Amid the fear, uncertainty and outright horror, Task Force S.I.R.E.N. plot their stakeout of Vitamin Bee in the "safety" of St. Patrick's.
Meanwhile Dr Lucius continues to feel the consequences of his betrayal of the Cheiron Group..
Knights of the Night
KOTN Actual Play Podcast 35: Shit Luck Ep: 36 "Congregation"
[Music] Hello and welcome to Knights of the Night Actual Play Podcast. This world of darkness storyline should not was written and run by our storyteller Scott. [Music] And now please enjoy chapter 13, scene one, titled "Convrogation." [Music] This is chapter 13 of World of Darkness storyteller and that 13. We just might have this world darkness story shitlock and with us tonight is Mike playing Michael Clay, Tom playing Jay Alton, Greg playing Dr. Lucius Miles, Bob playing Special Agent Cheapuck. All right so we're going to do the investigation the stake out in the morning because I thought we were going to do it at night but it makes more sense to yeah you had discussed that and then I think we were talking about it and then we ended the session. You discussed it, you were eating some China Jade I believe, some Chinese food from China Jade at the St. Patrick's Church and we decided that the evening was probably not the best time to study you know be out without because it'd be less people would be more conspicuous to do it at night than it would be to do it during the day and that's where we left off with Michael departing I believe with Nico, Nico to go to the Cleveland Public Library and do some research. I forgot the map of the area I'm going to go upstairs get it really quick and you guys can discuss Jay, Lucius and Chew, what you're doing for the rest of the evening since Michael's departing to go to the library. What time is it Scott? We're going to say I believe at eight thirty nine o'clock somewhere in that ballpark I think actually you've called Nico at nine yeah it was like he drove over so it's almost I'd say by the time you told you you revealed the the story to him as it were and I believe it's probably about 10.30 now at this point so it's relatively late at night. I'm probably still sleeping but no they won't queue up. Okay you're going tonight to do the research? Yeah Nico come to the church. Yeah he came to the church. Maybe it's not the best idea if we're with Nico unless you want to be alone. Sorry what? He is a trusted mentor. Right. It would be really bizarre and cruel if he turned out to be some part of this conspiracy. Not him but there are people trying to kill us. I mean if you feel safe that he can protect you then why are you making it sound like it's some kind of oh I'm sorry you didn't get attacked by bees and have them try to enter your brain so you don't know what it's like to turn out under attack from these forces. We're at a disadvantage without Jim's first character. First take out purposes and I can get my Kate on if necessary if there's some compelling reason for her to be involved in some part of the evening's activities I can I mean I know enough of Jim's creation of Kate to be able to work my way through it. Resurrection will probably be handy. Okay so between the three of you what are you doing this evening? I'm going to take care of you real quick or as long as it takes and then we'll switch gears to Michael in the library and then we'll switch to the next morning and the stakeout. I think we're focusing on the stakeout whose particular job what aspects would be covered by what people. I'd like to hear that and maybe talk about some of the equipment that we might need if we don't have it already. Cameras and why not. Other kind of surveillance gear. What is the plan as you're getting ready for the end of the night? It was one of two locations either her house or the corporate location. Your conspiracy know where you're at at all. It beat the shit out of me last time. Well I know. You meant safe house they know what safe house is right? Yeah what I say. What do you say? I mean what you meant you said do you know where they are? Do you think they know where you are? Okay yeah. I think he meant safe house. I don't remember how he got to be with us. They dropped him off a couple blocks away and he walked to the church or he walked to the old safe house and then we came to the church afterwards. No he walked from where he got dropped off to the church because you were already been at the church. Because you beat me up by the church and the alley went by the church. Where you dropped the car off. When you first dropped the car off to say it was stolen by the task force siren. So he had an excuse. You hit him with a sack I think. A couple times to bloody him up. Then he got picked up around on the shoreway and got taken to whiskey island and got interrogated a little bit more roughly. By the time he got back to you he was looking bloody and bruised and he still does. And they bought it. The truth. I mean they bought the truth. They bought the truth. That you told them. Mm-hmm. That Tony was stolen from