Session 2 - Punishment

(25 May 03)

I threw the watcher against the wall, face first, holding him there with one hand on the collar, the other pushing my gun up against the base of his skull.

"Ow!" he shouted. Or snorted -- his nose was mashed pretty flat.

"How many of you are there?" I snapped. Figure out the what first, then the why.

"Just --!" he began, loudly, then, as I drove the barrel in tighter, continued more softly, "-- just me. Ow."

"When will you need to report in?"

"Never! I mean, she calls me. Ow!"

I was, frankly, more than a bit surprised by his complaints. Hardly what I'd expect of a hostile operative. "Who?" I asked.

"Haley, the Power of Imagination!"

Huh?

"Don't worry about her," he added. "It's nothing personal, not a threat. She's really nice."

Right. "What is your mission?"

"Watch and holler," he offered up, without hesitation. "That's all I did."

"How do you report?" Maybe I could get a line on this Haley that way.

"Well, I just said, 'She's here.' But ..."

"Wait, just said?"

"Well, yeah, that's all I had time for when you grabbed me -- but --"

I turned him around, pushing the gun up into his nose, looking him in the eyes.

"But -- but -- it's okay, because she's really nice!"

Instinctively, I considered him and the state of his soul, and what transgressions he'd committed that deserved -- retribution?

And found nothing. Not that he was a saint, but that evaluation, which ought to have been automatic, came back a blank. And what the hell is that all about, Siân? Reading others' souls? What's that all about? But even as that question flitted across my mind, I was still faced with the current situation, which was clearly more immediate. I knew, by the blank I'd drawn, that this person was a trusted -- agent? Not the right word, but close -- agent of some higher power. And if he said that he'd already contacted this Haley ...

"You know," the man said, trying to smile winningly -- for which I had to give him some credit, under the circumstances -- "you seem really tense. Maybe a cup of peppermint tea --?"

I took the gun away from his face, but, even as he started to smile with relieve, smashed the pommel against his head, toppling him to the floor. Not hard enough to kill, or even permanently damage -- he'd done nothing yet, that I knew of, to warrant such a judgment. I quickly dragged him over to a calico-and-doily upholstered chair and sat him there, out of the way.

"That wasn't very nice," came a voice from the hallway, through the closed door.

I flattened myself against the wall, the gun trained to flank the doorway.

"Can I come in?" the voice continued -- female, Midwestern US accent, youngish. "I don't have any guns. Or knives. Or a sword can. Or balloons filled with nerve gas. Or a Frisbee that can be bounced off the wall and then reveal hidden blades to cut off your head. Or a laser-beam-firing wristwatch. Or a Bester grenade. Or ..."

She continued on for another half minute or so, declaring herself devoid of the most amazing array of weaponry. I'd never heard of anything like it, though I found myself approving of several of the concepts.

Finally, more to stop her than anything else, I called out, "Enter."

The door swung open, but nobody came in.

"Are you clinging to the ceiling over the door, ready to drop down and bite off my ears and otherwise hurt me when I come in?"

I was silent a long moment. Then I repeated, "Enter."

She stepped carefully through the door -- a young woman, 5'6" or so, well rounded, dirty blond hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She was wearing a floral print shirt, a macrame vest, and jeans with holes in the knees.

She threw me a tentative smile, immediately looking straight at where I was standing, then turned her gaze at the man in the chair. "Aw, Sam."

"This one's yours?"

"Yeah, he is." She stepped over to him, grabbed a small pillow off another chair, and slid it under his head. "Poor Sam. I didn't hire him to be subtle, I'm afraid."

She let out a breath, then turned back to me with a big smile on her face. "Hi!" She took a few steps toward me, extending her hand as if to shake mine. Mine remained firmly gripped on my pistol, which remained firmly pointed at her.

She faltered a half-step, then reached out and gently "shook" my gun barrel. I made sure it did not go out of line with a vital target, and so did not stop her. "Hi," she said again. "I'm Haley. I thought you and your friends might need help."

Friends? File that away. "That's very nice of you," I replied, neutrally. "Out of the goodness of your heart?"

She grinned, gave a half-shrug. "I'm looking for something that can help me, too. I'm, Haley, the Domina of Imagination," she added, as if that explained everything.

I stared at her impassively. She sighed. "Okay, you ever read comic books? Alan Moore? Or, given your bent, maybe Garth Ennis? Hello? British writers? Of comic books? You're a Brit, right?"

"I know what comic books are," I granted.

"Okay, so imagine, like, someone being the super-hero of -- transportation. Yeah. This guy has the powers of transportation, and everything about transportation belongs to him."

I shook my head.

"Oookay. Something a bit more concrete. Imagine someone in charge of transportation. Not like the government guy --"

"Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Transport," I said. His name had been in an article I'd skimmed at the newsstand earlier.

"Riiight. Okay, like him, but not the government. Worldwide, in charge of it."

I frowned. "Like a conspiracy?" The Illuminati? No, the Cammora?

She frowned, too, but with frustration. "Okay, imagine someone in charge of all music, worldwide, making sure a song doesn't become unpopular or something --"

"We're talking payola?" The Mob? Or, again, the Cammora? What's the Cammora? And why does it keep coming to mind in this context?

Haley pouted, slightly. "See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You need my help. Okay, so never mind the examples. Just trust me that I'm the person in charge of Imagination. And you --" She cocked her head, looking me over. "You're either Punishment or Death. I'm not sure which." Neither was I, which was more than a bit disturbing. "Your boss was into all aspects of life. I get the two of you mixed up sometimes."

"Imagination wasn't an aspect of life my boss was into?" I asked. Boss? And, past tense?

"Well, I guess he could have been, but he didn't. Though some of the others have plenty of imagination." She waggled her eyebrows at me in a way that was probably meant to be lascivious, but which seemed more like a kid trying to be lascivious. Her enthusiasm and friendliness was certainly -- endearing.

Not that I didn't have to be ready to try and kill her, if she posed a threat.

"So why are you here?"

"Because you have a big chance now to start all over. And that's where I can help."

*   *   *

"Can you point that thing elsewhere?" Haley said, gesturing at my gun. "It's really pointy, and it hurts when it hits you."

Or more. That's the idea. I lowered the gun, though. Slightly.

"Can I fix you some tea? You look tense."

I snorted. "What's with you people and tea? That's what he suggested."

Her face lit up with a big smile. "Good for him! But -- you didn't accept."

I shrugged, noncommittally. I'm not drinking any right now, am I?

"So, you want some tea?"

"No thanks." Anything could be slipped into tea.

"I'll make some myself, then." She stepped over to the kitchenette part of the flat, started going through cupboards. She gave a little squeal and a hop, and pulled down a box. "Peppermint. Just what I was thinking of. Of course." She put the kettle on. I watched the whole process with fascination.

"Okay, so this is what I'm talking about," she said, turning back to me. "You need to learn to open your mind to great opportunities. You've never used my Domain much."

Whatever that means, I thought, though I was beginning to get a glimmer. "I can imagine some imaginative punishments. Or deaths." If she took that as a veiled threat, so much the better.

She wrinkled her nose. "Not really. You're very linear." Haley cocked her head, examining me again. "I'm pretty sure Death is a guy. This time around, anyway."

"Where are the others?" I asked. Friends had been mentioned. Allies, at least, would be valuable right now, even if Haley was on the up and up.

"All of them?" she asked. She frowned. "Well, I can't tell you about your personal Anchors." Whatever that means. "But your family -- well, I probably need to tell you about them, it looks like. Death, of course. I mentioned him already." She giggled, and stifled it with a hand. "'Death in the family.' Get it?" She giggled again, then turned back to the stove, where the kettle was beginning to whistle. "There's Electricity. He's neat. And Lust. Guilt, of course. He's inventive. And motivated."

She'd poured the hot water into a cup, over her tea bag. She reached up into another cabinet without looking and pulled down a bottle of Scotch, pouring a little of that in, too. That isn't natural, I thought. Imaginative, but not natural.

"And then there's Fungus," she continued. "It's always different." I realized she was talking about another family member, not the subject of eating and drinking.

"Do you have any flowers?" she asked, picking up the cup. I opened my mouth to answer, when she suddenly stared at me. "Hey!" she said. "Pockets. You have lots of pockets, right?"

I'd discovered that was so when I picked the lock to the door. Lots of pockets in my vest, lots of interesting gew-gaws in them. I'd not had a chance to investigate them thoroughly. But, since she knew of them, I nodded.

She laughed. "See? Imagination! I knew you could do it. I like your pockets."

"Uh ... thanks."

Haley wrinkled her nose again, and took a sip of her tea. "Do you always have to be so serious?"

"Duty calls," I replied. It was the truth. Duty always called.

"You should have a t-shirt printed up that says that."

I shook my head. "How did this happen? Why is it -- I cannot remember anything?"

Haley took another sip, draining the the cup, then put it down. "They tried to kill your boss. Or maybe they did. Probably. I'm surprised you survived, being so set in your ways. Or maybe that's what saved you -- imagination means being in touch with reality --"

I snorted.

"It does!" she added. "You have to be in touch with it to be able to look at things differently. You're so set in your ways, you probably hardly even noticed." She frowned. "That's kind of sad, actually. I'm sorry."

"Ah --" What do you say to something like that? "That's all right. If I hardly noticed then -- well, I hardly noticed. I suppose." I looked at her quietly for a moment. "I do appreciate your, ah, help."

She smiled. "No problemo. Hey, do me a favor?"

And here comes the price tag. "Okaaaay ..."

"It's no biggie just -- look at your gun. You can keep pointing it sort of near me, that's fine. Just -- focus on the gun. And try to imagine ... it's ... a spear that you see ..."

I did keep the gun "sort of near" her, but tried to do as she said. What she was suggesting seemed somewhat familiar but -- it remained a gun.

"Open your eyes. See it. It's long, with a long blade, of the same metal ... deep bronze ... a metal shaft, too ... round pommel on the end ... shaft wreathed ... in flowers ... blood-red ..."

Her voice was almost hypnotic -- though, by the same token, I remained aware of her, on guard, ready to strike with -- my -- spear?

My vision seemed to ripple -- or maybe it was light itself that did, or even the underlying reality. I could see the gun -- and then something would flit across it, like a cloud past the moon, and in that shadow I could see the very spear that she was describing --

I pointed the gun (spear!) at her. Imagination indeed. "What are you doing?"

She held up her hands. "Nothing. Just trying to get you to use your imagination -- and see the reality alongside this reality."

My eyes went back to the spear, and now it was clearer, and I could see, paradoxically (don't think about it!) my hands both in a gun grip and gripping the spear. It's really pointy, and it hurts when it hits you, she said. I'll be damned.

"There," Haley said, clapping her hands in excitement again. "See? That's the sort of thing folks like you can see. It would freak the others out, though." Others? I wondered, but she was continuing, "Now, look at yourself, at Sam, and me. See the auras?"

There was an aura upon me, a vague nimbus, extending outwards from my skin and clothing, both emanating from me and wrapping about me. It was me, in some strange, ineffable way.

Sam, still unconscious on the chair, had a glow around him, too -- weaker than my own, barely visible, flickering, pulsing in time with --

Haley's aura was distinctly brighter than my own, which, to be sure, seemed both fitting and vaguely worrisome. It swirled and crackled about her and, at its outward extensions, seemed to ripple into shapes -- stars, moons, rabbits, lawnmowers, lollipops, dragons, pocket watches, comets, clipper ships --

"You're seeing the Mythic World, rather than the Prosaic One. Everything here has a spirit. See?"

She gestured back at Sam -- no, at the chair Sam was in. It seemed to be holding onto him, even as it muttered in a Cockney accent to, as far as I could tell, the piano bench, "And 'e's 'eavier than she is, and I don't think she's ever passed out in me, though there was the time she fell asleep after crying, when Princess Di passed on, and the time she couldn't stay away for New Years, and she actually spilled on me then, but was very sorry in the morning and cleaned me roight up, but, my, this one's 'eavy, and 'e's not even trying to stay on me, well, I never."

And the piano bench murmured in agreement, nodding, somehow.

"And over here?" Haley pointed to the toaster on the counter, which was looking at me (without eyes, of course, that would be silly), and saying hello, and asking if I wanted any toast, and how I oughtn't poke my spear into him, even if the bread gets stuck, without unplugging him first ...

"And this is a power you have?" I asked Haley, and she shook her head.

"No, like I said, this is just another reality. One you could see easily before, but which had to be pointed out to you this time. See? Paying attention can be helpful."

"Riiight." I shook my head, blinking. It was just a toaster, one way, but looking at it again, I could see it humming a little toasting song to itself And, frighteningly enough, both views seemed perfectly normal. Was I learning again what I had forgotten, or was I going mad? Is there a difference? And does it matter? "Thank you, truly, for showing me that, but ... I have to get hold of the others. The ones you mentioned -- Death, Mold --"

"Fungus," she corrected. "Probably easiest. Unless you have flowers for the others on you."

I could search my pockets, but I knew I didn't. I don't call them, I knew. They call me. And not often at that. Which suits me fine. Even though it didn't. "No."

She looked disappointed, then brightened up. "Well, like I said, we can probably find something for the Graf right here."

"The graft?"

"No, the Graf. Like Count, or Baron, or those other titles, only not. You'll understand when you meet."

"Okay."

"So let's see if Marcia does any fancy cooking. She's off at pinochle with the girls, I'm sure she won't mind" She began to root around in the cupboards.

"She does, does Marcia," said the wingback chair. "She cooks quite a bit, and spills very little on me, except for that time on New Years, when she fell asleep before midnight, but that was a little glass of sherry, not food, though why you'd want to consume either is beyond me, I'll tell you, but she's very nice, very nice indeed."

I saw the chair still supporting Sam, and turned back to Haley. "I do appreciate your help, but -- I do have to ask you something. To be fair."

"Well, I'd never ask you to not be fair, eh?

"Um -- was it your man I killed? Earlier?"

Her eyes widened. "Sam? He's not dead!"

"No, no. In the alleyway, when I -- began remembering again. There was a man I'd killed. I think."

She frowned. "No, I just have Sam. He keeps me busy enough." She cocked her head again, looking at me. "You killed this guy?"

I shrugged. "I think so. A neat cluster of shots to the heart. The gun was on the ground between us. It happened right before my memory stops."

"Describe him."

I did, paying attention to the empty eye sockets. I figured that would probably be a clue. "Did you take his eyes out?" she asked.

"I don't think I did. My hands were clean, and I'm pretty sure there are no eyes in my pocket. And it didn't look violent -- just that he didn't have any eyes."

She nodded. "Could've been an Anchor, or just some soldier of some sort. The other senses could have been enhanced. Anyway, no, he wasn't mine."

I was glad -- and hoped that I could trust her. She seemed trustworthy -- but, then, they always do. "Well, good. You've treated me well, and I'd hate to have killed one of your people."

"Me, too," she said, going back to the search. "Hated it, I mean, or would have. If you had. Killed one of them, that is. I mean -- aha! Mushrooms!"

She pulled down a yellow and green tin of Knorr's dried mushroom soup. "You can probably use this."

"Um ... do I eat it?"

She laughed. "Well, I suppose you could, though I like their sauce mixes better. No, just focus in on it, like you did on the spear. Just think to yourself, 'I am trying to reach the Graf of Fungus.' And break off pieces ever now and then. If you get an answer, it will be like a voice in your head. It's sort of like praying."

A vast room, lit only by votive candles, tears rolling down my face, a shadowed figure stepping out from behind the altar -- "Would you really?" I shook my head. "I haven't done that lately. I think."

