Session #12: Gary Dodd Memorial

This was a fun session for me because I got to reprise the role of several NPCs, each with their own goals and motivations that would incite the PCs to act.  After all, the best NPCs are like those little levers in a pinball machine that send the ball (PCs) in all kinds of weird and wonderful and unscripted directions.

This was also a session where several PCs had their own goals and desires.  Sadly, Edward Kensington (new character) couldn't meet his childe (slightly older character) this session but he got to meet up with a few Melbourne vampires who had also headed for Adelaide over the past few months for their own reasons.

Zahra and Taranis were given temporary positions as Master of Elysium by the city seneschal as a representative of the Circle of the Crone (Zahra) and the Ordo Dracul (Taranis).  Jax clashed with Zahra a few times as he was feeling quite Tempted (i.e. frenzy-prone), especially after the hijinx he had been witnessing among the Ordo Dracul. 

He was particularly annoyed by the NPC Mattie Monroe when Mattie approached Faux (recently released fledgling barely a month old) to be his new foster sire instead of the scary Elder Novichkov.  Mattie had his reasons, many of which he freely admitted, and was told by Jax that he couldn't simply choose a new foster sire.  It would be up to the prince.  Mattie waved that off, saying he'd just offer to attend family gatherings and she'd be for it.  Considering that his real sire (Evil Taylor) had caused his father to crash the car, killing his mother and best friend on his 18^th birthday, all to Embrace him…  Yeah, big deal.

It was around this time that Faux dropped one of Jax's most dearly kept secrets into the middle of the gathering, not seeing why it would be such a big deal.  Jax freaked out and it was only due to the timely intervention of the Master of Elysium, Zahra, that he was taken outside and calmed down (somewhat).

During all of this, Siobhan O'Baoill was using her two minor boons on FatherMother that she had traded for to buy her best ghoul (Moneypenny) and get her to quit the police force.  FatherMother argued that Moneypenny was worth far more than a minor boon.  Without the prince there, things got heated and Siobhan O'Baoill threatened that FatherMother would become boon broken so FatherMother quit the city by the end of the session.  Siobhan was motivated by FatherMother killing one of her own touchstones in his hospital bed, an action FatherMother maintained was necessary for the masquerade.

The seneschal, Gustaf, was busy trying to keep the various members of his family together (as almost all of the Gangrel were related in the city) and was watching it all fall apart.

Another NPC who entered the session included Peter Walsh (Winnifred Tyler's long-lost sire) which enabled some rather awkward conversations.  Unfortunately Julia Dannenburg wasn't in play at the same time as the main cast member who runs her couldn't attend.  Since that cast member was also the player who had lost Gary Dodd, it was quite unfortunate that he couldn't come.  Peter Walsh explained a few plot elements and helped clarify a few things when Seamus O'Baoill (who has suddenly become younger and handsomer, weird) was giving a speech on all of the occult issues in the city.  Where before he could only speak to a maximum of five people, now he was talking to the gathered court.

Contrary Mary was the third NPC I can remember playing.  Wearing a plastic mask gets annoying, by the way, as your breath condenses against the inside and makes the whole thing wet!  Still it gave me the chance to watch the five minute clip of Gary Dodd drinking and staring into the camera that was projected onto the curtains, and feel duly sad.  I do miss poor Gary Dodd … he made such interesting decisions and really livened up every scene he participated in.

Rest In Peace, Gary Dodd….

Sadly enough very little focused on poor Gary Dodd as this was one of the busiest Elysium games (i.e. no plot intruding) that we've had yet so most people just didn't get the time to really focus on the dearly departed.  No speeches were said.  No songs were sung.

Finally our newest player, portraying MaidenLad (FatherMother's childe), told Mattie he should get over his daddy issues, played fitting songs at various characters to represent their woes, and offered herself up as a potential host for an angel so that it could be better interrogated.  She certainly added a lot to the session and really hit the ground running.

Session #11: Trial of a Kogaian

The player of the deceased and the accused working on
character generation to replace the glorious Faust.

This session was intended to be a regular court gathering, or perhaps the memorial, but the player intending to do the memorial wasn't able to attend and so we went with an Ordo Dracul Juris Draconis followed by a regular gathering.  In order to understand the Juris Draconis you will need a little back story….

