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OPERATION CRUEL SUMMER PART 3
More deft sleuthing reveals a place of great interest, a possible cult, and certain danger.
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Transcript
What Vadim sees in this drawing is a mass of eyes and teeth that are supported on what appears to be 4 goat like legs with tentacles shooting out of the top of the mass every which way, writhing and it seems to be perhaps shitting or dropping. More mass of soupy gut like material below it. It does not look pleasant or fun. And Vadim is sad.
Speaker B:Go ahead and roll for sadness.
Speaker C:It's also drippy.
Speaker A:I got a 100 on sadness.
Speaker B:Yeah, you're sad as fuck, dude.
Speaker A:He's very sad.
Speaker B:You're fucking sad.
Speaker A:She's talented artist and she has left the world.
Speaker B:Go ahead and roll a sanity though actually from helplessness. Would you like to project any potential loss?
Speaker A:Uh, I think Vadim would probably be fine with not projecting right now.
Speaker B:You grimace at this creation and you roll in unnatural. Oh, you don't have a natural? How'd that happen? I'm gonna give you some unnatural because you need some.
Actually, everybody needs a little bit, so I'm just gonna sprinkle that out there for y'all. Something I missed during your character creation.
Speaker A:I failed my unnatural role.
Speaker B:You do not recognize what is depicted here. That fills you with again, a familiarity that discomforts you greatly.
Speaker A:Vadim snaps the diary closed and says she was very troubled girl.
Speaker C:That's right, she killed herself.
Speaker A:I think we understand that she did not.
Speaker C:Well, I guess that's what we're gonna find out.
Speaker B:Zechariah, you do find lots of information about Clark's schedule, school schedule, extracurricular schedules, and the identities of the sorority sisters who were, in your now educated opinion, after going through her correspondence, I think grooming her, trying to bring her into not just Trizeta, but into something else. They're using obvious code language. You're not sure exactly what it is, but they're using the names of food instead of something else.
You assume drugs, but it's really hard to tell. They are love bombing her in some spaces and they are tearing her down in others.
Really vacillating back and forth from positive reinforcement to silent treatment for spans at a time. You can tell that this was affecting her greatly.
She would try to respond back to them on her social media, on her dms, on email, sometimes in ways that seemed like cries for help. Other times she's nearly worshipful of these other girls, trying to earn their respect and love. Again, you can't tell the true intent here.
It seems like it's a sorority thing, but there's some subtext here you're missing because of all this coded language. As you continue to analyze over the next hour or so, Sophie emerging from the shower and sharing with these discoveries.
You can see that the next sorority event supposed to be at something called pp. It's shown up in a few other places. Not exactly sure what it is, but that's where there's something of great importance to the sorority. Capital P.
Capital P, Vadim.
Speaker A:After Sophie comes out of the shower, Vadim takes his turn.
Speaker B:Zachariah, as you continue, I'd like Sophie to roll an alertness, please.
Speaker D:Success. 27 out of 64.
Speaker B:As you're drying your hair, you stand in front of the Krongler's Delight window and kind of peek out the blinds. Fourth story. You've got a little bit of a view here, but it's mostly the parking lot. And you look down and you see something familiar.
Orange, spiky hair with a shaved side. This time it's girls with a couple others you don't really recognize.
But they're in the parking lot, standing around and sitting on the hood of a car, smoking, looking up at your hotel room. For a brief moment, you think she locks eyes with you. She smiles devilishly.
Speaker D:What the.
Speaker B:Then she turns to her friend and laughs.
Speaker D:I'm going to open the window and just yell, rachel. Hi.
Speaker B:Rachel. Is that. Hi.
Speaker D:How you doing? I didn't know you were. How are you? And close the window really quickly and then just go inside.
Speaker B:Fuck.
Speaker D:What the hell is going on?
Speaker C:Friend of yours?
Speaker D:So, not in so many words, but yes, I. Okay, so when we went to the dorm, I spoke to that girl outside just to get access into the building. She was just sitting on a bench.
Very short interactions, wasn't too pleasant. And now she's outside of our hotel and she was looking right up at us, at me.
Speaker C:So she must be part of the cult.
Speaker D:Well, I don't like to jump to conclusions, but it's. I don't think it's weird, but it's weird.
Speaker C:Well, only one way to find out. Zachariah. He starts heading for the door.
Speaker E:Whoa. Hey, hey.
Speaker B:You open the door.
Speaker E:Whoa. What are you doing?
Speaker C:I'm going to talk to them.
Speaker D:Yeah, and I'm gonna go with you.
Speaker E:Oh.
Speaker D:Since I recognize one of them.
Speaker E:Okay. All right, great.
Speaker C:Keep up the good word. Leonard.
Speaker B:Zechariah.
You move quickly enough to walk out the door and down at the parking lot to see that they have packed up in their vehicle and they're pulling out to leave the hotel.
Speaker C:I'll keep going towards the car. Yeah.
Speaker B:You start quickly making your way down the stairs.
As the car leaves the hotel parking lot, completely turns right and out of sight, far before you get to the bottom and enter the parking lot yourself. You walk up to where they were parked, and you can see several cigarette butts, freshly squashed underfoot.
Speaker C:That is exactly what I wanted to get. I will grab the cigarette butts and I'm gonna go back to test them.
Speaker B:You actually go ahead and conscript Leni to do that. While you continue pouring through this girl's social media, Lyney combines the two fluids, takes a swab, looks at it under a light.
These are bright turquoise.
So, Zechariah, when you sit back down after Lyney proves to everyone that whoever is following you appears to have some connection to whatever unnatural organism or substance the program has sent you to find the origins of, and see if it has anything to do with Molly Clark's death, which seems to have.
Speaker C:Chris, quick question. Did we get a. Like a business card from the dean of Greek life?
Speaker B:Yes, you did.
Speaker C:I would like to get Lenny to swab that too.
Speaker B:It comes back clean, no problem. Dang.
Speaker C:That would have been a twist though, right?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, but good.
Speaker C:Good thought.
Speaker B:Don't trust anybody. Might want to swab yourself too, while you're at it. Nah, nah, yeah, I'm fine.
Speaker E:Lenny swaps himself.
Speaker B:You're good, Lenny. You're clean. Uh, okay, so, Mason, you go ahead and you irked about this coded language about this location that's just two letters.
And you look at the phone and start paring through the GPS history. And there is a spot. And this. It brings you great pleasure. When you find the answer to a problem, it's like one of your favorite things in the world.
But there is a spot in a nearby public park where she has been often over the last few weeks. Lakeshore Nature Preserve has a very popular reservable part of it called Picnic Point.
And Molly Clark has been there about three or four times over the last few weeks.
Speaker C:I yell out, ooh, baby. Very sensually.
Speaker E:I'm almost afraid to ask, but what'd you find?
Speaker C:I found her pp. I found her location.
Speaker D:Is it close?
Speaker C:I share it with everyone.
Speaker D:Well done.
Speaker C:I think. I think we're onto something. Thanks. Thanks to me.
Speaker D:You know, they say when the room goes silent, an angel flies overhead.
Speaker C:I've made many an angel. And he grabs the car keys.
Speaker A:Vadim is still in the shower.
Speaker B:Vadim emerges. And it took him a long time because he had never seen a shower before. But it. He figured it out.
Speaker A:In Russia, we just have buckets. Of water outside frozen solid.
Speaker C:You could just rub the ice on us.
Speaker E:Our massive Russian audience is made out of.
Speaker B:Anyways, they know.
Speaker E:Do they know what showers are?
