Greetings again to my Chronicles of Darkness crossover write-ups! You'll have to wait a little longer for a Starfinder post, as the last session was one of those where there's a lot of moving from room to room and fighting some monsters, and written-up it's a not particularly compelling entry on its own. Also, it left off in the middle of exploring a spaceship, and I think finishing that exploration would make for a more interesting blog entry. Now, that said, as the next session may go beyond finishing up that ship, I'm torn as to whether to do the next write-up just focused on the ship, or to do the whole session even if it leaves off in the middle of some exploration. If you've got an opinion, let me know either by the comment feature here or by other means.
One more bit of business before I move on to the Chronicles of Darkness content: A reminder that the Trinity Continuum Kickstarter is still running. It's funded, bonus material is being unlocked, and there's a preview manuscript up for the Trinity Core book. And this week they'll start doing previews for the Aeon book, which includes stuff I've written! Huzzah!
And now, to a different 'fistfuls of d10s' system...
Note that some of this is going to overlap with a few things that happened at the end of the last session, as there were rolls we didn't have time to fully resolve yet and it all flows better with context.
So where we left off, the group had just kidnapped a cultist to the Mountain God and swiped his books. So during the remainder of the night, we've got Otis and Josh learning more about the strix that Derrick ate a year and a half ago. The cult doesn't know that it's a strix, or even what one is, but there are stories about a trickster owl spirit they think might serve their mountain-encased deity. Stories that suggest it's been around for possibly as long as humans have lived in the area, if not longer. And they know it's been guarding some sort of door or gateway, long before they knew about the archway underneath the ground, and that it's been waiting for someone who can open it. But as we know from before, specifically it's waiting for a vampire with blood that can be traced back to Rome... and it's been waiting there since before Rome was a thing.
Huh.
But regardless, this has been part of the region since before recorded history, and all they know (besides about the door it's been guarding) is that every now and again -- once or twice a century, when it's active -- it gets bored and just wreaks havoc. Usually it does this by manipulating any local vampires, often pitting them against each other. (The research doesn't say that it gets bored, it just says 'spirits are capricious and difficult to understand,' but they're able to figure out the true motivation by inference.)
But eventually Otis goes to sleep, Josh has to become Alice and hit up the day job, but during that time the demon is able to establish contact with Jakob the librarian and make an appointment to see him in a couple of days, and with Weaver to make a date for researching after Alice gets off work. Weaver also reaches out to his Mysterium superiors back in Pittsburgh about establishing more of a presence in Morgantown (and gets their agreement), and hits up his Hallow for some tass.
And at this point we should be completely caught up with resolving stuff from the end of last session.
So Alice gets off work, and Josh invites Weaver over to his place. Weaver uses magic to speed himself up again to do the research, which kinda makes it hard for Josh to help. At this point, they're broadening their search to more of the cult's activities and knowledge and history. And between that and the magically-induced haste, Weaver gets the mistaken impression that the Mountain God Cult and the Mountain Line Preservation Society are on-again-off-again allies.[0]
So this revelation inspires Josh and Weaver to track down the local MLPS office (which isn't that hard to do, given that they're publicly known as a historical society) and Woodburn Hall and poke around a bit. They head down there and find that the office has a very sophisticated digital lock on it, and while Josh takes a closer look to see if he can bypass it, Weaver just teleports inside. He reaches to open the door from the inside, but Josh stops him because he's worried about alarms and such. And Weaver's like 'oh, silly me,' and teleports back out... just to grab Josh and port back in.
And then they flick on the lights, to find that the office has cameras and motion sensors protecting it. The office also has a lot of books, some filing cabinets, a half-open weapons cabinet bolted to the wall, and a weird-looking seismograph in the corner of the room. Josh recognizes this right away, as his demon ally Euler has one as well that can detect disturbances in the fabric of reality, and he's now very concerned about this winding up in the wrong hands. Since they've been spotted anyways, Josh grabs the seismograph and he and teleport back out and head back to Weaver's place where they plug it in and determine that it works. They go through its paper logs and can find confirmation that it is what they think it is when it registers a major disturbance when the dimensional event occurred at the club.
