The Hollow Men - Episode 1

Welcome to the Hollow Men - a Hunter: the Reckoning dramatised solo actual play.

In this episode, we meet our protagonist, Courtney Webster, whose meeting at a bar with a contact doesn't go exactly as planned.

All music and soud effects from Epidemic Sound.

Thanks to the following for lending their wonderful voice talent to this episode: Karen Pope, Heather Haneman, Troy Coady and Havliah Coady.

Contact us at:

EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog

HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).

Chapters

• 0:05 Premise And Content Warning
• 1:00 The Depot
• 2:47 Meeting The Whistleblower
• 7:30 Arrival of the gunman
• 8:43 The Imbuing
• 10:36 Combat Rules Explained
• 12:49 First Shots And Ed Falls
• 16:00 Courtney’s Edges In Play
• 19:20 Reinforcements Turn The Tide
• 22:30 Aftermath And New Allies
• 27:20 Police Arrival And Doubt
• 29:47 Outro And How To Support

Transcript

Iain: 0:05

Welcome to the Hollow Men, a dramatized actual play of Hunter the Reckoning. What you're about to hear is the story of ordinary people who discover that monsters are real yet choose to bravely stand against the darkness. This is a solo game played using dice and the roles of Hunter the Reckoning first edition. Every role is real. Every decision matters. Nothing is scripted. This show contains mature themes including violence, profanity, body horror, paranoia, moral ambiguity, and psychological distress. Listener discretion is advised. The story unfolds as a dice dictate. Sometimes the heroes triumph, sometimes they fail, sometimes they die. The only certainty is that once you've seen the truth, they're forever changed. It's the eve of the millennium. Monsters walk amongst us wearing human faces. Anyone could be compromised. This is the Hollow Men. Calvary Bluffs, Missouri, Downtown, May 22nd, 1999, 824 pm. As bars went, the depot wasn't much to speak of. The steel door facing onto Madison Street occasionally rattled as a particularly strong gust of wind made its presence felt. The whole Midwest had been hit by devastating storms earlier in the month, and this had upset weather patterns all across the state. A pool table sat idle in the rear corner of the room, underneath the flickering Miller light sign that flashed fitfully in what seemed like a half-hearted attempt at creating ambience. A rack of cues stood neatly against a wall that had been yellowed by decades of smoking, and a single piece of blue chalk hung out forlornly on the table's green felt surface. The bar itself stretched all the way along the left-hand wall, twenty feet of scarred and pitied oak, backed by a mirror edged with railroad crossing signs. About two blocks north of here was the abandoned Missouri Pacific Railroad Station, and the depot occupied a converted freight office that used to service it. Booths lined the other wall, their aged red vinyl cushions seemingly held together by erratic lines of black electrical tape that fought valiantly to keep their stuffing from spilling out. The man sitting across from Courtney Webster in the booth shakily took another drag from his cigarette whilst glancing towards the door again for what seemed like the hundredth time. His eyes darted to the dictophone that sat between them, and the fingers of his left hand drummed nervously on the tabletop. Courtney pointed at the recorder, its black plastic case shining under the harsh overhead lights.

Courtney: 3:12

Do you mind not doing that?

Iain: 3:14

The man turned his head to the side and exhaled a puff of bluish smoke. Doing what?

Courtney: 3:19

The drumming. Makes it hard for the mic to pick up what you're saying. It's bad enough with all the background noises it is.

Iain: 3:25

Courtney gestured to the crowd of men huddled together beneath the depot's only television set. The cardinals were losing to the Dodgers, and what had been a gentle murmur of conversation had become a noisy bladder of recriminations and castigation. The man nodded. Yeah, sorry. He took another drag on the cigarette, exhaled, and smiled.

Courtney: 3:49

It's just it feels like I'm being watched, you know.

Iain: 3:52

She nodded and smiled in what she hoped was a sympathetic manner.

Courtney: 3:56

I understand. You've listened to my show, right? So you believe me when I say I've talked to a lot of whistleblowers before. I know it's not easy. Those guys?

