"One Night" Amanda - Found Family 1

As they walked across campus, Amanda asked Ms. Fern to wait for a moment as she ran in to Dr. Armitage's office to ask him a clarifying question on her paper. To her surprise, she found him frantically rifling through his papers, looking thoroughly perturbed. He told her that Professor Warren Rice had gone missing, and that something strangely familiar was happening on campus.

Amanda offered to help, for which Dr. Armitage thanked her profusely, then borrowed a flashlight and returned to Ms. Fern, who had met up with her intern Peter. As soon as she heard what had happened, Ms. Fern volunteered them both to help out, and all three headed to the Humanities Building, where Amanda knew Professor Rice had class in the evening.

Upon their arrival, the trio found the power out, and as they split up to look through the various floors Amanda found herself experiencing strange hallucinations and visions of bizarre things. The entire building turned out to be deserted, which concerned Carolyn to the point that she left Amanda and took Peter to go inform the college administration about the outage. But the few staff she found there had already become mutated into strange, apathetic puppets, following pointless behavioral loops. As soon as she confirmed that this was actually supernatural and not normal educational bureaucracy, Carolyn rushed back across campus looking for Amanda.

Amanda herself continued looking for Professor Rice, visiting the Orne Library. As she entered, she found herself experiencing a strange pull on the back of her mind, fraying her thoughts and messing with her coordination. Moments later, magical barriers sprung up around the exits of the library, trapping her inside.

Using a countercharm she found in the restricted section, Amanda broke out of the library and hurried back to her dorm, wanting to hole up until the bizarre happenings quieted down. Unfortunately for her, this was not to be; she was blocked from returning home by the sudden materialization of what she could only describe as an alien monster. Amanda screwed her courage to the sticking place and did battle with the alien, hand-to-tentacle, to the shock and amazement of the few students nearby not too busy studying to notice.

But the forces of evil don't play fair, and a twisted cultist tried to sneak up on Amanda as she fought the alien. Carolyn, however, had found her girl. She steeled herself against the absurdity of what she was about to do and then cut the man in half with a magic lightsaber before Amanda even realized he was there.

Reunited, the trio dodged the alien and barricaded themselves inside the dorm. Carolyn revealed to Amanda that something awful was rampaging in the Science Building and would be there soon. Amanda pleaded with Jazz, the janitor, to help them find Professor Rice and get the students out, but he dismissed her "prank" as poor taste. Feeling her physical strength slipping, Amanda began to cry as her self-confidence fled and visions of failure mounted.

Carolyn reassured her, forcing her to take a moment to breathe and relax, and telling her to put herself first and stay safe. Her (admittedly limited) magical knowledge told her that Amanda needed to get out of the range of the spell, and at her encouragement Amanda found her courage again and ran across campus, drawing off the alien attacking the dorms, and hearing the chaos in the Science Building before she managed to escape both the area of effect of the spell and the interest of the alien pursuer by getting off campus.

Amanda safe and gone, Carolyn was determined to evacuate the rest of the kids in the Dormitories. She swore and threatened Jazz until, cowed equally by her fury and the alien he watched pursue Amanda away from the building, he unlocked the dorms so she and Peter could bang on everybody's doors. Collecting the sleepy and confused college students, she shepherded them (with Peter and Jazz's help) out and away from campus, leaving the strange magics behind.

1XP spent for Curse of the Rougarou (coming next!)