The Cast:
Cormac McAllister (Mavrick): The team's scout and master of crossroads. Cormac is also handy with a gun and might not be fully human.
Yanay Servantes (Annia): An Incan witch and powerful spellcaster. Yanay is really good at psychology.
Landon Winchestor (Alex): Rich. Posh. Utterly aggrandizing and pretentious. Still, an effective face.
Mike Bastian (Andre): A holy warrior who fights for the glory of heaven. Easy to guilt trip.
Agravaine Tashalan (Me): The grease that makes the entire team work smoothly. Agravaine is inhumanly and inconveniently attractive, extremely smart, and a real mastermind when it comes to planning.
Events:
Landon's hauled off by a Custos Knight for a debriefing of some kind, something to do with the guy who ran off in the Labyrinth who Landon replaced within our group.
We have two more days of downtime to relax and recoup. Cormac gets promptly bored, challenging Mike to a game of wooden sword vs. painball gun. Cormac 'wins', and Mike is prepared to be humble and accept defeat until Yanay instigates further conflict.
Agravaine is subjected to intense training by Olivia after seeing his poor display in the shifting room from before.
We're told that Trina will live- although she'll be recovering for months.
The number of remaining pupils has decreased dramatically- lots of groups are down from 13 members down to 4-5. One group is literally just one guy whose entire group flaked out at the pond test- and he's managed all the trials up to this point by himself. Yanay attempts to introduce herself, and he brushes her off within seconds. Agravine does some asking around and is told by Olivia that Tarrant Einari makes him look like a pansy.
We head back into the Labyrinth again.
We find ourselves in a field filled with white roses, with a fountain in the middle. A statue of a lady holding lilies stands amid the fountain. There's not a lot of water at the bottom of the fountain. The roses are sharp with brambles and thorns.
There's a bronze plate with an inscription in latin on the side of the fountain. Mike, who can read Latin, takes five minutes to puzzle it out. It reads:
“A white rose can be red if you bleed upon its petal,"As a lily can be white if you’re willing to test your mettle.”
Cormac decides to drink from the fountain, and finds that his hands don't get wet and he can't feel the water. Scraping his nail across the bottom of it produces reddish brown flakes. Cormac then cuts his hand, losing 5 HP as the wound bleeds profusely. It appears that a quarter of the lilies and roses have swapped colors. Cormac's hand clots normally, making Agravaine a little less concerned about things.
Yanay, Mike, and Agravaine all follow suit, taking 5 damage. Everyone except Agravaine succeeds at avoiding a major wound. Agravaine is pale, woozy, and blacks out for about half and hour. Yanay does some first aid, healing all but 1 of the damage caused.
The fountain is suddenly flowing with blood, the roses are red, the lilies are white, and a door has opened for us to go through. We go through it, Agravaine using Mike's shoulder for support.
We find ourselves in a hallway, which opens up into a room filled with clocks of all shapes and sizes. Digital, cuckoo, sundials, all kinds of clocks. All are set to different times- including the sundials.
Cormac's watch doesn't move in the 90 seconds he counts off watching it. Yanay determines that we're in some kind of convergence of time, where everytime intersects. Mike attempts to adjust a clock, and ages almost 15 years in a second. He adjusts the clock back in the opposite direction, suddenly growing almost 10 years younger than he was when he began.
He reverts back after a few seconds. Cormac makes a Survival (Between) check to see what knowledge he might have.
Every clock suddenly accelerates, spinning through time until all match up at the same time, 1:13pm.
All of us seem to have difficulty focusing, and the passage of time seems strange. Mike finds himself back in time with his parents as a little kid. Lucien, Agravaine, and Cormac all have no problem, while Yanay suddenly finds herself talking with her psychology professor in an interesting debate.
Agravaine attempts to use Autohypnosis to steel himself against the effects, while Cormac cuts himself to cut through the mental fog. Lucien is in a trance, seeming like he's discussing his special capabilities with his father- wanting to be normal and not dragged out of school to go to exorcisms and shit.
Only Cormac and Agravaine aren't in a daze. Mike is very focused on wanting to go back into the memory, screaming that he should've been there for them. Suddenly, the clocks all stop, and return back to normal.
Agravaine has some trouble tending to the gash in Cormac's leg, just in time to be spit out of the Labyrinth. Those of us who are injured are lead to the infirmary. Ms. Baril congratulates us for only having one trial left, and doesn't even bite Agravaine's head off when he implies she's no longer off her Prozac.
Landon's in the quarters, asleep. We're given a week to recoup.
Commentary (Christopher):
I feel like this one went better than the couple before. Mostly because of the players interactions with one another vs. anything I'm doing. I still really am trying to find my feet with this campaign and the gaps of play are not helping that at all. I'm going to have to find a way to address that at some point.
C-Team has also been a bit of a testing bed for some of my DF trap ideas (yes, I know. Different genres, but in this instance it works).
Soundtrack:
"Here It Goes Again" by OK Go https://www.youtube.com/watch?
"Time Is On My Side" by The Rolling Stones https://www.youtube.com/watch?
"(Don't Fear) the Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult https://www.youtube.com/watch?
"Sharp Dressed Man" by ZZ Top https://www.youtube.com/watch?
"Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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