The Matchmaker

THE MATCHMAKER

This campaign is wrapped around investigation, but it would be an
effort in fealty for me to post all of the clues and handouts, since
there are more than sixty, and a lot of them are photographs (amazing
what you can do with Corel, the Web and a decent printer). What follows
is the plot for an adventure which took my party 9 months to solve, in
super abbreviated form. (My group loves to get into rather extensive
character-mode conversations, so it probably would not take half as
long).
There are two primary adventures involved, each dealing with a
particular Kult, and the campaign aspect comes from how the two Kults
are interlinked. The individual adventures are written first, and then
the supporting plot structure of the campaign.

Adventure #1

The setting is in Washington DC, although there is no reason it can't
be any other city (I happen to live in DC). The characters in my party
became involved initially because two were FBI agents stationed in DC,
and were assigned to the cold case office, investigating murders which
have turned cold with age. Anyway, they were handed the case file of a
murder investigation. The victim was male, mid 20's, and the victim was
apparently burned to death. Several clues they came up with while
investigating were that the victim was apparently flash burned at around
2500 degrees F, for about 10 minutes. There were no trace elements of
carbon outside that of the victim. There were no trace elements of a
volatile or otherwise flammable agent on the body. For all appearances,
it was as if the victim was stripped, held in a "clean" burning fire, a
large one, until dead, and that the body dumped off in the local park
where it was found.
After a little investigation, they found that there were no leads, or
that the leads for the 2 year old case were so cold it was depressing.
Soon, however, a new murder victim turns up with the same circumstances:
male, clean burning, etc. They went to the crime scene and, although
there were no witnesses, they found a few clues. (Crime scene clues
are: faint footprints & drag marks, traces of wood dust and motor oil
embedded in the burned, pussy flesh. Give a small chance of witnesses
seeing van pull up and two shadowed figures carrying body into woods if
you're feeling generous. No positive ID's, though.)
This intrigued the investigators, that there were two similar unlikely
murder victims, so with research, they turned up 5 more similar crimes
in the local area within the last 3 years. (I wrote up unsolved police
investigative files and newspaper articles for each of them as hand
outs.) Unfortunately for the characters, there are no more clues (maybe
a taste of a clue here and there, but nothing very strong). I let my
characters get frustrated briefly, until they had started to research
spontaneous combustion and other things. Then Saul comes in.
Saul is an Aralim. In Judaic tradition, this is the choir of angels
which guards or defends the sephirah on the tree of life. Like most
good angels in the game, Saul was disoriented when he was cast out to
the illusion, but he is slowly coming to. He realizes that there is a
cult doing evil things in the area (see below) and he wishes to stop it.
There is some power or force which is keeping him from regaining his
power as an angel, however (this is the illusion itself), and he
realizes he needs help. That's when he notices the characters are
involved in the investigation decides to help them. He also realizes
that he can't reveal the illusion to humans, for fear of the chaos which
will ensue after the breach in the veil, and of the lictors which will
hunt him down. So he decides to spoon feed the investigators
information a little at a time, just enough to keep them on the trail.
(He essentially plays the part a compass to the investigators).
While the characters are investigating one of the hang outs of a murder
victim (they should start looking for acquaintances of the victims at
some point, asking about strange behavior, etc.), Saul is leaning
against their car. (The characters should never really get a good look
at Saul, so most of his encounters with the characters should be at
night. Descriptively, in the Illusion, Saul is average height, athletic
build, shoulder length blonde hair.) When the characters get close
enough, Saul says something like," You must stop the burnings, " and
walks off. If the investigators chase him, he should avoid them easily.

