Medallions d20 Modern (Update Wednesday 09-20-06)

Episode 1: "Pilot"

Setting:
Birmingham, Alabama, USA. May 2003.
The biggest current local news story is the SEC investigation into the financial dealings of giant corporation South-Medical, and its philanthropist founder, Dick Scorse. The company has just laid of over a hundred people in recent weeks as its stock price fell. The weather is hot and rainy, with frequent storms.
(Due to our in-game use of real-world people & locations, some names have been changed for public release. The world is a more dangerous version of our own. )

Inspirations:
The campaign would best be described as a dark & deadly action-thriller-horror-mystery: somewhere between X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Kolchak the Night Stalker; with bits of Friday the 13th (the series), Dusk 'til Dawn, The Matrix, Big Trouble in Little China, and Men in Black thrown in. Or another way to say it is: like an X-Files episode written by Stephen King and directed by John Woo.

Cast:

• P.I. Willie Lamar - Down-on-his-luck private eye with an attitude. Currently his shotgun and car are pawned to pay bills, forcing him to rely on his grandmother to give him rides. (Charismatic)
• Brother Guyzell Cooper - Southern preacher with a cable-access TV show. Drives a pickup truck with a gun rack. (Charismatic)
• Joe Empire – 38-year-old comic book shop owner / conspiracy theorist. Lives in a little apartment above his store. (Tough)
• Crystal “Little Wing” Lassiter - Native American college archaeology grad student (Smart)
• Taylor Chu - Bad-tempered Korean librarian, part-time grad student (NPC) (Smart)

Prologue (5/07/2003)

Each of the players was given a prologue hand-out. What follows are the actual handouts delivered at the table, which is why they are written in second person. I tried to convert them to third or first person for publication, but they seemed to lose something in the transfer. So here they are, unedited.

P.I. Willie Lamar

P.I. Willie Lamar

You hate the rain.

Okay, you hate the rain, and you hate Sunday nights.

Okay, fine, you hate rain, you hate Sunday nights, and you hate Councilman Jim Slate.

It would be bad enough, stooping to these little, petty, is-my-husband-cheating-on-me jobs, where you spend nine days hiding in the bushes like a peeping tom, if you could at least go around on your own time, and stake the guy out proper. Instead, it's Sunday, and the bus don't run on Sunday. Which means you have to get Gramms to come out and drop your broke ass off here in Vestavia, so you can spend three hours in the bushes with your disposable camera and try to get a shot of this guy getting some action with his secretary between his weekend city council meeting and returning home to Jane and the kids.

Then the rain hits.

So now, just to recap, you are sitting outside the Vestavia City Hall, in the rain, in the dark, in the bushes, soaking wet, with a disposable camera, and your gun digging into your hip. You sit there for one hour, then two. You really need to bring a radio on these stake-outs. Your mind wanders. You re-play an entire season of New York Undercover in your head. You remember some dream you had last night. A nightmare, now that you remember it. You were at the funeral for your grandfather. You walked up to the casket, and put two dimes on his eyelids. Then he started growling.

The councilman guy finally comes out, and what does he do? Hops straight into his car and drives off. The secretary doesn't even come out for another five minutes, and when she does, she drives off in the other direction.

Fine. Cool. Stupid white people want to spy on each other, that's fine. Let 'em, as long as they pay the bill. Now you can at least go home and get dried off. And man, that rain is really coming down now.

You can't just walk into the civic center and use the phone to call Gramms. You want to, but you tell yourself that you will at least be professional, even on these stupid adultery cases. And besides, a soaking wet black man walking into the city hall at night while carrying a gun might not be too welcome.

So you walk a couple of blocks north up Highway 31. You make it into the Ruby Tuesday's and use the phone. Gramms answers.

Sorry, the storm is blowing too hard. She can't drive in this weather. Best wait it out a bit until the storm lets up. You don't want Gramms driving off the road, do you?

No, Gramms, that's fine. I understand. No, you're right. I'll just wait here at the bar-

You're not calling from a bar, are you?

