October 18, 1925 (The Beginning of the Actual Longest Day Ever)
The players began the session split into three groups. Despite my best efforts, they ended the session still split into three (albeit slightly different) groups. Here's what happened.
Ashby, MA
Judge Putnam, Dr. Black, Kane Eastman, and Johnny Doukas
awoke in Ashby to find that Max Reed had left some time early in the morning.
Ruth Anne gave Johnny sealed letter that Mr. Reed had written to the group.
The quartet had breakfast at the boarding house, during which time Dr. Black made a slight faux pas by offhandedly mentioning that the blood he found was merely raspberry jam. As Dr. Black did not further explain that he went out in the wee morning hours to inspect the abandoned mill, where he found something that looked like blood on a rusty circular saw blade, only to determine, by taste and smell, that it was raspberry jam, this statement merely baffled everyone else.
In a desperate attempt to change the subject, Johnny opened the letter at the breakfast table and passed it around. According to Mr. Reed, there was to be an emergency meeting of the Silver Twilight Lodge later that same evening at 6 pm, and that they were invited. Mr. Reed said he would “see them there” and that their actions of the previous day put them in a position that was “above reproach” as far as Mr. Stanford was concerned.
The quartet set off for home, but not before buying a lock and as much heavy-duty chain as they could from the general store. They then visited the hilltop cabin one last time to bind up the wardrobe, thereby making that particular Gate Box useless to Carl Stanford and the Order.
While driving back, Johnny heard an unpleasant sound coming from the back of the car. He pulled over, gave the car a thorough inspection, and found that someone had tampered with the car’s differential, such that its Babbitt thrust washers had completely degraded. This caused a two-hour delay while the quartet waited for a kindly mechanic to arrive and replace the bearings with metal ones. They then resumed their drive.
(I did a lot of research on cars, as you can see.)
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| Judge Putnam's Touring Car |
- Dr. Black went out on foot to check on the abandoned mill, as previously hinted at. Upon returning to town, he saw Max Reed using the phone booth in front of the general store. The good doctor got close enough to listen in. Mr. Reed was apparently talking to Carl Stanford about: how James Clark had slipped away without a trace, how the jade sphinx had been stolen from the Lodge, and how Max had noticed that someone "had gone for a little midnight drive." Max Reed became very irritated with Mr. Stanford and hung up.
- The Judge and Johnny drove the judge's car to one of the mills, parked behind it, and ventured back up the hill to the lonely cabin. After a thorough search, they discovered fake identity papers for Mr. Reed, Mr. Scott, and Mr. Stanford, as well as enough supplies to either live off the grid for years or start new lives in a new city. The judge found a slim black case containing six stoppered vials of amber-colored liquid and a silver whistle with a strange patina--reminiscent of the silver coating of Leroy Turner's enchanted trumpet. Johnny and the judge made off with this case, but left the rest behind.
- Kane got some sleep, because someone has to.
Bayonne, NJ
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| Sunny Bayonne, NJ - Circa 1920 |
James seemed much more lucid in the morning, and a devoted
Angie was not about to let him leave her sight again. While Mrs. Demathias made
breakfast for everyone, Mikhail went to a shelter and got himself a big
Doberman named Pushok.
Upon returning to his mother’s house, Mikhail called the Bernouse residence. He updated Viv and Ron about what had happened, as well as the fact that both Angie and Deb were there and knew about James.
Mikhail also related a story that Angie had told him once things had calmed down. Apparently, she had been visited the day before (just prior to Mikhail's phone call), by Carl Stanford himself, who had asked her if she had seen James. Mikhail mentioned that Angie thought wanted to call Mr. Stanford, “just to let him know that James is all right.” Mikhail convinced her not to, without telling her why.
Viv, Ron, and Mikhail all agreed that Mikhail should stay put for now, but suggested that there was a good possibility that someone had followed Angie and Deb and was now was watching the Dimathias residence.
Mikhail hung up and tried to have a serious heart-to-heart with Angie to see where her loyalties lay. Angie, assuming that Mikhail was accusing her of something, got upset and went for her purse, but Mikhail managed to calm her down before she pulled her gun or smacked him in the face again. Eventually, Mikhail determined that, despite being Silver Twilight Auxiliary, neither woman knew much about the deeper secrets of the Order, or who really wanted James or why. He finally revealed to Angie, but not to Deb, that that James was being hunted by someone who felt James had wronged him in court. Angie seemed to believe this.
New York City
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| Barry Pollard, Before His Mafia-Style Beatdown |
Unbeknownst to Vivian, Ron and Luca Tartaglione (another one of the Bernouse made guys), went had done a little business for Vincenzo the night before. This business, prompted by Ron, involved Ron and Luca finding and beating the tar out of Barry Pollard, the haughty girls-school headmaster who a) was an appalling racist and b) insulted Vincenzo at the Lodge. They successfully tracked down Barry and found him with Jack, one of the members of Lodge security. They then proceeded to beat them both to a pulp. Unfortunately for Ron, his player failed a Luck roll, which meant that Jack recognized him from the original Lodge meet-and-greet, which allowed him to start putting a few things together.
For Vivian, the day began mostly quietly, even with Ron and Luca hanging around with her and obliquely (and not subtly) talking about their nightly activities in front of her.
Viv also played operator, fielding calls from Bayonne and Ashby, and keeping Ron and Luca abreast of everyone's movements and plans. It was decided that the four group members who were also Order members (Kane, Dr. Black, Johnny, and the Judge), would attend the emergency meeting at the Lodge and report back. The rest would remain where they were until they received additional information.
