GURPS: Nightshift

1 pm: GURPS Nightshift

This was the point where my nose started running. I think what I had was allergies to whatever the hotel and convention staff used for cleaning and air freshening. This was a pity as the GM had a lovely prop. a trocar, used to pierce organs and drain fluid, which I didn't touch, as I wasn't sure whether I had allergies or a cold.

The Amazing Institute

• GM: Diane Donaldson
• Mark: Diane
• Sean Eustis (?): Melody
• Me: Pluty
• Brock: Mike
• Brian: Lisa

The GM explained that she worked at her family's funeral home, and that the funeral home of the scenario had the same blueprints. The workers were loosely based on the ones at the real home. And, she had each of us fill out a form stating what we figured might kill us if we died in one year or five or ten or twenty. She then used this information to describe corpses awaiting burial. I'd thought this might actually prove very significant, but it turns out it was just a cheerily morbid way of coming up with corpse details on the fly.

The plot involved corpses getting up and moving. They weren't sentient, just animated. And there was a man posing as the doctor come to get a brain whose owner had agreed to donate upon her death. She'd had Alzheimer's, and made the agreement before her faculties had begun to degrade too heinously. But, it turned out, although the PCs never learned this, that there was some kind of weird life form in her brain. This had to do with something from GURPS Cabal and Black Ops, I gather.

My notes mention breeder bugs, but I think that's what was animating the corpses. Fortunately, they proved vulnerable to flame. Unfortunately, the bad guy escaped. The GM said that this was the first time that had happened. The PCs never did understand exactly what had happened that Halloween night.

Game quotes, not necessarily with context:

PC concocting story for police: I thought we locked up the doors -- those kids shouldn't have gotten in here.

Player (to that PC's player): Well played, Sir, well played!

PC (about dead bodies coming to life): This reflects badly on us.

PC (about a now messy corpse): It's okay -- it's Arlington Alley. Funeral viewing already happened.

Explanation of that last: Dead veterans sometimes need to wait for a space in the appropriate burial ground. So, they are stored until then, in the part of the funeral home referred to as "Arlington Alley". The funeral happens early, with a fake burial, as I understand it, the idea being to provide closure. So, the corpse isn't viewed between then and the actual burial. After all, the funeral's over.

PC: He's already dead -- it's an offence to my livelihood!

PC: Fire. Are we paid up on our insurance?

Pluty (brandishing fire at the walking corpses): Who's scared now, you dead bastards?