The Forge Archives

I'm spamming the whole RPG internet with cloned AP writeups of my new WT game with REIGN companies grafted on top to eventually track how the PCs interact with the setting's factions.  I'm just that stoked about it.

GRIM WAR: REIGN OF THE WILD TALENTS

I started my new WT campaign on Sunday.  It wasn't the most auspicious start -- out of four players, one was down with the stomach flu.  Another was going to be late, but wound up stuck in traffic so unbelievably slow that he was delayed THREE HOURS.  Normally, I wouldn't run a game with 50% absence, but since I thought #3 was on his way, I figured I'd focus on the other two until he got there and rope them in together.  Oops.

However, even without two players, it went pretty well.

THE SETTING: GRIM WAR

The premise for my WT setting is that both mutants and sorcerers have always been around.  Maybe Alexander the Great had Heavy Armor or Hyperbody.  Maybe Ben Franklin conjured daemons to protect his business interests.  But by and large, they just weren't relevant to the course of history.  Sorcerous knowledge was difficult to acquire, had to apply, and often hazardous to practice.  Mutant genes are rare, and the powers don't flick on until a sort of second puberty -- and, just like normal puberty, it's unlikely to happen on schedule to malnourished or sickly people.  Furthermore, many historical mutants who DID live to develop powers either failed to control them, or failed to accept them, or just never bothered trying to waste anybody with their heat vision.  (When was the last time YOU tried to waste someone with your heat vision?)

World War I started the deviation between Grim War history and our own.  A few people demonstrated mutant powers during the conflict -- the unexpected experience of modern combat was likely to shock people out of their standard beliefs about the way things worked -- but the big change came after, and after the Spanish Flu epidemic.  A globally decimated population shook people's faith and left them longing for a way to contact their lost relatives.

In this climate, the Theosophical Society felt it was finally time to throw aside their cloak of secrecy and reveal their powers to the world.  Soon, they had established that, yes, sorcery worked and, yes, it could contact the dead and, yes, they could prove this to the satisfaction of science.  A golden age of occult research ensued, slowed only slightly by the sort of disaster any thinking person expects when the underprepared start fiddling around with conjuration.  It culminated in the creation of the very first fully-supernaturally-oriented government: National Socialism.

Enter World War II.

The Nazis had a leg up on the sorcerous front (though, of course, all their enemies had enchanters on their side as well -- a factor that was conveniently forgotten after VE day), but when America got involved, mutant soldiers and sailors began developing powers on the battlefront.  This was due, in some small part, to the American dedication to 'frontier spirit' and rugged individualism, but far more to America's vast, well-defended grain belt.  Americans were simply better fed.  American fighters had the calories needed to fuel their transformations, while the Russians starved and the British rationed.

The war generated the propaganda that still informs modern attitudes, still continues in the 21st century.  Its central message is that mutants are generally GOOD.  They're everyday folks just like you and me, only with superpowers, and they act right, just like you would if you had superpowers.  Right?  You would, wouldn't you?  Sure you would.  Sorcerers, on the other hand, are presented as unrelievedly BAD.  They're creepy, isolated perverts mucking about with unholy forces in pursuit of power and wealth they can't attain honestly.  They conspire in secret, trying to control you and your life!

There are strict anti-magic laws through most of the developed world.  Every civilized culture denies using magic.  Their governments all do.

After the war, there was a great scramble to gather up the fruits of the Nazis' occult research: This was called the Grim War, in a pun on the standard name for magical tomes.  It has never really ended, even with the fall of the Soviet Union.  But while the powers that be have always attempted to suppress magical knowledge, they're finding it harder and harder in the face of modern information technology -- the same technology that can analyze a dozen medieval spells and build a faster, easier, more powerful version of ALL of them.

There are more mutants around, too -- something to do, perhaps, with the factors that have created a nationwide epidemic of childhood obesity in the USA.

In WT terms, Grim War is Red 4 (but primed to slide downhill), Gold 3, Blue 4 and Black 3.

THE CHARACTERS: 250 POINTS EACH OF RAGING HORMONAL JUSTICE!

LUCIEN KNIGHT, aka "Bolt" formerly aka "Surge"
Lucien had a pro football future ahead of him, until a career ending knee injury.  Physical therapy was tough, and he was tough on himself.  He pushed -- too far.  In the middle of a physical therapy session doing leg weights, the pain became so severe that his mutant powers kicked in, transporting him across the nation from the PT facility in Cincinnati to his brother's apartment in San Francisco.  Since then, he hasn't been able to teleport anywhere near as far, and but he can (with some concentration) make the jump between that apartment and that PT weight machine.  He can also teleport short distances, shoot lightning from his hands, and (with intense concentration) call down truly a truly abysmal thunderbolt from the sky.  He's very hard to injure, and when he pushes himself he can force brief bursts of inhuman strength.  That bummy knee still gives him trouble, though.

Lucien's backstory as a masked vigilante starts in San Francisco, where he cultivated street contacts but didn't make his big breakthrough until a mysterious homeless man directed him onto a train just as a terrorist managed to accidentally release his sarin gas prematurely.  Lucien stopped the train, cleared the car and found that the man with the nerve gas in his briefcase also had maps of the Transamerica pyramid and schematics of its ventilation system.  There were five marks on the schematic, only one with particular notes.

Despite dizziness and blurred vision, Surge got to the pyramid at top speed and killed or apprehended the other four poisoners.  Unfortunately, in the process he also mistakenly electrocuted a prominent lawyer named Lawrence Munk.  Munk survived, but thanks to his pull the SF cops are pursuing Surge 'for questioning'. So far, no one seems to have connected Surge to Lucien Knight, who is just one of the dozens of people treated for sarin gas exposure.  Ever since that episode, he's had some weird visual effects, but he's hoping it goes away in time.

In the course of his treatment, he met a young nurse named Bahrira.  (Haven't decided yet if she's first or second generation.)  He's got feelings for her, but has decided to move back to Cinci and start over with a new persona -- at least for now.

LEO CRICK
Leo's older brother was trouble.  He was noisy, he was rebellious, he was a disciplinary problem and, as the frosting on top, he was murdered and dismembered in a ritual fashion at the age of 14.  If that wasn't creepy enough (and by any reasonable standard it should be), the family had long been plagued by poltergeist activity even before the killing.  No one was ever apprehended.

Leo went off to stay with his uncle Tracy Bridge in Cincinnati for a while, and it was there that he privately learned the extent of his mutant powers.  He kept them a tightly guarded secret and went off to UW Madison, where events forced his hand.  He had a mid-grade crush on a flamboyant, beautiful girl named Heather Scudieri, until she revealed HERSELF as a mutant.  Then it became a seething obsession.  Unfortunately, Heather's powers manifested in a spectacularly dangerous fashion.  During a party out on the frozen lake, something happened to set her off (something involving rohypnol, though Leo doesn't know this yet) and she started shooting whips of fire out of her body, breaking up the ice under the reveler's feet.  Leo had no choice.  He invoked his Alter.

Leo's Alter looks like a larger, slightly puffier, slightly transparent version of him.  It doesn't speak and has no independent will, and is immensely strong.  (Essentially, it's a projected focus for strong Telekinesis.  Leo can climb inside it and wear it like a suit, however.)  The Alter saved the partygoers, both he and Heather were hauled off to the police station, where he was questioned for hours and eventually released.

SETH MURPHY
Seth was the all-American boy -- smart, well liked, good manners, only missed playing on Lucien's high school football team by one year (Murphy graduated before Lucien's freshman year).  When he developed inhuman strength, durability, flight, a sort of unfocussed shock blast and preternatural speed, it only seemed like the natural extension of his trajectory.  He became a licensed municipal defender for Cincinnati, got a nice girlfriend, and foiled an attempt by an unnamed group of sorcerers to summon a spirit called "The Duke of Shadows."  No one was ever apprehended, but Seth basked in the glory of his heroism.  In fact, he was busy basking with a few appreciative ladies when his girlfriend Amanda vanished.

Only her head was recovered.

While Amanda's parents can no longer stand to see him, her little sister Annette still idolizes him, as she did all along.  Annette has reacted to her sister's death by becoming secretive and shaving her head.  (Seth's player has a thing for bald girls, as long as they aren't wearing hats.)

As if that wasn't enough, he's also been recruited as a under-the-table Homeland Security asset (he thinks) by a woman named Chlotilde Giroux.

CICELY ____________
(This is the character who didn't get as fully developed and, since her player got stuck in traffic, still isn't.)  At my request, the player agreed to have Cicely be the token sorceress.  Cinci is a natural place for sorcery, since the college there is an international center for the "legitimate" study of the paranormal.  Cicely, however, is unlicensed, though fairly powerful.  Her ex-boyfriend Trey IS licensed and pulled strings to help her bypass the waiting lists for the pre-sorcery undergrad courses (which are only providing a theoretical background to some of the spells she already knows).  Unfortunately, he's a prick and she dumped him.  He isn't taking it well. 

I'm thinking Cicely knows Annette.  Oh, also, she's haunted by the ghost of Benjamin Franklin, and only she can see him.  No, really.

TRACY BRIDGE
(Okay, Tracy's not a PC.  He's a GMPC/major NPC type.  I'm bending over backwards to non-Elminster him -- I'm only half-joking when I say I'm planning to have him be wrong about everything.  If a PC dies, Tracy's there.  He also has the boring healing powers, though hopefully I can make them interesting to his friends.)

Tracy is 63, substantially older than the others, and he went to Viet Nam when he was a freshly-married 19.  Though he was in the motor pool, 'Nam was his introduction to bloodshed.  Also reefer.  And a combination of the two fueled a turning point in his life.  One day he emerged from a particularly strong marijuana haze to discover that under heavy fire he'd rescued a fellow soldier, getting injured in the process.  He got a medal, got sent home, and found out his wife had been unfaithful while he was away.

Tracy could have divorced her.  Or he could have stayed married, periodically hitting her with the "You cheated on a WAR HERO!" hammer.  But, hard though it was, he forgave her and, with the help of an empathetic pastor named Cody Wright, their fragile trust was restored and his wife provided him with years and years of married contentment, even during the bad times when his nephew mysteriously died and he had to take in his brother's son for a spell.  With no children of his own, he'd always been close to them.

Unusually for a mutant, Tracy's power didn't reveal itself until late in his life.  After his wife's death, plagued by bad hips, sore knees and glaucoma, he wound up being reintroduced to his old 'Nam flame Mary Jane.  Blazing up to treat his glaucoma, Tracy discovered that he had access to a powerful reservoir of what he calls "life force."  He can sense the living instinctively, he's hard to injure, he's recovered some measure of his youthful strength and -- most remarkably -- he can heal the ills and wounds of others and himself, if he's in a tranquil frame of mind.  Unfortunately, it's hard for him to attain that tranquility because Reverend Wright, Tracy's longtime friend, pastor and spiritual confidante, has long believed that mutancy (like sorcery) is one of Satan's subtle snares.

Unsure of the source and meaning of his powers, Tracy has kept them hidden as well as he can, but there's a gradually growing circle of people who've heard the rumors.  Though Tracy doesn't know it, this helps explain why he's dating a woman half his age...

INTERLUDE: CHARACTER GENERATION

Here's how we did character generation.  WT has a typical point-buy, fiddly-stacky grainy system.  The kind that lounges there purring, "Minmax me, big boy, or lose me forever!"  REIGN is also, at bottom, a point buy, so for this we used a character generation system that got elided from REIGN due to space reasons. 

The way it works is, the players tell a story about their characters, writing stuff down, and they underline the important things and spend points appropriately.  It mitigates, I think, the starkest aspects of optimization and puts story and character front and center.  I'd hoped their stories would be more interwoven, but such is life. 

The twist I put on it was, after their stories were done, I said, "Hand your notes to the person to your left.  Done?  Add a plot twist."  We did this a couple more times.  It's how we wound up with Munk, Ben Franklin, Chlotilde and Tracy's bouts of cannabis-fueled megalomania.  (Oh, did I mention that he gets delusions of grandeur when he's high?  Tracy gets delusions of grandeur when he's high.)

SESSION ONE

The players for Leo and Lucien showed up, and I kept expecting Cicely's player, but it was not to be.  So I started with clarifying some backstory, blah blah, what's Lucien doing (selling cars) and establishing that Leo's meltdown heroics took place the very night before.  Then I got into it.

Lucien was walking down the street when he became convinced -- absolutely CERTAIN -- that something was getting stolen in the bank.  Looking around, everything was calm, so he quietly teleported inside, found a stairwell, changed into his Bolt look, and only then thought to see if there were cameras.  (He lucked out -- he'd gotten on the good side of a 50/50 chance that a camera was aimed at him, and really I felt that it was awfully early to jeopardize his secret identity.)  He teleported past a few more cameras (with that mysterious sensation drawing him towards the basement) and, after some dithering, surged his way through a locked metal door.  Once through that, though, there was no way to hide from a camera at the end, so alarms started going off.  He moved at top speed towards the end of the hallway (it was the only way to go) when an explosion rocked the building.  Then another, cracking the door at the end.  Going through it, Bolt saw a heavy vault door blasted open, and emerging amidst the dust...

A guy in whiteface makeup with his eyes blacked and a horizontally striped shirt.  Bolt reacted as any right-thinker would when unexpectedly confronted with a mime.

"Halt, evildoer!" he shouted.

The mime glanced up as two guards streamed down the steps, then grinned as he tossed a velvet bag to Bolt.  "Here's your cut!"

Bolt wanted nothing to do with the bag and teleported behind the robber.  He mimed up a wall as the guards opened fire.  So did Bolt.  But the guard aiming at the mime missed, the one who hit Bolt did no damage, and Bolt's lightning was blocked by the wall.  The mime fled down the very hall from which Bolt had emerged, while Bolt teleported to the other side of the invisible barrier.  By the time he got through the door, the mime was on the other side of the door that Bolt had forced.  So Bolt teleported right in front of him.

It was at this point that timing became very important, because the mime had just created a psychic bazooka with which to blast his way out of the building.  Unfortunately for Bolt, his jump was timed first.  The mime's eyes got wide and he said, "Dude, look out!" before Bolt was clobbered back through the wall and out into the street.

At that point, Seth showed up.  Unfortunately, we had to have Leo's player run him.  I know.  Highly sub-optimal.  But Seth was played conservatively, resolutely failing to fulfill the "Heroes meet, fight and then clear up the misunderstanding" trope.  (Lousy players.  No respect for tradition.)  Between Bolt's lightning and Seth's brawn, the mime kept taking damage to his left arm (even through his armor and past his walls).  His reaction to Bolt (who did almost all the damage) was "Dude, what the hell?  I tried to give you a sack of diamonds!"



INTERLUDE: RULES ON THE FLY

The guy running Seth wanted to pull his punch on the mime, doing Shock damage instead of Killing.  Not having considered the possibility of a character wanting to do LESS damage to a mime (those players!  They'll always surprise you!) I decided to give him a -1d penalty and judge that sufficient.  THEN he wanted to pick up a chunk of rubble or piece of bannister, and I gently suggested that "pulling my punch..." and "...with a cinderblock" weren't really compatible phrases.

SESSION ONE: CONTINUED

The mime attempted to escape through his new opening on the back of a (mimed) motorcycle, but was much better at conjuring it than riding it.  Seth knocked him off it, so the mime walled the heroes out and went back down the hall, towards the guards.  Bolt teleported in front of him and found out that even with a sore left arm, he could mime up a rather nasty machinegun.  Good rolls (huzzah for Spray dice) left Bolt with one unmarked box in his chest.  The mime tried his bike again, and was just not fast enough to get away from Seth.  So then (as the security guards ran up) he mimed pulling the pin from a grenade.  Seth clamped his hans around the mime's and said, "If you drop it, you won't escape it."

With a sigh, the mime surrendered.  Seth considered punching him in the back of the head but (I pointed out) two guards were watching, the guy's arm was really messed up, and he was handcuffed.  Not exactly a heroic act, hm?

From there we switched to Leo, who was awakened by the cheery sounds of a media circus.  With some help from a friend (Doug) he got out from his apartment and sent his alter out as a decoy.  It fooled everyone... everyone except a pretty young woman named Swanda (it started as a typo, but I like it) whose life he'd saved the night before.  She had anticipated a rear-door exit and blackmailed them into letting her come along by threatening to blow his ruse.

Leo, Doug and Swanda pretty much dodged the media all day, though Leo did wind up having to take a call from Disney.  ("There is a LOT of entertainment potential at one of our theme parks for a para-real individual.  Plus, having Talents around for added security is always a bonus.)  He eventually picked an agent named Devon Eire, based mostly on the fact that Devon was fairly local and that Heather had chosen him as HER agent.

INTERLUDE: A PUN MY WORD

Yeah, "Devon Eire" is extremely debonair.  And when they find out the mime's real name, it's Robin Banks.  I can't stop myself.  I actually think it'll kind of reinforce the comic book elements of the game.

SESSION ONE CONTINUED: CONTINUED

Leo got moved to an 'undisclosed location' in a stretch hummer full of bodyguards, and it turned out to be Devon's apartment.  He had a tepid argument with Heather, who was also there, and who demonstrated her newfound ability to put a cigarette out on her eye without damage (though the ash is pretty irritating).  He told her that the only reason he hadn't left the party earlier was that he'd been working up the courage to talk to her.  Her response was, 'Oh, don't make me puke.'  When asked what had set her off, she said 'I don't want to talk about that right now.'

Leo decided to hang out with his uncle Tracy for a while.  Tracy and his girlfriend Angelica met Leo at the airport and he talked about getting Leo in touch with some other Talents... and also with Reverend Wright.  Leo resisted that last offer.

The session ended with Bolt making a surprisingly successful roll to find a street doc in San Fran (after telling Seth "It's okay" as he stuffed strips of his shirt in his bullet holes).  He considered asking Bahrira for help, but decided to wait until he's recovered, since she doesn't know his secret.  Dr. Ismail runs a free clinic and often treats illegal immigrants who can't get treatment in other venues.  He was pretty startled to find a bloodied superhero in his office.

ISMAIL: What happened to you?
BOLT: A mime shot me with an imaginary submachinegun.

Ismail rolled pretty well to patch him up after wrecking a needle on his arm ("I guess I'll administer this orally").  I like Ismail, he's fun, so he'll probably be back.  ("Um, I can't exactly give you stitches, so I'll have to use the surgical glue."  "Well, the good news is, there's no shrapnel left in the wounds.  Or, none I can see anyhow.")

ISMAIL: Well, I've done what I can.  Try not to get riddled with any more invisible bullets.
BOLT: Way ahead of you, doc.

With that, we concluded.

-G.

SESSION TWO

I didn't have a plan for this session other than, "Do the stuff I had planned for session one and didn't get time to do."  That worked just fine.  "Plan" is  a pretty vague term anyhow.  It's more like "list of stuff to throw at the PCs when nothing more presentable is happening."  I expect that as the game grows, it'll develop its own momentum and I won't have to prime the pump quite so much.

Events started with Cicely getting a midnight call from Trey Hogan, her ex-boyfriend.  Midnight calls, as a plot device, were a lot more atmospheric before call ID and answering machines.  I'm just sayin'.  Trey was kind of drunky/apologetic/aggressive, and I threw in a "Look, maybe you're right about that... bedroom stuff... um... I guess I could give it a try, if that's, like, a dealbreaker."  I knew the player would get a kick out of that.  Cicely didn't pick up, just turned the volume down and then called her friend Annette.  "Look, my ex-boyfriend just called and I can't get back to sleep.  Wanna get a drink?"

Annette, by the way, is the sister of Seth's late girlfriend.  Not sure what to do with that... something, though.  Anyhow, they talked.  Annette had a little bit of little sister syndrome (established by Seth's player, very firmly) so she has nothing bad to say about him even though her parents blame him for her sister's death.  It was her sister's kidnap/murder 18 months ago that prompted Annette to (1) shave her head and (2) start studying street sorcery.  This stuff's illegal but widespread, and it's what Cicely also pursues.  They refer to it as 'knitting'.

Meanwhile, a knock came at Seth's door, which he opened.

SETH'S PLAYER: Doesn't this place have a camera on the lobby?
ME: (Shrug.)
SETH PLAYER: Okay, I open the door.
ME: Do you have a peephole or anything?
SETH PLAYER: Sure, but I never use it.

The door smashed open and there, in front of him, was the rotted, naked corpse of his headless ex-girlfriend.  Only now she had a noggin made of blue fire, trailing off into gray smoke for her hair.

