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.

Door Session #5: Quiet Werewolf Chat

Nikita and Gustaf ... together (platonically)
at last!

Sometimes you can have a gathering with very little pre-established conflict and it all goes up in smoke and fire.  Other times you can have a gathering fraught with internal tension and yet it all moves so very peaceably.  Gustaf Freya'barn yearned to bring back his lost werewolf friend, Nikita, who had died in New York shortly after he had freed her from her blood bonds.  After his time in the Cassandra session where he had believed her still alive, and himself a nomad who travelled with her pack, he became consumed by a need to re-create that world and wanted to draw across that sliver of reality.  In short, he'd hoped it had been a true but alternative dimension he could pull her from and in his torpid sleep he couldn't help but try.  Unfortunately when he awoke he was within a version of Elysium crafted from cold grey stone in the giant cavernous reaches of the Underworld with an even stranger creature sitting on the couch across from them.

Present were the following:

• FatherMother (Gangrel Crone)
• Gustaf Freya'barn (Gangrel Crone)
• Luke Garibaldi (Werewolf from a pack he can no longer reach)
• Jeremy Dartmoor (Urban pack member  Pack Gustaf used to run with)
• Sariah Dartmoor (Urban pack member Gustaf used to run with)
• Fangs Like Knives (Adelaide Hills pack member Luke used to run with)
• Old "One Eye" (Adelaide Hills pack member Luke used to run with)
• Nikita (only appeared in a ghostly form when Gustaf mentioned her by name)
• The Unknowable (strange entity who explained the basic circumstances)

The Dartmoors wanted to convince Luke to defect to their pack as they needed more members, he had invaded their territory on many occasions to reach the Port Adelaide Precinct where he worked, and he had been cut off from the Rural Pack anyways over the past year.  Naturally the Adelaide Hills pack still wanted him to hold on and pointed out that they'd given him Alpha while the others would let him be Omega at best.

Although typically vampires wouldn't be involved in such discussions, the secretive magic of the dissolved stone ensured that Gustaf's opinions remained front and centre.  He offered to assist Luke Garibaldi, first suggesting that he temporarily run with the Dartmoors and then when that turned out to be culturally impossible he suggested he wait for a few more months (while secretly planning to discuss the matter further with Luke when his pack-mates weren't around).

FatherMother also convinced the werewolves that she didn't throw her vitae around liberally when pressed on the matter by Old One Eye who worried for Luke's safety.  She stated that she only ever Embraced one girl who was otherwise going to die (true) but naturally didn't mention all of the blood bonds and ghouls she had strewn about the place, Crone beliefs regarding the sacred value of vitae, or the need to use it for Cruac rituals.

After a very diplomatic encounter, Gustaf then had to discuss with Nikita whether she would rather be alive yet human (wolf-blooded) or dead as a werewolf.  Nikita chose to live, but in the end she told Gustaf he would need to choose for her.  In the end, he chose to resurrect her as she could always still support the remnants of her old pack and even produce children of her own who might end up full werewolves able to run with a pack of their own.

It was a touching scene, and in the end no blood was drawn between the two packs, and Gustaf was allowed to dissolve their place in the realm to reappear in their individual beds.  All but for Nikita who reappeared by Gustaf's side, alive.

Session #13: Treaties, Negotiations and Selections

This was the first session back in the real world where everyone could share their information and figure out how to cope with the changes that have been happening in the city.  Unfortunately there was still plenty of hangover from when Sheriff FatherMother killed Detective Monroe in his sleep for fear he was a hunter (boss of Siobhan O'Baoill and potential lover of Seamus O'Baoill).  Professor Jasmine Hadley offered her a potential solution in exchange of the use of her stone to ward the main Elysium up at St. Kilda from any kind of nefarious Agatha Campbell or Taylor-Strix problems.

So then there were naturally plenty of back room wheeling and dealing that changed a few of the spots around, including swapping FatherMother and Novichkov's positions in a way that is arguably more fitting.  FatherMother is now Marshall in charge of dealing with external threats while Novichkov the scary Elder is in charge of internal matters and defence of the court.  The Emissary, Seamus O'Baoill, also won the right to add people onto a particular "Asset Register" where other vampires may not attack them lest it count as a direct attack on the court.

