Church of the Metamorphoses

Beginnings

(TW: Bugs, gore)

## Character Stats

THE HUNTERS

Callum, Terryl, Lazarus, and Idris

THE MISSION

- The Sect hears news of the disappearance of an entire town of people. The crew sets out to investigate.

- Terryl is at the Sect. Callum rides to the Sect on Jaime’s motorcycle and Lazarus rides to the Sect on his own motorcycle. Idris just walks hah

 - Terryl made packed lunches for everyone!!

- They set out to the town: Terryl rides with Callum and Idris rides with Lazarus.

### GENNISI

- The milling town of Gennisi is their destination. When they arrive, they see that there is indeed nobody there. There is a path of destruction through the buildings - particularly in the residential area.

- There is a trace of two unidentifiable residues: one white and sticky substance, the other red and viscous.

 - Terryl collects some of both in a napkin.(eats it)

 - Callum tries to determine what they are by sniffing them. The white one has no scent,

   the red one smells putrid. He is unable to identify either.

- Callum places his magic journal down on the ground and uses magic to look back in time. What he sees is a large monstrocity (pictured in MOTW art by Matt) that goes plows straight through the buildings. It goes on until it crashes into the reservoir. It appears to be powerful, but reckless and not very intelligent.

- Upon inspection of the houses, they are found to be torn apart, with things broken, and the aforementioned residue in the doorways.

 - A dog looks out of one of the houses. Terryl and Idris go over to it. When it goes back

   into the house, Idris (and the others?) follow it in. It sits by a pile of rubble, which is

   discovered to have a human arm sticking out of it. Idris carefully removes the rubble.

   The person is, of course, dead. The deceased has large bite marks on them with the

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 same red residue from earlier.

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### THE WOODS

- The crew next heads to the woods, which seemed to be highlighted as a spot of interest by Idris’ vision at the beginning of the session.

- Most of the trees they could see had gashes on them.

- Callum summons Percy, but with the side effect that Percy cannot communicate in any way.

- They find heavy bootprints leading deeper into the woods, along with a trail of the substance(s) they found earlier. They begin to follow these.

- A thick fog rolls in. Large clumps of the white substance on the trees begin to transform into small creatures (pictured in MOTW Art by Matt) - lots of them. They are not yet hostile.

- Terryl discovers that their best action in this situation is to run. The crew begins to do so, but Lazarus is bitten in the ankle as he moves past one of the creatures. It does no harm, but it hurts a lot. He gets -1 forward on anything involving movement.

### BACK TO THE TOWN

- When they get back to the town, they decide to go up to the roof of a building in order to get a better view of everything (there were roofs that were in-tact). Callum uses his wolf hands and feet to scale the building. Terryl flies up, getting there first. Idris and Lazarus take the stairs.

- Once everyone is up there, they decide to investigate the reservoir. Terryl flies over it and sees that the creature Callum saw in his flashback is still in the bottom of the reservoir, but it appears to be decomposing.

### THE WOODS PT. 2

- The crew finds that they must return to the woods.

- After following the footsteps through the woods for an hour, they get to an area where there is no more of the substance and where there are only small cuts on the trees. And after a little bit more walking, the forest ends and they find themself in the parking lot of a power plant.

### THE POWER PLANT

- The power plant is surrounded by large gates. It has a single entrance with a guard.

- Woods surround the area, with only a single dirt road leading into it.

- The crew goes through many ideas before deciding to walk up to the guard and present their Sect IDs. Terryl does the talking, introducing them all as investigators.

- The guard, Jarold, says that he will need to call his supervisors first. He tries to call them, but no one picks up. This goes on for five minutes before Terryl lets him know that this is an urgent matter and is able to convince him to let them in.

- When they enter, they find no one walking around. There is no destruction. There is no steam coming from the power thingies.

- The crew is able to find the same bootprints to the forest, leading into different buildings. One in particular has strange marks. The door is locked, however - it requires a keycard. Everyone returns to Jarold to ask him for his key card.

- They ask Jarold for the key card, pressing that the situation is very urgent. He seems unsure. Idris and Terryl are able to convince him, but he asks for something in return: “Do you have any gum?” And fortunately, Terryl does have gum. They give him the gum and receive the key card. Jarold is happy with the gum.

- Lazarus warns Jarold to look out for any swarms of bugs. Jarold asks “Like bees?” to which Lazarus responds “Ground bees.”

- Everyone heads back to the locked door and they are able to open it with the key card. Inside are two hallways, one that goes off to the left and one that goes off to the right. They decide to split up. Terryl and Callum go to the left, Idris and Lazarus to the right. Callum sends Percy to go with Idris and Lazarus.

### THE RIGHT HALLWAY (IDRIS AND LAZARUS)

- This hallway seems to house research rooms. There is no one in the hallway.

- One of the doors opens and out stumbles a person in a protective suit. They have a drill. Except, it’s no normal drill - instead of one spinning part it has three. The drill whirs as the person approaches Idris and Lazarus, still stumbling. Both try to speak to the person and get them to put down the drill, but they are unresponsive.

- Lazarus, with the help of Percy, is able to get the drill out of the person’s hand. This, unfortunately, hits Percy’s foot, dealing 2 harm. Percy begins to float (as happens when he takes damage).

- Lazarus restrains the person and Idris removes their face covering in order to see what’s going on with them. What he finds is that they look to have little life left in them. There is an opening in their head exactly like the shape of the drill (the one they were formerly holding has no blood on it, though).

- The person continues to struggle against Lazarus’s grasp. Idris carefully knocks them out.

