Dance of the Seasons V: Winding Roads to the Windy City (Storms of Winter)
Game: Changeling: The Dreaming: Dance of the Seasons
GM: Aaron (2_ragged_claws)
Setting: The Kingdom of Grass
Players/Characters:
Sunday, June 22, 2002
In the morning, once we had all slept and eaten, we had Margaret prize Count Gregory away from his studio so that he could tell us what needed to be done next. Gregory explained that the Harbingers' work to bring the Iron Road into the world could be stopped by means of a ritual, which he believed the three of us were fated to perform. Unfortunately, the ritual was currently lost. Fortunately, Gregory thought he knew who would know how to perform the ritual: Duke Asterlan. Sadly, the Duke had been wandering in the Dreaming for decades, and was presumed lost forever. However, Gregory told us, there was a member of House Beaumayn, Baroness Maxine, who was thought to have a way to find Asterlan. As a final piece of bad news, however, Maxine was thought to be in the basement of the Sears Tower, a dangerous place both of destroying Banality and lingering radiation. Gwen then had a vision of the Baroness, shrinking and shrinking until at last she turned into a silver bell.
Gwen wanted to depart for Chicago immediately; the rest of the motley was much less convinced. It was pointed out that all the troubles happened in the first place because the Beaumayn had kept the Iron Road an internal matter; both Riyos and Jacob felt that it would be best to involve other trustworthy people. Gregory protested that the other Houses, remembering only that Beaumayn was found guilty of something involving Cold Iron at the long ago trial, would start indiscriminately slaughtering Beaumayn. While the House was prepared to die en masse to save Concordia, Gregory believed that the Beaumayn were needed to help ensure that the coming Winter would eventually give way to Spring. Gwen borrowed a tarot deck and performed an Augury that seemed to confirm this.
We split up at that point to ponder our future course. Lenore had to leave - Morwen wanted her to be safe at Chief Greyhawk's freehold, and sent a few Red Branch Knights to see her there. Before she left, she gave her healing necklace to Jacob. Jacob then went off to use the freehold's antiquated computer, to check his email, post a lulzy account of how he was arrested for transporting a minor across state lines to /b/, and also type up an email detailing everything he knew about House Beaumayn and the Iron Road, which he set up to be sent to the Knights of the Silver Web in three month's time. Riyos, meanwhile, hiked to the nearest forge so that he could seek advice from Ogoun the Smith on what to do. Riyos pointed out that Ogoun had told him to defy fate in order to be free; Ogoun laughed and told Riyos that if he always did exactly the opposite of what fate asked him to, he wasn't free at all. He told Riyos to follow fate's road for a ways, and break away when it seemed like the right thing to do.
Reconvening back at the Beaumayn freehold, Riyos agreed to come to Chicago, and Jacob told Gwen that if she could promise that they'd make considerable progress on saving Concordia in three months, he would come to. Gwen said that she was certain this would be the case - although she noted and was disturbed by the fact that the deadline was a good month before Samhain, when she knew the Winter would start. Letting it slide, however, we announced our intentions to the Beaumayn. Margaret gifted each of us with a special gift for the road ahead, and then the three of us and Julia piled into her Chevy and drove North, towards Chicago. It took us two days to get there.
Monday, June 23, 2002
As we approached the city of Chicago, we could feel the cold of Banality settle around us. Dreams were dead here. But as we drove, we passed a house, freshly painted in bright colors, that radiated Glamour and called to us. Riyos and Jacob wanted to check it out, but the two women (including Julia, who was driving) resisted the urge and firmly refused to stop. Gwen suggested that it was probably a sidhe who had walled themselves into what would someday be a Lost One bubble; Riyos pointed out that, as the place was so inviting, there wasn't really any harm in stopping. Jacob was curious about why it would call to them. Nonetheless, Julia drove on, and soon the house was far behind us.
