Buffy Update part 1

Played a decent bit lately and advanced the Buffy storyline somewhat. The brief recap (can’t type forever like I used to thanks to time constraints) will follow. Note: This will require a basic working knowledge of the Hellboy universe to understand it all. If you've seen the movie that should be enough.

Aaron has decided to bring the Hellboy universe (or at least elements and characters from it) into our little version of the Buffyverse. Turns out Bastion and my watcher both have ties to the old dude from the comic.

The Hellboy characters and universe won’t have a LOT to do with our game (more east-cost versus west-coast), but if (okay when) we do a Hellboy game, he thought it might be fun to have the option of adding in elements of both games.


Sascha was pretty busted up at the beginning from the previous night’s vampire fight. A colleague of her watcher showed up to discuss the vampire god she may or may not have released. It turns out the good news is that it isn’t out yet. Bad news is that a harbinger is on his way into town and will gather a vampire army (gather….create…..all the same) and use it to find the last thing that is needed to bring the god into this world. The blood of an angel.

Apparently the old guy had already sent a fallen angel into the area many years ago, when he had been part of a religious order. Sascha thought that sounded eerily familiar to Bastion’s story….so she raced out of there and to where he holed up and asked him about the old man and his story. He confirmed that he was indeed an angel, but he had no intention of going back to talk with the old guy, and seemed to have a serious beef with him in general, saying they had “gone down different paths” some time in the 40s. Needless to say this kind of took Sascha aback, as she had always assumed he was HER age. In the end Liz showed up and talked to him and the two girls convinced Bastion to come back. When Sascha asked who she was, Bastion’s only reply was “You remind me a lot of her.”

She realized Bastion had no intention of letting her help in finding and destroying the vampire god's harbinger. As she was technically a frickin’ VAMPIRE SLAYER, she got pushy about it and he mentioned he would be willing to let her in on things if she was able to get back into fighting shape, which unfortunately meant a trip to talk to the resident medical superscientist.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have Cameron’s number or address, and knew only one person who did. In order to get to him, she had to talk to her ex-“friend” Opal.

Sascha and Opal had it out, and they drug everything out. From thier competition and jealousy with each other over Anzo's attentions to Opal's being jealous of Sascha being a Slayer and hating that Sascha didn't want to be chosen to Opal's walking out of a mission to Sascha's attempts to hedge them out of the monster hunting business in order to keep them safe. It all got covered in one huge screaming match....and then they actually started talking about it. In the end, despite Anzo's warnings about the dangers of anyone Sascha chooses to involve herself with, she and Opal made up and the Scoobies were back on the team. And they headed towards Cameron's house to get Sascha healed up.

Cameron had his own problems. He had a huge machine built in his parents' basement out of household parts that was capable of bringing Ember back to life, but he was becoming very frustrated by lack of a power source. It would take nothing less than a nuclear reation to power this sucker, and he had no access to the materials his new and improved brain told him he would need. Anzo's psycho sister Snow had made him an offer to bring Ember's contract to him and to bring her back to life if he signed over to work for her (she was in direct competition with Anzo in their father's company) and had illustrated all the perks of working for her to him. He had the crumpled paper sitting on his desk and was thinking over whether to sign it when Snow showed up to pick up the contract, signed or not.

Cam was about to put pen to paper when Opal and Sascha showed up at the front door. After a quick conversation Opal convinced Cam to hold off on signing the contract until we could at least check out our own options and verify if the contract had any magical additions to it. After a few snide words between Opal, Sascha and Snow, Snow agreed to come back the next day at noon.

Getting power turned out to not be a problem. Laz's mom was more than capable of magically powering the machine. Trouble was she said she wouldn't help unless we could prove Ember died by magical means. If she was just shot, the price for bringing her back would be too high. She also gave Sascha a Harry-Potter-esque bone knitting potion to get her up and running (after which Sascha took her leave to deal with the harbinger stuff).

So the scoobies assembled and we all drove down to Frisco, where a disheveled, homeless Ember was murdered. Laz was able to do a rewind spell and see that she was definitely not shot. She was grabbed by two people in robes and stabbed by a third, who had a ring with a blue bull on it. What this meant we're not sure (and we're not sure if her cause of death is actually a supernatural one), but they dragged her body off, which Laz was pretty sure meant her body was what was binding her to this world. Her "contract" with Anzo wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Her body was what we'd need to bring her back to life.

With a vague plan to confront Snow on this (eithe she's trying to screw us over or Anzo is trying to screw HER over) and very little time to get back and talk to her, they headed back to Pleasant Hills, desperate for options.