Gloria Mundi Update
You'll recall that last time, the Rogue Element cabal got its collective ass handed to it by a Promethean (they don't know that's what he was, but we all know, yeah?). Morrigan escaped without serious injury, zipping off into Twilight. Tyrrhenus, Niamh and Ogma were badly injured and taken away to the hospital. Winter was arrested, but hadn't been hurt (and her player wasn't available last night, so what happened to Winter remains a mystery, but I am making lemonade out of that particular potato, lemme tell ya).
So, the injured mages were take to the hospital where I discovered that the WoD system is way forgiving of serious wounds. I would like, I think, to see a game system that makes a serious stab at representing what happens when you take lots of tissue damage. I mean, we have entire professions built around this kind of wound rehabilitation, and I know it's not a lot of fun to role-play, but that makes magical healing worth the risks it presents, yeah?
Anyway, since these people are mages and have access to magical healing, it's going to become moot anyway. But initially, mostly full of aggravated damage, they were just relaxin' and enjoying their morphine.
Morrigan, meantime, went home and called the police to report her car missing (which, you'll recall, was parked outside the Carpet Store of Doom and the police found it to be rigged with a bomb). They asked her to come in, and she told them that she'd been at a club, but had gone home and her car had gone missing from the drive. The police dutifully noted this.
At the hospital, Tyrrhenus received a strange visitation from a man in a dark suit and a woman in a red dress. They referred to something being "broken" and asked Tyrrhenus if he'd summoned anything from "the outer dark" lately. He assumed it was the drugs and left it at that.
Later that night, Februs, the Mastigos of the Shadow Chorus (the Guardian cabal in town) open a portal to take Ogma to the forum, which you might recall me mentioning. The other three players at the table took the roles of other Mastigos (Nebudchadnezzar, Knave, Rabid Annie, specifically - I played all the rest). Simon, Morrigan's former mentor, moderated and the Warlocks discussed the killer in their midst. Theories were flung about; Banishers, Seers, something else entirely, but at the guts of it, all they came up with was "Everybody watch your back and let's try and look into this deeper." The Secret Concord was mentioned, though not by name.
Towards the end, Rabid Annie's macaw familiar warned her that someone had "lit the lighthouse." Knave checked, and indeed, someone had made a magical beacon to the building, enabling anyone paying attention the right way to see the meeting house. The mages scattered, Februs left Ogma back in his bed, but before passing out Ogma noticed a piece of paper that the other mage had dropped. He picked it up, and fell asleep.
Next day, Tyrrhenus called the family lawyer. Said lawyer told him that the cops had a few days to prepare a case (since, really, what were the mages charged with? Trespassing?). He said that he'd represent all of them, but the Licavoli family would consider that a pretty major favor. Tyrrhenus agreed. The lawyer also mentioned that Cecelia (Morrigan) had screwed up - she'd claimed her car was stolen from the house, but that didn't explain why her roommates and her fingerprints were at the scene of a highly bizarre crime.
Morrigan, for her part, stepped into Twilight and visited her cabal. During her visit with Ogma, the strange man and woman came back, introducing themselves as "Mr. Gold" and "Ruby." They looked around the room and answered questions when it suited them, and then told the mages that they'd talk to them Tuesday when they got released. Ruby, it seems, can read a person's past by touching them, and rattled off Ogma's real name, DOB, date of Awakening, and so on. This rattled him a bit.
Ogma also showed Morrigan the paper that he'd found. It contained two lists of names, and apparently every mage in Boston was on one of the two of them. The cabal, it happened, was split - Morrigan and Niamh were on the longer list (which also included the Nemean, Chain, Vision and his cabal, and many others) while Tyrrhenus, Ogma and Winter were on the shorter one. It looked, to them, like a hit list, but they didn't know what to make of it.
Morrigan spent the time that day going out to visit the Gravediggers. She talked with Hydra about what had happened and the killings, but Hydra was tired. She chatted with Seraphim and Hades a bit, did some training, talked about Legacies, and headed home.
