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.

Thank you for trapping us on a ship

We found a ship to take us cruising down the river, as it would be quicker to travel. There are ginormous crab creatures that might eat the entire crew in that river, but we'll be okay, right? There are only claw marks and stuff that we can see, and maybe it would be advisable to not be trapped on a boat going down a river?

Turns out the big crabs are intelligent and can be hurt and disabled, but that they stop bleeding when they're in water. Their claws are tough as hell, but you can defeat them. The party - sans Murmei and Knightlight, who were hiding out downstairs, because water would be bad for a Flame Servant - fight off two of said crabs.

We made it safely to the town of Kurun, where we possibly dodged several side quests - and assassins? We didn't stay for very long, as we were busy trying to get back to Thistle Hold. Which we eventually did. Huzzah! Because all of this had actually been a side quest, and not part of the actual campaign! D'oh ...

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?

That tangented quickly

Things go bump in the night. Troll shadows, but we're in a Witch Circle so they don't see us. We subsequently make camp, and then six hunter wolves with some kind of weird, glowing beetles inside them show up.

FIGHT!

And because there was a big fight, there wasn't a lot said in the session or about the session, except of course that we won.

Crazy people trying to deal with things

Julius is out when Lottie and Frankie return to the Manhattan house. Lottie went to shower off the Tzimice red mist ickyness she had to walk through in Harlem, while Frankie looked out through a window and saw Julius talking to a Gangrel, who wanted him to ally himself in regards to the Gangrel primogency.

Everyone in the same place, we started catching up with what everyone had been up to. Julius had been researching Egyptian mythology. The primordial creator goddess was not a part of the cousins' dream, apparently. Neither cousins nor players have any clue what this means.

 A surprise Jeanine appeared! Lottie and Frankie went to hide in another room to avoid her. She invited Julius to tomorrow night's Elysium. With Lottie's Auspex, she saw the bond between Frankie and his sire was very thin and fragile, but in fairness she hasn't been around for about a week, and the cousins have only been vampires for about a week and a half. And she didn't even enquire about her childe either. Bitch.

Victor, the Setite in the safehouse in Harlem, came by to say Ellie has Valenti and is ready to hand him over. He wasn't looking in a great shape. Not that the cousins really care.

Can I bite it in the butt?

There's a weird abomination creature wanting to get into our witch circle. It was like a spider with too many limbs, even though spiders already have too many limbs? Or not spidery, tentacle-y. Either way, it died.

We went to go see our arch troll friend Uhux, as we were supposed to let him know what had happened to his friends.

Can I get Willpower for that?

Last time ended on a cliffhanger - things had just turned frosty between Frankie and the boxing promoter, because someone failed his Intimidation roll. (He succeeded on the first one. It was very satisfying.) Turned out that the eight weirdos around the corners of the boxing ring were staring around the room in sequence. Once the situation was defused (because Frankie thought it best not to start a fight in a room full of mindwhammied people when he's in the presence of his big brother and a number of other humans), four of them walked away.

Lottie is a much better negotiator, and got a much better deal. She should go back to the boxing promoter and re-negotiate the percentage. Ellie said she'd find Valenti for us, seeing as how her childe apparently knew where he was. After leaving Ellie's she went to see a production of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, or at least a part of it, in order to negotiate a new deal at the theatre. This was also successful, because she's the negotiator of the two!!!

Lottie then bumped into Theo Bell and offered her services in the mood changing department (to help him become the next Brujah Primogen) and asked him to please maybe keep an eye on her cousin, seeing as how Frankie's sire has been shit. Theo did this by essentially hijacking the taxi Frankie was in to get out of Harlem. Frankie, bless him, went "this is basically my boss, I should tell him what I know if asked" and told him about both the werewolves and Ecaterina at the steelworks incident in Gowanus. This apparently spooks Theo, who says Elysium is likely to be called the next night.

I'm the Aston Martin of barbarians

We met with barbarians! Deadorna and Valgai offered to heal people attacked by blight elks, but the barbarians refused. Deadorna spoke to them, because barbarians are her people after all. They mentioned a Sovereign Oath and a Blood Daughter.

Murmei made his sister a set of snake armour. It's dark green, making her look like the Green Arrow, which is excellent news.

We met with Kathman, the chief witch of the Vajvod tribe and also Deadorna's mentor. He's very knowledgable. Apparently there have been visions of an icy cold creeping into the world from Korratix Domain - that place we were stuck inside which had an opening to some kind of ice troll world ...

Elindra offered to bestow Xanatha's blessing on Deadorna, who chose to think about it.

Half an hour of drama, one dice roll

Having woken up from the weird dream, the cousins learned more about the cagey Setite from Julius, because he has had previous dealings.

