Beginner campaign in Darkon (possibly one-shot)

[HuManBing]

Falkovnian Interlude - 2013.05.05

We got a fifth player from out of town, who wanted to play a one-shot character in this game. I decided to roll her up a Falkovnian serving "inside the system", so to speak. It was my intention to give the players a peek on the other side of Beredostich, one of the most hated enemies in the Falkovnian apparatus.

The Falconer arrives

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Some weeks earlier, Lars Beredostich and his adjutant Klaus found themselves standing at the southern gatehouse, sharing an idle cigarette and watching the road pensively. The Ministry message had been clear on one point: they were getting a Falkner expert to help them keep an eye out. The Falkner was en route right now, with five birds-of-prey in special transit. Orders: to provide any resources and facilities needed for the expert, who would take up residency here and develop logistical and early warning support.

Beredostich stubbed out his cigarette and turned to his underling in the midmorning sun. No name?

None - the letter just said a Falkner expert. Nominally funded by the Army (but then again, what wasn't?), with special orders from above. Just your standard fat-arse birdthrower, Klaus surmised.

Beredostich squinted. There was definitely a pall over the road, in the distance. Up this high, the roads were just dust and pebbles, and you couldn't travel far on them in any wheeled contraption without raising a dustcloud.

Seems like the Falkner is here. Better button up, he said.

The carriage pulled up, a hooded figure at the reins. The two standing men saluted - Klaus with the smart efficiency of a subordinate trying to impress, Beredostich with the reserved studied casualness of a commanding officer unsure of his visitor's rank. He craned his head round to the side. The carriage didn't seem to have room for a passenger, what with all the boxes.

And the Falkner? Klaus asked.

Falknerin, came the response - correcting Klaus' gender mistake. Beredostich stared back at the hooded driver, who had offered the correction. Her voice was definitely female.

We'll help you with those, he said, and lifted the first of the equipment in.

Within half an hour, they were unloaded, and the driver had doffed her dust cloak. She was a serious-looking woman perhaps in her mid twenties, with dark hair and grey eyes that never seemed to miss a thing. Beredostich had dismissed Klaus, and now the two were setting up the feeders, stands, perches, and wire cages that housed the warbirds.

Careful, warned the Falknerin. They'll take a chunk out of your fingers if you let them.

Beredostich rubbed his hand ruefully. I see, he said.

Why don't you go back inside and I'll take care of these, she suggested. Her tone of voice made it clear she'd done this many times before.

Good, I shall review your papers. Come into my office when you're done and I'll have coffee.

The ambitions of Arnitz

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Beredostich flipped through her dossier. BEATE ARNITZ, graduated with full honors from Stangengrad Madel Gymnasium, trained under HEIKE BRAUNSCHWEIG in Kelmeswote. Said to have excellent rapport with hunting birds. Intercepted intel from Darkon to Maresotes. Can read and write other languages - Trecht and Dvoryrech, naturally, but also Darkonian and Paradel.

Beredostich felt a pang. This woman had talent, and plenty of it. So who had she pissed off, to end up here? Or, worst of all, maybe she hadn't pissed anybody off. Maybe she was just here, among the rubble and barbed wire, because she was a woman. Exercising poor discretion in choice of birth gender, he'd heard it once described. Too bloody right.

When she came in, he handed her the coffee and began without preamble. You know, this Erlösunghaus assignment is a hardship or punishment assignment - just look at the poor saps standing guard here. What story did they feed you to make you take it?

Fraulein Arnitz seemed startled, then caught herself. I was sent to provide overwatch services. The NRD said there had been increased guerrilla activities here, and her preybirds would ensure no more prisoner escapes.

Beredostich nodded, but there was a sour look in his face. True, there had been problems - but knowing the Nachrichtendienst bastards, that was most likely just a pretext. Did they give her a firm recall date, though? Without it, she'd just be whiling away her time here, amongst the mute hillsides and sullen prisoners. At least they'd given her some hawks for entertainment.

Beate decided to change the subject. Actually, not just hawks, she said proudly. Two hawks, one great eagle, one owl... and one crow. The crow was her Voice, as always: she could see through its eyes, hear through its ears. The others could only understand her spoken command, but the crow could actually voice them itself. In this fashion, a Falkner could potential control an entire wing of warbirds through a connection with only a single bird.

The two repaired to the roof of his tower, where he watched in amazement as she sent the crow up first, then sent the remaining birds one by one to fly in formation with it. Closing her eyes, she sent the crow in majestic swoops and circles high above. Then, the crow voiced a passable command in human tongue, and the great eagle peeled off, circling down towards the tower and alighting on the battlement near Beredostich.

The warden eyed the large bird warily. Beate opened her eyes and looked at him. And smiled.

This is the battleground of the future, she said. I soar with them, I see what they see. They can strike from above - a good peck or kralleschlage will blind my enemies.

Beredostich nodded, uneasily. Innovation in the battlefield was all well and good, for the country. But with the state of the art moving onwards, how much further would he have to catch up? How much of a gap widened between him and his father's example?

The two of them completed a purely pro forma mock combat drill. Parries, dodge, block. Feints, double beats, disarms. The like. Although inferior in strength of arm, Beate had a swiftness in her that matched or exceeded any of Beredostich's men. Once more, he felt keenly that she was wasted here in the wilderness.

Over schnapps, Beredostich asked after her father - a common courtesy amongst friends in Falkovnia. He had not heard of him, but the rest of her story was familiar. A young woman, restless with the dullness of home life, spurred on to follow her father's footsteps in the army. And although Beate had luckily stumbled across the alternative route of Falkner and raptor trainer, she seemed destined to hit the same roadblock as any other woman did.

It was a sorry exchange, but Beredostich told her the only story he had to tell. His father, Colonel-Oberst Beredostich, led a company famed for its bravery and ferocity. When he died, his men memorized the time and date and became known as the Twelve-Twelve-Three brigade. The son, Lars Beredostich, was assigned to the Kerkerministerium under Vigo Drakov, but once he won his reassignment, he'd follow his father. Years pass slowly, and the arm grows weak with age, but if Lars could not follow his father in glory, at least he would follow his father in death. Why grow old and infirm when you could meet death on your own terms on the battlefield?

Introduction, improved prospects?

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Come along, Beredostich said. I'll introduce you to somebody. Make a good enough impression, and maybe you'll get out of this shithole and back into that army.

For me? she asked, surprised.

Ja, don't argue, he said. Hurry up and get your rank pins in. Besides, it's not just out of generosity. If you get back out of this camp, I'll have somebody out there who owes me a favor. And don't you forget it!

The two stood at the head of the Prominente welcoming group at the south gate. When the Falkfuhrer Vigo Drakov alighted, Beredostich greeted him with a fond handshake, taking the leader's hand in both of his. Falknerin Beate Arnitz merely gave a formal salute.

I'm glad to be back here, Lars. I hear you have some more gladiators for me. The best damn trade goods our prisoner camps produce, eh?

Over a stiff drink and hunting plans, Lars Beredostich sought to bring up Beate. My Falkfuhrer, this is special agent Beate Arnitz. She has a rare talent with birds, and I think she'll be of great interest to you. Her birds are trained specially to coordinate and attack enemy forces with unusual ferocity.

The Drakov scion favored her with a faint smile and a few words of polite inquiry. But then the talk shifted immediately back to prison issues. Where were the former escapees? Did he recall the Vistani woman? Had any news turned up about her?

Beate kept her disappointment to herself. Once, when Drakov bent his head over the map on the table, she caught Beredostich's eye. He was apologetic.

Well, he tried, she thought. He alone amongst all the jostling ambitious men of this troubled nation, he had tried.

Farewells, and a new charge

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I shall have to leave the camp, Beredostich announced. We have new Vistani folk, and the Falkfuhrer intends to take them to the mines.

Understood, my warden.

I want you to take command here. You know the layout. You are familiar with the prisoners and their tricks. And the men look up to you and your preybirds. If you have any problems, send one to the supervisor's shack in the upper mines.

Understood, my warden.

Very good. You have a rare evenness about you, Falknerin. Take care to preserve it and you'll go far. Now tell me, is my hat on evenly? I always think I tilt it to the left too much.

[HuManBing]

Dreams of Buksca, and the Erlösunghaus Assault 2013.05.05

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Alcibiades recalled a flashback of the camp - Bukcsa the Ogre Mage, shackled in the Pit. Himself lowered down, a woodsman's axe on the ground before him. The camp adjutants above watching with amusement and awe at this contest between clear unequals.

Alcibiades looked up into the darkness before him, the only evidence of the monster in the two glinting golden orbs of its hooded eyes. Beneath which lurked the fearsome needle-toothed visage of a devourer of men.

Above, the Falkführer Vigo Drakov nodded to Beredostich, who called down. "Take up your arms, warrior!"

Alcibiades gazed at the axe, such a feeble weapon in the face of this all-consuming beast across the pit. This axe, and the central post, was all that stood between them.

Well, not quite all - there was one more thing. The memory of a terrifying negotiation, with the upper half of a dog's carcass, came back to him.

"Hold your axe in your right hand when you come to me, and I'll know we have a deal..."

Alcibiades reached out for the axe, picking it up with both hands. Then almost lazily he let it fall, hefting it before him in his right hand. The crowd above began a protracted cheer for their doomed champion.

Another nod from Vigo Drakov, and Beredostich called to the chainmen. "Give the Beast two measures' slack," he called.

The chains clanked, and Bukcsa's finely-hewn arms relaxed away from the wall. It took two lumbering steps forward, towards the hapless Alcibiades, and then the chains snapped taut with a jolt that rattled the mechanism above. The crowd gasped.

"Good... you remembered," said Bukcsa, in a voice gravelly and inhumanly low. "We have a deal."

The show they put on certainly made for good viewing. Bukcsa dashed across the pit, reaching for Alcibiades, but the chains looped taut around the central post, saving the human. Alcibiades dodged and ducked as Bukcsa's claws gouged lines into the earthen walls of the pit and his fangs drooled ichor as he roared.

Finally, sweat pouring from both contestants, Bukcsa cackled "Now" and lunged for Alcibiades, catching his left arm. The man swung the axe in a fierce arc, digging deeply into the monster's wrist and eliciting a cheer from the watchers. Bukcsa had no need to feign his howl of agony. He thrust Alcibiades away from him, nursing his right wrist briefly, then extended his arms back again. This time, Alcibiades' aim was true and he landed his second hacking blow directly into the wound caused by the first. The axe cut through the wrist like a rotten trunk and Bukcsa hobbled back, maimed, his disembodied right hand convulsing in spams on the ground. Notably, the chains around his arm slipped over his wrist, falling to the floor.

"One more!" shouted Bukcsa and closed again. Alcibiades hacked at the proferred left wrist, biting deeply but no clean severance. The axe jammed in the monster's forelimb, as the organizers above began shouting in consternation. Falkführer Drakov was ending the fight.

"This beast is a fair prize for the King; spare it for now," shouted Beredostich. "If the human makes any move against it, shoot him dead."

Crossbows were prepared as the chainmen desperately tried to haul Bukcsa in by the one last good chain to his left arm. The ogre mage looked at Alcibiades, the axe quivering deep in his injured left arm.

The monster almost smiled - although with a face like that, who could be certain.

"Well, at least we tried," it said ruefully. Then it picked him up and flung him headfirst into the ground like a rag doll.

...

Time passed as Alcibiades faded in and out of darkness, and when he came to, he was bundled on a cart with several other corpses, thundering across rocky roads and jolting pathways. A sudden yell, drawn blades, and arrows. Bandits looting the cart. Discovery. "We got a live one here!" "Take him, Gondegal will want to see him."

And then nothing more.

Assault on the Camp

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Back to the main characters. The Agency's strike team now consisted of Aarunder, Jevethro, and Vasily Szekler, supporting the four PCs Nadezhda, Lyra, Alen Vaughan, and Alcibiades. They found the camp quiet in the night, with guards largely unaware or slooping down in their watchtowers. Occasional patrol changes occurred, but by eavesdropping, they heard that all the dogs were out of the camp, taken to an undisclosed location elsewhere. Nearby, an owl hooted. Up above, in the nearest guard tower, two guards were chatting, Hans and Klaus, about their Prominente visitor (VIP) and their new lieutenant commanding officer.

The PCs cut through the first barbed wire fence, and then made their quiet way across the trench to the inner wire fence. All precautions for the camp appeared to be designed to keep the prisoners in, rather than interlopers out. ("Why would somebody be so crazy as to break into a concentration camp?") Cutting through the second fence was the work of a few more minutes of quiet focus. Alen, Nadia, and Szekeler prepared to breach the inner fence there, while Lyra headed south along the trench towards the warden's tower where Beredostich would be. As they did so, an owl hooted. Outside, Alcibiades strung his bow alongside Javethro, ready to put up a volley of arrows from outside the camp to distract and harass the guards within. Aarunder, the cleric, made his way to the south gate, there to prepare one of his "godly tricks".

Occasionally, guards circled between the towers. The guards were at a low state of watchfulness, and there was a figure standing atop the warden's tower. There were also no dogs to be seen around the camp, although they might have been asleep in their kennels. Every so often, the figure atop the warden's tower made a strange casting gesture, followed by the sound of flapping wings in the darkness.

Aarunder's godly trick came first. A cacophony of hymns, chanting, and shouted preaching emanated from the southern gate, and a bright light announced the cleric's luminary pyrotechnics. The Falkovnians lit up torches along the warden's tower, and three soldiers came to the rooftop, preparing bows and crossbows to pepper Aarunder. With their attention thus distracted, the breaching PCs completed their entry smoothly, with Alen and Nadia making their way undetected to the nearest unlit watchtower. Alcibiades also set up a volley of arrows against the two guards, pinning them down in the tower. Meanwhile, Nadia snuck past the watchtower and beside one of the female prisoners' huts, darting inside and waking one of the women up. A few quizzed questions and she learned that Beredostich and the Prominente were out of the camp, and they had taken the dogs with them to the mines.

The Vistani weren't in the camp. Up above, a crow called in a harsh cry.

Lyra had crept close to the warden's tower and was a few seconds into casting her largest possible "create fire" spell, when suddenly the air next to her face exploded in a fury of beak, claw, and feathers. Reeling backwards from the strike, she felt blood coursing into her right eye and lashes across her cheek. A large, enraged hawk had swooped in and nearly blinded her while she had been concentrating on her spell. At the watchtower, Alen saw that one of the Falkovnians was clearly a dark-haired woman, and she was releasing warbirds in rote into the night. Likely, these birds had powers of sight even in the near-darkness that made the PCs' attempted stealth futile.

It was time to retreat. Nadia ran back to the fence, informing Szekler and Alen that the Vistani were not here. Wondering if this might have been a trap, Szekler ordered a withdrawal. Alen darted a guard with a nonlethal paralytic and they managed to bring him down harmlessly for interrogation. Meanwhile, further south, Aarunder's distractions gave Alcibiades and Javethro enough time to take out both the Falkovnian crossbowmen and to wing the female falconer atop the battlements, striking her in the arm and felling her from view.

The party regrouped and Aarunder gave out what healing he could. Alen, however, decided he wanted more. Making his way back into the camp, with Szekler covering the breach behind him, he snuck over to the warden's tower, intent on killing the commanding officer here and securing any intel he could. As the rest of the camp scrambled against a phantom foe, Alen climbed a ladder onto the rooftop and found a set of bird stands and feeders, which he liberally dosed with poisons. Then he made his way down to a trapdoor in the roof and looked through to the second floor - Beredostich's quarters and offices. He was just about to descend through and get started with a ransacking, when he heard somebody making their way up the stairs from the first floor. He held back, watching, and saw the falconer Beate Arnitz come into view. Her face was creased with pain and one arm dangled uselessly, bloodtrails evident beneath the bandaging. She staggered to the ladder and began climbing it. Alen dropped a death-poison dart down, but as rotten luck would have it, it landed harmlessly on the shoulder of her leather armor.

Gritting his teeth, Alen leapt down the ladder and tackled her bodily.

Beate might have been wounded, but the Falkovnian training still gave her lots of fight. A swift kneelift made Alen fervently wish he'd invested in a steel codpiece, but even through the pain his two good arms prevailed against her one injured arm in strength. In some merciful quirk of fate, he found the dart still harmlessly stuck in her shoulder armor, and yanked it out and jerked it deep into her unprotected neck. Her struggles intensified and then almost immediately quietened, her deathgrip hands relaxing almost into a lover's caress on his wrists as she ebbed away.

Alen freed himself, then looked around. One door here led into Beredostich's office - he grabbed a knapsack and began systematically glimpsing through the documents, his expert Trecht fluency discering at a glance whether they were useless (food orders, guard changes) or key (prisoner profiles, journal entries). He raked documents and papers into it until it was full, and then shouldered it and went downstairs. A wounded soldier was there, an arrowhead in his guts - Alen delivered him quickly with a dose from the poisoned glove. The guard's final words were a mumbled memory of a long-ago graduation ceremony.

Outside, Alen darted between watchtowers, heading for the distant breach in the fence where - he hoped - Szekler would be waiting. He had almost made it too when a crossbow string sung out from the watchtower behind him and he was tumbling in a crazed somersault, a wrenching hot pain in his back. Alcibiades and Javethro immediately refocused their arrows against the lone guard, silencing him as Alen regained his feet and staggered to the breach. The crossbow bolt could have easily killed him - but luckily it had lodged through his rucksack and the books therein.

Snapping off the bolt, Nadia was able to get the rucksack off his back and they made their escape with Szekler. Aarunder exhausted the last of his deity's healing, and then took the rucksack, as he was heading directly back to the border. The party regrouped, where Alcibiades was busy interrogating the remaining guard. Alcibiades, in a flash, recalled the lessons of his secret police training in the Falkovnian Nachrichtendienst ("should the victim prove intractable, limited physical violence with an emphasis on pressure over damage may be effective ... in disposable victims, the break and flexion of nonessential bones typically produces satisfactory confessions ... key locations include the fingers, toes, and collarbones") and immediately set about applying them. Once he had stopped screaming, the guard was able to tell them that Beredostich and Falkführer Vigo Drakov had taken the dogs and the Vistani to the upper mines as part of their hunting arrangements. Exactly what they were hunting was unclear.

Alcibiades came back to the group (which had respectfully left him privacy to conduct his brutal interrogation) with this news, and Alen went and quietened the guard with a death dose and a moment's distaste for Alcibiades' tactics. They discussed what they could do. First, their fatigue was building, despite the wakefulness drugs Szekler had provided. Second, their time was running out - staying in Falkovnia after sunrise would reduce their chances of survival, especially with seven cumbersome captives. Third, they weren't sure where the captives even were - although they were at the mines, searching for them in the tunnels and passageways could take hours. Additionally, Beredostich didn't seem like the type of person who would let them live after hearing of the massacre at the camp and the assassination of his prize falconer.

