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.