Siobhan O'Baoill even gave a speech based on the collated evidence she'd managed to gather so far on the Machine, while Seamus O'Baoill explained what was known of the potentially international police hunter cell that seemed to have been unleashed by Detective Monroe's death as well as the mysterious "Who is Caine?" attackers who seem to be spontaneously forming out of the general populace and which may be either possession or disease.

Jax confronted Taylor about a revelation regarding a threat against his girlfriend, Katharine's, life.  Katharine gave Jax purely good advice about how to entertain the gathering.  The Changeling from the Epcott door session left little jars full of Red Pills everywhere and Gustaf reminded people to list any offered resources with him.

Mattie Monroe, ever the entertainer, leapt around the corner of the building, shouted "Witness Me!" and sprayed his mouth with whipped cream -- then coughed up blood because vampires can't eat food without blush of life.  An actual canister of whipped cream and a blood pill were used to recreate the effect, and naturally I had been previously informed.

Faux and Mattie had a nice heart-to-heart with Talitha Salvatore and Geist boyfriend Nicks about Nicks' attempt to grab vitae from Mattie while everyone was away, and naturally while I played Nicks I walked around with my arm in a sling from when Mattie "responded".

Rowan gained a foster-sire as a last minute announcement, Zahra was reassured Master of Elysium after another busy session wrangling people, and far too many people dropped various disciplines so now there isn't a supernatural sense of safety and security making frenzies harder (no automatic failure on a 1 nor +2 to resistance rolls).  At least for the next week, unless people start behaving better.

Oh, and the Ordo Dracul learned they had to leave their old Chapter House behind due to its exploration by both changelings (damn you Darling!) and the police while the Ordo Dracul were missing.  People also discovered that Siobhan O'Baoill had been put on the Terror Watch List and will therefore anyone connected to her could well become a Person of Interest.  And finally the "Caine" situation means every Rack has taken a crippling blow -- dropping by a full point value and therefore less able to sustain the vampires present in Adelaide.

What else could go wrong?  Nothing, I'm sure.

Door Session #4: Mixed Cassandra Merger

See?  Nothing sus here.

Since a few of our new players couldn't attend the Season 3 finale that was our last Cassandra session, we decided to have one of our main characters use their stone at just the right/wrong time.  At about the same time as Lewis Epcott used his stone to open a doorway, Nurse Cassandra attempted to draw him into her realm which caused a few interesting glitches.  This gave the PCs access to the past three Cassandra sessions worth of on-screen dialogue (from the clips), populated the demi-realm with mock versions of some of the characters (who were portrayed by other players to ensure each was played slightly off), and threw in a few mysterious figures besides.

We had a changeling from the second Door Session arrive, Police Chief Gordon Leary, whom was thought to be a human by the majority for most of the session.  We had mock versions of Siobhan O'Baoill, Seamus O'Baoill (cloaked version), Dr. Jonathon Taylor, and Michael Novichkov.  We had the mysterious and elusive Peter Walsh and a seemingly random human called "David" who became a merchant toward the end when he tried to sell some intriguing wares to the PCs (props courtesy of Adam, Jamii-Lee and Brenda).

We had Contrary Mary, Mattie Monroe, MaidenLad, Daryl (ghoul) and Joseph Smith out of the main cast list (i.e. not mock ups but not completely player controlled) with Lewis Epcott (naturally),  Zahra al-Rassimi, Rowan and Faux as actual PCs.

So what happened?  Oh, so very much.

Well those who had yet to vote received their first stones while those who were main cast or real PCs found their stones in their pockets if they still had them.  Toward the halfway mark of the entire session, "David" came forth to sell four arcanotech items in exchange for stones.  Lewis Epcott was able to make his selection first as he had spent his stone to open the door and though he was initially suspicious he soon grabbed a relic.  Then Faux obtained one, followed by Mattie Monroe (who actually asked permission of his foster-sire before expending a stone!) and Daryl.  Since none of the other PCs were at all interested in using their stones, it made sense to allow the Main Cast to do so.

