Keeper: Sean Nittner
Hunters: Eric Fattig, Karen Twelves, Adrienne Mueller
System: Monster of the Week
Supplement: Tome of Mysteries
Campaign Overview
Overview of the entire campaign here: Agents of Cisra
Adventure Log
Stasia races off, compelled by her vision of a man tied to a chair with a knife at his throat. As she races into the room, she hears a woman saying, “Hans, we know you’re the traitor.” as she moves to cut his throat. With almost uncanny luck, she jinxes the chair Hans is sitting in, causing it to break and moving Hans out of the way of the knife. The woman’s accomplice sits up in alarm and telekinetically flings a duvet at Stasia with a single word, but she blocks it with her jinx. She pulls a gun and tells everyone to freeze, although she isn’t actually sure who or what her foe is right now.
Jessica, meanwhile, is dancing the night away with Helmut. He’s a positively enchanting dancing partner, and she feels herself falling under his spell. This is, unfortunately, not a metaphor. Fortunately, Jessica has tangled with the arcane before, and is able to shrug off his arcane influence. Instead of telling him her deepest secrets, Jessica is able to reveal meaningless, boring falsehoods instead. Once he believes she has no useful information, his demeanor shifts, and he coldly dismisses her. Jessica thanks her lucky stars for escaping without falling under his influence, and goes to find Stasia.
Meanwhile, Stasia continues her showdown with the duo holding Hans hostage. The woman—Lena—tries to use her magic on Stasia, and is shocked when it is ineffective. The man—Wolfgang—sheds all pretense of being normal, and accuses Stasia of being a fellow practitioner of the dark arts. The woman tries again to command Stasia to fall, to no avail. In frustration, Stasia shouts the word back at her, and Lena is wrapped tightly by the ropes they’d used to tie down Hans. Stasia is slightly surprised at the strength of the power surging through her.
Finally reaching a detente, the Hans introduces himself as a “member of fish and wildlife,” an obvious lie. The four head to the bar to discuss their situation, and Jessica and Mordecai come down to join them.
Wolfgang et al introduce themselves as part of “the Circle”. Mordecai recognizes Hans from an encounter years earlier at a rave in Germany. He knew Hans before he joined the Circle, who are keepers of a terrible power that they’re mostly pretty sure they can control, kind of. The years have not been kind to Hans; he appears haggard and drained.
The circle is here to reclaim what’s “theirs”. Helmut is not one of them, and he’s misusing the powers even by the Circle’s loose standards. Their methods are decidedly more violent than the team’s. The team tries to persuade the Circle to let them solve this by the book, with limited success. Wolfgang lets them know that they’re leaving with the Circle intact, one way or the other.
Jessica applies some bureaucracy-fu to assert that Hans has to be brought in, as someone affected by a supernatural effect. The Circle relents, and leaves Hans with the team.
The team brainstorms a bit with Hans and comes up with a hairbrained scheme. What if they could lure the cursed speech into a host (i.e. Mordecai) whose memory was temporarily impaired by drugs? Could they make the memory of the speech disappear? It’s a dangerous approach, but their options are few. Jessica forbids it outright though, but Mordecai goes back to their room, intending to disobey her instructions. Hans catches up, and tells Mordecai what he couldn’t bring himself to say in front of the others: there may be a way to draw it out of a person. The two hit the books and come up with a ritual that will remove the cursed speech, although it’s not a rapid solution. They’ll need to bring them into custody first before beginning the ritual.
Meanwhile Jessica and Stasia follow Lydia—now wearing the dress that she wore in Stasia’s vision—to the VIP room at the top of the hotel. Salzwefel is announcing a new chain of his hotels is being opened all up and down the west coast. The room is practically humming with the arcane power of the cursed speech. Hoping to get innocents to safety, Jessica and Stasia pull the fire alarm and trigger the sprinklers. Most of the crowd flees, except for Salzwefel, a few bigwigs signing the final land use authorization for his hotels, Lydia, and two members of the Circle.
Salzwefel shouts at the wavering Department of Interior bigwigs to sign the contract, causing part of the chandelier to fall towards Lydia. Jessica tries to pull Lydia to safety, but it’s looking like she won’t be able to save her without taking grievous harm herself, when Stasia reluctantly uses the power of the cursed speech to freeze the chandelier in the air.
Awed by this obvious display of power, everyone turns towards Stasia. Helmut, in a fury, orders Stasia to freeze with the power of the speech. She’s briefly tempted to use the power to shut him up—permanently—but she resists. With Stasia out of the way, Wolfgang and Helmut are about to turn their mystical powers on each other. Desperate to buy some time, Jessica hurls an obsidian paperweight at Wolfgang to prevent him from killing Helmut. Instead, he directs his wrath at Jessica, who takes the blow.
At the last moment, Mordecai bursts in with gas canisters and knocks everyone out, but unintentionally contracts the cursed speech from Ilse. He calls Director McCloud who calls in the clean up crew to round up Wolfgang, Ilse, and Helmut. CISRA clears the cursed speech from Wolfgang and Helmut, and the party attempts to discretely removes the cursed speech from themselves. They succeed in removing it, but their magical efforts do not escape the notice of Director McCloud…
