DarkMatter D20: Drunk Southern Girls with Guns ... UPDATED - 8/18/05!

[Doc_Souark]

Another Cat !

Like the twist of the PCs being the players themselves, as for your rules it's cut and paste DMing at it's finest keep it up.

I missed the last thread somehow, is there anyway I can get back there and read it moderator ?

Where's the Zombie Toddlers ? sounds great !

 

[Horacio]

Wow! Thanks for the info, it looks like a very complete conversion!
I will try some of these rules...

 

[jonrog1]

Zombie Toddlers are coming.

I suppose this calls for an explanation for those who never saw the first thread (and this is a complete reprint, you won't miss anything.) In our regular D&D game, Johanna mentioned that one of her greatest fears were undead children.

Actually, I remember now what happened. We were trying to stop an ambush at the presentation of a Duke's infant son. We in the ensuing carnage the child died. The DM rightly ruled that toddlers didn't have enough CON to be raised, and how creepy would that be anyway?

So Andy, playing our Gnome Tinkerer, planned for weeks to pleasantly surprise all of us by robotically re-animating the toddler's corpse. The image of a stiffly shuffling child raising its little arms up to Jo and murmuring "ma-ma... so ... cold ..." creeped her out so much it became a running joke.

When I presented Dark*Matter, then, she knew - I knew, we all knew -- a zombie toddler was coming with her name on it. She just didn't know WHEN. As a result, in every adventure, she was incredibly, incredibly paranoid when dealing with children.

Just to let you know, this thread will eventually cover:

-- Exit 23: the introductory mission in the Dark*MAtter sourcebook

-- NEW RECRUITS: the supplemental adventure in the sourcebook

-- NIGHT OF THE CATTLE MUTILATORS: a home-brew about, well, cattle mutilations near a small Arizona town..

-- GONE MISSING: another home-brew, where the Agents investigate the disappearance of three local teens in Oregon after a UFO sighting, and run into two very familiar faces ...

-- and tonight's new one, DARK CANADA, EH?; the Agents are on vacation in Toronto, which is rudely interrupted by Some Who Tinker with That Which They Don't Understand.

 

[jonrog1]

EXIT 23 -- PT. 3
Down the dark corridor, a body lay half-in, half out of one of the restrooms. It was the female state trooper.
Swearing vigorously, still attached by the belt loops, the rushed to the body.

"WHOA!" Johanna slipped, almost bringing them all down. "I tripped in ... no wait, this isn't all blood..."
They noticed the floor was soaked with blood AND water. Then they saw the reason. The tall, blonde state tropper was dead -- but not of gunshot wounds. She'd been stabbed.

With icicles.

Two foot long icicles. That were still embedded in her.

The group stared at the grotesque, pincushioned corpse. The only light they had was the tiny pool from their flashlight. The wind still howled, high, whistling, outside. The trooper's body wedged the Men's room door open.

"Gun in her hand, " noticed Ross. "She must have been the one to get three shots off."

"DIBS!" Johanna lurched forward, seized the Nine mil. She now had a bottle of vodka in one hand and a loaded gun in the other.

(DM's NOTE: Jo was the only one with pistol proficiency. This little armament distribution was not universally beloved by the rest of the group... nothing like a drunk Southern girl with a firearm.)

Andy pushed open the Men's room door, Stephen and Ross doing their light-spear trick. Jo covered them with the gun, or at least waved it at the inside of the restroom. They were all freaked to find another traveller, a young sketch-artist who'd been in the coffee shop earlier, similarly slain with the icicles. Then -- a MOAN!

They threw open the stall door, found a man in a business suit with one of the icicles embedded in his thigh -- but still alive!

Stephen tried to stabilize the man. Blood surged everywhere. Despite all Stephen could do with his first aid skills, the man convulsed once, twice ... and died in their arms.

("all Stephen could do with his first aid skills" was roll a spectacular series of 1's, unfortunately)

"Let's get back to the others, now!" Ross started to back out, put his hand on the wall. He yanked it away. Every surface of this restroom, the walls, the stalls, all were covered with a thick layer of frost.

Andrew had other ideas. There was a wastebasket in the restroom, and just to be safe, he flipped it, checking for any clues. The clue turned out to be a large leather briefcase.
Stephen looked up from the dead man's wallet. "His name's Jonas Riley."

"Matches the monogram on the briefcase." Andrew jimmied the case open. "Papers, a bunch of memos from something called the Hoffman Institute." Andy's brow furrowed. "Some of these papers have occult notation on them." They all stared at him. "I dabbled." He then pulled a glass sphere out of the case, whistled. "A snow globe ..." He looked closer at it. "Oh $#@%#$%@$$f*cker."

As the others clambered to see, he held the show globe up to their flashlight. It looked perfectly ordinary. About the size of a softball, snow whirling around in it, with a little building ... that's when they all got it. It wasn't just any building. It was the rest stop. A perfect replica of the Exit 23 Rest Stop was inside the snow globe.

Something banged down the dark corridor.

Something was still inside with them.

