Twelve special government agents investigating the supernatural in Ohio City have disappeared without a trace. Another team, Task Force: S.I.R.E.N., has been rapidly assembled, briefed, and sent in to discover the first team's fate. What is happening in Ohio City? How do twelve agents (special soldiers fighting a supernatural cold war) just vanish without a trace? Join us as we try to find the answers.
Knights of the Night
KOTN Actual Play Podcast 01: Shit Luck: Ep. 1 & 2: "Recap of Lost Episodes"
Hello, and welcome to Nights at the Night Actual Play podcast. The following podcast isn't going to be our typical episode, it will start with the description of most of the players' characters, and then a quick recounting of the first two chapters of our story, which we have, unfortunately, lost to the mad gods of the internet. Now, please enjoy chapter 1 and 2 of Shitlock. My time, I play Jay Alton, a Iraqi veteran, born and raised in Cleveland, lived on the east side. I have father who's a preacher, a mother who has passed away. Her lengthy illness killed our finances, which is what caused me to go to join the army in the first place. While I was over in Iraq, I met some members of the Ascended One, which is a cult, very ancient. I originally started in Egypt. I got involved with them at the same time, I got involved with the world of darkness and creatures that I hadn't previously known about. When I came back to Cleveland, I tried to start my own business, but I kept in touch with them, and I'm a member of the Ascended One's beginning member. And then, eventually, I was brought into the passport siren group as one of the many members that were being pulled together for a mission. My name is Jim, and I play Tony Bonadillo. He is an Afghan that he was a medic and also a demolitions and explosive expert. When he was in Afghan, they replaced some injuries he had with claws and bangs. And then when he got back to the states, they replaced an eye that he lost with the hypnotic eye. He was reluctantly dragged into the siren group, the Kairan group didn't like him, so he was one of the people that were picked to get thrown into the task force siren. Oh, there's also online, longer explanation of my background, I'm one of the weird people that liked the right out at complete background stories, so it should be out there somewhere. Hi, I'm Mike, and I'm playing Michael Clay, a middle-aged member of the Aegis Kaidouru, the Skrull. He is more of a support staff, and now he wants to step up into the front lines kind of situation. An engineer/field tester of ancient artifacts and equipment, and part of what his group has been involved in is to keep the records of the artifacts that he finds in the field and basically unlock their secrets and learn how to use them. And this is his opportunity to, like I said, get out of the lab and get into the field. And so he is a little starstruck and a little naive about working in the field, but he also comes with some pretty interesting abilities and skills and can't wait to contribute to the team. My name is Greg, I play Dr. Lucius Miles. The concept for my character is a troubled doctor, he has a background, grew up in Maryland, came to Cleveland, his father is still in Maryland, he's got some background issues with his father, Lucius had some military background as well, was an emergency field physician, came back, now head of Emergency Care at Lutheran Hospital here in Cleveland. Dr. Lucius is a member of the Chiron groups, brought in to task force siren a few weeks ago. Because of a recording mishap, we don't have chapter one and chapter two of The Adventure. So what we're going to do is we're going to have the storyteller Scott give a first a leading overview of what happened before, how we all got together, and then we will discuss chapter one recap in which there's seen one, two, and three. And then chapter two, seen one, two, and three. All right, this story is called shit luck. The reason that the group got together was under the auspices of task for siren, which is a secret government task force put together to explain the disappearance of 12 task force Valkyrie agents disappearances in Cleveland, Ohio. The group was taken and put together from several different conspiracies and compacts throughout the world of darkness. They trained together for one month in the Washington, DC area before being put into Cleveland, Ohio, under deep cover, and are going to be investigating the disappearance of these 12 agents. The first chapter in our story begins with scene one, shattered reflection, and I'll open it up for discussion among the players. From what I remember was a really short scene that really just involved Ryan's character, John Beamer, who unfortunately is not here tonight to talk about it. Because John was, he woke up early before anyone else got up and went down to the kitchen. They live above a wine bar in condos, very nice modern condos above a wine bar called the Market Ab new wine bar. That's part of the Great Lakes Brewing Company campus, which is a bunch of little different restaurants and companies that make up the Great Lake Brewing Company. So it just involved John Beamer, he was down making breakfast and got the door, someone was knocking. The door, it's