Rowan Tree and Red Thread

Last Thursday we had the second session of our brief Vampire Slayer in 1985 Arkham game using Over the Edge rules. It was something of a rushed affair, as I wanted to get some sort of resolution this session and not leave things hanging when we switched back to our regular D&D game the following week.

This meant that after the first session's set-up of the odd love/hate polygon between the various protagonists, this session the PCs got stuck straight into fighting baddies and disturbing sacrificial rituals.

Kevin (Pete's character) hung out at the university for a while, and figured out something was up between Gary and Ramona, who left the LARP/SCA practice session in a bit of a state. Vanessa the vampire tried to put the teeth moves on Kevin when he followed Gary and Ramona, but came a cropper when Mindy the Vampire Slayer and Jac the odd fae showed up. Vanessa's appearance did let Gary get away with Ramona and into the steam tunnels for a bit of good old fashioned human sacrifice, but luckily for Michelle (and Ramona who was backup sacrifice of choice) Mindy and her Scoobies tracked them down and disrupted the ceremony. Mid-fight one of the gargoyles turned up to try and retrieve the stolen hand of its partner (a gargoyle's hand being an important part of the ritual). Mindy was only too glad to toss him the missing hand and avoid going toe-to-toe with a big rocky bruiser.

She made the right choice, unlike Abraham, the cult leader who attempted to flee only to be brought down with a cross-bow bolt from Kevin. It's funny the things an exorcist keeps in his gym bag. With his leg injured, Abraham was just too slow to get out of the gargoyle's way and was thrown hard against the wall of the steam tunnel. Kevin helped stabilise him until trained help arrived, and the emergency response medics couldn't understand how a guy could be hit by a train in the middle of a college campus.

So we wrapped with the sacrifice averted, but a question mark over Vanessa's fellow vampire and Ethan Rayne's role in all the fun. Overall it was okay as a filler, but I should have kept the relationship map simpler and got the PCs stuck into it right at the beginning of the first session, and worried about filling in the background as we went along.