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Play Report 23 — A Farewell and A Scheme
The party convenes to decide what their next plans will be. They run
down a list of things they are interested in:
- The lake at 1110 with the deep crater in the center.
- The encroachment of the Occult-Futurists on the east coast, and their
increasing air traffic in the north.
- The structure at 1308.
- The entire situation around Akela being displaced in time.
- Hant’s want to visit the Valley Collaboration (0807) as part of his
book hunt.
- The fallen piece of the firmament.
After some discussion of the dangers and pitfalls that could potentially
occur, in particular the difficulty of investigating the firmament and
the danger posed by the Occult-Futurist’s airborne forces, an idea is
raised: what if the party got their own dirigible? All the players are
immediately taken by this idea, though Hant’s player notes that the
assassin is on moral grounds opposed to the sky being something that is
easily traversed. It is decided that this will be the next project of
the party, to ease their travels. A research roll is made to begin
determining where they can get the materials and expertise to make this
happen, with a result of 3.
I decide that Cleo says she has a lead. She is not lying really, there
are Occult-Futurist defectors in the Valley Collaboration that she could
call on for advice. She mostly just wants to get the party among her
allies though. Unfortunately for her this prompts a different line of
questioning from the party: Hant provokes Akela into questioning whether
Cleo is actually loyal to the old Catage royalty, as Hare House tends to
be. She admits that she is. When pressed as to why she is working for a
group that is operating primarily out of an anarchist enclave, she
answers that she both needs the money and doesn’t see the conflict of
interest when both groups are currently primarily interested in opposing
the Merchant-Industrialists. She also just finds the party interesting,
she says (not a lie but a big elision of why).
“How can we trust you if we do end up at odds with the royalty?” Akela
asks.
“If I saw that this would happen, I would leave your service before it
came to that,” Cleo replies.
Cleo is dismissed from the party’s service. I will be figuring out where
she goes next. Her designs are not at their end.”
After this, Akela decides to consult Almuund’s cult on supernatural
matters, and pays a fee to speak to one of their consultants. These
consultants are psychopomps who have been pushed out of business by the
cult, but then hired on to what is effectively a supernatural call
center. I have had the Wandering Merchants
zine by Evlyn Moreau and Brian Richmond on standby to act as
inspiration for these ex-psychopomps, and a d10 gives me Agnes.
In a dark basement below the temple, Akela stands in lantern light as
swarms of (non anthropomorphic) cats swarm out of the darkness, standong
on the edge of the light and filling the space. An old woman pushes
through, complaining about how this new job doesn’t give her enough
breaks. Akela asks her why she might have passed by 50 years while only
experiencing 5, and the old woman hands her a strand of yarn from a bag
on her back, which she unspools slowly until she reaches its end.
The old woman informs Akela that there is more than one thing stealing
time from her, and part of it seems accidental while another part seems
deliberate. Akela is told that answers await her in several places: the
part of the wall that lies below the earth, and in the work of the
Occult-Futurists on their boats off the east coast.
The old woman also explains some of the nature of nightmares as social
ills of the human world breaking into and shaping another world, and
Akela suggests the possibility of making one on purpose.
At the end of the consultation, a projection of one of the cat-cultists
asks Akela to rate her experience with this consultant. Akela gives her
a 10 out of 10.
The party’s next plan is to visit the Valley Collaboration and see if
they can follow up on Cleo’s information without Cleo present.