Operation Report - House Of Rain Part 1

Today I finished running the first scenario from the CRYSTAL JACKAL campaign, "House of Rain". I thought it might be nice to put together a play report, mostly because I think writing it up is a good exercise. Also, forgive me if some things are vague and nebulous, as the first session took place almost a month ago.

HOUSE OF RAIN PART 1: NECROSIS

Cottonwood, Utah, June 15 2016.

The Agents (Coker, Damcott, Evans and Harris) receive plane tickets to Salt Lake City and directions to a meeting place, a small, unventilated conference room tucked away on the second floor of the FBI Field Office in SLC. Their case officer goes over their task. Yesterday, the body of Alyssa McPherson was found in her house by a worried neighbor. The young woman appeared to have partially liquefied overnight. Taskforce CRYSTAL JACKAL is to investigate McPherson's death and determine if an Unnatural vector is involved, under the cover of an FBI-CDC bio-terrorism taskforce. They are also informed of a Green Box in the area.

 Since she lived in Cottonwood, on the other side of the state, in San Juan County, the Agents rent a car and get on the road. In the meantime, Damcott does some research online and discovers McPherson was a private tour guide, taking tourists to visit various caves and natural point of interest, as well as tours to Native American cultural heritage sites (supported by a local museum). Once in Cottonwood, The Agents split up: Harris and Evans go to the Monticello Public Safety building, which houses the Sheriff's Office and the morgue; while Damcott and Coker go to investigate the Redd family, who found the body.

Alyssa McPherson's body is a grisly sight. It would seem like a case of necrotizing fasciitis, if not for the speed and extension of the infection, which not only liquefied almost all soft tissues but also partially eroded her bones. After hours of work, Evans determines that it must be a bacterial infection, though the microbe responsible is an as-of-yet undiscovered species. Harris connects it to a paper he read on the determination of a cause of death in ancient bodies, which mention Ancestral Pueblo bodies with the same type of erosion on their bones as McPherson.

Damcott and Coker visit the Redds, and Damcott eats some delicious funeral potatoes. They offer little useful information, but Damcott gets the hunch that the two may be hiding something.

The team decides to not visit McPherson's house yet, awaiting the arrival of personal protective equipment they requisitioned from their Case Officer. Instead, they choose to visit the Green Box set up in the area. It consists of a small, one-floor ranch home, dilapidated and abandoned, a barn and a grain silo. While the house and barn contain some canned foods and supplies, the grain silo contains the actual cache. Inside, there are several boxes of junk and a rotting wooden coffin marked with the letter "Q" in white paint, containing an assortment of old but well-maintained guns. The Agents also find some damaged caving equipment, a box of bent spoons, a crate of unlabeled mezcal bottles (at least, they hope it's mezcal: how else would you explain the worms inside?), a collection of books by Graziano Henke, crackpot pseudo-archaeologist writer, and many other oddities.

Before calling it a night and returning to their rooms at the Black Dog Motel, a sleazy lodging on the outskirts of town, they go to unwind at a decrepit casino. There, they realize they're being followed by a Sheriff's Deputy they met earlier, Deputy Thomson, and an unidentified woman. Evans, in a drunken rage after quite a few losses, almost gets into a brawl with Thomson, causing him to leave, while Coker goes after the woman. With surprising clarity, she explains she is agent Graves with the Bureau of Land Management, investigating the theft of antiques from public land. In short, McPherson was involved in a ring of antique smugglers, in which Graves is going undercover to identify some high-profile buyers. Graves asks Coker not to interfere with her investigation.

After that, the group returns to the Black Dog Motel. While the rest sleep, Damcott pulls an all-nighter and reads a couple of Henke's books. The author seems to believe there was a prehistoric civilization of giant hominids that were driven underground by some kind of cataclysm. 

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