Play Report 24.1 — The Occult-Futurist War Effort

Way back, Akela had lied to an Occult-Futurist agent about where she found an old helmet of theirs. This prompted the simulation of an Occult-Futurist scouting expedition to the area she lied about. Given the fabrication, there were no dead Occult-Futurists to be found there. What is there, though, is The Compass Rose, which is a pretty big deal for them to run across.

So my job now is to determine: what comes of them having found this?

Knowing that I have to address this, I’ve been generally trying to keep up a writing regimen and specifically trying to fill out the pieces of the campaign that address this, taking them from garbled notes to actually readable entries. With the rose written and the Biggest Evil Plan of the Occult-Futurists more fully detailed in my entry for their horrible boat that sucks, I can crystallize this pretty well:

The Occult-Futurists would, upon learning of the rose, put in an effort to occupy the hex and research the rose. However: not everyone is privy to what their project is, and the ones that are feel to me like they’d be overly particular weirdos who don’t want a lot of rank and file trampling over their work. Traffic overall is likely to be increased.

As such, the changes for the active game to the region and hex are as follows:

Any random encounter rolled in the far wilds has a 2-in-6 chance of also including 2d6 Occult-Futurist troops, with a 1-in-6 chance of them having a balloon.

In 0101 itself, Agent of the Recondite Table Luisa Tessari (she/her, level 7 wizard) is accompanied in her research by an encampment of 3d6 Occult-Futurist guards and 1d6 Muraenidae. She has identified the magnetic and true north arms. In 2 weeks she will fully be sure of another arm’s target — I assigned the remaining 6 numbers, and rolled a d6, getting a 2 for the fires. This being within the realm of knowledge the Occult-Futurists could determine (and having missed a month or so of tracking particulars of their study due to being Very Busy Being A Line Cook When The Weather Just Got Nice) I assigned a timescale of weeks and rolled another d6.

The possibility of using the compass rose for Admiral Sala’s plan has been considered, but the particulars of how it works as a spell focus has not yet been learned by Tessari. I figure that whenever she identifies a new arm’s spell and purpose she has a chance to figure that out as well — 5% per arm, so 15% once she finishes the fire arm in 2 weeks.