During the gap between LARP sessions and over the forums, a number of interesting events were occurring in the Ordo Dracul Chapter House.  A low humanity necromancer called Marco Giovanni had come to stay with his two daughters who were then thought to be ghouls but who were, in fact, also vampires.  Many others within the Ordo Dracul were also living in the Chapter House as it was dangerous in the surrounding city and this created an atmosphere of frequent frenzies and other vicious shenanigans over the forums.

One night while most of the others were out, a human friend and boss of Siobhan O'Baoill called Detective Monroe who had been brought into the Chapter House for fear of a particular member of VII called "Darling" who had been tracking down the loved ones of the various vampires and who knew his identity.  During his time there, he had been badly drained by a frenzying vampire, suffered hypothermia, seen Siobhan cut off her own hand, and seen a zombie of someone Siobhan had been Dominated to kill fall apart in a lot of gore and viscera.  Previously he'd even been killed and brought back with a resurrection stone.  His sanity was quite shaken and he was looking for something to believe in.

Due to the particular resurrection stone in question, he had realised that Dr. Jonathon Taylor -- the man responsible for Dominating him into a car accident which killed his wife and left his son in hospital (whom Taylor later Embraced) -- was most assuredly not that vampire at all.  (Very long story about that -- suffice to say that this was the Taylor of the past brought to the present who had never committed such acts, if that makes sense at all).  Anyway, he sees a person tortured and goes to have a conversation with Taylor seeking some sense that perhaps this vampire could help him deal with torturers (since he really didn't want to get the low ranked and young Siobhan involved and was still a little suspicious of the elder Seamus O'Baoill despite a mutual attraction and those were his only allies who might help).

The conversation goes poorly as Taylor fails to give him the hope he seeks, so with sanity shaken and mounting desperation, Detective Monroe starts hitting emotional buttons to get Taylor to see that he must start actively helping humanity.  This leads to frenzy.  The frenzy leads to Monroe escaping and Taylor ripping out Siobhan's eye when she investigations and then beating Marco Giovanni into torpor and during this time Monroe grabs another human recovering in the medical rooms to assist him in escaping with the torture victim while the torturers were away trying to find out what had happened to their father (Marco Giovanni).

Taylor finds Monroe in the midst of his escape with a fellow called Bennett because the actual security ghoul in charge of the place refused to open the exit.  After all, you don't simply release a vampire's test subjects no matter how much it might hurt your conscience.  You simply don't have the appropriate permissions to do so.

Luckily Taylor is nearly entirely out of blood so after a few hits (namely by Bennett the more skilful fight), Taylor can no longer soak damage with Resilience and is put out of action.  At this point the two torturers come rushing up, looking gleeful, as does Siobhan who carries Monroe's gun.  A gun full of phosphorous rounds.  He asks for the gun and she gives it to him without thinking so naturally he starts shooting at the torture sisters, knowing that the victim will simply be returned for further torture if he doesn't.

One frenzies, the other goes invisible.  Seamus O'Baoill arrives at this point and grapples the invisible woman moments after she slashes the torture victim's throat, providing a chance for the two humans to slowly take apart her health levels while Siobhan clamps her hands to the man's throat and tries to keep him alive.  They get the woman down into torpor moments before the next one arrives (also under obfuscate) and slashes Monroe with her claws.  She gets in a few good shots and he's only got one health level left (and that's only because he was wearing a stab vest which soaked two damage each hit) but with Seamus and Bennett's help and some further phosphorous rounds they manage to take her down as well.

Monroe kills one of the daughters.  Seamus kills another and then goes to kill poor Marco Giovanni -- knowing that he would never forgive them and never leave them alone after what had happened to his two childe.

So naturally when one Ordo Dracul kills three Ordo Dracul things get a bit delicate.  Sure the humans started it but they're only humans and don't really matter in vampire society.  However Seamus O'Baoill is the kogaian who normally cannot be tried under Juris Draconis and as one of the few remaining characters from Campaign 1 (2009-2011) there was some incentive for other characters to keep him alive.  More so for those in charge who happened to also rely on him for advice and didn't want to see him dead.

Still a trial had to happen.

Especially when the four Giovanni from Melbourne arrived who had been called by Marco only a few nights beforehand.  They were given the ashes of their family and allowed to play the part of the prosecution at the trial.  I gave these NPCs to the players of the Circle of the Crone who graciously were willing to play cast for a significant portion of the session and did a fantastic job of it.

