Mid-West Campaign
Session Thirty-Three

Thursday, 14 December 2000 (continued)

Realising the agonising death that awaits David, Harlow shoots him in the chest killing him instantly. The spray of blood briefly outlines the horrid form of the Joker! It has a broad but wiry body with long, almost simian arms and long, delicate fingers that end in hooked claws. Its face is narrow, with exaggerated, angular features. The nose, the chin and the ears are all unnaturally pointed. A row of sharp spines climb from centre of its brow to it swept back, crooked hair. It moves toward Nathan, its reptilian eyes glowing red on red, a knife gripped in its hand and drool trickling from its fanged mouth.

Suddenly the scene shifts and Harlow finds himself in a comfortable room, well-appointed with red velvet. He wears his own body and not that of Lehoaoah. He has been plucked from the verge of death by Lillian Winter who is sitting languidly on a sofa. She informs Nathan that he is in trouble (no shit).

Suddenly the scene shifts again. This time Harlow is inside a castle facing a man in battered armour. He has summoned Harlow. The man pulls back a curtain and reveals a land of storm, replete with the sounds of metal hitting flesh and screams of agony. The man says:

"First there was stone and magic was easy; Then there was bronze and magic was bound to stone; Then there were words and magic became hard; Now there is science and magic is just remnants."

He goes on to tell Nathan that what he faces is an accumulation of rules. That research is needed, and that there will be acceptable losses. He gives Nathan a Six of Hearts and says, "For the days of Lore and places I cannot go." He then opens a second curtain that reveals sunlight and soft meadows. His face immediately begins to blister and bleed, his flesh dissolves as he begins to decompose.

Harlow reappears in front of Lillian Winter. She had nothing to do with his disappearance (and didn't even know Harlow had gone until Nathan mentioned it). The Armoured Man is evidently not working with Lillian. She tells Harlow that he has 2.1 seconds to live and that he must strike a deal if he wants to survive. She says that she wants a life for a life - that she will spare Harlow if he will help them remove an "impediment" that bars their way. She bombards Harlow with questions. What are his greatest desires? Does he want to live?

Harlow is terrified and unsure what to do. Lillian won't answer any of his questions (including the identity of the impediment) until he agrees, but he doesn't want to deal with the devil. He hides the card on his person and rejects her. He is returned to the real world and prays for forgiveness as the Joker fillets him for a second time.

The lights snap back on in the west coast HQ. Jane contacts everyone again, assuming a great deal of time has passed. She cannot raise Nathan and rushes to the vault room. She finds him dead on the ground, his hand over a wound in his sternum. It takes Jane a little while to regain her composure after seeing Nathan dead for a second time.

She speaks to Schult, who says he sensed some sort of demonic entity and offers to ward the building against further intrusion. Jane readily agrees, upset that this hadn't been done before. She contacts Eisenstein who sounds like he can't take more bad news. He tells Jane to keep the Joker's involvement away from the New Orleans team for as long as possible.

After a quick examination of the crime scene, the bodies of Harlow and David are taken to cold storage. At this point Special Agent McKraken calls from the airport - he was ordered to LA with Burchill and Ecks, but he is late. He gets a taxi to the HQ. Despite this loss they have to crack on with the case. Reasoning that further autopsies won't reveal much, Jane orders Ecks and Burchill to the scene of the crime while she and McKraken investigates the west team's case files - after all, the vault is now open.

At 11:30am Burchill and Ecks travel to a group of eighteen corrugated iron warehouses in an isolated bay up the coast from the city. They were last used during the second world war, and are still owned by the navy. Ecks conducts an extensive ballistic and forensic analysis of the scene and discovers the following:

The agents were clustered around a low wall in the corner of the warehouse that used to be the office space. One assailant approached the warehouse from outside and jumped twenty feet straight up, through a high window and down into the warehouse while firing an automatic weapon. He dropped Wilson and Goldfarb without missing a shot. Three people came through the main doors. One man with a handgun calmly fired killing Cummings and hitting Goldfarb and Hilderbrandt. Another jumped forty feet across the room (from a running start) and delivered a fatal blow to Tate. The third assailant is wearing white silk shoes. He stops just inside the warehouse and doesn't seem to do anything.

