NF3 Supplement 25 Jul:Layout 1
T
7/26/2011
1:47 PM
Page 1
Driving by Night: Them
by Kenneth Hite
he enormous glowing cross was going to be a problem. Franz Orlok had
tried just soaring above it, but he just couldn’t do it: he sheared off every time. Some
smartass had probably put black light tubes in with the neon of the JESUS SAVES; it
was probably the UV that was getting to him. Probably.
But if he was going to get inside that roadhouse, he had to get past that cross. Sir John
Travail expected him to get results—to find out what the Westview Resistance Army was
doing sending two of its best hunters driving a truck way out into flyover country. Flyover
country, Orlok snorted. If only. He could fly over it, but not at 80 miles per hour, which was
what that truck was making. He’d lost it for good at the Mississippi—all that running water
nearly choked him just thinking about it even now. Getting across involved figuring out when
neap tide was in a world with no sun—which almost took more time than the crossing did.
By the time he got to the Arkansas side, the truck was probably two states away from him
and speeding fast. So Orlok needed to figure out where it was going to be, or at least figure
out some way to bring it where he wanted it to be.
It stood to reason, though, that the truck had passed through this roadhouse, or that news
of it had. The roadhouse lit up I–40 like Nightfall never happened: its parking lot was full of
big rigs and pickups, and Orlok could hear honky-tonk music pouring out of it on the breeze.
He could even smell Buffalo wings … and rare, bloody steak. Not close enough … but if he
could get past that cross, he could smell something more to his taste, and possibly pick up that
truck’s scent to boot.
O
rlok tore the brake pedal out of the bottom of the cab and bent the clutch pedal
over. The rig sped along in third, and Orlok took a little more time to sight the
hood ornament on the cross before he wrapped the tire iron around the steering
wheel to lock it in place. The trucker’s body fit right under the dash, mashed up against the
gas, pushing it down and vaulting the semi over the first curbs. Orlok felt a little better
looking out the polarized windshield at the cross—take that, UV rays!—but as it got closer
and closer, he felt his eyes tearing with blood and his throat closing. Finally, he dived out
the window and flew away from it, the truck hurtling across the lot and through the parked
cars and … yes! Orlok felt the pressure on his back vanish at the same time he heard the
crash and crackling bang of the impact. The shadows in front of him slanted crazily as the
cross, slammed out of its bed by 80,000 pounds of 18-wheeler, tilted and then smashed into
another row of cars, exploding in a wave of sparks and busted neon.
Orlok wasn’t there for the inevitable fireball: he didn’t care for fire, and the more active
and aggressive locals would run out front to see what had happened. The rear windows of the
roadhouse were silvered, of course, but vampire strength was more than enough to hurl a
cement block through one at fastball speed. Orlok flew through right after it, and tore the
throats out of three guys playing pool. Again vampire speed and reflexes, honed by plenty
of “negotiations” with werewolf packs; five billiard balls crushed skulls and sternums of the
five likely local heroes in the bar; the inevitable shotgun went off with a crash, and Orlok was
there to grab it out of its wielder’s shaking hands.
The gunman went down howling, his carotid artery spurting red. Orlok lifted
off for the high ceiling, carrying a likely looking waitress with him. Young, smelled great.
Probably Miss Soybeans 2011 or Homecoming Queen or 4H Vice-President. Someone the
folks here would think twice about shooting through. Sure enough, the few drawn guns
wavered and dropped. Every eye was on Orlok, the whole bar silent except for a few moans
and whimpers, and Toby Keith on the jukebox.
Franz hefted the shotgun and threw it like a javelin. Another explosion of sparks, and
Toby Keith shut up, too. Orlok tried to put a little of Travail’s arrogance into his voice.
“Now that I have your attention, folks … I want to find out everything you know about a
certain truck out of Atlanta. And two so-called hunters named Kestrel Two and Tango Ten.
I’ve got all night … but unless you start talking, you people don’t.”
“Any wolf in my pack only dies from one of two things:
silver, or riding a Japanese hog.”
—ascribed to “Harley Doberman” by the survivor of the Little Rock massacre
What’s New?
