Portland Monster Slayers: Part 1

The Cast

First, there was Daisy Skywalker. With a name like that she was obviously The Chosen One®. She was a young woman wielding an axe made of teeth, and she saw visions of the future sometimes.

Her best friend was Willow Wendigo, a goth woman who had escaped a supernatural cult as a child, and was now an expert on the paranormal. She carried a bag of witch stuff which she used to cast spells. As an inside joke about our Drakkenheim adventure, we named the cult she escaped Prophets of the Rat God. This would become significant later.

Next up was Reno Thewagon (like René Descartes. Get it? Haha. Very funny, Gustav) who was, unbeknownst to Daisy, her father. He worked at a shady company called Smile Corp, which was some kind of supernatural CIA. He always wore a suit and dark sunglasses.

Finally, there was Ayn, who was an angel. Literally. Ayn had been thrown out of heaven because they disagreed with the folks upstairs. Now their mission was to protect Daisy.

I set the whole thing in Portland, using real locations for everything. Turns out there’s a lot of inspiration for the supernatural in Portland.

Mystery One: Knife Jesus

This was a pre-written adventure. The gang was hanging out at a cafe when the TV news mentioned that a man had been killed a nearby church. This gave Daisy a vision of a middle eastern man with long, brown hair, charging at her with a knife. Clearly, something was up and they had to investigate.

When they arrived at the church, they found it blocked off by the police. Reno used his special agency ID to convince them to let him enter. Inside, he found the dead worshipper covered in shards of glass. One of the stained glass windows above was broken. Before he could investigate more, the doors shut and the landscape outside the windows turned from the cityscape of Portland to a dark, barren wasteland. Reno found a side entrance, but opening it only led to the strange land he’d seen through the windows. He called the others and told them how to get in, which somehow worked.

Countless ghostly spirits floated around outside, and some flew in through the broken window. Others flew into the intact windows and possessed the stained glass figures depicted therein, jumping out of the windows and into the church.

One of them was the knife-wielding Jesus that Daisy had seen in her vision. He ran toward her and she pulled out some teeth from her pocket, which rearranged into an axe shape. Ayn drew their flaming sword. Reno pulled out his submachine gun. Willow made an improvised flamethrower from a can of hairspray and a lighter.

The ghosts were throwing books and candles at the group. Knife Jesus knocked Daisy back behind a pew, and she dropped her tooth-axe. Reno fired a burst of rounds at him, shattering him and sending glass shards all over.

Ayn shattered a glass Saint George with his sword. Willow looked around her, trying to make sense of what was happening. She saw that the ghosts seemed to get weaker whenever a stained glass creature was destroyed, and figured that whatever was going on was probably connected to the windows and their figures. She came up with a plan: she would try to use a spell to create a shockwave and break every window in the church. She told the others, and asked them to distract the ghosts—as well as the glass prophets and saints—while she did it.

Just as she was preparing the spell, another ghost possessed one of the stained glass figures. Ayn had already destroyed Saint George. But Saint George hadn’t been alone in his window. The window had depicted the legend of Saint George and the dragon.

And here came the dragon.

Ayn didn’t hesitate to rush toward it. He vaulted a pew, dodged a glass claw, and stabbed at the dragon’s heart. He was every bit as successful as Saint George had been in the original tale, breaking a section of the dragon’s chest with enough force to actually push it backward as it roared in pain.

At the same time, Willow completed her spell, and the shockwave erupted with a deafening boom. Every window in the church shattered and crashed around them, almost as loud as the shockwave itself. They covered their heads as shards rained down all over. Once it had settled, everything was quiet. The group looked out the windows and saw that they were back in Portland.

Mystery Two: The Karen Witches

For our second adventure, I wrote my own mystery. It was one of those where the group runs around all over looking for clues. Unfortunately, I don’t quite remember all the running around, but I do recall most of the good parts. Anyway, the idea was Hot Fuzz but with witches, and a dash of The Stepford Wives.

A few days after the events of the church, the group noticed something odd in the news: a suspicious number of people had been attacked by bears in a town called Happy Valley, just ten miles southeast of Portland. They decided to check it out.

Happy Valley very much seemed to live up to its name. As they drove through the suburb in Reno’s highly conspicuous Smile Corp van, everyone smiled and waved at them. The group visited the families of those who had been killed by bears. Their investigation led them to a park, a paragliding company, and a cafe. All real locations, which was pretty fun.

