Session 4: Drums in the Dark

The primal rhythm fills the darkness; it talks of war and revenge.

A small band of friends stand against the night, and the museum hall buzzes with gathered power – Two wardens of the white council, an FBI special investigations agent, a white court vampire, plus a fledgling Valkyrie and a scion of Hephaestus ready themselves to face the bearer of the steadily pounding drum. They are tied by fate, in ways they cannot even fathom, and they are not afraid.

Malak the playboy warden quickly raises a veil for everyone to hide in, though Nick the Technomancer and Agent Blair choose to stand outside of it, flanking the gaping hole in the building's exterior. Hannah takes position atop some destroyed shelving, and Warden Kjenobi chalks a circle, gathering power for a ward.

The drumming raises to a crescendo, then stops abruptly - leaving the inky darkness potent and still. Looking out of the breach, across the small parking lot and field behind the museum, to the edge of the complex grounds into the foreboding woods, Nick sees movement.

The stillness is shattered by two huge bodies careening out of the treeline, bee-lining for our plucky band of do-gooders. Trees are flayed aside and turf ripped to ribbons as a huge bear and an even larger bison charge from the undergrowth.
"Reavers! Desecrators! Villains! No more will you trample our dignity, our history!"
The challenge flies from the lips of the neolithic Ursine behemoth. The faster of the two, the bear – which appears to be completely taken by a berserker rage – charges straight at Chris, who readies his service weapon. It suddenly seems woefully small for the day's work.

More and more bodies emerge from the treeline, as cousins fill the field behind the museum. They are eerily silent, making no sound but the crunch of grass beneath heeled boots, and the snickts and flickts of switchblades appearing like magic in their hands.

Agent Blair readies his weapon, but as the giant bear charges through the hole in the wall, Hanna Storm steps up and neatly clips the beast under the chin, the arc of her mighty hammer more neat than a professional golf swing. *KA-THOK*

A shiver runs through the bear's entire body, as his eyes roll up and he slides into the veil, limp and senseless. The great Bison skids to a stop, horror on it's face.
"how... " The cousins in the yard halt their advance, the tension in the air palpable.
"Stand down now!" Chris shouts, drawing a bead on the buffalo.
"The stench of Summer... but it is not you, not from within..."

The skinny crow cousins filling the yard hunker down unsure of which direction to face.

And a resounding BOOM of thunder reverberates through the walls, the ground, the air, the night. And another. And another. Nick begins to ask what's going on when a hellish scream pierces the air, eerie and shrill. It is answered by other shrieks, from various directions, surrounding the small yard filled with crow cousins.

"Well it's about freakin time, I was getting bored" quips Derek, un-slinging his guitar – a monstrous steel beast forged of Pure Righteousness – and steps outside. The glampire is fast, but so are the things dropping from patches of darkness onto the turf. Curled Horns over shaggy bodies, The Gruff's Hooves pull up furls of dirt as they charge the cousins, The vampire, and anyone else in sight.

The tremors continue as a battle breaks out in earnest; the strangely silent cousins engaged in mortal combat with the gruffs, Derek pirouetting from gruff to gruff – trailing quivering severed limbs and gouts of green fire behind him.

Nick yells for Merv inside, as a giant body brings down two trees, forcing its way into the courtyard. A huge elder gruff wielding a sword the size of a car fully enters the clearing, trailing devastation and property damage behind him. "Kill them all! No Quarter!" bellows the giant elder gruff, who raises his sword in an arc, and starts towards the blasted exterior of the museum.

Agent Blair takes a more offensive stance, drawing a bead on the gigantic Gruff. His service glock begins to glow with an eerie blue light, and and he fires a searing, silent bolt of energy at the steadily advancing beast. It punches a hole the size of a large man's fist in the great beast's leg, just above the reversed kneecap . The giant gruff lets out a bleating scream, just as nick lets loose with his laser pen ( which rips open a hole in the creature's shoulder, bringing it to its knees.)

Hannah tries to reason with the now very visibly panicked bison cousin, who seems to be at a complete loss as to what to do. Merv O'rourke, the unnaturally large security guard, arrives back at the ruined gallery – having heard nick's call. Seeing the carnage going on outside, an asp concealed in his duster pocket snaps to full length, and he wades into the fight.

