Now with the whole group (and mom hat) double vaccinated, we could all meet up in the hat basement for rpg funtimes. We ate some pasta and brownies and went downstairs to pick up where we left off.
SESSION SIXTEEN
The team drove out to the land of cell reception and found that the Free-Life Temple's next 'healing session' was due in a week. They asked for a Home scene which seemed like a bit of a stretch, but I said they could check off any skills they could plausibly train in the meantime. Sadie, of course, spent the week trying to get closer to Fox Tox.
The church bus drove out to another county and set up shop with a big tent in an abandoned lot. Gina stayed in the jeep to provide overwatch while Barbara, Ren, and Sadie hung around the back of the crowd. The reverend gave a normal sort of service with the usual deviations one might expect from a faith-healing sect. Ren didn't note anything too out of the ordinary with Anthropology, nothing about star people or crystals that one might expect to find out here in Montana.
Eventually it was time for the healing. The reverend brought out the 'Eucharist' in its tupperware container and called forth the sick and injured. Each explained their ailment and with a bit of ceremony, the reverend bestowed the pink fleshy wafers upon the new faithful. When it came time for Ren's turn, Sadie stepped up with him, explaining that her brother had lost his sense of taste and smell. Sadie used her CHAx5 and HUMINT to fawn over the reverend, distracting him, while Ren attempted to palm the wafer. He failed his Stealth test, but with a hefty penalty of -40%, the reverend also failed his Alertness test. One of the disciples noticed, though, and Ren noticed him noticing. The reverend was taken aback by Sadie's forwardness, he was used to grooming people after he'd gotten them hooked, but he wasn't turned off. The disciples started taking down the tent and filing into the bus but one stayed behind. He approached Ren while Sadie frantically texted Barbara her plan. Ren tried to bullshit his way out of the situation, saying he was just uncomfortable eating or drinking in front of people. But before the disciple could say anything, Fox Tox attacked from behind. With a 99% chance of success and an automatic crit, there wasn't any point in rolling. She put him into a sleeper hold and pulled him down out of view.
With the disciple whose name I've now forgotten so I'm going to call him 'Harold" bound and gagged in the trunk, the gang headed to their favorite outdoor location, the quarry! But first, they gave Ren and Harold a spray. Ren came clean, only having touched the wafers, but Harold's pinky turned a bright purple. Sadie and Ren dragged him down into the base of the quarry with a hood over his head. Barbara and Gina crouched out of view at the mouth of the quarry, the latter observing the interrogation through a rifle scope. A Luck roll established that they'd caught one of the die-hard cultists, but given his present situation, he was still somewhat forthcoming. The interrogation almost fell into the classic pitfalls of DG interrogation scenes, but Matiopia was able to feed Blue some insights into Harold's responses that she'd missed, being all caught up in the roleplay of it. Technically Gina couldn't have heard any of this, but whatever, multiple people collaborating can often simulate the intelligence of a smart character and Sadie had an INT of 11. They found that the reverend had cured Harold of his liver disease and that no one exactly knew where the wafers came from, just that Doug and Father Gauss-Wernstrom would sometimes go down into the basement and bring them back out in a tupperware container. They also figured out that the radio station was barely guarded when the reverend was out 'touring.'
Harold was left bound and gagged again. The group stood outside the cars discussing their options. Ren very clearly wanted to just 'dispose of him' while Barbara was vehemently opposed to the idea. "He's just some guy caught up in something he can't control and doesn't understand, he doesn't deserve to die for this." Gina didn't give a shit about Harold and Sadie was torn between 'operational security' and not wanting to ruin her relationship with Fox Tox. An INTx5 roll and a SAN test later, Sadie remembered the deceased William Stafford's report on a successful exorcism in Afghanistan. She proposed her plan to exorcise whatever was inside Harold in order to fully break him. Warned that it was a dangerous ritual meant to be administered by two people, Barbara and Gina opted to play cards in the car. Sadie made a show of starting to perform the ritual but their plan all along was just to kill the guy. So Sadie turned a blind eye while her brother and fellow Delta Green agent carved Harold's brain out through his ears. They were planning on making it look like an exorcism gone wrong, but decided to bury his body under a deer carcass and claim the entity within him manifested super strength and escaped.
Barbara and Gina caught up with Sadie and Ren running in the opposite direction of where they'd buried the body. The latter two feigned exhaustion and were able to convince Fox Tox of their version of events, but not that it was hopeless to follow him. Barbara and Gina ran off after a nonexistent trail and returned half an hour later. The group reconvened at the vehicles to discuss their plan. They were going to wait a few weeks until the next church service to break into the basement, but the 'escaped cultist' was forcing their hand. Suspicions were high and someone (I forget who) suggested testing everyone with the spray. To everyone's in and out of character surprise (except for Matiopia), Gina stained. Sadie and Ren were still clean after their 'tussle' with Harold but Barbara also stained. Guns were drawn and after a few minutes of tense discussion, lowered. They resolved to figure everything out later since they all clearly wanted the same thing: a cessation of wafer production, and a removal of the reverend (and possibly the deacon) from power.
Then out of the woods came a horrible moaning and gurgling, punctuated with the occasional rustling of leaves. Gina's Medicine brought to mind the vocalizations of patients with severe brain damage. But before anyone could do anything, Harold's resurrected body stumbled from out of the trees, protomatter leaking from his eyes and ears. Everyone fired, blowing chunks of him away. He faltered, a tentacle of ooze leaking out of the hole that used to be his chest, and then rapidly advanced on all fives. Ren, Fox Tox, and Gina panicked, continuing to fire, while Blue remembered the instructions, "DESTROY STAINED TISSUE WITH FIRE OR STRONG ACID/SOLVENT" and ran for the cans of gasoline in the trunk. They doused the creature in gas but were only able to light it on fire after it had smashed Ren to the ground with a collection of limbs. Gina dragged Ren away while I did my best impression of the Bennings-thing from The Thing. We called the session there.
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