Speaker A:No, obviously not. I've met every Russian.
Speaker B:They stink. I'm serious. None of this is a joke.
Speaker C:I mean, once again, we are very anti Eurasian. Anyone from Europe or Asia. Don't listen, just don't.
Speaker B:Honestly, it's every country. Yeah.
Speaker C:I mean, fuck all of you.
Speaker B:Yeah, fuck every one of you. All of you humans out there.
Speaker C:And we're humans too. Yeah, We've always been human. And that's like not up to discussion.
Zachariah will throw the keys to our Russian friend here because he's been driving, right?
Speaker B:Has he seen keys before? Yeah, he saw keys earlier in the game. He knows what keys are.
Speaker C:Does he just have like. Just terrible amnesia where he just forgets everything?
Speaker B:That's my final Vadim joke. Vadim. The keys fly through the air towards you, destined to land in your hand if you so desire.
Speaker A:He hooks his index finger through the loop mid air.
Speaker B:Nice.
Speaker C:Let's go.
Speaker A:Where are we going? I just got out of shower. Let me get clothes on.
Speaker E:In catching the keys, he lets go of his towel, which falls to the floor and then reveals his trunk.
Speaker A:Like appendage with Lenny is daydreaming. Too many tips. Too many tips.
Speaker B:Talk about black goat in the woods.
Speaker C:You know what I mean, boys.
Speaker A:I want to die.
Speaker C:A lot of bush. A lot of bush.
Speaker A:Anyways, so where am I taking you?
Speaker C:And I show you on my phone.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker C:Shotgun. Get in the back. And I'd look at Sophie and Lenny.
Speaker B:So it's going to be a few hours before the sun dips down beneath the horizon and this event that you've sussed out occurs. Is there anything that you guys want to do to prepare before night falls? Or do you want to go there before night as you've begun preparing to do?
Or like, what do you. What's the plan?
Speaker E:Plans.
Speaker A:It would be funny to ambush them before they even get started for once.
Speaker E:Yeah, before they can summon something fucking weird.
Speaker D:Maybe we can set up some chemtrails.
Speaker A:Chemtrails?
Speaker C:Respirators. And gloves for the goats. And flashlights at least.
Speaker B:Yeah, you can buy respirators, gloves and flashlights from any hardware store.
Speaker C:Sick.
Speaker A:We want to make sure we're not being followed.
Speaker D:We're definitely being followed.
Speaker E:Yeah. Lenny pipes up. How do you think they found us?
Speaker A:They're following us. Well, can I roll my drive to see if someone's following me or is that not an appropriate roll?
Speaker B:Well, once. Once you decide where you want to go, I'll help you out with rolls for that.
But yeah, we've got to first kind of figure out what we're going to do once we're in the car and we're headed somewhere. I can help you out with that.
Speaker A:No, we wanted to get. We wanted to get respirators. We wanted to get.
Speaker E:Do we have binoculars? Because if this is at a park, maybe we could be able to.
Speaker A:Well, if it's in woods.
Speaker E:Oh, it's in the woods. Okay, nevermind.
Speaker C:I mean we could. We might still need them. But we are not going to pretend to be birdwatchers at night in the woods.
Speaker E:There's more just. Yeah, so we can get it. Keep like a distance and you know.
Speaker C:All right, we're also getting four walkie talkies and we're getting two binoculars.
Speaker B:I see no reason why not. So you guys spend some time buying all of these things and let's go ahead and do an alertness versus stealth. Vadim.
Speaker A:Okay, Vadim. What was that?
Speaker B:You guys can't hear my weird noises over here?
Speaker A:I did hear a weird noise this time.
Speaker B:It was like a. Oh, you did? Interesting. It's a critical.
Speaker A:Oh, you got a critical.
Speaker E:Oh, no.
Speaker C:Okay, that's good.
Speaker E:What kind?
Speaker D:What kind?
Speaker A:Well, Vadim got a 18 of 80.
Speaker B:Nice. Good success.
Yeah, you keep a good eye out seeing if any of these great success, I guess girls that Sophie and Zachariah mentioned to you are following. But you see no indication of anything like that. Just a normal trip to the hardware store.
Speaker A:Okay, so we go ahead and we buy the stuff and load it up and we'll be heading on over to the Lakeshore Nature preserve trail to find the point.
Speaker C:And I want us to park in Eagle Heights Apartments, not the parking lot for the park.
Speaker B:Yeah, you all want to trek out there? It's a pretty far trek, but definitely doable.
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean there's trails, right? So it's not like.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, it's not super far.
Speaker E:Can we try going to.
Looking at the map here, like Second Point woods or Caretaker woods, and walk out to the beach and use the binocular to see if we can see anything out of Picnic Point. Ooh, that's just in case.
Speaker B:What time of day do we want to do this? Like tell me all about it. Get me in it.
Speaker E:What time was the event supposed to happen? From the invite we saw.
Speaker B:Do you want to take a guess what time of night? Midnight.
Speaker C:Midnight.
Speaker A:It's always midnight. Dude.
Speaker B:Yeah. It's midnight.
Speaker E:Goddamn shit. Fuckers. All right, midnight it is.
Speaker B:So some sorority event is taking place at PP tonight at midnight. Everyone's invited, including Molly Clark, who is unfortunately not with us.
Speaker C: p. So like maybe we get there: Speaker A:Okay, so I see signs that say no alcohol use, no collecting or picking of plants, wood, stone, earth. So we have probable cause if they start doing any of that.
Speaker E:Good point.
Speaker B:That's true.
Speaker E:Very good point.
Speaker B:That's true.
Speaker E:Unfortunately, Paris is not here, so we will not get to use a boat. This would have been a perfect time.
Speaker A:Fucked up not bringing him.
Speaker B:Dude, you can still use a boat.
Speaker D:There'll be no swimming.
Speaker B:You can still use a boat anyways. You can swim, you can dive in.
Speaker E:Specific characters I'm disappointed in my. No one is more disappointed in me than myself right now.
Speaker C:I'm pretty close.
Speaker A:You're good.
Speaker E:You are pretty close though I will say so.
Speaker B:Tell me more. We're going to show up 30 minutes ahead of time in Caretaker's woods where we can look across.
Speaker A:Okay. But let's be serious though. We get there at 12, nobody's showing up for like another two hours because they don't want to be the last one there.
Speaker E:Yeah, it's not cool to be on time.
Speaker C:But it's an occult thing. It has to be on time or otherwise you can do it.
Speaker A:I just don't believe it. They're college kids first. I'm going to take your word for it though. We do pick a.
Speaker E:We should pick a time. Let's pick a time. Let's say 11 o'clock. We're going to get to the parking lot at 11 o'clock and then we'll.
Speaker B:So y'all want to get to the Eagle Heights Apartments parking area at 11 o'clock, park settle down, basically walk out into the trails there. It's totally fine.
In order to make your way to Caretakers woods, which has a bird's eye, well, as the crow flies view straight to picnic point where you're going to use your new binoculars to check this out from afar. Is that correct?
Speaker A:Very correct.
Speaker E:Correct Mundo.
Speaker B:Okay, is there anything else that I need to know about preparation, approach or anything else before we do this?
Speaker E:Lenny's gonna put on his anti cultist overalls. So he'll be.
Speaker B:So his normal overalls. He only buys anti cultist overalls. He's never bought pro cultist overalls on his life.
Speaker E:Correct?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker C:I mean I already got the New Balances and hiking Pants on. I'm good.
Speaker A:We're all bringing. We're all bringing.
