Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 40
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 Dec 11th 2008
So, I think I left off with us exploring the rest of the Tallyman’s house after breaking up a group of vamps, Macout zombies, and weresnakes, right? Well, after all the bad guys got away, we searched the rest of the house pretty thoroughly, but the only thing of interest we found were some papers featuring the address of a caiman farm in St. Lucia, a nearby island. Aside from that, we didn’t have much to go on, so we decided to see if we couldn’t track the weresnakes back to wherever they went. After all, they’d split up from the vamps and Macout, and we were all in agreement on a policy of divide and conquer.
Sadly, it didn’t work out for us this time. >_< Anna and Elisa did their best to track the weresnakes, but there’s only so much they could do to follow them into the ocean. I mean, sure, they could track them there, but most of us aren’t really equipped to brave the ocean depths. Except Pierre, of course, and sending him after them alone would be foolish. So we gave up on that plan of action after noting that they’d swum off in the direction of St. Lucia, the same place as the caiman farm.
It seemed like St. Lucia was the place to go, so we returned to the jet and set a course for the island. Juanita circled overhead so that we could get a sense of the layout, and it seemed like most of the built-up areas were on one end, while the rest was a boggy, swampy mess…and that’s where the caiman farms were, of course. It didn’t take us long to find the farm we were looking for. It was the gigantic crocodile beast with mouths on all of its joints that tipped us off. Sure, it was mostly hidden underwater, so it wouldn’t have been obvious from the ground, not with all the vegetation around anyway, but it was hard to miss from the air, especially when it moved. Mostly it just seemed lazy, though. Elisa and Adam informed us that this was the son of Cipatli, a pretty bad Atzlanti titan. Scary…but Adam assured us the the son was nowhere near as powerful as the mother. It was still intimidating, though, and apparently it was supposed to eat Elisa.
Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that, did I? That’s the other thing we found in the Tallyman’s house – notes on what the Aztecs were actually trying to accomplish by working with the Tallyman. This son of Cipatli beast is supposed to eat Elisa. That’s how they’re going to get the baby. We’d assumed they were going to sacrifice her child to the titans, but apparently not. They want to empower the child as one of the titans’ servants, and letting it make its way through the son of Cipatli’s digestive tract is supposed to do that. Gross. >_<
Anyway, while we were on our way to St. Lucia, night fell and I got a call from Keiko. She was still at Pierre’s place, of course. She said that Suchette had awakened. I spoke to Suchette briefly, and she wanted to help us out. Being undead, she’s can’t be controlled with cheval, which could be a potent advantage when we face the Tallyman. With Ray’s help, we gave her directions to find us in St. Lucia, and she flew out to meet us. I also talked to Keiko, and she updated me on other matters. But I’ll get to that later.
We left the jet in Juanita’s capable hands while the rest of us jumped out of the plane. Don’t worry, we had Chase, Charlie, and Rommel to fly us down to the ground, but I was still anxious about jumping. I mean, I can’t fly or anything, and I’m not sure my corpse-shedding techniques would activate in a fall… But then Ray pushed me out, the jerk. t >_< I screamed…but I shouldn’t have been worried. Chase caught me no problem.
It turns out the farm was Aztec titanspawn HQ. It was practically a military encampment with a bunch of human guards standing sentry over a number of shacks. T-Bone phased out and scouted the area to get a better look at the place and the insides of the buildings while the rest of us got a feel for the situation from the air. One large (if crudely built) structure was full of ahuizotl. Another looked like it was home to twelve or thirteen giants. And another…well, it was full of tzitzimime. But the worst thing was the Aztec dragon Adam foresaw in his prophecy was there, giving the tzitzimime orders. She had taken the form of a woman…sort of. She had feathered hair and serpent eyes. But it was apparent that she was extremely powerful, virtually on the cusp of godhood.
Aside from that, there was a shack with an evil magic circle and other trappings for rituals. That, we learned, was where the titanspawn sacrificed their victims to the titans…and to the dragon-woman (wish I could remember what Adam called her, but Nahuatl names are hard for me to remember!).
Once we knew the layout, we reconvened to make plans. We talked for a long time, considering and discarding all sorts of plans. Of course, none of our plans ended up being feasible. We just couldn’t deal with the son of Cipatli and the dragon-woman and fourteen tzitzimime. And before we’d finished planning, thirteen giants showed up (it was so weird…they somehow used the son of Cipatli’s mouth as a portal, and just walked out of it and into the camp. Not appealing, if you ask me). Needless to say, though, the arrival of the giants threw yet another monkey wrench into our plans.
Eventually, Suchette arrived about the time we came to the conclusion that our enemies were simply too concentrated at the camp for us to realistically have a shot at defeating them. We were going to have to withdraw, but leaving all those titanspawn alive really grated against most of us. That’s when Suchette gave us an idea. She has experience dealing with large concentrations of enemies in her role as the vampire queen of New Orleans, and suggested that we plant explosives to destroy the camp’s buildings. We’d considered doing something like that early one, but Suchette developed the plan in ways that really made it work. If we blew up the camp, we probably wouldn’t hurt the titanspawn themselves too much. The ahuizotl would probably die, but the rest would likely shrug off explosive damage without much trouble. However, it would throw them into disarray and force them to relocate, and we could definitely take advantage of that chaos to pick them off in smaller groups.
