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Showing posts with label Online Gaming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Online Gaming. Show all posts

Sunday, June 2, 2013

The Hermetic Oder of the Silver Twilight

We meet with a Mrs. Clark, who is the wife of James Clark.  Mr. Clark is missing.  He is a lawyer in Boston.  Our meeting took place in our office in Boston on a Wednesday morning in July of 1927.  We invite her in after she knocks on our office door.  It's raining outside when she tells us that her husband has been missing for two nights.  She last saw him Monday night at 10:00 pm.  Mrs. Clark informs us that her husband has been spending a lot of time at the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight which he joined about three weeks ago and that on the night he went missing he took the car keys and his wallet, but left the car parked in their driveway at the house.  She also tells that he used to meet a friend of his, a Mr. James Henry, at a local pub before it closed down due to prohibition.  The friend, as far as she knows, is abroad in Europe at the moment, but may be back now.  She gives the address of Mr. Henry's home.  She tells of an article in the Boston Globe mentioning the order and that she informed someone of our investigation at the order who may be a doctor.  Mr. Henry, her husband and Mrs. Clark are approximately all the same age, since Mr. Henry and her husband had gone to school together.  We thank her for her time.

We start our investigation by going to the Boston Globe and the clerk there tells us that all the articles are at the local library.  We then split into two groups; one group goes to the library, Mr. Graham, a professor of psychology, and Mr. Seldon, a private investigator, while the second group consisting of Mr. Williams, a Geo-chemist and myself, Dominic Hastings, investigate the home of Mr. James Henry.  We drop off the two at the library and go to the home.

While in the library, George Graham and Hari Seldon search for the article in the Globe.  George finds a book on something and runs into a friend, Frank, who has recently visited the Lodge of the Silver Twilight.  Frank found them odd, friendly, a weird number of employees, almost too many.  Explained that some rooms are locked and access is restricted to the first floor of the three story lodge.  He tells that employees block access to the stairs leading to the second floor.  He remembers a gentleman with pocky skin who may have been the leader of the lodge, but lead the meeting regardless.  He also says that there was an older gentleman named Scott in another room talking and although the building was in pristine condition that he couldn't like the amount of secrecy they seemed to have.

Outside Mr. Henry's small house stood a descent well-cared for garden.  We visited his next door neighbor who seemed very standoffish and just downright creepy and cared nothing for his neighbor.  We notice his other neighbor across the street, who tells us what we just witnessed about the next door neighbor, but also tells us that Mr. Henry is also missing and that it was also in the paper.  We go back across the street and try talking with his next door neighbor again about Mr. Henry's disappearance and he pulls a shotgun on us warning that he'd shoot if we didn't leave.  He told us nothing, so we left and went and picked up the others at the library.

We decide to visit Mr. Clark's law office and find it occupied by a female secretary and his law partner.  The law partner said he saw a light on last Saturday night and assumed Mr. Clark was working into the evening which he normally did and that Mr. Clark had invited him to join the order, gave him the normal meeting time of 5:00 pm and the address of the lodge.  He also mentions a Dr. Call who is a member of the order and gives us his contact number and tells that he normally works out of his home, we also receive the address of the lodge from him.  We call the doctor from the law office, he tells us that it isn't good for us to be seen together and will meet us at the lodge during the next meeting, tonight at 6:00 pm.  The doctor seemed very worried.

We try finding records on the order at the courthouse, but find nothing.  We decide to grab a bite to eat before heading to the meeting.  We discuss that we should act like acquaintances at the lodge, that we are not investigating the disappearances and that we should go our separate ways once inside.

The meeting takes place across the Charles River in the Cambridge area of Boston.  The house itself is three stories tall.  We notice Dr. Call outside the lodge smoking a cigarette.  Ash walks over to talk with the doctor and says that members are restricted from talking with nonmembers.  The rest of us head inside the lodge into a large foyer with two reception rooms, the larger of the two being on the left behind the coat-check room.  I check my overcoat and get a ticket.  I move into the larger reception area and see one of the people that runs the lodge along with the pock-faced man and an animated and energetic man in a wool sweater and a German accent.  A move across the foyer into the smaller reception area and see a young man drawing a lot of attention.  I attempt to get closer to the young man and am bumped into by a tall, burly man. I apologize for bumping into him and he starts a conversation with me, asking a lot of questions.  Turns out he is cop, speaks with a slight Irish accent, joined the local force recently and his name is Terry.  I tell him that I am a private investigator that finds things, like artwork and missing items, that I am not investigating the missing members of the order, and although lying to him seemed like a good idea at the time, I have my doubts.  He walks away and notice him writing something down on a pad of paper.

