indigodice

[indigodice]

THREE MEN, A DWARF, AND A WOMAN'S SHADOW MET AT A DOOR AT MIDNIGHT

I may have been a little unfair about the story explanation. I felt so before the second session which I had recently, but I'd have a hard time proving that so you'll just have to believe me.

They five were drawn to that door in the market, by a pressentiment of danger. In the dream she hid a card away in the first book she could find. Neru's shadow fumbled at the lock until a tall man clad in armor jogged to the door and bumped into her. Not finding the shadow curious, he kindly requested she cease invisibility, then whispered asking why she was invisible. Neru explained she needed to open the door, to which this man called Final turned the handle hard and pushed on the door, it did not budge, but interrupted Neru's careful work. She asked him to stop, and he did. It became a queue when Angus the robed dwarf arrived asking if the man in front of him was here for the shop too, and whether or not the two were here for the same thing. Then Auk, who wore chainmail, asked whether they were in a hurry, to which the shadow of a woman cast a spell to rattle the door open. Devil magic was flung at Neru, who deflected it before dodging aside. Auk ran around to the back of the shop while they fought for the doorway. Final drew twin blades and engaged the clawed beast which blooded him, but he cleaved it in twain before being forced out of the doorway by a second creature of metal and rust. He disengaged.

Auk found there were in fact no windows and so cast a spell to create one. Neru yelled "She's dead!" Auk paused to think, and breached the passage. Empty but for the books spilled on the ground, and the one from the dream. He grabbed it and conspicuous, ran to where the fighting started. The demons were screaming for /it/, whatever /it/ was, but they didn't know about the book. Angus cast away his robe like a wrestler, grew into a giant and wrestled it away. They hurled each other, then hurled rusted metal which became molten and useless under Angus's counters. A third beast like the first changed out, to which Final, having killed the first engaged. Then something he couldn't see struck at him, blooding him a second time. Neru countered the creature's magics and movement, it would flicker and fade. She healed him with a word, and reinvogorated, he reengaged. When the invisible thing would strike at him, she should shout to dodge, and he would, then turn away to fight the third, which he could see, which bloodied him just before Raxis stabbed it in the back, and apologized for not being late. Then they fought it together, Raxis at it's back, Final at it's front, while being flanked by an invisible thing, which was in turn being flanked by Neru's magic, and soon Auk who stretched his limbs to stab at it from strange angles and far spaces. The fight began to turn, Final moved from beast to beast as they were engaged by the strangers, and fell them one by one.

Winded, Neru said "You're a whirlwind."

"I'm just a man." He cleaned his blades with an impatient flourish, and strode inside. Raxis followed him, made him sit down, and began to suture him back together.

"You got it." Neru said to Auk, to which he agreed, and began to read it aloud. Those and his thoughts, like where he supposed the important information was, scribbles, notes, annotations, though he could only speculate. Her name was Hajeck.

"I don't mind the scars," Final would say. "It doesn't hurt that bad -"

"You don't need to scar. Keep still." Raxis would answer. "You got surprised, then you got tired, then they kept hitting you. But you didn't die."

"No. I don't think I would have."

When Raxis was done, he examined the corpse professionally, aloud, to no-one in particular, to himself. While Auk admired the examination, Angus admired Auk's window, then examined the other rooms with Final. They spoke briefly on the fight. Neru explained the chalk map Hajeck made on the floor was the market square, it noted three stores. Afterward, Neru called the town guard. When Auk was done reading the ledger, he opened a book and read it aloud to Hajeck, who being dead, couldn't hear.

Raxis went outside with Angus to see if they could scavenge anything from the bodies, they found magical trinkets from each, except the rust creature. When the town guard arrived, Neru and Auk met them outside. Neru spoke with the captain, who took her word instead of the group's as he knew Neru. Auk asked if he could try to speak with Hajeck, to Neru, who understood, and asked the captain, who asked what that meant, and when Neru insisted, said yes.

Raxis muttered that the dead should stay dead, to which Auk with all seriousness agreed, and invited Raxis to watch. Seriousness was convincing, and Raxis, being serious, agreed. Auk lit a candle on a mortified severed hand, and spoke to a space above Hajeck. None save Auk could hear nor speak to the dead. To the captain with whom Auk planned his interview, Neru and Raxis, Auk spoke in a strange whispering mumble that wasn't the language they planned in. Hajeck was angry, more Hajeck was indignant about his death. Auk broke away from the interview and instead asked Hajeck about his funerary plans, and his next of kin. Hajeck requested her shop be burned, and the card brought away from the city. Auk answered the first would be harder than the second, before she deciding she didn't, after all, care about burning her shop, or even assembling her next of kin, for she had none, and would rather fade away, a long rest after what she thought was a long turmulous life. Auk was more patient than one needed, to a ghost, but before long the ghost of Hajeck would repeat her answers and sentiments, and Auk was convinced he was thorough enough. Auk conveyed the spirit's indignance, and his failure to obtain the answers to their questions, then the request the store be burned down to the Captain who said he would see what he could do.

[indigodice]

CLAVAGY AGAIN

Started another game with a GM that used to GM for me and some of my buddies. We spent about a month before christmas working on characters. Pathfinder's systems are pretty colorful, but it still feels like there's an oppressive focus on combat. We began, we had solo sessions to get us oriented, we did THE TASK at hand, then we were thrust into the next TASK at hand. We're on pretty hard rails so far, we haven't really tried to deviate yet, but somehow I'm expecting resistance when we inevitably try to. But when I was asked about the session I remember saying something ilke "seems like a good start" which, although truthful, I'm not sure if I share that optimism for the future of the game.

I've been stealing random bits from other fantasy I like, so now I'm an amalgam of references I don't think the other players understand, but at least I'm very colorful. I'm a wizard that deals in keys and doorways, belonging to an organization called the clavigers. I've decided the leaders of the clavigers are called Uncles and Aunties, they are long lived to the point of stasis. They could be like vampires or liches, or have whatever forms of long life.

We dealt with our individual problems, then joined together through visions that set us up together, and now we're a kind of amalgam of our own, driven, I think, by people who take up more space than other people. I'm not sure I want to just be driven around without my input, but I'm willing to be patient and see where I'm allowed to act. More curious I think is whether the world, the GM, will respond to me existing, or if the classic "GM only reacts to actors who take up space" will happen.

[indigodice]

ADVENTURES FROM THRESHOLD

THE CONSERVATORY

For moments the snow stopped falling, and Nettle listened to the scratching of scriveners below. The conservatory was built atop a library, where scriveners pondered texts written on papers processed by wasps like himself. After Threshold became more than a place, it's papery walls became home to a library. As the pages that formed the walls filled with knowledge, a creature called Five-Eyes pressed three eyes so close to the glass that it smudged. It began to detail the event on wasp-parchment the size of itself.

"What are you doing? I haven't started the weather yet," Nettle complained. Five-Eyes meandered on six legs to fetch another parchment, while Nettle fought the frustration of losing those precious snowless seconds. "Clumsy clumsy," Nettle muttered. Five-Eyes was constantly dropping charts and smudging the glass which Nettle now had to spend his time cleaning. "Is this really how you imagined your lot in life? Do you really find you're so suited to a life of stars and ink?" Five-Eyes thought it was rude for a Naiad like itself to move it's jaw in the presence of other insects but in light of the rapport with Nettle, Five-Eyes stroked Nettle with it's jaw. "Well, I wish the best for you." The matter was settled.

That moment of clear skies seemed to signal a change for Threshold. Nettle dictated the weather to Five-Eyes who secured the parchments with a spidersilk chord, and began down the trunk to the archives. Nettle cleaned the telescope as he muttered about his apprentice, and the state of apprenticeships in Threshold.

THE ARCHIVES

Historical documentation demanded literacy beyond measure, lights, parchment, and storage. The wasps provided parchment and storage. A large geode was provided by some clever moles, who labored for a time to install the reflecting crystals below the base of the hive. It was designed to reflect and refract light across the archive. And with light, archivists of all kinds toiled to crystal refractions at every hour.

Some of the scriveners were hard at work in the archive, reading and writing and translating, and condensing weather reports, and sometimes as they were meant to, building a meteorological body of works.

Clio understood the importance of her work since her family of mice were farmers, though sometimes she wondered if all the archivists understood that gravity. Cresika Newt loved gossip. In the afternoons she would hunt for it in the archives, hiding among the crystals, thinking gossip thoughts wondering where gossip hides. And before long she found herself in the restricted section, supposing the warnings were more like suggestions, and supposing again that nothing could hide from her after all. She would even ask that quiet mouse, Clio, to "Spill the tea, tell me everything!"

"I prefer coffee actually," Clio squeaked, "but I don't have any here and if I did, I wouldn't, that would be bad for the documents."

"Oh you," Cresika was musing and miming about her lot in life since she had just read something and liked it a lot, "this work is destined for the stage! How wonderful it would be to act The Epic of Magnolia Barns!" She held in her hands a document Clio had never seen before. "I should have been a playwrite! Or an actress!"

"Where did you get that?" Clio asked. "Wait, I thought you wanted to be a botanist," Clio squeaked.

"Oh, you, get with the times Clio, now it's all about the Epic of Magnolia Barnes! I've never wanted anything more than to give The Epic of Magniolia Barns the attention it deserves!"

"I thought you were doing all this so you could become a botanist!" That she used to go on about wanting to become a botanist, and had in fact completed almost every preparation to begin as a botanist. Cressika pauses, and Clio can see the gears turning in her head.

"Perhaps then it wasn't meant to be, just like their love, and just like this epic was cast away into the Restricted Section!" Cresika banishes the forbidden play into the shallow depths of the crystal archive. It feels as though it hangs in the air for a moment, and for the next moment Clio imagined it falling into some deep insurmountable hole in the cave. But there in the hall towards the restricted section, Clio felt the judging eyes of the other archivists. It lands harmlessly. But Clio cringes anyways. Cresika leaves.

The archive is quiet without Cressika. At first Clio waits, hoping for the responsible party to reappear, but all waiting does is build on Clio's curiosity, and responsibility. It takes a while longer for Clio to decide she must take this responsibility, though she tells herself she is concentrating on a translation, and didn't know there was a restricted section.

Cressika had not taken good care of the document. It was well worn, well read, if a bit damp, if only because Cressika is a bit damp by nature. With some work, this could be fully restored, Clio supposed it would be for the best if she kept it. But before she knows it, she has already found her way to the restricted section, which wasn't so hard to find at all. Five-Eyes is there, waiting and staring, and holding documents for processing, and before she can return the epic, they're back at her desk processing documents; Notes of a Wallfacer diary, from another solitary creature like itself from some waterdwelling cave below, An extremely current weather report, and a starmap. In hands and signs, Five-Eyes signals "These constellations: new. These: old. Speculation: astral drift has broken alignment. Curiosity unabated."

"You mice work too hard. Go and enjoy the party!" Fuzzy, a veteran archivist has been an archivist longer than most have been alive.

"But -"

"Go go go." Fuzzy meanders when words are unconvincing, then he turns off the lights, and repeats, "go go go. Enjoy yourselves! This is a special occasion!"

"But…"

"Query: Will there be grubs and meat this time?"

Clio nods, "I'm sure there will be."

THE HUNDRED HANDS

Barnabee frequented The Hundred Hands, a bar tended by hundred-handed-Basil, who had so many legs that some thought he had a million. That didn't sound right to Barnabee, but he couldn't argue since Bees were always better at music than math. "Hey Basil, the usual, put it on my tab." Basil prepares a drop of mead. There is no hope of Barnabee ever replaying his tab. It has been growing unconscionably, but the milipede makes exceptions for the Aruna Almus hive. Bees can have all the mead they want.

"How's hive life?"

"Hive life has been good. You know, the usual." Barnabee has been hiding the secret of his exile. Barnabee is unkempt, his fur is covered in old pollen he tells himself he has been saving for an emergency. When his life became an emergency, his criteria of emergency changed, and the pollen remained for yet more dire circumstances. Perhaps by now it is bad, but it is also for emergencies, so only an emergency will know.

"I envy hive life, you know, you have purpose and family, a warm place with food."

"Yeah?"

"Solitary life sucks. You have to work hard and make a living by yourself, you've got no-one to count on, and no-one counts on you."

"Oh. It can't be that bad, right? You're so free. No-one tells you what to do."

