Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 39
This account was originally found on Livejournal, I am not the original author—I am just a fan of the journal and have found reading it on livejournal clunky to navigate and rife with errors/instability (such as having to refresh multiple times due to the page in questions becoming unavailable often requiring multiple refreshes. The original post can be found here, published by DJ-Yomi, and was published on Nov 30th 2008
You know, you’d think that things would become easier for us as we become more godlike. But I guess fate has a way of scaling up the challenges we face. If it didn’t, I suppose we’d never really achieve the legendary status we must reach to become gods. The reason I bring this up, of course, if because our recent travails in the Caribbean have really been challenging! Our adversary is very cunning.
I think I left off in my last entry with us on the beach, tracking the dead henchman back to wherever he’d come from. Anna and Elisa took care of that, and it wasn’t easy. I’ve never seen them have to concentrate so much to follow a trail before (and didn’t know Anna could concentrate that much!), but the Tally Man had covered his tracks well. He obviously has some sort of power over plants…maybe even the earth itself.
We eventually came to a swamp. Instead of trying to navigate the boggy ground and waterways, we all loaded up on Charlie, Chase and Rommel (Anna, Ray, and Adam’s flying mounts). As usual, I rode with Ray and Juanita on Chase. As we glided slowly through the swamp, some of us noticed a few things. I was among those of us who saw strange floating lights like will o’ wisps in the distance. They were so entrancing…but we all managed to shake off their lure and remain on task. It was around this time that Adam noticed that the swampy woods around us were moving in a strange way…all the trees and grasses swaying in unison, for example. I never could quite see what he was talking about, but some of the others did, and Adam’s way more keen than I am, so I’m sure he knew what he was seeing.
It was Pierre’s guess that the Tally Man probably possessed the trees and other vegetation using both cheval and his fertility powers. He was following us as the land itself, and thereby keeping an eye on us. Talk about creepy stalkers. Sheesh. >_< There wasn’t much we could do about it, though. And besides, Adam seemed to think that if he was watching us, he probably wasn’t prepared for us to follow the trail he’d left, which meant that he was ready for us. For maybe the first time so far, we were one step ahead of him instead of the other way around. ^_^
That became more obvious when the Tally Man started throwing things at us to slow us down. First, we encountered a fenced in region of the swamps that served as a drug farm. The area was patrolled by some drug kingpin’s private army, and when we showed up, they were driving around in their boats fighting hungry dead that hid in the murky water. They were doing a pretty decent job of it too, but Adam’s telescopic senses allowed him to eavesdrop on their radio conversation, and he discovered that there were more people—women and children among them—trapped in a nearby house by a horde of forty or fifty hungry dead. O_O
The Tally Man was trying to slow us down, probably so that he could better prepare for us wherever we were going. We didn’t want to slow down, because the less time we gave the Tally Man to prepare, the better off we’d be, right? But we couldn’t exactly ignore the poor people who needed help. I mean, sure, they might be connected to the drug trade, but they’re also people caught in the crossfire of our war with the titans. So naturally Ray took care of things ^_^. Like superman, he flew in and helped the people being attacked by hungry dead (and apparently extremely poisonous tarantulas too…which reveals that the Tally Man does, in fact, have an affinity for and power over spiders). Yay spiders! ^_^ Boo Tally Man! >_< Ray didn’t say a lot about it, but it seems like he took care of things easily. ^_^
Meanwhile, the rest of us continued following the trail. At one point, the Tally Man made the swamp itself attack us. A huge sinkhole opened beneath us. Tree folded in, swatting at us, and a huge gout of slimy mud erupted upward toward us to knock us out of the air. I saw it coming just before it hit and commanded Chase to swerve to the side to avoid it. Can you believe that he actually had to confirm the order with Juanita first? I mean, geez >_<, you’d think he’d trust me by now as much as we’ve worked together (and as often as I’ve petted him ^_^), and split seconds of delay can (and almost did) make a difference in situations like this!
As it was, T-Bone (who was riding Wash through the swamp) and Jacob both got hit by the sinkhole attack and ended up in the mud. They weren’t really hurt, but it took us some time to fish them out and make sure they were okay.
Not long after that, we found the place we were looking for, a large three-story mansion home in the middle of the swamp. It looked like a drug lord’s lair, but the fact that it was surrounded by a defensive screen of something like seventy hungry dead implied that it belonged to the Tally Man (who I guess technically is a drug lord). We didn’t waste any time infiltrating the place. I mean, Ray was still off saving people, but we knew that if we really needed him, he’d be there for us. So Jacob broke open a window and we all jumped onto the third floor, leaving Juanita and our mounts outside.
The place seemed fairly empty at first, so we decided to be pretty methodical in searching the place. We started with the attic, and then split up into two groups (Jacob, Adam, T-Bone, and me in one group, Pierre, Elisa, and Anna in the other) to search each floor in more quickly.