To the mines

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In the end, the PCs voted in favor of pressing on and retrieving the Vistani as promised. Szekler applauded this, and they set off to the distant quarry. On the way, they were walking along a narrow mountain path when they heard hoofbeats in the distance. Lyra set up a fire trap to corral them, and the rest of the party set up arrow ambushes along the flank and rear. Eventually, six horsemen made their way down, and in the ensuing melee all were felled, with one taken captive for interrogation. The PCs mounted up on the horses as Alcibiades took to interrogating the unfortunate survivor.

Meanwhile, Nadia made good use of her beast-calming Vistani power, quieting the panicked horses and bringing them to meek docility for the party to use. She watched as a crow flew down beside her and tapped on the stone. Wary of the dead falconer's art, she drew a blade and prepared to throw it, but the crow merely dropped something on the rock and flew away. It was a Falkovnian coin, with the Hawk's crest clearly visible on one side, but the reverse side scoured clean of the visage of Königführer Drakov. Suddenly, Nadia felt an overwhelming urge to possess the coin, and she acquired it. It felt warm in her palm...

BLOOD OF MY BLOOD... came the voice in her head. She looked around, panicked. But nobody else had seemed to hear it, and the horses were stilling calming down from their exertions.

I HAVE WAITED SO LONG FOR YOU. COME TO ME.

"Who are you?" asked Nadia, much to her companions' consternation.

UP THE MOUNTAIN. HURRY. THE TRAP WON'T HOLD MUCH LONGER.

Nadia pulled herself upright, her prior fatigue forgotten and new desperate vigor in her veins. She vaulted onto her horse and steadied it, then spurred it up the mountain, the coin clenched tight in her fist. Whispering words of comfort and gentle urging to her mount, she led the way to the topmost mine, along a winding mountain path that zig-zagged back and forth across a cliff-face. The rest of the party scrambled to keep up with her, their shouts and urgings futile at her back.

Atop the cliff-face, there was the unmistakable evidence of torches, lanterns, and human silhouettes. The party had finally located the commanding officers of Erlösunghaus 189. Somewhere up there was Beredostich, the Vistani, and the Falkführer.

Nadia rode at reckless speed up the trail, unheeding the warning shouts of the Falkovnians, and unable even to shake her head to show she didn't understand them. She breached the top, where Hauptmann Lars Beredostich tried in vain to flag her down - her prior tormentor now going by in a flash of irrelevance - as she dismounted and dashed past conscript crossbowmen and into the mines.

Alcibiades was next up, and he greeted Lars Beredostich with a crisp salute and a flawless officer's hail in Dvoryrech, the noble tongue. It was worth a gamble. "Relief forces from the NRD - six in total. Falknerin Beate Arnitz at the camp told us you'd be here. We understand you could do with some aid?"

The gamble paid off. Beredostich eyed him warily, no recognition in his eyes of the man he'd once tormented. Instead, an inexpressible weariness and fatigue as he nodded and waved Alcibiades into the supervisor's shack. "Good, I've been awake for three days straight. You'll find coffee over the fire and the good stuff in my pocket flask. I'll join you presently."

The other PCs dismounted - Javethro and Lyra careful not to speak lest their foreign tongue betray them - and entered the shack. Nadia had long disappeared through the rickety structure and into the mine shafts. Beredostich brought them some dry crackers and drinks and poured a bit of abfalduz essence in for anybody who wanted it.

Beredostich reminisced abstractedly about his dead father and his abandoned hopes of living up to his example. All he had to look forward to now was to die in battle like a true Falkovnian soldier. Meanwhile, his guests watched him with bemusement - evidently, his sadistic treatment months before had made absolutely no impression on him. For them, he had been the most brutal force in their living memory. But for him, they were just guests at the camp dining table...

Entering the Darkness

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Nadia found that outlines of rocks, walls, and the ceiling leapt into uncommon clarity here, even in the palpitating darkness of the mines. Something was happening to her eyes and she could actually see without torchlight. Up ahead lay some track work, leading to a hand-winched elevator. She knew that what she sought would be on the bottommost level - she could feel it in her blood.

WHAT DO THEY CALL YOU? came the voice.

She seized the lever and winched furiously, biting her lip as her hair shook with the effort. "Nadia, also Nadezhda," she gasped when she could.

AH, SO THEY HAVE GIVEN YOU A FALSE NAME TOO. I TOO HAVE A FALSE NAME, BESTOWED UPON ME BY THE IGNORANT MEEK. THEY CALL ME "VIGO".

Nadia froze. The Falkführer! But there was no time to waste - the coin was burning hot in her pocket and the elevator doors were swinging open into the darkness.

In the room, her senses told her there was a coalescing pillar of shadow in the center, forming and reforming like mist. But as she looked, it solidified and collapsed and receded until there was the crisp outline of a man, youthful yet with quiet power in every step, walking confidently towards her.

"At last," came the refined voice, calling to mind the distant memories of an aristocrat - a brother - a favored lover. "You have come."

Nadia stepped forwards, surrendering herself to the embrace of the shadows.

Bukcsa's visit

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Up above ground, there was a rising commotion from outside, as horses whinnied in fear and dogs chased down their prey with frenzied barking. Beredostich threw back the rest of his coffee and wiped his mouth, shouldering a crossbow.

"Everybody outside," he said. "Our quarry has finally come to us!"

From the vantage point of the mining office, they looked down through in the glare of the torches. A confusion of dogs were rolling and snapping about an inky blur, the dogs hefting into the air and snapping before being carelessly thrown aside. One dog appeared to hover as it closed its jaws around something unseen and held on like grim death.

"Hah - Bukcsa, you do not disappoint," said Beredostich. "Bowmen, to arms!" The PCs were given a crossbow each, and Beredostich's conscripts leveled their own weapons at the unseen monster as it closed the distance. Dogs were flung and broken and trampled as it reached the base of the winding cliff-face trail and vaulted up it.

"Loose!" shouted Beredostich, and the crossbowmen did so, firing their bolts at Bukcsa. The ogre mage suddenly flashed into view, abandoning its attempt at magical stealth - all glistening teeth like the visage of some deep-sea ice-cold monster, its enormous frame straining as it bounded up towards its hated tormentor. The bolts that struck it seemed to glance off with no effect. The few that took merely seemed to add to the monster's resolve.

"Reload!" shouted Beredostich, but by now it was a moot order. Already the conscripts were pressing back, dropping their crossbows against the bold advance of the unstoppable. "You fools, where do you think you're going? Stand fast - that's an order!"

Alen and Alcibiades were the only ones left still reloading, as Szekler and Javethro were bounding down the trail to rescue a small figure that had gone down to confront the raging monster: Lyra.

"No, come back!" shouted Alcibiades. "He can't be reasoned with!" But Lyra was oblivious to the danger as she skidded down the cliff-face and came to a stop before the massive monster. It drew up and regarded her, its waist level with her head.

"It doesn't have to be this way," Lyra said. "You don't have to kill anybody."

Bukcsa flicked her aside dismissively with his right hand - the hand itself significantly smaller than his left - and muttered "I will have my vengeance". Lyra tumbled down but landed on her feet. Of all the humans on the cliff-face, she would come away from this confrontation least injured.

Szekler and Javethro were not so lucky. Bukcsa passed them both on the way up, mashing them effortlessly off the trail. Szekler's ribs broke as he was smashed against the cliffside and he doubled over on his good side, unable to move. Javethro went the other way, falling off into space and tumbling with numerous fractures.

Bukcsa came up to the penultimate turn in the trail and raised a finger at Beredostich. "You, now," it said. In response, Beredostich doffed his cape and drew his sword, dauntless until the end.

Bukcsa stormed up and the Falkovnian hacked at him, but Bukcsa disarmed him like a toddler and gripped his head and neck in its large left hand. "Your life is over, the only fitting tribute is to make a good end of it," it said.

It dangled him over the cliffside and with practiced swipes of its smaller right claws, Bukcsa stripped Beredostich of his breastplate, his tunic, his bracelets, and his leggings. Bukcsa slid a razor-sharp claw inside his breechclout and stripped him of that too, unheeding of the Falkovnian's furious kicking and ineffectual punches. For a moment, Bukcsa held the naked man at arm's length above the void, like a sculptor taking in the beauty of a well-formed statue.

Then, with a look over its shoulder at Alcibiades and Alen, to make absolutely sure they would take notice, Bukcsa began stripping Beredostich of his skin, starting from the abdomen and working outwards, taking care not to puncture the intestinal membranes. Beredostich remained conscious and highly vocal throughout this process, although near the end he ceased forming words and his output more closely resembled a farmyard beast in its slaughterhouse throes.

Alen and Alcibiades felt numb.

Vigo's Proposal

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Your kind visit fills me with a delight, sister. I had almost forgotten this sensation, it has been so long. Fellow bearer of the spark, we are different. All around me I am surrounded by these lifeless clay vessels calling themselves people. And even though I give them the quickening from time to time, still they disappoint and bore me.

Our father renounced half of his immortality so he could leave the Shadow Rift and the Twilight Gate to walk among men. He brought the spark of shaping to their crude matter. And look at you - so luminous before me in your blazing beauty! Together we can regain the immortal glory of our father's homeland and return in rightful triumph, recognized masters among the lesser folk.

The journey will not be easy for you. You have forgotten much of the lore of our kind, just as I did. But if you will join with me and be mine, I shall shepherd you through the listless and the aimless, once again to stand upon the heights and to view the future with eyes unclouded. The metal of the sword can survive many reforgings and come out stronger. The wooden handle and leather haft cannot. But no swordsmith worth his mettle ever weeps for those...

I have planted my seed within your mind. We shall speak again before long, and I shall be with your thoughts so long as you are near me. Go now, it is fitting that you rejoin your friends.

Call me, in times of trouble, and if I am near I shall deliver you - flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood.

Bukcsa's departure

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His flensing work done, Bukcsa held Beredostich's quivering flayed carcass above him and nodded appreciatively. Bloody bubbles and gurgles still emanated from the Falkovnian warden as he hung helplessly, writhing and twitching in the utmost extremity of agony. Then Bukcsa dug his shrivelled right hand into the Hauptmann's abdomen, seizing coils upon coils of his entrails, as he hurled his corpse off the cliffside with his strong hand. The guts and intestines unravelled and grew taut, then snapped as the gory projectile tumbled out into the void. Bukcsa dropped the ordure and turned to face the others. His gaze first lit upon Alen.

The humans were too transfixed with horror and fright to even react. The ogre mage raised an encrusted finger and nudged Alen's chin up to meet his gaze.

"I don't know you," it said at last, and turned away. It went to Alcibiades next.

"But I remember you well," it said. "And I think you recall me too."

In flash, it was upon him, yanking him up by the head and neck, and slithering its right hand claws under his armor, stripping him of his greaves and breastplate and tunic, cutting his clothes off his body.

And then Alcibiades realized this was the creature whose hand he had removed in the pit and it was back with who-knew-what mad lust for vengeance and that he was going to die just like Beredostich did. And Alcibiades screamed and screamed and screamed himself raw, until his own blood rasped his throat and gurgled in his teeth.

Bukcsa responded by thrusting his sharp-taloned fingers into Alcibiades' mouth, silencing him. The salt sting of Beredostich's fleshly matter, still staining the monster's talons, gagged him. Behind him, Alen regained his senses and fumbled a dart into place with uncertain fingers, then threw it. It stuck into Bukcsa's hide with a shallow thud, and no apparent effect on the murderous monster.

"Shush, mortal," Bucksa said with a comforting, even loving air. "I'll give you a little kiss to remember me by." And with a flick of his hand, he opened up Alcibiades' left cheek from lipline to eyeball and threw him aside to cower and shriek in the flickering lamplight, clutching his mutilated face with his reddening hands.

Nadia came up from the mines to this hideous tableau. She drew her knives, throwing three of them in practiced assurance. They all found Bukcsa, but two glanced off him, and the third struck him shallowly, creating a wound that almost immediately healed. The ogre mage turned around and in two strides was upon her, batting Alen out of the way like a discarded puppet. Bukcsa's mighty left hand closed around Nadia's neck and shoulder as he lifted her up against the wall.

Nadia's heart was in her mouth as she screamed for Vigo to help her.

And then...

Coalescing in the darkness behind her. An inky pressure against her nape, as of the intimate play of lover's lips to comfort. "Be thou not afraid..."

Time slowed.

A fist raised inverted before her eyes, drawing a sword of shimmering blackness from a scabbard she could not see. Even as the ogre mage's maw opened lazily in its raging shout, the sword crossed once to the right, gathering for a good swing, and then shot back to the left.

Nadia felt the hand on her relax, as the ogre mage stumbled backwards in pain and astonishment, his left arm gushing black ichor from a stump. One golden eye turned back towards Nadia in amazement, searching for the source of his assailant.

Beside Nadia, another fist appeared by her left temple, hefting a heavy contraption into view. Wheels turned, sinew clicked, and a bolt slid into place. Then, with a singing note of release, arm and crossbow both jerked back as the bolt flew straight and true. The darkness was gone as quickly as it had arrived.

The bolt blew out Bukcsa's right eye and knocked him off the cliff-face, roaring in incoherent rage as he dashed repeatedly against the rocks below.

The fight was over. Both monsters were laid low, and the hapless would-be rescuers were the only survivors.

Well, not quite. There remained one little detail to attend to.

Vistani revealed

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Nadia guided her uncertain steps back into the mines now, listening with the other half of her blood. Once already she had come here, seeking Vigo and her Shadowborn heritage. Now she was back searching for the affinity of her Vistani brethren. On the second level, she found a glimmer of a fire in the distance, and came upon a camp of bedraggled, drawn-looking wanderers sleeping.

One silhouette was upright, sitting at watch beside the fire with a dagger in his hands. She came up and raised her hand in greeting.

"Took you long enough," was all he said.

[HuManBing]

Administrative note: I've also remotely hosted my campaign journals on a Google Website for my players, as they are not registered with Fraternity of Shadows and I'd rather they didn't have to come to a spoiler-rich environment to see their past progress.

The remote-host site is here; I've also linked to it in my signature. Everything I post on this thread is duplicated in the remote site, but there will be a few extra materials on the remote site, like maps and PC/NPC headshots. (Plus Clint Eastwood as Azalin and Sean Bean as Drakov. Far out.)

Please continue to post comments, questions, and any other feedback in this thread at your leisure!

[HuManBing]

Delivering the Vistani - 2013.06.08

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The party now consisted of three people in walking condition, three people with serious injuries (Alcibiades with a huge gash in his face, Vasily Szekler with broken or cracked ribs, and Javethro with leg injuries), and six Vistani (one able-bodied fighting man among them). Of the twelve people, only two were front-line combatants. Getting back to Darkon would depend heavily on avoiding combat wherever possible - which meant leaving Falkovnian territory before daybreak. Moreover, in order to avoid the nocturnal-bound Creeping Death, they could not enter Darkon until daybreak. Clearly, they'd have to carefully coordinate their travel plans.

Alen set about gathering the panicked horses as best as he could. There were the six they rode in on, and then four more in the stables at the top of the cliffside. He did some searching from a vantage point and found two more. Nadia brought the Vistani out of the mines. They were six in number: frail matriarch Elvira, her daughters Tsuritsa and Snezhana, Snezhana's teenaged son Beshaley, and then twin brothers Hyskosa (frail seer) and Soldanni (able-bodied man), and finally their much-younger sister Dulcimae. Beshaley was loud-mouthed and abusive, both to his relatives and to the Agency party sent to rescue him. But after a few hours of putting up with his attitude, Nadia realized that he was the "man of the family" and the obnoxious behavior was a result of his own pressure and insecurities. Outside, Alcibiades scrambled to collect his scattered gear and to find some serviceable clothes to cover his nakedness, now that the ogre mage had been stopped bare moments before skinning him alive. Nadia produced a fishhook needle and thread, and laboriously sewed up the worst of the gash in his face. Bukcsa's sharp talon had left a massive tear from the corner of his mouth almost to his eye, and the effect was rather like a perverse ragged half-smile. She put the bandage over his face and gave him a swig of abfalduz-infused hard liquor. Alcibiades hoarsely roared in pain as the burning liquor seeped through his torn cheek and stained the bandage a sickly pink color with his blood.

Finally prepped, the party had a dozen steeds left over from the Falkovnian guards and conscripts, and they set off back towards the camp, breaking north from the path in order to reach the distant border. Gathering the immense severed hand of Bukcsa the ogre mage into a burlap bag, they headed homewards.

Nadia found that her eyesight was largely unhindered by the darkness, and details leapt unbidden to her sight almost as clearly as they would in clear daylight. From afar, she made out the dim light of a gathering of four soldiers in a clearing, setting up a stake with a prisoner. She motioned the nine horses with injured or non-combatants to stay back, and she made her way forwards with Alen Vaughan and Lyra, across three steeds.

They were three against four. What could they do? Nadia closed her eyes and reached back to her brother, her fellow demon-spawn Shadowborn - Vigo Drakov. She asked him what to do.

In her mind, she heard his indulgent laughter. Those puppets before you are the dregs of this country's refuse - and quite unfit to raise hands against a luminous being such as yourself, he said. Show them the hand of your strength and they shall scatter like husks in the wind before you.

Unfortunately, at about this time the guards staked their unfortunate prisoner, and this did little to help Nadia's confidence in their prospects. What could Vigo have meant?

The guards heard the three horses coming, and prepared for battle. Their weapons were scourges and whips - clearly not marshal weapons for warfare, but to torture and maim prisoners. Nadia had a beltful of throwing knives, Alen had his fencing blade and darts, and Lyra had her magical spells. But would it be enough?

Vigo's words repeated themselves through Nadia's head, as the three horseback riders emerged into the flickering campfire and stood before the guards. "Show them the hand of your strength", he'd said.

The first guard stood and challenged them, and Nadia suddenly realized what Vigo had meant. She called to Alen "open the burlap bag and throw down the trophy from the Beast!" Alen did so, pulling out the enormous severed blue-skinned hand leaking black ichor, and threw it to the ground.

The four guards all blanched at this - everybody in the camp knew what Bukcsa looked like. And if these folks had been able to cut off one of the Beast's hands, they were not people to be trifled with. Two of the guards ran immediately, and the final two seemed sorely shaken.

"Let us past and you'll live to see the daylight," said Alen simply. That was enough - the remaining two scarpered, leaving the path open for the party.

Szekler's condition worsened, despite the precaution of laying him on his back, and he began to slip in and out of delirium. Several times he muttered conversations with "Delly Bee", speaking to her as though to a misbehaving child. Other times he spoke as if reporting back to the Agency for missions long past. One thing was clear: without medical aid, he would die.

