[MH] Caribbean by Night

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Oh? I think I know that guy. He makes furniture now.

He should have made sure he wore a condom, as his offspring grew up mean and has only be getting meaner.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I don't know enough about Texan Christmas customs to know how the religious angle would affect it, and the winters here are even more genial than thse of the Gulf coast of Texas, but I would say "yes". Beach resorts with good fishing around here are quite busy around the long weekend in June. You have a lot of people trying to get away from the winter misery of places that are too cold to bear but not cold enough and too flat for skiing. "Winter sunbirds", like in Florida, but more Western.

Interesting.

So are we talking about ten people in these thirty or so houses located on the outermost peninsula that Google maps recognises as Indianola? Twenty? Thirty? Fifty?

I'll roll a generic 'Reaction Roll' type roll for it (which I often do when I have to determine how lucky PCs or NPCs get about factors that affect their plans, but aren't under their control), in order to determine whether there are unusually many or few this holiday season, but I need some sort of best-guess baseline to represent the 9-11 range on that roll.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I guess the best bet would be to torch a dozen houses on South Ocean Drive and rely on the fire tenders to block access for a couple of hours. You're also going to want to cut the electricity and phones and take out a cell tower.

You're talking about what they'll do once they've diddled up their plan to take over quietly and without anyone outside Indianola becoming aware of it?

The cultists already had pre-created Charms (as defined in RPM) designed to create a 'Somebody Else's Problem' field around their ritual space, which they meant to use elsewhere, but will now use here. This won't affect anyone inside a family home, because of the protective effects of the Threshold in homes (defined in Pyramid #3/58 'Safe as Houses'), but it will give anyone outside the confines of this space a penalty to remember that it exists or to notice anything unusual happening there, as well as make them less likely to want to go there and more likely to forget to include it in a search plan for the general area.

Essentially, it's a ritual that strengthens the Facade (defined in Pyramid #3/97 'Mask of Humanity) in the area, making the veil that causes most ordinary humans to ignore any signs of the supernatural stronger and more effective.

The cultists also have, for protection and just in case, pre-created Charms that act as magical jammers when activated. They intensify the interference between magic and technology by messing with any technological communication signals that would pass through the barrier established by the ritual. So within half a mile of the center of the effect, phones, radios and other communication devices will have a very hard time reaching anyone outside this area, although they'll still receive signals from outside of it (so TVs won't stop working, for example, but anyone trying to select a different movie on Netflix will have trouble doing so, as their input isn't getting out).

Skilled communication technicians could circumvent this, using professional-grade equipment that can actually be adjusted by the end user, as this is just a penalty to send and a penalty to Malf., probably around -5, but it's enough to make household stuff that usually works automatically and without user input fail, so no one is going to be calling the police successfully.

It will most likely appear to the inhabitants to be stuff like the router not assigning IP addresses correctly, network failure or dropped calls for cell phones and landlines getting a busy signal when calls are made outside of the area. It shouldn't be visible to people outside the area, not without analysis of data that nobody monitors in real time. That is, somebody at the telecom company could theoretically notice that none of the cell phones in Indianola were pinging the nearby tower any longer, but it's not like they get an alarm just because everyone in a half-mile radius happened to have turned put their phones on airplane mode.

Of course, everybody in these thirty houses or so being cut-off from the outside world for two whole days is going to be noticed by their families, at least for those who have any they are in daily contact with. But, come to think of it, unless these families were coming up to stay with mom and dad over the New Year's or something, most of them would not be likely to panic just because their parents didn't call them between the night of the 29th and New Year's, if they knew their parents were away for the holidays. I know that I'd expect mom to call at New Year's, but not necessarily the two days before that.

In any case, as long as 'noticed' means that ordinary people drive up to check on their families, after they fail to reach them on the phone, the cultists are fine with it. They have plenty of magic sleep powders to capture people with, like the one that was used on Alice Talbot (PC) at the start of the adventure. They just want to avoid a police response or any official attention and are hoping that the mystical effect that causes everyone not actively forced to notice to avoid thinking about Indianola will suffice to do so.

[Icelander]

So, Unluckiness as a result of a quirk on a hastily cast magical ritual has attracted sharks in the waters of Galveston Bay.

They are unusual in the sense that they actually represent a potential combat encounter and thus will be outliers in that sense, but should be sharks that actually are found nearby.

I'm thinking bull, tiger or hammerhead sharks.

