LogMotW:Quoth the Raven-Jason-7

Game log for the 2022/03/20 session of MotW:Quoth the Raven, as taken by Jason

Sougand dreams that he's in the grocery store, stopped in front of a cold case of vegetables, and reaches out to touch cucumbers. Something is drawing him to them.

Chet gets a call from Eleanor Longbaugh, the rescueee from session 1. There's a spot of bother up at her house, and she'd love it if he could come up and look into it. Chet calls Damien to invite him along, then Sougand, and then Jacob. When they swing by Jacob's place, the usual black SUV is out front. Jacob leaves via the back window and hops into the car.

The Longbaugh's butler does a good imitation of being happy to see them all, and brings them to meet Eleanor. He also offers them snacks and beverages. Anyway. One of the neighbors was out fishing, and then they found his body. He's missing some of his insides. He doesn't have any wounds, but according to Doctor William Billyups, the victim is missing his intestinal tract. The police are investigating too, but for whatever reason, she'd feel better if the scooby gang was on the case.

Jacob goes to find Dr Billyups. The cops seem to be allowing traffic between the big house and the scene, presumably because the Longbaughs are important and influential members of the community. Billyups doesn't recognize Jacob, and seems willing to talk to him. The only explanation the doc has for someone missing his guts without a wound would be a fish that burrowed up into the anus and ate the intestines from the inside out. Said guts weren't just missing - a strip of colon was hanging out his ass, turned inside out.

Sougand Googles this and gets a hit that looks like Gollum, with a liquid-filled dent in its head. It's called a kappa. It's whole gimmick is to reach up your butt and yank out your guts, unless you trick it into vowing otherwise, or make a sacrifice to it, possibly of cucumbers. Chet contacts Sammy and asks for a large number of cucumbers. Not, like, all of them, but a lot. Chet talks to the neighbors to see if he can figure out why a Japanese monster is in the lake, and discovers that one of the neighbors is Japanese, and there's a Shinto shrine on the lakeshore. A clue! If you fight one, make it spill the water out of the "bowl" in its head; that makes it stupid.

Damien tries to investigate but the cops take one look and vigorously dissuade him.

The gang decides to wait until after dark, so the witnesses will disperse, then try to lure the kappa out. In the meantime, cucumber in hand, Chet walks up to the Japanese neighbor, Mrs Kagawa, and asks her where the kappa came from. Unfazed, the Mrs says it came over with her mother. She shows Chet to the shrine and explains that her mother passed on last year. She seems to have very protective feelings about the shrine but a little vague on the issue of her mom's pet kappa. She has no idea what her mother was doing to keep the kappa from eating people. Mom didn't, to her knowledge, buy any unusual number of cucumbers. He hands her the cucumber and warns her she might need it, and that Chet and friends might be wrecking some stuff. Oh, and she is at least aware enough to keep her own kids out of the lake.

More online inquiry reveals that a kappa needs to eat once a year. That seems like an easy deal, and there's some discussion of just coming back once a year to put a cuke in the shrine and call it good. That does seem a little passive for us, though.

After dark, the gang stakes out the shrine. Sougand senses that something is interested, and then a skinny little arm comes out of the water and begins feeling around the top of the rock. Chet throws a cucumber at it. The arm grabs it and vanishes below, into the water. Chet grabs some more cucumbers and approaches the water. The kappa emerges and takes a cucmber, but it doesn't understand what Chet's saying at all. Sougand tries communicating with it telepathically, to translate for Chet. It will stop eating people for 20 cucumbers per year. Chet will take that deal! New HOA rule: your dues pay for upkeep of common spaces and also for putting 20 cucumbers a year on the shrine so the ass-destroying monster in the lake won't kill anyone.