And then yesterday, we finished our All Flesh Must Be Eaten game, set during the 90s and inspired, in part, by Journey's Greatest Hits. I have a silly life.
Last time, Mia was killed by zombies, and Heather, Daisy, and Patricia wound up in the woods near a burning bus.
They start walking, and eventually wind up on the edge of Lucille's aunt's property. They start calling out to attract her attention (figuring someone might shoot them if they just wander onto the property), and Lucille and her ninja-like aunt Bonita come to find them. They take the girls inside, listen to the sad end of Mia and how Daisy and Heather had to kill their father and Kyle, and give them dinner. Everyone beds down for the night - it's been a long day.
And then they wake up with a start to find the power has gone out. Bonita isn't there, neither is Sgt. Priest. Lucille wakes the others and they gear up, deciding to go out and try and track down the others. Lucille warns the others to step where she steps, but avoiding traps turns out to be a problem, although no one is seriously injured. They find a couple of zombie corpses, but one of them has a handful of flesh in its hand and in its mouth. A few yards away, they find a military issue pistol.
Just then, Heather trips a deadfall and winds up with her foot trapped. Three zombies, including Priest, appear, but Lucille hefts the deadfall log and hurls it at a couple of them, and Daisy incinerates Priest with her power. They decide to fall back to the house, and Lucille grabs a walkie-talkie to contact Bonita.
She finds her, but Bonita says that she ran afoul of some zombies and one of them caught her brachial artery. She's bleeding out.
Lucille tries to get her to reveal her location, but Bonita refuses, and tells Lucille to clear the house, or, if that's impossible, take the truck and go. Lucille and Patrica check the back door while the Bitcherman sisters guard the front, but the zombies get the drop on them. Literally, in the case of Lucille and Patricia - they drop down from the roof. More run up from the basement and attack the sisters, two of them tackling Daisy and tearing her open. Patricia runs in to try and save them (Lucille is quite capable of holding her own), but she gets there just in time to see the zombies rip Daisy's heart out.
Heather freezes up, staring at her sister's corpse, and Lucille runs in, grabs both Heather and Patricia, and kicks the front door out. They all run to the truck and start heading out, with zombies emerging from the house, Daisy included.
They head north, possibly heading for an Army bunker that Priest mentioned, leaving the city behind, to an uncertain future.
Yesterday, people got eaten by zombies, as is normal. Here's last session.
The characters are at Dr. Stephens' house. Lucille takes Stephens' car and heads out for her aunt's house north of the city to get things ready for the girls and make sure that everything's OK. The others take a moment and reconnoiter.
Mia and Daisy look through Dr. Stephens' occult library, looking for some details on how this all started and, more importantly, whether or not there was a way to stop it. They learned that the original intent of the ritual was "eternal life" - basically stealing the life from one person to add it to the occultist's. Something went horribly wrong, though, and the result was the zombie rise. Since that reaction was an aberration, though, it wasn't something that was addressed in the books. Destroying the zombies was simple enough - break the red thread on their spines. But stopping all the zombies didn't seem to be possible, and all of the zombies seemed capable of spreading the condition quickly.
Heather loots the house, stealing money, food, liquor, and Dr. Stephens' revolver. Patricia moves the bodies of the zombies that the group into the panic room and shuts the door as best she can.
They regroup to talk about their next move, and then hear something outside - sounds like someone stepping on a car hood. They look out and see someone standing on the bus hood, who then jumps off and hides behind the bus. Heather and Daisy head out, and Patricia and Mia follow cautiously. They hear Kyle's voice - "Heather."
Heather isn't fooled. She's lost everything except her sister, and she's pissed. She calls out to Kyle, trying to get him to show himself...but then two more zombies drop on the girls from the roof. One is dressed in a security guard uniform, the other is naked but has a Y-shaped scar on its chest.
Mia swings the sorority paddle and misses the zombie, but nearly smacks Daisy in the head (she's quick enough to dodge, fortunately). Heather smacks one in the head with a fireplace poker and keeps it at arm's length. She puts the revolver up against its neck and pulls the trigger, but hits an empty chamber. It pulls herself free and tackles her, biting her chest. Meanwhile, the other zombie tackles Mia.
Daisy calls down holy fire and incinerates the zombie on her sister, but misses the one on Mia. The zombie tears Mia's throat out, and pulls her heart out of her chest. The last thing Mia sees is Heather shooting the zombie in the back of the neck, destroying it.
The girls are safe, but devastated, especially Patricia. She drags Mia's body into the house and sets the place on fire, and the girls get in the bus and head out. Heather notices very quickly that they seem to have a flat, but she's not interested in stopping. Patricia mourns, and reveals that she was in love with Mia.