The buffalo cousin's tongue is thick, the whites of its eyes huge, as it circles in confusion and calls for its kin. Malak, becoming a tad strained from holding the veil, drops it and steps forward - " We are here on official white council business - what reason have the Red lands mantouac to interfere with our sanctioned investigation!?" He blasts a nearby gruff with a toss of his hand. "Speak now cousin, or find yourself in a tough position!"

The Bison Bleats loudly and runs for the trees, becoming less corporeal as it goes. The other cousins follow suit, extracting themselves from dead and dying gruffs, the sick stench of scorched
goat filling the night air. Derek and Merv deftly move from gruff to gruff, dealing death in their wake.

The gigantic elder gruff reaches the breached wall and braces himself for a mighty swing. As he does so, Hannah darts between his legs, and swings her hammer in a singing arc, connecting at the already damaged knee. The steel in the hammer's alloy ignites the gruff's blood, and the leg comes off – he bellows, enraged. "Murder! Blood! No Quarter!" Shouts the maddened summer assassin, as he slams to the ground with a deafening thunder.

Behind nick, Ben gives a muffled "Ach!" and slumps to the ground, the power he was drawing snapped into his brain. Such is the fate of a wizard who reaches too far beyond his or her limits.

A few gruffs try to charge the breach and are brought down swiftly by nick and Chris, firing nearly in tandem with both cold steel bullets and magic-imbued lasers.

The final gruff outside cries out as it's skull is split by the steel of Merv's asp, and the defeated elder Gruff tries to grab and crush Hannah to death. She is too quick for him, and Malak puts an end to him by way of large fireball through the back. The charred body blocks the torn opening in the building, until merv almost casually drags it out of the way.

The team regroups, an unconscious cousin laying on the floor. The huge bear is thoroughly rattled, and cannot uncross his eyes. Hanna begins to administer first aid, in spite of the fact that the bear could maul her at any moment. Malak checks on Ben, and surprised to find that the ward he had been constructing looks to have worked – only instead of blocking the hole in the wall, seems to have warded his mind from the outside world. "This is beyond my ability to fix, without putting a sword though his head - which would fix the one problem, but cause all sorts of others..."

"Crap. This is going to cost me SO much paperwork," quips Cris, as Derek rejoins the group.
Derek stands off to the side, occasionally glancing at Hannah. His skin glows pale, and his eyes, normally quite human, are solid orbs of silver. "I need to get out of here, and soon. Very hungry."
Nick looks around, mildly nonplussed. " you guys sure know how to turn a normal scooby-do episode into night of the freakin smelly goat dead."

With a wounded manitou and warden, it is decided that they should split up, both for healing and a bite to eat. The wardens are going to head to a white council safe-house, and everyone silently agrees that it's best not to ask where Derek is headed.
"Yall don't wanna be headin out without this," says Merv, handing over a manifest of the items looted from the museum. "Near as I can figure, whoever set up this heist dudn't want their goons to know what was valuable an what wadn't.."

Agent Blair and nick go over the list. Quite a few items were stolen, including ceremonial weapons, bits of pottery, ceremonial garb, a matched pair of colt peacemakers, and a coil-woven earthen pot.

The group begins to split up and go their various ways, when a portal to the never never opens up. A familiar face greets the group, as does a familiar satchel...

Session 3: A Night at The Museum

To the normal bystander, Spider-walker Nick© seemingly vanished without a trace. But to the trained eyes of the wardens, Nick, and even Agent Blair, Future Nick explodes in a fabulous light show; silently ceasing to exist as the parallel universe that was anchoring him to our reality ceased to be.

"Well that was anticlimactic..."
"I wonder if that will play out somehow later..."
"My eyes won't uncross."

After some discussion on the art & science of time travel, parallel universes, and observer's-viewpoint paradox, Agent blair has a thought -

"We need to get to the scene of the crime!"

The team loads into various vintage muscle cars, nondescript government cruisers, and Valkyrie motorcycles and heads to the last known location of Raven's Pot: The Gilcrease Museum.

30 minutes later, at the very northwest edge of Tulsa proper, the museum awaits; a beacon in the darkness of the wooded hills across the river. The Downtown skyline fills the night sky, and our band of do-gooders gather to assess the situation. By consensus, it is decided to try the rear service entrance, as the front of the complex is locked and darkened for the night.

Malak and Derek both consider breaking & entering, but before their plans can come to fruition, Nick rings the bell and the door opens on silent hinges.

A security guard opens the door, featuring a broad-nosed, grizzled visage and a large, bulky frame. Pinned to his not-quite-official looking leather duster is a name-tag that reads: O'rourke.