Speaker C:Ready to rock.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:We're all bringing our guns.
Speaker B:Sophie, what weapons are you bringing with you out of Curiosita?
Speaker D:Curiosita says I'm going to bring my suppressed micro Uzi.
Speaker A:What?
Speaker C:That's sick.
Speaker D:The suppressed pistol.
Speaker B:So you go ahead and load those up into the vehicle. Any other weird things I need to know about?
Speaker E:Yes. Lenny has his knife and his pepper spray keychain.
Speaker B:Have we ever described the pepper spray keychain?
Speaker E:No, we have not. Would you like me to?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker E:It is a hello Kitty limited edition pepper spray keychain that he obtained le while visiting Japan itself. Yes. This is a rare, rare item.
Speaker A:I'm so glad you didn't go into that room.
Speaker C:Kawaii.
Speaker E:So that is the. That's. That's his primary weapon. That in a deck of cards. He does have his deck of cards which he can throw if you've ever seen the movie.
Now you see me. That's it. So now you see me. Prove to the.
The moviegoing audience that you can use cards as weapons if you are a good enough magician because you could throw them really hard at people and it can cut their face. So I'm gonna have my deck of cards with me as well to make minor cuts on the cultists.
Speaker C:Yeah. Have you never watched Batman? That's like half the bad guys.
Speaker B:Yeah, they can all do that.
Speaker A:I think that's really cool.
Speaker E:Thank you.
Speaker B:You four take both vehicles.
Speaker E:I also have a pocket notebook that I.
Speaker A:Okay, we're all bringing all our stuff. We get it.
Speaker B:Okay.
North of UW into the Eagle Heights apartments complex where you park up in the northeast corner, close to where the lush foliage of the complex meets the boundary of Lakeshore Nature Preserve. There are large buzzing orange lights illuminating the entire parking lot, almost making it feel like the middle of the day.
As you disembark your vehicles, open up the trunks of your cars and remove the equipment you've brought with you. Can't help but feel eyes ponder backs from the apartments that ring the spot that you've chosen.
But you move quickly, deftly and purposefully and soon disappear into preserve itself, crunching leaves and sticks underfoot as you travel the well marked trails obviously often traveled by hikers and joggers. Towards the east towards Picnic Point. It's a fairly gloomy evening.
There's a dampness in the air, pre morning dew, already clean to bark, leaves, twigs and stems. And you all notice that there's even a bit of dense humidity hanging around your feet, twisting around your ankles.
As you walk again purposely through the preserved trails. It doesn't take you long to reach the shore of caretakers Woods. You hear the sound of lapping water.
And as you emerge from the trees upon a steep cliff face down to a rocky shoreline, watch the gentle moon's light reflection off dark, dark waters across the way. Is your objective the many campgrounds of picnic Point. You can see this wooded area is embraced by dense, foggy clouds.
You can hear across the water the sounds of drums, perhaps laughter, yells. You can see lights flickering every once in a while, twinkling through the cloudy embankments.
Speaker C:Sick.
Since we have walkie talkies, should we have a couple people, like, closer to where all those trails come together just to make sure that no one's coming up behind us or anything like that?
Speaker B:Can you describe what you're talking about for the audience? Because they can't see.
Speaker C:Oh, yes. So the nature preserve has a bunch of different trails that run crisscross across it.
Picnic point is in this very thin peninsula that has a very big choke point near this marshy area where all of the trails kind of come together towards Picnic Point.
Thinking two of us can stay around there away from that trail, but we might be able to hear people talking or hear people moving through the trail before they can see anyone at Picnic Point.
Speaker B:You want to send two of your numbers to go closer to Picnic Point while the other stay at Caretakers Woods.
Speaker C:Not closer, just a little bit south of us towards the choke point, because the caretaker's woods is farther down the shore.
Speaker E:Are you talking about the. Where the.
Speaker C:Yeah, like before the marsh? Yeah, north of the marsh.
Speaker E:Okay.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker E:Bathrooms?
Speaker C:Yeah. North of that first campfire.
Speaker E:Number one. Okay.
Speaker C:Yeah. You see where all those trails come together right there.
Speaker E:I thought you meant the bathrooms on the east side of.
Speaker B:That's only like 800ft, so if you want to do that, you're welcome to. They'll be obviously far out of sight and calling distance, but you have your walkie talkies.
Speaker C:Okay, I'll take one of the walkies and go.
Speaker E:Lenny volunteers to go and hide. He's a stealthy individual coward without saying what my stats are.
Speaker A:What are your stats, bro?
Speaker E:You don't even know.
Speaker B:So Zachariah and Lyney, you both head south and make your way a little bit farther down the trail, While Sophie and Vadim stay at Kyrtigras woods, watching from across the water to see if they can spot any definite activity within the cloud banks.
Speaker C:And we definitely Want to hide. So we might be breaking the law and not staying on the marked trails.
Speaker D:It's probably the safest.
Speaker A:You are part of law enforcement, so you're allowed to break the law.
Speaker D:You're after.
Speaker B:The moment you step off the trail, you see a forest ranger emerge from the brush. He's in a ghillie suit and. And he says, get back on the.
Speaker D:Trail and leave because this place is.
Speaker B:Closed at 10pm so both of you are reconnoitering and stop right before going full on into the peninsula. And you come upon a little clearing. There's a few people there. The embers of a fire are visible to you through the trees.
Speaker A:Are they being cool about fire safety?
Speaker B:Vadim's never seen fire before, so he doesn't have any answers.
Speaker A:That's so unfair.
Speaker B:You can hear that someone's playing a drum. It's kind of arrhythmic bongos. It's not well performed.
You also hear someone every once in a while kind of shouting some sort of laughter, as if somebody's told a great joke. So before you're scene, you of course can hear this long before that.
Speaker E:As you approach, Lenny puts a hand on Vadim and says, should we stop here?
Speaker C:Nope. Wrong person.
Speaker E:Sorry.
Speaker B:Yep. Zachariah.
Speaker E:Oh, who am I with? Mason.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker E:Oh, fuck.
Speaker C:You volunteered, dude. You volunteered.
Speaker E:Uh, Mason, maybe we should stop here, keep an eye out.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's my plan.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker E:Yep.
Speaker C:Good talk. And he fist bumps you.
Speaker A:Are you within range?
Speaker B:Over.
Speaker C:I. I just beat back twice.
Speaker B:Vadim, you've never heard of beep.
Speaker E:So if we're the lookouts, does that mean the other two y'all are gonna move in and. Actually, I guess we're gonna watch from this point to see movement. So y'all are gonna watch from Caretaker's woods, see if anything pops up on.
Speaker B:Are you talking on the. Hold on. Are you talking on the walkie talkie?
Speaker E:Louder. No, this is out of character. I'm trying to just reorient myself with our plan.
Speaker B:Too late. Too late. Y'all are now split up. If you need to talk to the other team, please use the walkie talkie loudly.
Speaker C:I told you, we're both lookouts. They're looking at Picnic Point. We're keeping an eye over here.
Speaker B:You say this in character loudly. And the people around the bongo circle.
Speaker C:I said it before. He's just forgot because he's got a soft brain.
Speaker A:Smooth.
Speaker B:Very smooth. It's very smooth.
Speaker C:It's very soft.
Speaker E:It's the smoothest.
Speaker B:It's the smoothest, right?
Speaker E:The smoothest.
Speaker B:Y'all are kind of hanging out there. You're listening to this arrhythmic bongo drumming as well as unrecognizable speech. Sounds like exuberant laughter sometimes.