"I think you've got it all wrong. You've got it made with hive life. You've got everything a bug could dream of. Hive life must be swell, everything's planned out and figured out, and the queens have a vision for the future. Better yet, they've got a plan, and not just any plan, they know what to do because it's happened before, they remember their history and that doesn't happen with solitary bugs like us."

"Hey wait I recognize you." Primrose was another worker from Aruna Almus. "You're that exile! Boo! Get out of here!"

"I think you've made a mistake, Barnabee from your hive."

"Yeah, an exile! Barnabee you suck. You shouldn't be here, get out of here!" Primrose doesn't actually know why Barnabee is exiled, but Hive news travels fast. Bees trust hive news. Bees trust their own hive news and distrust other hives' news. Since Barnabee is now an other, he's also distrusted.

"It can't be all that bad. Be nice Primrose." Juniper is from the same hive, she trusts hive news, and accepts her friend's exile. She does not reconcile these two things, they are irreconcilable. Parts of Juniper's life have been irreconcilable for a while. Primrose becomes very aware he doesn't understand the noble machinations in the hive. Primrose sinks away, unity and hive and honey and all. "How've you been Barnabee?"

"I've been swell. I've found a little mushroom alcove, that's where I've been staying."

"Why don't you go there instead of here!?" Primrose is awkwardly avoiding Juniper, while definitely eavesdropping on Barnabee who he's decided he hates.

"I thought it'd be a nice change from the trees we bees are always in. I guess it's not the same as being in a hive, either. How have your dancing lessons been going?"

"I don't think I'm cut out to be a scout, I don't have any rhythm at all, so the other bees have trouble understanding my directions. I think I'll have to keep being a handmaiden for the queen."

"There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"You scouts just have so much fun exploring out there. For once I'd think I'd like to see what's out there and do some exploring too. But I don't know if I'd be able to find my way back. Are you ever worried about that?"

"I'm exiled, remember?"

"But you won't forget where the hive is, will you? Anyways it's been good to talk to you. I tried to memorize a little dance about where some recent pollen is, but I don't know if the directions are good, being me and all." Juniper is about to give away hive secrets, an offering of present friendship for past friendship. But Barnabee moves to leave.

"I hear Threshold's throwing a party." Basil said.

"Yeah. So?"

"There'll be food there. A lot of food. I hear they're swimming in it."

"No, I think I'd best be getting home. I have a mushroom to take care of you know." Basil gets rid of Barnabee's tab, while Barnabee assures mostly himself that everything will be fine.

Barnabee's mushroom has waited patiently for Barnbee to return. It has held out all it can, and when Barnabee arrives it collapses under the weight of the snow upon his approach.

Barnabee dreads the decision he'll have to make. With only one option he decides he'll have to visit Threshold after all.

THE SOLSTACE CELEBRATION

All seem to be welcome. The gates aren't barred, and all sorts of creatures funnel in to have their share of the feast. The mayor is on stage giving a speech talking about how swell everything is going.

Five-Eyes finds a grub and munches on it while listening to the speech. It's two larger compound eyes notice movement above, and Five-Eyes supposes it is a new ceremony. Except no-one is looking at them, and some of them are holding tools that might be weapons. Bats are climbing into Threshold through the roof. It's never seen bats inside Threshold before.

Five-Eyes asks in hands and signs if there are bats in Threshold. In hands and signs Five-Eyes motions his queries, but does not have a commanding presence. Where are the guards? Panic sets in as Five-Eyes considers that the guards are all here, and not at the guardhouse where he could quickly swim if something like this happened at any other time. The guards are out and about like all the other citizens of Threshold. Some are drunk. Others are listening to the Mayor, but not enough, since they probably hear enough of him during their work hours.

Five-Eyes skitters through the crowd, which fights his every attempt. They are mostly taller and bigger than Five-Eyes, who's body is like a worm's or a cricket's, or a small shrimp's, long and towards the ground. It weasels it's way through, sometimes making snapping sounds with it's jaw to ineffectually force people to move.

"Query: Are there bats in Threshold?"

"What's that? You'll have to talk, I don't know your language all that well." The Mayor says.

In a deep gravelly voice Five-Eyes asks "Are there bats in Threshold?"

"What's that? Bats? I don't think so!"

When Five-Eyes speaks, it speaks in an earthy tone, deep and cracklingly soft. "They're armed!"

"What? They have arms? I hope they have arms. I see you struggle all the time without arms. A mouth isn't a really good arm - " The bats spring into action, flying everywhere and driving the citizens of Threshold into panic. A bat flies low and brings the Mayor into the sky. Others are flying in groups scattering the crowd.

"Speculation: I will avenge you Mayor Thistlebottom." Five-Eyes turns it's attention elsewhere. Even the guard have scattered. Five-Eyes finds a group of guards at the boarder of Threshold, and tries to rally them into a formation. Everyone that is needed is here, it decides they must be coaxed into action. A contingency must be put into place, Five-Eyes conscripts four nearby citizens of threshold, and informs them of a plan. They run off in different directions.

Clio Mus is not paralyzed with fear. Clio Mus is succeeding in recording these events in detail. She notices the bats, she counts them, details their outfits and weapons, and the mice on their backs. The townsfolk are scattering. The mayor is kidnapped and handing a document to his captor. Clio notices this and writes it down. Clio notices the mayor handing a document off to his captor. She stares, and remembers a spell. She remembers she can do something to help and casts a spell into the air and bats and mice begin to fall asleep, else they begin to fight drowsiness.

The bat holding the Mayor begins to fall. The bat holding the mayor lets go of the mayor.

Barnabee who was enjoying a berry is assailed by a bandit, who literally takes the berry from his mouth. Barnabee cannot stand this insult, and draws a needle to defend his honor. They duel and their blades clash. Until he notices the Mayor falling from the sky. He doesn't know the mayor, but he knows the mayor is important, and this cannot stand. He flies into the sky and catches the mayor. Only the mayor is a Gerbil and very heavy. They're put into a spin, and they're still falling.

Clio notices the mayor and casts another spell. Their fall slows. Barnabee gets the mayor to safety, he decides the mayor's safety is his responsibility. He does not remember he is not part of threshold, but it feels natural to protect a leader.

The assailants escape with food, Five-Eyes organizes the guard and sends out messengers. As the guards begin to organize, the bandits start to make their way out of Threshold. Five-Eyes' rallying of troops begins to take motion as the remaining bats and rats retrieve their compatriots and make their way out of Threshold. They'd taken the food, packaged it, begin to leave with it. The guards chase the bandits out of Threshold, but no further. There's a lingering question of which units and who exactly is prone to disobeying the order to not chase the bandits further. Five-Eyes decides to think on that later.

Five-Eyes finds Captain Fennel and brings him to Mayor Thistlebottom to brief them on the situation. Five-Eyes begins to assess Captain Fennel's competence, and is displeased, calling on his designated powers as an astrologer to create a position above Fennel for himself, then a position besides Fennel for Barnabee as captain of the scouts, since Fennel would have his hands full. Fennel is assured he will be important in the days to come. Five-Eyes is hoping to not make an enemy of Fennel, while voicing the displeasure. Barnabee asks for a accommodations, food and shelter. Five-Eyes accepts. Since the details aren't worked out, Barnabee decides this means Captain Fennel will share his home. Captain Fennel accepts this too.

Thistlebottom privately admits to Clio he didn't intend for all the food to be stolen, that wasn't part of the deal.

[indigodice]

UNDONE AND DONE AGAIN

This is that second half of the last session. I really thought I'd have more to say. Here is the first half.

Wesley watched Poppy throw a rock at his window before greeting her. He supposed she couldn't see him through the window, and that this was as good a chance as any to do something about the situation.

"I messed up." Poppy said. "I was fighting with my mom, we were fighting and I thought the fighting was all over - I'm so sorry, I messed up. Then she asked to show the key to Dad and I gave it to her."

Wesley invited her inside. He tore a page out of a book and stuffed it in his pocket.

"She was supposed to show it to dad, but then they came home, and they were all there with everybody, she was in the car coming home. And it's gone, it has the key."

Next he took a photo out of a photo album, thinking he can burn it to try and curse himself.

"Wesley?"

"I'm - I've - It's fine. Your father would love this. I think the government's in on this."

"Wait, woah. What?" At least the world makes sense, even when it doesn't.

"Well, somethings in on this. I think they're getting ready to move. I don't know how much time we have. Getting readycould mean a week, or even a day, or an hour. They're here to help, but I don't know if that means help us, or help themselves." Wesley expected her to ask how he knew, but she didn't. She waited for him to keep talking. "We can try to settle this ourselves, or leave it to them. I don't think they know what we know, and we don't know what they know."

His parents' note was still on the countertop. 'Work emergency, we won't be home tonight. See you tomorrow at the lake.' He took a piece of paper from the refrigerator. He'd been thinking about what to write, or what to explain, but instead wrote 'Sorry'. Then he got his bike from the garage, and the two rode towards the mansion.

"But I think if we can't settle it we should at least burn it all, like Evan joked. I've been thinking and it'll probably be a good last option. I sort of knew where you were going when you started talking about your mom. Hey, so what would you have done if I were /it/ just now?"

"I didn't think about that. If you were it, and you already had the key, I don't think you'd risk coming back."

"I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe you could be itnow, or if not you I could be it. What if we're it, and we don't know it?"

"How could we possibly win?" The betrayal was still fresh.

"Fire. But before that we group up and we watch each other. If either of us are the faceless -"

"I don't think you're the faceless."

"Why?"

"I think it really wanted to open that door. It's probably going there right now."

"So between one and ten, how likely am I to be the faceless?"

"Two?"

"Two!?"

"It'll be fine, don't worry about it."

---

Mr. Calhoun was beginning to worry, then his son Evan Calhoun came home. "Where's Jordan?" Mr. Calhoun asked.

"What do you mean where's Jordan, she's here in her room isn't she?" That did not last long.

"You went on some kind of adventure with - "

Jordan got into the car Evan was driving. Jordan didn't think twice about it, she didn't notice he had both his legs. Maybe she thought since he could run with the prosthetic, there was nothing suspicious about him driving with it. Mostly she was curious about why he needed her help. It drove them to the mansion.

"Uh, do you remember when we went to see Granny? We uh, it had something to do with the face stealer. That wasn't me taking Jordan, that was the face stealer. I need you to call Granny."

"Where are you - " Evan left through the door. He ran to Lila's since she's the closest. Mr. Calhoun dialed the phone.

---

Lila noticed Evan outside and supposed it was time to head to the mansion. Lila's older sister was quietly working on something. So when Evan knocked, Lila told a lie. "Veronica's at the door. We need to go somewhere for the science faire project."

"LILA?" Evan was still knocking. He had started knocking even louder. "LILA!?"

Lila raised her voice to cover up Evan's shouting and knocking. "WE NEED TO GO FIND BIOLUMINESCENT MOSS." She lied.

The surprise and adrenaline is crippling to Lila's older sister. She just wants to keep doing something, whatever she was doing. "Alright alright - sure - yeah, go." She puts her headphones back on, and writes a small note to herself about Lila in the margins.

"LOVE YOU GOTTA GO." And Lila was out the door.

"It has my sister." Evan said. Yeah, alright, that's good enough for me. Then he ran, and before she knew it, she was running too.

Evan had meant to go to Poppy's house, then to Wesley's who lived somewhat far from the mansion. Maybe Evan would have thought to phone Wesley from Poppy's. It felt so good to be in motion. Maybe this is what was missing.

They found each other on the long road to the mansion. Evan was running, Lila was trying to keep up. She was surprised that Evan could outrun her on a prosthetic leg, but Lila has never been very athletic. The run had filled her with tiredness, so she made her way across to Poppy and Wesley and when Wesley stopped to talk, got on the back of his bike.

"Oh." Was all he said. He decided to not mention the tiredness. Lila was mostly glad to not have to run anymore. Meanwhile Evan was convinced to get in Poppy's bike's basket. "It'll be fun," she said.

"Hey Lila, between one and ten how likely - " Wesley asked.

"Don't - it'll be fine!" Poppy said.

"It'll definitely be there right?" Lila asked.

"If it's not there we'll be out of leads." Evan said.

"Oh, when did you tell them about the key?" Wesley asked.

"What?" Evan asked.

As they approached the mansion, they come to a stop. The fear set in. They got off the bikes, Evan hopped out of a basket.

"The faceless got the key from me. Wesley says the government is in on this and that they might be here to help themselves to the faceless." Wesley feels their eyes on him. He shrugs.

