Game Night Jan 11 - Nightmare at Hill Manor, a Prelude to the Nocturne

In a hi-rise apartment building in Kansas City one group of friends were riding out an unusual January thunderstorm with their usual Friday game night. The storm became increasingly fierce, but the television was tuned to the national news channel which showed never-ending footage of an upcoming near miss with an asteroid.

Zooey and her daughter Amber lived on the sixth floor, as did the video store clerk Jay and the paramedic Bunny. Besides these four, Zooey had invited her friend, the legendary Jazz singer to the game, and Amber had invited her best friend Italia.

Then there was Janice. (think annoying new jersey accent, Chandler’s girlfriend in Friends). She heard that Zooey played dungeons and dragons and “Wanted to know what all the hoopla was about.” Aside – given the chance to role play characters who are role playing characters in a game, in a game, who could resist the temptation? I stopped short of actually having their characters roll up characters, and instead had them explain to Janice what she should do.

Soon she left to get food from her apartment on the 5th floor. While she was gone, Bunny tried to get the elevator to return to the 7th floor without Janice. She heard the elevator start to return then they all heard two gunshots, from above, followed by a pause, then another gun shot. Then the elevator door opened and it was Janice saying something about the fifth floor.

Everyone reached for their cell phones, but there was no reception. They tried the emergency phone in the elevator, but no dial tone. It could have been the storm, or interference from the asteroid, but when Bunny could not get her emergency radio to work, she knew something was wrong

Jackson and Amber stayed in the apartment while the rest went towards the stairwell. first they came to Jay’s room, and he picked up his matching pistols, and then they noticed an open door further down the hall. It was Keenan’s room, a quiet unassuming fellow, but his room was a mess with crazy things written in the walls in blood. Obviously the room of a madman. His bedroom was empty but for a bed and a dresser. on the dresser was a small shrine to something with candles and a little velvet stand, but whatever once sat there was now gone. They left the apartment and continued to the stairwell.

They bypassed the 7th floor and continued to the locked steel door to the penthouse. Janice had suggested that the maintenance men on the 5th floor had a master key, but they had Italia d’Italia, master thief. even though it was a difficult lock (-3) the high class thief managed to open the door.

Italia’s story. she is the daughter of wealthy, snobby parents. one day Italia became disgusted with her parents and told them she didnt need their wealth, she was going to strike out on her own. She then began staging daring cat burglaries against her parents wealthy friends. She had a lockpick, and sprung the door to the 8th floor.

The hallway was marble tiled and nicely decorated, but dusty with age. It was bare, but for the man slumped against the wall, with brains and blood dripping down behind him. It was Keenan. There was a blood trail into the open penthouse, which turned out to be the apartment of Brian Sullivan, the eccentric old man. He lay in a pool of blood with two bullet holes in his chest. again Bunny rushes forward to detect a pulse, and this time is surprised to detect the faintest flutter. blood is pumping from a hole in his heart,and she reaches in and pinches closed his torn aorta.

Old Man Sullivan opens his eyes and whispers “there isnt much time.” Looking at his wound, Bunny grits her teeth and mutters agreement. “No,” he says, “never mind me, the ghost.” Zooey is like “the what who now?”

He gasps out that a ghost of Jonas Hill haunts the place and he has escaped and is bent on destruction and his watch must be destroyed by attaching it to the lightning rod and that Keenan stole it. He is a pretty good last-gasper, but eventually the spurting heart slips out of Bunny McGunny’s blood-slick fingers and he croaks. Searching Keenan reveals no watch. Not even pulp fiction style. Though he has been dead less than an hour, rigor mortis is already setting in.

They search the penthouse for liquor (finding wine) and more information, finding books full of old newspaper article. They all hear a scream on the 7th floor, and taking the info, head down to investigate. Upon entering the 7th floor, it feels strange, like vertigo. the hallways are very long and narrow, with ceilings almost 18 feet high. suddenly Bunny, in the lead, spots a prone body on the floor. she sees a big bowie knife embedded in his chest, and blood dripping upward to form a pool on the ceiling. After a few seconds of vertigo she shakes her head and realizes the body is pinned to the ceiling and the blood is pooling on the floor beneath it.

The five meet back up on the sixth floor, where Amber has made survival bags for everyone in case the power goes out. The droning news report anounced that the gravitational forces between the earth and moon had caused a part of the asteroid to break off, changing its trajectory which scientists were scrambling to predict.

Janice mentioned that Keenan was friends with Orlando, the son of the maintenance man, on the fifth floor, so they head down. Upon opening the door to the fifth floor, a madman comes rushing at them with a knife, another bowie knife. Bunny holds the door closed while he slams into it, then she lets him get an arm through, taking a grazing slash with the knife, before injecting him with a powerful tranquilizer from her medkit. The man falls unconscious and they drag him into the first open room to tie him up, where they find another mad man beating at a bedroom door. It was Orlando while a voice from the other side screams “I’ll kill you zombie fucks!” Orlando has three long bloody gashes and the room is a mess.

Italia leaps in with a karate chop, but fails to take him down, so Amber swings at him with a baseball bat, and also misses. Jackson Jackson steps forward with a left and a right hook, and finally they knock him out and find the pocket watch in his back pocket.

We had to end, so I quickly narrated how they went to the roof and Italia stepped out into the fierce storm to fasten the watch to the constantly struck rod, but a ghostly figure of a man in burning clothes rose up before her, so they fought and eventually she managed to get the watch hung up. It was destroyed and soon after the storm abated and the skies lightened with dawn. Most of the carnage from the night before was gone, just a hallucination, but for three dead bodies, Keenan. Sullivan, and Orlando, who it was said afterwards, were caught in a sick love triangle.