Editing Old Man Henderson (section)

==Director's Cut Part 3==

''A Self Called 'Nowhere' 08/11/12(Sat)02:33 No.20271993

:''I got enough free time to do the story of Henderson's 'Hat Trick'.

:''While killing a god is cool and all, that happens a lot in Tabletop Games. Granted it was a first for a CoC inspired game, but I digress.

:''Henderson has another record that I find far more irritating, for obvious reasons: Henderson is the only PC I've ever seen to manage to kill the same player's characters four times in a single session.

:''Namely mine. The bastard.

:''I'm gonna type this up in chunks around what I'm already doing, so don't be surprised if this takes a while.

Technically I mistyped the end of the last thread: I REROLLED three times in one sitting, but I already had one character ready to go at the beginning.

When we first arrived for the game that day, I was determined to not get upset at a character death. It's just a game, all pretend.

I failed, eventually.

I don't even remember the name of my first character. The session began with the cultists using a mob front, planning to kill the son of a rival crime family. Incidentally, the same one Jim used to work for.

I was playing the role of the bodyguard, and I was quickly knocked out and thrown in the trunk of one car, while the kid was loaded into the back-seat of another.

Enter stage left: Henderson and Will. They see them wacky cultists up to no good, and they decide to nick the vehicle with the visible hostage. While Will hotwired it, Henderson punched a hole in the gas-tank of their second car, and lit it off. They then sped away after unknowingly leaving my character to burn screaming in the trunk of the second car.

Approximate elapsed time between the start of the session and first character death? Two minutes and thirty seconds.

I promptly rolled up a second character, and agreed with the GM that I should wait until a more appropriate time to join the scene than in the middle of a drive across town.

They then decide to pull into a local bar with the Don's kid to help him get off his problem.

My second character of the evening's name was Ronald. Ronald was a used car salesman coming off the tail-end of a bad divorce in which his wife gained all their worldly possessions, and then promptly killed herself and left it all to the new church she had found: The Disciples of the Yellow King.

At this point in time, he was playing darts. Unbeknownst to him, a cultist from that church just let loose a powerful entropy curse after the car that was stolen from them. A curse with a very specific target: The brake-lines of the car coming in for a hard stop just outside.

Ronald looked at the perfect game he was playing, and felt genuine joy for the first time in weeks. Then he was ripped in half by a BMW coming through the brick wall behind him. This was less than ten minutes after the first death of the evening.

Henderson gets out of the car, and the Bartender with the mob connections immediately puts a gun in his face.

"What the bloody hell do ya think you're doing?"

"Trying to escort a young man to safety. Damn cultists must've cut the brakes."

The bartender then recognizes the Don's son, and calls him over to see if he's alright. Danny, the boy, is confused but mostly unhurt. This saved Henderson's life, but the GM soundly refused to let me just take control of such a politically powerful character just to get back into the game quicker, so I started to roll up another: a cop, looking into a lead in a weird house across town.

A weird house connected to a cold case that his old friend Al asked about immediately before his mysterious death in the middle of a huge explosion.

A place the mob had just told Henderson and Will should have answers for some of the questions they had, as a favor for saving their son.

They get there after me, and open the door to creep inside. I've already investigated the upstairs, and found notes saying something about a lab in the basement. Henderson, in the meantime, had gone straight down on the logic of 'what the hell kind of evil cultist just fucks around in the living room when they have a creepy ass cellar to play with?'

He finds an old summoning circle down there, and decides to spit in its general direction, accidentally activating it as he walks out the far door, finding nothing of 'interest' in the room. Upon discovering that this other door leads outside, he circles back around into the house, and winds up in the study with Will.

Meanwhile, with my new lead pointing me at the basement, I run in, see the horrible thing taking shape, botch the FUCK out of my save against 'crawl into the fetal position and cry while losing 2d10 sanity'. Henderson meanwhile picks up a book off the shelf and flips it open to a random page.