"It has my sister." Evan said, like it was the answer to the complication. He started towards the mansion through the clearing. Wesley saw new footprints, but followed over them. Poppy followed, pulling Lila by the arm. Lila checked her flashlight one last time. They go through the side-door, across the hall, to the kitchen.

Wait why's Danielle here? She muttered a reply to no one.

"Liz? What are you doing here?" Poppy asked.

"I'm waiting." She whispered.

"Who are you waiting for? Why are we whispering?" Poppy's moonstone is glowing.

"I'm waiting for Adam. He'll arrive soon, I'm sure of it."

"What's Danielle doing here?" Lila asked. Lila whispers to Poppy "Danielle's been losing time. I guess this is what she was talking about."

"Her name is Elizabeth."

"Her name is Danielle." They stared at each other until Lila made a face. It was an expression of confusion. Or frustration. Maybe.

Danielle Manford hasn't been herself recently. She has been losing time and finding herself in places it doesn't make sense to be. Sometimes the Manford Mansion, or in the forest with the impression she has been sulking. Veronica hasn't done a good job keeping an eye on Danielle, but no one person has the time and energy to watch someone for all hours of a day, especially if one needs sleep for the next day. As a result Danielle has been losing time and space, and finding herself in different times and spaces.

Wesley asks if she has pockets or a key, but is ignored. The Sprite is excitedly orbiting Danielle. It seemed to be rolling around on an invisible floor, head height with Danielle.

"How do we get through the door?" Evan asked.

"You should be proud of me. I was very clever, you see I've had two keys made, but Adam hasn't arrived yet. I'm sure he'll arrive soon." Elizabeth said.

"Where's the other key?" Evan asked.

"Adam has it. Adam was supposed to have it, but he never arrived. It would be - I don't remember where it would be. It was so long ago. Wait, that can't be right. He'll arrive soon. I'm sure of it."

"Can you tell us anything about the locket?" Poppy asked.

Elizabeth is whispering even quieter now. There is a rhythm of talking, but everyone is listening to the quiet and hoping someone else can make it out. Danielle is confused. She asked a question with her eyes, and everyone looked away. They scratched their necks, the backs of their heads, they shrugged.

Evan brought out the discount store locket for the third time. This is the wrong locket. It made him smile. "Wait - I don't have the time for this." The smiling stopped. Evan dropped the discount store locket on the ground, it ticked and clicked like a clock or a bomb, but the showy lights were out of power. Evan has used it for the third time, but no unsatisfying lights this time. He headed out the kitchen and up the stairs to the secret door, thinking of his sister. It is still locked. Evan is trying to force door open, he kicked it with his prosthetic. When he decided that is ineffective because it hurts, he decided to tackle it, which hurts less. It doesn't seem to make a difference, but it feels too good to be doing something.

"Is there a ghost in you?" Poppy asked. She's holding her moonstone close to Danielle now. That moonstone's light had waned, dimmed, disappeared. Oh, it had been working this whole time. It doesn't have to be close at all. "Do you know where the other key is?" Poppy asked.

Danielle pushes the moonstone in Poppy's hand away from her face. She recognizes her surroundings, she orients herself. "There's a bunch of boxes in the attic upstairs. It's just a bunch of old Manford Junk. A decade ago? Decades ago? I think it was decades ago." Danielle cannot comprehend the length of decades. They follow a reluctant and confused Danielle into an attic. She is not convinced she isn't dreaming, Poppy is a surreal experience to her. Danielle wondered where Veronica was, but decided the key was more important, since everyone was insisting on finding it. Somehow she was confident the key is somewhere else, that Adam has it. But she can't remember who Adam is, and becomes more confident that she is dreaming since nothing makes sense, like in most dreams. She can hardly think and doesn't feel awake.

She leads them out the kitchen, down the hall, through the stairs, past the secret door, and up a ladder. Dusty boxes and darkness. It felt dark even with the flashlights. When Lila's flashlight began to flicker, she commandeered Evan's. Evan doesn't mind the darkness. There are five searching with two flashlights left. The encroaching darkness makes Lila work faster. This energy makes everyone work faster, except for Danielle who is very tired, and Wesley who decides dust is the worst.

Poppy wasn't even looking for the key, she was looking for Hartwood. She wants to do magic with Hartwood and finds a Violin in an unlit corner of the room. The violin might be Hartwood. "Woah look at this. Where's the rest of it?" It's bow is missing. It's case is also missing. She plucked it's strings, and found they are not tightly wound. She is afraid to wind them, since she has seen a sibling wind a violin's strings too tightly, and the string explode.

Dust and darkness. It is difficult to find a key in a box in an attic from sound alone. At first Lila thought the flashlights were losing power, but they aren't flickering like hers occasionally did. Once they had checked almost everything, she to double-check boxes they have already checked, leaving one flashlight to check containers that haven't been checked yet.

It is very slow checking boxes that haven't been checked yet. Eventually Lila finds the key in a box that has already been checked.

"Finally." Lila said. Now we can get out of this dark, messy attic.

Lila opens the door. The enormous mirascope-apparatus is shut. Above it is a hologram of Jordan's sleeping face. Evan ran to it to trying to force it open. Lila winced, there is a wall of misty darkness past the light of the kiln. The shadow wrapped itself around the apparatus, but the light of the kiln seemed to roll away the mists of it's shadow. Flashlights made smoke of the darkness, blowing it away like dust in wind. Lila scanned the room to find something to focus on, hoping it was a thing, and not a force. There was a tall thing in the mist, in the light of the flashlight.

As Evan tried to force the device open, Poppy pulled the lever next to it, the device creaked open. Evan pulled Jordan out. The shadow flows like water, it tries to divide the group from Jordan, but Evan fends it off with a one-foot-punch. Lila burns it with the flashlight, and it relents, it whispered and cackled, and echoed loud as shouts.

The shadow becomes a ball of spikes, hurling itself at everything, the tendrils spiral around the room. The shadow cackles, and whispers, it becomes a mist that spreads across the room, hiding the entrance and the walls.

A tendril shattered Evan's prosthetic leg. He fell, protecting Jordan. Lila flinches backwards, guarding her flashlight. The other tendrils wrap and spiral around the room. Wesley and Danielle dodge into the light of the kiln. The tendrils are a different kind of fire, made longer and violent by the kiln. Lila noticed the light of her flashlight is different from the light of fire, the flashlight burns the shadow away.

There are black cracks in their skin, with every volley. Like its turning them into ghosts, or making them disappear. The cracks look like tree roots, but an absence instead of a form and figure.

"I can still help you!" Elizabeth yells. "We still have time!"

It replies with incoherent screeching and echoing.

Elizabeth does not stop shouting and pleading with it.

Poppy tries to pull Evan back into the light, he sets Jordan down next to Poppy, and tries to tackle the shadow. Lila focuses her flashlight on the shadow, it is momentarily corporeal. Evan grapples it, then it hurls another tendril at Lila, destroying her flashlight.

Wesley snapped out of his daze. He got Lila's attention and tossed her a flashlight. He asked Poppy for the violin and tries to set it on fire. It is a shame to burn this, but the room is catching fire. The flickering lights everywhere are lengthening the shadows of the thing.

Evan not having two legs to stand on doesn't stop him. It doesn't even slow him down. He had been trying to wrestle with it since he cannot seem to strike it properly. But when Lila's flashlight was destroyed, it slipped away. He cannot grapple mist. Wesley starts to walk to the wall on the far side of the room holding a violin holding fire. Lila turned off her flashlight and followed him to the edge of the room. Evan does not relent. Evan has not stopped fighting. Evan finds when the shadow strikes anything, it can be struck back. Wesley started swinging the violin around like a baseball bat. When it got away from Wesley Lila turned on her flashlight. It was corporeal and surrounded. Evan grabbed it by the leg. Wesley swung and missed, but off balance, Lila shoved it into the fire.

It howled in pain, and wrapped its shadow around itself into a ball of pain. "You're hurting him!" Elizabeth shouted. The shadow bounded around the room screaming and howling, and on fire. Melding and unmelding itself from the dark before becoming corporeal and still. Poppy wrapped her scarf around her hands to try to pick up the shadow. Evan is the first to help Poppy, followed by Danielle and Wesley. The creature is smoldering, but not resisting. Lila keeps her flashlight on it. Together they pick up the shadow and place it into the apparatus, which Lila shuts with the lever. Poppy drops the smoldering remains of her favorite scarf.

After a moment of silence the creature pounded the metal from inside the machine, like it had woken up and was trying to escape. Above the apparatus was a hologram of a face they didn't know, Adam's.

The shadow sprite oscillated in the air to get their attention. It bumped against a force towards the device, like a balloon against a window. Wesley tries to help it approach the device. Then everyone tries to help it get to the device. The sprite's size makes this awkward and difficult, and as a result everyone is pushing against Wesley, who is pushing against a tiny shadow sprite.

"Wait, on one. One!"

The sprite does something, no one knows what. It's dancing by itself above the apparatus until another sprite pops out of the dust and darkness of the apparatus, and the clanging from inside stops. They dance into the sky. Everyone is watching the sprites dance.

"Everything is on fire." Danielle said. "Maybe I'm dreaming. Maybe I can put it out." She puts her hands up to try to do magic. Lila stops her. Poppy is disappointed.

"Oh right, of course. Fire." Evan said. The door is jammed shut, there is no handle. Something happened to the handle during the fight. There are alarms blaring in the background.

"I shouldn't have put my on-fire-scarf on the ground." Poppy said.

"The violin was a bad idea." Wesley said.

Lila knew the room was on fire but decided not to panic because no one was panicking. The tides have turned. Evan had seen enough movies to decide the room would eventually be on fire. So he broke the window with the least fire with his shattered prosthetic. Lila tore down the curtains and began yelling. She used the curtain to safely remove any glass that was left. Everyone started yelling. There were emergency services outside, and sirens. Evan threw his prosthetic out the window to get their attention before wondering how much the prosthetic cost. He decided it was shattered anyways, and did not regret this. When it didn't get their attention, Wesley followed suit, because he liked throwing things. Everyone was throwing things out the window and yelling.

Emergency services arrived with a tarp. Jordan was still unconscious. Lila was helping Danielle because she was having trouble staying conscious. Poppy helped Evan walk because he threw his leg out the window. Wesley carried Jordan, and thought a lot about how to jump out of a window carrying a body. After jumping he checked to make sure she was alive, and was glad he didn't kill someone that day.

Evan's dad and Granny Calhoun were there. Evan's dad was having a day. "I knew I should have home-schooled you two." Mr. Calhoun said.

"This doesn't have anything to do with school." Evan said.

Poppy's mom is there, she wraps her scarf around Poppy when she notices its missing.

"Evan? Evan! It would be great if just for once you didn't tell the truth. If there's one thing they learn, it won't be the truth. It would make things a lot, and I mean a lot, easier, if we did not tell the truth." Wesley said.

Evan cleared his throat. "Okay."

Wesley's parents are with a man wearing a black suit.

"Are you okay?" His mother is inspecting him for marks, shadow marks. Maybe it looks like she is looking for burns. "Wesley? What happened here? I need you to tell us what happened here."

Loudly, Wesley recounts the story of the party. He talks loudly and clearly but he isn't communicating to his mother, or the man in the suit. He is telling the story of what happened today, starting with the party, and ending in the fire. He is loudly writing the narrative of the party as a one-day-event. He wavers when he notices his mother does not believe him, but she does not say a word. Evan notices, and starts talking too, he talks about finding the locket and what was supposed to happen once they find the toy. Lila realizes the lies, and where they are going. She takes over the story convincingly, where Wesley words were stilted and Evan's were unfocused, Lila's lies were like silk. Maybe there was some value in their lies, obvious or not, but the moment the official noticed he had underestimated the children, and that they had successfully shared a narrative, it was too late to separate them.

They each recount the story they created together, Wesley found it was easier to speak the story the second time around. Evan had no problems the first time, nor the second time sharing his story. Lila had the least problems with the narrative. Poppy however decided to distract the official with such questions like "Are you with the government? Yeah? Cool cool. Do you know the president? Can you give him this letter?"

EPILOGUES

Evan spends the coming days in the hospital with his sister. Later when he returns to school, Spencer welcomes Evan to the track team.

Wesley spends the coming days with his parents at the lake. They do not acknowledge the drama. Their situation has never been more precarious, but the normal becomes a performance.