I rolled 14 on a 3 to 18 scale for how dangerous they'd be (within a range of sharks that can be dangerous to humans) and 12 on the same scale for how many there are. All three types are solitary hunters, but I don't know if they congregate for other reasons or how many sharks there might be within a few miles of Galveston Bay on the 29th of December.

I'm thinking that I'll interpret the numbers as two to four sharks, depending on species and size, but I could be convinced otherwise if it's implausible to find that many sharks in relatively close geographic proximity.

What type of shark sounds most plausible and interesting? Suggestions?

[Icelander]

Unbelievably, the PCs were able to use Ritual Path Magic creatively and on the fly to slow down He Who Hungers in the Deep, which was then followed up by a ruthless exhibition of perfect teamwork and lethal application of violence.

End result, the physical body that the Outsider was occupying was destroyed* in quite dramatic fashion and the possessing spirit was expelled from this plane of existence.

While this is a win for this reality, ironically, it means that He Who Hungers in the Deep will not tear apart the cultists of the Keepers of the Last Hearth and thus the hastily concocted backup plan of changing the ritual space to Indianola will not be thrown into disarray. Also, the PCs will not accidentally stumble on the cultists while following Him Who Hungers in the Deep.

There's a very low chance that the cultists will successfully enact their ritual, but an excellent chance that they'll kill a number of innocent people while trying and possibly they will cause unpredictable spiritual ramifications from their failure. However, odds are that the PCs will not expect further excitement and will be resting on well-deserved laurels.

Also, two of the PCs are going into surgery, so, you know, there's that. Lucien Lacoste had a significant part of his head torn open by a monstrous pair of jaws and Alice Talbot literally disemboweled herself with an Obsidian Athame that looks like a tear in the fabric of the world.**

I'd welcome suggestions on what is likely to happen with our energetic cultists, what the PCs might hear about them and when.

*Well, technically, 'Saucy Jack' still lives, for a given value of life. He's just missing quite a bit of important stuff, like an arm, functioning legs, huge chunks of his body, eyes, etc. And poisoned from having swallowed silver (toxic to pishtaco), ten whole bullets of it (unfired, still in a magazine, incidentally lodged in his throat). Also his lungs are full of water. Okay, so 'lives' is debatable, actually. He's not breathing, but there is a theoretical possibility that he might, if he gets competent First-Aid (and field surgery to remove the magazine with silver bullets from his throat).
**She needed to gather energy really quickly and opted for self-sacrifice, to the tune of 24 HPs of damage to the Lower Abdomen. Pretty gutsy of her, if you'd pardon the pun.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I don't know enough about Texan Christmas customs. Do Texans take a day off at Christmas? Australians take a month, but that's our summer.

I don't know. I'm assuming that the 27th and 28th of December are workdays, but in 2018, the 29th is a Saturday. The next day is Sunday and while the Cowboys have clinched their playoff spot, the Texans need a win against the Jaguars to clinch the AFC South. Also, with the death of founding owner Bob McNair last month, I imagine Houston Texans fans might be attaching a lot of importance to this season.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Calhoun County has 21,400 people in 7,440 dwellings, and average of 2.88 people per dwelling. Indianola is reachable from the city of Victoria, and is within commuting distance of Port Lavaca (12,000 population). To a certain extent it is going to be a dormitory for those places, and to a certain extent a retirement area. I'd say that you ought to count on at least forty adults. If Texan families congregate at Christmas there will be more like eighty.

By the looks of their trucks and the state of repair of their houses they are prosperous members of the upper working class and lower middle class. And they are mostly Texans, the kind of people to whom gun advertisements offer a stainless-steel revolver in .38 Spc to keep in your bait-box for maritime emergencies. Also, I checked the tourist-promotion materials for the area, and it seems as though the second attraction after fishing is what I call "shooting" but Americans include in "hunting", so there are going to be bird-dogs and shotguns.

I checked the "calendar" for the Indianola Fishing Marina. Live music on Friday and Saturday nights seems to start at the end of February and finish at the end of October, so it would seem that November to January is the quiet season there, tourist-wise.

Wow, thanks!

That's great info.

I think Texas families congregate at Christmas, as that seems to be a pretty common US custom. However, I don't think that extended family can always stay more than a week, from Christmas until after the New Year's. While people who have accumulated paid leave might take it over the holidays, the Thursday and Friday between Christmas and New Year's aren't recognized as either national or state holidays according to Texas Employment Law Handbook.