Seth made his Stability check and that shit was ON.  The fight was somewhat one-sided, however.  He kept landing blows that had zero effect whatsoever, while when the corpse hit him, it HURT.  Given that he can bounce a 9mm bullet off his chest, this was a definite surprise.  (For you WT fans at home, the corpse had Body 4, so it was only doing Shock damage, but Penetration 10 against its designated target.  It also had AR 10 against its target -- in this case, yep, Seth.) 

He flew out the window and, since he had an apartment near the top of his building, it decided not to jump out after him.  Instead, it threw his charcoal grill at him as he dive bombed it.  The grill bounced off him, as did the creature, and he flew back away from it again.  He heard a crash, and then a car alarm going off in the parking lot below.  It threw a table at him, which he caught, and then his VCR, which he also caught (though we never addressed where he put this stuff.  Hm.)  Sick of this, he swooped in and grabbed it (absorbing more punishment in the process) then flew out over the parking lot and exploded.  No effect.  Threw it head first into the parking lot hard enough to mess up the sedan it landed on, and it popped right back up game for more.  It ran back into his building and then the cops showed up.  As soon as they were there, the thing vanished.

Leo and his uncle drove up to Columbus because they had an appointment to talk to its licensed municipal defender, a guy called Vast.  His superpower is that he's twelve feet tall and roughly eight times stronger than a normal person his size.  They got there just as his cook was quitting, uttering the classic, "I can't work under these conditions!" line.  Vast followed him out and bellowed, "Then F***K YOU!"

ME: ...and when a guy with lungs the size of a large suitcase yells, the whole neighborhood hears it.
LEO: If this is a bad time we can come back.
VAST:  Who the hell are you?
LEO: Mm... we had an appointment?
VAST: Huh?
LEO'S PLAYER: Why do I feel like I'm about to hear 'fee fi fo fum'?

Vast invited them in and called his secretary. 

VAST:  Yeah these... they did?  Oh, Devon?  So... okay... yeah.  (Hangs up.)  So you're the guy who did that thing on the frozen lake?  Sorry about that thing with the cook.  Hey, how's Devon doing?

He then indulged himself in a bitch session about the suckitude of (1) being a licensed municipal defender and (2) being twice as big as everyone else.

VAST: I gotta get all my clothes tailor made, custom furniture, custom car... do you know how much it costs to have a custom toilet built?  Not to mention not being able to comfortably crap anywhere else...

From him they got a little bit of backstory about Columbus, where he led a well-publicized raid on a massively crime-sodden part of town that had a no-shit supervillain running things -- a guy who shoots bolts of force and flame out of his eyes and who calls himself Eyebeamz (yes, with the Z).  The raid was kind of a wash.  No buildings actually fell down, but there was a whole lot of damage, fires, injured civilians, a couple cops dead, Vast badly hurt but Eyebeamz smashed down through the pavement into the sewers below.  No body was recovered though, and Vast is sure he's alive.

VAST: Yeah, you want to know what municipal work is like?  Check this. 

He opened his shirt to reveal hideous scars.  Tracy, moved, stepped in and healed them.

VAST: Dude!  Now that, THAT'S a power!  I mean, the world must be your oyster if you can heal like that!  Sure, the AMA regulations have to be a pain, but...
LEO: I can see that you've got a lot of wounds from your work...
VAST: Not any more!
LEO: Not all scars are visible.  I know.
VAST: Hell, I'm happy with ditching the visible ones!  You guys are all right.  You need anything, gimmea call.  You're from Cinci?  Say hey to Seth for me too. 

Driving home, Leo and Tracy discussed Leo's future.  Tracy is still conflicted about all this mutantcy business, since his close friend Reverend Wright believes its all Wiles Of Satan.  Tracy recommended that, whether Leo believes that or not, he might not want to let his newfound telekinesis drive him too far off his life's path.

Meanwhile, Lucien had a talk with his older brother in San Francisco.  It's his apartment that Lucien arrives at when he makes the long jump, and the player decided that he's in on Lucien's secret.  He expressed amazement that Lucien was hurt and offered him some cautions.  Lucien pooh-poohed it and teleported back to Cincinnati for his shift at the dealership.  Upon his arrival he called Seth and got his secretary.

Seth's co-workers were amazed that he'd actually been injured.

COP: I thought you didn't have to worry about, you know, bullets and knives and getting cut shaving and stuff.
SETH: I can still get hurt sometimes.  I got hit by a train once.

He was displeased but not terribly surprised to learn that the Mime had escaped.

CAPTAIN: We had him cuffed, in four point restraints and under armed guard, but when he woke up he somehow freed himself, walled off the the guy watching him...
SETH: ...and let himself out the window on an invisible rope?
CAPTAIN: No, fired an invisible arrow over to the parking garage, went over on an invisible zip line, and then crashed an invisible car out of the second floor to jump over the roadblock.  The good news is, we got prints and a name.  Brace yourself.
SETH: Oh?
CAPTAIN: The Mime's real name is... Robin Banks.  I almost understand his life of crime, now.
SETH: His dad must've been one sick individual.
CAPTAIN: Robin's a two-time loser, served time for robbing a liquor store and for a weapons charge.  Daddy's no prize either -- rap sheet like a roll of toilet paper, weapons stuff, assault, lots of theft and robbery, and apparently he's a survivalist too.  But the good news is, we recovered the stuff he stole.  It's funny: He went after the safety deposit boxes and not the vault.

The stuff Banks stole included some gold Kruegerrands, jewelry, uncut diamonds in a velvet bag, bearer bonds... and a big thick notebook full of weird symbols, apparently encrypted.

Seth visited University of Miami, Cincinnati, which is home to "The Cube" -- a windowless square building shunned by normal students, home of the Department of Applied Thaumaturgy, one of the few legal places to study sorcery in the US.  It's got three separate security forces: Federal, local and private.  The secretary there told him that Dr. Majors (the department chair) was teaching, as was Mr. Hogan, Dr. Jefferson was in Switzerland... but Dr. Eisenerbrecht should be free.  If he wasn't in his office, he was probably at the Student Union.

And indeed, the erudite-to-the-point-of-incomprehensibility Eisenerbrecht was there, along with Cicely.  That was a stroke of luck for Seth, as it turned out.

SETH: Do you know who I am, sir?
EISENERBRECHT: Of course, of course I do!  Did you ever get a handle on that advanced calc, Tony?  I remember you having a dickens of a time.
CICELY: Actually, that's Seth Murphy.  The Sentinel?  Our municipal defender?
EISENERBRECHT: You look just like a math grad student here.

After the pleasantries...

SETH: Do you know anything about... er, um, reanimated corpses?  This one had a head made out of blue fire.
EISENERBRECHT: The appearance of a manifested spirit, when confined to three-dimensional physical parameters, can vary greatly.  It all depends on a sort of psychic topography...
SETH: Uh huh.  Let me take some notes, 'kay?
GM (to Cicely's character): You can translate Eisenerbrechtese, if you care to.  He's saying that it could be just about anything.

Cicely introduced herself as a friend of Annette's and soon she and Seth were getting along like a house on fire.  Cicely did, indeed, break down Eisenerbrecht's abstruse lingo into something resembling English.  He couldn't make head or tails of the notebook, until he pulled out a sort of lorgnette and said, "You know it has a guardian spirit, right?"  He let Seth and Cicely look through the spectacles and see something dragonish and indistinct crouching on the book.  Unfortunately, Seth's player then remembered that he only had a COPY of the book, so we had to put that scene behind the Impenetrable Wall of OOC Knowledge.  Damn. 

Eisenerbrecht opined that the guy Seth REALLY needed to talk to was an ethnologist named Dr. August Park, but unfortunately that wasn't allowed.  Park (as the characters but not players knew) was in a maximum security facility in Terra Haute, optimized to hold sorcerers, in theory.  Though he persistently maintained his innocence, he had been convicted of summoning three entities that had done tremendous damage to Austin, Texas -- entities that had required the Army's two top teams of Talents to finally put down. Because Eisenerbrecht is a licensed thaumaturgical investigator, he's forbidden contact with convicted thaumaturgical criminals.  But Seth, with his invulnerable Mutant Hero reputation, could get access, and bring Cicely along as a translator.  When he called his secretary to set it up, he was told a "Mr. Bolt" had called for him but didn't leave a number.  Seth said that if Bolt called back, she should give Bolt his private cell number.

Bolt did, indeed, call back and set up a dinner appointment with Seth at a local restaurant.  Tracy had a date with Anjelica, and Leo went to the Uni to visit some friends from his old private high school.  (These were prep school kids who were expected to go to Harvard and Yale but, you know, didn't.  So of course I did my best Thurston Howell voice.  "I sahy old chahp, why don't we head over into Kentuchy and visit a tittay bar?  It sounds so very jolly!  But can you drive?  A grille fell on my cahr lahst night."

Seth went home to change, which had little plot impact, but was fun when his player asked, "Is there evidence that what happened to me was real?"

GM: Other than the police tape, the broken windows, the damaged sport ute and the dent in the ground where you threw the thing through a car -- no, not really.  Oh, and your neighbors.  They're concerned.  One of them gives you a ham.
SETH: Thanks.  I'm okay, really.
NEIGHBOR: What WAS that thing?
SETH: Ex-girlfriend.
NEIGHBOR: I can see why you broke up.

Seth met Bolt for coffee and a 15-foot tall alligator made of fire attacked Cicely on the quad right (coincidentally) near Leo.  Being an enchantress, Cicely had Cool and Stability out the wazoo, but Leo was not so fortunate and failed his check.  He wound up having to burn all his Willpower to summon his Alter and keep acting rationally.  His Alter went and grabbed the creature by the tail, while Cicely used enchanted agility to dodge its attempts to put her on fire.  There was also an armed security guard who started ineffectually shooting at it.  (Ineffectually only because he missed.  Being fully materialized, the spirit was vulnerable to bullets, sticks, stones and the other ugliness of material life.) 

INTERLUDE: CHARACTER GENERATION

The way character generation wound up working was that the players described what they wanted and I minmaxed it up for them.  I think this was a pretty good idea since (1) none of them were particularly enthused about learning a new way to point-stack and (2) it meant all the characters were built along the same kind of design paradigm, if you get my drift.  My big concern was that the enchantress would be underpowered.  Her best summoning spell is a general call, which means that she gets a spirit relevant to whatever area she's in -- a spirit of metal or labor if she did the spell in a foundry, a spirit of law (or crime) if she did it in a police station.  She said she'd done it in the woods and in a grimy back alley, so I ruled that she'd gotten a spirit of predation and a spirit of depression.  The depression spirit would aid her once (because she'd only been able to get that much help from it) but the wild spirit was signed up until the end of the month.  It lent her 1+HD+WD on any physical attacks or dodges, through use of Aces.  Like I said, a pretty potent spirit.

SESSION TWO CONTINUED

The Alter got a hold of it and started trying to drag it to the nearby river, while Cicely tried to open a fire hydrant.  Unfortunately, she stopped dodging while trying that, and it set her on fire.  That was some damage, but more vitally it caused her another Stability check.  Because her Stability pool was so high, she was able to do a multiple action, but it wasn't enough to protect her from the creature's follow up attack.

The creature, by the way, was a fire archon, and was in fact one she knew how to invoke.  It had Create (Fire) with the Burns quality and normal damage, and then Control (Fire) with ghastly craploads of damage.  So once it sets you on fire it can REALLY whale on you, which it proceeded to do.  I got two results on my attack roll -- a 3x10 which would have killed her deader'n shit, and a 3x1 which I chose to use.  That just ruined her leg and filled her torso with a mix of Shock and Killing damage.  I suppose I can justify it with the argument that her head wasn't on fire so the Control (Fire) ability wouldn't work on it, but... nah.  I was just reluctant to kill a character on its very first session.

Leo ran over and helped Cicely stop, drop and roll, the security guard called it in, and the Alter dragged it towards the river. 

We cut to Bolt, comfortably drinking coffee in his full superhero getup, while Seth talked to him.  Then the phone rang.

SETH: Hello... a fifteen foot what?  Okay, I'm there.  (hangs up)  Hey man, there's a giant flaming alligator attacking campus.  Wanna come?  I can carry you while I fly.
BOLT: Actually, I teleport.
SETH: (blinks)  Can you carry me?

The Archon was much less successful at putting the Alter on fire, thanks to its Heavy Armor, but it got some good damage in just as it made the river.  The river didn't hurt the Archon, but did put the flames out on the Alter, spoiling the salamander's greatest attack.  Seth and Bolt arrived just in time to take part in a three-way frenzy of killing blows, and then they went to see to Cicely.

Dr. Eden Majors and Dr. Eisenerbrecht came running, all tricked out with their occult gear, just a tad too late to help.  But they did haul Cicely into The Cube, where Eisienerbrecht summoned a rolly-polly health spirit inside a tank with a fog machine.  After finally bribing it sufficiently, he accessed its medical skills and was able to stabilize Cicely.  This was another spirit she knew how to summon, as it happened.

CICELY'S PLAYER: This jolly doctor uncle spirit SUCKS!
GM: Give him a break, he's only 100 points.

They then hauled her over to the biology building, where Eden had said she'd be setting up.  The bio students had voluntarily evacuated when they saw the Big Enchantress On Campus showing up.  She had gone down where the medical cadavers were and summoned a grisly looking spirit, which she abused until it knit Cicely's wounds some more.  THEN they hauled her to the hospital, where Tracy was waiting.  He tried to do HIS healing wuju, but flubbed the required Meditation roll and was too shook to do it.  He felt REALLY bad -- chalk one up for the "mutant powers are just Satan screwing with you" argument.

The next day, they visited Dr. August Park, who was kept isolated in a padded cell, shaved every day (because they know that hair can be used as a spell component), not permitted clothing for fear he'd use it to form some sort of occult pattern, not allowed pure water, not allowed writing implements or paper, and only permitted to speak with his attorney through an intermediary who rephrased everything either one said using synonyms, so that there was no opportunity for him to pass coded messages.  They weren't allowed to speak with him directly, only via two way video.

So this bald, naked prisoner was approached somewhat diffidently by Seth, but the doctor seemed fairly accepting and approachable.  "Anything to break the monotony is welcome."  He stressed throughout that he was an innocent ethnographer with no practical experience with performing invocations or conjurations.  He did immediately suss out Seth's description as a Greek archon of revenge, practically invulnerable to its target and able to harm it through nearly any defense... but vulnerable to everyone else, and only able to exist for an hour at midnight.

"That last aspect could change," he warned, "If your enemy has access to a... now what did my colleague call it?  I believe it was a 'materialization' spell.  I, of course, have never done such things."

CICELY'S PLAYER: Is he lying?
GM: Roll Sense Motive.  (Park had a HUGE Bluff pool, but Cicely got lucky and beat him.)  He's lying to you.  Roll Bluff to conceal your suspicions.  (Another awesome roll left Cicely poker faced despite her strong feeling that Park was, in fact, a practicing sorcerer.)

All in all he was courteous and informative.  Eisenerbrecht had asked Seth to convey his (Eisenerbrecht's) good wishes, and Dr. Park returned them.  He also asked in return that Seth put in a good word for him with the authorities.

As they emerged from the prison, Cicely was a bit shaken.  On one hand, she was pretty sure that there was a lot more to August Park than was visible on the surface.  On the other hand, the thought that the same magic she was practicing might be legal grounds for throwing her in a cell, naked and largely incommunicado, was certainly chilling.

-G.

So... what do y'all think should happen next?

-G.

Just want to say that even though nobody has responded to this, I'm really digging the play-by-play descriptions. I know it's the fashion here on the Forge to prioritize OOC player interaction and mechanics in AP posts, but to me those always come off dry when they aren't related directly to game fiction. So it's refreshing to be able to read a fair mix of mechanics/OOC comments and IC/fictional events.

I also am gleaning some neat ideas from your descriptions. The flame-headed uber zombie thing is cool, and the extra anti-sorcery security measures are brilliant- it seems rare in games that players think all the way through what effects magic/powers would have on everyday stuff like that (although it's been dealt with in comics a fair bit).

So, yeah. Just a kudo. Keep 'em comin'.

SESSION THREE: FULL FRONTAL SORCERY

It didn't quite have the same delirious energy of the first couple sessions, but we hit a lot of plot points like they owed us money, and we got some good characterization in.  Still no Ben Franklin though.  I mean, what the hell?  If I could summon up a lecherous, intangible, undead founding father I'd be on that like a teenager's cell phone!

The session commenced with Leo and Lucien waiting in the car while Cicely and Seth spoke to Dr. Park (whom one internet correspondent dubbed "Gandalf Lechter").  I imagine awkward small talk, as Lucien wouldn't take his mask off and they discussed the issues of teleportation.

Driving back to the airstrip, where they took a prop plane back to Cincinnati, they chatted about what they'd learned, and Seth expressed an interest in hiring Bolt on in an official capacity.  Though, of course, that would mean he'd have to tell people his real name.  They also discussed Dr. Park.

CICELY: For what it's worth, I don't think that guy's a harmless ethnographer.  He's done sorcery, I think.
SETH: I can't say why, but I get this feeling that him getting out would be about the worst thing that could happen.

On the plane, Seth's cell rang.  It was his secretary with a mysterious phone call that was supposedly "urgent," though the guy wouldn't give his name.  (I actually flubbed this as an opening scene, so we retconned it -- clumsily, but with no scar tissue). 

SETH: Hello?
MYSTERIOUS CALLER: You are in contact with Chlotilde Giroux?
SETH: Who is this?
MC: I don't have much time, but it's imperative that you tell her a letter from Prague has arrived for her.  Do you understand?
SETH: Yes.
MC: (hangs up)
SETH: Pilot, can you do a low flight over the city?  We have to get off.

Bolt teleported Cicely and himself down to a small cafe, while Seth attempted to fly down Leo.  I say attempted because he blew his roll, lost a Willpower point and had to try again before safely arriving on his (recently cleared) balcony.  His sign to contact Chlotilde was to take the fern off the balcony and put out the cactus, which he did while Leo ran to the bathroom to puke.  As that was transpiring, a knock came at the door.  Seth's player mimed pulling aside a shutter and peeping cautiously out. 

SETH: Hello?
GM: It's Annette.
SETH: Annette!  Hey, c'mon in, I was going to call you...
ANNETTE: Yeah, are you okay?
SETH: Sure.
ANNETTE: I heard you got attacked.
SETH: Um...
ANNETTE: By Amanda.
SETH: Yeah, see, I was going to tell you about that.
ANNETTE: Look, if I give you something, will you use it?  Will you trust me?
SETH: Sure.
GM: She hands you a big portfolio type folder. 
SETH: What is it?
ANNETTE: You're not going to turn me in for this, are you?
SETH: Of course not.
ANNETTE: Good.  If it comes back, try to get it to walk across it... it should trap it, or block its powers.  Try to keep the symbol between you and it.
SETH: ...okay... thanks... and hey, can you do me another favor?  Between midnight and one, make sure you're somewhere that you normally wouldn't be.  Doesn't matter where, as long as it's not typical.  Random would probably be good.
ANNETTE: Don't worry about me.  I can take care of myself.

When she departed, Seth noticed that she was limping.  Inside the portfolio was a 3x3 square of flat plywood that had been whitewashed and had a diamond-shaped pattern on it in what appeared to be bloody footprints.  He immediately pried up the doorjamb, pulled up the carpet, put the symbol under the carpet and put everything back as it was.  There was a little bit of a lump in the rug, but he put a doormat over it.

As for Leo, he heard the whole thing.  Exiting, they ran into Leo's old prep school buddy, who happened to own the car that got trashed in Seth's lot.  Apologies and insurance information were exchanged.  (This time I didn't use the Thurston Howell accent.)  Then they met Bolt and Cicely at the cafe, where they were playing "I Never."  Leo got a brief call from his agent Devon.

DEVON: What kinda music you like?  Who's playing in Cincinnati?
LEO: Um, I think John Mayer's in town.
DEVON: I'll getcha tickets.
LEO: Really?  How'd you manage that?
DEVON: Funny story.  I've got this client in New York and he happened to pull a car out of a ditch and it had this record company guy in it, or something like that... anyhow, what's happening with you?
LEO: Well, did you hear about the flaming Salamander?
DEVON: Is that the guy down in Texas?  Yeah, he's pretty brave coming out down there...
LEO: No, the big burning lizard that attacked Miami's campus!
DEVON: When were you in Miami?
LEO: University of Miami at Cincinnati.
DEVON: If it's in Ohio, why is it called Miami?

Almost as if in passing, Devon asked Leo if he was ready to start talking to the press, and when Leo said he thought enough time had passed, Devon asked if he wanted to position himself as a pop culture media figure, or more of a serious sociopolitical person.

DEVON: Basically, d'you want to be on NPR or MTV?
LEO: NPR.  I want to be like Harrison Ford.
DEVON: Doesn't everyone.
LEO: Well, I mean, Ford isn't caught up in the scene, but when he takes his private helicopter to rescue people on his own dime, it's influential.
DEVON: Check.  As long as there's no "Seven Days, Six Nights."