There's a lesson on Fairy Tales written by Ms. Redding. But another group assignment where the main characters are placed together, like last time, since they seemed to have the energy. Poppy has snacks. For a while they enjoy the snacks then Wesley starts to take something out of his backpack.

"Wesley, buddy, you're gonna give me a heart attack. Can you please tell us what you're doing first? I don't know if I can take another adventure."

"This is a book, probably mostly payback for the one Poppy loaned to me. It's called The Dreamweaver, sorry, you can probably see the title. It's about Rasputin." Poppy is making happy noises.

Lila participates in the science faire, she does her project about the energies produced by a similar occult apparatus, or maybe its vaguely or exhaustively about similar apparatuses.

She gets third place.

"Interesting, out of the ordinary, well done." third place.

Eventually Veronica confronts Lila about the strangeness with the officials, and all the questions. Lila tells Veronica the truth.

"I can't wait to tell everyone." Veronica said.

"Ah, maybe don't?" Lila said.

"But then how will people know how cool you are?"

"I think this might get out on it's own."

Wesley makes sure the book makes the rounds with his friends. It was a practical read, but topical. At home his parents don't acknowledge what's happened. When he's ready to talk with them, he finds the house is bugged. He reads a note from his parents that they can't talk. He writes a letter over the coming days, he rewrites it until he gets it right. The day he gives it to his parents, they read it to each other on the way to work.

Poppy has been at work writing letters and thinking about the future ritual. The next year they make their way to the ritual site, Poppy has shifted the ritual to be about protecting oneself against the occult. Moonstones have significance here. Poppy has been writing letters to the president daily, one day she receives a letter with no return address and opens it.

[indigodice]

THREADS AND KNOTS

This is the first half of the last session. The length of this write up has grown enormously.

While Lila Yamamoto inspected the curtains, Danielle found her courage and whispered something to Veronica. Lila held her breath, one problem at a time, and signaled a secret message through the window with a hand across her neck, no, or maybe more accurately, eep. Unless eep was just her expression. But the signal with her hand definitely said, stop, or simply, no. Outside somewhat in the bushes, Poppy waved hello, Evan waved goodbye, Wesley waved to an empty window. Lila had closed the curtains.

Danielle had been in the hospital. The plans made before the strangeness were kept after it, though Lila didn't know if Danielle's addition was Veronica's doing, or her own.

"Whatcha' talking about?" Lila asked.

"Oh nothing," Danielle bristled, then looked to Veronica, "it's been a weird week."

"Spencer and his face?"

"Yeah, weird right? What even happened?" Veronica said, followed by a pause. Sweet silence as their minds wandered through the strange.

"Did you get like, a mark?" Lila asked.

"What do you mean?" Danielle asked.

Lila rolled up her sleeve, revealing the black crack in her skin. At first it looked as though there weren't enough light to see the wound, but the dark was the wound.

"Gross. Sorry. Nothing like that." Danielle said. Lila's fascination and curiosity became discomfort.

"You should get that checked out." Veronica said.

Lila unrolled her sleeve. "The doctor, they didn't say anything about it and let me go like it's just something - like I've never heard of anything like this before, it didn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense." Then was a silence and a lot of sitting, in silence.

Danielle hummed, then asked. "Do you guys ever lose time?"

"Like track of it?" Lila asked.

"I don't know, like sometimes I'm here in one place and before I know it I'm - I'm just somewhere else with no idea what's just happened. The doctor said it's stress, but stress can't do that, can it?"

"Maybe you should see Granny Calhoun. Evan just took us to see her, she told us a lot."

"Granny Calhoun? You mean Evan's crazy grandma?" Veronica asked.

"Well, yes, but - "

" - Ugh." Danielle laid down and looked angrily at the ceiling. "Can we just, forget about it all for today? It's been a wild week, I just want to have a normal day. Can we do that? Just try and have one normal day?"

"Yeah, we can do that." Veronica laid out the movies. "What should we watch?"

Night sets in.

When the faceless arrived, Poppy locked the door. Evan and Wesley turned off their flashlights and the three sat down in the dark silence of a locked room. Moments later, the creature left on a bike wearing another's skin.

When the sun rises, Lila, Danielle, and Veronica have breakfast. They watch some TV together, quieter than the night before. Everyone was still waking up. The morning is uneventful, and later on, Danielle and Veronica leave together.

Later in the afternoon, the doorbell rings. Lila answers the door. "Hey Evan, what's up?" Poppy and Wesley are also there.

"Do you still have those blueprints? Wesley said you had them." Evan said.

"Why would you want to see those?" Lila asked, filling the conversation with a silence.

Poppy and Evan shuffle about for a while until Wesley opens his big mouth. "This guy," Wesley peeks into his breast pocket, finds nothing, then continues, "showed me something at the manor. So yesterday I tried to get everyone since Poppy had the key. But after we got there that thing was there. It was there doing something with the things that were there. And there's something wrong that this thing wants us to do to those things, but we don't know anything, so I'm hoping the thing you've got has a clue about the thing we need to - to do to those things," the sprite catches Wesley's eyes, hovering indolently, "guys, help me explain these - these things." Evan shrugs. "What did she say? Fix the spirit or break it? Why didn't we ask more questions?"

That first day at the manor Lila couldn't make sense of the blueprints. And when she'd brought them home, kept not being able to make sense of them, and after that frustration hadn't thought of them. There were other matters that needed attention, and if this couldn't be figured out, maybe it didn't matter. Lila had decided to simplify. Only later Spencer lost his face, and Granny Calhoun had been talking about face stealers. Lila pinched her nose in frustration. The blueprints were in the trash by the end of that day. Lila wanted to forget about the night in the dark manor. But Lila asked them to wait in the living room while she fished the blueprints out of the bin. She brushed them clean with a hand, then unrolled them on the table. Ignoring the problem wouldn't make it go away. Lets make this quick.

"Nakai was in prison for vandalism." Evan said.

Lila made a face. Confusion. Huh, it seemed to say. Or maybe an expression about handling blueprints that were just in the bin.

"Well, he didn't do it. You didn't steal his chair right? And I didn't attack the party." Evan said.

"The chair was made of Hartwood," Poppy said, "The faceless is stealing things made of Hartwood, the chair, the chest, Ms. Redding was there. She told us about Hartwood. Oh! The faceless stole some glass from the police station too, two-way-glass that they use for interrogations. There was this circular hole a police station window."

"Like a cartoon? Why glass? Why Hartwood? Why was Ms. Redding there? Are they -" asked Lila.

"- Yup, they are!" said Poppy, "Ms. Redding says Hartwood has occult properties. Burning it helps you see things. Spiritually."

"We thought the blueprints could tell us about how these things are used." said Wesley. "Break or fix, this has to be it, right?"

Granny Calhoun said the spirit needed to be fixed. Was this how? Tell me your secrets, spooky-mansion-blueprints. Lila's thoughts were met with nothing, just nonsense. She didn't recognize any of these contraptions, and with no starting point there was no-where to go next. Lila had a prior engagement today, too. I don't have time for this, I need to go see Ms. Clyde for the science faire.

"Ms. Clyde." Lila said. "I think I've seen something like this in Ms. Clyde's room." She almost regretted saying it, but realized she was curious after all.

Lila opted against taking her bike since it would be the only one. Her house was the closest to school, so the four walked a quiet walk in the afternoon through landscape they knew so well, though sometimes the blueprints rustled when the wind blew. The silence from a morning ride to school, or a daily walk seeped into these moments. Everyone was somewhere else.

Ms. Clyde's classroom was in the back overlooking the Multi-purpose building. Inside were three other small groups of people, each at different tables probably discussing their science faire projects.

Lila approached and greeted Ms. Clyde. "Hey!"

"Hi Lila. Have you decided on your project yet?"

Lila felt eyes and ears on her, a self conscious feeling. "I haven't, we might do something on blueprints. This one caught our eye but we haven't been able to make anything of it."

"This is quite old. Sometimes the conventions change, and some people are better at writing and drawing for teams than others. But this," Ms. Clyde points "I recognize this. This is a Mirascope, made of two parabolic mirrors. There's normally a light source here, but I suppose this kiln could cover that. I have a model over here, but it's probably much smaller than the one in this blueprint." It was on top of a shelf somewhere, next to a startling number of physics contraptions. Each contraption is bursting with a desire for motion, but they are frozen in time, unmoving. "Normally when a light is shined into a closed Mirascope, a hologram is created, here at the top, based on whatever is placed inside." Light and brightness "Well, this one doesn't work so well, but I think there's a working angle." She repositions Lila. The image of an acorn appears at the top of the contraption.

"Do you know anything about Hartwood?" Poppy asked.

Ms. Clyde was making everyone take turns at the proper angle to see the acorn. "I think Ms. Redding would know more. It's said Hartwood lets you see beyond, Ms. Redding is apparently very interested in those sorts of things." Ms. Clyde's eyes narrow in mock suspicion. "Why?"

"Just wondering." Poppy smiles. Poppy had hoped for more.

They thank the teacher and huddle up.

"So what did we learn?" Wesley asked.

"We need to burn Hartwood." Poppy said.

"And other things." Evan said. "We should bring some things to burn. Maybe the mansion. Maybe we could burn that."

"We could burn that," Wesley said, "but maybe as a last resort. We should probably burn smaller, more manageable things if we can help it."

"Like, a basketball?" Lila said.

"I'll bring a soccer ball." Evan said. I have too many soccer balls.

"We should come up with categories of things." Wesley said.

"Like what?" Evan asked. Wesley shrugs.

"I guess random stuff works, as long as we learn something." Wesley said. "We have time, probably. How much time do you think we have?" Evan checks his watch. "I mean, how much time do we think Spencer has?"

"We should meet tonight." Evan said. "Go home and collect things, and meet tonight. Once we figure this out, we should know what to do next." They disband and depart for home.

Wesley Wei found a note on the countertop. 'Work emergency, we won't be home tonight. See you tomorrow at the lake.' He wrote a reply. 'Going out tonight.' He went to bed and tried to come up with categories of objects to burn. He doesn't come up with anything. There's a book on his shelf that comes with a protective charm, worth testing. Somewhere downstairs there's a photo album with pictures of his family. He felt guilty about not being cursed with a mark, and suspected others have been cursed in his stead. He fell asleep wearing his coat. It feels safe. Like armor.

Later. "Wesley?" His mother is trying to be calm.

Wesley sits up, "Morning," he mutters. His eyes feel heavy.

"Wesley this is very important. Have you been to the abandoned mansion?" She notices his coat. "Are you going to the abandoned mansion?" She's holding the note. "What's this about? 'Going out tonight.'"

This feels like breakfast. Wesley blinks. Yes, she thinks.

"This is very important. We need you to stay here for today. It's very important that you stay here where you're safe. There's something happening, that's work related, and it'll all be over soon."

"Is this about Spencer losing his face? Or the others being marked?" Wesley probes for information.

His father crosses his arms, his mother winces. "What marks? Wesley, have you encountered - " His mother is checking his arms. "There's something called a faceless out there, that the people at work are very interested in. I need you to understand how dangerous this is, it's very important to us that you stay here. Do you understand?"

"Are they in danger? The others got these weird marks. I haven't because of - I figured out how to protect myself." Wesley is looking for the sprite. It is sulking in the background.

"What? How?"

Wesley changes the subject. "People at work, do you mean the military?"

"No - not the - I'm sorry Wesley, I can't - we have to go back to work. It's important that you stay here. Can you promise that you'll stay here?" Wesley nods. "I need you to say it."

"Are they going to help Spencer? Or - what'll happen to the people who are marked? What are they going to do?"

"All you need to know is that it'll all be over soon. Wesley, this is important. Can you stay here?"

There's a pause, Wesley in silence.

"Wesley? I - "

"I promise I'll stay here."

Wesley's father left the room first. He couldn't stand the silence, and was afraid he would say something he shouldn't. Wesley's mother joined him. They waited a moment out in the hall and whispered to each other in the dark. Then they left the house.

Wesley laid back down thinking about categories of items to burn. He was too tired to change his mind and too tired to think. He found rest and resolve. We probably have a day, less than a day, safely.

Poppy Smitherson-Smith had a plastic frog box, for frogs, somewhere upstairs in the closet. It refused to be found, maybe for the best, since Frog-catching was so long ago. But she continued her search, until she found her mom's eyes on her and it became very easy to need to hide. Poppy didn't know how to deal with these feelings. She began to leave.

