Ghostbusters Actual Play: Ghost Toasties Part I


Based on the West End Games Adventure by Scott Haring et al.

Cast of Characters:
  • Ethan Sharp, smooth-talking wheel-man
  • Mike Slade, brawny brainiac
Wednesday, September 11, 1985. Brooklyn, New York. 7 AM.

The Brooklyn Ghostbusters had just moved into their headquarters in Kings Plaza mall. They had had quite the moving celebration, with the extended staff joining them - though come to think of it, they weren't there for the heavy lifting...  Slade and Sharp had retired to their bunk room after a healthy diet of takeout Chinese food and questionable recreational beverage. True by a strict reading of the law their lease might look unkindly on their sleeping in the mall. But once you have unlicensed particle accelerators as part of your kit a little lease violation was a small thing.

Slade woke first and noticing the phone off the hook he replaced it and immediately received a call from Fred Lunt of the Yum-Mee Food Palace on Ocean Avenue - it turned out they had a bit of a ghost problem. Despite the lack of coffee, Sharp limped into their Ectomobile and they made off for the supermarket.

They arrived to a large crowd and a small Lunt limping out of the supermarket, all covered in white himself. It was fortunate he wasn't mistaken for a ghost.




As they walked in they found the place had been turned into some horrid form of abstract art, with bizarre food patterns all over the ground. They found a flier which was certainly a clue given their GM pointed it out to them...



The sugary foods seemed to be the most heavily ransacked, especially the cereal section, where a vacuum-cleaner ghost with four hands, no body, and a vacuum tube going into nowhere was breaking open boxes and sucking in their contents. Below the floating apparition was an unconscious cashier. They pulled her to safety and awoke the young Daphne (assuming her nametag told the truth). She told how the ghost came out of nowhere and began ransacking everything. And someone kept chanting "hey ghost!" over and over. She also had a horrible valley girl accent.

They did some scouting around but eventually the ghost got nervous and grabbed Sharp, who got thrown into a variety of sticky and slimy foods and wrapped in aluminum foil. They used a combination of proton packs and healthy vegetables to immobilize the ghost and pull it into their ghost trap.

As Sharp got cleaned up back at headquarters, they got a call from Louis Tully who indicated that supermarkets across the country were being hit by the cereal vacuuming ghosts and President Reagan himself had contacted Louis (who gave the president free tax advice). Louis promised big bucks to the franchise that got to the bottom of this. Ron was counting on them.

A little research revealed:

  • Flakey Jake Barley Flakes (now with more sugar) seemed to be the most heavily desired cereal of the ghosts
  • "Hey ghost" could very well refer to an ancient Incan god-demon Hagost which was an agriculture deity, specifically of sugarcane
  • As it turned out, Westerfoods, Inc. had been sponsoring a treasure hunt for a real and authentic ancient Incan gemstone, found within one box of Flakey Jake Barley Flakes.

A few phone calls to Westerfoods led to massive frustration, but in the process they learned that young Jason Greer, a third grader at Fritz Mondale Elementary School in Yonkers had found the Incan gemstone and there was going to be an end of the day assembly to celebrate the finding - with Jerome Westerbrook III to award Jason the award of "World's Greatest Treasure Hunter" and to provide some educational content, telling how he found the gem. The assembly was due to start at 2 PM. (They caught the end of the news story when Sharp picked up a new tv at Crazy Eddie's across the street.)

They traveled to the assembly where Westerbrook spoke in the gymnasium on a small stage, with an oddly glassy-eyed Jason and four executives, constantly amazed by odd sights such as their chairs, their ties, etc. Westerbrook explained how he had led an archaeological expedition to Peru (the executives, clearly possessed by something, chanted "Peroooooooo, our destiny is in Perooooo"). He was the sole survivor of a freak mudslide. It revealed a hidden temple where he found the crystal (the executives chimed in "Hagost's Crystal! Hagost unknowable, Hagost all-powerful! Our destiny lies with Hagost in Peru! Peroooooo!"  

PKE meters were going off the scale when Jason approached the microphone and shouted "Bring servants to the eternal Hagost!" as he and the executives floated up to a blue light near the ceiling and vanished, leading to cries of "my baby!" and "my executives!" 

Strange hands emerged from the floor and began tossing kids through the blue portal. While West End Games planned on the portal closing and the characters unable to reach it, forcing a trip to Peru, they did not anticipate our players who brought alpine gear. They sent a grappling hook to the ductwok near the ceiling and climbed up, Sharp needing some help from Slade to make it through.

They went poof through the portal and found themselves in a trippy cartoon land with a leprechaun greeting them...

To be continued...

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