Other times just normal conversation. The mist begins to rise at your ankles. Both of you roll an alertness, please.
Speaker A:I can do that.
Speaker B:Both of you being Zachariah and Lyney who have gone.
Speaker A:I assumed you meant the cool kids.
Speaker E:49. I failed.
Speaker C:73 out of 24. Failure.
Speaker E:I'd love to roll my stealth if possible, but it's not.
Speaker B:Not calling for that. So y'all just kind of squat there next to the trail listening to this drum circle, I guess. Anything else you want to do?
Speaker E:Lenny is gonna double check that he is well hidden from the train.
Speaker C:He's gonna astral project and look at himself to see if it's easy to find him or not.
Speaker B:You again feel just fine.
Speaker E:Good, good. That's great. I just wanted the confidence. I wanted Lenny to have that confidence, that's all.
Speaker B:Okay, so y'all are just gonna hang out.
Speaker E:We're hanging tight, watching for things to happen at the moment.
Speaker A:Sophie, Vadim, we are observing through binoculars. The peninsula off trail.
Speaker B:Gonna roll your alertness, both of you.
Speaker A:Hell yeah. I got a critical success. 11. Oh, that was Sophie. Never mind. I got a success.
Speaker D:But do you also get a success. Steal her thumb.
Speaker B:Go ahead and both roll your sanities, please.
Speaker C:Oh, of course.
Speaker D:Cause we're peeking through.
Speaker E:That's what you get for being good at things.
Speaker D:Sanities.
Speaker C:We don't know shit.
Speaker D:Question mark, question mark.
Speaker B:Do you want to project any potential loss?
Speaker D:No, I will also not.
Speaker B:You hear the sound of creaking, cracking tree limbs behind you, and you both instinctively turn to look and you can see that the trees that are pressed around you, something's quickly moving the very tops of their canopies, as if a great wind has brushed across just the. Just the edges of the leaves that normally touch the dark sky.
But all too quickly, you both furrow your brows as you watch what looks like something moving from tree tree high up. Then it strikes you that there's something waving behind the limbs.
Something dark, something pendulous, long, stretching up even higher and dissolving into the black sky. And then it's gone. But both of you can't help but feel that something's standing there, still watching you. Something enormous.
Speaker A:Vadim is going to grab Sophie's wrist, facing the direction that he thinks the something is, and slowly walk down the path towards where Lenny and Zachariah are.
Speaker B:Sofie, do you allow him to take you by the hand?
Speaker D:No. I mean, I don't need lead, but I will follow. But with my weapon. Let's see which one Here. Probably the pistol, just sort of ready.
Speaker B:Vadim will also draw his pistol and.
Speaker D:I'll kind of back him up. As we make our way down towards the other guys. I'll just keep my eyes peeled.
Speaker B:You keep walking. Your head's on a swivel. You keep looking back. You can't help it. The hairs on the backs of your necks are at attention.
And you hear more cracking, more branches snapping, but you don't see anything. The noises get farther and farther behind you until you only think you hear them, but it's just as unnerving.
Before long, you find yourself nearby where the others are. You use your walkie talkies to beep until you're able to find your locations, physical locations. We are together again as a foursome.
Speaker A:Something is in woods.
Speaker E:What do you mean something is in the woods?
Speaker A:He means something is in the woods. And it is not college kids.
Speaker D:No, it was very high up. It was really dark.
Speaker E:So he starts looking around without a flashlight into the dark. Using his night vision eyes. Yeah, night vision eyes, I guess.
Speaker C:Chris, what time. What time are you.
Speaker B: It is now: Speaker C:Well, if we were made, maybe we should head towards the peninsula, Hide nearby.
Speaker A:Maybe that is where we are wanted. But maybe we have no choice. Is the sound still following us?
Speaker B:As you moved away from Caretaker's woods, the. The sound grew more and more distant.
Speaker A:Okay, so it's not following us or it's following slowly. Okay, we may be safe here. Just to keep head on swivel.
Speaker E:Now we can't see.
Speaker A:Hey, can you look at me? Do I look hidden?
Speaker E:Lenny does his best.
Speaker B:You look over. And he unfortunately didn't put any clothes on since he left the shower. He's never really seen clothes. Let's be honest, he's Russian.
Speaker E:Basically. Only the top half is very visible. The bottom half is just so.
Speaker B:Bushy. Yeah, that blends right in. That blends right in.
Speaker E:It's good. So you're like half hidden? Yeah.
Speaker B:Talk about ghillie sue. You know what I mean?
Speaker C:Yeah. There's no way for us to be lookouts here in the middle of the woods.
Speaker E:Yeah, if I can't see picnic point, I guess we should head closer. Now, at this point, then we move.
Speaker B:Do we want to talk to the people in the drum circle, or do we want to avoid them? By going through the woods.
Speaker A:Judging by the map, it seems like there's just one path and a very narrow strip of land. So you're saying woods. So I take it as wood at all along that.
Speaker B:Then any place you see green is woods.
Speaker A:Yeah, I don't think Vadim would want to go in woods at this point.
Speaker B:So you either go with COVID or you go not with COVID Which means the people in the drum circle will see you and anybody waiting for you will see your.
Speaker A:It's okay, guys.
Speaker B:I talked to them.
Speaker A:Why let them know everything is Miami Vice.
Speaker C:You do know how unsettling that is?
Speaker A:Yes. Yes.
Speaker D:No, I'm not fully with that.
Speaker A:I thought America was all with Miami Vice.
Speaker C:Zachari will get off the trail and start walking towards pp. Okay.
Speaker B:And you're gonna start moving through the dense woods.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker D:Sophie's just gonna follow behind off trail.
Speaker C:At least to get around these drummer boys, these drummer folks.
Speaker B:And Vadim and Lyney. What are you doing?
Speaker A:Vadim's gonna follow because his pride has hurt a little bit.
Speaker B:All four of you start trying to quietly make your way through the woods. Which one of you has the lowest Stealth?
Speaker D:I have six.
Speaker C:I have a 10.
Speaker A:Oh, boy, it's you.
Speaker C:Do you want me to roll that?
Speaker B:Oh, I'll take care of it for you.
Speaker C:Oh, thanks.
Speaker B:I got you covered, bro. Thanks.
Speaker C:Really nice of you.
Speaker B:You four begin crunching your way through the dense undergrowth, winding your way through trees, ducking under branches, scraping your faces in the darkness as it becomes mistier and mistier. As you plod your way through half marshy ground towards Picnic Point, you can hear cheers and more drumming in the distance.
The sounds are buffeted somehow, as if coming towards you from the inside of a room or within some sort of sound dampened cave. But there are more and more fires in front of you, twinkling through the dark. Branches and trunks of trees.
Can't judge their distance well, the mist makes things so hard, so tough to gauge. But there's laughter, yelling, and some sort of gibberish. Once in a while, it sounds like a maddened fury. Other times, joy.
You get closer and closer to one of these flickering flames and it's obvious that you've reached another clearing. You can see even from this distance that there are at least seven people here dancing or at least moving quickly. Others beating drums and yelling.
There's no telling exactly what they're up to. You can't again understand them at this distance. But you're welcome to try to get closer if you want to Observe them.
Or you can continue through the brush toward Picnic Point itself.
Speaker A:So we moved to Picnic Point. Yes.
Speaker C:Sophie, you're small.
Speaker D:Yes.
Speaker C:Do you think you can get a little bit closer?
Speaker D:No.
