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.