" - Poppy wait. I heard about what happened at school. I'm - I'm sorry for not believing you. It's just that with everything - and it can be hard to believe, you get that, right?" Poppy didn't know what to say. "If you tell me the whole story, I'll listen. I'll just listen. Please?"

Poppy hugged her mom. Did it all begin at the mansion when four were chosen? Or did it begin earlier when she read Spencer's tarot? Or even earlier when she was given the book about Nero. Maybe it was when her siblings were telling her stories about the Manford Mansion, or when she decided she would find secrets with the moonstone. "We were supposed to find a crown in the Manford Mansion. It was just a game. But we found a secret door and a key, so we went inside to search. I had the moonstone with me, and I saw something I couldn't explain, a ghost? A spirit? It was so bright. It was the most magical thing that ever happened to me. But later it all turned. It was borrowing our faces to find things. But then somehow it took Spencer's face. We didn't lock the door when we left the mansion, we made a mistake."

"We could tell your father about this, maybe we can get something in the paper about it."

"Everyone knows it happened, but its not in the papers, its not in the news. They took Spencer and Liz away, but Spencer never came back. Mr. Nakai was in the news because the faceless stole some glass from the police station. But he's there for Vandalism, not because he's the faceless."

"Let's tell Dad. Do you still have the key? Why don't we show it to him and we can look into this together? He's good at this stuff." Poppy's mom extends an open hand and Poppy gives her the key. "Maybe we'd learn something. Maybe when this is all over he'd be able to write a book about it. We'll get this sorted out." Poppy's mom goes to find dad, to show him the key. A minute later and Poppy continued digging through the closet for the frog box. And a minute later there was a rumbling of a car in the driveway. Dad? Poppy found herself looking out a window. Mom and Dad. Coming home in the car with everyone.

Poppy looks down at the door from the banister. The door opened to siblings' laughter, and parents trying to distribute food. When Poppy's mother notices her, there is electricity "Hi," she raises a bag into the air, "we bought chicken." Electricity and worry in her words, masked by kindness.

"Save some for me. I have to go do something." Poppy felt awkward and sorry, masked by a smile.

"Alright, but hurry back, it'll cool down."

"Thanks mom." There's a tiny little crack on her mom's neck. Poppy got on her bike, and rode away.

[indigodice]

A HOP AND A SKIP

I haven’t finished the other half of that first session. Though there have been a number of sessions since, I’ve decided to put my energy towards this latest session.

Wesley Wei had taken to the sprite. He opened a cabinet and found another box of saltines, reminiscing about when he found that hungry ball of darkness. He let the words of Grandma Calhoun boil in his head. It steals luck, but it is very cute. “What even is luck, does this mean luck is real? Whose luck did you steal? I thought I was a great pitcher but was I using their luck? Was it my luck to have my face stolen, so Spencer’s was stolen instead? Why wasn’t Grandma more specific? How much time does Spencer have? Why aren’t we working on this right now? Why didn’t we ask more questions? What do you even want? Do you even understand words?”

When it ate, food faded into it’s void of a mouth, but it had paused. Maybe that was a yes. It puffed up and bumped harmlessly against the window like a balloon. Wesley opened the shutter and watched it drift through and away. The moon-wisps were out glowing faintly and floating harmlessly in the breeze, and were called such because the moon was out and so were they. If they reflected the sunlight better maybe they would be called sun-wisps. But that very light seemed to send a kind of static through the sprite’s blackness, pushing and repulsing it. The sprite made it’s way through the crowd, almost disappearing.

Then it waited for and beckoned Wesley, who paused to get his baseball bat. Wesley followed that ball of darkness though the woods following wondering if he was being tricked. Into the woods, after all, after a wisp after all. After meeting Grandma Calhoun, night was almost upon them. When Wesley reached the mansion, the daylight had been nearly spent. There were footprints and bike tracks around the mansion. The creature has been busy. Wesley decided to not leave any prints of his own, he would like to investigate the creature further, but felt that wouldn’t be possible if it knew it was being investigated. A moment later the sprite floated inside the mansion, up the ruined stairs and through the ruined hall to the ruined room by the ruined wall, that secret door where it all started. The dark didn’t dissuade Wesley, nor the forest nor the mansion nor solitude but said “I don’t have the key,” and all the sprite’s directive intent deflated, “but I know who does.”

Poppy Smitherson-Smith had suspicions about where the scarf-chest was, but her mother had never not believed her stories. Paramedics took a faceless Spencer away which was connected to Lila not stealing a chair connected to Evan not attacking the after-party. As Grandma Calhoun explained, we needed to find something not right about the creature and make it right, else make it less right, or the thing that was once inside, now outside, would try on it’s own to make the less right right or even less right, but by it’s own right. Enough, just give it back. If only it were that easy. Poppy’s night was ending with a huff, interrupted not by the silent humming of a shadow, but a musical sound. Her wind chimes, sharply against her window in short notes. But without the sound of branches or leaves against the walls. Then a tapping against her window and those sharp notes again. Is that... “Wesley?”

Poppy opened the window and tried to call to him but he beckoned her. She found her resolve quickly, excited by the need to sneak out through the window. Excited to leave the drama of today behind. She’d never snuck out before. She thought about the front door, but couldn’t risk her mom spotting her. Feeling her fate was in her hands she opened her window as wide as she could, and pulled the curtains as far open as she could to better leap for the tree across her window. She leapt somewhat short of where she intended to, caught herself long enough for Wesley to share her panic, and decide he probably needed to catch her because it would be wrong not to. And fall she did, and catch her he did, “...hi Wesley.”

“Hey. What’s up?” Not you I guess.

“Ow, ow.” Her ankle hurt, and above them silently hummed the sprite.

“No, wait - sorry. We’ve gotta go. Why didn’t we ask Grandma Calhoun more specific - why didn’t we ask more questions? I think the sprite has something to do with this after all. It brought me to the mansion and it needs the key. It doesn’t know what luck is, but I think it knows something about that door, but it needs to get through,” Wesley paused, “...you’ve still got that key, right?”

“If something happens out there I might not be able to run without some help. It might be late but I think we need the others. I’ve still got the key right here.” Poppy had been wearing it as a necklace. It was the most magical thing that ever happened to her, she wasn’t going to let it get away.

“I don’t know where they live.”

“I do.”

Evan Calhoun hadn’t worried his father about the supernatural. He knew the family history and Grandma’s falling out with it, since their dad wouldn’t approve, Evan conscripted his sister Jordan to prepare a distraction. She agreed and when the time came told their dad, “My body is changing.” So ended any hope of their single father getting any sleep. Before they left on a long walk, Jordan mouthed the words you owe me, to which Evan supposed he did. Effective, if overplayed somewhat, all the none of his father’s bluster had become a bundle of worry, and Evan considered that one worry had been replaced with another. The rest of them managed to meet with Grandma Calhoun who explained the nuances and dangers of face-stealers, and the unrelated nature of the sprite.

Evan was having a quiet night, his dad spoke briefly with him about how he understood everyone was worried because of what was happening at school, but he’d hoped Evan would turn out differently from Grandma. Then Evan went off to bed. Evan was having a quiet night.

Poppy and Wesley were outside throwing rocks at Jordan’s window. Poppy was about to throw rocks before she wondered “Which window is Evan’s?” Wesley shrugged and started throwing. When Jordan opened her window Poppy whisper-shouted loudly-but-quietly-as-she-could “Which window is Evan’s!?”

“It’s the first one around that corner! Actually do you want me to go get him?”

There’s a pause with a lot of staring. Jordan inhales deeply before closing the window “EVAN YOUR FRIENDS ARE OUTSIDE!”

“WHAAT!?”

“THEY’RE YOUR FRIENDS RIGHT!?”

Evan looked outside his sister’s window, “...yeah.”

“DAD I’M GOING OUT.”

“OKAY. WILL YOU BE OUT LATE?”

“MAYBE. BYE.”

“BUH-BYE.”

Evan leaves through the front door.

They go to Lila’s, who is inexplicably indisposed for reasons unestablished yet.

They were three, they made their way to the mansion, slowly, this time since Evan has a prosthetic leg, and Poppy's leg is hurt. Quietly, excitedly, they go though the ruined door, up the ruined stairs and through the ruined room by ruined room to the ruined wall to that secret door where it all started. Poppy turned the key in the secret latch and waited for a secret sound but found the sound happened earlier than it was supposed to. When she tried the lock, found it was locked, then reversed the key and unlocked the door. “Wesley, did you lock the door before we left?”

“Why, didn’t you lock it?”

“I didn’t know I’d needed to lock it. When you gave me the key I thought you’d locked it. Did you lock it?”

“...I didn’t lock it. Speaking of forgetting, I think the creature was around here.”

“What?” said Evan.

Wesley tightened his grip on his bat, “I’d meant to be careful and not leave any tracks but it looks like I forgot and we all left tracks. If we don’t deal with the creature here and now we might not have another opportunity easily unless we can find some way of following it or slowing it here.”

Speak of the devil, outside is the sound of a bicycle, Poppy swings the door open “Inside inside inside.”

Wesley and Evan step through the threshold, “What do we do!?” Wesley shuts the door as quietly as he can. Evan finds comfort holding against the door.

“I don’t think we’re ready do I lock the door!?” said Poppy, key in hand.

Evan, calmly, “lock the door.”

“Maybe it won’t know,” considered Wesley. “It’ll know.” He decided.

Poppy locks the door, the sits down, then everyone sits. The flashlights go off, and the three wait in the dark in the quiet. They hear the sound of someone on the other side of the door, silence, before the sound of the bicycle.

After a pause Poppy begins to unlock the door.

“What if there’s more of them? Or something still there? Or it’s some kind of huge spider monster that’s incidently very quiet?” said Wesley. Poppy unlocks the door. The creature isn’t there. “We could follow it, we might not have another chance.”

“We’re not ready.” She closes the door.

About here is where I stopped having the energy to keep up the effort. It is summary from hereon out. This is a little over the halfway point of the session.

The strange kiln apparatus is still in the room, they would need Lila’s help with the strange notes for that. In a pile in the corner of the room is an empty backpack, Spencer’s empty backpack. There’s a pile of trophies, stripped of their wooden platforms, the antique char, and the Smitherson-Smith scarf-chest. They notice the missing wood and the wood making up the antique chair and the chest are the same kind of wood. Unprepared to track the creature, they decide slowing whatever it is trying to do is best. Evan puts the pile of the trophy remains into Spencer’s empty backpack. Wesley helped Poppy with the scarf-chest.

When Poppy returned home, she was confronted by her mother about the missing scarf-chest. A fight ensued and Poppy returned the chest and tried to explain about the creature stealing faces and stealing people’s things, and the drama at school, and the paramedics taking Spencer away because he didn’t have a face. But she didn’t believe him, and they’d never had a fight like that before. Poppy put the chest back, and remembered saying something to her mother before going back upstairs to her room. The regret made her wait at the top, and she heard her mother sobbing before she went to her room.

The next morning Wesley’s parents are home for breakfast. They recount their plans for today to go to the lake, a plan fumbled by Wesley who had new plans with the group. Breakfast devolves into quiet and chewing. Wesley agreed to going to the lake tomorrow. Their weekends are important as most of the weekdays the Wei parents work through the night. Wesley’s mother was reading a newspaper with a headline about one Mr. Nakai, the Home Economics teacher at their school. The sprite sits stealthily on his father’s shoulder, his father breaks a glass, at which point Wesley decides to head out to the cafe for their meeting.

Poppy and Evan are already there talking and planning about what to do next. Wesley buys a newspaper and goes through it while Poppy and Evan are talking about trying to keep things quiet and sane at home. Wesley finds the article about Mr. Nakai and shows it to them. There’s nothing in the news about Spencer.

The three go to the police station to try to meet with Mr. Nakai. Ms. Redding, their homeroom teacher, is having a moment with Mr. Nakai, but excuses herself when Evan, who is Mr. Nakai’s student, is brought in. Evan tries to explain what he can without alerting an officer, and asks Mr. Nakai about the particular kind of wood that made up the chair. Mr. Nakai hints at it’s occult properties before suggesting they ask Ms. Redding about it. interrupts and also talks about it. They ask about other properties and other woods but don’t yield much in results.

They go home late in the afternoon. Evan gets home and the father asks about where Jordan is, Evan explains he doesn’t know. Evan’s father explains Evan returned home yesterday after leaving with his friends to pick up Jordan for something. Evan explains the supernatural, and asks father to drive him to everyone else’s houses.

