Halloween Hootenanny VIII – Hunter: The Vigil – A Nightmare at Hill Manor

Game session summary for one-shot game using White Wolf’s Hunter: The Vigil somewhat parodied with bumbling characters from the League of Extraordinary Zeroes:  Buffy Summers, Felonius Gru, George Bush, Mable “Madea” Simmons, Napoleon Dynamite, and Shaggy Rogers.

The team had assembled for their regular game night with Janice in the apartment lounge.  Janice had gone downstairs to get snacks from her car when they heard a few gunshots from a floor or two above.  They discussed what to do as Janice returned saying she could not get down to the car.  The group went to their apartments and grabbed their gear and found the elevator would only open on floors 5, 6, and 7.  On the 5th floor they were attacked by a white-eyed madman.  Buffy ended up staking the man, and a green mist escaped his mouth as he died.  They continued to explore their situation and ran into a variety of oddities such as the reek of blood or areas of hallway causing nosebleeds.  They even had an instance where Madea was compelled to fire upon her allies!

They eventually decided they needed to get up to the penthouse but needed the access to key.  Someone remembered the maintenance office on the fifth floor would likely have a key, so they went there.  Within, they found the maintenance men were mad like many of the other residents, and they attacked the party using hammers and screwdrivers!  The group suffered a few minor injuries but knocked out both men.  They revived them after the green mist left their bodies, and they discovered the men didn’t seem to know much.

The group went to the penthouse and found a man’s body slumped against the wall, apparently the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.  Gru pulled a minion from his pocket to look around the corner, and they learned of another body.  The party rounded the corner just as a ghost formed over the corpse of an old man.  He told them an evil spectre, Josiah Hill, and an army of ghosts were trapped in magical wards within the building and needed release.  Josiah was tethered to this world by a pocket watch that the party needed to find.  The ghost gave them several relics with which to fight the possessed residents.

The team went in search of the watch and found several more disturbing events such as more madmen, a burning ghostly maid, a burning ghostly man, and a body dripping blood upward to the ceiling.  They even caught sight of a madman with a pocket watch!  The team chased him over several floors until they finally caught him in a stairwell and rendered him unconscious.  The group took the watch up to the roof to melt it on the lightning rod.

On the roof, they found a raging storm of falling blood and hail of human bone.  The spectre of Josiah Hill appeared and began compelling the party to turn on itself!  The team struggled against his control but succeeded in hitting him with the powerful relics enough to discorporate his form.  Then, the team attached the watch to the lightning rod  and watched as the lightning melted it down and destroyed Josiah once and for all!