"See? We need to talk about that. Here." From out of her vest, she handed me a poppy, a brilliant red-orange in color. "You can use this to get hold of me. Oh, and here." She handed me a card. "That's got Sam's number, his cell phone, and all that. In case you can't get hold of me. November gets to be real busy for me."

"All right. I -- will be in touch." I smiled at her. "And thanks."

"Great smile, honey! Work on that."

I ignored the comment, and started following instructions. Fungus. Fungus. How odd. I mean, Punishment seems odd (but, yet, so right). And Imagination seems odd. But Fungus? And yet --

It stares at me out of cloudy black eyes, its face a fragile mockery of human, bulbous and brown, and I know I could kill it with ease, but it wouldn't stay dead. It would just grow back. 'I am called the Graf,' it was fond of saying, 'for I am not Baron, but Fruitful.' She could smile at a joke like that, once. And it was my Family. Even if it did smell -- earthy.

I shook my head again. All right then. "I am trying to reach the Graf of Fungus. Hello? Graf? I -- call to you. If it please you, answer. It is I, your sibling." I would not pray to my equal, but, it was, I suppose like prayer. And, like so many prayers I had made, it seemed to be unanswered for some time.

Then I began to feel -- odd. Tingly. The flat began to fade around me.

"Oh, wow," said Haley. "That's a summoning. Someone's summoning you. Go ahead, see what happens." As if I knew how to stop it. If it could be stopped.

And as the room faded out, her last words were, "Oh, and don't kill anyone unless they try to kill you!"

That seemed fair.

*   *   *

The big, hairy, overweight, loin-clothed hippie was not pleased to see me. The gun in my hand, pointing straight at him, likely had something to do with that. I'd decided that I was more comfortable, for the moment, with a gun than a spear. The gun/spear didn't seem to mind.

I'd also been seized by a sudden fury. I knew -- I did not know how I knew, but I knew -- the ritual he'd used to summon me. Very old, it was, a bit of poetry by Sappho of Lesbos herself, a woman crying out, in the most personal and terrified ways imaginable, for succor from Nemesis against those who were unjustly hurting her. He'd even cut open his hand, to let the blood drip on the ground. The ritual required blood shed by the one who summoned Punishment. The idea behind it was that the summoner was, in fact, bleeding from an attack.

It was an old ritual, and a sacred one. And he was no more in need of my aid than the other dozen or so hippies cavorting about the rooftop. How dare he?

"Honey, you aren't going to feel good about that in the a.m., if you shoot him," said an old lady, sitting off to one side, nursing a bottle. She caught my eye, for certain, and there was something about her that seemed familiar, but I kept my attention on the man.

"Hey, hey, don't point that thing!" he said, backing off. "Not my fault you got up on the wrong side of the iron maiden this morning."

"Why did you call me?" I said, trying to keep my voice under control. The barrel remained pointed right between his eyes.

"June told me to. It's her fault -- wave that thing around at her, not me."

I knew he was correct -- he was not to blame, save for his insolence. There was something I could do about that, perhaps, but I wasn't sure what, only that using my gun on him would be wrong. I also suspected I knew this June, but wasn't sure. She didn't seem to "match" any of the names Haley had given me. "Do you know what that ritual means in Greek? Was that the only way you could bring me here?" I gritted out between clenched teeth.

"We'll, you could've stepped through your Chancel to here, I guess -- oh, wait," he added, sarcastically, "it's full of bad guys out for your blood. So, yes, I guess this was the only way to get you here."

I lowered the gun a bit, taking a step back. It was a bit of a madhouse, up on a tenement roof on a horrible day in -- I scanned the sky line -- Chicago, United States. Hippies. The old lady (who grinned at me and took another drag from the bottle). The asshole in front of me. Pigeon coops. Why was I there?

We talked, some, after that. The hippie was named Hank, and he worked for June in much the same way as Sam worked for Haley. June was bringing all of us, our family, together in one place. She, herself, was driving in from Minneapolis (she needed time to deal with a woman named Vera). Electricity had been here already, but had been called away, to return later. A similar summoning ritual had been used on Lust, but it had failed -- the rumor was that there was someone else now in that role (a new/old sibling, in some strange metaphysical way I could not yet understand).

(I would later learn that the appropriate flower could be used to contact one of us -- just as I had been trying to use a mushroom to contact Fungus. But though June had directed him to grow a garden of such flowers, Hank had proven a less-than-effective gardener, and the flowers had all died. I was hardly surprised.)

It seemed, as Haley had suggested, that someone had attacked us and killed our boss. Well, more than that: he had been judged guilty of treason by "Inquisitors," of having committed some capital crime against another Family. He had been judged guilty and executed. As part of the execution, we ought to have died as well. Obviously we hadn't. By getting together, then, we could come up with a plan. Perhaps.

I nodded in agreement. It seemed as good a course as any. I offered to continue trying to contact Fungus, though I was finding the cavorting, half-naked (and fully stoned) hippies a -- distraction. They smelled good, in a way that seemed strange to me, male and female alike.

I shook my head again. Distractions. Have to concentrate.

I'd stuff the Knorr's tin into my coat jacket. I pulled it out, and took out another mushroom. "Graf of Fungus, I call to thee ..."

*   *   *

A long silence. Then, in my mind ... "Is your mind swiss cheese, too?" Strangely familiar. Familiarly strange.

"If by that you mean, are there holes in my mind, yes."

"What do you want?"

I explained the situation, and that was looking to summon it. Fungus seemed to consider, then asked if there was more of what I had used to contact it. I still had the tin. At Fungus' request, I described the surroundings, and Fungus indicated it could use the organic matter in the pigeon coop. The old lady -- Guilt -- volunteered to get the hippies to pull the stuff out of the coop space and onto the rooftop, and was not ineffective at doing so. I sprinkled the remaining mushroom soup mix onto the pile, and --

Well, and then, with little to-do, Fungus grew out of the mass of pigeon droppings and feathers. I kept a straight face, though it was both difficult to believe and rather disgusting.

Hank ran and got Fungus a plastic rain poncho -- to keep the moisture in, oddly enough. As Fungus was donning it, I asked Hank who June was.

"She's my boss. Reality."

Oh, fine.

Fungus seemed to to have most of its memory intact, and knew all of us there. "When is June returning?" it asked, in an odd, raspy voice.

"She's driving in," he said, a lot less antagonistic than he'd been earlier. "She should be here, soon. Um ..."

"What?" I asked.

He gestured over at the other hippies, who were staring at Fungus. I suddenly felt uncomfortable, as if we'd been caught doing something bad, something we shouldn't have been doing in front of others.

"Ah," said Fungus. It reached under its poncho, and pulled out a set of strangely colored mushrooms. "Here."

The hippies seemed a lot more mellow after that.

Electricity, we further learned, had come and gone, off to assist the new Lust -- a woman -- who needed help. June had said we should wait until everyone's head had cleared before we summoned the last member -- Terminus, called also Death. I bristled at the suggestion that Death might be more dangerous than myself, but Hank insisted that, while with my spear I might be a match for him -- "Well, he's more of a snap judgment kind of guy. If someone summons him, then they either need or deserve death. Whereas Punishment -- well, she gets slowed down trying to judge of they're worthy of that punishment."

It was hard to argue with that. Though, if it should come down to a fight with my brother ... "Probably best, then," I heard myself saying, "to wait until the others return."

And while we waited, I suddenly realized how hungry I was. It was a struggle to find something palatable to eat down in the kitchen of the flat the hippies had, but I found a fresh grocery bag with bologna and "Wonder Bread," both of which were horrid and wonderful at the same time.

It was only afterward that I considered it had been -- many, many years since I ate something because I was hungry.

Things got exciting shortly after I was finished with my sandwich, as a phone booth suddenly grew out of the rooftop. A young man stepped out of it, to face my gun. "Hey," he said. "You must be Punishment. I'm Electricity." He gave a slight wave of his hand, trailing sparks as he did. It did establish his bona fides.

I pointed the gun at the woman behind him -- pretty, in a cheap, tawdry way, her looks not helped by the shreds into which her leather jacket and pants had been torn, nor by the glower on her face. "And you are?"

"Really angry at you for pointing a gun at me."

Fungus chimed in, peering at her, "I don't know you."

Electricity, though, introduced her as Lust. The new and improved model? I thought not, though I did lower the gun. For the moment.

"Hey!" Lust suddenly chimed in, "you're all the criminals."

Guilt smiled. "Honey, you're the one with the bruises on you."

Lust explained that she'd been attacked, without warning, by one of the (to give them a label) Bad Guys. She also noted that Electricity had gotten into a fight with someone, too.

"Where," asked Fungus, "is the Angel, Cicera?"

Dead in New York, according to Lust, heart torn out. Electricity said that Avrileros, whoever that was, had claimed he had not done it. (And it was about then that I had to introduce Electricity more formally to Hank, who offered him some Glenfiddich. He'd offered me some, too, and while it was strangely enticing, I'd decided it was best to stay clear-headed for a while.)

"So the old Lust is dead?" I asked the new one.

"Unless he can survive with his heart torn out," she replied.

Oh. That angel. Bitch.

Electricity asked, "Anyone know how to get into the Chancel to get people out?" He had been getting phone calls from someone there.

"Yes," Fungus replied, "but there are people there waiting to kill us."

"The key question, then," Electricity said, "is did the boss really do it?"

Did the boss really do it? Yes, that was in fact the question. If I am the spirit of Punishment, and if our master was really guilty of the crime he'd been accused -- was not, then, his punishment just? Did he -- and, by extension, we -- deserve that punishment?

And, if so, then should I fight against it?

It would have helped if I could remember what the boss even looked like.

The conversation had been continuing as I'd been pondering. "Who's this Lord Entropy?" Lust asked.

"Head of the Locust Court," Fungus replied. Lord Entropy was in charge of the defense of Earth (from whom?). He had judged in the case of our boss (our "Imperator") against accusations from the Family of the Perpetual Wanderer, including the Dominars of Lost Things and Eternity (Electricity noted that Avrileros had said it was a matter of long-term damage done them). That judgment had been carried out by Inquisitors, including the Bronze Man, who served the First Castle, Pen Lo.

By God, you need a program just to keep track of the players.

Lust continued to think that, since she'd assumed her Estate after the supposed crimes by our Imperator, she was off the hook. This despite the fact that the Bronze Man had attacked her in New York.

That battle had been ended by the Power of Cities kicking them all out, including transporting Electricity and Lust to where we were waiting.

The bad guys had evidently learned some of the ways in and out of the Chancel, but not all of them. There were other ways they didn't know anything of, but which Guilt did know. Unfortunately, Guilt had been stricken by amnesia as badly as the rest of us. Fungus could assist, but it would cost some of its power to create a Miracle that would help.

Miracles?

Fungus said that, long-term, we needed to find out what "assets" we had in the Chancel (the otherworldly realm of our Imperator, our true "home territory"), and if we could get them out. That brought up a discussion explaining what Anchors -- like Hank, and Sam -- were: allies, minions, folks through whom we could work our powers through. And, in fact, Electricity was able to see through the eyes of one of his Anchors, inside of our Chancel. He saw many prisoners inside of warehouses, well-guarded.

Death had been there, hear learned, fighting, causing destruction. It was thought he'd escaped. I hoped so -- we would need his strength.

There were troops all over the place there, with thousands of our people held prisoner for things like violating curfews.

It made me wonder -- did I have Anchors? Were there allies I held so closely, people whose welfare and mine were so closely linked? If so, I had a duty to them. But first I had to find out who they were, and how I could contact them.

Meanwhile, Lust was nattering about how good her senses had become, since her taking on her new Estate. "Hearing is great!" she enthused.

Isn't that special? A pity my ability to know what punishment someone deserves did not work on my brethren; I suspect I'd have gotten quite a bit of information about the new Lust ...

Session 2 - Invitations to the Party

Note: this log is missing the second half of June Reality's turn, and all of Terminus Death's. There will be some GM additions to this once that stuff happens.

REALITY
June continues to travel with Vera, picking up on the fact that her problems with her husband are more based on Vera’s jealousy than her being away from home too much. Due to the fact that June feels as though she owes Vera for her help, she wants to do something to help out, but it’s a tricky thing – on the one hand, a soul can only take so much of one emotion or another, but on the other it can hold an infinite amount of feeling, provided a balance is worked out. (Also complicating this is the fact the June can tell that someone has, at some point, Preserved the woman’s Jealousy, so there’s a chance she’s going to draw attention to herself – she’s stepped on the toes of other Powers by ‘helping’ people before.)

June’s had bad experiences with ‘balancing’ bad things with good things before (“I’m now very devoted, but I’m still really Jealous, so if I can’t have him, no one can…”), so opts for the simpler, but more strenuous solution of wiping out some of Vera’s Jealousy.

[Lesser Destruction of the woman’s jealous attachments to her husband, rather than the easier but potentially back-firing encouragement to her other feelings for him to try to balance out the jealousy.]

They continue the drive to Chicago.

LUST
Senachiel grows/reveals wings and says something under his breath as he starts to fly away – something about ‘another of your allies’. Macy glide/jumps along building rooftops, moving after Senachiel towards the building with the dead angel. She enjoys this and it is fun for her. She decides to jump on the angel's (Senachiel’s to be specific) back as he is flying along. They come to a stop on the original brownstone’s rooftop and she stalls him from going into the building by asking several questions. He gives her a flower and tells her to call him with it. He finally is able to pull away and drops down to the front steps of the buildings. Macy runs down the side of the building and gets there first -- she tries to interposing herself between him and the door.

FUNGUS
Arrives on the slope of Mt. Baldie. IT finds a dirt path that leads to a road, but parallels in the undergrowth instead of walking on it directly. Fungus follows its instincts, walking down into a washout ditch beside the road. It gets like a magnetic north kind of pull that leads to a storm drain. The fungi in the sewer are singing and talking to Fungus by way of greeting. Fungus asks where it usually goes when it comes down here. They respond that it is normally to see the professor. Fungus heads further down the tunnel.

PUNISHMENT
She in the apartment across the street from her own, with her gun to the back of the head of the dude she caught watching her place. She interrogates him and finds out that he is watching on behalf of the Power of Imagination. Punishment asks if the guy thinks he is going to call for help. The spy tells her that he already did call for help. He suggests that maybe some nice tea would help her calm down, and she knocks him out. There is a knock on the door. The lady outside the door goes through a list of things she doesn't have with her (a very Imaginative list, har) and lets Punishment know she only wants to talk. Sian lets her enter. The girl looks friendly enough with dark blonde hair and a lot of smiles -- asks if Punishment wants some tea or scotch. Imagination offers to help Punishment and trys to explain things to her and the way Nobles work. Punishment is still holding a gun on her. Imagination tells her she (Sian) is a Noble in charge of Punishment… or Death, she “gets you two confused sometimes”.

ELECTRICITY
Goes elemental and spreads over everything that will burn in the room. Things start burning. The other man in the room squints and all of the flames halt – that is, completely stop moving, but are still there. Ball of lightning gives the guy the finger and exits through a light socket. Electricity exits to Alantic City, NJ, but decides he really needs more information and jumps back to the house, trying to lurk in the wires without a ton of success. Goes back into the room and the man is still there, as are the [Pause Button] flames. He asks the man if he couldn’t just leave and let Donner look around for awhile. Avrileros offers Electricity the chance to throw himself on the mercy of the court. The phone in the room rings.

Just that phone, though… the one closest to Donner. Weird.

Oh.

