Grim Therapy, group 2, actual play

Like every single one of the my Sorcerer sessions thus far, I simply took the Characters’ Kickers and ran with them, promising myself I’d work out a relationship map *prior* to the game one of these times.

The session starts with all of the PCs (plus one other kid) sitting in the front waiting room of the Principal’s office. It’s 3:25 pm, and they’re waiting for their parents to show up, ‘because of what happened.’

The secretary admonishes the kids to be good while she goes to make a few copies in the Printing Room and leaves the office.

Silence. Then the pale-skinned, dark-haired kid in the corner looks up at them and says “Well, what did you guys do?”

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Cut back to: 7 a.m. that Morning

Lori’s character Coraline woke up with a mouse sitting on her chest, wearing a small crown and a waistcoat. Looking around the room, she noticed that there were many more mice looking down at her from various places in her room. The mouse-king explained that she (the “princess”) needed to come with them and help them ‘save the kingdom’. This is all apparently part of some mouse-kingdom prophecy and the King is quite certain that Only Coraline Will Do.

She thinks about this for a bit and exchanges glances with her fairy, Zit, but eventually decides to Do It. About then, Mom calls up to get her going for school. C gets everything ready, but empties her backpack in order to make room for the Mouse Army. She goes downstairs for some breakfast and gets ready to ‘leave for school’ when Mom stops her and hands her a check.

“This is your lunch money for the next few weeks. Please be a good girl and take this to the Principal’s Office when you get to school.”
“Sure, Mom.”

She leaves the house and immediately sets off for the Woods On the Edge of Town.

[At this point, I called for a Humanity check, since Coraline is dissing one of the two Humanity definitions in the game — Being a Good Kid. Lori doesn’t make the role and C’s humanity drops (again? to a two or three?) as she decides to forget about her promise to her Mom and ditch school for some Adventure. This isn’t the only time that such a check came up during the game — notably, it was always due to the kid’s blowing off their responsibilities in favor of the Make Believe — there was never a check for rejecting the Make Believe over Real Life (and no one tried to come up with a solution to a conflict that made both Humanity definitions happy).

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Margie’s character Kermit is dreaming of flying, and begins to fall towards the ground. Stubbornly, he decides to find out what really happens when you don’t wake up before you hit — he crashes through ground that shatters like stained glass and comes softly to rest on a vaguely familiar grassy slope in the Make Believe. It’s very quiet and restful, but there’s all these whispering, giggling fairies around and finally Kermit wakes fully up to tell them to be quiet. Only then does he realize that he’s sleeping on the front lawn of the school.

… and everyone’s watching him…
… and he’s in his pajamas.

The asst. principal takes him inside and calls his parents for a change of clothes (the nanny has to bring them, I think?) and Kermit misses the first period and doesn’t get to class until it’s time for “Smart Kids’ Math”.

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In first period, Jack opens his desk to get out his books and is shocked to discover that the desk is full of gold coins. A golden glow washes over his face from the reflected light.

He closes the desk lid.

He looks again.

He closes the lid.

He looks.

Closes.

Looks.

A leprechaun, dozing in the coins, looks up and says “Oh, ‘ello there, dragon-rider… I need a wee bit of a favor.”

The teacher asks him to get his book out, he closes the desk and explains that he forgot the book. She has him read along with someone else. After the in-class work is assigned, he goes back to the desk and has a whispered conference with the wee little man.

Turns out the guy has fled the Other Side due to a ‘great dark army’ that’s risen up and causing all kinds of havoc. He came here because he’d heard of heroes on this side that could help…

… help him hide his gold someplace safe, that is. Bluffing, the leprechaun claims that Jack has to help him out because the gold’s on his hands, now. Jack believe him. (Who really knows about leprechaun laws, anyway?) As class is wrapping up, he dumps the gold into his backpack (sensing a theme here?) and proceeds to sneak out of the school (amazingly avoiding any detection — his sneaking-around rolls were very good) and call Fred the Dragon to him… the leprechaun wants ‘a nice hollow tree’ to hide his loot in, and the only place Jack can think of for something like that would be the Old Forest.

He hops on Freds back and they take off for the forest at full-tilt. (And fails a Humanity check for ditching school.)

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In Smart Kids’ Math, the teacher is writing on the blackboard and Aloysius is bored. In his daydreaming state, he imagines the math symbols and numbers on the board coming alive and dueling like two knights in armor.

