A Most Haunted Update

It's been a while since I posted anything here, huh?

It pains me to say it, but, as you might have guessed, Escape from All-Mart is dead, as are some of its players (dead to me, anyway). The session writeups will haunt this blog forevermore. If you're especially lucky, there might even be sightings of some unused GM notes when the moon is full and/or the stars are right. 

Quilombos & Colonizers

Still from Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), a movie that very much encapsulates the vibe I want for this project.... Whatever it ends up being.

My life has been quite tumultuous in the wake of EfAM. I've gone back to school (again), moved into a truly horrible apartment, found a safer place to move, consulted an attorney to cover my ass during this process, and started dating someone very cool. 

Amidst all this, you'd better believe I've still been working on creative projects, mostly RPG-related.  I've been slowly nurturing a historical fiction or historical fantasy project of some description set in early colonial Brazil. I spent a ton of time on research, which helped me narrow my scope to one Brazilian state (or in the parlance of the era, "captaincy"), Pernambuco, and the forty-year span during the 17th century that the Dutch managed to seize the colony and keep it from the Portuguese (for maximum factional drama).

Through my copious research, I found plenty of interesting historical figures who could serve as prominent NPCs or viewpoint characters, like the Jewish pirate captain Moses Cohen Henriques, and Zumbi dos Palmares, leader of a famous settlement of rebel slaves and capoeira martial arts user. I found two academic texts on the indigenous peoples of the region not from the colonizers' perspective, which turned out to be something of an accomplishment, since the Tupi and other local groups didn't have cities or a writing system.

So far, this project has amounted to highly interesting research and not much else. I had initially been thinking of using it as the basis of an OSR hexcrawl, but at this point I think that'd almost be a waste of what I've learned, what with having to pare everything down to work within the BX D&D rules framework or something similar. 

If I want to turn it into fiction, I would need to figure out a format, including a single plot and cast of characters (not having to do that was one of the big draws of doing this as an RPG campaign). I also feel like it would take even more research to get enough concrete, sensory details down to write this as fiction. Maybe it could be an RPG setting supplement? For now, it's on the back burner so I can give it time to breathe and gestate. It's pretty likely I post more about this on here in some form, if only to show off my research.

Looking Forward, Looking West

Since deciding to hit pause on the still-formless Pernambuco project, I've set my sights on a different OSR project for the next game I actually run, one from a storied tradition: the West Marches. West Marches campaigns are supremely open-ended and player-driven, even more than the OSR is by default. The GM sets up a campaign environment in some sort of wilderness area at the bounds of civilization, rife with ruins and monsters and treasure, and everything from there is down to the players, from scheduling sessions to deciding what to do on each expedition.

The West Marches style is an open table, so I hope and expect to have quite a few players from the get-go, with only some attending each session. I have also elected to have all my GM notes 100% in analog format - I'm busting out the 3-ring binder, baybee. Much, much work remains to be done before session 1, and admittedly the analog notes plus player-written session notes means I'm not sure how much of the campaign will end up on this blog, but there will be something, so stay tuned.

 

 

Lastly, I just tonight formulated the idea for a Halloween-y solo journaling game while talking to a friend about some recent computer hassles. I'm thinking it'll be a very short (and thus hopefully manageable by the actual holiday) project drawing heavily on the "Wretched & Alone" format. I can't promise anything on that front since the West Marches project still takes priority, but who knows.

I really don't know if anyone keeps tabs on this blog when I'm not linking the posts on the Unknown Armies fan discord or someplace like that, so this is quite possibly a bad use of my time, but hey, future me will probably get a kick out of it. Until next time, enjoy the spooky season!

Escape from All-Mart: Session 7 Writeup - "Bill Abingdon Jr."

 The PCs:

• Julianne, a computer whiz who fell on hard times and had to take a “temporary” job at All-Mart over a year ago.
• CC, an internet personality who recently had her personality upended in the House of Renunciation.
  
• Darian, a full-time computer science student on top of his All-Mart job, who is also curious about the occult.
• Star, a washed-up, self-aggrandizing grifter.