Iain: 4:08

She pointed at the rest of the bar's occupants.

Courtney: 4:11

They're so absorbed with the game, and they're never going to remember you even being in here.

Iain: 4:16

Packing his hand, she smiled again.

Courtney: 4:19

So Edwin Dead. Let's start from the top. You're an employee. A cornerstone concrete, correct?

Iain: 4:28

Ed nodded, then drew in a cigarette and then frowned. You said no name. If it came out that I'd talk to you, accordingly, shook her hand and modernly.

Courtney: 4:39

Don't worry about that. This is just for us to make our conversation easier. I'll reset afterwards. Besides it would be weird if I called you Mr. X or something.

Iain: 4:48

For the first time since arriving at the bar, Ed smiled.

Courtney: 4:52

Yeah, that's a good point.

Iain: 4:54

Sorry, I'm just His voice trailed off.

Courtney: 4:57

Nervous? Like I said, I get it.

Iain: 5:02

Courtney looked at Ed before continuing. He was in his mid-thirties, but he looked closer to 50, his complexion marred by years of hard manual labour. His hair, a curly mess that was normally concealed by the cornerstone concrete baseball cap that lay on the table next to him, had gone prematurely grey, and he gave the impression of being a man who had a permanent five o'clock shadow, regardless of the time of day. He wore a faded cardinal sweater, its vibrant red now a muted pink. The tips of his fingers were stained yellow from years of smoking, and the hacking cough that occasionally interrupted his speech suggested it wasn't just the work that was aging him. However, despite his worn down and beaten-up appearance, Ed clearly possessed a quiet courage. The message to the radio station had simply said there was someone at Cornerstone that wanted to meet to discuss irregularities in the working conditions there. What really made this stick for Courtney, a woman who'd received a thousand hot tips in her time from supposed whistleblowers, was that Ed hadn't asked for anything. Ordinarily, the first thing out of these guys' mouths after passing on the request to meet was a query about how much they were going to be paid. Not Ed though, he simply wanted to talk. What was more, and here's where Courtney believed Ed was more courageous than his appearance suggested. In the small town of Calvary Bluffs, Cornerstone Concrete employed a sizeable percentage of the town's 55,000 inhabitants, and its supply chain contributed to the livelihoods of even more. For Ed to go up against this, an organisation that enjoyed nothing but positive support from all parts of the local community, suggested that whatever was causing him concern was big. Sure, there'd been concerns over working conditions at Cornerstones in the past, but in all cases these had never gone legal and they'd certainly never merited a media investigation. The plant and its owners were simply too important to the local community. Courtney's instincts told her that if Ed was willing to challenge this, there was something worth exploring here.

Courtney: 7:13

Okay, Ed, let's start again. An employee at Cornerstone Concrete. What is it you want to talk about?

Iain: 7:21

Ed exhaled again and stared at the smoke thoughtfully. He turned back to Courtney and was about to speak before his eyes darted to the door and widened. He instinctively hunched down, facing the wall, and tried to make himself as unobtrusive as possible. Courtney, never wanted to panic, glanced casually in the direction Ed had been looking. A tall man had entered the bar and was walking in the other direction. He was smartly dressed, black slacks with a white button-down shirt with a navy blue tie, and also wore a jacket with a cornerstone concrete logo stitched onto the right breast. She leant forward in her seat.

Courtney: 8:02

Who's that?

