Session Report – DRYH – Session 1

Session Report

Don’t Rest Your Head

I ran my first for real session of DRYH or Dont’ Rest Your Head last night. It’s a strong narrative, light mechanics system set in a dark surreal land of horror and scary things that really do live under the bed, things that are all pointy bits and razor edges.

In attendance were +Laura Dollins (my lovely wife), +Scott Stone and +David Warren friends who I’ve shared gaming tables with for 20+ years. Two other players +Temple Smith and +L. Scott Rubin were unable to make it but hopefully next time.

Laura and Scott had already created their characters and we were able to go through Dave’s pretty quickly. The mechanics are easily explained and eventually learned. I’ve read a lot of game systems and the dice mechanic is unique in my experience.

Laura turns out to be a young woman named Sophia, a serious social misfit and introvert who’s secret hatred of people turns out to fuel her Madness Talent although it got little use last night. Her hatred of others is contagious and she can make them so hate themselves that they… well let’s just say you wouldn’t want to get on the bad side of this woman.

Scott is a mature man, a salesman by the name of Jimmy who can sell anything to anyone, even himself at times as he covers up his horrible self image with flashy material goods. The power to Forget his Madness talent, when pushed he can reach into the past and make a person forget to have locked a door and by pushing to the limit his Madness talent could literally do something like make gravity forget about him for a short instant while falling 40 stories to the ground.

Dave is a older fellow with a lot of suppressed rage. A german butcher by the name of Klaus from a long line of butchers it’s not surprising that in the end, his Madness talent is The Knife. It’s always there, in whatever form it needs to be and it knows even before he does when he’s going to need it. Push him too far and the Knife can sever the tie between your mind and body and leave you in a rather bad way.

Each character had their opening scene, based on their character questions and their What Just Happened answers.

These are the results of those opening encounters. I’ll follow up with the rest of the fallout later on this week as well as the player’s reactions.

Assuming the recording didn’t jack up, I’ll get the podcast cleaned up this week hopefully and posted for anyone that wants to listen.

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The fated evening started quietly enough with a authoritative knocking at Jimmy’s door. Peering through the peephole he sees two policeman. Being all to familiar with debt collectors and eviction notices, Jimmy’s not too keen on opening the door.

“Who is it?” Jimmy calls.

“The police. We need to ask you a few questions sir. Please open the door.” The stilted way the one policeman was talking had images of James T. Kirk and a T-101 running through Jimmy’s mind.

“Jimmy doesn’t need anything officers.” he replies. His odd way of talking about hismsef in third person creeping in.

The the wierd way the the police have of talking and the high sheen on their skin was definitely freaking Jimmy out a bit.

He calls 911 and requests assistance but the police outside seem to have some urgency to talk with Jimmy and start to break the door down.

Jimmy attempts to block the door with furniture but in the end decides to flee, grabbing his new jacket ($399 custom fitted and brand new that day bought on the last of 10 credit cards that was still working) he flees through the window of his 8th floor condo. (“A decision I think I’m about to regret, after stating he lived on the 8th floor earlier”)

The two policemen give chase but they’re slow and Jimmy flees down the snow covered escape, breaking windows and arousing an outcry as he passes them. He ducks back in on the 5th floor and then takes the stairs down.

“Hi John, Mary, just passing through.” he says with a bright salesman’s smile as he crosses in front of the couple watching the latest reality television show. “He’s never going to win you know.”

Outside there’s a police car parked at the curb, an odd one, one more fit to be seen on the streets of London. And even odder, there’s a large, slowly turn wind up key sticking up out of the trunk which brings back childhood memories.

“That’s something you don’t see every day.” Jimmy says, bouncing from one foot to another, filled with nervous energy.

The few other cars (“No I’m currently in between cars.” Much like he’s in-between jobs…) on the street are snow bound and besides Jimmy isn’t a car thief. But that police car running at the curb, headlights on attracts his attention and as heavy footsteps each from inside the building he dives in and decides to head out. The two police come back and Jimmy, in an unusual fit of rage, throws the car in reverse and speeds back the way he’d just come, deftly flipping the wheel at the last minute to spin the car and catch both cops with the side of the car. Metal crushed and clanged and the cops went flying heavily through the air to burst through the front of a building.

With air leaking through the damage doors of his acquired cop car, Jimmy proceeds to head toward the river with the idea of ditching the car and catching a water taxi.

—–

Sophia on her way home spots something really odd in an alleyway, a man who appeared to be shoving his arm through another man’s chest. “Serves the bastard right I’m sure.” she mutters, hating him instantly for attracting her attention. Head down she trudges home in the heavy snow from her minimum wage job at Walmart. Oblivious to the figure that’s now ghosting along the dark streets of this run down section of town behind her, one that minutes earlier was doing… something to another man in an alley.