As the evening is wearing on, both in and out of character, we jump ahead to Derrick. He's had a weird dream during the day where he's flying through the air in the neighborhood where Asif lived, and he swoops down on what I can only describe as a human-shaped hot spot. And now he's waking up to a couple of texts from his government-aligned, Invictus-employed associate Barbara McCoy.[1] They're simple enough, asking him to call her.
So he gives her a call, and she asks if he and his have done anything with Asif. Apparently the people working for her occasionally keep tabs on the Mountain God cultists and have noticed that both he and many of his books are missing. Derrick explains where he is (in his basement, restrained), and she isn't terribly concerned as long as he's alive and she knows where he is. She then asks if he knows anything about a break-in at the MLPS offices just a little while ago, because the Society are among the people who work for her. He asks if she's got any pictures of who broke in, and she sends him three camera stills: The first is Weaver standing just inside the door, in night-vision mode. The second is Weaver and Josh standing just inside the door with the lights on. And the third is Josh running back to Weaver with the seismograph equipment. Derrick just says he knows who's responsible and he can deal with it and get the seismograph back to her in a couple of hours, and that basically makes them even for the stuff she's cleaned up for him in the past. She agrees and says she'll have someone waiting at the office for it.
So Derrick gives Otis a call to ask him to come out to the club. He calls Josh and Weaver and does the same, but suggests there's something Very Important he needs to discuss with them. When he arrives at the club, with a bunch of rolled-up posters under his arm, one of the ghouls from the tunnels is waiting outside the club to talk to him. They duck into the alley to talk, and the ghoul explains that they had an intruder in the tunnels, a guy in a city worker's uniform. They found him standing at the archway, staring slack-jawed at it, and he resisted when they tried to question him. They're pretty sure they killed him, but regardless they pounded on him some and he exploded into sparks. The ghoul makes it clear that the Badacelli don't think Derrick had anything to do with that, but they wanted to ask him if it sounded familiar (it doesn't), and to warn him to keep an eye out. Derrick asks the ghoul for some blood before he leaves, and the ghoul offers his wrist like he's obviously used to doing.
Otis arrives as Derrick comes back around front, and Derrick leads him into the club with the intent of asking him to help put up the posters he's had printed up -- blown up copies of the images that Barbara sent him. But when they get up to the VIP area, there's a guy in a city worker's uniform standing there, slack-jawed, staring at the spot where Derrick became a being of pure shadow and consumed the suicide bomber's essence. Otis, as he did with Josh, is able to sense that the guy isn't human and that he's similar to Josh, but not the same thing.
The stranger notices Derrick the moment he arrives, and says he's here to investigate a gas leak and that his name is 'Bill,' and he works for 'the city.' They start asking him questions and he tries to make a run for it. Before he can get to the door, Josh and Weaver open it from the outside, and they watch as Derrick tackles 'Bill' and ties him up with a chain. They gag 'Bill' and then Derrick and Otis put up the posters, showing Josh and Weaver that he knows what they did.
Weaver explains his reasoning for going after the MLPS office and taking their stuff, and that leads Derrick to correct him on what he's learned, as Derrick knows enough about the Society to know better. He also makes it clear that Barbara's fairly dangerous and it's unwise to push her buttons unless you absolutely have to. Otis is more than a little concerned that Derrick is regarding Barbara as something other than particularly clever food, and wondering whether she knows her place in the literal food chain, but Derrick makes it clear that Prince Justin (in Charleston) has her under control. Otis remains unconvinced, but tables the argument for now.
Weaver and Josh are willing to return the seismograph, and want to establish a complicated system of hiding it someplace and passing along information to Barbara's people, and Derrick is like 'No, look. We're going to take it back to her, in person, no need to make this difficult' and Weaver agrees with a sigh.
But then we come back to the subject of the restrained city worker. Before he removes the gag, Derrick informs the others as to what happened in the tunnels, and suspects this may have something to do with the 'terminator' he found in the PRT that time. Josh, suddenly concerned, activates Aetheric Resonance to discover that the 'city worker' on the ground is running on God-Machine juice. He suddenly gets very quiet and very nervous and trying hard not to freak out while they talk to the guy, trying to figure out what he's there for.