Iain: 8:03

Ed glanced up from where he'd been pretending to study the menu. He's management. Before Courtney could answer, the general hubbub of background noise rose in a swell of panic. She barely had time to register the barmaid screaming, He's got a gun, before she saw another figure lurched drunkenly from the crowd by the television. He was dressed in a blue workman's overalls, also with the cornerstone logos stitched across the front. More alarmingly, he was carrying a handgun, a glossy black automatic held limply in his right hand. As she took this in, her stomach seemed to somersault and time seemed to stand still. The television cut to static before the words open your eyes stood out in stark white against a black background. The same words echoed in her head. Open your eyes. And then she saw it. The gunman's gait was all wrong. He dragged his left leg behind him as he moved, and as he slowly raised his gun arm, she could see it shake, as if the very act was one of monumental difficulty. His skin was pale, almost translucent, and she could smell the damp and stench of mildew that came from his clothes. His eyes, though, they were the worst of all. Pools of pure, fathomless darkness stared lifelessly from his head. As if sensing her scrutiny, the thing, for she could no longer think of it as a man anymore, slowly turned its head in her direction, its movements jerky and disjointed, like she was watching an old stop-motion animation. Its mouth fell open and dirty water cascaded out down the front of its chin and overalls. Then, with a rush that was dizzying, reality snapped back. The TV had reset to show the game, but everyone around her seemed to be screaming and panicking. The barmaid had ducked beneath the counter, dragging the payphone with her. Courtney hoped she was calling 911. Ed was just staring slack jawed at the figure in front of her. A figure that as she looked at it seemed to just radiate a sense of wrongness. She got to her feet. She had to do something. In terms of the storyteller system, combat is broken down into three phases: initiative determination, actions, and resolutions. In short, every character rolls for initiative, then they can take an action, and then the results of the actions take place. Now, ordinarily in the tabletop game, the characters with the lowest initiative declare their actions first, allowing the faster characters who get to act first to respond. However, given that I'm the only one playing this game, I'm not going to bother with this as it will just slow the narration down. Initiative is determined by rolling a d10 and adding the total of a character's wits and dexterity. In addition, any character may make a defensive action as long as they have an action left and can either make a successful willpower roll or spend a point on willpower. The storyteller system does include roles for multiple actions, but I'm not going to be using them unless a character specifically has a role that allows them to take multiple actions, it'll just get too complicated otherwise. Finally, because Courtney has been imbued, I'm ruling that she automatically has second sight up without the need to spend a point of conviction. Therefore, she is immune to panic and mind, body, and emotion control. Anyway, all of that out of the way, I'm going to rule that for this first round of combat that only our interloper with gun and courtney can act. Everyone else is far too shocked and surprised to do anything. So let's get to combat. Entering combat. Courtney. The creature. 10. Even though Courtney is determined to do something, the imbuing is shaking her, and she's extremely slow on her feet. The creature raises its gun and fires. Who's it going to be shooting at? Let's say that on a 1-4 it's Courtney because she's actively making moves towards a creature. It's a management guy on a 5-7. Some other bystander gets shot on an 8-9 and it goes for Ed on a 10. Rolling. A 10! Looks like it's targeting Ed because he's surprised he can't take any defensive actions. Now ordinarily for a ranged attack, I would roll dexterity in firearms, requiring a six or above to succeed, but the creature has no skill with this weapon, so it just rolls its dexterity of two. That's a six and a seven. Yikes, poor Ed's been hit. Now, since this is our first combat, we should probably talk about health and hunter. Broadly speaking, unless I rule otherwise, every character and hunter has seven health levels. As characters take damage, they begin to suffer penalties to their dice pulls. The damage our character suffers can take one of two forms, bashing or lethal. Bashing is generally blunt force trauma, being punched, kicked, or hit with a baseball bat, all count as bashing damage. Lethal is anything, well more lethal, being stabbed, shot, or set in fire all counts as lethal damage. Crucially, normal humans can't soak bashing damage, which is to say they get to roll to reduce the amount of damage they take from it. Lethal damage, on the other hand, can't be soaked, it's a big deal. If a character fills up their