Dance of the Seasons IIIa: Freebird fights, and dodging ducal detachments

Dec 14, 2009 07:48

Game: Changeling: The Dreaming: Dance of the Seasons
GM: Aaron (2_ragged_claws)
Setting: Duchy of Knollbrook, near Albany, NY
Players/Characters:
  • Sarah (kalliplokime)/Gwendolyn ni Scathach (Gwen Douglas): An older warrior/songstress.
  • Peter (zero_the_fool)/Jacob: A skunk pooka /b/tard.
  • Matt (ra1330)/Riyos (Christopher McCoy): An itinerant Eshu with memory of all his lives.

Sunday, June 16, 2002
They waited for Gwen to become unparalyzed, as more of the Count's nobles and knights arrived. Jacob, taking a moment when no one was watching Gwen, took a permanent marker and drew a fake tiara and mustache onto her. Eventually, Gwen was unparalyzed and went off to clean herself up, as Viscount William arrived to survey the scene. He spoke with some of the nobles first, and, after a little while, called over the motley to thank them for their assistance. They accepted his thanks, and then, at Olaf's suggestion, departed to the Three Horns to continue celebration.

Arriving at the Three Horns, they noticed a larger than usual crowd around, looking rather ragged. Additionally, near simultaneously Riyos and Gwen noticed Kasim, an Eshu both of them had had previous encounters with, storytelling in a corner. They talked to Bill, one of the proprietors of the Three Horns, and discovered the extra fae were refugees from the Kingdom of Grass. They sat to drinks, pointedly ignoring the Eshu in the corner.

After a while, Kasim finished his story, and sauntered over to the bar. Acting surprised to see them, Kasim, Riyos and Gwen reintroduced themselves. Both Gwen and Riyos were surprised to discover that the other knew Kasim. After a few moments of tense fake geniality, Kasim left them alone. A short while later, a band came on stage, not the usual fare for the Three Horns. They began to play rather cacophonous Death Metal, and as they did so the crowd began to turn ugly, yelling anti-establishment phrases.

It became obvious to the motley that things here could turn really ugly, really fast. As the band prepared to play their next song, Jacob called out "play Freebird!" and fuddled the troll to hear his band's songs as Freebird for the next month. They weren't too far in to their second song when the bassist stopped them. However, after he yelled at his band mates for a moment, they attempted to resume playing. The troll dropped out quickly, smashing his bass and his head against the wall, while his band played on. Gwen and Riyos noticed Kasim moving his hands with the music, and theorized he might be cantripping; some quick Kenning confirmed he likely was. Riyos, between the crowds' actions and Kasim's history, assumed he might be using Talecraft to influence the crowd, and counterwove the effect he saw occurring. This seemed to calm the crowd, and the band, with the bassist out of commission, decided to call it a night. As they passed, Jacob told the troll that they should've just played Freebird.

The troll was not pleased by this, and swung the remainder of his bass at the pooka. Riyos brought his Opa up to block the swing, as Jacob dove under the table and Veiled Eyesed himself. Gwen moved to disarm the troll of his half-bass, while Kasim, from across the room, released a cantrip on the area. Though the motley managed to resist the effects, the rest of the bar was not so lucky; approximately a third of the bar erupted into fighting. Kasim fled out the window with Gwen on his tail, while Riyos attempted to restore order in the bar. Gwen returned, Kasim having escaped, as Riyos's oratory, Lucky Liz's (the other proprietor of the bar) shotgun blast, and Olaf's loud demand that everyone quiet down restored some semblance of order to the bar. Most of the patrons, including Jacob, left at that time while Riyos and Gwen helped Bill and Liz clean up the bar. Gwen then returned home for the evening, while Riyos spent the night at the Three Horns to regain some Glamour.

Monday, June 17, 2002
Again that night, Riyos and Gwen had prophetic dreams. Gwen dreamed of what she interpreted as Lenore and her company traveling before being attacked. One of the travelers with them, an antelope, escaped the dark shadows attacking it. She also dreamed of a Sidhe with an unknown house banner -- a purple star on a black field. Riyos had further dreams of the time post-crusade at Gwen's holdings in France; Gwen's lover, a Sidhe from a house represented by black and purple; a civil war within that house, and an unjust punishment placed on Gwen, Jacob, Riyos and others.

The next day, each of the three heroes received an invitation from Duke Albion's court to a feast that evening in their honor. While this didn't immediately phase Jacob or Riyos, Gwen became concerned because the timing of the feast overlapped with the likely time Lenore's company would be passing through the area. While she knew she had a duty to her house, she also knew it would be rather poor form, at best, to skip an official ducal ceremony. She called Riyos to discuss this, but they didn't really have a great solution to the problem.

While she considered what to do, Gwen went off to talk to the refugees from the night before. She discovered that all the balefires in the county in the Kingdom of Grass from which the refugees came had gone out, which lead the refugees here. Meanwhile, Riyos had traded with a Nocker for some chimerical silver and begun crafting a bracelet like one he had seen in his dream two nights prior, and Jacob attended one of his final days of High School.

Independently, Gwen and Riyos both decided not to attend the feast that evening, and sent their regrets to the Duke at around 4pm. Gwen claimed, truthfully, she had important house business to attend to, while Riyos simply claimed he had otherwise sworn to a different engagement that evening. The local nobility was not pleased with this. Later that day, a pair of trolls showed up at Gwen's house and brought her to the duke's court, where one of his men, a Gwydion count, interrogated her about her response. Eventually, she was given a choice: explain what her house business was, or attend the celebration that evening. She was given an hour to decide. After she was escorted to a waiting area, she sent Riyos a text message warning him of the trolls looking for him, too.

Riyos, however, was already aware of this. The Nocker who had sold him the silver also had lent him use of his force, in return for some dross and a promise to give him "product placement" for a year and a day. When the trolls showed up, he gave Riyos the option of "being there" or not, since he didn't want the advertising to go to waste, and Riyos left out the back while the Nocker distracted the trolls. Riyos wandered for bit before attempting to return for his motorcycle; however, on seeing one of the trolls waiting nearby, he instead decided to hitchhike to Gwen's house and take her car for that evening's meeting, instead. Getting a ride from (and unintentionally raising the ire of) a biker named Big Larry, he arrived at Gwen's shortly before she had to make her decision.

She had not sat idle during this time, however. Using Soothsay to cause her "captor" ill fortune, she then convinced the trolls she needed to use the bathroom. When the brought her there, she climbed out the window and began to scale down the castle wall and cliff-side on which it was constructed. She lost her grip, falling but managing to maintain a grab on the cliff top (and thus, not to her death). She got up and started to run, as stealthily as possible under the circumstances, from the keep. She called Riyos as she ran, asking him to get her armor, and letting him know where her spare key was.

Riyos loaded the armor into the car, and opened the garage door, to a surprise set of Trolls, a Sluagh, and an SUV blocking the driveway. He momentarily considered his options, deciding to try to pass the SUV just off the driveway. As he drove out, however, he hit some bumps in just the right way to vault over the SUV instead, shocking the trolls. With a loud thud, he landed and set off to pick up Gwen. In typical Eshu fashion, he arrived as she was being chased down by some Sidhe on horseback, sliding the car in front of her to get her in and speeding off down the road. They drove off, with Gwen changing into her armor in the back. They finally shared the details of their dreams from the previous evening, as well, so they both had a better idea of what was going on. Eventually, they got close enough to where they expected Lenore to be that they activated the power of Riyos' Opa, and then set off into the woods to find the princess.
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