Episode 1: We Don't Fear the Boogieman

"It's blood," Dane said flatly. "Why would an 8 year old have a lamp filled with blood?" He sniffed the air in the room, trying to determine if there were any strange smells. This was going to get ugly, Commander Griswold had to know.

If Dane senses no obvious threats or smells to chase after, he will do the following.

"I am going to radio the commander," he said, and began moving towards the door.

--

Smell-13 roll is 9, searching for unusual smells (like Travis).

Once she heard Mary's footsteps fade down the stairs, Amadea said, "Whatever else this kid was using, it's in here somewhere. He'll have whatever it is tucked away somewhere safe in this organized area. An eight-year-old can't make blood dance without help." She lifted the rug to check for ritual markings on the floor.

Dane sniffed the air. He could sense the faint tinge of blood, masked by a heavy douse of Lysol. Michael must have been applying Lysol liberally to the hourglass and surround area; the scent was very well established. It was enough to completely mask the smell of blood to a normal nose.

Griswold's voice sounded in the radio. "This is Bulldog, circling at 15,000 feet. Go ahead Lance."

Amadea lifted the rug and looked underneath. She saw no markings, but there was a slim notebook. It was fulled of drawings - some intricately detailed in fine pen, some scrawled in blood. All of them showed a sinister figure in a wide-brimmed hat, long coat, and masked face.



There were fifteen illustrations. Most showed either the face, top half, or full body of the figure. In all of them, he faced the viewer and clasped his clawed hands in front of him. Half of the drawings had no detail - just the silhouette clearly outlined, and completely shaded in. The last drawing, a mix of pen and blood, showed what was clearly Michael's room, with the bed on the left and the projector on the right. The figure's claws were coming out of the right wall and reaching out over the bed, where Michael was lying asleep.

--

Dane has Smell-13, roll is 9.
Amadea has Perception-12, roll is 11.

--

Correction to an above post - go ahead and do your own rolls, just know that modifiers may be added and will be noted in the crunch section.

Glancing at the notebook, and rather surprised that the police missed it in their search, Dane radioed, "Bulldog, it looks like a category 3 otherworldly incursion. Visited subject is an eight year old boy with possible blood magic ability."

Alert for danger, Dane walked over to examine the wall to the right.

Xiaoming Wang

Old computer it may be, it's a computer nonetheless. Xiaoming turned the computer on and tried to thoroughly go through its content. Including but not limited to: Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, 4chan (though Xiaoming personally think is't a bad idea to let an 8-year-old gain access to that site, but hey, it's the internet), tvtropes viewing history, and so on

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Computer Hacking at level 18, roll gets 11

Amadea watched pensively while Dane checked the right wall. "Just thinking out loud here," she said, setting the notebook on the bed turned to the last drawing, "But if some kind of portal opened in the wall, it might have been triggered by the projections Mary mentioned. Is there a projector around?" Then she walked to the computer. "Wang, is there a chance you can find files that would be projected, like videos or powerpoints?"

Amadea watched over Wang's shoulder as he searched the computer with practiced efficiency. He hacked the simple password in under a minute and immediately indexed the files and browser history. He found a few notable points:

- Michael's last Facebook update was: "There's going to be a BIG surprise at the science fair this weekend. Everybody better come!" This was followed by four comments, presumably from classmates, mocking him for thinking he was some sort of Albert Einstein.

- Michael's MySpace had no top friends, and it played a children's folksong in the background. Wang did a quick search and found that the music was a rip from this YouTube video:



- Michael had just one Powerpoint presentation on his hard drive. It contained two slides. The first said, against a black background: "Michael Elsworth Brings Shadows to Life." The second slide was blank white.

- Michael had read several news stories about two missing children in Whitefish (he was to become the third). Like Michael, those children had disappeared mysteriously during the night. Wang noticed that one of the children was a pretty nine-year-old girl named Ashley on whose Facebook wall Michael had posted a lot - mostly innocent nonsense. Ashley never replied. Wang searched for the other child's name in the local school's records, hacking in with ease even on the slow connection. Kyle Smith was the top student. He had even aced a difficult chemistry test, barely beating Michael's excellent score and earning him a Teacher's Choice award last December. Michael had favorited several of the articles in his browser.

Meanwhile, Dane stood in the corner talking to Griswold. "Roger that Lance. Exterminate the incursion with extreme prejudice. Secondary objective is to rescue the boy and convince him that magic isn't real after all. Hit him on the head if you have to, I don't care. But if he doesn't believe you we'll have to kidnap him ourselves, and there ain't no coming back when S.P.E.R.T.S. takes you away."

Dane examined the wall on the right, but didn't see anything special.