damage track with bashing damage, further levels of bashing damage are converted to lethal. If all health levels are filled with lethal damage, a character dies. Now because a gun does lethal damage, Ed can't soak it, so the creature just gets to roll for the damage. In this case, the gun has a damage rating of 5, plus the creature gets to roll an additional die because it gets an extra success on its 2-hit roll. That's 3 6's, a 7 and 2 10s. Each despite the creature's jerky pained movements, it fires and hits Ed in the neck, spinning him around and spraying blood all over the booth. It's Courtney's turn to act. Now that she's been imbued, it's important to know what edgies she has access to and whether these will help in this situation. Edgies are the powers that the messengers bestow upon hunters, small supernatural capabilities designed to give them an edge when encountering the supernatural. Those of you who listened to the whole of the setup episode, my congratulations on your patience, will know that Courtney has one point in each of the virtues of vision, mercy, and zeal, meaning that she gets a single level 1 edge from each category. Now I've rolled for these off mic, and this has given Courtney access to the following 4C, a level 1 vision edge that allows her some insight into the actions of others and probabilities. This is honestly very fitting for everything we've determined about Courtney so far. She likes to know how people tick. She also has discern, a level 1 judgment edge from the zeal virtue path. This gives her a hyper awareness to supernatural creatures and gives greater insight into what they may actually be rather than just the vague sense of wrongness that Second Side provides. She finally has Hide, a level 1 innocence edge from the Mercy Virtue Path. This allows Courtney the ability to vanish from the sight of supernatural beings. It has no effect on normal people or hunters. Well, this seems like a good time to use 4C. Rather than Courtney consciously activating it, the imbuing is going to flood her mind with knowledge. The edge kicks in, giving her limited insight into what's coming. Mechanically, 4C is reflexive, so it doesn't cost her her action. However, it can only be used once per episode. She will roll intelligence and vision, it's a difficulty of seven, and each success lets her re-roll a future action. Essentially, she sees two possible outcomes and chooses the better one. The catch is she can only apply it once to any given action, and if both rolls are bad, she's stuck with the less terrible option. Anyway, those mechanics aside, let's get rolling. What have we got? A 9, 2, 8, a 6 and a 1, so that's two successes. Then with her head swimming with visions, Courtney is going to try and drive off this creature. She's going to grab a nearby bar stool and swing at the monster who just shot Purette. For this, she's going to roll her dexterity and melee skill. A six and a four, that's a hit. She slams a stool into the side of the creature and the wood squirches deeply on the impact, causing her stomach to turn. I'm treating this bar stool as a club, it does strength plus two damage. Because Courtney didn't roll any extra successes on her attack roll, that means she's rolling six dice. Two fives, two threes, and two fours. That's unlucky. Despite Courtney's natural strength, that's not to do any damage. However, because she's activated 4C, she chooses to use a reroll. That's better. A 2, a 4, 2 5s, and 2 10s, 2 successes. One more thing. Normally, characters with 4 or more and an attribute or ability could take a specialization, an area which allows tens to explode, letting you roll an additional dice to try and get more successes. Time for a house roll. I'm skipping the specific specializations and just applying this to anyone with four plus and any trait. Why? Basically, it allows for simpler bookkeeping and it also serves the random nature of solo play better. All of which is to say, because Courtney is a strength of four, I get to re-roll those two tens again. A five and a seven, that's another success, so three points of damage in total. The creature now is going to roll its stamina of three to try and resist the damage. A three, a four, and a two, no successes. The monster staggers back from the impact, something that's not quite blood, not quite water, leaking from its overalls. Curiously, despite the damage, the creature doesn't appear to be impaired. It's not suffering the same wound penalties that a normal human would suffer. On to round two. Initiative. Courtney. A 9. The monster. A five. The cornerstone management guy. A fourteen. Well, it looks like the management guy is going first. And he turns and runs from the bar. He's seen someone gun down in front of him and he is terrified. Courtney acts next, still conscious of this threat the thing poses, she swings at it once again. A six and a one. The one cancels out a single success, so that's a miss. Worried for her life, she uses her remaining reroll. It's probably a good time now to mention a stat that all characters