Also, depending on what kind of houses these are, it might be that the owners are more likely to spend the holidays with family elsewhere. Some of those who own vacation homes there might live in Houston or Corpus Christi and/or have children who do (and who host holiday meals).

My grandparents on both sides (and my father, after he turned sixty) sometimes spend the New Year's up in their various cabins (ranging from 30 minutes to 2 hours in driving time away), but it's not like any of their children drive up there for the holiday. When they want to have holiday dinner with their children, they stay in the city.

From Google Streetview, I'd hazard a guess that the owners of these fishing cabins and mobile homes mostly have actual homes elsewhere. So how many of them will be at their vacation homes during the weekend of 28th to 30th of December, 2018? Assuming they can take a vacation day for Monday the 31st, it's a long weekend, and, of course, many people with vacation homes are retirees.

It's a wet, rainy weekend, about sixty degrees or so.

Edit: The weather in the Houston area over this weekend is actually much worse than that. It's in the forties Fahrenheit, about 7° C, as I finally managed to find by checking old news reports leading up to the Texans home game in Houston. Granted, there's no compelling real-world reason for Indianola to have the exact same weather as a spot a couple hundred miles away, but I've decided that the weather there on the night of the 29th is pretty nasty, low forties, high winds and rain. That's worse than it was Friday and while the expectation before the weekend was for inclement weather, it's raining a lot more than people might have planned for.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

It's a dumb plan. They don't have enough troops with the necessary skills and resolve, and the area isn't isolated enough—there are houses all the way along Ocean Drive to Magnolia Beach. It's close enough to Port Lavaca and even Formosa that some people doubtless commute and will be missed if they don't show up for a few days. This is not like taking over an isolated fishing village in the good old days or in a country where people don't have cars and there are no roads.

It is not a very well thought out plan, but note that the seven pishtaco are supernaturally stealthy, fast, strong and ruthless. And four of them know a magic trick to create a shadowy duplicate of themselves. So that's eleven preternatural predators who have skill 16+ in such skills as Brawling, Stealth and Knife. If necessary, they also have pistols and a couple of them might have semi-concealable larger weapons, such as SMGs or compact carbines.

The five representatives of the 'Red Dragon' Chinese organized crime syndicate from South America will also carry some weapons. At least two of them will be the most dangerous enforcers in the organization, there guarding the sorcerer/godfather 'Father Dragon', who is himself a very dangerous ritual magician (if not a very imposing man physically).

I'll grant that the rest of the cultists will not be all that capable in a tactical situation, but they are, however, armed with magic dust that puts people in a coma.

Their most severe weakness is that people inside an actual home, not just a temporary vacation spot, will be protected to a great degree from hostile magic and supernatural creatures. The cultists will need to enter such homes physically and drag the people out, which can be really hard if the people have guns. So quite a lot depends on if anyone lives in Indianola permanently and if those homes have formidable Thresholds (long-time residence, happy times, close family, etc.).

Weakening any Thresholds and aiding the magic of the cultists is the fact that Indianola is a Place of Power for negative magic.

[Icelander]

I'm forcibly reminded of cultural differences at the description of houses like the ones I see in Indianola on Google Streetview as 'well-built'. To me, those mostly look like ramshackle structures not suited for human habitation. They're made of wood, for crying out loud!

Putting aside the terrible notion that in different parts of the world, people might stay overnight in such ramshackle wooden structures, these hardly look large enough for full-time habitation. Only six or seven of the structures at the end of the peninsula by the marina look like they have more than one room (and they all functionally have just one floor). The rest seem like bait shacks, boat houses or the like.

And can we get input from forumites with Cultural Familiarity with Texas, or at least the South or the US in general?

From Google Maps, does it seem like many people are living permanently in historical Indianola or are the buildings there vacation homes and fishing cabins for people who have year-round-homes elsewhere?

Where are the owners of these structures going to be the weekend between Christmas and New Year's?

Is Indianola a place where people stay in December or is it exclusively a summer vacation spot?

[dcarson]

The NSW fishing village population seems like what I'd expect here in the US also. So a number of late 60s, early 70s that are healthy enough that they don't have to right near medical care. Some being retired military would make sense.

The time between Christmas and New Years is not a holiday but at least some companies do what the aerospace company I worked for did. Since lots of the factory people either did take vacation for the time between and others were physically there but had attended late Christmas parties or early New Years parties and were not totally there mentally from hangovers they shut the place down and you either used vacation time or had a week of being laid off.

