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No Good Can Come Of This:
OK, where were we again before I was sidetracked by Hobbitses and Apocalypses…?
That’s right! The players had just seen Officer Brewer change into a Werewolf for the very first time. The joke’s on Officer Brewer, since I don’t suppose he’ll be hunting down those “Horrible, Evil Werewolf Monsters” now will he! Ahhhhh irony…
In the process of breaking him out of jail there was a wee bit of chaos outside of the police station. Pedestrians were put in harm’s way, the police tossed some tear gas grenades into a near riot situation, Hunters (capital H) arrived on the scene, one of those Hunters wound up unconscious and in the hands of some crazy new Werewolf players… good times.
And then they came across the possessed nun. The nun was possessed by none other than my very favorite Demon, Sangre Santo! This is a story I’ve told before, so I will be lazy and let you go back and read my original post here: Death is Always an Option (The original post features original artwork from Sangre Santo’s creator!)
After which one of my players decided to make a quick side-trip to the Vatican, but that was after the group’s attempts to capture a Seer of the Throne, which lead to my brain being broken (again).
Keep in mind as you read through the reconciled time line that this particular Seer of the Throne was once married to everyone’s favorite shady lawyer turned Mastigos Mage, Damien. That’s right, that’s his ex-wife they are beating the hell out of without any indication that she has herself done anything wrong. His poor ex-wife who he cheated on multiple times, and who he made completely miserable, has been beaten into a coma because she wanted to talk to them.
Tune in next week to find out how they twisted this poor woman’s mind and made her even more insane than they make me!
Hunters, Forsaken, and Pure… Oh My!
As Arrow’s player correctly pointed out on last week’s post:
You forgot my crowning achievement of the session. When the Thyrsus magically jacked up his strength, berserker rushed a Pure, completely botched to hit, kept running, aced his Stealth (crowds) roll, deftly maneuvered through the tear gassed people, quietly sat down in the police office lobby and said “Hi Damien” as though nothing had happened.
And you thought I was lying when I said that actually breaking Brewer out of prison was the easy part!
Inside of the station was a model of efficiency, which is even more incredible when you realize that Aenaiyah was just making shit up as she went along in there. That’s the part that went well. Go fig.
Outside in the middle of the street outside of the precinct we have Forsaken Werewolf on Pure Werewolf action, tear gassed pedestrians, and ordinary folks just trying not to lose their minds. Is it any wonder my mind is desperately attempting to repress these memories of carnage? I seem to recall a grenade (the explodey kind, not the tear gas kind) turning up at some point, and a standoff between armed police officers and insane Werewolves. That may have been the point when the Hunters turned up.
That’s right, there were Hunters around. And why wouldn’t there be? They too had an interest in Brewer. He was talking openly and honestly about having tracked a bunch of Werewolves after all. Any group of Hunters could use a guy like that. Somewhere in the midst of the fracas our new Werewolf brothers wound up with a beaten senseless Hunter on their hands, and instead of either killing him at the scene, or leaving him where he was, they decided to bring him back to the rendezvous point where the Werewolves and Mages were meeting to figure out how to handle Brewer’s impending first change and kill him there, in front of everyone, because you know… it was the Hunter who was senseless.
Naturally, this lead to a bit of in-fighting among the players. After all, Argus had been a hunter once upon a time (before he Awakened), and so he understood why Hunters did what they did. He also understood that some Hunters combine their Hunting and killing to those Supernaturals who are doing harm to the community (insert glare at the Werewolf Brothers).
And have I mentioned that Aenaiyah clearly has a thing for Argus and will defend him on this point even though outwardly she insists that she doesn’t “LIKE like him”, he’s just… you know… a mate. (not THAT kind of mate!) She in fact likes him so little that she is willing to defend him to the Werewolves who are not convinced that eating his face would be a bad thing. That would give most sane people pause. Then again, this is Aenaiyah we’re talking about.
