On Thursday 16th we played Monster of the Week: The Jersey Devil – an improv scenario which I based on the famous monster of American folklore. This game uses the Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) rules framework which is simple to learn, fast to play, and supports very player / character driven storytelling. This was the second time I’d run the exact same scenario – to wildly different outcome!
Our characters were:
· Miranda Stalhaski (Professional) – Part of the secret Russian ‘Nostalgi Unit’ of monster hunters, tasked with a secret mission on US soil (this is in 1973…) to capture a live specimen of the Jersey Devil. She has been equipped with the N.S.C.V – Nostalgi Stealth Capture Vehicle ™ - a Russian made van with a cage in the back to hold monsters and two terribly uncomfortable seats in the front.
· Vybe (Crooked) – Conwoman and musician, carries around a synth-keytar that houses the demonic essence of her pet/companion – an evil creature which does her bidding. Has been hired by Miranda and Nostalgi Unit to lead them to someone who knows a lot about the local area and the monster, which leads us nicely to…
· Sherwood (Spell-Slinger) – A wizard who was reportedly born in the same house where Mother Leeds gave birth to the Jersey Devil nearly four hundred years ago. Cursed with magic powers and needing some of the creature’s blood to undo his curse, still living in the barrens after all these years.
Following directions from Vybe who was now sitting in her passenger seat, Miranda pulled up the NSCV outside Sherwood’s house in his tiny village set deep within the Pine Barrens, and almost immediately the front door of the house next door flew open. A middle aged woman emerged waving a small silver revolver and started shouting ‘whoever you are, get away, we don’t want you around here’. Ever on-mission, Miranda exited the van with her shotgun at the ready and confronted this interloper – scaring the woman off by pumping her shotgun.
Sherwood opened his front door and was confronted by the Russian agent who immediately demanded that he show her where the Jersey Devil was. Vybe quickly followed her, insisting that if Miranda had let her drive then the trip would have been far faster, but quickly also turning her attention to the supposed wizard standing in front of them. ‘Best come in then and have some tea’ said a shaken Sherwood, as he sat them down on his couch and put the kettle on.
As they got into a discussion about the Jersey Devil, Sherwood explained that he was born in the “Leeds House” – the same house that the myths said that Mother Leeds gave birth to her 13th child – the Devil – nearly four hundred years ago. This was not this house however, he explained, but it is out in the woods a few miles from here and has been abandoned for many years. Miranda began to insist that Sherwood take them to the house and begin their search for the monster there, when they heard a rustling in the bushes outside the open window. ‘GO AWAY MRS HERSTON’ shouted Sherwood at the nosy neighbour that had confronted his guests out front. ‘Sorry’ apologised the busy body from outside, as they heard footsteps receding ‘I didn’t hear anything about you all talking about the Jersey Devil with that strange accented lady’ she then corrected herself ‘ummm, I mean I didn’t hear anything at all’.
Vybe took it upon herself to go next door and convince Mira (Mrs Herston) to stay quiet about what she had heard, by insisting that ‘the government’ (she was non-specific as to which one exactly) would get wind of them and come interfering – something she had picked up that Mira would hate to have happen.
Just as they were agreeing that they would all proceed together out into the woods towards the Leeds House and start tracking the monster, they heard another sound outside the window – this time a snarling and growling sound. Fearing the monster, they were quickly relieved to hear a local hunter named Vic yelling at his dogs to ‘get away from the house and leave it alone’. Vic always walked through Sherwood’s yard on his way out into the barrens to hunt deer. The dogs got more violent and started snapping and fighting with each other – drawing attention from many others in town – some of whom started remaking about the strange van parked there. Desperate to get the dogs to go away, Sherwood ran to the kitchen to get some bacon, but the dogs smelled it and jumped clean through the window into the house – headed straight for him! Miranda stood between the hounds and Sherwood, raising her shotgun to shoot them but was a little too late – the dogs jumped on her and started savaging her until Sherwood hopped in with his magic shield and pushed them back off her. Vic looked through the window to see all this but was distracted by Vybe so that he didn’t notice the real magic being cast, instead seeing her scattering glitter around and performing legerdemain.
The dogs jumped up and ran off out of the house and into the woods, which made Vic angry and start blaming Sherwood for this strange turn of events, as his dogs had never behaved this way before and it must have been something Sherwood was doing that set the dogs off. Vic decided to set out into the woods on foot searching for the dogs, while the group decided to take the NSCV and drive along the dirt roads and meet up with him to search. Miranda got on her morse code machine in the van and sent a request for supplies from Nostalgi Unit – she asked for some radios and medical supplies as they had none and were heading to a dangerous situation. A lengthy reply was received – agent Sergei would meet them around Midnight at the fire tower at Apple Pie Hill, but the message also included a stern rebuke for Miranda for not handling things by herself – she’d barely been on the case for 5 minutes and was displaying a disturbing lack of ability. She sighed.