[indigodice]

SESSION HAPPENED THREE WEEKS AGO BUT DISTRACTIONS ARE MOUNTING

Lila woke up at a reasonable time. She was offered food and orange juice by her mother and a drive to school by her father. She accepted the first and rejected the second. They would be off to business-related-work. Lila, ever a thriving student, was the first in the classroom, spending her free time admiring the bookshelf in the classroom. Mostly she waits for her friend Victoria.

Evan was second. He woke up and briefly thought about exercising, but he lost the heart when he remembered the accident that took his mother, his leg, and his promising soccer career. His father gave him a ride to school, and tried to make talk under the guise of normalcy. He was unsuccessful. They would talk, but between the two of them the father did most of the talking. Evan chose a seat nebulously in the center.

Wesley was third, though his day began the earliest. Before the sun was up he was roused by his father who’d come home from work. He stayed in bed until his mother came home from work thirty minutes later to do the same. While his parents went to sleep Wesley got dressed. He took a bus past school to buy a pork bun from a talkative baker. Then took another bus back to school to baseball practice. None one else arrived for practice. Wesley went to class taking a seat near the window and finished up a book.

Poppy was the forth. She was woken by an eager mother who prepared breakfast, an occult scarf and an occult reading of the day. They had exchanges about scarves and other things objects the mother prepared to sell, the father nodding in agreement, but focusing on a newspaper. Poppy is driven to school. She notices Evan, but not having heard the news asks if his leg was stolen. He, asleep, doesn’t respond.

On the teacher’s desk is a little bottle lantern containing a bright-bug of some kind. This is considered normal lighting.

The teacher enters the class and begins a class introduction, talking briefly about the class and adjacent structures within it. The teacher asks the class if anyone’s read anything interesting over the summer, since the class is a language arts class. Lila halfheartedly raises her hand hoping not to be called on. Wesley hides the book he was reading.

Lila passes notes to Victoria asking if Lila’s going to the party. Victoria makes a comment about Evan, there is a back and forth between Lila and Victoria about the party. After further probing, Lila agrees. Wesley notices a plant walking around about in the school yard through the window. This is normal flora. Poppy watching the note-passing reflects on what her siblings had told her about the party. There would be a raffle and a quest to explore the mansion.

Later, during lunch, Evan is prepared for the party by his soccer buddies. They dance around the subject of his leg and the accident. Everyone is at least content in pretending nothing has changed.

Wesley is confronted about it by the catcher. The rest of the team is following for a bit until they realize Wesley isn’t going to the lunch room. They begin to peel off. The catcher asks Wesley if he’s going to the party, and Wesley tries to coerce the rest of the baseball team to show up for practice in exchange. The catcher agrees. When class ends, Wesley goes home, leaves a note for his parents, and does his homework. When that’s all said and done he takes a bus to go to the mansions where the party’s going to be held. When he’s content, he leaves to arrive at a more reasonable time.

Lila’s older sister helps Lila and Victoria prepare for the party.

Evan speaks with the coach about continuing duties that at least contribute to the team’s success. Evan gives advice to the other soccer players. When practice is over, they organize a ride to the party.

Eventually everyone makes their way to the party. There’s a pitiful amount of alcohol. Wesley returns a book about Nero to Poppy after she finishes with a reading for another student, Spencer who is predicted to face some kind of trial resulting in either good or bad fortune. When Poppy asks Wesley what he thought about the book he changes the subject to the reading and has his fortune read. His tarot read as The Lady, The Chariot (Depicted as Charon, but pronounced as Karen), and Death, to which Poppy defines as ‘Wesley will meet a woman, but he might die.‘

Looking back on this, this is about half of what’s happened in not even four hours of play. This might be why I’ve been avoiding wanting to submit the post, it feels like a lot happened for once and I’m having a bit of trouble keeping the post length short! So I might end up posting the rest of this particular session once I manage to find the motivation to continue.

[indigodice]

NEGOTIATIONS BEGIN AND END

Two days ago were session zero negotiations. There wasn’t really a fact or form about them so we ended up vaguely discussing how it should go. Only another player close to the beginning immediately rejected a system I held near and dear after having played half a session while not engaging with it. So it was difficult to engage with the negotiations afterward.

I couldn’t even offer to GM since in that player had expressed that they wouldn’t play. Alternatively the other system I could offer to play wouldn’t have been good at the one-shot-type things we wanted to aim at. The rejected system was Troika. The other system I could have offered was Burning Wheel.

So we went on discussing what we wanted the game to look like, which ended up being mostly discussing the setting of the game rather than systems, or even people independently searching online about systems instead of talking to each other. There was a lot of silence in the meeting, and I ended up just waiting around silently doing nothing.

For most of the negotiations there were three players. The other two spent most of the time talking to each other. When the forth showed up with some technical difficulties, we mostly just plowed forward without integrating that player into the discussions, which makes me wonder if the forth is even considered a forth.

We ended up on a system called Kids on Bikes, which does what it sounds like. There hasn’t been additional information about what happens next. Mostly even after arriving the forth player was somewhat absent, or disengaged, or predisposed to events away from keyboard.

We arrived on a grouping of ideas that probably won’t see the light of day again, ambiguities about how conflict should be resolved and such like that. So I started thinking about characters again. We talked about tech levels and an exact date in our own world so I wasn’t sure if we were holding on to the idea of urban fantasy if we were going to build on the trappings of this world.

They kept referencing Hilda but none of this is like Hilda at all.

In my mind this all sounds like Stranger Things with ghosts. I thought about the character I’d try to make. I arrived on a few different characters I could mix and match together. Yagami-Kun from his own comic. Peko from Ping Pong the animation. Araragi from Bakemonogatari. Out of them Yagami-Kun probably has the most interesting personality. Peko has another interesting personality, but I guess the personality can’t really exist until I see what else there is to work with in-game, or see how things can develop.

I want to engage with the content but there almost isn’t any right now.

[indigodice]

AN END FORESEEN

We returned home from the cultists’ lair, after having murdered them like vermin, we returned and rested and inside the inn at the bottom of the stair the talking rat, La Pieto and I, Claviger Nero, noticed an advertisement for the orphans’ play. It was across the street from the White Stag inn. The Dwarf, Tor Torinson tried to convince us to pursue our leads.

We went to the play which despite the advertisement, was explained to be the worst play we’ve ever seen. The children delivered their lines without emotion, parts and people were missing, the main character included. Damien Krieger goes on to speak to the head of the orphanage. He gives us information and a kind of lead about the burned church, but nothing conclusive about the world or the present drama unfolding. So we leave.

The head of the orphanage spoke about one of his children being worried about her missing friends, and that her friends were part of a teenage romance story involving the burned down house. The girl Lilly was worried about her friends, Laura and Sam. I comment to the others that we still feel fated. “Don’t you feel the pull of the string of fate? I think if we follow this string the path forward will unfold before us. If we’re being watched we could take a different path. I think if we follow what’s obvious, the same fate that befell the knight and Barbar could befall us.” We did not abate. Our leads were Scarlets’, where Lilly worked, and the burned house, where Laura and Sam went missing. “I think they’re the same lead. And we’re not going to survive here unless we make some money,” said Nero.

“We don’t have any other leads, so we should stick to these,” said Damien.

Tor Torinson took some of the fancy clothes to the tailor and asked them about the cultist’s robes. He didn’t learn much, they weren’t made by craftsmen.

La Pieto extracts information and gets the rest of the party into Scarlets where we meet with Lilly who directs us to the burned house after giving us a description of Laura and Sam.

Inside we hear crying and a scream. I engage the cultist and smash his face in with my hammer. We notice a dead Laura in the center of the ritual room become a Hellhound. The fight goes poorly. La Pieto goes down, Damien drags him to safety. I try to drag Sam out of the room, and we make the decision to not leave him here to die. He’s about as strong as Nero is so it’s a fight that doesn’t go well, and he manages to keep his ground. Tor Torinson arrives to fight the hellhound, and Damien commits to the fight as well. Nero commits to the fight, and with everyone nearly dead, we defeat the hellhound after Nero goes down. Tor Torinson alerts the guards, who arrive and take us all in. End session.

Damien’s player comments on not being directed particularly well towards the thing we’re supposed to do, and I comment on how if I had a choice between Disco Elysium and Baldurs Gate, I’d choose Baldur’s Gate, to which the GM comments about how we’ve been rolling poorly, are still level one and acting high and might about our capabilities, built poor characters, and the story isn’t as linear as I think it is.

Yet my main problem, is that I’ve played with this GM before, and the problem of a character not being able to express it’s design isn’t a new problem. If there’s a problem with expectations, I think I need only point to the fact nothing about what or how the session would play was explained in the session zero beyond setting. But maybe its my own fault for thinking that if I held on to hope somehow the session would go smooth in a way I was happy with just by letting it develop.

The GM posted a meme about players complaining about not being able to find the path, then a picture with the path being littered with signs. It made me unreasonably angry because the way the argument went out was mostly with him talking over me, and me realizing I’d never been able to convince him about anything.

I think this is the first time in the entirety of our years of role playing that I’ve ever decided to bring up I had a problem with the session. Usually I sit down and shut up and accept that if I don’t have fun I’ll somehow have fun next time. A gamble. And the first time I bring it up I have this realization he’s not the kind to ever give up ground while he’s ranting off. His word, the last word, is the only word that matters. In a previous session I remember talking as a player, that he couldn’t keep making all the party decisions himself, or take everything into his own hand. For example, trampling over our morals to do what he personally wanted to do would mean we become threatening to him. For example my character could act out or slit his throat if he thought the act was egregious enough. The next session he bought a stone that let him not sleep instead of addressing the problem I had with his character design, or the fact his decision stopped my own character design from being expressed. He’d taken a lich stone and destroyed the vessel it was attached to, a young boy, instead of taking the steps the other players in the party wanted to take to free the boy.

All I can think is that this is a person I can’t get along with. And its some kind of wonder I’ve spent so much time with this person at all. This is a person who I watch my tongue around, and constantly feel I cannot express myself. So while he was complaining about how we wrongly keep trying to act heroic, I say I’m done, and I leave the channel. And I keep thinking about this all now I get angry enough to think, why have I spent so much time on this person, and I decide I’m cutting this person out, this person who doesn’t listen to me, who I have a hard time even thinking of as a friend.

Sepiadice comments that I’ve quit a lot of games recently. There was his own, there was my friend’s Strahd campagin which we were both in, there was the above GM’s end of the world campaign, there was the above GM’s current campaign. All of these were dnd or dnd adjacent, except for the end of the world campaigns which I had other reservations.

And this puts me in a space where I’m not sure if RPGs are for me if I’ve had so many poor experiences. I don’t know if it’s specifically DND and DND adjacent content or if its something other and else like my own personality somehow has a mismatch with these games, or the possibility I have some mental block about DND interfering with my ability to enjoy the games. Having played so much DND in the last decade, and having so many of them be so similarly discouraging experiences, it feels obvious that it should be the game. Yet, if they haven’t been fun, why do I keep doing them? Why do I keep insisting on trying them? There a grail of an experience I want and am going after, and more often than not the GM promises something interesting or close, but there’s always something off.

I don’t know how to clean any of this up. Maybe I’ll just do it later.

[indigodice]

AFTER LASERS AND FEELS WAS THE REST OF A HALLWAY

The next day I had another game session. Pathfinder. I still haven’t figured out how to enjoy Pathfinder. Clearly its not the combat that makes this game enjoyable. If I want to play a combat game, I think I could play a video game. The clear strength of a role playing game should be the role playing, yet seven of ten hours devoted to pathfinder over two days in one week have been a combat encounter. We go down the rest of a hall. There are three maybe four more guys down the hall. We kill them. I could get into the nitty gritty but I don’t care. We investigate the shrine in the next room. It is bloody. The shrine room is older than the hallways we’ve gone through, or the church on top of it. I have Nero take an axe as some kind of evidence. I wanted to have him try to investigate the metal with Rubeus, or try to trace where the weapons came from. I’m explicitly told this is a red herring, and to take a cultist robe. Cool I guess. I thought taking a weapon could lead to finding not just who made the weapon, but the kinds of people these cultists are, but I guess humanity is too much to ask for.

We do not find the clues the GM intended for us to find.

We enter a room filled with demon thralls. After what I thought was a pointless combat encounter, we’re rewarded with a silver vial, a weapon explicitly for fighting those thralls, inexplicably hidden in the room filled with thralls. These cultists might not be the smartest bunch.

