Unless something's gone horribly wrong on my end, you may be noticing that you're getting kind of a two-fer for this week on posts. This is because I had some delays on getting the Starfinder post ready (partially because I wasn't sure if there was enough there to post), and got a much earlier start on the Chronicles of Darkness post. There'll be a little delay after this, because I'll be out of town this weekend at a convention, so we won't be playing this week.
But with that, let's get on with it!
(Quick note before we begin: For reasons unrelated to his absence from the Starfinder game, John also couldn't make it to this session of this game, either. In this case, his character's off-camera, keeping his head down with the recent discovery of a vampire openly and actively trying to hack the God-Machine, as well as the poking at his cover. If we establish more, I'll post that here somewhere, probably in a future game post.)
So after the last session left off in the middle of the night, we jump ahead past periods of people resting and such to the 2:30pm appointment at the library. Josh isn't there, but Weaver shows up and is ready to research. He meets the librarian, Jakob Cooke: a man in his early 40's, thinning hair, glasses, dressed more or less how you'd expect a librarian to dress. He shows Weaver inside, explaining that he inherited this collection of occult materials from another librarian (whom Weaver knows to have been a mage murdered by a slasher some years ago).
He leads Weaver into a locked storeroom with several shelves worth of texts both old and new. Weaver grabs a few books to flip through, trying to see if this is all Mage stuff or not, but it looks like there's too much for him to know without a more thorough inventory. Jakob asks if he's looking for anything specific, and Weaver kind of dances around the topic of spirit esoterica before dropping the term 'Unshaped,' which does get his attention. As he recognizes that Weaver wants to conduct this research in private, Jakob pulls a selection of books for him with which to start, and says he'll check on him in 45 minutes or an hour.
Weaver, as per his modus operandi at this point, uses Time Magic to speed up his efforts on the research. He pushes himself enough to risk Paradox, but he manages to dodge that particular bullet. So there he is, zipping around at high speed, reading the books -- which is difficult at first, because many of these books don't actually have any useful information and a few are in fact full of the sort of thing you'd find at the Barnes and Noble, artificially aged to seem full of old wisdom. He recognizes that this is a collection that a Guardian of the Veil may have used to distract mortal occultists and researchers away from more dangerous materials. But he pushes on, starting to find useful material about spirits of concepts that don't (or can't) exist. But over the course of reading, he realizes more and more that he can't leave this library in the hands of even a particularly clever normal human. He starts scheming a way he can get these books out of here.[0]
Time passes, and after an hour of researching he looks up to realize that Jakob is standing there, eyes wide, and has been watching him long enough to see him moving at magically-enhanced speed.[1]
Weaver panics, and in his moment of panic does something desperate and potentially murderous -- he tries to teleport Jakob into the basement with the vampires. But this risks Paradox again, because not only is he pushing the limits of what he can do without ritual preparation, there's a Sleeper present (obviously) and the risk of Paradox earlier has brought the room slightly closer to the Abyss. He manages to teleport Jakob away, but winds up having to internalize the energies of the Abyss (containing the Paradox), and the Abyss seeps into his mind to taint his spellcasting efforts for a while.
He stops to process what he's just done, but manages to rationalize it to himself, leaving him in a mindset that throwing more magic at these problems will solve them.[2] Speaking of throwing magic at problems, he figures that since he's just brutally, indirectly murdered the librarian, he may as well teleport the books to his house. So he does so, taking his time this time around, and pulls it off without a Paradox risk (which lets him cleanse the Abyss tainting his Imagos). And after that, he's definitely ready to rest. He opts not to check the basement, for fear of what he'll find.
So we move ahead to sunset. All of the vampires in town reachable by phone, as well as Otis and Weaver given their current informal status as associates, have messages waiting for them about a meeting at 9pm at the club.
So they get to the club where Leland is up on stage, setting up a microphone, and most of the city's non-Baddacelli vampires (and some with ghouls) are in attendance. Leland gets things started, informing everyone that he doesn't want to keep them too long. He knows everyone has heard whispers about what's been going on, he knows there are concerns about the current state of the city and its leadership, but he has someone there who should be able to answer some questions and put fears to rest.