It was a great suggestion. Yay Suchette! ^_^. And Jacob is a retired National Guardsman with demolitions training, so he could rig the bombs up easily! ^__^ . Elisa used her contacts to get what we needed, and T-Bone phased out again and snuck into the camp to set the explosives. ^___^ I took some telescopic photos of a couple guardsmen so that T-Bone could use cheval to check on the camp before we detonated the explosives, and then we retreated to the safety of Pierre’s place before remotely triggering the explosives.
The camp went up in several huge fireballs. The ahuizotl were all killed. Nothing else was, not by the explosion, anyway, but we expected that. The dragon-woman was furious! According to T-Bone (who watched it all through the eyes of one of the guards), she tore through the camp, burning the surrounding with her fiery breath and tearing to pieces anyone who got in her way, including a couple of giants! She screamed at the tzitzimime to go find and kill us, and they shot off into the night sky…but they were probably just trying to get away from her.
Anyway, it was a job well done. And we couldn’t have done it without Suchette and Jacob. I’m so glad they’re here! Now we just have to monitor the chaos and choose our moment to strike!
In the meantime, we have another objective. We still need to track down the Tallyman. He’s the real mastermind here, and we can’t give him any breathing room lest her find a way to strike back against us (he’s already tried to strike back against me personally!! >_< But I’ll get to that…). So we returned to his house to search for more clues. Ray summoned the kami of the Tallyman’s car while Jacob and I chatted and the rest of us milled about waiting. The car was able to tell Ray a bit about where it had been, and thanks to the info it gave us, we found our way to an ocean oil rig just off the coast. The place was crawling with zombies, and it’s possible it’s the Tallyman’s headquarters…but I guess we won’t know until we hit the place. Which is what we’re getting ready for right now.
While we were resting at Pierre’s place and the others were remotely setting off explosives, Suchette and I retired to the rooms Pierre gave me and Echo. I introduced Suchette formally to Rose (and personally, I was just glad to get back to Echo and Rose again. I don’t want to leave them at all right now!!). But Suchette was really weak from her ordeals. She needed to feed in order to recover, so I offered to let her feast on my blood. I have to admit, I think we both let the feeding become a bit more amorous than we intended (and Echo didn’t help! ^_^). I mean, nothing really happened…but I did enjoy it. ^_^ And what Suchette couldn’t get from me, she got from Jacob, who also generously offered to let her feed from him (though that feeding wasn’t nearly so racy).
As I already mentioned, Keiko filled me in on a few things when she called, and she covered the details once we were back together at Pierre’s estate. First off, a bunch of Macout zombies apparently tried to grab Miko and possibly kill her. They were obviously the Tallyman’s thugs. At first I couldn’t figure out why the hell he’d want to grab Miko…until Keiko reminded me that Miko and I are deeply connected by fate. He probably figured out that taking her out would lead to my death as well. I guess he’s looking for whatever weaknesses he can find. In any event, Miko survived and managed to retreat to Yomi, where she should be safe for now. I’m really worried about her, and not just for my sake. I called her and left a message. I hope she calls me back as soon as she gets it.
Quinn’s been having trouble, again. I love her, but she has been the source of so much drama over the past year or so! >_< Anyway, her grandmother (who is a Japanese woman who married an American G.I. and moved to the States) disowned her. It had a little to do with Quinn’s pregnancy but more to do with Quinn’s announcement that she’s bisexual, which is news to me, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised (plus, Quinn was kinda exaggerating because she was mad at her grandmother). Anyway, Quinn’s pretty upset about it, so I called her, but she didn’t answer. I’ll have to try again later.
And the last bit of news is that Keiko heard from our Japanese friends via Maneki. Actually, it was really adorable. ^_^ Maneki’s always adorable. Apparently Maneki talked Keiko’s ear off for thirty minutes or so about her idea for combining rollerskating and fingerpainting, and somewhere in all of that she let Keiko know that she, Hinako, and Ryu-no-Maru were investigating something going on in Japan involving ley lines. It sounded interesting and potentially pretty big. I’ll have to get the details from Hinako. Actually, I need to call Hinako anyway because she’s apparently (still) having issues with Sayuri, who has been presenting herself in a more and more masculine fashion lately…which understandably upsets Hinako. My guess is that Sayuri’s responding to what she thinks Hinako wants in a partner, but of course Hinako feels that if Sayuri is going to be more like a man, she may as well have a man instead of a woman pretending to be manly. That’s not why she’s with Sayuri. Hmm. I gotta catch up on Flowers for Boys to see if all of this drama is affecting their work on the manga.
You know, I really don’t think it’s going to work out between those two. Perhaps I should intervene. Ryu-no-Maru and Hinako would make a great couple, and I know he likes her. ^_^
Anyway, I think the others are ready for the attack on the Tallyman’s oil rig, so I gotta go. Later! ^_^