- The two proceed into the room the person came out of. Inside, they find a giant khrysalis. It has burst open, and little vermin are scattered throughout the room. There is lots of the white substance in the inside of the chrysalis and in the entire room.

- Under the table is a ~41/2 ft long humanish blobish bugish thing. It is writhing in pain and looks as though something is about to break out of it. They try to speak to it, but there is no response.

- After much debate over what to do, Lazarus shoots it. It explodes and white substance goes everywhere (fortunately only getting on the shoes of the hunters). It lets out a screech and then stops moving.

- Idris and Lazarus exit the room and continue until they find a dead end.

### THE LEFT HALLWAY (TERRYL AND CALLUM)

- Down their hallway, the two find an elevator. It has three buttons: 2nd floor, 3rd floor, and an unmarked button. They of course choose the unmarked button.

- This takes them down and opens up to a dark cavern. After a bit of walking, they find their way to a balcony that overlooks the nest. There are huge piles of the white substance, a few of the creatures Callum saw in his flashback patrolling, some workers (human-sized creatures with mantis-like arms), and dozens of closed chrysalises.

- At this point, Idris and Lazarus have entered the left hallway and take the elevator. They press the unmarked button too (figuring this is probably what Terryl and Callum did). However, they find that they with their human eyes cannot see very well. Instead of proceeding into the darkness, they decide to investigate the other two floors.

### FLOORS 2 AND 3

- Both of the other two floors (the 2nd and the 3rd) just have a hallway. These hallways have no doors and are clearly a dead end. Reasonably suspicious, the two investigate.

- Lazarus convinces Idris to use his wind magic on one of the walls. This backfires - due to the wind accidentally being sent in the opposite direction - and Idris is thrown back against the other wall, taking 1 harm (the first harm he has ever taken no less!). Then Lazarus realizes that it’d probably work better to just hit the wall with the blunt end of his gun, which he does. There is no insulation, but there’s not really anything weird.

- They go back to the elevator and return to the cavern.

### BACK TO THE CAVERN

- Idris and Lazarus carefully navigate through the darkness, Idris using his staff to poke the ground in front of them to make sure they don’t walk into a hole. There is sloshy substance all around. These two reunite with Terryl and Callum at the balcony.

- Off of the balcony is a stairway down to the ground level (the nest). One of the workers is attending to the chrysalises.

- Callum sees a large armored figure (pictured in MOTW Art by Matt) decapitate one of the other workers with a weapon that is a polearm with a tail (of the sort of creature from Callum’s flashback) at the end of it. This figure then ducks around a corner and disappears. Strange…

- Terryl finds out that they may need to burn the chrysalises. Everyone discusses the plan of action.

 - They try to see if the white substance is flammable by using the bit of it they collected

   in the napkin earlier (there’s a bunch of it all around, but if it was flammable then that

   would be dangerous). It is not flammable, but gives off lots of fumes when touched by

   Terryl’s flaming sword. Concerned about the fumes it’s giving off, Terryl eats it. Given

     that they don’t have a stomach or anything, they suffer no harm from this.

- The chrysalises are moving more and more, so the crew decides that they must act now.

- Terryl flies down and kills the worker tending to the chrysalises. This is, fortunately, the only creature in sight.

- Everyone attacks and destroys the chrysalises. Inside of these are the sort of thing Idris and Lazarus found under the table earlier. They have the same drill holes in their heads, but these have maggots in them.

- Three more of the worker creatures appear. Lazarus shoots one, killing it.

- The “Observer,” alerted by trouble in the nest, appears at the balcony. It is BIG, ~15 ft. It has a head like that of a horseshoe crab. It has 100s and 100s of legs, 2 arms with hands that have especially large middle fingers. Flesh, entrails create a winglike formation on its back.

- Once The Observer descends the stairs, Idris attacks it with a burst of wind. It lets out a shriek and the hunters can hear faint indistinguishable whispers in their heads. It is intrusive, but they are not otherwise affected by it fortunately. The shriek does draw the attention of one of the “brutes” - the large type of creature, like the one that plowed through the town.

- Terryl and Callum kill one of the two remaining worker creatures.

- Lazarus is impaled near the hip by the remaining worker creature, taking 2 harm. This creature is then killed.

- Terryl severely wounds The Observer. The brute creature charges at them in response. They stand their ground, but Idris pulls them out of the way. The brute does not make it over, though, as the large armored figure from earlier drops down and kills it, and then proceeds to stay and watch as Terryl finishes off The Observer. At this point, all creatures in the vicinity are down.

- The large armored figure walks up to Terryl and offers their hand, introducing themself as Freidus, the Exterminator General. They say that this is the nest of the Church of Metamorphoses. They also say that they are impressed by the crew’s efficiency at dispatching the creatures and that, because more and more of their kind are dying, they could use such skillful fighters in their ranks. The crew tells Freidus that they are already employed, to which Freidus makes clear they know of the Sect and suggests they could possibly work together in the future. Freidus then walks off, seeming as though they will be taking care of the remaining creatures.

### JAROLD

- The crew returns to the surface and finds Jarold unharmed at his post. As they approach him, they are covered in bug substances. They make sure he’s going to go home and find a new job, wish him well, and Lazarus reminds him to watch out for the ground bees. Jarold walks off to his car, watching the ground carefully.

### CONCLUSION

- Unfortunately, the hunters had not gotten to the nest in time. The missing townspeople became victims of the Church of Metamorphoses. The creatures are dealt with at least, and they have gained a possible ally for the future.