Gothic Earth

The game's plot is divided into chapters. Click on any title to read a summary of each game session.

Seven strangers awoke in a mansion on New Years Eve, 1898, uninvited guests at a masquerade ball. Aidan the occult hunter, Alexandria the madame, Celio the violinist, Elise the reporter, John the archeologist, Katerina the missionary, and Lawrence the locksmith worked together to fend off monsters like icy spectres and bloodthirsty zombies. Slowly they decoded a message that would free them, left there by the maid before she died, but their investigation led them to a mad scientist named Roderick Usher who experimented with a supernatural force called the Red Death. The group defeated the curse that would have claimed their souls by midnight, but in leaving the house they found Usher's corpse transformed into a giant, two-story spider that they narrowly defeated with their newfound power. Spirited from the scene by a sympathetic investigator named C. Auguste Dupin, they learned that he worked for a shadowy group called La Lumière that studied the Red Death's effect on the world, and accepted an assignment from him to study a cult in Philadelphia so that they could gain membership in La Lumière themselves. (read game session summaries)

Arriving in the snowy city, the group made contact with La Lumière agent Thaddeus Jackson. He gave them rooms in the hotel where he worked, and explained that their target was the Hellfire Club, a former gentleman's club that had recently begun dabbling in occult rituals. The group was to gain information about the group by getting inside their building, Monk Hall, without attacking them. Alexandria promised to find a teenaged virgin who had been sold into the club's service, but became wrapped up in a murder investigation with Lawrence. Celio got a job waiting tables and talking up rich locals. Elise and John researched the long history of the Hellfire Club. Aidan talked his way in but was captured, and escaped with the teenager and a converted cultist. Katerina got a job catering to the club and almost got inside, but was interrupted by former La Lumière agent Liesel Schreiner, who had joined a more violent organization that attacked the Red Death instead of studying it. After a confrontation with cult leader Oliver Haddo at their hotel led to violence, Aidan and Liesel left to confront the Hellfire Club alone, while Celio quit to keep his waiting job. Thaddeus inducted the rest of the group into La Lumière in gratitude for the information they had obtained. (read game session summaries)

Elise was summoned by her newspaper, the New York Journal, to investigate a local museum robbery. On the train, robbers were defeated with the help of illusionist Jacques LeBeau, who followed the group. At the station, they were also followed by a bizarre homeless child who said only "Gao." At the museum, the curator explained that a sarcophagus had been stolen overnight, containing an oracle of the cat goddess Bastet. In town, a gypsy pickpocket was bullied into taking the group to his caravan in Central Park. His leader, Bronwyn Cutitari, suggested that local thieves had robbed the museum, rebuffing Jacques as an "athingani" who she wouldn't help. Suddenly, Gao took off running, and led the group to a burning food market. They defeated four cultists in black robes and put out the fire. The rescued shopkeeper, Franklin Johnson, said he looked after Gao, who the cultists were trying to "awaken." Seeking first aid, they found a medical clinic taken hostage by a street gang. Elise and Alexandria talked their way into meeting gang leader Bill the Butcher, who had been attacked by a panther. They followed his instructions and fetched Elise's boss, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, who admitted to hiring Bill's gang to rob the museum to invent a fake news story, drawing the wrath of Bastet. The group traced the sarcophagus to the store of William Wilson, who they had rescued in Baltimore, and John said an Egyptian prayer to end the curse. They met with a La Lumière agent, who arranged for the sarcophagus's return to Egypt and inducted Jacques and Gao as agents themselves. (read game session summaries)