I head to the restroom, spying Ash Williams in the foyer and whisper to him that the pock-faced man is in the larger room.  I come out of the restroom and sit in the lounge looking out for Dr. Call.  I do not see him anywhere.  I search the dining room, don't remember him in the two reception rooms, and see that an employee is guarding the rear steps and the front ones in the foyer too.  The employees look like security guards.  I go and sit in the lounge, after a while, the meeting seems to be winding down, so I go and introduce myself to John Scott.  I had overheard his name while he was speaking with Ash, also overhearing that his bodyguard is named Mr. Reed and that the other leader of the meeting is named Carl Stanford.  I notice that the pock-faced man is John Scott.  Mr. Scott doesn't know me and although I was expecting something, was disappointed when I received no recognition.

We leave the lodge and go to the office.

This is where my character left off and I left the online chat.

Until next time, have fun and safe gaming!

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Call of Cthulhu online, episode 1

So, my first Call of Cthulhu game where I am playing an investigator who is a Criminal.

I started by picking up one of my friends from the Asylum in Arkham, and went out to an old farmhouse to help my other friends investigate something strange that an acquaintance of ours, a Mr. Rupert Merriweather had asked us to finish on his death bed.  I had just arrived in Arkham in time to talk to him before he passed and he begged me to go out to this farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and help the guys investigate something he did when he was younger.  He showed my a list, and he was the last alive, said that they were keeping something bound in that farmhouse, but since he was dying, it would escape and he didn't want it to escape, they had done some kind of magic summoning thing at the farmhouse years ago.  Anyway, I said yes  to the request of a dying man.  Just because I break the law sometimes, doesn't make me a bad person.

So I picked up James, I think his name was James, from the Asylum and drove out to the farmhouse.  Saw the rest of the guys standing outside staring at a corpse of a raccoon.  I said, "Hi, what's going on?"

I was answered with shrugs and a recap of what exactly was going on out here.  Something about a murder, and trying to stop something from killing, and looking for a translation of a ritual to perform so we can stop the something from killing.

We went into the house, and looked in the front room, saw a couch and it smelled like rotting something coming from the couch.  Me and Zach, we'll call him Zach, moved the couch against the wall and found a nothing, but some rats.  Looked around the room and found a trap door that lead down to a cellar and another door leading into the attic.  Heard some noise coming from under the floor boards, like scurrying, stomping on the floor didn't stop it completely, just temporarily.  We moved on, there was five or six of us all together, but I don't we were all there.  Anyway, we moved on into the kitchen or back room, there were only two rooms.  Searched the back room, found the translation in an old cigar box, along with two containers with powder, one white and oily and the other brown and sawdust-like.  I pocketed a box of wooden matches, don't know why, maybe they'll be useful later.  The guys were talking like we found the powder of Ibn Ghazi.  I had no idea what they were talking about, but it burned in the fireplace after igniting the embers with an old wool blanket that was lying there next to an open can of beans, which were eaten by what we assumed to be a squatter or hobo, anyway, heard the noises again from under the floor and we went to go look in the cellar.  Found the hobo hiding.  Said he had leave or something, but we held him there and questioned him, he didn't seem all there in the head.  Said he had to get his things from the other room.  I said,"What, your can of beans?"  I don't think that is what he was talking about.  We let him go into the other  room, he bolted to and through the back door, we let him.  Nothing but field for thirty or forty yards, don't think that far, since he kinda disappeared while we was talking.  We should have been able to see him still, but he wasn't anywhere to be seen.  Thought he fell in a hole.  Nope, no hole, his tracks just stop in the grass, don't know what happened.  We started talking about what might of happened to him, and we came up with some pretty far-fetched, but logical ideas.  We can't see him, so he's invisible, but he doesn't leave tracks, so he can fly, but he's got to be able to fly and turn invisible at the same time, otherwise we would have seen what happened to him since we was pretty much staring right at him run away, couldn't have looked away more than two seconds.  Heard a noise, this one came from up in the attic.  Went to go up in the attic, take a picture with my camera since the only picture I did take was of a warding symbol that was drawn or carved all over the house.  So we was talking about what we were gonna do, and we heard something out in front and it was the hobo getting a ladder to go up in the attic.  He had the cigar box, don't know how he got it, but he did, and he was gonna give the cigar box back to what was in the attic, we helped him, didn't know he had the cigar box at the time, and I followed him up the ladder, but he said the door was stuck, told him to put some weight behind it and force it open, probably just snug.  He did, and he was overcome with some kind of mental thing and slammed the door open and threw the cigar box in the attic, and he must of slipped or something hit him, but he lost his balance and fell and broke the ladder.  He then ran out the back door again (which this might actually have been when he disappeared, not remembering correctly right now) and disappeared.  We then discovered that we needed that cigar box and something  about a murder victim missing a heart, the raccoon missing its heart, and something in the translation I think said something about needing a heart, not sure.  Anyway, we dragged the table up from the cellar and fixed its leg and used it to reach the door in the attic and I think Zack hoisted me up or held the table sturdy, anyhow, I poked my head up into the attic and ducked just in time to miss getting charged by something up there and the door closed, somebody tried again, same result as the door slammed shut, the guy with the shotgun, who may have Zack or Zetel, not sure, but he shot a hole in the ceiling.  I noticed something run past the hole and the cigar box was just sitting there within reach of the hole.  So I grabbed at it quick like, but held my hand back while something ran past, big enough to block out that hole, so I grabbed the box quick before it had time to turn around.  Said i was gonna lock it in my truck so we'd have it when we needed it.  As soon as walked outside to my truck, this thing jumped and ran towards the woods, looked like a shadowy fox.  Didn't know nothing, crazy looking thing, anyways, we went to the village after and bought some supplies to make amulets to put this warding symbol on and I picked some stuff up and some copper to melt into amulets.  We went back the next morning and prepped the house for the ritual we all needed to do at midnight, started that, saw the farmer's wife, thought she was dead with a missing heart and a hole in her chest, but she was there, hurting and calling for help, someone went outside to help, but then she attacked him, he pushed her away and came inside and locked the door, then that hobo came back, he was at the front door, he had a hole to where his heart was suppose to be.  All the while we was completing this ritual, finished it when that shadowy fox appeared in the middle of the symbol carved into the floor, it was the same symbol they used to summon this thing, so we had to say the summoning in reverse to get rid of this thing so it didn't kill anyone else.  After finishing, I think we departed to go to Arkham or someplace to rest.

