It's been a good adventure

The party decides to go to Ravenia, by way of Castor. In Castor there's a church with a partially collapsed floor. This eventually leads to us taking down the city's mayor slash undead monstrosity, and stopping a ritual to bring a lindworm through a magical portal. Deadorna kindly offered to put him out of his misery as an alternative to being sent back into some kind of hell dimension, but the lindworm took offense ... and was sent back, for possibly someone else to deal with in another couple of hundred years time.

In the woods we later came across Mother Elsana and the Night Lady. Elindra removed a cursed gem from a corpse, and as the Ordo Magica would only paw it off to someone else anyway, she buries it in an undisclosed location.

In Ravenia Valgai meets a friend, Teig, in a pub. (Teig as a character will be joining us going forward, replacing Valgai.) Murmei does a lot of research and is stopped from going to investigate a hubbub outside Ordo Magica in the middle of the night. His sister doesn't seem to think it's a smart move to get involved when people are out to potentially murder you? The hubbub turned out to be a whole family getting killed by a giant spider. Kind of like the one Elindra has as a familiar - except she was a few hours north of Ravenia at that point. Someone's setting her up?

This got spicy real fast

Lottie and Frankie continue their discussion about what happened while they split the party. Lottie then explains to Angela why Frankie can't take her out on a date, and her reaction leads the players to surmise that a certain crush might actually be reciprocated. She also gives strict orders about which Kindred are allowed inside the house, i.e. definitely not Charlotte.

In this week's "ghouls acting kinda weird": Angela gives Frankie's neck a funny look.

The Commissioner of Plants and Buildings in Brooklyn is apparently excited about the Brooklyn Bridge building works, which are taking place during daylight hours and begun the same day that the three cousins were Embraced.

Frankie meets Val to discuss plans, how Val needs to talk to his police contacts to find out everything he can about the hits on Red Hook. This turned into a more personal conversation between the two cousins, where Val finds their new lifestyle to suit him very well, but he notes that Frankie might never get used to it - as highlighted by Val, who had brought them a couple of women to snack on, was busy sweet-talking his before biting, whereas Frankie apologised to his.

Val, it turns out, is worried about the situation between Lottie and Charlotte. That the air gets frosty when Charlotte is mentioned around Lottie is one thing, but it also seems to be happening the other way around ... However, if it comes down to it, he's on his cousins' side. He also kindly offered to stake Jeanine for Frankie. So thoughtful!

Meanwhile, because of the lack of a phone in the Manhattan residence, Julius says he's getting a new place, which will have a telephone. He's confident he can get that house tonight ... because he wasn't planning on paying for it. The family living there are mindwhammied into submission, will be great at answering the phone and taking messages and acting as snacks. Plus, he's just given Lottie a family, which she's never truly had. It's incredibly romantic - and sexy. They can totally take time out for a bit of bedroom fun, despite previously telling a certain cousin that there's absolutely no time for anything other than business right now.

Left brooding after Val's heart-to-heart, Frankie asks Benny to arrange a flower delivery for Angela. In a further doubling down on his humanity, backed up by dice, instead of driving to Theo, he thinks about happy childhood memories and somehow ends up outside Golconda Park. All sounds and all lights around him fade out, spooking him and making him return to the car, handing a passing drunk some spare change in the process.

So in a strange turn of events, Val might actually become a sort of bridge between two cousins who are clearly heading in opposite directions on the morality scale.

 

I can't keep playing Humanity Roulette like this

Lottie and Julius dream about the other person's personal traumas, lying naked in each other's arms in a basement in Staten Island. Frankie and Val head back home to Brooklyn, and to be on the safe side, Frankie stays over at Val's. In the evening, Val heads off to do some stuff, while Frankie got to see his apartment - and a change of clothes! - for the first time in what seems like forever.

Lottie doesn't lose Humanity for what was inflicted on Jeanine. Nor for jointly breakfasting on Tommy the Fool followed by jointly snapping his neck. How romantic!

Frankie goes to see Benny at their speakeasy, and places a number of calls to check on business. Everything is fine, but there is stuff happening in Red Hook. 25 people, running legit businesses and none of them connected to the mafia, have been arrested on shaky grounds, like "running mob fronts". Some premises were completely smashed, others roughed up a little, or basically left alone. It's puzzling. Seb is looking into it further.

