Saturday, December 21, 2013

Arrival: Odinson & the Nords

There are some things you just don’t expect while walking the streets of post-apocalyptic New York and that’s stumbling across a battle between a demon and ... Vikings. Nico almost lost a round in shock before telling Rochelle to set up her gun and take a couple pot shots at the beast. The Viking men swung axes and wore furs and leather armour so at least it was a good view.

After the beast was despatched, they came running over to Nico’s team and requested help for their champion who was badly injured. Nico followed them in and found herself in the warehouse she had been advised to avoid. A giant of a man (literally Size 7) was slumped against a wall with cuts across his chest. They declared him to be blessed by Odin’s son and said they were fighting against the evil Fenris during these end times.

Nico laid on hands and pretended to be praying to Freya (seemed appropriate though she knew sweet eff all about Norse Gods) when she made her Latin chant and used what is essentially a Benediction co-opted by my Storyteller to the cause and made into an accessible merit. It took ten minutes but I managed to heal five lethal. My Intelligence is 2 and as I only knew 2 prayers it made my dice pool a measly four.

They were very grateful to her and disclosed that they were on a mighty mission to take on a big fiery demon – the very same one she was after as well. She figured the giant fellow to have sold his soul to a demon unwittingly but also figured they could use the extra meat shields so she agreed to go along with them. They were also collaborators, after all. They made their way out of the haunted warehouse and something began to coalesce out of the shadows on the roof. The big guy slammed it with a hammer, breaking the wall, and they hoofed it out of there and kept on their way.

After a day’s travel they found the place they were after. Several patches of ground were charred with a section around a particular old butcher’s that was entirely blackened. They spotted the demon not too far away just before it spotted them. The huge Nord charged it and it flew up into the air and dove at him. Nico sent Rochelle to the left to set up a sniper position with Jack by her side to haul her away or defend her if she were specifically targeted. Nico veered right with Johnny so that they weren't bunched together in case it splashed a specific area with flame.

The Nord threw his hammer which hit it as it dove and near knocked it out of the sky but it kept coming and knocked him down. There followed a series of low rolls on the Nord’s behalf and pretty low rolls on the demon’s while Rochelle and Nico shot at it. The Nord crawled away while the demon followed, burning the Nord through sheer proximity, and the gunshots hitting it sprayed burning blood onto the Nord who somehow survived the onslaught.

Finally the devil tried to fly away, was shot down by Rochelle who took out its wing joints with an epic shot, and as it lay there bleeding and trying to heal the Nord approached it with his hammer. It begged, “Wait! Wait!”, but all for nought as the Nord brought the double-headed hammer down and crushed its skull.

Jack made a deal with one of the lesser Nords – two hand axes for an ink kit and some red ink – and they parted ways but not before the boss Nord was given a bit more healing and provided us with the suburb where the Feasthall lay – Sunset Park to the far west of Brooklyn. They also revealed their religious text – a book on Norse myths that may have been fetched from a public library.

Shaking their heads, Nico's team went to search the warehouse and found a number of bodies placed roughly as decoration / warnings / lures for smaller demons. They robbed the bodies of jewellery, items and equipment like good little scavengers and then found a waste pit beneath a large grille that Nico had to climb down into which had been filled with entrails from some of the bodies collected earlier.

She searched through it using a few of the broken rifles and managed to snag a number of religious iconography on jewellery, a decorate athalme, bejewelled sword and the double-ended rod itself. They had what they had come for but what would they have to deal with next?

Question: Why place the Vikings in Sunset Park?

Answer: It was a random stab at the map by the Storyteller that ended up making a lot of sense in retrospect. A later look into the area revealed that it had a high population of Scandinavians back in the 1940s at least.

No comments:

Post a Comment