LogMotW:Quoth the Raven-Jason-5

Game log for the 2022/02/27 session of MotW:Quoth the Raven, as taken by Jason

Sougand's session premonition: Sougand dreams of a man in a cage, with a big shadowy thing behind him, full of malicious intent. It's clear he's not allowed out for sanitary breaks.

Spring break has come to town. Sougand's walking home from work and sees a little girl, dressed in play clothes. She looks at him and says, "help me," and motions for him to follow her. He asks what's wrong and she says, "My brother killed me, please help." Sougand looks around but can't see any danger... presently. He follows her. Her name turns out to be Violet Evans. He's never heard of the Evans family. She leads him through a residential neighborhood and into the outskirts of town, to an overgrown driveway and a burned-out ranch house. She confirms that her brother is also the one who set the fire. Sougand also has a vague sense that there's something under the stairs. Sougand sends a group text to the Scoobies.

Jacob grabs some exorcism gear, Damien his anti-werewolf arsenal, Chet his pants, and Sammy his car keys. Soon, the gang's assembled. Sammy, like Sougand, can see the little girl, but the other three don't. Sougand describes her for them, and realizes that her clothes are forty years out of date. Chet goes in to the house and starts investigating. It smells like rotten wood, poop, and a hint of rotten meat. Hanging on the oak-veneered wall, there's a hanging with the names of the family members. Violet's the youngest, Lucy and Richard are the parents, and Gilbert's the older child. Sougand tries to sound out Violet on what's under the stairs, and she says something is living inside her brother. Chet suggests that Damien should check it out. Sammy and Sougand volunteer to back him up. Sougand attunes to the monsters in the basement and realizes they're about to eat what's in the cage. He tells Damien to hurry.

Damien rushes through, misses the bad spot, and falls through the floor. Sammy tells him he's coming down, so Damien rolls out of the way. Sammy lands on his feet and begins sweeping his cell phone light around the basement. It was finished, now it's a smoke-damaged moldering dump. He sees furnace, water heater, cage. ... wait, cage? There's a lump of something in the cage, and also a pentagram on the floor, and a walk-out door to the backyard. A big ugly thing is moving toward him, around the pentagram. It looks like a 70 year old extreme bodybuilder. Sougand hang-falls through the hole in the floor as Sammy asks the charging man to stop. The man chooses otherwise.

Jacob begins searching the first floor. He finds signs that before the fire, people were exsanguinated here. He calls Chet to come and look.

Sougand mutters curses in Armenian to jinx the old man. The old man doesn't stop coming at Sammy, who punches the old man firmly in the face. The old man leaps onto Sammy, biting and clawing, tearing chunks out of him. Meanwhile, three somethings come out from under the steps. Sougand calls out to make sure Damien sees them. Two of these things appear female, one appears male, and they seem like shambling semi-human corpsified uglies. Damien spatters the female all over the wall, which makes the smell much worse. Now Chet and Jacob hear gunfire.

Chet leaps over the hole in the floor and charges down the stairs. He runs into one of the male zombies (apparently this was Kevin) and brawls with it. Jacob looks down the hole in the floor and takes a long look. Sougand goes running to the cage, but the monster wrestling with Sammy tries to manifest a whip and slash at him. Sammy banishes him before he can use it. Sougand finds an old man in the cage, still alive and whimpering, and yells for someone to call 911. Damien shoots another zombie. Chet tries to shove the zombie off him and get away to join Damien, and makes it look easy. The zombies shamble toward them.

Sammy turns and kicks the zombie Damien just shot, exploding it like a bag of rotting meat. Sougand begins trying to get the old guy out the door, away from the zombies, and Chet hastens to help him. Sammy encourages Damien to shoot the remaing zombie and tries to heal himself, but for some reason, his injury gets worse instead. Upstairs, Jacob smells brimstone, and jumps down the hole. He calls for everyone to run, and puts that plan into action for himself too. The brimstone smell gets stronger.

Chet and Sougand get the old guy into the El Dorado, the other three hot on their heals, and head to the hospital. The old guy's whimperin. Sougand mutters a few Armenian blessings, which seems to help, although the struggle to control the resulting flow of energies gives him a bit of a nosebleed. Chet roots around in his glove compartment to find the patchouli stink air freshener Melanie left there, sprinkling the herbs behind them to stop the monster from following them.