After a few hours, they were able to put the pieces together. One significant clue was that a woman named Becky—who used to be a member of Prophets of the Rat God; the cult that Willow had escaped from long ago—was the leader of the Homeowners Association. This could mean only one thing:

The HOA was a coven of witches.

Not only that, they were secretly plotting to perform a ritual that would turn all their families and neighbors into mindless, smiling slaves, transforming Happy Valley into a perfect, happy city where no one disagrees with the HOA. To ensure that their plan would succeed, they had killed anyone who discovered the truth about the HOA, and even offed one of their own members who had doubts. Turns out there weren’t any bear attacks after all.

The ritual would be held on top of Mount Scott, an inactive volcano part of something called the Boring Lava Field. (It’s all real, look it up!) To bring the entire town there, they would perform the ritual as part of the town’s Thanksgiving party which they held on top of the mountain ever year.

They spoke to one of the locals—an old friend of Willow who happened to be a werewolf closely resembling Hugh Jackman. They asked him if any of the HOA members had any weaknesses. He said that while they’re always smiling, they never laugh. Since real witches need to give up a part of themselves for their powers, the group figured this must be it. If they could get enough people laughing, the magic would fail and the town would be saved. The question, then, was how they could get the entire town to laugh.

The solution was pot brownies. The group got baking, and raced to Mount Scott in the van, plowing a witch’s car off the road on the way. This caused the van to break down, so they stole a new car. They arrived just in time to give everyone, including the children, their brownies.

But nobody was laughing when the witches rose into the air and started chanting. The people were running away. There weren’t enough people left to stop the witches. They had to think of something new. Once again, it was Willow’s hedge magic that came to the rescue: all they really had to do was to get Becky, cultist and queen bitch witch, laughing. They gathered up the remaining Happy Valley residents, told them to hold hands, and taught them a magical chant. A few of them actually agreed to participate.

While half the group was chanting and holding hands, the rest of the group fended off the witches. Ayn fought with great skill with his sword, and the witches decided to swarm on him with their polished claws and spells. Just as things were looking dire for Ayn, the group’s spell took effect, and Becky, floating in the air on top of the mountain, began cackling hysterically. She had sacrificed her laughter in exchange for her powers, and now that she was laughing like a maniac, suddenly exploded.

Mystery Three: The Low-Budget Minotaur Maze

Alright, here’s another one from the mystery book, ever so slightly modified by yours truly.

The session began with the party hearing a news story about some kids going missing in Tualatin, OR. Then, for reasons unremembered, they headed to a UFO convention. They learned of a conspiracy theorist influencer who had a plan to capture footage of real aliens. From some weather satellite imagery, he had discovered strange crop circles at a farm in Tualatin, near where the children had gone missing. His plan was to go there and get captured by aliens while livestreaming the whole ordeal.

Out of character, the group thought the whole idea of aliens was pushing their suspension of disbelief. UFOs and little green men didn’t feel realistic, even in a supernatural setting. But as they were about to find out, aliens weren’t actually real at all.

Investigating the missing kids, Reno drove the gang in his Smile Corp van to the farm in Tualatin, getting there before the influencer. A sign out front said it was for sale. An old man sat on the porch with a shotgun, as old American men always do. He said he lived there with his son and that he didn’t know anything about the missing kids or the crop circles. I don’t quite remember how, but the group made it into the house. They also had an encounter with an angel who, unlike Ayn, hadn’t been cast out of heaven. He’d driven there to meet them in his cool old car. He gave Ayn a warning of some sort, and then Ayn stabbed him and he turned into dust.

Next, the gang investigated the crop circles, which formed a sort of corn maze¹. When they arrived at the center, they heard the terrifying roar of a monster. Turns out the old farmer’s son was a minotaur who lured people into his maze to eat them. Now they had to find their way out before he showed up. The group split up, with some of them trying to backtrack while others ran in a straight line through the crops.

Reno and Ayn (I think) made it out by the house, and Ayn caught some buckshot from the old man’s gun before beating him up and taking his weapon. Reno ran for his truck, picked up Ayn, and drove straight into the cornfield. They picked up the rest of the gang, who were busy trying to trap the minotaur with magic. This led to an awesome scene where Willow was hanging out the window with the shotgun while Reno drifted through the cornfield, Freebird playing on the radio, broadsiding the truck into the minotaur. With the damage they’d done to the maze, they realized that the minotaur’s strength was somehow tied to it. They set the whole place on fire and beat the minotaur to death.

The alien influencer had showed up for the end, and livestreamed the whole thing. Willow broke his phone and punched him in the face. Then they hopped back into the truck and left the burning farm behind.