They head over to Angela's to call people, because Julius's house hasn't had a phone line installed yet. (He's from The Past, after all.) While Lottie calls people, Angela showed concern about what happened to Schiro (we're not sure why as he's from a different borough entirely and wouldn't exactly have had contact?) and then was still coming on strong with regards to Frankie. He was concerned about her behaviour, she said something that made him less concerned, and they ended up kissing.

Which was nice.

Lottie Auspexing meant her eyes went all glowy, which, as it turns out, induce some kind of happy obsession in humans - read: Angela - and it made her realise perhaps she should lay off Auspex for a little while, because that's quite a significant side effect.

The cousins gathered their troops to go to Harlem to show Schiro's people they're under new management. Lottie spoke to a "Father" and then walked into a creepy Tzimice vampire den to speak to Ellie - the Setite that sired the guy mentioned in the first paragraph. Frankie ended up speaking to a seemingly mind-controlled boxing promoter, and showed us exactly why he's not the guy you send in to negotiate deals.

In space no one can hear your stress

We are trying out the new Alien RPG! The first session turned out to be a lot about getting used to the system and how Stress dice work. We found ourselves getting super stressed very quickly. Heeh. In the end there were some house rules we decided on for next time.

We began by having our characters waking up from cryosleep five days earlier than scheduled. Another spaceship had been found. There was a dead body floating around and a Synth that wanted to murder us. It very nearly succeeded because Stress is a tricky mechanic and we may have been doing it wrong? Oops.

For the next session again, we found another ship, the Potemkin, where we also came across a teenage kid hiding in a room. Wait, why do these things sound familiar? Is there a ginger cat around here somewhere too? ;)

And the last thing, which I believe was on a third ship, we found bodies hanging from the ceiling. Like thousands of them. Space is apparently not a very nice place, but then we're probably about to find some of those alien things, aren't we? Things are bound to go downhill from there!

Introducing the future victims:

• Don[atella] "Dry" Martini, pilot
• Joshua "Josh" Brown, doctor
• Michael Knight, Colonial Marshall

 

Tearing down windows and doors and I could not find eyes like yours

This whole session was basically all dream. Except this time they were in the same one (sans Val) - the Egyptian primordial sea of darkness thing. Lottie turned on Auspex and discovered her and Frankie were floating in what will basically become aura/everything.

A pyramid and an Egyptian god emerged from the water, Tatenen with the sun crown. Turns out if you use True Sight on a god you can get a seizure, a splitting headache and get glowing, golden eyes.

Tatenen wanted to know the cousins' names. Lottie negotiated some sort of immunity for three people each of their choosing in return for giving the names. She only really wanted the immunity for Julius, and offered her other two spots for Frankie. He chose to decline them, and after giving it a lot of thought chose the other three people that are now connected to their new unlives: cousin Val (who we guess was left out of the dream not because he was lucky, but because he's now an NPC), and ghouls Benny and Angela. Tatenen told them to stay and learn.

They observed fighting snakes-with-frogs-heads, the sun rising (doing them no harm, which was nice), and then blood with black aura streaks gushed forward, so they ran to avoid it. There was a creepy and quickly developing foetus that came out of a piece of flesh, and another god stabbed himself in the right hand. It was all very strange and neither characters nor players had a single clue WTF was going on.

Frankie woke up with bite marks in his hands, and since he botched the understanding roll, Julius must have some kind of a rat problem. Lottie woke up with golden eyes - huh. Val, it turned out, had also had wet dreams, but in the other sense of the word. They told him and Julius about the weird dream and about what happened the night before.

Lottie worried that she was the one choosing Julius as a sire because she had asked for him to be protected at the very beginning of time. He tried laying those fears to rest, and complimented her on her new eye colour, which she now hopes will be permanent ...

I've been trying to get disowned for years!

The weird thing here is that my first note from this session reads: "Spider god: GTFO." I can't remember if this was us encountering a spider god, meaning we need to GTFO; or if it was a spider god telling us to GTFO; or if it was a spider god actually hiding in that hill that people were trying to dig up, and therefore that's why we should all GTFO and stop digging. I think my personal RAM is on the fritz.

People are leaving the camp now, at any rate, and we suggested the powers that be that they should go to where Erdugald was, but beware the murder hornets ...

Murmei practiced making leather armour so he can make snakeskin armour for Deadorna once he gets enough XP to get Blacksmith at Adept, because the armour will be a lot better then. His sister is considering making him fancy ink to write with as a thank you.

In the end we bricked up the bit where people had got closest to breaking through to the thing inside the hill, so we can leave the place and the barbarian tribes can ward anyone off from getting too close. A job well done, we think!