Arriving in Chicago, we got a few blocks away from the police barricades around the Sears Tower, and pulled over to discuss how best to get through them. As we sat there brainstorming, a nearby sluagh drug dealer approached, introduced himself as Speedy Pete, and offered his services as a guide about the city. He was extremely persuasive, and we decided that indeed, it would be helpful to have someone who could get us safely through the barrier. He even seemed to know about Maxine, although he called her Mad Mary - apparently amongst the Chicago Kithain, she was rumored to be an Oracle. We paid him in dross and information about Faerilyth's involvement with the Parliament massacre, and he led us through the sewers to the Sears Tower. Jacob found a couple of the crawl spaces a tight fit, but we made it through without particular incident.
Speedy Pete left us at the door of Tower, and now Banality's chill was even more palpable. We said little as we made our way down into the basements, picking our way through the rubble. At one point the stairs down had collapsed completely, and Riyos granted Gwen the ability to fly so that she could ferry her companions safely down. Once at the bottom level, we found that it was full of shadows, and the walls were covered with frantic chimerical writing. Following the faintest of traces of Glamour in the freezing basement, we found Maxine, huddled amongst several homeless people. She was quietly rocking and muttering to herself, and Banality clung to her like a silent shroud. She had become Dauntain. Gwen went and knelt by her, and tried to comfort her and coax her to tell us how we were to find Asterlan. But Maxine, traumatized by everything that had happened, could only speak in bits of borrowed poetry. Riyos deciphered her riddles: we needed to go through a trod at a place called the Solitary Ringing Tree. Having the answers we needed, Gwen stood sadly, gazing down with sympathy at her unfortunate Housemate.
But Maxine was not done with us. She frantically grasped at Gwen, and her words were now all from "The Wasteland." Gwen realized, with a cold shock, that the woman was asking to be killed. Horrified, Gwen found that she could not do it. She could barely even contemplate doing it. Riyos, however, did not hesitate. Drawing his mace, he called upon the Wyrd and struck a mighty blow, and Maxine fell lifeless to the ground. From her fingers rolled a silver bell, and we brought it with us.
We left the way we came, saying even less on the way out. As we entered the sewers, however, Gwen had a spontaneous vision, of creeping hungry shadows that were frightened away by a red veil. Jacob thought he had heard of such creatures - they were servants of the fomorians, and their shadows caused terrible illness. We warily proceeded, and soon were ambushed by Speedy Pete - who was no sluagh after all, for he no longer whispered - and three others. They wanted to know who we were and what business we had had with Mad Mary. We declined to tell them, and they attacked. They severed their shadows from themselves, and there was a brief hot battle between the eight of them and the four of us. Julia managed to Dictum two of them into surrendering and we cut down a third; the remainder ran off, but not before one of the shadows touched Julia. She began to sicken as we left the sewers, and before we drove to the Solitary Ringing Tree, we dropped her off at a freehold she knew where they could look after her.
We then drove to the Solitary Ringing Tree, which was a lone tree in the middle of the plains, covered with hundreds and hundreds of bells. Riyos hung Maxine's bell on a branch and set it ringing, and one by one every bell on the tree began to ring as well. Before they all chimed in, however, a car pulled up. We could feel the Banality of it even before it opened, and out of it came hideous wraiths that had no mortal seeming, but were only tattered shreds of Fae souls infused with Banality. After them came a Dauntain troll, and we were shocked to recognize him as Ajax, Danielle's squire, still alive after all these years.
Ajax asked us all to join with the Harbingers of Exodus, to help lead the Fae to their final destiny. We refused. Ajax sighed, and said that it was understandable but regrettable, and added that at least he could promise us that we would find ourselves in Paradise. Then the ironwraiths attacked. Riyos challenged Ajax to single combat (to Gwen's horror), and Jacob attempted to protect us all with Veiled Eyes - but Riyos wanted to keep Ajax distracted and Gwen, seeing that the wraiths attacked the tree once they could not see us, tried to protect the wondrous place. But there were too many of them, and she was badly injured by them. After what seemed like an eternity, the bells on the tree were all ringing and the trod finally opened. Jacob went through, then Gwen, bleeding profusely in both meins. Riyos came last. AS the trod closed between us and Ajax, he offered a parting thought:
"Baroness Gwendolyn," he said. "She loves you still."
And then he was gone, and we were a beautiful watercolor panorama in the Dreaming, and the next part of our journey began.