After Nicholas' death, Star and Julianne grab his guns and head inside the All-Mart to see what's happened to Vince. They suspect that, like CC, he returned to the All-Mart at the spot from which he disappeared upon entering the Room of Cold Reflection. Toting the hunting rifle, Star sits down in the security office and scans the camera feeds, while Julianne begins searching on foot with the shotgun. 

Julianne finds the door to the break room closet open, then discovers a few smeared, bloody fingerprints between there and the stairs that took Vince, CC, and Hamzah to the Room three days prior. Star soon deduces that Vince has been moving toward the back of the store. The security footage shows him moving slowly, sneaking and evidently unwell. He's hunched over and clutching his chest.

The pair confront Vince just before he makes a break for it out of the loading door in the stockroom. Star goes right for eye-gouging, although Vince tells them he thinks he's dying anyway and they'd do better to use "more carrot, less stick." He has indeed been shot in the side, though it's unclear if it's a fatal injury, and it's bleeding less than Star's arm.

They negotiate with Vince, agreeing to let him leave in the ambulance in exchange for his phone number and some quick answers up front. They ask him mostly about Rex and TNI. To the former, he says that Rex works for the Abingdon cult, led by the owner of All-Mart corporation, but he doesn't know where Rex fits in with the hierarchy. The cult is responsible for the All-Mart Curse, according to Vince, but he doesn't know what their agenda is. 

As far as The New Inquisition, Vince tells the PCs that his hit squad was operating on its own in the area, and with Marie dead and Arkadiy (the police impersonator from the Christmas Party Massacre) locked up, he's on his own - hence his tractability with their questions.

By the time they reach the parking lot, no one is outside but Nicholas' corpse, with CC, Darian, John and Ash the EMT all having gone inside. Julianne had threatened to bring John in to interrogate Vince, but never followed through on it since they reached an accord without him. CC tries to manipulate Ash by guilting him about his professional failures and warning him about consequences in the afterlife, but Darian tries to convince him not to listen. The end result is that Ash does little more than wander around panicking.

 

Ash's dilemma, courtesy of Kristina,  Darian's player

Vince drives off alone in the ambulance, leaving the PCs to suffer through the rest of their shift, then seek medical attention the next day once they're actually able to leave. CC gets antibiotics and a temporary colostomy, having had some of her intestines damaged from the gunshot wound she suffered three days prior, and Star's arm wound is treated, though she has yet to regain full range of motion in the fingers on that hand. They're both cautioned to avoid strenuous activity, lest their current debilities become permanent. CC immediately starts milking the colostomy for sympathy online.

While Star and CC are at the hospital, Darian goes home to his increasingly concerned family, and fails to get much rest around their constant doting. At this point, he's flunking out of this whole semester for sure. 

Meanwhile, Julianne decides to hire a private investigator with the goal of getting in touch with Rex or Bill Abingdon Jr., family patriarch, whose Wikipedia page she also gleans some useful information from - namely that his family harbors an unknown genetic disease and his father, William Sr., had rumored ties to fringe religious groups in his youth.

Unfortunately, on short notice the only remotely reputable PI Julianne can find is one Amber Donaghue, who works exclusively with infidelity cases. Still, Julianne spins her a yarn about how CC is working on a documentary about the Abingdons, and she seems to buy it. The next day, Amber tells Julianne that she's tracked down an upcoming appointment at a spa that Abingdon's wife, former model Lila Champlain, has scheduled six days out. Interestingly, Lila has apparently not been accompanied by anyone to handle the press during public appearances recently, and she's been sighted alone with her young daughters as well.

Julianne fills the rest of the Night Shift in and they decide to stake out the spa the morning of the appointment, December 6th, after they get off work. Star buys some guns from the store John recommended to her beforehand, while Julianne files the paperwork for a concealed carry license. 

Star keeps trimming her fingernails with the exostock clippers, so no new developments there. The group also catches up on a whole bunch of John's occult underground intel, though how reliable it is remains uncertain. 

They do get in touch with Vince as well, asking him about what John calls "chaos mages", and what he calls "entropomancers" (the resulting information prompts CC to start buying three lottery tickets every day). But when Julianne decides to tell Vince about their plan with Lila's appointment the day beforehand, he doesn't answer.