"What the hell kinda gobblydegook is this anyway? How are you supposed to pronounce this: Al'whya al Cthulhu fhatagan? K'kili'far al is ar'arkas fal dep'wa?" He turns to Will, completely oblivious to the be-tentacled beast he just conjured into existence behind him, cocked eyebrow barely visible above the rim of his sunglasses. "What does that even MEAN? What's the point of wasting paper with that sort of nonsense?"

Will, having barely failed his SAN check, loses five points from his score and points behind him muttering something about a thing that 'should not be'. Henderson chuckles and says how he's not going to fall for that one again. Last time he did the tranny he was interrogating vis-a-vis his lawn gnomes had 'her' pimp beat the shit out of him and steal his wallet. So he leads Will to the kitchen, leaving the monster to its own devices.

In the kitchen, Henderson continues to be disappointed with the continuing lack of clues, while the professor is overjoyed to discover that the liquor cabinet was never emptied by the previous owners, and helps himself to a bottle.

Then the local cultists, getting a report of Henderson's location, proceed to kick in the door to come kill him.

Three of them are eaten by the thing Henderson summoned in the study, and while they're screaming the two of them take a peek at the next room, and Henderson smashes all the alcohol and lights it off while they run out the back door.

The abomination in the basement with me does nothing of importance, while I regain my wits and attempt to leave. I burst out the way I came, see the fire, and immediately have a SECOND breakdown caused by a pre-existing phobia of fire (randomly rolled for) and then die burning, screaming in pain and terror.

Much like the cultists and the monsters.

Meanwhile, Will is asking Henderson why his car only has the Creedence Clearwater Revival playing ever. It turns out that it's because the CD is jammed in there and the radio is broke. Henderson just never bothered to fix it because Creedence is awesome.

So they ride away happily listening to 'Around the Bend' while I fucking died for the third time in the last hour. At this point I was beginning to get a little pissy and break my promise to myself to not let the game get to me.

I roll up another character, determined to do SOMETHING of consequence in this session. I end up with a nasty street-fighting thug named Patrick.

Somebody in a yellow robe gave Pat a pile of money and a picture of Henderson, asking him to make sure he 'disappeared'. Now normally Pat would think twice about accepting such a shady deal, since he preferred to 'rough people up' since it couldn't get you 25 to life.

However, it was a LOT of money. And I was getting to be very bitter about the whole dying every fucking session thing. So Pat agreed to the job. I figured that this would end with me either killing Henderson or us getting into a scuffle and then Pat switching teams.

Oh how wrong I was.

Turns out, Henderson wasn't a particularly tough fellow to find, since there's only one crazy old fucker with a mohawk and Hawaiian shirt running around reeking of cheap whiskey and porcelain.

When Pat caught up with him, Henderson was taking a piss in an alleyway on the cardboard 'home' of a hobo that just tried to mug him, now dead. As he finishes up, Pat taps him on the shoulder, and he turns.

"You Henderson?"

"Indeed I am." And then Pat's right hook hits him in the face and smashes his aviator shades into a useless mess of metal and glass shards. At which point Henderson very calmly pulls it off his face and pulls out a spare pair of shades, puts them on and comments "Well that was kinda rude."

Then Pat caught him with a left.

Henderson then tosses the second useless pair of sunglasses aside, dons a third set and then says "Now son, I've only got one more pair on me and I've got considerably less patience than that. What the bloody all loving fuck hell are you doin?"

"I got good money from a man in yellow saying that you're a no good son o' bitch who needs to be put down."

At this, Henderson puts on a very surprised and concerned face. "A man in yellow you say... Son, I'm afraid that there's been a very big mistake here."

"... I've been lied to?"

"Nah, you're pretty spot on." Henderson replies, before shooting out both my knees with his concealed handgun, followed by a pair to the balls. "But no man gets between me and me wee men." He then walks out of the alleyway, leaving me to bleed to death, and everyone at the table kinda looks shocked at the fact that Henderson just blatantly executed a PC right there.

I will admit to flipping my shit a bit. While the GM went to consult his 'notes', I confronted him.

"Why the fuck did you just kill me?"

"What?"

"You just fucking shot me dead!"

"I shot a random guy who threatened my life and started trying to beat the shit out of me in the middle of a crime scene where I totally just murdered a hobo? Yes, yes I did. What possible reason could I have to NOT shoot you?"