No, Gramms, it's not a bar. Well, okay, it is a bar, but it's not a bar-bar. It's a Ruby Tues-No, ma'am, I was not going to --- No ma'am…No, ma'am I have not been drinking…. No, I was just calling from here… Yes, ma'am...

You close your eyes and lean your rain-soaked forehead against the wall, still listening to her. You can also hear the little kid bartender, in his red-and-white golf shirt and colorful flair buttons on his apron, snickering at you from across the room. You wonder in the back of your mind if this would qualify for a "black rage" defense in court.

Yes ma'am, you saw a library across the street. Yes, the one she saw on the way over. Yes, you can wait out the storm there. Yes, it would do you some good to spend some time reading from the Good Book. Yes, ma'am. You will call her back when the storm dies down.

Fine. Fine. Fine. You slam the handset back on the receiver, and march back towards the door. You stop suddenly, just even with the pip-squeak bartender. You level your best cold gaze at him. "Something funny, mother*^$*#*?"

His eyes get bigger than silver dollars, and actually does one of those big gulps, like you see in movies. You fight the urge to grin, as you head back into the rain.

Ah well, what the hell, maybe the library has a good book on police techniques. Or at least the latest issue of Guns and Ammo.

Joe Empire

Joe Empire

The newsletter is going to be late this month. You were up last night working on your special exposé (about how the Canadian government is using SARS as a cover-up to explain shutting down Toronto, when their real purpose is far more sinister…) when you saw that the Sci-Fi Channel was showing "Pitch Black", and then right after that was "Alien". You decided that Sigourney Weaver could beat Vin Diesel, as long as she could somehow see in the dark, and you also decided that whenever space combat becomes a reality, that you will get serious about exercising, so you can join the Space Marines.

Anyhow, the point is, you got distracted and didn't get to finish the newsletter. Then you got tired and passed out in front of the TV, under a protective layer of Cheetos.

You had a freaky dream last night. You were at the shop, working late. There was no one there, and you had decided to close up for the night. Then, in walks a kid, and he points behind the counter at one of your older, more expensive comics on display on the wall. You look at where he is pointing. "Magic Agent #1". Asking price, five dollars.

You ask the kid for the cash, and he digs in his pocket. He pulls out a handful of silver dollars, and then counts out five of them onto the counter. You ring up the purchase, and he disappears out the door. Then, you look closer at the silver dollars that he gave you, and you realize that they're not dollars. They're some kind of trick coins. Then you woke up.

You went to work today (Sunday), and it was the usual crowd: teenagers, gamers, skaters. Although you promised yourself you wouldn't, you got sucked into a marathon of Magic The Gathering with a couple of your regular customers.

One of your regulars, John Wiggs, invited you and a couple of the other guys from the shop over to his mom's place to watch his DVD of "Lord of the Rings" tonight. He offers to give you a ride to his mom's apartment, somewhere in Hoover. You can close the shop at six, he'll pick you up, and you can both get a six-pack and some Taco Bell, and be over there well before it starts.

It wasn't until you were locking up for the night that you remembered your dream. Getting curious, you went behind the counter to the "Magic Agent #1". You really do have that comic on the wall. You pull it down. The actual price you have listed is twenty-five dollars. (This is not one of your more expensive comics, you realize, despite what your dream told you.) You realize you've never read this comic. You just pulled its price from the Overstreet Guide and put it up on the wall. What the heck, you have a couple of minutes.

You read the comic. It was published in the early 60's. It's about a government agent named John Force, who has this magic coin that grants him a variety of powers. You nearly drop the comic book on the floor when you see the coin. It is exactly like the one in your dream.

You sit there for a minute, and decide you must have read this comic before. That's how you remembered what the coin looked like. Yeah, you had to have read it before.

Anyhow, it's getting late, and now it is raining outside. Actually, it's pouring. Looks like a bad storm coming in. You put the comic away as you see headlights out front. Wiggs arrives and you rush out into the rain to his car. You drive out down Highway 31 and the rain is coming down in sheets now. You can not even see fifty feet in front of the car.