The party hurried onwards.

Border fort and Leila's bargain

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It was already light in the east when they arrived at the border fort. There was no other passable border crossing for dozens of miles, and the border fort was supposed to be abandoned. However, as they had learned on the way in, it was very occupied, with a number of Falkovnian soldiers newly installed and lights in the windows. The way in had the good luck of mists masking the party's intrusion - but sadly on the way out, the sky was clear. The party thought about this.

A crow wheeled overhead. Nadia looked at it and recognized it as the familiar of Vigo Drakov, her enigmatic mentor.

Nadia reached out to Vigo (distance making the message very attenuated) and found out from him that there was a band of freedom fighters - the Deliverers - heading their way from the east. The band was led by Sir Gondegal, a longtime thorn in the side of the Drakov regime (though Vigo had long since stopped caring about such mortal trifles in this kingdom of puppets), and they would be at the fortress in two hours' time to help the Agency party engage the fortress garrison.

Nadia looked at the ominous bright sky to the east, and looked back at the trail south back to Falkovnia. They had just crossed that expanse of broken land and rocky terrain in three hours - who knew how many Falkovnians were after them even now. Did they have two hours to spare?

Lost in thought, they gradually became aware of cigarette smoke. Nadia looked back at the Vistani, who had been known to light up a grass-stalk once in a while, but none of them was smoking right now. She reached forward with her sense of smell, and circled around a tree. Sitting in the tree branches was an odd sight: a youngish woman, pale skinned and Roman-nosed, smoking a bright ember cigarette in the predawn murk. Her clothing was uniformly black and she had a dust coat around her as she perched and smoked away obliviously.

Nadia hailed her, and the woman looked down at her, then leapt gently from the branch, alighting nimbly before her. She introduced herself as Leila - "Dawn" in an old tongue - and so the timing of their meeting here was fortuitous. The dawn was coming, and the Falkovnians were sending a relief force to bolster the fortress after the wreckage of the Erlösunghaus camp. The PCs could try to chance the two hours it would take Gondegal to help them... but she had a faster way to get them safely past the fortress if they wished it.

There was no cost involved, but they would be required to swallow a gem. She produced four gems with runes on them. These were provided by the Magreji Repatriation Fund - and the RFP was a well-funded patron that had contracted with l'Agence d'Affaires to retrieve the Vistani. The current mission was at their behest, and now that the PCs were so close, the RFP didn't want their Vistani wards captured at the last hurdle by the fortress.

Nadia, Lyra, and Alen all wondered at the gems and why they would be required to swallow them. Leila said it was for insurance - it would help the RFP and Agency keep track of where they had gotten to, to keep them safe. They asked Szekler (then in a lucid state) about it, and he confirmed that he had swallowed one such gem a long time ago, when he was about to undertake a very dangerous mission for the Agency. Then, Vesildur Ermoroud had crafted the gem for him, but he suspected that Leila's gems would function in a similar way.

The PCs were faced with a choice - take the deal on Leila's terms and leave now, or wait and see if Gondegal could deliver them.

They decided to take Leila's terms. They swallowed the gems, Alcibiades with some significant discomfort, and then turned back to her. She nodded and smiled and handed them each a control rod - four in total. "Let us go on a walk," she said.

The group of five went along a perimeter hike, keeping at a constant distance of maybe a quarter mile between them and the castle. Leila called a stop at one point and declared that one member of the group shall stand at this spot, facing the castle. She took the control rod, lengthened it, twisted it, and then shortened it again. "Hold it like that facing the castle until we're all in place," she said. "Stay here and do not move."

Then the group continued in its perambulation, one member fewer. Another spot, another member left behind, control rod twisted and engaged in their hands, facing the castle. This repeated itself two more times, and then Leila herself took a control rod and headed for the final 72° perimeter arc.

For a number of minutes, nothing happened, and then Leila must have activated her control rod, because all of a sudden the castle disappeared. In its place there was a huge white explosion upwards, engulfing the castle and shooting towards the clouds. Their distance made the explosion silent for a few seconds, and then a great booming rushing roar filled the air.

The white plume arched high and then reached an apex at some 200 feet elevation, melting away in spray and mist. The PCs realized they were seeing a plume of water. Leila rejoined them and reclaimed the control rods from them.

"We commissioned a portal at the bottom of Lake Kriegvogel," she explained. "You helped us to create a portal here, around the castle. When activated, the two portals join each other. Gravity dictates that water will flood out of the lake bottom at half a mile's pressure, and the force involved collapsed the castle easily. Much safer than gunpowder."

Suddenly, the vague conversation from their journey into Falkovnia came back to the PCs - Szekler talking with Javethro and Aarunder about lowering a complex array into a lakebed. The PCs marveled at the magical equipment and coordination the Magreji Repatriation Fund could clearly bring to bear.

Something fell out of the sky near them, landing with a thud in the light misting of mud. They took a quick look and saw it was a Falkovnian helmet. It clearly wouldn't do to dawdle. They collected their group and quickly headed past the ruined castle, where the subsiding waterspout was forming a temporary lake and several rivulets down the side of the cliff face. They uncorked the poteens of levitating potion, and drank them - then pulled themselves weightlessly up the cliff face into the Darkonian side. Maybe it was the sudden gain in elevation, but by the time they were over the cliffside, they looked east and found themselves bathed in sunlight. Dawn had arrived at last, and Falkovnia was behind them in ruins.

Back to Velnarest, meeting Dale Reeve and the Bec bandits

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The PCs returned to the village of Velnarest, and entered Vierpalt the Zverg's tavern, noting that there were lots of horses tied up outside. Inside, the air was thick with smoke and booze and banditry. A rival bandit outfit, the Bec, had made their home there, and they were harassing Vierpalt for ale. Luckily for them, they had enough coin to pay.

Nadia and Lyra drew lustful leers from the gang of ne'er-do-wells, but a lieutenant named Krager Braddock made a space for them and the Vistani in one of the corners. Pulling up a chair, he began not-so-politely to look through their belongings, knowing that they had barely three fighting men between them, and the Bec had dozens. The Vistani were dragged in, as were Javethro and Szekler (the latter of whom kept his face carefully turned towards the floor when they laid him down on a blanket), and then the PCs were told to wait. They tried nervously to make themselves comfortable.

A large, throttled-looking man came down the stairs and introduced himself as Dale Reeve, head of the Bec bandits. He quizzed them in a broad obnoxious accent that made everybody in the party want to punch him very hard and put a gag in his mouth. (GM's note: Cockney.) He asked first what such fair maidens were doing in such dodgy company, and then where they came from - given that the Falkovnian Army had invested Nartok Keep to the west. The PCs eventually caved and told him the truth - they had just come over the border from Falkovnia, having rescued the Vistani from a concentration camp.

This caught his interest. He asked about the camp's number, and they said it was Erlösunghaus 189. He then asked the name of the camp leader, and they told him it was Lars Beredostich. But, they told him, Beredostich was dead.

Reeve called for silence and the entire pub fell quiet. He then commanded Nadia to repeat herself, which she did. Beredostich, she informed him, was dead. Killed by a monster that escaped the camp, and skinned alive. Reeve made her hold her story for the moment, and he called over to "Molly", a tired-looking strumpet who tagged along with the Bec. She came over and took a perch on his proffered knee. He then made Nadia tell the full story.

She did, starting with the raid on the camp and then the journey to the mines, and finally with the confrontation between Bukcsa the ogre mage and Hauptmann Lars Beredostich, which the latter lost. Reeve's expression took on a strange tinge as Nadia described Beredostich's agonized death as the ogre mage ripped his skin from his twitching frame over the void.

Molly squealed in surprise and delight, and Reeve excused himself quickly, urging her upstairs and then slamming a door which did nothing to hide the subsequent sounds of vigorous copulation behind it.

The PCs glanced at each other, nonplussed and slightly revolted, as Reeve upstairs worked himself into one crisis and then immediately went back to work on another. Molly's shrill screams provided a strange contrapuntal highlight to Reeve's throaty shouts.

Krager Braddock, Reeve's lieutenant, pulled up a chair and offered them an ale. He'd never seen the boss in such good spirits, and he asked them what they'd discussed. When Nadia somewhat dubiously told him about Beredostich, Braddock nodded appreciatively and called up to Reeve, asking if it's okay for him to explain to the PCs about Beredostich. Reeve answered "YES" several times fortissimo and Braddock took that to be permission granted. He told the PCs about Erlösunghaus 189, five years ago, when Reeve and his then-small gang of the Bec had been caught smuggling grain out of Falkovnia.

Beredostich remembered

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Dale Reeve had good reason to hate Lars Beredostich. A more stuck-up, prissy, Sunday schoolmastery, pompous, do-gooder, meddling miserable bastard never walked the land. Beredostich was short on compassion and long on preachy holier-than-thou sanctimony, harping on about how he believed everybody had some element of good in them and they behaved in evil ways through choice not nature.

Reeve never cared for philosophy. He was a simple man, who lived his life according to the "three Fs": fighting, filching, and mating. And he was willing to do whatever would keep Beredostich's toffee-nosed hypocrisy satisfied and to eventually release him as a "redeemed criminal".

Beredostich came to trust Reeve and rotated him out of hard labor into vegetable gardening. He even gave him some after-hours duties, allowing him run of the camp. This was of course a cunning plan on Reeve's part - the after-hours duties also gave Reeve access to the women's huts. Beredostich caught Reeve in flagrante up to his ears in a pair of ragged female prisoners and had the man placed in a cage in the central square. Reeve passed an evening of cramped wretched sleep and awoke blinking in the morning to find the entire camp arrayed in front of him.

Beredostich had the camp's food rations placed behind Reeve, with a protective screen of guards before it. The rest of the prisoners - men, women, and children - were arrayed before him in neat concentric semicircles, as if at a show. Beredostich then pronounced Reeve's sentence - for betraying the trust reposed in him by the camp, he would "finish what he started", only this time without the aid of female company. Guards came to the cage and tore his loincloth away, leaving him bare before the viewing masses.

At this juncture, Braddock broke off in his storytelling to explain something to the two women, Lyra and Nadia, with an aside. He didn't know if it was the same for women as it was for men*, but if you're the sort of person who has difficulty finishing what you started without outside help, then having a bloody great big slew of filthy unwashed prisoners watching your every hand gesture was hardly going to help. In fact, it was likely to put you off your stroke. Permanently.

*Generally, yes.

After several utterly humiliating minutes of earnest effort, Reeve gave up, absolutely defeated. The camp filed out silently, then went to their posts at the mines, at the rock quarries, and at the vegetable patches, working on hungry stomachs. Then they broke for lunch.

Beredostich had them file back in at their semicircular formation earlier and the guards blocked off the food again. It became abundantly clear that this was going to continue until Dale Reeve could finish what he started, under Beredostich's terms. Also clear was the fact that Dale Reeve couldn't. And the camp filed out again. This time, a few of them spat at Reeve as they filed past his cage.

By dinner, the entire camp was ready to murder Reeve and he knew it. This time, the guards were there as much for his own protection as to keep the starving exhausted workers away from the food. Reeve managed about a minute or two before the utter hydraulic futility of the entire exercise caused him to break down entirely and rock back and forth, sobbing continuously.

On the second day, Beredostich relented and let Reeve out of the cage and let the starving camp back at their food. Reeve was a forever changed man after that: one of the three crude pillars of his raison d'etre had collapsed, leaving only fighting and thievery as his remaining supports. Luckily, he was still a tough enough bastard to beat the living tar out of anybody who came after him. This would be put to the test numerous times in subsequent days.

When he was finally released, Dale Reeve had become a brutal callous murderer, and he quickly took to terrorizing the road between Nartok Keep and Velnarest. (Nadia bit her tongue at this stage - these Bec bastards were the bandits who had shot her in the back with an arrow while trying to hijack their ore shipment, weeks before!) He never did take to whoring like in the past, though - seemed like something inside him had irreparably broken, and he had lost the appetite for it entirely.

Upstairs, Reeve gave a final ecstatic bellow like a bull at the butcher's, and the ceiling finally stopped shaking. Braddock listened intently for a few minutes, but the only thing to break the silence was Molly, reappearing at the stairwell, exhausted but happy. The bandits put up a raucous round of applause for her.

"So, looks like you done well, at least by old Dale up there," Braddock said, motioning for another ale. "Fancy another?"

Lyra, Nadia, Alcibiades, and Alen all shook their heads, a little green around the gills.

Presently, Dale Reeve sent a bandit messenger downstairs for some tonic water and dry biscuits. Also, the messenger had a message for the PCs - in gratitude for services rendered, Dale Reeve was allowing them to go unharmed.

Lord Vorjek's estate

The PCs found their way back up to the crumbling manor house and faded glory of the Vorjek estate. Lord Szelenaz Vorjek was there, as were many peasants and laborers from the outlying areas. Though he had fallen on hard times, their lord still allowed them to stay with him at his manor in times of trouble. The Vistani finally relaxed a bit and told stories and sang songs.

Nadia heard two songs about her, sung by Soldanni (Hyskosa's brother) accompanied by his guitar. They both seemed to demonstrate a curious depth of knowledge about the intimate details of her relationship with Vigo Drakov...

Welcome Nadia (based on So Long, Marianne by Leonard Cohen (perf. John Cale and Suzanne Vega)

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Come over to the vardo little darling
I'd like to try to read your palm
It's clear you've come to our humble gypsy camp
In hopes of following us back to your home

Chorus:
Welcome Nadia, wayward wanderer
From hearth to heart
From light to dark
Wandering until the end

You know that we love to have you here
But sadly you've forgotten so very much
We refused to play for the giorgios
And now the giorgios refuse to play with us.

Chorus

You left when you were almost young
Deep in the mistlands of the heart
You gazed after us like we were some kind of talisman
Before you went striding through the dark

Your visage bespeaks of a new paramour
Then why does your soul seem so alone?
Your lover's on the edge of a mist-filled precipice
Devouring the rivals to his throne.

Chorus

You really are such a pretty one
Your beauty commands the choice of any swain
But you've cast in your lot with the Shadowborn
Between the sacred and profane.

Chorus twice

Black Left Hand (based on Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

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Take a little walk in the rural roads in the mists and damp
Scurrying fast on the mountain paths and the shadow of the camps
Shambling past the slave-built ramps and the hanging traps
Girl you know you're never coming back
Past the gallows and the graves and the stocks and the racks.
On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man
In a military coat with a black left hand.

He'll wrap you up in his arms, tell you that you've been a good girl.
He'll sniff out every little sordid dream you tried to keep a secret from the world.
He'll reach deep into your hole, steal your shrinking soul
Girl there won't be a single thing that you can do
He's a god he's a demon he's a shadow he's a guru.
They're whispering his name through this devastated land
But hidden in his coat is a black left hand.

You don't have any memories - he'll get you some.
You don't have any legacy - he'll give you one.
You don't have any kith or kin, but just stick with him
Well don't you worry girl cause here he comes
Through the gulags and the ghettos and the prisons and the slums.
The shadows reconvene to wherever he stands,
Caressing the unwanted with his black left hand.

You'll see him in your nightmares, you'll see him in your dreams
He'll appear out of nowhere but he ain't what he seems
You'll see him in your head, in your empty bed
Girl you'll even see his face in the eyes of the dead
Can't be shaken, can't be lost, can't be tricked, can't be fled.
You're an inconsequential piece of his apocalyptic plan
Designed and directed by his black left hand.

Nadia confronted Soldanni about the meaning of his lyrics, and the thirtysomething gypsy shrugged and said the lyrics just came to him randomly, from the moods of his twin brother Hyskosa. Nadia followed Soldanni's gaze and looked upon the wasted, rail-thin, stooped figure of Hyskosa warming his feet grudgingly by the fire. Soldanni had no idea what the lyrics meant, but he sensed them from Hyskosa's dreams and visions. If Nadia wanted to know more, she should speak with Hyskosa or Elvira - they could explain many things to her.

[HuManBing]

Vorjek's household and the Vistani casting - 2013.06.08

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Vorjek came over to Alen and Alcibiades with a journal. He had received the package of seized Falkovnian papers from the camp thanks to Aarunder, and he handed them back to the PCs, as the rightful owners. Alcibiades read through Beredostich's personal journal entries and learned interesting facts about him.

Five years ago, his father, Colonel Oberst Jürgen Beredostich, died in battle, and he was so beloved by the troops that the regiment called themselves the "twelve-twelve-three" in honor of the date of his death. Lars Beredostich looked forward to joining the regiment and serving with honor, as his father had before him.

Sadly, it was not to be. His career stalled and he found himself sent to Erlösunghaus 189. Initially when he received the notice, he thought he was being sent there as a prisoner - but he later learned he was being installed as its warden. He got there and looked forward to redeeming the prisoners under his command, shaping them into responsible people and citizens who could be of use and service to the great Falkovnian nation.

As time went by, however, hope turned to despair. He realized he would never leave the Erlösunghaus on his own. Somebody - probably the NRD - had put him there, and he would only be able to get out with a powerful patron.

Some time in his third year, Falkführer Vigo Drakov came to visit him at the camp. Drakov also told him of his loss of a father - how the Königführer treated him as an estranged son whose sole purpose was to sit quietly at the head of the prison ministry and supply him with occasional gladiators. Vigo knew he could do better, if given the chance.

In him, Lars Beredostich saw a reflection of his own abandoned life. The two struck up a rapport. As the years passed, Alcibiades could see the effect this had on Beredostich's state of mind. His journals and sketchbooks, once sketching nature scenes and uniforms and quirky sights of life from the camps, became darker and obsessed with death and despair. Eventually, they focused solely on torture and pain - Beredostich had clearly abandoned all hope of leaving, and with it, all aspirations of improving the lives of his prison wards.

Near the end of his journal, Alcibiadies caught one rare beam of light and hope in his otherwise despondent reflections. A promising young falconer, Beate Arnitz, had been sent to the camp. She was bright and talented and clearly a victim of bureaucratic infighting. Maybe, Beredostich thought, if he could save her career and get her out, he could redeem himself and his wasted life in some way.

Alcibiades finished reading the journal and sat back, contemplatively.

Elvira and Hyskosa

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Elvira shuffled her Tarokka card deck and held it out for the PCs to touch individually, saying that the deck must be attuned to the spirits of all those who wished to see their futures in its machinations. Then she dealt out the cards in the following order:

The Herebefore:	_	The Innocent/The Philanthropist (Coin2)	_
The HereAndNow:	The Torturer (Sword9)	The Avenger (Sword1)	The Beast
The Choice:	The Prison/The Bishop (Coin8)	The Guildsman (Coin5)/The Artifact	The Mists/The Hooded Man (Sword7)
The YetToCome:	The Dictator (Sword8)	The Marionette	The Master of Stars

Elvira dealt a card first at the top row - The HereBefore, but two cards tumbled out by accident instead. She initially made to correct it, but then left them where they lay. "In the past, there were two actors. The Innocent represents somebody without guile or malice: a tabula rasa or blank slate. The Philanthropist is somebody who lives by his wits to do good for others. Perhaps a guide for those who have no familiarity with these lands?" (Naturally, this represents the PCs - three of whom are Mindlost because of Darkon's memory draining effect, and the fourth of whom is a native Darkonian and leads them with the blessing of the Agency.)