The girls take route 9 up into the forest and the bus sputters and dies. Heather mixes up a couple of Molotovs with the liquor they stole from Stephens' house, and they discuss their options. They're at least 20 miles from Lucille's aunt's house, and they have this feeling that there are zombies around.
As if in answer to this thought, the CB crackles to life. "Heather." Heather thinks it's Kyle at first, but then she recognizes her father's voice. There's a tap at the bus door, and they turn to see Officer Bitcherman, radio in hand, standing there.
They argue a bit about who should shoot this particular zombie; Patricia finally agrees to do it. They look back, but he's gone. They open the door and step out, and a zombie in fatigues jumps at Heather from the side. She hits him with with a Molotov and lights him up, and he tackles Patricia and bites her. She falls, burning and bleeding. Kyle appears and bites Heather on the shoulder, and Bitcherman rolls out from under the bus, pulls Daisy's legs out from under her, and bites into her legs.
Patricia throws off her zombie and gets to her feet, healing herself. Kyle bites into Heather's neck and nearly pulls out her throat, but she survives, barely. Patricia smashes the zombie attacking her with a Mag-light, and Daisy incinerates her father. Heather shoots Kyle point-blank in the neck, severing his threads, and Daisy slices the other one's neck open with her knife.
Patricia heals Heather as best she can, but all three of them are injured to one degree or another, and they're stuck in the woods. Next time, we'll see how all this ends.
Yesterday was the next thrilling installment in All Flesh Must Be Eaten (not to be confused with "All Flesh Much Ado About Nothing," which sounds fantastic but isn't this game). Here's last session, here's our opening titles.
The characters are in the hospital room, they've barricaded the door, but now they're feeling like the need to get out and get down to the lobby. Lucille takes her fire ax and starts breaking through the back wall, eventually beat out a hole large enough to squeeze through. They emerge into a similar room being used for storage, and go out into the hall.
The hospital is eerily quiet. They head for the staircase, but then they notice the nurse's station and that something red is blinking. Following good horror movie logic, they investigate, and find Sgt. Priest on the floor.
There's a suggestion to smash her head in before she gets up and attacks, but Mia vetoes that idea, and goes into the station to check on her. She's alive, but barely, and she has terrible wounds on her legs and back. Patricia heals her enough that she comes to, and although Heather is convinced that she's a zombie, she's able to talk and accompany the characters.
They make their way downstairs and to the ground floor, and peek into the lobby. They rather wish they hadn't. The lobby is full of corpses whose hearts are being eaten or corpses that are eating the hearts. Many of those corpses are soldiers or cops, many more are in scrubs, and of course a lot are just people in street clothes. Heather spots one zombie in a uniform, and watches as her father raises his bloodied face toward her.
Heather begins to fall into despair, but the zombies don't much care; they rush the group. The characters run, bursting out the side door into the sunlight, just in time to hear soldiers scream at them to get down. They do, and try to explain what's happening, and Lucille risks her life to jam the door shut with the blade of her axe, but it's not until Priest emerges that the soldiers (in gas masks) listen, pulling the characters to safety. They put them into a bus equipped to quarantine, and turn their attention back to the door.
The zombies burst through the door and charge the soldiers, and the characters realize in horror that more - these in hospital gowns, are dropping from the upper windows. Mia gets in the driver's seat and starts the bus, and they peel out to the sound of gunfire and screams. And then they all hear a chopper zoom in overhead, and explosions behind them...
They talk about where to go, but they run up against a couple of obstacles - they have no money or ID on them, and they're all covered in blood to a greater or lesser extent. They decide to go to the sorority house; there's some worry that the cops will be watching, but Lucille points out that the cops have better things to do today. Lucille also mentions that she has a great survivalist aunt who lives north of the city, should things reach that point. Daisy, though, mentions that maybe they should tell the authorities what they know - where the zombies come from and how to destroy them. Priest says that the authorities (specifically General Grantham) are unlikely to listen if they start talking about "zombies" and "magic red thread."
Maybe, then, they can find Dr. Stephens, whom Daisy believes started this whole thing somehow. They go to the sorority house and get clean clothes, and take the time to shower off (not in that order). They gather up everything of use - Patricia cleans out the medicine chests, Heather grabs sanitary napkins, someone grabs liquor, and Lucille grabs her bug-out bag - and they get back on the bus. They decide to go to Stephens' office; maybe there they can find some answers.
They park the bus outside the building, and Daisy, Heather, Lucille, and Priest head in. Lucille knocks in the door on Stephens' office and the sisters search the room. Heather finds a leather-bound book with handwriting in it, including notes on a ritual meant to give "eternal life." But for whom? It doesn't say. The ritual involves sacrificing a victim, tearing out their heart, exposing the spine, and binding it up with red thread.