We head back up to the surface after rescuing a Dwarf with a D-name. Daniel probably. Daniel the Dwarf accompanies us as fires are described to us. There’s an exchange between the GM and the player about our priorities, I don’t exactly remember why the player says this but a player says if the inn is on fire, his priorities are probably correct in going to the inn and taking care of his stuff.

We head to the slums where the fire is, the accountant of Barbar the dwarf, who hired us, pays us a small sum of 25 gold. The Gnome tries to intimidate the accountant, asking where Barbar is. This is while the accountant was pointing to the then burning church slash whorehouse. Because remember this is the infernal campaign in the evil town, even though these details can barely hide this is the same campaign structure and campaign as every other prewritten campaign ever.

Daniel the Dwarf leads us to the back of the church where there’s inexplicably no crowd, we enter Barbar’s room to find a dead Barbar. There’s a mechanism to reveal a room with a shrine of a lesser demon, a direct servant to the demon the city worships. Daniel finds the treasure he’d inexplicably hidden in Barbar’s room, and leaves. The Gnome smashes the statue for some reason, and pees on it. We leave.

The GM goes down the list of clues we missed. I’m beginning to think this will continue to be a disappointment, but that I’ll probably be told to hold out because you apparently need to invest in fun, but I don’t know about that. If I spend time learning to play Dwarf Fortress, I’ll have fun playing Dwarf Fortress. I could have watched a few movies in the time I played this, or I could have made progress in Sekiro, but instead I’ve spend time in a probably unmemorable campaign I’m not sure I’ll want to remember when it’s over. But maybe that’s the pessimism talking.

If I think back the GM attempted to have a session zero which turned out to just be character creation. I don’t know how much of the player’s job it is to go over stuff during session zero, but it was only a session zero in name. I think normally we’re supposed to go over expectations or what the gameplay loop might be like, but all that was silent and I only thought about these things as an afterthought. I can’t say expectations stated during a session zero have ever really turned out to be true.

[indigodice]

FOR ONCE THE TITLE MIGHT COME AFTER THE STORY

It didn’t. Maybe it could have been FOR ONCE A SHORT SELF CONTAINED STORY. THERE WERE ROAD BUMPS.

We continued Lasers and Feelings. Where the last session was about mining out explosive space icecream, this session, we were being sent to steal a space cream soda recipe.

The captain briefed us on our objective handed us a small number of old and thoroughly used laser rifles. Phoenix, a doctor with an impossibly longer title, prepared some pocket cocaine, while The Sidero requested a replacement battery. Zalthor’s player began to experience internet problems, which reminded me of the last lasers and feelings session.

I think the player playing Phoenix was also the player who was playing the woe is me orphan from Sepiadice’s Crypt of Kassen. I still don’t understand the takeaway from his long character descriptions. Something similar happened in another session a week ago, where a character described in vivid detail what he was wearing, what his face looked like, and the weapons he was carrying. Short and sweet seems to be the way to go. I think one should add character details over time instead of putting them all in a huge unmemorable dump.

I thought about how we could begin the heist. The Sidero is a combat oriented machine, it has some piloting guides and videos from when the suit was inhabited by Pike. It probably could come up with a plan involving piloting. We could fly toward the station we’re targeting, turn off the thrusters, ensuring stealth, and launch a pod containing the player characters at the station.

“The captain successfully lands the ship in the station’s parking lot.”

Well okay then, I guess we’re in.

We made our way to the complex. It was on an asteroid. We later learn it has 18189 floors. Now that I think about it we never established which floor was the ground floor, or whether the fact it had so many floors had any visual indicator. The structure was probably visually massive, but we never thought about that. There was a tourist entrance, an employee entrance, and a service entrance. I don’t think there’s a way around how massive the structure is, since after entering on the ground floor we later take the elevator upwards towards the top of the structure.

The original plan was to have The Sidero remain in the ship, since it might be hard to be inconspicuous with a security suit walking around. Phoenix suggested the suit could be part of a security operation, after Zalthor hacks into the complex’s systems for clearance and the such.

Zalthor created and printed work orders, first about replacing a toaster in the vault room, then about replacing a toaster near the vault room. Then Zalthor bugged out completely and it was just The Sidero and Phoenix. We found ourselves in a security room where we requested the inexplicably close accounting division update our security clearance so we could replace the vaults panic buttons with our own. The plan was just to get us close, but a marginal success meant we had a complication in the mananger following us tot he room.

The doctor prepared to drug the manager, while the Sidero worked on the replacement. A failed roll could mean a few different things. The GM suggested the replacement fails, and the alarm goes off. I wanted the failure to be a little more interesting, or fail forward in some way. I proposed that The Sidero started making it’s way toward the item in the center of the vault, to which the GM said no by having The Sidero be inexplicably stuck in the wall. The GM gave his attention to the doctor drugging the manager, I didn’t think I’d have to interject when there were simultaneous action. I was wrong. Since I got stuck in a wall, I remained stuck in the wall until it became clear getting stuck in the wall and, by saying nothing, implicitly doing nothing was the wrong move. This lasted until close until the end of the session, I think because I didn’t want to bother saying I’d fight my way out of the glass, because I thought it was somehow obvious I would be doing so. So the GM left me there until Phoenix navigated his way out of his own situation.

I mentally turned off. I hadn’t done much the whole session, and when it was my time to shine my character was incapable of doing what I thought it should be able to. So now Phoenix was role playing by himself and the GM. Phoenix coaxed the manager to his side. We went to the elevator, which brought us up to the CEO, to which we escorted to the vault room. A few times by now, I tried to claim the Sidero was helping Phoenix by being conspicuous. Earlier when he was trying to convince a guard about security clearance, surely the high tech security drone helped the case. When he was trying to be intimidating, surely it still helped the case. Apparently intimidation by being conspicuous is a feelings roll rather than a lasers roll, which I disagreed with, but maybe that’s a failing of a simplistic two-stat system. I think my argument was something like, “I’m not lying about what I am, or trying to seem more something I’m not, or making some kind of specific appeal by using my own emotional capacity, the Sidero IS dangerous, being seen should help with the intimidation.” I think the solution was the Sidero doing something even more conspicuous. The first idea was to have a dot appear on the Sidero’s visor for each of the guards that raised it’s gun. The next more conspicuous action we decided on was instead of a subtle dot, it was a laser pointed from the visor at each guard.

Phoenix pulls a gun on the CEO, the Sidero points its arm cannon at the security officers. There’s a mismatch between the impenetrable security systems and the very poorly armed guards. The CEO is coaxed into opening the vault, Phoenix coaxes the guards into the vault so we can leave.

He has to convince them we don’t want to kill anyone. I argue the Sidero probably hurts this case. It takes a few beats before I realize Phoenix won’t realize he can ask the Sidero to stand down, which would be a strong show of goodwill. When I tell the player, and he does, the Sidero stands down. We leave.

As we go down the elevator, it’s hacked and rockets down the levels. I’m not sure I understand the point of this scene since it takes Phoenix a few rolls to get the elevator to stop. I guess if there really needed to be more rolls, or we needed to die for some inexplicable reason, there’s that. We hadn’t established what our characters do or can do, so maybe being a tech character I could have inexplicably been able to hack the elevator too. But I didn’t, and don’t think it has that capability, even if the game might. So Phoenix saves us even though that’s not his skillset. And the valuable lesson here is probably something like, next time don’t leave witnesses.

[indigodice]

A DWARF, A NOBLEMAN, AND THE LARGEST RAT I’VE EVER SEEN WALK INTO A TAVERN

So I ask my master, Claviger Rubeus if those are the fellows we’re looking for. Rubeus crooks his goblin neck and squints his goblin eyes and mutters “I don’t know anything about this town, why do you keep asking such stupid questions.” As we enter the tavern, the Dwarf gets into a fight with a Gnome, and the barkeep tells them off. He complains about the lot of us milling about so we meet in the only available table in the corner. We soon learn we’ve all received a mysterious letter and without spending a moment to marvel at the twist of fate, the nobleman brings us to a hall of records to find whoever summoned us.

The custodian of records spends some hours finding the records we requested. We wait patiently, silently, somewhat outside the bounds of time.

We find the Ser who hired us is running an unofficial guild from the slums. We’re directed from the slums to the Ser by another Dwarf with a beard longer than he is tall. When we find the Ser, he’s dead. We report the very recent murder to the authorities to absolve us, but keep our leads to ourselves.

We take a moment to find rooms at the nearby Inn. The nobleman arms himself, and I find myself asking if he really think he needs his weapons. A sickle and a pair of sheathed blades. “It can’t hurt to be prepared.” I head inside to my room to find a weapon. When I head back down, they’re taken aback by the maul. “You’re a claviger you said? You make keys?” asked the talking rat. “Yes. I make keys.”

Willing to see this mystery through, we report back to the Beard Dwarf who hires us for a substantial sum to search an abandoned town three hours away to find out the reason for it’s recent lack of abandonment. We find the church, and without any other viable entrances, we enter through the double doors. It’s empty save for traps and the noise of steps. We find the trapdoor and proceed to spend three out of game hours fighting five enemies down a hallway.

[indigodice]

FIXTURES

I remember reading some forum discussion about 4e DND, where people talked about what made it good and what made it bad, and contextually what made it fail. In the general ways it was a combat game, made for combat, unlike other DND games it was more inflexible because it intended to lean into what made DND, well, DND. And I think players mostly, but wrongly, disagreed with the assessment of what DND really was. The best explanation for the failure of 4e was that it peeled back the illusion of the game. Even if players never leaned into the freedom and flexibility of DND as a world, they didn’t want to lose that illusion of choice when it came to the game. And since 4e intended to fill in the spaces and streamline the gamey parts of 4e, and I think they were ultimately successful, even if they were unpopular.

Another assessment was that they’d simply changed the game too much, and that even if there was a better game underneath players weren’t buying into it to play that new game. A similar argument goes with COD games, wherein if the game changes too much or too little, players will be unhappy. A fine line sort-of-thing.

I played my first session of Pathfinder 2e yesterday. Sure the system was better that 1e, it was much cleaner and felt less bulky than the previous but the core books are still enormous and a D20 system is still a D20 system.

The initial session still has the massive conceit of, “You’re here to do the thing rather than your own thing.” and it opens with a mostly unspoken acceptance that our poorly planned meeting had a massive twist of fate. We were intended to find a guy, but not told where to meet. Instead we found all the other player characters, then found a guy who knows the guy, only the guy we were supposed to find was dead so we were sent to an abandoned town to clean up the lack of abandonment.

The role playing took maybe three hours for us to find the dead guy and then prepare for the next part. Combat which was killing two guy, going down a short hallways, then killing three more guys, took two and a half hours.

Back when I hosted Troika! I remember intending to have a one hour one-shot, which became a two hour half-of-a-one-shot that never completed for reasons. But I remember feeling disappointed we’d rounded the first narrative arc instead of completing it. That kind of disappointment doesn’t seem to exist with other GMs or players. Apparently it’s completely okay to take six hours to round a narrative arc instead of completing it. I’d always felt that the first dungeon in say Crypt of the Everflame or Rise of the Runelords should have only taken a short time, an hour at most, but in both cases they’ve disproportionately taken up most of the gametime by a massive massive margin. And if this is just the core gameplay loop of DND, I don’t know if I’m okay with that.

And looking at just how the story has played out so far it feels way too familiar. Like this is clearly the same cookie cutter plotline every DND game has ever had ever and I don’t know how much more of this same story I can really take. Even if the players are different and act out differently, they have a nihilistic property where they just feel like flavoring instead of directive. It feels so strongly that nomatter who they are or how they act the story has to play out in a particular way, that or whatever moral beliefs or whatever there’s that conceit, that even though it doesn’t make sense to walk into a stranger’s house and murder them, it’s somehow the narrative conceit that it must be done and was supposed to be done.

And if that person is a goblin there’s no problem because goblins are evil. If it’s a human cultist, then it’s because they’re insane. The problem is never so nuanced that there’s room for humanity. I think the problem is DND is a game that glorifies violence. Though I don’t have a problem with that, games like Sekiro and Nier will always glorify violence better, and comparing these types of games I think I’d rather play action games rather than games that pretend to be action games. At least in Sekiro the samurai were people. They’d talk and chatter, and even though they needed to be murdered, the game respected them enough to give them humanity and personality.