Zahra al'Rassimi also summoned the angel, Anuriel, into MaidenLad so that they could quiz it on the Throne and its plans.  Faux persistently mouthed off to "it" and so Anuriel cursed him with a permanently broken leg that reduced his walking speed to three yards per turn and his full speed to six.  Needless to say, Faux is no longer overly fond of the Throne.  The most poignant piece of information gathered was the simple phrase: "The Throne is blind to Walsh," which was repeated to a series of no fewer than six questions.

In the fenced in courtyard behind the venue (both in-game and out) stood a table full of all the Emotion Cards from Cassandra Session 3 which gave people the chance to re-read them and newer characters the chance to get a better understanding of everyone.  Since this was a transdimensional space, the building and yard was surrounded by sheer nothingness.  When Peter Walsh threw a cushion over the fence line, it simply curved through space and came back from the other direction, lightly smacking into Rowan.  Naturally he repeated the test which then sailed past her.

A carefully created psychiatric report prop complete with manilla folder for the mysterious Jack Frost was also found and quickly read by a few characters, though I don't know if it were read by many of those who were real characters and who could therefore retain their memories.

A severed hand lay upon a camouflage-coloured pack, clutching two flowers and a note: "To Rowan Tyler."  Rowan was quickly fetched by the vampire who discovered it and she located an empty crossbow in the bag.  Examining the hand once more, she found two explosive steel encased bolts where the bones should be in the hand.  Prising them loose, she loaded the crossbow.

An angelic visitation during one of the quieter periods.

Mattie Monroe was quick to look over the crossbow once they were back in the main room, using Dominate once again to gain access to what he wanted.  "Is it loaded?" he asked, and fired it into the ceiling.  The explosive bolt detonated, dealing quite a bit of damage to people.  Luckily much of it was bashing damage as vampires don't take lethal easily, though the ceiling did fall down (giving two characters a chance to hop out onto the roof for a look-see).

Mattie Monroe used the final bolt on the angel (likely due to it cursing his foster-sire) which conveniently caused it to depart of its own volition.  Strangely enough, because MaidenLad liked Mattie Monroe, he was shielded from the detonation and took no further damage - neither did Zahra.  Mattie fled to his foster-sire in the back room, only to become all cocky when MaidenLad came in to tell him the angel had departed.

All of this occurred in the space of around two hours, and once the place was fully explored, Lewis Epcott activated the chance to leave.  Those who had yet to vote with their stones were given a quick opportunity to vote at the end when a ghostly Nurse Cassandra appeared and telepathically projected the basic outline -- Chaos or Order, Cassandra or the Throne.  Those who had already sold their stones for relics, but who should be able to vote, received ghostly versions of their stones for the purpose.

It was a quick vote and those with more information on the situation were too distracted to provide much guidance.  Then they all appeared outside of the Art Gallery on North Terrace.  Those who were playing mock characters or "David", regained the use of their real PCs who appeared on the street fresh from the Cassandra session.  Those PCs who had been at the Cassandra session but whose players were not at this one had either left earlier or later (i.e. delayed) to justify why they weren't there.

This caused Professor Hadley no little bit of bother as she had to drum up a new safe zone using someone's stone -- yet FatherMother was not available to oblige.  Professor Hadley managed to do so and had a stone spent at the joint Elysium.  While she managed this, Talitha Salvatore ran off with the torpid Taylor to wake him up -- which led to hungry shenanigans.  The others were left to deal with a strange woman who approached them, demanded to know the whereabouts of Caine, and then attacked Mattie.

Mattie reflexively smacked her in the face, but that didn't stop her and Lewis Epcott was forced to pin her to the ground while Edward Kensington obfuscated the three of them (Fade in the Crowd) so people wouldn't pay too much attention.  Mattie bit her to shut her up, which was handy since he only had one blood point remaining because he loves to use Vigor and Celerity for funzies.

Then they all split up into separate cars (I put them into three different rooms) and travelled to the new Elysium.  Naturally the car with the greatest number of vampires (six) had a frenzy and the other two cars left them to it to set up Elysium.  We had about thirty minutes in Elysium itself where Dr. Taylor admitted to doing some dodgy things while possessed and then we ended it with Prince Hadley's vow to find a solution to the city's problems.