They figure that the first victim must have been Stella Aminat, Stephens' GA - that would make her the first zombie. But Stella is capable of spreading the condition to others, who can then spread it on their own. Daisy theorizes that destroying Stella might end the plague, but who knows? The book is no help; the next page merely mentions that the ritual was performed and that those involved have taken a "vow of secrecy." Those pages are also bloodstained.
Lucille touches the book and prays for wisdom, and sees Dr. Stephens in a panic room, holding a pistol. Something is pounding on the door. She relays this to the others, and they grab a faculty directory and look up Stephens' address.
Meanwhile, outside, Mia sees a cop approaching their bus. She rolls down the window, but the cop lurches up and grabs at her, snarling. She floors it, and Patricia whacks the cop's fingers with a meat mallet (which she took from the sorority house). The zombie-cop falls under the wheels, and Mia reverses and runs him over until he stops moving.
The others get downstairs and they see the cop and the forming crowd. Patricia yells to everyone to run, but of course they don't. They all head to Stephens' house, and when they arrive, they see two cop cars out front and the door smashed in.
Lucille grabs a shotgun out of a cop car and they all head downstairs to the sound of chaos. They see three zombies - Stella Aminat and two cops - pounding on a metal door. When the characters show up, though, the zombies turn and charge.
Daisy summons holy fire and destroys Stella immediately. Lucille shoots one with a shotgun and staggers it, but it doesn't drop. Patricia touches Heather and blesses her, and Heather shoots the other zombie cop right in the throat, blowing out the back of its neck and severing the red thread. It collapses, and the characters surround the other one. Lucille picks the zombie up (with the strength of ten, one might say) and rips out the thread, destroying it, and then pulls the panic room door aside.
Inside, they find Dr. Susan Stephens...dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. On a whiteboard, she's written: "ARMAGEDDON MEA CULPA".
The (surviving) characters have been admitted to the hospital and put in quarantine. They're in a locked room, separated by plastic "walls", and have been given water and hospital gowns. Mia, Daisy, and Patricia have washed up, but Heather refuses to (and is having trouble acknowledging that Kyle is really dead). They argue a bit, and discuss the "fire" that Daisy seems able to summon and Patricia's strange ability to heal with a touch, but then the door opens and a bunch of people in hazmat suits come in.
One of them introduces herself as Sgt. Priest, and she says she is to act as a kind of liaison to them while they're here. The Army (USAMRIID in particular) is making sure that there's no chance of an outbreak, and they need to stay here while it's being investigated. To that end, they need some blood samples.
Mia and Patricia agrees, but the Bitcherman sisters refuse. The Army (overseen by General Grantham, who takes the time to step forward and introduce himself) has no time for this, nor for Daisy's demands for a lawyer - both girls are held down and blood extracted. The other folks leave and Sgt. Priest is able to answer a few questions.
The Army isn't sure precisely what's going on; they know that people are being found dead with their hearts torn out, but then those same people are reportedly getting up and attacking people. Obviously that's nonsense (Priest theorizes this is a chemical attack of some kind), but until they figure this out, the students are actually in the safest place.
The Bitcherman sisters disagree, of course, and express their intent to be uncooperative, but Priest points out that talking about blowing the place up (yes, the room is mic'd) and refusing to wash off is not really conducive to getting out. She asks if the girls have any requests (Mia asks for a Walkman so she doesn't have to listen to Heather, Patricia asks for a deck of cards). The sisters ask to speak to their father, and Priest leaves.
Officer Bitcherman does show up and talks to his daughters, but he isn't able to get them out and admonishes them to cooperate. He leaves, Priest returns and gives Mia a Walkman and a Pat Benatar tape (it's all she could find).
Downstairs, the rest of the sorority sisters have been asked to come in for some quick bloodwork and a statement. One of them, Lucille Williams, is among them (she's a new character! theme song here). She's been cleared, but Officer Bitcherman approaches her and asks if she would be willing to get some clean clothes for the girls from the sorority house. Lucille helpfully agrees, and they go to the house.
The house is pretty trashed, and Bitcherman gets the folks watching the house to let Lucille in to get some clothes. On the way back, she asks him what's happening and what she should be doing, but he says he doesn't know - he really doesn't have a good explanation for all this. She offers to pray with him and he accepts.
At the hospital, Lucille is admitted to the room with the other girls (wearing a hazmat suit), and hands out the clothes. She talks with Heather and prays with her (Heather isn't very religious, but she's happy to have the attention), and helps her wash up. The Army comes back and asks for a volunteer for an MRI, and Heather agrees; Daisy goes with her. Lucille stays with Patricia and Mia.