"It's ME you cock! I've already died like three times TODAY."

"That's metagaming."

I went to make the call for takeout, knowing that I would've hit him if I stayed.

''A Self Called 'Nowhere' 08/12/12(Sun)01:16 No.20284013

:''Before anybody says anything, I know getting violently angry over a game is stupid, that's why I walked away before it got the better of me.
:''Nobody in the group (except maybe the GM) was a 'that guy', but we all had a tendency or two that could have put us into that category.
:''WHM has a thing about the 'rules' and about characters that I'm pretty sure are signs of his OCD coming to the fore. It's a really mild case, so you wouldn't even know he had it if you didn't notice little things: like the fact that he never has the volume set for an 'odd' number.
:''If there are rules in place for a game, he expects them to be followed as written. If someone modifies the rules for some reason, that's fine as long as he knows in advance there's a change. The dice land as the dice land, and he tends to be very chill on the whole as long as you don't manage to piss him off.
:''Me, I like being a team player. I honestly hate playing a multiplayer game if it means going against my friends. I think this quirk may have eventually rubbed off on WHM as far as Vidya are concerned, but I digress.
:''So one of my sore spots is basically infighting. If two people start to have a fight, IC or OOC it ruins the fun for me. I don't give a shit if the random kobolds we're beating up are having a bad day. I give no shits about some random guy in a server I keep sniping. but that guy I'm shooting isn't Dave, my friend who let me move in after I had a bad breakup. That Kobold isn't Mike's new PC.
:''Personally, I think this is where the line between That Guy and the rest of us is drawn: We're all geeks and nerds. Given what gets posted on /tg/ and 4chan at large on a daily basis I think it's fair to say that we're all assholes to some degree as well.
:''We all have in us some quality or two that might be detestable. The difference between us and 'That Guy' is that we're TRYING to at least be 'acceptable' if not good.
:''But now I've gotten off topic a bit.
:''I opted to go for a quick drive to get the pizza since it was a bit cheaper, and we were taking a break anyway. WHM decides to go with me, defeating the purpose of me trying to get away and clear my head.
:''On the way was probably the time where we actually became friends. You see, up until this point we'd just been kinda hanging out in the same group, playing games and shit. But on this day... I don't know what prompted it, but I got angry, and I kinda yelled at him. He took it in stride, came back with a reasoned argument and let the matter drop.
:''On the way back we bickered over stupid shit, but I think out of all the crazy shit I've seen and done with him: near death experiences, epic games, lan parties, late nights having to go help a friend, that time he talked down a jumper... this was the one that stuck with me the most. Partly because I'd never before seen anybody just let their guard down and be honest like that.
:''I won't share what we talked about, except this: He actually bought St Anger.

''Waffle House Millionaire 08/12/12(Sun)01:31 No.20284195

:''For fucks sake, are you ever going to let me live that down?

''A Self Called 'Nowhere' 08/12/12(Sun)01:32 No.20284203

:''That CD was fucking garbage and you know it.

''Waffle House Millionaire 08/12/12(Sun)01:34 No.20284228

:''I didn't at the time!
:''Fuck, Metallica's pretty consistently awesome, how the hell was I supposed to know THAT was the album they were going to fuck up?
:''It was two fucking years before we even met, and I already apologized for it.

''A Self Called 'Nowhere' 08/12/12(Sun)01:36 No.20284252

:''Make all the fucking excuses you want man, the truth's out there now.
:''Now all the internets know you done goofed.

BACK TO THE STORY AT HAND-

We get back to the table, and the GM has got some new stuff lined up. I decide to opt out of re-rolling and rejoining even though we were only like halfway through the session because I wasn't ready to have another character killed off just yet.

Will and Henderson bounce around trying to find a lead to work with for the whole 'revenge' plot they were kinda working on. They ended up meeting up with Jimmy to try and talk his girlfriend out of being a cultist.

Which ended up fantastic.

Jimmy basically agrees to go to one of the meetings if she promised to seriously have a chat with him afterwards about the whole 'joining a cult' thing. She agreed, basically telling him that he'd totally change his mind once he saw what it was all about.