GM: Aaron (2_ragged_claws)
Setting: The Kingdom of Grass
Players/Characters:
- Sarah (kalliplokime)/Gwendolyn (Gwen Douglas): An older sidhe 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 22, 2002
In the morning, once we had all slept and eaten, we had Margaret prize Count Gregory away from his studio so that he could tell us what needed to be done next. Gregory explained that the Harbingers' work to bring the Iron Road into the world could be stopped by means of a ritual, which he believed the three of us were fated to perform. Unfortunately, the ritual was currently lost. Fortunately, Gregory thought he knew who would know how to perform the ritual: Duke Asterlan. Sadly, the Duke had been wandering in the Dreaming for decades, and was presumed lost forever. However, Gregory told us, there was a member of House Beaumayn, Baroness Maxine, who was thought to have a way to find Asterlan. As a final piece of bad news, however, Maxine was thought to be in the basement of the Sears Tower, a dangerous place both of destroying Banality and lingering radiation. Gwen then had a vision of the Baroness, shrinking and shrinking until at last she turned into a silver bell.
Gwen wanted to depart for Chicago immediately; the rest of the motley was much less convinced. It was pointed out that all the troubles happened in the first place because the Beaumayn had kept the Iron Road an internal matter; both Riyos and Jacob felt that it would be best to involve other trustworthy people. Gregory protested that the other Houses, remembering only that Beaumayn was found guilty of something involving Cold Iron at the long ago trial, would start indiscriminately slaughtering Beaumayn. While the House was prepared to die en masse to save Concordia, Gregory believed that the Beaumayn were needed to help ensure that the coming Winter would eventually give way to Spring. Gwen borrowed a tarot deck and performed an Augury that seemed to confirm this.
We split up at that point to ponder our future course. Lenore had to leave - Morwen wanted her to be safe at Chief Greyhawk's freehold, and sent a few Red Branch Knights to see her there. Before she left, she gave her healing necklace to Jacob. Jacob then went off to use the freehold's antiquated computer, to check his email, post a lulzy account of how he was arrested for transporting a minor across state lines to /b/, and also type up an email detailing everything he knew about House Beaumayn and the Iron Road, which he set up to be sent to the Knights of the Silver Web in three month's time. Riyos, meanwhile, hiked to the nearest forge so that he could seek advice from Ogoun the Smith on what to do. Riyos pointed out that Ogoun had told him to defy fate in order to be free; Ogoun laughed and told Riyos that if he always did exactly the opposite of what fate asked him to, he wasn't free at all. He told Riyos to follow fate's road for a ways, and break away when it seemed like the right thing to do.
Reconvening back at the Beaumayn freehold, Riyos agreed to come to Chicago, and Jacob told Gwen that if she could promise that they'd make considerable progress on saving Concordia in three months, he would come to. Gwen said that she was certain this would be the case - although she noted and was disturbed by the fact that the deadline was a good month before Samhain, when she knew the Winter would start. Letting it slide, however, we announced our intentions to the Beaumayn. Margaret gifted each of us with a special gift for the road ahead, and then the three of us and Julia piled into her Chevy and drove North, towards Chicago. It took us two days to get there.
Monday, June 23, 2002
As we approached the city of Chicago, we could feel the cold of Banality settle around us. Dreams were dead here. But as we drove, we passed a house, freshly painted in bright colors, that radiated Glamour and called to us. Riyos and Jacob wanted to check it out, but the two women (including Julia, who was driving) resisted the urge and firmly refused to stop. Gwen suggested that it was probably a sidhe who had walled themselves into what would someday be a Lost One bubble; Riyos pointed out that, as the place was so inviting, there wasn't really any harm in stopping. Jacob was curious about why it would call to them. Nonetheless, Julia drove on, and soon the house was far behind us.
