[Demon Cops] Session 1

[Henri]

For characters, see this thread.  

In order to create the anime mood, I began the "show" with an intro in which I described the forging of the sword Murumasa and scenes of it killing people in old Japan.  Then we cut to Diablo Del Rey, present day.  We see Oda Katayama sitting in front of the sword in his home.  Suddenly, a ninja walks in and attacks.  Oda draws his sword and they fight, but for some reason, in the middle of the fight Oda freezes and looks confused, and the ninja decapitates him.  

Cut to Eugene, at home, around 9 pm.  Eugene gets a call from Oda's wife, Lillian, who is crying and tells him that Oda is dead.  Eugene and his wife, Katherine, rush over to the crime scene.  Lillian tells him about Oda's brother Zenko, who was there in the morning and who had left angrily after an argument with Oda.  As he left, she heard him shout to Oda that if he did not give Zenko the sword, it would be his undoing.  Eugene left Katherine at the house and went to the Ritz where Zenko is staying.

Cut to Jackson (we changed his name from Jay).  Jackson comes home, checks his mail, and finds an envelope, no return address.  In the envelope are a bunch of photos, some of them taken by Jackson!  The photos seem to indicate that the murderer of his former partner, Nixon Taylor, was a Chinese woman named Cindy Lee.  Jackson goes to the station to do some research on this Cindy Lee.

Cut to Daniel.  Daniel gets a bunch of baseball cards in the mail, from a person he recognizes as being in a powerful Mexican cartel.  When he organizes the cards in a certain order, the first letters of each card spell out "We know who killed Janis" (Janis used to be his girlfriend).  There is also a note, telling him to be at the Taqueria Corona at a certain time (which is soon).  He goes to the Taqueria.  

Cut to Droo.  Droo is at the station.  Someone tells him they just got a call that Scurlock has escaped.  He goes to tell Captain Tate.  I have decided that Tate has a pet peeve about 'Cops using the Demon Cops for personal vendettas, and so he tells Droo to stay off the case.  Droo leaves his office pissed off, and runs into Jackson, who has just arrived, and they chat.  

Cut to Eugene.  Eugene finds Zenko and asks him about Oda.  Zenko admits to having been at Oda's house in the morning and that they discussed the sword.  When Eugene tells him Oda is dead, Zenko looks a little surprised, but tells Eugene that he warned him.  Eugene asks him to come to the station for questioning, and Zenko complies.

Cut to Daniel.  Daniel meets the Mexican guy in the Taqueria, who tells him that his old employer Cindy Lee has suddenly appeared back in town.  They are not happy about this, and want Daniel to help them get Cindy.  If he brings Cindy to them, alive, they will tell him who killed his girlfriend.  BANG!  Daniel is furious, stands up, and walks out.  He makes some phone calls to try to get in touch with Cindy or find out info about her, but only confirms what he already knows.  So he heads to the station.

Cut to Eugene.  While Zenko is being questioned by the police, Eugene gets a warrant and searches his hotel room.  He uses his scroll demon's Perception ability to look for demon's in the room.  The scroll shows that there is a demon in the closet.  He goes to the closet and looks in, but all he sees are suits.  He searches the rest of the room, but doesn't find anything.

Cut to Jackson.  Dev (Jackson's player) takes some director stance (yay) by authoring that as he walks by, Daniel overhears him talking on the phone about Cindy Lee.  Then Jackson heads home.  On the way home, it starts raining.  When he gets home, he finds a Chinese woman at his front door ringing his doorbell, leaning on a cane.  He asks her who she is, and she says that she is Cindy Lee, and tells him that she is an old friend of Nixon's, although she says he probably never talked about her.  She says that she is in desperate trouble and asks for his help.  She says that she has no one else to turn to and that, since she knows he was Nixon's friend, she turned to him.  BANG! He lets her into his house, and as she walks in, he pistol whips her in the back of the head with Justiss.  He rolls Stamina 5 against her Stamina 4 and gets like three 10's against her 8, so she is out cold.  But he get's a Humanity check for bashing crippled women over the back of the head with a gun, which he fails.  Mwahahaha!

