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
At the former CISRA office
Mordecai finds a secret door panel, goes through, lights are out. As he goes through, the panel clicks again and the door seals shut, with glowing wards to indicate that the door is now hidden.
The room has lots of ritual elements, and photos. The photos seem familiar with Mordecai but he can’t place them. One of the photos is of Mordecai with the gas station attendants from Sterling, he realizes that other photos are of folks we’ve encountered on previous missions. Someone’s been doing surveillance. Then he hears a growl and sees two glowing red eyes. It looks like a dog gone wrong, and lets out a horrifying yell that fills Mordecai with terror.
Stasia has a hunch that Mordecai’s missing, which is when she hears the screams. She grabs a fire axe and starts chopping at the wall.
Mordecai grabs his lucky dagger (magical) and leaps on the beast. The creature latches onto his arm. He sees a sigil on the floor that seems to be glowing, perhaps it’s what summoned the creature.
Jessica comes in from outside and sees Stasia halfway through the wall. Stasia takes out her 9mm and dives in. She shoots a bit wildly in the dark, which fortunately shoots loose a large hanging fluorescent light that swings down and hits the creature, knocking it off Mordecai. Mordecai shakes off his fear and thinks that he’s seen this creature before, and perhaps he knows how to kill it. The creature seems to pick up on his new confidence, and bolts to a corner.
Jessica shines a flashlight around the room (a very fancy LED light from Kickstarter that Malik gave her), trying to find it, but it’s no longer in the corner. It left some tracks that faintly glowed, but they stop at a wall. Jessica is overcome with dread, not knowing where the creature went or when it will reappear.
Stasia starts looking around. The photos are mostly of Mordecai but include other team members. Lots of occult rituals have been performed here recently, there are similar ingredients to the Preĝo practitioners but not all of them match, there are other ingredients used for necromancy. On one of the pictures (of Mordecai and Malik in Arizona, climbing on top of the burial dome), she finds a clear fingerprint. She also finds a spellbook, bookmarked to a spell for creating a Nightwalker. The notes indicate that it can fill its targets with fear, but are afraid of the light. A Nightwalker isn’t summoned, they’re created from humans. The more powerful the human, the stronger the creature.
Jessica wraps Mordecai’s arm as the three of them try to discern who would be watching them (namely Mordecai) and set a trap for them. Stasia shows Mordecai the spellbook, and Mordecai recognizes the bookmark—it belonged to Dr. Hansen. There are photos as far back as The Circles case (minotaur, before The Quiet case in Arizona) and one from yesterday of us entering the woods.
At the hotel
Everyone tries to put together a timeline of who would be watching us and how Dr. Hansen could still be alive. The team gets Malik on the phone to fill him in. Malik seems nervous; McCleud has been asking lots of questions, members of the Special Ops team (that Pancake Special) came in to talk to her more. Malik says he’ll have a friend see if Dr. Hansen had any relatives and call us from a burner phone.
In the woods
Mordecai and Stasia look for other ritual sites in the parks. They find a number of small sites by the creekside with ritual remains (candles, flowers, etc.). The more recent rituals seem to have been protection rituals. Mordecai starts carving some runes into the team’s weapons, as it may help against the Nightwalker. (Or the necromancer. We all know that you can’t beat a necromancer with a non-magical weapon, like a stick.)
At the hospital
Jessica visits Kathy Witecki. She’s stable, but doesn’t look good. Jessica uses her medic skills to bring her to. Kathy looks fearful—just how Mordecai looked just after he was attacked. Kathy talks in fragments about dark shadows, long spikes, a man with red glowing eyes. She screams, and can’t recall further details. Kathy seems gripped with fear, she’s not able to collect her thoughts. She also can’t recall details of having gone into the woods, it’s almost as if she’s actively losing her memory of the last day as she’s talking about it. Her wounds are similar to what Mordecai suffered.
At Wolf Road Woods
Stasia dons the robe and sash Gabriella gave her and goes to the site of the séance, carrying her (non-enchanted) 9mm and her phone sending her GPS location. Jessica follows. There are still some people heading into the woods, some are carrying simple camping equipment in addition to ritual materials. Gabriella meets her, says that they will be performing a ritual to honor their ancestors and protect their loved ones. Gabriella is very kind and concerned that Stasia isn’t weirded out by the ritual, she introduces her to other people.
Jessica tries to follow but also stay off the path. She gets stopped by a park landscaper, and admits that she was following the Prego practitioners. He says that they’re nice folks and asks her to stay off the rhododendrons. He’s wearing something that looks like a park ranger uniform—perhaps he’s the man from Stasia’s premonition. Jessica says she’s a government agent and asks him to head home.
The ritual site is close to the river. The first half hour is socializing. Some folks are long-time practitioners, most are from the city. But one guy, Trevor, tries to conceal a double-take seeing Stasia. Stasia sends Jessica a text with his general description, but “adult white male in a white robe” isn’t very helpful.
Just as the ritual is about to start, Stasia sees a shadow move through the water and stop about 20 feet away. It seems to be wary of the group, and more likely to attack an individual walking off on their own. Stasia sends Jessica a quick text to watch out for it.
