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Requiem for a Douchebag
The Mages now have two bodies on their hands: both fellow Awakened. The ghost of this latest victim is somewhat drunk, and so is not likely to be of much help. They do know a little bit about him though.
Enigma had been an ill-respected member of the Mysterium. He was somewhat lazy and self centered, and really only landed in the Mysterium because he had been a professor at NYU. He had been with the english department until some scandal involving a student caused him to lose his job. If anyone in the Mysterium who knew him told you that they were surprised by this they would be lying. Enigma reeked trouble, which is why he never found a cabal to fit in with. He was universally distrusted. As a result he found no sympathy when the following story reached the Consillium’s ears.
Karen Myers, a student at NYU, was taking American Literature with Professor J Dowe (AKA: Enigma). She hadn’t been doing well in the class. Otherwise a straight A student, Karen set up an appointment to discuss her poor grades with her professor. Karen, in the habit of recording her classes with a digital voice recorder, recorded the meeting as well. It became clear to her during the course of the meeting that Professor Dowe had taken a liking to her and graded her harshly in an attempt to obtain favors from the young woman. The dean of the literature department and the president of the university agreed with Karen, and Professor Dowe was dismissed. Seeking to avoid bad press, the University arranged a settlement with Myers that included a full scholarship, and the re-evaluation of her coursework by the Dean of the English Department. Myers, only seeking to be treated fairly, agreed to not drag either the professor or the university (or herself for that matter) through the disgrace of a public trial. She was happy to have her tuition and board covered by the settlement, allowing her to graduate without facing years of student loan payments.
This gives the Mages a place to start. Perhaps there is something about the Myers case that will lead our friends to some link between Enigma and Matt, the animator who hadn’t even been a Mage long enough to have chosen a shadow name. Maybe there is something about NYU that will lead the Mages closer to this multiple murderer.
And heck, if not maybe Argus can find a date: Changeling Pick-Up Lines
Those Meddling… Puppets?
The first thing Aenaiyah spotted as she walked from work to the train platform was his feet sticking out from behind a car. As she got closer she realized that she recognized this man from the bar. He had been there quite a bit lately, usually the last one to leave. At first she thought that maybe he had simply passed out, but soon realized that he was well and truly dead. Not being overly fond of dealing with corpses, Aenaiyah decided to call on Riff-Raff. Both as a Moros Mage and a former NYPD Officer dead bodies were no problem for him. At first glance it did appear to be alcohol poisoning, but Riff-Raff did pick up spell resonance here so he cast Forensic Gaze to see what really happened.
What really happened was that someone had bashed this man’s face in with a heavy, blunt object. This is precisely what had really happened to a certain stop motion animator. If the puppets hadn’t tried to fix him…
Did I forget to tell you that part? I think I might have. You see the animator had tried to attune himself to his tools, in this case puppets, to bring about a harmonious accord that would help him in his work. He had believed this to be some new age meditation thing, but in truth it had been a spell that would rouse the innate spirit of an inanimate object causing it to become a Supernally Honed object. Normally this would only have caused the puppets to not show wear and tear as much, or maybe to hold position a little better while Matt was setting up takes. For whatever reason, this time the spell had done something more than that. Matt’s job involved animating the puppets, and so that’s what the spirits in the studio did. Fortunately for Matt (and everyone else at the studio) the studio spirits were by and large a fun loving group. They enjoyed having these nifty bodies to move around in, and they liked Matt. When they saw Matt get broken, they figured that somebody had to fix him. They tested out colors to match against his skin just like the puppet doctors did when they had to fix worn out puppets. They cut him open with a sculpting knife to fill him with more silicone, figuring that he had worked so hard that he had worn his out and that might be why he wasn’t standing up anymore. As hard as they tried, all they wound up with was a gruesome mess of a corpse that was found by a security guard, who called the police, who called a certain FBI Agent he knew who tended to wind up with the weird cases. Had the puppets not tried to fix Matt the security guard would have found a much tidier corpse, and the police would have written it off as a drug overdose even though Matt had no prior history with drugs. Whoever killed him saw to it that there had been plenty of evidence in him to trigger that conclusion. Whoever killed him knew exactly what they were doing, and they would have gotten away with it too… just like they had so many times before.