On Wednesday the 6th, Julianne arrives with Darian in tow (who naps on the drive) around 10 a.m., the time the appointment is scheduled for. The spa is in a Cleveland suburb, and it's incredibly fancy. 

When Julianne and Darian arrive, they see no sign of Lila, but CC is standing out front of the spa livestreaming an impromptu "meet and greet" for her fans. Having arrived at 9:30, she's already had a few people show up, an equal mix of longtime followers, true crime fans, and general weirdos. Star tries to go into the spa to book an appointment and is swiftly told to go away by the receptionist, then escorted outside by a security guard who remains in the lobby from that point on.

As Star circles the block in the bougie, half-residential, half-retail neighborhood, a fancy car with tinted windows pulls up. It's now about 10:05. No one gets out immediately, so CC ends her stream just as abruptly as it started and goes back to her car. Still, no one gets out from the newly arrived vehicle.

While the coast is clear, Lila makes a break for the spa, her daughters in tow (though her eight-year-old son isn't with them). It appears there was no one else in the car, not even a driver. They're seen inside quickly, before Star returns. After waiting for an hour, CC goes into the equally fancy bakery next door to the spa, which shares the same parking lot.

Star follows CC inside while Julianne and Darian look on from a distance, actually managing a semblance of discretion. CC buys several hundred dollars of overpriced but not especially good baked goods so she can ask about the spa, which the PCs now suspect to be a front for something magickal. All she gleans from the cashier (who kicks Star out when she asks to use the bathroom without buying anything) is that the spa's been there for twenty years. Even CC, a thriving internet celebrity, is not important enough to earn his respect, it seems.

When Star sits back down in CC's car, she accidentally discharges one of her new revolvers, which she had tucked into the back of her belt and forgotten about. Although she miraculously doesn't injure herself, the bullet goes through the bottom of CC's car, and of course makes a hell of a lot of noise. The bakery clerk and spa receptionist both immediately call the cops.

Star tries to call an Uber, but the cops come first, so she pretends to be asleep in CC's car. CC herself has started streaming again, trying to get both businesses cancelled and claiming they shot at her. She turns her phone camera on four policemen as they approach her, guns drawn, shouting at her to get on the ground. Darian is bewildered, but Julianne continues to watch the spa lobby, and just as the cops close in on CC, she sees the receptionist collapse abruptly, for no apparent reason.

The Night Shift hasn't realized it yet, but they have, in fact, escaped from All-Mart at that very moment, their efforts in bargaining with Vince and stalking Lila having pushed their objective rating to 100%. What exactly this means in practice, even the players don't yet know.

However, we have decided to continue the campaign, with the players deciding on a new objective once the danger of the current scene is resolved! The consensus is that they're interested in pursuing more with the Abingdon family and their cult, though the exact objective remains undecided. Several PCs are also quite interested in learning magick of one sort or another.

All in all, this has been a great "act 1" to a campaign that will see our protagonists go from total ponies to, just maybe, savvy members of the Ohio occult underground. Stay tuned for what happens next!

Click here to read the previous session's writeup

Apocrypha from All-Mart - includes several handouts the players got this session and an updated Dramatis Personae section

Escape from All-Mart: Session 6 Writeup - "Sleepers"

 The PCs:

• Julianne, a computer whiz who fell on hard times and had to take a “temporary” job at All-Mart over a year ago.
• CC, an internet personality who recently had her personality upended in the House of Renunciation.
  
• Darian, a full-time computer science student on top of his All-Mart job, who is also curious about the occult.
• Star, a washed-up, self-aggrandizing grifter.

Still early in their shift on November 28th, most of the night shift remains unaware that CC is back. She goes out front of the store to wait for the ambulance Nicholas called, feeling weak, her gut wound festering after three days without proper treatment.

Star decides to try and sneak into the security office, whose window Nicholas has covered from inside. He notices her and reacts swiftly to the unannounced intrusion. He tries to grab a handgun off the security desk but fumbles it to the floor in his haste. Star produces a combat knife from the hunting goods section, but before she can fight back with it, Nicholas recovers his gun and shoots her in the forearm, causing her to drop the knife. As she tries to gouge Nicholas' eye with her functional left hand, he tries to shoot her in the head, but she somehow stumbles out of the office and the door slams on its own, blocking line of sight and causing Nicholas to miss - again, the universe has seemingly prevented her death while she is still bound to the All-Mart.