in the back of the building, and sometimes vagrants, or people that are hard apples. Down on the block. Down on the block. Last quarter. Hand up. Yeah, hand up. And it was one that we've seen before, a vagrant by the name of Sigh Street Billie. Unfortunately, Sigh Street Billie has been known to do drugs, and he seemed to be... He's a heroin addict actually. And he seemed to be... Under the influence when he showed up. Right. Very heavily under the influence. And he asked John why he had glass embedded in his face. Which of course John did not, he didn't know how to respond to that. So I think eventually just in Sigh Street Billie ran away freaking out and said, "Oh my God, what's going on?" He wasn't getting the response he wanted from John, and he stumbled down the alleyway and disappeared in confusion and fear. The scene two of this first chapter was called Shit Lock, which is also the name of the story. This was later that evening as the characters were getting ready in their deep cover as workers at this Market Avenue wine bar. We're getting the wine bar ready for the evening, for the evening's rush, and that's where the scene takes off. And I'll let the characters who were there that evening discuss what happened that evening. Someone who is just an NPC who works at the wine bar asked John if he could cover for him. John was supposed to be off that evening, and Ethan instead wanted to be off because he had a girlfriend whose parents were out of town and he wanted to get busy with her, so he asked John to fill in. This is the same John who in the previous scene had looked as if he had glass embedded in his face from Sigh Street Billie, the vagrant. Yeah, some of us were working behind the bar. I think Tony was working at the door. You were a bouncer. That was the bouncer. I was helping with prep. It's seating people in, I think. I know the doctor was there. The doctor was there just drinking. It doesn't actually work at the bar. He works at the hospital, but he hangs there a lot. He's the only one I think out of the group that wasn't actually been covered working at the hospital. Shoot was there? Right. He's just miles as the, he works as an emergency room of the head of emergency room at Lutheran Hospital. He's the head doctor in charge of that department and he was there drinking. He's the only one that also doesn't live in the condos above the restaurant. He was talking about the wine bar. Sorry. Then a regular came in, Henry Jacobs is a regular customer. So first of all, we should say that John, the switch places with Ethan giving him the night off, and so John came in to work at the Market Avenue Wine Bar. He didn't even go to the other bar. He went down to the Great Lakes Marine Company and you eventually found out that he was there for the full week. But he switched in, but he wasn't in here. He was not in the Market Avenue Wine Bar where he was supposed to work. He was waiting for his girlfriend at the Great Lakes Brewing Company Bar. Once John agreed, Ethan left and we assumed it was to be with his girlfriend, so we don't know. So this regular customer shows up, Henry Jacobs sits next to the doctor and someone else. Well, he sat next to the doctor, Henry Jacobs sat down, the NPC, who worked for a company named Vitamin B, selling vitamin supplements, and he looks a bit worse for wear. He had some bruises, scratches, the doctor asked him questions, "Hey, look how we got that way?" He got frustrated in the lack of a direct answer from Mr. Jacobs. He was all days too confused and just was complaining about having bedlocks that luck can. There hasn't been a sale in three months and people had beaten him up. He hit him on the car, he'd been run into by a vehicle. He lost his wife, his wife left him as well, exactly, so he gave Lucius the long story there. There was a hidden run accident, he was mugged, he hadn't had any sales. Three months seemed to be the key, and I believe he mentioned that he had a big sale three months ago, but right after that, then it all went bad. Correct. He could only remember that it was a local beekeeper who he made a big sale to, and that was the extent of it. Anyways, Lucius took swabs of Henry, being the doctor for you, you asked him, you ever said you were going to get him tested and then have him come into the hospital next step? He was sweating at all. He was pale. Yeah. Intruded. All day, so yeah, we swabbed the cut some contusions. And chew. I don't know, I think it might have been at that time that chew did a scar psychic read on him and got back three words, perhaps. Bees, ritual, sale, sale, sale, sale, sale, sale, sale being S-A-L-E, the sale. Which led everyone to believe that the beekeeper had something to do with it, because obviously beekeeper, sale, and then the ritual, I think, was the big mystery word there. I don't know if that was a trigger or it just seemed like the trigger, but once we got those three words and someone started asking him questions about those things, like, hey, what's this ritual or something like that, that's the cue for that car to go right to the window. Which takes us to scene three, crash into me. It's scene starts off with a large explosion of a high-end Porsche driving through the large front window of the Market