Good Fight, Good Night!
As our favorite FBI Agent and Guardian, Argus, searched the body for physical clues, and our favorite Acanthus, Aenaiyah, was busy trying to argue her way out of casting Post Cognition (or at very least grousing loudly about knowing she would be asked to), Damien (the new Mastigos) scanned for signs of invisible people hanging around by way of scanning for consciousness other than his new acquaintances. The Moros Mages on the other hand had the most success of all of them by reaching out to the dead man’s ghost. The dead man, a stop-motion animator named Matt, had no idea why he was killed. He also didn’t see who it was that killed him. He did have an interesting tale to tell about getting clipped by a bus though.
It was a day pretty much like any other, and he was getting hungry so he ran out to grab a slice at the pizza place across the street. While trying to make his way through the mid-town Manhattan lunch crowd he inadvertently stepped ever so slightly too far into the Broadway part of the intersection. There was no way that the bus driver could have seen him, and he certainly didn’t see the bus looming up from behind him. His left side exploded with pain as he was thrown twisting through the air and landed in the middle of 50th street. It was all a blur from there.
Matt remembers being vaguely aware of people hovering over him, and moving him out of the street and into an ambulance, but he couldn’t communicate with them in any way no matter how hard he tried. He felt completely disconnected. He saw and felt himself being wheeled on a gurney into an operating room in classic movie style, with big lights overhead, people’s faces looking down at him, “it was all very cinematic”. He remembers being pushed right through the OR and into a morgue that looked like something out of a Twilight Zone episode. As he was wheeled up to the morgue drawer he saw a life-sized Silicone Mills Lane counting him out as a Silicone Audience shouted for him to “shake it off!” Out of the corner of his eye he could see a city bus “standing” on its two rear wheels. Its windshield washers were raised in the air as it posed for the crowd, as if it was clasping its hands above its head after an impressive victory. Filled with renewed energy, Matt stood up on the gurney to discover that it was a wrestling ring, and it looked just like the set pieces he and his coworkers had built for Celebrity Deathmatch.
Stacey Cornbread came over to give him a between rounds interview, asking “You’ve just been killed by a city bus! What are you going to do next?” This made no sense of course, because Stacy Cornbread had been killed off in Season 2. He could hear Stone Cold Steve Austin commenting that “those city busses have some killer moves”, to which Johnny Gomez replied that “they really know how to sneak up on a person!” Nick Diamond could be heard chuckling and saying “Oh man you are so right. Unbelievable!” Matt knows that Austin, Nick, and Johnny are at the top of the announcer’s tower, a location he has spent countless hours animating, but which looks to be made of stone for this episode. It’s an interesting choice. He doesn’t recall having used a stone tower before. He decides to climb the tower to tell them that he’s not out of it yet!
Nick, Johnny, and Steve Austin comment on Matt climbing the tower. “I don’t believe it! He’s climbing the tower!” At the top of the Tower Matt sees Nick Jr, who asks for his autograph. When Matt signs the autograph, everything changes.
He didn’t know it then, and still doesn’t properly understand it, but Matt Awakened on the street that day. He was in a great deal of pain from a shattered hip, but very much more alive than he probably had any right to be. They can’t be certain, not yet, but the Moros Mages begin to suspect that they might have just found their motive.
Before Rex and Riff-Raff can begin to explain what it is that happened to Matt that day, a woman with short, spiky, purple hair comes flying into the shoot room babbling about… puppets?
You Don’t See That Every Day:
As I stated in an earlier post, I made the decision to end a chapter with the departure of two characters and start a new one. The question was where I wanted to go from here. I already had some ideas about where I wanted the PCs investigations to lead (more on that later), but what I needed was a hook. I needed to get them started.
It started with a phone call to our resident Former FBI Agent (technically on leave) and Guardian of the Veil Argus Guille. You see, the Werewolf half of the campaign had just helped him close a cold case (they solved the crime, he reported the findings for them), and so he received a phone call from Officer S. Murphy.
