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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nebulous" data-source="post: 3980775" data-attributes="member: 31465">Adventure #5: Castle PlumThe morning paper has an article concerning the destroyed hotel, and several Americans are suggested as suspects. Feeling that they have been specifically targeted, the investigators decide to cool their heels outside of London and let the heat die down.  The article entitled “Police Baffled by Monstrous Murders!” centers around a small town called Lesser Edale a hundred miles outside of London.  If Jackson Elias had an interest in events there, then maybe there are further clues. The take a bus and arrive the next day, bringing with them just the bare necessities: guns, ammunition, and black trenchcoats.  They look like friggin’ gangsters traipsing across the London countryside. Lesser Edale is a picturesque, quaint little town of rolling green heath and open blue sky. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/img0057.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The townsfolk are welcoming of the guests at the local pub, the Laughing Boar, until the investigators start dropping questions concerning the Scoop’s newspaper article.  There is clearly an aura of tension in the town concerning the murders, and when Constable Tumwell arrives, he corroborates the general fear.  He thinks it’s a wild animal at large, and the folks in the pub still say strange things are heard around the full moon. [As soon as the full moon is mentioned (and the general description of “hairy monsters” tearing up folks, the players immediately suspected they were dealing with a werewolf.  So, I changed that aspect of the story slightly.] [I do recall that Leo had scribbled the name “Vane” in his notes, but I never connected the subplot (although I did reward him an Action Points for astute notekeeping).] After thoroughly questioning everyone, they find that Lawrence Vane is a suspect, and that he can be found at Castle Plum, an imposing stone edifice located several hundred yards above the village on a rocky bluff. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/magdalen college, ox.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Sir Arthur Vane is the senior head of the family, with his son Lawrence Vane and his twin daughters, Eloise and Alyssa Vane. A servant answers the door, and the investigators introduce themselves as American “specialists” seeking information about the murders. They’re able to Bluff their way inside and get an audience with the older Sir Arthur.  After some time smoking cigars and sipping brandy, Arthur’s distrust is eased, his tongue is loosened, and the investigators find out that the man is truly, truly frightened. …of his daughter Eloise.He tells the investigators that his family suffers from a curse put on them by a witch as she burned at the stake in 1682.  Since then, some female daughters turn into vicious were-creatures, and there is no known cure, none that he and his son Lawrence have been able to find.  They are the only two who are aware that Eloise transforms on nights of the full moon because the servants are sent away.  Her twin sister Alyssa suspects she is sick, but Lawrence and Arthur do not openly discuss it with her. This very night is the full moon, and Arthur invites the investigators to stay…if they dare.  He and Lawrence typically lock Eloise in the dungeon and wait for dawn as her howls echo throughout the countryside. She recently escaped however, and committed atrocious murders that Lawrence was barely able to conceal. Photographic evidence of a genuine werewolf transformation is EXACTLY what Mickey Mahoney of the Scoop would pay dearly for, so Morty primes his camera.  Arthur lets them speak briefly with Eloise and Alyssa, but Eloise seems quiet and distracted, unwilling to talk.  Alyssa is more sociable, and secretly tells the investigators that she worries about her sister.  “Can you help her?  Is that why father brought you here?  Can you?”They have no idea what they can or can’t do, and we have to separate meta-game player knowledge from character knowledge concerning werewolves. Later that day all the servants are sent away, the gates are closed and locked, watches are set, and Eloise Vane is heavily sedated with opiates in her wine. Her brother Lawrence gently carries her to the basement. “I cannot watch,” Sir Arthur tells them. “It…pains me too much.” The dungeons of the castle are located off the wine cellar.  It is dark and moldy, and Lawrence points them to the cell.  Eloise can be seen lying prone on a bed of straw.  She is manacled, but Lawrence says that she gains supernatural strength, so much that he fears she might rend the bars aside one day.   He does not stay either, retreating to the study with his father, so Morty sets up his photographic equipment and they wait for the moon to rise. Two hours later, Eloise begins to twitch.Although careful to conceal their guns from the father and son, Arnold and Chang have pistols loaded and ready in case the thing somehow breaks free. Clicking the shutters on the camera, Morty starts taking pictures of the terrifying sight:Her body warps and buckles, hair poking through her flesh, and Eloise suddenly jerks up, her face warped into a snarl, canines jutting from her jaws. The investigators are completely freaked out by this event and take some Sanity hits, but not enough to send any of them nuts. It’s not until they hear the screams from somewhere upstairs that they realize something has gone horribly wrong. Chang, Arnold and Huey race from the dungeon to the main level, leaving Morty alone (and terrified) as he watches Eloise grow in size, muscles rippling beneath a coat of shaggy black fur.  