Arriving in Chicago, we got a few blocks away from the police barricades around the Sears Tower, and pulled over to discuss how best to get through them. As we sat there brainstorming, a nearby sluagh drug dealer approached, introduced himself as Speedy Pete, and offered his services as a guide about the city. He was extremely persuasive, and we decided that indeed, it would be helpful to have someone who could get us safely through the barrier. He even seemed to know about Maxine, although he called her Mad Mary - apparently amongst the Chicago Kithain, she was rumored to be an Oracle. We paid him in dross and information about Faerilyth's involvement with the Parliament massacre, and he led us through the sewers to the Sears Tower. Jacob found a couple of the crawl spaces a tight fit, but we made it through without particular incident.
Speedy Pete left us at the door of Tower, and now Banality's chill was even more palpable. We said little as we made our way down into the basements, picking our way through the rubble. At one point the stairs down had collapsed completely, and Riyos granted Gwen the ability to fly so that she could ferry her companions safely down. Once at the bottom level, we found that it was full of shadows, and the walls were covered with frantic chimerical writing. Following the faintest of traces of Glamour in the freezing basement, we found Maxine, huddled amongst several homeless people. She was quietly rocking and muttering to herself, and Banality clung to her like a silent shroud. She had become Dauntain. Gwen went and knelt by her, and tried to comfort her and coax her to tell us how we were to find Asterlan. But Maxine, traumatized by everything that had happened, could only speak in bits of borrowed poetry. Riyos deciphered her riddles: we needed to go through a trod at a place called the Solitary Ringing Tree. Having the answers we needed, Gwen stood sadly, gazing down with sympathy at her unfortunate Housemate.
But Maxine was not done with us. She frantically grasped at Gwen, and her words were now all from "The Wasteland." Gwen realized, with a cold shock, that the woman was asking to be killed. Horrified, Gwen found that she could not do it. She could barely even contemplate doing it. Riyos, however, did not hesitate. Drawing his mace, he called upon the Wyrd and struck a mighty blow, and Maxine fell lifeless to the ground. From her fingers rolled a silver bell, and we brought it with us.
We left the way we came, saying even less on the way out. As we entered the sewers, however, Gwen had a spontaneous vision, of creeping hungry shadows that were frightened away by a red veil. Jacob thought he had heard of such creatures - they were servants of the fomorians, and their shadows caused terrible illness. We warily proceeded, and soon were ambushed by Speedy Pete - who was no sluagh after all, for he no longer whispered - and three others. They wanted to know who we were and what business we had had with Mad Mary. We declined to tell them, and they attacked. They severed their shadows from themselves, and there was a brief hot battle between the eight of them and the four of us. Julia managed to Dictum two of them into surrendering and we cut down a third; the remainder ran off, but not before one of the shadows touched Julia. She began to sicken as we left the sewers, and before we drove to the Solitary Ringing Tree, we dropped her off at a freehold she knew where they could look after her.
We then drove to the Solitary Ringing Tree, which was a lone tree in the middle of the plains, covered with hundreds and hundreds of bells. Riyos hung Maxine's bell on a branch and set it ringing, and one by one every bell on the tree began to ring as well. Before they all chimed in, however, a car pulled up. We could feel the Banality of it even before it opened, and out of it came hideous wraiths that had no mortal seeming, but were only tattered shreds of Fae souls infused with Banality. After them came a Dauntain troll, and we were shocked to recognize him as Ajax, Danielle's squire, still alive after all these years.
Ajax asked us all to join with the Harbingers of Exodus, to help lead the Fae to their final destiny. We refused. Ajax sighed, and said that it was understandable but regrettable, and added that at least he could promise us that we would find ourselves in Paradise. Then the ironwraiths attacked. Riyos challenged Ajax to single combat (to Gwen's horror), and Jacob attempted to protect us all with Veiled Eyes - but Riyos wanted to keep Ajax distracted and Gwen, seeing that the wraiths attacked the tree once they could not see us, tried to protect the wondrous place. But there were too many of them, and she was badly injured by them. After what seemed like an eternity, the bells on the tree were all ringing and the trod finally opened. Jacob went through, then Gwen, bleeding profusely in both meins. Riyos came last. AS the trod closed between us and Ajax, he offered a parting thought:
"Baroness Gwendolyn," he said. "She loves you still."
And then he was gone, and we were a beautiful watercolor panorama in the Dreaming, and the next part of our journey began.