us. Bye. Yeah. Yeah. His missions flew by. Ha ha ha. Get out of it. It is. And right now the second safe house is being cleaned and watched to see if it really is still safe or not. And your third safe house is now the apartments in the rectory of St. Patrick's. Got a church. So what were the two choices? The CEO's home or the corporate headquarters of 20,000 B Company. Vitamin B. I'll get international. I think we had decided on the Vitamin B. Yep. We could see trucks coming in, trucks going down, and things get delivered. Okay so besides the fact that you're going to go on to stake out tomorrow morning. Do you have any more details for me? Would you discuss any details later on that night? Yes. If you get the general idea of stake out, do you have a stake out Greg as well? Okay. If you get the general idea you have a couple people surveilling, at least one person surveilling at all times. And then you try to have someone get as close to or inside the building if possible in order to get the information that you're looking for. You know more information, more detailed information. So somebody who's good either at stealth or some sort of subterfuge where you can put the skies on and go in as a repairman or you know they give a couple different examples in the rules. If someone was to be the person to go into Vitamin B or walk the premises and not be from a distance, which one of you three would that be? I imagine that has to do with disguises and such. But other than that it would also be what? If you're trying to be stealthy it would have to do with stealth. Yeah I don't think that's the route. Necessarily. I mean if you have your sniper rifle on you, yeah I don't want to be in there. But then if you're going to cover me then I guess I'll be the one to do it. Are you planning to do it stealthly? Are you going to do the bluster and walk in and pretend you're supposed to be there? Yeah I'm going for like a kind of construction guy outfit. Tries to get in that way. I mean with a drywall mask or something you know just trying to get close to the compound. The stick out tactic is in my book. It is in it's on 131 of some book. I guess it is some book and I believe that book is Night Stalkers. It says if we have cameras we get a plus two. Is that something you can set up a traditional camera while you're in there walking around? Is that like a spy camera or anything small? It's like a handheld type camera. I thought we had some that we were going to use in the backyard overlooking. Benjamin. Benjamin. We were talking about it I don't know if we actually had the equipment to do it. I'm going to assume that for the sake of argument you have a surveillance camera set up. In a small briefcase they're small cameras. Obviously you don't want big huge you know things on the trees and whatnot so they're at least palm-sized if not smaller. There is four of them and they're tied into we can tie them into a central computer and do some surveillance that way as well. What is the goal of our job? To gather more information where's the clean be? Where is the area we have to do this about? We don't know that because we're waiting to hear from him. But we're gathering information on the location just what kind of defenses it has and what kind of you know what are we going to need to infiltrate and get the spell off. Do you think we could get a like a white band or a white band or something like that? I'm sure we could you know make some outfits? We can call Winston and I'm sure get something by tomorrow morning. Okay. Give it enough time. It should be. What about getting a fake contract to do some of the different things? I don't know how we do it. What about doing that? They're just having these different things. Right and obviously we're here to do the drywall or whatever. Are you sure? Anything else? We're our weapons. The bug spray works pretty well. I'm not sure how many cans that we have or if there's some kind of bug bound. If we use a smoke bound or some kind of heavy duty pesticides then we'd actually come and hand it. We do have to go inside the compound. You don't think like a fog machine you know like not a fog machine but one of those be smokers that they have in the back of the van. Or do we say that in an actual attack as opposed to if you're going in and you know they look in your van that's going to be a little hard to explain. It's your job doing surveillance? Maybe we hold off on that. It will be a bad thing to have though when we can disguise this. I'm not saying that's just going to work bad or whatever. I don't know if they have reason to search our van. It's the idea here to get us inside or to relay the information of the siren and allow them to get people inside. I like playing to eat better. We're just coping out the area finding out as much as we can so that when we decide to make a move we have as much information as possible. From the conversation with Winston that Jay had by your being interrogated he seemed to indicate that this was your