October 18, Afternoon
New York City
Prior to going to the meeting, Johnny and the judge dropped by the New York Public Library. Johnny was curious about the whistle and bottles of liquid that he and the judge had found, and wanted to see if there was any mention of them in the one Mythos book that the group had thus far discovered.
The librarian told Johnny that the book was in the Rare Books Collection, and that he needed to fill out his application and wait at least a day for approval. Judge Putnam ruled that this delay was not acceptable and insisted that the librarian make an exception. After a successful Credit Rating roll, Johnny and the judge were shown into the Rare Books Collection and granted access to the Mythos book Monstres and Their Kynde.
Johnny read the book and went temporarily insane from the revelations he discovered therein. Judge Putnam was, thankfully, able to talk Johnny out his bout of madness, returning his driver to lucidity, if not total normalcy.
Johnny also learned the Bless Blade ritual, as well as a ritual to call forth an Ice Demon. Further notes in the Ice Demon ritual mentioned such topics as, “whistles whose notes are pleasing to the beast,” and “the great elixir which allows those to survive whilst the demons carry them to distant spheres.” Johnny assumed that these topics referred to the whistle and the vials that he and the judge had found, and vowed to hang onto them.
Meanwhile, Across Town
While all this was going on, Ron explained to Viv how Nathan Torpley was going to reconcile him with his ex-wife. This apparently involved throwing an incredibly fancy dinner at a Midtown, Michelin-rated French restaurant Viv immediately started teaching Ron the basics of table etiquette, to Luca's great amusement .
October 18, Evening
The Emergency Meeting
Just prior to the meeting, Dr. Black decided to call Dr.
Call, as he was concerned that the emergency meeting might actually just be a trap for him and his three companions. It turned out that Dr. Call was also invited to the emergency meeting,
but had no idea what it was supposed to be about. He agreed to meet Dr. Black
for coffee beforehand. This meeting was brief and cordial.
Thus caffeinated, the four Order members went to the meeting. They found the air around the Lodge quite tense. They had to pass some minor vetting in order to be let into the building, and they (as well as the other Order members present) were confined to the Lodge's foyer until the meeting began.
The meeting was held in the lounge and presided over by Carl Stanford. Mr. Stanford first mentioned the theft of Mr. Scott’s notebook by a disgruntled excommunicated member. He then went on to say that, while this issue was being handled, and quite admirably, by some of the Order’s membership, a new problem had come to light.
At this point, Mr. Stanford called in a rather battered servant named Steven. Steven, it turns out, was the security member who had been escorting Ron in Ron's guise of "City Waterworks Guy," and who had been knocked unconscious by Ron and stuffed underneath the Noble Philosopher's dais. Steven relayed the events of his assault, as well as the news that his assailant had also stolen, “one of Mr. Stanford’s personal items of great importance.”
Mr. Stanford then called in Barry Pollard and Jack who also looked quite worse for wear. The two of them described how they had been attacked by two Italians “mob style” on the previous evening. Jack claimed he got a very good look at the “little paisan,” and stated that he thought that the city employee and the guy who jumped him had been the same person.
Carl Stanford then explained that he thought that all of these incidents were coordinated efforts by outsiders to bring down and discredit the Order. He also stated that he wanted to keep these issues—and the dealing of them—in house, so that they could be handled properly. He then asked to speak to the Order members a few at a time, so that he could give them important tasks that would help bring this matter to a swift and satisfying conclusion.
The Library Meeting
Kane, Judge Putnam, Dr. Black, and Johnny all met with Mr. Reed and Mr. Stanford in the
Order’s library. Mr. Stanford congratulated them on a job well done, and asked
if they were ready for more important work. The quartet tried to press him for
more details about why they had been sent to Ashby. Mr. Stanford apologized and
explained that, “it was just a hunch, but not only do we definitively know that he’s
not in Ashby, we also have recent intelligence of where he is right now.”
Judge Putnam tried to get assurances that the Order would not be doing anything illegal in their attempts to resolve the matter. He was less than satisfied with Mr. Stanford’s replies.
Kane asked why the Order simply couldn’t call the police, to which Mr. Stanford replied that, “as upstanding gentlemen yourselves, you might not know that the mafia families have numerous police officers in their pockets. If this is, indeed, tied to some sort of mob thing, the moment the police know, the mob will know, and then we might be in a great deal of trouble.”
Mr. Stanford then ordered the quartet to go with Mr. Reed to Bayonne, NJ. There, they would rendezvous with another Order member by the name of Martin, locate James Clark, and return him to the Lodge for further questioning.
The Plotlines Converge, Sort Of
It was at this point that the judge, being an elderly man
who had to work the next day, asked if Johnny could bring him home. Mr. Stanford said
that that was just fine. While the rest of the group waited, Johnny brought the
judge back to the house on Staten Island before returning to pick up the others
and go to Bayonne.
The moment Johnny dropped the judge off, Judge Putnam called Viv to let her know what had happened at the meeting. He obtained Mikhail’s mother’s number from Vivian and called Mikhail to fill him in as well.
Once everyone was updated, Vivian and Ron decided to drive to Bayonne to meet up with the others. Mikhail, realizing that, as it had been thoroughly searched, Ashby might just be the safest place on earth right now, bundled his new dog, his mother, Angie, and James into his car and headed north for Massachusetts. Meanwhile, Deb drove back home to New York City.
Johnny returned to the Lodge and went into the foyer to collect the others. He (and they) were just in time to hear that Mr. Stanford had received a phone call from their Bayonne liaison, Martin. Martin told Mr. Stanford that “they were on the move,” and that Max Reed and the quartet should instead meet him at the Bayonne train station. From there, Martin explained, they would try to figure out what to do next.
The session ended with the judge trying to figure out how to operate the toaster, while the rest of the group drove to various destinations and appointments with destiny.
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