Cave of Secrets: Aftermath (WtA)

Whew, okay. So I've had a hell of a week, between finishing up the draft of a freelancing gig and running three Aeon playtests with not as much warning as I'd have liked. There's a part of me that wants to put this off a couple more days but the sooner I get it started the sooner I get it over with.

But this marked the last session of 'season one' of Cave of Secrets (I may or may not go back and add a tag to these posts labeling them season-wise). Honestly, I'm more than a little burned out on the old WoD system and I guarantee you there's going to be some house-ruling when we get around to revisiting this. (I dunno exactly when that'll be, because who knows long that might be and what will happen in the meantime.)

So what's on the schedule now? Well, we're taking a break from the homebrew stuff for a few weeks to give me some time to prep and so we can push through to the end of the fourth volume of Mummy's Mask, because the group's in the middle of an annoying dungeon.

Then after that, we're coming back with a game in my Woodburn Chronicles setting, following up on Derrick's very bad decision to consume a Strix. This time should be a little smoother, since we're starting as a tabletop game from the beginning rather than tweaking a LARP. It's looking like it's going to have quite the varied group of supernatural creatures, as well.

But we'll get into that when the time comes. For now, we've got the (admittedly short) epilogue of the story with the Skin Dancers and the Cave of Secrets 'season finale.'





So we pick up with the group returning to the sept with Samson's body. Raptor Strike meets them shortly after they get back, wanting to to know what happened. They give him the Cliff's Notes version[0] with a promise of a full debrief in the morning, and then they go to toss Samson's body on the Skin Dancer/Spiral pelt 'trash fire' nearby. Rebel asks Jerry if he can keep Samson's skull as a trophy. Jerry's worried about any sort of Wyrm taint or dark energies in the skull, but decides it's probably okay. So they toss his body on the fire, make sure it burns, while Rebel begins stripping the flesh from the skull.

The next morning, Rebel and Åke sneak out early to release the Skin Dancer captive from Florence's attic realm. They give her a heads-up that Tick will probably be reaching out to her to give her a heads-up on the new status quo, and that they've forged an understanding with the totem. She wishes them luck and heads out, and we have this little exchange as the two of them watch her shift to Lupus and take off into the woods:

Åke: "If you love someone, you set them free."
Rebel: "If I see her again, she's dead."

They get back just in time for Jerry and Wants-to-Know to fill in Raptor Strike on everything that happened. Strike's mind is basically blown, and he says that while he wouldn't necessarily recommend any punishment for letting the Skin Dancer get away and negotiating that deal with Tick on their own recognizance, he warns them that if this winds up blowing up in everyone's faces then Strike will probably merely get punished, while Jerry as the pack alpha would be 'crucified.'

We jump ahead through some downtime to the sept's normal monthly moot, during which -- with Strike's help -- the pack gets the Grand Klaive back to the Shadow Lords. Åke tells the story at the moot, relaying what happened, telling everyone what went on with Tick and Minotaur and the Skin Dancers. He also spins them releasing the captured Skin Dancer as something they did to cement the deal with Tick, to help spin it. The response from the rest of the caern is largely positive, but there is still a lot of grumbling about any Gaian Garou literally doing anything that could benefit a Skin Dancer, even if it also serves the greater good. However, Åke does finally get a shiny new deed name out of the whole experience -- "Bullfighter." So that's something.

And the moot finishes with Raptor Strike announcing he's going to step down and return to his home sept, and that Aedan Thorne will be taking his place as leader of the sept. (This will be something that will be more relevant when we return to this game, obviously.)

And we basically kinda fade to black on that. End of season. Any questions?


[0]-- Yes, I know how dated of a reference that is. Shut up.