Then Elvira dealt out The HereAndNow, showing what the PCs are currently dealing with. On the left is the Torturer (clearly Beredostich, or another Falkovnian), and on the right opposing him is The Beast (possibly Bukcsa, or Vigo Drakov). In the middle is the Avenger - the warrior that comes back to put right what was left wrong for too long. That would be the PCs, returning to Falkovnia to put an end to Beredostich's depredations.

Finally, Elvira dealt out The Choice, showing the PCs the Guildsman as what would transpire if they do nothing (serve the Agency). Or they could choose other urgent affairs to attend to, including The Prison (Nartok Keep, which has now fallen to the Falkovnians and all civilians within are prisoners), or The Mists (defy the Agency and hide the Vistani). Elvira then rose and headed back to her curtained divan, saying the casting had wearied her and urging the PCs to consult with Hyskosa.

Hyskosa was in hardly better shape. The twin of Soldanni, he nonetheless looked decades older, and sported a deep angry scar across one eye. He chewed incessantly on a grassroot and occasionally hacked and coughed and spat. One of his eyes was milky white and trailed off to the side. He fixed Nadia with his remaining baleful eye and told her a little of her past: she was a distant blood relative to the Elviran family, a bloodline that had become too dangerous even for the Vistani to hold. There had been a desperate peace-making attempt to intermarry a Zarovan groom with Dulcimae - Hyskosa's twentysomething sister - but that turned acrimonious and violent when Hyskosa himself was called upon to bless the union, and he was unable to honestly do so, knowing that there would be tragedy in the future. The ensuing fight hideously wounded Hyskosa and caused the Zarovan family to expel their own, Bogdan Tireŝ, as a Darkling traitor. Now Bogdan Tireŝ stalks the Elvirans and Nadia both, hoping to avenge himself on them.

So much for the past. Concerning the future, Hyskosa resignedly informed her that if she brought them to the Agency, they would separate him and his brother, and send the young women and the boy to forget their pasts and become standard Darkonians. Elvira, robbed of her wandering ways, would quickly age and die. Hyskosa himself would be placed in a garret and mined for information and visions by the Darkonian leadership. Soldanni would make whatever living he could recycling his old songs and telling tales, until he began repeating himself due to separation from his brother and his lyrical source - and then he would eventually become Mindlost or Mind-led too and be reduced to a lifetime of menial labor.

Hyskosa told Nadia this was all foreseen and guaranteed if they sent the Vistani to the Agency, but if they could help take the Vistani to the Mistlands instead, then the Vistani could wander the Mists of the north of Darkon indefinitely, staying safely away from the prying eyes of the Darkonian leadership and their dark plans.

He also picked up Elvira's deck of cards and casually finished the fortune telling. He threw down three cards on top of The Choice cards, showing The Bishop in the Prison (Eternal Order in Nartok), the Artifact on the Guildsman (Agency's future relic hunt for the PCs), and The Hooded Man in the Mists (Bogdan Tireŝ).

Nadia was torn. She went to go outside and saw a crow - Vigo's familiar, circling above. It came to land on a nearby tree branch, and she spoke with Vigo. She received several visions from him over the course of a few days, as the party healed up.

Visions of Vigo

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Nadia's first few contacts with Vigo brought her only faint audible and visual cues - Vigo on horseback, Vigo rushing to a Falkführer meeting, Vigo grateful for her conversation at a boring meeting. Later visions showed him seated at a desk, writing in a ledger and nodding appreciatively to Nadia.

The Nursery:

One dream put her inside Vigo, as Vigo was inside a womb. Vigo realized he could puppeteer his mother's limbs and actions. He jerked her upright and made her stagger to the doorway. He reached out with his lifesense and felt the nearby sleeping life forces of people. He made his mother enter the nearest bedroom. Several women got up from their beds and gently escorted Vigo's mother back to her bedroom. Her heartbeat was pounding.

He made her get back up and go further down the hall. There were faint life forces in another room, neatly arrayed. He made her enter the room and reach into the nearest crib and hold the life force in her hands. Then he cracked it open and released it gently into the night. It faded. He picked up another life force - very small and fragile and weak - and let it go. It went to the floor and opened and released into the night as well.

Vigo was curious. He went from crib to crib, picking up the gentle warm life forces and then turning them on themselves or separating their components or pushing them into each other. In every case, he watched with detached clinical curiosity as they faded gently under this treatment.

Finally, when no more remained, he yawned inside the womb and turned his mother's steps back to the bedroom. Her gown beneath him was damp from loss of urinary control, and he had to clamp down hard on her jaw to stop her murmured moans and whimpers from alerting the others, but he got her back into bed and then settled for sleep. The moment he let her arms and legs revert to her control, she curled up into a tiny ball and began bawling and rocking back and forth like a terrified baby. Vigo sniffed at this - such lack of control was unbecoming an adult.

The Falkmeet:

In this dream, Vigo was a younger man, and he was bored at a Falkmeet with the other Drakov sons - Mircea, Vlad Drakov II, Mikhail, among others. At a perceived snub from Mircea, Vigo stood up and beat him repeatedly about the face and neck, drawing deep gouges in cheek and jawbone. It took the combined force of three Drakov men to pull him away from the stricken Mircea, and nobody could explain how Vigo caused such gaping slice wounds with his bare hands.

The Broken Blonde:

As Nadia repeatedly visited him in her visions, Vigo's mood appeared to alter. Eventually, she visited him in his tower at the Kerkerministerium, viewing him through the vantage point of one of his crows. Vigo was entertaining a guest at the time - a blonde woman in a revealing dress who was apparently far ahead of him in drinks. She cooed into his ear and stroked his arm pleadingly.

Vigo was halfway through a goblet of wine at the time, a drink which consumed his entire attention, and he shook her off. Noticing his crow's gaze, he raised his glass and took a sip. After a while, the woman gave up and began some solo work on her own. Vigo finished his wine and turned to attend to her with his gloved left hand, saying "Here, allow me..."

Matters progressed, and as the blonde began exclaiming emphatically, Vigo seemed to recall something. He quickly grabbed the empty glass with his idle right hand and, bringing it lower, deftly saved the carpet. In the eventual ensuing silence, Vigo glanced back at the crow, sensing Nadia, and raised an arched eyebrow. Smiling to her, he raised the glass and drained it of its liquid contents - the blonde's own somewhat more recent vintage.

He poured another glass of wine as the blonde recovered and then whistled for the crow. Nadia felt her viewpoint lunging forwards towards Vigo's outstretched hand as the crow alit on his fingers. He brought the crow into a bedroom, along with the languid blonde, and they engaged amorously there for another session in a luxurious bed.

Vigo looked back at the crow, and quirked his eyebrow again that Nadia was still watching. He brought his paramour out of bed, unheeding her feeble protests, and whistled for the crow again. He threw a nightgown to her and then fished around the dresser, locating rope, and bound her wrists and neck. Then, whistling to the crow once more, he led her out of the bedroom by the halter and up the staircase to the attic.

The crow thought to Nadia: "I know a shortcut" and flew out the window. It flew up several stories to the attic, where it reentered a window and then perched on the pulley of a strappado. The crow looked around the room, uncaring of the equipment, restraints, and implements that served as its furniture - but Nadia certainly had some inkling.

Presently, Vigo arrived with his companion, whom he secured to a bronze statue of a bull rampant with heavy straps about her limbs. He then disrobed himself of all his clothing except for his gloved left hand. Nadia half-expected to see some hideous deformity, but apart from an intricate tattoo of coiled tentacles on his lower back, Vigo appeared normal. He also appeared to sport the normal masculine proportions, too.

Vigo initially set about his companion in the traditional fashion, much to his companion's tired but happy delight. After growing bored with this, he affixed a chained prop to himself and continued. His companion's reaction to this was very different - pleasure turned into panicked shrieking and desperate efforts to disengage herself. For Nadia, the victim's struggles brought to mind the shrill unthinking agony of a cat she'd once seen at a fair, its tail crushed beneath a cartwheel and the cat struggling hopelessly to free itself as the wheel slowly rolled over on top of it.

The crow flew closer, but Vigo fixed it with a scowl and saturnine eye, and motioned behind him. The crow diverted itself and perched on the wall there instead. For a while, Vigo continued unheeding of his partner's bestial screams of agony and futile struggles - with only occasional pauses as he readjusted for target. Eventually, he had no need even to readjust - it had all become one and the same.

As Vigo toweled himself clean of her matter, he called for a chirurgeon to staple her back up. The crow took flight and exited the window, as Nadia abandoned the vision and her latest reflections on the nature of this new mentor.

Nadia's player has asked if it's possible for her to revert to an older save game.

I told her no.

[HuManBing]

Leila and the Vistani - 2013.06.08

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One of the seances with Vigo's crow turned out violent when a raven came out of the sky and attacked it. The crow flew down to shelter behind Nadia, and the raven pursued. Eventually the two birds disappeared around the corner of the Vorjek estate and Nadia ran to follow them.

She ran almost headlong into Leila, the mysterious agent, who reminded them of the importance of the mission and getting the Vistani to safety. She also reminded them of the stones they ate and what they risk by keeping the Vistani so close to the border where the Falkovnians could recapture them.

Nadia sought counsel from Vasily Szekler, whose allegiance was to the Agency. He informed her that the proceeds from the successful completion of this mission would be vast - the Magreji Repatriation Fund was willing to pay a sum which on its own would fully fund Agency operations nationwide for the next four months. Szekler himself stood to gain Agency rank and Alen stood to gain full employee status. The three Mindlost PCs would immediately cancel their debts and be offered independent contractor positions.

Balanced against that, Szekler acknowledged that he knew the Vistani had significant reservations about their futures in the Agency. If they knew of something he did not know, and if their foretelling powers showed that delivering them to the Agency would result in a violation of the asylum intent from their rescue and extraction, Szekler would be willing to defy the Agency and deliver the Vistani to the Mistlands north of Neblus. Hyskosa had identified that as the only place where they could wander freely to avoid Static Burn, and also where the mists would hide them from the divination powers of the Darkonian leadership.

Nadia was torn. On the one hand, her Vistani blood cried out to save her brethren - but on the other hand, Vigo made it clear that her duty to him was to deliver the Vistani as planned to the Agency. Unable to decide, she went to Hyskosa. The twisted old seer smiled at her - whether in bitterness or in sympathy, it was hard to tell - and told her that the future he had seen in the Agency was something he was well prepared for, and which his brother and Elvira would face without fear. As for the others, they would lose their memories and would hardly mind. Nadia took this to heart, but the decision could wait until they reached the Nebula Road. There, they would choose to go west and deliver the Vistani to Il Aluk as planned, or they would choose to go east and flee with the Vistani to the Mistland.

Ultimately, the PCs headed eastwards towards Mayvin, then stayed the night. On their way in, Leila was ahead of them and waiting at an overhead cafe to watch them arrive. She gave them a barely perceptible nod as she lit her cigarette and sipped a tiny cup of beverage. The next morning, after Nadia had a disturbing dream about Vigo (see above), they set out and went to Corvia, where Leila was once again one step ahead of them. The final leg of the trip took them past the Boglands and to the junction of the two highways. At the juncture, Nadia decided that she would indeed honor the Agency contract, and they headed west. Leila was at the gates of Il Aluk to see them enter, and threw them a salute as they did so.

The Vistani wordlessly submitted to the Agency. Their journey was at an end.

Recognition

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Little remains left to tell. The three Stockmasters - Rafiq al-Bahraini, Kellsin Cotter, and Vesildur Ermoroud - voted to elevate Vasily Szekler to Stockmaster status, allowing him a guiding vote in the Agency's policies. Alen Vaughan was elevated to full employee, giving him run of significantly greater Agency equipment. And Nadia, Lyra, and Alcibiades were elevated to independent contractors, forgiving their debts, and with generous bonuses paid for services rendered.

The Agency heard debriefings about the Falkovnian situation, and pondered their next move regarding Nartok. Szekler was entirely absent - his urgent business called him to Nartok to deal with the Falkovnians (who had by this time entered the city and removed the Darkonian flag, although they apparently had decided against flying the Falkovnian banner overhead).

Finally, the Agency retired to the shores of Lake Placid, a half-day's drive west of Il Aluk, not far from the ancestral homes of such noble families as the Van Richten family and Nin's homestead. At the lakehouse of Shayla Nin, the Agency held a soiree for their officers and employees. Three things of note occurred:

a) The party was given a choice of three missions to undertake next: investigate Nartok Keep, or investigate shipments of abfalduz in Il Aluk, or steal a painting.
b) Vesildur Ermoroud got drunk and began pursuing a possibly illusory pink-haired half-elf female. He had a piece of paper with the number 216 scrawled on it. Later, a blue haired half-elf male turned up looking for the pink-haired half-elf female: she had hinted that she would get undressed for him if he hid himself away in her bedroom. After the PCs couldn't help him, Blue-Hair went back to his room, 216.
c) The PCs all met Shayla Nin, the head of the Agency. She was the sort of very fashionable, infinitely gracious, and happily witty hostess becoming somebody extremely wealthy and in her early seniority. Alen was asked to debrief Nin at her office. What then ensued left him somewhat bemused - the lights quenched, a female voice playfully called "I will find you, and I will catch you!". The prophecy came true: hands gripped him and hungry lips found his in the darkness as a whisper thundered in his ear "You're so very young!"

[HuManBing]

GM commentary:

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Nadia's player is a bit oblivious to literary clues and hints. She tends to play her character as a person of high passions and doubled-bladed violence when ass needs to be kicked.

Fortunately, Lyra's player (who is dating Nadia's player in real life and therefore knows when she may need a literary pointer on occasion) has commented here and there to point important things out to Nadia's player.

One such example is the open question of whether Nadia was impregnated by Vigo. Nadia can't actually remember much from the meeting, and Vigo did say he had planted a seed in her (head). But the plain implication is that he may have taken physical advantage of her too while she was out of it.

Nadia's player had been gleefully embracing her quasi-incestuous dynamic with a "Shadowborn" fiend-blooded, and showing off her cool powers. But when Nadia's player realized the possibility that she might be pregnant with a demon child that may one day be able to mind control her from the womb, she became fairly adamant that she wasn't at the right stage of her life and career to give birth to an unholy spawn.

Unfortunately, it's unclear if Darkon has any pregnancy testing kits.

Nadia: (Goes up to Il Aluk wizard) Sooooooo... I may or may not have had sex with somebody who may or may not be a demon, and if he isn't, then he may or may not be one of Vlad Drakov's sons. Got anything for that?

~ Excerpt from "How to Gain a Very Quick Reputation in Darkon".

The Shadowborn (fiend blooded) template bears some explanation too. It grants darkvision, as well as some degree of telepathy (based on contagion by symbolic or personal items - e.g. Vigo's coin to begin with, then Vigo's seed in her head). It grants some degree of lifesense (Vigo could "see" the life of other infants while he was still a fetus). It also grants a shadow weapon which can bypass all physical damage reduction and apparently a good deal of magical reduction too - for Vigo, it's apparently a longsword or bastard sword, and for Nadia it's a scimitar (it carved through the enchantments protecting Bukcsa the ogre mage, for example). The shadow weapon may also be a ranged weapon, as per Vigo's crossbow. Finally, the Shadowborn template also gives them an extradimensional carrying pocket, usually with an aperture located in the chest. Vigo "drew" his shadow blade from a cavity roundabout his chest (and even drew it through Nadia without harming her, during the battle against Bukcsa) - Nadia will have a cavity in her chest too. The Shadowborn does not need to actually bare their chest in order to draw or store things in it, to the mild disappointment of some male players around the table who had hoped to see Nadia's player role play this process accurately.

Fortunately the gaming group had a GM (me) who was acutely aware of the unequal sexualization of female characters in RPGs was willing to argue hard against it. Chastised, the male players buried their hopes of seeing Nadia's chest cavity, but they did call the GM a spoilsport.

The GM did not see fit to raise the point that he had, up until quite recently, been dating Nadia's player as this was entirely unrelated to the subject and would have merely been a distracting factor.

[HuManBing]

To the Capital 2013.06.15

Cleanup at Daegherill

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The PCs found themselves hungover and tidying up amongst the remnants of the celebrations. Alen woke up to find himself being carried by Massisi out to the waiting room outside Shayla Nin's office, followed promptly by his clothes. He dressed quickly and went downstairs to the cold serving breakfast outside.

Nearby, two angry half-elves glared sullenly at each other: Vesildur Ermoroud had holed up in what he hoped was the closet of his pink-haired paramour's guest room 216 - instead it had turned out to be the bedroom of his rival for her affections and he had passed a wretched evening cramped up in the closet after watching his rival get naked and go to bed. A morose poodle stood stranded on a floating cello in the pool. And at the table, representatives two of the Agency's competing ecclesiastical clients - the Church of the Eternal Order and the Church of Ezra - squabbled tediously in the morning light. The house guards had to intervene at one point as the churchmen came to blows, knocking one over into the food table.

Also, a courier came down by the gatehouse and delivered the mail. One item, addressed to Shayla Nin from Vasily Szekler, was a summary of the situation in Nartok Keep. Nin allowed the PCs to open it on her behalf, out of respect for their close working relationship with Vasily Szekler. It outlined that the Falkovnian occupiers had indeed managed to seize control of Nartok Keep, with apparently minimal loss of life to the defenders, and furthermore were sending out summons requesting a "Reckoning" or "Beurteilung". Summonses had gone out to a number of luminaries and dignitaries, requesting their expertise and promising them safe passage to and from Nartok and while they were within the city. The people so summoned included: Agency members, members of the Church of Ezra, members of the Magreji Repatriation Fund, barons and earls, and even colleagues and compatriots of Dr. Rudolph van Richten. Exactly what the Falkovnians were hoping to accomplish by this, nobody could say - although Shayla Nin consulted with her Stockmasters and noted that the Temple of the Eternal Order had not been requested to join the Beurteilung.

"Perhaps," she surmised, "they're hoping to attack the credibility of the Eternal Order - and they're going to try to use the Church of Ezra to do it..."