Mystery Four: The Man Who Smiled Too Much

Buckle up, ‘cause it’s all homebrew from here on out. And by homebrew I mean plagiarizing Steven King’s It, Little Nightmares, Until Dawn, Evil Dead, and His Dark Materials. Okay, let’s go.

The group had gotten word that kids were disappearing in Florence. Not the Italian city, the one in Oregon. So off they went. The group headed to an elementary school where the most recently missing kid, Cleo Weber², went. In the hallways, they passed an old hispanic janitor who stared, unblinking, at them as they passed. Her mouth slowly stretched into an unnaturally wide grin. When they went to speak with her, she seemed to snap back to normality. They didn’t get much information out of her because she only spoke Spanish.

They spoke to a teacher, who said that Cleo had been acting strange lately. She showed them drawings he’d made of a tall, dark figure with a creep smile. She said that this wasn’t the first time kids had started disappearing in Florence (still the one in Oregon, Italian kids don’t go missing), and gave them the address of a teacher, Mabel Burgess, who worked there ten years ago when it last happened. As they left, they almost forgot to ask about the strange janitor they’d met. The teacher said the janitor wasn’t working that day.

Arriving at Mabel Burgess’ house and knocking on the door, the group received no answer. They learned from a neighbor that the poor old woman had been taken away in an ambulance just a few minutes ago, apparently having suffered a heart attack. Logically, the group decided to break in.

There weren’t many clues to be found in a random retired teacher’s house. But once inside, the lady’s old rotary phone began to ring. Reno answered. For a moment, there was silence. Then a sound. Breathing. Then faint, raspy laughter. I’m pretty sure Reno said something stupid to break the tension and hung up. Looking out the window, Willow saw the neighbor they’d spoken to earlier. Smiling that same, unnatural smile the janitor had. The group decided to bail.

They drove to the hospital to speak to the old woman, who had fortunately survived her heart attack. She didn’t have too much info, but told them of a student named Jeffery Case who had disappeared back when she was a teacher. The gang said bye and drove away.

Their next stop was the library. They were looking for old news articles about Jeffery’s disappearance, and yearbooks with him and the rest of the missing kids in them. Using one of the old microfiche readers, they found a newspaper article form a decade ago about Jeffery Case’s disappearance. More interestingly, they found another article about his reappearance a few months later. It seemed he’d been committed to a mental institution an hour away. That was when he was nine years old, and he’d be nineteen now. The group followed the trail and headed to the institution.

Before going there, they checked the school’s yearbooks to find a picture of Jeffery. They found one with a picture of his entire class, standing outside the school. But looking closer, there was something weird in the background of the photo. In the reflection of the school’s window, they could faintly see a tall man in a suit and hat, smiling an unnaturally wide grin. When they flipped to the next page, all they saw was the same photo, slightly zoomed in on the man in the window. The next page was even closer. And the next. And the next, until the smiling man took up the entire frame. They slammed the book shut and hurried back to the van. Florence was scary. (Not the one in Italy, which has a very low crime rate.)

After an hour of driving, the gang rolled up to the doors of the mental hospital. Using the power of dishonesty, they secured a visit with Jeffery Case. It did not go well. Jefferey had spent the last decade in the company of doctors trying to convince him that his disappearance hadn’t been a supernatural nightmare, and they had been making good progress. That progress was utterly and entirely undone by the Portland Monster Slayers. They came in, told him about children disappearing and creepy smiling people with the power to manipulate yearbooks, and Jeffery’s perception of reality came crashing down. He threw the group aside with apparent telekinetic powers, rushed outside, stole a car that someone was just getting out of, and drove toward Florence. (The one in Italy this time. Nah, just kidding.)

As he ran out, the group caught him saying something about killing the smiling bastard once and for all. So they got back in the van and followed Jeffery, who was, understandably, not a good driver in the slightest, back to Florence. The group caught him as he parked outside the elementary school and were able to calm him down. They learned that he smiling man was a creature that lured kids into a strange world called the Further through a door in the nearby lighthouse, where he feeds off their misery. The Further was a strange place, and had allowed Jeffery to develop supernatural abilities that he used to escape. The group left him there and drove to the lighthouse.

They arrived at the Oregon coast and spotted the Heceta Head Lighthouse, which is a lighthouse-turned-B&B in real life, and a portal to a frightful dimension in the game. Outside the building, they spotted a child’s bicycle, perhaps belonging to Cleo Weber. They went inside the lighthouse, took the stairs all the way down, and opened a door to a place that definitely wasn’t a lighthouse basement.