We'll all be Malkavian by the time this is done

In the basement of a little cottage in Staten Island, AltLottie and Julius have a frank discussion. Turns out Lottie is actually the third person Julius has sired, gasp. AltLottie tells him a few home truths about Lottie's and his relationship - he needs to shape up or ship out, basically - which has the desired effect, as he really does want the relationship on offer. AltLottie switches back to Lottie, and to save time Julius gives her a memory dump of everything that's happened, and the interrogation of Jeanine continues.

Jeanine hands over the key to her house (well, she won't be needing it ...) and reveals that, unsurprisingly, Maslowe was going to be her heir, but she didn't have a chance to formalise it yet. For a short while she had considered Frankie, but she kinda went off him because he's very stubborn when it comes to having ethics. Lottie gets her two write two back-dated letters, one that names Frankie her heir, one that signs over the ghouls to Julius. Just in case.

That knife of hers? It was used in some rituals. It also went missing, and she did not in fact carve that J into the guest bed at Val's ... She also gives background on the ghouls. Where they come from, how she tracked them down, and so on. Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned, and she might've been better off taking up a different hobby.

Lottie and Julius blood bond right in front of their torture victim (with Tommy the Fool cowering in the corner), because bare cell with a drain in the floor is just so romantic, ya know? (They were in a similar room the first time it happened. Is this going to be a thing now?) They follow this up by going full Malkavian mindshredding on her, which, true to form, makes them super horny again.

In Manhattan on the way back to Charlotte's apartment, Theo divulges his rivals for the Brujah Primogency. Out of the other three, Frankie has only met one: Delilah, from Elysium! When asked if Charlotte can be trusted, Theo says "to a point". The two of them have a sort of off-and-on thing going on. It's currently on. Frankie admits that when it comes to himself, “it’s complicated”, because saying he has the hots for his cousin's ghoul seems like a thing best kept to himself at this stage.

Don Cerro, the Brujah Primogen, is waiting for them back at Charlotte's. He agrees the Brujah had to make a show of strength, but geez, Theo (and Frankie) couldn't have been a bit more subtle about it? Turns out a Setite doing garbage disposal in Harlem and the Bronx has had a lot of business in Little Italy recently. The Giovanni wanted rid of dead bodies (!) and agreed to a one-off slave trade with the Setites, who wanted some live bodies. Not that this means anything in particular at this stage?

Charlotte spoke with the Toreador to get more information about the Giovanni ghouls and found out her Primogen and some guy called Tamoszius are planning to nominate Frankie for Scourge (!), which is of course completely ridiculous considering he's a baby in vampire terms - it hasn't even been two weeks! He clearly won't say yes, and saying no would hurt future career prospects, except what fucking career prospects does a non-political 13th Gen have anyway, even before taking into account that he narrowly avoided being declared Caitiff after being publicly disowned by his Sire? So is that really such a loss? Theo finally suggests they beat the Toreador at their own game: have the Brujah put that Tamoszius guy forward for Scourge first. Having him turn it down would hurt his social standing wayyyyy more than it would Frankie, and the Toreador couldn’t counter-nominate Frankie without it looking like sour grapes.

I'll use a spell-checker if I have to!

Last week we generated characters for Rogue Trader, but that didn't generate a lot of quotes, so I figured I'd put it together with the first session instead.

Here's one we made earlier.

In fact, it's not roleplaying at all, but instead it's boardgaming during this year's International Table Top Day! #ITTDatChimera

Can I take your Sanity?

For this session, we did two things: levelled up our Rifts characters, followed by a game of Mansions of Madness, one of the expansions. The GM had had a bad day, so he was definitely in the mood to inflict pain on us - but first, getting us into a false sense of security by being nice.

We got the clues, were doing okay, and when the character with the silver tablet was making a run for the exit, hell broke loose ... quite literally. And then we all failed horribly and the GM won. It was a fun session. :D

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?

This would make a great PowerPoint presentation

Once we got back to the hotel after a good day's work, we went to sleep ... and woke up in the middle of the night, because of a storm. Outside, a big, red sphere hanging in the air ... with eyes ... It caused a crapload of SAN to be lost (enough to kill off two characters) - and then we woke up. It had never happened. Still scared the willies out of us, though.

Well, aside from Mulligan, that is. He's come to terms with his own mortality that puny things like that don't cause him to lose Sanity.

We also met the car mechanic again. First, he whistled a tune across the street - and then he came at us with a tyre iron. Some grappling and handcuffing later, we finally had to tazer him to stop him from killing himself. Yes, it's against protocol and our training, but then again, neither are how to deal with the Old Gods.