This sheet, for one. This
sheet brings you up to
Nightfall rules v.1.2.
The Setup rules have
changed.
Empty archives cease
to exist.
New Setup Rules
When preparing to draft, shuffle all the draft cards
together. First deal cards into the center of the table
equal to 8 minus the number of players (e.g., deal 3
cards to the center in a 5-player game). These cards
are placed face up and form the commons.
Deal 4 draft cards face down to each player (5 if
you’re using more than one set). Place the rest of the
draft cards back in their section of the box.
Archives
Archives are stacks of order cards that are not owned by
any player. You can acquire these cards during the claim
phase of your turn. Archives are always kept face up and
visible to all players. There are two types of archives.
The eight archives in the center of the table are called
the commons and are available to all players. You also
have two archives in front of you, called your private
archives. Only you can claim cards from these archives.
When an archive is emptied of cards, it ceases to exist for all game purposes.
Feed, a new mechanic,
has been added. Note
that you can feed cards
that exile themselves.
Feed
Some game text has “Feed:” followed by an action.
Feed allows you to repeat that chain or kicker text by
paying the price (performing the action) listed after the
word Feed. You can do this as often as you like, so long
as you can (or are willing to) keep paying the price. You
cannot feed text that did not resolve (i.e., it was a kicker
that you didn’t get or an effect prevented the card from
resolving).
If a card exiles itself as part of its chain text, you can
still feed it to get additional uses from its chain text; the
card does not exile itself until after all of its feed uses
are spent.
Example: Janet’s Vehicular Assault has a feed
effect in its chain text. When the card resolves, she
resolves the chain text once. Per the feed effect, she
can then destroy one of her minions to resolve it
again if she wishes (up until she runs out of minions).
Chain: Inflict 1 damage on
target player. Feed: Destroy
target minion you control.
Kicker: Destroy target minion
you control. Inflict damage on
target player equal to its health.
Supplemental FAQ
Exit Strategy (BC): Yes, this captures an opponent’s card permanently. Hope you can chain
it.
Gather the Pack (BC): The healing part of the kicker is optional, as written.
Infected Ghoul (BC): You must use its kicker or another card effect to get it into play.
Pipe Bomb (BC): Taking the wounds from the bottom of the stack avoids shortening the game.
When a wound is on top of an archive during your Claim Phase, you must claim that card
for 0 influence.
Wight Trash (BC): That’s right, you will only get to attack with him if you chain him during
the turn of the player to your right. Otherwise he’ll be destroyed before your Combat Phase.
Vampiric Turning (BC): As implied by the text, this effect does last past the end of the turn.
Copyright © 2011 Alderac Entertainment Group, Inc. Nightfall, Alderac Entertainment Group, and all
related marks and images are TM and © Alderac Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed
in China. Questions? Email CustomerService@alderac.com
NF3 Supplement 25 Jul:Layout 1
7/26/2011
1:47 PM
Page 2
“My Ex-Wife Sucked Me Dry (Then She Turned Into a Vampire).”
—number 14 on Billboard’s Country Music chart (week of June 20, 2011)
T
Driving by Night: Us
by Kenneth Hite
he squawk woke up Tango Ten, dozing in the shotgun seat of the big rig. Lance Patroccio
reached for the handset, clicked the button: “Go for Kestrel Two.”
“Ah, Kestrel Two? This is, uh, the Reverend Cale Higgins at Third Baptist in Canute,
Oklahoma …”
“Reverend, don’t use names on an open frequency. Do you have a War handle?”
“Uh, Kestrel Two, I, uh …”
Now Patroccio could hear the stiffness, even the pain, in the other’s voice, even through the
crummy CB speaker. “Never mind, Reverend. What’s up?”
“Uh, a friend of yours from Atlanta … Franz Orlok … says if you don’t stop in Canute and
surrender your cargo in six hours, he’ll kill everyone in town. He says …” Sounds of scuffling,
a crack … “Don’t you do it, Kestrel Two! It’s a trap! You’re dead if you stop, but we’re already
dead!” More sounds, more cracks. Patroccio couldn’t tell what was happening over the static
and distortion—he wasn’t sure if that made it worse or better.