The MRI goes fine; Heather is initially worried about the tight space, but she gets over it and everything looks normal. Up in the room, Mia sketches the strange spines that the assailants have shown. On the way back from the MRI, Daisy and Heather see a woman getting into an elevator and close the door. They both recognize her - Stella Aminat, the TA of Dr. Susan Stephens. Stella went missing some time ago. They frantically inform Sgt. Priest and General Grantham, and Priest takes them back up to their room while the Army folks head downstairs to investigate.
Back in the room, Lucille is sitting on Patricia's bed rubbing her back, and has a vision. She sees the hospital morgue, a morgue worker with his throat torn out, and a woman standing before Kyle's body. She flips his body over on its stomach and runs her hand down his spine. The skin splits and the bones become visible, and red veins emerge from the flesh and wrap around the bones, resembling thread. The body stirs, and Lucille realizes she's pressing too hard on Patricia's back. She glances over at the sketches Mia has been doing, and realizes that's what she saw.
She tries to tell the others, but Priest's walkie talkie crackles to life and they heard shouting and gunshots. Priest tries to get out, but the room has been locked down - her card won't open it. Lucille uses her skill in electronics to short the door and open it, and they head out into the hall, Priest and a private taking point. The elevator door opens and Stella, Kyle, and several soldiers get out.
Music cue:
Mia unloads with a fire extinguisher, filling the hallway with white smoke. The zombies emerge from the smoke, and one of the soldiers leaps for Heather. She smacks it out of the way with her own extinguisher, but Kyle tackles her and bites her neck open. Stella pounces at Patricia and bites her, and Daisy avoids one of the soldiers and reaches out with her power, binding it. She sees its red back-threads explode from the spine and wrap it up, and she bashes it repeatedly with a fire extinguisher until it stops moving.
Priest yells at them to run, and they do, heading back down the hall into their room, and barricade the door. They take a second to regroup and Patricia heals herself and Heather, and they decide that staying here might be the wisest course of action.
And then a walkie-talkie crackles. "This is Officer Bitcherman. We're in the lobby. Multiple assailants, it's all blood - holy shit, what". And it cuts off.
Yesterday, there were zombies. (We're not going to have as many sessions as I thought for this game because one of the players got an awesome job and is leaving town in summer, so multiple "songs" per episode, I think.)
Anyway! It's been a good long while since we played this; last session is here, and here's our opening music:
We open with the characters all at the Tri-Delt house. Kyle has just arrived and is freaked right out. Heather sits with him trying to calm him, but like, she's bad at it. She gives him a shirt (one of hers, but it's not covered in blood and vomit, at least), and Patricia, Daisy, and Mia hang around talking about this. Daisy tries to get from Kyle what he took, figuring he's just on drugs.
Patricia notices that someone is outside the back door, hanging around but not really moving. As they can just see a silhouette, Mia assumes it's Bethany (she's been drinking too much lately), and opens the door.
It's not Bethany. Rocco - the guy who died and had his heart cut out yesterday - is standing there. He looks intact, but for a strangely vacant gaze. Mia asks who he is (figuring he can't actually be Rocco), and the man lunges at her.
Mia has very quick reflexes, though, and slams the door and locks it. Rocco responds by smashing his fists through the window and kicking in the frame. Mia, not exactly brave at the best of times, runs, grabbing the paddle off the wall, sitting in the corner, and freaking out. Kyle grabs Heather and pulls her upstairs, panicking. Patricia, made of sterner stuff, grabs a meat mallet (someone in this house likes to cook!) and smashes Rocco in the head with hit.
He staggers, and the mallet comes back with flesh on it, but he's still moving. He lunges forward, but Patricia jumps back. Daisy runs in to the room, and he lunges at her, putting Patrica behind him. She smacks him again, in the back of the head, and notices that under his shirt is a long incision along the spine, bound up with red thread. She hits him again and some of the thread snaps, and he roars in pain and whirls on her. He grabs her shoulders and bites her, ripping out a chunk of her flesh.
Daisy grabs a knife and stabs him in the back, popping more threads, and he grabs her arm and bites. She screams and feels fire well up, and calls it down from her hands into him. His spine ignites, the threads break, and he collapses. The two girls stare and Patricia absent touches her wound...and it closes.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Kyle and Heather are hiding and have told the other girls about the situation (kind of; Kyle said "we're under attack" and Heather said something about some guy being here). One of them calls campus security, and Kyle and Heather leave through a window, but get lights in their eyes outside as the security shows up. Of course, in a few minutes there are even more lights around, Daisy and Patricia get taken to the hospital (Heather goes with Daisy), and Kyle and Mia are put in squad cars.
