Paranoia isn't a bug, it's a feature

 Before heading off to bed, Julius was fed some bottles of blood to make him wake up again, and that's just as well, as half his face seems to be missing. (Thanks, Ecaterina!) That's going to take a while to heal back up.

Lottie lures a group of fratboys back to the house as Julius is in no position to go on a hunt in his current state. The couple's particular way of feeding is somewhat unsettling to watch for anyone who isn't them.

They then have a catch-up. There's going to be an outright war with the Sabbat, and an Elysium will have to be called ASAP. The gold auras are gone. As new safehouses are needed, and a safehouse for LJ isn't safe if anyone but them know about it, Lottie hands Frankie the key to Jeanine's place, saying Jeanine left it with them (they swear they didn't kill her, but don't tell him they tortured her), that it's intended for him, and unlike the places he might want to go in Brooklyn, it's warded.

They have an outing to said apartment, near Morningside Park. Looking around the place (using one of the fratboys as a canary) they come across a kitchen drawer of "oppressive nothingness" and Jeanine's will, listing Frankie as her heir ...

Julius quickly averts his gaze from the creepy drawer, but Lottie goes full on Auspex on it - and starts having a seizure. She leaks blood and gold from her face, and Julius goes after her.

In the Dreamscape, as that's where Lottie ended up, she's seeing both Nordic mythology's icy plains with a giant trapped inside the ice, and a snake wriggling around his feet trying to eat through the ice. The Egyptian mythology's pyramid is also there, and she can see shadows of herself and the others from previous visits. The pyramid is bigger and more ornately decorated.

Neith, the goddess who wasn't there last time we encountered the Egyptian mythological dreamscape, talks to Lottie, offering her all the knowledge and answers she wants/needs, but it will hurt. She's fine with pain, as long as it doesn't hurt Julius. The gods propose a bargain of "perfect preservation" of LJ's relationship, but that sounds too much like a trap so Lottie doesn't take them up on it. She's told to climb the pyramid ...

Damnit, I have narrative blue balls!

This is a combination of two sessions, partly because they were both short so not a lot was said, and because they both covered Elysium. The first was short because the GM had internet troubles and instead of having no game, we desperately improvised by ending up doing a group call using actual telephones. #OldSchool

So, Elysium. We were at the Met, sitting in the auditorium watching Faust: Part 1. There was a young man with Jeanine, but we didn't recognise him, nor did she introduce him to anyone, and when she did spot Frankie she didn't appear to recognise him? Don Cerro, the Brujah Primogen, talked to Jeanine who introduced the young man as Steven Maslowe. Who?

Nor did it appear the Prince knew, when he invited Lottie and Julius to speak with him. The Prince had invited the Sabbat (!) to Elysium, for a hitherto unknown reason. The Prince asked the two Malks to keep an eye on them, which they did from the Malkavian Primogen box. Lottie wasn't pleased at the Sabbat referring to her as a "morsel".

Frankie told Theo about the knife Jeanine (allegedly) gave him, as she broke into a third party's house to deliver it. Theo later invited Frankie to the Brujah Primogen box and offered to take him under his wing. Don Cerro was, perhaps understandably, a little miffed about this.

So, in front of the entire Camarilla and the Sabbat, Jeanine finally introduced Maslowe to the perplexed Prince as ... her previous Childe from Atlanta, who is hoping to make his mark on New York City. The only people happy about this were the Toreadors, who thought it was hilarious - except for Charlotte (we don't know why) and Val, because his cousin was just very publicly disowned by his Sire. The Brujah were not happy being screwed over by one of their own, but at least Frankie wasn't declared Caitiff as a result. Phew?

The Prince wanted a private word with the two newbies. Did Frankie realise how fucked he was? Sort of? Not really? (Frankie doesn't get politics.) But yeah, he's pretty fucked, as is probably everyone he cares about. (This is just about the worst thing to tell a character who is fiercely protective of his mortal family and who also isn't adjusting well to being a vampire ...)

The Prince said he could potentially offer the Mangano clan a boon of protection, but they would need to ask him the question he had granted them - specifically without Julius being there. Lottie asked about the broken twin ghouls, which the Prince was unable to answer, but said he'd look into. He then granted everyone "of Frankie's blood" the boon of protection, so that's one crisis averted - and another one created. Frankie's uncle (a.k.a. Lottie's "dad") is of course being actively harmed by another vampire's ghoul, so Angela will quickly have to stash him in some care home so he's out of the way. At least his mind is so broken now that he'll never regain proper consciousness ...