The next session will follow hot on the heels of this one and will be set directly after it.

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.

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.

Session #9 - Split Session Part 2 (Gangrel Meetings)

FatherMother, Skully, Siobhan and Talitha, again from the
Cassandra session as I have no Split Session pictures,
but both Siobhan and FatherMother are Gangrel.

And then we had the Gangrel meeting…. Kindly enough, the hosts (Gustaf Freya'barn and FatherMother) allowed non-Gangrel to attend so long as they were willing to get involved in the festivities. We set up the big hall so that the little stage at one end was the fire pit, the big painted circle on the floor was the bear pit for later duels, and the cross hatched paint work to one side stood in for two cages - one cage filled with animals and the other filled with unconscious humans with nasty back stories (i.e. bad guys) who were doped with particular drugs with the name of the drug etched into their foreheads. There was also a set of chairs in a circle that people could move around.
There was no music and there really didn't have to be.

When Siobhan rocked up with Seamus and Walther, she immediately punched FatherMother under the mistaken impression that she had blood bound the human she had a crush on. FatherMother thought they were playing and gave her a painful headlock and then when Siobhan kept going in the fight, she threw her in the bar pit and leapt in as well. Soon enough Siobhan frenzied (she was hungry anyway) and after awhile of gloating and having taken some damage, Gustaf threw in a dog that Seamus had used Animalism to inspire to attack Siobhan (a poodle) and FatherMother ran up the wall of the pit to clamber out. Siobhan's frenzy redirected to the dog (she was hungry) and she ate the dog.
Then she grumpily left the cage and ate all the other dogs in the dog cage. She didn't touch the humans.

Other highlights included a series of cage matches with Peter Walsh:

• First the human, Torvald, from the Freya'barn ghoul family. Torvald found Peter Walsh's massive defence (9) annoying and also his irritating lack of interest in actually throwing a punch at a human. Torvald scored a couple good punches, took a few weak ones, and was rewarded with ghouldom from the family's vampire leader (Gustaf) for his efforts.
• Crowley entered the ring and threw some solid Vigor-backed punches but Walsh managed to get in some cheeky shots and - mostly due to an inability to hit each other - Crowley left with a few bashing damage.
• MaidenLad entered the ring with her dog and was far more successful once the dog dragged Walsh down in a grapple. MaidenLad clawed him across the face several times, damaging the Daeva's pretty face in a way that worked on him, though he healed so fast it barely lasted. Walsh hadn't fed yet kept healing. How much blood did that boy have in his system? Walsh won in two surged strikes. One involved hauling up the dog and body slamming MaidenLad into the wall (before being dragged down again) and dealing 11 bashing damage (awesome roll +5 for the surge) and then later lashed out against her ankle for an extra 8 bashing damage. She hobbled away with her dog and drank a guy spiked with all of the drugs to death.
• Finally Walsh fought with Bats (after Bats kindly told him to go and feed which he left for five minutes to do). When they entered the ring, Bats stayed in the shadow of the bear pit. The two had difficulty hitting each other until Bats got him in a grapple, damaging him a few times in spine crushing hugs, until Walsh decided enough was enough and erupted bone spurs that would have damaged Bats if not for Celerity. Bats knocked Walsh on the ground in a pin, foot planted beneath the spines, hands gripping Walsh's wrist and pulled back, demanding Walsh yield. With an inhuman snarl, Walsh twisted the bone spurs out of his back, wrapped them around Bats leg and managed to sever it with another strength surge (lethal not aggravated damage).
• At that point, a high on PCP FatherMother leapt into the cage and elbow dived onto Walsh. Bats quickly Obfuscated the two of them. Worried that one might die, Bats Obfuscated the two of them and FatherMother was left to wander the place in confusion. The two merely sat there, talking, and then they clambered out as FatherMother tried to attack Seamus who had been walking on the walkway to tell Walsh to stop and who now simply partially Obfuscated (Ignore Me) out of there.
• Gustaf jumped over the fire pit while naked (flashing off his Giant Size + Striking Looks combination) and used resilience to avoid damage. When FatherMother frenzied, Gustaf used his web ability from Protean to stop her from killing folk and Walter brought her out of it by grabbing one of the prisoners and throwing it at her (under orders from Gustaf).

