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.
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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.
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!