--

Amadea has no checks; she just guides Wang's search.
Wang gets +2 because the computer is old and poorly secured, giving him a margin of huge success of 9.
Dane's Perception is 10, roll is 15. That's a failure; but of course he can still clearly see that there's a white wall in front of him. Just nothing interesting.

"Bah," Dane huffed. "Doesn't tell me anything I don't already know. Figures." He turned. "So we have a boy who at the very least had some kind of creature using magic through him. Didn't Bulldog say there were more children missing?"

"There's two more, a girl named Ashley and a boy named Kyle Smith. Personal suggestion would be to go and find out more about those two as well, but we'll see." with that, Xiaoming radioed as well, "Bulldog, this is Rich. Here's what turned up from the kid's computer: Apparently his classmates aren't as hyped in his project as he is. Also, I need info on a song called Es tanzt ein Bi-Ba-Butzenmann, it's been his background music on MySpace, can't tell if there's anything wrong. Lastly, our missing kid showed interest in the two other kid that went onikaku, especially the girl Ashley. Hold on there's another thing I need to check."

Xiaoming concentrates on the second page of the Powerpoint presentation for a while, and used Detect Magic on it
Skill level 14, roll gets 9

"MySpace..." Dane mumbled. "Isn't that the poorly constructed version of the face book you were explaining to me Xiaoming? I still do not understand why people would put their face into books."

"Beats me, I have no idea how people manage to maintain friendship to thousands of entities. Also they seem to be really good at cooling down, seeing everyone there is a fan one way or another."

The sun had fully set, and the moon had risen outside the window, casting dim blue shadows into the room.

"Rich, this is Bulldog. Our analyst in DC just got back to us on that song - apparently it's German for 'A bi-ba-boogieman dances around in our house.' Them Germans kids is into some weird songs."

Wang squinted and focused on the second slide - both the file and its projection on the wall. The file showed nothing ... it was a completely mundane white slide. But while Wang was staring at the wall, he saw something. Just for a split-second, a figure flashed on the wall in shadow. It was the figure in the drawings, its claws clasped and its eyes gleaming out from the wide brim of its hat in silent malevolence. It was just a moment, faster than the blink of an eye, so fast that Wang thought for a moment that he hadn't seen it at all. But then he was certain.

He was also certain that the computer file and the wall were mundane.

--

Seeing the image was either something unique to Wang, or his high perception (16) let him catch it when others in the room could not.

"Hey, erm, anyone else see that? The dude from the drawings on the notepad just appeared on the wall." Confused, Xiaoming turns to his peer to seek confirmation

"I saw nothing," Dane replied. "There is a wall, nothing more."

"Thanks for that lovely piece of information about it being a blank wall," Amadea walked back to it and frowned, checking again for any clues. "But I've got an eight-year-old who drew a picture in blood of something coming out of it. Half of kids that age don't even read."

She touched the annoyingly blank wall. "Crazy plan, but I'm a ghost and can go through walls. I'm thinking I'll just go to the plain other side if I try it now, but if we can find the next target-child, I could jump through the portal safely. Or if we don't want to endanger a kid, we could project that blank powerpoint slide onto this wall and I could try to go through. Thoughts, team?"

With a shrug, Dane replied, "It's worth a shot. Especially if Xiaoming did in fact see something." He took out his rifle and checked to make sure it was loaded.

"Hold on. It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this! It'll just take one minute."

Xiaoming starts to cast a spell on Amadea


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Xiaoming casts Trace on Amadea, level 14, roll gets 12

FT:10 (sry for not tracking it earlier)

Wang's eyes glowed briefly as he burned the essence of Amadea into his vision.

--

Wang's casting of Trace is successful; he can now tell where Amadea is by concentrating for 1 second. Theoretically, if she goes through a portal, Wang will still be able to find her. This effect will last for one hour.

"Well, while she goes to spookyland, why don't we start find out if there's any clue linking the 3 missing cases? I'd go to the smart kid's place, anyone with me?" After casting a few spells, Xiaoming seems a bit weary.

FP: 7

--

Note for Cynthia: FP stands for Fatigue Points. It represents your character getting more tired with exertion. Most magic - including casting the Trace spell - uses FP. So does sprinting, lifting heavy objects, holding your breath, etc ... anything you need to recover from. FP is a secondary attribute based on HT. For more information, see Basic Set page 16.

"You guys can do what you want, just keep an hour on a stopwatch or something. If you can find out where I am, can you summon me back?"

She didn't wait for the answer as she floated over the bed, became insubstantial, and went through the wall.

"I do not think splitting up is a good idea. At the very least we should wait until Amadea makes contact, or fails to find anything of interest," Dane added.

"Well in this case, I'll see if Mary can provide me a room, I need some sleep" Holding back a yawn, Xiaoming went downstairs for the inn owner