Siobhan convinced FatherMother's ghoul, Daryl Whicker, to proposition Seamus O'Baoill - Gangrel Ancillae - and her sire. Daryl put a hand on Seamus' shoulder, Seamus used Auspex to figure out what kind of woogie was being put on him, and Seamus let him down gently - admitting that he had envisaged his first time being different than a random pick up and one night stand.

Walsh and Bats spoke telepathically for awhile (Bats' power) and then Seamus told Walsh to come with them to leave as Seamus had had enough of all of the Gangrel shenanigans and low Humanity hijinx. Walther Hawke and Siobhan followed the family patriarch as they left with Walsh quickly trading numbers with Bats before leaving -- thus giving Seamus that little bit more of a status boost. Like he needed it.

I'm sure I missed parts of the Gangrel meeting as I was portraying Peter Walsh so please let me know if I missed any of the other epic moments!

I waited until after the session to roll Humanity for people, querying if anyone wanted to cancel out any breaking points in exchange for banes, as I felt the vibe of a Gangrel gathering should be one where you don't really pick up on your loss of Humanity until afterward.  I did pre-warn the players that this would be how it worked.

Session #9 - Split Session Part 1 (Covenant Meetings)

Picture from the Cassandra session but it shows three of the Crone
and the now deceased Ordo Dracul, Gary Dodd.

After the events of the last session, there was interest in running a few split "faction-specific" sessions which included the Ordo Dracul, the nascent Circle of the Crone and the Gangrel. Rather than attempting to go through all of the details on a forum that would be quite slow or an IRC chat room which would creak and sag under the weight of a dozen players, I thought it best to combine them all into a single day.

Since one of our players had to leave for hockey at 1:00PM, we began with the Ordo Dracul game at 11.00AM with people advised to attend as early as 10:00AM for pre-game chatter, meetings and conversation. The fellow who had yet to play a vampire (namely because he was playing the human, Henry Peterson, in the last game) sat in as Louie Bonaldo, the castellan's security minded ghoul.

I'd printed out several copies of the Agenda and after chatting to a few players of the Unsworn who held coils, I found the main person happy to MC the meeting was the player of Siobhan O'Baoill. So with that settled she sat down with the Agenda and started going through the following items:

• Preliminaries
• Present
• Welcome to Kettral
• Apologies
• Business Arising from Previous Meeting
• Juris Draconis

The Juris Draconis was declared by Novichkov due to the information given by Seamus O'Baoill regarding diablerie marks (basically soul eating) seen on Thomas McAllister. Shortly before Novichkov could even declare the Major Judge, McAllister said "Bye-bye Darling," and dropped Feral Infection. This meant that every person in that room had to roll versus frenzy (had the pre-rolled frenzy checks sorted in secret with the online rolls available to be seen on the forums because doing a dozen rolls in-game stops the action). Even the humans risked an anger frenzy!

Rather than telling people the results of their rolls, I instead informed them that they could spend a willpower point to avoid a frenzy for a round and that such willpower points would give them each a +1 bonus to their final roll. While typically you would pre-declare just how many points you would spend at the beginning, I decided to keep to the one-willpower-spent-per-turn method as it felt more organic and gave more leeway. Only once they ceased to spend willpower, or after things settled down, did I inform them of whether their bonuses were enough to go anywhere.

Talitha immediately frenzied after her sire, Professor Jasmine Hadley, managed to get out of the way (she scrambled over the table but tripped over Walsh at the end due to a bad Athletics roll). Siobhan also immediately frenzied, having no willpower to spend and having rolled a one, and she turned on Hadley and scratched her with her claws. Walsh slipped out from under Hadley and went for a loose floor grille in preparation to slip away and hide. The new vampire, Walther Hawkes (Siobhan's brother whom she only learned was her brother at the meeting itself), sensibly hid beneath the table.

McAllister dropped into Obfuscate on his next turn (good Initiative check) which meant that Gary Dodd (who had used both Coil of the Wyrm to immediately Ride the Wave and choose an objective) could only pace the room and look for him. Novichkov ran to defend one door. Regrettably Kettral, Taylor and Epcott decided that retreat was the better part of valor and rather than block the other door they opened it -- though this gave McAllister a chance to escape the room it may have also saved everyone's unlife when Novichkov finally succumbed to his frenzy after almost everyone had left.