Then Wiggs gets a call on his cell phone. He pulls over into the parking lot of the Vestavia Library and answers it. It's Teresa, his whiny on-again, off-again girlfriend from Tuscaloosa. You sigh and roll your eyes while he talks to her for a minute. He seems to be agreeing to something that he doesn't want to do. Then he hangs up, and turns to you.

He says she's locked herself out of her apartment and she wants him to bring his key to her. He asks if you want to make a quick trip to Tuscaloosa. In the rain. No, scratch that, in a freakin' thunderstorm. This is what you get for hanging out with comic-book store kids.

Apparently you accidentally say something here about his girlfriend that offends him, and then he's yelling and getting all whiny. You tell him to just drop you off back home and he can go on to T-Town. He huffs and says he's not gonna go back out of his way to drop you off, so you can either go with him to Tuscaloosa or you can get out and call a cab.

You look over at the library. There are lights on inside, and several cars out front. You hop out of the car and run inside.

There really is a comic book called Magic Agent. It really is from the 1960’s, and it really is about a spy with a magic coin.

Crystal "Little Wing" Lassiter

Crystal "Little Wing" Lassiter

You worked a closing shift last night. Late and exhausting. The Kudu may have closed at two since it was a Saturday night, but it was another half-hour until all of the regulars had filed out the door, and you were still cleaning up behind the bar until 4:30 this morning. Then you had to take a shower when you got home. The smell of stale beer and cigarettes was just a little too much. You didn't finally collapse into bed until the sky was already lightening up a little outside.

You expected to sleep like a log, and for the most part you did. When you finally did wake up (just in time for a late lunch), you vaguely remember a bad dream.

You were a little kid. You were traveling through a little western town called Anaconda, on vacation with your family. Only it wasn't a modern town. It was like one of those tourist spots built on the main highway, made to look like an Old West boom town. Then your dad stopped the car in the middle of the road and you had to get out.

The people in the town were all smiling, but you knew they were killers. They were dressed up in their cowboy outfits. You even remember they had name tags, like theme park characters. The town mayor came over and said they had to kill you and your whole family, because they were cowboys and you were Indians. It was all very matter-of-fact, like they didn't want to do it, but it was their job. Your dad seemed very understanding, and he sat down on the ground so they could shoot him, as a woman dressed like a showgirl came over and began handing out guns.

You started arguing but no one would listen. You told them it was stupid and it didn't make any sense, and you wanted your dad to stop helping them. It seemed to trouble them that you didn't want to get killed.

Then an old man was there. He wore a black cowboy hat. You can't remember his face, because he was standing in front of the sun. He didn't say anything. But the crowd seemed relieved that he was there. You remember the mayor saying something like, "Well, there you go. He'll settle this…"

And the old man in the cowboy hat reached into his belt and pulled out a big silver dollar. He flipped it into the air…and just then you woke up.

Rain is drizzling down lightly outside. The weatherman predicts storms tonight. Possibility of tornado activity..

You made a sandwich for lunch, and tried to do some reading for class. You have a paper due on Choctaw Oral Histories in Mississippi, and you can't find the books you need. The university library is severely lacking on the subject, and unfortunately for you, oral histories written in the original Choctaw are not a big seller at Barnes & Noble or Books-a-million. Your anthropology professor, Dr. Running Bear, would be helpful for guidance, except that he has been pulled into Moundville this whole week to help with the investigation of new tips from that whole pottery robbery fiasco.

You spend the early afternoon reading some of your other books at home, and then call around to the libraries in town. You've decided you can do without the oral histories for a while, if you can get hold of some back issues of Anthropological Quarterly. After calling the main downtown branch, you try the Southside branch and the one in Mountain Brook. No luck. Finally, Vestavia Hills says yes. They have a full collection, and they are open until ten, even on a Sunday.

The rain has stopped for now, thought it is still threatening to storm. Well, you can risk it. It's less than six miles to the library from here, and you needed to work out today anyway. It's hilly, but you could do it in half an hour if you push yourself. You pack up your backpack, put on your rain parka over your leather, and hop onto your Trek. The rain starts up again when you are about a mile from the library. You race the last few minutes, and coast into the library parking lot, just as the rain really starts coming down. You figure you can finish studying here anyway, and worst case scenario you can leave the bike here and call a cab. You tell yourself again that this week you will save your tips to put a down payment on a car, as you lock the Trek up to a post outside.

