Portland Monster Slayers: Part 2

Mystery Five: The Further

They were in a corridor. The metal walls were painted gray. The floor and ceiling were grated walkways. Pipes in various colors followed the walls and turned down various paths ahead. The whole place seemed to sway gently back and forth. There was a faint, metallic sound of footsteps ahead. The slayers, having closed the door behind them and finding it no longer there, had no choice but to continue onward.

Not knowing where to go in the maze of corridors, they picked a pipe and followed it. They soon stumbled upon a child, who told them to be quiet and helped them hide in a large vent when some unknown horror came crawling by. The little girl was called Kyra Golden, and she had gone missing a few weeks before Cleo Weber. She led the group to a small room where several other children were hiding. The slayers brought them along. With the missing kids found, all they really had to do was get out of there. But they wanted to deal with the smiling man first.

They found a small, round window in one corridor. Looking outside, they discovered that they were on a boat sailing a massive, pitch-black ocean. Far away they saw a gray cliff with a cell tower¹. Continuing their search for an exit, they stumbled upon a kitchen with a huge, monstrous chef. They quickly turned around and went the other way. This led them to some kind of large foyer decorated with couches, an old TV, and a door high in the ceiling. There was also a man dressed in white with curly blond hair.

The man introduced himself as Diniel and said he was an angel. Willow’s player thought that was a terrible angel name for some reason. I blame the random angel name generator. Diniel explained that they were in a place called the Further, and that the smiling man was actually called the Ferryman, and he’d been recruited by heaven to captain an ark in preparation of the new flood. Apparently, God had had enough of humanity and wanted to start over. The ocean they were on was made of the endless tears of angels. Diniel had been kicked out of heaven and into the Further for opposing God’s plans. Ayn had been thrown out to Earth even earlier, and never learned the full extent of these plans.

Daisy had long known she was the chosen one, but now she understood exactly what it was she had been chosen to do:

She had to stop God.

But first, they all had to deal with the Ferryman and get out of there. Figuring it was the way forward, the group decided to head through the door in the ceiling. They began stacking couches in order to reach it. Reno was the first to climb up, and discovered that behind the door was another corridor, going straight up. Jumping through the door, he didn’t fall back down, but rather to the floor of the vertical corridor, as if gravity had decided to become a silly little prankster right then and there. They brought the group of children up, and the rest of the slayers followed. As they were doing so, the smiling man, or rather the Ferryman, appeared in the room.

While he had seemingly been able to take any form in the real world, here they saw what he really was: a thin, ungainly, sickly pale man in a suit, with a face bearing no features save for a massive, toothed grin. Reno shot at him from above, but the Ferryman was, unfortunately, very good at teleporting around and being generally hard to hit. Daisy managed to get through the ceiling door just as the couches collapsed. She closed the door behind them, and they all ran. On the way—whichever way it was, be it up, down, left, right, or something else entirely—Diniel told them of a man he’d met in the Further who was planning on trapping and killing the Ferryman. He said the man was dressed similar to Reno and was holed up in some kind of ballroom.

They kept running and looking around in the corridors, trying to avoid whatever crawling horrors lurked there and, to make a long story short, they found the ballroom. It looked like every other ballroom, except with more lamps. The whole hall was filled with them. Desk lamps, reading lamps, construction lamps, industrial floodlights, the whole nine yards. There was also one of those G-man-looking guys, in a black suit and sunglasses. Reno recognized him as a colleague named Wess Hess. Wess had somehow ended up in the Further while on a completely unrelated and highly classified job. He’d figured out that the Ferryman couldn’t teleport in direct light. Having set up the perfect trap for the Ferryman, all he needed was bait, and the slayers had just brought a flock of kids to him. The Ferryman would surely waste no time in staking them.

The group hid the kids in a corner and got ready for a fight. They kept silent and watched the doors. Wess turned off his lamps, standing ready to plug in the extension cord. They heard the sound of something invisible crawling on the ceiling, but didn’t dare bother it. Then, the Ferryman teleported in. Wess practically blinded them all with his lights. Reno fired his gun. Ayn charged with his sword next to Daisy and her toothed axe. The Ferryman screamed and knocked them back, with Ayn accidentally ripping out a cable with his foot and turning the lights off. The Ferryman teleported toward the children, but Daisy plugged the lights back in. Then they stabbed the Ferryman until he exploded in a cloud of smoke.

