Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DanMcS" data-source="post: 506945" data-attributes="member: 6530">Returned from first mission.  Placed with:Mason Andrews, ex-police investigator;Rae Winters, previously with national parks medic service;Wolfgang Kohl, retired military.Mission objective was distraction.  Instructed to find one Big Johnny, an orc of (as we later discovered) fearsome reputation and even more fearsome odor.  Johnny and his lads worked for an ogre who had been consolidating power among criminal gangs downtown.  We were to find Johnny and keep his gang away from their hideout long enough for a strike team to go in and deal with the ogre.Arrived in neighborhood approximately at dusk- we believed the orcs would not venture forth earlier.  Report had it the orcs often visited a local liquor store, so we started there.  More a gas station, we discovered, with a large convenience store and large liquor selection.  Mason and I ventured inside to check it out.  Rae took up a position across the street to call me if she saw them approaching, and Wolfgang went around back to look around.The owner, Horacio, was an easily agitated Pakistani gentleman.  I selected a small bottle of whiskey to appear as a customer, but when I went to check out Horacio reacted to some inaudible noise, grabbed a bat, and started towards the rear storage area.  We later learned Wolfgang had broken into the back and was snooping around- he claimed it was unlocked.  Mason and I suspected trouble, so we kept talking at the owner until he decided it must have been nothing, and relented to serve us.Mason proceeded to question the owner.  "I need to talk to Johnny.  I hear you know him.  Big Johnny.  Can you get me in touch with him?"  The owner tried to protest, but M. persisted, and we were told that some nights they hung out and drank in a park nearby.We went outside and met Rae and Wolfgang.  W. told us there was a car parked behind the store in the alley, we decided to check it out.  The car was locked, but we found gashes in the wall of the store, as though someone had been hitting it with a large bladed weapon.  This we also discovered, in the dumpster, a fireman's type axe, with old blood on it.  A bloody rag was also found nearby.  Very strange.None of this was finding us any orcs, though.  So we went to the park, maybe a half mile overland, in a somewhat residential neighborhood.Wolfgang disappeared into the dark to look around.  Rae stayed near the sidewalk to watch the street, Mason and I also investigated the park.  It was block-sized, small parking lot at one end, little restroom building in the middle.  There were two cars in the lot, one a running Mercedes, the other unoccupied.Mason and I searched the area with flashlights; we discovered black tire tracks on the driveway, someone peeled out of there fast.  I called out for my lost dog, wandered around, and approached the Mercedes.  Knocked on the window.  A Jamaican gentleman opened the driver's door."Excuse me sir, have you seen my dog?  Little wiener dog, he got away from me and was dragging his leash, have you seen my Fluffy?"  He told me unless I was buying, I should scram, so I did.  There was someone in the passenger seat, too, but he didn't get out.Rae, Mason and I regrouped and eventually found Wolfgang skulking in the dark.  Mason had investigated the restroom building- there was a guy in there wearing sunglasses, washing his hands, but it was otherwise empty.  All the faucets were running, though.  They were the push-down type that turn off automatically after several seconds.  Very odd.Rae approached the Mercedes again, and initiated an exchange.  I was called over to front the cash.  I'm used to dealing in expensive plant matter, but mostly it's bound and printed on.  We got out of there quick when Wolfgang reported a large Arcadian he had seen earlier was approaching the area.  We later determined it to be an ogre.From 20 yards away we saw the figure approach the Mercedes.  I called Daedalus, and told him the ogre he was looking for was probably right here, right now, with no supporting orcs, and he should get here RIGHT the HELL NOW.  He demurred, and ordered us to leave the area.  The ogre produced a huge, double-headed battleaxe, seemingly from nowhere, and with a shriek of metal brought it down on the passenger side of the Mercedes.  The driver popped out the other side and took off, right towards myself and Rae.  I informed Daedalus that the ogre had just cut the Mercedes in half; he reiterated that we should leave.  This was not particularly helpful, so I terminated the conversation.The ogre brought the axe down again and again.  The passenger had been struggling to bring a gun to bear, but he was never successful.  We took the stunned driver prisoner and vacated the area.  Under questioning, the driver proved unaware of the incursion of strangeness in the world- he babbled about the "'uge frigging guy" that had attacked the car.  He did not recognize the assailant, and could give us no useful information on Johnny, so we zip-cuffed him, hobbled him with duct tape, and called the police to pick him up.  He had sufficient drugs on him to incriminate him without our testimony, so we decided to stop wasting our time in this obvious wild goose chase and go back to Horacio's liquor store.On the way back, Mason spotted a cop he knew investigating the severed Mercedes.  The second car had disappeared from the lot, and with it I suspect the sunglassed man from the restroom.  None of the drugs had been taken, but the passenger was messily dead, and the Mercedes had been searched.A quick check behind Horacio's found the car there now unlocked- it smelled of an unidentifiable herb, but the trunk had more of those bloody rags.Back in Horacio's, Rae told H to "Stop playing games" and hook us up with Johnny, we had a job for him.  Wolfgang had gone to burgle the back room again, and picked up the phone in time to hear H talk to a deep-voiced person who wanted to work for beer.  We regrouped in the store, and waited for the orcs to show up.  A call to Daedalus told him when the orcs reached the store, and we were told to keep them there for 10 minutes at least.Negotiations were difficult at first, as the orcs (rightly) believed we didn't have a job for them.  They were distracted by the smashable glass doors concealing lots of beer.  Horacio was displeased and produced a mammoth shotgun, but we pointed out that he was insured, and the gangers would outshoot him.  Touch and go for a minute, though.  We escaped out the front door, and pondered the merits of crashing the car through the front door, or torching the place with the gas hoses, but decided retreat was the better part of valor.  H deserved to deal with the orcish vandals anyway; what good person keeps a box of bloody rags in his trunk?  Daedalus picked us up several blocks away, commented that the ogre he saw had no battleaxe, but that he was reasonably successful, and so were we.Who was that other ogre, though?  And the sunglassed man in the park.  Horacio is definitely up to no good.  And we'll have to deal with those orcs eventually, I imagine.  Maybe this job isn't so bad after all.Illegal actions perpetrated by the party this session, roughly chronologically:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Concealed carry w/o permit (constantly)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Burglary (Horacio's back door)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Buying, possessing controlled substances</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kidnapping, armed robbery (searching the driver's pockets for clues)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Disturbing a crime scene</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Burglary (the back door again, and the car)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Incitement to vandalism/riot (of the orcs)</li> </ul>And we're just getting warmed up.</blockquote>

Verification