Meanwhile, Ogma had set up mental communication with Niamh and Tyrrhenus, working out a story. The story was that they'd seen Morrigan yanked into a car, had followed in her car, the fight at the store happened, and Morrigan had fled. They told her about this, and told to say that she'd flipped out, intimate that she'd been drugged. Also that day, Ruby and Mr. Gold visited Niamh. Gold asked Niamh what it was that she should have been doing that she wasn't.
The next day (Monday), the cops came for Morrigan, brought her in for more questions, which were administered by the Chief of Detectives of the city. She told him their concocted lie. He said that if she went to the hospital and had blood work and a rape kit done, it would help matters; she agreed, and after her blood was drawn she altered it a bit to reveal trace amounts of a date-rape drug. Once the results were back, the charges were dropped. One of the uniforms that had brought Morrigan in, by the way, came up behind her and whispered "Just know there's more at work, here. And the Gravediggers have your back." That cop, she realized, was Hades, a Gravedigger...but also a Guardian of the Veil, presumably in a Masque (not that Morrigan knows about such things).
(The other thing that happened Monday was that a "terrorist" was apprehend at the Boston airport with, according to some sources, a dirty bomb...but that detail disappeared from the airwaves pretty quickly. But we knew that.)
Whew. OK, so, the characters were released from custody, but not from the hospital. They were allowed to be brought together, though, and while the four of them were talking Ruby and Mr. Gold showed up again. They said that something had gone out of joint, something wasn't done that should have been. They repeated their questions about the "outer dark," and Tyrrhenus remembered this little incident in which he actually met a being from the outer dark. Niamh, by now, had figured out what she should have been doing that weekend - watching Cerberus, the dog-familiar of Agdos, a fellow member of the Mysterium. Ruby and Gold said that they were there to help the mages find and banish whatever it was that was killing them (one player asked if they were changelings; they are not). Morrigan decided to go check with Agdos, while the other three mages decided to stay in hospital care a while longer.
Morrigan talked with Agdos and learned that another mage had been murdered. This one - Sandro - was a member of a cabal in outlying Waltham called Benefit. He'd been a prof at MIT. And, once again, with the victims outside the Consilium, the Ebon Noose wasn't acting.
And with that, and with a meeting of the Mysterium upcoming for next time, as well as detailing Winter's whereabouts, we leave it.
So, the injured mages were take to the hospital where I discovered that the WoD system is way forgiving of serious wounds. I would like, I think, to see a game system that makes a serious stab at representing what happens when you take lots of tissue damage. I mean, we have entire professions built around this kind of wound rehabilitation, and I know it's not a lot of fun to role-play, but that makes magical healing worth the risks it presents, yeah?
Anyway, since these people are mages and have access to magical healing, it's going to become moot anyway. But initially, mostly full of aggravated damage, they were just relaxin' and enjoying their morphine.
Morrigan, meantime, went home and called the police to report her car missing (which, you'll recall, was parked outside the Carpet Store of Doom and the police found it to be rigged with a bomb). They asked her to come in, and she told them that she'd been at a club, but had gone home and her car had gone missing from the drive. The police dutifully noted this.
At the hospital, Tyrrhenus received a strange visitation from a man in a dark suit and a woman in a red dress. They referred to something being "broken" and asked Tyrrhenus if he'd summoned anything from "the outer dark" lately. He assumed it was the drugs and left it at that.
Later that night, Februs, the Mastigos of the Shadow Chorus (the Guardian cabal in town) open a portal to take Ogma to the forum, which you might recall me mentioning. The other three players at the table took the roles of other Mastigos (Nebudchadnezzar, Knave, Rabid Annie, specifically - I played all the rest). Simon, Morrigan's former mentor, moderated and the Warlocks discussed the killer in their midst. Theories were flung about; Banishers, Seers, something else entirely, but at the guts of it, all they came up with was "Everybody watch your back and let's try and look into this deeper." The Secret Concord was mentioned, though not by name.
