Session 38: The Fringe Division

The session began with the players waking inside a dingy meeting room, seemingly in better repair than the rest of the facility they'd seen. Snack foods and black coffee sat on the table before them. Upon awakening, they felt as if they had disappeared and then reappeared in a moment, despite the time between their previous disappearances. The players remained calm; however, some team members were panicked. Jimbob, Sharos, and Gerrek were absent. RM calmly tried the door, but the handle didn't work. Fredrick, decidedly less calm, threw a chair into the room-length window, shattering it. This led to the entire party being sucked into an absolute void. Just as they were about to fly through, the window reversed its shattering, reforming and pushing the players back inside. The room was left in disarray, with hot coffee spilling onto Jason.   Kenny tried to feel the energy of the void beyond the glass but, for the first time, felt disconnected from the universe's energy. Curious, he shattered the glass again, immediately being sucked into the void, quickly followed by the rest of the group. They all reawoke exactly where they started. Kenny shattered the glass once more in a futile attempt at escape or as a petty act of defiance. Once again, they found themselves sitting in the same chairs with the room restored. Finally, RM and Fredrick restrained Kenny. As Quinten prepared to continue his actions, Allie stopped him.   Jason, seeking another escape route, inspected an air duct but saw a glowing red eye peer back at him. The vent was blasted off its hinges, and Dr. Simmons descended from the ceiling upside down, declaring, "Your doom is inevitable." A ceiling tile directly above RM then fell on her head as Simmons reached down and pulled her into the ceiling. A sticky note floated down with a message from Jimbob, stating that everything was fine and he was handling it. Noticing the snacks on the table had changed with each reset, the players decided to eat while they waited. Quinten, acting slightly feral, was chastised by Allie.   Jason and Kenny devised a new escape plan. Jason launched Kenny into the ceiling fist-first, but at that moment, a ceiling tile opened again. Jimbob, RM, and Simmons narrowly avoided an uppercut from the flying monk. Jimbob tried to calm down Kenny and the rest, declaring that Simmons was a friend. Simmons reassured Kenny, tenderly closing his eyes and patting his head before extending his elongated arm into the wormhole for the players to climb up. Before leaving, Quinten hastily stuffed snack foods into his trench coat. Fredrick, still skeptical, leaped into the upper room and attacked Simmons. Jason grappled him, and Kenny helped calm him down. Eventually, Fredrick relented, and Jimbob explained the situation.   Jimbob formally introduced Simmons, who shook Jason's hand with his unusually long fingers. Simmons helped Jimbob explain the rift, the anomalies, and the growing destabilization. Upon learning about the Astral Rift, Jason theorized about alternate dimensions. Simmons mentioned that the rift didn't lead to one but said there was a man in the north wing Jason might want to meet. Simmons also explained the true history of the Institute—that it existed solely to support the Fringe Division in containing the rift and the anomalies. RM, Allie, and Quinten were shaken by this revelation, but Simmons insisted that, as Institute members, this mission was of utmost importance. Quinten insisted they were former members, with RM agreeing.   Simmons informed them that due to the rift's instability, the facility's spatial fabric was too unstable for them to escape reliably. Therefore, they had to help him contain rogue anomalies. The players agreed and were sent to the north wing through a sweep of Simmons's lab coat to contain a goo monster.   In the north wing, Kenny looked into the nearest cell but was tackled by Jimbob—not before glimpsing a sleeping man on a bed and a dog. Quinten wanted to meet the dog despite its aggression, but Jason and Jimbob refocused the team on the mission. Mentally concentrating on their objective, they were guided by Simmons's imprint. As they traversed the facility, Kenny walked casually while his teammates moved stealthily.   Kenny spotted a break room with a pristine double chocolate cake under a glass case on the counter. He immediately ate it despite his teammates' protests. Minutes later, he became supernaturally ill. During the typhoon of pestilence, the players waited for ten minutes outside the bathroom before RM convinced them to move on while she took care of Kenny. They agreed and continued, but soon after, Jason was drawn to a cell where they found a man named Joseph suspended in a stasis field. They freed him and conversed. Realizing he was from the pre-war era, they helped him cope with the revelations of the past 250 years. He told them about his anomalous ability: being unwillingly transported to alternate dimensions of wonder and horror. Sensing his deep depression caused by this condition, the players agreed to put him back in stasis. However, a part malfunctioned, and he panicked, knowing his next jump could happen soon and dreading it.   Meanwhile, Kenny awoke from his sickness, miraculously clean, lying in an office atop a pile of Time magazines. RM knocked hesitantly on the door, asking if he was awake, to which he groaned. RM said she could never look at him the same after what she witnessed. Looking around, Kenny found a secure briefcase with a pre-war Boston Metro train ticket inside. When Kenny caught up, the players had done their best to comfort Joseph. They contacted Simmons, who told them a replacement part was available in a storage room near their objective. They told Joseph to stay put and set off to secure the mysterious goo monster and find the replacement part.   