While poor Louie Bonaldo had been shoved to the ground by Gary Dodd and was still in the room (most everyone had either left via the other door or via the bilge beneath the steel grille floor), Novichkov wasn't hungry and in his anger frenzied state was far more interested in taking down some of the vampires. So he raced out to dent the exit via the stairwell (damaging the door quite fittingly) and then came charging through the haven looking for prey.

At this stage, Taylor was hiding in Gary Dodd's room behind his desk. Kettral was in his room. Siobhan had come after her frenzy once Hadley Dominated her into draining Hadley's ghoul to death rather than frenzy on her -- and the two had slipped through the bilge to the security office. Epcott was hiding in a hot desk office that anyone could access which had two doors.

And Gary Dodd had tracked the Obfuscated McAllister's movements into the library where a pile of folklore books sat in the middle. McAllister set off a flare (still in obfuscate) to burn the books as Novichkov stepped into the room. Gary tried to kick the flare into Novichkov to distract him but failed to dislodge it from the books and burned his foot instead. Novichkov charged over to him, struck him a blow that stunned him, and then proceeded to shatter his skull. On the second Vigor punch, the Blood Potency 6 frenzying elder managed to hit him so hard that Gary Dodd immediately ashed upon the blow.

Then Novichkov came out of frenzy. McAllister set the alchemy lab on fire and snuck around before finally using a crowbar to pry open the exit and escape. After an hour of searching the Chapter House for him, they went to finish off the meeting. Important things needed to be spoken of.

First there was discussion of the need to call a blood hunt against McAllister. But there was no Prince. And so Professor Jasmine Hadley opened a discussion about the possible Praxis.

And then on to other Agenda items (if you want a copy, mention it in the comments). So many of them were meant to be covered by Dodd and again and again there was a moment's silence when various items came up that were meant to be spoken by the dead vampire who had sacrificed his own unlife doing his duty for them. People kept as upbeat as shock allowed them and even Walsh seemed relatively peppy as he discussed his item.

That was to change later during the Gangrel meeting.

Dr. Jonathon Taylor also mentioned a certain fellow he had kept in torpor … who was awoken after being found in the Women's & Children's Hospital as a "patient" and was staked and put in a barrel … and who will be introduced to people at the next gathering so I'll keep things relatively quiet on that front.

The Circle of the Crone covenant meeting, on the other hand, was mostly a meet and greet between the new and old players as well as some natural discussion about the problems of the city and the way forward for the covenant. Since no Kindred died, I feel it best to let them keep their secrets. They initially wanted to have a Chorus meeting for those interested in the covenant but whom belonged to another covenant but by the end of it they didn't really have a plan of what to do with them -- the Chorus that is -- and decided to worry about that later once they had more time to discuss things and get to know each other.

Door Session #3: Merry Birthdaymas, Dear Taylor

Nurse Cassandra's Skull ... or so the label read.

Dr. Jonathon Taylor was coming down off a red pill stolen from the fae realm in the second door session and it left him feeling pretty down, as fae pills tend to do.  He was feeling so depressed he chose to activate his stone to see where it took him.

We held the game in my house so that it looked nice and homely, put a roast in the oven, took out a Christmas tree and put birthday decorations around. When he first stepped into the realm, a set of warped Christmas songs (Very Scary Christmas) was playing and everyone but Seamus O'Baoill (actually a representation of Seamus possessed by the Taylor demon) was pretending to be dead around the table.

When Seamus encouraged Taylor to sit, everyone popped up with a "Surprise!" Then Siobhan had to blow out the five candles on her deathday cake and Taylor was invited to cut it into slices for them … slices which oozed with jam (representing gore). Although it was ostensibly Siobhan's deathday, Taylor kept being invited to do things as the guest of honour.

Then there was a rousing game of Pass the Parcel with a note from one of Taylor's old patients beneath each layer which Taylor was invited to read to the table no matter who got to unwrap the layer. As you may be starting to realise, the entire thing was a play on his old miseries and horrors designed to either break him or motivate him to actually accomplish his dreams.