The hospital takes the old man in as a patient. Jacob takes Sammy to his infirmary. They raid the kitchen for breakfast. Jacob goes to his lore library and researches the house and incidents therein. The monster seems to be a possessing demon called Kromax, which requires periodic sacrifices. Chet notices that the crimes seem to cluster around March 20. That's tomorrow. The victims were all killed on their birthdays. The old guy was born on March 20, 1968, which was the precise date of the first crime. Sougand figures the best way to block Kromax from getting to the old man is to ward a place against him, but he's going to need the summoning spell to devise the right blocking spell for said demion. Jacob knows a guy who knows where to find that spell, and hooks him up with all the details. It's going to take a couple hours to assemble things, and also, a goat.

A few hours later, Chet, Sammy, and Damien pile into the hospital and claim to be the old guy's family. The old guy wakes up and is rather surprised to see them. Chet reads his chart and discovers that he's Richard McKenna. He doesn't recognize them, but he remembers being rescued from the cage. He does not like being reminded of that cage. He wants to stay in the hospital, where they've been treating him so nicely. Chet talks him into leaving with them, and asks Sammy to be his lookout while he steals some scrubs to disguise the old man. Inevitably, Chet gets caught, and tries to act like it was drug-seeking behavior. He makes a dandy distraction for Sammy and Damien to walk poor old Richard out of the hospital. Turns out he's a pediatrician and knows how to get out of the hospital. Chet, meanwhile, gets arrested.

Jacob suggests using the cabin in the woods from a couple mysteries back to assemble their warding spell. Jacob does some digging to see where people use goats for landscaping, and they figure to steal one. Sougand jinxes the cameras while Jacob sneaks one out, and nobody's the wiser. They take it back to the cabin and Sougand casts the spell barring Kromax from the place.

Damien then points out that anyone else with that birthday might also be a viable sacrifice, and we'd better find them all and protect them all for this to work. Jacob looks up their addresses and then Sammy goes to visit all five of them. He kills them so that the demon can't sacrifice them. Sougand does not know this happens.

A couple hours later, a large magical force slams against the cabin door. Kromax can't cross the barrier but he's stomping around ranting and roaring. Sougand jinxes him and makes him stub his toe. Damien tries to shoot Kromax's medallion with his hunting rifle, just for the lols. Chet runs over there and tells him to stop, because the plan is working, and they just need to hang tough. Kromax slashes at the house with his whip, he rants and he roars, but the scoobies just hang in there.

After a couple hours, someone starts banging on the door. Chet and Sougand argue about letting him in until Sammy gets bored and lets him in. It's the same old guy, but now he looks deflated, and he no longer has the amulet on. It turns out that he's Gilbert. Chet yells out for someone to check his rectum. Sammy declines but does throw the formerly possessed guy to the floor. Sammy then tries banishing him, and nothing happens. Sougand offers Richard a few free kicks on his old tormentor, but Richard isn't having it.

Sougand calls for Violet, who appears and goes to hold Gilbert's hand. Sougand tries to condole her. Chet asks Gilbert if he remembers how get got possessed. He was hiking in the woods, went into a cave, and found the amulet. The gang waits out the 21st, then goes outside to see if the amulet is lying around. It's gone, maybe back to where Gilbert found it. Sougand figures he could find it with a spell, a plumb bob, and a good map, given an hour or so. He casts the spell and figures out exactly where it is. He gives Sammy, Chet, and Damien directions while he and Jacob wait in the cabin with the two of them. Jacob starts researching demon containment devices.

The search party find two kids camping in the mouth of the cave. Chet tells them there have been a lot of mountain lion attacks in the area and they should probably go elsewhere. Thing is, they've been in the cave. Sammy goes to see if the amulet is still in the cave, because of one of these two has it and might be possessed, Sammy gonna take steps. He can't find it. Kromax finds the other two outside the cave instead.

Damien shoots him with his hunting rifle, which has no effect. Chet tells the two campers to run for their lives, which they do without further debate. Chet calls out for them to get rid of that goddamn amulet they found. Cromax tries to whip Damien, who drops his gun a he drops and rolls. Sougand arrives unexpectedly at this point. Chet grabs onto Kromax's whip, just to slow him down and give Sammy a clearer shot. Sammy produces a flaming sword and swings it at Kromax, and oh wow, that leaves a mark. Damien tries to distract Kromax, but ends up falling and hurting himself instead. Sougand shouts some Armenian words that enchant the bullet's in Damien's Glock.

Chet hooks a heel on a root so he can get some leverage on Kromax's whip and holds on for dear life. Unable to swing his arm and block properly, that's more of a beatdown than ol' Kromax can take. All that's left is a charred circle of an amulet. Sammy uses magic to shatter the amulet. It could be put back together, and if it did it might work, but that should hold it for now. They take some time to throw one into the gulf, and put another into the foundation of a campus building. Also, hey look, Sammy really is an angel!