Stalking the Night

[Mark Chance]

What follows is an account of my Friday night, two-player d20 Modern game.

Introduction

Our heroes, Dean MacGuffy and Roger Kyler, work as ace reporters for a sleazy on-line tabloid that investigates and reports on bigfoots, UFOs, weird cults, and other strange-but-true happenings.

Everyone's seen supermarket tabloids like the Weekly World News, with its front-page stories about the bat-boy and women having bigfoot's baby. These tabloids turn low-brow fiction into faux journalism. In Stalking the Night, however, the tabloid stories are not fiction. They report on actual events which few people believe to be true (and which the mainstream media all but refuses to touch).

The heroes are normal albeit talented folks working for Stalking the Night, one of the leading Internet tabloids that is also published hardcopy for its subscribers. The tabloid's goal is to bring into the light the truth that other news media refuse to cover in order to warn the public that sometimes the monsters are real.

Of course, most people think Stalking the Night is, at best, a ridiculous parody of real journalism. Few people ever encounter a real monster, and when they tell their stories, even fewer people believe them.

The heroes have one important mission: Get the story to the public in a timely manner without getting run out of town, arrested, or killed. If the heroes can protect the public from the menace at the same time, so much the better (both for the public and for the tabloid's circulation). Being a reporter for Stalking the Night is a thankless, sometimes dangerous job, but the truth is out there, and the people have a right -- nay, a need -- to know.

Roger Kyler
News Photographer

Roger Kyler was born and raised in the small Midwest town of Malta, Illinois. He graduated high school with many interests but little direction in life. While working as a diesel mechanic, Roger started studying photography to pursue a different career. He took his first international trip in 1996 to photograph the wildlife in Africa. While traveling the world as a wildlife photographer Roger discovered a hidden passion for living with the creatures that he is photographing. Roger took his skills and became one of the foremost wildlife photographers in the world. Year long expeditions to the Yukon, Siberian, Africa, and Asia occupied his life. On one such trip to the Canadian Rockies, Roger was awoken in the night by screams of terror. He exited his tent to discover a large man-shaped creature viciously attacking his team, tearing them apart with tooth and claw. Roger escaped the fate of his comrades, only by running away while it filled its belly. Roger has now dedicated his life to redeeming his moment of ccowardice by exposing the vicious beasts that live among us. He will never run again.

 

[Mark Chance]

Important NPCs

This info was given to the players before the first session.

Joseph Noriega, President and Publisher
Mr. Noriega (no one calls him by his first name) cut his journalistic teeth as a reporter embedded with a Marine recon platoon during military operations in Somalia. Before this, he served 25 years in the Marine Corps with distinction, earning a Bronze Star (among other lesser decorations).

Events in Somalia ended Mr. Noriega's career with the mainstream media. While with the Marines on patrol, the platoon was ambushed by fast-moving, horrifically powerful creatures. The platoon sustained heavy casualties before driving off the monsters. Mr. Noriega's suffered injuries from one of the creature's fangs so severe that he lost his left arm below the elbow.

As soon as he was able, Mr. Noriega tried to go public with the story, but met resistance and ridicule at every turn. The surviving Marines were quickly reassigned or, if their injuries were too serious, were sent back stateside. None of them have ever been willing to go on the record about what really happened, and the possibility of governmental intimidation cannot be discounted.

Mr. Noriega, however, isn't the kind of man who backs down. He turned to self-publishing via a vanity press. The book-length account of his time in Somalia, the monster attack, and his subsequent research was entitled Ghuls of Somalia earned Mr. Noriega little critical acclaim but much notoriety. Undaunted, he founded Stalking the Night in order to tell truths that the powers-that-be don't want told.

None of you have ever met Mr. Noriega face-to-face, but you've sat in on more than one teleconference with him. Mr. Noriega spends most of his time behind heavy, locked doors and a state-of-the-art home security system.

Erica DiNardo, Editor
Erica is an energetic woman whose aging girl-next-door looks are spoiled by her foul language. She is the staff member who interviewed and hired each of you. Mr. Noriega recruited Erica from a textbook publisher after learning she lost her daughter to a boogeyman.

Overseeing the daily operation of Stalking the Night has given Erica a driving sense of purpose. The major part of her life is dedicated to the tabloid. The smaller portion of her time is divided between her long-suffering husband Lorenzo and following up on boogeyman rumors.

Around the office at least, Erica is humorless and all business all the time. More than one reporter who missed too many deadlines or caused too much trouble has arrived at the office to find his belongings packed and waiting for him along with two weeks pay.

Ronald Maguire, Advertising Coordinator and Managing Editor
Ronald, a diminutive, balding chainsmoker, is your direct supervisor. He hands out assignments, or at least approves stories that his reporters want to investigate. Ronald's knowledge of what it takes to publish and keep Stalking the Night up and running is nothing less than amazing.

Despite being always cheerful and encouraging, something dark passes behind Daniel's eyes in unguarded moments. He has no family, but wears a wedding band. Whether his life has been scarred by something mundane like divorce or by something supernatural, you do not know.

You do know this: Ronald has learned how to be stunningly talented with a knife. One night in the parking lot outside the office, a homonculous attacked Ronald. He handily impaled it through the heart with the butterfly knife he always carries.

Daniel Chiu, Web Manager
Paraplegic Daniel works for Stalking the Night from the basement of his mother's home. Judging by Stalking the Night's website, Daniel is a competent web designer and programmer. Other than this information, you don't know anything about Daniel. As far as you know, he's never been to the office, and you've never had any reason to have more contact with him than a few words on the telephone once in a while.

Vivian Horrigan, Administrative Assistant
Vivian, a middle-aged African-American woman, oversees subscription information, payroll, finances, light typing, and answering the phones. An authentic alien abductee, Vivian was subjected to bizarre experiments (but, thankfully, no probing), at least one of which somehow left her with a greatly reduced need for sleep. By her own estimation, Vivian sleeps no more than two or three hours a week.

Vivian is a pleasant, warmly Christian woman. Her husband left her years ago, and her only child Darren has just started high school. While Vivian herself has little education past the high school level, she exhibits remarkable intelligence and insight. A natural linguist, Vivian speaks, reads, and writes well in Spanish, French, and Japanese (in addition to her native English).

Jonah Nevle, Proofreader and Layout Artist
Jonah puts the more in morbidly obese. Beneath his fatty exterior lurks a genuinely jovial if overworked heart. It's not so much that Jonah's a clown as he strives to always find the upside to any situation.

"At worst," Jonah says, "this should be a learning experience."

Jonah, as far you know, is the only staff member at Stalking the Night whose life hasn't be directly touched by the paranormal or supernatural. Nevertheless, he is a true believer with a keen eye for detail and the clever use of space. When not working for the tabloid, this young man with an M.A. in art history lectures at high schools, civic centers, and the community college.

 

[Mark Chance]

The Game's a Bigfoot!

This space reserved for the summary of the first session (which I've not completed yet and in which our heroes travel to California to investigate an alleged bigfoot attack at Redwood National Forest).