GUILT
The world gets tingly and phasey. She is now standing in an efficiency apartment in a low rent tenement; bedroom and bathroom. There is a man in the room dressed in a dirty white tank top, well-used boxers and a pair of dark socks who offers her a sip of whiskey. Guilt complains about her bleeding wound, but Hank isn’t terribly susceptible to Guilt-trips. June told him to bring her here. The man tells her she is one of those 'god people'. He tries in vague descriptions to tell her what is going on. He finishes with the story and when he is done she asks him to put on some pants. She asks about the Bronze Man, but he doesn't know about him. He says they are in Chicago. He runs through the list of people still to summon and invites Guilt to join him. They go up to the rooftop for the next one. There is a group of hippies who are stripping down for the ceremony. Guilt cradles her whiskey bottle and begins the slow chemically-aided detachment from current events.

LUST
Senachiel explains how to use the flower he gave her as a focus for communication. Meanwhile, she listens to hear what is going in the building (Donner’s attack blew all the glass out of the second story, so it’s quite easy.) She chats some more with Senachiel.

ELECTRICITY
Moves up a floor and to a back room through the electrical wires, waits for Gail’s call to catch up to his new location, and answers the phone. It's Gwen (of course) and she needs him and wants to know if he has gotten hold of anyone else. They talk about the dead angel, and she tells him that there might be a new Lust then – probably Must Be, considering that his heart’s missing. Electricity has been fighting Eternity – she knows that much about Avrileros, but not much else. She tells him to get closer to New Orleans. Gwen names everyone in his Familia and cautions being careful with Death (who was seen a little while back in the Chancel “he fought one of the Inquisitors; things fell down”).

LUST
Talks more with Lost Things. He says he is going in to talk with his brother, so she jumps into the third story of the building through a (until then unbroken) window. She walks through to the back to find Electricity

ELECTRICITY & LUST
Lust introduces herself as well as any amnesiac can and tells Electricity to meet her at a phone number she provides him, where she has to go (the woman who’s been calling her). Lust runs out the building towards the address of her caller. Senachiel and Avrileros are on the way up the stairs, and Electricity jumps into the phone lines.

FUNGUS
Emerges into a lab environment and is found by Professor Wirtz. He is a wiry balding gentleman. Professor is happy to see Fungus who informs him that it has lost its memory. Fungus believes there are people after it (yah think?). He asks after the rest of the Familia. Fungus looks confused. The Professor asks about reforming itself – he seems to think that if she changes her form (the ‘little death’ transferal of her essence), she might get some of her memory back. Same confused look. Professor explains to Fungus that it might want to rot itself and reform for the purpose of regaining memories. Fungus wills itself to reform and slowly this happens – she regrows out of the ‘study fungus’ in the next room.

PUNISHMENT
Still holds a gun on Imagination, who chides her for not using imagination more. Punishment asks how to get in touch with the others. Imagination asks if she has any flowers. Punishment finds out that her boss has been killed, and she thinks she might have lived because she is so focused – Imagination (“just call me Haley”) thinks it’s because she’s so stubborn. Imagination tells Punishment to look at her gun and imagine it is a spear. Punishment is able to focus on the gun and see it as the spear it ‘really’ is. When she looks up everything seems to be different (she’s shifted to mythic view). Imagination tells her to get some mushrooms from the kitchen and try and talk to Fungus. Punishment has a short conversation with an armchair about the owner of the apartment and decides she doesn’t like Mythic View very much. She describes the man she killed earlier and asks if Imagination knows who it was, but she doesn’t.

GUILT
The rain dance continues. Guilt is watching the ceremony. She is truly unimpressed. The light bulb hanging from the power pole that the group is using as a sort of ‘may pole’ blows up and lightning is everywhere and forms into a man. Hank gives Electricity the low down on the family (and some scotch) and Guilt is hiding just out of sight. She chides Hank for not warning her about the lightning. Electricity says he’ll be back, but says he was interrupted in transit and leaves to meet Lust. Guilt commends Hank on his stock of alcohol.

Hank then starts trying to “get” Punishment. Imagination sees Punishment fading out and tells her “pleasedon’tkillanyonewhodoesn'ttrytokillyourfirstok” before she vanishes. Punishment gets summoned, and points the gun at Hank, somehow very upset about this and sure that He is Not the Sort of Person who Gets to Summon Her. Guilt tells her that she is not going to feel good about killing Hank in the morning. Hank gives The Speech to Punishment (though the speech gets a more simplified and vague as the evening progresses), and gives her some alcohol. They discuss Fungus and that they should summon it, but Hank doesn’t have the stuff he needs for her – it’s not complicated, but not the sort of stuff you can get at a local Stuckey’s, either. Instead, they decide to have Sian try this flower-communication prayer-thing that Imagination told him about.

[Technically, they should be using Mugwort for a prayer-flower, but Sian’s been encouraged to use her imagination. :) ]

LUST is running (across rooftops, at a good clip) to meet Jessica. She runs and jumps to the top of the building where she wants to be. She runs down the fire stairs to the penthouse and finds someone inside who is not a threat (Jessica tries to hit her with a bat when she walks in and that doesn’t work well. Jessica is aging rapidly now that she’s not Sisera’s anchor anymore – they talk for a bit and Lust considers calling Lost Things to find out how to anchor someone, but Jessica remembers. Lust cuts her arm and feeds Jessica some blood just as someone steps into the door of the room. Macy ignores his order to cease immediately and gets smacked across the room.

[Now introducing The Bronze Man, Sacrifice's Regal, who takes a swing at Macy. Macy is anchoring Jessica and won’t stop doing so, so the attack just “happens”. The result is a deadly wound for Macy and a busted up sectional couch where she lands after he hits her in the back.]

Macy jumps back up, rushes him, ducks under his attack, picks him up and throws him out the patio door – hard. He sails through the glass, CLANGS through the patio railing, and head towards the cement many, many, many stories down.

[When he hits the ground, the Bronze Man takes two Deadly Wounds, even though he’s Durant – it’s a big fall and his Rite of Holy Fire protects him from almost no mundane damage.]

Macy pursues, jumping down the side of the building from balcony to balcony, watching the gaping hole in the street sixty stories down. About halfway down several patios collapse under her, flinging her into open space.

[I realized too late that I'm a little shaky on what exactly the Bronze Man can do with his Estate (REALLY shaky), but for the spur of the moment I went with Destruction to Serve a Goal – the irony being that in order to get what he wants he almost always has to destroy part of the Creation he’s supposed to be protecting. End result, minus the poetry: crumbly balconies.]

Somewhere around here, Donner shows up in the Penthouse and Jessica tells him what’s going on. Donner leaps out of the window and just falls to the ground below. He’s in elemental form, so the physical impact is not notable for him.

She gathers herself for the landing and spreads the impact through the ground (it cracks) with a crouching three-point landing.

[Even with Durant (which she doesn’t have), a 30-story uncontrolled fall = Deadly Wound. Macy spends an AMP for a level 6 Aspect miracle of ‘righting myself in mid-air with the wind resistance from my clothes and landing well enough not to get hurt’.]

The pavement crumbles beneath her and Lust falls through the sudden collapsing hole into the access tunnels beneath the street.

[Bronze Man does a Lesser Creation of Domain on the street, as the balconies above.]

The Bronze Man charges her. They exchange blows – his are more ponderous and very powerful, hers are quicker and deceptive. Electricity is standing at the top of the impact crater (not to be confused with the Sacrifice crater). Pedestrian and automotive gawkers line the street, but they can’t see the two duking it out and Prosaic Reality is trying to pass Donner off as a damaged and dangerously live electrical short caused by the two sinkholes in the street.

Combat rages. The Bronze Man causes a cabby to sacrifice his car by gunning it into the hole and straight at Macy, but it misses. Meanwhile, Donner hits the Bronze Man solidly, Macy does twice and take a shot in the breastbone for her troubles (another deadly wound). The crowd suddenly reacts as though Donner is some sort of superstar and tries to rush at him – he’s in elemental form, so this will kill them – he jumps into the hole to get away from them. TBM jumps out the hole and Lust jumps after him -- Electricity hits him with another bolt. Bronze man crushes into the hood of a car several blocks away and Macy sails past him to land atop a taxicab. Donner arcs through the electrical conduits beneath the street, leaps out into the open from a streetlight about two blocks back from both of them.

[Let’s just say this was the first real combat we’d played through and it wasn’t exactly… smooth. We’re still figuring out how the numbers flow during a fight. One thing is obvious, though: combat eats miracle points. Big time.]

FUNGUS
Talks with Punishment (using one of the familia-aligned flowers that the Professor has grown in a window box outside his office at her request). Fungus has him drop the bag of mushrooms so it can try and to locate where they are (it needs to be outside Punishment’s Auctoritas to be Divinable. Punishment tells Fungus they are in Chicago. Punishment throws the mushrooms near the pigeon coop and Fungus locates them and reconstitutes herself out of the… biological matter... in the area (eww). Hank scrambles to get Fungus some clothes at Fungus's request. He has some difficulty locating polyester for Fungus, however (cotton fabrics are right out for her -- she rots natural matter in a few hours). Fungus gives some special mushrooms to Hank for his rain dancing hippie friends so they don’t freak out too much at what’s going on, or at least can explain it as a bad trip later. Punishment asks about food and Hank provides her with some of the stuff June sent him to get.

LUST & ELECTRICITY
It’s a showdown. Suddenly, all the people within ten city blocks slump over unconscious. Cars coast to a stop. The Bronze Man shouts a protest as a large hole opens under him and he drops out of sight. A Voice tells Electricity and Lust that they should not be doing what they are doing in the middle of her city (“Don’t Freak Out the Mundies!”). She tells them to get into the phone booth (that just appeared) before TBM's friends get here. They step in and the booth sinks into the pavement. Minutes later it rises out of the rooftop of a specific apartment building in Chicago (where the other Nobles are).

ASSEMBLED GROUP
Punishment points a gun at them as they enter. Lust asks her not to point the weapon at her as she has had a bad day (and she’s suddenly feeling cocky about her god-fighting powah). Fungus asks Lust who she is and she tells her. June will be here in 3 hours. Lust needs sleep and Hank suggests his bed. She refuses, as she has a sudden very CLEAR vision of what’s been going on there, so Fungus grows her a soft bed of her Estate. Those folks with more info fill everyone else in on who is hunting them and some of what they are in trouble for. Electricity jumps into his anchor Gwen (in the Chancel) and finds out what is going on with her, and hears more about Death’s appearance – after that story, they decide not to summon him just yet. Fungus decides to contact her Herbalist anchor (also in the Chancel). She is in her house and has not been rounded up, though her business has been closed by the invader’s order. Fungus asks what herbs would be good for memory loss. The herbalist is not sure what to recommend because Nobles are not like normal people. She gives a few suggestions.

Meanwhile, Guilt's whiskey bottle is empty and she's officially written most of this off as a drunken nightmare.

REALITY
June and Vera have stopped at a KwikyMart on the outskirts of Chicago to pick up supplies. As June goes through the candy aisle looking for candy orange slices, she notices that everyone in the store has become fixated on different things to the exclusion noticing all others: the girl behind the counter is staring at the business woman leaving the store, who in turn is staring at the soccer mom outside loading three children into the mini-van, etc.

Just as suddenly, she realizes that there's a woman staring right at her from the next aisle over.

"You think you're sooo great, don't you?" The bitter sound cuts through the quiet of the store, even though the words are spoken softly. Turning, she sees the dark, narrow face of the woman glaring at her over the snack shelves. The air around her almost seems to bend with the intensity of the emotion she's directing at you, like heatwaves coming off a blacktop highway. "You've already taken everything from us," she continues, "but even when you run away you have to stop and try to take something else from me." He hand comes up and grips the top of the intervening half-wall of snack food. "Vera was mine, and you ruined it."

"Yes, dear," June says. "Sometimes you have to learn to share." The orange slices are so...orange. Oh, well. Little wedges of jellied sugar will keep. "Do you need something, young lady? What can I do for you?"

June opens her hands: they shimmer in the fluorescent light, full of
invisible offerings. Conucopias of the spirit. Perhaps even a monkey's
paw or two.

The woman's pale face twists downward as though she smells something foul-but-seductive... burning cigarettes wafting past an ex-smoker... her laugh is short and harsh, full of disbelief. "You can't offer me anything that I don't already have." She shakes her head, her (golden?) eyes still on June's open hands.

It's hard to tell if she is stating what she believes to be fact or forbidding June from trying.

June says nothing and waits, only trying to intensify her aura.

The woman seems lost for a moment in the light, but her unfocused gaze is on the past, not the wonders June offers. "We were a good Familia. We increased our Estates, watched out for each other, fought the War. Everything was good. I almost --" she cuts herself off, blinking and looking up at June. "It took us almost two years to notice that someone was siphoning away our strength -- bypassing the Heart of our Chancel -- but it didn't take us long after that to figure out who was responsible." Her hands grip the top of the rack that separates the two women even more tightly, her knuckles going white and the metal creaking slightly. "We never did anything to you!" She says through clenched teeth. "You were just... just Jealous of us and you're going to pay for it; the Inquisitors will make sure of it." Her eyes blaze with actual light, far past the simple flash of anger a mortal might manage.

June stops out of arm's reach; not the woman's arms, but her own. "If anything we did hurt you, I'm sorry. I don't know much about the business that was going on at home; I'm the kind of person that takes care of emergencies out in Reality. Sweetie, there are some things I can't fix, and the person who could fix them is gone now. There are a lot of things that nobody can fix. But there are a lot of things I can fix. Why don't you tell me about it?"

Her eyes narrow, "Oh that's right... Cathetel is such a loving, caring Imperator, he's so much better than everyone else. Except he's been killing off tiny sections of our Chancel's heart for two years; locking each piece in a timeless void and siphoning off the energy." Her eyes brighten again, even as they narrow. She looks suddenly triumphant. "Siphoning it off to you and the others. HE didn't have our Chancel's energy, which means YOU and the others must have gotten it." She glances out the large plate glass windows in the front of the store and smiles. "But they'll get it back for us."

June's gaze follows hers. Three people (two men -- one black and well-dressed, one white and disheveled -- and an east indian woman in traditional garb) are standing just outside the building and looking in through the window at June at the other woman. None of them are smiling.

[Annnnnnd THAT'S where we'll pick up on Saturday! :)]

Session 1

The official Log of the first session is now up. I've put in HG-commentary on certain parts of the game to explain what or how I did something -- I won't always do that, but I think it's important at the beginning for people to understand how the story fits in the game system -- helps everyone understand.

Also, I left in my original temporary notes from the first half-session, so we have a log of everything. If it makes the thing come off as uneven, blame me, not margie.

Guilt wakes up sitting near the door in a soup kitchen. She is wearing cords with a vest and polyester shirt. People occasionally look at her. She stands up and wanders over to the food line. [Digression on the gender of the group in general (MFFFFM and Fungus' “they”.] When she gets to the front the woman serving soup asks

“Do you need something?”

“No, but I think this broth could do with a little meat and vegetables.” Guilt replies

“Do you need a doctor? You are bleeding.”

Guilt notices a gaping wound in her side.

“Don’t worry about me dear.”

“Let me get you a chair back here and bring you some soup.”

[No domain miracles to twist the girl around her finger, other than her inherent gift with manipulating others.]

The assistant gets Guilt a chair in a back office and quiesces to the doctor being fetched. They ask Guilt her name and as she realizes that she doesn’t know a cold shiver runs down her spine.

As soon as the woman is out of the room, Mariska’s vision swims and a clenching discomfort washes over her.

[Nettle Rite: Chancel bond]

---

Punishment wakes up face down, on the cobblestones of a dirty alley. That, as her eyes blinked open, was the first thing she could bring into focus; grimy stones, bits of refuse settled against the juncture of a building's wall and the ground.

