Just ran my first session of Monsterhearts, which went surprisingly well.

Tonight, on a very special Monsterhearts…
Episode 1.1 - Pilot

Starring:
Camilla, the Queen: Lead singer and guitarist for the up and coming band “TBD”, Camilla is a rising star at Westerberg High. Will she burn bright or fade away with the dawn? Only time will tell.
Kyle, the Werewolf: Brash and impulsive, Kyle struggles to keep his lycanthropic heritage a secret from all but his closest friends. Dare he confide in his girlfriend Emily, or will she be safer not knowing?
Annalee, the Witch: That quiet girl, brooding in the corner? She knows a secret or two. And strange things happen to those who cross her. Best to stay on her good side (if she has one).
Stark, the Fae: Charming to some, eerily disturbing to others… everyone has an opinion about Stark. Some say his absentee dad is in prison, others say he is an important politician buying the family’s silence with money. One thing is for sure: he will hold you to your word, or you will pay.

The episode begins with Camilla, Kyle, Annalee, and Stark in homeroom. While classmate Isabella tries to convince Camilla to audition her for the band, Kyle is confronted by Kevin, who wants him to stop dating his sister Emily in exchange for a deal on a “new” used car. Kyle agrees to hear him out after school, but has no intention of giving up Emily. Meanwhile, Stark attempts to get Ursula to intervene with her younger sister, who torments his middle school-aged sister, but is shut down. At some point it is noticed that Angela is missing, and cannot be reached despite Camilla’s efforts to do so.

Later, Kyle informs Emily of her brother’s plan, and she agrees to meet later after he talks to Kevin. With Camilla’s assistance Stark gets permission to leave school to get flowers for their homeroom teacher Mrs. Romero, whose husband recently died in an auto accident. Annalee is mocked by Ursula in gym class, and steals a few strands of her hair from her locker while the other girls are in the shower.

After school, Kyle meets with Kevin, and rides with him to the used car lot to discuss Emily. Kyle informs Kevin that he will not give Emily up, and Kevin insults him. Kyle takes a swing at Kevin, but is beaten by the larger boy and left at the dealership. Meanwhile, Stark goes to the Burial Grounds, a hipster coffee shop built on the site of an abandoned cemetery, to talk the owner to let Camilla’s band play there. He is not entirely successful, but does extract a promise from the waitress Samantha that she will do her best to convince him that “TBD” would help improve the business.

Annalee spends her afternoon in her room, working a hex to get even with Ursula for taunting her. Camilla’s band practice is marred only by her growing worry for Angela, who still has not answered her calls. She swings by her house, but nobody appears to be home, so she finds Stark to talk about her concerns. Kyle meets up with Stark at the Burial Grounds and asks him to help get even with Kevin by humiliating him publicly. Stark agrees and begins plotting with Camilla on how best to go about this, while Kyle sits with Emily and tells her how the meeting with her brother went. She gently tends to his black eye and scrapes, then the young lovers sneak off to be alone.

At dinner, Annalee’s mother tries to get her to open up about her school day, but Annalee shuts her down. Camilla and Stark go back to Angela’s house to find it completely dark with a couple of days’ worth of uncollected mail in the mailbox. Not wanting to get caught by the neighbors, they leave.

Later that night, Camilla is playing her guitar and letting her mind drift when she has a sudden vision of Angela running down a corridor and screaming as she is enveloped by an ominous darkness. At the same time outside of town, Kyle’s evening run in the forest is filled with visions of him hunting down and attacking someone, perhaps Emily. Stark is troubled by strange sounds and winds that seem to come from the stones he can’t seem to help gathering, and Annalee uses her scrying mirror to witness a scene from the past – Stark’s mother dallying with a strange and otherworldly figure in the forest. All four of them go to bed with troubled thoughts.