Hey! Let’s talk beautiful moments in monster-hunting history, please?
I wrote up a mystery involving a gargoyle. Relevant info: a stone griffon-man, animated by magic, to serve the master of the home to which it was magically tethered. Tough, fast, eats people, flies. A good brawler first monster, I think.
Investigating a murder, the crack team is able to track it down after it kills again. A fight and it escapes after The Expert screwed up and put a bullet in The Spooky’s back.
They split up to protect the remaining potential victims, obviously. The Flake meets with one of them and realizes he has stumbled into the den of the gargoyle’s master. He realizes this when the professor shuts the door and turns on his power drill — and dives for the Flake’s heart!
The Flake barely escapes, but the professor runs off to a spooky old mansion (like you do, right?) and the Spooky and Flake go after him again — leaving the Expert to check in on the professor’s flat and do one on one magic battle with the gargoyle anchored to the apartment!
Only the gargoyle isn’t there. It’s followed the professor to his new hideaway, which the gunshot victim Spooky and fragile Flake thought would not be protected. They’re ambushed, the Flake is pinned to a wall, and the Spooky is trapped in a backfired spell-barrier, unable to save him!
The Expert, racking his brain, raiding the professor’s notes finds indications of painted mystic symbols. He starts tearing the place apart — throwing open cupboards, flipping the furniture… He sees a can of UV glow paint and a black light rod.
He kills the lights! Grabs the UV flashlight! Runs it over the windows — and finds a massive arcane circle! He grabs a stool and smashes it through the window, sending it sailing out the fourth story window with a shower of glass!
As the gargoyle begins to rend the Flake… Just seconds before collapsing into a wreck of stone fragments as the broken magic circle ends its life.
I think my favorite moment was in my regular group’s long-running playtest in 2011.
They were on the trail of a lake monster, and eventually tracked down the person giving it orders, but not before the sorcerer had started some kind of huge ritual magic.
I warned the more supernaturally aware hunters that there was a lot of magic power concentrated around the monster in the lake and the ritual, and that interfering might have side-effects (that was in response to read a bad situation). They had a quick, tense discussion, and decided to wait until the ritual was over before attacking.
So the sorcerer completed the ritual, and unbound the elemental spirit of the lake to go wreak havoc anywhere it wanted, rather than just the lake’s immediate surrounds. Oops!
My favourite moment was when the group needed mummified remains for a spell to dessicate a big bad. They were in the NY Museum of Natural History at the time so I told them there was a stuffed Quokka on display (if you don’t know look it up they are super cutesy) anyway during the general melee with horrific monsters, death and gore, due to the vagaries of magic the Quokka came to life and became the Mundanes new pet. Mike, you probably wouldn’t be surprised if I told you it was Jono who did the ritual.
Btw museums make terrific threats as mazes that want to separate and confuse people!