Hostages

Hostages
Theme: greed and the pursuit of power is dangerous.

Players receive invitations:

“Dear [player]

Please meet me at exactly 3:00 PM in room 212, floor 12 of the Smith Tower in Seattle Washington.

Once there, you will meet with me for further instruction.

-Faun”

Entering the building, the players will see Brinks security workers entering the building.

Inside the building, the players will meet with Faun and Kelly. Faun will brief them on the following key points:

You are to retrieve Udre Udre stones for me. Each person who brings me one such stone will be paid. To get you started, help a group in the next room Do not return here until you have the stones

You may ask questions, and I might provide answers.

When the players enter the next room, they find it occupied by 8 hostage takers and 6 hostages. The hostages have their hands tied behind their backs. One group of three hostages is being covered by one man. Two hostage takers are staring at the door. Everyone in the room (hostages and hostage takers alike) seem relieved to see the players enter the room.

The main Delta merc's name is: Commander Brinks. (really Kyle Tofinelli).

“Oh thank god it's just you. Come in and close the door.”

Each group has been told by Faun that help will arrive. Descriptions were given.

Billy Bivens: Is a 27 year old manager at Wizards of the Coast. His father recently died, passing him a fortune and a small collection on udre udre stones. He attempted to call a demon to grant him superpowers so that he could clean up the streets of Seattle. The demon mentioned that the more stones he was able to pay at once the greater the reward would be. So he offered one stone and asked to be able to find others and for the ones that he had now to be safe.

The demon burnt his new estate to the ground, and cursed and destroyed his wife and children, transforming them into guardians for his still in-tact vault. The insurance money would help him hire mercenaries to do the dirty work for him.

Jones Artifacts: is an organization of tomb robbers. William Tarms is in charge. He says that there has been information regarding a stone's location in France (buried with a somewhat eccentric france nobleman).

Lust: Intercourse. Gives taint, roll conviction difficulty 6 (Humanity), 7 (Pleasure), then 8 (corruption). Then roll each virtue at difficulty 5. Failure results in a loss of a point of that virtue.

Greed: Requires the donation of a very personal item. Alternatively requires a body part as a donation. Betrayal and treason, hoarding, stealing. “Both of your eyes, or one of the eyes of one of your companions”

Gluttony: Requires a cannibalistic ritual to be performed. Conviction roll difficulty 8 Praepropere - eating too soon. Laute - eating too expensively. Nimis - eating too much. Ardenter - eating too eagerly (burningly). Studiose - eating too daintily (keenly). Forente - eating wildly (boringly).

Sloth: Requires comatose state for several months or years Aceda: Requires sacrifice of duty Dispair Gives derangement.

Wrath: Suicide, vigilante justice. Perversion of justice to the degree of spite and malice.

Envy: Sorrow for another's good. May only communicate with those who have the driving goal flaw. She will steal the eyes of the summoner, and allow others to donate their sight to him. The summoner is required to obtain a pair.

Pride: Most dangerous requires human sacrifice. Most powerful.

STATS: Delta mercs:

physical stats: 4 body armor Firearms: 3

Demon children x3 Strength: 6 Dexterity: 6 Stamina: 6 wits: 4 Brawl: 4 Hands of death: 4 Strength +2

soak lethal with stamina Can crawl and jump

Abraham's stones

Hays' Account
Written by a friend

The agent appeared to be a nine-year-old girl.

''I looked at her again. Still a nine-year-old girl.''

''She was wearing a sun dress, had blonde hair to her shoulders, and said her name was Kelly. She was carrying a plain envelope.''

''After opening it carefully, I found that it directed me to Room 212, on the 12th floor of Smith Tower, in Seattle, at 3 pm. I looked at my watch; it was about 2 pm now. Then I realized that the date was 5 days from today. I was being given plenty of time to get to a game. This was the second time in a row that had happened. Surprising; possibly even suspicious.''