After exchanging contact information (Bolt has a burner phone) the PCs went back to their respective homes to rest.  Lucien had a message from his brother that both a police detective and a private investigator wanted to talk to him, while Leo walked in to the familiar reek of Tracy's glaucoma medication.  What was not familiar was the purple metal-flake helmet with big, horn-like spoilers that Tracy was wearing.

LEO: Uncle Tracy.  Please no.
TRACY: (Pushing the faceplate aside) Isn't this great?
LEO: Where'd it come from?
TRACY: Vast sent it to us!  He wanted to say thanks for the scar thing.  Apparently when he was just starting out, some artisan made this for him on spec.  Get this, the guy thought his name was 'Fast'.  Since he can't wear it, he sent it to us.
LEO: Yeah, but the problem is, if you're not inhumanly fast someone's going to grab you by that spoiler and twist your head off.
TRACY: Sheesh, what a killjoy.  Check this out... lemme find the button... (a panel opened on the front of the spoiler and a bright spotlight shone out)  Isn't that neat?  Oh, and these... (Another button, and police lights started flashing.)  It's got some kind of radio rig in here, and it's titanium, try it on!
LEO: No thanks.  I'll be in my room.

In his room, he called Swanda, who chastised him briefly for not calling back, said she'd heard he saved some other coed's life -- "Should I be jealous?" -- and told him that she'd been declining interviews.  After a little more conversation ("You should call Doug, he's worried about you") she mentioned that Heather had called her to apologize.  "Apparently, she's calling everyone.  Or, if not everyone at the party, everyone who was... you know, everyone endangered."

Emerging from his bedroom, Leo asked Tracy if he wanted another crack at healing Cicely, and the old vet said he felt the spirit moving within him, so why not?  He made the call, she agreed, and when she came out of her house, Trey was watching.  An ugly and very well-acted quarrel ensued.

CICELY: What are you doing here?
TREY: I... I wanted to make sure you were all right, when I heard what happened...
CICELY: You couldn't phone first?  Because after getting jumped I'm a little protective of my personal space, so you sitting outside my house like a stalker is...
TREY: I was in the area!  Did you see my car here when you came home?  No!  I drove by and saw your car parked.  I decided to see how you were doing.  I guess I got my answer!  Look, let's just... let's just try to calm down and not have this be antagonistic.
CICELY: I'm not being antagonistic, but I think it's a good idea to put up some boundaries.
TREY: Oh for the love of... I guess this is the last time I go out of my way to be considerate.
CICELY: (With a short, bitter laugh) Oh yeah, because THAT was such an issue between us.
TREY: I give up, I'm going, I'm gone, I just... look.  I just want to know you're too smart to let your personal feelings about me get in your way if you need help, okay?
CICELY: If I had personal feelings for you, they wouldn't.

Seth talked to the police chief and found out that some scant evidence had shown up near the site of the salamander attack: A partially melted fine tip plastic brush under the kiln, and a single plastic bristle with human blood on it in the men's bathroom.  A witness who was in the Fine Arts building before the attack remembered that the bathroom was locked and had an "Out of Order" sign on it... but that the sign was on a Post-It note, instead of the usual janitorial plastic sign.  Furthermore, only someone with a key would be able to lock it from the outside, so it was plausible that someone put up the note, then locked himself inside the bathroom to do... well, something with human blood.  Musing about that, Seth told the chief he was heading home.

Cicely drove to Tracy's house, where Tracy rolled his freaking TEN DIE pool to Heal her, got a 3x1 set that failed to beat the Difficulty set by her injuries, and was completely flustered.  He's really starting to wonder why his powers are failing him with this girl.

CICELY: I feel a little emotionally better, is that part of it?  (Out of character, to the GM) She doesn't, by the way.
TRACY: No, I... the way it usually works is, I feel the spirit build up inside me and then it flows out...
CICELY: You're not a sorcerer, are you?
TRACY: (Offended) Certainly not!
CICELY: Well, I mean, I'm in that program at the college and I  know there are some people who... they just have a natural talent.
TRACY: (Stunned and appalled)  I... I'm... um, I'm hungry, I'm going to cook up some eggs, anybody want eggs?

Cicely then offered to take Leo out to the woods.  She wanted to get her act together, but also wanted someone to watch her back.  On the way out, she felt him out about his ability to keep a secret, then told him about Ben Franklin's ghost and her other activities.  When they reached an abandoned shack out in the middle of nowhere, she asked him to keep watch while she summoned an archon.

INTERLUDE: FRETTIN' 'BOUT THE RULES
As I've currently got it set up, sorcerers have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops and do a whole bunch of stuff to get results, and if they fail even one, it's  a pretty meaningful setback.  In this instance, she had to (1) roll to cast the spell, (2) roll the spell's pool to summon the spirit, (3) roll to cast another spell to try and bias it towards her and then (3) roll the spell's pool again to turn its head.  Yeah.  Not exactly "one roll does it all" in this instance, but the player was actually okay with it, feeling that when you're trying to do a big bad spiritual effect, it SHOULD require you to do a load of setup.  We'll see.

SESSION THREE: CONTINUED

The summoning involved her stripping naked, presenting a sword to the four points of the compass, and chanting for about an HOUR.  Leo, who'd been fascinated at first, was just starting to get bored when a HUUUUGE bolt of lightning struck... and a sword-shaped chunk of it didn't fade away, but instead asked her "Who implores the Blade of Justice?"

Some good rolls got her the Blade's protection for a month, and its first offer was to heal her undeserved wounds.  (She didn't even know it could do that!)  She said yes, it did it, and then suggested that if she wanted it to protect her, she should let it conserve its strength.  (It can be arduous for spirits to exercise their powers on the mortal world.)  Heading back into town, her phone rang and Seth invited her to meet him for some out-of-costume beers.  She picked a place and he said he'd call the others.

GM: Now you can watch Leo and see if Seth was really calling everyone, or was just mackin' on you.

Instead, Seth called Bolt, who'd gotten a message from his brother that a THIRD investigator was asking for him.  Bolt reluctantly agreed to show up unmasked.  But first, he went and stalked the other PCs to see if anyone was tailing them.  As it happened, someone was.  Walking by Seth's apartment building, he noticed a bald woman with glasses in a parked car, who looked up when Seth took off  Nothing elsewhere. 

Arriving at the bar, Bolt cased the joint while Seth played pool.  A pretty woman lost to him, then suggested they play for money, then (when he rooted around in his wallet to 'see how much he had' casually badging her at the same time) hastily amended that to 'Or we could just play loser buys the winner a drink!"  About that time, Lucien sidled up to play him.

BOLT'S PLAYER: I'm going to subtly let him know who I am.
GM: How?  Like, pass him a bolt in a handshake?  Like, the little piece of hardware?
BOLT'S PLAYER: Why not?

Leo and Cicely showed, and Bolt's mysteriousness was somewhat dispelled when a fellow patron came up to him and said, "Lou?  Hey, it is you!  That car you sold me is a LEMON, man!"

CICELY: You know, my car feels like it's been pulling to the left lately...
LEO: My uncle's a mechanic, you know.
CICELY: This is the same uncle who tried faith healing?  Maybe I'll just take it to Midas.

Lucien told Seth about the bald girl following him, and he said, "It's okay, I consider her family, but I think she feels like she'd be reminding me of Amanda."  Cicely halfheartedly cruised for action, but upon being told that the likeliest prospect was a beefy, crewcut man in a corner wearing a leather jacket and drinking vodka, she decided to wait.  Around 11:30 Seth suggested they go for a walk, just in case Amanda's headless corpse showed up, and as they arrived at an appropriately foggy public park at the stroke of midnight, it did. 

GM: Roll Cool+Stability.
LEO'S PLAYER: Four tens on four dice!
GM: Have a Willpower point.  Lucien?
LUCIEN'S PLAYER: Where's Stability?
GM: (Examines his sheet.)  Y'don't have it.  Roll two dice.
LUCIEN'S PLAYER: (Pause)  What happens.
GM: Oooohkay, you have a choice.  You can lose half your Willpower and go fetal, or you can lose ALL your Willpower and continue to act.
LEO'S PLAYER: Though, without Willpower, you can't use your powers.  I'd start huddling and sobbing if I was you.
LUCIEN'S PLAYER: Okay.
GM: Yeah, this vigilante idea sounded great, but you somehow always pictured it as bullying street thugs and rescuing kidnap victims, not a freaking DEAD BODY with a head made of blue FIRE.

I decided Seth didn't have to roll, since he'd seen the thing extensively before, and Cicely has Stability out the wazoo.  It was fast and tagged Seth on the arm before he scooped up Cicely and flew into the air out of its reach.  And then Annette showed up, pistol in hand, blazing away.  Leo summoned his Alter, who protected Annette, while Cicely invoked the Blade of Justice, which immediately said, "The Blade is drawn."

Next round, the thing threw a rock, which Seth avoided and which Cicely could have caught had Seth not avoided it, while the spirit said, "The Blade is raised."
Annette continued to fruitlessly try and shoot it (she's a crap shot), Seth dodged and at the end of the round, after "The Blade descends" this friggin GINORMOUS lightning bolt hit the creature and literally exploded it.

Sobbing, Annette tried to conjure back her sister's ghost.  When she failed, Cicely tried and (being a much stronger sorceress) succeeded.  Then it was time for the Clue Exposition Discharge, which went pretty well, I thought.  One aspect of the setting is that ghosts have no emotions -- they're just memories and logic structures left over from the living.  So Annette was calm and dispassionate as she explained that she'd been trapped by the nemesis spirit, which accessed her thoughts and memories to predict what Seth would do and to be better able to hurt him.

SETH: What happened to you?
ANNETTE: I didn't see who grabbed me.  They put a bag over my head, and I think it was soaked in some sort of chemical because I immediately got dizzy and passed out.  When I woke up, I was in a car trunk with my hands cuffed behind my back.  They were the plastic, disposable cuffs.  It wasn't a new car -- the trunk showed signs of wear, and it was spacious, so I think it was probably a sedan.  We drove for some time, even after I woke up.  I got a brief look around when they let me out -- I saw a river, some docks, and I smelled this strong soybean odor.  I could hear a highway nearby and it looked like I was in a rundown neighborhood.  I think it was Columbus.  The sun was just starting to get low when they grabbed me, and I could still see a little sunset when I got out, before they put the bag back on.  They walked me into a building.  I think it was an apartment building, because I heard sounds of habitation around on the first floor.  It smelled bad.  We went up a flight of stairs, and heard more family sounds.  Then, after another set of steps, nothing.  One more set of steps and they led me into a room with no windows.  They took the hood off me and used a taser on me.  While I couldn't move, they secured my ankles, then tied both my ankles and my wrists behind my back.  There was a ring set into the floor, they used that.  A woman with dark hair and a mask had a serrated knife, a long one like a bread knife.  It had a black handle.  She cut my head off, starting at the front and sawing back and forth.

While they digested that information, the ghost turned to her sister and said, "I've been thinking about that argument we had at Thanksgiving and, in retrospect, you were right.  Mom and Dad did always behave as if they loved me more, though I preferred not to think about it.  That's why I reacted so strongly, because I knew what you said had some merit.  I always loved you."  Then she turned to Seth and said, "When I was in the car, I was very angry with you, but I can now see that what happened to me wasn't your fault.  Be well."

With that, she went on to her final rest. 

Driving home, Seth got a call from Chlotilde, setting up a meeting.

-G.

SESSION FOUR: POT, POON AND PREVARICATION

Let me begin by saying: STILL NO FRANKLIN'S GHOST! Good grief! This is a resource! A fair smattering of points went into it! It could help their asses OUT. But nothin'. Not an ectoplasmic sausage. Sheesh.

This session, we were missing Leo's player and I hadn't prepared as much as previously, but it went okay. Not great, but a decent building session. I'm probably going to go through character-by-character until they're together -- there was a lot of individual action this session.

After a good night's sleep, Seth went to talk to the chief about hiring Bolt on payroll. The chief was all for it, as long as Bolt would, you know, unmask and provide a SSN so they'd know he wasn't an escaped felon or something.

SETH: C'mon, when you bribe an informant, you don't ask for his tax identification number and a receipt.
CHIEF: That's true, but we don't ask informants to take violent action against dangerous criminals in volatile circumstances. If we pay Bolt and he makes a mistake, it's on us. We're liable, and we'd deserve to be, having asked an untrained and unknown person to do our jobs for us.
SETH: Forget the SWAT type stuff, then. Think about him as a first responder. He TELEPORTS. Can you imagine how many lives he could save in a time-sensitive disaster?
CHIEF: Hey, I'm all for this guy saving lives. Citizen involvement, yay rah. I just can't pay him for it unless he's willing to go on the books.

Back at his office, Seth found that his secretary had checked over the budget and that the city had decided it was a better allocation of resources to buy body armor for the cops who WEREN'T already bullet-resistant. But on a brighter note, a guy named McAllister wanted to take Seth to dinner and personally thank him for rescuing his (McAllister's) bearer bonds from the Mime. McA mentioned in passing that his bonds were still tied up at the department.

Lucien went out to San Francisco, first sneaking into the PT building to make the jump. (His usual mole in the building was already in trouble for leaving the door unlocked once, so he didn't want to let Lucien in again. Lucien just snuck in. It's easier to sneak when you can teleport around locked doors.) Due to a misunderstanding, he called a police detective (Harriet Prills) in persona as Surge, rather than as Lucien. She was startled and agreed to a meet by the Golden Gate bridge. When she arrived, Surge met her and asked why she was calling around. She explained that she was doing after-the-fact investigation of the gas attack and was trying to get statements from everyone who was present -- but that she hadn't expected SURGE to respond. She took his statement. When he mentioned getting tipped off by a homeless guy, she paused and described the guy -- vaguely, but accurately.

SURGE: Yeah, that sounds like him. Who is he?
PRILLS: I wish I knew. It's just... someone loses their grip on a baby carriage, and this homeless guy stops it right before it goes into traffic. Someone drops his insulin on the bus and this homeless guy brings it back to him just in time, miles from the bus stop. Who pulled the fire alarm ten minutes before anyone else smelled smoke? This homeless guy. Who led a doctor to an alley in time to save a knifing victim? The homeless guy. He's always in the right place at the right time with the right thing... but no one knows who he is. He's like an urban legend.
SURGE: I'd like to thank him.
PRILLS: How do I know you're the real Surge, anyhow?
LUCIEN'S PLAYER: I'll teleport away.
GM: From your new position, you can faintly hear her say, "If he ain't Surge, he does a damn good impression."

That took care of the first of the investigators waiting for him in San Fran, but there were still two left, along with the appearance of graffiti reading "SURGE WHERE ARE YOU?" all over town. The first detective was named Randall Putney, and he was working for a lawyer named Lawrence Munk. This is the guy that Surge accidentally lightning-bolted in the Transamerica Building while halting the terrorists. (In his defense, after mild Sarin exposure, his vision were badly blurred.) Putney said he was interested in getting information for a class-action suit if they ever found someone who could be proven to have funded the attack. Lucien gave his song and dance about being on the train when Surge showed up and the terrorist panicked.

PUTNEY: Would you say Surge's appearance CAUSED the terrorist to drop his briefcase and release the gas prematurely?
LUCIEN: I don't know. It was pretty chaotic. I think it would've been a lot worse without Surge.
PUTNEY: Hm. Can you describe Surge?
SETH'S PLAYER: "He was a veritable olympian god made flesh!"
CECILY'S PLAYER: "I'm not gay or anything, but if Surge asked..."
GM: "He was just POURED into those tights!"
LUCIEN: He was pretty tall, um...

They then rolled to see if Putney was suspicious about Lucien's lies. The same rolls were made a few scenes later, when Lucien talked to a P.I. named Adam Kwok, who said he represented a private citizen whose daughter had been badly harmed in the attack. "My client doesn't fully trust the government," he said, "So he's funding a private, parallel investigation. If we uncover anything the police are unable, or unwilling to act on... well, he'll plan his next move."

Having gotten through that gauntlet, all he wanted to do was go home and teleport back to Ohio, but when he walked into his brother's pad the phone rang. Not his burner cell, his brother's telephone.

LUCIEN: Hello?
MYSTERIOUS CALLER: Hey Surge. How's it going? I imagine that hole in your chest is itching pretty badly right about now.
LUCIEN: Excuse me? Who is this?
MYSTERIOUS CALLER: You can call me... eh, PC will do. Relax. I'm not interested in outing you -- if I was, I'd have ratted you out to Munk by now. I really have your best interests in mind. Do you know how much of a bounty Al Qeda has on your head? A million bucks.
LUCIEN: I don't feel real comfortable discussing this on the phone. Can I meet you?
PC: Me? Um... that's probably a nonstarter for a lot of reasons, but I think I can send someone to talk to you face to face.
LUCIEN: Do you know who's behind the 'Surge where are you' messages?

PC gave him a detailed description of the guy who'd been doing it -- name, address and "his liver's in bad shape. He seems to just be a conerned citizen, no connection to any power group." When Surge suited up and visited, he found himself in an area where he'd once prowled and patrolled.

THE GUY (I had a name for him, but didn't write it down): I... I was worried! You just vanished! People said you'd gotten poisoned in the attack, that you were dead! I was scared.
SURGE: I didn't go anywhere.
THE GUY: But no one's seen you.
SURGE: Well, there's this lawyer who wants to sue me.
THE GUY: Oh no...
SURGE: So I'm laying low for a while. But I'm still around.
THE GUY: The crooks, the gangsters... they're not scared anymore.
SURGE: They will be. Oh, and you should probably schedule a doctor visit.
THE GUY: Huh?
SURGE: Trust me on this, 'kay?

Lucien then got to a meeting in a park with a pretty young woman in typical "superhero wannabee" style-clothes - goggles, a sort of aviator helmet, etc. On closer examination, she looked a little older than the typical gogglechick. She introduced herself as 'Meg'.

LUCIEN: So... this 'PC' guy. How does he know about me?
MEG: He knows. That's just his thing. (Tilting her head.) One thing he doesn't know is how you got injured, and where you go when you disappear from here. Don't suppose you want to tell?
LUCIEN: Leave me with some mystery. You've got me at a real advantage, though. Who are you people?
MEG: We work for the U.S. Army. You're not government, are you? DIA, NSA, CIA...?
LUCIEN: Strictly freelance.
MEG: Nice. There's a lot to like about that. A LOT. I mean, I don't regret going on Uncle Sam's dime, but...
LUCIEN: Are you trying to recruit me?
MEG: Actually no. Look. We find out a lot. With PC. But a whole big lot of it is inadmissible in court. I mean, they can't just toss someone in jail on the say-so of a mutant, even if he's been right EVERY SINGLE TIME for THREE FRICKIN' YEARS... whoo hoo, hooray for the Bill of Rights. Anyhow. We're accountable. We have to file reports on our actions, explain and justify everything. So there are times when we know a guy is bad, but our hands are tied.
LUCIEN: I begin to see your interest in me.
MEG: You're in their crosshairs. If you let them get a fix on you, they'll come after you, and THEN we'll be able to swoop in.
LUCIEN: Give me names and addresses. My afternoon's clear.
MEG: No, not just yet. We don't know you well enough -- no point in getting you needlessly killed. Besides, you might not be able to handle these guys alone.
LUCIEN: I'm not alone.
MEG: Hold on a... (Puts hand to ear through her helmet) Crap, I gotta go.

With that, she ran off at inhuman speed.

LUCIEN'S PLAYER: Nice.

Cicely went to class, studied, talked briefly to Annette, and was in her apartment when Dr. Eden Majors (the head of the Applied Parapsychology department) dropped in to see her. The blow-by-blow of their conversation isn't really important (meaning, I don't remember it) but mainly Eden was interested in the imprisoned Dr. Park (aka "Gandalf Lechter"). She wanted to know if he seemed crazy or stressed or desperate. She didn't seem happy when Cicely said, "No, he seemed pretty composed and controlled. He was working out." Eden was appalled by Park's conditions, and speculated that a real sorcerer would (given enough time and effort) be able to cast spells without needing things like ink or paper or hair. "Plenty of spells can be cast with only breath, or by contorting the body," she said. "If he was what they claim, why would he still be there?" Then she narrowed her eyes and said, "Of course, he may not be the only one who's not what she seems." Having implied that she knew Cicely was a rogue sorceress, Eden bid her farewell and left.

