It started in the Rotunda. Each of the PCs noticed that as they opened the door of their cell, they found that 5 others doors were opening into the next room as well, and out of these doors stepped the rest of the party. One more door, this one painted light blue, remained locked against them.
Sandor found immediately that the cell phone he'd destroyed, but held on to the charger for, began growing a new cell phone, almost organically. Freaky...
Largely, the group worried themselves with their items, and how to get out of the room they were now locked in. Some frustration at all the locked doors was encountered, which is understandable. I need to find more ways to hold up the PCs while they work these puzzles.
Sami began passing around the mirror she received with her makeup case, and the PCs began to study their features. Chris, however, saw a little bit more in the mirror than he'd expected - when he looked at the dome light in the ceiling through the mirror, it wasn't a light at all - it was a light-emitting eyeball, the size of a basketball, embedded in the ceiling. And it was watching them...
I had hoped that the PCs would begin to give each other names, but this didn't happen. So I had nametag stickers slide in from under the door as a hint. Everyone (except Tasha, of course!) named themselves, and a few minutes later, the door clicked open.
From the Rotunda, the PCs entered the Lobby. This is a small office lobby, with a drop ceiling, crappy office carpet, a receptionist desk (with phone), a small desk chair, an elevator, a maintenance door, and a glass wall for the entrance. Upon completely entering the room, the door shut itself, looking (from this side of the door) like a glass door. Outside is pitch black, and nothing is revealed by shining the flashlight out. Through the mirror, the glass wall looks like a wall of flesh, quivering slightly...
Sandor found a power outlet for his phone, plugged it in, got it turned on, but discovered a 15-digit security code was locking the device.
The elevator doesn't appear to work, and the maintenance door is, of course, locked. The telephone, though not plugged in, appears to have a dial tone and a rotary dialer. After some trial and error, Colt worked out that there was a code in the dialing - 7757253825. After he dialed this code, the phone rang loudly, then went silent - and the maintenance door clicked unlocked. Everyone filed in to the next room...
Which is a hall / stairway. Plastered all over the red brick walls here were maintenance signs, all pointing to a door at the bottom of the stairs. Almost immediately, Chris detected the trick - some of these stairs teleport you back to the top. Once they learned this, they used the mirror to see that some of the stairs glow, and those glowing stairs are the ones that teleport the stepper. Using a piece of Colt's chalk, they marked all the stairs that were safe to touch, and took note of the sequence of stairs that aren't. That sequence, Sandor realized, had 15 digits, and did indeed work - Sandor's phone let him in to the main menu.
Colt and Sandor looked through the phone before they continued on into the next room. They discovered that most of the apps on the phone were either broken or further locked, but one app in particular worked just fine, for the most part: the Notes app. There was even a note waiting for them:
To the finder
You’re in the phone, if you’re reading this - that’s good. Means you’re relatively smart, not brain-dead. Yet, anyway. Wander around this place long enough and that might change, but I really hope not.
I’m utterly alone, now. Last of this group of strangers. I’m a stranger myself as well. Such a short life, apparently, but the fact that I’m writing this without having learned the language may be a testament to whatever life I lived before I came upon this place.
I hope I was a decent person, at least.
I’ve tried to document things. In the phone, and in this world. It seems the things we did have some impact here, but I can’t explain it. Whistles could, if he were still alive.
Going to die soon, I think. Starving to death. Found plenty of water, but food is scarce. Already ate the others. Is that really what they want? I know they watched me do it.
I hope they don’t erase this. For your sake, not mine, for I am lost.
Sandor and Colt also noticed the bold letters in the note - they spell out a phrase: "Don't trust what you see. They lie."
They continued on into the maintenance room. This room was a large, completely dark room filled with what look like internal combustion electric generators. A large system of pipes worked their way from the ceiling to each of the generators, with each generator sprouting three pipes from their tops. Through the mirror, the only change was the pipes, which became massive undulating arteries. The noise in the room was near deafening levels.
Tasha and Sandor began walking around the room clockwise, while Sami, Chris, and Richard walked counter-clockwise, hoping to meet at the far wall. Colt stayed behind at the door to keep it open and maintain their origin. They found that the room is square in shape, and that there are 10 rows of 10 generators each - 100 generators. They also found an elevator, but this one's button had been torn off, and through the mirror it appeared that the hole was dripping pus or some other sort of gore.
After messing with the elevator to no avail, Tasha decided to walk through the generators back to where Colt was standing. On her way, she felt a presence near her, and some sort of... creature... began to breathe down her neck. She stiffened, but continued walking toward Colt.
Chris was the first to actually see the creature. He drew his flashlight toward the source of a strange noise, and saw it: a 4-foot tall quadrupedal creature of clearly alien origin. It resembled a cross between a large lizard and a small bear, covered in a rotting amalgam of skin, hair, scales, and bone plating. Two great fangs protruded from the creature's mouth, and its seven eyes, strewn randomly across its face, darted wildly and blindly across the room. Green liquid drooled down from the creature's maw. Perhaps the strangest feature, however, was the large red elevator button that had been shoved into the creature's forehead.
The light from the flashlight seemed to hurt it - smoke immediately plumed from the creature's hide, and it disappeared from the beam of light with a high-pitched cry. From there, the creature stalked, largely unseen, through the room, learning the PCs. It singled out Chris, as the one who'd hurt it, and while he was in total darkness, it grasped him by the arm and began to lead him deeper into the field of generators. He didn't resist, for fear of being mauled, until the creature threw him against one of the generators. He turned his flashlight on and scared it out of the range of his light.
By this time, Colt had realized that there was a lightswitch near the entrance door (non-functional), and Tasha had found one generator that wasn't on. I believe it was Sandor who pieced together the idea that the broken generator powered the lights, so the party decided to fix the machine. Richard found that he was particularly skilled in repairing engines, so he got the machine running. The room slowly began to fill with light, for Colt had left the switch on. As the room lit, the creature began shrieking (in three voices at once), and by the time the light from above flooded the room, it was dead and melting into a puddle. The only solid bit that remained was the elevator button, which Tasha picked up and installed on the elevator...
I've left a good deal of stuff out - there was a lot of conversation, a lot of ideas tried, and more to the creature encounter - but this is the highlights. Tasha spent a great deal of time chronicling the game, so I may steal her notes and update this post later. Overall, the game was received with much enjoyment. I managed to freak everybody out, especially with the encounter in the complete dark. Even got compliments from Dennis, who had played in the previous incarnation of this game (and hated it, lol).
I can't wait for next Sunday... I get to elaborate on some of the themes I've introduced.
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