(We shouldn't worry about Charlotte being mind-controlled. We'll find out soon enough.)

Val had left with Charlotte, so Lottie and Frankie rejoined Julius and went back to the couple's Manhattan home to discuss events. Frankie went to bed early while Lottie talked about blood bonding with Julius in private, offering. Julius succeeded a Willpower roll to not throw himself at her.

And that's where we left it.

This is how Game of Thrones started

Exploring the burned remains of the cultist hideout, Elindra found a chest. A chest which she cut open and found some letters relating to the Blight Council. It's complicated.

She later went clothes-shopping with Valgai, who pretended to be her dad, because surely we all need to look our best if we're to have an audience with Baked Alaska Nightpitch, the ruler of Thistle Hold? Murmei and Nightpitch seemed to ever so slightly bond over not being keen on Murmei's mum arriving. She apparently wants Nightpitch to organise a ball.

We also made inquiries into who the burned-down building belonged to, and it turns out it's a noble in Ravinia - a.k.a. the duchy (or whatever) that the House Vesuvion estate is in, and Murmei's dad often goes to the capital city. So this is all connected??? Scheming nobles, cultists, Davokar, and everything else?

In a bid to avoid his mum's insistance on him getting married, Murmei had the brilliant plan that he and Elindra could get hitched (in name only) because if he's already married when his mother shows up, she can't insist on him marrying someone he doesn't even know. Elindra wasn't as keen on the idea, despite the fact she'd automatically become quite rich, but on the other hand, as Valgai kindly pointed out, marrying a Changeling would probably result in Murmei being disowned anyway ...

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?

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.

Can I roll sense motive on the fruit?

We're back in Rifts, heading toward the city of Soul Harvest. We met a fairy on the way, who was trying to get us to eat and drink things, but we declined. A lot.

Soul Harvest ... is an interesting place. They have undead as servants (whether or not they're unionised is a good question), and subject people to an introductory film to welcome newcomers. It ... was a bit dull. But we don't think it's brainwashed us ... We hope.

The Secret Life of Zolistagol Bagridan

Eddie and Tilly have dreams involving people throwing themselves into fires. In other news, pancakes were made, and one player had to cut the session short because he was feeling so unwell he didn't even fancy cake.

The rest of the session went by with the rest of us learning that Zolistagol isn't the only Russian in town. Half of the Bagridan clan appear to have set up shop in Derby, and they're all some kind of relation to him or other. There is also a rival Russian gang, because why not? It's a roleplaying game - any similarity with any form of reality is purely coincidental.

Right?

A symbiote is for life, not just for Christmas

First session of the new year, woo! We started by having a chat with Rita, who we found out last time was the goddess Hecate. Or a part of her. Or something like that. She found our party to be very interesting, seeing as how we're such an eclectic mix of people ... and other entities. Booker with his new back parasite, for instance, smelled particularly intriguing.

We brought her along to see Rolf, a.k.a. the guy who hired us to find his "wife" Rita. Booker showed him the list of expenses (which were previously agreed in the contract drawn up on accepting the mission), which was about ten times more than the 100k base fee. After deductions. Well, at least he paid up before Rita killed him.

On the plus side, we made a new friend: a Norse dwarf called Ulmolf, a Runesmith, who is a welcome addition to the group.

Needing to stake out the Crow Bar for a gargoyle called Granite, Booker had apparently misunderstood the instructions for this, so we spent a good long while drinking a concoction which took us to a funky cloud room in the astral plane. This "room" was later destroyed by Baradhi and Gorbash, who tried to find a door out to the normal astral plane. No one has ever been barred from the Crow Bar before, but umm ... we might be the first. Possibly.

We were only meant to stake out the place and wait for Granite to show up, so we could persuade him to give up some information. No need for astral plane stalking. Oh well. While we did that, Gorbash turned into a dwarf and went drinking with Ulmolf and Gorbash. Jayson, who didn't have time to get jiggy with Maria earlier, found some time with her now. Baradhi waited down the road from the bar and when Granite showed up, followed him back to what appeared to be Gargoyle Central. Oops?

All good deeds must be given with a minor crime

And we're off!