Cicely's next scene was with Seth as they talked to Eisenerbrecht about the notebook code. Eisenerbrecht, in his typical roundabout way, said that it had a lot of very interesting stuff, but that it was clearly someone's personal notes -- meaning that there was a lot of shorthand, a lot of references they just couldn't crack. He suspected, however, that the author was working on a variation on summoning spells.

EISENERBRECHT: Currently, there are two modalities for summoning -- well, two subdivisions within Invocation and Conjuration, but never mind for our purposes. It's like... okay, here we go. Imagine that there were two ways you could contact people on the phone. One was to pick up a phone and dial randomly, talking to whoever happened to pick up. Some summons' are like that. Or, you could call a specific person... but only on a dedicated phone line, so that you'd have to have a separate phone for your mother, one for your sister, a phone for your boss and so on. You might have seventy phones, or you might only be able to specifically call three or four people, yes? Now imagine someone describing the phones we use, where one phone can call a specific person. That's what this research seems to be seeking, one spell that can specifically summon many spirits -- just by filling in the blank with their identity. Instead of needing to learn dozens of spells, a magician would only need one.

Not liking the sound of that, Seth called the chief and was told the book had been sent back to the bank vault "where it belongs." Seth asked the professor to destroy his copy of the notes, and Eisenerbrecht, with great reluctance, said he would. He also mentioned that the last entry in the book was "Success. Now to penetrate the next circle." In the process of explaining how important the discovery could be, he revealed a fair incidental knowledge of several occult power groups: The Russian spy agency Direktiva Nul, the European Projekt ELSA, and the criminal Xoloti Cartel.

More to come...

That night, Seth and Cicely went out boozing and cruising. Seth was specifically looking for someone 'disposable' -- someone he could hook up with and then leave with no hard feelings and not enough connection that anyone might, say, be able to decapitate her and turn her into another Nemesis host. Cicely was also operating on the assumption that the best way to get over Trey would be to get under someone else. Penalized Sense+Sight rolls were made, and with his big pool, Seth got a hinky feeling about one guy quietly drinking alone. He went over and started hassling him -- badged him, asked for ID, got up in his face. The guy produced a Wisconsin drivers' license for Nick Koroviev, acted very surprised and nervous, but Seth couldn't make the roll to place him. Cicely (who'd failed her Spot check) asked if this Koroviev guy was cute.

GM: No cuter than he was at the Tiger Lily the other night, when you and he were both there drinking.

Koroviev bugged out, Seth had to make a penalized Seduction roll -- I'd made it clear to him that it was a no-roll no brainer if he DIDN'T go over and hassle the dude. But even after abruptly leaving his arm candy at the bar so he could go aggress, she was patiently waiting when he got back. Cicely, on the other hand, found an acceptable English major who invited her back to his place to hear some poetry.

CICELY'S PLAYER: Is the poetry any good?
GM: Excuse me?
CICELY'S PLAYER: Cicely's an educated woman, she's smart and informed. Is this guy's poetry any good, or is it trite and self-serving.
GM: (Rolls 4d, gets nothin'.) It's nothing above mediocre. Does that influence her decision?
CICELY: I'm out of here. Good grief, don't quit your day job.

She then text-messaged the worst lines of the verse to Seth while he was making love up in the clouds. He actually paused in his screwing ("Don't fall off now") to check the message. Then the pair went home to their lonely beds and slept.

Next day, Cicely went to see Tracy again. Though fully recovered from her burns, she still had scars on her thighs and also wanted to give him another chance. Plus, she asked him to look at her car. At first, Tracy only wanted to examine the car, but having failed his Mechanics roll (and recommended that she take it to the guy who bought his garage when he retired) he relented and tried to heal her again. This time, it worked. With a rush of vitality and sensation, she was made whole.

CICELY'S PLAYER: Is it like an electric shock, or something else?
GM: It feels GREAT! Afterwards, it seems like colors are brighter, you feel awake and energized and healthy.
CICELY: Wow. You really batted that one out of the park!
TRACY: You want some tea? I always get really thirsty after doing it.
CICELY: I bet this is going to be the best tasting tea of my life.

Seth went to his meet with mysterious DHS spy Chlotilde Giroux. They'd arranged to meet at an outdoor cafe, and she had time to ask him what his concern was, and be told "Someone called and said a letter from Prague had arrived for you..." before a bullet slammed into her chest. Seth threw himself in front of her, and was hit with a bullet big enough to injure him. A young girl -- looked 12 or 13 -- came up to him with a hissing gas canister just as Chlotilde disappeared. Then he saw a stocky man with a handgun and a weird headset aiming through the gas. The headset was a gas mask from the nose down, and something like sealed night vision goggles with a relentlessly rising and falling blue light in the center of it. Seth, having grabbed Chlotilde before she turned invisible (!) lifted off as both the hidden sniper and goggle-man continued to shoot. Goggler tagged her in the arm, and then Seth flew away at top speed. He could feel Chlotilde pushing him through the air, too -- greatly increasing his speed.

At the hospital, Chlotilde returned to opacity and was rushed to the OR. An ER nurse tried to dig the bullet out of Seth's arm and was unable to. "Your muscles have locked around it... I can't probe them, they're too strong. I'd need a miniature Jaws of Life. If I put you under..." Seth refused anaesthesia and called in a lockdown to the cops. Then he called Cicely, who called Tracy, and they hit the hospital together. Cicely invoked the Celestial Physician, who gave Seth all the surgical knowledge he needed to operate on himself. After several hours, the surgeon emerged from the OR, stripped off his bloody gloves, threw them on the floor and raised his arms like a triumphant athlete.

DOCTOR: Anybody want to see what a surgical genius looks like? Right here! Right here! (Exits)
NURSE: The arrogance would be a lot harder to take if he wasn't actually making some spectacular saves. That bullet missed her heart by millimeters.

By the time Chlotilde woke up, she'd somehow developed a French accent, and Bolt had arrived. She explained that "A Letter From Prague" is the nom-de-guerre of a Russian agent. "He probably followed you in order to find me." When asked about the accent, Chlotilde explained that she'd been raised in France, the daughter of an American serviceman. Tracy then rolled to heal her and, once again, did a bang-up job. From death's door, she was now bruised, but fully functional.

GM: Tracy says "I felt the spirit in me." Then he passes out.

When the doctor and a nurse came into Chlotilde's room, they made several remarkable discoveries. (1) They couldn't get an IV needle through Tracy's skin, (2) Seth had operated on himself with Mayo Clinic level skill and (3) Chlotilde seemed to have undergone a month's worth of recuperation in about ten minutes. He kind of freaked.

CICELY: He's a mutant healer, but you're the one who saved her life. He never could have stabilized her.
DOCTOR: Okay... you know, the AMA would sue the hell out of you all. You can't just practice medicine without a license!
CICELY: He's not practicing medicine, he's using a mutant power.
DOCTOR: Oh, and Murhpy suddenly being able to operate on himself? (To Seth) Do you know what this is?
SETH'S PLAYER: What is it.
GM: Some medical whing-wang gadget. You have no idea what it is.
SETH: (Shrug)
DOCTOR: Because you used it with a level of skill that, frankly, I envy. (Glaring.) Listen, medicine is not a hobby! There's an article in the Lancet about a mutant with flesh controlling ability who tried to fix... it was a broken arm, actually... and wound up killing the patient, who'd been STABLE before the interference.
CICELY: When Tracy can't make it work, it just fails.
DOCTOR: Then you're far luckier than you know. Look... just... if anyone asks, I did this stuff, okay? And for God's sake, don't use this stuff inside a hospital again!

After some discussion, in which it emerged that Chlotilde thought Letter From Prague was chasing after a potentially very valuable occult notebook, it was decided that Bolt would teleport her away to a safe house (i.e., his apartment). Upon arrival, Chlotilde asked if it was okay for her to go get herself some water, and after he agreed, she started asking questions.

CHLOTILDE: Are you associated with any particular group, city... anyone paying your bills? I'm sort of involved in, mm, sensitive and covert matters, if you get my drift.
BOLT: I'm very uncomfortable with outing my identity and signing on to a formal payroll. I have people to protect.
CHLOTILDE: Oh, I'm sure that for someone of your talents we could work up some kind of... informal arrangement.

Back at the hospital, Seth and Cicely were heading out when they spotted Anjelica (Tracy's much-younger girlfriend) going into a room in the long-term care wing. Following her to say hi, they walked in on her passionately kissing a patient who clearly wasn't Tracy.

CICELY: Oh, you slut!
GM: She spins around and turns paper white. "Please..."
CICELY: Tracy's right upstairs you know. Should I go get him?
GM: She sinks to the floor and breaks down sobbing. "Don't! Whatever you do, please don't tell him." Behind her, you can now see the patient in the bed. He's in a coma.

With that, the session broke.

Whew! That was a long read. Good, though.

Before I start, let me say I'm a big fan of Wild Talents. I've only had the book for a couple weeks, and only played 3 sessions so far (as a player, not GM) but it rocks. I plan to post an actual play of my own soon, which should be kinda neat since most APs are written by GMs.

Okay, I'll quote liberally from different posts of yours to bring up some points of discussion...

Quote... street sorcery.  This stuff's illegal but widespread, and it's what Cicely also pursues.  They refer to it as 'knitting'.

Loved this detail, it's little things like this that really make a setting come alive (not to mention, motivate people to read 20 freakin' pages [printed] of AP write-up. :) )
I find it interesting in contrast to our WT game which is Red 4 & Blue 2: basically it's the real world but with superheroes, and the general attitude is to shun any paranormal stuff (including Talents), although there might be secret government programs and the like that try to make use of them. Anyway I really like the way the WT text makes it so obvious that the game supports such a wide spectrum of campaign styles, plus all the optional rules that can help zero you in on the style you're after.

QuoteCICELY'S PLAYER: Is he lying?
GM: Roll Sense Motive.  (Park had a HUGE Bluff pool, but Cicely got lucky and beat him.)  He's lying to you.  Roll Bluff to conceal your suspicions.  (Another awesome roll left Cicely poker faced despite her strong feeling that Park was, in fact, a practicing sorcerer.)

I liked how she had to roll Bluff to conceal suspicions, was that a static roll (just needed a success) or a dynamic roll against Park's Sense Motive pool?
Also, would you have made her roll Sense Motive or Bluff later in the same scene, to detect/conceal any later falsehoods? Personally I prefer to borrow the 'let it ride' philosophy from Burning Wheel, especially in a game built on a "One Roll" ideal. The WT text doesn't really discuss this, which probably means it's meant to be left up to individual groups to decide. Which is cool, but I'm interested in your group's take on it. (I guess you also kinda touched on this later with the stuff about all the summoning rolls, I could see both sides of that argument too.)

QuoteSeth attempted to fly down Leo.  I say attempted because he blew his roll, lost a Willpower point and had to try again before safely arriving on his (recently cleared) balcony.

Hmm. I've read most of the WT book and never really thought about how the "Bid 1 Willpower to activate power" might play out. In this example, it seems kind of lame to me that he failed to activate his power, but then could just try again. He did lose a Willpower point, but it seems like it might have been neater if his failure had more of an effect. Like maybe they took off, then Seth lost control for a minute, and Leo thought he was gonna die.
I'm not trying to be critical here, just wondering what you find cool about the way this rule played out. Am I missing something?

Last question, do you ever intend on posting your PCs' stats? Two reasons I ask: 1) general interest and 2) our group found after our first few sessions that you have to be careful with Hard Dice, since they're very, um, Hard. Powers with too many hard dice aren't just inflexible, they can actually become boring (okay, another 4x10 blast to his head). Also, when you build a character with 2 or more hard dice in a power (esp. a stat or skill), you better make sure it fits your concept -- under most circumstances the character is incredibly capable in that area. I guess part of the problem is the min/maxing urge you feel when building a character, and hard dice aren't that expensive. Don't get me wrong, we love the way they work, you just have to be careful how you use them.
So, I'd be interested to see how many hard dice these PCs have, and in what areas, especially after the way you described your char-gen worked.

Anyway, thanks for giving us a fun, flexible & inspirational ruleset to use. Love the game.

Cheers,
Mike

Quoteliked how she had to roll Bluff to conceal suspicions, was that a static roll (just needed a success) or a dynamic roll against Park's Sense Motive pool?
Also, would you have made her roll Sense Motive or Bluff later in the same scene, to detect/conceal any later falsehoods? Personally I prefer to borrow the 'let it ride' philosophy from Burning Wheel, especially in a game built on a "One Roll" ideal.

I pretty much  let it ride, mostly because (1) Luke makes good arguments for doing it that way, though I don't take it as far as BW does, (2) it wasn't that game critical at that point and (3) on social skills like that, I tend to be pretty vague anyhow.  "He seems shifty" as opposed to "He's lying," for example.

QuoteIn this example, it seems kind of lame to me that he failed to activate his power, but then could just try again. He did lose a Willpower point, but it seems like it might have been neater if his failure had more of an effect. Like maybe they took off, then Seth lost control for a minute, and Leo thought he was gonna die.
I'm not trying to be critical here, just wondering what you find cool about the way this rule played out. Am I missing something?

I really had to stretch to get Seth all the powers he wanted, so his flight is a leeeetle bit unreliable.  They were awfully high in the air when he jumped, and I didn't really want to splat them on the ground just for a random misroll, so I let him reroll and did it as some comic effect.  (Leo ran to the bathroom to puke while Cecily and Bolt ordered coffee on the ground and asked "What's taking them so long?") 

QuoteLast question, do you ever intend on posting your PCs' stats? Two reasons I ask: 1) general interest and 2) our group found after our first few sessions that you have to be careful with Hard Dice, since they're very, um, Hard. Powers with too many hard dice aren't just inflexible, they can actually become boring (okay, another 4x10 blast to his head). Also, when you build a character with 2 or more hard dice in a power (esp. a stat or skill), you better make sure it fits your concept -- under most circumstances the character is incredibly capable in that area.

I might post 'em.  One of the setting-specific changes I made for Grim War was that you can't have more than one HD and one WD in a pool.  That's still a pretty broad range, but maybe a little more manageable than needing maximum Heavy Armor just to feel safe against the guy with loads of Harm HDs.  I agree that you have to exercise some caution when you don't have those limits.  Hell, you have to exercise it even WITH those limits. 

It was kind of interesting doing character generation (1) collaboratively for backstory and (2) as a short-order cook.  Since no one particularly wanted to learn the character generation system intimately enough to minmax it ("I like you as a FRIEND, chargen") they told me what they wanted and I munchkinned it out with the same aesthetic that I used with their opposition.  I'm pretty happy with how it's worked.  So far, there don't seem to be any unexpected overmatches.

-G.

-G.

Thanks for the clarifications Greg, good stuff.

QuoteThey were awfully high in the air when he jumped, and I didn't really want to splat them on the ground just for a random misroll, so I let him reroll and did it as some comic effect.  (Leo ran to the bathroom to puke while Cecily and Bolt ordered coffee on the ground and asked "What's taking them so long?")

Ha, very cool. Okay, scratch what I said; the way this played out definitely added to the game's atmosphere -- we'll have to keep this kind of thing in mind at our table when failing to activate powers.

Cheers,
Mike

SESSION FIVE: ENTER THE SLIME

Leo's player was back (and, consulting my notes, the guy who was graffito tagging stuff was Alexander Sobieski), so we started by catching him up.  His agent (Devon) got him a spot on the Hairy Gary Abnerthery Show -- a talk show with a guy who's kind of Oprah for mutants.  He himself is one, though with a dud power -- he can make his hair grow and retract and that's it.  Whee.  But he's a decent interviewer, from a publicist's point of view, in that he pitches a lot of softballs.  But every now and then he changes it up and asks a real stumper, just to keep his guests awake and his viewers entertained.  Oh, and guess where Hairy Gary's located?  San Francisco, home of Surge (about whom Leo knows nothing) and now of Heather (the volcanic mutant he adores from afar).

Before his interview, Leo got a tour of Heather's new job site at Mutagenet Labs.   She's essentially typing and filing... and letting them measure her powers and explore her DNA.  Leo got to meet the head of the lab, a mutant whose body was covered with a low-level aura of colored lights, flowing and glowing all around him.

LEO: Is that... your only power?  Does it just produce light?
THE DOCTOR: It does other things.
LEO: Oh.
THE DOCTOR: You should come out for the Fourth of July.  I really let it go, then.  But it takes me a week or so to recover, afterwards. 

(Note: The stuff about the color aura was completely off the top of my head.  I'm just now deciding that the guy's name is Dr. Sjoek, and that most Americans mispronounce it as "Doctor Shock."  Honestly, I really believe this helps us all keep the characters straight.  It sure helps me.)

The doctor subtly insinuated that he'd love to bring Leo into the fold, too -- and was not quite as subtle about his beliefs that Mutagenet Labs was where the future was being forged.  He was quite proud that they were working on a blood test that could reveal the potential for active mutation.

LEO: Don't you see the possibility for potential abuse?
DOCTOR: Any technology can be abused, and every technology initially benefits the elite.  When the telephone was new, it did a lot more good for the rich than the poor.  Should it have been left on the shelf?
LEO: Telephones don't draw lines between people in their infancy, or even before. 
DOCTOR: You must know everyone's working on this.  We're just going to get there first... control it, identify mutants for their own good.  Who better than their own kind?
LEO: It could start with the best of intentions and end with pogroms.
DOCTOR: It could also prevent tragedies.  You, Leo, are a tragic example -- forced to hide your talents for years!  How much farther along your path might you be if you could have been open about your abilities?
LEO: I'm doing just fine.
DOCTOR: Then what about the unfortunates who wind up as Wild Tal-

At that moment, Heather walked in with coffee and both men guiltily looked up at her.  Then the doctor asked her point blank, "Do you wish you'd known earlier about your potential?  That you could have discovered it under controlled conditions?"

HEATHER: That's a bit of a puffball question, isn't it?  'Would you rather learn this on your own, or by nearly massacring people?'  What have you been telling him, Leo?

Leo and Heather continued the tour, musing about their future, Heather revealing some vulnerability -- "Everyone here is so well educated, molecular biologists and biogeneticists and genetic biologists... and me, the college dropout."  When Leo queried her about the lab's work, she told him they were examining regenerating mutants in the hopes of being able to clone new body parts independent of the body.  "Think of it -- an endless supply of O Negative blood, wherever it was needed!  No more relying on donors.  No more worrying about illnesses slipping past toxicity screens."  Leo agreed that it sounded pretty boss, then left to get interviewed.

Lucien woke up to find Chlotilde wearing his bathrobe and cooking crepes in his kitchen.  ("I didn't even know I had the ingredients for crepes!")  They chatted, mostly about her getting some clothes, and a letter arrived from Bahrira.  Seth and Lucien got her some suitably stylish garb, and then she set out to reconnoiter her safe house and see if it had been compromised.  They later heard that it was just fine, so she was going back to ground there.

Leo went on the Hairy Gary show and made a generally good impression, coming across as someone who wants to find a good way to use the gifts he's been given but who doesn't want to be pigeonholed ONLY as a Talent.  The only curveball came when Gary told him that an anonymous witness to Heather's eruption had told a newspaper a version of events in which Leo's Alter showed up FIRST, with the shock of seeing it prompting Heather to defend herself with firepower.  Leo convincingly argued that was ridiculous -- if he'd spent years hiding the Alter, why would he out himself in front of a big crowd?

After the show, Gary gave him a lock of hair crafted into a lapel pin -- a common memento from his show, and a real status symbol in certain circles.  On his way out, Leo briefly chatted with an assistant to the Secretary of Defense, who was in the Green Room waiting to get interviewed.

The next scene was Cecily working on her base tan out on the quad, when she saw a shadow creeping up and slowly covering her.  This shadow was cast by a man, who (deliberately or not) was walking at her with the sun right behind him.  A pair of black wingtips stopped right in front of her face and a somewhat sneering voice said, "You must be Cecily."

CECILY: Must I?
MITCH: I'm Mitch Schantz.  FBI.  I'd like to ask you a few questions.
GM: When he badges you, you can see some kind of residue on his hands... something slimy.  He's dressed in a black suit and sunglasses and looks like a Secret Service agent... but not.  He's slightly rumpled, his suit looks off-the-rack and he just can't carry it off.  He looks like a Secret Service agent in a high school play.

Agent Mitch wanted to question her about the attack (she couldn't imagine who would want to harm her) and her discussions with Dr. Park ("It's all on tape.  I never had a moment's physical contact with him").  He was fairly brusque and snobby.  He managed to sound smug and superior even when explaining that his hands were covered in ointment because he suffers from psoriasis.  (Closer examination of the sort Cecily would probably have preferred to avoid revealed that, yep, he had it on both hands.)  He was very interested in the notebook, and dropped a few not-too-subtle hints that (1) he was a licensed sorcerer working for the Feds and (2) he knew she was practicing too.

