I, Demon: This is getting interesting…

This is my play session log of our re-started d20 World of Darkness game (written by Monte Cook and published late last year). I’m writing in character because it allows me to explore a more narrative writing style, but I’ll pepper it with Out of Character (OOC) comments on the actual game.

The main thing one must know about the game is that because of complete lack of product support (and setting incompatibility with other WoD books, since the underlying story is drastically different). we are actually playing more of a Shadow Chasers d20 Modern campaign with d20 WoD character classes.

Dramatis Persona:

• William Gunther, Awakened Human, played by Yan
• Duncan Clark, Werewolf, played by PM
• Brook Didler, Vampire, played by Mike
• Citation Needed/Vicky Fox: Demon, played by your’s truly
• GM: Franky

An atmosphere of distrust and suspicion pervaded my first few hours in the Shadow Chasers squad of the Chicago branch of the IDA (Intrusion Detection Agency). I wouldn’t want it any other way.

My introducing myself with my chosen name succeeded in impressing my peers, causing them to have fits of barely suppressed trembling and stifled gasp while trying to avoid my seeing their reaction.

They adopted it and shortened it to CN, probably to better deal with it…

So far so good.

We got an assignment quite rapidly. An IDA investigation team went into some sort of college to investigate a possible infiltration by agents of an organization called the Pentagram (I need to check who they are, someday).

Of course, they got into something bigger than they could handle (as sheep are wont to do) and Agent Jake Ernstery called in for the evacuation of the whole campus on account of it being attacked by apparently undead animals. He also screamed somthing about his partners having been killed.

That’s where we came in. When people can’t deal with whatever shit the Nightmare Wave generates, we were to go in, kill everything that isn’t natural and we let the sheep clean up afterwards.

Works for me.

Before we left, I went into my office, took my Vicky Fox freelance journalist form and called in my contact at the Daily Enquirer, Chicago’s yellowest tabloid rag , and promised them a full video account of what was happening at the college.

I love screwing up with the public’s mind, when all the sheep are together, there’s more cerebral material to screw with.

OOC aside: While joking around with Graham, trying to find a name for my Demon, I told him that everything the character knew about the world was gleaned from Texas Newspapers, Wikipedia and Fox News. We naturally came up with the name Vicky Fox. While it’s an easy gag, it really fired up my imagination for a sideline freelance reporting gig. Franky graciously went with it.

To get there, my partners suggested that I travel in the vehicle’s trunk so as to not create unnecessary panic, which seemed sensible.

Once there, we saw that the whole campus’ main building was cordoned off by the Metropolitan Police with some entry points barricaded and others being guarded by the Swat team.

We decided to enter from the kitchen’s delivery dock, letting Gunther our stealh specialist, do some recon. Clark, like a guard dog, was watching me closely, unable to get itself to trust me… Good boy, have a bone!

The building was mostly silent, punctuated by periodic screaming and animal cries. However, the decoration was vivid, to say the least, as human gore and entrails were everywhere.

We finally found a few laboratory animals ripping some freshly deceased students in a classroom. The animals charged us. One bit Gunther solidly (OOC: A crit that dealt 2 points of Constitution) but we moped them all up in mere seconds…

It seems that even when turned into ghouls and twice their size, lab rats, dogs and cats are not that dangerous.

We later found the labs and killed all the zombie animals that were trying to burst out of their cage.

How mundane… At that point I was fearing that all that ‘fighting the supernatural’ buisness was going to be dreadfully boring and that I would have to start killing my partners to make things more interesting.

We finally made our way to the building’s amphitheater where we spotted Agent Ernstery fighting against a whole menagerie of those undead housepets. We jumped in the fray and made short work of them all.

Ernstery, or whatever it was, reeked of supernaturalness and was really intent on going to the building’s basement to save his remaining partner.

We tried to confront him but we came to a standstill, no one trusting each other.

Thinking that keeping him close to us was best, we followed him to the basement. There, Diggler and Gunther started sneaking while I followed Ernstery and, ironically enough, Duncan followed me.

Quite an amusing trio of distrust and paranoia we made.