By now, the rain is really pouring. The library is deserted except for you and one young librarian. She seems surprised to see anyone here on a rainy Sunday night, especially someone who rode in on a bike. She directs you to the periodical archives and a free table, and you set to work.

Brother Guyzell Cooper

Brother Guyzell Cooper

You didn't sleep well last night. You had a bad dream.

You were in church on Sunday. You were taking up the collection like you always do. You were passing the offering basket around, but nobody was putting anything in. Everybody was just looking at you, with these cold dead eyes. You continued anyway, passing the basket. You were halfway down the aisle when you noticed something else was wrong. Everyone was silent...

The church was full, but there were no children, and no one was talking, or singing, or even moving, except to turn and stare at you, in eerie silence. And still, no one put anything into the offering basket. Then you got to the last pew, and no one had put anything in, but when you started to set the basket down, there was a single silver dollar in the bottom of the basket.

You took the dollar out of the basket, and walked back to the pulpit. The congregation said nothing. No one moved. They just stared at you, with those cold dead eyes.

You flipped the silver coin over in your hand. It was wrong. Where it should have said the year, it said 42:28.

Then you woke up.

You ate a big breakfast this morning. Bacon and eggs, and two waffles. You always prefer to eat a big breakfast on Sunday mornings. At the breakfast table, you read yesterday's mail. You gleefully picked up a package from Columbia House. Your new DVD of The Song of Bernadette had arrived. You looked forward to watching it tonight.

The services went well this morning and you had a good crowd, despite the rain. You gave a good sermon, and the congregation was really following you. After services, you had the standard classes for children, and then the seniors' luncheon, and then the teen encounter group in the afternoon. By then the rain was pouring outside, and a storm was coming in hard.

At last, you made it to dinner time. The ladies' choir had invited you along to dinner, but you politely refused citing exhaustion. You were finally able to put your feet up, eat some re-heated casserole, and watch your new DVD of The Song of Bernadette while the storm blew outside. And what happened? Your new DVD wouldn't play. You fiddled with it for an hour, and the thing wouldn't play. The new disc looked scratched.

You sighed heavily, and looked outside. The storm had slacked up some. If you hurried, you could make it to that little video store in the Galleria and get a replacement copy before they closed.

Driving in the rain, you make it to the Galleria just after the stores close. Grumbling, you say a prayer for patience, sigh heavily and get back out onto Highway 31. The traffic on the interstate is stuck behind a wreck, and the storm is really picking up.

You cut north into Vestavia, where the highway is deserted, but the rain is coming down in sheets. You reluctantly look for a place to pull over and wait it out. Up on your left, between flashes of lightning and passes of the windshield wipers, you see a library, and it looks open.

You find yourself inside the library, shaking rain off your jacket, and looking apologetically at the weary librarian. Up ahead you see a shelf of Bibles, and a table.

That's when you remembered the dream again.

42:28

It looked to you like a chapter and verse.

There are only 6 books in the Bible with that many chapters: Genesis, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. You start from Ezekiel and work back. But each time, chapter 42 does not have enough verses. There is no verse 28. Finally, you come to the last option.

Genesis 42:28
"My silver has been returned," he said to his brothers. "Here it is in my sack." Their hearts sank and they turned to each other trembling and said, "What is this that God has done to us?"

Session 1 (5/07/2003)

Session 1 (5/07/2003)

Brother Cooper tried to maintain some semblance of dignity as he barreled through the glass double-doors of the library, momentarily wrecking the sanctum of silence within the place. The storm and wind followed him in, and his long coat and white Stetson dripped rain into a quickly-growing puddle beneath his feet.

The library was old, that was to be sure. The place smelled of wood polish, dust, and just plain old age. The outer walls were strong brick, and thick enough to stop a cannon. The tables and bookcases were dark-stained wood. The lighting was dim and yellow and clearly antique, from fixtures maybe from the twenties, or even earlier. And no sign of modernization. No colorful banners, no computer kiosk, no buzzing fluorescent lights.

