Hunter Session 32

Previous: Hunter Session 31

When the hunters returned to Minneapolis after their successful trip to Montana, nothing seemed any different in the city. Everyone resumed their jobs and classes uneventfully. Paladin moved Witness1 and his computer equipment into one of the lockdown rooms in the basement of the apartment building, where (with the help of Shaker) the two of them began the exacting and tedious work of reconstructing the servers. Melba informed the rest of the hunters that the real Hunter-Net would soon be operative again, and also took advantage of the omnipresent rumor mill to try to figure out what had gone on during the week that her group was in Montana. It seemed that things had been fairly typical, if somewhat more regimented, under Kurt's command; he'd sent the more combat-oriented hunters out on missions against rots and vampires, while the Merciful volunteers had spent their time researching and investigating other potential threats in the city. The hunters who didn't wish to participate were, as always, free to do as they pleased. Apparently, they'd destroyed a number of minor but pesky nests this way. Many of the hunters who'd worked with Kurt had come to admire his directness and effectiveness, but there were just as many who disliked his authoritative manner.

The trouble didn't begin until Melba decided that it would be a good idea to talk to Kurt in person and find out what he'd been doing in Minneapolis while everyone was gone, and whether he planned to stay in the city. She asked Charlotte to do this, since Kurt seemed to at least tolerate her and she had to set up another marriage counseling session between him and Shirley anyway, and because Melba realized that she hadn't exactly ingratiated herself to Kurt during their first meeting. So on Monday afternoon, when her classes were finished, Charlotte went to the Radisson to visit Kurt. He was perfectly willing to talk to her about his plans, and to share the information he'd been gathering, though as usual he made no apologies for his actions. He said that he didn't intend to stay in Minneapolis very long, since he had his own problems to take care of in North Dakota and wanted to return to them as soon as the child support issue with Kirby was resolved. Kurt also mentioned offhandedly that he'd been enjoying collecting new specimens in the Twin Cities.

That was when Charlotte made the mistake (or perhaps the smart move) of asking him what he'd found out. Kurt said, "Here, I'll show you," and led her into the bathroom. Charlotte was expecting something bad, and the four half-dissected zombie corpses in the bathtub were certainly pretty disgusting (though Kurt, as always, acted as if nothing about them was out of the ordinary and discussed his work with manic glee). The real problem was the unconscious young man handcuffed to the toilet...a young man who was, by all appearances, completely human. Hiding her horror and disgust, Charlotte asked about Kurt's latest prisoner, and Kurt said that he was a young warlock who he'd stumbled across the previous night and brought back for further study. He said he was looking forward to vivisecting the warlock, since it had been a long time since he'd been able to see one up close. Charlotte managed to tell him "good luck," then fled from the Radisson and went directly to the apartment building. For better or worse, she knew that the rest of the group had to hear about this and help her decide what to do about it.

When Charlotte told Arie, Melba, and Randy about what Kurt had done, it led to the biggest argument that the group had had in recent memory. Randy was completely shocked and disgusted by Kurt's actions, and said that he had to be stopped at all costs. Melba was also infuriated - not so much because she thought his actions toward monsters were immoral, but because he had gone behind her back to do it and was, in her view, overstepping his bounds within her city. Charlotte couldn't say that she liked the idea of a living being getting vivisected for Kurt's insane crusade either, but she wondered whether they would be able to stop him without making a powerful enemy out of a powerful ally. Also, she had to admit that Kurt's information had been invaluable in their past dealings with vampires, and since she herself knew nothing at all about warlocks it might be worth sacrificing the life of a stranger if Kurt could learn something useful and save the lives of many friends and loved ones in the future. (This suggestion touched off a screaming match between Charlotte and Randy that Melba, of all people, had to mediate.) And Arie, ever one to rock the boat, thought that Kurt was doing the right thing in learning what he could from monsters before he killed him. He argued that it didn't matter how human a monster looked; in the end, it was still a monster, and capable of great evil unless people like Arie and Kurt put a stop to it.

Finally, the group realized that they would never be able to decide anything without hearing Kurt's side of the story. Everyone piled into the Humm-Vee and headed back to the Radisson to bring their concerns before Kurt and see if they couldn't reach a consensus by talking to him. Melba didn't think this was a good idea, since it would cast undue suspicion upon them if they decided to free the warlock on their own later, and had to be talked into it by Charlotte. Arie decided to wait in the car, since he didn't want himself to be associated with what he saw as "stupid useless Marta bullshit." In the hotel room, Charlotte stated their moral qualms with Kurt's plans (she wasn't letting Melba do much talking, just in case she blew up again) and asked him if there wasn't some way that he could study the warlock without killing him...for example, questioning him to get information, or at least trying to determine his motives and actions. Kurt said that the fact that he'd seen the kid do unnatural acts as a warlock proved his guilt well enough, and that letting him go at this point would only create a new liability. After going around in circless for a long time, the group established that Kurt was not willing to budge on the issue and left.