have. It's called Willpower, and while it can sometimes be rolled like any other attribute, it also comes with a pool of temporary points. Characters can spend these points to do various things, but at the moment all you need to know is that a point of willpower can be spent to guarantee a single success in a roll. Given that she's fighting for a life, that's exactly what Courtney is going to do. That's better, a seven and a six along with the willpower point spent, that's three successes, meaning that she hits a creature and also gets two extra dice on her damage roll. Rolling four damage. But in the storyteller system, you can't botch damage or soak rolls. That means the monster simply takes three points of bashing damage. Courtney's stool impacts into the side of its neck with enough force to cripple a grown man, but instead, head lying at an odd angle, it remains on its feet. The creatures turn and it flails wildly at Courtney. The creature swings at Courtney but overbalances and staggers into the bar. A rule that the creature can't axe next round as it tries to right itself. Round three, initiative. Now you think I'd not bother with initiative as Courtney is the only one capable of acting, the creature being out for a round and then Mavvy's win guy having fled. However, two new individuals have pushed their way through the crowd. A man and a woman, so I'll roll for them too. Courtney. A twelve, the woman. As Courtney readies herself, a man and a woman push their way through the crowd. The man raises his fists and he swings at the stricken creature. As he does so, Courtney sees him wince slightly and say something to the monster, but she can't make it out over the noise. Now I rolled these characters up off mic, but this man is of the martyr creed and he's using the level 1 martyrdom edge demand. This allows the martyr to hurt themselves in order to save another's life. In mechanical terms, this lets him take a health level of bashing damage and then allows the imbued to add his mercy rating, in this guy's case 3, to one strength-related roll. There's a catch though, for a combat roll, they have to take the level of damage before rolling to hit. Anyway, with that out of the way, let's roll to attack. Rolling the 10 again. An eight, so five successes, rolling damage. Wow, that's five successes in total rolling the monster's stamina. Is no good, so all the damage goes through. This fills its damage track up completely with bashing damage, and it now spills over to four levels of lethal damage. Black, watery blood leaks from the creature's mouth as it leers drunkenly at the man. It's the woman's turn. Having rolled her up off Mike, she follows the vengeance virtue and is of the Avenger Creed. She's grabbed a pull cue, which she's going to swing at the monster. However, she's using the level 1 Vengeance Edge Cleave, which empowers her weapon to do plus two damage and it also makes that damage lethal. Furthermore, she's risking 5 points of conviction in this role. What does that mean? Well, all imbued can do this, and it allows her to add the points risked as dice to her melee role to hit, but if she fails, she loses the conviction invested, and if she botches the role, she loses all her conviction. If she's successful though, she gains her points of conviction back, plus an extra one. She also cannot use a point of willpower if she is risking conviction. Anyway, all of that out of the way, let's roll to attack. That's three successes now rolling her damage. Wow, five successes. The pool cue almost seems to hum as it cuts through the air, and for a second, Courtney's dimly aware of something that might be fire surrounding it as it strikes a creature. Now, unlike normal humans, despite the damage being lethal, the creature can attempt to soak it. Ouch, the creature's appalling luck continues and it manages a grand total of zero successes for the soak roll. As the empowered pull cue strikes the monster's side, there's a wet gurgling sound, and the creature crumples to the floor in a heap, ending this combat. Courtney's heart was racing as she ran her free hand through her hair. It was sodden with sweat. She let the broken bar stool fall from her hand and looked over the man and woman who had come to her assistance. He was tall and athletic. His build reminded her of a runner, with dark skin and short hair that was cropped in an almost militaristic fashion. His face was young, probably no more than 25, and the powder blue Kansas City Royals top that he wore made him seem even younger. The woman would have stood no more than 5'2 with the kind of effortlessly slim frame that in a more normal setting would have made Courtney feel envious. Her face was striking, high cheekbones, beastung lips, and large blue eyes that would have seemed almost comical if they weren't so pretty. A black baseball bat covered her head, and a sandy blonde ponytail jutted out of the back, swinging in time with the woman's nervous energy. Courtney caught her breath and was about to express her thanks when the woman turned to the man.

