Characters
Second session started with me trying to rope Paul Roman into the action. His player wasn’t able to make the first session, so he was coming late to the party. I got to use another of my NPCs, sending Matthew Cross to talk to him. As the Voice of Anubis, Matthew knows a lot of the nasty things Paul has done over the years, and he came and told him that Anubis said that Paul should look into the cold and deaths as a means of balancing the scales while he can.
Paul didn’t like it, but he knows he’s in the hole as far as karma goes, so he trotted off to see Lucky Firth at the Public Safety Building. Lucky’s still having some difficulty buying into the whole mystical thing, so they spent a few minutes bashing their heads together, then Paul left his number with the detective and went off to find things out on his own.
He did this by talking to Crazy Tom, getting roughly the same information the others had got the day before. Then he went off to the Assiniboine Forest to summon the spirit of the forest for information, finding out a little more, and getting very, very cold in the process.
At this point, Christian’s character showed up, so we flashed back to the end of the fight the previous night, where Christian very carefully avoided giving any useful answers about his ghoulish nature. They also scouted around the area of the fight, looking for evidence of where the other group of fae had gone, but came up empty. Finally, they fled the cold back to their vehicles and home.
The next day, Lucky told Anne about Paul, and Christian went back to Crazy Tom to ask for an audience with the Bramble King. Tom reluctantly agreed to take the message to the Bramble King, but made no promises. Anne went to First Folio, looking for some research material, and ran into a gang of wyldfae trying to shake down Artemis Black for magic books to help them in their battles. She chased them off, and spent some time with Denizens of the Nearer Fields, by Salman al Rashid, learning about the vulnerabilities of the fae.
 The trio decided to go back to the forest in order to try and find better signs of the faeries in daylight. They met Paul leaving the forest at that point, and all retired to a Tim Horton’s for some coffee and to share information.
They went back into the forest near dusk and found the place where they’d fought the ogre the night before. Paul used the Sight to scan the area, and found the portal to the Nevernever that the fae had come through. While examining it, right at sunset, he felt a surge of power, and Anne heard the far-off call of hunting horns. Paul quickly conjured a barrier over the portal, and was rewarded with the impacts of several faeries on the far side before an ogre bashed his way through, followed by four Sidhe warriors.
The battle went in favour of our heroes again, with Lucky burning a whole stack of Fate Points on the final few gunshots, Anne laying iron filings across the portal to prevent reinforcements, Paul shutting down the portal’s magic, and Christian keeping the ogre occupied until everyone could focus on it.
And, once again, we leave our heroes in the dark and cold of the Assiniboine Forest after fighting for their lives.
Comments on this session:
- Combats are getting easier for the players as they learn the ins and outs of the system. They’re expanding their tactics to try new things – for example, Anne drove off the wyldfae at the bookstore with a recording of church bells.
- Someone with a lot of Fate Points during the climactic scene can really steal the show.
- The patch rules for Evocation that were sent to the list recently work very nicely in play.
- Players here in Winnipeg really understand what -50 C means. Just describing the cold to Paul’s player had him almost shivering when he knew he’d be out in Assiniboine Forest for hours working his ritual to summon the forest spirit.
All in all, things are working fairly well. Check back this weekend for the report on the next Friday Game.
You mention Christian having to hold the ogre back, but I would have thought the Sidhe knights would be problematic. What were they up to?
Driving off the fae with church bells is COOL. Hands down. Little unique tricks like that makes the setting feel more like traditional folklore, with its supernatural home remedies.
Hurrah for pow-wow at a Tim Horton’s.
I like the summoning of the Forest Spirit (and the spirit of intellect) and suchlike; it’s very Shinto. Not really constructive, I just like that Concept structure.
They were Sidhe warriors, not knights – have to be careful with the word “knight” when it comes to the fae, because the Winter Knight and Summer Knight are terribly powerful. These were just Sidhe mooks in armour with swords and shields. Between Christian and Lucky, they went down in a single round, and then Anne’s iron filings kept more from coming through. Of course, that left the ogre free for a round and he almost took Lucky’s head off…
Tell me more about “someone with a lot of fate points can steal the show” — I think this is something I WANT to be happening in the game (behold, the awesome of the high-refresh mortal!), but I feel like I need some more detail.
It happened just the way you would want it to. Lucky has a refresh of 7, and had been hoarding all his Fate Points for the endgame, when he started spending freely. He spent to dodge a couple of potentially dangerous attacks, and used them to turn his gun attacks into vicious head shots. He had enough Fate Points going in that he didn’t balk at spending two on a couple of attacks to push them up over the top. Everyone else was husbanding their points carefully, but he had enough to spend with impunity. He wasn’t doing anything really surprising (i.e., he was dodging and shooting and such, not throwing around bolts of force or turning into a monster), but he was very effective.
Which is just the sort of thing a (relatively) normal guy has to do to keep up with the magic crew. I imagine Murphy and Marcone (and Hendricks) do that alot.
Was he tapping his aspects, or using fate points for other things?
Tapping his Aspects, for the most part.
Mainly “Bad luck for Bonzo”, then I presume?
Mainly “Luck Favours the Bold,” actually.