She rolls over. The alleyway is dank and old (which seems familiar) and thick with the stink of moldy trash. (That seemed familiar too, although somehow for a different reason.)

She sits up, resting her arms on her knees. She is wearing slacks, a jacket. Her knuckles were scraped and bruised. A taxicab drives by the mouth of the alley several dozen yards away and she realizes she’s in London.

She doesn’t know how she knows it’s was London, what or where London is, or why it fills her with a certain relief, but she knows that she knows and she knows she is not wrong.

Forcing herself to her feet, she takes stock of her surroundings. The dead body on the ground between her and the alley’s dead end catches her attention first.

Her reaction is not fear or revulsion but resignation, as though this is a familiar scene playing out for the hundredth time to no happy conclusion. She approaches the face down body (too much like her own earlier pose for comfort) and rolls it over.

A flash. A memory. Looking over the shoulder of a London bobby, looking down on a body lying in a very similar -- the same? -- alley. Blood everywhere. the poor woman's eyes wide with terror and death and the stink of blood and offal nearly overwhelming and --

Seven bullet entry points. Center mass. Also, his eyes are missing. It does not look as though he’d ever had them.

She remembered. He was striding straight towards her from the dead-end of the alley, half-smiling. She had had a pistol and he had been wearing sun glasses.

Looking around, she finds the gun against the wall and shortly thereafter finds a holster for it at the small of her back. She doesn’t see the sun glasses anywhere.

[At this point, I hadn’t realized Dave wanted a spear-thing, so I did the gun -- later, we just decided the gun WAS the spear, with the ability to Guise itself as appropriate weapons.]

She frowns. It didn’t feel right, having used a gun. There was something...

Something... off. Wrong weapon. Not the feeling that she wouldn’t have killed someone, but the feeling that it wouldn’t have been this way.

So something was wrong, but that wasn’t the real problem.

She’d been trying to remember her name since she’d first rolled over into the sun, and she couldn’t.

Sirens are coming closer. There is a door to one side and a fire escape to the other. Punishment checks the door and it gives to his touch and she enters the mud room of an industrial kitchen. The room holds a drain and slop bucket. There is a ladder to a trap door in the ceiling. The next room is the pantry. Further on is the kitchen proper. As she enters the pantry her nose notes that it an Indian restaurant. Her stomach rumbles - an uncommon, yet remotely familiar feeling. She waits for an opportunity to slip past the workers and continues through the restraint, raising only the slightest eyebrow from the hostess.

[Moving through the kitchen well enough to keep the two dishwashers and the assistant cook from looking up at the wrong time was a piece of cake -- Sian’s aspect is a 3, and what might have been a challenge for some ended up being a piece of cake for her.]

Out the front door, she flows with the pedestrian traffic looking casually at what the policy are doing. They eventually find the body in the alley. The call goes out. Punishment finds herself at a newsstand from which position she can still clearly hear the chatter of the police radios in the cruisers. She pauses to check out the headlines.

---

Lust wakes up on a psychiatrist couch. Taking her measure, she notices that she has an ornate but serviceable knife in her left hand -- both of which (hand and knife) are coated in blood that has long-since gone tacky; in her right hand is a cell-phone whose screen indicates she’s missed... ten calls. As soon as she registers that, the phone starts to ring.

She answers it, and sits up to look around the room, which looks like psychiatrist’s office: dark read leather and mahogany, heavy drapes over the windows. The female voice on the other end of the line is speaking somewhat loudly, her voice is strained. Macy is not tracking the words however, as her attention is on the angel sitting in the traditional psychiatrists wing-backed chair across the shadowy room.

He’s wearing the robes associated with angel imagery. Also, the big white wings hanging over the back of the chair is a give-away. He looks quite dead: his chest has been split open and Macy’s fairly sure even from across the room that his heart is missing. The voice on the other end of the phone is repeating a name over and over, as though trying to get her attention.

[For the record, I didn’t start out thinking “Red Tooth Rite” -- I just wanted to frame her for something nasty and realized later (after the half-session) that the angel was really her old boss and that she was a VERY new noble.]

The woman is calling her Macy. She seems upset and thinks that things are ‘going badly’ and ‘people are watching us’. She says she’s in New York and Macy realizes on looking out the front windows that she is as well. Macy says she’ll talk to her later and hangs up. She goes over, cuts the angel’s throat to ‘make sure’, then washes off the blood from the knife and the hand, wipes it down and sticks it in her belt until she can dump it. Then she leaves out the back of the building.

Macy exits the brownstone by way of the rear door. She quickly and very easily jumps the walls and fences separating various back yards and works her way to the next street over. A few blocks later Lust tosses the knife in a convenient bin and she feels a subtle shiver run down her neck. Someone behind her says

“Ah, there you are.”

[Senachiel is the Marquis of Lost Things. He’s been to the house (mere moments after Macy left), knows the heart was removed with a knife, and hopes that it’s going to get dumped somewhere... he’s maintaining a Lesser Divination and as soon as the knife hits the trash bin, he knows it, AMPs up his speed and flies right there. Jackie avers that the knife wasn't really "Lost", since she knew exactly where it was. I counter by pointing out that she's not the one defining the Domain, he is :)]

At the end of the street Lust notices that there are three muscle men gathering.

[It occurred to me later that since he didn’t teleport there, he wouldn’t have had backup, so... I ret conned in a Lesser Creation of discarded Mannequins next to the dress shop, then Lesser Change to Guise em and get them into combat readiness. DMPs flow like water, but Macy’s an unknown.]

“I guess that we are not playing nicely” Lust observes.

“I am just looking into matters that occurred down the street.”

“And you are….”

“I am Senachiel. Obviously you can help me out” He says as he pulls the knife out of the trash can. “What were you doing with Sisera?”

“You don’t look like police. Let me see your badge”

“I assure you that I have sufficient authority. I in no way seek to persecute. I am here as the agreived party, looking for Sisera. To round up people, not to mete out justice-”

Lust notices the three muscle men moving towards her from far up the street, though she isn’t looking their direction in any way.

“I thought we were playing nice?”

Senachiel motions them back with a slight surprise in his eyes.

She relaxes a bit. “What would you be interested in?”

“That looked like a Red Tooth Rite back in the angel’s house.”

“What is a Red Tooth Rite?”

“Come now, I can tell that you should know all about the Red Tooth Rite”

The pais a deux continues until Lust blurts out. “I don’t remember anything about that... or anything else.”

Senaciel searches her face. Finally: “My word, you ARE telling the truth.”

---

Electricty sprawls across a threadbare and badly sprung armchair. A light bulb socket hangs directly overhead, dangling from the ceiling on a cord and holding only the shattered remains of a blackened bulb. He is the Power of Electricty.

There is dust on the scarred wooden floor, the single windowsill, the radiator next too it, and on the misused armchair itself - all of which seems entirely undisturbed. The room is otherwise empty. Something in the chair is digging into the man’s back.

He is lithe and wiry; lean, with short blonde hair so pale it was almost white. He wears a fine pair of slacks that quite are quite obviously part of an expensive suit, a dark, form-fitting sleeveless shirt somewhere between silk and mesh, and no jacket. A shoulder holster hangs along his left side, empty. He, unlike the room, is not covered in dust.

He raises his other hand (instinct or habit) to take a drink and discovers he still holds the neck of a whiskey bottle between his fingers. He seems less surprised by the natural inclination of his hand to cling to a bottle even in unconsciousness than he is when he notices that the bottle ends in jagged shards about halfway down.

There is something dark and tacky on the jagged edges of the bottle, and he is not injured (barring the damage the chair is doing). The room does not smell of spilt whiskey, nor does he see broken glass or blood (or footprint… how did I get here?) on the floor as he sits up and looks around.

[Randy’s mentioned that this was a big telltale that something was off -- Donner’s a detective, and not seeing footprints was a big deal.]

He stands, wiping the bottle down to erase fingerprints and dropping it on the chair behind him as he looks over the room. Neither his jacket nor the presumably missing pistol are anywhere to be seen so the holster hanging at his side remains both conspicuous and useless. He slips it off, winds the straps around the holster itself and shoves it into a pants pocket where it bulged and ruins the line of his slacks, but does not draw as much attention.

His gaze moves to the bare window and the world beyond. Tenements. Projects. He is certainly not dressed to blend in but, searching his mind, he finds no particular concern about such things. His natural instincts tell him he is more than competent enough to handle the dangers of such places, though he has no idea how or why.

Of course, in searching his mind he finds precious little else in the way of information or memory, which does bother him. He is a well-dressed newborn delivered into an abandoned tenement in an unknown city. The room holds no further information for him beyond that.

Electricity leaves the tenement. Shirtless old men are playing Go in the shade of worn-out buildings. They give him a look and complain to each other that the power is out and the fans won’t run. Electricity realizes that he knows how to play Go and that the men are speaking Tagalong - Odd. He gets a phone book and flips through looking for something familiar. The phone rings and an angry voice calls out as he puts it to his ear.

“Where the Hell are you?” A women voice rings out

“Are you OK?” and then “It’s Gwen.” As a afterthought

“I’m OK but my memory is shot” Electricity answers into the phone that should not work.

“I’m trapped behind enemy lines, but I can still contact you this way.” Gwen replies. She says she can sort of phone him and whichever receiver was nearest me would ring, something he’d set up.

[I did this because I thought it was cool -- that, as the Power of Electricity, his anchor’s prayers come through as phone calls... just seemed to fit. There’s a few problems with that (like it basically allows him to teleport to any supplicant), but in general it works kind of neat -- in the grand scheme, I think I’ll have prayers work normally for him and just have a “special phone number to god” that a few of his servants know -- it’s sort of like a weak version of “summonable” that isn’t worth any points due to balance bad and good points.]

Gwen then tries to explain what/who Electricity is and what the chancel is and what had happened. She gives Electricity the phone number for ‘The Angel’ and describes the other ‘members’ of the chancel, then hangs up. The phone goes dead, cuz there’s still a power outage.

He pushes the next call through the power outage

[Lesser Creation of electricity.]

and the call goes all the way to... New York, it feels like... east coast, certainly. A phone rings.

A man with a deep, gravelly voice picks up. He said the Angel was in the shower. Wants to know where Donner is. Meanwhile, several street thugs approach the phone booth, attracted by his swanky duds.

---

Fungus
A wooded copse looks down over an open expanse of grass. Faeries flit from shadow to shadow in the gloaming beneath the trees, occasionally circling the head of the creature that stands at the border of darkness and light. The creature is not human, but seems to give the impression of a humanoid form, if that form were composed of the firm but pliable substance of a mushroom, it’s skin the durable ‘leather’ of a puffball. It’s toes dig into the earth beneath it and flat black ‘eyes’ take in the world beyond the trees.

The strange shadows of a city loom all about this small patch of tamed wilderness - the place were she stands is a temporary refuge at best.

Why the creature thinks it needs a refuge is unclear even to it, but somehow it knows.

She feels a strong painful stitch in her side.

[Again, a Nettle Rite on her Chancel Bond.]

Fungus is in a park in the middle of a city. The hamadryads were grumbling about the nasty air. A deep shiver runs through Fungus, a sense of wrongness. A pixie spirit flits by his face/front

“What are you doing here? It has been like forever since you’ve been here, or at least you weren’t here yesterday.” Tinkerboy continues without pause.
Fungus tries to discern the direction or location of the wrongness. He follows it to a nearby copse of trees. There is a faerie ring of mushrooms in a cave. The fungus chatter and gab, then settle into a chant.

“Are you going to do that thing again like you did before with the ring y’know - whoosh”

“What thing?

“You went there and then you went somewhere else. I don’t know where.”

The ring is where the wrongness is -- or it leads to that place... or... something. Fungus steps into the circle of toadstools and nothing happens. S/He relaxes and the chanting of the little mushroom spirits increases. The power rises up out of the ring and flows through Fungus. It feels good.

“Bye! See you soon. Have a nice trip. Whoosh! Zoom!” Tinkerboy calls as Fungus sinks into the ground.

S/He is in a large cave filled with giant mushrooms and fungi.

“There it is! Get it!” A voice calls out, followed by the sound of many feet pounding towards Fungus.

[At this point, we’ve established by process of elimination that the as-yet-not-built Chancel has “Convenient”. It’s also “important” in a bad way, has an Enemy Gate, a couple banes, and all sorts of magical inhabitants. Fun place. Too bad we don’t know what it looks like.]

---

Death wakes up in a morgue, on a cold tray. He automatically pushes open the door and slides out, as though he’s done this sort of thing many times before. Something is not quite right. This isn’t my morgue. There is a familiar tang in the air, though. A morgue worker squeaks at his appearance.

“No one was supposed to be in there, so... You’re free to go.”

Death notes his face for future reference.

“Why am I here?”

“I don’t know. Did somebody drug you?”

Death pushes past him, and the poor soul faints. Death wanders through some wards on his way out, twisting dials and pushing buttons. A few deserving souls meet their end.

[I sort of forgot about the Code Fideli-whatever that forbid harming those who have done none -- in retrospect it works just find -- Death doesn’t remember it, so he’s basically responding to his basic nature -- he is, after all, a Pawn of his Estate. That said, and excuse like that only works when you’ve got amnesia. Instictively, he’d be focusing on the ‘right’ people to work on, anyway.]

A wall of heat hits Death as he exits the hospital. It has to be Houston. Death looms tall over passerby and looks a bit less genteel than Death-warmed-over. He feels the constant hum of people wishing others dead. He tunes out the prayers to Death and feels a stronger, different tug on his spirit.

---

Reality looks over her shoulder and shudders deeply. [She remembers everything about what’s happened, as opposed to everyone else, who remember nothing.] She flees through one of the lesser gates of the chancel. She thinks that everyone got away in one way or another. It is clear that they got to the imperator and executed him. It should have killed Reality. It should have killed them all. She saw Fungus die, but who hasn’t seen that. Punishment killed her way out and Electricity exited the way he always does. She did not even bother to worry about Death. Lust hadn’t been around.

They must know that we are all summonable, eventually they'll catch us all.

Reality arrives in a corn field in Minnesota. Got to find someone helpful she thinks as she heads for the highway and flags a Good Samaritan that she knew would be driving by.

[De’s definition of Reality is (paraphrased, and filtered through HG’s sketchy understanding) the strength of cosmic purpose that a thing has by virtue of belief in itself or other’s belief in it... and the ties that give a thing substance and connect it to the rest of the world. In this sense, losing “reality” is what made the Invisible Girl invisible in the first season of Buffy. Using that definition, when she says she wants someone who’ll help, I’m having her use a Lesser Divination to find someone who thinks of themselves as a Good Samaritan, then doing a Lesser Preservation on that person to reinforce their instinct to stop. De very helpfully bought a nice high domain so she really doesn’t have to sweat the miracle levels on little stuff and let me figure out if she needed MPs for whatever she was doing. It worked well.]

“How did you get here?” The Samaritan asks. “Is there a Home where you should be?”

“I need to get to my daughter’s house.” Reality drawls.

“Well, we’ll try and find it. Do you have her number?”

“Why I do! Do you have a phone?”

The Samaritan digs into large (read: enormous) purse (read: macramé bag) and retrieves an older cellular phone. Reality calls her anchor in Chicago.

“Yeah!”

“Hello”

“Oh! Her nibs.”

“Boss is dead.”

“You said that we would all kick the bucket if that happened. Are you still on this side of reality?”

“Yes and No. I need a rain-dance and some other things.”

“I can do that.”