Her muzzle elongates, and she suddenly SLAMS against the bars, bending several outward in her insatiable bloodlust.  Morty’s presence is sending her into a rage, and Morty glances at the lantern hanging on the wall, and at the bed of straw in the cell…The study is empty, Lawrence’s and Arthur’s cigars and brandy only partially touched. Immense stairs wrap up to the balcony, and the investigators carefully creep up, calling their names, guns cocked and ready. There is no response, just an odd shuffling sound from behind a door at the top of the stairs, and peeking in, Chang sees a huge black shape hulking in the room.  It whirls around, and Chang begins screaming bloody murder.It is a seven-foot tall half man/half boar, its tusks bathed in blood and entrails, Sir Arthur Vane’s eviscerated corpse dangling from its hands.  Allysa Vane’s shredded nightgown hangs in tatters about its hoofed feet. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/Masks/wereboar.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Chang starts shooting his twin pistols, but the bullets glance harmlessly off the beast’s unnatural flesh. It lowers its head and CHARGES in a mighty pounce, and by pure, pure luck, Chang falls flat and the wereboar soars over his head and crashes through a door across the hall.  It would have killed him instantly. They’re in over their heads.  The run screaming down the stairs, Arnold pumping shotgun shells at the thing, but it does minimal damage. The boar slams into Arnold, bowling him down the stairs where he comes to a painful halt at the bottom.  The wereboar leaps off the balcony and crashes into the floor, cutting off Huey’s escape route. In the meantime, Eloise the werewolf is tearing her cell to shreds.  The manacles have snapped, and she is bending the bars apart.  Morty is at his wits end, and decides that he is going to burn her to death.  He throws the lantern onto the straw, and immediately flames shoot up, catching fire to the wolf’s matted fur.  Unholy wails rip through the dungeon as Morty stumbles back, still trying to click off some pictures through the smoke. Huey, Chang and Arnold are having a rough time.  The wereboar is impervious to damage and swipes at them, nearly killing Huey.  He’s saved at the last second by Lawrence Vane who stumbles to the balcony, blood streaming from a head wound.“Alyssa! Alyssa! NO!  What have you done to father?”The boar is distracted, staring up at her brother with a mixed expression of rage, recognition and distraught, when Chang sees a godsend hanging above the massive front door:It is the Vane family heirloom:  twin silver-plated axes.  [Totally not part of the written scenario but I couldn’t resist throwing it in there]He leaps up, snags an axe off and plants it into Alyssa’s back.  The silver blade cuts through flesh and bone, and blood splatters Chang’s face.  Alyssa bellows in pain and explodes out a window to escape.  Arnold grabs the second axe and they give chase, even as Morty stumbles up the stairs with thick smoke coiling behind him. “The castle’s on fire!” he shrieks.  “I…I think I did something bad!”Lawrence begins shrieking and crying and pushes past Morty to run down to the dungeon. The investigators stumble outside and give chase to the beast which has leapt with incredible speed up into the hills.  But it is a full moon and the night is bright, and they can see the creature…and they can see a mob of villagers carrying torches, pitchforks and rifles!Sure enough, Lesser Edale has armed itself to the teeth this night, and after hearing so much commotion from Castle Plum, they’ve come to investigate. “There! Get the beast!” screams Arnold, and he spearheads the lynchmob of drunken commoners as they surge after the creature’s footprints and blood trail.  Behind them, flames have continued to devour Castle Plum, and the clean night is soon bathed red with heat and soot. Alyssa the wereboar bloodily plunges through three more villagers before she is finally cornered by two dozen people with torches a top a hill. And braving her wrath, Arnold and Chang bring the Vane family curse to a vicious end, and cut her down in a blur of sharp silver blades. Soon afterward, there is a group of shocked villagers standing around the corpse of a mangled nude young woman, while the crackle of flames and crumbling stone on the hill behind them….The evening did not go as smoothly as the investigators had hoped, but they do manage to loot some quality rifles (and silver axes) from Castle Plum before it is razed completely to the ground.  Constable Tumwell is barely able to believe what happened, and insists that the investigators might need to stick around and fill out some paperwork. They politely decline, and then get the hell out of Lesser Edale before anything else goes wrong, taking the earliest Omnibus as possible in the morning.  The last thing they see is poor Lawrence Vane crying on the shoulder of a sympathetic soul, his entire family and fortune gone in one terrible night. He might recover one day, but he’ll be spending some quality time in a mental institute for a long, long while. And so the investigators return to London, realizing that they are leaving a trail of chaos in their wake.  Three American Caucasian men and a Chinaman in trenchcoats, blazing a trail of vigilante justice against the Mythos! (and whoever else gets in their way!)</blockquote>

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