Without the magic of the Ferryman to distort their senses, navigating the boat’s hallways was much easier. But there was still something invisible making noise just outside their reach. Eventually, chased by three grotesque humanoid figures shambling forward on all four, they found a door that led to a place that definitely wasn’t a boat. It had concrete walls and was full of shelves with planks, tools, and housewares. Large cardboard boxes littered the floor. Taking the stairs up, they discovered that they had gone from the further into the basement of a hardware store. A hardware story in New York City.

Glad to be back in the real world, they dropped the kids off at a nearby police station. They passed a hot dog shop being terrorized by an invisible creature. Realizing they probably brought it back from the Further, they decided to intervene. Using a can of pink spray paint, they determined that the creature was a golden retriever with massive spider legs. They took it with them, named it Jenesis Gonzales using my list of random names, rented a car, and went on a road trip back to Oregon.

Mystery Six: The Farmer, the Beast, and That One Vampire Movie

When looking around a map of Portland for inspiration, I found a very famous house and couldn’t resist making a mystery about it. Apologies in advance.

Having made it all the way back home and gotten some well-needed rest, as well as dumping Jenesis Gonzales in Willow’s Winnebago (which was named Norma because it sounds like “normal”. Willow didn’t want to arouse suspicion), the slayers got wind of a suspicious disappearance in the woods near Willamette heights. Someone disappearing in the woods is in itself nothing too unusual, but just like during their previous investigations, there was a pattern to it—this guy wasn’t the first to go missing. About a month ago, two hikers had disappeared in the same area.

They drove up to the residence of the missing man’s family. As soon as I started describing the place—a foresty area hiding a house with state of the art modern architecture, blending wood, metal, and large windows—Daisy’s player exclaimed “Like the Twilight house!” I responded that it wasn’t just like the Twilight house, it was the Twilight house. 3333 NW Quimby Street, Portland, OR 97210.

They knocked on the door, and a gentleman of Central European (as in, Transylvanian) descent opened the door, introducing himself as Callum McMullen. Willow explained that they were there to help out with the investigation. Callum said he’d already hired a private investigator, Quentin Becker, to help. Becker was a discreet professional who didn’t ask any questions. Willow pointed out that not asking any questions would make him a terrible investigator. Callum supposed he agreed, and shared some details about his missing son.

Shawn McMullen had gone out into the woods in the middle of the night a few days ago. This wasn’t unusual for him, he liked taking walks in the dark. Only this time, he hadn’t returned. Callum wasn’t worried about his son’s health—Shawn was a healthy, resilient (as in, immortal) individual who could take care of himself. With some details about Shawn’s favorite hiking trails, the slayers went off to search. But Willow couldn’t help thinking there was something suspicious about the McMullen family (no shit, right?). She used a spell to try and see a glimpse of the past in the Twilight house. She got a vision from earlier that day, showing Callum’s other son, Eddie—who somewhat resembled Robert Pattinson—taking out a large bag of trash that was dripping blood. She tried to see even further back in time, but realized she’d need some powerful magical ingredients to do so. She’d need a special black candle, and there was only place in Portland that might have it: The Freakybuttrue Peculiarium and Museum.

This was another very real place I spotted on the map and thought yeah, that makes sense. It’s a museum for strange and creepy stuff, notably with a 10-foot Bigfoot statue. This piqued Daisy’s interest, and she made it her mission to steal it. So they rolled up in the van. Reno distracted the curator with small talk while Willow stole the magical candle and Daisy stole Bigfoot. Somehow, she got it out of there mostly unnoticed, and spent the rest of the investigation wearing it as a costume.

The group hopped into the back of the van, and Reno drove away a few blocks so they wouldn’t be there when the museum staff noticed that the candle was missing. Or more likely, that the giant bigfoot statue right by the entrance was gone. In the van, Willow used the candle’s magic in an attempt to get a vision of the house further back in time, and hopefully figure out what the deal was with the Cullen McMullen family. Due to a poor roll, she ended up looking way too far back and was treated to a behind-the-scenes vision of the filming of the first Twilight movie, long before the McMullens had bought the place.