Speaker C:Perfect. Then let's go to Picnic Point.
Speaker D:Let's go.
Speaker B:All right, Zachariah, I'll roll your stuff again.
Speaker A:So good.
Speaker C:Ba, ba, ba.
Speaker B:You give the campfire another wide berth. And although the footing is treacherous and the darkness, especially with the ground just now carpeted and messed, you manage.
And you soon leave the yelling behind you, moving towards more of it. It seems like hours pass. You're all holding your breath almost. You have to remind yourselves to breathe.
But as you get closer and closer to what you know is the end of this peninsula, you can see that you're approaching a large, much larger flame. A bonfire, perhaps. Shadows flicker across the branches of the trees that are lit up by what's in front of it. Perhaps there's more dancing here.
You can hear definitely more than one drum being played. Something sounds more frenetic, more hurried, more anxious, more urgent. There's no joy in these words that aren't quite intelligible to your ears.
They. There's just frenzy. Something in your legs tells you to stop walking as you all halt, leaves crunching one last time.
As you peer through the dense woods towards this movement, this flame ahead of you, the yells are growing more and more energetic.
Speaker C:I like to establish if we already have the respirators and gloves on or not.
Speaker B:No, but they're hanging around your necks, and you have your gloves pocketed.
Speaker C:Okay. I would like to put those gloves on.
Speaker B:Done.
Speaker D:I would, too. I'm also rethinking now if our approach should be breaking things up under the guise of FBI.
Speaker B:If you want to say something to the rest of the team, you're welcome to do so.
Speaker C:I also put the respirator on.
Speaker D:Can you hear through a respirator?
Speaker A:Vadim sees him doing that and follow suit.
Speaker C:Yeah. I'm assuming this is just kind of like a face respirator.
Speaker D:Oh, just for the.
Speaker B:Yeah. It just sounds super muffled.
So unless he kind of yells, which he probably doesn't want to do right now, you won't be able to really understand him too well.
Speaker C:But I can always just pull it down, right?
Speaker B:Of course.
Speaker D:All right, disregard.
Speaker A:So we're just gonna continue watching?
Speaker B:Well, you can't see much from this vantage point. It's as I described. Did you want to get closer to try to see what's happening?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:I'm not gonna go.
Speaker B:Do you want to Talk to anybody or try to whisper.
Speaker A:Vadim's gonna just gesture from, like, two fingers pointing in his eyes and then point with his two fingers at the group and then walk the two fingers towards the group and make his way over.
Speaker C:Zechariah's gonna.
Speaker B:Is anybody following Vadim?
Speaker C:Zechariah's gonna point his eyes at his eyes and point at the ground where he is.
Speaker A:Vadim nods.
Speaker B:Is anybody joining Vadim on his jaunt towards the fire?
Speaker E:Lenny will follow.
Speaker D:Sophie will also follow.
Speaker B:Those two, begin to follow behind you. Is that cool with you, Vadim?
Speaker A:He's fine with that. I have a 50 stealth. That's the lowest, I'm sure.
Speaker B:You begin making your way through the woods, ducking under branches, slowly crawling, trying your best not to crack sticks or more leaves underfoot. But it's nearly impossible to get closer and closer to whatever scene awaits you.
And almost suddenly, as if someone pulls back curtain on a stage, you see the full breadth of what's been occurring on Picnic Points Peninsula tonight. There are dozen, maybe more young women moving around in something approximating a dance, a fairly large bonfire.
Most of them, however, are on their knees, shaking, convulsing.
Some are on the ground curled up in a fetal position, some sort of seizure, while others spring about, bounce, yell the words coming out of their mouths again.
It's no language, you know, but they yell it with purpose and over and over again, words that begin to take form in your mind, syllables, gibberish, syllables that seem important to this moment. They dance around while the other sisters lie convulsing on the ground. And you hear, in the darkness, sounds of a rhythmic drumming.
There's two other sisters seated, and they look frenzied as they beat their hands and palms against bongo drums. But it's behind them, behind them that's casting shadows down atop of them. It makes your eyes widen, your throats clench up in fear.
You roll your sanities.
Speaker C:Except for me, right?
Speaker B:Would anybody like to project any potential loss?
Speaker D:Nah, I'll project on Big Cell.
Speaker E:I'll project on my former colleague.
Speaker B:You know what to do. Please roll a 1D4. Subtract from willpower and your bond of choice. Oof. Lenny, that's a. Yikes.
Speaker E:Oh, it just zeroed it out, too. Oh, sorry. Hope Breton.
Speaker B:You just lost Hope Breton forever.
Speaker E:I did.
Speaker C:That's a bummer because Hope was a big fan favorite.
Speaker E:I know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker E:Hope.
Speaker B:Hope was. Gosh. Well, rip in peace. There were two massive bulbous figures behind these drummers. They sway back and forth on misshapen legs.
Must be 8, 9, 10ft tall. They look like someone's taken piles of rot, dung, glistening red meat, put them together in some crude approximation of a man.
There are asymmetrical limbs that hang off of the central bulb that makes up their grotesque pustule. Covered torsos. Their faces are layered with fat. Thick rolls of callus dripping unmentionable fluids.
Black slovenly maws agape, thick bluish paste, foamy corners of rows of teeth. Their meaty hands, limbs and appendages are bristling with veins, sinew. Despite their impossible proportions, they seem strong.
They seem powerful to you. As they sway in synchronicity with the drumming, they seem entranced. Perhaps milky, roomy eyes peer out from beneath furrowed, knotted brows.
Fires reflecting. Perhaps there's no one home. These flesh sprouted behemoths. You three stare from your spot at the edge of this bonfire clearing.
Speaker D:Sophie sort of holds back throwing up after seeing this creature.
Speaker B:All right, Vadim, before you do anything, I have some work to do with you.
Speaker C:I love it, damn it. Does he not know anything? Because he's actually from a different plane of existence and not from Russia.
And he's one of these things because that'd be sick.
Speaker B:It's me. It's my brother.
Speaker A:Time to go to space.
Speaker B:Fight. Flee. Faint. Or fawn.
Speaker A:I'm gonna go fawn.
Speaker C:Ooh, Puppy.
Speaker B:Vadim. Your hand shakes. You drop your gun and the wet mulch at your feet, sad and soft. Thud. Lydia and Sophie don't see this.
They're staring straight ahead, Sophie trying to swallow a wretch. You look at your thick, callous hands.
You watch them shake as you stand up to your full height, tears in your eyes, staring at this, this group of people who are obviously at the mercy of these impossible things, but have appeased them, appeased them with their madness. And you feel a spring in your step. You feel your knees move. You begin some sort of grotesque jig, a dance. You leave the safety of the clearing.
Lyney and Sophie see this with horror as you are revealed, dancing, cavorting, yelling to the sky. Some of those strange words that you hear them repeat. Iya ea shub nagurat. You yell. You yell it to the black sky. You yell it to the clouds.
You allow your vision to fall across and over the two grotesque, lumbering beings half hidden in darkness. You yell it again and again, dancing, cavorting. And then the women start screaming. But why are they screaming?
You're here to worship, just like they are. Their screams Are of anger, of fury. Sophie. Lenny, you have a opportunity to interject here.
As you watch some of these sorority sisters stand and begin screaming like banshees, running towards the dancing, prancing form of Vadim in front of the bonfire, silhouetted like a festive shadow.
Speaker A:Can I just say, Vadim is feeling like a snack.
Speaker B:And they run towards him at full speed, screaming. You see, one picks up a burning log out of the bonfire, raising it above her head as she screams unintelligibly but throws herself towards him.