Nicholas turns the doorknob but for some reason the door doesn't open. Star slips in her own pooling blood but still escapes to the exterior of the store before Nicholas can pursue her. She finds CC outside, who is now incoherently streaming and trying to recount her experiences in the Room of Renunciation. 

CC, who has been inundated with messages, calls, and emails after her disappearance three days ago, has opted to ignore all that in favor of cashing in on the fame her recent misfortunes have brought by getting right back into content creation. She is deliriously trying to communicate the doom All-Mart wreaks on her and its other employees to the rest of the world, and she hits viral levels of engagement in no time. She also makes sure she gets footage of Star's new wound.

In the stockroom, Julianne continues to re-check every corner for hidden exostock, aware the stockboys have a cache somewhere. Abruptly, Nicholas emerges from the office connected to the stockroom following a bullet he has fired, though oddly Julianne heard no shot. Nicholas is now confused at seemingly being teleported, and further enraged now that he believes Star to have been hiding magick powers this whole time.

Darian follows the others outside, having heard the most recent gunshots, which have riddled the All-Mart with yet more bullet holes. By now Julianne is on her way too, if only to escape Nicholas' rampage. The ambulance eventually arrives, and the drunk EMT, Ash Clarkson, returns. Incidentally, just as Star reads the name tag on his uniform, she finally gets a response from Cadence Clark, the last employee to quit from the Wellspring All-Mart, back in 2020 and before Hamzah brought about the curse, who she added on Facebook three days prior after finding out about her from John's old paperwork.

The EMTs ineffectually attempt to treat Star and CC, but it's immediately obvious they need to get to a hospital. CC particularly seems near death. However, the curse stops the ambulance from leaving again, with no obvious problem the EMTs can fix.

Strapped to a gurney, CC passes out, but continues occasionally spouting bits of what Hamzah told her about the invisible clergy and the occult underground, subconsciously driven to communicate with her coworkers. 

Julianne goes to the edge of the parking lot to wait for John to arrive, knowing he's on his way because Nicholas called him earlier. John arrives not long after and sees the ambulance. Julianne tries to talk to him, but he becomes overwhelmed with everything going on and struggles to decide what he should do rather than accomplishing much. 

Star sends Darian to her car with her keys to try and find another means of getting to the hospital, but as he tries to put them in the ignition, he is yanked a few inches out of his seat by some unseen force, and when he tries again he notices the key no longer fits the ignition, though he thinks it did earlier. Star also notices her fingernails are definitely hardening after using the exostock nail clippers, and they are beginning to grow pointed.

John tries and fails to get ahold of Nicholas over the phone a few times, and the PCs gradually fill him in on some of the pertinent information they've learned. Julianne persists about how Rex and the stockboys kidnapped Darian and Star the night of the Christmas Party Massacre, which does actually catch John's attention.

However, Nicholas soon emerges from the store, red-faced and toting a shotgun in one hand and a hunting rifle from the store in the other. John immediately seeks cover behind the ambulance, and the ambulatory PCs follow suit. Clarkson the EMT cowers in the back of the ambulance with CC, and begins listening to the cryptic shit she keeps saying. The other EMT, Albert Jameson, continues trying to drive away with no success.

Star has the idea to throw the ambulance in reverse and hit Nicholas with it, reasoning that it could still move, just not away from the store with them aboard. She fails to convince Jameson to try it, so she moves the gear shift and stomps the gas pedal herself. It works, but unfortunately Nicholas is far enough to the side of the ambulance that it doesn't hit him with this brief burst of speed, and everyone who had been hiding behind the ambulance has now become sitting ducks.

Nicholas fires both his guns at the exposed crowd, but the recoil makes both shots miss, and John shoots him in the center of mass, albeit with great regret that he has no other option. Nicholas goes down instantly, knocked on his back by the direct hit and his own recoil.

