I did an Urban Shadow one shot last week, and this is my play-through/session report. I am going to focus on the story of the game rather than the mechanics.
The game took place in Brighton, UK (both in-game and out of game). Our characters are as follow:
Isabel the Spectre, who was a WWII nurse in life. She refused to move on until her little brother Thomas does. Old age had gotten the better of Thomas, and he was wasting away in an old person’s home. In her spare time, Isabel tried to help the sick and the injured in the city. She still dressed in her WWII-era nurse uniform.
Angelo the Tainted, who was working for a patron called Mr. Boxell. He used to be a small time criminal. One time he was arrested by the police and was about to face a lengthy jail sentence, but a voice in his head offered to bail him out in exchange for his service. Since then, Angelo had been taking instructions from Mr. Boxell, who had plans to gentrify the neighbourhood with unknown ulterior motives. Most of the time, Angelo’s work involved threatening owners of old buildings and clearing out squatters. He wanted respect from the world, and he tried to dress nice, but with little fashion sense.
Bartholomew the Veteran, who was a retired museum curator. His retirement was not entirely voluntary, as his research into the fae and the demons had attracted the wrong attention. Nowadays, he just wanted some peace and quiet. He had a large library in his home, filled with all sort of texts and ancient relics (which were acquired via legitimate channels). He did not like people calling him Bart.
Desmond the Wizard, who was a veteran of the Korean War (now in his 80s). His wife died young and he had been researching in the arcane to find a way to bring her back. Throughout the decades, he was so focussed in his research that he lost contact with all his surviving family. Recently, the grave of his wife was robbed, and her casket was missing.
I think it would be easier for readers to remember who is who by referring to the characters’ archetypes instead of their names.
Now to the rumours stage. An acquaintance of the Tainted had been working as an underling for some mages, and he told the Tainted about a ritual being carried out by the seaside. The Veteran had heard of the ritual, and now one of his relic, a silver cat skull, had been stolen. The Wizard had bumbled into the hangout of certain dark lady called Ms. Wolfen (a patron not unlike The Tainted’s), and she was coming after him.
The Tainted was instructed by his patron to clear out a building by the seaside. When he got there, a huge and muscular man was on the lookout at the entrance. Assuming he was just one of the mortal squatters, The Tainted beat the crap out of that man. The noise had alerted three people from within the building, and the Tainted recognised them as mages, with one of them holding a silver cat skull. The Tainted immediately regretted his earlier action, as he knew he was no match to three mages. As the mages were arguing about the best course of action to do with the Tainted, he managed to sneak away in the confusion.
The Wizard had been trying to track down the casket of his dead wife, and ended up at the same place as the Tainted. Two of the mages had dragged the lookout back into the building, and one of them was left guarding the entrance. The Wizard recognised the mage at the door as Lawrence, someone he briefly tutored in the arcane. He told Lawrence about his search for the casket of his dead wife. Lawrence revealed to the Wizard that the mages had been looting corpses of nobodies, but they would not have knowingly taken the Wizard’s wife. For old time’s sake, Lawrence let the Wizard into the building to have a look.
Meanwhile, the Spectre had been keeping tabs on her great nephew Clark, who was hired by the mages. She followed him to the basement of a derelict building by the seaside, and found him moving some caskets with corpses inside. The Veteran, who was tracking his missing relic, also arrived by the building and met up with the Tainted. The Wizard went into the basement and found the casket of his dead wife. Amanda, the leader of the mages grudgingly let the Wizard go, as long as he kept quiet about the ritual. The Spectre followed the Wizard out of the building, and they met the Tainted and the Veteran on the way. The Tainted still wanted the mages out of the building, and the Veteran still wanted his relic back.
The Veteran confronted Amanda about his stolen relic, but she lied and told him that she did not have it. He decided not to start a fight at that point. When the Tainted tried to persuade the mages to relocate the ritual, they explained that it had to be performed on the ley line. The Wizard and the Veteran managed to convince the mages that there was a much better spot on the ley line to perform the ritual, and the mages relented. At the end of the night, the Tainted managed to complete his patron’s instruction; the Wizard, quite strong despite of his old age, hauled the casket onto a bus and took it home with him; the Spectre manifest in front of her great nephew, warning him not to work for the mages; the Veteran still had not got his relic back.
The next day, The Tainted got a message from the patron, telling him to watch the news on TV. A woman’s body was found in a local park, with many cuts on her body. The Tainted recognised her to be Amanda, the leader of the mages. Apparently, whoever hired the mages to perform the ritual was not happy with their tardiness. Mr. Boxell, the Tainted’s patron explained that one of his business rival was about to do something nasty, and he commanded the Tainted to get the silver cat skull away from the mages. The Tainted went and look for the Veteran’s help, and together, they headed towards the cemetery on the ley line, the spot that the Veteran and the Wizard suggested to the mages last night.
