Okay, folks, this is gonna be a big 'un. As you may or may not recall, the next-to-most-recent session of Werewolf ended in the middle of a combat scene because sometimes the realities of RPG pacing don't line exactly up with the realities of players' night shift work schedules. And while I've dealt with that before, this time didn't have a clear 'fade to commercial moment' where it left off like it did when Francis Stump showed up so I decided to wait until things were resolved before I posted any updates.
(That said, given how many details I've had to reconstruct from memory, I probably should have still written the first half down in a timely manner for good measure. Live and learn.)
By the way, for those of you who've been following these, there's kind of an announcement at the end of the write-up about a few things.
And awaaaayyyy we go!
So where we left off, Åke had just gotten into an argument with Deborah over the issue of taking her back to her place to grab a few things, wherein he used the Persuasion Gift to basically try to convince her not to be upset about the pack's initial decision to ask her to stay at the sept. He goes back to the pack and tells them that she pitched a fit and won't be coming along on a trip into town after all. He artfully leaves out the catalyst (his use of the Persuasion Gift), and the end result is that the pack assumes that Deborah is just being petulant, ungrateful, and naive of the dangers.
Of course, this just revives the argument about whether or not she should be allowed to go back to her place anyways, even with an escort. Ray argues that she's an adult who's capable of making her own decisions, but Jerry thinks it's just too dangerous, even with an escort.[0] At one point, Jerry worries she's going to just take off on her own if they leave her at the sept, for reasons that are actually still a mystery to me because they seem predicated on some sort of wholly imagined precedent, but whatever. Regardless, it becomes a pointless revival of a circular argument until Ray suggests they stop worrying about Deborah and just start worrying about things they can control or affect.
Which leads to a discussion about the murder scene in town and the railroad spikes that have somehow been magically activated in the process. So we begin a new circular argument about whether this is a trap of some sort, is it a trap to get the pack away from the spikes they have at the sept, is it a trap to lure them into an ambush, and so on and so forth.
Ray comments that it'd be nice if they knew a wizard of some sort like Florence who could maybe give them some perspective on what sorts of power they're dealing with here. Jerry immediately jumps into a discussion about Tobias (the technomancer from the radio telescope) that makes Åke and Wants-to-Know very uncomfortable. They eventually explain in detail about their past interactions with him and how that's the reason for Wants-to-Know's tattoo of shame. That said, they're certain it's their best lead.[1] Though that means heading into town anyways, since the Radio Exclusion Zone means cell phones aren't viable.
So they get into town, unmolested, and find a pay phone where they can call the radio telescope. Since there's an extensive directory publicly available, they have an easy enough time getting Tobias on the phone. When it becomes clear to him that the group wants to discuss supernatural stuff, he manages to shuffle them all onto a secure line so he can talk. Jerry starts to talk about what's been going on with their end, and knowing where this is going, Tobias cuts them off with some laughter. This annoys Jerry, until Tobias asks "You haven't looked across the Gauntlet today, have you?"[2] So then we proceed to have moments where, starting with Åke (who has the mirrorshades), everyone peeks across the Gauntlet and sees that the opera house' umbral reflection has become this bloated, throbbing, mass of Wyrmish energies easily twice as big as it's supposed to be, dominating the Umbral landscape. Since they still have the phone in hand, Tobias tells them that he's in the process of getting a handle on what's going on, and that the anomaly they're seeing showed up on the scopes the moment the murders happened.
They get off the phone at that point and start putting together a plan. The best they can come up with, however, is getting another pack to watch things on the outside while they go in and start doing what one does in places where the Wyrm dwells and breeds. Jerry takes off back to the sept to see if he can get some backup while the others keep an eye on the opera house in town in case it does something.
While he's away, Tobias calls back on the pay phone since they're all right there. He says he's got a satellite where he can get a closer look at what's going on, and casually asks if the one of them who fucked up his leg is still there. They answer, uncertainly, in the affirmative. Then he's like "Ah, yes, I think I've got you. Hey, could you ask him to take a couple of steps to the left and just stand there for a bit?" right before the line goes dead.[3] Hilarity ensues when they get the obvious implication that he's going to somehow try to kill them orbit, but nothing happens.
A short time later, Jerry returns, having gotten Aedan to help track down a rookie pack called "Draw and Quarter," consisting of two Bone Gnawers, two Fianna, and a Silent Strider. The Sons of the Saga tell them to watch the perimeter, keeping an eye on things on both sides of the Gauntlet, while they go in and put an end to whatever is going on.