Speaker E:Lenny picks up his walkie and just says.
Speaker B:So when he flips it on to talk to you, all you hear is women screaming.
Speaker C:I start bolting towards and maybe Lenny talking. I just start bolting towards the pee pee.
Speaker B:So Lenny, you're talking, staring, sweat coming down your brow. What do you do? These women are screaming and they have fallen upon the dancing form of Idym in front of this fire, this bonfire.
Speaker E:Lenny is gonna continue talking on that thing. He's kind of frozen.
Speaker B:Sophie, what are you doing?
Speaker D:Okay, so I apologize, but those women are screaming and just on top of Vadim.
Speaker B:Yes. One grabbed a flaming log out of the fire and threw herself upon him.
Speaker D:I'm going to pull out my pistol and attempt to shoot. I guess the person with the log, the first one, whoever's the most dangerous, the biggest threat to Vadim.
Speaker B:Yes, I think she definitely looks like the biggest threat. It looks like there's maybe five or six women who are pouncing upon him to take him down. Go ahead and fire.
Speaker D:On that note, if it's just known that this would be the Uzi.
Speaker B:Oh, I thought you said pistol Uzi sounds good to me.
Speaker D:Okay, sorry, I'll switch Uzi.
Speaker C:Should have found out which one's the wizard. I always take out the wizard first.
Speaker D:Well, failure 76 out of 60 took too long.
Speaker C:Picking up that Uzi, Vadim's face disappears in a bloody mess.
Speaker B:Are we firing the Uzi on full auto?
Speaker D:Yep. Yes. Full auto. Here she goes.
Speaker B:Alrighty.
Speaker A:You're gonna kill me.
Speaker D:I hope I don't shoot Vadim. He's down on the ground.
Speaker A:I love the image that you have going on for these sorority girls.
Speaker C:It's horrifying. They look so demented.
Speaker A:Perfect.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's perfect.
Speaker A:Never change.
Speaker B:You go ahead and you let loose and the sound of a suppressed Uzi is still extremely loud as the mechanical action and the combustion is still happening. It's just somewhat suppressed. You got a little bit lower decibel level, but you, you let loose with this thing.
Across, I guess, the group, including Vadim. Is that right? So you're just mowing him down?
Speaker D:Well, okay, so my assumption is he's down on the ground, so I'm trying to stay above him. But yeah, I'm attempting to mow them down. I mean, I'm trying to save him.
Speaker B:The chances of not hitting Vadim are extremely low because of the dog pile that has occurred on his form. But you're trying your best not to.
Speaker D:Trying my best, yeah.
Speaker B:That's the first thing everyone hears, is this report, this incredible report of the Uzi.
Speaker C:I think we should have gloves and respirator for every situation now that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker B:All right, cool.
Speaker E:Wow.
Speaker B:These women, all sorority sisters of different stripes, although dirty, covered with some sort of black liquid, sometimes blue liquid under the light and utterly frenzied, begin falling upon Vadim as he collapses under their weight.
Speaker A:Very nice.
Speaker B:One of them swings.
One of them swings the burning log kind of just threateningly as bullets fly through the air, zipping through the crowd, the flames, perhaps towards the two lumbering bulks behind it. There are still women, many more women on the ground, convulsing in rigors, various rigors and seizures perhaps, all around, scattered about.
Lyney, you're still speaking into this walkie talkie, frozen, watching the scene, watching Vadim disappear from view under these women who are tearing and ripping at his body.
Speaker E:Let me think about this. What can Lenny do? Is the question. And the answer, I think, is nothing.
Speaker B:Point trick.
Speaker C:Dress up as a sexy lady bunny.
Speaker E:And you guys want to see a card track?
Speaker D:Go punch a drummer on the face. In the face.
Speaker E:Well, there's a lot of. There's a lot of bullets flying around. You know, A little hesitant to walk out into that, so I might. What was Lenny gonna do? He's going to. He's.
You know what he's gonna do? He's gonna get out his. Do we. What kind of phones do we have? Do we have the, like the burner flip phones or like regular smartphones?
I forget which one we ran with.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker E:He's thinking to myself, what do you.
Speaker B:Want to do, buddy?
Speaker E:Well, at this point, he's kind of thinking, you know, we're fucked. And he's thinking, I need to get this information to Snedegor.
Speaker B:Okay, you're going to try to start texting in the next six seconds, so it'll take you about that time to get the phone out of your pocket.
I don't think you're going to get information to Snedegger in this exact moment where you're at the edge of a clearing with a bunch of people getting murdered.
Speaker E:And yeah, let's be clear, I don't think he is either. I'm just trying to think what Lenny would do in the situation with his small knife and his little hello Kitty. Pepper spray could.
Speaker C:Pepper spray.
Speaker E:Lenny is gonna get behind. Actually, you know what he's gonna do? He's just gonna get behind. Get behind Agent Carls.
Speaker B:You stumble backwards, dropping the walkie talkie into the damp underbrush and walk your hands and body backwards behind Sophie. Zachariah, roll your athletics, please.
Speaker C:I will. Come on. 89 out of 70. It's my good thing. It's my good thing.
Speaker B:Zechariah, you sprint at full speed through the darkness, through the dense woods, through the misty undergrowth, towards this bright light, towards now the sound of automatic gunfire. And your foot most comically snakes on some unseen route as you fly forward, spinning through the air.
For a brief moment, you slam into the ground, knocking all the wind out of you. You quickly stand back up to your feet, shaking a bit. Sophie, roll your luck, please.
Speaker D:Success.
Speaker B:What would you like to do with your turn?
Speaker D:I'm going to. I'm going to reach around and pass my pistol over to Lenny. Lenny, here, take this.
Speaker B:Wait, you're.
Speaker D:What? What?
Speaker B:Okay, so you've got your Uzi, you're firing in front of you.
And so as you're firing, you're gonna reach in, you're gonna grab your pistol and you're gonna throw it behind you at Lenny, who is crawling on the ground behind you.
Speaker D:Oh, he's crawling on the ground. I thought he just was standing behind me. I think I'm gonna take a pause to assess the damage if I've got any of those girls down.
Speaker B:You're not sure. It's just violent flailing and attacking of Vadim in front of this bonfire.
It looks like those things, those giant things, those mounds of flesh are starting to move.
Speaker D:I'd like to aim the Uzi up.
Speaker B:Towards the mound of flesh now, beyond the flames.
Speaker D:Correct and shoot. Success.
Speaker B:18 out of 60, go ahead and roll your lethality. Damage, please.
Speaker C:Oh, shit.
Speaker D:This is lethal. In bright red.
Speaker C:17 damage.
Speaker D:17 damage. So I would also probably. I'm picturing like a Arnold Schwarzenegger, just scream while I'm shooting this Uzi at this thing.
Speaker B:There we go. I was about to say. I don't want to picture that.
Speaker C:I want to meet you.
Speaker D:I thought that those sort of sounds don't come through. But no, it wouldn't be that bad. It would be screaming like a woman. But I know that that won't come through. So just so you know, you go.
Speaker B:Ahead and let loose with whatever's left in this magazine, firing bullets past the mound of people on top of Vadim, tearing him apart and into the flesh. The broadside of the flesh barn on the other side of the fire.
Speaker C:Ew.
Speaker B:You hear this thing begin to moan and grunt as gouts of blood fall out of it as if balloons have been popped inside of it.
