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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Audrik" data-source="post: 6427892" data-attributes="member: 73653">Handful of Dust - Session 3aThere was a brief discussion about how to proceed. Given the whispers she’d just heard on the wind, Agent SAM wanted to go take a second look at the well they passed when they first arrived in town. It was eventually decided that Agents SETH and RAPSCALLION should guard the group’s other rental car while everyone else checked on the well. They all headed back to the vehicle since it was on the way to the well, but before they split up, the agents saw a truck pull up in front of the well down the street. There were two men in the cab and three in the bed. The three in the back hopped out and just stood around the body which had apparently not yet been collected.Agent SETH got in the passenger side of the vehicle while the other five agents stood outside keeping an eye on the well. Not long after, the sheriff could be heard whistling as he walked down the street. As he passed the agents, he tipped his hat in a friendly manner. A child of about ten or eleven came running out of the saloon yelling and waving, and so the sheriff tipped his hat once again, took a coin from his pocket, and flipped it to the kid. For his part, the kid caught the coin and ran back inside happily.The agents watched all of this with a mix of interest and suspicion. The sheriff continued on until he reached the men by the well. They had a brief conversation which ended with the sheriff tipping his hat and turning to return to the office while the men tossed the body in the back of the truck, hopped in with it, and sped off out of town to the northwest. Another brief discussion followed, and RAPSCALLION ended up watching the vehicle while SETH slept, and the others left to interview Jack Pena.Jack Pena’s camp wasn’t much to look at; several junked cars forming a circle, and tarps elevated by trees, posts, and ropes to act like tents. At one end of the camp was a very old Navajo woman with thick glasses who was busy painting pottery. In the center was a Navajo man of about 80 years sitting in a lawn chair and tending a small camp fire. There was a television on a table nearby which was plugged in to a generator which was not running at the moment. Quick questioning confirmed that this man was indeed Jack Pena.Agent ROBIN decided the old woman was more interesting, and so she approached to see what was being painted. The woman didn’t seem to notice ROBIN’s approach, but when the agent spoke up to compliment the pottery work, the old woman turned. The lenses of her glasses were quite thick, and even at this distance, the woman squinted and leaned forward to see who had spoken.Agent ROBIN and the old woman had a friendly discussion about the artwork on her pottery; she had been painting T-shaped totem poles with animals dangling from them. Apparently, these totem poles were outside “the Ranch”, and though the woman seemed like she never went far from camp, she said she sees the poles “most nights”.Jack Pena was quite helpful as well. He seemed happy to answer questions, but he warned them that the Ranch was a dangerous place. He said “the key to releasing Rhagorthua” could be found there. Agent RAPUNZEL recognized the name from somewhere – a book, a television show, a half-heard conversation. Where she’d heard the name wasn’t particularly important at the moment. What was important was that the name belonged to a spirit creature of some sort – a demon-god – who had taken over the entrance to the underworld. Jack Pena confirmed this, and he added that this demon-god dwelt in a bottomless well somewhere in the desert.Sometime in the late 1940’s, Jack told them, a couple of detectives passed through the area on the trail of some magic or other which could help in their investigation in New England. The investigators were searching for eternal life, but instead they stumbled into Rhagorthua’s well and their bodies were consumed. Their spirits supposedly still wandered the desert in search of their elusive magic.Jack was also able to confirm that the Ranch was northwest of town; the same direction the truck had gone after collecting the body by the well. It seemed the next step was to investigate this Ranch. The agents headed back to the vehicle to discuss their findings with RAPSCALLION and SETH, but they only made it into visual range of the vehicle before they saw something which would change the entire course of the night, and probably not for the better.Agent RAPSCALLION had been quietly reading a book from the green box while standing outside the driver’s side door. There was a loud thud