The character's next encounter with Saul should be a couple of days
later. When the characters return home one night, there is a message on
one of their answering machines saying something like, "I'll be at the
waterfront, at (some bar) tonight. Meet me." Ego to see if the
characters recognize the voice as Saul's.
If the characters go to meet Saul, they'll see him in the shadows of
the building. When they approach, he'll start to walk away, down an
alley. They'll probably follow, and he'll lead them to an old
warehouse. He disappears inside, and if they follow, they'll find a van
parked there. Further inspection reveals bloody clothes (later to be
IDed as one of the burning victim's), and whatever other clues the GM
decides to put there. Saul can't be found, and the only other exit is a
window about two stories up on the rear wall, open, which faces a three
story drop to the rocky shore of the Potomac (or other suitable) river.
From here, the GM can use Saul to provide the characters with clues
when they seem to get bogged down, although it's not a good idea to
spoon-feed them. Saul is an abstract character, who's traits I defined
as the game progressed, so I'll refrain from defining him here. Give
him whatever abilities you feel necessary, although he should show some
disorientation from time to time.
This is the introduction to the adventure, and now I'll give the
details on which the rest of the adventure is based.

The first Cult

Carlton Burns was studying to become an ordained Jesuit priest and was
sent to (some other country, I used Germany) to help excavate an old
Jesuit archive which was found. During the uncovery, he and a fellow
brother of his, Brian Kendleton, came across an old, untitled book in
Latin. They curiously began to translate the tome, and found it held
the description of several spells which granted the caster visions into
"Hell", and explained the intricacies involved in summoning demons.
Feeling they were following the old Jesuit code of "know thine enemy,"
they began to delve deeper into their research of the volume. Shortly
they also found 5 mirrors, which the book describes, that allowed them
to invoke a spell which let them see Metropolis briefly. The mirrors
were large, oval shaped and on stands, with carved angels and devils on
the frames. The wood seemed to heal from nicks and scratches, and the
glass was unnaturally cool. When one pane was shattered, it broke into
a spiderweb pattern and turned jet black, giving the impression of a
dark room on the other side. Smoke drifted slowly to the mirror,
finally being absorbed into the cracks. When bodily fluids (blood,
semen, etc) were touched by the mirror, the fluid was also absorbed by
the cracks and some of the cracks seemed to heal. Letting their
fascination get the better of them, they shortly dropped the Order and
began their fall from glory. They split up after several years, and
studied their own separate paths. They left one mirror with an
associate at a local university in (Germany) and took the four remaining
with them.
Carlton Burns soon attracted people to his mystical rituals, acquiring
a group of twenty or so followers. He really only knew how to do a few
tricks with the mirror, and ran out of new rituals to perform in the
abandoned warehouse the group met in. At one of his gatherings, a new
face was in the crowd, a man who called himself Creighton Hall.
Creighton had an air of power about him, which attracted Carlton
immediately. He began to tell Carlton about the mirror and the true
bounds of power it really possessed. He told Carlton about how the
mirror was a middle point between heaven and hell, and described rituals
which would allow Carlton and his followers to journey into heaven.
Carlton was immediately hooked, and began to learn under Creighton.
For a year or so Creighton would designate spots in the city where
Carlton was to meet him, and when Carlton showed up Hall would always be
there, dressed as always in impeccable Italian suits. Carlton was
taught several rituals, some with drugs and some without. He was shown
how to make a hallucinogenic paste for direct application to the skin,
how to invoke the mirror as a gateway to any spot within the Illusion he
wished to journey, and how to use the mirror to watch people. He was
also taught how to open the gateway to heaven.
Creighton told Carlton that the mirror was more of a door to a tunnel
which either led to heaven or to hell, depending on the moral fiber of
the users. Hell could be bribed, however, with ritual sacrifices which