The lattermost person in that list, Dr. Rudolph van Richten, was present at the celebrations, and Shayla Nin introduced Alen Vaughan to him. Alen spoke with him, informing him that he had wanted to study the arts of the mesmerist in order to better combat the supernatural. He described in great detail his combat against Bukcsa the Ogre Mage, and he said that he would need more than poisons and darts to deal with that sort of thing. Van Richten nodded and scribbled a note for him, telling him to look for Leadger Wynn under the Botanical Gardens - if Wynn himself couldn't teach Alen, he could definitely find somebody who could.

In any case, the PCs met with Kellsin Cotter, who asked them what mission they preferred. The three missions, explained in greater detail, were:

• Return to Nartok Keep, to investigate what the Falkovnians were up to, exactly, and how they managed to capture the fortified city without a protracted siege.
• Track the shipments of abfalduz drug (a Falkovnian-created narcotic) in Il Aluk, the capital city, and find out who's bringing it in and where it's coming from. The drug should have been cut off now that Nartok is occupied by the Falkovnians, but significant quantities are still making it to the Il Aluk streets and drugging the poor and homeless.
• Break into a mansion in Neblus and steal a painting that should not have been sold at an auction. The Agency intended for one of their partner organizations to auction it "openly" to a high bidder, which would be another partner organization. Unfortunately, Baron Olmar Dalthis bought it and now it must be "retrieved".

The PCs decided that the abfalduz sounded good, and so they strapped their packs and prepared to head out. Luckily, the majority of the Agency bigwigs were heading to the capital again by convoy, so they rode along with them.

Kellsin Cotter, Agency stockmaster and moneychanger/merchant/"acquisitions expert", met them in Il Aluk and settled them in at the Green Lady Inn - a surprising well-appointed comfortable hotel where they only had to share two per room with basic housekeeping services, courtesy of the Agency. The inn was just down the road from the Mirabilis Music Hall, and the lively night life surrounding it. They were each given a significant advance on their payment, and allowed seven days of rest and recreation.

Before the tribunal

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Unexpectedly, the PCs had a summons from Kellsin Cotter - apparently, they were to give an immediate accounting of their mission to the Agency's senior officers. The PCs were led into a windowless room where Pieter Leynt, Kellsin Cotter, and a few other Agency folks (Yamashida Maeda, Olusegun Odekunle, Gustavo Cuomeza) browbeat them and interrogated them about their performance in Falkovnia. Several well-dressed folks sat dispassionately off to one side, asking no questions.

The panel's inquiries seemed asinine enough. They first asked about the situation in Nartok leading up to the invasion: Aside from Rosie (Baron Eduard Curwen), was there any sign of high-level Darkonian assistance to the Falkovnians from the army leaders or guard?

Then they changed tack and asked about Falkovnia: What was the general popular opinion like in Falkovnia? How are the harvests? How is the worker sentiment? What were drafting levels like?

Thirdly, they began questioning the current occupation of Nartok: Did they know of any signs that Ardellia might be in collusion with the Falkovnians? The transcription was apparently going on in her pub with her assent, no? Had they heard anything about Leopold Neiß and why would he be commissioning a "Friendship Opera" with Ardellia Borlest? Had they witnessed any behavior or statement by Ardellia Borlest which could hint at a change of loyalty, or even treason?

The final question was the only one that the PCs were able to answer: Did the PCs see any military preparations or tactics of newer military value? They decided to tell the panel about Falknerin Beate Arnitz and her crow-hawk battlefield combination. At this, Kellsin Cotter grinned broadly and extended a hand to the shadowy folk in the corners, asking them if this was good enough. The panel grilled the PCs at length on the falconer issue, and then Cotter let the matter drop.

He was about to end the hearing when he raised a question about the weird disappearance of the Falkovnian fortress at Crowcrest Hills. However, before the PCs could even answer, one of the people in the corner stood up and said that time was tight, so they would have to wrap up. The question went unanswered.

When Alen asked Cotter who the shadowy people were, Cotter merely responded "They're with the Magreji Repatriation Fund." This was the same group of people who sent Leila to blow up the fortress. This group now was using its influence to block investigation of their activities.

Alen's R&R

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Alen spent this time following up on the Leadger Wynn lead - he found the grungy strongdoor underneath the botanical gardens and found a pencil stub, a dropbox, and a pile of cards. A sign in crabbed handwriting told visitors to leave their name and contact details, and a statement of inquiry. Alen shrugged and did this, then left. Within a day, a message from Leadger Wynn had arrived at the Green Lady Inn, informing him that the contact was willing to meet him at the Royal Music Conservatory for lessons in meditation. Alen went to the Conservatory, where a shaven-headed Eastern man in white robes led him to a room of silence in the conservatory, and instructed him in meditation techniques. With this talent, Alen would be able to focus his thoughts and eventually be able to shield his mind from psychic attacks. Future practice promised to bring the ability to shield others, to see and hear through others, and perhaps even to meditate on behalf of others and help them overcome mental and psychic distress.

Lyra's R&R

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Lyra made contact with Vesildur at the Thaumatorium, and he took her down to the basement where the really dangerous tomes were kept. It turns out that this book appeared not to be of terrestrial origin, and the writing in it was indecipherable in some loopy carefree script - this suggested that the inhabitants if the Shadow Rift could have been the authors. If the book had willingly divulged information to Lyra before, it might do so again.

Lyra spent several days speaking with the book, who greeted her as though she were an old friend and answered her questions patiently. It told her that it was a compendium of magical knowledge intended to be given to the outsiders to see what they made of it. The only thing it could tell of the authors was that they wished to venture forth from the Rift, but did not want to become mortal while doing so. Hence, they sent out probes and scouts - the Incubus could be one such.

The book also felt the presence of her pet snake, Barbara, and turned to a page that would interest him too. Lyra studied the philosophical underpinnings of a magical system based on five elements: water eliminating fire, fire melting metal, metal felling wood, wood splitting earth, and earth absorbing water. Conversely, wood feeds fire, fire produces earth, earth generates metal, metal condenses water, and water nourishes wood.

The book also taught of the duality of creation and destruction, positive and negative, masculine and feminine. Lyra felt that she was learning these secretes at a prodigious rate, almost as though she were not learning so much as remembering. Wherever she stumbled, Barbara was on hand to correct her.

She generated a report of the book's teachings and delivered it to Vesildur for him to analyze. By the end of her week, she had gained a dozen spells in standard magic (incidentally, the prerequisite spells for the ones she had) as well as basic familiarity with Hua magic (an Asian variant). However, her Hua magic will not work as she us too far from the Empire Under Heaven... to successfully cast spells, she'll need to enlist the help of a powerful spirit patron.

Nadia's R&R

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Nadia woke with a start in the middle of the night, to find somebody standing by the fireplace, in a military coat. Firelight cast a gleam on his polished boots and gloves. Without fear or surprise, she rose to meet his embrace and his kiss.

Vigo held her back and told her he could only visit her in dreams, this far from the Fatherland. However, he would awaken a basic power of her Shadowborn bloodline - he told her to open her robe and stand fast.

He drew his blade from his unseen chest cavity and made a shallow cut in her chest between her breasts, and returned his blade to his "soulkeep". He told Nadia that as long as she could reach her own soulkeep, she would never be helpless - but the repository of her lineage was stored there and she must be careful to protect it.

Finally, Vigo told her, there were others like them, traveling the mists, and they knew the power of the Shadow heritage and would hound her until they had stolen her life force as well. One such character, Bogdan Tireš, was on his way to Il Aluk even now...

Nadia convulsed as Vigo held his hand over her chest, and something tore at her insides. A skittering, pittering feeling crawled around her innards, jostling the flesh of her organs as it tried to escape. But Vigo's magic eventually overpowered it, and she felt a loathsome, many-legged carcass forcing its way up her throat and finally out her mouth. She spat out a gem - the same one that Leila had made her swallow - only this time it had somehow sprouted many pairs of crystalline legs to better secure itself inside her body.

Vigo withdrew as suddenly as he came, leaving Nadia alone. When she awoke, it was to the morning light and a sleeping Lyra, as Barbara the snake watched her distrustfully. She opened her soulkeep and drew out a brilliant shadowshimmer scimitar, trembling in the light.

Alcibiades' R&R

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Alcibiades decided to try to hunt down this Magreji Repatriation Fund. He went to their offices and asked to speak with Leila, the bird-woman who had tracked them and forced them to swallow the gems in the first place. The secretary stonewalled him at every inquiry and eventually he returned emptyhanded, cursing the civilian laws of the place and vowing he'd have her singing like a bird if only he were allowed to interrogate her Falkovnian-style.

[HuManBing]

In the Capital 2013.06.15

VIEW CONTENT:

With the occupation of Nartok by the Falkovnians and the enforcement of a trade embargo, abfalduz should not be turning up in Il Aluk. However, the number of derelicts and beggars addicted to the drug has risen - the effects allow the body to ignore the effects of hunger and thirst, and makes the user less aware of danger (effectively making them fearless) and pain. This has military applications (although it affects the sound judgment of the user) as well as domestic applications (resulting in faster and harder workers).

Baron Karl Ranherdt has passed a decree saying that abfalduz is illegal for consumption in the city, and anybody found trafficking in it will be subject to imprisonment. Council head Colin Vestmar is trying to stop the flow of drugs into the city.

The city has several means of entry: by canal/river (along the Vuchar), by road, and some letters by carrier pigeon. The amount of abfalduz needed to cause intoxication is too great for air flight.

The PCs tracked down street dealers and had a few nerve-wracking nighttime adventures dodging patrols, pimps, and pushers. Alen went to a brothel with Lyra shadowing him for safety, and was able to glean from the prostitute where she got her abfalduz supply - a guy at the Rose and Crown pub named Daverty.

Daverty was a mess. He not only sold the abfalduz himself but also consumed it, and of late he had been under a lot of stress (having to send money back home to his mother and his sister, Casey). This caused him to be sloppy, selling to strangers and even in the rooms of the Rose and Crown Inn, where he usually frequented. Nadia drew the short straw and went in to talk to Daverty, who was fairly far gone in his beer and abfalduz powder. Her player rolled a very good Reaction Roll, and Daverty mistook her in his drug-induced haze to be his sister, Casey.

What followed was a pitiable tale of woe and privation - of Daverty confessing that his rent had been raised and that he had been robbed, so the last two months of payments back home were mere pittances. He promised "Casey" that his drug income would be enough to raise the remittances next month, and that he had never forgotten about her and mother. He ended by weeping tears into his beerglass as Nadia left, while promising her he'd do better and not to think for a moment that he was stiffing her and their mother.

From him, the PCs found that he gets his drugs from Giren Shawmercer, his foreman, and that the rest of the crew were pretty routinely dipping into the stuff. They went to find Giren Shawmercer, who was the general contractor for a building company working on a Temple of Ezra building project by the docks of the Vuchar River.

Their talks with Shawmercer were inconclusive. He seemed like a canny enough man, and a good leader to his workforce (arriving an hour before his workers to prepare the worksite, and staying an hour afterwards to oversee tidy-up and next-day prepping), but also keenly not above financing their abfalduz habits if it means they work faster - much as Ancients used opium to improve productivity. If Daverty was to be believed, Shawmercer had a special exclusive source providing him with abfalduz, and he wasn't going to surrender it any time soon. They watched him go at the end of the day, but if he did any drug shopping, that day wasn't it. Obviously, he could be fired from his job and lose the lucrative Ezra Church contract, so he was very close-lipped. Alen thought about offering him a large bribe but could not find a figure that wouldn't insult him or simultaneously trigger suspicion.

Finally, Alen and a few other PCs stopped by a famous brothel: The House of Auspicious Meetings - the oldest and most well-established courtesan's quarters in Il Aluk and quite possibly in the Core. They saw an entire avenue of beggars outside, arranged in a mock parliament, with an old woman distributing alms. In the morning, at noon, and in the evening, beautiful courtesans come outside bearing food and water for the beggars, as a reminder of where they might have come from and where they might still be but for the grace of providence. Clients diverse, wealthy, and dignified made their visits at all hours - and from both genders and all ethnicities.

Above the doorway, carved in seven different languages, were the words "WHAT IS THE KEENEST PLEASURE KNOWN TO THE MIND?"

[HuManBing]

Solo Adventure: Nadia's Showdown with the Darkling Bogdan Tireš 2013.07.03

With due credits to Cormac McCarthy, author of "No Country For Old Men"

VIEW CONTENT:

GM: Last we met, Nadia was in her room at the Green Lady Inn, at Il Aluk (capital city of Darkon).
She could sense somebody coming up from the common rooms downstairs, up the stair case, and over to her corridor. The life sense stopped outside your door, blocking the thin line of light in two places with its feet.
Then it stepped away down the hall, to the nearest lamps.
Presently, the lamplights die.
Leaving no line of light under your door.

Nadia: Oh god. Does it sound like he is making any movement to open my door?

GM: You can sense somebody right outside your door, leaning forward.
Almost as though they're placing their head to your door.

Nadia: okay, does my scimitar make a noise when I pull it out?

GM: You don't think so.
Actually...
make an IQ roll to remember.
Unmodified.

Nadia: failed with a 13

GM: Okay, your heart is pounding in your ears and your head hurts mildly from the tension. Your temples ache and you cannot call the memory to mind right at this instant.
The very faint distant spiritual outlines of the other occupants in the inn are far away.

Nadia: okay.

GM: The outline of your visitor is still strong and clear on the other side of the door.
Your response?

Nadia: I will veeeerrrryyyy quietly pull out my normal daggers then

GM: Okay.
With practiced fingers, you unhasp the ties on your shoulder-loops and take one dagger in each hand.
You feel rather than hear the _click_ of the buttons coming off, but you're confident he doesn't hear it.
As you finger the familiar leathery coolness of the knife hafts, you see the figure on the other side of the door appears to be doing exactly the same thing.
Hands coming up to under his armpits, a quick - furtive - adjusting motion, and then hands coming back out to the sides, balled as fists with something in them that doesn't show up in your lifesense.

Nadia:
any moves to get through the door yet?

GM: Not yet.
One second passes as you breathe with your mouth fully open, trying to silence your breath and heartbeat both.
He raises one hand upwards.
To his chest?
To his face?
You can't be sure.
It's the ... (thinks) ... right hand.

Nadia:
does the door open inward?

GM: You glance at the hinges. It's hard to make out in the gloom (you didn't light any candles in your room and it's around supper time). Yes, they're on your side of the room.

Nadia:
Dammit okay.
So my room is dark then?

GM: It's gloomy. Your windows are open (and there is a slight breeze coming in from outside) but the daylight is dying and even the everpresent sound of the hawkers and merchants outside seem distant and far off.
You feel a moustache of perspiration on your upper lip and clammy dankness on your nape. The room feels strangely cold.
Sweat beads your brow also.
This is the first time Nadia has ever had to deal with somebody who hated her enough to come after her and try to kill her.
It's not a pleasant prospect.
Another second passes. It's as though time is slowing...

Nadia:
Any more movement from the door?
or behind it rather?

GM: You're just watching for movement... there is none. Not as far as you can see. What in the hells is he _doing_ there? It's almost like he's putting a cigarette to his lips. Having a smoke in this sort of circumstance?
You almost crack a grin at the absurdity of such a perverse action.
(rolls)
No
Too high for the lips.
Eye level.
He's pinching something at eye level.
You've seen this before. Think. _Think_, dammit. Where the hell have you seen this before???
(You may roll against IQ. If you succeed you get a chance for another roll.)

Nadia:
rolled an 8

GM: FUCK. ALEN. DARTS.

Nadia:
dicks dicks dicks

GM: He throws it.
(rolls)
You sense rather than see something come flitting out of the darkness straight towards you. Instinct kicks in and your shins kick you sideways.
(Roll vs. Dodge)

Nadia:
9

GM: You're safe.

Nadia:
hoooo.

GM: You crash to one side, knocking over a pile of bedcovers and hitting the floor none too gently.
(What now? You're on the floor. A third second has passed.)

Nadia:
well I am sure as hell gonna get back up
this door aint gonna keep me safe

GM: You're up on your knees. (Roll vs. DX to spring to your feet as well.)

Nadia:
7

GM: Nadia pushes off with her hands and her feet hit the floorboards under her gracefully.

Nadia:
Whats he doing now

GM: Behind the door the assailant has tracked your movement just as easily as you're watching him. He throws the other dart.

Nadia:
gahhhh

GM: 3
(Crit: You do _not_ get a Dodge roll!)

Nadia:
faaaaack

GM: Something flits out from the dark doorway - and in your fevered mind you realize it must have flitted out _through_ the solid oakwood of the door - and strikes you full in the chest.
You gasp an agonized hissing intake as a numbness spreads out from your breast, taking your abdomen and base of your neck.
(Give me a roll)

Nadia:
12

GM: What is Nadia trying to do? The icy numbness spreads with alarming speed to her arm and engulfs the rest of her torso.

Nadia:
Well shit. Time to balls to the wall it. Can I make it to the door?

GM: You can try.
Is that what she's going to do? The assailant is right behind it.

Nadia:
no...

GM: (rolls)
Despite the fall and the recovery and the hit, you notice (in some coolly detached corner of your mind) that you're still holding both throwing knives. Training and familiarization of technique have served Nadia well.
What will Nadia do?

Nadia:
He's still behind the door no?

GM: Yes
No more than 3 seconds have elapsed in this encounter.

Nadia: WTF am I supposed to do with throwing knives when the dude is behind the door?!

GM: A fourth heartbeat passes, and the icy numbness spreads further.

Nadia: fuckity fuck.

GM: Your legs begin to wobble.
A breeze from the window reaches you. It's frigid - vast - arctic.

Nadia: this guy isn't easy mode -_-

GM: (Rolls)
Your legs give out and you put one arm out to stop your fall. The other seems to have gone to sleep. The knife in your responding arm clatters away a few feet but you save your head from hitting the floor directly.

Nadia: shit shit shit not gooooooddd

GM: It's all you can do to gasp for air. As though your chest muscles were lifting building bricks or tombstones.
(Some sardonic corner of your mind ponders this. Huh, this must be how Alen's victims feel.)
Your breathing becomes labored and hard. You realize with rising panic that there's a very real chance you could suffocate if your lungs stop working.
Then follows a panic attack - retching, coughing, wheezing. When you open your eyes again, there's a stranger standing in front of you.
The clearest thing you can see is his sandalled foot, and that's because he's put it on your chest and is pedalling it gently - almost lovingly.
Air blows out your lungs as he pumps your chest with his foot. Then fills your lungs shallowly through your dumbstruck mouth as he lifts.
He bats the fallen knife away from your open hand with a chuckle. "Ees a feisty one, dees Koh-die."
His voice has a strong accent, which seems to suggest Vistani. Possibly Elviran tasque, you're not sure.

Nadia: I curse at him in Vistani
Do I still have a knife in my other hand?