Since his prior self was responsible for Embracing Siobhan (using Dominate on Seamus), torturing and killing both sire and sibling (Talitha and Hadley), and creating the demon that possessed Seamus in Campaign one, everything tied into that. There was also an NPC called Julia Dannenburg who had been spying on him under the guise of a depressed Suicide King. The patient notes were sad because they were from children in a palliative care cancer ward but they were also inspiring because they were patients he had legitimately helped as he had never harmed any children.

The final layer of the Pass the Parcel was blood stained and when he opened it he found Nurse Cassandra's skull with a little identifying note. I was also portraying Nurse Cassandra, fetching knives and bringing out the cake, giggling and never speaking (my character's tongue was ripped out but he never really looked at me long enough to notice).

Then there was a game of Musical Chairs. Taylor was very reticent about playing and tried to fail on several occasions but the second-to-last person kept refusing to sit or even walked away saying they'd lost if he wasn't sitting. Siobhan "won" the first time and was really excited for her present but when people started saying her prize was to be tortured, she became very scared and started begging Taylor not to hurt her. When Taylor refused to harm her, Talitha went to do so and when he Dominated her to not hurt her, he instead had a thumb cut off.

And then Siobhan eagerly said that they should play Musical Chairs again!

And on they went, though this time the winner was Talitha.

The final time it was Taylor himself who won and Talitha Salvatore tortured him quite well under the gentle instruction of "Seamus O'Baoill" who had dropped his Irish accent in favour of Taylor's odd style of speech. I went off to get dressed as the final NPC (the Evil Queen) as the rest of the Cast poked and prodded him emotionally to see if he would break or harden his resolve. After he made a heartening speech about doing better, the Evil Queen arrived and spoke with him awhile and he was allowed to leave.

Welcome Session #2

Gustaf -- Gangrel Crone -- gazing across the hall.

The first session of Season 2 was a bigger session than usual and was most similar in form, function and structure to the very first session.  We had a total of 12 expressions of interest from new players though only six could make it in the end.  This brought the total number of players up to 20 though only 15 could attend.  The new characters included:

• Two humans who had been trapped in the Mirror World for a few years which in the real world equates to seventy years (one human was an NPC);
• Hex was one of the proto-vampires called larvae who had been beaten into torpor during Session 7.  Prior to this session he was uplifted into Clan Daeva by Lewis Epcott;
• Gloria Brown, cousin to Amity Fine, sister to Lewis Epcott and niece to Duchess Alicia Brown;
• Kettral, sire to McAllister and grand-childe of Yzador;
• MaidenLad, childe of FatherMother
• Crowley, childe of the infamous Grandma Hollis of FatherMother's initial circle who was also an uplifted larvae from Session 7. 
• Gustaf, new character from an existing player, had newly arrived to locate some family members in the city.

Many of the new characters were designed with a strong degree of inter-connectedness as it eases participation in the game and gives people a quick vested interest in the new characters.  Many of these characters were pre-generated with the option for players to either adopt them or give them back in the end.

So what happened during the game?

In short, a lot!

We had five hours in two main rooms.  The session started with the Circle of the Crone plus humans in one room and the Ordo Dracul in the other room plus the one Carthian PC.  The doors between those two halls were locked (padlock image blue tacked to the door on each side to represent this) and the doors would only open when it was unlocked by both sides (padlock image removed from the other side). You needed Larceny to do it so it gave the thief-types a chance to shine and it allowed the two groups to moderate when they would mingle.  There were other ways to cross that barrier individually (shrinking down to spider form or using Auspex 5 or even Acute Senses).

In each room there were two projectors showing a static blurred figure and occasional text in Typewriter font interspersed with lengthy periods of ambient music.  I'd learned my lesson from last time by using a change from ambient to lyric-based music to signal when the text would display but made the error in having the text move too rapidly (it reads differently when you're sitting at a computer screen compared to reading a projection).  I also made all of the clips add up to six rather than five hours so I had to skip ahead occasionally through the blank spaces between text clips. This also meant I accidentally skipped some text. Luckily that text, while cool, wasn't strictly necessary and can be used again.