Eventually, perhaps deciding his mission would be better completed by coming clean, 'Bill' explains that he's there to try and seal a dimensional breach that happened and that he can detect that it's still somewhat centered on Derrick. He doesn't seem to know anything about the God-Machine, only still insisting he works for the city, but that he should be able to close the rift centered on Derrick without hurting him ('like stitching up a wound' as he puts it). So they unchain 'Bill' and let him try. He stands up, and basically waves his hands at Derrick while nothing seems to happen. He looks confused and does it again. He says that normally he should be able to deal with the anomaly, but there's something blocking it, but perhaps he should go back and report in and see if a better protocol can be implemented. Derrick asks the rest of the group to meet him in the office, and tells 'Bill' to remain there. So they go into the office, but not before Otis slips 'Bill' a piece of note that, when read, gets a 'Thank you' from the angel. Josh is not pleased by this development.[2]
So in the side office, Derrick asks Josh what they should do about the thing, because everyone is pretty sure this falls under Josh's deal. Josh warns Derrick that he seems to have caught the God-Machine's attention now, and that if they let 'Bill' go then the Machine may send someone else. Derrick asks about what he encountered in the PRT station a year and a half ago, and Josh confirms that that was also like 'Bill' and that the God-Machine could send someone dangerous at him. Josh's first solution is to relocate the club -- he'll get together the resources to just abandon the building and move the business to a new space, let the God-Machine do what it wants to the building, and wait for all this to blow over. (clink glasses)
Derrick finds that plan... less than ideal. But the big issue with figuring out what to do is they don't know if the Machine would be willing to kill Derrick to close up the portal.
Weaver goes back out to talk to 'Bill,' and when asked 'Bill' confirms that there's some connection keeping the rift from closing. Going back to the aforementioned 'wound' analogy, the angel explains that it's like trying to stitch up a wound that still has a blade in it. By this point, everyone else has come out to ask 'Bill' more questions. They determine that 'Bill' isn't there to hurt Derrick and doesn't have orders to do so, but there's the strong implication that he can't make any guarantees about anyone else from 'the city.' They try to tell 'Bill' to inform 'the city' that they have this well in hand, and that nobody else needs to deal with this, and he simply says he'll share their feedback when he returns.
They decide to let 'Bill' go, but in an attempt to get him to violate his orders he uses Dominate to try and convince him to take up a hobby and have a dance downstairs. 'Bill' just looks at him and leaves, and a minute later they check to see him just standing on the dance floor, not knowing what to do. Derrick calls Leland to ask him to try and force 'Bill' to have a good time and at least get him drunk.
Afterwards, Weaver asks Derrick about what he encountered in the PRT station and where, and Derrick fills him in on the basics. He was led to the PRT basement, he encountered a piece of the God-Machine in the closet, and some sort of robot thing that looked like a security guard attacked him. Derrick, in turn, asks what Weaver and Josh got from their further research, and they give him the basics of that and Derrick fills in one or two of the details they got wrong and explains how they got that journal in the first place. Weaver wants to ask the cult's leader from a year and a half ago what happened, but Derrick explains that she'd been arrested and taken away by government hunters (I'm pretty sure he pointed out Barbara's involvement in this but I'm blanking on specifics) and they don't know where she is.
Josh argues that if the Mountain Line Preservation Society is actually the cult's enemy, maybe they could steer the group towards the cult's higher-ups. Derrick's reluctant to involve Barbara for fear of owing her another favor, and Josh asks if they could at least talk to her. And Derrick ponders for a moment and decides they can at least have the conversation. Otis is still displeased with Barbara's situation in all this.
But we can sort all that out next time, because that's where we left off.
[0]-- For those of you following along at home, Weaver failed one of his rolls for the research and opted to take a condition so he could continue. So I reskinned the "Received Inadvertently Wrong Information From The Ancient Wise Informant" condition from the Overly-Specific Condition Cards and gave him that.
[1]-- Barbara has turned up once or twice in the previous LARP story that led to this one, and she was a major recurring NPC through a big part of my Hunter LARP from some years back. She's a member of Task Force: VALKYRIE, an NSA agent, and hilariously amoral. We've joked that the only reason why no vampire has embraced her is because they're afraid of what she'd become if they did.
[2]-- As Sean (Otis' player) has asked that John (Josh's player) not know what's in the note, I'm leaving that out of this writeup.
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