mission and that they would have a backup plan as far as if the place was you know if the bees or the whatever were removed from this location that this what's called a locus which is a power area would not just be out there for a bunch of different people to buy for a new person moves in and it just becomes as bad you know they would move in and do something or try to protect the area but for all intents and purposes he said you know tell me what you need and we'll try to make it happen and we're limited on resources there are a new new government right agency but they'll do what they can. Got it. Nuclear from orbit. It's a little bit be sure. So, band, cameras, bees, smoker, thingy. These people. I mean it's distraction and once we make our move drive in there turn it on and we go do our thing. Guns and ammo too. Obviously. How many more guns and ammo do you have? I mean I'm I've got what I need but I mean what specifically. Oh nothing special I'm just saying we shouldn't definitely bring our weapons a lot. 30 gallons. 30 gallons. 30 gallons. 30 gallons of value. Exactly. You're not going in there with fists in a prayer. You're going in there with some fire. I don't know any prayers so. Right. I use guns. Okay. Sister Kate. Are we doing this by vehicle or are we going in buildings around the area or? That's the question. Because it is depends on what we want to or how much information we want. Because if we do buildings around the area we probably want to have cash. Grandma Jones apartment faces the main door. We want to send a grandma to the movies where there's popcorn money. Casino. Right. Brimes. We want to. Lucious deals and bribes. We want to put her on a bus to Windsor. Go gamble Grammy. Right. Exactly. It's a big old night. Yep. So maybe we're kind of looking at like a stakeout and a stakeout. Maybe we should go down there. Just kind of. Stakeout and stakeout. What the best way to stakeout is. Let's do it. Get in your car. Oh, I noticed my face. Maybe. I don't look too good. No, we got new cars. We're not picking up chicks. We're just. I know, but. He's got an Excedrin headache. Remember, your kids number nine. Look, just by for construction. You do feel like crap, obviously. Oh, yeah. Mike, Mike's three and I'm nice doing all my rolls. We'll get a good, hopefully, good rest tonight. Position. Heal myself. Yeah, thank you. I think you guys should go do that as well. Yeah, I'll see. Yeah, I don't know what you're looking for in a stakeout apartment. Fine. Sister Kate says she could help if you want to feel a little better. Roll. Ball. She can. Ball. She gets out some clues to keep the habit up. Isopropa. Alcohol and her prayer beats. Maybe these special Mr. Miyagi. She starts praying a bit over her beats and then she takes them alcohol and she dabs at the cuts near the face causing you to wince a bit in pain. And after all is said and done, she is really good. Two, four. You heal five of your bashing damage. Wow. Look at this. Looks like a miracle doctor. Yeah, I tweak your blood. That's like mad. She gives you a right cross and you end up right back where you were. Five bashing damage. Nice. She just says that the Lord is powerful. How about an out? Yeah, well, if you're going to get the healing, you have to pay for it to serve. Just going to preach to you. Yep. Got to deal with it. Got it. All right, so you guys jumping your car and we scan by the area. We're looking for, you know, apartments for rent or buildings. Okay, as can anyone point to me, where is the map? It's located. It is at 3200 Woodby. Is that on this map? Yes. Come on, you've lived in Ohio City for crying out loud. You're the only one I live in Ohio City. I don't. Woodby. By Fulton Food? No, by St. Patrick's Church. Close, but it's 3200 that you're looking for. Right there. Right. Jesus. So what you see is there's kind of a triangle there. We're going to car. We could walk there. Yeah, you could, but cars are the more inconspicuous. But you certainly are able to walk if you want. It's 1030, at this point, 11 o'clock at night. Is there, there's an alleyway behind the 3200 or does the park go directly up against it? There's a parking lot that you can enter from Woodby and from 30 seconds. Right? So there's a parking lot that takes up this portion right here. And right here is the hexagonal building, the honeycomb building. Right there. And then they're building on to it as well, building back towards the park way. So across the street at this angle here, there are a lot of shops, hardware, antiques, a small grocer. Is the creepery there? There's probably restaurants there as well. It probably has the creepery very well maybe there. So you've got, it's a pretty, the creepery's here on this track. Okay. So you've got a lot of businesses in the area. And certainly on top of some of the businesses, you've got some apartments, you know, on the upper levels of businesses. But almost all of them are, you're typical, it is a brownstone street of businesses. Are there any foreign