Deadlands continues with the team finding the wreckage of a river boat on their journey up the Mississippi to Memphis. Seeing the ship, Amos and crew decide to investigate, first drawing out a corpse of an affluent looking person before noting a strange metallic object under the water. Amos and Cookie decide to swim down to retrieve the artifact, ending up on a tussle with a strange fish/man hybrid that Dr. Stein perforates with his super gun.
With the bizzare creature dead, the team regards the other corpse, and Lady Noir recognizes it as the scion of the Whitby estate, Walter Whitby. Amos hauls the object up, which Dr. Stein grabs and immediately attaches to his Pandora’s Box Mechanism without so much of an afterthought.
Puzzled at the appearance of a scion of a wealthy family with a machine that only Stein seems to be able to make sense of, the team decides to make a stop near the Whitby cotton plantations and ask a few questions.
Lady Noir and Amos take point, visiting Lady Whitby to inform her of her son’s passing and to return his personal effects. Penfold, the butler was unusually hostile, and Lady Noir and Amos found that they were being followed by all the dogs of the entire estate, and even the town.
This is where the Snake Oil Salesman Adventure card comes in rather handy. Amos’ player found a way to use this card to get a Snake Oil Salesman to show up selling pretty much all sorts of stuff, so they procured a whole bunch of perfumes to cover their tracks and confuse the dogs something fierce.
Undeterred the Crew regroups and decides to take a different approach, Lady Noir and her brother Sebastian Wayne speak with Lady Whitby, while Shea, Dr. Stein and Amos try to get more information out of Penfold.
Penfold eventually agrees to bring Dr. Stein to Walter’s basement workshop if only to draw out some more information from Dr. Stein himself. Dr. Stein, in a moment of lucidity, notices a shadow in the corner, which reveals herself as Antoinette, one of Stein’s seven homonculi.
At this point, Dr. Stein receives a torrent of disjointed memories of his homonculi, and having created them. They were bizarre, incoherent… but all he could remember was that the Pandora’s Box was the solution to everything. Dr. Stein mustered his courage and used yet another of his inventions, a fear effect that sent Penfold running away screaming as Antoinette retreated, temporarily panicking.
Amos had been keeping an eye out on Dr. Stein with the Mind Rider spell and headed immediately to the Doctor’s assitance, even as the Doctor and Antoinette fought. Antoinette resembled a woman in a ball gown, perfectly normal until tentacles slid out from underneath her gown, lashing out and trying to kill Stein, who fought back with his new Flamethrower gadget.
The fight was vicious, with both Dr. Stein and Amos heavily wounded as they fought the monstrosity, setting the lab on fire in the process. But in the end the duo was victorious, seizing Walter’s notes and the device even as they helped evacuate the estate.
Play Analysis:
This session was difficult due to the sheer amount of distractions and noise in the Starbucks we were playing at. The place has rather loud acoustics so voices travel far, and having a group of 10 or so people with screeching elderly women tend to ruin a game very quickly. That said it was an interesting character story for Dr. Stein, with hints as to what else he can expect, and maybe a tip for the player to look into anything that might have to do with his Pandora’s Box.
My new Flame Gun is courtesy of Shea’s nemesis, Hacksaw Jenny.
Because Ghost Rock makes EVERYTHING BETTER.
and my Fear Spell will now be in the form of a THUNDERCLAP, courtesy of the tesla coil I picked up.
Because EVERYONE is afraid of THUNDER.