It stumbles backwards a bit, moaning loudly, its eyes lolling back in its misshapen skull, its arms flailing backwards as it falls down onto its backside. The moaning is loud. It begins to sing. Roll your sanity, please, Sophie.
Speaker C:Ba, ba ba.
Speaker D:And as far as projecting goes, no, I'm not going to.
Speaker B:You grit your teeth and feel the last bullet leave the magazine. The other one looks over its enormous dripping head knob, regarding its fallen partner, companion, brother, who knows?
And then it turns towards you, Sophie, and with great ponderous effort begins to stamp its way towards you through the fire. Or at least part of it as it begins to snake up, its right leg doesn't seem to notice as it catches a flame.
The other one stands up, dripping great gouts of red ichor blood.
There are pieces of it hanging off like hoses that have unattached themselves from perhaps unimportant organs, pumping out more fluid onto the dirt ground. Some great effort. It grunts, continues to sing in this deep, sonorous voice, and it lumbers forward.
Speaker C:That is a lot of dice.
Speaker D:That's so many dice.
Speaker A:It's all people who are swinging at me, Vadim.
Speaker B:You don't understand why, why they hate you so much, but they do. And this enrages you. You feel their hands and their nails digging into your body.
Something hits you in the side of the head like a golf club to the skull. Somebody kicks you in the in the ribs. You feel something wheeze and groan inside your torso.
You're curled up on the ground underneath the mass of flailing, screaming women who have thrown away your obeisance like chaff from wheat as you roar pain and anguish, hate what your sanity form, evadim from helplessness. Like to project any potential loss?
Speaker A:Uh, sure, sure.
Speaker B:You lose four willpower and four from a bond of your choice.
Speaker C:Dang.
Speaker A:Bye, Yuri.
Speaker C:Don't worry. I'm coming really soon to shoot you in the head so you don't suffer.
Speaker A:That sounds super good to me.
Speaker B:Vadim. It's your turn what would you like to do underneath this nearly impossible to move bulk of women who are on top of you, kicking, flailing, beating.
Speaker A:He's gonna try to trip the one nearest his legs.
Speaker B:Unarmed, please.
Speaker A:It's a 31 of 60.
Speaker B:Are you trying to do damage in this maneuver?
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker B:Roll your damage.
Speaker A:It's three damage.
Speaker B:You grab the first leg. You see one that's rearing up to kick you again. It's dirty, scuffed, already covered with dried blood.
You notice in the flickering light of the fire somewhere from around you feel its heat. But you grab and you wrench her leg as hard as you can, trying to cause as much pain as possible to the knee socket. She stumbles forward a bit.
You hear her yell in greater fury. But she doesn't fall to the ground. Lenny.
You watch this enormous lumbering figure barrel through the bonfire again, catching part of it on itself on fire towards Sophie who has fired upon, well, everything in front of her maybe including por Vadim. And you hear something that causes your stomach to twist in greater knots.
Sound of her automatic weapon clicking audibly as there are no more bullets to chamber from her magazine.
You're crouched down behind her on your hands and feet, kind of on your back with your rear touching the grass as you crab walked backwards from your position of prior security. What would you like to do?
Speaker E:Shit my pants. Big old load. Big one. Big load right there in the pants.
Speaker B:Make a big poopy. Okay, no, no. Well, I don't think that requires a roll. So yeah, you've done that. Is there anything else you'd like to do with your turn?
Speaker E:Requires some effort. Yes, I will get off my.
Lenny's gonna get out his pepper spray keychain and attempt to distract the big old guy, big old gross dude so that Sophie is time to reload. That is going to be his attempt.
Speaker B:Cool. Go ahead and roll sanity from helplessness.
Speaker E:I'm happy to.
Speaker B:You did fail that you will need to burn a sanity. I'm treating this like suppressive fire running towards.
Speaker E:Okay.
Speaker B:An eight and a half foot tall creature. You would have to burn a sanity to get up and run towards it in that fashion with your pepper spray keychain.
Speaker E:Let's do it.
Speaker B:Awesome. You fumble in your pocket and you feel your fingers grasp around your trusty keychain. At the same time you rise to your feet.
You can't believe what you're.
But you're willing your legs to march you forward through the mist covered foliage out into the clearing past Sophie who continues to point the gun Forward towards this encroaching beast. You stride confidently.
Speaker E:Confidently is generous.
Speaker B:Raising the keychain, wielding it, brandishing it with a fervor you didn't know you had. I assume you want to use it.
Speaker E:Yes.
Speaker B:Let me see how that works. One sec.
Speaker E:Yeah. There's no damage or lethality. There's no role.
Speaker B:No, no, no. But there's a role for it to be effective. Yeah, I think it's a Dex.
Speaker C:That wasn't good, Lenny.
Speaker E:God damn it, Lenny. Lenny has decided out of 70, that's a failure. It's a pepper spray keychain failure.
Speaker B:You go ahead and press down on the dispensing kind of button on top and this cloud of utterly pungent, eye stinging, nostril watering material bursts into the air. And you're extremely disappointed because you can see even in the dim light, even in the flickering lights of the flames, you can see it.
It just has no reach. It sort of hangs like a little hazy obstacle in the air between you and it as it continues to lumber towards you.
And you feel the fear well up in your breast as it continues unabated in you and Sophie's direction. Go ahead and. Oh, you can't check your decks. Never mind. Sorry buddy.
Zachariah, you are kind of loping, almost monkey running now that you've gotten up towards the sound of gunfire, the sights of flickering flames through the branches of these trees, the screams, yells and other impossible to place groans almost sound like a song that can't be. And as you do, you fumble through the foliage where you think you threw or dropped your gun when you fell.
Your heart leaps when your hand grasps the hilt or part of the barrel of the weapon. You pick it up as you continue your headlong dash towards certain terror. What would you like to do with your turn?
Speaker C:I would like to keep terror dashing towards the melee. I haven't been able to really see anything, right. I just kind of see through the forest shapes and colors and that's pretty much it, right?
Speaker B:Flame. Exactly.
Okay, so at the end of your turn you do burst through into the clearing where Lenny, Sophie are standing nearly side by side as something enormous bears down on them. It's bulbous dripping silhouette accentuated by the flames behind it.
You can't help but gulp as you look up, almost stopping you in your tracks, your dead, your dead sprint. And you see the form of a man, vaguely but covered with py bulbous growths, long tubule like attachments draped across its sinewy muscular form.
Massive clusters and crusts of adipose tissue, bright yellow even in the dim light, dripping onto the ground below. And it groans. Groans loudly from within its chest, from its strange, gaping head knob. Sounds like a song to you.
It sounds like it's singing as it strides towards your fellow agents. And you roll your sanity. Team.
Speaker C:I will.
Speaker D:Welcome to the club.
Speaker B:Would you like to project any potential loss?
Speaker C:Yeah. I'll project on Carl, the child that I do the little brother program with.
Speaker A:You should not be a big brother.
Speaker B:Very nice. Roll A one D four.
Speaker C:Three.
Speaker B:All right. You will lose three willpower and three from your little brother.
Speaker C:That's. That made me sad. Okay. Do I still get a turn?
Speaker B:Yes, you do.
Speaker C:Sick. All right. Using the power of hating my little brother carl so much, I will.
Speaker B:Wait, wait, wait. Did you already hate him and now, like, that's crystallized in this moment of terror?
Speaker C:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker C:I do it for spite. Yeah.
Speaker B:Okay, we're gonna dive into that in your home scene if you survive, but okay, for now, I'm just gonna accept it at face value, so please continue.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:I'm going to levy my gun and fire at wherever that sound is coming from.