So the Sons step sideways and they just barge in the front door. In the Umbra, the building is huge and squishy and throbbing with a heartbeat. There's about a dozen doors in the room that don't exist in the physical world, and they hear cackling in the distance. There's a version of the circle of railroad spikes here, except the circle is basically complete and is made of bone spikes. In the circle is a Wyrm glyph, which Ray proceeds to tear up with his claws.
The pack decides they're not fucking around with this 'magical labyrinth' bullshit, and Jerry gives Wants-to-Know a description of the BSD metis who's been making him piss himself for months (the group never got the chance to learn this in-character, but I'm saying now that her name is Skrakk so I can just fucking call her that) and Wants-to-Know uses Pulse of the Prey to lead them to the proper door. The doorknob is slick with blood[4], but they open it and enter a long, twisty hallway that throbs with peristalsis. It becomes clear that the BSDs have indeed created a little pocket realm like the one in the Lodge and Florence's old house, but aspected towards the Wyrm in a perversion of her magics. They follow some twists and turns and come up on an intersection. The Wyrm glyph is on the floor, and Wants-to-Know uses Pulse of the Prey to figure out which direction to figure out which way they need to go, and it points... up? And there's a passageway, as wide as the others, pointing up like the worst-designed air conditioning duct ever. They can hear the cackling up above and Ray jumps up and tries to grab the edge of it.
Gravity reorients itself for Ray with a sickening sensation, and now he's standing on what looks like the wall from the others' perspective. But he charges down the passageway towards the source of the noise while the others follow. There's a wall made up of wooden slats with just a little bit of space between them, and the Wyrm glyph on it. It looks thin enough so they burst through and come out through a wall, and gravity reorients itself again that they find themselves standing next to a hole in the wooden floor.
They're now in a distorted reflection of the main chamber of the opera house, with 12-foot tall bone spikes surrounding them like Stonehenge (Bonehenge?). They're surrounded on all sides by four Garou. There's one, much older, carrying a Fang Dagger, matching the description of the Scavenger. Skrakk is on the other side with a klaive strapped to her back[5]. There's also one who's an albino and a fourth who's basically nondescript as far as Wyrm Garou go but conjures up a cloud of pure darkness to disorient the pack.
They all try to charge out of the side of the cloud that the Scavenger was on, trying to dogpile him. They tore at him, having to wear down layers of magical defenses before even doing any real damage to him. He strikes back, and actually almost manages to kill Ray outright because Fang Daggers are fucking broken mechanically. Only his Rage kept him alive (with a proper Battle Scar for later). Also making things difficult is the whispering they hear as the albino begins glowing with an aura of ghostly green balefire, driving them closer to frenzy. They manage to bring down the Scavenger, though, once Ray’s gotten back up.
Wants-to-Know starts the charge to go after Skrakk on the other side, lunging at her and stabbing her with the Fang Dagger. The BSD who conjured the shadow lunges at Wants-to-Know, trying to blindside him to no avail, while Jerry gets his claws into Skrakk and she falls with a massive gush of blood from the wound. Åke dispatches the one who went after Wants-to-Know, making sure to hit him again and make sure he's finished. Wants-to-Know switches targets to the glowing albino, who stays just ahead of his strikes and overwhelms him with a mystical wave of hatred that drains his strength and pushes him into frenzy. Ray swoops in and tears him up and Åke finishes him.
Elsewhere, Jerry is about to finish off Skrakk when her eyes pop open -- not revived by Rage, but because she was faking[6] -- and she deflects the strike enough that it only barely damages her. Åke tries to keep Wants-to-Know, in frenzy but looking for targets, from seeing Skrakk because after all this he wants to make sure his alpha gets the kill he's been looking forward to this whole time. Without getting up, Skrakk drives her claws into Jerry and they break off in his body, wounding and weakening him. Ray dashes in and delivers a decisive blow, but her Rage keeps her moving so Jerry lashes out with his claws, feeling her already-fragile bones crumble under his attack so he basically destroys her face before he grabs the klaive off her back and decapitates her with it.
As the BSDs fall still and Wants-to-Know regains his wits, the pocket realm starts to quiver around them, suggesting it's not much longer for this or any world. But they still take the time for Åke to lead the pack in a howl of victory before they go over the bodies for anything that might help explain all this. Ray finds a pendant with the Iron Riders glyph on the Scavenger's body as he cuts off his head as a trophy, and they take his Fang Dagger and Skrakk's klaive -- which they now identify as a baneklaive, which means that destroying it is going to be paramount. (And probably a Cleansing for Jerry, given that even though he didn't attune to it he did use it in a moment of anger to kill someone.) Jerry keeps one of Skrakk's claws to wear on a lanyard as a trophy.