"We're closed - whadaya want?"

Chris flashes his badge, and all are ushered inside.

" 'Bout time yall showed up. The local fuzz dudn't know howr ta make heads er tails outta all this mess."
Noticing the grey cloaks, the guard mutters "Wardens huh? Must be a bigger can 'o worms than we figured."

The team begins scanning, investigating, and questioning. The security guard''s name is Merv, and he's worked in the museum for over 20 years, and seldom seen a break-in happen in such a manner. He's also a bit standoffish, crude, and a tad lewd. He directs the crew to the site of the break-in; a large gaping hole in the southwest gallery. Derek is unimpressed with the wreckage, Nick fiddles with his phone-gadget, and Hannah ripostes Merv's crude pick up lines with a cool flick of her hammer. Chris is in the process of requesting a manifest of the missing items when malak realizes that not too many museum security guards would know warden when they see one.

Malak opens his third eye, and nearly loses his mind.

The image of Merv O'rourke, mildly irritating security guard is replaced with a 12 foot tall berserker, wielding a huge great axe in each hand, atop a pile of defeated enemies; screaming with joy or maybe ecstasy – and covered in blood.

With a grunt of effort, Malak closes his wizard sight. Merv starts, and turns to Mal.
"'taint polite to stare bucko, 'specially without a bye-yer-leave. You like what you see?"

"What are you?"

O'rourke snuffles, clearly unimpressed.
"Apparently somebody with better manners than you, kid."

Unmiffed, but with his pride beginning to sting, The Playboy warden locks eyes with Merv O'rourke, and initiates a soulgaze.

Whatever info was gleaned or shared in that moment, only they could say. But the tension in the air evaporates, and the investigation continues.

"Help yerselves to some coffee, I'll get that missing items report for yas."
Merv shuffles off into the darkness of the closed museum, as our team of supernatural sleuths begin their efforts anew.

With a pop, the security lights blow out, leaving all in darkness. The steady pounding of huge drums fill the inky blackness.

Hannah's voice is small in the dark:

"Anyone else hear those drums?"

SESSION TWO “The Nick of Time”

With things veering toward the nevernever, Hanna, Chris and Derek decide it’s time to get help from the wizards. In the morning they make a call to Nick and Malek and plan to meet that evening at Caz’s.

During the day, Hanna does some researching on Sindri, as well as pulling up whatever she can about the cauldron and the Denarians through her Monoc files.

Scene Change “Caz’s”

While seated at a back table, the three fill in the two wizards on what has transpired so far. Malek and Nick fill in some gaps on the Denarians. Before much else can happen, there’s a light show outside that seems to be coming from somewhere very near to the Center of the Universe (Which happens to be a block or two away).

Caz grumbles something about temporal instabilities before going back to his bartending. Nick and the others decide it’s worth investigating and take a walk to the bridge. They find a large crater in the cement, with slagged concrete and metal (very terminator-like).
Nick sets about trying a spell to tap into the city camera that watches the bridge. He pulls up the footage on his Black”magic”berry, PDA thingy and the group is able to watch the light show again, but it blows out the camera before we can see what emerges from the energy sphere.
Agent Blair is able to find strange scuff and drag marks leading to the bridge edge. As Hanna and Blair are looking over the edge, their startled by a large and grumpy troll. While the troll isn’t anything near friendly, he also doesn’t try to eat anyone. He tells the group that he just saw Nick emerge from the energy and go somewhere below the bridge. He mentions something about mechanical spider thingys.
Malek is able to sense traces of strange magic under the bridge, and using that as a guide, the group moves toward the river a mile or more away.

Scene Change “Down by the River”

Stepping through a bit of broken chain link fence, Nick tries a bit of tracing magic and realizes with a shock that what they’re following has his exact magical signature. It’s at this point that another Nick steps out of his hiding spot and greets the group.
Unlike our Nick, this one is strapped into some kind of Doc Oc-only spidery, contraption. He explains that he is Nick from the future come to warn everyone that the future is extremely ugly, due to the pot reshaping the universe (or somesuch). He explains that it’s crucial that Derek doesn’t visit the church… When we tell him he’s too late and we did that last night, he curses and says then it’s important we watch out for the Witch hunter.
Malek considers busting Nick for breaking an important law of magic, but decides against it.
The once and future Nick disappears. Everyone’s head hurts if they think about what just happened too much.