“Goodevenin’ Agent. I hear you recently closed a big case. Congratulations.”
:::pause so Argus can pat himself on the back:::
“I hear rumor it was some sort of ritualistic cult thing or other. Does this mean you’re back on active duty then?”
:::pause so Argus can say he’s easing himself back in by consulting:::
“I got a weird one for ya. Paramount Building on Broadway. 31st floor. Ain’t seen nothin’ like it ‘fore.”
:::pause so Argus can ask what he means by that:::
“Y’might wanna see for yourself Agent. Good t’have ya back.”
:::end conversation:::
What could possibly be a better investigation hook than the dead body of a stop motion animator that has been filled with skin colored modelling silicone? You see, in my World of Darkness “Celebrity Deathmatch” is still being made in good old New York City, right where it should be. On a routine overnight walk-around a security guard spotted the body of an animator sprawled across the entryway to a shoot room. He had been vivisected (think autopsy) and his body cavity had been stuffed with skin-colored modelling silicone. You don’t see that every day.
There were many paths that the investigation could have taken, and the players actually covered their bases well on this one. They were smart enough to investigate the stop motion camera, which did in fact have a few very interesting still frames shot due to the animator having tensed and squeezed the shoot button as his head was bludgeoned in by something that can’t be seen on the film. This is interesting because judging by the angle they are seeing the blows at on the still frames they really should be able to see what hit the poor guy. And then of course there is the fact that his head isn’t looking very bashed in at the moment.
They searched through the security camera tapes, but aside from the door closing a bit slowly at one point when somebody entered there was nothing concrete there. Argus did a search of the body and found some odd markings under a flap of skin where he had been dissected. A WITS+COMPOSURE roll made him think of a painter’s pallet… little swatches of color, almost like there was real effort made to match the colored silicone to the animator’s skin tone. Max Factor would be proud! No happy little trees here though.
Clearly Post-Cognition was called for. This session happened at right about the time that I started to become more comfortable with this spell, and really learned how to make Aenaiyah squirm and throw up a little in her mouth. I knew all about the moment the animator had died, what the reason for his death was, and what happened later. Bring it Acanthus! Right on schedule, she does. She asks me to see the silicone being stuffed into his body. I ask her to step out of the room and into the hall. I know that one of the best things about Aenaiyah is how her player reacts to things. This is clearly going to be priceless.
This pleases me.
She can only see a few moments of time around an event at this point in her Magely Learning, so I only tell her that she sees small, stubby little hands pulling back the flaps of skin, and working the silicone into the poor dead man. It looks like they are being extremely careful about the work. They seem to be very detail oriented. She shudders, and says “I look around me… what do I see?”
You see stop motion puppets. Hundreds and hundreds of small silicone celebrities. They’re all around you.
Freakout in 3…2…
Sometimes I love being the GM!
Caveat Acanthus
Before the face of the child in the ritual circle could even reach the Mage’s retina her throat was torn out by a Werewolf. I blame several factors for this:
- The Werewolves had never met Marissa, and had no idea that the Mage’s knew this child.
- The Werewolves were all hopped up on acceleration spells and there was Great Danger to the city here: the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few (or the one) and all that.
- Marissa did cast several spells asking Fate for something interesting to happen during the last session she attended. Challenge accepted!
- Werewolf
Now I know what you’re thinking here. You’re thinking “Wait a minute, did you just imply that the child in the ritual circle was a player character?” Why yes, yes I did. In fact, I am flat out stating that the child was a player character. I fully understood the danger inherent here, but had contingencies for enough potential outcomes that I felt OK with it.
You see, in my original plan this scenario was going to play out over the course of two game sessions: one in which the group’s legal drinkers wreak havoc on Liberty island and ultimately get sucked through a portal while the “meddling kids” have “something interesting” happen, and one in which they deal with the terror that is about to take place on New Year’s Eve. The first part of this plan worked like a charm ending with an awesome monologue… EXCEPT… the people playing the underage characters were not able to make it to the session. This caused a slight kink, but only a slight one. After all, there was no reason for the players to not meet up on the roof tops, and there was no reason in my mind for Marissa to already be in the ritual circle when the others arrived. She and Molly could just as easily have been talking with the people on the roof.
