Keepers and Hunters: Eric Fattig, Karen Twelves, Adrienne Mueller, Sean Nittner
System: Monster of the Week
Supplement: Tome of Mysteries
Campaign Overview
Overview of the entire campaign here: Agents of Cisra
Adventure Log
On the road
Malik has been sending the team on a number of missions, and everyone’s starting to suspect that these aren’t official missions. Lots of abandoned buildings, locals with no memory of strange happenings, cold cases.
Serling diner, Nimoy, New Mexico
It’s a very Atomic Age themed. Nichelle Wong, manager, wears roller skates. Jessica is feeling the effects of eating on the road for too long. Mordecai is bemoaning the fact that he can’t get a normal iced tea. Stasia is trying to shake off a particularly disturbing vision from the night before of being pulled out a window into inky blackness.
The team is complaining about what they’re even doing at this point, when there’s a giant and sudden rumbling that shakes the whole restaurant. On the horizon, a dust cloud is moving closer. Jessica goes outside to get a better look. Other townsfolk are also coming outside to see what it is. As she looks at it, she realizes it’s not dust but a foggy mist with a greenish tint, rolling quickly towards the town. She commands the townsfolk to get inside, over half comply but others stay. Stasia and Jessica both try to look a bit more commanding and fire some warning shots, one woman panics and runs towards the mist and Stasia tries to stop here. Jessica talks to the rest of the crowd. One woman, Yasmin Carter, seems to be an authority figure.
Stasia catches up with the woman, Amanda Yang, but the mist is about to overtake them. They run for Shatner’s hardware store. There are others already hiding here. Everyone grabs blankets, towels, rags, bottles of water, and uses them to help seal the doors and windows. Stasia goes to text Jessica that she’s okay…there’s no signal.
Meanwhile, Mordecai jumps in the van and drives it (and his trailer) to the nearby garage. His road trip mix of hits from the 70s and 80s blares as he smashes into a tool chest he didn’t see there. The tools shatter the windshield, Mordecai’s got a cut on his temple, the van is definitely not going anywhere.
The mist overtakes the town.
At the diner
Jessica tells Yasmin she’s from the EPA (Agent Kirk), here to look into a research facility and Dr. Rowe. Yasmin is a lawyer in family law. Jessica tells Yasmin she doesn’t know what’s going on, Yasmin is very understanding…and then steps in to take over. As she talks to the townsfolk about who’s present and who’s missing, they seem to want to make a search party.
The mist comes through the cracks under the door, and though it’s cold, doesn’t seem poisonous. Yasmin and another townsperson, Elron, decide to go out and look for some people. Jessica tries to go with, Yasmin pushes back that Jessica should stay here. Jessica shows her a photo of her brother and says that if he’s with the car, grab a CB radio.
Alias: Agent Kirk, FBI
At the hardware store
Denise Washington, hardware store manager, helps Stasia close up air vents. Stasia asks if Denise knows the people in the store and who would potentially do something stupid out of panicking. She points out Miles Durnbock, whose brother Tony didn’t make it in with him. Miles and Tony are always pulling dumb pranks. Stasia asks Denise to calm the group, and starts messing with an old radio to see if she can pick anything up. She gets a country station, and then it cuts out. The local DJ, Harris, cuts in to ask if anybody’s out there. This is a local station. Stasia suddenly remembers that landlines exists! Unfortunately, the phones are dead, but CB radios work.
Alias: Agent MacFadden, EPA
At the garage
Cleo, mechanic, is not too happy about a crashed van in her garage. Mordecai says he needs to investigate what’s going on, and the answers are in his trailer. He realizes that this wasn’t seismic activity, the shake was from the impact of something outside of town (a meteor?), and the mists came from that. It’s some type of electro-static phenomenon, that’s characteristic of atomic reactions. Radioactive, maybe?
Alias: Agent Brooks, ATF
At the hardware store
Stasia goes through all the channels and finally connects with Cleo at the hardware store. She doesn’t get a lot of information from her before a woman rushes to the store door, her hands are bloody, she’s begging to be let in. Miles looks about ready to break the door open on his side, Stasia tackles him. Denise is hesitant to open the door, Stasia rationalizes that the woman doesn’t look mutated or dying and has clearly been in the mist for a while so we should let her in. Denise lets the woman in. It’s Yasmin! No Elron.
At the garage
Mordecai hears Cleo on the radio, she says that she was talking to someone at the hardware store but then it cut out. After a few moments, Stasia comes back on. She says everyone’s fine, hasn’t heard from Jessica. Mordecai keeps researching but keeps the line open.
At the diner
Jessica is doing crowd control. She asks the cook to make some food for everyone, tells others to seal the doors and windows, and tries to keep everyone calm. She asks more about the research facility, sees if it has any possible connection. Nichelle says she knows Rowe, local philanthropist, passed away. His partner Dr. Alex Scott has carried on his work. Others say that they know Alex. The cook, Danny, says she lives in town, was doing lots of field work, her research was on nuclear power maybe?