Watching from the shadows, Jessica is still trying to put the pieces together between this case and exploring the old CISRA office. She also gets the feeling that what Stasia saw in the water isn’t the only threat here. It also occurs to her that the practitioners are ideal targets to be turned into Nightwalkers.
During the ritual
Stasia has to put her phone away. Trevor is keeping an eye on Stasia, distracting him from the ritual. Just as things are picking up…Stasia’s phone rings. It’s Malik, who has managed to override her Do Not Disturb settings. She slams it off. Gabriella is annoyed but the ritual continues. Stasia sees the dark shadow start to crest up out of the water and start to lurk around.
Mordecai is driving up to the site. The headlights flash across the circle, which scares the shadow off a bit.
From the darkness, Jessica texts Mordecai her position. She thinks she sees Mordecai approaching and waves at him. “Hello, Agent Stillman, it’s a pleasure to meet a protege. Dr. Hansen.” He extends a hand, his eyes glint red in the light. Jessica mashes the buttons of her cell phone to Mordecai and sends gibberish. She coaxes Hansen to start monologuing, and calls Mordecai from her pocket and leaves the line open (Mordecai hears snippets from the call and recognizes Hansen’s voice). Hansen says that he can’t stay, and starts to reach for her. Jessica steps back and fires a shot.
When the shot goes off, two people bolt—one towards the parking lot, the other deeper into the woods. Someone waves around a flashlight and again keeps the shadow creature at bay, and the ritual finishes—each person had to say the name of someone they would talk to, if they could. Stasia names someone from long ago, before joining CISRA, that she wasn’t able to save, so she could apologize. Upon finishing the ritual, the camp stove flares, which surprises everyone, but Stasia gets the feeling that the group is protected.
When Mordecai reaches Jessica, she’s alone, and doesn’t remember anything from the last 30 minutes. Morcecai presses an enchanted 9mm into her hands, and then someone screams.
Stasia runs to the scream—it was the second person who had run off when the shot fired. The woman (Cherise) is pinned by many shadowy spikes. Jessica’s flashlight weakens the shadows but it’s not enough to destroy it. Mordecai gives the second 9mm to Jessica, runs to the car to turn on its headlights, and is cut off by a Nightwalker.
Jessica fires both guns into the shadowy shards, and breaks Cherise free. Dr. Hansen, who had been controlling the shadows, doesn’t seem bothered that it didn’t work, and strolls towards Jessica with his hand outstretched. He sinks a bit in the mud and stumbles, brushing his hands against some flowers instead—which instantly whither to dust.
Facing off against the Nightwalker, Mordecai sees the wounds he gave it before. He lunges at it with his lucky dagger.
Trevor tackles Stasia, screaming that the team is always trying to thwart the Doctor. As they tumble, she drops both her gun and phone, and can see the preview of a text that Malik said that matched the fingerprint to Trevor. As they roll on the ground, Trevor hits his head hard on a rock.
Jessica fires at Stillman as he grabs her hand, which twists and withers. He seems to be debating whether to kill her now and turn her into a Nightwalker, or go claim the dozen practitioners down the hill. The shots seem to just create holes in him, which annoys him in the way that someone would need to get their suit dry-cleaned.
As Mordecai and the Nightwalker grapple, he drags it in front of the car and turns on the headlights, destroying the Nightwalker. Left where the Nightwalker was is the body of a woman Mordecai used to know from grad school, Shelly. They had been dating, but she had a professional relationship with Stillman. Mordecai always thought that she’d ghosted on him. He follows the lights down the hill, where he sees Hansen with Stillman.
Mordecai plows the car into Hansen, knocking him back into the woods just moments before he kills Jessica. Hansen shoots another shadow spike into Mordecai.
Stasia kicks free of Trevor and tells Gabriella to take everyone else and run. Stasia admits that she lied about why she needed to come to the seance. Gabriella pushes a statue of St. Anthony into her hands, and says that Stasia needs it more than her. They flee out a different way than they came in. Stasia turns and sees Trevor and a Nightwalker. She also notices a talisman of some sort around his neck.
Jessica knows, from CISRA training, that the spellbook would be a key item to recover, and Malik has already logged that they found it. But she also knows that destroying it would help to unravel some of Hansen’s spells. So she lights the book on fire. Her memories flood back. Before Mordecai had found her, Hansen had told Jessica that she was on track of becoming a director, and with that clearance, she would learn what CISRA was really up to—the only way to protect the world from the darkest threats is to control them.
Mordecai grabs Cherise and Jessica and drives down the hill to get Stasia.
The Nightwalker facing Stasia crumbles, and she and Trevor grapple again. She kicks free and dives into the car as Mordecai approaches, who blazes out of there as Hansen raises a huge wall of necromatic magic. Jessica notices something in Stasia’s hair—it’s Trevor’s necklace.
Mordecai and Jessica are both bleeding badly, everyone needs medical attention. But for the moment, they’re safe, and Hansen’s plot has been thwarted.