Incidentally, the people on the roof were Marissa’s Mother, Father, and Brother. The intention here was to reveal chunks of the backstory that I had come up with for Marissa, and hit her player with some interesting decisions to make. Was Marissa going to continue to be an eternal child, or would she start to age? Would she take conscious action to remain young, or would it be something she was doing unknowingly? What would the repercussions be?
Sadly, once again the players did not attend.
At this point a sane and rational GM might have changed their plans. After dealing with this troupe month after month I could no longer lay claim to those adjectives. Still, I tend to think it’s pretty bad form to kill someone’s character when they aren’t at a session. I could just as easily have made this some other child, and had the group of Scelesti Mages on the rooftop have been some other group of Scelesti Mages who had nothing to do with Marissa whatsoever. Instead I figured that since the ritual was not intended to kill the child (her parents had been keeping her alive, unharmed, and unchanged for 40 years or so by this point) so chances were that she would live through the fight. After all, when you see a child in a ritual circle in a movie you try to save the child, don’t you?
Enter the Werewolf.
With the kind of Intitiative roll that only a 4th Dot Time Mage can grant one of the Werewolves tears ass across the rooftop they are on, leaps the narrow alley, shoulder-rolls his landing back onto his feet, and springs up through the air hitting the child’s throat with his teeth and ripping her esophagus out. No one on the rooftop that night saw that one coming.
I however was not on the rooftop.
I know my players, and if there is one thing I know it is that they will make the worst decision possible. That kid was going down, and I knew it. I had absolutely planned for the demon that was to be summoned with the addition of the child’s blood to the circle to decide that her body looked like a nice cozy home now that she wasn’t using it. The moment the thing’s round came up and it turned her head (still in the jaws of a Werewolf) and asked that Werewolf “Are you my Father?” was priceless.
Clearly that player has seen Ghostbusters, because he knows that when someone asks you if you’re a god (or their Father) YOU SAY YES! This is why, throughout the fight, when the demon was stealing hit points from the other PCs and giving them to the Scelesti Mages, it was giving them to the Werewolf too. Even as he fought against it the demon was giving him his friend’s hit points. The demon wasn’t about to let its father stay hurt!
At the end of the day the players beat the hell out of the Scelesti. It was a tough fight though! The players had the Scelesti badly outnumbered, but Marissa’s Mother, the head of their cabal, was a ridiculously powerful Thyrsus Mage who was able to do some real damage, even to the Werewolves while also healing herself and her cabal. What she couldn’t do was teleport or portal herself out of there because that accursed Guardian of the Veil (ARGUS!) killed her Space Mage outright in the surprise round in one lucky shot. If that hadn’t happened, if he had randomly picked anyone but the Space Mage, they would have been able to leave the fight and live to summon demons another day. It simply wasn’t meant to be.
As for Marissa… as I’ve said, it’s poor form to kill off someone’s character when they aren’t at the session. This is why I would have been quite happy with the idea of Marissa being at the next session (or some later session) and showing up to knock on the Sanctum door because she had lost her key. The player wouldn’t have known why everyone at the sanctum would be surprised to see her, hich would be consistent with the character having not one single clue about what had just happened. They could have dealt with explaining it to her (or not) in character. It could have been an interesting way to explore her backstory. What really happened on that roof? Was that a random child altered by Life Magic to appear to be Marissa for some reason? Did Marissa have an identical twin? Was it a clone? Was that some “future Marissa” Brought back in time to serve her purpose here and now, still alive and unchanged at some point in the distant future? Was the Time Line messed with in some other way? (The child IS an Acanthus Mage after all.)
I really did have multiple possibilities for Marissa’s return planned out, but due to schedule problems the players who played the underage characters weren’t able to continue with the campaign. As such, Marissa died that night on the rooftop, and Molly disappeared into the night as was her way. It was a pity, but it certainly was an interesting way to end her story.
The Moral of the Story: Be careful what you wish for, especially if your GM is the MageMistress.
Mage Mistress 