---

Guilt knows that something is wrong. It pulls at her. She gets a flash of people who are not familiar in rooms that are familiar. They are looking through closets and rummaging among the papers. Guilt notes a badge worn by most of these folks. The scene shifts to people being herded into buildings. Some are being beaten. Others are standing by looking severe and pious. Guilt knows that this place (her home?) is in danger and she wants to do something about it.

“Honey, do you have some paper and a pen?” Guilt asks the staff member.

“The doctor is on the way. You won’t need a will.” She says as she hands guilt the requested items.

Guilt draws the design from the badge and asks the staff member if it means anything to her. She doesn’t recognize it and leaves Guilt alone so she can intercept the doctor.

“Who calls the inquisitor?” A male voice rings out. The rune/symbol/image on the paper glows.

“Sorry, can’t help you.” Guild replies as she feels the air go heavy around ehr with a scrying.

“You are speaking to The Bronze Man. Who are you?”

“Sorry, I don’t know you…” and Guilt tears the paper in half.

The paper resists at the sigil, but gives with some effort. The staff returns with the doctor.

“Are you OK? The doctor is here.”

Guilt feels that she should not stay here long.

---

Punishment browses the headline - “Power Outage in Malaysia.” “Rave Fire Kills Hundreds in Chicago.” “Knightsbridge Gun-Battle.” She listens to the walkie-talkies of the near-by and not-so-near-by police. They have made no progress on the murder scene. The experts have arrived. No suspects have been found in the area. No suspects seen by the neighbors.

[Sian’s aspect is more than high enough to clearly hear (and more importantly, understand) the police chatter over the radios in the Metro cars -- actually, if it came right down to it and she were close enough, she could eavesdrop on inserted radio ear buds.]

Punishment checks her pockets - twenty two pounds and an ID card/Drivers License (name of Sîân Ewig) and a local address in Whitechapel. She picks up a tourist map and memorizes the city that she feels she should already know. She cautiously heads towards the address on an oblique route, watches the area, and spots a guy who is not moving with the traffic. He is sitting on the stoop on the building across the street from ‘her’ address, reading a paper. Well, not really reading a paper, but doing a good job of pretending. He’s not turning the pages often enough.

Sîân She moves back a block, enters the building the guy is sitting on the front steps of from the back, figures out which front apartment is ‘clear’, picks the lock using the lock-picks in her vest. (Hmm, lock-picks in the vest.), and ghosts inside.

The watcher is still watching and Sîân doesn’t spot another. When the street is clear, she steps out and, putting a gun to the back of the watcher’s neck, and pulls him into the vacant apartment.

---

Lust continues her conversation with Senachiel.

“Well, this is a puzzlement! Normally, it is impossible to empower a Noble when the Imperator is dead.”

Senachiel continues to puzzle over Lust. He says he can’t tell if Macy’s actually ‘the new Power’ and decides to test her hearing by having a lady carrying paper grocery bags (two) three blocks away stop and whisper that Macy should tell him everything she knows.

[She’s one of Senachiel’s anchors, a Bag Lady (and not inconsequentially a Human embodiment of his Estate) -- he can’t just randomly take over nearby mortals.]

Macy hides that she can hear that well or that far away; he doesn’t notice her cover up.

It is obvious that he likes her. Lust makes an offer that he declines.

“I am not... this is an awkward time for that suggestion.”

“You’re gay?”

“No, use your vision. Look!”

With some work the view ripples and he is revealed as a winged... angel... like the other dead guy, basically. He has large feathered wings and a glow about him; an aura that reflects the afterimages of things like coins, papers, toys, golf balls, socks, and something that Lust somehow associates with innocence.

“I am the Marquis of Lost Things. I am faced with a quandary. Your Imperator is dead. Killed for his treason, but you came after his execution and had nothing to do with what he has done.” Senachiel continues to try and convince Lust to come with him to the Inquisitors’ Chancel and get this all straightened out. Lust finally agrees to go with him and let him speak for her.

“I am a bit of a loss,” he admits. “Everybody is at your chancel. Can you help me get there?”

“Oh sure, what’s a chancel?” Lust replies as her cell phone rings.

Lust answers it, and holds forth without attempting to exclude Senachiel.

“What’s going on?” Jessica wails.

“I’ve been detained”

“They are hunting everyone and killing them.”

“I have to go to the Inquisitor and talk to them.”

“Are you crazy? With everything you’ve done, we’ve done. They will kill you.”

“Then I’ll have to politely decline.”

“Politely decline? What do you think they’ll do? Send you flowers?”

Before Macy can decide for certain, the lights on the street dim and the sidewalk vibrates.

[This is the Manifestation of Donner's Major Creation back at the house.]

When Lust turns around, Senachiel has already drawn his weapon.

---

Electricity is interrupted by someone tapping on the metal side of the booth. A grinning punk and five of his street-tough buddies are tapping clubs to palms, playing with butterfly knives, cracking knuckles. He tells Gravel Voice to hang on, puts the receiver down and turns to the lead gang member. He makes his fingers (and eyes, apparently) to the Electric Slide. Five run. One wets himself and then runs.

Donner picks the phone back up and reaches out to the other phones and power outlets around the guy he’s talking to. The call feels like the East Coast, a major metropolitan area, New York, Atlanta, or Miami. He’s thinking about waking up in a chair under a broken light fixture in a dusty, trackless room -- he gets an idea. He thinks positively about being in the room next to the guy... his body changes to pure electricity and about 35ms later, he’s there. Very tingly. He’s 18 feet away in the next room. The voice has already stopped talking to the phone and turned to face the Donner would have to come though to get to him. Electricity enters the room and knows he may be in a bit of trouble. The man looks dangerous.

“Are you going to come quietly?”

“Where is the Angel?”

Avrileros points with his chin to the cleft Angel.

“Not from us. He was found that way. We are here as the wronged party.”

Electricity tries to bullshit for some information, and then decides to just punch him with electricity -- everything he has.

[In game terms, Donner took his default Domain 4, DMP’d it up to a 7 (Major Creation), then tossed his last two DMP’s onto the thing for penetration, just in case. Avrileros is Durant, so a level 7 miracle means a Deadly Wound. He deals with it, but isn’t happy. Takes a swing at Donner, but only manages a Serious-level Wound. Donner still has Deadly wounds left, so it doesn’t do much but ruin his shirt.]

Avrileros soaks it, though he is not unharmed. His knife flashes out along Donner’s side.

[And thus we have my ubiquitous inclusion of Michael Wincott into the game -- at least I didn't call him Kethos.]

---

Fungus

“There she is! Kill him!”

A wall of fungus appears across the cave, and choking pores fill the air.

[Lesser Creations/Attack]

Fungus works without thought. Bullets impact the temporary wall. The pursuers cough at the spores and more bullets fly. Some of them pierce the fungus wall and Fungus, but she is unharmed. Quickly searching around, Fungus finds several other Faerie Rings. S/he spies one that makes him smile. A perfect circle of morel mushrooms - earthy and spongy. Fungus puts a scuff neat a ring of little death-caps and fills the cave with blinding spores. S/he leaps for the morel ring. Fungus’ companions in the fairie ring sing out and raise their voices in a magical chant. Fungus drops through to a shaded spot by a mountain spring. There is a tang of pollution in the air and a condom by the river. He hears a car pass by not too far away. A dirt path leads to a fire-break road. “Best get on my way,” Fungus thinks as s/he heads down Mt. Baldy in Southern California.

---

Death
The summoning feeling pulls him to an open marble square with a large fountain in the middle complete with very tall ornate central statuary. Greek-style pillars front the building that borders the square. He’s confronted by a Romanian named Cerny, introduced also as the Baron of Knives, who’s been sent to take him in/down/whatever.

"Now, Let us start again. You are here for execution.”

"And you are? "” Death asks.

"I am Cerny Krizova- Baron of Knives. We have already met several times."

"Now that we have established who you are, who am I?"”

"You must be joking. You are Terminus - Baron of Death. We have worked together often. It saddens me to have to execute you, moreso because you do not seem to remember why it must be."

The Baron of Knives continues to discuss the failings and crimes of Terminus’ “Imperator”. How he committed grievances against another chancel.

As his oration continues, Death opines that Cerny is insane and turns to leave.
Cerny moves to attack with a long knife. They do a couple passes that are too fast for anyone to really track (fighting in full-speed Matrix bullet-time), and Death has a slight edge using his big sword, but only a slight edge, because the Baron is also GOOD.

Cerny steps back for a moment, waves a hand and the blade of the zweihander disappears. This puts Death on the defensive and, noticing already during the fight that he can leap around like a wire-fu grasshopper, heads for the rooftop of the pillared museum that surrounds the square on three sides. Cerny follows.

[Cerny's aspect is very high, much like Death's, but I'm using a variation on the 'staging' rules from Game of Powers, so Death's sword give him a slight edge. Cerny plays a little loose with his Domain (he's been doing this gig awhile) and does a Lesser Destruction on the Blade of the sword. He blows all his DMP's on this to both achieve the affect and deal with any auctoritas, but does even the fight up, since Death's left with just a big hilt and crosspiece to block with.]

---

Reality rides along with Vera the Samaritan. At one point they stop and she buys Reality some lunch at Big Daddy’s Cafe. After some thought, Reality calls her anchor back and describes all of the summoning rituals for the nobles of her chancel.

“But first go out and get some good liquor. They may be cranky when they get there.”

“Do I need any chickens or anything?”

“Only for Death, and a pigeon would do better than the other alternative.”

“I can get a few pigeons. The booze and the girls will be easy. You’ve seen my bathroom so mold is no problem.”

Hank goes out and spends way too much good money on booze and then calls in a favor for the pigeons. Some of the girls show up so he wastes no time in performing the proper tantric ritual to summon Lust, but nothing happens - well, Lust doesn’t show up, anyway. He starts in on Guilt while he waits for the people he needs for the Electricty rain-dance to show up.

June is still hours away.

Game Quotes, Session 1

"All she asks for is a flat surface and a bit of moisture."

HG: What’s your character’s name?
STAN: I don’t have one yet. I’ll make it up in game.
HG: We are in game
STAN: No I mean later in game.

[one of the many tangents on Chancel possibilities]
PUNISHMENT: All she [Fungus] asks for is a flat surface and a bit of moisture.
FUNGUS: [Smiles]
LUST: That's all I want, too.

DEATH: I hate you all. [Only recorded once, but repeated often.]

[Donner laments his buzz-kill familia.]
LUST: Hey, you don't know me yet, but I'll definitely be at the parties first.
FUNGUS: By contrast, I'm always the last to leave.
REALITY: And I always show up the next morning.

[Lee announced 45 days smoke-free.]
DOYCE: WOO HOO (with no enthusiasm)
JACKIE: DOYCE!
DOYCE: I meant that in a sincere way.

[GM decides the Nemesis spear can 'guise' as part of it's inherent Aspect.]
PUNISHMENT: So I can make it look like anything I want?
HG: Well, a weapon, and within reason.
DONNER: How about a chakram?
HG: I don’t care how high your Aspect is, it isn’t a chakram.

LUST'S ALLY: [On the phone with Lust] I thought you were coming!
PUNISHMENT: She's heard that one before.

[Later, same conversation]
LUST'S ALLY: You said you were close!
PUNISHMENT: She's heard that, too.

[Still later, still Lust]
HG: When you turn around, he has a weapon out.
PUNISHMENT: She's seen that before, too.

[In Summary]
PUNISHMENT: I forsee a lot of quotes at Lust's expense if we're not careful.

Macy - Day 1

The black fades to white, then color, and I immediately long for the black again. I close my eyes and attempt to rub the image away, but I'm not that lucky.

See, the image is this: I’m lying on a couch and the man in the chair across the room (which looks like a shrink’s office) is dead. Or least probably dead: for a normal human the wounds are mortal, except he (it?) isn’t human. The wings on his back spread out over the wingback chair (there’s some irony) pretty well give that much away. Still, I’m pretty sure most species cannot live without their hearts, and his (its?) seems to be missing, “cut out” might be more accurate.

And I have a blood-covered knife in my left hand, fancy that.

I review my inner reaction to all this and don’t find any sort of denial or panic; yes, I could have done it, it seems likely in fact, though I can’t figure out why. Right now, I can’t even remember my name and I’m going on instinct, which is telling me that a dead angel in the room deserves caution, not panic, and that I better make damn sure he’s really dead (which I do).

I have no time for admiring my (alleged, your honor) work -- I should leave. On top of my lack of identity I have no idea how much time I spent napping or who might be on the way. Nope, not where I want to be, and I also don’t want to leave the knife here.

Then my cell phone starts ringing. I’m grasping at straws, so I answer it and the lady on the other end seems to know me. She called me Macy and it doesn’t sound wrong. She is telling me about all this crap happening around the world and that people are looking for “us”, which is of course overshadowed a little by the dead angel in the room with me. I brush her off, since this is not really a good time for a chat, and tell her I’ll find her. She says she’s in New York and looking out the window I can tell I am, too.

Again, I don’t know how I know, but I know, which is getting to be a tired joke.

I seem pretty agile as I jump a six-foot fence without as much effort as I think it should take. Interesting. I’m a gymnast/assassin? A couple more fences, a dozen more blocks, and I am comfortably away from the scene and drop the (wiped down) knife into a garbage bin after cleaning it of evidence. Seconds after I dump the knife I hear a voice from behind me asking if I lost something. I ignore it; sometime, if you ignore it, it goes away, but I’m not having much luck today -- three thugs move to block me up ahead. I turn to face the thin man standing behind me.

He wants to know about the angel. Damn.

But it’s not that bad: he was sent to kill the man I killed, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend right? He seems to think so, too: he wants to me to go testify so that they know I am not part of this association the angel was in. This guy (Senachiel, something-or-other of Lost Things) really likes to talk so I am letting him. He mentions something about a Red Tooth Rite and for a second my mind flashes images of a bloody heart in my hands. The men behind me start to move up and I remind the talking man that we are playing nice. He calls the dogs off for now. He says he can’t tell if I’m actually ‘the new Power’ and decides to test my hearing by having a lady carrying groceries (two bags worth) three blocks away stop and whisper that I should tell him everything I know. I don’t flinch; he doesn’t notice me noticing her and I ask him what he is waiting for. He buys it totally, bully for me. I agree to go with him because I am guilty of many things, but not of any angel’s past sins. Plus, I could stand to have someone on my side right now. My phone rings again, it is my helpful little friend from before. She thinks going with this guy is a bad idea as Lord Entropy (whoever that is), might find me guilty of anything that offends him just to clear up the whole mess and get rid of everyone involved – basically implying that it would be a bad idea to go. Before I can decide for certain the lights on the street dim and the sidewalk vibrates and suddenly the guy I’ve been talking to has wings (just like the guy back in that room) and has just pulled out a weapon.

Neat.

I'm On The Highway To Hell

It was hot and muggy and smelly as only the tropics can be. The faces looking at me were South-east Asian, their voices throughout the building and beyond at real Asian beehive level in... Malay. Which I understood. I paused to look at my reflection in a window. I was not Malay, or Asian, I was European, with white hair, though I wasn't old. Late 20's, early 30's. Bleached? No, I didn't think so. Something wrong with the noise. No TV's, no radios, no fans, no phones, no air conditioners. A CD came on, faintly, and another. Battery powered. How did I know that? But not radios.

The street was crowded with people talking about the power outage. It was big, maybe country-wide. Sabatoge? They gave me a wide berth. I located a phone booth with, amazingly, a phone book. I thought I'd leaf through it and see if any adds caught my eye, stirred any memories. As the book opened the phone rang. Again. Silence spread out from the phone booth as everyone turned to look. What the hell, I picked up.

