Actual Play – Fall “Legends of the Fallen”

We started off exactly where we left off last time with Calvin trying to convince the others to go vampire hunting with him. It didn’t work so hot. Megan and Darius both looked at me like I’m crazy and Alex rolled her eyes.

Oooh, segued into first person there. Hmmm….actual play reports would be easier to write from Calvin’s POV…but maybe not.

Calvin dropped Megan home and then Alex. Sophie indicated that Alex might come around if Calvin pursueded her, but when I thought about it I wasn’t sure how Calvin would do that. He didn’t care enough about having her along to say he wanted her there and he certainly wasn’t going to say ‘please’ or beg or anything. I came up with “well, if you don’t care that there are monsters out there, fine whatever. I’ll see you later.” Sophie blinked at me. I shrugged. It all comes down to Calvin’s admitted motivation to go out and pick a fight with a vampire, he says it’s because it’s an honour thing. Of course the real reason has to do with being messed up and violent and reckless….but the honour thing sounds better. Later I used the same argument with Norm. “If you don’t mind knowing that there are vampires out there, killing innocent people and doing whatever, fine. You just live in denial.”

Sophie made it work. She said she’d meet Calvin at St Mary’s cemetary. The one on St Mary Street.
‘The one named after St Mary?’
‘That’s the one.’ Then she went into her house to have dinner with her happy family. Calvin hit the Home Depot and bought wooden garden stakes, sledge hammer, axe, machetes….pretty much everything he could think of. And a great big metal tool box so that it can all be stored in the back of his hummer. And yes, casting Jared Padalecki in this role has already turned Calvin into Sam Winchester. Just like that. But without the guns. So far.

Darius went to the old folk’s home, the one that the dead person from the bar in the first episode worked at. He didn’t get in. At 9pm he was way too late for visiting hours and he was unable to convince the security guard with his ‘innocent nerdy teenager’ routine. He did however get an ‘appointment’ to visit the next day. He also noted that the place had an awfully complex security system.

Alex turned up on time at the cemetary and promptly got attacked by a vampire. Calvin showed up in time to see her spin kick a vampire in the head and send it flying into a gravestone that then cracked in half. So, yeah. Weird super strength right there. Calvin grabbed a bunch of stakes for Alex and an axe for himself and jumped into the fray, immediately getting knocked over by the vampire and nearly staked by Alex. However I did manage to hit the vamp with my axe and do it some pretty sweet damage (axes do strength x 5!), so although Alex staked it and I had to inhald vamp dust, it was still awesome. Uhhhh the first person. I will try not to do that again.

Then Alex and Calvin heard some weird chanting and followed it to find a bunch of people in black robes sitting in a circle around a horse skull. While we watched one of them said ‘this isn’t working’ and they all took off. We hid behind a crypt so we weren’t seen, although, we’d both agreed that it was probably just the lame secret society from school….
Calvin: Hey, this is probably that secret society from school.
Alex: There’s a secret society at school?
Calvin: Yeah.
Alex: Were you invited to join?
Calvin: Hell no! Mason was.
Alex: Did he say yes?
Calvin: *shrug*
Alex: Oh well. Shall we go find some more vampires?

But just then they walked off, once they were past we looked at where they’d been because there was this this weird green light. Standing in the middle of a circle of sand that hadn’t been there previously was a tall hooded figure with a horse skull face. It created a scimitar out of sand and walked off, the grass died where ever it had stepped. Alex investigated a bit and then since we didn’t know what to do about that, we went searching for other vampires. In the course of the evening Alex killed two more and I landed a few good punches. And took a hell of a lot of damage. It’s really weird and different for me to be playing a Buffy game where my character isn’t that good a fighter and actually takes damage that can’t be shrugged off. In previous games I’ve been slayer, slayer, werewolf so I’ve had extra resilience. Calvin is just a hooman though, and he gets bruised ribs.

There was quite a neat visual of Alex and Calvin returning to Calvin’s car, the much taller Calvin leaning on Alex for support.