The pack manages to get out of the pocket realm back into the Umbral reflection of the opera house proper just in time for the realm to collapse behind them entirely. They peek across the Gauntlet and see that back in the physical realm, the cops are just now starting to remove the spiked corpses from the murder scene, removing the spikes and leaving them off to the side in evidence bags.[7] Ray steps sideways and manages to steal the spikes and get out with them. The rest of the pack regroups across the street in the physical world, only to realize that they can't find the Draw and Quarter pack anywhere. Åke peeks across and finds them over there, finishing off a bunch of Banes.
The Sons of the Saga regroup with them and discover that as soon as they went inside, wave after wave of Banes burst out of the opera house and Draw and Quarter had been fighting them off. The Sons fill the other pack in on what happened, which quickly becomes Åke beginning to spin the epic version of the story that they just don't have the time for right now, and Jerry has to cut him off and ask him to leave it for the moot. They all hang out for about ten or fifteen minutes outside the opera house to make sure the flood of Banes is ended, and they go to retrieve the spike they stashed in the Lodge (which had apparently ripped itself out of the wall to stand in the middle of the room when the spikes were linked).
The packs return to the sept to find bodies and signs of horrible battle. They rush back, find Aedan Thorne, and find out that while they were away, about the time they went into the opera house, there was a coordinated attack on the caern. At least a dozen Black Spiral Dancers and a bunch of Kin attacked the sept, killing a handful of the defenders before eventually being driven off. They also pass the baneklaive off to him to be destroyed, since he says he knows a guy who'll deal with it. They find out that Roy (the Nuwisha) and Andrea (the Bastet) were also there during the battle, pulling their weight, and there were reports of Corax seen among the fighters though they haven't formally introduced themselves to the sept yet.
The pack then goes to check on the rest of the spikes, which are laying down now, and they do a quick flip through of Florence's notes to try and find the source of the pendant they took off the Scavenger. They identify the pendant as one that she had given to her brother Martin (whose death they could never find recorded in the public record), assuming -- rightly -- that the Scavenger had at one point killed and eaten him.
There's a brief discussion of what to do with all the stuff. Åke wants to study it and see if he can learn how to make Florence's magic work for them, but Jerry's just sick to the back teeth of it all and wants to toss it all in a trunk, lock it, and let the Cave stash it. Åke interprets this as just burying it forever and gets into an argument with Jerry because he thinks Jerry's throwing away valuable resources and yadda yadda yadda and Jerry has to clarify that he doesn't want to get rid of the stuff permanently, but just not have to think about it for a few days or weeks. He's sick and tired of seeing Florence Slavin's old stuff at the center of everything and is just glad all of the spikes are accounted for.
After this they track down Raptor Strike, who mostly confirms what they already heard from Aedan regarding the battle, as well as the number of dead defenders (three Garou and five Kinfolk fell during the attack) and the involvement of their few Fera allies. He tells them that they're still on high alert for about 24 hours because he's pretty sure that the attack was meant to soften the sept up, but if there's no further attack, the following night they'll hold a moot to celebrate the victory and start letting folks freely move back and forth between the sept and the town (including the Kinfolk).
Which leads them into tracking down Deborah. They're still under the impression that she's needed some sort of eye-opener as to just how dangerous the world is (never mind that she has visions of it and is connected to a living Cave that occasionally shows her this stuff), but at least with Jerry there they're not as condescending as Åke was the last time he talked to her. She explains that she saw plenty of the carnage with her abilities and understood the risks, but they manage to clear the air. (Though to prevent another fight, she doesn't tell the pack about how Åke tried to use Persuasion on her) And as sort of an olive branch, they offer to get some of her stuff and bring it up until everyone can go home in a couple of days, and she asks them to swing by later and she'll give them a list.
They then catch their breath and put Jerry and the Scavenger's Fang Dagger (which, like Andy Stump's, is a stolen Bone Gnawer fetish, possibly taken at the same time) through a Cleansing. Shortly afterwards they run into Bury the Hatchet and show him the Scavenger's head and Ray makes some off-color jokes about taking selfies with it.
