Apostle: Week 1. in-game date: Tuesday Day 2 Week 1 (part 2)

 I have to write this quickly...

The group arrives at the white two-story house of Andrew Lawrence.

The group finds that the area surrounding the house is unusually empty... police tape is around the property but nobody is inside. Nevertheless, with some ridiculous precautions, Spaz eventually tries the doorknob.
A slight whistling creak emits as the door swings open easily.

Investigating the floor we find about 17 cents in the couch.

Spaz decides to split the group into two parties. Shimohi and CDWG investigate the floor, Bravador and Spaz to investigate the second level.
Spaz and Bravador go on a "tactical sweep" of the second floor whatever the fuck that means.

Oddly, the first room they come across on the second floor is the master bedroom.
Inside Bravador finds a key and a diary.
The diary tells about a trap door under a corner table with a lamp on top in the living room which contains a book of religious importance to the priest. There aren't much details as to why it is important. He simply refers to it as "book of religious importance".
This is the last entry in the diary.

Scanning over the diary, the party doesn't notice anything else of significance. Still, it would take some time to read over its contents.

Finding the trap door indeed beneath the corner table, it is opened.
Inside is found an old hard-cover book with no title or illustrations on its front or back save a gold-coloured border on each side of the cover and a few bumpy decorations on the outside of the spine.

The book is passed around the party. Inside we notice that most of the pages are blank except for one towards the first few pages... The image of a foreboding gate. Behind this gate, as the gate is done such that it consists of standing spear-like bars, we see the conspicuous presence of nothing.

The party then enters the attic. Inside they find the outline of a wheeled luggage container and the usual attic fare as well as some photoshoots at the church which Spaz takes.

Going back to the floor, we notice a policeman at the door.

He beckons us out. The policeman asks us how we got in and after it is explained he tries the door and finds it locked.
He tells us that the police investigating the place have all came back and left conspicuously uneventful reports and generic words.
He does say that one policeman had come back and was acting strangely... but when he is  asked how so, he silently walks off turning around only once to tell us

>That Andrew left by car
>The location around which Andrew had been last seen

Procrastination...

The ironic thing is that part of the reason I haven't writing anything yet is because I keep thinking about that book and the gate illustration...

Apostle: Week 1. in-game date: Tuesday Day 2 Week 1

Bravador does some research before the next meeting and shares this with the group whilst Christian Doctor Who Guy (with the blogger name I do not know)... which I'll abbreviate as CDWG(WTBNIDK)... pre-berates Spazalicious for a potential recurrence of Paradox Pizza.

Bravador brings up the subject and everyone inexplicably joins the bounty hunter team because the GM said so (maybe we'll work on this more.. I guess for now we'll just blame Spaz's charisma).

The team now consists of Bravador (but he intends to have a role that he hopes will make him appear more like a weird crime buff that likes to keep with events like this more than anything else...), Spazalicious, Shimohi (I think?), and CDWG.

Lady's Game Mistress was not able to join as  she was worn out of from Kumoricon.

Any way, thanks to Bravador's lucky researching we discover the following:

>The name of the priest we talked to is Andrew Ninewise. He is known as a friendly, well-loved and intelligent, yet absent-minded priest who seems oddly more interested in the scholarly aspects of priesthood.
>The address of Andrew Ninewise
>The room number for Karen Belfer's office at Horse Park Elementary

The group decides to head to Father Andrew's house.
It takes him a while to answer the door. Crashing sounds are heard and just as CDWG is about to knock again, the priest appears.
The group notices now just how young this man looks. Late twenties... Hardly a typical age for clergy.

He seems to notice the reason the group is here and is reluctant to help at first, but after listening to CDWG for a while he decides to trust us.
In this way the group discovers the following:
 
>Spaz likes to hide around corners when answering doors for no obvious reason.
>Andrew Ninewise and Aaron Lawrence were childhood friends (this needs some working out as I miscalculated the age difference like an idiot.. Aaron is more like a big brother to him)
>The address of Aaron's house
>These actions are incredibly strange for Aaron.. even when compared to the most famous of good people who have inexplicably committed terrible crimes it seems so very odd. That's what Andrew thinks any way.
 >Some time around when the first disappearance was expected to occur and before the crime's were connected, Ninewise believes he noticed a subtle yet disturbing difference in the way Aaron held himself. Though more likely it was simply Andrew's imagination working to rationalize Aaron's later actions...

The group decides to head over to Father Lawrence's house.
They board the bus...

I promise to update by next week.

I suppose I'll have to ask some questions...That's probably my biggest problem.
I'm so unused to making horror things like this... perhaps /tg/ really did have a point in a way..

