Previously:
Session 1
Scheduling, scheduling, my ruin, my scourge - but in the end, as they say, the boys are back in town.
Our party is:
Bart "Codekiller" Regis
Manhoman "Dr. House" Kamaroff (portrayed by friend of the blog deus ex parabola)
Auggy "Shillelagh" Ashe
Rob "The Belt / The Punisher" Wagner
We pick up where we left off last session, in the Copperbottom Theater, the party sticking up Stan Koontz and his gang of teenage miscreants in order to frame them for the kidnapping & drugging of Pinemarten's sole cop Debbie's daughter Marlin (the leader of her own, rival gang of teenage miscreants, who promised the party help breaking into the Rodnovprom mine in return for taking Stan off the board).
As Stan and the rest are teenagers, and the party are a heavily-armed team of para-political, para-military occultural troubleshooters, their intimidation is quite easy. For the first of several times this session, Auggy yanks the pin out of his grenade and pretends to throw it before sticking the pin back in. At some point Rob arrives at the Theater in a dead sprint, having been lost at the airport for an interminable period of time.
Thanks to Bart's texts to Debbie on his Blackberry mobile communication device, she arrives, revolver drawn, to that slapstick scene. She receives a confused explanation of the events that led up to that point, and orders everyone outside. The shenanigans of Bart and Auggy almost make her unload her cylinder into the party, but quick-thinking Rob flashes his old CSIS badge and fast-talks her into just-sort-of buying that Stan and his guys were involved in some international crime ring alongside Al Qaeda, or perhaps the IRA. Debbie loads the teens into her police car, puts the still completely xanned-out Marlin in the passenger seat, and drives the lot of 'em off to Sudbury, as Pinemarten doesn't have its own jail or police station.
The party decides to backtrack to the chateau where the First Annual Rodnovprom Associate Artists' Retreat massacre occured, and those fatal words: "Let's split up gang" were uttered, with Manhoman and Rob investigating one end of the odd trail of indents in the snow at the chateau, and Bart and Auggy following the other end to wherever it might lead them. It is about this point in the session that there is a prolonged tangent of the group attempting to remember and replicate what Fred and Velma from Scooby Doo sound like, and to figure out who in the Mystery Machine was cucking who.
Manohman and Rob find that the indent-trail ends abruptly at the wall of the chateau, with no apparent marks indicating that someone or something climbed up to a window - and of course as found last session there were no signs of forced entry to be found. Bart and Auggy follow the trail, the indents getting fresher and clearer as they progress, coming to resemble the sort of print that would have been left by a body curled up in the snow - though of course with five or so feet of distance between each, with no sign of interconnecting movement. It is theorized that they could have been left by a large narcoleptic toddler, or perhaps a man on a gigantic pogo-stick.
Eventually they arrive at a cottage, much more modest than the chateau, with an old man slumped over its porch, half-frozen, his head missing and his brain unspooled. A step of the stairs leading up to the porch appears explosively warped. Going around the back they find the door to the kitchen unlocked, and a pot of Brussels sprouts carbonized beyond recognition on the still-on stove-top. They notify Manohman and Rob, who regroup with them at the cottage.
They investigate the fridge, finding a ham - which Auggy stabs and Manohman takes a bite out of before clarifying that he is in fact Hindu and not Muslim. They then investigate the living room and find an old lady in an armchair, a collection of Jane Austin short stories on her lap, in much the same condition as the old man, only less frozen, as well as the very pale corpse of a middle-aged Native American (Canadian?) man, who is nude, lying on the floor.
Auggy considers stabbing the man's corpse in much the same way as he did the ham, only to be dissuaded after some conversation on whether you could stab a corpse in a place that an autopsy wouldn't discover. Manohman's examination of the corpse finds that it's got no blood in it. The party theorizes that the Native man's corpse represents some intermediate stage of processing between being alive and being decapitated. Bart snaps a bunch of pictures of the scene on his Blackberry, and is insecure at the quality of them. The crawlspace beneath the cottage is investigated, and a bit of ham is given to a raccoon. Snowmobiles, particularly snowmobiles with flame decals, are hyped up.
The party gathers in the kitchen to drink the dead man's beer and eat his ham and vegetables. Much delightment is had. Drunken and with night falling, the party heads back to the van and debates whether to abandon the almost-starting-to-sober-up Moroz, who they have been keeping captive in their van this whole time dosed to the gills on xanax, to death by exposure. Bart fakes out punching him a few times, then decides to let Moroz live, for now. Rob passes a driving test not to crash the van by a hair, and they find a motel - the Hibernation Station - to settle into for the night. They inquire about the missing horse with the pimply, no doubt drug-dealing teenager manning the desk, and he tell them that the other week a couple chickens also went missing under similar circumstances.
They plan to get in contact with Marlin in the morning. Bart and Rob bond over Bart's past trauma - he has a blurry picture which he believes to be a goblin, though no one believes him. Auggy theorizes that they might be dealing with an Irish fairy - a dullahan to be precise - which Rob gives him a hard time for before apologizing for his chronic anti-Irish behaviour.
Tune in the week after next, or perhaps more likely next month, for the next chapter of this exciting investigation.
