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.
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
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