Moving on, the group actually managed to track down Shawn McMullen. They found him in the woods. He was dead. Very dead. Just about as dead as one can be while still being recognizably human. Or in his case, undead. But actually also dead. Undead dead. Re-deaded. He was covered in puncture wounds and claw marks. His back had thick tree branches jammed into it. His head no longer had a healthy relationship with his neck. As if that wasn’t enough, large chunks of flesh had been cut off. Judging by the clean cuts and the lack of blood in those areas, the slayers figured this had been done after death with a particularly sharp blade.

The gang headed back to the McMullens in the Twilight house to break the bad news. And, because of how suspicious the family was, force their way into their home and interrogate the entire family. As they met with the other family members—Callum’s adult children; Eddie, whom Willow had seen in her vision, and Penny. The gang grew more and more suspicious. At one point, Willow’s player even suggested out of character that the McMullens might be werewolves. Everything but vampires. I guess it must’ve been too obvious. Or maybe they assumed that whatever the deal was with the McMullens, it had to be related to the mystery of Shawn’s death, in which case vampirism didn’t make sense. But when Reno snuck off to search the house and found a hidden cellar with bound and gagged humans, the McMullens could keep it secret no longer. They bared their fangs and attacked.

They players were somehow shocked by the reveal as a battle ensued. Reno opened fire as the others went hand-to-hand, or hand-to-claw, with the family of vampires. They broke off chair legs to stake the hearts. Ayn swung their sword to cut off the heads, almost getting bitten in the process. Reno managed to throw Eddie out the window, sending him rolling down a hill, onto a road, and into the sunlight. We all know that real vampires don’t sparkle, they burn, so this was immediately fatal to poor Eddie.

Having freed the hostages, slain the vampires, and covered half the house in blood, the group swapped brawn for brains and thought about how this could relate to Shawn’s death. Then, a realization dawned upon the players (after I told them): the McMullens hadn’t killed Shawn. They had nothing to do with the mystery and their supernatural nature had been a coincidence. They had been as innocent as vampires can be (which is to say, not very), and there was still a monster on the loose. A monster that could stab with long, terrible claws. A monster that could hang people up in the trees, rip the heads off of vampires, and, quite possibly, fillet them with a sharp knife.

I’m a bit fuzzy on the details regarding how they found the next clue. It might’ve had something to do with the fancy cuts on Shawn’s body. Whatever. The important part is that they found a food truck. It was called Farmer and the Beast². It was closed, so they broke in and found a bunch of suspicious meat that, based on the way it was cut, seemed to come from Shawn McMullen. Willow consulted her books of supernatural creatures for clues. She came across one monster that dwelled in forests, had massive claws and terrible strength, and was related to the consumption of human flesh:

The wendigo.

Some parts of the world host ancient woodland magic that curses any person who eats another human’s flesh, turning them into a fearsome, tall beast with a deer skull for a head. At least that’s what the pop culture version looks like. This explained what had happened to Shawn. No ordinary human could kill a vampire like him—it had been a wendigo. Then, for whatever reason, some food truck owner must’ve found the body and robbed it of its finest cuts.

There were also some documents about renting a warehouse, so they group went to said location in search of more clues.

Entering a gray nondescript warehouse building—and unknowingly setting off the silent alarm—the group found the inside largely empty, except one notable feature: a man chained to a pipe. He said his name was Quentin Becker and he’d been hired by the McMullens to investigate Shawn’s disappearance. The clues had led him to Farmer and the Beast. He asked some questions and ordered a burger. Shortly after he ate it, he passed out and woke up in the warehouse.

The group stepped away from the chained investigator for a moment. They weren’t quite sure how to proceed. After all, the burger he’d been served might’ve contained human meat, in which case Quentin Becker could turn into a terrible monster any second. They decided to leave him there for a few days and see what would happen. In the meantime, they’d deal with the wendigo and the suspicious food trucker, speaking of whom, appeared before them with a shotgun as they were about to leave.