Hearing mention of murders in Boston, the group traveled there. A bartender told the group that some hookers were murdered, always found with a homeless man dead beside them. In the park, they were attacked by a homeless man who they shot dead; they eventually cleared their name with the police. Flyers posted around town smeared Alexandria as a madam and drug dealer, so the group confronted Father Blenk, who had closed her brothel in Colorado. He argued theology with Katerina, but Rachael's bold arrival in the church left him pleading for mercy; he he agreed to stop interfering with Alexandria's life, but he had orders to spy on Katerina. After fatally battling another homeless man who became enraged when Alexandria sensed the name "Charles" in his thoughts, the group interviewed streetwalkers, who led them to a Dr. Charles Witherspoon, whose wife Jeanne had been Jack the Ripper's final victim in London. A séance with ghost finder Thomas Carnacki led the group to the truth: Jeanne Witherspoon was Jack the Ripper, murdering the prostitutes that her husband treated as his clinic. Traveling to Witherspoon's house to confront him, they found Jeanne's spirit manifested in his parlor, swirling knives surrounding her in the air. After a battle that nearly defeated the group, John scattered her ashes from an urn, dissipating her spirit. Their La Lumière contact, a witch named Theresa O'Neill, offered to take them to her "family home" in Salem for a few days to rest. There, they met The Circle, a coven of witches, who informed Elise that she was somehow born of magic. Jacques discovered that Gao's cat Melchitt could talk and cursed to live in cat form. Vinny was cursed with lycanthropy. Lawrence was summoned away for a few days on personal business, asking Alexandria to join him. (read game session summaries)

During a ceremony, Elise was inducted as a member of The Circle, and taught to manipulate stones with magic. Gao suffered a vision of Alexandria and Lawrence being tortured, and the group needed to find them. With Theresa's help, the group divined the location "Tate household" in Dunwich, Connecticut. There they found a town overrun with zombie-like locals, and Auguste Dupin waiting with news that Lawrence had traveled to nearby Arkham to rescue his mother Lily. They fled after discovering that Dupin was dead and his body was being manipulated to gain information, but not before Jacques sacrificed himself to stop the attacking mob. In Arkham, they found a town mad with nightmarish visions, and a peculiar investigator named Randolph Carter who seemed to know what they should do next; he explained that his dreams showed him the future. Lawrence and Alexandria were committed an insane asylum, so the group impersonated orderlies to free them, interviewing many inmates in the process. After a testy confrontation with facility director Charles Dexter Ward, who seemed to be interested in Gao's visions, they learned that he was really a centuries-old necromancer named Joseph Curwen. With plans that involved the skulls of famous mystics like Merlin, Curwen had taken Alexandria's soul to another world called the Dreamlands. Guided through their dreams by Randolph Carter, the group journeyed to the Dreamlands, where they undertook a journey that took them through lush jungles, foggy mountain peaks, and the surface of the moon. They met interference from Nyarlathotep, a miscreant alien in the form of a human pharaoh, and learned that Curwen sought a spell book called the Necronomicon that might be the same book they took from his laboratory. Curwen plotted to use Alexandria's budding powers to awaken the "Great Ones," unimaginably powerful aliens who could destroy the world, but the group defeated him in battle and returned to the waking world. (read game session summaries)

Alexandria woke up beside her nemesis Father Joseph Blenk, who she kicked out her bed. He had come to warn her that Katerina Petrovich had been taken to an abandoned train station in Providence by two men in priest cassocks, but he learned that the site was used by a Satanic cult, and the local priest Father Moretti wouldn't help him. The group traveled to the station, where they defeated two cultists in the basement who were ritualistically killing an eagle. At the church, Alexandra found letters from Celio Parisi to Father Moretti that mentioned the group's travels and Katerina's angelic protector Rachael. The next morning, Elise questioned Moretti further, and sensed him lying about being Rachael's adoptive father, but it was clear that he knew her somehow. They followed rumors of dead farm animals to the discovery of a slaughtered ox, and realized that the cultists were killing four creatures that represented the four evangelicals: An eagle (John), an ox (Luke), a lion (Mark), and an angel (Matthew). Rushing to the zoo, they found two cultists bleeding a lion to death and narrowly defeated them, but Aidan Kane arrived and killed the surviving cultist before they could question him. He said that Salistra, a darkling (the offspring of a demon and human), would have to kill an angel on holy ground to complete the ritual. They returned to the cathedral, where Aidan was being tied up over flame, along with other victims in an elaborate ritual. Salistra killed Rachael in the ensuing battle and escaped in triumph, while Aidan and Blenk succombed to their injuries. The group saved Moretti and Katerina, who pledged to help the Vatican prepare for an assault by Salistra and her newly freed father, the demon Astaroth. (read game session summaries)

