[UA] Ghost Photo

[John Scott]

At 16:08 22/01/02 +0000, James wrote:
> >>> wild at park.net 01/22/02 03:56pm >>>
> >When I ran "Fly to Heaven" for my players (Aside: highest
> >character mortality rate of any session I've ever run bar
> >Paranoia, and none of it to do with the plot),
>
>Really? What non-plot related mortality was there? Which characters died?

Sorry - I meant Pinfeathers, not Fly to Heaven. That's why the prop driven 
plane at the end was so spooky.

As for non-plot related mortality ... Spoilers for Pinfeathers and a long 
war story - delete if you wish.

I'd relocated the adventure to Winchester, in England, because it was 
somewhere that all of my players knew.  They were playing a special ops TNI 
team, detailed to deal with "weird shit".  They'd been briefed to go and 
check out this coven, and to see if they could find out what they were up to.

(Disclaimer:  I run a higher powered level of the UA game than a lot of 
people seem to.)

So, armed with Kirlean video cameras (of which TNI has 2) the following set 
off for Winchester in a people-mover.

Taxman - he thinks he's an Avatar of Death.  He might be right.
Luke - unnaturally lucky, but always at a cost to those around him.
Mikey - Entropomancer and south London thug.
Dr Taylor- Epideromancer and surgeon.
Dr. Smith - Medical Examiner / Forensic Pathologist. No weird abilities at all.

So, they get to Winchester and set up a base camp. They've got a couple of 
weeks before the coven meeting - plenty of time to get to know each 
other.  That was my first mistake.

Luke and Mikey hate each other.  Mikey has based his life around the 
principle that no one can beat chaos, and here's Luke flipping 50 heads in 
a row, because he can.  They go head to head, and start needling each 
other. Eventually, Luke dials 10 numbers at random into his phone, connects 
to the assassin on the other end who was waiting for a different phone call 
and sets him on Mikey.  Luke then decides "Screw you all, screw TNI, I'm 
out of here" and walks off the mission.

Meanwhile, Dr Taylor has been building charges by cutting himself, a 
lot.  However, to get some "serious mojo" to help Mikey (see below) he 
decides to cut half his foot off with a bolt cutter. (It did make sense at 
the time, honest.)  After cauterizing it Dr Taylor retires to bed for a 
week and spends his time in there making small cuts into his arms with a 
handy scalpel.  Only one day he overdoes it, and passes out from blood 
loss.  Dr Smith, finding him unconscious, starts to bandage his wounds and 
sew up the bigger cuts.  "Wooshhhh" go the 12 Minor and 1 Significant 
Epideromancer charges.  In revenge, Dr Taylor calls Dr Smith over to the 
apartment, where he is waiting with a kitchen knife stuck through his 
forearm into a breadboard.  When Smith turns up, Taylor pulls the bread 
knife out and with the Major charge he's just gained, causes all of Smith's 
cells to separate by 6 inches. Having seen his rival plastered all over the 
walls, Taylor then dies.

Mikey, knowing that an assassin is after him, stalks him and kills him. 
Unfortunately, whilst doing so, he BOHICAs and picks up an Astral Parasite 
(without knowing what it is ...).  After several ingenious attempts to rid 
himself of it, he decides that if he's not him, then the Parasite can't 
steal his soul.  So, with the promise of Dr Taylor's help, he decides he's 
going to pick a house completely at random, find his way there completely 
at random, burning charges everywhere.  The first person who answers the 
door he's going to kill and skin and Dr. Taylor will use his magic to fuse 
that person's skin to Mikeys.

After all that, which House could the door open in to?

So there we are - 1 MIA, 2 dead (1 murdered, 1 suicide), and one AWOL.

And Taxman?  He completed the mission despite everything else that was 
going on, and took the tapes back to TNI, along with a little gold pendant.

So I lied - there are no spoilers for Pinfeathers in that, because most of 
my players didn't touch the plot.

It was a fun session, and there were no OOC recriminations, which made it 
worthwhile.

John


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