MITCH: What've you got around you there?  Looks like the Blade of Justice, some kind of predation spirit and... can't quite make out the last one, something urban and depressing. 
CECILY: I don't know what you're talking about.
MITCH: You're surrounded by spirits, girl.  Don't play innocent with me -- it's not like anything's admissible court.
CECILY: You sound bitter.
MITCH: You sound disingenuous.  You mean to tell me you didn't know you've got a cluster of spirits around you?
CECILY: I'm in the program.  Perhaps someone put them on me to protect me.  If so, it was without my knowledge.
MITCH: Doesn't seem to surprise or bother you much.  (Looks in a notebook.)  One of your fellow students said, lessee, "She's Eisenerbrecht's grad assistant, but she only got the job because she's fucking Trey Hogan."  Is that accurate?
CECILY: Is that relevant?
MITCH: I'll take that as a yes.
CECILY: It's actually a no.  I'm qualified for my job.  Did personal qualities affect me getting the position?  Of course.  Hiring always has subjective elements.  I can't help it if I made a good impression.
MITCH: So you weren't involved with Mr. Hogan?
CECILY: I'm not now.

(Note: I'm paraphrasing heavily.  The dialogue between Cecily and Mitch was much sharper in-session, as was Leo's debate with Dr. Shock.  Hard to recall four days later, is all.)

Muttering more veiled threats, Mitch left.  She immediately called Seth and told him about Mitch, so when Mitch went to him, Seth just stonewalled.  Where he was a pushy little dick towards Cecily, he was unctuous and ingratiating with Seth, at least until Seth's insistent cold-shouldering got through.  Mitch asked about Cecily, asked what Seth would do if he found out she was illegally practicing sorcery, quizzed him about the bank job and his interview with Park.  Seth kept saying, "I wrote all this up, read the files, it's all in my reports, look at the tapes of me with Park, are we done yet?"  He didn't quite flick Mitch off as he flew away, but the subtext was there.

Cecily went and talked to Dr. Eden Majors, who suggested they go for a walk in the nearby oak grove.  "I'm pretty sure the Box is wired up like a Russian embassy."  Eden seemed familiar with Mitch and decidedly not intimidated.  "You just keep your head down and he'll be out of your hair in a few days.  I'll see to it."

CECILY: I told him that you summoned a spirit to help me when I was hurt.  That you did it in the bio building.
EDEN: Technically that's a crime, yes, but I'd like to see him try to prosecute it.

She then intimated that if Cecily was interested in some "extracurricular" study, Eden would be willing to show her a few things.  All she asked in return was the notebook from the bank, the one that Eisenerbrecht had been studying.  "I wouldn't need it for more than a few days, even."  Cecily said she'd see what she could do.

That evening the whole group convened at a bar and were out on the front deck playing a beanbag game called Cornhole when Seth spotted Mitch heading into the bar arm in arm with... Eisenerbrecht!  Lucien followed them inside and spied as Eisenerbrecht assured Mitch he was fully willing to cooperate with the government.  "We disagree on some principles, but I don't want to break the law.  I don't think Park should be kept in the conditions he's in, which makes me trebly unwilling to share them."  Mitch (who seemed tipsy!) was complaining about a dog jumping up on him and breaking... something.  Eisenerbrecht suggested that it might be a coincidence.

MITCH: Coincidence?  The most valuable artifact I have, the one I need to do my job, gets broken by somebody's Sheltie and you think it's an accident?
EISENERBRECHT: I merely suggest possibilities.  Paranoia is an occupational hazard for you 'spook' types, is it not?
MITCH: Hmph.  Well what about this notebook?  What's in it?
EISENERBRECHT:  I have no idea.  Before we'd made much progress decoding it, Mr. Murphy insisted that I destroy my copies.
MITCH: And you did it?
EISENERBRECHT: Of course!

Mitch then all but stated that he'd arranged to have Park falsely imprisoned -- "If he could really do the sort of thing that happened in Austin, he'd sure as hell be able to get out of jail" -- in order to keep the public reassured that justice had been done.  Then he went off to take a leak.

When he was gone, Eisenerbrecht turned, looked Lucien right in the eye and said, "When you report this conversation to Cecily, assure her that it's not what it looks like."  Lucien complied and the PCs took off -- though not before Seth pulled a big nail out of the porch, went inside, and used it to seal the men's room door shut.  They just had time to hear Mitch pitch a fit at being locked in.

Seth then went out to dinner with McAllister.

SETH'S PLAYER: I just know this is a trap.
GM: How d'you figure?
SETH'S PLAYER: What else could it be?

What it was, in fact, was a gratitude dinner and a suggestion that Seth might consider endorsing McAllister's firewall program.  Seth asked for copies to make sure it was quality, and McA assured him the D.A.'s office was already using it.

The other three closed down a bar and then went to Tracy's house.  (Can't remember if Seth joined them or not.)  On the way there, Cecily filled them in on what she'd seen Anjelica doing.  The name on the patient's chart was "Brett McClure."  She wanted to immediately tell Tracy.  Leo said that was unfair -- it would certainly blindside him, and besides, shouldn't he hear it from Anjelica?  After putting it to a vote, Cecily agreed to tell Anjelica to come clean, or she (Cecily) would tell all.

They came upon Tracy sitting in a darkened room, staring out the window.  When asked what was wrong, he said nothing was.

CECILY: Oh.  Because nothing says 'Everything's Jake' like staring out into the dark all alone.
TRACY: You really want to know?  Okay.  Today, this date, was the first time I saw someone killed close up.  In Vietnam.  A guy in my platoon he... he caught it.  Sniper.  Right by me.
CECILY: Ooh.  You know what might help you feel better?  Some of that ol' glaucoma medicine!

Tracy just gave her a disgusted look, then turned to Leo.

TRACY: What've you got there?
LEO: Where?
TRACY: Um... never mind.  I think I'm going to bed.  You all keep it down, okay?

I called for Sense rolls and Seth (yeah, he was there, I remember now) and Lucien both smelled gun oil.  Cecily went into the other room, saying she was going to powder her nose but actually looking for Tracy's cell phone to get Anjelica's number.  Leo went upstairs to talk to Tracy and make sure he was okay.  He made reference to the gun oil.

TRACY: I went out skeet shooting with Clarence yesterday, that's all.  You don't think...?  Look, I'd talk to Reverend Wright, or call one of my old buddies, or... um, look, don't worry.  I have lots of options I'd run through before topping myself.  But talk to me first thing in the morning, okay?

Cecily then called Anjelica, waking her out of a sound sleep, and made her ultimatum.  Anjelica said she'd manage it.

Next morning, Tracy told Leo that he had the ability to sense living things in his general area.

LEO: What?  Uncle Tracy, that's great!  First you're healing, then bulletproof, now this?
TRACY: It's not really that great.  Usually it's something I'm seeing, anyhow... though I do know that when your friend Cecily said she was going to the bathroom, she was actually poking around in my office.
LEO: Oh... she was probably looking for your stash.
TRACY: Classy.  How well do you actually know her?

After expressing some strong reservations about Cecily, including his suspicion that if his (Tracy's) powers were diabolical (and that, by extension, all mutant powers were tainted) it only made sense that they'd work on her if she was practicing black sorcery.  He then said that he'd detected a life form in Leo's clothes.  Some experimentation isolated it as the hair pin Gary Abnerthary had given Leo.  Leo put it in a sealed glass jar up in his closet, hoping to kill it.

That night, the whole gang went to a meeting of People for Religious Freedom, where they sat at the front table with Eisenerbrecht.  There were various speeches, including a rundown on Park's conditions, Cecily's paper about the dissonance between permitting "religious practice," of which there was no evidence of truth, while forbidding "magic practice" which showed every sign of being genuine.

CECILY'S PLAYER: And because you've been dropping such heavy-handed hints, I'm going to summon Ben Franklin.
GM: What?!?
CECILY'S PLAYER:  I'll see what he has to say about the country he helped found and what it's doing.
GM: Are you doing this out in the open or going back somewhere private for deniability?

While she was doing that, Seth's phone rang.  Mitch.  "I'm out in the parking lot.  You coming out, or should I go in there and we talk in front of everybody?"

Seth went out, meaning that Mitch didn't get to see Ben's ghost.  That's probably a lucky break for Cecily and everyone else.

Ben's ghost was quite a hit, giving a thoughtful and intelligent discourse on the topic -- wish I could remember what I had him say!  I do recall that he had some disagreements with the PLF position, but it's all vague and cloudy.  Damn.

It was rainy outside, and Mitch said, "You haven't typed up a REPORT about that shooting the other day, have you?  So you mind telling me who it was that got shot?"

SETH: Me, for one.
MITCH: You brought someone to a hospital.  A woman.  Who was it?
SETH: I can't tell you that.
MITCH: Can't or won't?
SETH: I'm not permitted.  I'm sorry.
MITCH: Look, you seem to have this antagonistic mindset towards me, but I don't hold it against you.  I admire you.  You could have gone off to be a mutant superstar, but you went the hard route of public service.  Like I did, see?  I think you're in a bad position, in over your head, and I hate to see you taken out of commission.  But you have to let me help you.  Tell me her name.
SETH: I can't.
MITCH: Okay, so here's your subpoena.
SETH: (Looking at it)  I'm afraid that you'd need to take me in front of a FISA court.
MITCH: C'mon then.  I'll make some calls.

They drove off to interrupt judges at dinner while the PLF meeting broke up.  Coming home, Leo heard a commotion -- raised voices, the sound of a hard punch, and then a woman's sobs.

TRACY'S VOICE: Oh, hurts does it?  Well HERE, just let me FIX that for you!  And that's the LAST healing you'll ever see me do!  Get out of my house!

The door opened, and Tracy threw Anjelica out onto the lawn, where she collapsed, weeping.

LEO: What happened?
ANJELICA: I... he hit me... and then he grabbed my face and fixed it.
LEO: Well, that was nice of him.  You want me to call you a cab?
ANJELICA: I drove.
LEO: Oh.  Well then.
ANJELICA: Could you...?  I don't... don't think I can drive right now.  Safely.
LEO: Then I'll call you a cab.  I'm not going anywhere with you or doing anything with you.
ANJELICA: That bitch Cecily got to you, didn't she?
LEO: Who's Brett McClure?
ANJELICA: (Pause) He's my husband.
LEO: Would he want you prostituting yourself to get him well?
ANJELICA: He doesn't know anything about it!  He's been in that coma for TWO YEARS!  What else could I do?
LEO: Did you try just asking him?
ANJELICA: You know how he is.  He doesn't want to use his power, he's worried it's from the DEVIL, I was trying to get him some confidence with it and then you had to come back, and bring that... that...
LEO: Sorry I spoiled your plans to cheat on your husband and leave my uncle heartbroken.
GM: She spits in your face and then turns to go.

The last scene of the session was an impromptu court getting set up in a judge's home.  (Seth's player knew a lot more about all this National Security FISA stuff than I did, frankly.)  Mitch made one last effort to get the woman's name.

SETH: Why don't you just give up?
MITCH: What did she tell you?  Did she false-flag you?  Say she was CIA or something?  If my guess is right and that woman was Chlotilde Giroux, you've been played like a harmonica.  I tried.  I tried to make it easy on you.

-G.

CHAPTER SIX: DAMN SHAME WHAT THEY DID TO THAT MIME

Cecily's player couldn't make this session.  We started with Seth going in front of a FISA court.  I don't know jack about FISA, but neither did anyone at the table (hey, it's SECRET, 'kay?) so that was all right.  I set a scene with three judges who'd been gotten out of bed and informally gathered at one's home.  One of them had worked with Seth in the past and was on a first name basis so, once again, the mutant public defender got a free pass.  It didn't hurt, of course, that Seth hadn't done anything illegal.  He'd talked to Chlotilde, he'd arranged a set of signals by which they could arrange a meeting, and he'd used said signals exactly once -- and got shot at that meeting.  He got a stern talking-to, was gently told how to find out the truth the next time someone claimed to be from Homeland Security.  Emerging, he overheard Mitch on his cell phone.

MITCH: Listen, I'm dealing with a genuine fire here, so don't call me for... look, take away his matches, okay?  Are you an agent, or do I have to hold your hand while you take a piss?

Getting off the phone, he asked Seth what had happened, and smiled when Seth told him there were no charges.

MITCH: That's good.  You can keep doing your job, and leave the spy games to the professionals, eh?
SETH: Yeah.  Who is Chlotilde Giroux, anyhow?
MITCH: It's... complicated.  She's not exactly an enemy, but she's not one of ours.  She works for Projekt ELSA, the occult spy arm of the EU.  She's nominally on the side of the angels, but she still shouldn't be playing in our sandbox.  You need a ride home?
SETH: I'll fly.
MITCH: Whatever.  I thought you might be tired.  I sure as hell am.
SETH: I don't really get tired.  I sleep a few hours a night, just to stay in practice.
MITCH: You mutants. 

He then reinforced that Seth was to bring him the notebook if he got hold of it, then departed.  Bolt, in the meantime, had teleported along with their car, presumably popping from high point to high point on the landscape.  Kids, teleportation is POWERFUL.  He took a position in a tree, out in the rain, and waited.  After failing a few Sight rolls (lingering sarin gas effects?  Or something else?) he was startled by a woman's voice appearing from nowhere.  It said, "I suppose by now you know I am not with the Department of Homeland Security."

BOLT: Excuse me?  Um... where are you?

Chlotilde gradually became visible, sitting on the branch next to him.  She fessed up to working for the EU, told them that it was in no free country's interest for A Letter From Prague to get away with the notebook.

BOLT: What about this Mitch guy?  What's his story?
CHLOTILDE: Ah, Mitch.  He is... how would you say?  "A twenty-two caliber mind in a forty-five caliber world"?  Skilled within his narrow field of expertise, but he is a sorcerer in the service of a government that is, mm, spiritually opposed to the idea of working with the occult.  Even in pursuit of the higher good.  He has the unfortunate fate of being a necessary evil in the service of starry-eyed idealists who believe they can achieve the best outcome with virtuous methods because Jesus loves them.  So he must keep a low profile.  But at the same time, they are looking for an excuse to be rid of him, so he needs to parade a steady stream of results.  Nobody likes him.
BOLT: Yeah, I can see why.
CHLOTILDE: He has his uses.  It is not difficult to predict how he will react, and as I mentioned, he has some skill.  Nonetheless.  He is indicative of everything wrong with the US occult intelligences. 

Bolt reiterated his interest in freelancing for Chlotilde, and she assured him that his rewards would be great if he got them the notebook. 

INTERLUDE: THE GAME WITHIN THE GAME

I'm now going to introduce a metagame activity for y'all reading at home: The Grim War Drinking Game!  Every time you read the word 'notebook,' drink.  Every time Ben Franklin gets summoned, finish the cup.

SESSION SIX CONTINUED

I think we had a couple days fast forwarded in there, and then a fun little side scene.  It involved Tracy, who's sorta my character and sorta a GMC and sorta group property.  The other characters were two thugs named Joe Broni and Joe Moke.

GM: Your getaway driver, Joe Mamet, is in the car.
SETH'S PLAYER: Did you just make a joke about the prophet?!?
GM: No!  It's a 'yo mama' pun!
BOLT'S PLAYER: You're just lucky it's not in print.

Seth's player and Bolt's player took the roles of the Joes, while Leo's player handled Tracy and I adjudicated.

GM: You Joes think of yourselves as John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in "Pulp Fiction."  You're streetwise cool thugs who do whatever dirty bidness your boss requests.  Lately, that's been a lot of kidnapping... a girl a few months ago, and now some senior citizen in Cincinnati.  Should be a cakewalk, this guy's OLD, you're tough, and you've got badass enchanted guns that are completely silent.  Broni, yours is a shotgun loaded with beanbag rounds, and Moke has a long-barreled revolver full of those rubber bullets the Israelis shoot at Palestinians.  You've also got your basic kidnap kit -- disposable handcuffs, rope, duct tape...
SETH'S PLAYER: ...adult diapers...
BOLT'S PLAYER: Dude, how long is the drive to where we're taking him?
SETH'S PLAYER: Not for him, for me!  I ain't goin' out like Vinnie Vega, shot on the toilet reading 'Modesty Blaise'!

They positioned themselves and then I turned to Leo's player and had him roll Tracy's Detect Life power as he pulled in.

LEO'S PLAYER: Got it.
GM: Two people in the house, probably Leo and one of his friends.  Probably Cicely wanting you to use your Satan-inspired powers, AGAIN, to help her continue her nefarious enchantments...  You walking or driving?
LEO'S PLAYER: Driving.  I was out getting some beer and a few DVDs.  No porno, but maybe High Noon...
SETH'S PLAYER: No porno?
LEO'S PLAYER: ...Conan...
BOLT'S PLAYER: The first Conan, right?  'Cause there really is no such movie as Conan the Destroyer.  It's just a do-over.

When Tracy got inside, Broni and Moke both opened fire.  Little did they suspect that this particular retiree was juiced up with (1) decent, though not inhuman strength, (2) several layers of Extra Tough and (3) enough armor that even normal bullets would bounce off him much of the time.  Consequently, the shotgun beanbag to the chest felt like a punch and he dodged out of the way of the gunshot, dropping his beer in the process.

LEO'S PLAYER: Those 'Nam reflexes just kicked in.
GM: He's pretty spry for an old dude who got shot in the chest.

Tracy fled to the garage with Broni in hot pursuit while Moke ran out the front and waited.

LEO'S PLAYER: Is there anything in the garage I could use as a weapon?
GM: Hm... not really, unless you grabbed a hoe or a shovel.
LEO'S PLAYER: Shovel.
GM: Or the pitchfork.  There's a pair of pruning shears, they're pretty sharp.  Or the stumping axe.  You just put gas in the chainsaw, too.
BOLT'S PLAYER: You know what's really wicked?  Those poles with a sort of flat, triangular blade for chopping ice.
GM: Oh yeah, there's one of those too.
LEO'S PLAYER: I'll grab the closest polearm thing and swing it into his legs as he comes out the door.
SETH'S PLAYER: I'm trying to stay close behind him and shoot him as soon as I get in the garage.

Rolling, they both missed, so I ruled that Broni had tripped and that, along with the sudden darkness, had ruined his shot.  Moke, having waited, decided to run around to the garage side door.  I rolled randomly, fifty/fifty chance of there being a door, and there was.

GM: (to Seth's Player) Suddenly the door jerks open!  There's someone there, silhouetted against the light!  HE'S GOT A GUN!
SETH'S PLAYER: I know I've got a partner... but brains aren't really this guy's strong suit, and he's already rattled, so let's see if I freak out.  (Rolls.)  I shoot the doorway!
LEO'S PLAYER: I'm trying to grab the shotgun.
BOLT'S PLAYER: I'm shooting the old guy.

Comic wrestling ensued.  I don't recall the blow-by-blow but do remember telling someone, "Your hand whips back and hits the doorway, hard.  It really stings!"  It ended with both Joes fleeing while Tracy ran upstairs to get his OWN guns.  Broni left his magic scattergun behind, Tracy called Leo, and Leo called Seth.  After some discussion, they decided not to involve the police, since doing so would almost certainly out Tracy as a mutant and he'd gotten enough grief on that score.  They also checked over the shotgun and determined that it was utterly silent no matter what ammo they used.  Seth was semi-covetous, but Tracy said he'd heard that meant there was actually some kind of spirit inhabiting the gun.  They eventually encased it in quick-crete and threw it in the river.

The next day, Seth got a visitor at his office. It was Eden Majors, trying best she could to subtly pressure him into letting her look over the notebook if and when he got it.  They seemed to get along pretty well.  He also found out that Cecily had been brought in for questioning, held in an interrogation room for about a half an hour, and then released without being interrogated.  "Sorry," the cops told her.  "Sorry we wasted your time."

The men got together and mused over what to do.

SETH: Honestly, I'm thinking about moving to Canada.
LEO: You want to be Captain Toronto?
GM: M'sieur Quebequois can't understand why all the other mutants laugh at his name.
LEO: It's a setting ripe for adventure.  Mounties, hockey, shootouts in the maple tree groves, ninjas on the Niagara...
GM: Oooh, "Ninjagara"!  I may have to use that some time.

Presently, Bolt got a call from Chlotilde, informing him that she'd tracked down the Letter From Prague.  She provided an address.  At the same time, an anonymous call gave Seth the exact same information.  Seth grudgingly called Mitch, who was seemed harried and distracted.

MITCH: An anonymous call?  How... how much stock do you put in it?  You say it was a woman, huh... and she knew about  A Letter From Prague.  Okay, I'm up to my elbows in alligators here in Dayton, it's a real... I need you to handle this for me.  Bring him in.  Get the notebook.