The group was advised to talk to La Lumière cell leader Honus Temple in Pittsburgh. On the train, a hunter named Solomon Kane ambushed the group and demanded Gao, but they defeated him in battle. Investigating a case for Honus, the group was invited to a demonstration of Nikola Tesla's latest invention. After John spotted Thomas Edison leaving the event, Tesla's "super-coil" charged out of control. Lawrence and Elise managed to stop it, but not before Tesla and John were fatally electrocuted. Overnight, John returned in a rage and attacked Gao in their hotel, and the group barely subdued him. Alexandria read his mind to learn that he had been resurrected in a basement laboratory. There, they were joined by federal agent Fayt Leigngod, who helped them apprehend a lab assistant who admitted that Edison had revived John using the notes of Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Confronting Edison, they fought a hulking monster in his room, and both men were blown apart in an explosion. Further investigation revealed that the monster was Frankenstein, and that Edison sought revenge against a group of scientists who had ejected him for his ethics violations. The group's founder (via an earlier incarnation) turned out to be the wizard Merlin, whose sword Excalibur was said to be able to cure John. The group set out for the Smithsonian museum in Washington to find it. (read game session summaries)

At the Smithsonian, the group learned that Excalibur had been stolen, and they were told they had been there the day before, but they no memory of it. Fayt's government boss, Lemuel Caution, told him to investigate a robbery at the White House. A visit to Fayt's mother Ursula, a paladin for the Catholic church, raised questions about his father and his true nature when she tried to contain him and cast a spell on him. At the White House, John learned that the robber was their former ally Celio Parisi, and they discovered that all of their valuable belongings were missing, including Lawrence's enchanted sword. Fayt was confronted by two women with parasols who had been following him since Pittsburgh, and in his rage he transformed into a demonic figure, and only regained his composure with the group's help. They agreed to travel through a portal to the women's realm, where their leader turned out to be Lemuel Caution. He explained that their secret society, the Fellowship of the Crimson Dawn, had engineered Fayt's existence, and arranged for him to join the group to expose his half-demonic nature. Fayt rejected them and the Fellowship was defeated in battle. From their journals, Elise figured out how to make portals to a dimension of her own design, where she made a large manor for the group to reside. The group found Celio working for a musicians-for-hire business, and Alexandria recognized the foreign owner from Lawrence's altered memories, but attempts to enter resulted in more scrambled memories. Overcoming their reprogramming with the help of hypnotist Anna Mesmer, the group learned that the business was run by a master of mind control named Svengali, who used his power to steal from the rich. With their ears plugged, they returned to his business and defeated him, freeing Celio and the others. Among their recovered belongings, they found a burned padlock from the house of seven gables in Salem. (read game session summaries)

Upon entering the Salem city limits by train, Alexandria, Elise, Gao, and Lawrence passed out and had a prolonged dream of being residents caught up in the Salem witch trials of 1692, culminating in sealing an evil creature named Zemlak in the basement of what became the house of seven gables. The group hurried to the building and found it burned to the ground a few days earlier, and battled Solomon Kane to death in the snow; they determined that he had burned it down and taken the padlock to lure them there, freeing Zemlak from his centuries-old slumber. After freeing Theresa O'Neill and Phoebe Pyncheon from the jail cell where they were being held on archaic charges of witchcraft that were still on the city books, the group accused Jaffrey Pyncheon of plotting against the family, but he said he wanted to find matriarch Hepzibah Pyncheon and warned her about a dangerous, wanted man named Holgrave who had been snooping into the town's history. The group found him and learned that he was a traveler between dimensions, who recognized the similarities between 1692 and 1899 as evidence of timeline tampering. He warned that Zemlak's spell magic to return to his native dimension Ravenloft could rip the entire town of Salem out of time and there with him. The group confronted Zemlak in the woods where they had found his ritual underway in 1692, but were easily defeated. Holgrave tested them in a house constructed of their past adventures and showed them that the way to defeat a magician like Zemlak was to prevent him from casting spells by force. They found themselves in a medieval village called Melos in Zemlak's kingdom, where the Salem residents had embodied locals. A sculptor named Kenyon with a crush on Elise helped them contact a Vistani caravan that carried them through the poisoned forest, but not before they fought off what Theresa had become in this world, a plant-like woman who spread disease with a kiss. Breaking into Zemlak's mountain castle by different means, they found off his human and faun guards, and lured him through a portal to the Manor, where their combined efforts delivered him fatal injuries. Hepzibah was turned to stone in the process, but Theresa and John were reunited and the Kingdom of Zemlak seemed to be no more. (read game session summaries)