The only furnishing to provide even a hint of décor was an antique wooden globe set into the floor before him, perhaps five feet in diameter, and encircled by red velvet ropes. To the right of the globe was a display table. The Topic-Of-The-Month was “coin collecting”. Half a dozen books on coins and coin-collecting were on display on the table.

Between two bookcases, he caught a glimpse of a young Native American woman in a black leather jacket, hunched over a table in the back of the library, thumbing through a magazine. To his right, the checkout desk was occupied by a twenty-something Asian woman, chewing on her lip and glancing at him through narrowed eyes. At once she looked both nervous and unfriendly. A small nameplate on her desk read “Taylor Chu.”

“I apologize for the mess, ma’am. Seems there’s quite a bit of a storm blowing up.”

Taylor just frowned further, and returned her gaze to her book.

Thunder crashed outside.

“I say, my name’s Guyzell Cooper. My parish calls me Brother Co--”

“SHHHH” Taylor shushed him angrily.

“I apologize. I was just going to ask where your Bibles were. You know the Good Book says --”

“SHHHH” Taylor shushed him vehemently this time, and silently pointed him forward.

The Bibles were in the reference section, directly behind the globe. Brother Cooper’s boots squelched wetly with each step as he crossed over to the books. Selecting the King James, he sat down at the closest table and began to read.

The doors swung open again, and rain scouted ahead in as the wind invaded. A large figure loomed at the door. A black male, easily six feet tall, in a dark coat and hat.

Taylor looked even more nervous than before.

The stranger stood silently for a moment and then calmly lit a cigarette.

“You don’t smoke in here!” Taylor hissed.

“Baby, I’ve been in the rain for hours. I just want to have one smoke---”

“You don’t smoke in here!” she shrieked again. “You get the cigarette out of here! This is a library!”

“Baby, now come on. Don’t be like that. My name’s Willie Lamar, baby, and I’ve had a bad day, and---”

“You get the smoke out of here now or I call a cop!” The librarian moved towards the other end of her desk towards a phone. “You can not smoke in here!”

Willie grimaced wearily, and leaned back against the door. The door creaked open a few inches, and rain began to pour in again. He shoved the cigarette out into the rain. After a moment, he pulled the arm back in, took another puff, and shoved the cigarette back out the door again.

Thunder crashed again.

“You stop smoking in here!” Taylor picked up the receiver threateningly.

“Baby, I’m not smoking in here. Do you see a cigarette in---” Willie was cut off as he regained his balance. The door he was leaning against swung open rapidly, and a huge tub of a person stumbled into the room.

The new arrival was a thirty-something male, easily a hundred pounds overweight, wearing a black trench-coat and hefting a backpack. Rain plastered his thinning hair to his face, and he absentmindedly shrugged his shoulders to re-adjust the weight of the backpack as he stood between Willie and Taylor, near the display table. Turning to Taylor, he asked, “Do you have any books on coin collecting?”

Taylor stared at him for a moment in silence. Willie took another puff of his cigarette. Several emotions quickly chased across her face, but she eventually settled on a mixture of disbelief and exasperation. She silently, violently pointed behind him.

The fat man turned to the display table and began pulling books up into a stack under one arm.

Taylor began angrily, “hey…fat boy, those are books on display--”

“Yeah, I got it,” he mumbled, his back still to her. He stopped with the half-dozen books under his arm and headed to one of the tables in a corner near a window to read.

Taylor turned back to Willie, who flicked the remainder of his cigarette out into the parking lot. With a wink and a grunt of satisfaction, he let the door close completely and headed over to the skimpy selection on the magazine rack.

Thunder crashed again outside, and suddenly, the lights went out. A heartbeat passed as everyone waited in silence. Then, the loud sound of glass breaking pierce the silence, and Taylor screamed.

Dim emergency lights flickered into life above the shattered front doors. Four rain-soaked thugs dressed in ragged clothing stood in the puddle of broken glass, panting and grinning wild-eyed grins that betrayed souls bent on destruction. The one in front reached into the back of his belt and drew a long Bowie knife...