Seth contemplated bringing in a SWAT team, but he was wary.  He knew Letter From Prague was some kind of super-spy, and he was in an apartment building in a residential area.  (The building had a meandering ravine in back, a street in front, a car dealership on one side and a large home on the other.)  He decided to go cowboy with Bolt and Leo instead.  Cecily got left out, putatively because she's not mutated and actually because her player was absent.  Tracy found out about the mission and insisted on accompanying them.

LEO: Uncle Tracy, no...
TRACY: If you're going, I'm going.
LEO: This isn't your fight.
TRACY: You're my fight. 

With that, he put the purple metal-flake spoiler helmet on.

In actual fact, Tracy was quite useful, in that he could scan the building and tell them that there were four life-forms in the target apartment (though one of them was 'weird'), two people in the apartment above and one in the apartment below.  The apartments on either side were empty.  Bolt, after a few attempts, got into one and got his bearings sufficient to bop back out and return with the posse.  Tracy and Leo went to knock on the front door, while Seth waited and then crashed through the wall.

GM: You're in the bathroom.
SETH: Anyone there?
GM: Fortunately for everyone's dignity, no, but you hear people jumping up and yelling "What the hell?"
LEO: I'm breaking the door in with the Alter.
GM: You wearing it like a suit?
LEO: Yeah.
BOLT: Can I see anyone yet? 
GM: No, you're behind Seth, there's plaster dust all over, you can't see clearly enough to teleport in.

In the living room was the thirteen-year-old girl they'd seen before, Nikolai from the bar (who was pulling on his 'cylon gas mask' as they entered) and a tall piece of Eurotrash in a sharp black suit running for the back bedroom.  The little girl tried to block their way, and Seth knocked her into the ceiling above the couch.  She was unharmed. Nikolai started shooting, Leo/the Alter started punching, Seth went after the Nikolai, Tracy opened fire and Bolt teleported in just as the little girl pulled out another tear gas canister. 

BOLT: I'm going to grab it if she drops it, or her if she keeps hold of it, and teleport out.
GM: Out to where?
BOLT: The air over the ravine.

If I recall correctly, Seth broke one of Nikolai's arms and Leo broke the other.

NIKOLAI: I surrender.

Bolt took the little girl out, jumped again and dropped her.  She hit hard, then popped right back up, screaming that she was being attacked by an evil mutant.  Bolt saw her pull out a hand grenade and teleported away to the car dealership.  Tracy ran after Letter From Prague and caught an armor-piercing bullet that trailed weird, glowing green smoke for his trouble.  They were closing in on him in the bedroom when something appeared in the air outside his window.  It was a flying, golden, four-foot-tall winged mantis with some kind of gold medallion or seal around its neck. 

GM: Sanity rolls, please.

Leo blew it.  (He's been saving his XP to pimp out the Alter, even though Stability is an inexpensive skill.)  Rather than lose all his Willpower, he lost half and fled into the living room.

BOLT: Mm, Leo, why don't you go watch the prisoners.
LEO: Watch.  Yes.  Go.
MANTIS: Give me the notebook.
GM: You see Letter From Prague blink, look dazed, and then hold out... a bic pen.  Tracy says, "That pen... it's alive!"

Seth grabbed the pen, Bolt opened fire, and Leo was in the perfect position to see four guys come through the door brandishing guns.  Tracy recognized Broni and Moke, and this time they were accompanied by Mamet and Bhodi.  The Alter started punching, Tracy and the bad guys started shooting, and Bolt initiated a power called 'Rend the Skies.'  For you WT fans, it's Harm 1+HD+WD, Slow 2, Electrocutes, and it has a shit ton of extra damage.  The Letter kept dodging everything, Seth was warned not to chase the mantis, and it kept telling him to give it the notebook.  It had Command 10, so resisting a direct order from it costs a Willpower point. 

And behind the four gunmen came a dark-haired woman and an old adversary.

LEO: Mime!!!!

The struggle got more and more convoluted.  Letter From Prague got knocked out at some point, and chained to the fire escape.  Leo got walled up by the Mime, tried to have the Alter strike through it and encountered resistance.  The skies were rent, and the mantis was definitely hurt, but not down for the count. Seth and the mantis came into the room, and the newcomers made their sanity rolls.  Or failed to make them, in at least one significant case.

GM: The four Joes take one look at the mantis and decide to straighten up and fly right.  They're getting the hell out.  The Mime looks... (rolls) and sinks to the floor, gape-mouthed in awe.  Then the Mantis tells the Mime, "Kill them."  He starts making an imaginary bazooka.
BOLT: Take it from me, that thing hurts.  Bad.

The woman ran, the mantis asked for the notebook (again), and everyone uncorked what Sunday punches they had left.  The bazooka hit Seth real bad and got Bolt with some ancillary damage, but Leo was protected by the Mime's own wall.  The Alter reformed behind the Mime and decked him, while Seth and Bolt double teamed the Mantis to destruction.

GM: ...and then the floor collapses.
PCS: What?
GM: This building was not constructed to withstand bazooka rounds. 

Seth heard a the sound of squealing metal and flew over to see the whole structure of the fire escape peeling away from the side of the building.  He grabbed it and slowed it down, but deliberately shifted it so that it crushed both legs of his unconscious prisoner. 

Tracy detected someone alive, but fading, in the rubble of the apartment below.  The Alter shifted the wreckage and Tracy tried to heal the bleeding fat man but... no.  Couldn't get the roll.  Who could have arranged for Tracy's power to crap out on him when it was time to save an innocent?  Could it be... SATAN?!?

The unconscious Mime started to stir, and Seth smacked him.

LEO: Um... oh, maybe...
SETH: What?  How d'you expect me to keep him controlled?  He escaped the hospital when they practically made him into a mummy.

Bolt, meanwhile, started teleporting around looking for the little girl.  Sure enough, he saw her in a taxi, pulling onto the interstate.  Despite the Difficulties of getting into a moving car, he managed it, only to have her open the door and jump out.

GM: Roll Sense+Sight.
BOLT: Made it!
GM: How many hand grenades can one little girl carry?  Well, it's one less now, 'cause she left it on the floor of the cab when she jumped out.

Bolt grabbed the cabbie and teleported to safety just as the car exploded.  He saw the little girl, who'd hit the pavement at 70 mph, roll down an embankment, jump up, and run off unharmed.  Couldn't pursue further, though I can't really remember why.

Every emergency service imaginable showed up and informed the PCs that the Mime was now dead.

SETH: Really?

We left it there, with Seth clutching a pen that was apparently a standard Bic rollerstic, but which was also (apparently) the notebook and also (seemingly) alive.

-G.

SESSION SEVEN: THE THING THAT ATE DAYTON (AND THE THING THAT MADE DAYTON EAT ITSELF)

The session started with a flashback, since the character of Cecily was a week behind everyone else.  The cops asked her to come in for questioning, put her in a room where she sat looking at the (presumably) one-way mirror for about half an hour, and then the officer opened the door and politely said, "You're free to go.  Sorry.  Apparently it was all a misunderstanding."  She returned to tanning and cramming and when asked if she did anything occult, or tactically significant over hte week, she said no. 

GM: D'you talk to Ben Franklin?
CECILY'S PLAYER: No reason to.
GM: Letting ol' Quaker Oats rest in peace, huh?  (Flips through the cards of spells I made up.)  What about this one?
CECILY'S PLAYER: So... it makes a magic device that protects you from spirits?  Good idea.

To cast that spell, she needed to spend a whole day crawling towards the sun, not deviating from her path and not harming any living thing.  She failed an Endurance roll while doing it, so I said she got a point of Shock on each leg.

CECILY'S PLAYER: I'm taking a point to the torso too.  Crawling all day has to be killer on your lower back. 

With Cecily brought back to the present through the magic of metagaming, Leo and Tracy went home.  Tracy was in a terribly foul mood, and they decided to sleep elsewhere since the two dudes with magic guns had been there just that afternoon.  Who did Tracy call?  Why, his spiritual mentor Reverend Wright, natch.  He and Leo both went there to spend the night, and the Rev told Leo that if he wanted to talk, that was fine, and if he just wanted to sleep he'd understand that too.  Leo went down to get in on the discussion about how mutants were subjected to particular demonic temptation, and that while their powers might seem positive, use would always turn out badly.  Leo feebly dissented, and then they all went to bed.

I was then very particular about exactly where the pen went (for good reasons).  Seth flew it home and put it in his gun safe.

GM: Seth has a gun?
SETH'S PLAYER: Sure, why not?
GM: I guess I just figured that the guy who can punch through walls wouldn't see much use for one.
SETH'S PLAYER: He was issued one.  Probably likes to go target shooting every now and then.

He also took it with him when the phone rang in 1:30 AM and the governor asked him to go to Dayton immediately.  In the background of last session, the news had been spouting about a "toxin spill" in Dayton requiring some evacuation, and then Special Agent Schantz had alluded to it once or twice.  Seth rounded up the gang and headed out.  Only without Leo.

Leo, when awakened, went to talk to Tracy about riding out to Dayton.

TRACY: You've got to be kidding.
LEO: This is widespread panic, Uncle Tracy.  Innocent people running, hurt... this is where you're really needed.
TRACY: I can't, and I wouldn't if I could.
LEO: I think you'll regret it.
TRACY: Don't go.
LEO: (pause) Okay.

Before the big fight started, I paused the action and told the players that, no shit, I was going to let the dice fall where they lay this time and that there was a real chance their characters could get killed or permanently crippled.

LEO'S PLAYER:  Okay.  Leo's Alter is in pretty bad shape right now anyhow.
CECILY'S PLAYER:  I don't like Cecily that much.  She's a bitch!
SETH'S PLAYER:  Seth's going to have to start killing a lot more people if he's going to retain my interest.

Luckily, Leo's player knows a lot about Ohio and was able to tell me there are essentially three egress points from Dayton.

GM: Wow, I couldn't have planned that better if I'd planned it!

The cops and national guardsmen they talked to on their way in didn't know much other than chaos, fires, radios going wiggy, no contact from Vast.  (Remember him?  The guy from Columbus?) 

They flew in to the tallest building (of four, apparently) and saw fires in one direction, heard gunshots in another, and saw a stampede of people towards a bridge in the third.  They opted for the stampede and set Cecily on the ground while Seth and Bolt realized that there was a sniper atop a nearby building firing at the crowd.  Seth flew, Bolt teleported, and the shooter was a SWAT cop.  He shot Bolt in the face at point-blank range before Seth got the rifle away from him.

SWAT COP: I had to do it.  I had to.  The voice... it wouldn't leave me alone.  It told me I had to do it.
SETH: Oh crap. 

Even with Bolt's considerable armor, he got knocked out and had to spend a Willpower point to wake up.  I, sweetheart GM that I am, decided that he'd recover half Shock from that since 'combat was over'.  Cecily saw Vast on the bridge, trying to move forward through the surging masses without clobbering them.  Seth and Bolt spotted another SWAT shooter, which Seth flew after while Bolt checked out a roiling mass of darkness that was heading down the street towards the bridge.

CECILY'S PLAYER:  I'm going to use Mark of the Wild to race through the crowd.
GM: Nothing happens. 
CECILY'S PLAYER:  Wait, nothing happens or there's no response?
GM: No response.
CECILY'S PLAYER: What about the Blade of Justice?
GM: No reply.
CECILY'S PLAYER: What about Ben Franklin?
BEN: Cecily, you should get out of here.  Thou art in great danger!
CECILY: Where are my spirits?
BEN: Exiled from you.
CECILY'S PLAYER: What about the gadget with the one answer to a question in it?  Do I still have that?
GM: Yup.

While Cecily reassessed her assets, Seth took care of SWAT Cop #2, who was shooting inaccurately because of the tears streaming down his face.  When Seth wrenched the gun out of his hands, he said, "Oh thank you.  I didn't want to do it but the voice, the voice..."  Seth grabbed the guy's radio and heard  that various police officers had "turned" or "gone whacko".

Bolt cast Magic Missile on the darkness.  Wait, I mean Lightning Bolt.  Wait... well, you know what I mean.  It briefly illuminated a figure inside the cloud, human shaped, about twenty feet tall, but moving... strangely.

BOLT'S PLAYER: I'm warming up to Rend the Skies.
GM: Check.  Seth, as you're flying up to get perspective, you hear a voice in your ear saying, "Kill them.  Kill them all."  It sounds like the most reasonable suggestion you've ever heard in your life.  It just makes sense.
SETH'S PLAYER: Willpower point.
GM: Check.  Cecily, you now see the black thing and Vast is wading towards it, hammer in hand.
BOLT's PLAYER: I can still yell, right?
GM: Yep.
BOLT: Stay back big guy!  I got this one!
CECILY'S PLAYER: Do I know any spells that would deal with this?  Exile Ex Materia?
GM: Only works on astral spirits.  This thing is solid as a wall.  You'll need an exorcism for it.
SETH'S PLAYER: "The power of Christ compels you!  The power of Christ compels you!"  (This got mild chuckles.) 
CECILY'S PLAYER: Then I use the one answer gadget and ask it for a spell that'll get rid of it. 
GM: (Pause.)  Yeah, okay.  If you pay the XP for it, I'll let you learn it instantly.  The Aspect of Infinite Circumference appears and... well it doesn't exactly speak, but you just know that it's ready to give you an answer.  (Flipping through the spell cards again.)  It knows a spell that could get rid of the dark one, but not the other one.
CECILY'S PLAYER: Is that big thing fighting Vast the dark one?
GM: The dark mass of chains surrounded by a dark cloud?  Good guess.  It's seven XP for that spell.
CECILY'S PLAYER: I've got five.
GM: Five XP and two Willpower then.  (Hands over the card with the spell on it.)  Check out what you have to do to cast it.
CECILY'S PLAYER: (Reads) "The caster strikes herself on the chest and shouts 'The power of Christ compels you!  The power of Christ compels you!' if an Invoker, or 'By Baal and Beelzebub, to hell returneth!  Obey the names of thy masters' if a Conjurer.  Note that Christian faith is not necessary, only the words and gestures."  Oh, like organized religion!
GM: Next round.  The thing in the dark gestures at Cecily and a chain shoots out of its hand, flying at her.  Vast yells "Deafen yourself!"
SETH'S PLAYER: I'm going to block that chain.  In fact, I'm going to use Multiact and try to grab hold of it and take control of it.
BOLT'S PLAYER: Staying on target...
CECILY:  Ben, I need you to keep me from hearing anything.
BEN FRANKLIN: Oh I wish that I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten look AWAYYYY...
CECILY: The power of Christ compels you!  The power of Christ compels you!
GM: Roll 'em. 

Cecily got her spell off and Seth blocked the chain.  It wound around him, but he broke free, seized it and... it turned to smoke in his hands.  The next round Cecily cast the spell again, while the first spell rolled its pool to go off.

GM: It folds in on itself and disappears.
CECILY'S PLAYER: What?
GM: It's gone.
CECILY'S PLAYER: Did I do that?

Bolt, having lost his original target, looked around to try to find the thing that had been whispering commands in everyone's ears -- presumably "the other one" that her spell couldn't affect.  Now that thing had Invisibility 10, but he rolled an x10 set on his Sight pool.

GM: There's lots of smoke around from all the fires, so you see a shape displacing it, moving through the mist.

Next round, he bolted the crap out of it and it too went poof.

With the two critters gone, Seth flew up to get the lay of the land and was surprised to see Dr. Eden Majors looking extremely nervous and peering out from the top of a tall building.

EDEN: Do you have any idea what's going on?
SETH: I was going to ask you.  What are you doing here?
EDEN: As a licensed enchanter, I'm obligated to assist in occult emergencies.  Eisenerbrecht's here, and he can see them.

Getting directions from her, Seth flew off after Eisenerbrecht while Cecily invoked her healing spirit to help her doctor Bolt's shot-up face.  Eisenerbrecht was skulking down the street holding what could only be described as "a wizard's staff" complete with elaborate carvings. 

EISENERBRECHT: Oh thank heaven you're here!
SETH: Eden said you can see them?
EISENERBRECHT: The spirits?  Yes.  There are a few of them just around that corner.
SETH: I'll go over the top...
EISENERBRECHT: Take me with you!
GM: Flying up over the building with Eisenerbrecht in your arms, you see a lone figure walking down the street wearing an orange prison jumpsuit.
SETH'S PLAYER: Oh crap.
EISENERBRECHT: Oh thank goodness!  It's okay, he's a friend!

Dubious, Seth set down and got a pleasant smile from Dr. August Park.  Remember him?  'Gandalf Lecter'?

DR. PARK: Oh good, you're here... Seth, correct?
SETH: This is a surprise.
DR. PARK: I should imagine so.  I got a pardon from the President, no less.  The ink's still wet.

Reconnoitering with Eisenerbrecht, and after Park spoke with one of his familiars, it appeared that the city was clear of spirits.

SETH: That's it?  Those two did all that?
GM: Think how much trouble you could cause if you were invisible, could fly, and people did whatever you told them if you told them four or five times.  Not hard to go to the fire stations, the police stations, the power plants...

The only other events of significance that night were (1) Eden giving Seth a very intent warning about Park, saying that he was dangerous, that Seth should never go anywhere alone with him, and that she suspected he'd engineered the events of the night only to get out of jail.  Then (2) while Seth was giving Park a flyover, Park started talking in a strange foreign tongue. 

SETH: What gives?
PARK: Oh, I was just giving directions to one of my spirits.
GM: Roll Brains+Sense Motive
SETH'S PLAYER: I got nothin'.

Everyone traveled home for a good night's rest, and I announced that, barring surprises, the rest of the session would cover a fast-forwarded week without big fights.  Seth and Bolt got medical attention (always problematical when you've got Heavy Armor) -- Seth from the doctor who treated Cecily, and Bolt got some under-the-table craniofacial surgery from a nameless doctor, in a plastic surgery spa, as arranged by a gentleman who described himself as the "Make Governor Look Good Guy."

MYSTERY DOCTOR: ...so now we're all square, right?
MAKE GOVERNOR LOOK GOOD GUY: Yeah, no worries, it's all good, the Gov loves you.  He just can't show it.  You know what he's like.

The doctor explained that he'd have to take Bolt's mask off to work on his face, but that "given the degree of trauma, I probably wouldn't recognize you anyway after the swelling goes down."  He made inquiries about Bolt's powers and, hearing that he shot lightning, nodded and got out an ankle cuff with a trailing wire.

BOLT: You're going to ground me?
DOCTOR: Exactly.  A colleague of mine was in a similar situation, the patient's body interpreted the surgery as an attack and... well, my friend wound up with fan burns through his lungs.  He had both hands in at the time.  What a mess!

Cecily and Seth took off to Memphis to get away and discuss the mystery pen/notebook.  They discovered that neither of them could damage the pen, and decided to consult Ben Franklin. 

BEN: It looks like a pen.
SETH: Great.  That's the best you've got?  No wonder you were never president.
BEN: Hey, who's on the hundred and who got stuck with the fifty?  I'll mention this: Though geography in the spirit world is difficult to explain, I believe I saw a spirit close to you during the donnybrook in Dayton.  It seemed to be a blonde woman with her lips stitched shut.  Not a spirit with which I'm familiar.
CECILY: (Rolls) Doesn't ring any bells.
SETH: How can we figure out how this pen can be alive and also be the notebook.
BEN: Well, what experts can you consult?  Who's interested in the book?
SETH: Letter From Prague.
CECILY: Dr. Majors and Dr. Eisenerbrecht.
SETH: That woman who was with the Mime.  And that giant golden mantis.
CECILY: Don't forget Special Agent Wiener-boy.
BEN: Is there anyone on that list you'd trust to examine the object?
SETH: Not really.
CECILY: Dr. Majors more than anyone else.

Ben faded out.  Then events took an NC-17 turn.

CECILY: Wanna pull over and have sex?
SETH: Are you sure that's a good idea?
CECILY: What would Elvis do.
SETH: Oh, you had to bring the King into it...

I hadn't really planned for it to be that kind of game.

GM: Okay, this is going to sound... it's relevant though.  Are you going out in the woods, backseat...?
SETH: Backseat, teenage-style.
GM: Where is the pen while you're doing it?
(Various jokes were made.)
CECILY: I'll be holding it in my hand.
GM: Okay.  Suddenly there's a third person in the backseat with you.  He opens the door and starts running.
SETH'S PLAYER: I fly after him.
CECILY: Pull your pants up!

Despite his head start, the guy (who dropped a rifle behind him as he ran) was easily run to ground.  He stopped in the woods with the notebook suspended over a puddle. 

GUY: Look, let me go and I'll give you the damn notebook.  Otherwise, I trash it.