At the hardware store
Stasia talks to Yasmin. Yasmin says that something grabbed Elron and tore him apart. She couldn’t see what it was. She’s worried that there are other people possibly out in the mist. Stasia tries to comfort her that if she was able to make it through, others could too. Yasmin sees all the CB radios and says that someone should deliver them to other locations. Stasia gets back on the radio and talks to Mordecai, says that they’re working on a foolish plan. They rig up a remote-control car with some firecrackers for Miles to steer in the opposite direction as a distraction. Stasia makes a bandolier of radios and sets off to the restaurant.
At the garage
Mordecai does more research about what could counteract the electromagnetic field. He also gets directions from the garage to the research facility.
In the mist
Stasia quickly gets lost in the mist. The ground is swampy and sucks at her boots. There’s gusts of wind that almost beckon. She smacks into a street sign and someone whispers to her. She finds Ellie, who is hiding in a dumpster. Stasia gives Ellie a radio and tells her to stay there, but as Stasis is leaving, the giant frog monster attacks them both. Through dumb luck and shooting widly in its direction, Stasia gets them both free and they run to the restaurant.
At the restaurant
It’s been some time and people are getting nervous. Jessica tries to keep people calm. She tells Nichelle to stay by the door and use the flashlight on his phone. She and Danny are going to cross the street, talk to people there, and flash the light on her phone back to her. Just as they open the door to venture out…Stasia and Ellie come barreling through. Stasia quickly undoes any calm by saying that it’s not safe outside. One sucker latches on the door and then lets go—at least one townsperson sees it. Jessica tries to calm everyone down again, Stasia helps her lie and says it’s just too cold out there and easy to get lost.
Finally, everyone can talk over radios! Mordecai says that a meteor strike caused electromagnetic interference, something something mad science, Dr. Rowe’s nuclear work continued by Dr. Scott, something something reactor. Stasia shares what she saw-a giant frog creature, multiple sucker tentacles that drag you into its maw to devour you whole. Mordecai speaks of the existence of other-dimensional spaces, and within those spaces, creatures.
They hear a gunshot, faintly. Stasia checks in at the hardware store, Denise is trying to keep everyone there under control. Stasia is able to convince everyone there to stay put.
The team decides to go to the research station. Danny goes with them to help lead the way.
In the mist
There’s all kinds of tree growth outside now. Jessica, Danny, and Stasia meet Mordecai at the corner and make their way to the building.
Who is funding this?! There is lots of modern tech about. So many whiteboards with equations on them. Dr. Scott is there with a greyhound, Jasper, who is barking at the team’s entrance. On one table, two model hands hold string in a cat’s cradle. Dr. Scott asks if we can help—if we can put something with enough density into the vacuum, the rift might collapse in on itself. She’s trying to make “red matter” in her reactor, based on Dr. Rowe’s research, which should be dense enough to work. Mordecai and Dr. Scott do a bunch of science to make it work. Stasia comforts the doggo.
Danny says that he hears glass breaking and gunshots in the direction of the hardware store—the froghemoth is attacking!
Jessica and Dr. Scott hop into her ATV to take the red matter to the nexus just outside of town. Mordecai and Stasia run to the hardware store. Danny stays with Jasper.
At the hardware store
The froghemoth has broken into the hardware store! Yasmin, sadly, is dead. Miles is shot. Denis is holding the line Stasia tries to get the monster’s attention to draw it out, perhaps does a bit too well; it charges her. Mordecai pushes Stasia out of the way and the froghemoth grabs him. Stasia keeps yelling at it to try to distract it while Mordecai lobs a grenade into its maw.
(As an aside, Mordecai is reminded that he knew Dr. Bones, a colleague of Dr. Rowe’s, back during his studies at UC Berkeley. He may have been grooming Mordecai for this type of research. Or did he? Mordecai can’t remember.)
At the rift
Jessica and Dr. Scott arrive at the transdimensional rift. It looks like a two-dimensional, red, glowing tear in the air, large enough for to drive into. Which is exactly what Dr. Scott says they have to do. So they drive through the rift. Inside, it’s swampy, with red light, the sky has constellations that don’t exist. In front of them, a pulsing meteor. Jessica drifts the ATV so she can toss the red matter at the meteor and race back to the entrance—but a froghemoth blocks the way.
Jessica slams right into the creature and continues through the rift. She can feel the pull of the nexus behind her. The rift closes just as they get out (taking only half the ATV with them). Outside, it’s the desert—no swamp, no mist.
Epilogue
It’s a major cleanup, total mess, so many witnesses. Official story is the mist contained methane that caused a mass hallucination, the carnage in the hardware store was unfortunately humans firing on each other. CISRA brings Dr. Scott in…to continue her work.
The team learns from Malik that he had been sending them to all sorts of dried-up CISRA research facilities to try to find out more about what CISRA has been up to.