One of the Werewolf brothers decides he’s going to sneaky sneaky over to the unconscious Hunter and slit his throat, at which point Arrow uses his powers of Thyrsus Awesomeness to make the guy get dizzy and trip so he can get the knife away from him. Neither Werewolf brother likes that very much, so they gang up on Arrow while Shannon is trying to calm them down. Argus is accusing them of being savage animals which is a sure fire way to help the situation. Rex, Riff-Raff, and Neils are trying to get between Argus and the brothers. Damien is trying to use Mind magic to figure out how ugly this is likely to get. Hot-headed knife-wielding brother decides to throw the knife up his other sleeve at the Hunter from where he’s standing. Calypso gets in the way of that knife, at which point the knife in Werewolf Brother’s boot goes winging its way at the unconscious Hunter’s throat. Aenaiyah tries to get into its path but stumbles, and then uses Shifting Sands to go BACK IN TIME to get stabbed in the gut with a thrown knife. (Paradox AND stabbed in the gut. Win-Win!)
I believe it was the sight of Aenaiyah bleeding out all over the ground that finally convinced folks that maybe this wasn’t the most productive way that they could possibly handle the situation, which was a pity since I had just grabbed fresh pop-corn from the snack shelf. I was enjoying watching her bleed out, dammit!
Ultimately they decided to let the Hunter live (boooooring), and deal with the fact that Brewer was rapidly growing fur. Mother Luna descended to have a chat with the gathered Uratha, and not being part of that Arrow excused himself because he had an important phone call to make. Previously he had convinced the Werewolf Alpha to give him a lock of his fur, and it seems that Arrow’s retainer has found an interested buyer.
Subtlety Is My Middle Name
I have revived from the turkey coma! I hope the holidays are treating everyone well so far. Now, where were we?
Ahhh yes:
So now they have a guy who there has been a nationally televised press conference about, who is in lockup, who is about to turn into a Werewolf for the very first time, who is somewhat insane.
This sounds like the perfect time to introduce two new players to the Werewolf table! The new players (incidentally, both excellent role players who I enjoy gaming with) are playing Irish brothers who are Werewolves. One is a priest, and the other… well… the other is not a priest.
So everyone arrives at the precinct to scope the area out and see if there is some way that they can get Officer Brewer out of his cell and away from anyone that he might potentially hurt (or drive insane) when he turns into a Werewolf for the first time later this evening. While most of the players are trying to come up with a plan, the new brothers discover a van with a cartoon wolf painted on the side of it and the realize that the people in the van are Pure. Forsaken Werewolves (PCs) hate Pure Werewolves like I hate Mages. This should be amusing!
In the sparsely populated area of Ireland that the brothers are from being a Werewolf isn’t that big of a thing, so the not a priest brother decides to go harass the people in the van. This ends with him punching the Pure in the passenger seat in the face, which naturally leads to a large scale fight involving the police (since they are right in front of a police station), which leads to some of the Mages facepalming and heading into the police station under cover of stupidity.
The quick thinking Acanthus casts Perfect Moment and rushes up to the desk implying that she’s a US Marshall and needs to get Officer Brewer out of his cell and into witness protection before the people outside who are trying to kill him (hence the extreme levels of violence outside) make it inside and succeed in killing him. Argus, who is a consultant with the FBI, and Damien, who was just on TV as Brewer’s lawyer, are with her. Since she has Perfect Moment cast which allows her to act perfectly in an unplanned situation (no one had planned on the lunacy outside), and she happens to have been followed by people who make the situation plausible, and Damien is using the Mind Arcanum to pull a Jedi Mind Trick on the desk guard (‘she’s the US Marshall you’re looking for’) I give it to them. I figure they earned it this time.
The rest of the Werewolf Pack (Shannon, Calypso, and Matteus) along with Riff-Raff (a police officer on leave) are trying to calm down the various parties involved out front while Arrow and Neils play “innocent passersby” who got caught in the middle. Rex wanders through yelling at whipper-snappers to get off of his lawn. Calypso, after a successful INTELLIGENCE + COMPOSURE check, goes to get their van to drive it around to the back of the station figuring that the missing Mages (Aenaiyah, Argus, and Damien) are already inside getting to Officer Brewer.
Meanwhile, inside the station, Damien wound up realizing that one of the prisoners in a nearby cell is also a Pure Werewolf, undoubtedly the inside man for the Pure in the van. The ability to read minds can come in handy that way. Fortunately for the Mages he isn’t in a good position to do anything at the moment as he doesn’t know who they are or why they are taking Brewer out of his cell. All he can tell is that they aren’t Werewolves. Damien is sure to keep his mind away from any thoughts involving breaking out of his cell and ripping them all limb from limb. Aenaiyah tweaks Fate a bit to prevent anyone from happening to walk past at a bad moment and as soon as they make haste through the rear exit they get picked up by Calypso and driven to the rendezvous point. The easy part of the mission, breaking Officer Brewer out of prison, is now complete.