Seth him him, but pulled his punch.  The guy got it on the arm and jammed the open notebook into the puddle soiling and tearing it.

GUY: Ouch!  You going to beat me to death too?
SETH: You're an agent of a foreign power.
GUY: Blah blah blah, I was hired to... look can we just talk?  Without you hitting me?
CECILY: (Running up and panting) So talk.
GUY: First off, I want his word that he's not going to hit me and he'll let me go.
SETH: If you tell us everything, I'll let you go unhurt.
GUY: (Rubbing his arm) Little late for that.  Okay.  I'm a mutant, I can turn into inanimate objects, all right?  I was hired to steal the notebook.
SETH: By A Letter From Prague?
GUY: Exactly right.  I turned into a paper clip, got dropped in the safety deposit room after the notebook got put back, turned human when no one was looking, got the book, went paperclip again and he picked me up the next day.  Then he wanted an easy way to get it out of the country to Europe, so I held it and turned into the Bic.  You took it from him and I've been stuck with you waiting for the right moment.
CECILY: You pervert!
GUY: What?
CECILY: You waited until I had my shirt off to resume human shape!
GUY: Don't flatter yourself.  I figured he wasn't going to get much more distracted.

Seth asked for his name, and was told some name, which the guy had on a credit card, and he took off towards the rest stop, muttering under his breath.

CECILY: Highway rest stations.  They were the bath-houses of the nineties, you know.
SETH: Is this still any good?
CECILY: (Looking at the sodden, torn book.)  Possibly.  Probably. 
SETH: I'm going to give it to you.  You can burn it or work on it or whatever, but if anyone asks, we never recovered it.

Lucien (Bolt's alter-ego) just told people he'd been in Dayton when everything went crazy, caught a steel-toed boot to the face.  He also found out that (1) there was footage of Bolt whaling on the 13-year-old playing on TV, (2) there was a big 'Is Surge Alive?' controversy in California, with Alexander Sobieski shooting his mouth off on the radio ("Surge IS alive!  Thanks to him, they caught my liver disease at an early stage!  If he's not around, it's because we don't DESERVE him!") and (3) the detectives Kwok and Putney had been asking Lucien's brother a whole lot of questions.

Leo spent the week turning Tracy's home into a fortress and re-rezzing the Alter with Willpower.  He also ran into a sleazy reporter who wanted to interview Tracy (and Leo) about Leo's powers.  Leo 'no commented' the hell out of him, and when he spoke to Tracy it turned out that the reporter (whose name was Vincent Fontaine) had been tipped off by Anjelica, who promised more to come unless Tracy woke up her husband.  Tracy wanted it kept on the DL, even if Seth could make a harassment charge stick. 

TRACY: Leo, it's my problem, it's not on you, it's... I'll deal with it.  This is my thing.

As if Leo didn't have enough problems, he got a call from his old college pal telling him that Swanda (Leo's #1 fan) had been hit off her bicycle by a truck and got both her legs broke.  Leo gave her a consolation call and they briefly discussed her upcoming Spring Break. 

Cecily got a ride from Leo out into the wilderness in the middle of nowhere, where she got naked and invoked the Blade of Justice again.  This time, it was less tractable, and only agreed to serve her for a month if she would, in turn, perform a service for it.  She also successfully called some random spirit from the wild, and we agreed that I'd work that up for the next session.  (Anyone out there have good ideas?  Just anything that would be thematic for the woods, or her, or Leo...) 

On the drive back, they got into a conversation about Leo and Anjelica and, when she found out that Leo wasn't doing anything, she let him have it with both barrels.  It was a lengthy argument in which she briefly recommended going to the hospital and stepping on the comatose husband's IV tube to send a message to Anjelica.  She castigated him up one side and down the other about indecisiveness, weakness, looking for excuses to do nothing...

CECILY'S PLAYER: How far back to town at this point, anyhow?
LEO'S PLAYER: Probably forty minutes.
CECILY'S PLAYER: Maybe I'll just shut up now.

Leo's phone rang, and it was his agent, who maybe had a one-time job for him up near his old school.  Quick job, good money, as long as the Alter isn't harmed by radiation.  Leo was enthusiastic.

Getting home, Leo found Tracy sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the sixth beer of a pack as if he was trying to work up his spirits to peel it off the plastic holder.

LEO: ...Uncle Tracy?  (Looking at the five empties.)  That's a lot of beer.
TRACY: Yeah.
LEO: Is something wrong?
TRACY: Yeah.
LEO: Did you use your power?
TRACY: (Laughs.)  No.
LEO: Did you try?
TRACY: I told someone I tried.
LEO: Oh... oh no...
TRACY: What was I supposed to do?  I went to the hospital, I put my hands on him, acted like I was doing it and then told her it didn't work, that it was better with injuries than sickness.
LEO: You could have made a real try?
TRACY: And let her win?
LEO: If you're serious about your Christianity, you should forgive her, rise above it and help her husband.
TRACY: Unless my powers are from the devil and will always, ALWAYS ruin everything they touch.  I didn't want to lie, but what else could I do?  Let her tell everyone?  I'd never get a moment's peace!  I had to find a way to shut her up.
LEO: I think you're going to regret this.

-G.

How about a Pooka? Those are always fun.

SESSION EIGHT: SHELL GAME

It was a little hard getting back in after a long hiatus (just several weeks off due to things and stuff) but I kicked it off by pulling back and giving each player present (Cicely's player was running late because he can't say no to his grammaw) one of the big Companies involved in events.  Leo's player got Direktiva Nul, the bosses of Letter From Prague, the remnants of the Soviet occult espionage apparatus.  Seth's player got The Way, Christians who are against sorcery and mutancy in equal measure (though they really trumpet Agenda 1 and soft-pedal Agenda 2).  Lucien's player got Projekt ELSA, the EU/UN counterpart to Direktiva Nul -- the gang behind Chlotilde Giroux.  Me, I managed the evil wieners who blew up Dayton.

Under our guidance, Direktiva tried to find the notebook, succeeding in finding the former Bic Pen guy.  (Think about that for a moment.  They tracked down and interrogated a guy who can turn into any inanimate object and stay in that form for weeks at a time.  They found him pretending to be a plastic chair in the Paris airport.)  So they now know that it was last seen in the hands of Seth and Cecily.  The Way decided to jump on Dayton with both feet, not only pushing the "See?  Sorcery is as bad as you always feared!" angle but also the "Mutant protectors?  Just exactly where were these guys when brainwashed police snipers were picking off civilians?  They CAN'T protect you!" angle.  As for ELSA, it went after the Dayton Destruction Societies, but with a bit of one-sided rolling, the terrorists squirmed away to fight another day.  They then tried to recruit on the strength of "Dayton?  Dude, ours."  Got more guys aching for Death By Cop, but not the big surge of public support they wanted.  The other three spent their time building up their strength and mobilizing their bases, and that was the month.

Out of character, I offered Seth's player 22 points to reallocate from the "Nova Blast" power that he has never once used.  It came out that when another player was running his character, the Nova Blast had gone off against the Mime and Bolt, apparently doing about as much damage as a string of mid-grade swear words.  So he beefed up Multitask, Flight and Go First by a level each -- very mathematically tidy.  I think he'll be pleased.

When Cicely's player arrived, she negotiated with a caterpillar spirit that asked her what she was becoming.  Its goal is to get more exposure to the physical world so that it can assist in transformative experiences, while Cicely didn't come right out and say she needed someone to save her ass, but talked about growing and learning and so on.  The caterpillar can transform itself into any animal or plant, but itself only.  She made her cell phone into a talisman for it, so she now has a phone that can, for the next month, change into a tiger or a raspberry shrub. 

I love superhero games.

Lucien/Bolt decided it was time for Surge to head out to San Fran and do some public stuff to dispel those pesky "Surge is dead!" rumors.  Now, he can teleport to San Francisco only from one particular Ohio physical therapy facility, and as he was heading there to violate spatial continuity, he saw Special Agent Mitch Schantz sitting out in front with his leg in a cast.  Hiding, he snuck around the back.  He could have teleported inside blind, but there was no way he could do that and know if there was a witness.

GM: Yeah, even somewhere normally private like a bathroom stall?  Could be occupied.
LUCIEN'S PLAYER: Oh yeah, he'd remember THAT face.

He decided to wait until someone came out the back and then, after watching through the door to ensure no one was in there, he'd pop in.  So he waited, and pretty soon someone came out.  In fact, it was Randall Putney -- the private detective who interviewed him in San Fran, claiming to be working for a millionaire damaged by the gas who was looking for private justice.

None of this made Bolt happy, but he made his cross-country jump and spent some time on the street, cruising for beatables.  He found them.  Dr. Ismail -- the street doctor who treated him way back in Session Two had gotten roughed up by some local toughs, and Surge paid them a little visit.  They did not, initially, believe he was the real Surge.  As soon as one of them grabbed his shoulders, that changed.

In addition to having too much armor for them to get through, he also had a huge Teleport pool, so every time they shot at him, he just wasn't there.  He electrocuted two into unconsciousness, crisped the leg of a fleeing enemy who'd tried to tackle him (and who slipped on his way out the back door) and persuaded the fourth to surrender.  (Number Five got away, having declared on the first round of the fight that "When he says 'drop your gun' I hear 'run the fuck away.'")  (Yeah, I deputized the other players to run the gangstahs.

The guy who surrendered, Jose, told Surge that they'd blackened Ismail's eye for protection money and because they thought he could help them get some fake papers for guys who were buying.  "Ismail doesn't do that kind of thing but, you know, that crowd is in and out of his clinic all day."

SURGE: What kind of foreign guys?  Where were they from?
JOSE: I don't know.  Not Ecuador.  They were brown.

Having gotten Jose's real name (two forms of photo ID and the fact that he had JOSE tattooed on his left knuckles) he told him that if anything happened to Ismail, Jose would hear from Surge.

JOSE: Man, yeah, I GET it.  Ismail's on the blessed list, no one touches him.
SURGE: Where does your mom live?
JOSE: Oh, you're... you're not going to do anything to my MOM are you?
SURGE: No, but I want to know where to find YOU if I have to. 

Since Jose was, at that moment, piled on top of his groaning and unconscious buddies, he coughed it up.

SURGE: You tell everyone I'm back.  YOU do it.  I want the word out, okay?
JOSE: Man, I'm your press agent, you got it!

Leo, in the meantime, went up to Marquette for the toxic waste job.  Devon took him out to lunch and subtly cautioned him that Bolt and Seth were looking more and more like bad news. 

DEVON: The cape... okay, yeah, people love the cape and the costume.  Until they don't.  And when they turn, it's hard, and bitter, and personal.  That footage of your pal mauling a 13-year-old girl...
LEO: A girl who can't DIE and who throws around grenades like they're water balloons!
DEVON: Okay, I know, but the visual, you know? 
LEO: Well, I don't think they're doing the kind of thing I want to be doing anyhow.
DEVON: If that's so, I may have some very good news for you soon.

After that, Leo drove over to Swanda's hospital room.  I asked him what he had with him and he said, "Um, probably a laptop.  If I have to wait."  So, no flowers, no teddy bears.  Right.  But she'd been released anyhow.  He then went to her residence, where her room mate Leah let him in.

LEAH: Oh, Swanda talks about you so much I feel like I know you.  She's not in right now, but come on up and wait.

Leah (I hadn't pre-planned a name.  I choked) let him into Swanda's room, where he saw she was piecing together a superhero costume, while she went off to shower.

LEO'S PLAYER: Leo doesn't find this creepy or disturbing at all.

Poking around he found a lot of clippings about himself on a bulletin board, along with a smaller number about Heather Scudieri (the girl with all the fire powers).  In her closet was a no-shit steel helmet -- not a costume, something lathed out of steel to stop bullets.

LEAH: Leo, could you come in here and help me with something?
LEO: Sure.

Going into Leah's bedroom, she was wearing two towels.  The bigger one was around her hair.

LEAH: Can you help me decide what to wear?
LEO: Um...
LEAH: You know, Swanda probably won't be back for at least an hour.
LEO: That's... look, how about something for getting to know one another first?
LEAH: Okay then.
GM: She drops the towel and puts on a pair of cutoff sweat pants and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, then engages you in conversation.  (Rolls.)  She's very charming.
LEO: I'm going to try to move it out to the living room.
GM: Give me a Command+Persuade.
LEO'S PLAYER: (rolls) Crap.
GM: You INTEND to casually maneuver her into the living room, at some point, but what with her laughing at all your jokes and twirling her hair, it's very distracting and you never get around to it.  Boy, first Cicely naked in the woods and now this.  Poor Leo!  Pretty soon you hear Swanda clomping into the apartment on her crutches.  She's in one of those big mobile body-casts and has no makeup.  Not at her best.

Swanda was not actually pleased to see him, was very self-conscious about the costume design (it was a project for one of her design classes) but he was quite sweet and Leah left them alone for dinner.  If Swanda was disturbed to see him come out of her room mate's bedroom, she didn't show it.

The next day, he went to have the Alter schlep toxic waste.

GM: They're treating you very diffidently, gushing practically, asking if there's anything you need, getting your coffee order exactly right...
LEO'S PLAYER: I'm going to be kind of a dick to them.
GM: Really?
LEO'S PLAYER: Cicely was riding him, he turned down SEX and he's bummed about Swanda having her pelvic bone broken.  He's in a bad mood.
GM: So... 'What is this, Desani?  I said Poland Springs!'
LEO: None of that, Evian!  And I don't trust the bottles, I want it right from the spigot coming from the side of the mountain!  And don't give me none of that 'Evian is just naive spelled backwards,' that's just an urban legend!

He failed his hearing roll to pick up what they were saying about him.

LEO'S PLAYER: How hard is this for the Alter to do?
GM: Roll.  (Looks.)  He can do it.  Roll again.  (Looks.)  No problem.  Roll again.  (Looks.)  It's actually kind of boring.
LEO'S PLAYER: So... the Alter can just work all day long?
GM: Yep.  They bring you a really nice lobster bisque sandwich for lunch.

Afterwards they gave him a check and assured him that they'd keep him in their Rolodex. 

Cicely was studying for exams at the library when she looked outside and saw Trey sitting on a bench, having an intent conversation with a man with his leg in a cast.  Ducking down into her books, she failed to get a good look at the man on crutches, but was somewhat uneasy at the thought of her ex-boyfriend.

Back in Ohio, Seth decided to take a couple vacation days and fly to Florida incognito.  Before he went, though, Annette came to visit him.  (Remember Annette?  Bald sister of Seth's murdered girlfriend?)  (You know, some people say I write too many characters into my novels.)  She had no sooner stepped through his door than something that he could only have described as 'eldritch blue flame' shot up through the carpet and arced into her.  Seth shoved her out into the hall, where she fell on her butt with a stunned expression.

ANNETTE: What just happened?
SETH: You tell me, I don't know.
ANNETTE: I wasn't talking to you... oh.

They figured out it had something to do with the weird protective symbol she'd given him weeks earlier, which he'd hidden under the carpet right at his threshold.  When they pulled it out to look at it, it had gone completely blank... and Annette was gradually realizing that she was now the host of some kind of cat spirit.  This pretty well distracted her from asking if he had any new leads on her sister, and he didn't anyhow.  Scratching his head, Seth flew off.

Without her BFFs around, Cicely was at loose ends and went to the Tiger Lily where she got chatted up by a pair of guys, who subtly probed her attitude towards menage a trois.  She was too distracted by them to notice that Mitch and Anjelica were sitting in a booth until she went up to the bar for a trio of Jaeger bombs.

CICELY'S PLAYER: Am I well-known at the Tiger Lily?  Do I know anyone there?
GM: Roll Command plus... mm, something.  (I can't remember what skill applied.)
CICELY'S PLAYER: I'm commanding.
GM: Yeah, Dan gives you a smile.
CICELY: Hey Dan, you see that couple in the corner?  The woman and the guy with the crutches?  Spill a drink on one of them and I'll show you my cans.
DAN: Oh yeah!

She looked at them, gave them the "Loozer" L on her forehead as they impassively gazed at her, then she pointed and said, "Especially YOU."

GM: Which one are you pointing at?
CICELY'S PLAYER: It's a vague gesture, could be either.  She's had a lot to drink.  Then I go back to the two dudes and say 'To threesomes!'

Seth chilled at the beach, drank, had a nice dinner, closed the hotel bar and slept better than he had for weeks... until he woke up around four in the morning, sensing a presence.  It was the Mime.  Or rather, his ghost.

SETH: What're you doing here?
MIME: I was sent with a message for you.
SETH: Sent by whom?
MIME: You should know I can't tell you that. 

(Awkward pause)

SETH: That was a pretty cool power you had there.
MIME: You didn't need to kill me, you know.
SETH: It was you or us!
MIME: I never really wanted to kill anyone.  That lightning guy scared me.  Then that bug thing.  I mean, what the fuck?
SETH: I know what you mean.
MIME: I wasn't going to attack you again.
SETH: I didn't know that.  I feel kind of bad about it, actually.
MIME: Why did you think you had to do it?
SETH: It was my duty... my responsibility.  I had to make sure you were no longer a threat.
MIME: To who?
SETH: To society.
MIME: Society?  Because I robbed a bank?
SETH: You were after the notebook.
MIME: Yeah.  What's the big deal with that thing?
SETH: Scary book of encoded magic mumbo-jumbo, that's all I know.  I feel kind of bad about what I did to you, actually.
MIME: For society.  Which told you that without society, you'd have no protection from scary individuals like me -- and there's no way to test it because society is all around you, it has you all the time.  Only way to get away form it is to go off into the wild for a while.  I did that.  Really cleared my head
SETH: That sounds pretty tempting.  The whole civic defender thing... I'm really starting to question it.
MIME: That's understandable.  You're told you're doing everything for 'America' or whatever but that's just an abstract idea.  The people you have to repress are real.  No wonder it's kind of empty.
SETH: Look, um... you had some kind of message?
MIME: Yeah, sorry.  The people who sent me after the book want to know who you really want to stop: Them, or the guys who blew up Dayton.
SETH: They can make that sort of deal?
MIME: They're pretty sure they can find out who did it.  In exchange, you hand over the book, and you agree to a condition.  If you're ever about to arrest one of them, they speak a code word and you let them go.
SETH: Let me sleep on it.
MIME: Okay.  I can't stick around much longer anyhow.
GM: With that, he fades away.
CICELY'S PLAYER: I think I liked him better when he didn't talk and just shot people.

-G.

The next day, Devon told Leo that Dr. Sjeok from Mutagenet Labs in San Francisco was very interested in him (Leo) and wanted to offer him an internship.  He was not too subtle about indicating that Sjeok was a much better person to hang out with than Bolt and Seth, who were both edging towards disreputability.  Leo indicated interest and flew home, where he checked in with Tracy and was told that an insurance investigator had called, asking for Leo.

LEO: Did he say what it was about?
TRACY: No, and I'm worried this might be about me.
LEO: What?  If it was, why wouldn't he just talk to you directly?
TRACY: I don't know.  Maybe I'm being paranoid, but if he was trying to build a case that I was practicing medicine without a license or something, he might skulk around first.

Leo called and set up an interview with Randall Putney, who quizzed him extensively about Bolt (learning, in the process, that Leo didn't know the names "Surge" or "Lucien Knight").  When Putney all but confessed to trying to find Bolt's secret identity, Leo told him he hoped he failed. 

LEO: He's saved my LIFE.  Why do you have to try and, and... ensnare him?
RANDALL: He didn't save the life of that guy in the apartment building when it collapsed on him. 
LEO: Firefighters don't save everyone.
RANDALL: Firefighters have names and addresses and accountability.  Look, you're not going to tell your buddy I'm on to him, are you?
LEO: Huh?
RANDALL: Frankly, the guy gives me the creeps.  I mean, knowing that he could teleport into my house and Kentucky-fry me if he decides I'm a threat, and that there's not much I can do about it? 
LEO: Bolt wouldn't do that.
RANDALL: I only have your word for that.
LEO: You could... any guy with a gun could come along and shoot you.
RANDALL: Yeah, but a guy with a gun, I could shoot back.  Bolt?  I wouldn't even know he was there until it was too late.  Or you.  That, that genie you call up could tear me limb from limb while you sat a block away eating a sandwich around a dozen witnesses, right?
LEO: It doesn't work that way... besides, I... I'm not...
RANDALL: Are you trying to convince me that I'm not actually scared?  'Cause that's a tough sale.
LEO: I just think you're scared of the wrong thing.

Not long after that, Lucien got jumped at work.  A guy was checking out a sports car and said, "Hey aren't you... you used to play football, right?  High school sectional champs?"