Shortly after, we finally found another group of zombie pets. As we were engaging them, they were joined by 2 humans whose’s skins had been flayed off and who tried ripping chunks of our flesh to feed on them.

One managed to rip part of my body, but he was solely disappointed to realize that my ‘flesh’ is actually nothing more than clay and rocks given life by my considerable will.

Yeah, choke on this inside-out man!

As predictable as a ‘pedia entry on Scientology will get edited, Ernstery revealed itself to be the true enemy and went after our rear-guard Awakened human (Gunther) with a Katana… Yawn.

Things were getting busy… but Gaunther told us that he could handle Ernstery himself. That he did by promptly blowing our predictable turncoat’s head with a well place assault Rifle burst (OOC: Critical hit, 11 points of Constitution damage, booya!).

Then Ernstery, or whatever it was, finally became original and managed to stay up and continue fighting sans head! It was quite entertaining to see our vampire duel a headless man Meat Clever vs Katana!

I was ‘wounded’ several times during the fight, only to have the satisfaction of ‘healing’ as fast as the Flesh rippers were tearing chunks off my body, absorbing chunks of concrete and cheap plaster.

After we spent more than a minute clawing, biting and shooting the thing that Ernstery was, we started to suspect that it couldn’t be killed by ‘classical’ means.

That’s when good old perceptive Gunther (I’ll grant that the Awakened are aware) noticed that a previously slain flesh ripper had a canvas bag tied to it’s waist. He reached in it and pulled a, wait for it… grinning demonic Head…

Which he promptly blew away with a high-caliber bullet… the rest of its body fell to the floor.

Maybe this will be fun after all.

I must say that my partners were a lot more interesting that I had initially believed… I might not kill them in their sleep after all.

We finally found the headless demon’s diary and it was filled with whatever it is that corrupted, summon-a-big-evil-only-to-get-killed-by-it write in these things. I pocketed it for later reading.

I stayed behind while my partners returned to the tell the authorities to clean up. I recharged my Anima by sweeping through the numerous bodies.

I also took my Vicky Fox form again and started filming the carnage, spinning quite a colorful tale of mutilating aliens, terrorist cannibals and escaped Zoo animals.

Shortly after that, as the media shit storm abated, things took another interesting turn.

Clark, Digler and I were picked up by a limousine where we were treated to a tedious monologue by a lieutenant of the local Vampire crime boss.

(OOC: As Franky was working up into his speech, I asked him, out of character, if he would mind my character interrupting it to ask the bad guy to cut to the chase. He said to go right ahead. I really didn’t want to barge in and break his GM groove).

After I cut him from his lovely speech, he went for the bottom line. The crime boss wanted us to act as insider agents in the IDA in exchange from protection from both the vampire and werewolf gangs of Chicago.

As I felt my vampire and werewolves friend tense up, I told them we were in fact already part of an Inconnu organization that we couldn’t name and that we had already infiltrated the IDA. I told him that I didn’t see how our 2 organizations couldn’t cooperate.

I concluded that we would consider the offer in the best possible light and would most likely contact them whenever the occasion came up in our later missions.

(OOC: I love weaving that kind of BS, I was really having a ball!)

I also mentionned that in order to maintain our cover intact, it was quite possible that we would hit their organization on occasion.

Our host graciously agreed to let us go, giving Didler the address of the local Vampire bar.

We ended up briefing our Awakened friend of our meeting and we broke up to our respective function until our unit was called again.

Game conclusion:

It was a really nice session. It was action driven and it ended up with a bit of roleplaying.

The supernatural classes rock. The Vampire and Werewolf are killing machines in combat. The Demon is an absolute blast to play with it’s nearly at-will shapeshifting and various mind-screw powers.

However, mechanics wise, the Awakened humans suck. Sure they are overloaded with high attributes and skills… (which are absolutely useless in combat).

By re-engineering his character from a Melee fighter to a Sniper, Yan made it into a workable character… but from a fun standpoint, much like 4e tries to address, having 3 players have fun with powers while your character has high non-combat ‘skills’ sucks… especially if you like to fight too.

We leveled up to 3 (we were 2) and we’ll reconvene for another mission next month.