On Saturday, April 21st, we embarked on our second game of the Blood Cell Chronicles, playing the Operation: Plague Walker adventure. The game used the Storyteller System from the Vampire: The Masquerade 3rd Edition rulebook. The starting cast included “Boomstick” Anders, “Boon” Wilkins, “Jarhead” Smith and “Rocket Man” Winchester. Later appearances were made by “Dom” Santori, “Ghost” Lee and “Whisper” Vasquez.
The team hit the beach and engaged a trio of soldiers immediately. “Jarhead” used the SAW to spray the two in the treeline, and “Boomstick”, “Boon” and “Rocket Man” made sure they were out of commission. “Boon” took a round to the thigh, but his ghoul blood quickly healed the injury. The landing was almost without incident except for “Boomstick’s” embarassing moment where he ejected a full magazine from his pistol instead of pulling the trigger.
The group moved to one of the helicopter crash sites and found the chopper had not exploded but fuel was leaking all around. Somehow, the pilot’s intestines had animated with WD-41 and attacked the group. The thing was thrown toward the chopper, and “Boon” shot the fuel tanks causing a horrendous explosion. Unfortunately, the team was caught in the blast and badly injured. Nursing their wounds, they investigated the other crash site and found it already burned out.
Next, they moved on the military base and found it littered with corpses. A number of WD-41 zombies charged and attacked but were soon cut down in overlapping fields of fire. The team fired up a generator they discovered and moved into the underground lab. They quickly came upon the mess hall and four WD-41 zombies. The team was swarmed, leaving “Jarhead” and “Boon” cut off and mobbed. “Jarhead” cleared the way for the rest of the team at the cost of his and “Boon’s” lives; he pulled the pins on his two frag grenades and blew up everything in the room.
The remaining team called in reinforcements, “Ghost” Lee and “Whisper” Vasquez. Together, they found Heinreich’s lab. Unfortunately, it was protected by a WD-41 Die-Borg and two WD-41 zombies. “Whisper” was caught in the lab with two of the creatures, and “Ghost” had one clamped onto her back. “Rocket Man” fired his rocket launcher into the room, destroying the Die-Borg. Sadly, the backblast also injured his allies, including causing the death of “Boomstick”. The group dug in and waiting for “Dom” to arrive before proceeding past the lab.
Down another hallway, they found the suite of Dr. Heinreich. Unfortunately, Heinreich had become a monstrous creature with huge rending claws, a WD-43 Ripper! A single swipe of his claws decapitated “Whisper”, but it was quickly put down with a 3-round burst from “Rocket Man”.
After clearing the complex, the team gathered the datafiles and evacuated the island. Four of the Blood Cell team were killed in the operation, but all objectives were met. Central Command was quite displeased with the casualties, but the spread of WD-41 and its variants was stopped.
Wow, this game was awesome. So much gore in such little time. We were a bit haphazard with our characters… maybe, but it was all for good fun. I hate that Charles has to write up a few new characters, but I’ve got no problems killing them next time.
Hey let’s face it, the best a gaming character can hope for is a dramatic, memorable death scene. We had several of those on Saturday!
That was a really fun game. I think the generalized map worked better than the full-blown schematic. Rocket Man is the only one still remaining from the original team. Boomstick’s on my killsheet. Heehee.