After an annoyingly long hiatus, my friends and I were finally able to coordinate our schedules for another game night. We briefly covered the new errata while catching up on each other's lives and jumped right back in. They remembered a surprising amount of the situation and quickly put together a plan. Sadie would lie in wait beside the building, Ren would hide in the car, shotgun at the ready, while Hopps would actually confront Rupert. After exchanging a few pleasantries, Hopps asked if Rupert would mind stepping outside, as she had some "sensitive information to discuss."
She started off by telling him that despite his claims, Gita had been seen around his diner. In fact, she had a witness who said they thought they saw Gita killed behind the building. Rupert feigned concern as Hopps continued to push, getting closer and closer to an accusation.
"I know you know something about this. What happened to her?"
"Why, my darling, the same thing that's going to happen to you..."
Then he tore off his human disguise. Hopps immediately took a temp, rolled a 1 to project, decided it wasn't worth it to try repressing the insanity, and ran for her life. Ren kicked open the car door and blasted away at Rupert with his shotgun to little effect. Meanwhile, Hopps hyperventilated while hiding behind a dumpster. I ruled that since she had basically escaped Rupert, she could return to face him after a successful POWx5 test. As Rupert rounded the corner, Sadie found too, that firearms seemed to have little effect. Unfortunately, before she could switch to her combat knife, Rupert swallowed her whole, right as Hopps reentered the fight. Hopps used her Mind Blast spell to conjure images of Sadie ripping her way out of Rupert's belly and he vomited her out onto the snow at 0 HP. After a successful Unnatural test, Hopps made a break for the front entrance, heading for the kitchen in search of knives and leaving Ren to face Rupert alone.
By the time Hopps emerged from The Diner, a bundle of knives clutched in each hand, Rupert was already shoving Ren into his mouth. A successful Athletics roll put a knife into Rupert's swollen belly and for the first time during the entire fight, he let out a howl of real pain. He spit out Ren onto the ground and advanced upon the new challenger. A few lucky rolls were able to fend Rupert off long enough for Ren to crawl over to his shotgun and blow Rupert's head off with a lucky crit.
Hopps dragged Sadie's lifeless body into The Diner while the newly violently adapted Ren chased off anyone who was still inside with the shotgun. Satisfied the location was secure, he was able to resuscitate Sadie with a critical First Aid roll. Shaken and injured, but still alive, the group planned their next move. After reviewing their leads, Hopps and Ren left Sadie to recover in her room before heading into the bizarre bazaar. Before resorting to violence, Rupert let slip that he'd last seen Gita talking to Dario in a halfhearted attempt to frame him. With the moonbeast dead, Dario had no compunctions explaining the role he played in Gita's demise. He also warned them that Nora was serious business. After speaking with Amtal, they headed to bed with four options: destroy the mysterious box, outbid Nora, steal the box from Amtal, or steal the box from Nora.
Not wishing to push their luck with another heist or fight, they chose the financial option, though with zero idea of what was actually inside the box. I'd had Amtal offer to sell it for 6K, which prompted a brief discussion on how it was stupid that the Delta Green rules didn't allow Agents to split the cost of larger purchases. I let Winkdeath roll Ren's Accounting to resolve the matter and lo and behold, they were able to split one Major Expense into three Unusual Expenses. They loaded the box into the trunk of the car and drove away without even checking out of Isid's hotel.
They called GERARD to establish a rendezvous point to drop off this strange package they'd obtained. He gave them some coordinates and told them to wait. An hour later, a helicopter touched down right outside one of Maine's many forests and took the larval elder god off of the players' hands. Thanks, CORAL NOMAD! I initially had them roll for SAN from Helplessness to turn what they already suspected to be a magical weapon of mass destruction over to Delta Green. Blue, the only player who had read the Handler's Guide and run her own games of DG, defended the ruling to Matiopia and Winkdeath, but argued that none of their characters had reason to make a SAN test yet. We found a suitable alternative source for the SAN loss later.
Sadie and Ren milled around in the airport, trying to return to normal life and forget the fact that they'd both almost died only a few hours ago. Meanwhile, Hopps excused herself to use the bathroom. After a worryingly long amount of time had passed, Sadie went in to check on her fellow Agent. She found an empty stall filled with Hopps' luggage, but no sign of the woman herself. Matiopia announced out of character that she'd run off to go through the portal and everyone was happy to roll SAN for Helplessness. We called the session there, resolving to do Home Scenes at the start.
Overall, this was a big success. Since Matiopia had NPC'd her character, I said I'd tell her what was in the box as long as she didn't tell any of the other players. This resulted in the following exchange
Now all I have to do is figure out what the hell GERARD is going to do with this damn thing and find a short two-person scenario to run for Winkdeath and Blue while Matiopia brainstorms a new character and excuses herself from the next session due to real life stuff.
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