 

[jonrog1]

UPDATE:

It had been a while since Dark*Matter, and we had a new guy (Flynn, from the EVIL campaign, actually, a friend of mine from University), so I was worried last night's adventure would take a while to get back into the Dark*Matter swing o'things.

Wrong. Although it was interesting to see how incredibly paranoid my Hoffman Agents had become compared to civilians.

Highlights and previews:

-- mad bomber in a museum with a ticking clock ("What's a minute on a timer? About ten rounds, right? Good luck.")

-- "Sure, Ross is the a$$h%#%e for tackling a homeless guy. But when it turns out the homeless guy has a bomb strapped to his chest, do I get a 'Thank You'? No."

-- "BEHOLD! THE GRAIL!" (beat) "Hey! Grail! It's over here, bud!"

-- "When you peer into the dark upstairs bedroom, you see two young boys. They're kneeling, facing away from you, heads bowed in prayer. They're totally silent. Totally still. Just ... kneeling there. "

-- Cosby: "How old is the language of those inscriptions? Okay, imagine some guy named Lovecraft wrote about these Elder Gods, and these Elder Gods actually wrotes a series of novels about their Elder Gods -- OLDER. "

-- "It opens its mouth to scream, and set INSIDE its mouth you see the head of a kitten. Upside down. The kitten head meows at you."

-- "You see the incredibly slippery slope Deepak Chopra can send you on?"

-- "And I've got two words for you: Desert. Eagle."

 

[jonrog1]

EXIT 23 - PT. 4

The group moved down the hallway toward the sound. Ross held the knife-spear high, Johanna aimed over his crouched shoulder. An unearthly glow lit up the end of the corridor ...

.. which turned out to be video games. The arcade electrical system was plugged into the trunk line because of the heavy load, so some games still glowed.

A sudden MOVEMENT lurched toward them. Johanna raised the gun, but Andy stopped her. "It's a kid!"

A teenage boy tried to sprint past them. Ross easily corraled one shoulder, hauled him back. After a bit of convincing -- Ross banging him against a wall and saying "SNAP OUT OF IT, BOY!" -- they got his name. He was Danny Woods, the McDonald's kid. He was playing a game in the arcade when "it" had happened.

"The lights went down ... and those voices started ... and then, the THING came through the door." Danny sniffled, paused, and Ross once again called on his crisis counseling training and banged the kid against the wall again. "It was seven, eight feet tall, all white, had a giant wolf's head and glowing red eyes. It looked at me, then went into the men's room. There were some flashes then --"

"The trooper firing," Stephen surmised.

"-- and I dived under the pinball machine. Then the wolf-monster came out and DISAPPEARED in this cloud of snow. Just ... whoosh."

There was a long moment of silence. Ross shoved the boy down the corridor. "Go to the coffee shop, everybody's hunkered down in there."

Danny scurried away. Ross rubbed his chin. "Okay, we need to get some more weapons, and figure out what the snow globe --"

"WAS I THE ONLY ONE WHO HEARD 'GIANT WOLF THING'? GIANT SUPERNATURAL FANGED ICICLE THROWING KILLING MACHINE!?" Andy shouted. "WE DON'T NEED WEAPONS, WE NEED TO GET THE F$#* OUT OF HERE!"

(DM's Note: Andy actually did have this meltdown, a nice grounding moment for the group. His character evolved as the 'practical' one over the course of the mini-campaign)

"Okay, supernatural snow globe? What makes you think we can get out of here?"

"Smash it," Johanna called from the corridor. They looked to her, double-taked. She was strapping the dead state trooper's bullet-proof vest on. She stared back. "What? It fits."

"Why does she get the gun and the vest?" asked Stephen.

"I don't want to smash it and then have us suddenly find out we're in the snow globe and we all die like some twisted Twilight Zone episode," Andy argued. "let me go through these notes, study what we've got."

"Stay or go, we need weapons. And you know what that means ..." They'd reached the twisted doors again. Each shivered as they considered what could bend steel like that. Ross pointed out into the snow. "The trooper's patrol car. She'll have a shotgun and ammo in it."

The group peered out into the blinding snowstorm. They could just make out the image of the patrol car across the empty parking lot. Andy took a tentative step out, sunk to his knees in white powder. "Who's going for the cruiser?"

Johanna jacked the slide on the nine mil. "I'll go."

"Only a few of us should be exposed, that way the other can come in as back-up," said Stephen. Andy nodded. Together, Stephen, he and Jo stepped out into the blizzard. Ross stayed behind, ready with the knife-spear.

Jo, Stephen and Andy CRUNCHED along, their footsteps echoing far into the night. The snow was an insulating blanket, muffling all sight and sound. They all had their heads down. Only Stephen looked up in time to see the glowing red eyes in the whirling snow --

"LOOK OUT!" Stephen jumped back. Something ROARED past him, howling, like a freight train with fangs and claws --

-- and those claws SLAMMED into Jo, sending her spinning high into the air like she'd been hit by a car. She arced up into the air and then slammed down onto the parking lot with a sickening CRUNCH.