Detective Gomez arrives and talks with Kyle, but Kyle isn't able to shed much light on the situation - he didn't even see Rocco, he figured it was Penny (the zombie that chased him out of his apartment). Mia, likewise, is able to recount what she saw, but what she saw doesn't make any sense, and Gomez knows it. He recommends they both go to the hospital and get checked out, and Mia drives them - neither of them have anywhere else to go anyway.
At the hospital, Daisy is stitched up, Patricia is cleaned off and both of them are shot full of antibiotics. Heather hangs out with Daisy in her room (she's been admitted for the night), and their father shows up. He admonishes Heather about gun safety (Heather was waving her gun around earlier and nearly got shot for her trouble), and tells the girls to stay here and stay safe. Some weird shit is going on, he doesn't understand it, but he has work to do.
Patricia, meanwhile, feels a strange sensation - an odd hunger that doesn't seem like hers, similar to what she felt during the eclipse. She gets up and follows it, and the elevator opens to reveal a young man with a blank expression. She follows him.
Kyle and Mia have also been admitted, and Daisy and Heather decide to go find them (well, Kyle, anyway). Detective Gomez finds him first, and shows him a picture of a dead man (from the neck up). The man is Henry Dees, the guy who lives across the hall from Kyle. He was found earlier with his heart torn out.
Gomez leaves, the sisters arrive, and talk with Kyle a bit. The elevator opens, and the man walks down the hall, followed by Patricia. He enters the room, and Kyle recognizes him as Henry. Kyle screams and rolls off the bed, and Patricia, figuring this confirms her suspicions, whacks him with her IV stand.
This has the effect of ripping out her IV and dousing Henry in fluids (antibiotics and saline). The liquid makes his shirt cling and reveals the hole in his chest. He leaps in to the room and pounces on Heather, nearly ripping out her throat.
Mia, plucking up her courage, wraps the cords from one of the machines around Henry's neck and yanks him back. He staggers back to the doorway, but Mia freezes up. Patricia stabs him in the back with her now-broken IV stand, and Daisy throws a chair at him (and misses). The zombie turns and lunges for Patricia, but misses, and Kyle picks up Heather's gun and fires, narrowly missing both the zombie and Patricia. Patricia dives into the room across the hall, out of the line of fire, and security guards arrive. The zombie leaps down the hall at them.
Kyle gets up, walks out into the hall, and empties the gun at the zombie, hitting him and one of the guards in the process (the guards are bleeding and torn up at this point anyway). The zombie yanks the IV stand out of itself, runs over, and tackles Kyle.
Daisy is helping Heather (really just putting pressure on her wound, but she's losing blood). They both see the zombie land on Kyle, slam its hands into his chest, rip his heart out, and start to eat it.
Both of them scream. Daisy raises her hands and calls down fire again, and the zombie's spine crumbles to ash. It collapses forward onto Kyle's body. Patricia goes back into the room and lays hands on Heather, closing her wound and healing her...but Kyle is still dead.
Sunday was All Flesh. First session is here. And now, our opening music:
We open on Kyle, who's crashed over the apartment of Penny, the barista at Rocco's Beans & Things. He learns from the clock-radio that Rocco was found murdered in the shop, his heart cut out. This shakes Kyle; Rocco was a good guy, and of course that's fucking gruesome.
Mia gets up, goes for a run, and then goes to Mass. She attends at the same church where Rocco's family goes, in fact, so she gets to hear about the murder there. She gets home to the Tri-Delt house and runs into Heather, who's also getting back from church (she goes to the interfaith chapel on campus because she's under the impression that counts as "community service"). They talk briefly and Mia floats the idea of raising some funds for Rocco's family, but Heather is unable to understand why that would be of benefit to her and Mia gets frustrated and leaves.
She heads over to Kyle's place and picks him up to go to the beach. Mia isn't really interested (or well-equipped) to comfort anyone, but she does enjoy swimming and sex.
Daisy gets up and goes to the library, checks out entirely too many books, and goes to campus to sit on the lawn and read. As she's reading, she sees a woman being chased by another person, obviously in distress. Daisy grabs a heavy book and runs after the woman, and catches up as she enters a building and is frantically stabbing the button the elevator.
Daisy calms the woman down and offers to walk her up to her office - the woman is a professor of Comparative Religion, Susan Stephens. Daisy asks if she wants to call campus security, but Stephens declines. She also says she doesn't know who was chasing her, but Daisy is experienced enough watching her sister lie (badly) to recognize an untruth. She stays and chats with Stephens for a while, and they mostly discuss philosophy, but it's not until later that Daisy realizes that Stephens' philosophical views are dark. Like, she believes in God, but she believes that God is uncaring and merciless, and all that anyone can do is amass power and comfort here on Earth. Troubled, Daisy goes back to her reading spot.