What he doesn’t notice is the faint, shadowy cloud of blackness that is slowly creeping down off the blackboard like a dry ice cloud and creeping along the floor toward his feet.

Kermit, also in the class, does notice this, but initially all he can manage to do is keep the nasty stuff away from his own feet… it starts to creep up Aloysius’ legs. Finally, while the teacher (who is entirely unaware of the subtly-writing blackboard or the cloud) is turned away, he zaps the stuff with a beam of light from his wand (Fahzenda), driving it off of Aloysius as it climbed toward his mouth and bringing the other kid around.

Aloysius snaps to and realizes that he was dazed by the images on the board. The two kids come up with some excuse for going to the nurse’s station (Al is a sickly sort, and Kermit is a teacher’s pet), and once they’re out in the hallway, they confer. Al realizes that the cloud stole his Sword of Light and he needs to get it back — they also think that the blackboard thing might be dangerous, so they need to stop it.

But first, they need to get the teacher out of that room.

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Jack knows just the right hollow tree in the Old Forest and is heading that way when he spies Coraline trudging along down below. He flies lower and flips one of the leprechaun’s gold coins at her (popping her on the head, but giving her time to hide her backback behind a tree) and demands to know what she’s doing out of school. The two get in a heated argument about who has more right to be playing hooky and who is doing a More Important Thing.

Jack finally gets bored with this and takes off with Fred again, but as he gets close to the Big Hollow Tree, he notices that the tree looks… really scary.

And there’s a big guy with antlers on his head coming out of the hollow part of the tree. He looks scary too. Not good. Time for a plan B. He heads back toward the school.

Meanwhile, Coraline discovers that the mice fled her backpack while she was talking. She tracks them a little ways and comes on a clearing in which the hapless mice have run afoul of three Seventh Graders hanging out in an old camping area. The Big Kids are chasing down the mice and putting them in an old sack to “do sumthin’ with em”. Not good.

Coraline picks up a rock, tells Zit to “cover her” and whips it at one kid’s head. She hits him solidly, shouts out something incoherent but insulting and runs off through the trees, trying to get them to follow her.

It works!

Uh oh. It works.

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Aloysius goes over and yanks the fire alarm in the hallways and the two boys hide (Kermit uses his wand/#2 pencil to increase the shadows around them in the nook they’re in) and everyone piles out of their class rooms. (Humanity check for malicious, irresponsible behavior.)

Once the last kid comes through to check each room is empty, they run back into the room and face off against the blackboard, which is undulating and writhing like a living thing.

Working together, the boys scrawl… something that kind of looks like a magic circle around the spot on the board where what looks like Al’s Sword of Light is stuck into what looks like a big rock (or maybe it’s “+0”… who’s to say?). The board is fighting them, but Kermit keeps his beam of lightning light on the thing while Al finishes what amounts to a Contain. Once the Sword is trapped, Al tries to pull the sword back out of the board (using a Summoning roll) by reaching right through to the Make Believe.

With Kermit backing him up, this works, and the Sword of Light blazes forth from Al’s hand. (Though Al misses the Humanity check for the Summoning Roll — contacting the Other Side is risky stuff while in school!)

Now it’s time to reverse roles as Kermit attempts to banish the nasty blackboard thing — Al’s going to back him up by attacking the board and trying to weaken it.

Many dice are rolled, the board succumbs to much magic and might, and there’s a big magic-circle-sized spot on the board that’s bleached white and the boys collapse back into their seats.

Right about then, the teacher comes back into the room.

“What are you boys doing in he- WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE BLACKBOARD?”

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Thinking on her (running) feet, Coraline has Zit hit the boys with Confuse (pixie dust) as they follow her and leads them a merry chase… eventually right past the “park ranger’s” house (hoping he’s inside to see) and from there to an old tree house on the edge of the forest, which she climbs up into and pulls up the rope after her.

The boys stay on the ground and are starting to throw chunks of mud and some rocks up into the tree house and talk about how to climb up there without the rope when the ranger and the county sherrif shows up. Victory!

Sort of. The boys are in trouble, but so is Coraline for being out of school, and the sherrif carts them all back to where they’re supposed to be and leaves Coraline with the Principal…

…who has just finished calling Jack’s parents to arrange an after-school meeting — Jack apparently doesn’t sneak into school as well as he sneaks out.

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And with that, we’re back where we started: everyone back in the principal’s office after school, waiting for their folks to arrive.