''Still, it provided the opening I needed. I volunteered to pick up Sakuro Ghoto, if he was invited. She agreed blithely and gave me a Park Avenue address in New York City. This seemed peculiar, since I was expecting a residence in Japan. When I arrived, I found only a vacant apartment, with a man in a black suit (the typical Man in Black to all appearances) waiting for me. He handed me the sword and a package with Ghoto's accouterments, and walked off without a word.''

''I arrived at the Smith Tower to find Kelly already there, along with a Harbinger who took the form of a beautiful nude woman. Also present were Bryan Taylor (sometimes called Cider Party) and two High Rollers I had not previously met: Hugo Becker, and a small Asian man who called himself William Ip. Becker was an airship captain as well as a scientist and engineer. Ip was dressed as a janitor but later claimed to be a ninja. I gave Ghoto to Taylor, as the one of us with the least combat ability.''

''The Harbinger, Faun, said that we were to obtain five Udre-Udre Stones and bring them back to her here. She described these as baseball-sized smooth river rocks with inscriptions on them, and said they had arcane uses, and were useful as currency in certain circles as well. Becker had retrieved some of these stones for Faun before, and was able to tell us more about them. He said that Udre-Udre was a Fijian chief who ate between seven hundred and a thousand people, and kept a stone for each of those – to imprison the victim's soul, apparently. The Stones were buried with him, but his tomb was plundered long ago, and many Stones have since been destroyed.''

''The Stones have souls inside them – a rather critical fact that Faun neglected to mention. I asked her what would happen to the souls. She assured me that they would be freed unharmed when she used the Stones. After studying her for a moment, I decided she was telling the truth. Nonetheless, I resolved to watch her closely. Anyone who deals in soul objects is suspect.''

''She told us that two groups in Room 213 next door had useful information, so we went next door. We walked in on eleven men in Brink's Security uniforms holding eight people in suits at gunpoint. They didn't seem surprised to see us, so I asked them if they had obtained the locations of the Stones. They said they hadn't; they were taking the hostages to be questioned elsewhere. We asked a few more questions, but they became suspicious and swung their shotguns around to cover us, so we took them down. Taylor, wielding Ghoto, took out five. Quite impressive.''

''I thought it would be a good idea to question the hostages separately from the gunmen, so that neither party learned what the other knew, so I asked Becker to question the leader of the gunmen while I spoke with the hostages. When I was done, I went to see what he had learned, and saw that the prisoner had somehow acquired a broken knee. I hadn't thought Becker would stoop to that level. Evidently I misjudged. I made a mental note to pay the prisoners' medical bills before they went to trial.''

''Annoyingly, the sword seemed to be influencing Taylor, who decided the leader of the gunmen had lost honor by being interrogated, and must be killed to regain his honor. When I confronted him, he snapped out of it. I would have to keep an eye on him – and on Ghoto.''

''The gunmen turned out to be mercenaries hired by one Billy Bivens. They were supposed to meet Bivens later with the hostages, who were employees of Jones Artifacts, a company that apparently obtained artifacts through questionable means and sold them to high-end collectors. Tomb robbers. I would deal with them later.''

''Jones admitted that they were sending an extraction crew to France to the tomb of a mystic named Marcel, where a number of Udre-Udre Stones were believed to be. One of his employees had mentioned the Stones in an email to his wife, which Bivens had somehow intercepted.''

''I paid Jones to handle the task of turning the mercenaries over to the authorities and seeing that they received medical care, and gave him money to cover his expenses. Then we went to find Bivens.''

''Billy Bivens, age 27, was a manager with Wizards of the Coast. He lived in Renton, Washington, south of Seattle in a mansion which he probably couldn't afford on an honest income. A week ago, his mansion burned down. His wife and four children were believed to have died in the fire. He was now living in a motel in the red light district of Renton.''

''When Bivens tried to run, we grabbed him and questioned him. At first he tried to spin various stories, but he finally admitted the truth: He had summoned a demoness – a succubus or something of the sort – who had promised to restore his family to life, and make him a superhero, in return for about six or seven Udre-Udre Stones. He had five so far. Apparently he had inherited a tome on demonology from his father and decided to give it a try.''

