There are no safe mental spaces

Lottie and Julius take the Staten Island ferry, while being followed by the Nosferatu Primogen. Sneaky Prince. AltLottie comes out to play and she, along with Julius, agree that killing Jeanine is bad.

At Theo's, he looks as the dagger and says she's seen both Jeanine and Charlotte with it. Frankie agrees to sign a formal complaint against Jeanine. As the two Brujah leave to find their Primogen, another car T-bones them and tries to run them off the road and shoot at them. Theo gets some shots off before Frankie gets them out of the way. (This will have “interesting knock-on effects” says the GM.) After all, if the unknown assailants shoot back with the Tommy guns they're sporting? Heads probably go splat, which is bad for vampires. Failing to find Don Cerro, they end up at ... a house where we know from previous (way back near the beginning of the campaign) that Charlotte has two apartments in? And Theo has a key?!

Staten Island smells funny. Following a scent, the Malkavians find Jeanine in an inn, looking ... poorly. Tommy the Fool tries to get a room, but they take Jeanine up to the room she already has, where Julius pricks her finger. Jeanine has somehow become Thin-blooded?! How the fuck is that even possible?! This complicates things enormously. What to do? AltLottie suggests skipping town. Julius declines.

Let's go find a victim!

The cousins went to Harlem to pick up Valenti from Ellie, who wanted an introduction to the Camarilla court in return? Julius said he'll mention her name, but he never said anything about the introduction being friendly. Having bagged Valenti, he now needed to be delivered to the Prince somehow.

We heard back from our contact in the city planning office and discover that the Brooklyn Bridge was entirely shut for vehicle traffic the same night the cousins were Embraced. Coincidence?

Lottie was shown by Julius how to hunt, as she hadn't actually had to hunt by herself before. It was, uh, memorable, and both of them seemed more interested in snacking on the other than on Kine ...

While the two of them were away, a weirdly expressionless and non-descript guy introducing himself as "John Smith" from the CHOMBRA Corporation came by to do a "transaction". It was not the Prince in disguise, but some aura-less part automaton. He was bundled into the boot as a bonus present for the Prince, who was very pleased. He commended the cousins on being so quick on giving him Valenti. John Smith, upon seeing the Prince, finally had a facial expression: abject terror. Which is fair.

At the Met, Theo introduced Frankie to some welcoming Brujah, and then took Lottie up on her offer of having his disgust lowered for the evening.

Val greeted his sire with a bouquet of roses, so it looked like they were planning on meeting up all along, even though she hadn't invited him to Elysium (but at least she'd been asking about him, so there is that).

Lottie and Julius spotted Jeanine on her own, looking like she was waiting for someone - and that someone obviously not being Frankie. She didn't seem too bothered about basically everyone else snubbing her (something that has been known to reduce a Harpy to tears) and she seemed ... excited?

Because of budgerigars

Val spoke to a sergeant cop saying influential people told the cops to keep an eye on Brooklyn. Wait, that's our turf?

There was some kind of consideration about comparing "blood flavour" between the teen ghouls and the kid Jeanine sent Frankie as a present, but in the end we decided this was a stupid idea. So Val invited his sire Charlotte around to his place instead.

She, it turned out from Auspexing Malkavians keeping watch outside, had some kind of weird spiderweb looking red bond thing going on in her aura??? Marco (Val's ghoul) was puppeteered into relaying a warning message to Val from Julius ... and brings some girls from the club for people to snack on. Some might have done this more reluctantly than others.

Charlotte decided to have an impromptu Celerity training session with Frankie, because Jeanine is kind of a pretty shitty sire, so threw cutlery in the air for Frankie to catch. She was impressed that he managed to do this, even with a bit of a flair, that she let it slip that Jeanine is busy playing with a new toy. One she's planning on presenting at the next Elysium.

And then there was gunfire downtown and we were all on high alert ... A vampire gangster's life can be complicated. Although perhaps not quite as complicated as what was going on in our 1932 AU at the time, which is what the beginning of these quotes references.

Character therapy sessions, though? Those are awesome and come highly recommended.

My hair pin is amazing!

Back in post-apocalyptic land, a woman threw herself in front of the van. She wanted a lift into a town that wants help help with bandits. This took us all the way to a creepy, deserted theme park - Magic Island! We had to walk along a monorail line to get there.

So, we shot at people holding townspeople hostages. We free hostages (I think). Creepy theme park is creepy. There are blood-soaked buildings, a fountain with screaming cherubs that start spluttering blood, because OH HEY THIS IS A DEADLAND. Are there evil clowns? Of course there are. And then the monorail, a.k.a. the only way on or off the island, has collapsed. Permission to freak out?

