Say no to unsafe blood sex

AltLottie came out to play, suggesting that maybe Angela had been mindwhammied by Julius at a previous date and that's why she was so, ahh, low on inibitions last session. (She was so forward even Frankie was thrown by it, although he didn't exactly complain at the time.) On the plus side, AltLottie also insisted on Val getting un-mindwhammied.

Julius also finally got the Charlotte situation, with his (presumed) relatives being Jeanine's ghouls. Allegedly. Is Jeanine the problem or is she being set up as being the fall guy? Is Charlotte the actual problem here, maybe? What game are they trying to play? We concoct a plan to meet Charlotte at Val's place (her being his sire and all) and watch her aura for clues. Maybe someone's mindwhammied HER?

We did warn you about him

We saw an ogre stepping away from a big fire, leaving behind an alchemical parchment. Is this a thing? There were hungry wild boars and big crowds and the ogre turned out to be the sheriff.

Deadorna can turn into a kotka, and two kotkas playing meant they spilled ink. Murmei wasn't happy.

We found the elf we were looking for. There was much suspicion all around.

Descriptions are kinda difficult three months after the game. *cough*

You're one of those Old Ones, aren't you?!

This session was AMAZEBALLS.

We had no dreams, yay! Val went off doing business stuff ... because his player sadly wasn't feeling well. This meant the only guy with an actual Driving skill wasn't present, which caused a few issues. (Turns out you if you don't have the skill you can't roll it, unlike Rifts where only stunt driving kinda thing requires the skill but generic "Sunday driving" doesn't. Or at least it does in our game.)

Julius was kind enough to gift us all some armoured clothing - in Lottie's case an Edwardian evening dress. Lottie asked Julius to get some kind of tracking thing be put on her so he'd be able to find her.

Lottie, Julius and Frankie went over to the house where Lottie grew up, and where her father Andreas is being cared for by Angela, who was finally going to be turned into Lottie's ghoul. The two Malkavians headed upstairs. After tasting his blood, Julius let Lottie know that Andreas isn't her father after all. Her mum had a thing with a bartender in Sicily before emigrating, so Andreas has never been a blood relation ... and subsequently Lottie isn't actually a Mangano after all. They decide it's probably best not telling anyone else about that.

When you have ridiculously high level Dementation, you can cause someone severe mental anguish for the rest of their miserable life by basically tearing their soul apart and putting it back together - repeatedly. Julius was happy to do this because FUCK THAT GUY Andreas Mangano! Lottie found Julius super hot torturing her not-actually-biological father that they ended up having sex in front of him afterwards. Well, he was a drooling wreck anyway.

Meanwhile downstairs, Frankie and Angela sat down together, because neither was welcome upstairs for obvious reasons. On the plus side, this meant the gift of the very fancy bottle of wine could be delivered, and, uh, asking Angela out turned out to be a LOT easier than Frankie expected. (The actual exchange had me as a player roaring with laughter.) He might've had a crush on her for the past couple of years, but apparently she's really rather into him as well. They had a walk around the garden.

Hrm, so anyway, making Angela into a ghoul went off without a hitch. The three vampires then went over to the Blackthorne to meet with Benny, so that Frankie also might get a ghoul. Benny was, uh, less easily convinced and required a lot of alcohol. He had to be mindwhammied (before AND after) to not freak out about his best friend and brother from another mother being a vampire. We'll see how that works out. At least we all have a ghoul each now.

Oh no, you're not!

We're back in Davokar, where we left off. Erdugald is about to shift again, so we really ought to get a move on. Especially as the stones covering the hole in the ground with the murder hornets will go with it ...

The party is promptly attacked by ice trolls (dicks!) when a barbarian girl with a pet kotka show up. The kotka's name is Yahana. The barbarian girl introduces herself as Deadorna ... who was formerly known as Rilia of House Vesuvion ... a.k.a. Murmei's younger sister ...

Then there was an elf asking us to find someone in a camp, where someone rushed in shouting "he's dead!"

I'll pretend I didn't just Google that

There was a lot angst, angst and more angst in this session, because of the thing we learned the previous session and how we couldn't discuss it with Julius. On the plus side, Frankie's BFF Benny got to make his first appearance!

