Casey and Colby got to experience our first All Flesh Must Be Eaten game, using Eden Studio’s Unisystem rules. In a four-hour time period, they successfully completed the adventure, Thirteen Ways to Die… Choose One.
The evening began as the Coppertons (Carl and son, Daniel, and girlfriend, Linda) along with their bodyguard, Stefano, and hired driver, Norton, picked up injured teenage hitchhiker, Eli Landau, while trying to find their way to San Francisco in a raging thunderstorm. Eli gave them directions to the little town of Thirteen Pines, where the group hoped to find a fast way to an interstate or expressway.
The group’s minivan crested a ridge and drove toward the dim lights of town. About halfway down the incline, the car’s power cut out, sending them spiralling out of control as the power steering failed. After a few tense moments, the group crashed into a stone flower pot in the center of a roundabout.
Crawling out into the rain, they ran into Fly’s Hardware and General Store only to find the proprietors eating a man in the back. The group snatched up axes, chainsaws, and flammable liquids and torched the hardware store, but the proprietors pursed them into the rain. The group fled to the J.P. Landau municipal building, only to find it partially burned. They rushed within and locked the doors.
After a bit of rubble clearing, the group proceeded into the basement and found some large firearms storage safes. Three were standing open and empty, but a third was sealed. Using a key from upstairs, they opened the safe to find the animated corpse of Constable Reeves within. Norton surprised everyone by pulling a large revolver from his coat and blowing the head off the zombie. The group then found eight semi-automatic rifles, with no bullets.
They then proceeded into the information center and the town library, and killed a half-torn-in-two zombie who spewed acidic slime all over Stefano. They also watched a “survivor” of the town die in the upstairs room as she succumbed to her injuries. A bit of research revealed things were not right with the Landau family, and the group began suspecting J.P. Landau to be behind the events.
They went out and searched the forestry station and found two bullets for the Ruger Mini-14s they had collected. Like the other buildings they had visited, they burned this one down too. They then went to the church and graveyard and found some strange things in the Landau mausoleum. As they moved back toward the center of town, the world seemed to spin, and suddenly buildings they had burned down were still standing. To make things worse, they found zombies of themselves moving down Romero Street and up Barrow Hill!
The gang killed some of their zombie “clones” and went up the hill to the Landau estate. There, they found Landau sitting on a black stone throne surrounded by thirteen zombies. Daniel shot and killed him, and the zombies attacked as hundreds more came shuffling onto the scene. Norton went berserk and shot Daniel, and Carl and Stefano hacked Norton apart with an axe and chainsaw. Then, the zombies began turning into Landau everytime the man was “killed”. Desperately, they fought against the man and the zombies. They discovered a living “clone” of Daniel, and the real (injured) Daniel went to untie him, but had his throat ripped out by a zombie as the last bonds fell free. Carl went berserk, and Stefano whipped out his spring baton, and the remaining of the thirteen zombies went down hard. Finally, Landau was defeated, and the storm dissipated in an instant. As the clouds disappeared in a puff, the remaining zombies fell lifeless to the ground. The horrors had ended for now, but many questions remain unanswered, including the origins and humanity of the “clone” Daniel.