Don't look a gift knife in the mouth!

We continued our plan of taking over the Irish gangs' territory, partly because we want to and partly because they fucking tried to murder us. Seeing as how the week leading up to this session had been spent on writing pretty extensive backstories for our characters (well, two of them at least) Lottie, through Auspex, finally realised one of her cousins has a long-standing crush on her BFF and now ships them in character as well as out of character.

So, we were trying to get some info on a place that had a gambling den in the basement. It required catching one of the people used as a look-out and persuading him to talk. He was not an easily persuaded kind of a person, despite our best efforts. At this point the GM hadn't actually read the backstories we'd so painstakingly put together (with miles upon miles of rope with which to hang us later), but it was rather fitting that the guy decided to suggest he'd been busy fucking Frankie's sister and that's why he didn't fancy answering. It hit right in the backstory berserk button. The guy was slightly more talkative after a broken jaw, but he was never getting out of there alive. Cousins fed, Frankie drained the last two points of blood, punched the corpse for good measure and lost a Humanity point in the process.

Someone who didn't lose a point in Humanity this session was Val, who, after we'd raided the gambling den decided we should blow it up to avoid witnesses. Because that's totally how the mafia roll ...

Does she need all her limbs?

Now armed with another PC in the party - yay! - we seemed to spend a heck of a long time trying to come up with a plan to maybe blow some stuff up and get an imprisoned god (?) from the ruins, and then that was decided against or something. It all got very jumbled up by the end of it that I lost track completely, and let's just say we're going to spend next session battling it out. Possibly in a Leeeeeeroy Jenkins style, because the Juicer might get bored with all the planning.

Anybody who is anybody will soon walk through that door

It's 1922 and the Mangano crime family are keeping their part of New York, uh, safe? Going about their daily lives, three cousins run a speakeasy and a gambling den, things like that. One day they're told they're going to be Made Men (and Woman), and have the ceremony with lots of booze ... and the next thing they know they black out, and when they wake up they're in pools of blood and lack a pulse.

Huh.

It didn't go so well for little Lottie, whose mind was somewhat ... fractured in the process. At least her sire brought her a snack. Val discovered that while he might still bite the first hobo he came across, he wasn't going to eat him without first cleaning the guy's neck. Frankie decided to be cautious and not eat a cop, but instead went for a canoodling couple, because hey, dinner AND dessert! (He even offered some to his sire, who wasn't as impressed as he expected.)

This was sort of session zero, in which we get to know the characters and take them through the traumatic lovely memorable experience of being turned into vampires. Turns out the Cosa Nostra is a bit bloodier than expected ...

Starring:

• Carlotta "Lottie" Mangano, Malkavian flapper girl
• Frankie "Fatso" Mangano, Brujah speakeasy bootlegger
• Valtena (Val) "Pretty Boy" Mangano, Toreador gambling den maestro

Just like the French

It has been a while since we did this (don't believe the posting date, it's a month later) and my notes are a bit scant, so it's anyone's guess what we did at this point.

Something about an adult dragon being a dick, teleporting 5m up into the air, almost forgetting Booker, Jayson on the ground, and "Shemarrians here?!"

For the second session, we went to Roswell and looked at Naruni weapons and the Coalition States came to blows with the Shemarrians and Splugorth.

I wonder if moon flu is flammable

In a break from regular scheduled programming, he's a session from a few weeks ago, when we were supposed to have a one-shot session of Gamma World, which turned out not to be finished, so we'll continue at some point.

The group of mutants (the GM and one of the players are making their first appearance here on the blog - hi guys!) assembled on a keelboat headed for Fargo. It didn't get to Fargo, it got to some place where the sandy ground was turning into glass. A big metallic worm robot thing told us its task was to terraform the planet, despite our protestations. Fargo, it said, had been wiped out. It then decided to suck up a lot of water and turn it into sulphuric acid. Fortunately, before this, it ate the boat and spat it out much improved, so we were able to get the heck away from there.

To Fargo, as it happened. There was a horse and a bunny and some other creatures there. Turned out the bunny had some kind of robot eye-arm stuck in its brain, which we got rid of. (Not that the bunny seemed at all grateful for it.)

We used the mechanical eye-arm to lure out a bigger thing, made of goo, from a kind of pyramid structure. It made a noise to turn everyone against each other, making Jetstream use her flamethrower to make Orson into calamari, but we could play at that game too and so almost accidentally commanded it to kill itself.

On the inside the pyramid contained a massive pool of green goo and a person who didn't seem too happy to see us. And then a bigger thing came out.