GM: Yes
(Rolls)
He does not appear to have noticed it.

Nadia: I am gonna try and hit whatever body part is closest to me.

GM: Your hand is asleep and your arm won't follow your will.
But you can feel your knife handle safe and firm in its grip.
Whether he'll notice it in the fullness of time is another question entirely.
If you had to guess, it might be blocked from his view by your hips.

Nadia: alright. so what can I move?

GM: Eyelids, a bit of mouth.
You're also producing a few involuntary vocalizations as he pumps your chest with his foot to stop you from suffocating to death.
His hands are gently pulling your obvious weapons from your body - your remaining throwing knives, your two hacking knives.
He's alternately tutting and shushing you, as though to a truant child.
You can see his face now. Lean, hungry - might once have been handsome, but hardened by privation and a meanness of the mouth that you don't care for at all.
He's wearing a bandanna of faded kingfisher blue. You can't tell if he's bald under it, but he does have lank, oily kinky hair hanging down in back and sides in an unruly, ill-groomed fashion.
Most of his teeth are yellowed. The rest are black.

Nadia: yuck.
Can I call on Vigo?

GM: And there is a profound and insatiable hatred in his eyes as he looks over your face.
(Yes. Give me a Will roll.)

Nadia: 8

GM: You're through. Vigo's there with you, in some way you can't explain.
What is it, sister? What is happening?
"A verr naice belt you have heer... I kip eet safe for you, yesssss..." (He unbuckles your belt and wraps it around his midriff.)

Nadia: Vigo the bastard poisoned me
darts through the door
Can't fucking move

GM: This is serious. You'll have to borrow my hand. Can you see it? Over yours. Roll your eyes as far as you can.

Nadia: I do. Can I see it?

GM: (Per roll)

Nadia: 7

GM: (Bogdan Tireš has now crouched down in front of you to undo your shirt buttons. He is squatting with his left foot on your chest, rocking back and forth lovingly - almost lasciviously - to keep your lungs breathing.)

Nadia: Fucking bastard

GM: As Bogdan shifts your head to better grasp your necklace, he turns your gaze and you do indeed see your left hand, empty of its dagger.
There is a shadowy apparition over it, of a strong masculine hand, beringed with jeweled bands, and with coarse, brutal knuckles that have seen their fair share of cracking skulls and breaking bones...
Good. Memorize it and, in your mind, lay it over your own. It will become yours for as long as I can lend it to you.
(Will roll at -3 to assimilate the shadow limb.)

Nadia: 9
dammit

GM: "Oh, you have ghud test een earreengs too my sweet 'nastia, I kip dem sef for you too, heh heh..."

Nadia: Can I try again?

GM: Focus. Clear your mind. Do not let rage distract you. Now, try again. See my hand. Picture it. Feel it. You know its contours already, my sweet one. Make it your own.
(Same roll.)

Nadia: (Ew, lol)
9 again! >.<

GM: Bogdan has claimed all your head jewelry and now he is undoing the last of your shirt buttons. He mutters in frustration as he sees your under garments - a tied long strip of fabric that surrounds your breasts three times.
"Hmm, I borrow your knife, hokay? Jus' a leetle cut here and there..."

Nadia: yuck yuck yuckkkk
Vigo...

GM: Nadia, we are one flesh. This is something none of the other Shadowborn can do, because their bonds are too weak. You have a rare power here. Now reach out and claim it proudly. My hand is yours. My will is yours. My destiny is yours...

Nadia: roll roll roll?!?!?!

GM: (yes!)

Nadia: 7! (AWWW BITCHES. But he definitely demon raped me...)
:D:D

GM: Okay, your hand leaps to life convulsively, with a searing pain as though it had been starved of blood.
Bogdan's attention is focussed entirely on your wrappings, which he's carefully cutting away under your right armpit (the side of you that's up towards the ceiling).

Nadia: I have use of my left hand?

GM: Yes.
The knife that was there is now in Bogdan's hand, though.

Nadia: and everything else is gone?

GM: Your right hand is dead but has a knife in it.
Bogdan has a knee against your chest, which he's humping rhythmically to keep you from dying. His other knee is close to your head.
(rolls)
You feel a tingling in your extremities as the paralytic reaches its furthest extent in your system.
"Ah, here we go. My, my, leetle Koh-die, what treasures you have been hiding from Bogdan... heh heh."

Nadia: ew ew ew

GM: He cuts through the last of the wrappings and pulls them away from the front of your chest.

Nadia: well can I just punch him?

GM: His expression changes to one of dreamy lust as he looks at you fondly for a second.
It comes to your awareness that his crotch is probably within easy grabbing distance, if you could bring your arm around his knee to the inside of his legs.

Nadia: Yes. Let's try for that.
I don't need any more demon rape

GM: Okay, a grab for his happysacks?

Nadia: yep

GM: Roll

Nadia: 13

GM: Straight up DX.
You shuffle your arm awkwardly and he stops what he's doing and looks at you with alarm.
"What dee fock ees dees? Euh?"
He mashes your arm down to the ground with his knee, painfully trapping your wrist against the boards.
He looks at your face in a weird confusion, then shakes his head free.

Nadia: "Uhhhh... Vigo..?"

GM: "No more delehss. I take what I want now."
I don't suppose you could ask him to raise your head so you could look at your *right* hand, could you...?
Bogdan is now poking and prodding around your upper chest, just below the base of your throat, like a confused tracheotomist.

Nadia: hmm... I dont have enough strength to spit in his face do I?

GM: "Hwaer ees eet? Bog rot! Hwaer to find...?"
Actually, make a HT roll.
You probably could.

Nadia: 8

GM: You gather a pretty impressive bolus of contempt and mucus and let fly.
DX roll?

Nadia: 8 again

GM: He jerks back away from you, cursing and flailing at his face.
You're free of his weight for now.
Your left hand and arm function fine.
The rest of you - including lungs - do not.
You have a very limited window of action here...!

Nadia: crap.
alright. is he in hitting range?
or is a knife?

GM: (Rolls)
You're in luck. He dropped your knife when he went with his anatomical investigation of your collarbones and upper chest bones.
So that's within grabbing distance.

Nadia: "Vigo, you cant help me breathe can you?"

GM: I do sort of need my lungs actually.

Nadia: hahaha
shit alright. I guess I have to make this quiiiickk
Im gonna try and grab my knife then

GM: Okay, DX roll at +4.

Nadia: 15

GM: You're good.

Nadia: lololol
phew

GM: Your fingers - mingled with the coarse strength of your bloodkin - close around the haft of your throwing knife. You're armed once more.
(HT roll)

Nadia: 10

GM: You feel a slight burning in your chest. A gasping noise escapes your throat.
You feel like the poison is beginning to lose its effect, starting with the point of entry - your chest.

Nadia: sweeeeeet

GM: Bogdan is recovering from his hygienic crisis and looks back at you.

Nadia: is he in stabby range>?

GM: You could try

Nadia: eh, why not

GM: It would be a stretch.

Nadia: mannn
okay.

GM: Bogdan wipes the spit from his face, and looks at you.
There's a smile on his lips as he pushes the last of the phlegm and mucus into his mouth and swallows it.

Nadia: EW

GM: "I was hoping you might say that..."
"Now, hwaer were we...?"
He comes back towards you, apparently not noticing the knife.

Nadia: Come back over here you bastard...

GM: And then kneels down again.

Nadia: stab now>?!?!

GM: Roll
DX
at -2

Nadia: 10 bitchessss

GM: You sink the knife deep into his thigh.

Nadia: yeeeeee

GM: His fingers, which were once again probing your upper chest for skeletal girth and muscle tone, stop instantly and his head turns to face you very deliberately.
He raises an eyebrow as his mouth opens in shock.
"You stabbed me!" he shouts incredulously.

Nadia: heheheheheeee

GM: He stands up, on wobbly feet, and steps back a few steps.
I think you made him angry.

Nadia: ":D"

GM: With a sudden violence that startles you, he kicks you - hard - in the head.

Nadia: owwww

GM: The world explodes into an intense ringing and vague dizzy sphere of pain and disorientation.
There are a few more bangs, which you gather must be him kicking you in the abdomen and chest with his good foot, and a barrage of Vistani curses.

Nadia: well that isnt helping....

GM: You feel pain, oddly enough, in your extremities as well.

Nadia: well thats a good sign

GM: When you come to, he has the knife back out and he's cutting shallowly into your chest, muttering "It's got to be here, it has to be, that's what de Zarovan sed..."

Nadia: grrrrrr
can I move yet?

GM: It's not exactly painful but he's definitely drawing blood and your skin is going to be a mess if you survive this.
(HT roll?)

Nadia: 5

GM: Your limbs are starting to recover.
You're breathing on your own now. And have been for some time.
Unfortunately, for you, Bogdan knows this too.
He has his legs pinning your elbows as he digs around in your chest, looking for what can only be the shadow dimension pocket.
With a cry of triumph, he strikes gold. And you feel an immense wrenching sense of violation and weakness as he opens the shadow pocket in your chest.
"Yesyesyesyaaaaaayce... come to Bogdan, sweet treasure..."
He reaches inside (the worst invasion, spiritual, bodily, mental, that Nadia has ever felt in her life) and wraps his hand around something attached to the inside.

Nadia: NOOOO

GM: Then begins wrenching it free, leaning his entire body weight into it.

Nadia: nonononononooo

GM: (ST check, opposed. Quick contest.)

Nadia: 12

GM: (You failed by 2, he failed by 4. Success was needed to stop him, so he continues.)
In some societies, they have experts who will wrench a rotten tooth out of your jaw before it can grow infected and kill you. This operation usually involves the man putting his entire weight into the wrenching, to remove the firmly affixed tooth from its socket.

Nadia: eeeeeeee
gross gross grosssss
this man is grosssss

GM: Right now, Nadia is feeling something very similar with Bogdan. He's almost kicking the thing free of its spiritual moorings in her pocket dimension. Like a dentist ripping a molar out, or a gynecologist tearing a placenta from the womb lining. Everything in her being shudders with utmost revulsion.
(Rolled)
Finally, with a last, juddering violent heave, he succeeds in ripping his treasure free and he brings it up out of your chest. Your vision is swimming from the pain and you can barely breathe.
There's an inky black shimmering mass, about the size of your fist.
Bogdan's wretched hand holds it triumphantly as he stands up and strides back from you.

Nadia: VIGOOOO

GM: "Ees even more beautiful dan dey sed..." he says wonderingly.
Can you get up?

Nadia: Can I?

GM: (HT roll to regain use of limbs)

Nadia: 11 -_-

GM: (Not yet, then.)

Nadia: "no.. no I can't no no no no nooooo"

GM: Bogdan raises it to his face and breathes it in, then smiles at you.
The thing suddenly extends tendrils to either side, reaching upwards, and snaking back around.
It forms a glimmering, shadowy necklace, and Bogdan triumphantly dons it immediately like a noble flaunting his youngest mistress.
"Tonight I clem dee first of my rivals' spirits," he crows.
Suddenly, the necklace flashes, and he becomes embroiled in a roiling miasma of shadows, palpitating darkness, and glimmershine.
His eyes roll back in his head and his mouth opens in ecstasy as he chuckles and gasps.
And then you see something very odd happen. You see his limbs elongating, his neck lengthening.

Nadia: ewwww

GM: The meat of his forearms and calves fills out suddenly, bursting with veins and sinew.

Nadia: ew ew ew ew

GM: His head bumps against the ceiling as his face enlarges, haphazard and asymmetric.
And as the metamorphosis ends, you see yourself staring up at a hewn, misshapen giant of a man, some twice as large as he was before, staring out into the distance with a transfixed expression of purest pleasure.
(HT roll at +2)

Nadia: 7

GM: Can you move now?

Nadia: yes!

GM: Let's leave this place.

Nadia: What did he take from me?

GM: Don't forget your knife bandoleers.
(Shirt, jewelry, belt. Your knives are lying unattended on the floor, two separately drawn, and several remaining in your bandoleer.)

Nadia: okay. I'm gonna grab them I guess

GM: Okay, done.
Bogdan emerges abruptly from his reverie.

Nadia: uhh... door?

GM: His voice, now octaves lower, and highly redolent of the other Beast (blue skinned - drenched in Beredostich's blood), thunders at you.
"END NOW WE FEENEESH WHUT WE STARTEED...!"*
(You may be able to dart past him to the door, although he's much closer to it than you are.)

Nadia: I'm in no shape to fight am I? hahaha
bitch stole my spirit thingy

GM: You're essentially a badly-injured normal human who's been kicked in the head once and in the chest/stomach twice.
Although, Vigo can still communicate with you.
Because the spirit seed was in your head.

Nadia: Whelp, time to run I guess.

GM: Bogdan lunges for you, but his head breaks open the lantern hanging from the ceiling.
The glass tinkles uselessly around his head, but the oil definitely keeps him usefully occupied.
"ARGH. FUCK." he says.

Nadia: theres no fire around is there?

GM: All the lights in your room were out. You might be able to find a lit torch or lamp outside.
Bogdan is flailing around. He stumbles into the bed with his mighty shins and breaks it.

Nadia: out the door out the dooooorrr

GM: "CUNTS" he says helpfully.

Nadia: lolol

GM: Okay, Nadia runs out the door. Are you shutting it behind you?

Nadia: no, no time. I need a torch

GM: Okay, you run out.
Your sides are hurting like hell, from the impact of his kicks.
The kick to the head was bad enough, but he may have bruised or broken some ribs with the assault on your torso.
(Nadia took 2hp from the head hit, and 3hp each from the torso kicks. She's in pretty bad shape right now.)

Nadia: shiiit. I should probably start yelling for help..

GM: You hurtle down the hallway is a curious, crablike careen as your find yourself doubled over in pain in certain points of each step. Whatever Bogdan did to you, he did good.
He's still roaring in pain and irritation behind you.
Curiously, this is eliciting no external response.

Nadia: torches?
anything?

GM: All the lamps on this level are out, but you can see just fine.
The stairs down are ahead of you, to the right.
Aside from your own room, there are maybe a dozen other rooms. Three doors are in front of you further down the hallway.

Nadia: alright... keep running I guess. No one is noticing the giant hulk monster?
Im gonna head for the stairs

GM: Apparently not.
Okay, you round the stairs. Nice, railings. Something to lean on.
You turn the corner, and you see something that chills you.
There are people in the foyer, in the common room, at the dining hall.
But they don't look like people.
They now look like the blurry, grey-on-black silhouettes you normally see with your lifesense.
You realize whatever Bogdan did to you, you've lost the ability to see people in reality. Now you're only able to see them by their life essences.

Nadia: "Vigo whats happening?"

GM: You're trapped in the Shadow Gate between the living and the dead.
Remember what I said about crude puppets and how you were composed of luminous matter?
Now you shuffle, as I do, between the unliving and the uncaring.
You're going to have to get your soul back from the Darkling.

Nadia: "I plan on it."

GM: Behind you, the door crashes outwards in a terrible splintering.
Maybe at a later time. For now you need to get away.

Nadia: Are there any torches?
I WANT TO BURN THIS MOTHERFUCKER

GM: Downstairs, you see them, but they're weird. Like a black-and-grey tracing, or a shadow.
The light they give off is sickly, and only illuminates an exaggerated circle around them.
As you might see in one of Dedrick Lacon's theater posters.

Nadia: Alright, screw it. Run.

GM: You push past non-human silhouettes chatting, smoking, laughing - but all their inane jabbering seems to come from very far off, and the sound is muted.
Out in the street, the same deal with the lanterns and light sources - weak and sickly light, confined only to a golden nimbus maybe half a foot in radius around them - and then everything else is the same muted grey and black that pervades this strange realm you've been forced into.
Above you, you hear more splinterings and roarings.
Apparently, Bogdan has guessed (incorrectly) that you've gone into one of the other rooms and he's now wasting time breaking them open looking for you.

Nadia: Excellent. KEEP FUCKING GOING.
NAKED NADIA IS ON THE RUN.

GM: You run, with a terrible grinding pain in your left side and a liquid sticky warmth pooling in your crotch which you assume must be blood flowing from the hole he gouged in your chest.
You run past a bright temple of Ezra, its mirrored exterior showing you in motion, staggering forwards frame by frame.
When you get to the end of the temple, you look up at yourself in the reflection.
Somehow, you're sitting down now.
Come on, get back up Nadia. Don't die on me now.

Nadia: I'ma try.

GM: You force yourself up, and you turn the corner as something huge and incoherent bursts out of the Green Lady Tavern behind you.
You stagger up the street, leaning against the wall when you have to, and catch your breath.

Nadia: "Vigo... what. What the fuck am I going to do..."

GM: Up ahead, you see a wagon - fully colored, with the tired chestnut horse's neck bulging at the bit with veins striving, coming closer to you.

Nadia: hey
wagonnn

GM: The cart is in brilliant brown wood, and the man driving the horse is alive - alone among the greys and blacks of the surrounding area.

Nadia: prettttyyyyy

GM: The man is swarthy tanned, and has a long moustache, and wears a faded red vest. He's smoking a grass reed in a fashion you seem to recall somewhere recently but can't.
(IQ roll to try.)

Nadia: 8

GM: Vistani.
Hyskosa and Soldanni both smoked grass reeds like that.

Nadia: "Vigo... why is he colorful?"
"Everyone else is black and white"

GM: Perhaps he can see you? See if you can steal his horse!

Nadia: "I can try.... I'm not exactly at my quickest...."
The cart is moving, no?

GM: Yes, closer to you.
You're off to one side of the street.
The cart is making its way in the middle of the street towards you.
Weaving among the shadow pedestrians.

Nadia: I don't know if I am in any shape to steal anything...

GM: Perhaps you can impress upon his goodwill and generosity then?

Nadia: ESPECIALLY a horse lashed to a cart thats moving and may be my best bet at fucking survival
alrught.
I call out to him in Vistani
"Please friend! Please help me!"

GM: Nadia's voice is cracked and raw as she shouts
"Szerush! Segitsen!"
The Vistani man looks at you and stares, startled. He pulls the reins and gapes at you.

Nadia: I take a step toward him
"Please..."

GM: You realize the impression you must make. Naked from the waist up, except for the bandoleers bristling with throwing knives. Blood caked below your neck and running in rivulets down your chest. Bruising on your head.
(Reaction roll.)

Nadia: 9

GM: He seems doubtful.
Almost as though he can't believe this tatterdemalion ragged female is addressing him in the Mother Tongue.

Nadia: "Pl-Please! I.... I was attacked. I need help..."

GM: "Come on, child. Who has done this to you?"
He scoots over in his seat and takes off his vest, offering it to you.

Nadia: I take it super gratefully and cover myself quickly.
And attempt to climb into the cart

GM: He reaches down to help you up.
It's difficult but he pulls you up and helps you sit down.
"Poor wounded child! What monster did this to you?"