The woman on the line assumed she had the right person. Was I OK? The chancel had been invaded, our people were being gathered up, some had been killed. Huh? She took my amnesia in stride, more or less. She told me I was a sort of superhero, or a god. Of electricity. This struck me as absurd. And right. I trusted that voice, I really liked that girl. The notion that my place, this "chancel" had been invaded and my people (I was apparently a possessive sort) hurt or killed filled me with lively anger instead of leaving me cold or confusing me.

OK. I told her to wait a moment and held my right hand up. Small-G god. Superhero. Electricity. Right. I want a spark between my thumb and forefinger. Nothing. I tried harder. Nada. Very funny. I raised the phone up to say something irritable and tossed off the spark without thinking about it. Stared. Did it again. Made little lightnings dance from finger to finger. It tickled. Go figure.

I started to talk to the girl again and was interrupted by someone tapping on the metal side of the booth. A grinning, wiry punk and five of his street-tough buddies were tapping clubs to palms, playing with butterfly knives, cracking knuckles. I told the girl -- hard 'G' something, I couldn't quite remember -- to wait, put the receiver down and turned to the lead gangbanger, "Are you lost? Do you want to be?" I grinned pure malice and did the electric fingers thing, and something happened with my eyes too. Five ran. One pissed himself and then ran. It's good to be the Thunder God.

Back to my informant. She could phone me and whichever receiver was nearest me would ring, something I'd set up. She suggested I find 'The Others'. Apparently I was a member of a little pantheon. She gave me 'The Angel's' number and had to run off before the invaders caught her. The phone went dead. Right. I decided it would work, and it did. I pushed the call through the power outage all the way to... Europe. It rang. A man with a deep, gravelly voice picked up. He said the Angel was in the shower. Where was I? I reached out to the other phones around him and thought about waking up in a chair under a broken light fixture in a dusty, trackless room. I thought positively about being in the room next to the guy... my hands, my body flashed into lightning and I was there. Very tingly. Gravely Voice was a medium sized tough looking guy with a big, clean knife who introduced himself as Avrileras. No bells. He seemed to know who I was. The Angel, a real fucking angel, near as I could tell, was nailed to a wall and dead. This did not bother me nearly as much as the notion of someone chasing that girl who'd phoned me around. It looked like the Angel's heart had been cut out. Avrileras was not bloody and claimed he hadn't done it. He and his were the injured parties in this matter, my boss had been acting secretly against them for some time and got caught. The Imperator was dead and we, his crew should have died with him. We'd been sentenced to death and it would be a lot easier on me if I stood there and took it like a man.

I laid on some weak bullshit about how the Boss wouldn't do that without our help, that we'd been framed, that Avrileras and Company should be worrying about the real enemy. He wasn't having any, so I suggested that he go one way and I another, "Or we can dance." He wasn't nearly as impressed with me, Thunder God or not, as I'd hoped. He rushed me. Anybody who wasn't impressed by a man with freaky electrical powers needed to be taken seriously, so I hit him with everything I had, enough to maybe blow a big hole through the building wall. It hurt him, shredded his shirt, burned some of his chest, blew off the soles of his shoes, but he grinned with electricity dancing along his teeth and cut at me, giving me a long graze above the hip and more excitement than I really wanted right then. Crap.

Just plain disturbing

Google Image Search: fungus.

6 of 7

The page for June, Dame Reality is up. Picture at top left is also linked.

One character left to go (and a couple questionaires from the Usual Suspects) and I've got to say I am patting myself on back for assembling this group.

June, Dame Reality, Session 1

1. Running away from home and everything I know.

Amaciel is gone; his soul has been folded and folded until it's nothing more than a memory. I should be dead. Death would be a relief, but I'd always thought it would be a gift granted as a reward for service, my soul returned to the paradise of Amaciel's embrace. Almost like I imagined it as a child--a different savior, but the same salvation.

Instead, I've run away from home and almost everything my heart knows is true, with no hope of ever going back. I have a purpose in living, although I do not know it yet.

2. Minnesota.

When I left the chancel, I arrived in the Minnesota cornfield I like so much. Not the wisest way to set out to accomplish a mysterious purpose, but I needed to see something of comfort. The corn-spirits were healthy, still childlike, and chattering incessantly. Gossiping about the neighbors.

The greatest joke one corn-spirit can tell to another--and this joke inevitably crops up with each new year's planting--is this:

"Look! Corn!"

They collapse in giggles for miles around, sunny blond children with button noses and blue eyes.

3. Needing each other.

Luckily the highway runs near the field. It's a good one, respectful and considerate of the land for much of its distance. You could almost say it's a philosophical highway, contemplating the parallels of earth and sky, uninterrupted but for power lines, but it has its willfully treacherous potholes here and there. It likes a good laugh now and then.

I called for someone helpful and found them. Her name is Vera; she's a travelling cracker distributor. Her husband had just left her. They didn't have any kids, which is sad but just as well.

The best way to cheer yourself up it to help someone else in trouble. She'll drive me to Chicago, and I'll see what I can do, too.

4. Hank.

Like the rest of the things that hold me to this life, I can feel Hank always. It isn't until I narrow my attention to him particularly (or when he prays for me at the track--heaven help that man) that I can hear his thoughts or see through his eyes.

The chances that I'll see something I don't really wish to see are high, Hank being who he is. It isn't the women or the drink that bother me so much as the despair. I wonder sometimes whether I didn't let him know more than he wanted to know, or if I didn't give him too much of my soul.

Well, he was a moody son-of-a-b, even before I changed him. But underneath it all, he's a decent man, and that's what I love about him. --Well, to tell the truth, if he were simply a decent man, I wouldn't love him nearly so much.

Ah. Here I am, romanticizing a man who cheats at pool and sucker-punches kids in bars, who stares at women's breasts when he's talking to them and whose means of making a living is the dogtrack. Hank would cackle to hear me go on like a big fool, and I'd never hear the end of it, would I?

5. Truckstops, diners, and vinyl tablecloths.

Vera and I stopped for lunch (the blue sky stared down at us as if we were the entirety of existence, and the horizon of road and cornstalks were the end of eternity) at Big Daddy's Cafe. It's decorated with photographs of WWII pilots, cartoon pinups of women with Valkyric breasts, and a few items of Nazi paraphrenalia. I've never understood the fascination with those. When you hate something, you give it more permission to exist than it would have if you ignored it. Eh, mortals. The owner's name is Big Daddy, and that's what he is. His wife--her voice like a radio recording of herself that hasn't been tuned in properly--takes the orders with a nice and exact loathing of everything about you. That is, she hates your hairstyle, she hates his cologne, she hates her sly
and sleazy shoes; each individual existence permitted by creation is a personal and individual insult. I laughed at her and she hated me all the more.

Big Daddy serves barbecue. I've never had its better. Or spicier! Great googly moogly! He claims to have sent strong men to the hospital with the full-strength recipe, and I believe him. I asked him for the recipe--I'd have liked to have tried it out on Hank--but he wouldn't give it to me. I decided not to press for it after he sent me half a key lime pie and a box full of barbecue sandwhiches (without bread).

Vera paid for the meal, which left me doubly in her debt. Talking to her on the road, I'm learning it isn't her absences but her jealousy that caused the problem. I'll have to consider what I'll do; lessening jealousy is the kind of complicated affair that really takes it out of me. I should be saving my strength for the tasks set before me.

6. Summoning.

Hank's working on the rites of summoning for my family. I asked that he save Death for last; I don't trust the fellow not to gut everyone in sight if I surprise him. I persuaded him to buy some decent whiskey to serve my family, as I won't be present to greet them.

Although Hank worked the summoning for Lust with enthusiasm, he didn't appear.

I supposed I could have asked him to summon me first, but I need time to think. God knows I'm not the smartest woman in the world; I could use the time.

Why am I living, when my Amaciel is dead?

Interlude 3: Consideration

"Two Exemplars, three dukes, plus Guilt and the Nemesis... it's a wonder they haven't been targeted before."

"You're saying this is a conspiracy, Depa? That Cathetel was executed wrongly?"

Conspiracy shook her head. "There are two possibilities; Cathetel was competent and his Powers skilled. He held certain amount of influence in the Valde Bellum and has certainly made his share of enemies. Anyone of that type will eventually attract close observation. Under such observation, many of us would fail to live up to our reputations."

The other nodded. "You said two possibilities."

"Well, if I were the sort to conspire for power," Depa's lips twitched a fraction of a centimeter, "Cathetel would be a very tempting target indeed."

SoMps

I'm thinking of including a new way for you to spend your (as yet non-existent) Character Points, something I found in the Live-action book that seems like quite a lot of fun and usefulness.

They're called Social Miracle points. You start with none and can buy them 1:1 with CPs. They basically let you drastically speed up 'social' processes that would take multiple game sessions to affect normally, call in favors, that sort of thing, and let a few things take place 'automatically', off stage, between game sessions, so you don't have to (for instance) waste multiple game sessions making sure your secrets stay secret.

There are quite a few examples, appended below

Influence is represented in this idea as a pool of Social Miracle Points (I might simply call them "Influence Points" to remove any confusion), distinct from regular miracle points. The two kinds of miracle points are not interchangeable and do not intermingle. Characters have none of these Social MPs by default, but can purchase them for one character point each.

There would be specific goals achievable through the use of Social MPS.

• The completion of a project that receives effort from both PCs and NPCs, organized at least in part by the pc.
  
• Digging up information available in society but not to any player character.
  
• Social manipulation, such as attracting important people to a celebration or enticing a given NPC to ally with the character.
  
• Handling a specific social crisis - e.g., covering up a violation of the Windflower Law, exposing the same, or preventing some event that would blacken the name of a group.

In the setting, this mechanism represents the character or characters drawing on their personal social credit to convince others of and organize others towards the goal. Characters can achieve similar goals through roleplaying; this system is intended for cases where the goal interests the Hollyhock God or players but struggling to achieve it is not worth a significant portion of the game's focus.

Some examples of goals and their costs follow. Normally, one resolves a task either with roleplay or with Social MPs, with player interest guiding the my decision on the matter. However, some tasks may require both, and facilitating one's Social MP expenditure with a small amount of roleplay, planning, and positioning can reduce the MP cost. Note that one can spend Social MPS on someone else's behalf.

• Announcements. Announcements backed by one Social MP reach large numbers of NPC Powers. Announcements backed by three to five Social MPS have social significance. Thus, if a Power announces the alliance of three Familiae and someone spends five Social MPS, it becomes socially awkward for any Familia to disentangle itself later. Unless someone spent a similar number of Social MPS to endorse the separation, any Familia that breaks the alliance would receive less trust and more scrutiny from miscellaneous NPCS.
• Background Investigation. Anyone can ask around to find the name, design, code, known abilities and character traits, and public history of a Noble, as well as any current gossip about them. Spending one Social MP allows a PC to do so subtly, without word getting back to the subject, and generally returns the information more quickly.
• Concealing One's Background. One can spend Social MPS to keep one's life relatively private. These MPS both oppose background investigations (subtracting directly from the MPS spent on such) and reduce the information found through open inquiry.
• Cover-Ups. Spending Social MPS can impede the normal social channels of communication, keeping some of the events of the game secret. Characters may wish to conceal a major Code Fidelitatis violation, an interesting artifact or secret learned during the game, or protect other information from leaking. The HG can specify a cost between one and ten Social MPS for keeping it hidden. (It costs one Social MP even if the information is already perfectly concealed, since the PCs evidently don't know that.) This silences gossips and in general makes the news less interesting. It does not stop strongly motivated NPC witnesses or PCs in general from telling interested parties directly.
• Downtime Socializing. Characters can spend Social MPS to improve their relationships or undermine others' relationships with NPCs during downtime. Generally, the more entrenched the NPC's opinions are about the character, the more Social miracle points this action requires - one can gain the favor of an ambivalent NPC without a single Social miracle point, but changing someone's stance slightly from love or hate requires at least five.
• Events. Any character can hold a celebration, festival, council, wedding or other social gathering during the game. Spending one Social MP in advance makes it notable; the plots slows down slightly at the right time to allow it to take place. Spending three Social MPs makes it a meaningful event, more likely to attract plot than coexist with it. Spending five or more Social MPS ensures that important NPCs attend, and may even catch the attention of an Imperator or two.
• First Impressions. One can spend Social MPS to make a good first impression on an NPC. Although interaction can quickly turn this impression around, it never entirely erases it. The cost depends on the NPC'S good nature, ranging from one Social MP for a pleasant Power to five Social MPS for Scorn's-Regal Joktan.
• Interaction. Spending Social MPS can ensure that an NPC who is not a member of the usual cast of characters for the story makes an appearance. The cost depends on the NPC'S importance; an insignificant Power costs one Social MP, while Scorn's-Regal Joktan again costs five.
• Research. Anyone can ask PCs and NPCS about a given place, Imperator, mythic creature, or situation, with appropriate results. If additional information is available, the HGs can provide it for a standard cost of three Social MPs.

Note that any of these things can be accomplished through roleplaying, and should be, if it's central to your character's story. However, sometimes there's simply something you'd wish to accomplish by calling in a few favors and that's that. (This can be seen, in some cases, as a 1-point-day-of-effort-I'm-saving system.)

Subjective resolution of 'off-screen' activities like this leaves a bad taste in my mouth (like most subjective resolution systems). Anyone who knows me knows this. Therefore, I favor something like this for that kind of activity.

[To use CryHavoc as an example, this is the sort of thing that Diego or Fineas would be burning any number of points on (influencing public perception, gaining allies quickly with a note and a gift, etc.); Thirteen or Jacob might do so rarely (for off-screen intelligence gathering, mostly), and Toriana very rarely or not at all.]

Stuff

Added Guilt's character page, updated Lust's and Punishments. Click on the appropriate image in the upper left to reach the pages.

Update:

Oh, and thanks to Dave for the new thumbnail pictures I was entirely too lazy to make.

Guilty pleasures - 1

Something smells like crap….

Where the hell am I?

Why am I dressed in polyester?

Quit looking at me ya big dumb mook…

The horrible smell seems to be coming from that steam table over there.

I'll give you something to eyeball you greasy, shabby-clothes-wearin' looser…

Hmmm…I am feeling a bit hungry…might as well get in line. At least that what I think that the pain in my stomach means.

(Pretty colors, flashing visions, a lot of people I do not know, knife coming at me, WHO THE HECK AM I ANY WAY?)

When I get to the head of the line the server only gives me a bit of broth…That is not at all expectable.

"Honey…could you see fit to give me some of the meat and vegetable's instead of just broth"

"Ma'am are you all right?"

"Mostly sweetie…I just would like something more then just hot water"

"Ummm yeah we can do that for you… but no…I mean you are bleeding…right there on your side"

"No honey I'm fine…it just stings a little…"

"Here…Here is a nice chair and A bowl of soup with meat n' Veggies, and I'll go and get a Doctor for you"

"Thanks Sweetie…you are a Dear"

(Instant of pain, Men with Badges…symbols…something on their chests)

"Honey Before you leave, could you get me a pen and a scrap of paper…if it isn't to much trouble…"

"Oh sure…no problem…here you go"

"Thanks"

I sketch out what I had seen. I didn't recognize it…heck I don't think that I would recognize myself right now. When the girl returned I showed her the sketch and asked her if she knew what the symbol might be.

"Nope, no idea…why?"

"Oh nothing to trouble your head about…just something I saw this morning and I still don't know what it was about"

She turned away and the sketch flashed and started to glow. Odd, scary, and in the back of my mind somewhat reassuring.

"Who are you?" the sketch bellowed "What do you want?"