*grabs popcorn, waves beer can at the screen in a "keep going" gesture*

Session 1 (5/07/2003) Combat

Brother Cooper stood up rapidly for a man of his size, and his hands came up in a calming gesture, “Son, hello there…Now I don’t know what’s going on here, son, but I don’t think you should be waving around that knife--”

The thug with the knife grinned wider and took a few steps towards the preacher. Behind him, the other three remained in place, but each drew a similar knife. The blades all were clean, and gleamed like wicked candles in the flickering emergency lights.

Willie reached into his jacket, and in a flash he was holding a pistol. “FREEZE MOTHER*$%#%&! DROP THE #^%&ING KNIFE!”

The display was enough to shake a war veteran, but the thug didn’t even pause. As he lunged forward, Brother Cooper saw it in his eyes. A glazed-over look that spoke volumes. The thugs were not in their right minds, and would not listen to reason or be intimidated.

In a flurry of knives and screams, combat began. The thugs were everywhere, knives flashing in the low light, grunting and giggling in a fury as they leaped over tables and into the room.

Willie fired, and a thug collapsed bleeding onto the carpet. Another lunged forward to replace him, and Willie caught a knife blade across his side. Blood flowed from the gash, and he staggered back.

Brother Cooper reached into his jacket and drew out an odd-looking appliance. Pointing it at the thug closest to him, he squeezed a trigger. The Tazer fired wildly at his target and missed completely. A scorched smell of ozone permeated the room. The preacher looked crestfallen, and backed up into the stacks, but not fast enough. The thug in front of him stabbed viciously and the preacher took a deep knife wound into his belly.

Another thug leaped over the front desk and slashed at Taylor. Clutching her handbag, she dove under the desk divider, and came up on the other side, a revolver in her hand. Blood flowed from a shallow knife wound on her arm.

The fat man with the coin-collecting books staggered up from his table in the back. His backpack was open at his side, spilling out a dice bag and a few small lead miniatures, but he ignored those and instead began furiously stuffing the library books into the pack. A thug was suddenly on top of him, slashing wildly. The fat gamer dodged wildly from side to side, the book bag swinging and deflecting the knife, as he reached in deeper into the bag. As the thug came up to tackle him, an explosion sounded from the bottom of the bag. A tiny bullet hole appeared in the bottom of the sack, and the thug staggered backwards bleeding.

Willie was falling back, and losing the battle. He felt dizzy and the gun was shaking in his grip. He fired again and again at his next target, but the gun was shaking in his hands, and he could not hit anything. Beside him, Taylor was stumbling backwards as well, trying to keep a bookcase between her and her attacker, but she emptied her gun and still could not hit anything.

Wasting no time, the fat man took a few unsure steps, and crashed through the front window of the library, out into the rain-soaked parking lot. Brother Cooper staggered past his closest opponent and followed through the front doors, towards his truck, and his gun rack. From the corner of his eye, he saw another thug running into the library as he exited. The preacher felt nauseous and he clutched his bleeding stomach as he moved.

The rain was pouring down outside, as Brother Cooper fumbled with his blood-and-rain-soaked keys and opened the passenger door to his pickup. As he reached for his shotgun from the rack, the fat man was suddenly at the driver side door. Brother reached in and flipped open the door lock.

“Let’s get out of here!” the fat man yelled as he jumped into the driver’s seat, tossing a well-worn backpack into the floorboard.

“Who in the blazes are you?” Brother Cooper asked, as he flicked off the safety and positioned a shell into the chamber.

“I’m Joe!” the fat man yelled, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Let’s go!” he whined again as he reached for the keys.

Brother Cooper pulled the keys back from his grip, and tucked them into his pocket. Gunfire rattled repeatedly from inside. “There’s people in trouble inside, Joe. I’m afraid I can’t leave yet.”

“Well give me the KEYS!” Joe screamed, as Brother Cooper ignored him and staggered back towards the library doors.

The scene inside had changed, and not for the better. As Brother Cooper’s boots crunched on the broken glass of the double doors, he saw a thug lunge at Willie, and bury a six-inch Bowie blade hilt-deep into the black man’s thigh. Blood fountained up over the scene, and Willie’s eyes rolled back. He cursed, “Son of a…” and collapsed on the floor.

