The guys just ran for soda, and I had to hop on the computer to tell you that your game is exquisite. My friend Jere got it for me for Christmas (yeah, we were impatient to play it ;) ) and we're playing it right now. It's me and my friends Jere, Tom, and Josh.

My character, Andromeda, came upon her father's blueprints for a machine called the Blood Engine (I think I stole that from this forum or AP notes somewhere). She tore his blueprints apart. In a fury, he cut off the hand of Andromeda's page. After doing this, he realized the madness that overcame him, and went blind as he wept. Andromeda picked up her page, and ran off to save him while leaving her blind father to fumble about his study, calling her name.

Jere's character, Ursa, was called in to investigate the sudden deaths of half of the senate in the middle of a session. As he was investigating, the corpses began to crawl and killed the remaining half of the senators. Ursa slew the demon that was causing this, but the half-dead creatures it spawned continued to rampage. Ursa called in two nearby Knights of the Order of the Star to help him. They slew the half-dead things, and the senate building split, half of it crumbling to the wall. As they stood panting and dripping with blood, all evidence of the demon disippated, leaving the knights standing amidst the massacre, their swords stained with blood.

Josh's character, Sarga, was asked by the captain of the guard to ride into the night to rescue his daughter who was dragged into the night. He rode out with his brother and his mentor. They encountered the girl on the edge of a dark, twisted grove. She said she had fled her father who had struck her and wanted to keep her locked in the basement. She asked Sarga to walk with her in the woods for a little while. He did and his brother accompanied him. Part of the way into the grove, he realized that black tendrils snaked into her skin and were puppeting her movements, and that while they had walked the tendrils had worked their way into his brother as well. The tendrils began tearing the girl and his brother apart, splattering him with gore. He exposed the tendrils to the light of his Ring of Winter's Purity, and too late his mentor called to him, "Don't! We can still save them!" Saying nothing, his heart torn with grief, he picked up the head of the guard captain's daughter and walked back towards town.

Tom's character, Vega, rode on his ice spider to the keep of his concubine and her brother. The gate was smashed, and a child lay dead to the side of the gate. His concubine and her brother approached him and began accusing one another of the murder. They then attacked one another. The ice spider leapt on them, to paralyze them with its poison, when the corpse of the little girl stood and threw a piece of the door at the spider. It struck him, and as he lashed out, he injected Vega's concubine with too much poison causing her to die. Vega sliced the corpse child into pieces with his starlight sword, and the pieces fled to reform in a century. His concubine's brother confessed all that had happened - his wife would not bear him a child and a demon had promised him an heir. He had made a pact, but his sister had seen his child for what she truly was and tried to kill it. Vega cut off the man's head and rode away on his wounded mount.

This game is beautiful.

Actual play notes will come once the game is over and I have time away from eating turkey to write them, but man, this session has me so fired up I had to post. I have never had such beautiful fiction come from a single game session, let alone half of one. Jeepers.

Glad you like it!  Good luck with the rest of the game and I look forward to reading the play report.

yrs--
--Ben

Okay, one quick question that came up, and I'm sure this has been answered a bunch of times so I apologize:

Ursa and the two knights in the story above were kicked out of the Order and exiled in disgrace. One of the knights, Cassiopeia, blames Ursa, and wants him to swear servitude to her to make amends.

Can I say that he does, and then the Mistaken picks this up as a conflict? Or does this stomp over Jere's right to choose what his Heart does?

See we thought it did, but we noted two things:

- There's an example in the book where a Moon says that someone's Heart is falling in love.
- It would be very, very difficult - damn near impossible, even, to manipulate a character in a social situation. Maybe that's intentional.

After some discussion we decided against it, but we were a little confused by the seemingly contradictory example in the book (pg 72-73, by the way). We just didn't want to stomp on Jere's ability to decide what his character thought, felt, and did.

Hey!

You caught one of the only places in the rules text where what I wrote is different than what I meant.  Thanks and congrats!

So, you know how in the Conflict section it says that you can't make statements about another player's Heart character without their permission?  The same basic principle applies to such strong statements -- you need the player's permission in order to make it.  Thus, the easiest thing to do is just make the demand and see how the player reacts.

I'll need to rewrite that for the revision.

yrs--
--Ben