"Ummm…nothing really…do you know who I am? And for that matter who are you?

"I am the BRONZEMAN (followed by a long string of gobbledygook), Where are you?"

"I'm eating some lovely soup, and you?" As I said that I took the paper and started to tear it through the symbol…There was some resistance when I got to it "Wait…STOP…don't do tha….." silence.

After a few the doctor arrived and looked over my wound and said something about an Ambulance….Tingly….hmmm….everything is tingly….

Prelude 2: The Deal

More GM flores

"You hate him." The dark figure stood in the darker shadows of her living room, impossibly tall, wearing a long coat and wide-brimmed hat that should have been ridiculous.

She shrugged, not looking at him. "I hate what he is. I hate his hypocrisy."

"Hypocrisy?"

Her face twisted. "You know many other angels that make a project out of exporting vibrators to eastern-bloc countries?"

"He is Lust."

"Sure, just don't tell me your goal is the sanctity of the home while you're filling out the shipping order."

"Still --"

"And not forgetting how he sent me to blow a third-world dictator's brains out."

"...while he was sodomizing his sister's child, you mentioned."

She shrugged again. "I work for the power of Lust, not Punishment. It looked to me like I was killing one of the choir. Slime-ball, yeah, but it's not like you get too many Saints on our side of the fence."

"Yet you went."

Her eyes narrowed, focused in the indeterminate distance. "I don't exactly have a choice, with what he did to me. That's the deal. I'm stuck with it." Her eyes moved over the well-furnished loft and the edges of her mouth twitched in a way that was not entirely friendly. "Other than that, the perks are alright."

"Yet you hate him."

"Sure." She looked up at him directly for the first time, at the shadows beneath his hat, and flinched away. "Yes. Yes, I hate him."

"You would kill him."

"Can't." She learned back and spread her finely-muscled arms along the back of the couch. "Harms the mission. Not possible."

"You sound confident."

"I've done my homework."

The hat brim dipped. "What if I told you," his voice continued, smooth and liquid, "that you could do this thing without in any way harming the true master of you both, or his goals. That you could, in fact, be Lust, the way you envision it might be. The way you think it should be."

She looked at the shadowed figure for a very long time without speaking, then: "I'd ask you how."

This is not where it began, but it is where it started for her.

Storage System

A quick note on what the various post-categories are intended for:

Flores -- Essentially, this is fiction bits from the GM (or the players if it doesn't pertain to their character); background bits from the NPCs and so forth.
Game Logs -- gods-eye view of each session.
Notices -- General blog or game-related notices.
People & Places -- NPCs and Places of note.
Rules -- House rules, interpretations of standard rules that bear recording, etc.
Thought Records -- Diaries, Journals, whatever... I'm just using the name the game uses instead.

Prelude 2: EnNoblement

I will never forget her face. How odd that I cannot remember his.

I wonder what that means.

It was dark inside of Christ Church, that long-ago November night in 1888. The Hawksmoor church in Spitalfields was a mighty landmark in the East End, and the only place I could flee from the horror, for a few moments, to collect my thoughts, to say my prayers for her, and for those like her. The communion rail was hard and cold, the few candles scattered here and there barely enough to me to see my hands before me.

Her name had been Mary Kelly, though others knew her by other names. She'd been born in Ireland, but from a childhood near Cardiff had learned Cymraeg fluently; I'd talked with her in that tongue (now dwindling in use as so many immigrated to the five valleys) a month or two before, after Kate Eddowes had died, and she'd even known an old joke I'd heard at my Da's knee.

And now she lay in her bed, in her own hovel on Miller's Court, carved like a pig at the hands of a drunken, maddened butcher, her blood everywhere, her guts stacked beside her or placed carefully under her head, her face --

I shook my head violently, bent it far deeper, clutched my hands together as tightly as I might, until it felt like I might break the bones in each from the pressure.

Why, God? Good Jesus, why is this madman not stopped? I know there is great evil in this world, for we are fallen, but in Your Mercy and Your Terrible Judgment, can this fiend, this mocking, Saucy Jack, not be stopped? Must Your punishment of his sins wait until he's killed, and killed, and killed again?

I threw my face up, so that I could see the tormented figure of Christ upon the cross above the alter. He'd known torture, but not even those who'd killed Him had exercized such brutality, such evil --

"God!" I cried out. "Take me! Let me be Your tool, the sword in Your hand! I would give anything, anything, even unto my soul and life, to be Your punishment, to stop these most hideous crimes!"

My voice echoed in the stillness of the sanctuary, even as a tolling rumbled from above.

"Would you?" came a man's words to me. "Would you really?"

As I said, I cannot remember his face. I thought at first he was a priest, for he was dressed all in black, and black was the cloak about him, though I think it was not a cloak, but wings, folded and shrowded about his shoulders. I saw him many times thereafter -- why can I not remember him now?

I can hear his voice, though even that is odd, for it was both like a great church bell and like a choir of men from my youth, and even then it was the voice of someone very learned and old and wry with the years.

My voice was echoing around the nave. "Yes! I would give anything. You -- you didn't see her! She was alive, when we spoke. She was fair, and --"

How could I explain it? Father Dafydd had taught us, taught us all, to respect women. Their lot is hard, he'd said, in punishment for the sins of Eve. But they, too, are of Sarah, and Esther, and of the Virgin Mother of Our Lord, and the Apostle Paul said we must love them and cherish them as Christ loves the Church. My own father, too, had told me many times, Be they rich or poor, son, the Queen herself or the lowliest drab in the gutter, they all are ladies, son, and must be treated as such.

And now Mary Kelly -- not the first, not the second or the third or even fourth -- lay in pool of her own fluids, butchered by the deranged creature who was preying on the women of Whitechapel.

I was the lowliest detective constable of the Metropolitan Police assigned to the investigation, dogging the feet of the other detectives and officers who sought to end this reign of terror. I was younger than they, and, from Wales and with my accent, subject of some unkind comments from more than a few of them.

Yet, even they, who were bound to the service of the public, seemed as eager to use these horrors to their own ends -- to advance careers, to throw groups they cared not for (such as Jews) into a bad light, to argue the need for more men to patrol the fleshpots of the East End (and answer to them, and bring in more bribes for them), and to grind axes against their fellow police officials, superiors and competitors. Sometimes it seemed I was the only one who saw the victims of these foul deeds as the poor, slaughtered souls they were.

"I did see her," said the man. "And you would give up anything, you said. Would you give up everything?"

My eyes burned, as I stared up at the newcomer. He was so tall -- "As God is my witness, I would."

I felt my soul pierced by his gaze, weighing me, judging my worth, my sincerity, the value of the oath I'd just sworn. "What is your name?"

I stayed on my knees, as he approached the front of the rail. "Sion Ewig, Father."

He smiled, his teeth white in the gloom. "No father, not in the way you mean. Tell me, Sion, what do you know of the human condition?"

I blinked at him, confused.

He smiled again. "I, as well, though I have studied it centuries, with the help of you and others like and unlike you. Would you like to help me in my study, and my war? Will you take my service?"

"I am a servant of the police, and of the public of London County," I said, warily. "And of Her Majesty." My eyes flickered back to the cross. "And I am a servant of Our Lord, first and foremost."

He followed my gaze. "Ah. One of the Light. Though I suspect you'd be surprised to find out what Heaven thought of him. Still, he was one of the best of us. He singlehandedly turned back the empire that a shard of those beyond had built, and did it in such a slow, natural way, turning its own strength upon itself, and with so little of the direct bloodshed that even I had thought inevitable, that he forever subverted the concept of god-emperor in this world, and with it the ultimate war that would have destroyed you all in a few centuries, give or take. Remarkable. He's owed a dozen times the fame you mortals have given him."

He gestured around. "This was a graveyard, once. Of those same Romans. Now it is a church in his name. The irony, I trust, does not escape you."

I shook my head. "I don't understand."

"Part of the human condition as well, though I fear Hell has preempted the Domain of Ignorance. Never mind, you'll do." The words were oddly relieving, yet they made me tremble a bit. "Will you then take my service? I can force it upon you, but I'd rather not have to wait until you recover."

My eyes went back up to the cross.

He shook his head, abruptly impatient, even angry. "That one died over a century ago, fighting the Excrucian Golgotha, which is an irony I suspect you also do not appreciate. Now, answer me just once: if it lets you be the punishment of those who prey upon these beasts of Whitechapel -- indeed, across the entire globe -- will you take my service?"

To punish evildoers. It was the goal that had drawn me to the police in this greatest city on Earth. Others laughed at my idealism, but I'd sworn an oath of service and protection, and I would remain true to it for all the days of my existence. And that meant that monsters such as Jack had to be stopped, punished for their crimes, and kept from ever harming man or woman again. If this one before me could help me make that happen, then no added service could be too great.

"Yes," I said, at last, and was surprised by how hoarse my throat was.

"Very good. But there is a price, you must know. First, you have a training in the classics?"

I nodded. Father Dafydd had seen to my education, even before I left the valleys and came to London. I think he saw in me, perhaps, a future priest, but he'd died before I could choose that vocation, and the new vicar, from Sussex, had thought little of the Welsh or their hymns and piety, and less of his assignment to them. I sometimes thought that was one reason I'd been so quick to leave, as no kin remained to hold me there.

"So, then, you know of the goddess Nemesis, and her sisters."

I nodded again. It seemed odd to speak of pagan spirits here, but it was a mere distraction. "The daughters of Nyx, the night, who punished the transgressions of mortal men."

"For you to become what is needful, you must be transformed to one of the Daughters of the Night. That is required, that Nemesis' spear might be yours. You'll want to change your name, of course, but you'll think of something. Besides, name's for your sort are far less important than title. Even if the noble falls, the Domain survives, save the Enemy be responsible."

I didn't know what he meant, but it made no difference. Spear or pistol or hangman's noose, if I could make the Bloody Jack pay ...

As if reading my thoughts, he said, "And that, which you most desire, I fear, cannot be."

"What?" Confusion, dismay made me sway.

He closed his eyes, as though looking at something only the darkness within coudl reveal, something painful. "That errant one has already been -- dealt with. He harmed, where no harm was done. Our Lord -- our true Lord -- has wrought justice in this case, far more effectively than even you could. The echoes will still be felt for the days and months to come, but that will be naught of your concern."

I believed him, though I knew not why. "But --"

He opened his eyes upon me, and in them I could see a thousand bloody spirits. "But there will be many who are equally deserving, Sion, and who are equally beyond the law's reach, or the reach of those who have not been paid off or sheltered by the law, or who are beyond the caring of society. Those you may have. Those transgressors. For punishment, by you."

"For punishment," I repeated. Something was rising within me, hot and terrible, and cold and terrible, as I thought of Mary Kelly, and and Kate Eddowes, and all the others, killed and murdered and abused over the years and centuries and history of mankind. Jack might be gone, but there had been others before, and there would be others after. And there would be me to deal with them ...

"Yes," I said, standing up at last, off my knees, ready to grasp that nettle, knowing that any pain it would give me would be cheap at what I would gain, what mankind would gain. Our Lord, whatver this one before me might say of Him, would approve, I knew it. "Yes. Do what you must."

And I was slain, and remade in a new image, and learned the truth of the world, and both wept and laughed.

The next night, I punished my first offender, a man who had beaten his wife to death for not having at hand another bottle of gin for him to drink. I drove the spear of Nemesis into his chest, through his heart, and watched as his life, in turn, was forfeited.

It felt good.

His face I don't remember, either.

But Mary Kelly's face I'll never forget.

Session One - Punishment - 18 May 03

I gazed down at the body. No ID. No eyes. A neat cluster of shots in his chest. Nice work. I assumed it was mine, unsure why the assumption felt so natural, save it might be a memory I could not remember.

The gun's weight in my hand was a comfort. With it, I felt I could do almost anything. I knew that was a dangerous sentiment, but did not know how I knew.

Sirens warbled in the distance. Time to leave. The gun tucked into the belt at my back like it had grown there. The alley was an odd artifact of intersecting buildings, with no purpose save for a door to one side, redolent dumpsters beside it. If there were anything painted on it once, the legend had long since flaked away in the grime. But, then, I needed only to know that this was the way out, not wonder what it was the way to.

That seemed vaguely familiar as a sentiment as well, and just as unfamiliar in its origin or meaning.

If the door had been locked it would have been no problem something whispered, but it made no difference, as the door barely fit into its jamb. I wonder how they keep it secure at night? Again, it made no difference. I'd never be here again. Unless I'd been here before, and simply didn't remember it.

Damn.

It was an Indian restaurant, and my stomach rumbled. It was a sensation both distantly familiar and utterly strange, and I was getting very tired of feeling that way. Whoever did this to me will pay. Dearly. That felt better.

I was in the mud room, a drain for the mop to one side, a ladder to some ancient storage place embedded in a wall. Ahead the way held a pantry, then the kitchen proper. It was between meals, and off in a far corner two men jabbered in Urdu about a friend of theirs who gambled too much. I hadn't known I knew Urdu, but that was turning out to be par for the course today.

They weren't facing in my direction, and a third man who was grunting and groaning to clean a grill was only somewhat angled toward me. They never had a chance to see me slip past them into the butler's pantry between kitchen and restaurant. I glanced through the windows, took in the few quiet patrons polishing off their lunch, and casually passed into, then out of, the room, for all the world someone who simply ought to be there. None of the customers even looked up from their curry and vindaloo.

The dark-skinned woman at the door, hair dark as coal, looked at me a little strangely. I could kill her, to be sure. I knew I could frighten the hell out of her, too, but this wasn't the time for that, either. I simply gave her a nod, took a peppermint, and exited.

Whitechapel by day is always busy, and there were plenty of businessfolk there for cheap eats, tradesmen and housewives shopping among the tatty shops, and, of course, the tourists. If they'd seen what I'd seen, they'd vomit up lunch from last Tuesday, I thought, wondering what I'd seen in the same mental breath.

A Metropolitan police cruiser had come to a stop a building or two ahead, another car behind it, and since half the crowd was gawking I felt I could, too, without drawing attention. The alley was behind me, and glancing there I could see another of the silly little cars stopped short there. Both uniforms and plainclothes were getting guns out of the trunk, and I could hear the crackle of microphones and speakers. "Shots fired, officers responding," other bits of that sort. They were taking it seriously, and part of me automatically wished them luck, while part of me furiously backpedalled from that wish.

I stepped down to the next storefront, a newstand. I entered, to get myself off the street (were there descriptions of me out there?), and to see if any of the news headlines jogged my memory. I could hear the cops speaking as clearly from inside as out, which was both odd and natural in that annoying paradoxical way that was already burning a slow fuse within my gut.

My eyes skimmed across the headlines, taking in whole stories at a glance. Huge Power Outage Strikes Malaysia. US 'Rave' Fire Kills Hundreds. Gun Battle Terrifies Londoners. I gave that last one a special look, as though it rang a bell, but it was full of lots of words and very little content. What can you expect from the Guardian?

Meantime, the cops had found the body, word was, out looking for some sick bastard who'd mutilate a corpse (only beforehand), and I had heard all I was going to unless I hung around long enough to make folks suspicious. So I didn't.

I knew London, but I didn't know London. A glance at a tourist map gave me the layout of the city, burned in my head like I'd walked every street there a hundred times (perhaps I had). And paying for a candy bar (the hunger remained odd, but I knew it had to be dealt with) gave me a chance to look at the wallet in my jacket pocket.

Siân Ewig. An address in Whitechapel. How convenient, as was the £30.

No keys in the pocket, though. Interesting.