You’d think that would be the hard part, and it would have been, if not for the fustercluck going on outside.
From Hell’s Heart I Stab At Thee
What the Mages didn’t know:
The Mages decided to clear up whatever it was that Neils had unleashed in their basement as quickly as possible. Part of this was owing to Aenaiyah’s somewhat dramatic insistence that they would destroy all of Manhattan if they didn’t fix the problem within 48 hours at the latest. Aenaiyah was off by a few weeks, but everyone took her word for it and instead of playing around with this effect and maybe learning something about the nature of magic they shut it down with soul stones right away.
The effect in question actually comes from a book called “Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss” and it’s called “The False Demesne”. Where the book gives you a lot of “some theorize that”, I filled in my own explanations for what was happening and why. The solution to the problem was taken directly from the book though.
I had decided that Paradox simply didn’t ever happen… ever… and I was having no more of that. Much like Mages can cast extended spells, I decided that the Abyss can intrude over time as well. Neils’s tampering with magic in one location, repetitively, with no protective measures, and pushing the limits of his skill all the time… this sounded like ideal conditions for an Extended Paradox to me. The way to shut it down was in the book, and the effects of it were in the book, but what I had to decide was how to handle it if they didn’t shut it down.
Yes, I could have let it kill them all and honestly I wasn’t going to rule that out! That said, killing them all would kind of end the campaign and then I wouldn’t be able to continue torturing them. What to do, what to do?
It is at about this time that I picked up another book in the line: “Book of the Dead“. Now, White Wolf listed it as a generic World of Darkness Book even though the book itself seems to be pretty clearly related to Geist. That said, it makes one Hell* of an awesome book for Mage! Book of the Dead talks about how the underworld works in World of Darkness, and how Supernal Magic works there.
So I decided that the Mages had a few choices:
- They can deal with the event horizon in the basement before it gets out of hand.
- They can attempt to manage the event horizon in the basement by feeding it mana periodically (much like one would mitigate a regular Paradox dice pool by using mana during spell casting) which would not shut it down completely but would prevent it from spreading and growing stronger.
- They can make some poor decisions and an explosion will indeed happen… and that explosion will drag them to the edge of the Abyss (as close to it as a sentient mortal can go) right at the corner of the Abyss and the Underworld.
I had a rough sketch of what they would encounter in the Underworld in my head in case that looked like it would be used, though of course my players smashed my dreams asunder by not letting me kill them all and continue torturing them too. Inconsiderate Bastards!
I had also decided that to the rest of Manhattan it would look like a gas explosion had occurred in their Sanctum. The Consilium would be able to figure out that this was much more than a simple gas explosion (any reasonably competent Mage would), but that doesn’t mean that they would be able to trace the group to wherever it was they wound up, or bring them back. They would however be able to deal with their magical transgressions appropriately when/if they ever did return.
But no… instead my players don’t try to harness the untold power being unleashed in their home and get a call from the Werewolves telling them that Officer Brewer, who you may remember as being a police officer who saw a bunch of Pure Werewolves transform and went a little Werewolf Paranoid but remembered the whole thing, may actually be a Werewolf who is about to go through his first change. And where is Officer Brewer right now? Why, he’s in prison… like any crazy person waving a loaded gun around in a diner in Manhattan for no good reason should be.
What makes the Werewolves think that this man is about to become one of them, you ask? It might have something to do with the recurring visions of a moonless night, prison bars, a shield, and a furry fist punching through that shield that Shannon has been having. You know: police officer/ shield… he’s in prison/bars… there’s a blue moon that night/moonless night… and as an added extra: his name is Brewer, and Blue Moon is a beer! Honestly, their GM and I thought that they would figure it out much faster than they did. (Especially since it seemed like every time the group went out to eat in real life between Shannon having the vision and her player figuring it out there were ads for Blue Moon Beer on every surface of every restaurant!)