Stephen was struggling back to the doorway. Andy turned and saw it just for a second: eight feet of walking wolf, sheer white, red eyes, huge fangs and claws the size of steak knives.

And then it hit him ...

 

[Piratecat]

Hurrah! One of my favorite story hours is back. Post more often!

 

[Doc_Souark]

Yes YES post more often like every frilling DAY !

Ok I'm calm now good story BTW , do you have the Dungeon with the Aftermath adventure in it ? It involves a swamp, mutants and a Gray doing experments

 

[jonrog1]

EXIT 23 -- PT. 5
or
"Relax while I pour lye on your wound ..."

The Unholy Giant Wolf With Red Glowing Eyes (TM) brought one massive claw back and SLAMMED it into Andy's chest, lifting him ten feet into the air. Andy's leather jacket shredded, long talons ripped through his flesh. Andy hissed involuntarily as the feeling of claws was followed by cold, like shards of ice shoved deep into the wound --

Ross charged into the snow, but he was too far away, the knee-deep powder slowing him down --

And poor Johanna, the first victim of the Winter Demon, lay sprawled face-down in the parking lot --

-- completely unhurt.

The State Trooper's vest was sheared away, but it had sucked up that first brutal hit. Jo lay face down, playing dead, watching the beast tear into Andy. The Trooper's Glock Nine Mil was icy in her hand. She had the only firearm ... but she couldn't bring herself to use it!

(DM's Note: one of my favorite role-playing moments ever. Jo wasn't stunned -- there was just no way she was going to attract the Bad Thing's attention. She just lay there waiting for it to go away.)

The Winter Demon clawed Andy again in mid-air as he fell. Andy crumpled into the snow. The Demon whirled -- and charged Jo again! Jo lay there, paralyzed with fear as the horror thundered closer to her ... let out an unholy ROAR ... reached her ...
... and disappeared in a whirlwind of snow.

"F&@#*$$&!" Andy rose to one knee. Stephen lifted him, eased him inside, a long scarlet trail on the white behind them. Ross reached Johanna. He quickly discovered she was unhurt. Hoping that the Demon was occupied elsewhere, they dashed for the Trooper's cruiser. They recovered a 12 guage and spare ammo for the pistol and shotgun. Not wishing to press their luck, they dashed back to the rest stop.

"How is he?" asked Ross as they returned.

"AAAGGGHHHHH!" Andy convulsed. Stephen looked up, a little embarassed, his hands covered with bloody bandages. "Err, he's been better."

(the second time Stephen rolled all 1's on his healing checks. His legendary inability to heal the living actually became a plot point in a later adventure...)

They managed to stabilize Andy. Faint pools of golden glow from the flashlights allowed Andy to study the papers from the dead man's briefcase. As the most heavily wounded, he was given the bulletproof vest as protection. Johanna objected. Or at least they think she objected. She was pretty far into the vodka bottle now.

Finally Andy gathered the others around. "Okay, this is what I've got. Jonas Riley works for a place called the Hoffman Institute. It seems like a paranormal research center, but other documents imply government connections ... Anyway, after a well-known occultist died, Riley was sent up to scope out his house. The place was cleaned out -- Riely figured this guy was a low-rent Crowley, had a little cult going. But he did find a secret compartment containing that ... snowglobe."

They all threw a nervous look at the bizarre artifact. Stephen gulped when he saw that now, in front of the tiny rest stop, there was a smudge of red. Exactly where Andy had bled outside the real rest stop.

"So using some test -- doesn't say what -- Riley discovers the globe is supernatural. He's heading up to the Seattle office of this Hoffman Institute when --" Andy gestured around them. "Next thing you know, dead in the men's room."

"He goes to the men's room, the thing comes after him for the globe," Stephen theorized, "the Trooper stalls it a second by shooting, Riley takes the moment to hide the briefcase."

"Here's an idea. Monster wants globe, give monster globe." Andy was once again being "practical".

"And it eats us anyway, but now it has more power because it has its little Snowglobe o' Evil. Don't think so." Ross chambered a round in the 12 gauge. "Got any idea what it is?"

"Nope -- but when it appeared, did you notice an orange glow?"

Ross, Stephen and Jo looked at each other. "No."

"Good, that means something else is in here with us." Andy pointed. Orange light and shadows flickered in the foyer area outside the donut shop.

Leading with the 12 gauge, Ross rushed out. "FIRE!"

The gas station next door was on fire! The group scattered for extinguishers, anything they could find. Thanks to some quick thinking Stephen and Ross managed to contain the blaze withing mintues. Ross noticed, though, that the fire had started from a pile of magazines in the center of the room.

"What kind of monster sets fires?" asked Ross.

BANG! Wood splintered past Jo's head. One of the truckers, the man, suddenly dove from the donut shop door. He came up in a crouch, aimed carefully. "YOU WILL ALL DIE!"

He fired three more times as the group scattered ...

 

[Dinkeldog]

Wow. Thanks P-Kitty for pointing this gem out. Very cool, jonrog1