In the car, the hunters continued arguing about what to do next. While this went on, Arie sneaked upstairs to talk to Kurt. He said that he was annoyed with his comrades' lack of action and constant debating, and that he wanted to go out with one of Kurt's hunting parties and do something worthwhile for a change. Kurt seemed glad to hear this, and told Arie to meet him at the Radisson the following night, where there would be plenty of groups for him to join. By the time he returned, the group had pretty much agreed that none of them wanted to let Kurt kill the warlock, whether Arie liked it or not. Thus, they made plans to break into Kurt's hotel room the next afternoon, while Charlotte was working with Kurt and Shirley in their next marriage counseling session. Once there, Melba and Randy would set the warlock free, but make it look like he'd escaped on his own. (Arie didn't mind this plan now that the promise of some action was in the future for him.)

The next day, as planned, Melba called Kai to ask him how to break into a hotel room with an electronic locking mechanism. Kai explained it to her over the phone, and at the appointed time Melba and Randy set off for the Radisson armed with this new knowledge. Randy stood lookout while Melba tinkered with the lock, and finally managed to crack it after a solid half-hour of work. As luck would have it, they weren't too late; the warlock was alive, if unconscious. Melba and Randy went to great pains breaking the handcuffs and trashing the bathroom to make it look like he'd struggled and eventually gotten free. Then, they carried him down the rear staircase, drove for a few miles, and dropped him off in a dumpster to make his own way home. Melba and Randy then returned to the apartment building for the night's baby-watching duty, confident that they'd done the right thing.

After another exhausting yet productive counseling session with Kurt and Shirley, Charlotte met Charlie for what would be their first time together since Charlotte's return from Montana. They saw a play and spent a lot of time just catching up, but not surprisingly they eventually ended up in Charlotte's bed. In the middle of their lovemaking, Charlie bit Charlotte's wrist. She felt a strange and definitely pleasurable sensation from his bite, but she could also feel that it was somehow supernaturally wrong and that her second sight was threatening to activate itself unbidden and end the effect. Charlotte ultimately suppressed her second sight and allowed wave after wave of intense pleasure to overcome her as her body went entirely limp and passive to everything else. Afterwards, Charlie explained that the effect of his bite was known as the Kiss. It had evolved as a hunting mechanism, and happened every time he fed...but he believed that in the context of his love for Charlotte, it meant more than that in this case. Being a vampire also meant that he no longer derived much pleasure from sex, so blood, for him, had to replace it. He said that if it bothered Charlotte, he wouldn't do it again...but she told she'd enjoyed it and wanted to continue to share it with him whatever others might think.

(Summarizer's note rant: and that's the story of why my character no longer had a Bruised health level for the rest of this campaign, LOL. In all seriousness, this subplot is the reason I will never buy that the only way people can or should approach sex in RPGs is with a tasteful fade to black. Playing out the specifics of this encounter was such a crucial character development moment for Charlotte that demonstrated how her worldview was changing, and something really cool and valuable would have been lost if we hadn't gone into this level of detail in the session. Obviously every group should draw their own lines and veils as they prefer, but if you ignore this aspect of a character's life you can miss out on opportunities for understanding and evolving them that go way beyond gratuitous titillation! PSA over, we now return you to your regularly scheduled plot summary.)

At the same time, Arie met Kurt at the Radisson to get the action he'd been promised. Kurt seemed annoyed and subdued about something, but Arie didn't ask him why. Arie, along with a group of other hunters that included TeddyB and Kurt himself, was assigned to follow a group of vampires. Arie and the others spent the beginning of the night tracking said vampires around town, until they saw them meet with an unfamiliar human young woman who gave them a set of plans. From a distance, through binoculars, Arie and Kurt saw that she was giving them plans of the apartment building's heating and electrical system. Confused, they called Paladin to ask why this was important...and were rewarded with a horrified tirade. Paladin explained that the entire defense system of the building was based around the furnace and the central generator being operative, because they generated the effect that kept supernaturals away from the building. If the furnace were ever to shut down, anyone would be able to approach the building...which is apparently just what the vampires wanted to do. Arie and Kurt's team wasted no time in trying to stop the vampires from relaying their information any further, but the enemies proved too strong for their small force and Kurt was badly wounded before they escaped. Swearing profusely, Arie piled everyone into his Explorer and floored it to go warn the others about what was happening. He had an apartment building to defend.

Next: Hunter Session 33