Hunter Sessions 35-40

Previous: Hunter Session 34

Summarizer's note: unfortunately, session 34 appears to be the point at which my past self stopped writing plot summaries. In the unlikely event that someone who didn't play in this game is reading these, I will do my best to summarize how the campaign ended in the form of some handy bullet-pointed lists so you're not left hanging. If you did play in this game and you're reading this - help me out and fill in the stuff I forgot and fix the stuff I definitely remembered wrong.

Session 35

 * Everybody kept cleaning up after the apartment building catastrophe. Bergs went to the hospital and healed Kurt while Charlotte got rid of the zombie corpses in his hotel room. Kurt went back to North Dakota after he recovered, much to everyone's relief.
 * Witness1 got out of jail but no one could find Shaker. He just said "she went away." (It was implied that Shaker had been one of the other Hunter gods like Twitcher was the Zeal god, but I don't think we ever confirmed that theory in character.)
 * The hunters got curious about the reasons behind the vampire attack. Blatant and obvious violence went against Saigow's entire code, Haji was out of the picture, and Tsao Lo didn't seem like he had the resources to do this by himself (the helicopters alone...). A bunch of detective work suggested that Tsao Lo had been put up to the attack and funded by a shadowy corporation with headquarters in the suburbs.

Session 36

 * To infiltrate the corporation, the hunters decided that someone should try to get a job there. Since Randy was the only unemployed player character without a criminal record, he interviewed for an entry-level secretarial position and was soon hired.
 * Randy quickly charmed his new co-workers and used his access to them and the corporation to learn a bunch of stuff:
 * Some of his co-workers were "wizards", including most of the higher-ups. Among the employees was the guy who ran the bingo group at Melba's mom's church from Hunter Session 26.
 * Randy dug into the company file system and discovered that the corporation was owned by the same organization that ran the compound in Bemidji, and that they were trying to continue their work with the guardians by locating and recapturing the escaped and/or reincarnated guardians. They had also become aware of the hunter-guardian connection.
 * I think this is also how we found out that Blak had been recaptured and was being experimented on by the Technocracy?
 * The person behind most of these initiatives was a wizard named Adam Carlson.

Session 37
Basically this entire session was spent trying to find where Adam Carlson lived so we could kill and/or interrogate him (opinions on that were mixed, as usual). However, he had Arcane 5, which made for a comedy of errors because nobody could remember him after they found him. The hunters eventually overcame it by having Randy plant a tape recorder in his office. The recording captured a meeting with another higher-up named Charles Carlson (no relation! turns out the GM just defaults to "Charles" and/or "Carlson" when he has to name an NPC in a hurry) in which they detailed their further nefarious plans for the guardians.

Session 38

 * The hunters staked out Adam Carlson's house but screwed up the reconnaissance really badly, and Randy was spotted and recognized (due to his various flaws related to his conspicuous appearance). The Technocracy hadn't previously known he was a hunter, but now they did, and they had his home address from his resume. A bunch of other hunters as well as Chet and Saria were still sheltering there after the apartment building debacle, which seemed bad.
 * Everyone hurried back to Randy's house and had a huge throwdown with Technocratic agents there, who were trying to capture Chet and Saria. Arie went out in a blaze of glory, sacrificing his life to blow up a bunch of them with his grenade stash. His actions saved the lives of many hunters, but the surviving agents took the still-weakened Saria with them as they fled.

Session 39

 * Based on Randy's discoveries and their own past experiences, the hunters thought Adam was probably taking Saria to the compound in Maine where Blak was also being held. Melba, Charlotte, Randy, and Chet hurried to the airport to try to stop Adam's private plane from taking off. They failed, but Chet assumed his guardian form and held on to the jet's fuselage as it took off.
 * There was an abandoned house full of zombies located near the airport runway and the hunters had to fight through it on the way out.

Session 40

 * Charlotte, Melba, and Randy gathered as many hunters and guardians as possible to back Chet up at the compound in Maine.
 * I genuinely do not remember how everybody got from Minnesota to Maine. Hakim again?
 * Things were already not going great at the compound when the hunters got there. It was overrun by weird spirits that were able to possess the guardians (but not the hunters, imbued being immune to possession when second sight is active). The hunters fought a bunch of them, including one that possessed Cassius (and yes it still bothers the hell out of me that the GM never remembered what he meant about the spirit's weakness being the planet Venus).
 * I also don't remember how this whole thing was resolved. I'm pretty sure that the hunters had to kill the possessed Blak (or was he dead when we got there?) and that Saria sacrificed herself to destroy the compound so the Technocracy couldn't continue to exploit the guardians' abilities. I'm unsure if Chet died here as well.
 * The presence of the evil spirits (including a really big one that escaped from confinement while the hunters were there) seemed bad but the hunters concluded that they were not equipped to deal with whatever it meant. This plot led directly into the events of the Cabal of Good Intentions Mage campaign, with our PCs even briefly crossing paths with some of the PCs from the subsequent game.
 * With the compound destroyed and the threat eliminated, Charlotte, Melba, and Randy returned to Minneapolis to lead the network of cells there, continue to rebuild Hunter-Net and the apartment building safehouse, distribute Hope to other hunters, raise the guardian babies, mourn their dead, and find fulfillment in their respective romantic relationships. And they all lived happily ever after (as much as hunters can).

The End!