Main Session 14: A Tale of Two Matties

Siobhan threw acid in her eyes to avoid Dominate.

This session had a lot going on.  It began with three crone threatening an Ordo Dracul (Dr. Jonathon Taylor) in the mangroves near Elysium, Talitha Salvatore throwing Siobhan's notes into the air to make it rain information, Mattie shutting the door in a blinded Siobhan O'Baoill's face (she has acid scarred her eyes to prevent being Dominated) and Prince Hadley having a rare moment where she could discuss matters in the court. 

Oh, and Jax brought along his werewolf girlfriend.  On the full moon.  Who was also a Rahu.  Who ran around in Urshul (dire wolf) for a chunk of the game and harassed Mattie for smelling badly until Mattie pulled out a fetish covered in the kind of scents that annoyed werewolves (actually a cover for something else but it worked and blame was placed on the fetish accordingly).  At one stage both Jax and Kat were in wolf form, howling at the moon, where Jax spent a stone to boost his blood potency from 3 to 6.

Later in a side room a group of neonates led by the Deputy Emissary and later the Marshall went to collect the orbs beneath the Gloom Walls, tricking their ways through areas where a sacrifice was typically in order.  Typically I wouldn't have any "Away Missions" during a LARP court session but orb collection is quite quick and I did check if anyone not currently involved in politics wanted to tag along.  There was a bit of mischief when the prince's childe commandeered the prince's limousine to take them all on their orb collection mission but nothing too untoward happened.  Mattie assisted with the orb collection.

Or rather, imposter Mattie did…  There were a few clues.  His eagerness to read the notes Talitha had thrown about and his occasional comments that set the record straight on occult explanations which had the prince wondering aloud how he, of all people, had come to know the details.

The Crone having a friendly meeting with Dr. Taylor.

It was only when the real Mattie Monroe arrived partway through the gathering that people twigged to what was going on.  There was a tense moment between the two of them as Real Mattie first thought it was a joke but when Imposter Mattie aped his first interactions perfectly, he shoved the imposter over the table with vigor.

Deputy Sheriff Jax demanded they both sit and Faux (Mattie's foster-sire) determined which one was real by asking where Mattie had been over the past month.  The imposter declared he'd been in Adelaide, while the real Mattie piped up that he'd been in Wonder City.  When the imposter stated that such a secret wasn't meant to be shared, Faux declared that Mattie can't keep his mouth shut and therefore identified the real one.  He made demands of the imposter, Deputy Sheriff Jax put the two Mattie's under the influence of a truth serum (basically a dissociative that makes people prone to rambling and weakens their creativity).  The imposter's greater self-protection allowed him to skirt around answering but didn't allow him to give credible lies instead of silence and weak declarations.

Then it was decided that the best way to tell a real vampire from a fake was to stake them in the heart which would tragically slay anyone not a vampire but at this stage things were pretty tense and no one was thinking that far ahead.  In truth, several figured he was likely either the Strix in possession of someone or a vampire using Obfuscate to look like Mattie.  Perhaps both.  The Deputy Sheriff hadn't known that Elysium was protected from Strix and incorporeals, in possession or not, due to the use of the Marshall's special stone in abjuration.

First Jax went to stake the real Mattie but when the imposter lurched forward to protect him (staking torpor does funny things to a vampire's mind and is really painful), he turned to stake the imposter instead.  Since the imposter has some fantastic defence, he missed and embedded the stake in the couch and wall.  A few others tried to grab the imposter or attack him but failed.  Real Mattie was too out of it to get involved beyond saying, "Is it my fault?" and the like.

In the end Jax gutted Imposter Mattie with his claws, and Faux tried to lay on the Kiss (i.e. vampire bite) to make him complacent but underestimated the effect of sinking your fangs in someone still trying to escape and instead tore his throat open.  The imposter collapsed to the couch, bleeding out, at which point everyone decided that they didn't want him dead after all and argued about how best to save him.  It was decided that Deputy Sheriff Jax would rescue him by feeding him vitae and ghouling him so that he could heal his wounds before he died for good.

At around this time Deputy Sheriff Jax set off a frenzy in Faux by declaring that he was irresponsible.  Somehow Jax made his own frenzy check, despite having a -8 due to cumulative frenzy check successes.  Luckily Kat (the werewolf) was there to pin Faux down and Gustaf used his web spitting ability to pin Faux to the ground.

Real Mattie not long before everything went crazy.

And that's when the imposter, whom Marshall FatherMother was still gripping, started to respond.  You see, the imposter was a fellow called Peter Walsh who had moved through the court on several occasions pretending to be a vampire but who had slowly but steadily been revealed as some sort of harmless shapeshifter on several occasions.  Over the forums it had become quite clear that he was mentally deteriorating after all the strain he had been under.

Losing his latest identity (duplicating Mattie) made matters worse and when people tried to ghoul him to pull him out of his faked death, he started to lash out.  His lips sealed shut and his chest wound warped to be mouth like, ribs cracking into position like teeth, and his slashed throat bulged with threat.  Things were about to get bad….  Very bad.

FatherMother almost shot him in the head but Taylor called out that it's Walsh.

Luckily Edward Kensington, Mekhet Elder and new player, happened to have a stone for this.  He strode forward and with a natural 10 threw the stone into the chest cavity just as Dr. Jonathon Taylor reflexively put Peter under Obfuscate.  FatherMother still held the man in a basic grapple (mostly by the head and hair), and she could feel his seizures as the stone did something unexpected.

When Taylor finally dropped the Obfuscate, all saw that the imposter was back to looking like Mattie, no more damaged belly or throat, though with fangs, and who seemed to be quite asleep but for minor tremors.  They took him into the cells and had a quiet conversation with him where it was discovered that he was feeling much better, thank you.

Edward Kensington advised he dyed his hair black so that the real Mattie wouldn't take advantage of the situation.  And he offered clothes to Peter to help people differentiate the real and the fake better, now that Peter's renewed sanity meant he could no longer shape shift and was body locked in Mattie's form.

Somewhere in the main area, Faux was yelling at the prince for a werewolf's presence before disappearing with Mattie.  Mattie was summoned back for more conversation.  Deputy Sheriff Jax was lectured.  Politics shifted up a notch as well.

All in all, this was a very busy session.  Especially as I have only reported what I was present for and thus there was much, much more.