There was also an alchemy lab set up which had the ingredients necessary for a couple puzzles and which could be used to forge one of two styles of love potions -- one made with Changeling blood and one made with Vampire blood.  I won't say how many were made, only that far fewer were made than expected and none were given to player characters, which is nice of them.

There was also a blood bowl people could drink to replenish their blood, though no one did, and a back table set up with nice snack foods and sweets that would only taste good for the mortals or those who bought MaidenLad's Flowers of Demeter (which had been given to MaidenLad by Grandma Hollis).

Three of the characters arrived high as kites on special fae drugs, which led to some interesting scenes.  A Major boon was spent by one high character to force another character to take a drug.  This was poor Dr. Jonathon Taylor who really needed more conditions to deal with.

The characters soon discovered that Nurse Cassandra wasn't giving them Strix to glean information from and exorcise like she had last time.  Oh no, instead they had a certain amount of time to solve certain puzzles around the room which would summon certain individuals in to talk with them.  These individuals would slowly deteriorate over time in unique ways and the other characters could either save them or destroy them. Leaving them too long without a decision would cause terrible repercussions … like madness leading to pyromania or spontaneous combustion.

Each time someone was summoned or something similar happened, the bell would ring.  Each bell that rang those who were out would find their curse progress.  This ensured that there were never too many cast out at the same time.

How did I get the cast? Well, I pre-arranged with some players that when a certain puzzle was solved I would appear them with a bell as the ghost of Nurse Cassandra, tap their character on the shoulder and lead them to the summoning sigil. They would disappear, a mask would appear in their place, and the player would then leave to dress up as the NPC. No one knew what arrangements had been made, what NPCs would arrive or which players would disappear.

The characters and their puzzles were:

• Nicks (necromancer) could be summoned by setting fire to an offering bowl full of bark chips (LED candles hidden in the bark chips to represent fire) at which point his pyre-flame marionette egg would appear in the middle.  He could be saved by convincing him without mystical power to give someone the orb or slain by stealing it from him (which sped up his death).
• The Blue Girl (true fae) could be summoned by playing her deck of cards "Love Letter" in the usual manner.  She could be healed by giving her the warming potion (she was growing increasingly icy) or harmed by giving her the sleep draught (which had a warning label that it would worsen the symptoms of hypothermia).
• Skully could be summoned by opening the safe (whose combination was a letter riddle for OWL which could be converted into numbers using the telephone beside it which had say ABC listed over the button for 1, etc.) Skully could be saved through tears of genuine guilt or damned through being shot with the phosphorous rounds.
• The Maid (Rider -- weaker custom variant of a Geist) could be summoned by answering the riddle put forth by the four paintings that were placed on the window sills (which luckily enough actually had a number permanently etched into them) and then finding a nail which was described via the riddle.
• The Oracle (Rider) could be summoned by getting the deck of faux tarot cards (actually language teaching cards) from under the scorpion in a box contained in the safe. Normally a riddle had to be answered from the scorpion but the person using Animalism was so polite that they managed to convince the scorpion to simply hand it over. He could be saved by someone giving him a guilty secret powerful enough that it could get them killed.
• The Cultist could be summoned by three people drinking out of the communion cup but instead of that she was pulled out due to a request given to the Blue Girl who simply wove her magic into the sigil.
• There was a changeling who could be summoned by a game of Gloom (native to Wonder City) but no one got around to finishing that game.

Strangely enough, each and every NPC summoned was saved and their information largely delivered.  I'd expected that the Blue Girl would be purposefully slain and Nicks accidentally killed when no one bothered to gain his trust.  Instead, full win conditions all round!

This time they dealt with Compassion rather than Mercy whose shawls fell off her as she ran through the room, sporadically pausing in a seizure mid-speech as she babbled at them about all kinds of matters. Finally she stopped by one table and held out her hands and told them to vote for either Order (the Throne) or Chaos (Cassandra). Each person who had a stone (new characters) had to vote by placing the stone in one of her two hands.

The characters who had been around awhile all encouraged them to vote for Cassandra in the hopes that by empowering her enough they could remove the gloom walls.  When they left they found the gloom walls were all still intact.