Part one here.
So, the demons got together and realized that we have a Burned demon and a soul pact. Well, that’s a match made in Hell, right there. Lucia Sparks, it seems, dies tonight (or rather, has her marker called in).
Krispie and Harriet do a little research and find that Lucia Sparks lives in Cleveland, near the Flats, in a section of town marked by some very expensive apartments. We pile into the RV and head over there, park in a vacant area (there are lots of those). Then we form a basic plan.
Lee takes demonic form and, carrying Tamar, flies up and lands on the roof. The others will enter the building, get up to the roof door, and let him in, and then we’ll all go down and get entry to Lucia’s place and let Tamar call in the pact. No problem.
I failed the compromise roll for Lee, though, and decided I’d take the Hunted Condition (which, if we were going to play these characters again, might come back to bite me, but it didn’t tonight). But Lee assumes demonic form: He’s better than 12 feet tall, with big, sheet-metal like wings. His beard gets longer and is made of thin, copper wiring that sparks like a Tesla coil, and his tattoos fade to acid-etchings on metallic skin. He takes to the air with Tamar and, as planned, lands on the roof.
The other folks enter and make their way to Lucia’s place. Lee comes down with Tamar (turns out the stairway door is unlocked from the outside). They knock, she answers but doesn’t undo the chain. There’s a couple of minutes of trying to con our way in (which she’s really too smart for, and Krispie’s use of Authorized failed), and then Anton decides, screw it, we’re here for her soul anyway. He kicks in the door.
Lee uses Hesitation on the poor woman, and Yuri jumps in and uses Knockout Punch. Krispie calls up her EMP Field form power, and Harriet jams the elevator so we don’t get surprised from behind. And then the dog wakes up.
There’s a little dog sleeping on a doggie bed, but its eyes are huge and black, like a grey alien’s. It stands up…and then without moving, it’s next to Yuri. Its tail brushes him, and he’s across the room, full of bashing damage, feeling like he’s been through a wringer.
Lee braces himself, summoning up his Blade Hand (actually a giant stone hammer), but the dog doesn’t stand a chance. Yuri takes demonic form, teleports over the “dog,” and drops down on it, digging his claws into it. That does aggravated damage, folks. He tears the dog in half.
We let Tamar into the room, and she touches Lucia’s unconscious body and holds up the soul pact. And then the soul pact kind of digitizes…as does Lucia. And then that digitization reforms around Tamar, and now she’s Lucia.
Anton uses Break to Heal to fix Yuri up (the TV shatters). The rest of us calm down a bit. We talk a little about how Lucia’s memories will come back to her a bit (and she marvels in the knowledge that she has work in the morning), but this does make us wonder where the dog came from. Lee looks at it and tries to figure out if it’s a Hellhound, but it doesn’t seem to be. It might be just a cryptid that’s been trained somehow. But then we realized that it’s still got some magic in it, because when Yuri pokes it with a stick, the stick disintegrates.
We gather the body up in a blanket, take it to the roof, and Lee nods to Anton. Anton uses Hellfire on his pistol, and Lee throws the blanket out into the night. “Pull!”
Anton shoots it, and it explodes into a fireball. If that doesn’t kill it, man…
Since we basically just set off a beacon, though, we decide that going out for drinks and now being here might be wise. So we hit one of the bars (Flat Iron, maybe? I don’t remember) and have mojitos, and try and figure out where that dog came from.
Lucia finds some of her business cards, and hands Harriet one. There’s an equation on the back. When solved, it yields a phone number and the word “Reese.” Harriet calls it, and a mechanized voice answers. She asks about the dog, and “Reese” seems confused, but then says, “oh, we’re in that reality?” He indicates he’d be willing to get together and explain that, but the general consensus is that that’s a bit more angelic than we’re comfortable with. Anyway, Lucia’s a demon now, we can all help her get established (Anton especially), so that’s all good, right?
Some Demon: The Malachi games end with explosions, some end with mojitos.
I love the image of a small dog sending a demon flying across an apartment.
It might just be the way that these playtests are constructed but it seems that demons are rewarding to diversify with. In many other WoD games you do better by focusing on a single power or suite of powers. Demon seems to offer a much broader assortment of abilities and make then each rewarding.
Demon powers don’t exactly come in suites, anyway. There are a few broad categories of Embeds, but no real restrictions on who can learn what. So, yeah, definitely worth your while to diversify with a group.
….I still feel like there was some kind of grand conspiracy in back of all this.
Anyway, the Soul Pact thing. Is Lucia “dead?” The original Lucia anyway?
More like irrevocably deleted, by the sounds of it. Deader than dead. Not even a ghost left behind.