Patricia gets up and hears about Rocco on the radio as well. She goes about her day, and then goes for a walk on campus and runs into Daisy. They talk a bit, and then Daisy decides to go to the Tri-Delt house and raid the fridge.
They do, and run into Heather. The three of them discuss Rocco's death and Patricia, like Mia, thinks maybe it might be nice to raise some money for the family (Heather is, again, unsympathetic). They decide to find Mia, and Patricia notes that she might be with Kyle. Daisy is suddenly very much in favor of finding them, and recalls that Mia likes to swim. They get into Heather's car and head out to the beach.
They find Mia and Kyle sitting on the back of Mia's jeep (they've been "swimming," of course). Mia is a little annoyed to be stalked, but they talk about Rocco and the horror of that situation, and stay at the beach the rest of the day. As evening falls, they build a fire, and another group of surfers comes up and offers marshmallows, so the group of them sit around the bonfire as the sun sets. Kyle plays his guitar, and the group talks and relaxes.
And then the cops show up.
The police ask to speak to Kyle, and take him aside. They establish his whereabouts today, and then reveal why they're here: Penny was murdered about an hour ago, near Rocco's cafe. Her heart was cut out. Kyle was the last person to talk to her.
Heather and Daisy talk to the other cop (their father is a cop), and get a general sense of what's going on. Kyle returns to the group, clearly shaken, and asks if Mia would take him home. Mia winds up taking him, Daisy, and Patricia, since no one really wants to ride back with Heather.
Heather, offended, goes to the mall to find her father (he's working security at the movie theater). She talks to him and learns that someone stole Rocco's body today, but immediately realizes he shouldn't have said that. He tells her to stay out of it, but Heather is determined to solve the mystery. She decides to head into town and find the others.
Said others, by the way, have gotten back to town. They drop Kyle off at his place, and then decide to go to the police station and report what happened to Dr. Stephens (Daisy has told them about this, and it seems strange). They talk to a fellow on desk who promises to pass the information along (he, too, knows Daisy). Patricia and Mia go to get a pop from the vending machine, and hear one Det. Gomez talking to another officer - "I knew that name sounded familiar, her TA was the one that went missing."
Mia has a pretty incredible memory, and she recalls a TA going missing earlier in the fall. Her name was Stella Aminat.
The three of them stand in the parking lot a minute talking about all of this - the murders, the disappearance of Stella, the attack on Stephens - and Heather arrives (though for the life of me I can't remember why she went there). There's some eye-rolling, but Heather remembers Stella, too; she took a Comparative Religion class. Stella was, you guessed it, Dr. Stephens' TA.
Daisy tries to call Kyle, but he doesn't pick up.
After getting dropped off, Kyle goes out walking, and winds up near Rocco's cafe. The place is swarming with cops, and Kyle hangs out, listening. He hears a couple of them talking, and realizes that Penny's body disappeared, right from under their noses. Another cop comes up and tells them that Rocco's body disappeared, too, so it's not just a matter of the cops being incompetent. At this point, Kyle asks to talk to Gomez, the detective in charge. Gomez is on site, and talks to Kyle. Kyle relates the story that Daisy told him earlier, about Stephens being chased on campus, and Gomez looks thoughtful. He thanks Kyle for the info, and Kyle leaves (Gomez, of course, heads back to the station).
Kyle heads home, and goes into his apartment complex. A woman steps out of the shadows - Penny. She doesn't look hurt, but she's covered in blood and her shirt is torn. Kyle panics and runs upstairs, but Penny vaults up the railing and lands in front of him, and now she looks dead - chest is ripped open and blood falls out. Kyle runs, throwing up on the way, and manages to get out the door and away from her.
Penny smashes through the door to get after him, but Kyle gets to his bike, guns the engine, and heads to the Tri-Delt house on instinct.
He gets there just after the girls, gets off the bike, utterly panicked. He tells them he saw Penny, and she attacked him, but they don't believe him - they figure he's high. They take him inside to have a cup of tea and change his shirt.
So, yesterday we started a new game: All Flesh Must be Eaten. A little background on this particular campaign is necessary.
I've been wanting to do this setup for a while. I had the players choose an album to act as the framework and inspiration for the campaign as a whole. My players, always a group to challenge me, chose Journey's Greatest Hits. Now, my first thought was "ugh, not exactly a deep inspiration," but thinking about the songs, I actually warmed to the idea. Sure, most of the songs on that album are love songs (not always the greatest inspiration for RPGs), but there's often a mature, kind of wistful element to them. Plus, we also have songs like "Wheel in the Sky" and "Lights" that aren't love songs, and that imply travel and a sense of place. So that's cool.