were given to the demons in replacement of the user's soul. The trick
was the sacrificed souls had to be of greater value in hell's opinion
than the soul of the sorcerer. Because of this, it was always a good
idea to kill several people for each person's soul one wished to bribe
hell for. If one did the ritual properly, when they were ready to pass
through to heaven, hell would not try to lay claim to the soul, and the
person could pass through to heaven regardless of their character.
The ritual involved preparing the sacrifices with fasting, painting
runes over the body with the hallucinogenic paste, placing them in a
ritual circle with the mirror at their head and casting a spell which
Creighton gave them, which had the side affect of the body bursting into
flames. The smoke of the burning would carry the soul through the
shattered mirror and into hell to pay the passage for heaven.
This, then, is the first cult and their motivation. They are all
dedicated believers, and are abducting people to use for their ritual.
When they have sacrificed enough people, around 40, they will pass as a
group through the mirror and journey on their stolen passage into
heaven. At the beginning of the adventure, they have just started the
abductions. If they feel pressured, they will begin to speed up the
sacrifices, getting messy (leaving clues, etc.) during the abductions,
and if they find out specific individuals are investigating them, they
will try to abduct one of the investigators and sacrifice them to hell.
They all have small items in their houses tying them to the cult, i.e.
ritual chalices, shopping lists for drugs, books on the occult or
occidental mythology, sketches of ritual circles, etc. Carlton keeps
his mirror at his house, and periodically receives faxes from a
university at his house which has encoded rituals to try on the mirror.
The only member of the cult who can cast a ritual is Carlton, who can
cast See though Illusion, and perhaps some other lower Lore of Madness
spells. The spells he is casting for Creighton he doesn't understand
the mechanics of, nor does he really understand what they do.
Creighton Hall is a shadow dancing on the edge of the cult, never
involved but often insinuated. The investigators should not find out
where Hall lives (none in the cult know), what he really looks like, or
where he can be found. Only Carlton has spent time in his company and
he sure as hell isn't talking.
The cult practices in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. They clean
up after each sacrifice really well, and take anything they brought with
them when they leave. The only sign that the warehouse is used for
anything is soot marks on the ceiling from some fire. When they are set
up at the warehouse, there is an old office they have converted into a
cell, where sacrifices are chained to a steel table while they are
stripped and painted with symbols. When the hallucinogen has taken
affect, the sacrifice is carried to the circle immobilized by iron
chains and burned, after hours of ritual, to the delight of the cult
members.
If Carlton Burns (no pun intended by the last name, honest. It was
pointed out to me by one of my players after I had run the adventure)
feels that he and his cult has been thwarted, he will cast the ritual to
open the gate to heaven by himself, disappearing from this world. He
will immediately find himself in a purgatory, tormented by Nepharites.
He is in corporal form, however, and thus is tied to the mirror because
his body belongs in the Illusion. If anyone tries to use the mirror
after he has gone through, there is a 20% chance that he will manage to
break free of his captors and return to the passage he came in through,
coming to the backside of the mirror and pounding frantically on it.
Anyone on the Illusion side will hear a faint tapping and "distant"
shouting coming from the mirror. If the mirror is in shattered form
(i.e. enough body fluids haven't been poured on it to make it whole and
reflective again), Burns will come crashing out, skinless and
lacerated, to die in a bloody pool on the carpet of whoever's living
room the mirror is kept in, emitting foul effluvium (the innate nature of
the purgatories is to keep people alive through torture and anguish
which can't be survived when it takes place in the Illusion, thus Burns
dies when he hits the laws of this reality). The mirror can be repaired
by placing the shards back into the frame and "gluing" it back together
with fluids (you know the kind).