At which point they hear "Oh, are we sharing selfies?" as Roy shows up. He then digs out his phone and shows them pictures he's taken with Spirals he killed, all with headshots, apparently using a handgun loaded with silver bullets.[8] From the looks of it, he'd been sneaking up on them, basically going "Dodge this" and killing them with head shots. There's a lot of teasing about who could have possibly trusted him of all people with silver ammunition, and eventually he takes off. To change the subject away from the Nuwisha, the Sons of the Saga turn back to Bury the Hatchet and give him the Fang Dagger they took from the Scavenger -- retrieving one from a young BSD is one thing, but they just can't keep taking these things.[9] He accepts it with his heartfelt, grateful thanks, and promises them a favor in return in the future.
And we leave off with the pack finding a place to stash the Scavenger's head (because Ray wants to make a trophy out of the skull), going back to Deb and getting a list of stuff to retrieve from her trailer (mostly a couple of changes of clothes, some toiletries, and a couple of books).
But that's our biggest story arc so far finally finished.
Speaking of which, for those of you who've read this far, because I'm getting a bit burned out on Werewolf: The Apocalypse and because we don't want to run this in perpetuity in any case, there's going to be one more story arc as kind of a 'season finale' before I take a break from WtA.
So what does this mean? Well, if you need the reminder, I alternate between a game of my own writing (at the moment, WtA), and one of Pathfinder's Adventure Paths (which is a campaign made up entirely of pre-written modules). This way I'm able to keep a consistent-ish weekly schedule but I don't have to come up with new material literally every week without a break. The plan was originally to replace 'my' game with another one, but we might actually be focusing on Pathfinder for a bit to get a little further along in the Adventure Path to make up for the fact that we've been forced into short sessions for the last few months. This won't affect my Doctor Who posts, but it does mean that activity on this blog might drastically slow down for a bit.
But even then, eventually in the future I'll circle back to WtA to do a second 'season' of this, and we've been talking about what to do then, story-wise. I've tossed around a few ideas we want to cover for further adventures with these characters, including maybe running a Shattered Dreams story (particularly the "modern characters interacting with past events" aspect).
But that's looking far enough into the future that we're officially risking crossover with my Doctor Who game (because of the time traveling, and... never mind, it's not funny). In the meantime, this will continue for one more story, where a few elements I've set up (that some people may recognize from printed material) will finally start paying off. See you then!
(And now, an absurdly-extensive series of footnotes)
[0]-- Just a reminder, apparently that BSD metis I sent at the group a while back [link located in that last blog post] scared Zac, Jerry's player, enough that he's convinced that one wrong move will lead to her descending from the skies and reducing the pack (or Deborah) to a fine red mist in moments.
[1]-- As opposed to just, y'know, trying to scout out the horrific murder scene.
[2]-- Y'know, part of me is certain that there's a Technocratic version of the term (or at least a Void Engineer version of the term), but for the life of me I couldn't find it so I figured 'screw it.'
[3]-- I'm trying to reconstruct this scene from memory a few weeks later, so I know I'm going to get details wrong. Trying to at least capture the gist.
[4]-- Just for the record, this is a setup for a trap that I wasn't able to properly implement, but I at least left myself the opening for it. For those of you who know BSD Gifts, guess what the trap would have been and get a No-Prize!
[5]-- For the record, I honestly can't recall why I gave Skrakk a klaive when wielding one wasn't really a part of her idiom, but it was in the sheet I'd written up for her. The only thing I can think of is that I'd realized after writing up the BSD pack that I'd basically given them nothing in the way of fetish weaponry and put the klaive on her sheet as an afterthought and forgot about it.
[6]-- For those of you unfamiliar with BSD Gifts, there's one that lets you spray a bunch of fake blood from a wound, basically for this purpose.
[7]-- If I haven't mentioned it, I'll point out here that the railroad spikes that Florence enchanted, among other things, generally go more or less unnoticed by unawakened mortals. Like, someone might find one and use it as a doorstop or a paperweight and give it no further thought unless someone draws it to their attention. For those of you who are Doctor Who fans, think of the Chameleon Arch pocketwatch.
[8]-- After the session I went back through my notes because I realized that I thought they'd gotten the gun back from Roy. And it turns out they did, and then literally everyone forgot about it. So I'm handwaving it that he tricked them in some way and still had that gun after all. Besides, it's funnier that way.
[9]-- Also, the Fang Dagger is so effective as written for its cost in the books my characters -- some of whom are eager twinks and min-maxers -- actually don't feel comfortable having more than one among the pack.
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