John goes over to his colleague to see if he's dead yet. Unable to figure that out, he tries to call the EMTs over, but Clarkson is terrified and refuses to get out of the ambulance, and Jameson, seeing that the ambulance can move after all and realizing the effects of the curse, freaks out and sprints away, toward the highway. He is soon out of sight and doesn't return.

As John argues with Clarkson, Julianne knocks Nicholas' guns away and continues trying to get John to understand the threat she believes Rex poses to them all. CC abruptly awakens with a gasp of renewed pain soon after. Clarkson, realizing the situation may not be explicable by rational means, asks the PCs for more information about the hints CC dropped while unconscious. 

Star tells him what Mrs. Smith told her: that souls are real. She also convinces Clarkson that free will doesn't exist, at least for people who have come into contact with the All-Mart. She believes it has influenced their personalities and caused them to make their worst life mistakes so that they would be unable to escape its pull. Clarkson begins grappling with terrifying existential questions, and fears that he'll go to hell for allowing people to die on his watch while drunk. He beseeches the PCs for help with this quandary.

Eventually, John listens to Julianne. He fills her in on what he knows or suspects about Rex, the stockboys, and more, though he isn't actually sure of much that the PCs don't already know at this point. At the same time, CC passes on everything Hamzah told her in the Room, albeit more coherently and thoroughly now, though she's still very weak.

After bracing himself for "something bad to happen", John decides to tell Julianne that he and Nicholas are Sleepers, members of a large-scale conspiracy that suppresses knowledge of the occult from the general public. He says she seems like a decent possible recruit, and that he needs someone to rely on now that Nicholas is out of the picture; he's only in contact with one other Sleeper in Ohio, at least only one he believes he can trust, and that guy refuses to work with him.

The exchange of information continues until everyone present has more or less shared their pertinent knowledge. During this time, Star goes inside the store and steals the contents of Nicholas' bag in the security room, including a print-on-demand copy of My Name is Dirk A. John explains that the book contains a ritual to magickally "become" a Sleeper, but that this gives few actual powers to people who aren't already wizards beyond being able to identify and be identified by other Sleepers. 

Star is also distraught to find the corpse of the Mr. Smith that was left behind last session; apparently Nicholas shot him point blank, though what remains of Mr. Smith's face is still expressionless. In texting Cadence Clark, she also learns of a former employee of the Wellspring All-Mart named Soren. She doesn't remember meeting this person, though she might be forgetting things due to the copious blood loss.

CC says she wants to learn magick, having realized that Hamzah's power is in part derived from his absurd conviction in his beliefs on financial martyrdom. Star, meanwhile, begins to believe that cannibalism is the source of magick power. John warns CC that the main way he knows of to become a wizard requires a unique brand of insanity. He acknowledges avatar magick, but he believes it's much more common that adherence to an archetype leads to the magick, rather than the other way around. He does admit that he knows of people who become avatars intentionally, however.

Eventually, the idea of putting Nicholas down for good is broached, and John insists he does it himself. After all, "You Did It" is an important Sleeper mantra about accountability for one's actions. After this (and after Star rejoins everyone else outside), John and Julianne decide to go into the store together to see if they can find Vince, since it seems he has also escaped the Room of Renunciation. Julianne wants answers from him, while John is mainly concerned with making sure he doesn't escape, assuming Nicholas hasn't already killed him.

We are drawing near to the climax of the night shift's current objective: it seems Rex is a lynchpin they will have to confront, and now they have John and his Sleeper knowledge on their side, it seems. They need to act fast, because if they can't quit their jobs for a long-term hospital stay, their mounting injuries are only going to get worse. 

What's up with Schrodinger's Vince? What's gonna happen with Clarkson now that his view of reality is in shambles? Is Star going to eat someone? Will CC survive long enough to learn magick? And do the PCs have what it takes to finally Escape from All-Mart? 

We will found out in what may be the final session of Escape from All-Mart next weekend!

Objective progress: 68%->90% (between catching each other up on their various routes of investigation, learning about the Sleepers and possibly planning to join them, identifying Rex as a primary foe, and getting Nicholas out of the picture, the PCs achieved a significant milestone, bringing them tantalizingly close to realizing their objective.)

Click here to read the previous session's writeup

Click here to read the next session's writeup 

Apocrypha from All-Mart