The Wizard and the Spectre had a love/hate relationship. As a nurse, the Spectre wanted to help people live, but she thought that dead people should stay dead. Necromancy disrupts the balance of life and death and she did not like the Wizard’s research into reviving his wife. As a result, the Spectre had been pulling pranks on the Wizard for the past few decades, and she visited his house regularly. That morning, she was making a cup of tea but knocked over the bottle of milk by accident. She felt bad about it and left to get more milk, but was otherwise distracted and forgotten about it. The Wizard woke up and found that there was no milk, so he went to to nearest Tesco to get some. The Tesco was quiet, with no customers in sight. As he was about to leave with the milk, a bunch of goons blocked the exit. The goons worked for Ms. Wolfen the dark lady, and she was mad at the Wizard for messing up her ritual last night. The Wizard managed to intimidate the goons with a display of power, and they opened to negotiation. The goons said the only way for the Wizard to leave peacefully was for him to hand over something important, or else the dark lady would do unspeakable things to them, which swift deaths would have been merciful in comparison. The Wizard did not like the proposal, so he unleashed fiery hell on the goons. He walked out of the Tesco, milk in hand, as the whole store exploded behind him. He bumped into the Spectre, who finally remembered to get milk for the Wizard’s home. He explained to her that it was not necessary, and they had unfinished business at the cemetery.
The party arrived at the cemetery at about the same time. The Wizard located the magical energy emanating from the chapel. The Spectre went in, finding rows of empty pews and a staircase leading into the basement. The door was chained up and pad locked from the inside, so the Spectre crushed the lock with a fire extinguisher to letting everyone in. The noise attracted Ms. Wolfen’s goons, and the party could hear footsteps coming up from the stairs. The Tainted assumed his demon form and charged towards the stairs. The goons were slaughtered before they could go into the room proper. Unfortunately, the bodies cluttered up the staircase and it stalled the party from moving forward. The Spectre floated into the basement alone and found a huge magical circle on the ground with corpses littered inside it. In the middle, a mortal was tied to an altar. One of the mages, with silver cat skull in one hand and a ritual knife in another, was about to thrust the knife into the mortal’s chest. The Spectre attempted to go into the circle, but it was acting as a magical barrier. Since she held a debt on the Tainted, the Spectre called his name and summoned him to her. The Tainted recognise the mortal as his acquaintance who told him about the ritual in the first place, but he could not care less about him. However, the ritual had to be stopped, so he called on his patron to send an army from hell. A bunch of demonic chihuahuas overwhelmed the magical barrier and tear into the mages in the circle. The Spectre retrieved the silver cat skull from the altar and returned it to the Veteran. The Spectre, the Veteran and the Wizard decided to call it a day and headed for the local pub. The Tainted went towards the altar and inspected the mangled body of his former acquaintance. Suddenly, the bones reconnected and the flesh was knitted back together. The body of the mortal got back up and began to grow in size and gained demonic features. “She” was much bigger and scarier than the Tainted’s own demon form. Ms. Wolfen took out a bunch of hellish canine with a single swipe of her claws. From his earlier conversation with the Veteran, the Tainted had learnt that altars contain holy energy that can be used against demons, so he grabbed the altar and smashed the demon with it, dealing grievous damage. The demon retaliated, striking the Tainted really hard on the head, enough to cause some brain damage. Wondering why it took the Tainted so long to get back up, the Spectre went back into the basement. She managed to distract the demon, giving the Tainted an opportunity to attack. He grabbed a piece of the now broken altar, and shove it into the Ms. Wolfen’s neck. The demon’s body could no longer hold together in the material plane, and a portal opened underneath her, dragging her back to hell. As she was being drawn through the portal, she grabbed onto the Tainted’s ankle, attempting to bring him down with her. The Spectre tried to pull the Tainted up with telekinesis, but the demon’s grip was too strong. The Tainted ordered the demonic chihuahuas to bite just enough of his foot off so he could wiggle free of Ms. Wolfen’s grasp. Ms. Wolfen lost her grip on the Tainted and was returned back to hell.
The Spectre joined the Veteran and the Wizard at the pub. The Tainted decided to remain in his demon form so that his foot could grow back, and he stayed home playing FIFA on his Xbox.
We fast forwarded a few weeks. The Spectre was by the deathbed of her brother. The heart rate monitor flat-lined, and he passed away peacefully with a smile on his face, and the Spectre along with him. The Tainted had moved up the ladder, ordering his underlings to clear out old buildings without having to dirty his own hands. The Wizard had finally resurrected his wife, who had the body and experience of a twenty-something from the 1950s. The Veteran sat peacefully in his library, reading books and sipping his cup of tea.