The Pallbearers: Demons, Kaiju and Flame
This is a double session report, since the score spanned two weeks of play. In this one, the crew was confronted during dinner by Setarra, a powerful sea demon with a mission: go to the docks and find a stone idol dredged up by the dredging crews. They were then to return the idol to the bay at all costs. For payment she offered some coin and an arcane workshop for their lair. After a little bit of debate, the Pallbearers decided to do as she asked.
Ashen Crow (Leech) used his previous connections with the Iruvian noble Tasha to get the crew a boat, and they used that for a stealthy infiltration of the docks from the water. When they were confronted by a dockworker, Herrik (Slide) and Finni (Cutter) teamed up to knock him unconscious, and then Herrik pulled off a Desperate/Limited roll to imitate the worker’s voice and deflect suspicion from another worker. The crew then disguised themselves as inspectors and headed out into the docks. Veretta (Whisper) had previously used Attune to determine the position of the idol, as it was basically a black hole of mystical energies, and she led them to the warehouse where it was being kept.
They were stopped by two guards, who seemed sluggish but intent on keeping them out, and after a bit of arguing they drew the attention of the dockmaster Ox Ahuja, who Finni is currently gunning to take down. After they presented some documents and a good argument Ox relented and agreed to let them inspect the idol. That was when Ashen Crow noticed a curious acrid black fluid leaking out of the warehouse. With the doors opened, Veretta and Finni stepped inside while Herrik left to procure another boat. Inside the warehouse Veretta and Finni eventually found the light switch and threw it, revealing that the idol was leaking that black goo, and suddenly one of the dockworkers grabbed Veretta, leaking the same goo from his mouth and nose. Finni clotheslined the worker, and much to his surprise he decapitated him and revealed that he was almost entirely black goo holding together a thin layer of skin and muscle.
Seeing this, Ashen Crow ran for the crane device, which was holding the idol aloft. Using it, he raised the idol into the air, out of the warehouse as all hell broke loose and half the dockworkers dissolved into goo that began to attack the other half and the crew. Ashen Crow fended one off with a fire oil grenade. Herrik attempted to enlist the help of a sailor on one of the ships, but botched, revealing that the sailor was a goo monster that attacked him after dissolving its skin, and Herrik’s resistance roll put him over the edge. Ge fled the scene by throwing himself over the side of the boat.
At that moment, Veretta jammed some of her arcane miscellany into the goo and attempted to Attune and take control over it. The players suggested a Devil’s Bargain: her attempt would wake up something else in the process. I loved it and the roll was pretty good, causing all the goo to take weird geometric shapes and freeze up, but at the same time there was this immense sucking sound as the water level dropped momentarily and out of the bay rose a baby leviathan, called from its slumber by Veretta’s telepathic force.
Seeing that the situation was rapidly deteriorating, Ashen Crow overloaded the crane and used it to launch the idol into the bay, aiming for the leviathan, scoring a direct hit on the beast that also shattered the idol, revealing that it wasn’t a statue, but a shell encasing some sort of demon that proceeded to fall into the inky black water. Veretta used her control over the goo to force it to roll into the water as well, and Ashen Crow started tossing grenades, setting the docks on fire as he, Veretta and Finni jumped into a waiting electroplasmic carriage. In predictably action-movie fashion they escaped the inferno and the raging leviathan with a stylish jump through the dock gates and fled back to their hideout in Six Towers.
Herrik returned home a few hours later, stinking and filthy with a new Cold trauma, and the crew was rewarded by Setarra with the agreed-upon coin and room for working with rituals and arcane inventions. She left with the promise of more work later down the road. The leviathan was eventually brought down by a docked leviathan hunter, but not before causing great damage to the docks and Whitecrown, and now the corpse is being drained of blood, causing the water levels to drop in the city’s canals as the massive underground space it occupied is filled in by water. The Ministry of Preservation is moving dirt and stones from older sections of the city to dump into the evacuated cavity, and a cult that worshiped the slumbering monster is out looking for the people responsible for waking it up.
Meanwhile the Pallbearers have decided they want to push the Gray Cloaks out of Six Towers and have enlisted the help of the Iruvian Consulate to do so. Next session they’re going to make a daring raid on some Gray Cloak turf and attempt to take it from them.