposit a Blight loaded Capsule round directly inside of the creature fully disrupting it. As the creature was being removed from the Metahuman plane it took one final action to attempt to crush Zenith with its massive teeth, however their armor proved to be too much for the entity in its weakened state and it melted fully into liquid blood spilling over the team and down the sides of the building.
Delphi was able to save the initial sacrificial human from their second scrape with death as the creature collapsed nearly crushing them. Having not even caught their breath the entire building began to shake and rumble spurring the team to quickly descend and escape the building. After exiting they turned to watch as the building was sucked into itself through a partially formed Astral Gateway, leaving behind no evidence of the nights events aside from those people soon to be reported as missing and those who would never even be noticed as missing. Kaleb returned and due to fighting the entity that he believed he had already killed Delphi was able to talk him into giving his own hat to Zenith which was both a stylish leather gunslingers hat but also a Qi Focus. Kaleb then took out the teams pay, original U.S. dollars that they could transfer through a collector for the promised sum of Nuyen before hopping onto his horse and plotting off into the fog of Seattle.
Aftermath
There is a completely BGC less zone on the southern border of Puyallup amidst the normal BGC of the area due to the Gateway sucking some of the bad magic out with it.
Rewards
10k Nuyen; 8 Karma for Delphi, Voltage, and Gav 10k Nuyen; 3 Karma; and an F6 Mystic Armor Qi Focus for Orion
Game Quotes
Zenith, several seconds later upon seeing a Blood God emerging - "Okay, I'm a big enough person to admit when I'm wrong" |
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Zenith
Well this was a fraggin' trip. Bloodsucker J who was actually... well a decent guy, if creepy. Abandoned church, freaky disappearing part, the whole horror trid shebang. If it wasn't for the fact Delphi was there I might have just assumed it was magic drek and let it lie, but given the bad vibes that follow her around I just rolled with it.
Voltage was as good as ever, fun to have around, clutch in a fight. Damn good with that grenade launcher of hers. Also met Gav Jacinto, interesting character there. Anyone who carries around two chainsaws gets at least style points in my book, plus she was real useful for both spirit removal and door removal.
I threw myself in the gullet of a fraggin' blood spirit. The things that boil blood with a thought. I figured that if this thing was gonna be a pain in the ass, I might as well do the same to it. So I jammed Blight into it's weird spirit form and it seemed to do the trick. I don't like this stuff, it's bad vibes trapped in a bullet, but both the times I've had to use it have been what's been needed to be done. I dunno that we're done with whatever the frag that spirit was, but it's gone for now, and the team made it out alive.
Shine doesn't need to learn about the risks I take sometimes, and certainly not that I did it for a hat.
Delphi
So I show up at some church in Redmond with a ghost horse, a pair of cybersams and Zenith hanging around. The J was creepy as hell, with red eyes and spooky vibes, but I saw something in his aura that gave me the idea that blood spirits didn't like him very much so when he started talking about cults and the eclipse I got the sense that he was on the level about it. Zenith was pretty spooked, but he went along with it, and Gav and Voltage were good to have as muscle.
That cult hideout was something else - just freaky drek around every corner. Between the blood-filled hallway, the gore tentacles coming out of washing machines, the skin hallway and the just frankly crazy number of bodies it was almost enough to get inured to it. Almost. Then the psychometric impression of being stabbed to death happened, so there's that.
The actual summoning was... well, like something out of a horror trid frankly, complete with the victim tied up and ready to be sacrificed. Thankfully I managed to grab them before they got crushed by the blood god we accidentally summoned (thanks divination!) - good thing Zenith was just crazy enough to jump right into it's face and fire Blight down it's throat. Can't say I like that stuff, but at least it's got some good uses.
We got out right as the whole thing collapsed into an astral rift and destroyed the entire place and all the bad vibes with it. Least there's nothing left of it. Our J seemed happy, enough for him to give us his hat, which was pretty cool. Now I've gotta dry clean my pants after wading through a literal river of blood...
Voltage
So that was suuuper weird and creepy as hell. Wish I could forget the sight and the smell of that fraggin' meat hallway-- and no, chummer, I only WISH that was a euphemism. Eugh.
Buuut, we did get to kill a fragged-up nasty blood cult's fragged-up nasty god, and for as much as I thought Z was all uptight and straight-laced and shit, it turns out he's absolutely batshit INSANE-- and I respect that about him, makes me like the guy a whole hell of a lot more. And he's got some damn good tips about cleanin' blood outta stuff; I'm kinda surprised I didn't know some of that before. I should probably ask him if he knows about any air fresheners that can get rid of the C-Squared smell in my apartment, now.