Next, I had each player pick a band, and then I gave them a song by that band to act as the inspiration/theme song for their character. Here's what we came up with:
Michelle chose Halsey, so I gave her "Drive". Her character is Mia Starek. Mia is a Classics major at the University of California (Santa Cruz). She's a Tri-Delt, formerly a "big sis" to Daisy. She also suffers from depression. She's 23, probably the most mature of the group.
Travis chose Hozier; I gave him "Jackie & Wilson." His character is Kyle Thomas. Kyle is 25, the oldest of the group. He's a dropout, lazy, show-off, and utterly emotionally needy but distant. He's hooked up with most of the Tri-Delts, dated Heather when she was in high school, sometimes gets together with Mia.
Megan chose Florence & the Machine; I gave her "Sky Full of Song." Her character is Daisy Bitcherman. Daisy was a Tri-Delt, but dropped out of college and now rejects her father's money and all assistance, and lives in, basically, a utility closet in a shitty apartment building. She's lost weight and her health is suffering, but she's sticking to her economic anti-capitalist principles, at least for the moment. She's Heather's younger sister, and crushing on Kyle.
Sarah chose Ludo; I gave her "Anything For You." Her character is Patricia Allen. Patricia (do not call her "Trish" or "Patty") got back from a backpack tour of Europe to find herself, and is presently a business major. She works at a co-op and is trying to get Daisy a job there, and takes a class or two with Mia. She actually came back and tried to assimilate into college life for love, but she won't say who she's in love with.
Melissa chose Taylor Swift; I gave her "Getaway Car." Her character is Heather Bitcherman. Heather is a Tri-Delt, and she's Daisy's older sister. She's obsessed with Kyle (formerly her boyfriend, but that's been over for years, not that you can tell Heather that). She's emotionally dependent and not as smart as she thinks she is, but she wants to be renowned and loved.
So, our first session of the game is based on this song:
We start off the game on Saturday, November 7th, 1992. Bill Clinton was just elected President this week, and the characters are going about normal Saturday things.
Kyle and Mia hooked up last night; Kyle was actually on a date with Daisy, but Daisy had to call it early, so Kyle showed up at Mia's door. Mia let him in, because why not? It worked out for her (Mia is under no illusions as to the nature of her relationship with Kyle). Kyle pulls on his clothes and heads out, but Heather spots him in the hallway and confronts him, loudly, about hooking up with Mia and who knows who else in the Tri-Delt house.
Mia, for her part, glides on down to the shower while Kyle tries to extricate himself. Heather, true to form, freaks out for a while and then softens, verifying that Kyle will be at the opening of the new sandwich shop later (free samples!). Kyle says he will, but not for long; there's an open mic later. Heather confirms that she'll be there, since Kyle invited her (he totally didn't).
Meanwhile, Daisy is hanging with Patricia at the co-op; she does some work and takes some food in exchange. Patricia notices a missing person poster on the wall - it's a grad student named Stella Aminat. She gets a strange feeling when she sees the poster, but isn't sure what it means.
Later, all five of them wind up at the sandwich shop (City Bites), snacking on the free samples and kibitzing. Patricia and Mia wind up chatting, trying to drown out the sisters bickering and fighting over Kyle. Patricia talks a bit about her experiences backpacking, and Kyle regales them with the time he went to Oakland.
And then the characters glance up, and note that the sun seems to be...changing. There's an eclipse happening, which is odd because none of them remember hearing anything about one coming up ("It's not like they schedule these", says Heather). Kyle and Mia go into the laundromat next door and check the TV; the newscaster is talking about the eclipse, but not in a "OMG SURPRISE ECLIPSE" kind of way, so they just assume they missed it. The characters watch the eclipse for a while, and Daisy and Patricia both feel...strange. Daisy, in particular, feels an odd kind of hunger, a sensation that feels wrong somehow. But it passes, and the group decides to go to Kyle's open mic (Patricia and Mia are somewhat reluctant, but they figure it'll be amusing at least).
The coffee shop is called Rocco's Beans & Things. Rocco D'Onfrio is a tough-talking Italian-American who opened the coffee shop after his restaurant failed, and it's got a lively open mic scene going. The characters order drinks (Kyle gets them all hand stamps so they can get beer), and Kyle goes up and does his song. Afterwards, Kyle makes to leave, but Heather goes up and does a poem that she wrote, which everyone kind of suffers through (note: Heather has the Talentless Drawback).
The characters split up for the night; Daisy goes home to her awful little closet, Heather and Mia go back to the sorority house, Kyle hooks up with a barista, and Patricia goes back to her apartment.