Jimmy was a smart boy, and he called Henderson's cellphone for backup in case things went south.

So, pretty soon, Henderson and Will are sitting outside the church on the curb.

Waiting.

Henderson breaks the silence. "Man, I fucking hate stakeouts."

"They aren't that bad."

"Last time I was on a stakeout, two of my friends got killed and your bar burnt down."

"... does this shit happen on a regular basis with you?"

"Not causing it. Well, not usually. I remember I got arrested about a year ago for scaring a cook shitless."

"What? Why?"

"I told the motherfucker that I was allergic to olives. I get olives on my everything. I coulda fucking died if I didn't check it out."

There's a silence.

Then "Fuck it, there's a Best Buy and a video rental place around the corner. I vote we get one of those portable DVD things and a movie."

"Fuck yes. Shit, we're just here in case Jimmy calls us, let's get baked and watch something funny."

So they went and got a copy of Grandma's Boy, got high, and laughed their asses off.

In public, outside a church they're supposed to be watching for cultists that already know what Henderson looks like.

Surprisingly, nothing comes of this until Jimmy calls them from inside the church. Apparently they just called up some kinda demon, and told it to eat his girlfriend and him as a sacrifice to their god.

His girlfriend, shocked at the sudden change in tone from the companionable welcoming air that was there before, suddenly realizes that cults aren't as awesome as she thought.

And that's when Henderson and Will run inside, guns drawn. Jimmy, wise man he is, grabs his girlfriend and ducks, while full auto-shotgun spray kills every motherfucker in the room.

They go outside and into the car, Henderson starts it up while Will keeps the arson streak alive and sets the building on fire. As they pull away, Kary (Jimmy's girlfriend) goes all 'my hero' on them, and soon the two freaked teenagers are 'getting busy' in the back seat. Will looks shocked, while Henderson lights the bong up and starts hot-boxing while cranking up the stereo.

Which is when they passed a cop going in the opposite direction.

To this day, I giggle to myself thinking about what that cop must've been thinking when he saw that.

There's Henderson 'driving' the car, taking a hit off a bong the size of god, next to him is a dude who looks like a slightly less fat Kevin Smith looking bored out the window, there's so much smoke inside that you'd think the car's on fire, and there's a couple of people obviously fucking in the back seat.

I'd like to think that he was thinking about his family, or going to watch a hockey game at the bar with his friends. Or maybe finally asking the cute waitress out.

I just... Some part of me desperately wants to know why it took him two blocks to process what he just saw.

Henderson just keeps going, not a care in the world.

Cop turns around and starts to follow him.

Henderson keeps going.

Cop turns on his lights.

Henderson keeps going.

"Sir, pull over the vehicle." The cops says into his loudspeaker.

Henderson pulls into a drive-through.

The cops walks up halfway through an order for tacos and politely asks what the fuck he's doing. Henderson responds with a 'hold on a sec' gesture and finishes his order. Then he asks if the cop wants anything.

The cop asks him to please step out of the car, sir. Offers of a chalupa are denied.

Henderson gets out of the car, a plume of smoke accompanying his exit, Jimmy and Kary are kinda blushing and avoiding eye-contact, mostly having recuperated.

Will, having seen three cosmic horrors in the last day, killed a bunch of people, and still coping with the loss of his bar... apparently has no fucks to give. He just sits there, high off his ass listening to 'Fortunate Son'.

The cop interrogates him as to why he didn't pull over, and Henderson responds that was because he was color-blind, and that he didn't realize there was a cop behind him.

The cop asks him why he smelled like weed, and Henderson replied that it was because he just smoked a huge fucking bowl, but it's cool because he has one of those medical licenses.

When asked about the kids in the backseat, he stated confusion, and asked what kids, before looking back and seeing Jimmy.

"Hey Jimmy, when'd you get here?"

"You... you came to pick us up."

"No shit?" He turned to the cop. "Tell you what, memories the first thing to go, followed right by the memory. So how can I help you officer?"

After replaying the conversation a few more times, the cop made Will drive and they left relatively unmolested with their tacos.