Avenue wine bar. The wine bar is recessed about a half a level down. Right. The car was coming in roughly head level. Head level. And right for Henry Jacobs, the owner of shit block. Well, the vehicle. Well, Henry was standing next, or seated next to doctor. Right. And Tony Bonadillo and, if I remember correctly, John Deere, that's what the bar was. I remember my character slid across the top of the bar, grabbed John and threw him backwards out of the way of the car, because I was facing the car to get through the window. Correct. So I shouted out, jumped across. It should be noted that Ethan, who had switched places with John Beemer earlier that night, as far as switching shifts, Ethan was the one who was driving his parents' Porsche through the window. At that point, yes, a J dove across the bar and got John out of the way of-- Didn't you grab both the doctor and-- He tried to, but they tried to get missed. I mean, Tony tried to grab Lucius and missed. Lucius, Dr. Lucius and Henry were both struck by the vehicle. And Ethan was thrown through the windshield out against the large mirror behind the bar, and then crumpled his face littered with glass. Calling back to-- I was reading the one, seeing John with the same thing, but since they switched places, obviously Ethan ended up with that result. After that, General Cass ensued, me running around the check on the people the car had flown over to make sure nobody was hit, flying out, breaking out. I believe Chew got a fire extinguisher and put out the engine fire that was threatening to blow the entire vehicle, which was very heroic. I know that-- I think we got the sprinkler system to go off to help put it on. One of the waitresses, I believe Rebecca Chew pulled the fire alarm and got the sprinklers going off, which helped a lot. And then Lucius was helped up-- I'm not mistaken by both Tony and Jay. I want the Lucius-- Yeah. The first thing I did, I think, was I ran to Lucius to make sure he was-- The doc was OK. Right. And then the first thing the doc did was jump on Ethan. Ethan was-- Ethan. Right. Who was severely damaged. And that's when-- Ethan, being the kid that happened to Porsche. Right. And Lucius made an incredible role, two exceptional successes and one role, a total of, I believe, 11 successes total, and it takes five for an exceptional success in this system. So he actually coupled it to save Ethan's life when there was really-- from a gaming-- from a storyteller standpoint, Ethan wasn't long for this world and wasn't supposed to survive the scene, but Lucius saved him and made it happen. Both Henry and the doctor got bumped by the car, but not severely because of us. Just because of the fact that he actually-- Yeah, actually they were warned. Right. And the way, and warning them, in the commotion that was going on, Henry had gotten up, walked towards the door and was basically trying to slink away when he was literally running. When either-- Yeah, was he noticed it. I mean, you or I noticed that you definitely went after him because I remember telling you to stop him, I don't remember who actually noticed him. Yes, that was huge because he had disappeared and then someone saw him again against the glass, one of the windows, and Tony went sprinting out. If he had tracked him down, he wouldn't want to stop him with the sunglasses and give me the handwriting, convinced him to stop and go back to his place. And the scene drew to a conclusion with Henry going back into the condo of-- I think it was your condo, wasn't it, Tony? Yes. After the doctor working on saving, he, too, you went through the car, checked out his cell phone. Oh, yeah. And the other evidence that might be in there. Did you get his wallet and stuff, and we got phone calls, a list of the phone calls when he received them, trying to figure out who was girlfriend, right? Yeah, we grabbed his phone, it was in the car. That's really the only solid piece of, you know, evidence. But I remember getting a number of phone calls when they were, and when they were from the phone, that was very helpful. Greg, what was his girlfriend's name? Michelle. And that drew scene three to a close. Everyone kind of congregated into Tony's apartment or condo with Henry trying to convince him not to leave, you know, and to calm down, and that you would make sure that he made it through the night, all right, because he was very shaken up by getting another attempt on his life. I think we might have skipped something. Well, I went to it. Yeah, I mean, there was a point where we got, he can stabilize. You called the hospital, and had them bring specific equipment and people, and it had stuff ready so that we could get Ethan out of there, and as you waited for the ambulance to show up, we all took Henry off to Tony's apartment, which was just upstairs. So your character kind of disappeared? Right. ER. We took Ethan to the emergency. All right, and that concluded chapter one, scene three, crash into me. Chapter two begins with scene one, home sweet home, where the protagonists decide what to do with Henry, and we'll start off with the scene in Tony's apartment with Henry quite upset and unreasonable. At this point, Michael Clayton has joined the rest of the group in the condo, and taken away, guys, for