Welcome Session #3

People were naturally quite confused when they first arrived.

It began, as all Cassandra sessions do, with the characters stepping through a door somewhere mundane and arriving in the hall.  This time, though, they each had differing memories which locked them into new perspectives.  So for the first twenty minutes or so, as the new characters trickled in, it was all a case of going up to the most clearly distinct characters and trying to sus them out.

Or, sometimes, as was the case with a few characters and Seamus, not approaching him because oh Seamus is being weird again best leave him alone.

Isn't it great when your character is one of the most visually different, yet due to your character's own known eccentricities, people are also the least surprised?

You see, Seamus, last seen talking in groups and looking handsome, was now wearing a cloak of rags, with his wrists open and leaking blood, and blood on his hands.  He spoke in a low whisper and stated he would speak with no one who didn't touch his blood (i.e. touch his bloodstained hands).

Naturally this disturbed Prince Hadley quite a bit, as she relies on his advice quite a bit.  Luckily this version of Hadley was far bossier and she ended up making herself feel better when she clicked her fingers at Novichkov to make him follow.  Novichkov, is the BP 7 elder who had earlier kicked open the doors to make an entrance to demand to know what had happened to the Ancient Dimloch.  Naturally someone tried to ask Seamus, who declared that there had never been an ancient here, nor Duchess Alicia Brown.

You see, this was the Seamus that would have resulted should Duchess Alicia Brown have never entered Adelaide.  It was the Novichkov that would have resulted should a long ago decision have never been made.  And it was the Hadley who would have resulted had her sire not committed one special act of barbarity.  Each false self taught them something.  Who knows whether they each figured out the lesson?

So Faux managed to hack the computer and speed up the blank space filled with songs to the first set of clips, which was great, as I needed to jump ahead anyway to save some time since we started late due to Windows Updates (read up on the technical difficulties HERE).  Later he hacked the signals in the air using his laptop and managed to text the Blue Girl (one of the Fae seen on the clips).  As I had his mobile number, we simply texted back and forth awhile which helped smooth over some inconsistencies.

At one point, Julia Dannenburg decided to experiment on how to make the memories return by working alongside Faux and Winnifred Tyler to *break* poor Siobhan's will.  The poor girl had to cope with minutes of the Broken condition followed by the promise of nights of the Guilty condition.  It didn't help reveal any memories, though.

The only way to gain true memories were with Emotion Cards.  After every fae clip, Nurse Cassandra appeared (me dressed in a nurse costume) to drop the cards of a particular type around.  First were a series of flowers, each with a character name and their greatest desire written upon it.  This was tied to the fae, Rose Red's, clip.  Once they had read their desire, they regained some of their memories, though not all.  Naturally a number of characters read those of other characters.  Surprisingly, most of the cards were returned to their owners.

Eventually they started making headway in figuring it out.

Second were flames with their greatest wraths / hatreds; then autumn leaves with their greatest fears; and finally rain drops with their greatest sorrows.  Each encounter with Nurse Cassandra played out a little differently as well.  She sprinkled the flowers behind herself, then crawled toward a few characters in a creepy way, holding out her hand toward them as though pleading.  She cast the flames aside, then at one point as she left in a creepy way, when all attention had been turned away from her, she screamed and charged at one of the characters.  She threw the autumn leaves to the ground general, then cowered away from them, and fell against one of the walls as she tried to leave.  Finally she sprinkled the rain drops before the stage, and sat crouched to the bottom right of the projection screen, occasionally gazing up at it, and she dribbled blue blood into her surgical mask.

It was fun.

The saddest plot line involved Siobhan and FatherMother who thought they were best friends.  Yet while Siobhan read every Emotion Card she could find of herself, FatherMother stopped after the first one, merely collecting the others, afraid of losing herself (i.e. her false memories of being an Ordo Dracul and her friend) in favour of a darker self.  Afraid of losing her friend, or even attacking her.  By the point of their conversation, however, Siobhan had little patience with her and coldly told her to read the Emotion Cards.

It damn near broke my heart to see and hear FatherMother's pain.

When she did, and due to the timely intervention of Siobhan's Desire Card to Siobhan ("I want no one else to die") and Joseph Smith dominating FatherMother into trusting Siobhan, there was no murders.  In fact, FatherMother tried to reconcile with Siobhan who stated that she'd work with her so long as FatherMother does what Siobhan says.  For now, and under the influence of Dominate, FatherMother has agreed.

Edward Kensington had to cope with Winnifred Tyler not recognising him at all.  Someone had to break it to Winnifred that not only is her sire dead, but that she hadn't spent the last few decades hunting monsters with him.  Edward Kensington got to scold Kettral (who still hasn't forgiven him for abandoned him a century ago) and Kettral certainly *looked* contrite.

Talitha snubbed her buddy and plotted the death of another character.

Zahra believed she was in the Lancea Sanctum and still in a misogynistic vampire court within Saudi Arabia and costumed accordingly.  She got to scoff at the idea of a female prince (to Hadley's face!) and stand threateningly with her sword dangling from her sleeve.  She found Taylor could converse with her and tried to get him to act as interpreter, but found he wasn't interpreting some of the things she was saying.  She also tried to goad Edward Kensington into a fight (not sure if it was a physical or verbal fight she was going for).

A brand new player of a Gangrel Ordo Dracul got to play a character as confused as she was when the art gallery she'd entered turned out to be the hall.  She wandered around, got to meet various strange people who didn't know each other, and tried to find her place among it.  You see, players of new characters typically didn't have false memories, allowing them to be the normal people in a sea of weird.

Of course, the other characters couldn't be sure that *they* weren't the crazy ones.  After all, people only had their memories to rely upon.

It was a good session, and likely the last Cassandra session before the finale.  Season Three will likely end in the finale either in early May, mid-July, or September, depending on how players go (since there are exams in June).  It will be interesting to see how well they cope with it all, especially as in character they only have nine weeks before the Summer Solstice brings everything to a head.