signs or least, you know, lease signs, contact Johnny and blah, blah, blah, blah. No. Unfortunately, there are not any obvious lease signs as you drive down the street. One interesting thing is you drive down Woodby, there is a bit more activity than you would have anticipated at night. It's like a beehive of activity. It is like a beehive of activity. Stores are open at 10 30 on a Monday night, which is unusual for antique stores and other type stores in the area. That is pretty good. You'll also note that there's a little bit more foot traffic and certainly the honeycomb building is lit up. There's, you know, construction lights and the people are working through the night on it. So it's a, for this part of Ohio City, it's a pretty unique scene. And when you drive the street, it's fair to say that you feel watched. Like you, no, it almost feels like you want to stay up, wait, and like figure this out. Or figure this out. That's not the right word. It's bigger rated, you're looking for. And yes, you are invigorated. So it's interesting. It's not anything enough to make it, you know, stop the car and go build something or go do something, but it's like you just feel re-energized. We feel like, yeah, you know, we could do some work tonight. We could stay up, we could, we could mid-night this and figure it out. You know, stay up till two or three in the morning. You know, there's, there's things we can do. So you just feel the sense of energy as you, as you go through. But that was the, yeah, the block. There's a center here. Yeah. A lower center at locus. Yes, locus. And according to Billy, that's the effective. Right. And this locus was being, so I'm, yeah, yeah, you know, it basically industry, you know, just hard work and industry is certainly something he indicated. And we're feeling it. Okay. What about, as you're driving down wood by, that feeling starts to fade, maybe about halfway down the block or so as you're driving that out of the, the very close neighborhood of the honeycomb building and your cell phone rings jet. I answer it. Almost, at the same time, Lucius, your off phone, meaning your non-task or siren phone, buzzes with a text message. Oh, what'd you say? First with Jay answering his phone. Jay's just by kill him. Go ahead. I asked the phone, hello. It's Mike. Figure eyes. Figure eyes. I'm going to kill that. He's impressive. He has Jay Alton. How may I help you? Click. What's up? You're editing this episode. All right. What's that? What does this say? It's calling. It's got really, what really is it? It was really, it was, it was a pocket dial. Yeah, you pocket call them and you totally heard it. Okay. Your text message, Lucius, it says, no problem. Suspended without pay. Oh, fuck me. We'll contact you after a review of the board, Dr. Highsmith. And she says, Dr. Highsmith, because he, you know that he's the head surgeon in chief administrator of the hospital. You lost your potential. Oh, I get the, at the hospital hospital. Lutheran hospital. Like the real job? Like the real job. Oh, not like I was kicked off Cairo. The Cairoan group is not jobs you have. No. Oh, so I just get kicked out of this little shitty hospital. Yeah, the, the shitty hospital that, you know, gave you a good front and gave you places to do the one tests and all those other things. Oh, that's a problem. He has his cover for his other two jobs. I text him back and I do the whole, whatever, administrative process. I should know something about like, I demand a formal hearing of the full board and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not available until Wednesday. I have patience to take care of. Please assign, by the way, there's a real serious new more thorax and substance, something I hope you know what you're doing. The, or else Luther faces significant liability and I throw out a whole bunch of other stuff that can't really work. Okay, done. And so, as you're driving, that's only one of your three jobs. You're still okay. Yeah. So you drive past vitamin B, the feeling fades a bit, maybe a couple blocks down the street or so. What do you do with that point? I have no job. The cover is almost done. The mission's near attempt. Do you need a cover much longer? Yeah, we don't need a cover anymore. We, you know, ours blew up. You know, be happy. You just got fired. You got more free time. I just got blown up. Yeah, but if something goes wrong here, good point. There's snow. We turn around, drive back, and then turn, you know, look, the scoping in it again, but turn down 30 seconds straight, plus 30 seconds. Okay. Because we want to look at heading north, right? We want to look at buildings on this side across from there. Right. Because we would probably want someone here on 30 seconds, as well as someone on a wood vine. That's an office complex and an apartment building across the way. And any signs that jump out, again, no, they aren't being kind tonight. There are no signs to jump out for lease or rent. I know, like, you know, a lot of nurses. Yeah, I'm