Game Night Tales from around the gaming table

 

This was my first ever character for the CthulhuTech RPG.

 

After our second gaming session we sat around after the GM left and myself and the 2 other players chatted for over 3 hours about our PCs and how we all knew each other, how we became Tagers and how we became a Pack.

 

This is my part of that story.

 

 

 

I didn't know it at the time, but my first meeting with Dan, had been planned and well scripted.  The Eldritch Society wanted me -- well maybe at first it was that they wanted my parents' company -- but maybe a bit of background first.

 

Raven Armaments -- a small manufacturer of all things military -- had carved out a niche by supplying the NEG with the covert ops gear to fight the War.  We also had a policy to bring in outside inventions, in fact many of our greatest inventions were started at our annual competition -- it was something that my mother had implemented when they first bought the failing company.  They had made it prosperous in only a few short years and once I had finished business school they worked me through the company in various positions to learn it and find out where best my skills would work -- I was good at schmoozing, presentation and upselling -- so in the end I settled into Marketing.

 

Last year, both of my parents were killed in a "surprise Migou attack", leaving me the sole heir of the corporate reins.  I knew that something was funny about the attack, as it was too easily done and looked to me more akin to a surgical strike, and not of Migou design.  Let's just say that I had doubts about the attack and leave it at that.

 

Draka aka "Drake" -- the son of Emy and Torga, owners of Raven Armaments -- I had never liked my body, I was considered physically weak for a Nazzadi but I made up for that with a great deal of tenacity and force of personality, which was why I did so well in marketing.  But that physical weakness had left its mark on me -- I always feared that it would hamper me in some way -- so much so that it became what the doctors called Asthenophobia, the fear of weakness.  It got worse after my parents died.  In fact it leaked out into all aspects of my professional and private life.

 

Enter Dan, who was introduced to me by Nova -- a trusted family friend who was very worried about me -- as the best in his field of Security and Investigation.  It was barely a month after the funeral and I was well on my way to being a complete wreck.  Amidst rumours of assassination and conspiracies I felt extremely weak and exposed, but Dan had a plan.  In the end he would show me the truth of it all and how the Shadow War had spilled over into my life and taken my beloved parents.  It would lead me to take the Rite of Initiation and join the Eldritch Society's fight to save the world.

 

Up until that point I had never really bothered with the running of the business, my folks did that.  But now it was up to me and to make things worse, many of the people that I had to deal with were in league with or working for the Chrysalis Corporation, the very people who had killed my parents.

 

That was what finally made up my mind to take the Rite of Sacred Union; it was something that Dan and the rest of his team had been hinting at for a while.  It would give me the power to do more and the endurance to keep fighting.  I would join Dan and become a Tager.  But first I would have to prove that I was willing to die for the cause.  I would need to be Blooded, and that would mean killing a Dhohanoid in single combat.  I told Dan that I was ready to take the final step.

 

Later that night, the entire Pack was gathered outside of the arcology.  They had found a Dhohanoid for me to challenge.  I, in the latest armour and weapons that my company had, met the creature in the back alley of the slums surrounding us.  When I confronted it, it still looked like a man, but since we were alone, or so it thought it burst into it's true form, a Dua-Sanaras, it was a mass of tentacles topped with giant unblinking saucer eyes and a serrated beak mouth, hideous, rubbery smooth and hairless.  The shear grotesqueness of it caught my breath and froze my limbs, paralysed with fear I quaked and gibbered as it rose up to rip me to shreds.  But then the image of my parents reared in my mind and a red haze fell over my eyes.  I'm not sure what happened next, but I came back to my senses when Dan slapped me in the face and pulled me off the bloody corpse of that thing.

 

I had passed my first real test and to celebrate the Pack took me to a seedy little bar and got me shit faced.  No longer was I a pup, I was on my way to becoming a full fledged Tager.  That night was also the first night that I saw the Pack in their Tager forms, they were almost as horrific as the Dhohanoid, but for some reason I could still sense that they were still within, still human, unlike the Dua-Sanaras.

 

As I was the head of a corporation, I would not have the luxury of the normal 6 months of training for the Rite of Sacred Union -- it would raise questions and the Society wanted to keep our connection a secret.  Instead I was given the 3 month intensive training, a fact I hid by going on extended bereavement, stating my need to mourn my parents.

 

During my training I learned many things, first and foremost was Control of one's Self.  I had always been mentally tough, but even that didn't prepare me for what the Society would put me through.  But that was simple compared to the gruelling physical contortions that my poor weak ass would be dragged through.  I have to admit that I thought of quitting many times during my 3 months, but every time I did I would see the bloody dead faces of my folks and that would get me through -- barely.

 

One of the easiest things for me was the book learning.  The Society’s Lorekeeper was very helpful and I can say that it was one of the more pleasant tasks I had.  It also opened my eyes to what was really going on;  the secret occult history of the world, the history of the Children of Chaos, the Chrysalis Corporation, and the Eldritch Society.  It gave me the tools to know my enemies, their tactics and weaknesses.  I was also allowed to read the Lorekeeper journals on the victories and failures of other packs -- which would hopefully help me to win my fights and not make the same mistakes.

 

Let us just say that it wasn't fun and by the end of it my phobia was a broken and sad thing that could no longer paralyse me.  Then came the actual Rite itself -- 3 days of hell.  Worse than all the months of training condensed.  My symbiont, a Nightmare, came to me and in that timeless moment that would either make me a Tager or the symbiont's dinner.  I can't recall what fully happened at that moment, but I do know that it saw my fear of weakness and was enraged by it and I almost became its meal as it showed me what weakness truly was, but my training kicked in at the last moment and I was able to overcome the fear and satisfy it.

 

Now as a fully fledged Tager, Dan and I became our own Pack.  It would be too difficult to have the rest of the others just suddenly appear and start working for Raven Arms.  The Society would find others for us when another Tager was brought forth, if we couldn't find our own recruits.

 

Months would pass before we recruited Jack, but that's for his journal to tell.