He told them about how he’d spotted the wendigo while hiking, and how it had killed Shawn before his very eyes. But he, Nolan Harrison, had been spared. He saw this as a sign from above and decided that wendigos were awesome and that we should all turn into them. So he grabbed some of Shawn’s meat for his food truck, and planned on putting it in his burgers. The group objected to this. Nolan raised his shotgun, but Reno shot first, and so Nolan Harrison, the real monster of the adventure, was no more.

The party had, at some point, spoken to the family of Emmy Strong, one of the women who’d disappeared in the woods around a month ago. They’d learned of one of her favorite hiking spots: The Witch’s House—an old ruin and popular tourist attraction in Forest Park. It was quite close to Willamette Heights and seemed like a good place to spot a wendigo, so they went there.

Spot a wendigo they did, as it charged headlong at Daisy. She fought back with her teeth. The ones in the axe, not her own. Willow’s reading of her monster manual had prepared her for this fight: wendigos were weak to fire and getting their heart cut out, just like regular humans. She brought out her lighter and can of hairspray once more to flame the beast. Ayn’s flaming sword wasn’t bad either. Long story short, they killed it. They also found some of Emmy Stone’s belongings. They figured the two hikers had gotten lost, one had gotten injured and died, and Emmy had been forced to eat her flesh to survive. Tragic story, but at least it was over.

Pretty sure they forgot about Quentin Becker who, thankfully, did not turn into a wendigo.

Mystery Seven/Eight: The Book of the Dead and Also the Apocalypse, or: I’m Glad Nobody in the Group Has Seen Evil Dead

A few days later, Reno received a phone call from Smile Corp. It seemed that he was the only Smile Corp agent available at the moment, as all the others ones had gotten stuck in a supernatural anomaly at IKEA. Because of this, they needed Reno and the gang’s help with an unrelated case. Reno told the group the news. They briefly considered going to IKEA to help out, but the person on the phone said this was as bad idea, since they’d have no agents to spare if Reno got lost there too. Also, I hadn’t prepared an IKEA mystery.

The mission was to investigate a crime scene at a cabin in the woods. These particular woods were on the outskirts of a town called Beaverton, which borders Portland to the Northwest. Rolling up to the cabin, they met an old woman with an absolutely ridiculous name, which the party never learned because they didn’t ask. I was excited to introduce her, but the group ignored her completely. Now you’ll never know her ridiculous name³.

They stepped inside the cabin. There was blood everywhere. Covering the floor and furniture, running down the walls, dripping from the ceiling. Significantly more blood than what could possibly belong to middle-aged couple who supposedly lived there. Suddenly, a blood-covered old man with crazy white eyes came running out of the kitchen. Ayn was standing the closest and became the target. The group managed to get him off, after which he rushed out of the cabin, but not before he bit Ayn in the hand. The veins in Ayn’s angelic skin were turning black in the area around the wound, and their hand began to move as if it had a will of its own.

Willow went to check the toolshed. A single lightbulb hung in the ceiling. It was covered in blood, so when Willow turned on the light, the entire shed was bathed in an ominous red glow. Inside was a table with an old person’s head stuck in a vise. It had the same white eyes as the man in the cabin, and tried to bite her when she came close. The rest of the body lay on the floor next to a bloody chainsaw. When she stepped closer to investigate, the door slammed shut and the body came to life, grabbing the chainsaw and charging at Willow. The others came running and managed to get the door open. Reno gunned down the body, and they shut the door.

Back in the cabin, the gang found a journal belonging to the old man who lived there. Having read that, the situation at hand made a surprising amount of sense. Apparently, the old man, one John Anderson, had visited the Powell City of Books—a Portland bookstore taking up an entire city block—and found a rare volume. It was a tome bound in human flesh with a disturbing face on the front. Being an amateur enthusiast of the occult, he’d taken it home to read. In doing so, he’d accidentally summoned a creature called the Watcher in the Shadows who despised humanity and enjoyed turning people into demons. Their reading got interrupted by Ayn’s hand that kept hitting them in the head, so the group decided to deal with that little problem before it got worse. They drove to the nearest church.