So, we killed Milan, the dragon allied with the Rakshasa, and that was just the last adventure. For this, Booker Dayes (the gunslinger) got a mystery box from the Gray Seers, filled with all manner of weird and wonderful things. There's a protective amulet, a kinetic force gun (totally frickin awesome), a brick with a cryptic message, some red bandannas and a bag of what 1200 credits later turned out to be table salt.

As the Blackstone Juggernauts chief went out to buy loo roll or something, he put Booker Dayes in charge, so when a creepy guy called Rolf (without an Aussie accent, we hasten to add) said he wanted us to find his missing girlfriend, Booker got us a pretty sweet deal. Hopefully.

The missing woman is slightly beyond a Jessica Rabbit level of hotness, so the rest of the team seemed quite interested in helping out. Perhaps less so Christopher Drake the Glitter Boy who, when not in his armour, is dead from the waist down. Well, presumably he still is even in his armour, it's just that he can move around.

Baradhi and Jayson went to check out the place where Jessica Rabbit has a magic shop, and Gorbash had a look around with Drake but things were heating up, so they got out of there. It might have had something to do with Drake threatening to maim a guy ...

The Reincarnation of Axcalibur

The pregnant Eddie tried to drown his sorrows (foetus) in vodka. Strangely, he wasn't getting drunk from any of it, but instead, his body got very toned all of a sudden. He had never sported a sixpack before! Pregnancy really suits him!

We went looking for clues in Alvaston (or rather, Trevor was looking for a place to turn into a community centre), a rough part of Derby, and unfortunately, that's when Eddie decided to give birth to the big stone egg. Well, first of all, there was a thing crawling up through his throat and Tommy had to perform a tracheotomy and pull it out to stop Eddie from suffocating. The thing was a baby tentacle monster, as expected, and its gunk was highly corrosive. Luckily, Tilly performed some healing magics on him so that he wouldn't bleed to death.

Unfortunately, Eddie was carrying twins. There was also an egg and it decided to come out through his plumbing, so to speak. Ouchhh. The monster baby was dispatched and thrown into a hedge, where a tentacle monster and his tentacle monster dog then went looking.

So that was mentally scarring. We had visits from the blue-eyed German guy again, and some of us entered into bargains with him, which we're not exactly sure if it was a good idea or not yet, but we hope he isn't Fey, because then we're screwed. Eddie got another axe as replacement for his dearly departed Axcalibur.

Later on, we went back and were going to talk to the man and his dog, but the man ran into Zolistagol, Tommy and a patched-up Eddie and they didn't go easy on him. The dog, however, was behaving the way these tentacle monsters were supposed to behave ... so Tilly decided to try befriending it. How that works out, we'll find out next time.

Are you uncomfortable yet?

The wife and child were taken care of, and we went to deliver the "package" (Harold) to the people who wanted him, but apparently they no longer wanted him, and the Johnson who hired us had been a little "hasty" in his instruction to us. The job wasn't guaranteed, and actually, the corporation that hired us have close ties with Mitsuhama (Harold's previous employer) so under no circumstances could they have him or there would be Problems.

They said we should kill him, or at least get rid of him so that he would never resurface.

We didn't want to kill him, because we caused the situation for him, even if it was unwittingly. When we all then misunderstood an NPC's statement of "I've had to dispose of them myself" to mean Harold's family (when he did in fact mean the Harold's family's CommLinks - bit of a difference), things took a rather nasty turn.

Harold didn't listen to our plea to stay hidden and switch his CommLink off ("WE found you because it's still on, doofus! Don't you think THEY will?") ... so Teddy decided to "take care of" him. By magically influencing him to play with traffic.

Well ... at least he's dead now. But the traffic jam, and the reason for it, is headline news.

So that didn't pan out.

Aberrations of evolution, as chosen by God

Things turned interesting for the group this session. While the men in the group hid to avoid detection, Tilly tried shielding the girl/victim we found and ended up being hidden in plain sight. Something's obviously going on there.

Eddie went berserk with his axe, Zolistagol got to speak Russian ("Vladivostok!") and Trevor ... had his skin badly burned. To soothe it, Tilly grabbed some holy water from her bag (like you do), and lo and behold, the witch had apparently obtained magical powers, and the skin started healing!

After much ado, we ended up torching the warehouse to destroy evidence (might have accidentally burned someone alive, but hey ho), borrowed a fake brick of Nazi gold from the Russian mob, and the girl wasn't perhaps so much as a victim but a ghoul in training, or something like that. She wanted feeding to complete the process, and unfortunately, we were on the menu. No gratitude at all, that one.

