Unspent: St. Luke's Church

So, I've also recently started up a World of Darkness campaign for some friends over the phone, which is a vastly different medium than that of my other campaign (Dystopia and Giant Robots). I'm exploring a few different things here, including pitting the players against some very...unique critters. And, well, you'll have to see for yourself. This campaign is titled "Unspent", for reasons that will eventually become clear...

George and Ivy, Explorers of the Supernatural
We took some initial time to flesh out the two starting characters, who were to meet one another in the first session. First up was George Freeman, college-age ghost hunter, though he's somewhat inept at his job. He's being played by a former college roommate of mine, who'll be named under the pseudonym Elric. The guy is...well...a very strongly reactive roleplayer, a veteran of D&D with a tendency to be a sadistic DM. The other character is Ivy Hastings, child of hippies in the local small town of Shrewsburg, Kansas, who wants to be a journalist and so is poking about in scary old places. She's being played by, well...I don't have a pseudonym for her yet. I'll leave that to Elric, since she's his girlfriend. She tends to be heavy on the character-playing, with a mild demeanor but a sharp mind behind it.

George has a few circles of contacts to throw about, and some ability to keep a good head in combat. Ivy has the good fortune of being very sensible, and also of having a sense for the supernatural. As in, she gets that unsettled feeling whenever the spooky is about. That's a very good combination to have, you know...especially with what they're facing. See, I'm mostly going on my own here, homebrewing monsters with a good amount of inspiration from outside sources. Those sources might be rather apparent to some of you, via familiarity. If so, don't speak up too loud. ;)

The Old Church
This opening session saw George and Ivy poking around St. Luke's Church, an abandoned church in the small town of Shrewsburg, Kansas. George was acting on rumors from his ghost hunting circles, regarding a few disappearances of individuals in conjunction with the church. Ivy was looking into rumors that a few teens who had recently gone missing had vanished because they went to explore the church. The end result was, George started poking about at one of the boarded-up windows around the back of church, and failed miserably to do anything more than crack the wood whilst making a lot of noise. This drew Ivy's attention, and George was fortunate enough to notice her.

They started looking around, and the first sign that things were going wrong...was a wood crashing noise that came once they started looking elsewhere around the church. They run back, and find that something on the inside has punched down the boards that George was trying to tear off of the window. That's not a terribly comforting thought. It freaked both of them out, understandably, and they decided to look elsewhere for an entrance. "Elsewhere" turned out to mean "the front entrance of the church". Armed with some sticks from the nearby woods, they busted down the door, ready to meet whatever was inside.

Looming Menace
They saw a pretty standard church, although Ivy began feeling more weirded out the closer they got to the altar area. It was about 80 feet or so to the altar, which was flanked by two worn-down statues on either side, with one big, worn-down statue in the middle. When I say "worn-down", I mean so far as to be indistinct in any facial features. George and Ivy noticed some burned-out torches in the church, and went to examine one of them. As George started handling the torch, Ivy felt her sense of "something wrong" spike suddenly. She told George to put the torch down, and as George looked at her to reply, he was utterly freaked out--

There was a statue poised behind her, completely still...but behind her, all the same. They swept the flashlight around, and saw that all five statues were no longer behind the altar, but were instead in the center aisle of the church. (Those of you who know where this is going, remember to refrain from comment. ;) But yes, I did just do that.) And then came the Blink Rolls. (Again, yes, I just did that.) See, I did the research, and the human (on average) blinks about once every five seconds. And every time they both blinked, the statues got a little closer. It became quite evident that they only moved when neither character was looking at them.

Did I mention that they noticed there were a couple statues that had been in alcoves in the back of the church?

Getting Out of Dodge
So, essentially, both characters wound up being chased around the church by statues, a littler statue wound up crawling in the smashed-open window, presumably from the nearby cemetery, and they saw a black arrow pointing towards the right wing of the church. George and Ivy were more concerned about getting out of there, and they finally figured out ways to escape, amidst all of the flashlight-flickering that something was causing in the church.

And now they want to go back to investigate...

...but in broad daylight this time.

Stay tuned for more! It looks as though, for now, I'll be doing some recaps of sessions for both blog days. We shall see how this develops.