Keeper: Adrienne Mueller
Hunters: Eric Fattig, Karen Twelves, Sean Nittner
System: Monster of the Week
Supplement: Tome of Mysteries
Campaign Overview
Overview of the entire campaign here: Agents of Cisra
Adventure Log
At the office
The intern from the museum is the new Brian! Romeo Roberts is learning the ropes.
Everyone’s back in the office and things seem to be feeling good.
Jessica says she’s going to a 3-week offsite leadership training workshop. She gives the team the mission—Pancake Special was on a recon mission but hasn’t been heard from for a while, so we’re going to check it out.
Malik is a little bitter that Romeo got onboarded so quickly. He also asks Jessica if she’d be willing to submit a blood draw just in case we need to compare her DNA when she gets back.
There’s some conversation about who will take lead on the mission. After some bickering (Stasia thinks Malik wants it but doesn’t want to say so), Mordecai says he’ll take lead.
The mission
CISRA is concerned about the book The Astronomical Medium. Some of the language was flagged by CISRA, Pancake Special went to investigate the authors. All copies of the book shipped out of the same island—St. Margarets, very north of Maine, almost in Canada.
Pancake Special went to the town on the island (also called St. Margarets) using the alias Pip Masterson, posing as a student at the local college (also called St. Margarets). They filed 3 reports, 1 every 2 weeks: general updates, made contact with a group of students and professors investigating some historical phenomenon. Their last report was that they were trying to ingratiate themselves with the group. One member was Dr. Alfredo Gomez.
Mordecai knew Dr. Gomez as a postdoc. He’s a physicist.
Malik does some research on the book, it looks like there are some references to Finish folklore. Romeo gets us a translator, who will meet us at the airport.
FUN FACT: CISRA only covers the cost of coach, but agents can pay for an upgrade if they want. Sometimes the team members will splurge on an upgrade, which means we don’t always sit together. One time everyone chipped in to upgrade Jessica to first class for her birthday!
At the airport
The translator, Toivo Heikinnen, has a lustrous beard. His clothes look very minimalist and expensive. He is extremely cheerful and happy to meet the team.
On the ferry
Toivo is very excited about being in Maine, wants to try all the local foods, starting with airport lobster chowder. Malik shares facts about the origins of the donut hole.
On the island
There’s no cell service. They had installed a cell tower but it was knocked over in a storm, and it was deemed too expensive to replace.
The college is a handful of buildings surrounded by an old wall. It was built in the 1950s but designed in an older style. Its main gate is closed and locked. The team is met by the caretaker, George Mar. He says it’s too late to be visiting (it’s 7pm). He doesn’t know where Dr. Gomez is, hasn’t seen him for weeks.
The team tries to ask about either getting into the dorm, or visiting Dr. Gomez in his home. Both are on school property.
The team goes to the one inn in town, The Grey Sailor. There are a few students sipping beers and the owner, Rishi Khan, who’s willing to give them rooms.
Malik and Toivo carouse a bit to make friends with the students—Phillip and Henri. They know of Pip but weren’t close friends, probably haven’t seen them since mid-July (it’s not Early August). They get a bit quiet whenever asked about other students, eventually Henri says they should get back, Phillip says that he always feels a bit sick when he’s on campus. Henri says lots of people are getting sick, the sanitorium (health center) is pretty full.
Stasia and Mordecai chat more quietly in the corner.
That night
The beds are comfortable and it’s incredibly quiet. Stasia has a horrible dream—she couldn’t see, she couldn’t breathe—and woke up covered in sweat. As she gasps for breath, it almost feels like breathing is hurting her more. She wakes up Mordecai and asks if she can sleep in the overstuffed armchair in his room.
The next day
Toivo is feeling better and excited to try the (lackluster) breakfast buffet.
At the college
Mordecai goes to see the provost, Anthea Davies, to ask about Dr. Gomez. She hasn’t seen him in a while, she thought he was on vacation. Mordecai tries to ask after his “second cousin” Pip Masterson, Davies says she doesn’t know them. She starts pressuring Mordecai to apply as department head, if Gomez has left. She says that someone named Sarah would have more information, but she also hasn’t been around. Davies seems very distractible. Mordecai angles to get a facility key so Mordecai can give himself a tour of the facilities.