They hopped in the seats of the uncomfortable van (Miranda and Sherwood on the uncomfortable front fold-out wire chairs that were tilted forward at a very awkward angle) and Vybe hopped into the rear cage where her motorcycle was stored safely. They drove down the bumpy dirt road for several hours, and pulled up to a stop when they came to a crossroads, with Sherwood giving directions – to the right was the Leeds House, straight ahead they’d cross paths (hopefully) with Vic the hunter, and to the left was the dirt road that led to the fire tower where they’d meet Sergei. From the midway point between the straight and right-side paths, they heard a rifle shot ring out across the forest. An enormous shadow blotted out the sun as it soared overhead, releasing a horrific screeching sound as it sought prey – the devil was out this day! Before they could get a good look at it (but noticing that the enormous scaled creature – much like a Wyvern – had a dozen smaller creatures, possibly young, attached to its underside) it swooped off towards the gunshot sound.
Realising they couldn’t take the NSCV through the thick trees, Vybe pulled her motorbike out of the back (despite strong protest from Miranda about the noise) and took off – scouting for either the creature or Vic, while Sherwood followed and Miranda brought up the rear with her sniper rifle at the ready. The noise of the motorbike attracted unwanted attention – one of the small cat-sized ‘young’ from the underbelly of the Jersey Devil leapt out of a tree and attacked Vybe, trying to sting her with its scorpion tail. In a mild panic, Vybe unleashed the demon from inside her keytar – unfortunately crashing the motorbike directly into her demonic ally, sending them both sprawling.
Miranda, looking through the scope of her sniper rifle at this scene from a long distance - and not realising the newly summoned demonic entity was an ally of Vibe, nailed it with a sniper round, before Vybe jumped up waving her arms and yelling for Miranda not to shoot. The noise of all the yelling caused a full swarm of the tiny devils to head straight for them through the forest. Sherwood started blasting them with his magic, killing some, while Miranda pulled out her shotgun and made a fighting retreat back to the NSCV. Vybe grabbed the motorbike up off the ground and gunned it – picking up Sherwood on her way past and riding right past Miranda who was carefully stepping backwards while eliminating several creatures with the shotgun. On the motorbike, Sherwood tried to cast a spell at the monsters over his shoulder, but caused Vybe to crash the bike into a ditch, leaving them both on foot as Miranda caught up. Sherwood got stung in the arm by one of the creatures, which seemed to inject some kind of searing poison with it’s scorpion tail. All three piled into the van and slammed the doors shut, with Miranda in the drivers seat and Sherwood and Vybe in the rear cage – with the small lizard-wyvern-devil that had just stung Sherwood still clinging to him!
Miranda hit the gas to escape the flock of the young devils which were now bearing down on them – heading up the left-hand fork of the crossroads and towards the fire tower where Sergei would be arriving soon (it was now nearing evening). Several of the small creatures landed on the van roof and there was an alarming noise as they started using their scorpion like tails to pierce the sheet metal like it was paper. Sherwood used his magic wall spell to pin the baby creature to the rear of the capture cage they were in, safely away from himself and Vybe, but looking down at his forearm wound he realised the peril he was in – it was not just a poison the creature had injected – it was a larval form of itself, which was now wriggling around beneath his skin. Choking back a vomit at this thought, he turned his necrotic magic on his own arm – successfully shrivelling the creature growing inside of himself, but allowing the more mature form in the cage free of his other spell. Miranda screamed down the trail – leaving the devils in her dust – except for the one they had in the van. The now freed creature struggled with Vybe, similarly injecting her leg before it was thrown through the rear door of the van as Miranda sped off down the trail but also landing Vybe heavily in the road as the creature flew away back to its mother. Miranda slammed on the breaks and reversed up.
They saw a jeep coming along the dirt road behind them, beeping its horn and bounding around on the bumps terribly. It raced forward faster towards Vybe in the middle of the trail and reached her before the reversing Miranda could. It was Mira Herston, the nosy neighbour of Sherwood, and she had her gun with her. ‘I was right not to trust you commie bastards!’ she shouted, demanding to know what was going on and waving her small revolver around again. Miranda was suspicious – how had this lady found them? It turned out that Mrs Herston had been listening outside the van as Miranda received her morse code instructions about the fire tower, so had driven out her on her own to cut them off. Vybe convinced her there was more at stake here, to which she agreed but insisted that she would ‘take the lead from here on out’ – so Mrs Herston drove around their van, left them behind – and went ahead towards the fire tower without waiting for them to follow.
Vybe wasn’t doing so well – she was bleeding out from her wounds and this *thing* was now growing inside her leg, getting larger with every moment. She begged Sherwood to use his magic to kill the parasitic entity – which upset Miranda greatly (who we can now reveal was given the secret mission of “bring back sample of creature – if adult specimen not cooperative, bring juvenile and host”) as the necrotic magic was destroying these things entirely, leaving nothing behind. Miranda managed to scoop up the gooey remains of the larval creature after it had been evicted from Vybe it’s host, and saved it in a vial she had for this very purpose – but knew she’d need a better specimen than this for Nostalgi Unit. They jumped back into the NSCV van and went straight for the tower as well.
