Seeking Shadows – A Dresden Files RPG Weekly

(Part I: You mean THE Temple?)

Campaign Vital Stats:

GM: Me (Andrew)

Players:  Pop, Dan, Shaun

System:  Dresden Files

Setting:  Sunnydale, CA (For those of you unfamiliar, this is the setting of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. We decided to set it here primarily for the laughs, but also because the presence of the mouth of hell under the town gives me an excuse to do some fairly ridiculous things, which I enjoy.)

Characters:

Drake Adams (Aka Brian Gates) is played by Pop. He was a member of a fairly wealthy family in Sunnydale that was brutally murdered by vampires. He swore vengeance, and after leaving to train in the art of murdering things that crawl in the night, he returned to Sunnydale a rich man with a vendetta. Like Batman, he scours the town at night, searching for things to rescue, and occasionally pulling it off.

River Lethe is played by Dan. She is Drake’s cousin, and the only surviving member of Drake’s family. She has magical command over water to an impressive degree for someone still in her teens. An exceptionally powerful aquamancer (hydromancer?), she mixes a carefree demeanor with a deep lack of knowledge of how the world works. Innocent and naive, she remains one of the smartest members of the party – when she cares enough to work something out.

Aya Brea is played by Shaun. She is a member of Sunnydale’s only decent police agency – its SWAT team.  Notably, she is also an agent of Bast – though she doesn’t exactly know what that entails in practice. Up until now, it’s merely been something that was passively a part of her being, and allowed her access to some minor supernatural powers (which were kept tightly under wraps).

Eve Brea is an NPC that was originally designed to be played as a fourth character in this setting, however, we never managed to get someone to play it consistently. For the most part, she is run by the GM.  She is Aya’s younger sister, who may or may not be a clone. Fiercely independent and with a dark, mean sense of humor, Eve prefers the shadows to the spotlight. She has minor psychic powers which have only just begun developing as the campaign begins.

-----

Our story begins at the local police precinct. Aya is handed a file by her superior and told to get going. After a moment of confusion, as Aya is a SWAT team member, not a detective, she takes a look at the file. A nearby store – the Magic Shop - has been the subject of an armed robbery. A number of people were injured, including the assailant. Police are holding at the scene and awaiting Aya, who will be taking point on this investigation.

Aya heads down to the shop and meets with the owner, a heavily Balkan man who speaks in barely recognizable English. He explains that the attacker came in, held the store at gunpoint, and grabbed a stone reportedly from the original Temple of Jerusalem.  Aya explores around the scene, and asks what happened after the theft. The store owner reports that he shot the man with his excessively large pistol.  After figuring out that the owner does in fact have a license for an excessively large pistol, Aya inspects the rest of the store – eventually meeting a man who appears to be browsing in a fairly sketchy manner – and eavesdropping on the conversation Aya had been having.

Aya confronts the man, who informs her that he’s just a customer that comes in here all the time to buy trinkets for his daughter, who’s into ‘all that Occult Wicca stuff’.  The owner vouches for the man and Aya lets him go. She orders a forensics report on the whole place, and leaves the place in the hands of the utterly worthless Sunnydale Police NPC: Mario.

Over at the Gates Compound, River and Drake are enjoying their relative luxury.  River receives a letter in the mail – sealed with wax – from a school on the outskirts of town. The school is called the Calvieri Institute,  and brands itself as a “School for the Exceptional and Gifted.” It would appear that River and Drake are both invited to a reception the next day to investigate what the school has to offer. River begs, and Drake agrees, but only after calling on his resources to find out that the school is unique in the area as being the only school without a student mortality rate.

In Sunnydale, that’s a big deal.

Needless to say, they were interested.

When Aya got home that evening, he found that Eve had the same letter. Drake and Aya call each other, talk for a while, and agree to see each other at the school the next day.

-----

While the first session was light on the action (mostly because the majority of it was spent on character creation), the players were interested enough in a more story-based system that we decided to go for another round the following week. Check back next week to see the continuing adventures.

Tomorrow, the post is going to be going up late in the evening – most likely after midnight EST. I'm going to be at New York Comic Con the whole weekend, and plan on doing review posts of various and sundry things that I see/do/experience there, so, we'll see how it goes.