Here is the second section of my campaign, the Matchmaker. This section
deals with the affairs of a second cult operated by Brian Kendleton,
ex-Jesuit and co-conspirator with Carlton Burns.

Brian Kendleton left (Germany) in 1985 at the same time Carlton Burns
did, only he left with the book they had studied and 3 of the mirrors.
He was much more interested in the possible power which could be
attained in this world, as opposed to Burns, who wanted to attain
Heaven. When Kendleton came back to the states, he studied the book
zealously, finding more rituals hidden in the book in cyphers and code.
One such ritual, a spell which touted the ability to summon and command
a demon to do one's bidding, he found particular interest in. He
prepared for months to cast the spell, hoping beyond hope to achieve
what he had never even dreamed of in the Order.
At long last, he set up his ritual. He drew the circles and symbols,
lit the tallow candles, burned the incense of bone meal and in canted the
ritual. After hours of concentration, what came to him was a spider like
cybernetic creature which seemed to want to tear out his throat. The
circle he had drawn did not contain it and what followed was a maddening
chase through his rural house in the dead of night. He found his
shotgun and subdued the "demon" by removing its lower extremities, and
spent the remainder of the night panicking, trying to figure out what he
should do next.
He found that heavy shocks with a taser seemed to cast the creature
into a catatonic state for brief periods of time, and began to study it
while it was under. He became fascinated with the technology involved
with the creature, (which you probably guessed was a techrone), and
called an associate of his who was an electrical engineer. After the
shock of the initial sight, the engineer became as fascinated as
Kendleton was, and the two started to get designs on what they were
going to do.
Then the others came. It seemed that others like the creature they had
captured could sense their companion, and had come to get him back.
Kendleton and his friend, Goeff Turner, fled, taking their captive, and
barely escaping the other Techrones. They spent several months hounded
by the cybernetic organisms, coming too close to death too many times.
They probably would not be alive if a gentleman by the name of Creighton
Hall had not stepped in to their aid.
Creighton Hall came to Brian Kendleton one evening while Kendleton was
entering a restaurant. He told Kendleton that he knew of the fear he
lived in, and could help him hide from the demons who hounded him, for
an exacting price. Kendleton, fearing his life if not his soul was in
danger, readily agreed. In the next few days, Hall showed Kendleton how
to build a protected room, sealed with ancient words long forgotten,
where he could store the creature the demons were trying to reclaim.
Hall told Kendleton that as long as the creature was in the room, the
demons would not be able to sense his whereabouts.
Kendleton and Turner pooled their money and bought a piece of land in a
rural area ( I used Reston, VA, a rural suburb of Washington, DC, which
is just now becoming developed for industrial sites). They dug a tunnel
system, made with a specially prepared stone, and put the creature in a
room within the system. They lined the room with arcane symbols and
runes, and finally drove several lengths of iron bar through the
creature into the stone floor, bending the exposed bar down to the
floor, pinning the creature in the protected room. Indeed the demons
seemed to no longer be able to find them.
They began to harvest technology from the imprisoned techrone, and
based on the information they gleaned from it developed a dramatically
new RISC based processor. The market ate the new technology like candy,
begging for more. Within a few years, Kendleton and Turner soon became
millionaires, building a multi-million dollar corporation on their
estate, called Cybernet Industries, putting an empty warehouse over the
entrance to the underground facility. In this warehouse was an elevator
which went to the main floor and a basement, both used for storage. If
two keys were set into the locks on the panel, however, the elevator
would continue down to a sub-basement 30 meters underground. This is
where the techrone was kept, and only Kendleton and Turner have access
to this level. They venture down at night, after all of the other
workers have gone home. The warehouse has an armed guard which patrols
the interior, and a sophisticated fingerprint identification locking
mechanism on the outside.
The two have build a corporate building and research facilities on the
premises, and have filled the buildings with employees ranging from
engineers to administrative personnel. None of the employees know of
the basement complex in the warehouse.
Creighton Hall asked for two things in exchange for his protective
measures against the "demons." First, he demanded a price of two of the
mirrors Kendleton had. Second, he required that every year for fifteen
years, before June, Kendleton and Turner abduct a girl, physically
mature but as young as possible, to be delivered to him with very
specific instructions. The girl was to be virginal, sexually mature,
young and inexperienced, and delivered to a specific location within the
city. Hall warned that if the delivery were not made to his exacting
instructions, including even the streets which were taken to the delivery
point, Hall would aid the demons in their search for the two. Afraid of
the demons (again, techrones) which would haunt them, and the loss of
the wealth they had recently become accustomed to, the two agreed.

The investigators can be involved several different ways. The most
forward is to involve them in the search for a missing girl, either they
are law enforcement, PI's or relatives/friends of the parents. However
you do it, they should get involved in the case of the missing girl,
Crystal English, a resident of (Reston, VA). Her house is in a new
community build on the edge of an industrial complex owned by Cybernet
Industries. The tinted glass structure of the main building can be seen
looming over the trees behind her house, which is separated from the
grounds of Cybernet by 30 meters of trees. Crystal disappeared on a
weekday morning while she was on the way to her school bus stop, which
was up the street and around the corner. There are no clues as to the
whereabouts of Crystal, although a pendant of a pentagram she wore can
be found just inside the woods near her house. I'll leave you to feed
the investigators clues, but don't point to Cybernet too quickly. Let
them get frustrated. Anybody they talk to at Cybernet will never have
seen the girl.