So some of the normal commuters being there and not being expected at work would be reasonable.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

There are shacks in Indianola. This is not a shack.

Yes, that blue building is among the six or seven that aren't just shacks.

It's still closer to what I think of as a summerhouse than an ordinary home. I think of ordinary houses as made of stone or reinforced concrete and being able to withstand earthquakes. Also, a lot warmer and better insulated from winds and weather. I think no building I've seen in Indianola meets minumum standards for building regulations here to be registered as a full-time residence in Iceland (largely because of structural integrity concerns that result from the theoretical risk of earthquakes).

Intellectually speaking, I know that in many parts of the world, building codes are less onerous and real estate prices consequently a lot lower. However, that's why it would be good to get input from people with Cultural Familiarity with the United States, ideally with Texas or at least areas somewhat similar to it. To an American familiar with Gulf Coast weather and typical family homes in the area, does this look like a vacation house or full-time residence?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

In subtropical climates you need a lot less shelter from wind, cold, and snow than in Iceland.

Intellectually, I realize this. It doesn't stop me from feeling that these don't look like any 'proper' houses I've seen and wondering how anyone could dare stay in them when a hurricane might threaten at any moment.

Sure, I guess hurricanes are a seasonal thing. Also, probably less common and usually less severe than I'm imagining (if only because few of them will hit pass over any one spot at the height of their power). Still, these houses feel very exposed and ramshackle to me.

As an example, they are smaller and less solidly built than my father's 'summerhouse'. Which, I'll grant, he uses in the winters as well, but as a weekend destination, not full-time residence.

[Icelander]

Hilariously, the NPC cultists, who number 25 humans and seven pishtaco, are subject to the same problems as the PCs around high technology, especially if they are actively using magic and/or visiting a Place of Power.

Late TL8 electronics and digital technology is the least reliable around magic and magicians, but even earlier TL8 stuff from the 80s and 90s can easily malfunction in the presence of magical energies. TL7 stuff tends to do better, with relatively simple mechanical things like automobile engines without computer chips or electronics perhaps requiring more maintainence for those around a lot of magic, but at least they can be gotten to work.

Traveling around is thus fraught with complications for the most powerful of the ritual magicians among the Keepers of the Last Hearth, the cult devoted to the Lords of the Last Waste (Cold Ones). Of the five leaders, three do not fly at all and the other two did so only because this is a very special occasion.

Once they've made it to the United States, the cultists need transport. As taking prospective sacrifices / current hostages on public transport is awkward, they'll need automobiles and trucks. Granted, the success of the PCs in rescuing most of the victims of human trafficking being transported on the container ship Aquaronte means that the cultists can leave behind the trucks meant to transport these hostages/sacrifices, but they still have to be driving personal vehicles.

So, criminal associates of the 'Consortium', which seems to be a transnational criminal organization allied or subordinate to the cult, would have to obtain several, at least five or six, automobiles made before computer chips or advanced electronics became fundamental parts of car engines, i.e. in the early 70s or earlier. There are front companies associated with the 'Consortium' in Dallas and San Diego, with smuggling operations of some sort that run through nearby ports in California and Texas.

Can you rent vintage or classic cars in California and drive them across several states?

Or would they be purchased?

What are cars and trucks that don't require computer chips or electronics for the engines to function, but are still as anonymous as possible*?

For the seven pishtaco (who are rural-looking Hispanics speaking little to poor English), can you get pick-up trucks that are solidly TL7, without computer chips or electronic injection, that still run in 2018?

The seven pishtaco crossed the Mexican-US border illegally on foot and were picked up somewhere close to the border by people working for the 'Consortium' in Dallas. I'm thinking that they are going to be kept out of sight and away from people as much as possible, so battered trucks where they can stay in the back and look like farm workers (or just not be seen) might be best.

Slightly more than half of the rest of the cultists drove over from California, nine because they lived there and five because they arrived there from Asia (by ship). These had time and money to arrange for personally-owned vehicles of the appropriate vintage.

The other cultists landed in Dallas and Houston the morning of the 29th of December, 2018. They had pre-planned trwveling arrangements, but with little notice, are forced to find new vehicles. How might they obtain the requisite TL7 automobiles in about twelve hours, as ordinary tourists (with plenty of money, if necessary)?

