Previously:
The session in which I realize Pepto-talk was semi-autobiographical.
This session the player of Billy was unable to make it. Billy was ruled as absent because, and here I quote Billy's player:
"His grandmother got into the rabbit food again. She has recently developed a habit of replacing all the contents of the cardboard box-contained food items in the house with rabbit food, so he has to rush home (maybe via bus?) to replace the food stuffs. She says she heard about this lifestyle-hack on a podcast, but Billy hasn’t been able to track it down. It’s possible though because the lead content maker of the podcast—Clorox—has recently had their show pulled off streaming services as it’s being admitted as courtroom evidence in the suspicious death of the show’s host’s wife. It’s very strange—she died by falling out of the host’s private plane. Incidentally, the host’s famous sign off is the reason for the courtroom admission: every show ended with "And remember! The worst way in the world to die is by falling out of a fast-moving plane from super high up!""
We begin the session at the Blue Giant Crew's flophouse, with Quasar Mike, Stim Jackson, and Wheeler reeling from the news of Pepto-talk's death. The party debates bombing St. Fiachra's church with their car as the children suggested - Shorty isn't against the idea, but doesn't want to leave any evidence leading back to them. I feel the need to stress that the children are children and not terrorist geniuses.
They leave the flophouse and seek out a vehicle that isn't theirs to potentially use for the car-bomb. My understanding of the size of small towns and the amount of time it would take to drive places in them is brought into question. They find an unlocked pickup truck, because apparently just leaving your car keys hanging from the mirror is totally a thing that happens in small towns. In the pickup's glove-box they discover a package of menthol cigarettes - banned in America under the fascist Obama administration.
As the Private EyeNTJs searched the town they found it in anarchy - people barricading their homes, children pelting adults with rocks, mass looting, etc.
The party drives by the church and finds Officer Dimbly having a mental breakdown outside it in her patrol vehicle. She says she saw Sheriff Trudy and Father Donnchad tossing bodies into a pit in the church, and that the owner of St. Fiachra's brewery, Mr. Crabatt, left with the other elderly who could still walk under their own power. Walter gives Dimbly $5.00 to get herself some icecream, and Dimbly leaves the scene. Walter lifts Shorty up to look through a window, and Shorty's able to confirm that Donnchad and Knowles are in fact carrying the bodies of the sick down some stairwell that was hidden underneath the church's altar (which can slide back and forth on rails or somesuch).
The party returns to the Blue Giant Crew's flophouse to find Stim gone, and Wheeler arguing with Quasar. They take advantage of the two's more paranoid beliefs, as well as their resentment towards the townies & their emotional volatility after Pepto's death to get the two to agree to commit a terrorist act - driving a car-bomb into St. Fiachra's church.
For God knows what reason the party decides they need to disguise Shorty as a child, and so raid an already-looted gift-shop for a beanie hat and a jaw-breaker candy that Shorty glues to a stick as they could not find a giant lollipop. He goes to a rendezvous point told to him by the violent child delinquents of St. Fiachra's, and finds Dunkey arguing with Clarence - their leader - claiming that the adults aren't changelings, but human beings who bleed like them.
They load the improvised explosives the children had gathered into their stolen pickup, then get Quasar Mike and Wheeler and head for the church. Quasar Mike and Wheeler ram the front steps of the church at the same moment that Trudy Knowles poked her head out to see what the commotion was. They fail to jump out of the pickup in time, and so they, Trudy, and the front of the church are obliterated in the explosion, along with the sick & elderly lying on the church's back pews.
Shorty sneaks in through the back and brains Father Donnchad with his horseshoe - and sees that the inside of Donnchad's skull resembles the inside of that tuna Fisherman Chuck pulled up the other day more than the wrinkly pink of a human brain. He and Walter then go down the stairwell that was hidden under the church's sliding altar. They descend into a huge cavern overgrown with moss and other such plant material that smells like the sea, only to retreat back up to the church when they hear word salad-y grunting from below. Officer Dimbly returns to the church following the noise of the explosion, and agitated almost shoots the Private EyeNTJs. They convince her to check out the stairwell beneath the altar, but this turns into an altercation with some humanoid creatures following the sound and light up the stairs that results in Dimbly getting her throat bitten out and the Private EyeNTJs slamming the altar back over the stairwell.
They notice some of the comatose elderly who survived the car-bomb beginning to twitch and utter word salad, and so siphon off the fuel from their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire to immolate them and the church.
After this they head to the police station, and using a key they find in Sheriff Knowles' office unlock the armoury, finding a pistol, a shotgun, ammo for those weapons, a taser, and a bullet-proof vest. Walter uses a police station computer to watch videos of how to hot-wire a car, then applies his knowledge hot-wiring a police car that's parked in the lot.
From the police station, with their hot-wired police car, the party drives over to the brewery. They find the road blocked by Panthera LeSharp, and rather than run him over engage in conversation. Panthera acts even stranger than usual, and identifies himself as Mr. Crabatt. They don't really pry into that, and drive back to the Bannock & Boobrie. There they rearrange the room 180° so that the desk is placed over the trap-door, thereby preventing most things from getting through it.
They empty out some bottles from the inn's bar, and drive with them to the town's gas station. There they lie to the station attendant, claiming to have been deputized by Trudy (hence the police car), and receive some spare gas cans, a shovel, and enough gas to fill their bottles to make Molotov cocktails.
Driving over to the smoldering ruins of the church, they use the shovel to clear a wide-enough path through the rubble to make way to the stairwell where the altar once stood, then drive their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire over the stairwell to block it off.
The Private EyeNTJs drive back to the brewery to firebomb it and take care of the last entrance to the cave system beneath the town that they know about, and this time find Fisherman Chuck blocking the road. They talk to him, and Chuck makes a disconcerting reference to himself as Old Man Rather instead of Chuck, and mentions the need for living things to continuously evolve to survive. For some reason I cannot explain through the lens of reason, the party accepts Chuck's invitation to enter the brewery, and the session ended with them pulling into the brewery's parking lot.
The session ended a few minutes early because I really had to poop. I try to keep sessions in the range of 2 & 1/2 hours, with 15-30 minutes of casual talk at the start, because that is my operational limit. People who do like 4 hour sessions are, to me, insane.
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