The attic was…unpleasant, to say the least. It was immediately obvious that Adze vampire were using the place as a lair because the corpses of numerous children were scattered about, all of them drained dry of blood. Jacob was deeply (and understandably) upset by the sight. I tried to comfort him, but from what I gather he’s becoming a god of children, so seeing the aftermath of the vampire’s feeding hit him hard. I explained to the other that these were the same type of vampires as Suchette. Unlike them, though, she doesn’t have to feed on children; she can feed on adults, and she never feeds off of anyone so much that it will kill them (she actually has a regular group of young men she feeds from ^_^). Suchette doesn’t know why she’s so different, just that she isn’t bound by the same limitations as her fellow vampires, which is good. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that she hasn’t thrown her lot in with the titans like so many of the other vampires have? I really think we should do something about that. I mean, the vamps aren’t inherently titanspawn, which means they could really fall on either side in this war, right? It’s no different than the youkai, really. If we could convince them to support the gods instead of the titans, I think we’d have very potent allies against the titans…and the way things are escalating, I’d say we could certainly use the help.
Anyway, it was only about forty minutes until nightfall, so we decided that we needed to search the rest of the house and kill these vampires as quickly as possible (I mean, getting them to change sides wasn’t likely to happen this late in the game). Searching the house wasn’t difficult. There was a poorly hidden bear trap under a rug (what IS it with bear traps lately?), and we found a room with a lot of drugs, some canisters of what Adam and Jacob guess to be poison gas of some sort, and a number of automatic pistols, which we liberated ^_^. We also found a room decorated for Aztec ritual purposes. There were even papers with instructions on how to sacrifice heart to this Aztec dragon we’ve heard about. I hate to say it, but I think we’re going to end up fighting that damn thing before all’s said and done. >_<
We hit the jackpot on the first floor when we wandered into a large dining area and found some fifteen Macout zombies, eight Aztec weresnakes (whatever they’re called), fifteen vampires, and a couple of mortals with shotguns waiting for us. To be honest, that was a little more than I think we felt comfortable handling, especially since Elisa, Pierre, and Anna were in a different part of the house at the time (like I said, we split up to cover more ground). It was about that time that Ray zapped in on a lightning bolt to help out.
The fight that followed was chaotic. I knew the vampires could be a huge problem since they can do what I can do—you know, entrance people with their looks. So while the others attacked (and killed) two of the toughest looking vamps, I struck a dramatic pose and pointed to the others, flashing them a sly smile, and that’s all it took to compel them to just stand and stare for most of the rest of the fight. That should have let us concentrate more on the weresnakes and Macout…but that’s when things went downhill for us.
The Tally Man tried to possess all of us. He actually succeeded in possessing poor Jacob, but the rest of us were able to keep him out…at first. The Macout started to swarm us as well, and I was quickly overwhelmed. Not being very good at fighting sucks, by the way. I guess I could try to do something about that…but it would involve developing my divine ichor in ways that just don’t seem right for me… *sigh* I should probably just attune myself more with the vigor of undeath, like Pierre, to make myself more invulnerable rather than more untouchable.
Anyway, I was getting pummeled by Macout while the others fought our other enemies or tried to help me out. The combat’s a blur for me at that point. I know that I managed to shoot off a catty remark to the Tally Man (via Jacob) which badly demoralized him, and it might have been that moment of uncertainty that let T-Bone use his powers of manipulation to order the Tally Man out of Jacob’s head. Once he was in control of himself again, Jacob rushed to my aid. He put up an unseen shield to drive back the Macout. You know, he and I are an excellent team. We just need to plan these things better! ^_^
About that time I got possessed. It was unpleasant. I felt the Tally Man’s presence creeping into my mind, and I tried to fight it like I had before, but I couldn’t. He was too strong for me. Fortunately, the fight ended shortly thereafter, so I didn’t do much harm, but it’s scary to think of what might have happened if my allies had become enraptured and defenseless from the effects of my presence.
Elisa arrived on the scene at some point, literally crashing a car into the house. Why was she in a car? Well, the Tally Man had apparently possessed her too and tried to make her flee the site and come “willingly” to him…but T-Bone’s overt order forced him out of her head. So she drove through the hungry dead at the front of the house and joined us with all the action movie violence she’s famous for! ^_^
In the end, the Macout grabbed the vampires and snapped them out of my compelling presence, and they made a run for it into the twilight of falling night. Ray, Adam, Elisa, and the others chased and took down a few, so I think we were able to wipe out something like five vampires in all, and Jacob and I finished off the mortal henchmen. It wasn’t much of a victory for us, but it was a victory. We didn’t weaken the Tally Man’s forces as much as we would have liked, but he definitely lost this engagement.
As to what our next step is…I have no idea…