[indigodice]

MAJORITY RULE

I found this in my draft recently. I must have forgotten to post it. I’ll give it a brief skim and send it on it’s way. In reality it happened some time after Troika but a long ways before the recent happenings. I don’t remember when.

Today I don’t know where to start because I don’t really know what this is about, besides the fact a friend hosted a module called “The End of the World” which was an idea that excited some people. I wasn’t too enthused about playing myself in a module, since I find myself to be an unimpressive person. In fact I hate myself and haven’t worked past that. So the game has us stat ourselves and judge each other, which leaves who we are on paper to the mercy of those around us, who in the case of this game probably don’t all understand each other. I’m left to thinking our inner lives and who we are as people is going to be overtly manipulated by people who only ever see our outward lives. And then when it comes to the actual game we’re playing ourselves, only we’re playing ourselves without the context of the world, since the world is ending biblically as some kind of rationale for stripping away components of the world the GM cannot account for. So I’m myself, only, I’m the myself without any of the material and social mechanisms I use to keep being me, because it has to be stripped away for the sake of maintaining the gamestate.

As part of the prologue china in particular is nuked out of existence. There is no meaningful retaliation. There’s series of biblical disasters including locusts, plague, and other such things. If I didn’t already feel that America arbitrarily hated me for being chinese, boy I felt it now. I don’t know if it was true but I’d felt that in a nuclear situation, china would retaliate with an array of orbital missiles. It was part of a nuclear mythos in my head that I think I was annoyed the GM didn’t take to. And instead the looming threat of a nuclear retaliation was meant to sway us to action instead of nihilism.

So now I find I’m a me that has to act that way you act in a role playing game to keep the game light and fluffy enough for everyone else because now its a social game in it’s entirety and the me that makes me me can’t exist because we’re not here to explore that, we’re here to explore the plot driven campaign that is the only campaign the GM knows how to play. So maybe I should have known not to join in the first place, instead of joining and then quitting and then hating myself for it. As I pondered aloud the problems I had with the narrative, it was suggested my family be killed off so I wouldn’t have to worry about what the actual me would do, except to go further not only did they have to be killed off I had to be physically cut off from the social mechanisms I would normally use to stabilize myself. I had to be railroaded into walking south in the pitch black because south was where everyone else was, even though there was no way for me to know south was where everyone that mattered was going to meet. Sure, I consented to the idea, I even pondered privately that something like that might have to be done for plot reasons because despite relying on these people and those friends outside the current circle but physically near me, I didn’t really know them very well, and couldn’t be relied on to act through them as imaginary characters. But if I’m to play someone so far removed from myself what’s even the point of playing a game like this at all?

Anyways it all began with a generalist poll for the GM to try to learn everyone’s preferences. I remember doing that once with the group way back when, except even then I knew voting as such was a bad idea. Sure, the majority gets what they want, but what if there’s a significant minority that is unhappy? Or what if certain preferences are take it or leave it, while others aren’t so backbreaking. I thought a session zero rather than the poll would have been the way to go. In that other group I abstained from voting, then was told I had to vote because votes were tied. I remember thinking, “You’re giving me a lot of power here, there’s got to be a better solution, because I don’t have a strong preference.” But that’s all long gone. And here’s another scenario where voting leaves people out. Well, maybe that’s just me.

After about three sessions where I felt more or less stripped of the ability to act, I left. Even in a situation where we’re left to role play ourselves, I’m uncomfortable. The world has ended, but my world is more or less folded into these strangers’ that I don’t know well. I think maybe what bothered me the most is that the attachments I had, even the objects that were important to me were stripped from me without an understanding of what was being done. A small unimportant thermos of mine was crushed in the first session, then I was apparently forced to walk for hours in the dark because anything that could meaningfully or reasonably be investigated was markedly not worth investigating for being stripped of all qualities. There could have been a deus ex where the other players appear, but instead I have to wrestle with a GM who thinks giving me car keys and a car is a solution to my situation when I don’t drive. Several hours later another player shows up to arbitrarily rescue me.

[indigodice]

INSPIRATION

CHARACTER CREATION (it only took four hours aaaaaaaaah!)

          [ Empire Crossbowman, Warhammer ]

As a character-art stand-in I like the outfit here, even if the rest of the kit doesn’t exist for my character. I decided to name him Nero. Claviger Nero. Or maybe Nero of the Once Great Clavigers. And what better way to have something like a story than to make up something that maybe fits. It’s on paper now that there is a Claviger’s guild or group that I am a part of. We’re the keepers of keys, we study spaces and distances and gateways and portals, and we know how to create openings, to move through them, make them shorter or longer.

And now I’m a wizard with a maul because if all else fails, this maul is the best key. I put highest priority on intelligence and second priority on strength. I didn’t necessarily make the character with fighting in mind, which is probably a pretty big oversight considering everything I know about DnD. To have a competent character I have to put the stats I focus on at the high end. The stats would tell me this character is much smarter and much stronger than most people. If I could have it my way, the character would be average smart and average strong, but still be capable in their profession as professionals are.

I’m a Claviger, I find things. Which is starting to make me feel like Wizard Diviner was the wrong way to go. I have a few linchpin ideas I like to cling to. One of them is about divination because its one of the few magics that still feels magical. But in the case of the Wizard Diviner in Pathfinder 2, I still don’t get access to the guidance spell or the augury spell unless I make particular investments to get access to what are actually pretty sub-par spells. At level one the only divination spell I get is True Strike, even though I’d like to be about more than combat. The spell is made better by the new action economy, but I guess I might be better off focusing on spaces and travel than finding things. Spells that find things have been moved to higher levels. In concept I imagined I would use magic between necromancy and divination, something closer to a primal magic that exists in many different cultures that is more or less about talking with spirits or the dead. Keys to mysteries. But those spells mostly don’t exist.

Another linchpin is the master. I’ve decided my master is a goblin named Master Rubeus. There’s something about goblins being part of a previous conflict in the setting. And I’ve half decided Rubeus is a malcontent in the Claviger’s guild. He received the letter that was intended to go to each player character, and went to the city intending to send me as his proxy. Or maybe he was sent to send me because he’s at the end of his life, and the guild doesn’t have a good understanding of goblin lifespans, so he’s perfectly healthy and being made to train his replacement. Maybe it’ll be a joke that it’s unclear if Rubeus is trying to refine Nero’s skills or get him killed.

          [ Daniel Zrom‘s Godrok the Little Thief ]

He doesn’t look particularly masterly but he’s trying his best. It might be an even better joke if Nero is younger than Rubeus. The joke might be even better if Rubeus is nearing when goblins are dying of old age, and Nero is still older. Healthy or not that might be pushing it.

I’ve decided Rubeus isn’t a wizard himself, but being a prominent member of the guild he knows enough about the official arcana of the Clavigers to teach it reasonably well.

I have a scene in my head where we’re getting introduced. Rubeus is the one with the letter, and hands it to Nero. He’s cursing incessantly in his language because his back hurts or something much more trivial. Maybe he didn’t like the food. Nero translates saying Rubeus is tired from his journey and wants to rest.

[indigodice]

HERE WE GO AGAIN

I’ve been invited to a game of Pathfinder 2E. I’m conflicted on account of my history with RPGs. I wanted to cite D20 systems in particular but either tabletop RPGs in general haven’t treated me well, or there’s something very off about my communication skills that is causing me to not have a great time. The system will me GMed by the same person who GMed the end of the world campaign, and I can’t say I have a great history as one of their players. Mostly it’s felt like I’m playing Baldur’s Gate without the character’s lineage being the reason for murder being everything’s solution. But really that’s probably just game design at the time, or maybe some flaw about a game’s purely being combat mechanics somehow being transplanted to conceptually something everything game. But I still believe that if a game doesn’t have mechanics for something it probably doesn’t have much business doing that thing it doesn’t have rules for. That something being like “If its not in the rules its not in the game.”

I don’t know what I’ll do for my character. I’ve been trying not to think about it because usually I put proportionally too much time thinking about something I can really only make progress on while I’m in some kind of verbal contact with other players, or the GM.

But because I like magic, I’ll probably go with magic ever if DND historically makes magic feel very unmagical, and even though Vancian magic has always been ugly. I want to find something between Divination and Necromancy since that’s a space that’s always existed in many cultures, and it doesn’t feel as abstracted as trying to be a Monk separated from Wuxia or a Druid from some kind of Paganism.

There’s a space somewhere Pathfinder wants me to inhabit that I’ve always felt is very far from being a person, like it’s elements in the smallest and somehow numerous ways is dehumanising. I need to think more on that, or maybe less since it can’t accomplish anything for me.

[indigodice]

INTO THE FOREST

Last friday I finally hosted a game of Troika. There were three. Ozymandius, the Lone Monarch. Adam, the Chaos Champion. Estelle, the Parchment Witch. When the game started we made the arbitrary decision that Estelle knew Adam. Meanwhile they would meet the Lone Monarch some time later. I had some difficulties in gameflow, and in preparation. I didn’t prepare to get them to point B, I don’t think I even put much thought to lead them there. So I ended up having to create characters on the spot which didn’t go to well. They encountered a metal bipedal walker, which was like a sample for the future beings they encounter. They noticed the falling stars in the distance and decided to follow to where it fell. On the way there they find a small encampment of metal beings.

The sandstorm briefly picks up and dies down. This could have been a narrative tool to direct the players to find shelter. I didn’t use it as such, deciding to keep them on initiative to try to regulate actions, and decided the sandstorm could be on initiative to randomize whether it picks up or dies down. This was not helpful or effective. Eventually I gave up on trying to regulate actions since two of the players were being somewhat passive.

There was a hitch with not getting the players comfortable or integrated into the setting. I think if the world were larger in their minds there could be a better more self directed gameflow. They could for example have goals instead of trying to play into whatever I have in mind for them, which is my typical experience with rol playing games.

When they noticed the stars there were many, moving in all sorts of directions. One grew bigger and appeared to be falling to the desert they were in. Adam and Estelle discussed briefly why stars fall. Then they found the scrapheap, and numerous metal creatures selling scraps and sorts, odds and ends for trade. Ozymandius was here trying to communicate with the metal beings.

Adam briefly tried addressing one, which didn’t communicate back beyond blinking a large aperture in the center of it’s head, and setting up shop in front of him. When Adam lost interest, the machine picked up its shop and moved towards the scrapheap in the center. Everyone decided they were out of their scope when it came to the metal beings. Though they hadn’t decided why they were here, as no such throughts had been pressed by me. Ozy follows the other two, since he’s capable of communicating with them.

They made their way to the fallen star. It was described as a tower, and I briefly wondered with them whether they thought it was worth me trying to keep secrets about what they were seeing as players and characters. It was clear to everyone the things was a crashed ship. They investiagte the tower. Mostly the Chaos Champion takes the lead in exploration. They fully explore the structure and don’t find much of worth, but there’s a small metal humanoid scavanging from the walls. It gives them mats to scavenge onto, and they take what they can from the walls. Estelle spends time harassing and watching the metal creature, while Adam and Ozy discuss kings and kingdoms. Ozy doesn’t scavenge himself, and Adam offers to scavenge for him if he tells a story about his kindgom, to which he does.

The metal creature tries to take the mats and their holdings from each of the members of the party, and they each resist the attempt. The creature ties its own mats into bundles and drags them out of the desert after a brief sandstorm.

When the creature reaches town, it begins to trade goods. Adam buys rations, then does some day trading to get more currency in return. He buys a few more rations for himself, then a bone dousing rod from a Kurgan bonesmith. Ozy buys a plasmic core with what’s left over. Estelle stalks the scavenger, watches it buy a cavcas cloak, and does the same for herself.

A human wanders into the scrapyard, and tells them about a castle in the distance. Adam and Estelle spot magical resonances in the air, and reconvene with Ozy who tells them about the peasant’s strangeness. The peasant’s name is Hyde. They all make their way to the castle. Hyde is very confused and way about going back inside. He stays in the castle’s mudroom. There are footprints here and there in the various rooms. Mostly of people going straight from room to room. There are odds and ends missing here and there.

The party begins to explore the castle and finds that the rooms and hallways change as they go deeper and deeper. They’ve lost the mudroom and cannot readily leave at their whims.

The game ends and everyone leaves. The session had gone on longer than I’d thought it would. I think mostly I struggled to get them into the castle, though maybe there were mostly interesting things elsewhere. The setting isn’t really established, there’s not a place or any meaningful connection to it, but I don’t intend to discard the setting. I haven’t thought very much about what will happen next.