He then introduces Humfrey van der Höek, a Nosferatu with a long, thin mustache, a hideous, outdated suit, and a cane.[3] Humfrey shuffles up to the microphone, showing a smile that would crack a mirror. He informs the crowd that Derrick has betrayed them, he's betrayed the city, he's betrayed his covenant. The Charleston Invictus have withdrawn their endorsement of Derrick's leadership of the city, reclaiming it. And this means that things fall to Humfrey to establish order as the new Regent. He informs the crowd that if anyone has any problem with that... "...that's why God gave us dark alleys."
His formal remarks finished, he then indicates a few vampires, including Stills, to follow him up to the VIP room to discuss the Derrick situation. Pretty early on, as a test to the other vampires in the city, Stills 'flexes' with his Nightmare a bit to intimidate a couple of them out of the room. He then reassures Humfrey that he's got some useful allies and they're working on that problem.
Out in the club, Otis is mingling and proselytizing. The vampires are still getting a handle on just how to deal with him -- on the one hand, being a Beast, they have an instinctive feeling that they can trust him, and between that and the fact that he has a presence that looms beyond his physical body, they should at least take him seriously. But on the other hand, he's also telling them that he's their god and he absolves them of their sins. That's a little harder to swallow.
Meanwhile, Weaver talks to Leland about passing along to Humfrey that he still wants to have a sitdown with someone official about a possible alliance between vampires and mages. Leland agrees to pass that along when the time comes.
At about this point, Humfrey comes downstairs with Stills and the one other vampire that he hadn't intimidated out of the room. Stills makes a beeline for the door, and Weaver catches up and stops him to ask what's up. Stills is a little disappointed that so many of the vampires in town were chased out of that room, and he asks where Otis is. Weaver points to Otis in the crowd, who's displaying his Horror to someone who doubted him. Stills gets Otis' attention, and they head out.
Stills tells them that the new guy in charge needs results. They need to sort out what Derrick can do, which leads into Weaver pointing out that he's got the books they need. Which then brings up the subject of how he got the books.
Neither Stills not Otis is cool with teleporting the librarian into the basement. First off, there's the fact that he was just expecting the Baddacelli to clean up his mess. Second, that means that if the librarian goes missing, at best there might be security cameras showing him in the building right before the librarian went missing, let alone concerns about a body turning up. But as there's nothing to be done about it now, they get back on track.
Stills wants to grab one of Derrick's cultists and interrogate them for information. He starts hitting the streets, asking around, and tracks down a woman named Anne Winston, a woman who works at a bank and lives in Sabraton.
They get to her house about 11pm. There are lights on the house but she also has heavy curtains so it's tough to see what's going on, but they're pretty sure she's awake. When they creep up to the door they can hear her talking to someone, and Stills knocks on the door and she suddenly gets quiet and a moment later says she'll be there in a minute. The group whispers among themselves over whether or not this is a good plan, and then they hear several locks being undone before the door opens far enough to hit the end of the chain.
Stills immediately wants to know about her 'dark lord and savior,' and she's like "Is this some Satanist version of the 'Jehovah's Witness' thing?" and they don't really have a good response. She starts to close the door, but Otis teleports into a shadow he can see inside. From the shadow, he can see, hiding against the wall of the living room and out of sight of the door, a man in his early 40's with thinning hair, glasses, and dressed kind of like you'd expect a librarian to dress. Jakob Cooke, though Otis doesn't know what the guy looks like. Also, he's got a lot of cuts and bruises and is holding a shotgun.