After the group confirmed that Salem had been restored, Theresa O'Neill gave them an assignment: Mysterious murders in London had stumped Scotland Yard, and La Lumière wanted it solved. They booked passage on the R.M.S. Oceanic, the world's newest and largest ocean liner, on a three-week trip. Alexandria befriended a married couple going through a breakup after the death of their son on board, and the husband paid Alexandria for Qiu Jin to sleep with him to give his wife grounds for divorce. Elise helped orphans at work in the boiler room. A ghostly girl named Dolores Haze seemed to lure male passengers overboard; she had altered Fayt's mind, and John took him back to Washington to get him help. Lawrence was hired to assist scientist Wilhelm Röntgen with his x-ray machine, but found the old man murdered gruesomely by the removal of his skeleton. Soon an invisible man attacked Lawrence, and only when the group subdued him did they learn that he was Jack Griffin, Röntgen's murderer and former assistant, driven mad when an accident with the x-ray machine shifted him out of the visible spectrum. Gao investigated rumors of a wild animal loose in storage, and John's former financier Lord Carnarvon turned out to be the cause: This same ship was transporting Ramla's body from New York, and Bastet was awakened when Carnarvon stole it for profit. The group negotiated a truce with the Egyptian goddess and left the lord locked in storage with her. (read game session summaries)

On their way from the docks in Southhampton, the group was ambushed on the road by an assassin who was quickly defeated. Their La Lumière contact in London was investigator Sherlock Holmes, who told them to solve a month-old murder in a locked apartment. At the scene, they determined that someone had climbed in through the fifty-story window. Neighbors reported seeing a "bat-like creature" that same night, and directed the group to the victim's friends at a nearby pub. Join in conversation by skeptical stage escapist Caleb Lonergan, the victim's friend explained his belief in the legend of Springheel Jack, a creature that could jump to and from great heights. Their conversation was interrupted by a sudden firebombing; while the group struggled to quell the flames and empty the pub, Gao was abducted by strangers. Stymied in finding her, the group researched Springheel Jack at the library, but found the best book defaced with a warning to them from "JM" that they would not succeed. An assassin nearly crushed Lawrence in an alley with loose scaffolding, but hunter Lyon Omen joined the chase and saw the man spontaneously combust to avoid capture. A local expert told the group about Springheel Jack's six recent "killings" after decades of hurting no one. One of the victims was a chemistry student, who had been working with local scientist Dr. Henry Jekyll to develop a formula for separating aspects of the human psyche. The group was attacked by his alter-ego Mr. Hyde, who spit a serum in Lyon's face and briefly transformed him into a demon, then fled the scene. The group tried to find Sherlock Holmes for help, but found his assistant Dr. Watson freshly murdered. The trail led downstairs to the Boars Head Inn, where they found a secret underground theater where Gao was held captive by the Six-Fingered Hand. Tricked into a cage, Lawrence was incinerated and nearly killed, while Elise defeated Hyde and Caleb freed Gao. Alexandria confronted the mastermind of the plot, Professor James Moriarty, who had lured them from London to kill them and acquire Gao. She discovered that Moriarty was Holmes himself in disguise, transformed into a criminal by Jekyll's formula. After turning over Moriarty and Hyde to Scotland Yard, the group was promoted by Holmes's brother Mycroft, who revealed himself as the worldwide leader of La Lumière: They became a fully-fledged cell of their own, with Alexandria as their elected leader. Gao was with them again, but remained comatose. (read game session summaries)

