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Part. 4- New People, New Locales What surprised me about the Innsmouth campaign was how indifferently the rest of the group was willing to do away with Shmuntz. Granted, he had fully turned into a Deep One hybrid, and was completely evil now, but at the same time, it was still the same Shmuntz that the group had gone to battle with in the past. I thought that it would pose more of a moral dilemma to the players than it ended up doing...but such is the unpredictability of players when it comes to games like these. The fact that the players have participated in the Innsmouth raid, and that Delta Green's formation is pivotal because of the results of the raid, it is not lost on me that there could be a connection character-wise between the two...but more on that later. Alas, Mike Masrick's sanity had dropped too low, and his player decided that it was best that he retire. Replacing him in the group was Bruce Sothby, the Australian illegitimate child of Dr. Richard Sothby. Bruce was a bit of a change for his player, as Zero's first character was more of the investigative type, and Bruce was more combat oriented. As the group would figure out, this unbalanced the group dynamic quite a bit. After a few weeks' rest for the characters, it was back to work- this time, they took a trek to London England, after hearing a transcript of a dream Paul LeMond had mentioned some bad goings-on there. After fights with brown shirts, giant salamanders, Serpent Men, and getting to witness for the first time some of the formidable skills that Higgins possesses (which included Higgins hefting an unconscious Thug like he was a newspaper, and shooting a bad guy right between the eyes with at .25 at the distance of about 50 feet), the group players settled in for a nice, long, relaxing cruise ship ride home. In between this last adventure and the next, James approached me to let me know that he was pretty bored with his current character, "Thug". I wasn't very surprised, considering that, he'd turned out to be a pretty one-dimensional combat character, something that the group was becoming rather bloated with. After some discussion, we came up with the idea of Agent Darren Howe, Agent of the U.S. Bureau of Investigation. "Thug", however, didn't entirely disappear; he has a recurring role as an NPC, hired by the group as bartender, cook, and security for the house. Of course, no sooner than do the adventurers get back are they faced with a case of a serial killer in Boston; the killer turns out to be "Jeremy", a not-very-human child himself. Clues from the Cornwallis house, from where "Jeremy" was spawned, lead the investigators to Transylvania, where a Baron Hauptmann lives. Hauptmann apparently has connections to this Brotherhood that the group keeps on hearing so much about. In Transylvania, the group searches out Hauptmann, and finds him residing at his crumbling, stone castle. He invited the group to a lavish dinner, and the group fell for the oldest trick in the book; a poisoned plate of food. Knocked unconscious, they woke up, only to find themselves chained up in a foul, body-infested dungeon/torture room. To drive home is point that things were hopeless, Hauptmann challenged one of the adventurers to fisticuffs. Bruce naturally volunteered, and instantly died when Hauptmann put his fist through Bruce's head. After leaving the dungeon, the group managed to free themselves, with a little help from the angel Gabriel, and in searching the castle, discovered a reason and a way to travel to the Library of Celaeno. |