Nadia: "The.... the outcast"

GM: He puts the reins around the hitching post and turns to face you, looking at your wounds.
He seems about to say something when he yelps.
And looks down.
A shadowy dart blooms in his side.

Nadia: No!!!

GM: He looks back up at you, eyes already unfocussing, and another one blooms in his neck.

Nadia: I grab the reins and try and make the horse go

GM: Quick, grab the... there you go. Smart girl!

Nadia: "FUCKING BASTARD"

GM: The Vistani man slumps backwards and falls off the cart, as you flick the reins and shout for the horse to go.

Nadia: "this asshole is related to us?!"

GM: After a quick neigh of panic, the horse sets off at a quick pace, bringing you forwards and past the corner.

Nadia: GO PONY GOOOO

GM: You get a glimpse of Bogdan, immense among the anonymous shadowy crowd, as he brings yet another dart up to his eye level and throws it at you.

Nadia: nononono not again

GM: (Rolls)
(You see it coming and may Dodge.)

Nadia: FUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKK
I DEFINITELY didn't just roll a 15.
nope, definitely not.
it was totally a 3

GM: The dart strikes you in the arm.
Vigo's arm.
Don't worry, we're all right here.
(And you are. It hurts like a really really fucking bad bee sting, but Vigo appears to be able to keep the poison from spreading.)
You duck down and Bogdan doesn't have time to aim the rest of his darts at you.

Nadia: "How'd you..."

GM: They all go wide, or hit the horse (which is too massive to be paralyzed that easily).
The horse does spur onwards in panic, taking you round another corner and into a crowd of silent, gliding shadow people.
You hear a nearby choir singing a wedding procession march, as the silhouettes throw spring water and rice upon the gowned and suited couple.
The crowds slow your cart. Looking back, you can see Bogdan making his way towards where you are, and a colorful slash in the crowd where the Vistani fell.
In front of you, the massed crowds are singing a marriage liturgy.
Some shadowy grains of rice even land on your cart.

Nadia: THIS IS NO TIME FOR A WEDDING
are we still moving?

GM: Very slowly.
Your cart does bump and jostle the shadow people out of the way, although they react in slow motion, like they're people stuck in treacle or pitch.

Nadia: how complicated is the harness connecting the horse to the cart?

GM: Not very. You could easily cut it in a few seconds. Or untie it in a few seconds more.

Nadia: Alright I am gonna cut it and try to ride it out of here.
AINT NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THIS

GM: Okay, you do that.
The cart falls away and you hoist yourself - whimpering in pain - onto the horse's saddle-less back.
The horse seems alarmed by the blood.

Nadia: I whisper a few words to it
PLEASE PONY
DONT BE SCURRED


GM: (Rolls)
The horse's hackles subside and you seem to calm it with your strained murmurs and your bloodied hand stroking its neck gently.
Behind you, Bogdan skids around the corner and gives out a roar.

Nadia: LETS GTFO

GM: Of anger, of triumph.
Of... pain?

Nadia: hello?

GM: You definitely hear him whimpering.

Nadia: does he look hurt?
or are his bulging muscles not as fun as they seemed at first?

GM: He seems to be weeping.
His huge, boulder like fists are raised to his monolith face, covering his eyes.
You see his ragged mouth open in pain or despair and he's averting his eyes.

Nadia: "What's up with him, Vigo?"

GM: I don't know! What do you know about him, as a fellow Vistani?
He takes a few staggering steps, and then breaks into a crablike, sideways run, pushing through people and crashing into a wall and scurrying along it.
As you watch in wonderment, it becomes clear he's trying to pursue you while staying as far as he can away from the wedding.

Nadia: Time to go into the middle of the wedding!
"He hates the wedding...."
I make pony go further into the crowd

GM: (IQ roll?)

Nadia: 14 lol
nope, no idea.

GM: You seem to recall something Hyskosa, Soldanni, or Elvira said. But what exactly, you're not sure.

Nadia: hmmmm

GM: The pony is nudging people out of the way. The crowd parts reluctantly before you as you ride in.
Eventually, about four or five body lengths in, it's too crowded and you'd have to dismount to go any further.

Nadia: Good pony.
uhhhh. I AM NOT LEAVING THIS HORSE.

GM: The music here is quite audible, even with the dimensional shift.

Nadia: escape routes?

GM: The wedding is taking place in a partially open courtyard in front of a Temple of the Eternal Order.
The temple itself is wide open for business. There are more wedding congregants inside.

Nadia: Path of least resistance away from hulkman?

GM: On foot, through the Temple.
There appears to be another couple getting married inside the Temple.

Nadia: I cant bring pony can i??!?!


GM: No vehicles allowed in the chapel.

Nadia: lol dammit.
Fiiiiiiine.
There is no other way to get away?

GM: Bogdan appears to be circling a perimeter that is centered on the wedding party (where you are).
You may be able to go through the temple and either shift over to an adjacent property, or escape through the other side entirely.

Nadia: okay lets shoot for that

GM: Okay, you dismount from the horse carefully, your head a little light and woozy, and you make your way on unsteady feet into the temple.
Some of the priests here seem to be "brighter" or "more real" than the shadows you see.
You can see the elder priest, who's conducting the ceremony, is very vibrant and lively to your eyes.
But some of the junior priests are also "real".
For now, they haven't noticed you as they're focusing on the service.
You're not sure if your spiritual condition is contributing to your hard-to-see-ness.

Nadia: hmmm
As much as I dont wanna fuck up some peoples wedding...

GM: There is one priestess, a little older, who's beneath another doorway, welcoming people in.
She's got greying hair and a solemn and slightly sorrowful look on her face, but she smiles tiredly to the congregants and welcomes them in.

Nadia: Is she "real?"

GM: Her eyes are a brilliant shade of blue. Yes, she's real to you.

Nadia: Did I walk by her yet?

GM: Not yet but you can if you want to.

Nadia: I'll give it a shot.

GM: She looks at you and her mouth falls open.
"My dear, what happened to you?"

Nadia: "I... kinda got attacked by a huge monster..."

GM: "You're hurt, aren't you? Poor dear child..."
"Come, come into the chancery. Oh, poor thing!"

Nadia: "... yeah...?"

GM: She puts an arm around your shoulders and hurries you to a small chapel off to one side.

Nadia: ""Vigo, is this a bad idea...?""

GM: Do you mean practically speaking or ecumenically speaking?

Nadia: ""I dont know what ecumenically speaking is... ????""

GM: Well, personally I'm against organized religion on the philosophical grounds that they offer a false placebo and in so doing reduce the individual's agency with a fuzzy-hearted excuse for moral absolutism. But on the other hand, she might heal you up. And I'm not against that.

Nadia: ""..... Right.""
GM:
You get the feeling that Vigo is offering you a reassuring but not very confident smile.
"Let's take this off for a moment, dear, and see how bad the injury is, shall we?" asks the priestess kindly.

Nadia: "O...Okay."

GM: She clucks her tongue reprovingly as she sees your wounds. "Who could have done this? Just you rest easy, now, we'll get you some warm water. There we go..."
She bathes the dried blood away and gives you bindings and then a simple grey shawl to wear over it.
Finally, she takes her holy symbol - the fist defiant suppressing the skull - and casts a spell of healing. She slits her wrist into the water to do this, and presents the holy symbol to you.
You see her wrist tremble with pain as she does this.
"Child, take my wellness so you may recover more speedily..."

Nadia: "Uhhh...."

GM: She holds the holy symbol to you. Her blood comes thick and rich over her trembling fingers.

Nadia: Yikes

GM: "Take it... please..." she says hoarsely. You can see this is really taking it out of her.

Nadia: I take it from her

GM: You feel better.
First, the pounding in your head lessens.
Then the agony of bone scraping against bone fades to a discomfort.
And then the torn and skinned flesh over your ribs knits together again.
(+4 HP, back to 6)
As you release the holy symbol, the priestess' wrist suddenly stops bleeding and the cut vanishes.
She closes her eyes and sighs raggedly, sitting back for a moment before opening her eyes and resuming.
Your body has recovered, but there is still a feeling of emptiness in your chest - where Bogdan stole your soul.

Nadia: Damn bastard.

GM: The priestess smiles wanly at you.
"Perhaps you can walk more steadily on your way today, child."

Nadia: "Thank you."

GM: The wedding outside is beginning to disperse.

Nadia: TIME TO GO
Or.... time to fight >:)

GM: The wedding inside is waiting to go outside.
"Remember to give your thanks to our savior, Darkonius Rex! May he watch over you child!"
Hmph. He's not *my* savior...

Nadia: ""Well, he DID just save my ass..."

GM: Don't tell my father that whatever you do. He'll never approve of us and I'll never hear the end of it.

Nadia: ''"My lips are sealed""
""So how do I kill this miserable son of a bitch?""

GM: You're going to have to get your soul back.
I don't *think* he's harvested any other Shadowborn souls, but I could be wrong. The more you harvest, the tougher you become.
The good news is, you should be able to kill him the traditional way. The bad news is, he's twice your size and very angry at you.

Nadia: ""Well I cant very well ask for help now, since people can't see me..""

GM: Screams are coming - faint and faraway - from the front courtyard.
Apparently, Bogdan Tireš has decided not to wait for the second wedding to begin.

Nadia: ""I don't think he's gonna wait for me to get help anyhow..."

GM: If you can reclaim your soul from the necklace around his neck, it will make your work much easier.

Nadia: ""OK, time to steal some jewelry then..."

GM: _Remember some people and animals *can* see him - it's just a matter of finding them and getting them to help._

Nadia: Is my horse in the danger zone?

GM: It's disappeared.

Nadia: NOOOO
pony.

GM: Probably left in all the confusion.

Nadia: ugh. I guess time to go a huntin.

GM: Forget the pony, there are hundreds of them I can give you when you come back to Falkovnia.
Focus on your soul. There's only one of those around.

Nadia: ""Oh I meant for help. But let's see what this bastard is up to.""

GM: Bogdan is carving his way through the crowds and trying to get to the Temple.
But once he gets to the doorway, the sight of the wedding inside once again reduces him to tears and howling.

Nadia: heeeeheeeheeee
can I get any closer without him seeing?

GM: Possibly.
He's raising one hand up to his face, as though it's unbearably bright.

Nadia: okay, are there like pillars and stuff I can hide behind?

GM: Yes
You're still a little unsteady, but you're much better and your head is no longer debilitatingly dizzy.

Nadia: Excellent.

GM: Careful, now...
(Bogdan is large enough that a single punch from him is likely to knock you unconscious, and a kick probably will kill you in this state. Just so you know.)

Nadia: ""Well what do YOU think I should do??? Not having a sould kiiiiind of sucks.""

GM: Maybe throw something at him? If he can't approach you...
Wait no. Don't do that.
I just remembered. He can throw stuff back at you.

Nadia: ""Thanks. Helpful.""

GM: And my hand is wrecked, just so you know.

Nadia: ".... Sorry about that""

GM: Bogdan raises his face again and scans the crowd as intently as he can, given his extreme discomfort and weeping.

Nadia: ""So any other bright ideas???""

GM: Maybe you can lose him. You can't stay here forever. Eventually people will stop getting married and then he'll come after you.

Nadia: ""Ugh... then what. He will still have my damn soul...""
Despite this, I turn and look around for another way out

GM: There is an inner cloister, which opens to a surprisingly spacious courtyard.
Where there is apparently a third wedding happening.

Nadia: Well lets give that a shot then. Jeez, is it wedding season or something??

GM: I suppose it *is* springtime...
The census bureau will have to prepare for a wave of February babies.

Nadia: heheheheheeee

GM: Bogdan sees you and roars impotently at the gates, still unable to follow.
Nobody else really seems to notice him, although the priests seem somewhat flustered.
The courtyard has neatly trimmed grass, and is surrounded by quaint stone refectories on all sides.

Nadia: whats refectories?

GM: Squat stone buildings with sloped roofs.

Nadia: climbable?

GM: Yes, should be.

Nadia: let's dooooo it

GM: The stones are unevenly cut and there are plenty of protrusions.
Nadia springs up the first few yards with no problems.
Give me a climbing check to make it onto the roof. (There's a weird overhang bit.)

Nadia: 6

GM: You get over with no problems.
Glancing back, you see Bogdan is no longer at the arches.
You do see a flash of movement around the parapets of the building on the other side of the courtyard from you, though.
It's possible he's decided to go over the wedding if he can't go through it.

Nadia: uh oh. time to go.

GM: The building you're on right now seems to be adjacent to a noble estate of some sort on the other side.
At least, there are nicely enclosed green lands and stables and kennels there.
The blurry shadowy outline of a groundskeeper makes his way down along the tended lawns there.

Nadia: Is that the only way to go?

GM: That's directly away from the entrance of the Temple (and by extension where you last saw Bogdan).

Nadia: lol alright let's go there

GM: You're a little ways away from either lateral side.
But you could make your way closer to either of them and check if you wanted to.
If Bogdan is indeed climbing the wedding hall exterior, though, he'll gain on you if you do that.

Nadia: nope, to the estate.

GM: Okay, there is a mortared wall with glass bits to keep burglars and stuff out.

Nadia: mannn. Assholes

GM: You could probably climb to the top with little difficulty, but getting over would be a problem.

Nadia: I need all the HP I can get....

GM: It occurs to you that laying a suitably thick fabric across the top would render it harmless.
Same as with barbed wire.

Nadia: Do I have the vest that Vistani man gave me?
or something
Cuz thats what we're gonna try

GM: Actually yeah you do.

Nadia: Alright. Time to tryyyy

GM: And also the rough shawl could work too, if you don't mind going topless again.

Nadia: Lol Alright. No shame at this point. Didn't she put bindings on anyways?

GM: Yes, actually.
So you'll be running around in bindings.

Nadia: well thats better than nadia boobs going everywhere
this is sort of life or death. also most people cant see me anyways haha

GM: We actually never specified whether Nadia was busty or not. Given her heritage and nutritional hardships, it's entirely plausible to say she's not.
Okay, give me a climbing check with a -1 to get over the shingling without injury.

Nadia: 11

GM: Oh, right on the dot.

Nadia: mhmmmm

GM: She makes it over, although the clothes are now ruined, and she drops gently into the nobleman's enclosure.
It's about three yards down, so she slides and braces and rolls and comes up a bit dusty but fine.
The groundskeeper is heading away from her, walking dogs.
The groundskeeper is indistinct and blurry, but the dogs are not.

Nadia: uh oh.

GM: They're very much alive and stinking and barking and excited.

Nadia: ew

GM: And they're straining at the leashes and barking at you.

Nadia: Let's move away quickly now...

GM: There's a crack from high above, and a thump nearby.

Nadia: ugh here we go.

GM: A large piece of masonry has been dislodged and has impacted the ground maybe ten yards wide of you.

Nadia: Alright, time to runnnnn!

GM: Okay, where to?

Nadia: whats around

GM: The enclosure has stables at the far end, kennels at the near end.
And the back end of what appears to be a residence to your right, but quite far off.

Nadia: let's check out those stables.

GM: There are a few manicured trees and benches in this yard.
"Easy, easy boys. Come now, why so excitable today?"
The groundskeeper shadow cajoles and begs, as though from miles away.

Nadia: to the stables!

GM: Okay, you run to the stables.

Nadia: PONIES?!

GM: And that's when Bogdan comes crashing down from the heights.
He lands on all fours, roughly in front of you, and seems a bit stunned by the impact. He shakes his head to clear it.

Nadia: ugh
fucking HELL

GM: There are significant imprints in the lawn where his hands and knees took.

Nadia: HOW THE FUCK DID HE GET HERE
'".... yeah idk if losing him is gonna work bro!""

GM: "Ehhheheheheheheheheehhhhehh... ees time leetle gurrr..."
Behind you, the dogs are going insane

Nadia: "You have what you want, brute, why chase me down?"
Meanwhile. I am backing away
hopefully toward the dogs

GM: "Eet only works eef the bearer dies... an' I deedint feeneesh de beesnees..."
Your legs are quaking.

Nadia: "It sure looks like it worked to me..."

GM: Dogs have not been good experiences for you in the past...

Nadia: Can I get around him?

GM: You can try.
He's much larger than you and his gait would be similarly long. Although you'd probably have a significant advantage in cornering and change of direction.
Owing to lesser mass.

Nadia: Alright.
"When I harvest and kill you, will I be as ugly of a motherfucker as you are? That SURE would be a shame..."

GM: He laughs at you.
"A puppy threatens a tiger weethout even eets milk teeth..."

Nadia: I am slowly sidestepping to try and get to one side of him, drawing two knives

GM: He stands up and opens his hands and arms to you in a wrestler's stance.

Nadia: "Yes, that's right, I guess you DO have something that belongs to me. Someone doesn't know what a fair fight is..."

GM: Make the left knife count. You're throwing for both of us...
Bogdan rushes at you.
Feet churning the ground as he accelerates.

Nadia: THROW THAT SHIT

GM: (Which hand?)

Nadia: can I use my all out attack?

GM: Yes.

Nadia: DOING THAT
but left hand first.

GM: Okay, all attacks at -1 for range.

Nadia: each one gets a bigger penalty that the one before it no?

GM: You're ambidextrous

Nadia: oh right nvm

GM: So the left hand has no penalty for being off hand.

Nadia: roll 3 times?

GM: Yes
The final attack has a -4.
But the first two are at -0.
Then factor in range for each one.
So -1/-1/-5.

Nadia: 12
8
and 10

GM: All three are direct hits.
Roll for damage for two of them.

Nadia: 1d6 no?
-2?

GM: 1d -2 cutting
Right.

Nadia: okay

GM: Bogdan has DR 2.

Nadia: 6
3

GM: The first hits him in the upper pectoral, striking deep and drawing blood. He seems astounded that you've hurt him.
The second hits him shallowly in the side, where his ripped scraps of clothing absorb most of the damage.
Roll for the last one.

Nadia: 6

GM: That catches him in the thigh, which is good news for you because it slows down his careening lurch and allows you to get out of the way in time.
His grasping hands snatch at the air, missing you, and he barrels past you.
The dogs are barking and yelping and snarling. Really mean, ugly sounds like they want to tear some fucker apart.

Nadia: eeek.
Nice puppies.

GM: (rolls)
Nadia fights down the bad memories of Beredostich and the dog hunt. She focuses once again on Bogdan, who is limping badly and whose left arm is dangling from a torn pectoral muscle.
Did we ever determine how many throwing blades she had?
She's down by three now.

Nadia: you always just said plenty
lol

GM: Okay, say she's got nine more.

Nadia: alright. lets throw some more before he comes at me again/

GM: Fast-Draw
x3

Nadia: do i have to roll 3 separate times?

