Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Ceteri S1E1: Aggie doesn't cause a mass causality event, I swear

(apologies on the sparse summary, my internet was crapped out for the first 30 minutes of the session.)

We're enjoying a nice party with a fairy duke when it's crashed by a bunch of combatants. There's a massive brawl:


  • Yanay gets a bunch of goblins to start attacking one another
  • Agravaine zaps an orge with a necrobolt, hits a redcap with agony, and terrifies another
  • Mike kicks ass with his sword
  • Leo shoots a bunch
  • Landon sips wine and allows his servants to deal with the peasants attacking the castle
The team starts to see to the wounded and interrogating what captives we have once the dust settles. Leo, some random useful person who was at the Duke's party, leads the interrogation, finding out that Baron Saoirse Uí Luain was behind the attack.

This attack far surpasses anything else done before as far as fairy hostility goes. We're talking 300 raiders, hundreds of casualties, and a huge diplomatic incident. Their goal was to cause as much chaos as possible, preferably killing as many nobles in the Duke's court as possible. The fact that they were wielding iron weapons is an even bigger deal- fairies killed by iron don't get to enjoy the afterlife.

One fairy captive who spills the beans eventually gets killed by a spell when Christopher decides we've learned enough.

We piece together that linking two places in physical space together that have no existing connections is serious magical mojo, meaning that this attack was logistically costly.

Yanay has some kind of vision from her deity. She sees a bestial army fighting another army. Pretty short and sweet for a vision. She suddenly has silver tears.

Landon convinces the Duke to employ us to investigate the matter further.

The duke is informed by one of his men that Demonreach Murphy Island has been blown up. The Duke has a brother who married into that family, and boots us out so he can figure out what happened there.

Our objective is to discern why the Duke was attacked, and what else is going on.


Friday, September 15, 2017

Ceteri Post-Tral Prequel 1: Voodoo Murder Mystery

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:


Mike gets let in to see Suzzette as a 'priest' who can give 'confessional'. She spews out a bunch of irrelevant stuff, except for the fact that her affair with the dead dude likely killed his marriage.

All indications are that she's not the killer. 

Yanay tells Suzzette to remain strong and cautions her to not tell anything to the police.

We try to search for Holt. Making a series of really bad skill checks, we wind up outside a Boston bar. Ms. Baril is leaving right as we enter.

She strangely offers to buy us all drinks. The bar is a large wrap-around type dealie. There's a few vampires, a troll, some fairies, and a couple other Conclave members present. No normal people seem to be present. 

We all order food. Landon purchases a bottle of wine that's something like $20,000- for the glass. He confirms that it's heavenly.

Baril asks us what we're up to. We tell her, and she suggests getting in touch with a Custos Knight. She offers some information in return for a glass of what Landon just drank. Landon gets her a glass, drops a grand as a tip for the waiter, and Baril hands over a disc and info on her contact.

Baril's instructions lead us to an arcade, where we're instructed to enter the konami code on a machine and then enter a special coin which opens a portal to her contact. 

Yanay uses the coin and code on Street Fighter, and we find ourselves in an airfield where Guile is fighting some green-skinned creature. A guy off to the side is giving medical advice to someone, then accepting pay.

We approach the guy. He introduces himself as Garten Whitby. Yanay introduces us and explains our issue with the Loa. Garten warns us that whoever is doing the murders used a full-on invocation to do his mojo. He goes on to explain that the practitioner is capturing souls and killing the body. It hijacks the normal processes that happen when somebody dies.

Landon starts negotiating to buy a book off Garten that explains more, followed by negotiating for a translation text cause the book is in High Sidhe, then followed by a beneficial ring. Garten gives us some tokens so that we can visit his shop again in the future.

We're booted out. 

We review the film from the hotel and realize that an entity used Misting (abusing the shroud that covers everything and hides the supernatural from norms) to perpetrate the murders without being seen.

We decide to hit some local technomancers to get them to ENHANCE! the footage. We're asked to display our brands. We're told to wait for Magnus, and as we're sitting down in the waiting area there's an explosion from the back.

The receptionist hits on Mike, and rolls crazy high on her reaction roll to Mike. He gets her number.

Magnus storms out, feeling chuffed that we're interrupting his work. He asks us what we want. Upon hearing that we're stopping a member of the supernatural committee from soul trapping morals, he agrees to help.

He takes the footage, does something with it, and plops it into a VCR. We watch.

We're then asked to get Gravedirt from across town. Upon entering the graveyard we're accosted by a guardian spirit dog. We manage to make nice with the dog after Mike displays some of his Divine Power. We grab some gravedirt and beat it back to Magnus.

Magnus uses the dirt to finish some kind of treatment for the tape. He says the treatment should have the cleaned up any illusions on the tape. He goes on the elaborate that he sometimes needs odd jobs done. 

Evidently ALL copies of the tape have been disillusioned.

Mike has a date with the receptionist, for dinner. He's dragged back to her place after a short time, quickly learning the real meaning of some biblical euphemisms.

The next day we put the screws to the Lead Detective, forcing him to review the tapes. It shows what we see- someone who is obviously not Suzette walking out with bloodied hands from the hotel room.

Landon casts a dispell on the particularly obstinate Lead Detective, prompting him to become way less obstinate and accepting of the evidence. 

Agravaine prepares an extensive dossier on the case, which he sends to Olivia. She's not exactly happy that it's been dumped on her plate, but considering someone's gallivanting around stealing souls, she understands it had to be reported.

Landon receives an anonymous mail, filled with photos of Mike's dead family, photos of Landon's family burnt to death, and a note saying "They're connected." The handwriting is elegant.

Yanay calls her family to verify that they're okay.