I would cut to Droo, but Jon is being gimpy and has gone in search of food.  Later he comes back, but then he leaves again for the evening, so not much happens further with Droo.

So we cut to Daniel.  Daniel is suspicious of Jackson, and calls him at home and tries to intimidate him about Cindy.  Jackson tries to lie, but he sucks at it, and Daniel gets even more suspicious, and goes to his house and intimidates him some more.  Jackson shoves him out the door and locks it, and goes in the back to check on Cindy.  Daniel sneaks around and peers through the window, where he sees Cindy and Jackson.  Jackson rolls Cover against Daniel's Cover, and wins, so he notices Daniel.  Realizing that his secret is uncovered, he lets Daniel in and Daniel yells at him for hurting Cindy and is nice to her.  Cindy tells them that she and Nixon were lovers, but that they kept it completely secret, which is why Jackson doesn't know her (which is true).  They ask her how she was hurt, and she tells them the story (which is a lie) about how she found this demon over Nixon's dead body and then it chased her.  She eventually defeated it, but after a nasty fight in which she was almost killed.  She was in the hospital for a long time.  When she got out, she drifted around without much purpose, but her thoughts kept going back to Diablo Del Rey and Nixon, so she came back.  But no sooner was she back here than the Mexican cartel started after her.  They really hold grudges.  Daniel goes home and Cindy goes to sleep on the couch.

Cut to Eugene.  He returns to the closet.  He rolls his Lore, boosted by his own Demon (4 + 5 = 9) against the Demon's Cloak (which is only 6).  He easily spots the demon, and questions it.  This is Kargeri, Zenko's Shadow demon.  It is haughty, but not hostile, and speaks in a whisper.  It tells him that Zenko is its master.  He asks about the sword, and it says it knows of the sword, but not where it is.  Without warning, Eugene smacks a Contain on the demon, trapping it in a slip of paper with Japanese writing on it.  This is a snapshot ritual, so I had him roll (1 + 5) 6 dice against the demon's Power of 6.  I assumed that the snapshot penalty only applied to his base Lore score, not the demon's Boost to his Lore.  So it was a 50/50 shot, but he won.  I was a bit dissapointed by how easily he defeated Kageri, but, oh well.  He got lucky.

He takes Kageri back to the station, and I decide that the 'Cops have a holding facility for demon's in the basement, which is very secure.  It is a big permanent Contain, with lots of little "cells" (smaller permanent Contains).  He puts Kageri in one of these and questions him some more.  Then he goes and questions Zenko some more, but eventually he lets him go.  However, he tells him that they have Kageri essentially as a hostage.  If they decide Zenko is no longer a suspect, they will let Kageri go, but until then they are holding Kageri to make sure that he does not leave town.  By this point people are getting tired so we call it a night.

General thoughts:  On the whole, the game was fun, but I want to ramp up the intensity.  There were a couple of times where the players were kind of unsure what to do.  I felt like I ought to be hitting them with something, but couldn't think of an appropriate bang at the time.  Also, things were generally too easy.  The only demon they actually encountered was Kageri, and he was too easily defeated.  So next time I'll have to bring in Scurlock and Gr'ack (Cindy's gargoyle demon).  Also, I cut them some slack and decided that their demon's would not be in Need in the first session.  At the beginning of the next session I will remind them that they need to provide for theird demons' Needs, and if they don't, their demon's won't work for them.  With all that Lore Boosting, Eugene's demon is going to be especially hungry for some literature.  So it was a little slow, but it was just the first session.  For next time, I have to have a bigger bandolier of bangs to hit them with and heat things up.

Oh, Novalis (Eugene's player) had a question about Contains and parasite demons.  For example, Zenko has a parasite demon named Eiji.  If Eugene hit Eiji with a Contain ritual, what would happen to Zenko?  Would he also be trapped?  I'm a little concerned about the power of Eugene's Boosted Contain ritual.  I think I'm going to increase the Power of Eiji and Muramasa.