We talked to Julius about our weird chaos dreams. Turns out Lottie is having Norse mythology dreams, Val is having Greek mythology dreams, and Frankie Egyptian mythology. We were advised to keep the dreams going as long as possible to learn as much as possible.

Lottie and Val went to place a call at a phone box, which was essentially the two of them arguing for half-hour IRL. After which, we cut to another half-hour of Julius and Frankie having a chat involving discussing if relatives of vampires are somehow protected by default - because Frankie would be very concerned about the Manganos obviously and it totally has nothing at all to do with those two ghouled relatives of Julius Charlotte showed us last session. No way, no how, no siree. #smooth Then they awkwardly had a talk about ghouls in general (because of Benny), and being in love with Angela - at which point Julius botched a roll and somehow got the impression that Lottie and Angela were lesbian lovers?!?

Did we win?

So, we were faced with a number of creepy evil clowns and then a big octopus monster thing and creepy Walt Disney type dude? I may have got my notes and memories a little scrambled. We take it down, the deadland becomes ... not so bad any more?

Going back to the people we were trying to save and the town to tell them of our progress, Vince accidentally chatted up a widow by botching his pheromone roll. She was planning on dumping her kid and coming with us ... but um, we got the heck out of there. Because ain't nobody got time for that. He was very sad about it, it was touching. But at least he got laid, eh? ;)

Why did I end up with a fucking monster as a sire?!

Val and Frankie waited for Marco, who turned up with a couple of cabaret girls ... and turned out to be very keen on blood. He ... he might have become a blood junkie already?

Julius was finally introduced to AltLottie ...

I have a note that legit says "Frankie awkwardly having The Talk with Lottie" which I think refers to how she's a big girl now, and ... well, she's a vampire now, so not like she can get pregnant.

We met up with Charlotte at a house that contained ghouls gone wrong. She introduced us to two teenage ghouls who are alleged descendants of Julius, but that Jeanine has been keeping them as bait to see if Julius would break the Masquerade - because she’s pissed off with him spurning her a century ago. We don't know if this is genuine or not, but that's the explanation we were given. Lottie was very freaked out.

So, how can we plot to get Jeanine out of the picture without triggering Julius, or killing anyone - and making sure Frankie isn't on the line considering Jeanine is his sire.

We know it's corrupted

There was an icky axe-a-mole thing in the arcade. I mean, everything about this place is icky and creepy, but ... y'know. We found a guy. We went into the Enchanted Wood, where we went past a creepy picnic (which we ignored, yay us) to find a shed in the woods.

There was an animatronic werewolf attacking us, because for some reason we were the three little piggies and we got out of the shed just before it collapsed? Being in a deadland is not recommended, by the way. You easily get damaged - as Vince can confirm.

Do we have dinner coming to dinner?

We wanted to go on a raid against the White Hand warehouse, but realised we were way outgunned. Genius idea - go to a hotel and borrow their phone and call the cops on the warehouse (because that's totally how the mafia do things ... we've realised much later when we found their code of conduct on Wikipedia). Then we just had to sit back and wait for the cops to bring the numbers down to a better level.

While doing this Frankie also received relationship advice from his cousins. Lottie's advice might have been slightly better than Val's, who was very matter-of-fact and didn't actually address the problem:

"How do I talk to her? You're good with dames, what do I say to her?"
"Well, if you want a girlfriend, she's technically the only and/or logical option. So good for you."
"... Uh ... thanks?"

At least Lottie suggested getting Angela a present, maybe a really fancy bottle of wine that could be used for when she ghouls her. The fanciest bottle available was swiftly requisitioned from the restaurant where we had camped out, and it was WELL fancy.

And then we had really weird dreams again. What's up with those?

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 ...

Deadliest Catch: Human Slaves Edition

In the final session of Rifts, for what might be a very long time because we've complicated things for the GM now, our best laid plans involved using a warlock to create a distraction. He unleashed a water elemental that would turn the town of Moreno into a lake. A lot of people, including the vampires' human slaves that we wanted to save. Gorbash managed to save a handful, and took them to safety, but not without a body count because he had to do it very quickly, in a kind of trawler manner.

But we got the people we were sent there to save, so that's good? Mission accomplished? There were a number of vampires in storage somewhere else and they appear to not be there any more, but that's not going to be a problem, right? No, let's head back home to Blackstone Juggernauts HQ and get ready for our next adventure, I'm sure it'll be fine.