Recapsulations of our divine exploits Game 1 - 1/26/2019 Game 2 - 2/09/2019 Game 3 - Game 4 - Game 5 - Game 6 - Game 7 - Game 8 - Game 9 -

RECAPS

Game 1 - Vampire Dream combat/Isle of Man Relics/Pursuit to Wales

Cast of would-be victims:
Alec, Blacksmith (Alan)
Phillip, Church Prior (Paul)
Simon, Church Priest (Joe)
Nigel, Dickensian Orphan Thief (Tony)
Skard, Nordic Raider (Jim)
Berg, Nordic Raider (Mark)
Josiah, Grizzled Fisherman (Darren)
 
Tiny bits of background:  Skard and Berg are brother viking raiders, once captures, now liberated after a period of indenture.  Simon and Nigel were once at the same orphanage, where Nigel would regularly smack Simon around at the insistence of those in charge.  Now that they have met years later they seem to be on good enough terms and realize they were products of their environment.  Oh, and statistically 1 out of every 3.5 people in Lancaster has a limp that slows them down when they run.
 
And now to the start of the game!  We have a recollection of being instructed to go and retrieve a relic from a building but we don't remember anything after that, we're just THERE.  It's an oddly hexagonal building.  Skard barges his way in and there are statues that conveniently mirror some of our occupations, which Nigel goes off to examine while Skard advances on the coffin in the middle of the room on a raised dais.  As he gets there, what is quite obviously a vampire erupts from the floor on the far side of the coffin and engages.
 
What ensues is a bloodbath, as we are roundly cut into bits.  Sure the gangrel takes damage from Simon (prayer), Skard (Axe), and a hole point from Josiah (Hook) before he roundly annihilates us in order.  Each of our dreams cut out as we die, so some of use get to see more than others.
 
We wake from that nightmare in our own beds, back in one piece.  But not long after that we are summoned by the Abbot via courier.  We gather together at the Abattoir, I mean Abbey, and notice we are the exact same group from the dream, though it takes a while for any of us to bring that fact up.  We are here because on the Isle of Man is an abbey which has been raided by someone according to a couple of fishermen who made it back to tell the tale.  They can't identify who, just that it was an atrocity.  The abbot tells us that for some reason 5 relics were gathered together there and that those were stolen by the raiders.
 
We make for the island and on the way we are assailed by a cloud.  Yes, a cloud.  This cloud does try some offense (such as trying to terrify members into jumping overboard) but it can be hurt, which some folks manage to do.  It eventually flees since we're doing better than it is.
 
On the island there are lots of bodies, blood, and chaos.  It's worse than any battlefield any of us have even heard of.  Some of the things found include the bodies of some monks who are punctured and drained, and a pile of ash which, due to the stake through the center of it, had likely once been a vampire.  Also, Nigel finds an unusual curvy knife and pockets it, while Josiah finds a ring that will alert to the presence of vampires within 10'.
 
We find no one left alive to save, and there are tracks that lead to the beach and marks where there had been a boat on shore.  It's guesswork now until the more Jesusy types start to use their god knowledge... Josiah sees a vision of a boat to the south.  Simon sees a face in his vision of the most handsome man ever who simply says to him "London".  Well, that would be a different direction than Josiah saw (London West, South is Wales).  Phillip does the vision thing and comes up with a definitive result (I forget what it was) and we head to Wales.
 
We get to shore and find where the boat was.  Trailing footprints into the forest we get lost for a while (courtesy of a major botch) and wind up going as far as we can go without having to camp in the woods.  So we climb a tree (eventually) and see a campfire in a distance, so we make a note and go back to camp.
 
Randomly remembering this now:  We fought a bear.  I can't remember where or when, but at some point we encountered a bear and kicked its butt all the way back to Jellystone.
 