After a few days off, Mycroft Holmes sent the group to Kitty Hawk, a beach town in North Carolina. A trusted psychic advisor had warned that the Wright brothers were in grave danger; Holmes spoke of their future invention of the airplane but warned the group not to let them know of their importance. Arriving in town, Lyon was spat at by a hostile elderly woman named Violet, who claimed he was "the spawn of the devil" and urged the group to take him away. Exploring a long-abandoned lighthouse on the shoreline, they found a burned-out Jesuit monastery that had housed the monks who operated the lighthouse, where they defeated two animated robes and found a pentagram that Elise recognized as Satanic and penitent in nature. The next morning, the group found the Wright brothers working on an early prototype of their airplane. They were surrounded by twenty robed assassins, and the group sprung into battle against them. Elise was already strapped into the airplane as a test pilot and took off, crashing it into some of the attackers without injuring herself, then pleaded with the Wright brothers to continue their important work. When Violet was found dead, the group found in her house a list of names of the burned Jesuits, with "huecuva?" written at the top, an occult term that Elise recognized: It was a former servant of evil deities who was punished by being turned into an undead creature, but capable of disguising itself as human. They questioned the lighthouse keeper, whose name Jake Tanner was very similar to the monk Tanner Edmund Jacobbi on the list, and became suspicious. They later found him in the form of a living skeleton in the Manor's windmill, preparing a ritual bonfire. He commanded Lyon to strike, and the hunter used a magic weapon to cleave Elise's heart out of her chest to burn it in the fire, but with Melchitt's help, they replaced it and revived her. Together the group defeated Jacobbi, and learned from his ghost that Lyon was the son of Satan, who had put Jacobbi up to attacking the Wrights in a plot to lure Lyon here and realize his destiny. The group locked Lyon in the brig, unsure if they could trust him again. (read game session summaries)

When the group reported back to Mycroft Holmes, he handed them a letter for Lawrence that had arrived mysteriously. He refused to explain its contents, and the group had to chase him to Massachusetts (via the Manor) to learn that it was apparently from his father, who had died more than a decade earlier. Together, the group returned to his former town of Dunwich, which was once overrun with violent zombies, and found the walking dead going about their civilian lives peacefully. They were ambushed by the crippled Jacques LeBeau, who wanted revenge for abandoning him after he helped them escape from town, and Caleb bonded with his assistant Vivienne. Shortly after, they found him dead by the hand of Solomon Kane, who used his body for a trap; Caleb defused it and Lyon shot Kane dead to escape. After learning from Mi-Go that the Red Death had permeated the Dreamlands and that Cthulhu was brought to Earth by Alexandria's mental powers when she left, the group was forced to surrender Dupin's brain in exchange for Caleb and Lyon's lives. They found the necromancer behind the zombie outbreak and the reanimated Edward Tate, who forgave his son for leaving and mentioned that Lily Tate, Lawrence's missing mother, was in a place that sounded like the Dreamlands. Entering a shared dream, the group witnessed strong suggestions that Alexandria had been a child prostitute before she ran away from home. When she wouldn't confront this fact, they arrived in a "Purgatory" made up of her memories and the Red Death, which attacked them in a serpent form. Digging through Alexandria's past, they discovered that a scientist had engineered her from mandrake root and a prostitute mother to create a woman incapable of love yet drawn to sex. After rescuing Lily Tate from a mirror and discovering that Alexandria's mother Jill had survived, the group split up: Alexandria and Lawrence stayed behind in Purgatory to prevent their mothers from ceasing to exist upon their departure, staying behind to find another way home, while the rest of the group returned to Earth to continue their adventures. (read game session summaries)

Reporting to Mycroft Holmes in London, the group learned that they had made the newspaper yet again, with Elise's revelation of the Wright brothers' future in Kitty Hawk. Holmes fired them from La Lumière, but allowed them to keep the empty apartment. When astronomy professor Gant Harrington arrived with a warning that his mother had foreseen the destruction of London, the group traveled with him to Oxford, where biologist Thomas Huxley offered to pay them for a special mission: Travel to the Florida swamp and capture a creature called the Skunk Ape. Outside Sarasota, they learned that the beast had recently escaped from the Ringling Circus. In the woods, they encountered the Fountain of Youth (which Elise sampled), and fought talking panthers and boars that walked on legs like men with help from Lyon's hunting experience, but the Skunk Ape eluded every attempt to be captured, always slipping loose with a variety of animal abilities. At a cabin in the woods, they met a scientist named Dr. Moreau, who explained his fascination with evolution: By reversing the effects of the Fountain of Youth at a cellular level, he had created a beast whose body was in constant flux and able to adapt instantly to environmental threats. Escaping from the madman's experiments, the group found the Skunk Ape, and Caleb sprayed Fountain water into its mouth, reverting it back into a man grateful for the rescue. Back at Oxford, Huxley was disappointed to receive only body parts instead of a live specimen, but he paid the group. They returned with Gant's mother to 221B Baker Street in London, where old acquaintance Thomas Carnacki offered to open a business with them, investigating the paranormal together. (read game session summaries)