In the morning, Kyle wakes up to the alarm playing a radio. The broadcast is gruesome - Rocco was found dead in the back room of the restaurant. His heart has been cut out.
Next time, we'll learn what the characters do following that bit of horror.
Although actually, if something was eating your brain, you probably would no longer be able to complain about it. Makes you think.
The Game:All Flesh Must Be Eaten The publisher:Eden Studios. Degree of familiarity: Some. I've run it a few times, played it a few times, and done a little teeny bit of writing for it (part of Worlds of the Dead).
I'd like to do more, but I don't know what their production schedule is
like and I'm kind of spoiled by White Wolf, believe it or not (or maybe
it's just that I'm familiar with their brand of chaos). Oh, I also
wrote an essay about running AFMBE. Books required: Just the AFMBE book, though I might use others, depending on what I decide to do.
OK,
so this is the game about playing someone when the zombie Rise happens.
Easy enough, yeah? Except that the game is set up with a zillion
"Deadworlds," allowing you to play that Rise with lots of different
kinds of zombies, and lots of different time periods. And because I
already made a character for a modern, Romero-style Rise (here), I'll pick a Deadworld randomly. Hold on.
The
core book has 11 Deadworlds, so I'm going to skip the first one (it's
basically the Romero situation) and roll a d10 to determine which one I
get. A 3 gives me...Sacred Soil. Basically, the Rise comes from a
chemical fertilizer, and so it started in the country and spread to the
burbs, rather than starting in the city. Food is becoming scarce, and
you spread the love by burying the body, rather than biting (in some
ways, this is similar to the Deadworld I wrote). These zombies actually
bury people that they kill, making more of themselves. Yeek.
I have three choices for character type:
Norm, Survivor and Inspired. As much as I love playing Inspired
characters, this scenario is more science-y, so I think I'll play a
Norm. I want to play someone who's been watching all of this happen with
grim fascination. He was one of the chemists for OrganoGrow, the
company that started this whole mess. Actually, he was just a lab tech,
not a real researcher, but he's still got a good handle on the science
behind it. His present mission is trying to extract the chemicals from
patches of soil, so that new food can be grown. Oh, and not getting eaten.
Second step: Attributes. As a Norm, I get 14 points to divvy up between six Attributes. I
know I want this guy to be brainy, but not a total weakling, either.
I'll do it evenly (2 each) and put the extra two points into
Intelligence.
Next up: Qualities and Drawbacks. I get 5
points in Qualities, and I can take up to 10 points in Drawbacks. I
could use Drawbacks to raise Attributes, but let's see what jumps out at
me. Other than zombies.
Right off, I see a Drawback I like:
Adversary. My character stole files and data fro OrganoGrow, and the
upper echelons want it back (rather, if anyone's going to solve the
problem, they want to, so that they aren't perceived as the ones who
totally fucked the world). I figure they're big, but they've lost a lot
of resources since the Rise, so I'll make them a 3-point Drawback.
Because I want to survive, I'll take 2 levels of Hard to Kill.
I
like the Honorable Drawback, but I'll just take the 1-point version. My
character won't lie to you if he likes you, but can lie to strangers.
Photographic
Memory's good; that's probably how he remembered what files to swipe.
And I'll take Resistance (Fatigue); lots of all-nighters doing research
and filling in data. Finally, I grab the Showoff Drawback - he can't
keep quiet about his stolen data, which is why it's not a Secret.
That's all my points in Qualities, and I've got six points in Drawbacks to throw around. Hmm. I'll do the next step, Skills first, and then come back to that.
I have 30 points in Skills. Perusing the list, here's what I come up with:
Looks
good. I still have six Drawback points floating around, though. I'll
use three to raise my Perception to 3. If I take another 2-point
Drawback, I can raise my Intelligence to 5. That'd be nice. Let's check One of the Living
and see if there's anything cool there. I find Weak Stomach. I think my
character was a vegan before the Rise, but since food is so damned
scarce, he can't afford to be fussy anymore. The sudden change in the
diet, though, has left him a little shaky. That gives me the extra
points I need.
Last bit, I'll do my derived Attributes. I get 32
Life Points (because of my Hard to Kill Quality). I get 23 Endurance
Points. My Speed is 8, and my Essence Pool is 16, not that it'll matter
much (I'm not Inspired).
Thinking about my character, I picture
him as skinny, blond, mid-20s, just out of college and was looking to
become a real researcher in chemistry. OrganoGrow offered him a good
salary, and he took it up. In between poker games with his mates, he dug
into their protected files. When the Rise happened, he chanced across
the memo (it started small, in the country) and swiped copies of a bunch
of their data. Now he's on the run, with some other survivors. He's
always talking about how he could cure this thing, if he just had the
right materials. His name is Nick Houser.