SESSION ONE "The Pot Thickens"

Tulsa.

Hanna gets an unusual call from her mentor Brokk. “You need to get to the Tower pronto.”
Agent Chris Blair gets a similar call, only this comes from a mysterious woman named Lilly, who Chris believes might be linked to the Summer Court. Lilly tells Chris he would be wise to be at the Viking Tower at 3:30.
Derek is leaving a gig near Caz’s when Johnny Ravenclaw literally bowls into him, quite agitated. “You need to get to Viking Tower man! Something big’s going down!”

Scene Change “Viking Tower”

The three meet in the lobby of Viking Tower. The woman at the information counter tells Hanna she’s expected on 44.
A few minutes later they speak with Brokk, who tells them that Raven’s Pot (Ymir’s Cauldron) was recently stolen from a museum in town. Bad things always happen when the pot get’s stolen. Before he can say much more he literally disappears.
Soon after, the building shakes, security screens cover the windows and the power goes out. By emergency lighting, Hanna calls her Monoc supervisor, Mr. Oliver. He’s surprised to find she’s in the building, but instructs her that something big and scary is going down on the top floor.
Defying all fire codes known to man and gods alike, the three ride the elevator to floor 79, where they find a fiery mess.
Making their way carefully to the stairs, they find then find a bloody mess. Weapons drawn, they step through the doors and are confronted by a horrible sight. A hulking creature that seems to be some cross between grizzly, goat and rune covered demon looks at them with two sets of eyes. It’s covered in blood and gore and standing amidst dead and dismembered former Viking employees and a shattered circle.
And it’s really fast.
Before Hanna, Blair and Derek can do much more than gawk, the creature takes Derek by the throat and hoists him high, threatening to rip his head off if anyone moves.
No one moves.
The creature names itself as Ursiel, a member of the order of the Blackened Denarius. It informs them that it will return what it has taken in exchange for the Cauldron. It then tosses Derek across the room and jumps into a black hole in the floor.
In the aftermath, Blair looks over the scene, finding: The circles were meant as containment. Some of the employees were valkyrie. Other feathers were found too. Hanna finds a survivor who informs her that Odin’s spear, Gungnir, was stolen. As firefighters and the police arrive, Hanna calls Mr. Oliver and leaves the building.

Scene Change “Caz’s Bar”

They confront Johnny Ravenclaw at Caz’s. He tries to bolt but Hanna’s too fast for him. As his stoic friends look on, Hanna, Derek and Agent Blair question him. They get nothing. It’s as if he’s been magically kept from spilling the beans. He actually passes out.
Hanna calls Brokk, finding out that he isn’t in Tulsa, and that wasn’t him in the office earlier. He suggests that it was probably his brother, Sindri, a real bad egg.
On their short walk back to their vehicles, Blair spots Gruff’s falling from the sky and staking out spots outside of Caz’s.
The trio head back to “question” these new players.
They get very little in the way of information before the Gruffs attack. Derek and Hanna make short work of them, sending them both screaming back into the never never. The two in the back of the building are likewise dealt with by an unknown source (thought to be Worm, the bar owner/dragon or possibly some really powerful wards).
Heading back into the bar, they get a talking-to by Worm before offering Johnny and his social club a ride to the local catholic church.

Scene Change “The massive catholic church.”

The group is let in by Charlie, a little “mentally challenged” boy.
They meet Robyn, the head groundskeeper, who seems to know Johnny and be concerned for his welfare. Though she’s put off somewhat by Derek, she gives the group a limited information dump, telling them a little more about the Denarians and explaining that the cauldron in their hands could create all kinds of wickedness. She’s really not all that helpful before kicking them out.

In the alley outside, the group meets Barnabus, a mutt with the lowdown. In exchange for a bacon flavored potion, he tells them they really need to contact Old Chauncy if they want to find out what’s really going on. Hanna has her reservations about dealing with a demon, but hey, who knows.

Dresdenfiles Tulsa

Yet another RPG world. This time with the new Evil Hat, Dresdenfiles RPG. We're all big fans of the books and are having just as much fun playing in the world so far.

Brady - GM and storyteller
Kevin - Hanna Storm - Fledgling Valkyrie
Dave - Derek Wildfang - White Court Glampire
Mike - Malek - Playboy Warden of the White Council.
Selena - Nick - Technomage
Scott - Agent  Blair - FBI Agent/Arcanist