Challenged by a skeptical Caleb to prove himself, Carnacki conducted a séance in which an old woman's spirit warned of "white fires" that would burn down Atlanta. Traveling there to investigate, the group questioned veterans of the Civil War who seemed connected to clues mentioned by the spirit. An elderly patient at an insane asylum insisted that Caleb was her long-lost husband, home from the war. When he looked up the soldier, the man in the photo looked exactly like him, and news reports said that he was murdered on Caleb's birthday. At a speech on racial harmony by Booker T. Washington, a prop skeleton in a noose was used to terrorize the crowd. Following up on his clues, the group learned that the warnings were planted by a dangerous organization called the White Legion, who used the occult power of the Red Death to further their genocidal agenda. Haunted by a ghost who appeared to die when tossed in front of a train, the group pieced together that a judge named Calhoun, formerly the mayor of Atlanta, was murdering the members of his Civil War unit, including the one who looked like Caleb. They found the place where Caleb's predecessor was locked in a cage and drowned in the river, and in the process of helping the spirit to rest, Caleb learned what had driven him into a career as an escape artist. Traveling to the rural home of the old woman whose ghost had first sent them on their quest, they were assaulted by her vengeful daughter, who mistook Caleb for the man whose unit had assaulted her and killed her family three decades earlier. Those men had taken her spell-book, in which the most powerful spell allowed the sole survivor of a blood pact to gain incredible power. After confirming the murders of everyone else in the Civil War unit, the group tracked Calhoun to the old terminal building where Atlanta was founded, discovering a meeting of the White Legion preparing to burn every black resident of the city. Calhoun magically transformed the group into African-Americans and set the bloodthirsty mob upon them. Elise quickly destroyed the spell components and dispersed the crowd with dynamite, allowing the group to flee, but Calhoun survived and took the spell-book with him. The rest of the group returned to their normal appearance when the spell wore off, but Elise remained African-American for reasons unknown. (read game session summaries)

When the group discussed Elise's newly African appearance, she told them about an event long ago: Her nanny Delilah had once taken her to a graveyard where Delilah's dead ancestors welcomed Elise to the family, saying that she was reincarnated from the baby that Delilah lost. Seeking answers, the group headed to New Orleans, but learned that Delilah had disappeared. They also began to learn of other crimes around a city: A rich socialite accosted by zombies, a senator dragged from his carriage, a banker killed by a voodoo charm, and more. Partnering with a private investigator who was on the case, the group met Marie Laveau, the daughter of the famous voodoo priestess by the same name, who sold them voodoo dolls to protect themselves from harm and other spells. Laveau helped them realize the connections in the city-wide crime spree: "Doctor" John Malveau, an evil wizard who Laveau had long ago turned into an alligator, was killing his enemies one by one. The group gained entry to John's dilapidated mansion and found it full of summoned monsters, altars to voodoo gods, angry spirits, and John's legion of zombie servants. They fought their way to a secret chamber, where Elise found the ghost of her murdered nanny and learned the family secret: John was the father of the baby who had been reincarnated as Elise. Struggling through her own lifelong fear of alligators, Elise led the group into the bayou where John was about to sacrifice Marie Laveau. Finding him changed into a half-man, half-gator monster, the group was nearly killed by his magic, and Caleb was turned into a zombie. In the end, Elise created an explosion that vaporized John, avenging her family and saving Marie, who promised to thank the group by seeking a cure for Caleb's zombification. (read game session summaries)

Gao awoke from her long coma in the Manor, and marveled at the group's changes suc as starting their own business. Carnacki had a new assignment for them: Visit a country house in Surrey called the House of Bly and cleanse it of spirits haunting the children. Since this was close to Gant's childhood home, they visited his cousin's farm and learned that he had almost no surviving family left, causing him to retire from adventuring and return to Oxford. After another ambush from old nemesis Solomon Kane, the group arrived at the house, where Caleb hit it off with a fan and Gao was intimidated by a scary old woman. At night, mirrors seemed to cause false reflections, to Gao in particular, angering Lyon so much that he smashed them and discovered documents inside relating to Gao's past. While Caleb aged rapidly into an old man and Lyon reverted to a teenager and younger, Elise speculated that the group was caught in a dream that seemed to be about Gao, especially as something seemed to lurk about in Gao's locked bedroom after she stepped out of it. Another old enemy, an occult group called the Fellowship of the Crimson Dawn, seemed to be gathering intelligence on Gao and former teammate Fayt Leigngod; Elise discovered a book containing the group's entire adventures, and a spell for creating one of her own. Using their wits, the group deduced from found documents that Gao's real name was Enid, but another hint supplied the boy's name Enoch; together, the two names acted like a password that broke a spell and allowed them to reach their tormentor: A succubus that had put them into dreamlike comas while sucking the Red Death right out of Gao. When Caleb killed it, the dream ended, and they learned that a week had gone by. (read game session summaries)