We set up the tables and chairs so that the Sworn were at the head table (Taylor claimed his Alternate Self's / Past Self's title of Sworn of the Dying Light for the first time) with the two accused sitting to one side (initially Seamus and Siobhan O'Baoill until Seamus convinced them Siobhan had no part in it) and the prosecution sitting to the other.  The Unsworn sat along a line watching the events.  They seemed to enjoy it enough, with a few snarky comments here and there from the side lines.  I thank them for their patience nonetheless.

The trial proceeded with a number of breaks for private questioning, demands, calls for witnesses, and other such actions which allowed people to talk among themselves for awhile so that the Unsworn, in particular, didn't spend the entire time watching while doing nothing.  In the end Seamus O'Baoill convinced them that executing the humans involved would be like executing a tool and just as ludicrous which was helped by the fact the Greater Judge (Jasmine Hadley) didn't want to upset Siobhan by killing Bennett and had her own personal connection to Detective Monroe due to a similar back story.

In the end, they declared that Seamus O'Baoill would suffer a full vinculum to Prince Jasmine Hadley.  As she had Coil of Vovoide which made her blood doubly addictive, he refused which he claimed as his right since it was only by his graceful acquiescence that they could trial him at all as he were kogaian.  He stated he would accept only one of three options: Execution, Exile or Release.  In truth once he was there it was technically a caucus and he'd submitted to the results but the judges listened and took him aside to convince him.  Once suitably convinced, Seamus O'Baoill changed his verdict and acceded to their demands but the echoes of his statement resounded and brought him from Respected (Status 4) to Admired (Status 5).

If you have the guts to tell the judges which verdicts you're willing to accept and get away with it, you are someone to be Admired.

And lo … no one died.

The combined gathering only went for an hour and a half but most people were content to simply chill out and converse during this time so it worked out well for everyone.  The Crone were given a little more plot and some extra RtRs (between session scenes run in a tabletop game format) to compensate and the players who were present at the game seemed pretty content with that.

Session #10: Praxis Seizure

An earlier picture that reflects the struggle between the need
to have a political gathering regarding the prince and an
opportunity to remember the brave and valiant dead.
(Professor Hadley and Gary Dodd pictured above)

This gathering was intended to be a funeral of Gary Dodd but we also needed a new prince because the old one had to leave the game.  As the Nosferatu memorial was to be held by a vampire who had never actually met the deceased in question, though he had good motivation to want to mourn the fellow due to a mixture of blood-based mood swings and clan affiliation, the rest of the court decided to have a gathering focused on the praxis instead.  Since they thought it would be poor form to bicker about politics during a memorial, or at least to openly bicker about politics, they chose to do the memorial later.

Michael Novichkov, eldest in Adelaide with an Embrace date of 1751, stepped forward and announced Jasmine Hadley as prince.  The gathering then split into a variety of political manoeuvres in back rooms which saw Novichkov as Marshall (sort of an externally focused tactician and court defender) and FatherMother as Sheriff (an internally focused lawbringer and investigator).  No one stepped forward as harpy now that Amity Fine had left the city so the position fell to her deputy, Talitha Salvatore, who was all right with recording boons but really didn't want the other responsibilities of policing society itself.

Gustaf Freya'barn wrangled the position of seneschal and successfully (though temporarily) argued against creating a position of emissary which is pretty much a herald to other supernatural groups who would be responsible for making diplomatic overtures.  This game the Circle of the Crone positions of sheriff and seneschal while the Ordo Dracul held the positions of prince, marshall and lesser harpy.  For the time being Dr. Jonathon Taylor was to act as liaison between the two covenants.  As you can imagine that was not a very fun position to be for poor Taylor.

Sheriff FatherMother immediately set to finding people who could assist with the task of tracking down and dealing with the serial killers.  She had an argument with Siobhan O'Baoill, childe of the second eldest vampire in the city, who loudly argued that the serial killers should be arrested rather than killed.  The sheriff told the neonate not to tell her how to do her job and that she would decide when the time came.  Siobhan demanded to be present at each hunt so that she could ensure their arrest.

Gustaf Freya'barn gathered up information and offered resources from the various vampires present as part of his role as seneschal to better provide advice to Prince Jasmine Hadley.

Prince Jasmine Hadley requested that people introduce themselves to her in the back room but the conversations stretched out, as they are wont to do, and many of the younger vampires didn't have the opportunity to do so.

Due to the small size of the court, those who would normally be primogen instead of legitimate covenant positions and titles.  Therefore the primogen's council is made up of those with greater level of responsibility and divided duties than most primogen who are generally elder representatives of covenant power.