Towards the end, Rabid Annie's macaw familiar warned her that someone had "lit the lighthouse." Knave checked, and indeed, someone had made a magical beacon to the building, enabling anyone paying attention the right way to see the meeting house. The mages scattered, Februs left Ogma back in his bed, but before passing out Ogma noticed a piece of paper that the other mage had dropped. He picked it up, and fell asleep.
Next day, Tyrrhenus called the family lawyer. Said lawyer told him that the cops had a few days to prepare a case (since, really, what were the mages charged with? Trespassing?). He said that he'd represent all of them, but the Licavoli family would consider that a pretty major favor. Tyrrhenus agreed. The lawyer also mentioned that Cecelia (Morrigan) had screwed up - she'd claimed her car was stolen from the house, but that didn't explain why her roommates and her fingerprints were at the scene of a highly bizarre crime.
Morrigan, for her part, stepped into Twilight and visited her cabal. During her visit with Ogma, the strange man and woman came back, introducing themselves as "Mr. Gold" and "Ruby." They looked around the room and answered questions when it suited them, and then told the mages that they'd talk to them Tuesday when they got released. Ruby, it seems, can read a person's past by touching them, and rattled off Ogma's real name, DOB, date of Awakening, and so on. This rattled him a bit.
Ogma also showed Morrigan the paper that he'd found. It contained two lists of names, and apparently every mage in Boston was on one of the two of them. The cabal, it happened, was split - Morrigan and Niamh were on the longer list (which also included the Nemean, Chain, Vision and his cabal, and many others) while Tyrrhenus, Ogma and Winter were on the shorter one. It looked, to them, like a hit list, but they didn't know what to make of it.
Morrigan spent the time that day going out to visit the Gravediggers. She talked with Hydra about what had happened and the killings, but Hydra was tired. She chatted with Seraphim and Hades a bit, did some training, talked about Legacies, and headed home.
Meanwhile, Ogma had set up mental communication with Niamh and Tyrrhenus, working out a story. The story was that they'd seen Morrigan yanked into a car, had followed in her car, the fight at the store happened, and Morrigan had fled. They told her about this, and told to say that she'd flipped out, intimate that she'd been drugged. Also that day, Ruby and Mr. Gold visited Niamh. Gold asked Niamh what it was that she should have been doing that she wasn't.
The next day (Monday), the cops came for Morrigan, brought her in for more questions, which were administered by the Chief of Detectives of the city. She told him their concocted lie. He said that if she went to the hospital and had blood work and a rape kit done, it would help matters; she agreed, and after her blood was drawn she altered it a bit to reveal trace amounts of a date-rape drug. Once the results were back, the charges were dropped. One of the uniforms that had brought Morrigan in, by the way, came up behind her and whispered "Just know there's more at work, here. And the Gravediggers have your back." That cop, she realized, was Hades, a Gravedigger...but also a Guardian of the Veil, presumably in a Masque (not that Morrigan knows about such things).
(The other thing that happened Monday was that a "terrorist" was apprehend at the Boston airport with, according to some sources, a dirty bomb...but that detail disappeared from the airwaves pretty quickly. But we knew that.)
Whew. OK, so, the characters were released from custody, but not from the hospital. They were allowed to be brought together, though, and while the four of them were talking Ruby and Mr. Gold showed up again. They said that something had gone out of joint, something wasn't done that should have been. They repeated their questions about the "outer dark," and Tyrrhenus remembered this little incident in which he actually met a being from the outer dark. Niamh, by now, had figured out what she should have been doing that weekend - watching Cerberus, the dog-familiar of Agdos, a fellow member of the Mysterium. Ruby and Gold said that they were there to help the mages find and banish whatever it was that was killing them (one player asked if they were changelings; they are not). Morrigan decided to go check with Agdos, while the other three mages decided to stay in hospital care a while longer.
Morrigan talked with Agdos and learned that another mage had been murdered. This one - Sandro - was a member of a cabal in outlying Waltham called Benefit. He'd been a prof at MIT. And, once again, with the victims outside the Consilium, the Ebon Noose wasn't acting.
And with that, and with a meeting of the Mysterium upcoming for next time, as well as detailing Winter's whereabouts, we leave it.