''His story had enough holes to drive a truck through, but we were convinced that he was telling the truth about the central points: He had the items we needed, and there might be a demon protecting them. They were in a vault beneath the ruins of his house. He had been given a ruby that supposedly provided protection against the wardings, but some were undoubtedly keyed to him, so we persuaded him to accompany us.''

''The vault was where he had described it. The passageway leading into it was of concrete, about 6' 2” by 6' 2”, with two-foot-thick walls of concrete reinforced with rebar, according to Becker's sensory devices. The vault itself was cylindrical, with a high ceiling, four pillars, a pedestal in the rear of the chamber, and a circle of human skin inscribed with a pentagram. Half a dozen partially-eaten corpses suspended from hooks in the ceiling completed the decor.''

''No sooner had we started to look around than a block of stone slammed down behind us, completely closing the corridor. Immediately, we were attacked by four … things.''

''They were about four and a half feet tall, with humanoid bodies with the proportions of children, swollen stomachs, anemic, wiry arms, and twisted lower legs ending in the talons of birds. Their heads, which lacked fur but otherwise resembled a dog's, extended from the mouths of mutilated human skulls. They appeared to have burst out of the mouths.''

''Obviously, they were Bivens's children. The demoness had kept her promise as well as demons ever do. There was nothing we could do for them but grant them the peace of death.''

''That was not easily done. Indeed, for a few moments it seemed we would be the ones to find the peace of the grave. The monsters' gray skin had the texture as stone and seemed nearly as hard; our blows and bullets had little impact at first. We had to bring an incredible amount of firepower to bear on each of the creatures to destroy it. When we finally put them down, Taylor lay crippled and near death.''

''We did what we could for Taylor, but he needed to get to a hospital immediately. Unfortunately, we were trapped in the vault, and quickly confirmed that there was no other way out. The stone block was airtight, so we were on a definite time limit.''

''The pedestal had five Udre-Udre Stones and an occult tome. We each took one of the Stones. Then we tried to get Bivens to tell us whatever he could about the vault, but he was a wreck; he was obviously going to have to be institutionalized.''

''While Ip examined the vault and Taylor scrutinized the occult symbols, Becker and I pored over the tome. Taylor determined that the room had been designed for summoning demons, and that the most recent summoning had been within two weeks. The book was essentially “demonic summoning for dummies” with a helpful phone book. It began with a guide on the etiquette of talking with demons and a basic ritual for summoning them, and ended with an overview of a variety of demons that could be summoned and their characteristics. The demons it discussed were focused on the Seven Deadly Sins. It was evident that Bivens had summoned a demoness of Lust. Nothing about how to retract the stone block; the book had belonged to Bivens's fathers, but he hadn't made any useful notes. Reading it had accomplished nothing but to waste two hours.''

''Taylor – or perhaps Ghoto, who was clearly influencing him – seemed inclined to summon a demon to remove the stone block, using Bivens as the sacrifice. I called my staff on my cell phone and had them arrange for a construction crew to drill through the block. The workers were fairly efficient and got through well before our air was exhausted. Bivens was arrested and institutionalized, and we returned to Seattle to turn in the Stones to Faun. I asked if we could retrieve the Stones in the tomb of Marcel for a bonus, but she said they had already been taken by rivals. We offered her the ruby, but she declined it.''

''After I persuaded Taylor that it wouldn't be wise to keep the tome, we turned in the tome and the ruby to Miskatonic University, in Taylor's name so that he would receive credit. I checked Taylor into a good hospital, and left for New York to return Ghoto. Perhaps I would be able to learn a little more this time.''

''Nothing. My efforts to speak with Ghoto on the way were met only by zen thoughts. The apartment was vacant as before; the same man was waiting, expressionless as ever. I handed him the sword and the package, and courteously asked who he represented. He turned and walked away without a word.''

Blast.