Kendleton and Turner have abducted 5 girls so far. Two were from
employees of Cybernet, which they stalked while the parents were at
work. One was from an area in (Kentucky), where they drove down to
spread out the missing persons cases. One was from another nearby
neighborhood, about 4 years ago, and the last is Crystal. They abducted
Crystal as they have all of the others. They approach the victim in a
secluded area (near woods, etc.) which presents a well concealed avenue
of escape. While one of them asks for directions or something inane
like that, the other comes up from behind and chloroforms the girl,
squeezing her throat as they do so to prevent screams. Since all of the
girls are inexperienced, they breath deep to scream at the initial
assault, taking in loads of chloroform, and grow too dizzy to fight well
before they fall unconscious. Then they pack the girl in the back of a
car and take off. They usually try to stalk the girls beforehand,
trying to get a good idea of the patterns they live by first, and trying
to single out girls which generally are loners, but with Crystal they
were pressed for time.
The girl is kept in the underground chamber at Cybernet in a room
adjacent to the techrone's for a few days, getting her weak with
starvation. She is kept chained to a steel autopsy table, where they
verify that the girl (usually they are around 13 or 14) is in fact a
virgin. At that point, they contact Creighton Hall at a phone # he gave
them (an unlisted cellular phone), and he gives them the time they
should meet him at the "specified location."
They follow the directions into the city, where they are to head into a
bad part of town (plenty in DC), and there is a maze of about 20 or so
turns to take, some of them leading in circles. After the first 10 or
so illogical turns (some down alleys back onto a street they were just
on) the streets start to get dingier, and the street signs painted over
or missing. A few more turns, and people on the street become more
haggard and less stable. A few more turns and there are smoking, burned
out shells of cars. The driving pattern is in fact a sort of gateway to
the borderlands, where each turn must be performed to the letter and the
entire path followed or the ritual is broken. (It's awful fun to
roleplay this if the characters ever follow Turner or Kendleton without
being spotted). Once all of the prescribed turns and roads within the
slums of the city have been taken, they are in the borderlands.
Kendleton and Turner wind through the city for a while (plenty of
shadow rolls required) until they come to a very out of place black
building among the ramshackle rowhouses. The building is over 50
stories and completely dark and silent. Inside, the building is as torn
up as the neighborhood, except for the elevators. They seem to function
nicely. The girl is delivered to 21st floor, where there is a long
hallway filled with steam pipes wet with condensation. The hallway
extends for miles, and ends at a heavy steel door. Inside the door is a
room filled with piles of abandoned medical equipment: gurneys,
wheelchairs, etc. Kendleton and Turner leave the victim here, on the
floor, and leave as quickly as they came. The route back must also be
followed precisely, or the ritual is lost and either performed again, or
the passengers are stuck in the Borderlands.
The building is close enough to Metropolis to exhibit whatever nasties
you want to place here. Most of the people found around the building
should be insane or under the influence, the kind of people you expect
to find in the borderlands. This section, however, is very quiet and
unpopulated, because Creighton regularly sends "squads" out to kill
anybody they find close to his building.

The connection to the other cult should not be made by the
investigators too early. The biggest, and most fun, connection is if
the characters ever try to break into Cybernet's main building and get
to the top floor, in Kendleton's office they will find a mirror just
like Carlton Burns'. Kendleton can also use this mirror to get in touch
with Creighton Hall (see part 3, coming soon).
To his credit, Kendleton has hired a VERY well trained security team to
guard his "investments". They are on the grounds of Cybernet round the
clock, and although there are only a few of them, they are good at what
they do, and well equipped.
Creighton has also detailed two Azgouls to Kendleton's service, and
although he is not aware of all of their capabilities, he uses them to
his benefit. If he is made aware that there are people interested in
finding out about his illicit operations, he will not hesitate to send
the azgouls or his guards to take care of them. Additionally, if either
Kendleton or Turner dies, the living of the two will have one of the
Azgouls take the deceased's form, so the addiction to wealth they have
developed can continue to thrive unhindered.