Arriving well after dark, they saw two sets of headlights in the clearing around the tower – finding that Mrs Herston was now in a VERY tense standoff with an armed and alarmed Sergei. Vybe again talked everyone down (with a little help from Miranda) and they set to work firstly healing themselves a little with the supplies which Sergei had brought, then Vybe and Sherwood determined that perhaps if Vybes demon-capturing keytar could hold one demon, it could also be used to capture the Jersey Devil. They set about designing a ritual to get things done, but determined they needed to get quite a quantity of brimstone that they just didn’t have to hand. Miranda again hopped on her morse code machine in the van and tapped out a requisition – one chopper full of brimstone please – to which the return message was again lengthy and rebuking. Her superiors sent back (via morse code again) that Miranda was stood down, and would now report to Sergei for the remainder of this mission as she was clearly incompetent. Sergei, grinning, handed her one of the radios she had requisitioned and sent her up the tower to keep lookout for the devil or the chopper. Mrs Herston followed the ‘untrustworthy ruski’ up the tower and continued to berate her for, well, being Russian. Down at the base of the tower, Sergei removed some additional equipment from his own van and began making preparations, while Sherwood and Vybe continued to make arcane inscriptions on the ground with chalk for their ritual. All they needed was that brimstone the helicopter would soon be delivering.
Up in the tower, Mrs Herston eventually verbally berated Miranda too much, and the two began to scuffle – ending when Miranda knocked the other woman down the from the tower, collecting every step on the way down and ending upside down with her neck at a strange angle – dead. Vybe and Sherwood agreed that the corpse might help with their ritual, while Sergei got on the radio and admonished his new underling saying ‘I did not authorise you to push American lady down stairs’. Miranda sighed.
Deeper into the night they waited until Miranda up in the tower spotted the lights of the chopper headed their way. Unfortunately it was not alone and was being attacked by the ‘mother’ version of the Jersey Devil – a beast almost rivalling the chopper itself in size and with a wingspan of over ten meters. The chopper pilot made evasive manoeuvres while Miranda took a shot at the beast with her sniper rifle, hitting the creature but realising that conventional weapons would be no use here, causing her radio to crackle to life – ‘I did not authorise you to shoot’ came the voice of control-freak Sergei. Miranda sighed.
The beast left the chopper alone, but had clearly damaged it – fire and smoke were spewing out of it’s engine and it was headed towards the tower in an uncontrolled manner. Realising what was about to happen, Miranda made her way quickly down the many steps to the ground as the beast landed right in the middle of the ritual circle that Vybe and Sherwood had made, destroying their hard work. The chopper crashed in a fireball into the clearing nearby, not harming anyone but providing the cracking firelight which lit the scene which was to come. The Jersey Devil raised its scorpion tail at Sherwood and prepared to strike, but Vybe tossed him the keytar in the hopes that the wizard could use the mystic instrument to capture the monster as she had done with the demon who was previously trapped in there. Unprepared for this, and much preferring to have cast a protection spell on himself, Sherwood staggered and hesitated and tried weakly to play a tune. The creature struck – but in a last selfless act Vybe dove in the way and copped a full dose of its venom – passing out as her body swarmed with dozens of the larval form of the Jersey Devil now swimming amongst her favourite and very necessary bodily organs. Sherwood tried to use his magic but was also struck in the leg by the creature, which injected yet more parasitic babies into him.
‘Enough’ said Sergei to Miranda who was now there on the ground ducking for cover behind the NSCV with her new boss. ‘Plastic C4 explosive’ he explained, handing her a backpack and priming one of his own with nod to her. The two Russian agents leapt out from behind the van, lobbing their explosive charges directly beneath the great monster as it bore down on poor Sherwood one last time preparing to finish him off. KABOOM went the explosives – eliminating the creature and Sherwood in an epic fireball rivalling the exploded helicopter in size and ferocity. Miranda and Sergei picked up Vybe who was now riddled with symbiote devil-babies, depositing her in the cage in the back of the NSCV and making their way to rendezvous with Nostalgi Unit agents who would put Vybe on life support and then smuggle their ‘incubator’ back to mother Russia.
We cut to a scene of scientists removing small wyvern looking creatures and cryogenically freezing them as they hatch forth from an intubated Vybe who is hooked up to life-support systems.
Epilogue
Some weeks later, Miranda stands before a court martial at Nostalgi Unit headquarters, receiving a chewing out about her failures and deficiencies. Her superiors are about to send her to the ‘reconditioning unit’ (a terrifying prospect) when she reaches into her large duffel and produces a keytar – explaining that she retrieved this from the incident and that it has mystic powers of demon binding, as evidenced when their ‘incubator’ Vybe previously owned it. Impressed, as this was an artefact that Nostalgi Unit had been seeking since it was stolen some years ago, they instead promoted Miranda for her excellent thinking in the heat of the moment.
THE END.
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