Outside, Weaver wants to try and get through the door with magic. He attempts it and fails, eating a Paradox in the process, but his failed attempt gives Otis the chance to hear Jakob ask if they all had eyes, because the ones in the basement didn't -- though the guy that put him there did.[4]
Stills is about to kick in the door when Otis, in a booming voice, announces himself as the lord of shadows and offers Jakob and Anne a chance to save their lives. Anne quickly takes the shotgun from Jakob and looks around for the speaker, as he's still in a shadow. Otis uses the locked door as a Sealed Exit for the purpose of his Lair traits and invokes the rest of his Lair, and merges with his Horror to appear before them in his full Camazotz form.
Anne reflexively shoots at him, but not only misses but dislocates her shoulder and drops the weapon. Otis demands that they give him Derrick, and Anne asks "Who?" Jakob says he's heard of him, but starts stammering about what happened when Otis interrupts them and insists that Anne is messing with him because he knows she's one of Derrick's followers. She says she doesn't follow Derrick she follows Stephen (who briefly came up here). And even then, it's less of a 'worship' relationship than a 'co-worker' relationship.
Otis bellows that Lawrence is an idiot, and then tells Anne that he will be Stephen's god and also hers, and she's not willing to argue. Weaver's pounding on the door outside, trying to get his attention. Otis tells the two mortals that when his majesty recedes from the room, they are to flee and not come back until the first light of dawn. He uses the 'Needs Must' Atavism so he can track Jakob later, retreats into a shadow so they don't see his human form, and lets his Lair recede while they flee out the back.
He then steps out of the shadow, grabs some beer out of Anne's fridge, and opens the door where he yells at Stills for getting the wrong vampire cultist. He's also pissed that she shot at him. They ask about the guy with her, and Otis says it was just some guy, so as not to spoil the surprise for them that Jakob is still alive. So they write off what just happened as a trial run and Stills hits the streets again to find someone else.
So about an hour later, they're in an apartment building downtown, outside the door of a guy named Floyd Rollins. Stills jams a penny under the door and turns the light on his phone to create a shadow for Otis to inhabit, but Otis takes offense at the presumption -- he's a deity, not a robot spy cam. They hear the guy inside turning down his TV to listen at what's going on outside, and Stills says 'fuck it' and kicks the door in. He kicks it hard enough to launch it across the room, hit the guy in the head, and knock him unconscious with a nasty cut on his head.
So they go in and find Floyd, all emo-goth black hair and kind of pathetic, and Otis hides out in Stills' shadow as they just drag the guy out and toss him in the car. They head back to Weaver's place to interrogate him, where they find a pair of shadow owls -- like the one they encountered before Derrick's face-heel turn -- in a tree, watching the house. Otis takes a moment to confirm that Derrick isn't nearby, and isn't approaching.
They haul Floyd inside and lay down some newspapers and put him on them. They pour beer on him to wake him up and start interrogating him about what he knows about Derrick and his 'god' the Hungry Shadow. He describes how Derrick summoned the cult and has done so only once since this all began, and when asked to describe the entity's powers he said he saw it dissolve a guy who pushed back against Derrick's claims -- he described it as being like the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Donovan 'chooses poorly.' He also says that at one point the entity plunges them into a shadow that reaches into their soul, giving them feelings of peace and serenity that another one of Derrick's followers described as being like heroin without the side effects.
They ask about Derrick's endgame, and Floyd doesn't properly know. Stills grabs his shirt and pulls him in close and angrily demands more, and as Floyd pees himself he babbles that Derrick wants to just rule the city at least, build a kingdom of shadows, and so forth. They ask if he knows how the god can be killed, and Floyd mentions that it flinched from the fire when someone went to light a cigarette... at which point Derrick ripped the guy's arm out of his socket and tossed it to his god to eat, while he just drank blood out of the now-bloody hole in the man's torso.
To ensure Floyd's continued compliance, they point out that a couple of shadow owls saw them bring him inside, so they could just toss him outside and let Derrick assume he's been betrayed. The guy understands and agrees, and asks if he can get a paper towel or something for the cut on his head. Stills, just to freak him out, just leans in and licks the blood off the wound. Then they stop to figure out what to do with him for now, and Otis has a plan as part of the 'demonstration' he intends to give to prove his godhood. Stills said he'd been thinking about maybe Embracing Floyd, but Weaver just says 'not in my house.' They ask Floyd if he knows where Derrick is, and he just says that when he saw Derrick and the god before, it was in this chamber in tunnels under the city that he didn't even know were there. They ask if Derrick's always had the god nearby, or if they've ever been apart, and Floyd says that he didn't have it with him when he first came to gather up the cult members.