****That's as best I can remember without cheating and looking at the scenario in the book, the only thing I looked at was the name of Rupert Merriweather.  So, don't know if this is exactly how it happened, but its close and that's really good enough for me.  Well, until this next Sunday when we meet again and we start episode 2 with I haven't foggiest idea.****

Until next time, safe gaming and have fun.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Call of Cthulhu online

So, yesterday was a great day.  Worked a little in the morning, left early cause it was slow, came home to have brunch with my Mom and two sisters, then I get online and go to the forum for Call of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, and I have two private messages.  I'm like, "What's going on?"

I open the first and it's an invite to play Call of Cthulhu online.  I am literally jumping up and down in my chair at this point.  So I message him back saying, "Would love to, when?"

Then I open the other message, its for the GM, the one they call Keeper, and he's like message me, this is my Skype.  I'm like, "Sweet!"

So I go to download Skype, and because I am so happy, I totally click on the wrong link and like 5 different programs were installed on my computer.  So another hour uninstalling crap and installing the real Skype.  After getting that done, I get in touch with the Keeper of the Call of Cthulhu game and I download Mumble, which we are using for voice with a push to talk option.  So far so good, now I get invited to the Hangout on Google+ and go to the Roll20 option and then because of Adobe update, too much shit running on my computer at the same time, old 2004 Acer with Vista and 2GB of RAM,  system crash.  After waiting for 30 minutes for it to catch up, I said, "screw it!"

I shut it down by pushing and holding the button.  A big no-no if you know computers.  Anyways, last resort,  after the computer shut down, started it right away, another no-no, gotta wait like 20-30 seconds before hitting the power button to turn it on again.

Computers on, Norton wants to update, what the crap!

So, turn Norton off and shut down all unnecessary background programs, and start all over again with getting into mumble server, starting Skye, get the invite for the hangout, no problems so far, start Roll20, system crash.

I hate my computer.

Ended up using my Mom's faster and 4GB RAM computer, no problems, all I had to do is download mumble and load an update for google+ and hangouts, which didn't even need cuz her default browser is Internet Explorer.  She hasn't joined the Chrome world yet, even though Chrome is on her computer.

Anyways, long story short, I finally got my Character rolled up for next Sunday and he's a criminal.

Until next time, safe gaming and have fun!