Meanwhile, Lottie and Julius go to meet the old woman, Loretta, and her Childe, Adelaide. The Prince doesn't know about Adelaide, who was turned a year ago. Loretta tells the story of who Adelaide is (kind of a serial killer?) and where she found her (an asylum), how she got her out of there, and rescued her by Embracing her.

While Julius and Loretta have a discussion in private, Lottie and Adelaide get acquainted upstairs. Adelaide is well aware they have to leave before the Prince finds out about her. She wants them to go to Georgia. (Maslowe's from Atlanta. Coincidence?) She also talks about how there's something in the water near the Brooklyn Bridge, but she was afraid to look. She could see what seemed like a cold, bright star in that direction - bearing in mind this is supposed to be 6 km away. Loretta didn't see it. Lottie and Julius did see something in some of the very first sessions ...

Adelaide seems to have some kind of weird fortune-telling power. She asks if she can look at Lottie "properly", then says something cryptic about there being something in the blood, "something that feeds, something thin" before snapping out of it and asking if she's looked at her yet. What the actual fuck?! Maybe skipping town is the best option after all.

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.

Who wants to give a recap?

Well, since this session and calling ourselves out on being ungrateful players, we've provided the GM with pages upon pages of backstory, which he can screw us over with later. We're very proud.

That did not come into play in this session, though. Something else did, but I can't remember exactly what because I forgot to note down helpful reminders that I could use when trying to remember it months later.

Although I do remember why we only had a handful of quotes from the 30th (which I've included here) because while Lottie was busy having it off with Julius, Val and Frankie were followed when heading back to Val's place. It was a rival gang, and they ended up getting shot at. Frankie got shot quite severely, actually, and we were worried there for a bit. Fucking Brenda Toner.

Gunfight at the OK 5th Precinct

Sometimes we have to remember that we aren't just vampires, but also gangsters, and do some gangstering.

Well, first of all Janine is showing herself to be very untrustworthy by sending Frankie a messenger with a fancy bottle of wine. He declined to try it, and he also didn't use the messenger boy as a snack. In fact, he was kind enough to give the kid a bottle of cheap booze as a tip.

Lottie is trying to find a HQ for us, sort of a blood bank perhaps, and maybe it could masquerade (har-har) as a clinic for sailors ... We'll see how that develops.

Anyhoo. Now that we're made men and woman we were going to a meetup of different mob bosses, as some stuff had been going down. Even more stuff started happening. Gunshots. Someone had gunned down a mob boss outside the 5th Precinct, and there was more gunfire about.

The mob bosses at the meet had to be evacuated, and shit would probably rain down on all of us. The speakeasy had the emergency shutdown orders executed, and we strongly suspect one of our NPC cousins to have taken a photo of Lottie's dad from the speakeasy - possibly with a view to kill him and set him up as a fall guy.

What's worse is that our sires seem to know about what's going on here, and we don't like it.

Oh, and there was some frost on the water as we crossed That Bridge again, but hey it's only May, so it's perfectly normal, yeah?

It's up to you, New York

The cousins Mangano continue to try to get used to the idea of being vampire gangsters in 1920s New York City ...

Under the Dome was a bit different to this

We got to a town currently covered in a massive dome. Our friends are inside, and we need to get inside to talk to them. Unfortunately they're also besieged by a bunch of gnolls or related monsters. There was a big artefact, which Denethor eventually crashed his precious airship-not-a-warship into, and somehow we ended up killing Gruumsh, despite siege engines being teleported just as we were about to hit them.

It was a big battle, though, so we didn't "say" much. Hence why the session after is also included.

Fun fact: Blogger has updated and is very confusing now and you can't backdate posts. Blegh. Thankfully, the option to revert back was there so I didn't have to go through the rigmarole of migrating the whole thing to WordPress.

Microchips in a crisp bag

Coming across some weird purple stuff on the ground, shining a light on it made it sprout tentacles and suddenly we made a new friend - it called itself Terminus and the group decided to give it a moral compass. Like don't take stuff people need to survive, don't kill people (unless they're trying to kill you first), family is important, that kind of thing. Gunther added that it "shouldn't let the bastards grind it down", which may or may not be good advice? The thing grew and grew and maybe we have unleashed a monster on the world.