I should study horror or something.

I am bringing the book and character sheets but..

To Shimohi

I really wish blogger had PMs so I could just send a message...
Well.. any way, most of this is for Shimohi regarding me now realizing I should allow her to play my campaign. Whether you read it or not is your own choice

Any way, Shimohi, I take back in retrospect the idea that you should not play because of what you heard about the game.

The  idea was that I wanted a fresh group with legitimate reactions (besides my own character who I was thinking to make take a back seat any way)...
I wanted it to be as natural from all involved as possible.
I was also slightly worried about controlling possible reactions from both of us to various things you may have heard us talk about, however I suppose that's only a minor consideration and not likely to have any affect...

Since you insist on playing the campaign, which may very well be changed drastically from its original form any way depending on what I decide to do, I'll let you do that.

Turns out to not let you play it feels like a rude punishment more than anything else and you'd probably still be sitting at the table any  way so at least part of that element would still be there..

Besides, given that I'm new to this, probably have no idea what I am talking about or how it will turn out, and  also the fact that this campaign will mostly suck because of those facts, I am taking this too seriously.

Apostle: Prologue-ish (Week 1. in-game date: Monday, day 1 [EXACT DATES COMING SOON])

God I hope I did this okay.


STORY THUS FAR:

Crimes have been linked to a Catholic priest named Aaron Lawrence. Its been all over the national news.
Unfortunately, the media has gone more than a bit overboard on this case.
The story has been so muddied with exaggerations and rumours that even the crimes linked to this can be difficult to follow. Murders, kidnappings, conspiracies... All of varying degrees of veracity yet still even mostly staying within the far-far-fetched. There's even a chain-mail letter about it.
Here are the few facts mostly everyone feels certain of:
>Six children have gone missing. Kidnapping is suspected. Their livelihood is uncertain.
>Priest Aaron Lawrence has also recently gone missing.
>All of these six children knew and trusted Aaron Lawrence. Aaron Lawrence is the prime suspect, and by all (reasonable...) accounts the most likely perpetrator.
>Law enforcement is hampered by the attention given to this case.

At the Lucky Labrador bar in Portland, three men, ([Spazalicious Chaos], [Bravador], and [Mr. T]) are made witness to this news via muted plasma-screen.
By chance a couple had recently sat down at this bar and the three men had noticed their paling  expressions.
Spazilicous walks up to the couple to comfort them (and while doing so catches a glimpse at the TV mentioning substantial rewards for information leading to the location of the children and apprehension of the suspect. ).

Upon Spaz's inquiry, the man utters "Emily... they took our daughter...".
Spazilicious questions them about how she knew Lawrence and various other details... they respond in a somewhat bewildered fashion, not expecting such a sudden stranger to be asking questions about the recently realized  (improvise, they said...) disappearance of their daughter.

In this way, the group discovers the following:
>Name of one missing child is Emily.
>Emily and her family attended a church called Grotto of Our Sorrowful Mother, which Aaron Lawrence preached at.

The distraught couple then leave the bar.

The group agrees to go after the priest, though Bravador does this under the condition that he doesn't put himself too much at risk and to mostly do research that won't bring him any trouble. Spazilicoius then comments about this is why he's only earning 30%, but Bravador silently thinks to himself that this is not how rewards work.

 Finding a line to get their from the Lucky Labrador that takes 3 hours  (which is interesting considering that if you check Google maps it appears it may only takes about 45 minutes).

The group successfully doesn't miss their stop. Going inside the church, they see a clergyman heading towards the exit.
Spaz stops the man and begins questioning him about Father Aaron Lawrence. Without thinking too much about their motives, the absent-minded priest divulges his information quite willingly, and just as the group notices him pausing to think, they quickly exit the church, leaving the priest to stand their for a few moments before suddenly realizing his keys are missing and rushing back...

From the clearly very low wisdom priest - which is incredibly interesting for a priest - we gather the following:
>Name of one  missing child is Tim Belfer
>His mother is Karen Belfer
>Karen works at Horsepark Elementary as a schoolteacher
>Karen Belfer is a single mother
>He also gave us the address of Horsepark Elementary

It is now rather late.
The party all returns to their respective homes arriving back home quite possibly at past midnight.



NOTES ON APOSTLE:

This is mostly for me... I'll organize it all later.

*I also want to find a way to to keep track of your character sheets without having you actively hand them to me all the time... If I can get them in electronic form, that would be especially nice.. Granted, I still might have to copy them.
I have trouble keeping track of things but I do need a copy of your character sheets.. I suppose a physical copy may have to do.
This will be an interesting problem to solve. I suppose I have to go get a folder.