[DL] Finishin' the tale - Heart of Darkness (SPOILERS)

[<markus.finster@chello.at>]

I don't know, if any of you is really interested, but a few weeks ago I rote about the first session of The Heart of Darkness.
We already finished that adventure, and maybe some of you would like to know how it worked out for the "fisher kings".

But, there are a lot of Spoilers, so if you're not the Marshal, make like a tree and leave.


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We had a little change in the group: the Blessed and the Martial Artist left us, but another player, with a Mexican Kid Huckster joined us.
We started the morning after they found Doc Snead. They got him to talk, but when they left him alone, he crawled back into the whiskey-bottle. They came back to ask him if he would help them find the gem, but in his drunken state he wasn't very polite. That almost lead to the Kid killing the drunkard, to "put him out of his mistery". (sigh).

Anyway, they started to make plans how they could get the gem from Grimme's office in the Guardian Angels house and even went to check it out - then they met Old Pete.

They agreed to help him and entered the Rock. They managed to kill the two morons in the generator room and the butchers. When one of the posse - the doctor - entered the slaughterhouse he botched his guts-roll and rolled a whopping 37 on the terror-table. he barely survived that.

they went on and really had a lot of luck. in the great hall on the first floor they disposed of the guard, but he managed to fire a shot with his shotgun. of course, the other guards went to check it out, but the doctor, clever as he his, answered the calls from the guards with: "Everything's alright! I just shot a rat!" and rolled an unbelieveable 15 on his bluff-roll. with a single die, no chips.
They bought it and went back.

So the posse managed to get up into the Warden's office, encountering a few more scenes on the edge, where they were almost caught.

They search the office and wake the warden. the scientist hides under the table, the Kid behind the door, leaving the doctor (who acquired a guardian angel's robe) pretty clueless in the middle of the room. He dove into a corner, just before the warden opened the door.

Now the Kid, impatient as the young ones are, doesn't give the doctor a chance to fast-talk them out of trouble, but instead declares, that he's gonna "fry that bastard with a soulblast". I ask him, if he's sure, because, well Soulblast aren't that kind of accurate weapons when you only have one shot. He says, yeah, sure and goes for it. He suffers backlash and can't use his spells for the rest of the day. and the warden fires his shotgun, but misses.

In the next round, the kid get's one action, the warden gets five. the warden empties his shotgun at the Kid, who's chips run away like snow in the summer, and then proceeds to knock the sh*t out of him with the butt of the gun.
The mad scientist goes last in the round, stands up from under the table and blasts the warden with both barrels.
they run down again and free Stone from his prison. together with him they manage to shot their way out of the rock.

they have a pretty hard time, so I cut them some slack: they see that there's something moving in the pit where they entered. The scientist, always thinking practical drops a bunch of dynamite down there. They wait for the BOOM and leave the rock the way they entered.

It was 3 in the morning, but we continued anyway. I kept the Bloody sunday incident as short as possible and faced them with the fact that Stone and Pete are the same guy.

I recorded my own voice for the dialogue between the demon and Grimme and changed them wwith a wave-editor. The Players liked that pretty much ;-) I also showed them a picture of Clint Eastwood from Josey Wales for the young Stone. So they thought, that he might be tough, but he'd be a good guy after all. It also enabled me to give Old Pete the face of Clint from Pale Rider.

All in all they were stunned by the ending. A great and fun evening.

But there are two things I didn't like: First, the fight in the church came right after the escape from the rock. It would have been better to quit after the escape and then go into the chuch the next session (not knowing, when this would be, since we play on a pretty rough schedule).
But, one detail bothered me after the adventure was over: Pete gave them 500 gold-dollars, minted in 1878 (which they have to see yet). Where did he get them? 
One, he took them with them from the future. highly unlikey.
Second, he placed a treasure somewhere sometime, which he visited before he got to LA.

Why didn't he just Ghost his way into and rob a bank, as he does in the third installment?

But anyway, I liked it. Can't way to throw my posse into the Fortress of Fear ;-) I even translated Jackie Wells' booklet into German.

Markus