A new voice, rough and angry, like a baritone torn out of metal and dragged over stony
ground. “This is the alpha talking now, meat. You savvy?”
Patroccio forced himself to sound scared and blustery and weak. Scared was the easy part.
“I hear you, alpha. You got a Kawasaki pack along with?”
“Hell with that rice-burner crap, meat. I got me a real pack. Got some bats, too. And they’re real
hungry, get me? Six hours, no later, or we start us a little chowdown. Kids first.”
Patroccio snapped off the CB. Tango Ten was staring at him, covered in cold sweat, like she
had awakened out of a nightmare into a worse nightmare. “You can’t turn this stuff over to
Orlok. We’d never get Federal clearance for another shipment.”
Patroccio didn’t answer her. He just looked her in the eyes until she looked away. Then he
picked up the CB, switched to Channel 19, and started broadcasting: “Any Q out there with his
ears on: stay away from Canute, Oklahoma. It’s full of Jacobs. Likely Eddies, too. I say again,
all you Q, stay away from Canute, Oklahoma for the next six hours …”
D
riving a big rig while looking through binoculars wasn’t easy, but Tango Ten had done
harder things in her life. Anyway, she had slowed down to 30, or not much more, giving
her a little room if things got hairy. Hairier, she giggled to herself, and then bit down
hard on that rising hysteria. Because the binocs showed a lot of bright orange blobs fanned out
in the reddish crowd: werewolves in human form guard-dogging the human hostages.
Switching out of infrared, she spotted a few vamps, too, but it was harder to see them in the
shadows and on the roofs. Classic ambush pattern, she guessed. Kestrel Two would know, but
he wasn’t here at the moment. So she stuck to the plan, and twisted the wheel hard over.
Dropping the binoculars, she stomped on the gas, and the truck sped up, rumbling toward
the hostage crowd. They got nervous, and scared, and all that poured into their sweat and that
made the werewolves jumpy and that was Part One of the plan.
Part Two of the plan came when the 16-wheeler bounced over the curb and smashed into
the motorcycles parked in the Philips 66 lot, smashing a few to junk and sending the rest
spinning like toys. The weres really didn’t like that; already jittery, they broke pack discipline
and ran for their bikes.
Part Three was kind of improvised: Tango Ten twisted the wheel back the other way, and
fishtailed the truck toward the crowd again. Without the werewolves there to keep them herded
tight, they scattered—away from the truck, of course. Now the truck was between the civilians
and the wolf pack. She still heard screams: just panic, hopefully, for now. There would be
screams of pain soon enough, no matter how the rest of the plan worked out. She tightened her
gas mask over her face, checked the safety on her .45, and got ready to block
them out.
Werewolf fists—and paws, too, they were changing as their beast instincts took over—
banging on the truck and the trailer signaled the start of Part Four for Patroccio. He could
barely see anything through the peepholes they’d hastily drilled in the trailer, so he had to go
by the sound. A steady roar of pounding, then creaks as the bigger wolves and any vampires
downstairs got a grip on the trailer. Now the doors squealed against their frames; Patroccio
fought the instinct to cower in the dark and cover his ears. Instead he hunkered down and
steadied his grip on the M16A2 in his hands. It had been a long time since he’d ported one of
those—really, not since Basic. But they had a lot of M16s in Utah, and they fit the very special
Barnes .223 TSSX rounds they made there. The doors parted, then flew open, and the back of
the truck was suddenly full of werewolves.
Patroccio stood up, his back and sides protected by the crates piled to the trailer’s ceiling,
and opened fire on full automatic. The blasts echoed inside the trailer; Patroccio was deafened;
the previous cacophony not even a memory. Part Five had begun. The .223 rounds weren’t
very powerful: a sixth of a ton of werewolf had a lot of momentum. But inside their copper
jackets, they were 0.94 pure coin silver, dug out of mines hastily reopened a few weeks after
Nightfall. And the M16 threw a lot of silver down range. And Patroccio had millions of rounds
in the truck with him. Once the first wave of werewolves—or rather the second wave of fuzzies,
the first wave having died of surprise and silver and hydrostatic shock—began clawing
backward in panic, Patroccio could start picking his shots, moving toward the lip of the trailer
and firing out and up in a 180-degree arc. Swap out magazines, swing the barrel. Anything
flying got a burst; anything skulking, two bursts.