Of course, they could give it up as a bad job and just rent normal cars at the airport, but given the amount of magical stuff they'll be unpacking and the magical preparations they need to do, I estimate the odds of an annoying malfunction at about 20% per car, with 2% odds it will stop running altogether, if it's a modern rental car with more or less everything computer-assisted. This will rise to a near-certainty of annoying malfunctions and about 10% odds of a mobility-kill malfunction as the cultists move into the final phase of their plans. Less computerized cars will push these odds down, with even a late TL7 model, as long as it lacks electronic injection and computer chips of any kinds, reducing them by at least an order of magnitude.

*I recognize that by their very nature, 45+-year-old cars are obviously more memorable and noticable than modern Kias and Toyotas.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Edit: The weather in the Houston area over this weekend is actually much worse than that. It's in the forties Fahrenheit, about 7° C, as I finally managed to find by checking old news reports leading up to the Texans home game in Houston. Granted, there's no compelling real-world reason for Indianola to have the exact same weather as a spot a couple hundred miles away, but I've decided that the weather there on the night of the 29th is pretty nasty, low forties, high winds and rain. That's worse than it was Friday and while the expectation before the weekend was for inclement weather, it's raining a lot more than people might have planned for.

Seeing as your campaign is set in a similar world to our own, with the same weather patterns and all that (aside from when something goes horrifyingly awry, anyway), you may get some use out of this site. While it doesn't give historical weather predictions, it does give historical weather patterns. Unfortunately, that site seems to have some difficulty finding the nearest weather station to Indianola (it goes to Corpus Christi, roughly 100 miles away); it appears Indianola is flanked by 3 weather stations (forming a nearly-equilateral triangle, with Indianola in the dead center of one edge) - the Mole Hill Observatory (the furthest of the three from Indianola) seems to be the only one with data from December 28, 2018, and indicates it was around 55 F that day (see here; scroll down a bit to see the historical data); note you can use the forward and back arrows to navigate to another day (or just use the dropdown). Mole Hill Observatory looks to be roughly 10-15 miles away from Indianola (~30 mile drive, but that's because the route zig-zags), so should work. It was dry aside from what looks to have been some light rain very early (0.11 inches between 12:50 AM and 7:45 AM) on New Year's Eve Granted, if you prefer a different weather pattern than what was seen over New Years' there (or have already decided on one), you've plenty of excuse to modify it to match.

Incidentally, is it just me, or do Agemegos' posts have a disconcerting habit of vanishing into the aether? I've noticed it in a few threads now, and it's particularly glaring here, as Icelander is consistently quoting posts that no longer exist. Is Brett perhaps some sort of Evill interdimensional being?

Originally Posted by Icelander

Of course, they could give it up as a bad job and just rent normal cars at the airport, but given the amount of magical stuff they'll be unpacking and the magical preparations they need to do, I estimate the odds of an annoying malfunction at about 20% per car, with 2% odds it will stop running altogether, if it's a modern rental car with more or less everything computer-assisted. This will rise to a near-certainty of annoying malfunctions and about 10% odds of a mobility-kill malfunction as the cultists move into the final phase of their plans. Less computerized cars will push these odds down, with even a late TL7 model, as long as it lacks electronic injection and computer chips of any kinds, reducing them by at least an order of magnitude.

Provided they have enough people capable of driving, and the process of moving their accoutrements from one vehicle to another isn't too terribly onerous, they may just want to rent twice as many vehicles as they need. That way, even if half of them break down, they can just abandon the borked vehicles and continue on their way. Use a higher multiple (to a maximum of one vehicle per person who can drive) if they feel they want to maximize their chances. As a happy side-effect, this gives Kessler's people a chance to notice (thanks to their police contacts) a suspicious line of broken-down rental cars heading toward Indianola. If the cultists get rather unlucky, a highway patrolman might notice them transferring from one vehicle to another, stopping (after radioing it in) to investigate and render aid if needed. While it would be nice if the patrolman survives, it could be more useful to the world at large if the cultists flub their cover story and it comes down to a fight; the patrolman would almost certainly lose, but his failure to report back (or better yet, his calls for backup) would call for a more immediate response. Granted, the police are unlikely to recognize the cultists are heading toward Indianola, but a combination of internet searches (much as I used to initially find Indianola) and similar dowsing rituals to what the cultists used to find their location may clue Kessler's people in. Given the serious fight and severe wounds his monster hunters are reeling from, he may opt to send in a different, less capable team, provided he has such within actionable range.