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 obnoxiously upbeat new-agey internet personality and crystal collector.
- Darian, a full-time computer science student on top of his All-Mart job, also with a curiosity about the occult.
- Star, a washed-up, self-aggrandizing grifter.
We picked this session up the following morning in-game, Saturday, November 25th. While All-Mart usually holds its office Christmas party about a month after the holiday, this year it has been moved up to a month beforehand instead, per the desires of regional manager Rex Hamblin (who is, in effect, in charge of the entire All-Mart franchise, since this is the last remaining branch).
The PCs all get an email from John Breuer at 3:15 pm telling them to report in at 4 o’clock for the party. Though some of them are over an hour away, they all manage to drop their usual weekend routines and miraculously arrive on time.
All the All-Mart employees are at the party: Rex, John, the day shift workers, even the stockboys. After Star and CC take turns creeping out Rex (who is dressed as Santa, and who makes the mistake of doing the whole “naughty or nice” routine), the PCs began to diverge.
A day shift employee and old friend of CC's, Blake, is a kleptomaniac, and lifted several keys off Rex, so the PCs split them up and begin trying them on all the locks around the store. One key opens the door to John’s office, so Star goes in to root around, only to be thwarted by a newly installed padlock on the drawer of John’s desk. She contents herself with poking around in what paperwork he's left outside the locked drawer, and learns the name of the last All-Mart employee who was able to quit, back in 2020 before the other branches had all closed. Star adds her on Facebook but doesn’t hear back right away.
Meanwhile, Julianne starts rooting around the stockroom since the stockboys have left it unattended for a change. She finds a probable exostock item, a knock-off Slim Jim branded as Hungry Hal’s “Killer Hot” Beef Stick, which she pockets. She also finds a note to the stockboys composed from magazine clippings like a ransom note, telling them to hide a specific pallet of inventory in "the usual place". She scours the stockroom and the store’s exterior but comes up empty. However, she does notice that the stockroom connects to a network of hidden passages throughout the store that the stockboys use to get behind freezers and whatnot, and she begins the process of mapping these out.
CC searches these same tunnels for signs of the squatter, and finds evidence he had, in fact, been living in them, but has moved elsewhere recently. She keeps searching and eventually finds a more recent nest in the ceiling above the bathrooms. Inside, along with some soiled clothes and snack food wrappers (all things sold at the store), she finds empty containers of electronics, wristwatches, and other expensive items. She leaves a prepaid cell phone and a note with her phone number behind and goes back down to the store.
Star ropes Darian into creating a distraction while she smashes John’s padlock with a hammer. Darian turns up the music at the party (awful Christian rock) in the breakroom way up high, and Star successfully smashes the lock after cooling it with condensed air to make it brittle. She steals John’s printed-out copy of My Name is Dirk A. and a chromebook that has been heavily modified, though she doesn't yet realize this. The chromebook also has a sticker of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh, asleep, on its underside.
She brings her findings to her car, but is confronted by John on the way back into the store. She tries and fails to convince him that he, himself is a shapeshifter. He threatens to shoot her in the head if she doesn’t give him back his laptop, saying he's unsure if it would even work given that they are both bound to the All-Mart. Sure enough, when Star doesn’t back down, John’s gun jams when he pulls the trigger. Then, the pair starts ineffectually (at first) trying to whale on each other, Star swinging her hammer and John pistol-whipping. Darian tries to separate them and is accidentally struck twice by Star for his trouble. Before anyone else gets seriously hurt, the stockboys encircle the brawl. John manages to squeeze out of the fray just before the stockboys close in.
CC receives a text from the squatter’s new phone asking her to come meet him in the ceiling and to bring cash, so she empties all the registers in the store and went to see him. The squatter puts the bills in a big multi-layer sandwich and starts to eat. As he does, he asks CC why she wants to leave All-Mart.
When she explains she wants to apply her work experience from All-Mart to open her own business selling artisanal soaps with crystals in them, the squatter (his actual name being Hamzah) chides her and begins ranting about how she should be upset at All-Mart for grinding her between its capitalist gears. Surprisingly, after a failed Self check, CC’s delusional worldview cracks, and she actually begins to listen to and internalize Hamzah’s points, despite his fanatical delivery and bizarre behavior.
He then begins explaining the invisible clergy to her ("reality is governed by a congress of godlike, ascended humans!") in a roundabout way of telling her that the exostock comes from earlier iterations of reality. He also says he used a major spell to tank the All-Mart corporation in 2020, but some other mystical force has blocked this last branch from closing for some reason that he doesn’t yet understand. He agrees to have CC and the rest of the night shift work with him as he investigates this further.
What has become of Star and Darian in the hands of the stockboys?
Where will Julianne’s explorations lead her? Will she find the missing pallet?
Can the night shift really trust the ramblings of a money-eating squatter?
We will find out together in the next session of Escape from All-Mart!
(Which won’t be for two weeks, sadly, as Darian’s player is out of town next weekend)
Objective progress: 8% -> 34%