Mysterious Woman: 25:34

We have to go now.

Iain: 25:35

Rather than turn to leave, the man turned and inclined his head towards Courtney. What about her?

Mysterious Woman: 25:43

What about her?

Iain: 25:45

For one awful moment, Courtney thought of crime movies where a witness had seen too much and had to be removed. But the next words out of the man's mouth set her nerves at ease. She's clearly one of us. The woman made a non-committal noise before fishing around in her pocket to produce a notepad and pen. As she started drawing, the man kept glancing nervously at the door. The woman nodded as she drew.

Mysterious Woman: 26:11

Okay, lady, if you're what he thinks you are.

Iain: 26:14

She jabbed the pen at the pad a couple of times as if she were very aggressively dotting her eyes before turning it to face Courtney.

Mysterious Woman: 26:21

Tell me what you see here.

Iain: 26:23

The page was blank, save for a single simple symbol. It looked like a plus sign or a cross with a thick dot in the center from one each of the points. She furrowed her brow and was about to shake her head when that voice that she'd heard earlier spoke again. Open your eyes. She handed the pad back to the woman.

Courtney: 26:44

Ally. Ally or friends, I think.

Iain: 26:47

The woman smiled, her cold demeanor evaporating almost completely. Nodded and placed a hand on Courtney's shoulder before giving it a little squeeze.

Mysterious Woman: 26:57

Things are going to get very weird very quickly for you. We can't hang around.

Iain: 27:01

She nodded at the other man who seemed to be a bundle of twitching energy.

Mysterious Woman: 27:05

But when the cops arrive, just act scared and confused. Tell them that when the gun went off, you tried to get that man away from your friend and leave it at that.

Iain: 27:12

She smiled gently.

Mysterious Woman: 27:14

If you can cry on demand, that always helps too. Tends to stop the questioning, you know. Most men tend to feel uncomfortable around hysterical crying females. They don't like it when we're emotional.

Iain: 27:24

She put air quotes around the last word, winked, and taking the pad from Courtney, she scribbled her number on it before tearing off the sheet and handing it to her.

Mysterious Woman: 27:34

Once the dust settles, call me. I'll answer a fable, if not, leave a message. I will get back in touch. Believe me, I wish I had someone to help me when this first happened to me.

Iain: 27:44

She turned to the other man and punched him in the shoulder.

Mysterious Woman: 27:47

Come on, let's bounce.

Iain: 27:48

The man offered Courtney a grim little smile before the pair of them left. Head still swimming with everything that just happened, Courtney pocketed the scrap of paper as she had a car leaving and the squeal of tires. Almost as an afterthought, she glanced down at the body of the monster. Only he wasn't a monster anymore, he looked just like a normal man. None of that wrongness hung around him, and his appearance was completely ordinary. She could feel her heart beating faster and her legs begin to shake. Had they just murdered someone? Kneeling down next to him, she was shocked to see that he looked almost peaceful. It was then that she heard the sirens, and after what seemed like an age, two police officers battled into the room with guns drawn. Courtney felt an overwhelming sense of relief, which, combined with the adrenaline, caused her body to shake even harder. One of the officers noticed this and rushed to her side whilst his companion stood in the doorway and started hollering into his radio for backup. The cop attending her, his expression one of genuine concern, knelt beside Courtney and asked her if she was okay. Open your eyes. As she stared back into his honest, worried face, Courtney felt her stomach flip and an icy cold run up her spine. The police officer was wrong. Despite herself, she started to cry. Drop us a line at roll.save.pod at gmail.com or find us on Instagram and Facebook by searching for Roll2Save. If you want to support the show, you can Do so by leaving us 5 stars on your podcast app of choice, nor by sharing our episode announcements on social media. Every review and share helps us reach more listeners and it validates our fragile locos and makes us want to make more episodes. If you're new to Roll2Safe, welcome. We have a back catalogue filled with other actual plays like this one, plus history episodes exploring classic RPGs, roundtable discussions, author interviews, and product reviews. If you're a fan of Gaming's Golden Age, you'll find something there for you. Until next time, stay vigilant and beware of the Hollow Men.