what happened in scene one, my chapter two. Michael, Clay. By the way. Clay, sorry. I can show up after the fact of all the excitement, and I can lay to the party, because part of my cover is I am affiliated with an exhibit that is touring museums, and I have just come in to the Cleveland Museum of Art as an assistant curator, so when I finally show up, I'm whisked out almost immediately, piled into a car with some field personnel to trail Tony as he drives Henry back to his home. Yeah, Tony originally tried to talk Henry into giving him his keys to his apartment to go there to get clothes and stuff on him, so he got out of his apartment on his own, but Henry wasn't having any of that. He wanted to go to, so the both of them went, and everybody kind of followed us. We went in a car with Henry, and the rest of us were in my car following behind, except for you, Doctor. It was definitely your start at the hospital. Yes. It was definitely my car. We find out why the theater. We drove. We drove. We got to a place in... We parked a little farther behind you. It took half a block, and we set up a position so we can watch the house in case he hasn't even used it, because you guys are staking it out from different areas, or when I went inside, Henry immediately went upstairs to his bedroom to pack stuff up, he said, and I went walking around the house, it was like unusually spotless, clean, looked like nobody even lived in it. It looked like a model home. I noticed there was no garbage in the trash cans, no food in the refrigerator, it was like... There was something in the refrigerator. There was just wine. Oh, the red wine. The others were red wine. And that was it. It was really unusual. I was shouting upstairs back and forth and just trying to keep them in conversation. I remember there was a light rain falling that evening as well, and John, who was... I think John Beamer was in a car with, he was smoking a cigarette out in the curb waiting for you. You were in a car with John, and you were inside the house. Again, you heard footsteps upstairs in his bedroom. You would take an... He had the front right corner. Right. He picked out of the house. I had the back left, so we had all four walls. Exactly. And it was the back window that Henry decided to climb out of, which I spotted him, and let everybody else know about it, and that took us right to seem to have changed. Right. And you know, at that around that same time... Actually, at that time I wasn't sure who it was. It was going out the window. Right. And at that same time, at the hospital, Dr. Lucius was finding out that the DNA he'd taken from Henry... Along to a dead guy. Along to someone who was dead. If I remember correctly, the doctor of, I don't know if it was pathology, or someone who you've given that flob to came back and thought you were pulling a practical joke on him, and was confused as to why you gave him the DNA of a dead person. He told me like a test or something. Right. So, that comes into scene two of chapter two, and this would be the chase. Henry is just crawling out of his bedroom window, trying to, seemingly, trying to escape from his rescuers. Something I want to note too is like, up till now, Henry was a very subdued passive. You didn't seem worried or upset. Just confused. You seem unemotional. Unemotional. I don't remember. Yeah. I mean, just like he was like in a stunned, dazed... That was one of the things that Dr. Lucius was kind of crazy as he was talking about his wife leaving him and being struck by a car, and being mugged on the street, and it was all in this passive, on-a-tone type voice that struck everyone as a little dog. So... So, when he jumped out the window, and I remember the first glimpse his people saw of him as he was terrified. It was like the first time he saw any real emotion out of the guy. Right. And at this point, I believe, as he darts across the backyard, Jay, you start giving chase. Right. I actually had to go over some fences and bushes to get to him. And I think you announced it on your phone, so yeah, I sent a message to talk, and, you know, just, everyone then got the idea that he was trying to escape, because you're the only one who saw him. Right. At first, I said someone's coming out the back window, and then as it became evident, it was Henry. And everybody started moving in that area. I remember John, who gets not here, taking chase, if not slipping and falling in the mud. Yes. Somebody wiped out. Somebody was in the car, and stayed in the car, and started driving around the block, trying to cut him off from that mistaken. And Michael, you've chased on foot, correct? I've chased on foot too, but... So they were three on foot. Yeah. I didn't expect our F-from too. I couldn't catch him, because he was really fast, and I think only... I'm not sure who it was that actually intercepted. He jumped the fence. He jumped the way he jumped, right? He took some of the angry yards. He took it up on the fence, and ripped it up. I believe that was... That was... That was... Tony came first. Tony came first. I was a second person. He flopped over the fence. Someone else fluffed over the fence. Oh, I think it was you, Jay. It's not mistaken first. Yeah, I took a tunnel over the fence as