So now they have a guy who there has been a nationally televised press conference about, who is in lockup, who is about to turn into a Werewolf for the very first time, who is somewhat insane.
Clearly subtlety will be the buzzword of the next session.
*Hell… the Underworld…See what I did there?
From now on, I’ll stick to science!
The mission I gave to Neils’ player was simple: What AlterNeils wants, what he really really wants, is to expand the area of effect of what’s happening in RealNeils’s laboratory. For the moment the effect is being constrained by the natural walls of the space, but if those walls were to be removed the effect could expand.
Dutifully, when everyone else runs off to the Consilium to ask for ideas, AlterNeils heads downstairs “to study the problem”.
While others are attempting to call in favors or find any references to this kind of thing having happened before hidden among the library’s extensive collection, AlterNeils was trying to help in other ways.
While Glamdring was busy attempting to call in Obrimos Archmage Guthwine (who the PCs don’t get much chance to interact with since he works at the state level in Albany), and Narsil is trying to not find out anything too damning because as a Guardian he should be killing them all right about now and that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as letting AlterNeils kill them by accident, AlterNeils is removing the wall between his laboratory and the rest of the basement so that the effect can start to expand.
Naturally, when the others return home he denies all knowledge of what made the wall disappear.
This is definitely one of those sessions when I loved the fact that my players, well most of them anyway, bring laptops to the session. Neils’ player and I were totally discussing his actions by IM and playing off the sound of his dice hitting the table periodically as rolls for his attempts at scrutinizing what is happening in the basement. The other players were blissfully ignorant of the truth. Additionally, he was able to keep me abreast of what RealNeils was doing all this time, which is to say that RealNeils wasn’t at the Sanctum at all. RealNeils had gone off to see his mentor to ask for ideas.
You can only imagine the hilarity when the Mages regroup at the Sanctum, discover that the basement wall “was overtaken by whatever is going on down here”, and suddenly Aenaiyah gets a phone call from Neils asking what’s happening back home.
Neils’ player had secretly asked me if I had any specific ideas as to when he should have RealNeils contact his friends, and I secretly told him to wing it.
Good times!
Sadly the Mages were not to be lulled into attempting to harness the effect. This could have proven useful to them for a time as all the mana pouring out of downstairs was double-the-potency and double-the-fun, but in reality it is exactly the kind of thing that can draw unwanted attention to your Sanctum. (Not that anybody seemed altogether worried about that. Go fig.) It also would have required the pumping of personal mana into the effect from time to time to keep it under control (the very same way a Mage can use mana to mitigate a standard paradox), which could have been fun when the time to pump in mana came up during a fight with some Seers or something. (Of course, what are the chances they’ll wind up in a fight with some Seers?)
Even more sadly they dispelled AlterNeils out of existence. Poor AlterNeils.
I wept. Inside.
Since they were not sufficiently tempted they did decide to go with the one way that they found to possibly get rid of the event horizon in their basement: the creation of a Soul Stone. The chances to wiping out the effect entirely is enhanced by creating a Soul Stone of the same path as the effect, which gave the Mages two choices: Neils – the Obrimos who wasn’t in any way responsible for this thing happening in his lab at all!; and Argus – the Guardian of the Veil who happens to be of the same path.
Although Guardians of the Veil are typically expected to be the ones to create the Soul Stones for their cabal sanctums (thus making magic safer for everyone present), our Guardian made the decision to let Neils clear up his own mess – thus, in his mind anyway, making Neils safer for everyone present. Damien and Rex decided that Soul Stones are pretty cool and so they decided to contribute Soul Stones of their own to the Sanctum, though this was done a bit later.
As for Neils, there was a chance that his Soul Stone might explode without wiping out the effect entirely, or explode but completely clear the effect, or clear the effect and not explode even a little. Damn his good fortune (and the Acanthus who keeps giving it to him) he made his target successes and the Cabal had their first Soul Stone. It was quickly joined by the other two, and once again the city was saved!
Yes, the black marks of Soul Stone creation were in their auras, but it was pretty clear what those marks represented and why they had chosen to do it, so not much was said about it by the Consilium. Of course, it was duly noted who contributed Soul Stones and who didn’t.
It was right about this time that the Mages found out something interesting about their friend Officer Brewer, but that is a tale for another post.
Mage Mistress 