A young, hip priest named Dean Bonilla was happy to help the group. He talked like Patrick Warburton and used some holy water to exorcise Ayn’s hand. The group then convinced him to tag along to hunt down the demon that ran away from the cabin. But first, they headed to Powell’s City of Books to learn more about the book. They found the man who’d sold the book to John Anderson and asked if he knew anything about it that they didn’t, and why it wasn’t at Anderson’s cabin. He told them that after he’d sold it, a woman named Julia Lloyd called him up and tried to buy it. When he said he no longer had it, she threatened him into giving him the name of the buyer. Willow recognized the name. Julia Lloyd was a member of the Prophets of the Rat God, so that’s something they’d have to deal with at some point.

They’d read in the old man’s journal that they were having friends over for dinner the night of the demonic massacre. The Guests were Don and Janice Goldman, and they were pretty sure the runaway demon could’ve been Don. He worked at a restaurant called Broder Söder. It was part of Nordic Northwest—a cultural center for the Nordic nations. His wife Janice worked at the Nordic Northwest campus. That was the first place they checked.

Broder Söder would probably have been a perfectly pleasant place to have lunch if it hadn’t been under siege by a demon. Demon Don threw plates at the patrons and jumped around laughing on the tables. Dean Bonilla threw holy water at him and tried to draw out the demonic influence, but it was too powerful. The group had no choice but to hack him to bits, along with a few other patrons that Don had scratched, turning them into demons as well.

Exiting the restaurant while discussing what to do, they noticed that the cultural center’s giant, wooden troll sculpture had seemingly come to life, and was harassing the visitors with deadly force. The group intervened, tripping the troll with one of Willow’s spells and setting it on fire. By the time it went down, it had already infected several people with its demonic presence, and they were all running away in different directions. The group realized they’d have no chance to stop the spread without the book. Willow still had Julia Lloyd’s number after her former cult life, and called her up to ask for the book back since they needed it to stop the demon invasion. To her surprise, Julia agreed, and told Willow and the rest of the slayers to meet her in an industrial area on the Willamette river bank. After she hung up, the group discussed the situation and decided that it was very definitely a trap.

At some point that I don’t remember, the group had figured out that the cult of the rat god wanted to get their hands on Daisy, so she got to hang back with Reno. She was his spotter as he sat in the window of an abandoned industrial building with a sniper rifle, overlooking the deal. Willow, Ayn, and Jenesis Gonzales—the giant invisible spider dog—hid in the bushes, waiting to see who’d show up. After a while, Julia Lloyd did, but she wasn’t alone. She had brought a whole group of robed cultists. Six of them, Daisy counted through her binoculars. She discussed with Ayn and Willow what to do over the radio. They could probably take on the cultists, especially with Reno’s help. Unless they had some strange magic up their enormous robe sleeves.

Julia, at least, had brought the book. There was no mistaking it—wrinkly grayed leather with a contorted face on the front. The slayers worried that she’d attempt to trade it for Daisy. As they debated what to do, Ayn and Willow heard faint barking sounds. It was several dogs, and it was coming closer. Suddenly, a nearby door in a small brick building leading to Portland’s Shanghai tunnel network opened up. Out came a three-headed dog followed by a man who appeared to glide forward on the ground. He was wearing rocket-powered Heelys.

The dog bit one of the cultists in three places at once, and the man skated up to Julia and punched her, using some kind of rocket-powered glove, sending her flying into the Willamette just as he grabbed the book. The slayers watched in confusion as the man and dog proceeded to beat the hell out of the remaining cultists before disappearing back into the tunnels. Ayn and Willow stood silently in shock for a moment before coming to their senses, and then chased after the man in the tunnels.

He wasn’t hard to catch. He probably would’ve been, what with the rocket shoes and all that, but once he realized that his pursuers weren’t rat cultists, he stopped to say hello. He introduced himself as Aniketos, ancestor of Hephaestus, Greek god of the forge. Apparently, the slayers weren’t the only ones who had gotten wind of heaven’s plans to create a second flood. He agreed to give them the book so they could stop the demon invasion, as long as they promised not to give it back to the cult. As he looked it over to make sure Julia hadn’t duped them, he noticed that a few pages had been torn out. No doubt the ones the rat cult needed for their nefarious scheme.

