Session 3 - Recap

Player Characters

NPCs

Story Log

• The party awoke the morning of the full moon, and began preparations for infiltrating the swamp cult
  • Josiah went back to the docks to tail on LuDoux, but was noticed
    • Believing they were on friendly terms, LuDoux greeted Josiah warmly and went on his way
    • Josiah decided to abandon his plan
  • Haywood searched for stimulants to counteract the drugs used by the cultists
    • He went exploring around sketchy taverns, until he found a figure who pointed him to a pharmacy
    • The pharmacy sold him a modest amount of cocaine
  • The party armed themselves with small melee weapons, including an improvised shiv made from a swampglass arrowhead
• Around sunset, the party travelled to the Grover Ave. Manor
  • Some party members (mostly Haywood?) began consuming the cocaine before approaching the building
  • The party greeted by LuDoux and the guards, and ushered inside
    • The Manor house was bustling with robed figures
    • The party was directed to small bedrooms to dress themselves
      • Weapons were smuggled under robes
  • Once dressed, cultist women began flirting with the party
    • The party were offered drinks (which they knew to be laced), and accepted
    • The women began luring party members off to bedrooms
  • Thanks to heavy stimulant consumption, Haywood resisted the sedatives lacing his drink
    • He hid in a bathroom, acting strangely and drawing attention from the cultists
    • In a delerious state, he explored the house, and encountered a matronly priestess figure (Beatrice) reading from an old tome
      • Beatrice revealed she was a partner of Castro, and helped him perform rituals
  • Eventually, the entire party fell unconcious
• The party reawakened on the transport truck to the ritual site, hooded and bound
  • The party made some furtive attempts to escape their restraints, but in short order, the truck arrived to the site
  • The women from the manor house released the group, and ushered them down the path to the site
  • The ritual dancing and chanting was underway as the party approached
    • The site was relatively undisturbed since the party’s prior visit, though a decorated stone altar was now in place at the center of the clearing
    • Beatrice was working near the altar, chanting from the tome she’d been reading at the Manor house
    • No immediate sign of James was present
• As the group began participating in the ceremony, LuDoux approached Josiah to introduce him to Castro
  • Eddie decided to accompany Josiah, and LuDoux led them over to the waterside shack discovered on the party’s last visit
    • (The shack is roughly 200-300 yards from the clearing)
  • The trio entered the shack, which was adorned by one guard outside the door, and another immediately inside the door
  • An irridescent, metallic swampglass idol was on prominent display at the far side of the room
  • The lower body of a tied-up prisoner were also visible on the other side of the shack, with the upper body obscured around a small corner
  • Casto proceeded to greet the new recruits, and asked Josiah about his father - who Josiah claimed had been a resident of the home
    • Josiah bluffed his answers well enough to avoid suspicion, and asked Castro to talk about the origins of his group
      • Castro revealed to Josiah that Josiah’s father, Castro himself, and all the other former residents of the Grover Manor were descendants of the Sitimaxan tribe
      • Before the Eurpoeans had arrived, the tribe had been a powerful force dominating the American Southwest
      • The tribe’s power and prestige came from their alliance with a secretive group of aquatic fish-peoples living in the misty water of the gulf
      • The tribe was responsible for making sacrificial offerings to the “pets” of the sea people (known as “Neka-Ci Ckami”)
      • In exchange, the tribe was given special swampglass trading goods, and occult powers in battle
      • The tribe’s people were ravaged by European diseases post-contact, they lost contact with the sea people, and their way of life unraveled
      • Castro was an orphan who grew up in the aftermath of the tribe’s collapse, but his grandfather, who raised him, was the last surviving elder who knew the ancient rites of the fishmen
      • Castro learned the ancient rites, and decided his life’s mission was to restore glory to his people
      • He became a priest, started a group home for the tribe, and began exploring the world to find the arcane knowledge needed to re-establish contact with the fishmen
  • Castro’s monologue was suddenly interrupted as the guard by the door (revealed to be the player character Montana Jones!) made a lunge at the idol
    • The guard’s approach was clumsy, and LuDoux and Castro managed to block him
      • Neither LuDoux nor Castro behaved like the guard is hostile, but instead presumed he’d been enchanted or lulled into his behavior by the idol’s supernatural power
      • LuDoux escorted the guard outside to recover
• Sensing an opportunity, Eddie and Josiah attacked Castro, hoping to overpower him
  • Hearing the commotion inside, and suspecting he had common cause with these strange new “recruits”, Montana started fighting LuDoux and the second guard
    • LuDoux sends the second guard to the cleaing for help
    • Together, Eddie, Josiah, and Montana narrowly overpowered Castro and LuDoux
      • Montana quickly explained to Josiah and Eddie that he’s an archaeology student trying to rescue the swampglass idol, and had prepared an escape boat nearby
      • In turn, Eddie and Josiah tell Montana that they’re trying to rescue James
  • The second guard arrived at the clearing, and screamed that Castro was being attacked
  • Unaware of the events at the waterside shack, Livingston and Haywood joined the rest of the cultists, and ran towards the commotion
    • They took out their concealed weapons for combat
  • Eddie, Josiah, and Montana quickly freed the dazed James from his restrainted, grabbed the idol, and ran for the escape boat
  • The fleeing group narrowly managed to start their boat and pull into the dark, misty channels - mere seconds before the stream of torch-wielding cultists started to reach the waterline
• Discovering two of their leaders dead, the cultists entered a collective state of shock
  • Beatrice, acting as informal leader, sent many of the cultists back to the clearing
    • She and several guards stayed outside the waterside shack to piece together what had happened
  • Livingston and Haywood approached Beatrice and the guards, and asked if their friends were missing
    • Upon questioning, the second guard (who raised the alarm) only knew that there had been a commotion inside the shack, and that the other guard, who had been “acting strangely”, suddenly attacked LuDoux as it happened
  • Genuinely worried for their friends, and confused by the unexpected turn of events, Livingston and Haywood managed to avoid raising suspicion of their involvement
    • Livingston and Haywood were escorted back to the city by dawn