Speaker B:Got it. It's the enormous bulk I just described. I will let you do that. For sure. It's gonna be a minus 20% just because of the utter surprise.
It would be more, but you're so close that you do have a decent chance, even in this quick, like, almost hipshot moment, to actually hit it. So go ahead and roll with a minus 20%.
Speaker C:So I'm looking here. I don't have a gun in my inventory.
Speaker B:Oh, that's. Yeah, you only have a tire iron. I see that. Why did we think you had a gun?
Speaker C:I don't know.
Speaker B:We just assumed you had a gun.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, here's what we'll do. We're gonna go ahead and roll a luck for zachariah in this moment of uncertainty and poor GMing skills.
Speaker A:Now, you can blame the players.
Speaker C:That's your purview 98 out of 50.
Speaker B:All right, so we're gonna just straight up sigh that you did not bring a weapon that fires cartridges with you, but you do have your trusty tire iron grasped white knuckled in your right hand.
Speaker C:Sick. All right, I guess I'm going to run towards the thing. Can I reach it in this distance?
Speaker B:I will let you roll a sanity. We'll do the same thing we did with lyney.
Speaker C:Cool rolled.
Speaker B:You passed.
Speaker C:Oh, hell yeah.
Speaker B:So you see this and fight or flight takes over. Adrenaline starts Pumping. You launch yourself from the edge of the clearing straight towards this thing.
Tire iron grasp tight and you roll your melee weapons. Minus 20%.
Speaker C:All right. Minus 20. I pass.
Speaker B:Roll your damage.
Speaker C:I'm gonna bash it for five. No, six. Plus one. Hell yeah.
Speaker B:Very nice.
Speaker C:He's lucky I had my tire iron. Cause I was about to use my watch.
Speaker B:And like I cannot wait for that to be clutch later on in these.
Speaker C:Rounds, he's not ready for it again.
Speaker B:You launch yourself at this enormous creature and you slam you this tire iron, the bent part of it sinking deeply into what you think is the origin of this deep, sonorous, singsong dirge that's emerging from the beast. And you watch and feel as this strip of hardened metal crunches down into what could be a skull. Sounds like shell of a coconut being split. It's loud.
And a deep red claret starts flowing out of the massive hole you've made next to what looks like a black eye and a yawny mouth. It staggers backward despite its height. Over you, the strange sound begins to sound. Choked, like fluid has fallen within its voice box.
Speaker C:Last chance to run, buddy.
Speaker B:You can say that next turn if you'd like. Dang.
If you're still alive, Sophie, you realize that you've exhausted your magazine and this is extremely frightening to you because one of the other things has walked through the fire towards you with some grim purpose. The other you can see is standing back up. You know you hit it with a good amount of what the Uzi has to offer, but it's getting up.
It's standing back up impossibly next to you. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Lenny step forward.
And you hear a kind of a weird hissing sound as a cloud of some milky white substance fills the air next to you. You can almost start to feel your eyes start to prickle and burn.
Then you see Zachariah launch himself out of nowhere from behind you and sink what must be some sort of club or metal pole deep within. The closest encroaching creature strides through the fire towards you. The sound is sickening too, but it staggers backwards.
Zachariah's strike has really hurt it. What would you like to do with your turn?
Speaker D:Get to the chopper? No. Okay. I thought that was funny. That was my best Arnold Schwarzenegger from last time. But nobody got it anyways.
Speaker B:Oh, I didn't hear it. Discord, cut it out. Yeah, Olivia, Discord, cut it out. It didn't have any sound. All I heard was no. And I also thought that was funny.
Speaker D:There was so much silence. I yelled, get to the choppa.
Speaker C:Like, oh, yeah, cut it off.
Speaker D:Damn.
Speaker E:I would have laughed.
Speaker D:No, I know. It was just. I tried to do my best Arnold Schwarzenegger last time anyways.
Speaker B:And it'll be on the real. But not Discord. Discord will cut you off.
Speaker D:Damn. See, that hurts your heart a little when there's no response, but you just didn't hear.
Speaker B:Just dead silence, all that. Fan service only.
Speaker C:Yeah, I have.
Speaker B:It does suck.
Speaker D:Okay, so I exhausted the one magazine, but do I have any magazines left? Because I thought I might be out.
Speaker B:Well, a luck. I don't think Sophie the cat burglar would be bringing a lot of magazines with her. But it's possible.
I mean, you brought the Uzi with you, so roll a luck.
Speaker A:You were ready to rock.
Speaker D:Boo. Failure. 76 out of 50.
Speaker B:No, y'all were really doing some recon. You didn't really load up on equipment. You weren't expecting to end up in the middle of a life or death situation versus Unnatural Giants.
So, no, you didn't bring any additional magazines, just your. I think you brought your pistol. That's all you have left.
Speaker D:That's what I have left. So I am. I'm a little bit baffled by Lenny's spray, but I'm gonna have to sidestep away while I kind of drop the Uzi and raise up the pistol.
If I can do that all in one.
Speaker B:Gotcha. So you're gonna draw your pistol as you drop your other gun. I kind of like the idea of you being ambidextrous. So that's.
That's what the scene's gonna call for.
Speaker D:Absolutely.
Speaker B:So you drop the Uzi with your right hand as you draw your pistol with your left and point it towards this creature that is now reeling a bit under Zechariah's onslaught. You may roll your firearms. No penalty or benefit.
Speaker D:Success. 30 out of 64.
Speaker B:Roll your damage number, kids.
Speaker E:When we get this one, there's another one behind it.
Speaker C:Yeah, but at least we'll be hurt and have less bullets and less sanity and willpower. Yep.
Speaker E:All around a better situation.
Speaker D:Wendy, for it gives us a 3.
Speaker B:The bullet flies forth from the suppressed pistol, and you can see it strike this creature because a bunch of black victories viscous fluid explodes like a. Like a large water balloon out of part of its armpit. You're not really sure. It flies everywhere through the air, along the ground.
Some of it splashes across Lenny Zachariah, who doesn't seem to Notice it continues to make a terrible deep choking sound as fluid fills some part of its internals.
Speaker E:Gulp.
Speaker C:And it dies.
Speaker B:A disgusting clawed hand with what looked like perhaps two or three dozen finger like appendages starts to reach out towards you, Zachariah, desperately grasping at you. Tire iron, anything it can take a hold of. It seems again desperate in its gesticulations, looking to find the source of its pain.
Speaker C:And it doesn't.
Speaker E:It's gonna find you, buddy.
Speaker C:It doesn't have to.
Speaker E:Oh, it wants to.
Speaker B:You're able to keep out of this reach despite it being almost the span of your entire entire height as it flails through the air. You duck a couple of times, trying to wrench the tyrant back out of part of its skull or chest or some spot between its shoulder and clavicle.
You're not sure. Something that crunches and grinds as you retain hold of the tire iron and you grit your teeth.
Speaker C:See, it's all about dodging. You guys get a dodge. That's it.
Speaker B:That's actually not a bad idea. It is your whole turn, but it kind of keeps you okay for nearly an entire round. All right.
The large creature getting up from behind the fire staggers onto its pendulous limbs that make up its leg. I say that because one of the knee joints is bent backward, almost like a goat's hoof. It begins with a great cry, running toward the other.
And of course you. It seems extremely angry. Great gouts of thick red fluid spill forth from look like dozens of blossoms across its chest pelvis.
This doesn't seem to slow it down as he picks up speed, running through the flames like its fraternal twin and making its way towards you.