At school the next day Alex is chipper and gives a vague description of the thing we saw to Darius and Megan. Calvin slopes in late and is insulted by Alex, which totally ruined any of the bonding that might have occurred during the vampire hunt. She takes off and Calvin tells the others about Alex’s apparent superpowers. Megan (former geek) and Darius (current geek) wax lyrical about Wonder Woman comics. Bored, Calvin texts Mason. Mason answers the phone just as Alex comes to see him which made for a pretty awesome ‘where are his priorities?’ scene.

There is research of the horse demon and then after school we all go to the old folks’ home. We made a brilliant first impression on the receptionist…
Darius: I was just coming along because my grandmother is getting old, and I wanted to see what it’s like here.
Megan: We’ve all got grandparents.
Calvin: And they’re all getting old.

I could see that she was put on edge by Darius so I moved forward and made use of my +3 attractiveness, effectively distracting her. The others managed to sneak past and found their way to a weeping old lady who said such things as
“We’re not allowed to talk” and “the men in black suits took my husband away”. There was some faux-sympathy.
Megan: Were you married long?
Mrs Jenkins: Oh yes, 63 years!
Darius: Wow, you’re really old.
Megan: But in a good way.
But mostly they pumped her for information about the disappearances that had been happening.

Meanwhile Calvin flirted with Tiffany and stole a security swipe card. When her shift finished at 4pm, she suggested a date. Calvin agreed but realised he was the one who drove the others there. He distracted her from leaving by making out with her. There was some witty back and forth when the others discovered them along the lines of Darius judging Calvin and Calvin saying ‘yeah, and how many hot girls have you kissed today?’ and therefore winning, but I didn’t note it down.

Then there was research about the horse thingie at Darius’s house. Megan on the computer, Darius in the books and Calvin breaking the long garden stakes into more manageable and pointy stakes and recounting what he saw to Darius.
Darius: So it’s a horse skull?
Calvin: Yeah, they had a horse skull.
D: And it had round hooves.
C: Yeah….and it said it’s name was Bob and then it did a dance.
D: You could have mentioned this earlier! The dance might be important.
C: *just stares at D for a beat*. It didn’t do a dance.

Anyway, the name of the demon was discovered and it was revealed that it is all sorts of bad, summoned for revenge on enemies and requiring a sacrifice before it departs. The secret society called The Fallen must have chanted it up with a magical book.

Calvin decided to take a night off from vampire hunting and recover and the next morning Darius heard a news item about a bear that was found eviscerated by a park ranger. Rather, a park ranger found an eviscerated bear. (Joke from in game.)
Darius: a bear got eviscerated!
Megan: And?
D: Well?
M: That’s just what happens in the wild!
D: Not to grizzlies!

We figured out who one of The Fallen was through Calvin’s car recognition and Megan’s photographic memory. I tracked him down and beat him up until he told me what they were doing there and who the leader was. I was rolling poorly on my influence so I was pleased when Megan came in and assisted. Not in the punching, but by kind of playing good cop “You should tell him what he wants to know, he’s crazy. Didn’t you hear about the bear?” Xavier spilled his guts to us and we had the name of the leader of The Fallen.

Calvin then had fun breaking into lockers and the others went to class. We formulated a plan to follow William, leader of The Fallen and try and get our hands on that book.

Overall it was a good session. I feel like Calvin got to do heaps of cool things, as did the others. People are starting to carve out niches in the scooby gang. We’re still working on how we relate to each other, which I think is always the case in the start of a new game. Calvin as yet doesn’t care about any of the other characters, except that they know about monsters as well and therefore are worth being around. They will potentially help to locate more monsters that he can punch.

I think it will help too, once we have some more scenes that tie into our various back stories and important NPC connections, because that will make it easier to access more emotional depth and open up to each other as characters. Once again, I freaking love playing Calvin. Not caring about consequences is a very liberating experience.

One thing the group is suffering from a little is getting distracted and talking about non-game stuff, but again I think once we are more emotionally involved this will stop.