Outside Burchill finds tracks from the car the four assailants used: a sedan. According to the police, the two cars and motorcycle belonging to the west coast team have been impounded.

It takes McKraken four hours to crack the password on the west coast computer so Jane searches the west coast team's offices discovered two badly drawn pictures that are obviously by Cummings's two daughters. She then checks out their vault for and finds five years worth of weird.

There is a large black rod two feet long and two inches in diameter; a CD marked "Demonically Possessed" that Jane leaves well alone; a thick square of brown hide that seems to come from no natural creature; a jade pendant with a Chinese symbol upon it; a half-brick with dried blood on that seems unnaturally interesting. Very odd. Most of these items are eventually transferred to the mid-west's evidence locker. There is also a case of CDs where the west coast team have recorded their wills. Jane watches a couple and becomes thoroughly depressed.

Eventually McKraken cracks the code and the pair begin to read through the west coast cases. The team was just coming back after six weeks leave and there were only two open cases: 0008-GCF and 0015-GCF.

While Jane is reading the cases, McKraken puts on the jade pendant just for a laugh. It takes possession of his mind. He no longer understands what Jane says to him and tries to make a bolt for the window. Jane intercepts him and they fight. The pendant has give McKraken martial arts skills far superior to Jane's. She tries to take the necklace from McKraken but he beats her to unconsciousness and jumps out of the window.

Jane is revived by Schult who volunteers to trap McKraken in the maze, which he does by enclosing it in a globe of darkness. Todd races him and manifests an intense hatred for "The Scotsman" who injured Jane. Jane is led to bed.

In the evening Burchill and Ecks return and are appraised of the situation by Jane. They research the pendant. It was apparently found by the west coast team in a clay urn in Chinatown here in L.A. while on the trail of a mirror ghost. The west coast team believed that the pendant was the gift Mai Sei Ben brought to the funeral of Hao Chen. The jade pendant that McKraken is wearing has the Chinese character for Talent upon it. There should be three other pendants one for Strength, one for Skill and one for Confidence.

Suddenly everything seems to be coming together in the case of the west team's murder. Four pendants and four fathers of the Twisted Way Triad. Three superhuman attackers killed the west coast team, plus one man in silk slippers who probably killed Doctor Summers with a gesture. Jane realises that the pendant may have the power to bring back the dead. If it worked once it might work again - on Nathan Harlow.

Ecks questions Schult about his origins and discovers some of the history of the house and the west coast team (link to new page on the west coast team). The SF nerd in Ecks believes that there is an alien space ship beneath the house and that Schult is really S.C.H.U.L.T. - some sort of artificial life-form like on Voyager! Schult admits to be 5221 years old.

Friday, 15 December 2000

Just after dawn Schult leads Jane, Ecks and Burchill through the maze to restrain McKraken and take back the pendant. They are all wearing body armour and carrying tasers. McKraken attacks Jane who manages to hold him off long enough for Burchill to taser him into unconsciousness. He is brought back into the house and the pendant is removed.

In the HQ's morgue Jane exhumes the body of Nathan Harlow/Michael Hunt. With Ecks and Burchill ready to taser Nathan's corpse if anything happens Jane places the pendant around the neck. She immediately feels incredibly weak as if all her energy had been drained. Suddenly the body contorts and snaps its restraints. Ecks and Burchill taser it repeatedly and the body begins to change.

The pendant sinks below the skin and bonds with the chest. The body alters shape and form. Suddenly the body of Lehoaoah is gone and in its place is the original body of Nathan Harlow. Nathan sits up. He lives again.

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