One of the things I loved about the idea of running the Mage campaign had always been the size of the playing field. Mages can do anything, which can be a real painus in the anus to deal with in the physical world, but they don’t necessarily always need to have their adventures in the physical world do they now?

When I was coming up with the ideas behind the Project Lullaby (headed by a Seer using the Shadow Name Brahms) set of stories I always figured that there would be several astral journeys involved. When Damien joined the campaign and his player specifically asked if I foresaw astral sessions I was overjoyed! This was exactly the kind of thing that I had been hoping for.

And then they didn’t ever take the bait.

I had handed them the fact that both the Consillium and the Seers were experimenting on the potential uses of a little substance called lysergic acid diethylamide – more commonly called LSD. I had many great plans of walking the group through freaky drug trips. I also handed them a list of names of murder victims, and gave one of those victims a parent who had Brahms’ Lullaby playing in the background of her thoughts. The Mastigos wants to take a stroll through her brain to see what the deal is – but nobody else wants to do it. The rest of the group takes no interest at all in this lead beyond the very mundane conversation they have with her at her house regarding her daughter’s death.

I handed them a crazy Mage who kills newly Awakened folks on the orders of… someone they know not who… who is not likely to simply tell them what they want to know (he is a bit insane) but maybe they could wander through his head and figure out what’s really going on. They naturally opt to kill him outright and wash their hands of the situation.

Damien himself was stabbed by an unknown assailant and his memories of the situation are jumbled. Aenaiyah runs a post Cognition using his corpus as her focus which brings events somewhat clearer, but there is still much he does not know. Do they traipse through his brain to find out more? Of course not.

I make the involvement of Damien’s ex-wife with the enemy impossible to ignore. She is all kinds of personally involved with the kidnapping of Aenaiyah’s sister. After several sessions of punching her in the face and asking her questions they finally, FINALLY, have their arms twisted to tiptoe through the synapses – and hilarity ensues! These really are my favorite sessions of the campaign to date. (And we’ve had some good sessions!)

Earlier in the story the Mages found the hidden journal of a man who is very clearly suffering from multiple personality disorder. One of this man’s personalities is very clearly involved with kidnapping Aenaiyah’s sister, Betsy. They found out that the poor girl was in America at all and had in fact been bagged and tagged by clearing a printer jam in one of his safe houses and finding an upcoming edition of Sick, Sad World stuck in the printer that detailed the fact that the girl had been taken. The journal is being written by the part of him that wants to fight against the personality who was in charge during the kidnapping. The journal speaks about swearing someone to an oath against his wishes and not being happy about it. You’d think it would be easy to get them to consider taking a stroll down this guy’s memory lane – but no. Instead they tell the Seers that one of their operatives is having a crisis of faith and that they are willing to kill this guy for the Seers if the Seers give Betsy back. Because, you know, the head of the Seers who the Mages by now know is a Mastigos Arch Master would want one of his most successful operatives killed by them over a trifling difficulty like this. He wouldn’t simply take measures to keep the personality trying to thwart him in check. Why would he want to do that?

And then… and then… they go and tell Glamdring that they told the Seers that they know that Narsil is compromised, and when she asks why they would do that they tell her that it’s better to have everything out in the open.

I could have had Glamdring kill them all right then and there (she’s like Brock Samson if he happened to be a hot red-headed chick who is an Arch Master Thyrsus Mage) but she’s all about honor and duty (she is the head of the Adamantine Arrow in New York City after all) and with difficulty she restrains herself and simply throws them out of her office.

I’m thinking that if she kills them later maybe everyone will think the Seers did it – and if I’m thinking it, you know Glamdring is thinking it.

I’m generally not one to railroad a game, but this very quickly turned into a situation where I had to make it blatantly obvious that if the players didn’t step up and figure out a way to fix this their characters were all going to die. More than that, their deaths would be slow and torturous. And then their bodies would be disposed of in a way that made the Seers look guilty – or made the players themselves look like Seer spies (which wouldn’t be all that difficult under the circumstances). And their ghosts would be held captive by the outrageously pissed off red-head who had planned on marrying Narsil until she, an Arch Master of Life Magic, died. (which would probably not be any time soon.)

And when that didn’t work I smashed them repeatedly in the face with the Sledgehammer of Obvious Truths and eventually they realized that if the man who swore Narsil to his Guardians Oath (against Narsil’s will) had buried deep inside of him a personality that really wanted to RELEASE Narsil from that oath that MAYBE IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO GET INSIDE HIS BRAIN AND HELP THAT PERSONALITY DO THAT!!!

Which only goes to show:
You can lead your players to clues but you can’t make them think.