Upon their return to the Manor, the group found John Sheppard waiting for them. He was slowly being killed by Excalibur, and needed to consult Merlin's ghost via the ancient wizard's skull to free himself. The group realized that James Moriarty had stolen the skull from Gao in London, but when they visited him in prison, he said that La Lumière had taken it from him and locked it in their vault complex underneath Paris. Learning that La Lumière had become increasingly paranoid and even homicidal to certain "disloyal" members lately, the group convinced one member to give them information on the vault. The group went about hiring eight members of the Thieves Guild, one by one, to help them with the break-in: Arsène Lupin, Judex, Rocambole, Simon Templar, A.J. Raffles, Belphégor, Irma Vep, and Léo Sainte-Claire. Once inside the vault, the group took the opportunity to research the massive store of information and learn about world history, such as the existence of other qabals that have gotten involved with the Red Death. The vault's overseer revealed that he knew the group was coming, thanks to his own private information source, an ancient Egyptian oracle. In return for letting each member of the group ask a question of the oracle, he asked them to find out why a smaller sub-group called the Illuminati had seized control of La Lumière and made them so paranoid. From the statue, the group learned that James Moriarty had seized control of the Manor, using double-agent Simon Templar to seal off Elise's ability to reach her own home. Now angry, the group confronted the Illuminati, and Lyon was vaporized in the ensuing battle. The group discovered that the villains were actually a single entity, Inclavia, an alien spider creature using La Lumière's intelligence to conquer the world. They killed Inclavia in battle, but were themselves apparently blown up in the process. Wandering an afterlife with strange images, they realized that it was a manifestation of the Tree of Life from the study of Kabbalah that had given "qabals" their name. Using their prior research in the vault, they found Lyon and exited together, not knowing where it would take them. (read game session summaries)

Initially confused about how they had arrived in San Francisco without the rest of their party, Caleb and Elise got involved with French agent Sagesse la Roque and Chinese swordsman Elijah Ivy. After rescuing a bystander from a swarm of rats, they were hired by his insurance company to investigate a shipwreck a few days earlier in the bay, where the crew had been mauled by some kind of "wild animal" aboard that would have violated the terms of the insurance contract. The group heard eyewitness accounts of screams aboard a burning ship run aground in the bay and a wolf-like creature that swam to shore that same night. Elise made contact with La Lumière but scoffed at the local agent's suggestion that were-rats were behind everything. Elijah ran into his Chinese cousin and the group learned of Elijah's voluntary estrangement from his parents. The news mentioned local socialites disappearing. The sole survivor of the shipwreck, who had been institutionalized in a mental hospital, painted a grim picture of the crew's mauling. Aboard the shipwreck, they found seven caskets that had been brought from Hong Kong by passenger Justin Drake, who worked with a local man who owned Club Nocturne. By sneaking their way into the club by various means, Caleb found mention that a "brood" would awaken aboard the ship that night, and the rest of the group fought off a were-rat protecting the building. The group returned to the wreck and found the kidnapped socialites in the caskets, half-transformed into vampires, and slew them in a messy battle. Their victory was fleeting, as the master vampire revealed himself: Dracula, one of the most powerful beings on Earth. He spoke of his plans to create an "anti-qabal" to repel humans like them who mettled in the Red Death, and a vicious fight ensued. Elijah and Caleb were quickly killed. Sagesse fought back with garlic but got bitten on her neck, before Elise was mentally controlled into slaying her. The last one left, Elise jumped into the sea, fleeing for her life. (read game session summaries)

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These isolated game sessions take place in the same world as the primary game, but involve different characters and stories. (read game session summaries)