Next day we head straight for that smoke.  There we find a village of people who are suspicious of us (wisely).  Turns out that they encountered some men.  Josiah tells them the men were raiders who stole from our church and we're in pursuit.  When the cross is mentioned it's obvious he knows something of it.  The man also senses (without ever seeing it) that Nigel has the curved knife on him.  Turns out the men came by and there was a scuffle.  They managed to kill one and got the cross from him.  They are willing to trade the cross for the knife, which was stolen from them.  We agree.  We sleep in the camp that night and set out the next day in pursuit of the others.

Game 2 - Spirits, Wales, and Shadow Mastiffs in Wales/Vampires at the local pub

Alec (Alan), Philip (Paul), Simon (Joe), Nigel (Tony), Skard (Jim), Berg (Mark), Josiah (Darren) 

We continue from the tribe of people in Wales, who elected to not kill us in our sleep or anything, so we set out to continue our pursuit.  By the time we are close to their tail, we are pretty far away from shore, so we have to decide... search this cave and risk fighting at night or set up camp someplace else.  We decide to go in.

We start with sending in the thief, Nigel, who finds three different divergent tunnels inside.  He suspects there's something down the right one.  We go in, start down the right one, but then coming up behind us from the left one is a cloudy figure like the one we fought on the boat.  Josiah, who is keeping an eye out at the rear of the group calls out VAMPIRE, tries to use his Hey-Seuss powers but can't get them going.  Instead he gets terrified into running away and will be useless for a short while.  Meanwhile at the front of the pack, something ghoul/ghastish goes after the barbarian brothers.  They trade back and forth hurting the thing and its down in a few rounds.

Meanwhile at the back, the cloud is on others and a second one has shown up.  Prior Philip hits the newer ghost with a vial of holy fire whatits and it catches fire.  Add to that a physical blows that actually manage to hurt it and a few stabs from momentarily-returned-to-reason Josiah and his holy knife, and the thing goes down.  The other ghost ends up fleeing.

In the distance we can hear baying like there are at least two dogs.

A search of the rest of the cave yields a couple bodies and a pile of bones.  Approaching the pile of bones cause the ghost to return and get defeated (but not before bashing Josiah down to zero).

The pile of bones also has the rest of the relics.  We gather things up and prepare for incoming dogs.  Thirty minutes later, they rush the cave.  The barbarian brothers bottleneck the four dogs at the entrance  and that, plus a few ranged attacks, take out the mutts.  they were some kind of shadow mastiff creature.

We got back to the ocean and a keen eyed party member spotted that the boat had been moved a bit.  We examine the boat and its fine.  So we head out to the ship.  There we find the captain and two crew members, as apparently two other crew members had been attacked and killed.  They managed to stave off the vampire that had come through the water.  So the group did a search of the boat, did a scan for vampires, and settled in for the night.

On first watch the captain starts to get ill and transform.  He fights off that compulsion, but the others do not as several below deck awaken to find that they have been bitten.

The spawn of the dead get slaughtered and the captain restrained for questioning.  But ultimately we return to port with Josiah captaining the ship and the barbarians as crew.  There's a period where Josiah and Simon are kept chained because they had been bitten and the party feared they might turn into vampires.  The next day we make landfall at home and opt to rush the items to the abbey in the dark.  There they take possession and have us rest there overnight.  Next day we are to go back to our business but "stay close" because they fear we are easy prey individually.

A few days later we gather for dinner at the local inn/pub and while we are there, the local guards are mind-controlled into getting us outside so that a contingent of 9 armored buys can assault the staff of the inn.  We go back in and do combat with Skard thrashing one in just a round.  One of the turns out to be a vampire, who gets taken out fairly quickly... Sorry I forget who slaughtered him.  That makes all the others flee quickly.  A couple get chased down and one of them survives long enough to be taken to the abbey for interrogation.

Game 3 -

Game 4 -

Game 5 -

Game 6 -

Game 7 -

Game 8 -

Game 9 -

Game 10 -