well. Right. Which gave him a little bit more of some leeway as he was dashing across that backyard. Chew in the meantime was driving around the block, trying to cut off his route of escape. Michael was a little bit further in his head. He was running through the backyard, and then into someone else's driving backyard, and then into a driving street. Right. And you split up around... Actually, as well. Henry did. Yeah. Which allowed you... He did not slip. Tony, to catch up. What ended up happening... I thought somebody hit him first before... Well, what ended up happening was you split up. Uh-huh. I went on one side of the house. Jay went down the driveway of the new house, of this new yard he ran, chasing Henry, who ran down the driveway. You went around the other side, the back side of the home, between the two other homes. I mean, this home and the other home. You came around that direction. Right. So he grabbed hold of his shoulder and wiped out just as you did so, spinning him around in the front yard, but not stopping him. Right. You wiped out, slid down the driveway. He continued across the front lawn, just as Chu came around the corner with his vehicle. That's when Tony... Flip, peel around the other side of the house. Peel around the other side of the house and did a flying tackle. And when you tackled him, his body collapsed into a corpse is just the best way to describe it. And thousands of bees flew out of his mouth and out of his ears, out of his eyes, spiraling up into the air as his body just compressed into this moldering corpse that had been dead for months, as opposed to this living human that you were talking to. They're in starring Jay for life and giving him a fear of bees. Yes. At that point... Uh, Chu pulled up the car? Chu pulled up in your car. Chu pulled up in my car. He did? That's right. It was still my car. He told him that we had a body that we needed to do something with. And luckily, Dr. Lucius, I looked somewhere in the mines. Yes. He went over to the scene and we put Henry in a bag and... Body bag. Did we put him in a body bag? Then we put him in my car. We just put him in my car. You're doing it first. You just put him in your car to get him off the street. Then when the doctor arrived, you switched him over to the body bag. You're up in gooey parts all over my nice clean car. And it still doesn't smell the same. So anyhow, at this point in time, we throw him in the body bag and we're taking him to my safehouse. My secret, the laboratory. Under? Like carrying a salt mine. I'm on Whiskey Island near the salt mines. And this is a Kyron safehouse that they removed the body to. Not a task force. Kyron drop off, chop shot. Which leads us to scene three, chapter two. I can't remember, didn't we try to sample or place or analyze the wine? I haven't known that. I didn't call it at all. Okay, I remember there being a distinction that it was all red wine and I think we tried to... Yeah. I can't remember if... You didn't have the bottle? You didn't have the bottle? Huh. Someone drank it. So I thought... I think I grabbed a bottle of vitamins. How did you grab this one from the red wine? No, you grabbed some wine and you were drinking it as you were walking around. And grabbed the bottle of my own, I don't know if I drank it around. I just wanted to know if it was a wine. I have a memory of you drinking the wine as well. You did. I didn't think anything out of your ordinary drink. You drank the wine. I can't collect. It turned into a monster. But I wasn't sure if there was some issue about the vintage or if it was anything like that. It was all red. Miralose, Cabernet's. Right, but if it was a local, I wasn't sure if it was a... Right. No, there wasn't anything major as far as that one. It's part of the story line. A booth spot. Right. Scene three, Alien Autopsy finds the characters at the Chiron safe house, chop shop, underneath Whiskey Island, and I'll let the characters describe what they did in that scene. We did a quick autopsy. We did basically the big Alien Autopsy. Tony and I opened Henry's chest, inside was a bunch of honeycomb replacement parts. Yeah. The basement parts. Right. The heart was honeycomb, and the lungs were honeycomb, and... If I remember a couple, that was nowhere near this. Right. You are hiding in a corner, I believe, whimpering softly. And there were larvae? Larva. Larva. We took lots of samples. We took a section of the heart, lungs, blood, larva, and we called up the boys at Chiron to come and take the body. We placed it in the refrigerator, and that was the end of scene three and also the end of chapter two. That's pretty much the end of these reportings, we lost them, and we can actually put them in. And by now, we love... Just cover with actual... Thanks for listening to Nights of the Night at Action 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 comments and suggestions. Or you could email us directly at feedback@kotnpodcast.com. All music for this podcast has been created and performed by Zen Audio Smith. If you'd like custom professional music created for your podcast or business, please visit www.onaudiosmith.com. That's all for now. Join us next episode for more mystery and adventure. Bye! and I'll see you next time. Bye! (upbeat music)