We got back to the barge-on-wheels and were stopped by some other mutants, who wanted to jab us with needles before explaining what they were for. Turned out to be some kind of vaccine, but as far as we saw it, it was an unprovoked attack and they were trying to inject us with goodness-knows-what, so we put the pedal to the metal and drove out of there. The vaxxers were very insistent, however, and gave chase. They exploded in a fireball, but not before taking out one of our wheels - Cecil was NOT amused.

Moral of the story: if you're regenerating, eating weird berries is fine. To everyone else, they're less fine.

Welcome to the minimum damage club

The bigger thing that came out we did some damage to, and then it fell through a hole in the floor along with the other creature. We battled some things and a giant tentacled brain in the middle of the goop pool, until it exploded.

Maybe we should get out of there? Dragging an unconscious Orson along with us (his player couldn't make it, unfortunately) we found a room with lights, and Jetstream picking up said lights made things rotate and all of a sudden the spaceship (yes, we were in a spaceship) decided to start a countdown for take-off. We managed to convince the system to stay put until all the terraforming bits and other things had been recalled. Which happened kind of quickly.

We found an engine room full of what appeared to be weird sex dungeon loot, and the vents in the floor turned out to be exhaust vents. As we had to scarper, we jumped down and fell out in the crater below the spaceship ... and ran for cover, because that thing was taking off!

Starring:

• Cecil, a grumpy plastic ladybird toy come to life
• Gunther von Lunar, a vampire from Unspecified European Country
• Jetstream, a regenerating speedster who does Science with bowling balls
• Mr Johnson, a seismic shapeshifter with some very good ideas ... on paper
• Orson, an unconscious hypercognitive octopoid scientist

Is Archie short for Arch Enemy?

In the aftermath of taking down big-ass flying battlestation we came across an android calling itself A-51, proclaiming to work for some guy called Archie, who seems shifty - but then apparently he has a whole book about him or something. A-51 said something in a foreign language, Gorbash translated by the cunning use of magic, and she bolted.

Found out later she was still following us, and may or may not have liked to hear Gorbash speaking Splugorth? We don't know. And she basically exploded in our faces.

We went back home, getting armours fixed, having the remnants of the robot examined, talking to Ixchal, trying to get Jayson a pay rise without telling him (because being all noble and "I couldn't possibly, won't someone think of the starving children in Tolkeen" or something), and oh, apparently now Splugorth wants Booker's head. Again. But for a more serious 40 million credits this time.

There's one such thing as coincidence

We're still in Thistle Hold. Elindra has a great plan to avoid getting mind-controlled by the Symbaroum king again, which probably won't work and she might end up wiping the rest of the party. As she came to discover the cellar where we found the flayer in a previous session was part of some ancient Symbaroum ruins. Maybe the whole town was built upon ancient Symbaroum ruins?

Valgai decided to play politics and have the domestic servant clean the house in order for Murmei's mum and her entourage to have somewhere to live when they arrive, while he and Elindra stay in an inn somewhere. He probably has some kind of blood-based tracking spell on him, but doesn't currently want to remove it for strategic reasons.

Murmei stayed in his tower learning to summon a fire elemental into the armour - and succeeded! He now has a pet, and proudly told everyone what he's calling it. Whether or not it can speak is yet to be determined.

Oh, and the place where Elindra had seen the cultists go in and out? It burned down, and she didn't do it. Plus some dude in a tree house inn was curious to know more about when Murmei's mum was arriving. Curiouser and curiouser for sure, and we're no closer to actually starting our Davokar expedition either.

We built this weapon for rock 'n' roll!

After playing with a plant, growing it to gignatic proportions and hatching one of Auriga's protectors from it, we took Denethor's Floating Wagon to a hole in the ground. A big, big hole in the ground full of necrophages, eww. Down there we found a thoon hulk, some spider type creatures and a throne.

Battle ensued.

We were looking rather out-gunned, then Auriga's moth creature crawled under the throne platform, and it eventually cracked, and there was a big ass Rotten Court general hiding there. Which we, by the skin of our teeth, managed to somehow down.

And then we got pelted by dropping dead necrophages and got the hell out of there.

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?