Aniketos said he would try to figure out where the Prophets of the Rat God would perform their ritual. If they had the book, there couldn’t be much time left. He gave the slayers his phone number, and off he went. As the slayers headed back to the van, they checked their phones to see if the demon invasion had spread enough to make the news yet. It had. A news story told people to avoid central Beaverton due to an outbreak of an unspecified disease. Unlike the vampire thing, this was definitely not a coincidence.

The streets of Beaverton were full of demons, and Reno drove as if playing GTA. Sitting in the van, one would’ve thought they were going off-road from all the bumping and shaking. But they were very much on the road, or at least on top of the demon hoard that Reno was knocking down on the road. Rolling up near a supermarket, the demons charging at the van in their frenzied rage soon became too much, and the van began to lose momentum. They climbed out, narrowly dodged the mad swings of the demons, and made their way up to the supermarket roof by way of a dumpster and a drainage pipe.

On the roof, Willow, being proficient in numerous ancient languages, read the page that would undo the summoning of the Watcher in the Shadows. A black mist erupted out of the possessed crowd and was sucked into a swirling portal that appeared before Willow. All the formerly possessed people fell to the ground, apparently not having survived the ordeal. Oh well, can’t save everyone.

With perfect timing, Aniketos called. He said that a massive storm had appeared out of nowhere over central Portland, and the eye was right above Cathedral Park. Furthermore, a mastodon-like beast of literally biblical proportions could be seen on the Portland skyline⁴. The slayers got back in the van. Now they knew where the final showdown would be.

The van came to a screeching halt. The slayers didn’t even wait for it to stop completely before jumping out, drawing their weapons and rushing up to the crowd of robed cultists in Cathedral Park. Aniketos and his cerberus came to help when he saw the slayers. The cultists had kidnapped Diniel, the angel who had been cast out to the Further. There were about six robed figures, chanting something mysterious and seemingly trying to open some kind of portal, which was glowing and slowly growing, revealing a glimpse of a marble hallway on the other side.

When she spotted the slayers, one of the robed cultists produced a ceremonial dagger, took of her hood, and stabbed another cultist. Daisy recognized her at once. It was her mom. Reno also recognized her as his ex-girlfriend. The slayers joined in on the killing, with Reno machine gunning several of them down. Daisy used her toothy axe, Willow flamethrew them with hairspray, and Ayn untied Diniel, after which they both joined the fight with their flaming swords. They beat the cultists with no major issues, but the portal to the marble hallway still hung in the air, now large enough to step through.

Daisy’s mom, name forgotten, hugged Daisy and explained that she had been secretly working against the cult from the inside. The portal led to heaven, and would allow the rat god, who had taken over heaven, to step into our world in order to bring about the second flood. The rat god was an ancient sumerian deity named Ninkilim, most well known for creating the plagues back in the day. With the portal open, there was only one thing they could do:

Step through and fight.

And that’s just what they did. Heaven was, as expected, a beautiful place. The marble hallway led to an open area of a large marble platform floating in a sunlit sky of clouds. There was also a truck-sized, ugly rat creature, who was clearly suffering from a bad case of bubonic plague, though it didn’t seem to mind much.

There was no talking. Everyone knew what to do. The slayers, Aniketos, Diniel, Jenesis Gonzales, and Daisy’s mom, whatever her name was⁵. Everyone charged at the rat. Unlike with the other mysteries, I found no stats for it in my notes, so I’m not sure what it actually did. It probably involved claws and a stinky, corrosive breath. Anyway, despite the having an entire crowd fighting it, things looked pretty dire, until Ayn got in a critical strike with their flaming sword, and shoved it off the marble platform, sending it falling through an infinite sky as it squeaked its final, terrible squeak.

The group was all hurt, but they were feeling surprisingly well considering the circumstances. They caught their breath, did high-fives all around, and found a large marble (everything is marble in heaven, in case you haven’t noticed) box that they opened. Inside was the real Abrahamic God, locked away by Ninkilim. Don’t ask how. But he was a free man now, and he looked exactly like Morgan Freeman. He thanked the slayers and their friends for saving him and the world, and invited them to have tea with him.

It was the best tea they ever had.