Later, Quinten's curiosity got the better of him when he heard meowing. He opened a cell door, seeing a cat mysteriously missing its back half yet apparently unbothered. They read a name tag inscribed with "Josie." Quinten fed her and brought her along.   As they proceeded, Kenny felt compelled to continue writing a sheet of music he saw in a cell. The players held him back until the compulsion faded. Moving on, they found a coffin covered in chains, shaking so violently that the chains were breaking. Jimbob and Jason rushed in, mending the chains. Inside the coffin, something bashed and raged. Quinten took a shot, but the entity inside snatched his gun, crushing it and nearly his arm. Across the hall, they met an olive-skinned man of few words who thanked them for securing the coffin. Through conversation, they inferred that the man was the biblical Cain and that the entity inside the coffin was Abel.   Continuing, the players found a small anomaly containment room. Inside a locker, they found a pill dubbed "panacea," the last in the bottle. Kenny pocketed it. Soon, they sensed they had reached their objective. Kenny and Jason peeked around a corner while Quinten backed off. Jason used his light to illuminate the hallway. He and Kenny felt intense burning behind their eyes and were blinded. RM acted quickly, rinsing their eyes with all the water they had. When that ran out, Quinten found more. Thinking fast as something crept closer, Jimbob tried and failed to kill it with a fireball. He ran across the hall, closing a door while averting his eyes, then teleported down the hall but accidentally looked at the creature before closing another door behind it.   Separated, Jimbob's eyes burned intensely. Unable to find much water, he became completely blinded. Using his psychic abilities to detect nearby creatures, he navigated. Kenny, Jason, RM, and Quinten moved to reunite with him. Jason used his sensors to track Jimbob's movements in the next hall, while Jimbob sensed their thoughts. Jimbob found the storage room and secured the part. Eventually, they found doors across from each other. They hesitantly entered opposite ends of a containment cell, finding a massive suspended cube. They were cautious, but Jimbob sensed something awaken inside the cube. They watched as it rotted through the cube and reached into the containment cell.   The players fled as the creature pursued them, phasing through walls and spreading rot. Kenny tried to stand and fight but had his arm grabbed and snapped, being pulled into the rot. The players asked Simmons what to do. Realizing it was "The Old Man," he told them they could only run. They eventually made it back to Joseph's containment cell, but he was gone, having phased into another dimension, which saddened them. They finally reached the incursion point, and Simmons brought them back to safety.   Meanwhile, Kenny found himself in a mysterious, dark, decayed pocket dimension full of mazes and traps. Though his Achilles tendon was nicked by a swinging axe, he managed to escape, fairly certain the Old Man was toying with him. Lost in a dark part of the facility, he eventually came upon a cell where he met a towering Sasquatch. Sharing a meal, they gained mutual respect, and the Sasquatch escorted him to safety.   Back with the main group, the players planned with Simmons to recontain the Old Man. He told them that The Old Man was initially defeated by someone called "The Slayer" However, there was only one solution for recontainment now: a human had to be sacrificed as live bait to recontain him, saving thousands from his wrath. Just then, Joseph phased back into the room. Knowing he was depressed, the players asked if he was willing to sacrifice himself, a proposition he vehemently refused.   Kenny, having returned after patching himself up, formulated a plan. He caught RM's eye, who apparently also knew what needed to be done. Quinten, Jason, and Jimbob tried to think of alternatives, perhaps finding less innocent humans in the facility. Simmons doubted this was possible. Undeterred, Quinten insisted they search for one, and Jimbob agreed, not opposed to sacrificing Joseph for the greater good but willing to help Quinten try to save him. They left Jason to watch Joseph, as Quinten didn't trust Kenny's willingness to sacrifice him. RM went with the search party to distract them so Kenny could make his move.   Simmons sent them to the safely contained southern wing to search. Meanwhile, Kenny wore down Jason's resolve, convincing him of what needed to be done. The search party eventually came across a sociopathic, murderous anomalous man who could be human enough to serve as the sacrifice. Jimbob convinced him, through his psionics, to come with them.   Back in the north wing, Jason relented. Kenny lured Joseph back to his stasis field but instead of putting him back in, he shot him and dragged him to the femur breaker. Jason followed, unwilling to stop the plan but not participating. Kenny strapped Joseph in, despite his desperate pleas for mercy, and activated the machine. Throughout the facility, Joseph's cries could be heard, alerting Quinten and the search party to the betrayal. After an hour, the Old Man didn't show—he had already escaped.