<<notes resume>>
Hour two of the train ride started off easy. The train had power, the passengers were safe and the team didn't even have to fight. This looked like cake.
And then the train slowed down.
Normally, trains do that. It's expected. You can't go zipping across curves, everyone knows that. But here, on this flat stretch of land before a tunnel, there's no reason to slow down.
Everything slowed down. The train. The people. Time. ((I've been experimenting with the 'time dilation bubble' mentioned in the book - I'm not happy with it yet, but getting more comfortable))
The bubble passed, but the team knew something wasn't right. So they, in good agent fashion, split up. Mace went as far forward as he could. Nick went as far back. The rest of the team scattered among the passengers.
Nick didn't find anything. Mace did.
The engineer was face down at the controls, his body weight pinning the deadman's switch down so the train kept running. His head though was spun completely around the wrong way, his face frozen in shock. Mace went in for a closer look and...
the creature, large and gaunt and stinking of sulphur, old baby food and wet mulch was on top of him.
[Mace then began a good series of spends. I'm listing them here: Filch 2, Sense Trouble 1, Athletics 2, Athletics 2, Parkour Refresh, Shooting 3, Athletics 2, Human Terrain 1, Sense Trouble 2, Athletics 3, Driving 1 + Athletics 1, Parkour Refresh]
This is how the fight went down:
- The creature took a swing at Mace
- Mace grabbed the small fire extinguisher
- The two of them tussled. The creature although stronger, was hampered by the small room.
- Mace avoided a few attacks and used the weight of the extinguisher to push it back.
- The creature backed up in order to charge
- Mace jumped and spun OVER the creature
- The creature was....confused ((So was the GM))
- Mace discharged the fire extinguisher at the creature
- The creature, although not one to breathe, had trouble adjusting to the foam. ((We called this a visibility penalty))
- Realizing that if the train kept up at this speed, it would hurtle down the cliff and into a small town, Mace slid under the creature and put his back to the controls.
- The creature dug its fingers into Mace's face, and nearly plucked out his eye.
- Mace, pinched by the creature, used the time and the weight of the corpse to drive the train slowly through the bend
- Mace then smashed the extinguisher into the creature's teeth and lept out the cabin's door.
Eye bleeding [Down to 2 Health], he grabbed salt from the bar car and sealed the cabin. He limped back to the team for medical attention [Byers: 7 point Medic spend, Medical refresh, 2 point additional spend - not technically in the rules, but Mace's player said, 'If you let Mace live, you can do anything you want'] ((This is the moment where I took 2 pages of outline and tore it up, in front of the players. The gloves were off -- this is also where 3 players made plans to buy the book AND/OR sign up for more games I'll run))
Hour three: Mace recovered under Byers' care and the team did a collective [6-point Research and Occult Studies] session to discover that the creatures on the trains were NOT the vampires they've previously encountered but some sort of summoned creatures, evil beasties that take orders from someone...someone who has to be with 900 feet of them.
That meant the train was in double danger. On board were not only the beasts, but their master.
Surveillance picked up some communications between the train and the local police, there were reports of a stalled bus on the tracks ahead, and that they should slow to a halt just after the next local switchover. Mace was in no shape for a second fight, so he stayed back with Alice to keep tabs on things. Nick took over with a two part mission
- Slow the train to avoid catastrophe
- Get rid of the beasts and their summoner.
Part 1 was easy. They had no opposition getting to the engine and finding the car empty - no corpse, no beast. Just the engineer's hand torn off at the wrist, bent and broken like a vise to keep the train moving.
Rossini ((after a pause to consider trains)) slowed [Piloting, 5-point spend] the train to a halt, and in his best faux German accent informed the passengers of the problem.
Predictably, the passengers looked out the windows.
The bus was a school bus, packed with kids, all of them beating against the glass. The outside of the bus was dressed in sigils, runes and symbols, like it drove through a slaughterhouse carwash.
No one knew what to make of this. Mace did.
Drive the train into the bus, turn the whole mass transit system into your accomplice. The ritual was going to sacrifice the kids inside to accomplish whatever the summoner intended. Bastard.
The bus looked disabled. The train was about 80 yards from it. Nick had a plan. Send the team out to free the kids. It would draw out the beasts and the summoner. Nick (and Mace) could stop the summoner. Everyone else was on save-the-kid, kill-the-beast patrol.
Rossini made it to the bus and found the bus chained to the rails, the engine drilled into and the doors locked from the outside. The windows though, still worked. He pulled two or three kids out through an open window and then [Notice 3 point spend] found the bomb wired to the axle.
This had the makings of a disaster.
He made a phone call to [13-point Network spend] a local news reporter that he occasionally dabbled intimately with ((Valerie Kansas-Jones, Global News Channel)) and she was able to get him a van and another bus ((okay, it was a party bus full of bachelorettes, but this was short notice and Rossini IS insane)) but the kids came off and everything was good, right?
Well except that the kids were rigged with dynamite.
[Complete draining of the Explosives pool] and now is it okay?
Well, no, because the creatures came out from UNDER the train. But Rossini had all the explosives from the kids. And a bus. And a head start.
This fight was HUGE. Here's the breakdown:
- The first monster jumped from the train to the bus roof. Rossini managed to avoid making eye contact and went into the bus.
- Rossini used the bus CB to alert the local police and fire department that terrorists had hijacked some prototype military robots and were "getting all Terminator up in here".
- The second monster slipped from shadow to shadow and appeared IN the bus, and charged Rossini
- Rossini kicked out the windshield and broke off the bus steering wheel to hold the creature back.
- The first beast smashed its way inside and now it was 2 on 1.
- Rossini began tossing dynamite (lit) at the monsters and then climbed onto the roof of the bus.
- The dynamite was impressive, blowing apart one of the creatures and stunning the other.
- Rossini slipped UNDER the bus, jammed dynamite into and against the frame, and made sure to smudge any sigils he saw.
- The second monster responded by catching up to Rossini and threw him headfirst back against the train.
- Rossini, somehow ((he needed a 6 and got it)) [6-point Athletic spend] rolled on top of the train and prayed for death.
- Anna, who had been watching this whole affair from the engine room, [complete exhaustion of her Preparedness pool] had one shot with her sniper rifle.
- AND MISSED.
- But her errant shot sent the creatures away from Rossini who...
- who pulled the track switch and collapsed unconscious into some bushes. Dr Byers dragged him back on board
((I'm glad she missed. She needed a little humble-pie, honestly, and it made the rest of this scene better))
Nick needed to herd the passengers to safety. Nothing says safety like fleeing an armed gunman. He put two slugs into the roof of the bar car and drove most everyone away behind locked doors.
Everyone that is, except the fat little man with a greasy mullet, chanting as he stared out the window.
This fight was far less big. Nick and the cultist wrestled. Nick's gun went off twice. The first time into the cultist, the second time into a stick of dynamite Rossini left outside. The explosion was small, but lit a fuse Dr Byers' laid (5-point Preparedness spend] that went back the bus.
The bus went up in a bloom of heat and cherry red smoke.
The monster, freed now by the death of its summoner, sailed off towards the horizon on invisible wings.
In the ensuing chaos, the emergency vehicles, the news crews and all that, the agents slipped away in a party van of bachelorettes, off to Munich.
It was time for Mace to leave a message for The Man.