Her crappy apartment building, never warm enough to drive the chill of Boston’s December chill is waiting, empty and silent. Even with her employee discount TV, much less cable is out of her budget so after a quick raman noodle dinner she heads to her bedroom to try once again to make a futile effort to sleep while listening tot he radio. Her inability to sleep is perhaps what allowed her to hear the window in the living room roll up or perhaps it was the cold draft that whistled through the rooms.

Regardless the heavy maple baseball bat was a comfort as she moved to the door. She reached through the opening and flipped the lightswitch. Rising up from where he’d just crawled through her window is a man. Her second floor window although it didn’t occur to her to question that was a man in a dark floor length overcoat. His face was oddly hard to focus on, as if her eyes couldn’t… or wouldn’t… focus on it. His right arm is stained a deep crimson almost to the elbow.

“Oh that’s fucking it!” she swears and steps forward and brings the bat around in a blow that had every bit of force of her sinewy muscles in it. The deep cracking thud as it hits the man in the side of his head echoes through the apartment. His head snaps to side and his vertebrae crackle. He folds like a wet dishcloth and lands on the floor.

She looks for her phone, realizes it’s in the bedroom and heads to go get it. Hating that her night is going to screwed up dealing with this crap.

As her hand picks it up from night table, her bedroom door shuts. She turns and the man from the living room is standing there and takes two swift strides and grabs her by the shoulders.

Something inside her flowers and one handed she hammers his hands away and then brings it back and down on top of his head. The wooden thud is if anything louder than before and he staggers and falls.

She flees the apartment and into the cold air outside. Not really dressed for the outside now, she pushes through the piled snow to find a working street light three blocks away. Calling 911, she waits for someone to show up, hating the cold, the bastard who drove her out of her apartment and every son of bitch that conspired to have standing there shivering in the snow, bathed in the sickly yellow of the arc light above her head.

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“Godamn bitch, I should throw her in the locker and set this place on fire.” Klaus muttered as he drove his cleaver through the side of beef and hard enough to embed it a solid inch in the old butcher block table top. Another 16 hour day, one in a long series of them to try and make a better life for the two of them and then she up and runs off that creepy bastard and his gods be damned expensive cars and townhouse.

The little silver bell over the door rang out in the shop. The same bell his great grandfather had brought over from the old country and his butcher shop there.

“Closing up in 5 minutes friend.”

“No hurry Klaus, this won’t take a moment.”

Klaus recognized the voice immediately although he’d only heard in the background after talking his wife. He moved around behind his counter before turning, his right hand closing on the walnut hilt of the .357 magnum he kept by the cash register. He’d acquired it through a friend of friend after getting robbed twice and ironcially had never had a need for it afterwards.

Jack smiled at him in passing, his glance moving around the shop taking inventory, appraising it.

Something broke inside Klaus, the predatory way this son of a bitch was looking around was the straw. The straw that broke the dam holding his rage back. He pulled the gun up and centered the barrel directly over the man’s heart. “What do you want?”

The man smiled, seemed unperturbed in the slightest by the sight of the huge silver pistol. He carefully reached into his suit and pulled out some folded papers. “I just need you to sign these Klaus. Won’t take a minute of your time.”

“What are those?” Klaus said through clenched teeth.

“A bill of sale. For the shop. You see I need money and the money your wife brought wasn’t enough. Ergo I need your shop.”

Thoughts raced through his head, red thoughts, red broken glass and metal fragment thoughts. He nodded, “Fine, let’s go to my desk and I’ll look at them. It’s through there.”

Jack sighed in exasperation, “Fine, whatever.” He opened the indicated door and found himself staring at a meat cooler, heavy iron hooks suspended from the ceiling.

Klaus said, “The desk, back corner.”
Jack advanced into the cooler, “Odd place to keep a desk Klaus.”

Klaus followed him in, closing the heavy insulated door behind him.

Jack looked around then said in a musing voice, “Those look like they’d hold a lot. Your wife, she dresses out at what? 130lbs or so?”

Klaus barely heard the words, his concentration on his right index finger, feeling as if he was an outside observer as the finger continued it’s slow pressure and it came as no surprise at all when the revolver bucked like a kicking mule in his hand.

The heavy slug punched straight through Jack’s spine, expanded and then exploded out from the center of his chest to spray heart and lung tissue all over an side of beef. Jack toppled forward and his chin fell onto one of the hanging hooks and his body dangled there as blood ran out of his chest in a quick torrent of crimson.

Klaus looked at the body, then the pistol and then around. He stepped outside, no one appeared to have heard anything. He flpped the closed sign and locked the front door. A last glance out and the streets were still empty.

Swiftly, working on auto pilot from long practice he went into the cooler, strapping on his tool belt that held the various tools his trade. In the meat locker on the prep table he began to work. The meat was swiftly boned and then processed through the industrial grinder, the end product making a fine sausage like grind. It was as he was reaching for his spices that some level of sanity returned and he stopped.

Using waxed cardboard boxes and butcher paper he boxed Jack up and then moved him out to his car.

Heading to the river he drove slowly and carefully, the driving patters of a sedate middle aged man and so ingrained he couldn’t have hurried if he’d wanted to.

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