Starring:

• Cecil, a plastic ladybird who used to be a children's toy and therefore hates everyone
• Gunther von Lunar, a vampiric plaguebearer from THE MOON!
• Jetstream, a regenerating speedster with a short attention span
• Mr Johnson, a seismic shapeshifter
• Orson, a hypercognitive octopoid former biker and also scientist

My Jetpack skill is called Gorbash

Once inside the bridge (or one of the bridges, at any rate) of the flying fortress thing - not to be confused with the Boeing B-17 bomber, which is considerably smaller - we had to set the charges ... or rather, we had to work on opening the doors, setting the fuse (or whatever), chucking the bombs and getting the hell out of there.

We had seven tries before they'd blow up in our face. We got the door open on the sixth.

After that we just had to try and find our way to the outside, somehow, and then literally jump ship. Thankfully we're friends with a dragon, so some thrilling aerobatics later and we were safely on the ground, having severely incapacitated a big-ass flying fortress. With the cunning use of a vengeful dragon and some dragon friends and an air elemental. We have the best of friends, clearly!

I'm not foreshadowing or anything

Having defeated the group of spider creatures, we had eventually made it to the bottom of the stairs and found the other troll we were looking for, along with six trolls in a singing circle. That was the end of the last session.

In this session, we took on a couple of Spites - the creature that stung the trolls and infected them with murdery larvae! We also had to deal with the trolls, but the ones that were too far gone, we murderised and the ones that could be saved were knocked out and saved.

We realised that the Spites were coming out of a hole in the ground, and plugged it to stop further attacks. As a reward we were given the title "Defenders of Erdugald" and given a blue gem that will glow when Erdugal is threatened, which means we're supposed to come running to help save it again.

Oh, and it turns out that the Old Prios symbol Valgai's carrying is actually a spider symbol of some kind. THE PLOT THICKENS. Except not right now, because this is our last Symbaroum session for a bit. We're doing a few boardgaming sessions and then it's off back to either Godbound or Rifts, but we'll be back in Davokar eventually.

It had to be maggots

In this thrilling instalment, Elindra was ambushed. It turned into Valgai also being ambushed and them killing a bunch of people before they had a chance to kill them. Maggot bomb spells were thrown, and it was gross and painful.

They caught a survivor and decided to interrogate him, while another of the survivors had legged it through the south gate. Murmei eventually was helpful in getting to some messages that were found, and another link to Ravenia was discovered.

Plot, thickening, and so on.

Make Gond Great Again

Our main characters had a look in the angels' armoury, where Elani found a foresty-looking crown behind a hidden wall. She decided to take it with her, as it basically looked like it was made for her. It turned out to be an artefact called the Fey Crown, which changes its main Word and therefore powers depending on the season - or surroundings. Denethor would LOVE to find out how to make one, but it's currently wayyyyy beyond his pay grade.

Our secondary characters were on the road to Yhaunn, where they got stopped by a toll road. There was some kerfuffle happening (we may or may not have had something to do with causing it), and made their way to the town and up to a church that seemed to emanate the whole weirdness bit. Oh, and we spoke to red-haired lady who said she wasn't the bad guy we thought she was, and actually, we sort of have common goals. We find that rather suspicious, as it happens ... especially as the GM made us note down how many times we've failde Spirit saves while in Sembia ...

Roll Save vs being afraid of the dark!

Deeper into the forest of Davokar we go! We were attacked by giant hairless cats who were so hungry they decided we should be food. That didn't happen, through the cunning use of weapons and grappling hooks on people floating down the river. On the plus side, we made it to the Ordo Magica outpost! Some people were huddling inside, but were happy to see us.

As we made our way toward the headquarters out there, we came across freeze-dried spiders, weird purple lily of the valley where everything else was dead (did someone see a picture of a bluebell and didn't think to look further than "it looks a bit like a lily of the valley, but not white").

The Ordo Magica HQ was now full of goblins. Fortunately, Murmei knows how to speak their language and is proving to be strangely proficient at diplomacy. The goblins spoke of being scared of a "darkness". They also had a trap door (under which they kept a hungry troll), a wizard who was quite out of his mind, and a communication circle going straight to a big spider creature who said she was very benevolent and kind indeed.

The story continues ... and will hopefully be finished by Christmas at this rate ...

Spiders and reapers and fairies, oh my!

We continue our venture into Davokar Forest. There be swarms of spiders. We fought them off and got out of there. They were delicious. (They were represented by pieces of salty liquorice, so your mileage may vary.)

Then we found a group of treasure hunters who wondered if they could join us for the night (we said no), followed by a Necromage coming to attack them because someone in that group had decided to steal something of its. They died, it took its thing back and went away.