Patroccio was still deafened; Tango Ten was only slightly better off. She could hear over the
sound of her gunshots—best of all, she could hear vampires and werewolves shrieking at each
other, and choking on the clouds of allicin-lycoctonum gas pouring out of the truck. She had
a big pile of M2 gas grenades, loaded with the active ingredients in garlic and wolfsbane;
whenever she saw a furry arm or fanged face try reaching through the window, she fired a
silver .45 round into it and followed the shot with a fresh grenade. Now it was all up to Part
Six.
Amazingly, it was Patroccio who heard Part Six begin; he had dropped down to single shots,
and the predators surrounding the truck had learned to keep their heads down. Planning their
countermove, no doubt. But whatever they were planning became irrelevant when the horns
sounded in the distance. Horns playing “Boomer Sooner” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas”
and “La Cucaracha.” Then a few gunshots, then more shots, then a lot more shots … and then
the rest of the wolves scattered. The Q—the armed truckers that (barely) kept America fed and
supplied, like the Q-ships, the armed merchantmen in World War II—had heard his broadcast,
and they had responded just like Patroccio thought they would: “Lots of monsters need killing
in Canute. Come kill ’em.” Plus all the local good ol’ boys in their pickups and SUVs, and
teenagers looking to prove themselves to some girl or to their dads, and Iraq and Afghanistan
veterans from Fort Sill. Lots and lots of guns within six hours of Canute, Oklahoma.
And pretty soon, they’d all have lots of silver bullets. There would still be plenty left over
for Atlanta.
Credits
Design: David Gregg
Development: Edward Bolme, Brent Keith, Todd
Rowland, Mark Wootton, John Zinser
World Development: Kenneth Hite, jim pinto, Todd
Rowland, John Zinser
Art Direction: Todd Rowland
Graphic Design: Thomas Deeny, Ronnie Dyer, Hal
Mangold, jim pinto, Mark Quire, Paul Timm
Writing: Kenneth Hite
Editing: Edward Bolme, Ryan Metzler
Typesetting: Edward Bolme, Todd Rowland
Brand Management: Todd Rowland
Production: David Lepore
Covert Art: Jake Murray
Art: Conceptopolis (Exit Strategy, Gather the Pack,
“Harley Doberman”, K.C. Bigelow, Meat Puppet,
Shotgun Party, Shut Up and Soldier, “Straight
Eight”, Vampiric Turning, Vehicular Assault), Joel
Akerman (“Mac Ten”, Propane Improv, “Shadow
Hound”), Pierre Bertin (Flayed Ghoul*, Silas
Bragg*), Andrew Hepworth (Damon Montez, Flesh
Frenzy, Pipe Bomb, “Sierra Two”, Wight Trash),
Richard Kitner (Destiny Collins*), Heather Kreiter
(Healing Hurts, LeShawn Wallace), Jake Murray
(Maggie Hawke, “Rabid Rex”), Matthew Starbuck
(Burning Meat, Infected Ghoul), Florian Stitz
(“Bad Smoke”, Enraged Wight).
* promo cards: look for them soon!
Playtesting: Alex Barrett, Matt Benning, Chris Blair,
Nicolas Bongiu, Zachary Boyd, Kevin Carver, Li
Chua, Stu Clark, Terry Corbit, Bob Cyrus,
Sébastien Duthu, Michael Dye, Jonathan Grabert,
Adam Hegemier, Benjamin Higgins, Joshua Holly,
Franck Lopez, Rob Mackie, Erick McCall, Les
Murphy, Danya Oltmann, Jessica Presnell, Cody
Reichenau, Priscilla Reyes, Jason Riedinger,
Michael Rogers, Brian Roundhill, Michael Rudd,
Benoit Sigal, Emilie Sigal-Falgayras, Dave Snoddy,
Kevin Stone, Chris Trevino, Rick Villamil, Steve
Wallace, Mark "Triple M" Wootton.