The group tosses around the idea of maybe going back into the tunnels to destroy the spike to see if that does anything. After all, they don't have to worry about it releasing anything any more. But they circle around to the subject of what to do with Floyd now, and Otis says that he needs to keep him alive for a while, so they decide that Floyd is his problem now.
Otis insists that he is going to take Floyd to Xibalba, and asks Weaver if he can turn off the power to the living room. Since Weaver wants to go downstairs to talk to Alberto anyways, he doesn't mind. So he goes down there, hits the switch on the circuit breaker, and Otis opens up his Lair to stash Floyd in there for now -- also swiping a bunch of food from Weaver's kitchen to keep Floyd alive for a bit.
Meanwhile, in the basement, Alberto is also sparring with one of his childer. The elder proceeds to inform Weaver that the man he teleported down there earlier today escaped, as it was the middle of the day and the man -- who obviously knew what vampires were -- was able to exploit their lethargy to escape. He says that the rest of the brood are out looking for him now. Weaver, more than a little freaked by this revelation, admits that he panicked, and Alberto tells him that the reason he cut Weaver's arm before was to remind him not to foist his problems off on others as a reflex. Weaver takes a moment to consider that lesson.
He also asks Alberto if he can try sparring a bit. Alberto hands him a practice blade and Weaver takes a couple of test swings -- rapiers aren't his thing, but he does know how to handle melee weapons. Alberto respects that enough that he'll at least give Weaver a chance.
Weaver has no chance. Alberto has been studying the art of fencing since before the Revolutionary War. Alberto plays with Weaver a bit, tests him, lets him think he's getting the upper hand, and then the next thing Weaver knows his blade is in Alberto's other hand and there's a sword tip at his throat. And all without supernatural powers, at that.[5]
Weaver asks if Alberto could teach him a few things, and after a moment's thought Alberto agrees -- it's been far too long since he's gotten to teach someone the basics, and he sees this as a fitting payment for Weaver letting the Baddacelli brood stay in the basement. Weaver thanks him for that and heads back upstairs, to find that Otis has taken most of the food in his kitchen to feed Floyd. Weaver's more than a little annoyed by this, but Otis informs him that he is paid back in the gratitude of a god.
Then Stills tries to freak them out with his Nightmare-created 'phantom ghost face,' and Weaver's just not in the mood to have it. So Stills produces another illusion, having this one lick Weaver's face much like how he licked Floyd's face earlier, and that does the trick.
And we just kind of leave off there.
[0]-- To put it in game mechanics terms, Weaver failed a roll on the extended action and accepted the Obsessed condition, centered around acquiring the collection, so he could continue.
[1]-- Weaver failed another roll, and to keep things interesting accepted a Beat to make it a dramatic failure. This was the result.
[2]-- Okay, so the latest stop on Weaver's ride on the fail train (after the Obsession, and the dramatic failure, and the Paradox) has led to him suffering from Wisdom degeneration, which gave him the Rampant condition (which comes with a compulsion to use magic indiscriminately).
[3]-- If you've read my past posts, this is Sean's character from the LARP I ran in this setting a couple of years ago. I let him reprise the role for this scene, as well.
[4]-- Due to Quiescence, Jakob doesn't clearly remember his experience with magic. He doesn't remember being teleported, as such, but he does know that because of what Weaver did he wound up in a basement full of vampires. Fortunately for him, it was the middle of the day and this isn't the first time he's been chased by a vampire.
[5]-- It's worth noting that I treated this as a contested roll, and while Weaver is no slouch with swordplay, he got no successes while Alberto got so-damn-many.
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