And then there was a wizard with fire-y bodyguards that turned out to be part of Elindra's arch enemy hindrance. Fun times were had. And by that I mean death (theirs).

It's fun to heal at the OMHQ!

Valgai got the minimum amount of healing possible from someone at the Ordo Magica because dice are evil. We also delivered the book back to Master Eufrynda, who was so delighted with us she gave us another task we could do. Someone had gone missing in the Davokar forest and would we mind awfully going after them?

Yes, yes we would, but here we are, putting together an expedition and planning to escape the town unnoticed ...

Speaking of unnoticed, Elindra was trying her hardest to spread misinformation around the beggars and cutpurses ... but was so terrible at Persuasion she ended up murdering a whole bunch instead. C'est la vie?

THAT'S how you kill someone!

Elindra had a look around town and came across some shady people in an inn. The other two went to the Ordo Magica, as it would probably be prudent for Murmei to report for duty now that he's in town. The surly gatekeeper wasn't too happy with us trying to skimp on formalities, especially not when we kept coming and going all the time.

Turned out "Master Vernam" had signed himself in the ledger after his untimely demise and taken a book out of the library. A book on how to break links to objects, such as that crown that the elves were looking for.

Puzzle pieces suddenly came together and we tracked down the skin-stealer, the book and the skull/crown thing. Valgai very nearly died, what with going down to zero hit points because his Bale dice have "always had a personality". A murderous one at that, it seems. ("More of a chaotic neutral screw you roller dice.") The GM rubbed it in a bit extra a few days later: "Just thought I highlight that failing 11 and below on 6 rolls in a row is about 0.83%".

Well, at least it turned out alright in the end. Bad guys dead, us still alive, book and creepy skull/crown combo artefact recovered. Now where to put the crown so that no one else thinks it's a good idea to put it on?

Can I have your autograph?

Elindra went around town doing some investigations and interrogations. This led to CLUES! There was also a guy who looked very quest-givery, so we ended up heading off into the wild in order to find Lady Elsana a.k.a. the Night Lady in order to bring her back to the capital for lots and lots of money.

We bypassed a troll cave and ended up in a secluded village in a sort of basin type thing. It was a bit Maze Runner-y. She agreed to come with us, even after Murmei asked her to autograph one of his books ...

We parasited the parasite god

After Elani's meeting with the orcs to find out what they were doing with their troops, we found ourselves having joined forces with them. We fought with cinematic flair, superhero landings, dragons, crackling electricity on swords and everything.

Umberlee (the baddie) and her friends, including a big demon, were found inside a mountain. There was a big fight, someone might have got away, but all the rest of them were killed. The demon turned out to not be a demon, but a parasite god, and when the corpse exploded ... a lot of celestial energy was freed.

The issue was what to do with said energy. Elani took half and gave half to a follower. Gunda took half for Tempus and half for a follower, but as Tempus couldn't have that half it went to her instead. Denethor, having received a dire warning about "not taking what wasn't yours" (which he mentioned to Elani, who didn't care if it referred to this or not, but failed to pass on the message to Gunda) gave it all to his followers. So I think we ended up with four exarchs and a new Godbound or something like that. Which was nice.

The dire warning was in fact to not touch the celestial shards we knocked out of the demon/parasite god. Had we done so, we would have ended up insta-killed and perma-dead. There were bodies of gods strewn about the cave, so that's something we're going to have to get back to at a later date ... seeing as how those gods did in fact include our own preferred deities ...

We all live in a city submarine

Well, there we are, going about our day, levelling up, and sending off our Purple Knight buddy Alwyn to Suzail in Cormyr. He sent a panicked message back, Varion opened a portal to Suzail and lots and lots of water came rushing through. I believe the phrase was "you were supposed to open a portal to the harbour - not INTO the harbour itself!"

Turned out someone had put like a big invisible box around the whole city, and the surrounding area, and dumped a lot of water into it. The city was quite ruined by this.

Denethor rescued survivors by putting them on board our big airship, and Elani turned people into dolphins to get people there. Gunda, who doesn't need to breathe and can't feel cold, went for an underwater stroll instead. Underwater was a big dome, held in place by a wizard. There were lots of people inside.

Elani started turning people into winter wolves to stop them from contracting hypothermia while Gunda went to town on cracking the invisible box and let the water back into the bay. Sadly, the person we were looking for was found dead in the palace vault. OR WAS HE? And who was the fish woman some actual fish mentioned? And who was the figure on the boat in the bay that caused the big box?

On a side note: Elani's player has gathered notes on characters and Elani's thoughts on them, and for Varion, the note was "icky, slimy wizard, up to no good", because she doesn't like or trust him. Plus a general dislike to wizards in general.