GM: Yes.

Nadia: kayyy
11
11
8

GM: No problems. You're up, armed, and ready to rock.
Bogdan turns to face you. There is a single dart in his hand.
His right hand.

Nadia: lets aim for his hand thennnnn quicklyyy

GM: Okay

Nadia: or at least his arm
thats easier

GM: Okay, he's fast, but you're faster.
You throw the knives, one-two-three, with practiced sureness.

Nadia: oof. 17
11
10

GM: Two hit.
I'm rolling for location.
(roll x2)

Nadia: how many
oh wait
youre rollinggg
lol

GM: One hits his right arm, as you intended, and the other hits his right leg.
Damage!

Nadia: 4
3


GM: He throws his dart at you, but he's in a lot of pain and it flies wide.
Behind him, the dogs break free of the groundskeeper's shadowy leashes and they tear towards the two of you, foaming and frothing in bloodlust.
(Roll for phobia)

Nadia: please go for him not me oh god,
6
hooooo buddy

GM: You're good, you feel a tremor of blind, terrified, unthinking fear.
But then you swallow hard and force yourself to focus.
And the dogs look towards you and they see no waver.

Nadia: rawwr.

GM: And they turn back to the easier prey - the wounded, bleeding, bigger target.
And at once, they're on Bogdan, grabbing at his limbs and snapping at his heels as he curses and tries to stamp them.
His necklace is glowing now.
Almost with a sort of anti-light. It's folding in a mesmerizing darkness around it.
Calling to you.

Nadia: Time to get my soul back
!!!
Can I get close to him?
Well.
I pull out my dagger daggers. not my throwing ones.

GM: Good, get close to him and we'll reclaim your rightful property, eh?

Nadia: ""Yep.""
Daggers raised just in case I approach the poor bastard.
cept I hate him.
NO PITY HERE

GM: He's holding his own pretty well. Already he's kicked away two of the dogs and is brushing the others off his arms.
Get behind him...

Nadia: "Yep!""
I'm gonna move to get behind him

GM: (rolls)
The dogs are keeping him busy. He doesn't notice.

Nadia: goooood
How far am I from him?

GM: Close enough.
You can strike him in the back or anywhere lower.
If you want to hit him in the shoulders or higher you'll need to jump.

Nadia: Let's just start with his back

GM: Okay, for a Sneak Attack, your effective ST is 12.

Nadia: cooooool
roll?

GM: Which means if you successfully hit, you'll do 1d impaling damage.
Yes
And if you successfully hit, he can't dodge either.

Nadia: sweeeet
9

GM: You sink your machete into his back, hacking through ribs and kidney.
Damage?

Nadia: 1 -_-

GM: That's 2.
Because impaling is x2.

Nadia: woo.
lol

GM: He screams in pain and tries to whirl around. With a dog on each wrist, he can't do much. But he's seeing you in profile now.
Here... allow me...
You feel your left hand reaching back for a mighty blow.

Nadia: :D:D
"Punish him, brother!"

GM: Vigo strikes with the machete.
(rolls)
He severs the necklace around Bogdan's neck, and the soul stone falls to the ground.
Immediately, Bogdan's body convulses and shrinks back down into his scrawny, sunken dimensions.
The dogs release him, nonplussed, as he stands glassy-eyed, swaying back and forth in confusion.

Nadia: "Heh, so much for puppy teeth, fool"

GM: Your soul!

Nadia: GRAB

GM: You grab it, and the feeling is... hideous. It's like holding your own brain matter in your hand. The knowledge that this is fundamentally wrong and twisted.
Also, the wounded pocket in your chest yearns for its return.

Nadia: "Can I open this like I used to or do I have to cut a new one....."

GM: You can open it at will

Nadia: open sesame

GM: Although it feels very ragged and violated and tender.
It's the work of just a few seconds to secure your soul again.

Nadia: fabbbbbb.

GM: And once you're done with that, Vigo raises the machete again.
Just... one... last... thing...

Nadia: "Yes brother?"
heheheheheeee

GM: (rolls)
The machete falls with horrific momentum, and Bogdan's body does a complete rotation and a half before striking the ground, headless.
His hands clasp and unclasp, and his limbs contort in dying eddies.
The color slowly begins to fade from him.
Vigo speaks to you in urgent tones.
Your scimitar! Cut his soul from him and claim it for yourself!

Nadia: GRAB SCIMITAR

GM: It rises effortlessly and noiselessly from your chest.

Nadia: I raise it and slice his chest

GM: The process is not a tidy one, being much as it was when he was rooting around in your cavity for your soul.
But you eventually locate his misshapen lump of palpitating matter.
You feel a warmth in your chest as you hold his soul in your hand.

Nadia: "....Now what...."

GM: You must carry it within you until I can complete the ritual of the Rift...

Nadia: "yech, I have to put a part of this motherfucker inside of me?"

GM: Blood calls to blood, and the heritage has grown so very thin already my dear. Do not fear it - rather, celebrate it.
Every step you take brings you closer to immortality. To the scions who warp and redefine reality to their own designs.

Nadia: "...Alright fine. Bottoms up...."
I put it into my safekeeping chest hole.

GM: You experience a moment of wrenching vertigo.
...
You see a terrified Vistani woman, wandering far from the campfires, and a nameless darkness descending upon her. Forcing itself upon her. Leaving her.

Nadia: .... is that my...

GM: The cry of a child, unclaimed by any Vistani man. Growing up among rushes and weeds. A mother resentful of her outcast offspring.

Nadia: D:

GM: The outcast growing up, wavering for years between hatred and hope.
One day, discovering another in his predicament. Another Vistani woman, violated by the night, bearing a child - only this time, a girl.

Nadia: ooh heeeeyyy

GM: The two promised to each other.
And then wanderers from another tasque arriving.
A singer and lutist. And his weak twin brother, a soothsayer.
The twins taking the girl-child under their tutelage, teaching her the basic secrets and lore of the strange tribe. Teaching her of the world outside the mists.
Equipping her with knowledge and thought.
Turning her outwards and away.
Away from him.
Finally, a fateful wedding. The twins' own kinswoman, betrothed to his own tribe's swain.
The weaker twin asked to perform a goodwill soothsaying.
Refusing, saying that to lie would be to surrender his powers, and to tell the truth would be to dismay the happy couple.
Under duress, telling of misery and hatred.

Nadia:

GM: And finally the outcast snapping at his limit, and drawing the blade from his scabbard and cutting a scar from _here_ to _here_ on the wasted twin's face, and sinking his blade to the pommel in his side.
And vardo, seer, family, mother, and campfire all fading into the mist.
Leaving him. Fleeing him. Abandoning. Condemning.
And now with only two tasks remaining to give meaning to his wasted hateful life.
Kill the blasphemous seer.
Claim the girl.
And then he can lie. And sleep. And die.

Nadia: WELL HES DEAD NOW.
asshole.

GM: Yes, he certainly is...
Our grandsire certainly broadcast his seed far and wide, didn't he?

Nadia: "yep."

GM: The color is slowly returning to the world.
The groundskeeper is running to the house, shouting about an accident and a person falling from the roof.
Nadia feels like a visitor, returning to her own body - dazed with the distant dreams of a faraway land - as she sits down on the grassy lawns and absent-mindedly strokes the muzzles and tongues that whine at her cheeks for attention.

Nadia: puppies...

GM:
And that's how Nadia lost her fear of dogs.

Nadia: YAYYYYY
no killing in terrible ways!

GM: Well, no killing of dogs.
Bogdan and the Vistani cart driver weren't so lucky.

Nadia: Well Bogdan deserved it.
bitch stole my soul/
and the driver....
not entirely my fault.

GM: So that's the end of the solo session.

[HuManBing]

Tracing the abfalduz 2013.07.14

VIEW CONTENT:

The PCs under Alen decided to call in financial reinforcements, checking in with Kellsin Cotter, the Agency moneyman. Lyra went to his office and was told that he was out inspecting properties. She waited for him and presently he was back for his lunch break to pick up the paperwork that had accumulated since the morning.

He seemed interested in hearing her progress in the investigation: namely that the party was close to the top tiers of supplier for the drug and might be able to get Cotter a lead on whom to squeeze. However, Lyra was careful not to give Giren Shawmercer's full name, as she didn't want him getting in trouble with Cotter. She asked for four crowns - a month's wages for Giren and his entire work crew - as a safety payment to ensure his willingness to give her the name of his contact. Cotter proved a canny financial mind - he refused to loan her the money, saying that she and her friends had been paid that much as a bonus for their Vistani job earlier, but he did say he would consent to expense their costs as a reimbursement if they could deliver the name of the main supplier of abfalduz.

While rooting through the papers, Cotter found a set of four complimentary tickets to the Mirabilis music hall for a ghastly sounding opera called "Tales of the Borderlands". Cotter handed them to Lyra, telling her if she consented go to the opera in his place he would even add interest to the reimbursement. She took them and agreed. He quickly threw the rest of the paperwork into a nearby beggar's fire and took her back to the office, where he opened the lock room and gave her four crowns, each embossed with the brutal Iron Crown of Darkon's king on one side, and with a profile of Azalin's face on the other side. Lyra accepted them reverently and brought them back to the party.

Lyra met with Giren Shawmercer as appointed at the Rose and Crown Inn, although there was a tense moment when he locked eyes with Daverty and the junior man left the room awkwardly. She was able to put the foreman at ease, and even learned that his supplier had been raising the prices, probably because the siege at Nartok was cutting off the main route. In the end, he said that his contact was a man known to most as GG, but the most he'd ever heard about him in a year and a half of business was that his last name was Gallietti. He worked at the Preacher's Pestle apothecary, but he only did drug business with people he trusted, and you only got an introduction by having an existing customer vouch for you - something that Giren could not do.

Lyra and the rest of the party left him and went to the Agency to pull any files they had on this man and his business. It turned out that the business was run by an aging ellyll-y-gwerin (half elf) who also went around the temples on occasion preaching of the healing powers of chemistry. There was a brief description of his staff: Giancarlo Gallietti was apparently a fairly longstanding employee and had made the Agency rosters of people deserving of a short paragraph. Dark haired, thin, average height, below average weight.

The party staked out the drug store and tracked GG to his rented single apartment. On the way there, a familiar person met them: Leila gave Alen a set of gold earrings and tooth caps - by wearing these, he and his people would be able yo have conversations with each other even at half a mile's distance. Alen picketed them warily, wondering if they would allow eavesdropping by the Magreji Repatriation Fund as well.

Inside, Gallietti apparently had a gambling problem, which would explain his humble living conditions even despite the drug trade income. Alen did his usual break and entry, and found a mess inside - but among the wreckage was a neatly maintained calendar with dates and appointments and pick up and drop off dates and initials. There was a monthly drop off for "GiSh", which the party took to mean Giren Shawmercer. The next drop off was for "ZaPh", and the amount was enormous: where most work crews needed perhaps four pounds to get them through a month, this one buyer was asking for forty or fifty.

Alen memorized the document and then replaced everything as he find it, and left the house. They continued to monitor GG, but contacted the Agency to make some inquiries.

A Night at the Opera, with Byron May

VIEW CONTENT:

At the Mirabilis Opera Hall, the famous singer-songwriter and guitarist (and Isaac Newton lookalike) Byron May held the floor with a full orchestra and two guest musicians. Several songs-of-the-day were played (including one song about the time dilation effect of a band of colonists traveling at near light speed and discovering that a one-year journey for them lasted a century for their families and descendants back at home), in addition to a few pieces newly delivered from the sieged city of Nartok.

Byron May also spoke with the party about Ardellia and his shared past with her - the two of them had been married for three years in their early twenties before amicably parting ways. He said he believed she had been forced by the Falkovnians to collaborate with them on writing a friendship opera with one Colonel Leopold Neiß (pronounced "nice") - this was the same accusation that the Agency panel had previously leveled at her during their hearing with the Magreji Repatriation Fund.

The rest if the evening was a surprisingly touching opera about the last Falkovnian invasion, when two Darkonian soldiers went to war with a rivalry over the same woman. The officer tried his best to eliminate his rival through impossible missions, but somehow his rival, a lowly footman, survived and earned medal after medal, culminating in the highest rank-independent award possible: the king's Platinum Eye. The officer, finally facing death in a crumbling fort, asked the soldier how he was so brave, and the soldier responded that if he lived, he could only live as a hero to his beloved - anything less, and he may as well be dead. So why fear death? On the end, the footman clasped his officer's hand and said if he would follow him, he would show him where the Platinum Eyes can be found. The opera ended with both men charging to their doom against the Falkovnians, as the woman back at the loom clutched her belly and gasped at the kicking of the child within...

Arm in Arm (GM original, Ardellia Borlest and Leopold Neiß)

Be strong against the waning of the night,
In song we join our bravery and might.
As one let our peoples stand together.
The sentinels united here forever.

Let us heal the scars of bygone indiscretions,
May the wiser hearts forgive the wrongs of youth.
Now we lift our arms ’gainst tyrants and oppression
We shall only bow our heads before the truth,
For today our lives return to me and you.

Oh, we stand united - arm in arm, and heart to heart
Looking out across horizons as at one stride comes the dark.
Even in the midst of night we strike a spark.


Let Us Cling Together and Spread Your Wings (both by Queen) were also performed with minor lyric changes.

Still Alive delivered by Dedrick Lacon, with apparent authorship by Sedgewick, although May suspects Ardellia was the actual writer.

No need for violence - they came to our town with bribes and bread.
Now our heads of state embrace their faction.
Docile compliance - they bought it with just an olive branch.
Making good with all of us, except the ones who are dead.
Well we’ve seen far less of the impalings and stakes
And in Velnarest there were no lootings or rapes
So they’ve turned a new page
With their kinder gentler raids
Which go easy on those still alive.

They’re fearless and friendly - protecting my pub and peers, and how!
The Creeping Death won’t get past them to kill me.
How lovely this peace is! It’s something our dreams have long desired.
Now we’ve learned the Hawks love us, and loved our granddaddies too.
Now they’re kind and caring and they’ll stay for a time
And unlike the Baron they won’t censor my rhymes
They don’t want to make a fuss, it’s the King they want, not us,
So be quiet and we’ll stay alive.

Let’s not be peevish. Let’s leave the scars of old behind.
Let’s not dwell on how they’d rape and sell you.
Welcome dear neighbors! Come in and joke, and laugh, and dance.
From their graves our forebears know this is our rationalist's choice.
Let us praise and plaudit what the diplomats do,
As they serve the Hawk it helps the Hawk to serve you,
Now we’ve handed them our town so they wouldn’t burn it down
Which is nifty cos we’re still alive.

We’re all smiles and we’re still alive.
We are docile and we’re still alive.
In occupation we are still alive.
Collaboration means we’re still alive.
We’d sell our nation but we’re still alive.
Still alive. Still a lie.

[Baron Zamedi]

Hey HMB!
Just letting you know Im following this thread and that I think its great. I really like your DMing style and your take on the setting.
I like the GURPS system but Im pretty unfamiliar with it. It would be really cool if you could post some stats just to see how you are handling things around (if thats allright with you offcourse).
Anyway, cool campaign, great adaptation. Congrats!

[HuManBing]

I could do that, sure, but not for every roll or skill check - that would be prohibitively complex.

Which mechanics did you have a question about? I am happy to help explain or clarify whatever needs it.

Glad to hear the campaign is interesting and enjoyable for you! It's definitely not for everybody's tastes, but I think it's doing something different in terms of ethics and crime-and-punishment. In addition, the plot arcs I have prepared are more suited to an epic romance.

Hopefully this campaign will be fully concluded and the players will get to see the end result. I have intentionally not posted the actual "ultimate plot" of this campaign anywhere on these boards, to ensure none of my players can stumble across it and spoil it.

One player has already destroyed one ending plotline by essentially running an independently written adventure that just happened to parallel it, back in April. I got my own back on him by a May convoluted revenge plot involving collaborative lesbians but you can never be too careful. Once bitten, twice shy...

[Baron Zamedi]

Well my questions are mostly about stuff like how did you stat Buksca, what kind of rules are you using for Nadia's and Vigo's relationship (and the powers it presents), what is it that Leila used to blow up the fort, etc.
I'm also interested to know if you make rulings for all of this or you just kind of "story-drive" it. Also how many points are the pc's done with?

In any case I really don't expect you to let me in on anything you wouldn't feel safe telling.

Thanks a lot man, again, very cool campaign and I sure hope you can run it to the end I really enjoy the style and the twists and plots.

[HuManBing]

Well my questions are mostly about stuff like how did you stat Buksca, what kind of rules are you using for Nadia's and Vigo's relationship (and the powers it presents), what is it that Leila used to blow up the fort, etc.
I'm also interested to know if you make rulings for all of this or you just kind of "story-drive" it. Also how many points are the pc's done with?

When I first started playing GURPS, I was delighted with the ability of the game engine to stat almost anything. I decided that I would take advantage of this and that I would, indeed, stat everything. This was, in retrospect, completely unnecessary. It's a fun exercise on a Sunday morning, but when you're holding down a full time job, with a part-time job search, and your players are counting on you to provide a good GURPS campaign session every second weekend, you very quickly learn to cut down on the unnecessary effort. Maybe 90% of the complete NPC stat sheet will never be relevant to your adventures anyhow.

This slowed down my initial game campaign (Pearl of the Ebon Orb, a post-apocalyptic multi-tech setting in Africa) and I abandoned it. Instead, it's worth observing conservation of effort for statting only the crucial enemies. And even for them, you only really need to stat their relevant skills and combat abilities: Basic Speed and Move, HP, FP, DR, main attack skill and weapon damage, active defense skills, that sort of thing.

I haven't actually statted many of the key players so far. (Bukcsa and Vigo Drakov both have DnD 3.5 stats, clumsy as that system is, so I have a good idea of what they can do in-game even in GURPS, but I haven't yet converted them to full GURPS stats.) For the Falkovnian conscripts at the Erlösunghaus, and for the Shay/Bec bandits, I used an abbreviated stat card.

As you say, I let the plot and story drive the events, because I'm confident that the GURPS rules could support it in pure mechanical terms, if and when they become necessary to work out. I'm not at all confident that DnD does.

Thanks a lot man, again, very cool campaign and I sure hope you can run it to the end I really enjoy the style and the twists and plots.

Thank you for reading! I'm really glad to hear you like it!

This campaign has actually been in the planning stages ever since 2006 or so, because I played the early parts of it through once already with a friend in the United Kingdom. So I've been adding to the campaign plan and tweaking plot points. I think the end story will be very interesting, detailed, and satisfying in an overarching way.

I have not read Game of Thrones (and I honestly don't plan to anytime soon) but some of my players have compared the scope of my campaigns to that.