We tied her hands and locked her in one of the bathrooms at Trevor's. And then we were visited by Tony the Ghoul, who told us what was actually going on. By that point, we couldn't really say sorry, we'd rather stay in with a pizza, beer and watch the Rams game on Sky Sports.

Don’t worry, it’s only the end of the world!

We went to bed, and in the middle of the night, Bones receives a phonecall from an unidentified source, saying the radio telescope must be stopped or Ghroth (?) would come sooner rather than later. Mulligan has taken to wearing ear plugs at night, and didn't hear Bones banging on the door. McAffe did, but told him to shove off. Cully lent him a sceptical ear, and got the other two out of bed. Early in the morning, we headed back out to the telescope array ...

And were very nearly run off the road by some lunatic surveyor, whose tires we had to shoot out to get him to stop. An ambulance was called, because the man did not appear to be at all well. In Hayden, we - or rather, McAffe - drove over someone's leg, but he was lying in the middle of the road because apparently the poorliness was contagious. And the garage we visited last week was ablaze.

Finally made it out to the telescope array, where we were shot at, but Bones shot back. Unfortunately, for purposes of finding clues, he's a very good shot and blew the guy's brains out. But at least he shot first. (Anyone telling you differently is lying. Yesss siree.)

What then followed were Mulligan pestering telescope staff for information, McAffe and the ever increasingly paranoid Bones going through chalets searching for clues (seeing as how Bones shot the clue we had), and Cully played CSI with the crime scene. It all had a sense of impending doom over it. Is the end of the adventure nigh?

It's only paranoia if you're playing Delta Green

Meanwhile in Nebraska: Cully went back to North Platte to perform an autopsy. On the way back from Hayden, she was told to go meet a new guy in the hotel lobby. And sure, clutching a copy of the Fortean Times, there he was - FBI computer analyst James McAffe. (He has a driving skill of about 70, so he's the designated driver from now on.) They set off to autopsy the dead girlfriend, but didn't find anything because Cully somehow managed to roll 95 ... out of 90.

Over in Hayden, Bones and Mulligan got a lift out to the radio telescope array where their Sheriff's department driver got attacked by the guard dog they reportedly don't have. There was tazering involved, and then hog-tying.

The staff at the radio telescope array were a peculiar bunch, particularly one of the other computer guys - who seemed to get through his days using a steady stream of JD.

After meeting back up, introducing McAffe to the rest of the party, the four investigators went to the home of the murderer to see if they could find anything. Insects, is the answer, lots and lots of insects. Insects that seemed to home in on Cully. But then, what are improvised flamethrowers for?

As we didn't really find anything at the house, McAffe stayed behind to go through the computer a bit more and the rest went to a tavern to see what else could be got out of the drunken computer guy. In Bones's case, a massive headache ... that can't be a good sign.

Must be talking to the tinfoil hat

Because Mulligan had an epic dice roll for whether or not people in a restaurant had a camera, it turned out a photography convention was being held at that hotel ... The photo in question was taken of a couple of Japanese fellas standing outside with a black Mercedes. We've been joined by the original offshoot of the Aum cult!

And we have reasons to believe we're going to need tinfoil hats going forward. In fact, the plan is to make stetsons with a Faraday cage inside, because we're all sophisticated, like. After all, isn't the tinfoil really meant to ward off things like radio waves? Then a Faraday cage is what you want! Simples!

Our journalist pal took us to see her father, who managed to translate enough of the old scroll we had in our possession to realise it wasn't the lyrics to a Eurythmics song. But we definitely agree that there are shenanigans afoot in Texas.

The real world would be proud

Starting out where we left off last session (funny that), Mulligan went to talk to meteorologist Hank Long, who turned out to be a lot like himself, only a few years down the line and with some more Sanity points lost. He was totally tying the room together, man.

Cully went to have a coffee at the brand of coffee shots that measure their sizes in "Tall", "Venti" and that other one we couldn't remember the name of. Oh, with the journalist woman who wanted to interview Brian, the schizophrenic we had reunited with the friendly men in white coats last time. She had lots of info about the weird-ass church Brian belongs to. They have ties with the Aum Shinrikyo cult, and might or might not have caused that earthquake using some sort of EMP device.

And then we tagged along with the ATF who were going out to the church's compound to say hello ... and suddenly, it appeared to be a re-run of Wako, which, funnily enough, is just up the road from San Antonio.