Taylor was still pulling the trigger on her revolver, but there was only a defenseless click-click-click as the chamber rolled empty. She screamed as a thug dove for her, and she ran between the bookshelves. Brother Cooper fired his shotgun at the thug, and paper exploded as the shell missed and buried pellets into a bookshelf.

The thug leader who had buried in his knife into Willie stood over him, drew out the knife, and reared his arm back to deliver a death blow. Brother turned, unable to move fast enough, watching as the knife descended. Suddenly, from the shadows, the forgotten Native girl in the black leather jacket was there, leaping onto a table and screaming a tribal war cry. Her only weapon was a backpack loaded with books, which she slung like a hammer into the back of the thug’s head. With a sickeningly wet sound, the impromptu weapon connected, and the thug collapsed on top of Willie.

Brother looked at the shotgun in his hands, and then down at the wounded man in front of him. He started to hand the gun to the Native girl, when she leapt forward again. One of the thugs on the floor had started to get back up and pick up his knife. Again, the girl’s weighted backpack bounced of a skull, and the enemy collapsed.

Suddenly Taylor was running around the corner of a bookshelf, the thug hot on her heels. Brother Cooper reacted instinctively, and yelled to her, “Catch!” and threw the shotgun to her. As the thug rounded the corner after her, the librarian caught the shotgun, spun, and fired. At the same moment, Joe appeared in the front door and also fired his pistol. The bullet and shell hit the thug simultaneously, and the last of the strange assailants collapsed in a bloody heap on the floor.


By the way, someone please let me know if the half-masked profanity violates board policy and I will change it. Or, for that matter, if there is no need to mask it.

Session 1 (5/07/2003)

Session 1 (5/07/2003) Post-Combat

Brother Cooper was dizzy, and his stomach was a maelstrom of pain. “Call 911…please” he choked out, as he knelt down beside Willie. Blood has soaked his pants and the wound on his thigh was jagged, deep, and ugly.

“I already tried, my cell isn’t working,” the Native American girl answered, as she unslung her jacket and began ripping her shirt sleeve into makeshift bandages. The preacher rolled up his jacket and pressed it to his own wounds while also trying to help her.

“Cell phones don’t work in the library,” Taylor answered matter-of-factly, as she staggered over to the front desk and set the shotgun down onto the copier. Her shoulder was bleeding, but it didn’t appear life-threatening. From under the desk, she produced a small first-aid kit, and dropped it onto the floor next to Willie. She shrugged one shoulder in an “I don’t know how to use this” gesture, and picked up the office phone behind her desk. She dialed three digits.

Willie was coming around on the floor, his eyes rolling around drunkenly and his breath shallow. The Native girl opened up the first aid kit and set to work trying to stop his bleeding. She spoke in soothing tones, “Hello, can you hear me? Did you say your name is Willie? Willie, can you hear me? My name’s Crystal. Willie, can you hear me? Can you say my name? Can you say Crystal? Can you hear me?”

Taylor was on the phone giving an address. She covered the mouthpiece for a moment, “An ambulance and the police are on the way.”

Instantly Willie grabbed Crystal’s wrist and whispered groggily, “Police…no…my gun!…hide…hide my gun…”

Then Joe was there by his side. “Sounds like you got the right idea, man,” and he tucked Willie’s pistol into his backpack. Spinning on his heel in the broken glass, he headed out into the rain as the others looked on for a moment in protest. “Be right back. Nobody mention this!” and he was gone.

A siren sounded in the distance. Brother Cooper risked a look at his stomach. He was losing a lot of blood.

Crystal motioned Taylor over, and had her put pressure on Willie’s leg wound. With her blood-soaked hands free for a moment, and the police on the way, she looked over at the bodies of their attackers. Perhaps unsure if they might regain consciousness soon, or be possessed of other weapons, she crawled over to the closest thug and dug into his pockets.

Tires squealed on the pavement outside. Brother Cooper thought he saw paramedics arriving. He whispered a quick “Thank you, Father” as he lost consciousness.