Play Report 27.1 — Matilde and Miss Marlowe

This is a follow up to a previous bonus play report. Enough time passed in the game that I had to get around to doin one. Because other players couldn’t make it today, myself and my friend CoDele (the player of Hant the Assassin) put together the events of the game of cat and mouse between Miss Marlowe and Matilde.

We started by talking through the aims of the people involved:

Marlowe mostly just wants to make it out alive to get back to work at the salvager’s guild. Her exile was due to unknowingly selling stolen property, and she wants to turn the guild into a legitimate business worth investment from the merchant-industrialists to regain her station. She has the money paid for the printing press, a spear and shield, and skill in negotiation.

Matilde wants to be sure no witnesses can trace her back to the Thicket collaboration. The obvious path to this is Marlowe’s death, but a crucial alternative comes up: if Marlowe took her as being from somewhere else, leaving her alive could actually be advantageous. She has a rifle, Parzival’s hammer, and the ring Ommon.

We zoom in to begin with on the initial killing of Parzival: one gunshot takes him out immediately. Miss Marlowe grabs the money and bails into the woods. Matilde has to reload, so cant get a shot off at her, but pauses while looting Parzival: his teenage appearance reminds her of her own life in Riccamino, dodging the Occult-Futurist draft to sign onto a pirate vessel among like minded young people who were excited to strike back at the fascists, and then living the unromantic life of seeing her fellows die while committing naval robbery. She lingers, and says “now you can rest, old friend.”

I roll a d6 to see how many days of hunting there are until a confrontation between the two: 2 days. Then I roll a surprise roll, treating Marlowe as the player standing and Matilde as the monsters: a 6. “The players are surprised by the monsters.”

CoDele pitches a situation where Marlowe misinterprets Matilde as having primarily been out to kill Parzival, and dies for that mistake, but this leads us to the more interesting answer: what if she lives for that mistake, and is allowed to spread this rumor? We talk about Parzival’s history and make some calls: he was from Catage, and was the apprentice of the ring’s previous wielder. The previous wielder planned to give him the ring at the end of a century being stored in it, and let it reset by aging Parzival. This was prevented, the previous wielder got killed by the stored century, and Parzival inherited the ring, setting out to find a way to use it that doesn’t require killing another. This leads him to the wilds and the strange objects found in the river.

We decide that Marlowe, at gunpoint, misinterprets Matilde’s moment over Parzival’s body as her being someone who knew Parzival. Marlowe herself finds Parzival’s immortality uncomfortable — it casts an odd shadow on a business relationship which can never be truly fair because of it. She delivers her plea:

“he only had a few more years anyway — I told him he wasn’t going to find a replacement, and some days I think he even knew that. I’m happy to say that was his time and be done with it. I am in no position to ask what your relationship was, but considering the last few days spent in the woods, I’d like to get out of here with my head still on my shoulders — I find it very easy to believe that you had good reasons for doing that. If he wronged you such that you needed to balance the scales, you would not be the first or the last person that Parzival exerted a longer influence than he should have.”

Matilde see’s an opportunity, and simply replies “I’m sure you are right about that.” She confiscates the gold and Marlowe’s weapons, and escorts her to the road. On the way she takes pains to converse in a way that implies she has a Catagean origin, perhaps among the thaumaturgist’s order, rather than being from Ricammino.

Miss Marlowe will return to the Salvager’s Guild, and try to ensure she is better protected in the future, while investigating the actions of the Merchant-Industrialist thaumaturgists.

Matilde will probably go (don’t click this, players!) here to lie low as a common bandit.