Feeding Kanye West to an undead T-Rex

Our modern day superheroes have managed to restore the missing school to the physical world again, except it's relocated to Easter Island. The heroes relocated to Moscow to find our Russian characters frozen in stasis coffins. People having to act out two characters at once ensued.

Then there was a portal to Wall Street and fighting Eris, goddess of chaos, and suchlike until the world was saved. This involved a pillar that was supposed to have been a lava lamp but in fact was a couple of Appletiser cans stacked on top of each other, figurines in tiny cages, an undead T-Rex that had lived in the sewers, Kanye West and all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

In the end the bad guys were defeated and most of the characters were still alive to tell the tale afterwards. Good game, great campaign. :)

I love it when a plan falls apart

We got the attack victims back to the little ramshackle town from whence they came. Turned out they used to live in an abandoned city nearby, Tilverton, which had fallen victim to darkness like 150 years previously. Not that this was a deterrent for us.

We went into the city with the muffin top of darkness and slew a bunch of nasty creatures, and did a fly-by to grab an amulet off a Cthulhian type creature. This made the muffin top go away, along with all the nasty critters, so the townspeople could have their city back.

We're big damn heroes now. Severely injured heroes, in two out of three cases, but heroes nonetheless.

Yer a druid, Harry

New game, new characters! Godbound is set in Forbidden Realms (D&D), but the characters turn out to have special powers. It's a bit like Hunter, or Exalted, or Changeling, except it's not World of Darkness.

At first, we considered being an all-Cleric party, and then there was a couple of Clerics and a Paladin, or a cleric, a paladin and an archivist researcher, and in the end we're like a druid, a blacksmith (who also does archiving and research) and Brienne of Tarth.

• Denny/Denethor: a human archivist researcher who is also a very competent crafter-of-things
• Elani Tiatha: an elf huntress with aspirations of becoming Boudicca, except for the dying bit
• Gunda: a human paladin of Tempus; see also: Brienne of Tarth

We started off by fighting some bad hombres and by doing so we discovered we had special powers, because we didn't use to be quite as kick ass as we had suddenly become.

He can thank me later

We're still in Soul Harvest, that magical place full of reanimated skeletons and corpses. Zombies as hotel bellhops, with cheeks made up to look slightly less dead. Creepy.

Booker's back in the game (being played by the GM last week, we all thought he was acting strangely out of character!) and wasted no time associating himself with someone who seemed important - a vampire, apparently. Didn't try to drink any Château de Booker Dayes, though.

The rest of the party gathered information and were deciding whether or not to get citizenships as well, seeing as how Donna was acting a bit Cyndi Lauper and just to be safe, maybe the rest also should be citizens. May we live in interesting times and all. Interesting, necromancy-infested times.

I'm glad we're both stupidly heroic

Now that people were back from Reasons They Couldn't Make Last Session, the rest of us filled those people in on what we'd been up to in the meantime, i.e. killing bloaters on a riverboat and freeing a bunch of oar slaves.

There was a CLUE and everything, pointing toward a hospital about a mile or so away, so of course we decided that's the place to go. (It probably doesn't help that it seems like three people in the group have either Heroic or Brave or both.) Going by boat through the swamp soon attracted them bloaters, who promptly started to try boarding our ship - or at least drag us down to their level.

In the end, to cut a long story short, traumas were got and we got to the hospital.

Can we just call this 'The Monumental Fuck-up'?

So, umm, bad things happened.

Well, there was thing thing called the Prometheus Project, which can allegedly extend Juicers' limited lifespans. This was appealing to Donna, for obvious reasons.

Then ... well it came to the point where she was fined for not being able to show her papers, she went to pay it, was asked for her papers again (we were still waiting for the new forgeries), and shit kicked off. She destroyed a toilet which caused the building to go into lockdown. Gorbash set off a fusion block outside, blowing a crater in the street and taking not just a couple of Coalition State soldiers with it, but a number of civilians. Seeing as how he sort of can't differentiate between civilians and soldiers because they're all Coalition Staters (basically "all Germans were Nazis") ... the characters with a bit more fixed moral compass (read: Elyssia and Jayson) are ... not very pleased.

Oh, and Gorbash doesn't like haute cuisine. It's too bland for him. It's like what an iced bun is to Swedes ...