across the street, and he looked up just in time to see a rock bounce into the dirt road, apparently after having hit the building. As he was watching the rock, there were two loud hisses from behind him, and the vehicle settled much lower on the passenger side. As he turned, RAPSCALLION saw the kid from the saloon running down the street in the direction of the sheriff’s office, or maybe the general store. He had slashed the passenger side tires.This was their only remaining vehicle, and apparently there wasn’t a spare tire to be found in the whole town, so Agent RAPSCALLION wasn’t about to let this go. He dropped the book and took a few steps in the direction of the running child while drawing his pistol! He took aim, and though it was getting dark, he took one shot. Part of the child’s head blew off, and the body hit the dirt. RAPSCALLION approached the body, and it was then that the other agents rounded the corner to see about ten people with shotguns, rifles, and handguns running out of the saloon to see what had just happened. The people raised their guns and aimed them at Agent RAPSCALLION, but before they could fire, Agent SLEEPLESS (who was living up to his name by currently operating on about 40 hours without sleep) decided that the “cultists” needed to die, and he drew his own gun.SLEEPLESS fired his Glock-18 on auto into the crowd, and seconds later, only two were left standing. Most ordinary small-town citizens would probably dive for cover, cower, play dead … Not these citizens. The two left standing turned and fired their rifles at Agent SLEEPLESS. Just as quickly as he had thinned their group, they thinned him. His lifeless body dropped right at RAPUNZEL’s feet.Agent ROBIN ran for the vehicle, Agent SAM ran for the SALOON, Agent RAPSCALLION dove for the alley, and Agent RAPUNZEL fired her pistol wildly and only managed to kill a bottle of some blue liquor inside the saloon. Before the two remaining men could fire their rifles at RAPUNZEL, Agent RAPSCALLION peeked around the corner and fired his pistol, killing both men.All of this gunfire had apparently drawn the sheriff’s attention as he was now jogging down the street in their direction. He had seen RAPSCALLION firing his gun, and so he spoke into the walkie-talkie he was carrying, and he pointed down the alley. Agent RAPUNZEL fired at the sheriff and knocked the hat off his head. The sheriff spoke into his walkie-talkie again, and this time he pointed at RAPUNZEL. Agent RAPSCALLION could hear him clearly by now, and he heard the sheriff say “Scratch that. Get her!”Agent ROBIN had started the car, rolled down the power window, and fired a couple of meaningless shots, and she now decided that a better course of action would be to drive as quickly as possible down the road toward the sheriff. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t much of a driver. She was worse under this kind of pressure, and she was totally unprepared for driving a vehicle of this size with two slashed tires. As she floored the accelerator, the Ford Explorer veered hard to the right, and instead of flying down the dirt road like she had pictured, she flew through the door of the saloon. This took the dozen or so citizens on their way out completely by surprise, and about two-thirds of them were dragged along under the vehicle as it plowed through the bar and over the bartender. As the wall of booze crashed to the floor, Agent SAM hopped into the car. Through all of this, Agent SETH managed to snore.Agent RAPUNZEL was dead on her feet and falling when the shot was heard. It seemed a sniper had caught her right in the heart. This was a bit too much for Agent RAPSCALLION, and so he snuck away down the alley looking for an escape route. Reaching the rear of the buildings, he scanned the area. To the right was the well, and the road back to the highway. Straight ahead across a wide open space was the old church with the poorly maintained graveyard. To the left was the sheriff’s car, parked quietly in the dark.Nodding to himself, Agent RAPSCALLION ran toward the sheriff’s car. As he ran, dirt kicked up near his feet, and a shot could be heard. This was his second Opera, and this was his second Opera being narrowly missed by a sniper as he ran. He didn’t have much time to enjoy his good fortune, however. A few seconds later, there was a ringing in his ears, and his vision went red. His face felt wet and warm. Upon reaching the sheriff’s car, a mirror confirmed his suspicion. The sniper had put a round directly into his face, but by some small miracle, it had passed clean through seemingly without damaging anything more vital than his profile.</blockquote>

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