LUCIEN: Yeah, I played ball.
GUY: Weren't you going to go pro?
LUCIEN: Blew out my knee.
GUY: Tough break!  I'm sorry I forgot your name...?
LUCIEN: Lucien Knight. 
GM: Your phone rings.
LUCIEN'S PLAYER: Which phone?
GM: The burner phone.
LUCIEN'S PLAYER: Anyone I recognize?
GM: No, but it's a San Francisco area code.
LUCIEN: 'Scuse me, I should take this.  Interrupt me if you have to.
GM: So... do you step away from him and turn your back, or what?
LUCIEN'S PLAYER: Not all the way away, but a few paces.
GM: The voice on the phone says, "Lou, it's PC.  Listen to me: they're onto you.  You have to get out of there NOW."  As you're parsing that, the guy who was looking at the car says, "Sorry about this if you're the wrong guy, but I do have to interrupt you."  He's got this big freaking handgun and he's going to shoot you.

Lucien didn't want to just 'port out and blow his cover completely, so he dove for cover with his bum knee creaking.  Not fast enough: The bullet hit his leg and was clearly some kind of high-tech giant-killer round because it (1) actually freaking HURT him and (2) immediately after firing the gun popped open and the attacker started reloading it.

GM: The shell he puts in it is the size of a fucking Montblanc pen.
LUCIEN'S PLAYER: Who else is around?  Are we on the show floor or the lot?  What are people doing?

We rapidly established that he was inside, that there were three cars in a row and three others not too far away.  There were a few bystanders and co-workers, who were variously diving for the floor, screaming, waving their arms or standing numbly saying, "Wait, he... he shot him.  He SHOT him."

Lucien frantically dialed Seth while the assassin took cover and reloaded.  Seth answered in midair.

LUCIEN: I need help NOW!  I'm at the dealership out of costume!
SETH: I'm about an hour's flight away.

On his own, Lucien dove under one of the cars while the shooter stepped up onto one and fired down through it at him.  Another hit, but the bullet set off the car alarm and the airbag, adding noise and smoke to the general confusion.

A shell game ensued, with Bolt teleporting underneath the cars, trying to stay one step ahead of the gunman, pausing only once to jolt him when he hoped no one could see.  Meanwhile Seth called Leo, who rezzed up the Alter and started jumping towards the dealership Hulk style.

LUCIEN'S PLAYER: I've been waiting for you to go all Hulk with the Alter.

In mid-leap, Leo saw there was a man on the roof of the dealership holding a rifle, but because that guy was focused on scanning the street and listening to his bluetooth headset, he didn't see Leo until the Alter had smacked him one on the head.  Turning groggily around, he opened up with a SMG.  First round on full auto was bad enough to spoil an attempted head-crush, second round on full auto prevented a more general assault, but each round was sucking 11 bullets out of a 30 round magazine, so the last round he only rolled 8d and didn't make it fast enough to avoid a knockout blow from the Alter.  Meanwhile, the assassin inside, increasingly frustrated, looked out as the SWAT team arrived and decided on Suicide By Cop.  When they picked him up, Lucien played up his injuries and got strapped down to a gurney.  As they were carrying him out, his cell phone rang.  The last thing he heard before the game session ended was the voice of the mysterious PC saying, "They've got your brother, but it's okay, we've got them under constant surveillance, one of my guys is ready to drop through the ceiling if they try anything, it's all under control..."

-G.

SESSION NINE: SEASON ONE FINISH

We started out with Bolt being hauled to the hospital, all drugged up, as Seth arrived at the aftermath to check out the "cape killer" pistol and the pretzel-twisted machinegun.

COP: Yeah, that big... thing on the roof, that's a buddy of yours, right?  Tell him I'm glad he was here.  I was point, I was just about to... that guy would've got me.  He'd have gunned me down.

Seth did paperwork, got a call from Randall Putney (whom he blew off) while Cicely woke up with Ken and James making her pancakes.  I had a plan for them to be watching CNN when August Park came on, which would prompt them to talk trash about magic-users, but rather than stick around Cicely lowered herself out the bathroom window, after leaving a note reading, "You guys seemed more interested in each other than me."

As she was doing her walk of shame home, her cell phone rang.  It was Leo (or Seth?) telling her about the attack on Lucien.  So she asked Leo for a ride to the hospital, not stopping by her home and finding out that it had been trashed while she was out and that the precious notebook (drink!) was missing.

At the hospital, Lucien woke and got an earful from his surgeon about the hazards of not telling your doctor that you're bulletproof.  he said that he wasn't going to out Lucien as a mutant, and that the O.R. nurses would consider it a matter of doctor/patient confidentiality, but "People talk.  They won't name names, but when a sedated patient breaks a scalpel, they tell the story to their spouses after a couple Miller Lites."

I'm trying to remember how the timing of events unfolded... I think the unhurt PCs set up shifts watching Lucien, and Leo and Tracy were going to spell Cicely.  When Tracy saw her in the room, he gave her the stink eye and withdrew.

CICELY: What's his problem?
GM: Yeah, none of you can think of ANY reason why Tracy would be uncomfortable around Cicely, right?

While they were talking over the drowsing Lucien, in walked a soldier in uniform with a bulky suitcase.  Introducing himself as Sgt. Blanc, he said he had orders to deliver something to Lucien Knight, "once the area's secure."  Saying that, he opened the case and pulled out a helmet that looked much like the cylonesque 'LADAR' helmet that Nikolai  (the Russian henchman) had worn, minus the gas mask.  He put it on, swore, and drew a gun, aiming up at an empty corner the ceiling.  Everyone got set to roll some sets when a woman's voice said, "Oui, calm down, I'm friend not foe" and Chlotilde materialized.

SETH: How long have you been there?!?
CHLOTILDE: A couple hours.  I hurt Lucien got hurt and decided to watch over him, just in case.

Chlotilde and Blanc exchanged some sharp words and she left.  Seth couldn't help noticing that Blanc's gun looked an awful lot like the one from the crime scene, and commented upon it.  There were some minor design differences and when Seth described them, Blanc nodded.

BLANC: Mm.   Yeah, that's a knockoff from this one.  Comes out of the Czech Republic.

Lucien woke up at some point and assured Blanc that he could do whatever he was going to do in front of these witnesses, and Blanc delivered him... a satellite phone. 

LUCIEN: Who sent this?
BLANC: Someone with deeper security clearance and higher rank than me.  I'm just the delivery boy.  That thing's encrypted and secure, though.

Saying that, it rang.  On the other end, was the mysterious 'PC' who'd warned him. 

PC: You're okay?  Good, good good.  Things are pretty crazy around here, I'm trying to keep my eyes on a lot of different... anyhow, Achmed has your brother but he's okay.
LUCIEN: Who's Achmed?
PC: Leads an Al Queda cell, they're gunning for you.  Don't worry about your brother.  I've got one of my best men right over them, ready to drop through on them if anything goes south.  Achmed's not the type to torture, he considers it 'beneath him'.
LUCIEN: So what happens now?
PC: He'll probably call you, then let you stew a few days -- that's in his psych profile -- before making some kind of demand.  Oh, in fact, he's calling right now.
GM: Your other phone rings.
LUCIEN: Lucien's phone or the burner?
GM: The burner.
LUCIEN: Hello?
ACHMED: Do you know what I hate, absolutely hate most about the life of an itinerant 'terrorist,' Mr. Knight?  The petty larceny.  The small, demeaning crimes.  For instance, right now I'm resting my feet on a crate full of stolen cell phones, taken to keep me from being traced.
LUCIEN: What do you want?
ACHMED: Why, YOU Mr. Knight.  And though you may not realize it, I've already got you.  Say hello to your brother.
LUCIEN'S BROTHER: Don't tell him anything Lew!  Don't do anything he says!  He-
ACHMED: That's enough from him.  We'll be in touch.

With all that, is it any wonder Lucien decided to skip the August Park celebratory dinner?  Leo didn't, so he may have been distracted when Tracy mentioned, in passing, that Brett McClure (Anjelica's husband in the coma, remember?) was no longer in the hospital. 

The dinner was quite a swank affair, with much discussion of how the PRF (People for Religious Freedom) should respond to the assault on Dayton.  Eisenerbrecht opined that they should lay low and avoid attention, while Park took the position that now was the perfect time for PRF to distinguish itself from "abusers of wisdom" like the Xolotl Cartel and "whatever group of terrorists did this."  That, in turn, raised the question of who was responsible.  Trey (who looked a little twitchy and nervous even before Cecily dissed him) thought it was probably a lone enchanter whose experiment got out of hand.  This was roundly jeered, with Eisenerbrecht suggesting that it could be a rumored group called Akrab Inshallah, who believed they had holy magic from God himself to do God's will in the world.  Another diner spun out a conspiracy theory about how the government was in on it in order to justify further crackdowns on enchantment.

Park gave a very rousing speech about how the time had come to stop running and take a stand against the forces of ignorance and intolerance that had imprisoned him.  He insinuated that he was interested in entering public service.  Every PC resisted his mesmerizing speech except Leo, who opted not to spend Willpower.  Park also had words with Annette, who told Seth that he'd explained what happened with the rune on his doorstep.  Annette had thought it was a protective ward, but instead it was a snare that would put the captured spirit into the captor -- which was why she had it in her.  "He's so smart!" she said, gazing at Park and pulling a lock of hair behind her ear.

At home, Lucien got a call saying he should be in San Fran in a couple days.  He soon explained to the others about his "tele-tunnel" between Ohio and California, and asked them to help if possible.  But the night before the deadline, there was a huge forest fire, which mobilized Seth and Lucien.  As for Cecily, she got a knock on her door from a wild eyed Eden McCoy who said they had to go save the trees!  As they were driving out towards the woods, Cecily took inventory of her spirits and the Blade of Justice said, "The woman you are with: She is your task.  You must slay her without my aid in order to have my service." 

CICELY: Kill my thesis advisor?  On the advice of a voice in my head?  Well, okay.

She lunged across Eden's front seat and slammed her foot on the gas while twisting the steering wheel.  The car crashed, and Cicely got hurt a lot worse than Eden, who clearly had some kind of mojo.  Eden was climbing out as Cicely commanded her cell phone to become a cobra and poison her.  As it was changing, Eden tossed her head at it, which clearly made it twitch and suffer.  Its change complete, the snake struck, but Eden rolled higher and turned herself into a tree!  Cecily blinked, and tried to back the car up to run it into the Eden tree.

GM: (Rolls)  Hm.  For some reason it won't start.

Eden changed back, paused only to say, "Oh, Park got to you, huh?  Go with him then.  See what happens to those who TRUST him!" before disappearing into the ground.

So of course, Cecily called Leo, as she always does when she needs a ride.  He took her out to the burn site with much waffling about what to do, not to mention concern on his part about just WHY she wanted to murder a woman who had, at one point, clearly risked herself with mojo to heal Cecily. 

CECILY: She was condemned by a SPIRIT OF JUSTICE.  What more do you need?
LEO: I don't know, maybe a trial by jury?

Lotsa fire excitement.  I realize these writeups have gotten pretty long, so I'm just going to sum it up.

-Seth learned that the fires seemed to be intentional and flew off looking for the source.  He found it -- a guy wreathed in the shape of the Salamander, the burning fire-lizard that attacked Cecily waaay back in the first or second session.  They tussled, and Seth learned just why it's a bad idea to fight a powerful fire spirit in the middle of a forest fire.  It knocked him out and as he came to he saw the man/spirit above him.  With an obvious effort, the man held back from frying him.

MAN: No!  He is... not for you!  You get the trees... nothing else!

-Lucien had to jump midair (a trick I've decided costs Willpower) in order to get to a pair of downed smokejumpers.  He didn't think he could teleport them back out, but he called in their positions and waited for a rescue chopper.

-Cecily and Leo had no idea how to find Eden, and indeed Cecily thought that letting the forest burn might be a good thing if it bothered Eden.  Leo, on the other hand, started organizing the command center to track the traveling heat distortion with weather satellites, to pinpoint the source.  (It sounded reasonable as the player described it and he made a good Leadership roll.) 

-Seth tracked down and rescued a family of six who'd been camping out in the woods.  Now THAT'S superheroin'!  Then he went to find Lucien and arrived just as a man covered in soot emerged from the woods, asking if the jumpers and Bolt were okay.  Clearly it was the Salamander's host, and when Seth saw him he recognized him... sorta.  The man backed away and ran off into the smoke, but Seth had a nagging feeling that he'd seen this douchebag somewhere before.

-Leo's tracking paid off, proving that the source was a single moving person, but it switched off an hour before they got the information.  They figured out a place he could have parked, but by that point it had started to rain and any tire tracks were obscured.

The next day, Seth and Lucien went out to San Francisco while Leo and Cecily's players took on the roles of PC's buddies -- a pair of army Talents built on 330 and 350 points, respectively.  PC told Lucien that they'd set up a 'kill box' on an island in the bay, hoping its undetonated shells would dissuade him from teleporting around on it.  (PC had the island swept.)  He said they had a few more hostages, "Some guy off the radio, Alexander Sobieski, and I guess a nurse who treated your eyes after the gas attack... Bahrira something."  One of the Talents, the woman Lucien had met before, told him "No offense, but if it's between you and my commander, or even your brother... well, if you guys die, that's a damn shame.  If my boss dies, it's a national security crisis.  You've seen what he does?  He's one of the reasons we caught Bin Laden two months after the invasion."

The hostages were immersed neck-deep in the bay as the tide came in, there were two snipers on the tiny island under rubber tents strung with copper wire, and more on boats.  Firing lightning at the boats might electrocute the hostages, who'd need to be teleported to safety as the tide came in.  He specifically instructed Bolt to come wearing a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, no hat.  Lucien showed up with a bandanna around his head, covering a microphone.  When he arrived at the shore nearest the island, he got a call.  Achmed asked him to take off the bandanna. 

LUCIEN: I don't think so.  You said no HAT, I'm not wearing a 'hat'.
ACHMED: Oh, this is unfortunate.
GM: You hear a gunshot.
LUCIEN'S PLAYER: I'm teleporting to the island!

He thought he was under fire, but what he'd actually heard was one of the snipers pink-misting Sobieski's head.  Then that shit was ON, and the two Army talents started in on the rescue mission.  It was pretty dramatic -- I'd actually kind of wanted a TRIPLE set up with the fire, the rescue and the island, but it didn't work out that way.  Maybe just as well. 

The army talents made mincemeat of Achmed and the two women at the apartment without getting a scratch on themselves or Lucien's brother.  Actually, I think Achmed may have escaped, but I can't remember... should have written it down or done this writeup closer to the actual event, huh?  Leo's player positively fell in love with the power array on the Talent he controlled -- I'll just say that running 600 miles an hour, taking three actions a turn without penalty, and eight levels of Go First were her SECONDARY powers -- mooning about "How nice it was to control a half-way competent character."

At the island, gobs and gobs of gunplay, but given Seth and Lucien's heavy armor, not a lot of it did big damage.  Seth saved Bahrira, only to catch a slug in the back of the head as he was setting her down.  It knocked him out and things looked bad for Lucien, who was going hand-to-hand with one tent sniper while the other picked at him, but Bahrira was a good hostage to get knocked out near, being a nurse and all.  Back in the fight, Seth picked up a big ol' rock and just flew it through the side of one of the boats -- an attack that had the unexpected effect of leaving him stuck halfway through the hole he made.  With a shrug, he just picked up the boat and pounded the other boat with it.  They were beat and battered, but they'd rid the world of seven terrorist operatives.  All seemed well until Seth heard a voice on his headset.  So did the Army operatives on the rescue mission.

PC: What the... get here now!  Hostiles are coming... they're coming at ME!  They're just air displacement, I can't SEE... I'm getting out of here...  It's just like Austin!  It's Austin all over again!

(In case you don't recall, Austin was the devastating spirit attack for which August Park was arrested.) 

Meg chased off after him, but couldn't save him.  They all rendezvoused at Lucien's brother's apartment, where a grim-faced Meg explained that 'P.C.' was "Paul Cohen," a Talent who could perceive everything going on in a three mile radius.  Apparently while the two combats had him distracted, someone drove into his radius of perception at high speed, crashed their car into his while he tried to flee, killed him, and drove off Meg when she tried to save him.

MEG: It was him again.  They should have just killed him.  WE should have just killed him.  Bastard.
LUCIEN (SETH?): Who?
MEG: August Park, of course.

With that, I folded up my GM screen and said the game was done.

# # #

So... I'm inclined, now, with the distance of time, to look back on what these nine sessions DID.  Not in any particular order, but let's see.

-Leo didn't get far with his love life, but took a few steps in his professional life.
-Tracy is increasingly alienated from his own powers, and with them, Leo.
-Leo did save some lives, whacking out assorted terrorists, spies and maybe a drug dealer or two.
-Bolt/Surge/Lucien kicked loads of terr'ist ass, but may have outed himself in the process.  He has an association with Chlotilde, but she probably considers him burned/damaged goods at this point.
-Seth has some very impressive saves and defenses on his record, but association with a known foreign agent is a big weight in the negative category.
-Cecily didn't move forward or backward with Trey, her girls-gone-wild behavior notwithstanding.
-What's going on with Dr. Sjeok's lab and what do they want with Leo?  And, deep in his backstory, what REALLY happened to his brother?
-Who killed Annette's sister?  Can her new spirit powers help her find out, or just get her deeper into trouble?
-Russian spy ring?  Smashed, but they got the notebook out of it.  The immortal teen girl escaped, along with the Letter From Prague's necklace.
-Al Queda cell?  Terminated, except possibly for Achmed, if he escaped.  I'm pretty sure he caught a slug, so he won't get far.  Unless the GM needs another recurring villain.
-The Mime?  Captured and then killed, and the notebook kept away from the group that hired him.  On the other hand, that group is still at large, unidentified and possibly willing to bargain.
-The Guys Who Blew Up Dayton?  Still at large, though it sounds like Mitch and Eden took a toll.
-Eden?  Well, what about her?  Is Cecily going to try to kill her?  Is Eden going to file a complaint about Cecily?  Just why does the Blade figure she deserves death?  What's up between her and Park, anyhow?
-Trey?  What's his game?  In fact, he's been talking to Mitch, along with Angelica.  That's GOT to be something juicy stewing right there.
-Dr. Park?  Oh, can you say "Season Two Big Bad?"  He could wind up as the overall bad guy for the game.

I really don't know where to go with this, which is why it seemed like a good place to call it.  I've got a vague idea that when I take it off hiatus, I'll start off with six months of REIGN company maneuvering between Nul, the PRF and others.  It might also be fun to split the party -- Surge and Leo in San Fran along with two new PCs, Cecily and Seth back in Ohio with two new PCs.  Too convoluted?  Hard to say.

Looking back through my game notebook, I had a list of "Material Players Want" and I hit three out of four. 

-G.

Sounds like a fun game. You guys are gonna go after Park eventually, though, right?

Yeah, but I've got to figure out what Park WANTS.  The guy has acquired Command 7, which means that he's a notch or two more persuasive than Hitler and literally has the potential to convince ANYONE of ANYTHING (given enough time).  He's a total megalomaniac -- he might make an okay benevolent dictator if acquiesced to.  He's determined to get revenge on everyone who sent him to jail (which means Cohen, three powerful Army Talents and possibly Mitch, too).  But what next?  He's out of jail, pardoned, has a suit pending against the prison in which his lawyer intends to put him on the stand and let him talk as long as he wants -- so, pretty deep funds.  He wants to create some kind of utopia, but how?  Perhaps more intelligently, where? 

He genuinely likes Seth, by the way.  Currently, Park's power suite is: Limited omniscience; Mind reading; inflicting confusion; and fairly hellish damage dealing and resistance powers.  But given the magic he knows, he can more or less change up to... whatever, as long as he's got a couple days warning.

-G.

Well.. so does Park have to be an out and out villain, just because he's the heavy of the scenario? Maybe some of the PCs will find him persuasive even without his mindbending powers. Maybe he'll make someone an offer they can't refuse. Cicely in particular seems willing to switch sides on the fly if it will increase her sorcerous power, I'm sure Park could teach her a thing or three.

It sounds like Park might be more interesting as a kind of ambiguous renegade, or perhaps he could be a puppeteer for a while if he's too much directly?

What about these ideas:

Eden is related to Park:  sister, or maybe daughter.  He wants her approval.  And even though he could Compel the heck out of her, he knows the difference between convincing someone and Commanding someone.  He needs genuine respect: something that the PCs are all on different sides thereof.

Linked to that, what if Park knows the drawbacks of Command 7?  What if he realizes that once he starts gathering a bureaucracy around him, he's going to be surrounded by yes men?  What if he needs the Talents (who can resist him) in order to make sure that his plans are not full of crap?

What if park is vain? What if he craves genuine admiration from EVERYONE?