going to call one of my nurse friends. Was that friendly receptionist or sort of? I hated you. I don't know. The parking on either of these streets, 30 seconds or wood vine, would it be, is a long-term parking? No, there's meters. It's parking on the street for, you know, a couple hours at a time. Because it looks like we're down to the parking and the van or something on the street. Let's set up the park. All right. All right. So you drive up the streets, you find this is a place to pull off. And the woods itself, the park itself, is a urban park. So there's cobses of trees that are, you know, get occasionally thick, but then, you know, breaks up into little playgrounds for kids or a softball field or a soccer pitch. And then there's more trees and there's a winding path through it. It's pretty sizable, which you can see, you know, a pretty sizable park, all in all. But there, it's not a dense, you know, forest in the middle of the city by any stretch of imagination, but can you hunker down in a cobs of trees and stay relatively well-hidden throughout a day? Yeah, as long as you entered rather innocuously and had some sort of camouflage, you think you might be able to pull off. Again, it's night, the park lights are on though on the past are lit. But it seems to you as if there's decent coverage, but not the coverage you really want, if you were, you know, if you had the optimal situation. All right, how do we have some telephoto lenses? Yes, we have telephoto lenses. Okay, I'm trying to get a Google Maps overview to see how the park is. From the look of it, we could set up here on wood by and close to the intersection so you can actually see down west 30 seconds. Possibly. It's 3,200 wood by. Actually, the easier location. It's a real address, you know. But you'll be able to find Fairview Park. Yeah, I'm trying. Well, this location right here. It's called Fairview Park on your okay. This location here, you could see down west 30 seconds as well as the east of wood by. Someone else in the woods here could get the other two back lines. Those two locations. That corner would be if you're on the north side or on the west side of 32nd or the north side of wood by. You're like right in front of the building. Right, you get that? Yeah. Okay, I didn't know if I described it well enough. It's right on that corner. There's a large parking lot and in a large honeycomb building with the building being constructed behind it. But you're the distance of the park not away from the building. I mean, the building doesn't come right up to the front of the street, does it? The building itself comes right up to the, not the front, but it's within let's say 50 feet of the front of wood by. Okay. Just so you know, it's not like, I mean, if you stood out there in a day you definitely would probably brought something. No, I'm not going to park in a van. Right. Okay. Not standing in a street corner. The other location wouldn't have to be in Fairview Park. On the back end of Washington. You could probably zoom in to 3,200 wood by and go from there because Fairview Park's right behind it if you're looking on your mens. It's actually called Fairview Park because I got a Fairview Park in Fairview. It's actually called Fairview Park. Oh, I see, you know. It's a park. It's not the city I'm trying to say. It's right. For those of us, those of you listening. I got a park that was not familiar. There's a city called Fairview Park as a suburb of Cleveland. To move it along. Okay, you're done for the night. Scope that out. We try to find a location here where we can see the back and the this side which would be the west side of the building and you would be watching the east and the south. Right, so you had two people who could do that. You also have cameras you can set up and although you need some places to set them up. And then you would also have some presents if you wanted on the street. So, if the three of you could depart briefly upstairs? Why, you didn't make Mike depart. Right, because Mike's probably gonna die and I don't think he wants to hear you. You guys are crying in front of other men, so. If you could take your maps upstairs and do a little bit of research on Fairview Park that would be appreciated. I'm really hard not to say go away. Right, kindly go away. If you could take a seat with your character across me so I can look at your eyes while you die. Thanks for listening to the Knights of the Night actual play podcast. Visit kotnpodcast.com for more information on this and other adventures where you will find character stats, photos, storytelling, props and even a form for comets and suggestions or you could email us directly at feedback@kotnpodcast.com or contact us via Twitter or leave a message on Facebook. All music for this podcast was created and performed by Zen Audio Smith. If you'd like custom professional music created for your podcast or business please visit zenaudiosmith.com and please join us next episode for more mystery and adventure. [Music]