At Dr. Gomez’s office
Mar lets Malik, Stasia, and Toivo into Dr. Gomez’s room, which looks cleaned out. Mar says we need to talk to Mary Clague, who oversees the dorms. If he left anything, it would be stored in the attic of the main building, but Mar isn’t going to give them the key. Just then, Mordecai enters, saying that Mar is to give him the key. Mar hands them over reluctantly. Mordecai runs and makes a copy and the team goes to the attic.
In the attic
The team finds a box of Dr. Gomez’s things from his office, and other boxes from his room. It looks like he made a lot of purchases for outdoor equipment—receipts for rope, hiking boots, etc. These items aren’t in the boxes from his room, so he must have taken them with him. All his notes and other records stop after July 4.
Sarah’s signature is on some requisitions, but the dates stop mid-July.
Malik and Toivo go to George Mar to return the key.
At the sanitarium
Mordecai and Stasia go to the campus health center. It’s packed, people are lying in cots. Some are bandaged or in slings. The nurse, Helen Ying, is tending to everyone. Ying says that it’s mostly sports injuries. She says she never treated Pip; they were always hanging out with their friends, called “The Seekers.” She seems very forgetful.
Morcedai asks for an antacid, she says he can get it from a medkit in her office. He goes in to look around at medical records. The students all seem to have very low vitals—low heart rate, breath rate, blood pressure.
Talking to George Mar
Malik and Toivo catch up with George to return the key. Malik asks about any good local hiking areas. Malik tries to press George for more info, he seems very reluctant to divulge anything. He says that Dr. Gomez tended to hang out in the theater “with his friends.”
The team tells Toivo to hang out at the inn while they go to the theater.
At the theater
Romeo sends an update that they went through more of Pancake’s notes and that their last known GPS coordinates were the theater…but it just a regular theater. The team finds stairs going down to the basement.
In the basement, there’s a huge contraption that looks like a long rotating metal arm. There are levels in a circle around the arm. There’s some desks, papers, old tea mugs, overflowing trash cans, a pile of various outdoor equipment (but nothing matches with what Dr. Gomez had ordered). Judging by some of the students’ notes, one of the topics they were studying was astronomy.
Malik roots around more of the notes and pieces more together: The group believed that a comet had fallen in 1914, at the edge of the bay. There are different theories that something also arrived with the comet. There are fairy tales in German and Finnish about monsters.
Mordecai looks a little too deeply into a drawing on one of the desks of spiraling stars with a creature in the middle, and his vision goes a little blurry for a while.
The team grabs anything else they might find useful to take back to the inn to review.
At the inn
Toivo translates some of the fairy tales. He says it’s about life-sucking vampires who come from the stars and live underground. There’s also mention of the meteor creating some type of gas under the earth.
He also slides something over to Mordecai that looks like a spell, but it’s not in a language he knows. Modecai recognizes it as Dr. Hansen’s shorthand. It looks like a containment/banishment spell, but it’s referring to a master text—the spellbook Jessica destroyed.
The team calls Romeo to requisition gas masks, flares, and spelunking equipment.
At the beach/caves
The beach is rocky, oily, slimey. Eventually, the team (and Toivo) finds the entrance to a vast cave network.
Eventually, the team finds a desiccated corpse. They’re wearing the type of shoes that Dr. Gomez had purchased, but they look as if they’ve had decades of use. Moving further, they find a frying pan. Eventually, they enter a cavern, and see a shimmery, swirling cloud. The cloud engulfs the team—everyone starts feeling drained, with the overwhelming urge to lay down and give up.
Toivo bolts to the beach, the rest of the team staggers out. Malik grabs Pancake’s frying pan.
Under the theater
The team goes back to look at the device, trying to figure out how it could stop the cloud in the caves. As they start to rock-paper-scissors to see who’s going to turn it on…more CISRA agents arrive on the scene. Toivo had called in to request an extraction and informed them of what was in the caves, and CISRA sent in backup.
The relief team descends upon the research work, asks the team to turn over whatever they have and report back to the office. One man there, with an iris tattoo, says that he was Pancake’s team leader, and he’ll take it from here.