I walked casually down the street, paying as much and as little attention to who might be watching me as I could. I'd been found once (I somehow sensed, guessed, that the man in the alleyway had found me, not the other way around), which meant I could be found again. Which meant that my flat was a trap I could not avoid.

I knew it was my flat, just as it was my name. Even if it was neither where I truly lived, nor what people called me. Yes, the systemic confusion was no less annoying with repetition.

I approached my block -- familiar only from the map, not from my mind's eye -- with caution. I would deal with getting in the door without keys when must. But until then ...

I spotted him across the street, on the stoop of another flat, reading the same page of the paper over and over, his shaded eyes on my place, not on the words. He did not, I was sure, see me.

Fine. Pulling out the gun and killing him would be counterproductive, both attractive of unwarrented attention, and not, at this point, satisfying. I wondered at that pairing of concerns, even as I saw a man in black with a bold white collar, speaking Cymraeg and holding forth at length on both the value of life and the terrible wrath of the Lord, and His divine punishment on those who killed his sheep, while I stood stock-still in my pew, lest Da clout me on the head again. The vision was gone as fast as it came, leaving me to blink behind my own sunglasses.

I shook my head slightly, then moved back a block, passed down another alleyway into the back garden of the building upon whose stoop the watcher sat. I passed unnoticed through the back door, past two flats in back, then to the front two. One, I could hear, had a dog within it, a small yapping thing which made a frightened noise at my displeasure and slinked away. The other was empty, better suited to my purpose.

My vest had within it various items, including lockpicks, and I clearly knew how to use them, for the door was open in less time than it took to tell. I glanced around, noticing the bay windows. A half-glance through them showed the watcher, still oblivious to his target's true location.

I went back to the hallway, pulled out the gun which sang to me in my hand of lightning and blood and the Lord's mighty punishment.

Then I silently opened the foyer door, opened the front door, grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck, the other hand boring the gun barrel into the base of his skull, and pulled him inside before anyone on the street could notice.

Contributions

Just a quick summation of the things you can do as game contributions to regen miracle points faster.

Character Thought Record for a session: 1 MP
Keeping the Game Quotes for a session: 1 MP
Keeping the Game Log for a session: 1 MP and 1 DP*

Note: All benefits are halved if it's not in before the next game, with enough time for me to read it.

* - DP = Dynasty Point (essentially a pool of miracle points that anyone in the group can draw from if necessary). Normally, you get one of these every session. I'm going to be a bastard: the DP for each session is generated when the Game Log reaches me or this page.

Bonus

This oneword is also a bit of fic for Nobilis :)

lust

"Lust is a tool," he said. "It brings humans together, certainly... helps people connect and keeps the fires burning through the years, so to speak. Lust, in fact, leads to beauty." His voice was a drone in the back of my head. Pendantic, that was the word. "It is too easy to say that lust is about corruption."

"Easy, maybe," I said. "But not wrong."

-- From the Thought-record of Macy Hamilton

Interlude 2: Loyalty's Birth

Another bit of floral bordering for the Nobilis game. This one is ENTIRELY spoiler-free (at least relative to the story arc). It's just a lame attempt to write out the enNoblement of one of the NPCs I'm using in the story. My intent was just write out an enNoblement for anyone, just for the sake of doing it, but unfortunately I picked the Power of Loyalty. What I found out is that Joshua Stark's martini-dry demeanor does not allow for the sort poetic waxing that most of the enNoblement bits in the rulebooks have.

Oh well. It was still sort of fun.

---

[For a point of reference, Joshua Stark is 'played' in my head by David Anders, lately of Alias fame.]

I was offered Godhood while visiting Los Angeles, something I've always considered vaguely ironic for any number of reasons.

My immediate response was to write it off as some sort of joke in poor taste, which I felt (and still feel) was an entirely sane and understandable reaction.

The Being I would later call Master is most certainly not the sort to waste idle time in debate. I was shown a portion of Reality that I had never known or dreamed existed and the the conversation continued once I had realized what was truly at stake.

Even so, I resisted.

"I cannot imagine that you would want someone of my nature for your service," I said. "I am certainly not the sort of saint one usually sees achieving immortal status."

"We do not require purity," it said. Even then I knew instinctively that any appelation of gender in regards to the Perpetual Wanderer would be somehow wrong at a visceral level. "Further, immortality is not one of the gifts We will bestow; that much should be made clear."

"What sort of... duties does someo-- a being... like yourself require?"

"Yours is the Estate of Loyalty."

I could not help but laugh at that point. I realized later that the only reason I was not destroyed immediately was simply because I was not yet one of my masters servants. "You'll have to forgive me, but I'm afraid you have the wrong man."

"We do not make such errors. You are Our choice."

"Then I can only offer up my utter lack of credentials by way of argument. I am no paragon of loyalty, gracious lord."

"Again, this is not what We seek."

"I am afraid I do not understand."

The being regarded me for long moments (I assume that, here, I also avoided destruction, for my Imperator does not enjoy explaining itself). Finally, it spoke: "Long have We used Servants who embody the Estates We choose to bestow. There is wisdom in such methods, as there is in all things We do; but there is also wisdom to be found along other paths. We choose you at this time, when We require one that knows their Estate as... a Tool: a thing which can be wielded, rather than worn, to best effect. To you, Loyalty will be a sword."

"Or perhaps a knife," I murmured, my eyes focused on an indistinct point in the distance.

It moved its head in a way I would later interpret as a dismissive shrug. "As you say. We have need of weapons, for there is more assuredly a War."

"You realize then, the sort of person you will be bringing to your service?" I asked. At times, honesty is the best policy. It doesn't happen often, but it is more common than most people realize.

"We know far more of the nature of Our servants than Our servants know of Us," it said, but my mind was already filling with the possibilities that lay at my feet.

In retrospect, I believe It was warning me. I sometimes wish I had noticed.

-- From the thought record of Joshua Stark, Duke of Loyalty

Prelude 1: Sacrifices

Again, possible spoilers for players... I'm just messing around though, so there's not any real information.

---

"I'm afraid." My voice came out softly and the shame I felt came with it.

"THERE IS NO NEED." As always, the voice was a contradiction, all-encompasing yet soft and pliable - a very gentle, loving hurricane. "IT IS THE NATURAL THING, MOREOVER A THING WHICH YOU KNOW I LOVE."

"I do know, and that is what gives me strength."

"DO YOU HAVE DOUBTS AS TO YOUR CHOICES?" I could hear the sudden hint of concern in his voice, the idea that all of this might fail because of me, and I shook my head, knowing he could not see it.

"I have no doubts, only fear. It has been a very long time for me."

"THERE IS NO NEED. YOU KNOW WHAT BENEFIT COMES OF THIS. YOU KNOW YOUR PERSONAL REWARD."

I nodded, but at the heart of me, at the very core there was a sweet, rotten cylinder of fear. "I know. You're right, I do know..."

"AND YET YOU FEAR."

I dropped to my knees, my hands clasped in my lap. My head hung low between my shoulders and tears dropped on the backs of my crossed thumbs. I could not answer, although I tried several times.

"WOULD YOU KNOW THE TASTE OF WHAT IS TO COME?"

I blinked. "I... I couldn't. We..."

"IT CAN BE DONE. ASK."

I stared into the silence of a room in which I was the only occupant, hoping against hope. "If it can be done, then... yes, I would dearly like to know."

"MY DEAREST SERVANT MERELY NEED ASK."

And then I knew what was coming; I knew the length and breadth of it, the pain and the great, great joy.

And I knew that it would be enough.

- from the Thought-record of Sisera Twice-born

Initial NPCs

A list of some of the NPC's involved in the events surrounding the I&H Nobilis game. (Players may not want to know this, but it's just blurbs, no stats.)

*Update*: changed and added a few NPCs, allowing me to move a few people around who are more useful to me unaffiliated with the 'main' Familias.

Deus Sanguinas, chancel of the Perpetual Wanderer       Joshua Stark, Loyalty's Regal. Stark is anything but the embodiment of his Power -- he approaches Loyalty a tool to be used (like mankind) towards whatever goals suit him (or, of course, his Imperator) at the moment. On a personal level, Stark considers Loyalty a flexible thing (an attitude possibly brought on by the ease with which he manipulates his Estate). Avrileros, Viscount of Eternity. An unsmiling and vicious man who fights grimly against the encroaching destruction of creation, all the while wearing an expression that speaks volumes as to what he believes Creation's chances are. Senachiel, Marquis of Lost Things. A seraphim who survived the death of its first imperator and was taken into the family of Perpetual Wanderer, Senachiel has been the Power behind its Estate for longer than most remember. Marenka Zeleny, Jealousy's Regal. Said by many to be the very embodiment of her estate -- it is not usually meant as a compliment. Marenka has not responded well to the gradual weakening of her Family's chancel. Locus Nephys, chancel of Lavinkyo, Imperator of the Blind Whisper (Inquisitor Chancel)     Michel Tomas, Saint (aka 'pawn') of Justice. A deeply pious and strict man, Michel is an unbending and extreme servant of his Estate, striving to achieve Justice even in the halls of the Nobilis. He is not popular at parties. Depa Vastri, Duchess of Conspiracies. A dark-skinned woman with knowing eyes, the Duchess sees her Estate in all things, from the simplest act to the most complex series of events imaginable. Her role as a member of an Inquisitor Chancel is essentially to ferret out the presence of her very own Estate and destroy it -- for this reason alone, many fear her. Alexander Hawthorne Lawrence, Baron of Regret. The voice of temperance in his Chancel, Alexander was a serial murderer/rapist carrying out fifty-eight consecutive life sentences at a maximum security psychiatric institution when Lavinkyo enNobled him and give him full cognizance of his life. The First Castle, chancel of Pen Lo, Imperator of Sin's Pain (Inquisitor Chancel)   The Bronze Man, Sacrifice's Regal. An ancient spirit from the mountains of Tibet.  One of the most powerful and Ancient of the Nobilis. Cerny Krizova, Baron of Knives. A harsh man from a darker era of humankind's history. To him, it is irrelevant if his prey is Guilty or Innocent -- only that they are Accused. Once he has been given a name, his purpose is solely to bring his estate to bear upon that individual. He is unrelenting in his pursuit. Ife Hapura, Marquis of Friendship. A kind, dark-skinned woman who acts as the voice of compassion in an otherwise pitiless and strict Inquisitor Familia. Others       Emma la Rue, City's Regal. A woman of contrasts, by turns harsh and unforgiving, beautiful and full of hope. Her methods are frequently inscrutable, following carefully laid plans at one point and random impulse the next. For all that her Estate serves as its home, she is not a friend of Humankind. Goose, Elusion's Regal. Few have met the noble known as Goose, fewer still would know if they had, and even less would admit it -- consorting in any way with a nobilis whose head has its own trophy case waiting for it in the Locust Court is not a good way to extend one's existence. (created by Frank Sronce) Haley, Power of Imagination. Cheerful and helpful young woman, generally loveable though not entirely predictable. Penelope, Marquessa of Memory. Flighty, unreliable, irresponsible and sometimes malicious.

Interlude 1: Loyalty

So, here's an Interlude for the Nobilis game. Should be player-safe, but if you want to remain as ignorant as your characters, do not proceed.

---

Interlude: The Price of Loyalty

“There’s been a problem.”

Joshua Stark, power of Loyalty, felt the awareness of his master fall upon him like the weight of a thousand homeless souls. Air pressed out of his lungs for a moment and the lights of the Chancel seemed to dim. Just as suddenly, the presence was gone.

“Things become less predictable when one faces the dragon in its cave.” The entity known as the Perpetual Wanderer, whose true name was not spoken or thought by its servants, inclined its head. "What specifically has gone wrong?"

"I… we don't know." He gestured sharply with his hand. "They didn't die. They were supposed to die." He was elegant, even in frustration. That was his nature.

“You mean the other Nobles, following the assassination of their Imperator?”

Stark looked pained. “Execution, my lord; we possessed evidence of treason against the Valde Bellum, presented it to the Locust Court when asked, and have been exonerated of all wrongdoing. The fact that an Inquisitor Chancel supported us is proof in itself.”

“Justifying a murder after the fact simply makes it acceptable, Joshua, it does not make it less a murder.” The Imperator’s motioned with one hand in his noble’s direction. “Do not take this as censure on Our part; your actions were justified, but We do not care for sophistry.”

Joshua bowed his head. “As you say, my lord,” he said, hesitating before going on. “It was my understanding that a Noble could not survive death of the master --"

"Such is traditionally the case, as We have told you before."

Joshua nodded, not looking directly at the Imperator. "Yet somehow…” He shook his head. “Servants were sent to assure that they had in fact been destroyed but in almost all cases the subjects not only survived but acted quite effectively to preserve themselves.”

“We hear the word ‘almost’, Joshua.”

Devon glanced toward his master. “The Graf died, but in such a way as to suggest that it was merely another of its many demises and thus unsatisfactory. One of the others… it is unclear what exactly happened, but the evidence is not reassuring.” He waved his hand and a table rose next to him, covered in reports. “We think we might have some idea where…”

“We do not wish to know particulars.” The table vanished.

The Power of Loyalty inclined his head. “Of course.”

“It is enough to know that they have acted against the Valde Bellum and, not inconsequentially, Ourselves. Details are the reason you are here.”

“Of course.”

The Imperator regarded his noble for a moment before continuing. “Where are your brothers and sisters?”

Joshua’s chin rose to indicate the open window of the chamber. “They search, my lord. They are aptly suited for the task.”

“Agreed.” The being turned to the window as well, through which the hazy cityscape of Deus Sanguinas stretched away to the limit of mortal sight and beyond. “We are weakened, Joshua. You know this well enough and you might have some small inkling of how it must feel to know that the reason for this weakening is one of Our own kin and a onetime ally.”

Joshua shifted his weight. “I have some small understanding of Loyalty, master.”

“Don’t engage in banalities, Joshua.”

“I apologize, my lord.”

“It is important to Us to show the rest that We can yet exact Our own vengeance while protecting the goals of all.”

“I... we all understand this.”

“Therefore, you will not fail Us again.”

The man (who was not truly a man, and had not been for years) hesitated for only a moment before nodding. “Yes, my lord,” he said.

He was already alone in the room.

The Graf - Intro Session (0.5)

[This last intro log was easily the most difficult, since we didn’t do much more with ‘pat’ than set the stage for upcoming events... by this point our time was running out.]

A wooded copse looks down over an open expanse of grass. Faeries flit from shadow to shadow in the gloaming beneath the trees, occasionally circling the head of the creature that stands at the border of darkness and light. The creature is not human, but seems to give the impression of a humanoid form, if that form were composed of the firm but pliable substance of a mushroom, it’s skin the durable ‘leather’ of a puffball. It’s toes dig into the earth beneath it and flat black ‘eyes’ take in the world beyond the trees.

The strange shadows of a city loom all about this small patch of tamed wilderness – the place were she stands is a temporary refuge at best.

Why the creature thinks it needs a refuge is unclear even to it, but somehow it knows.

As it ponders the how and why of that it senses a type of smoke, somehow both near at hand and very far away. It knows this smoke is called ‘incense’ and that knowledge brings with it something like fear.

The smell grows stronger.

[The Graf of Fungus is played by Margie Kleerup.]

Donner - Intro Session (0.5)

A MAN SPRAWLS across a threadbare and badly sprung armchair. A light bulb socket hangs directly overhead, dangling from the ceiling on a cord and holding only the shattered remains of a blackened bulb.

There is dust on the scarred wooden floor, the single windowsill, the radiator next too it, and on the misused armchair itself – all of which seems entirely undisturbed. The room is otherwise empty. Something in the chair is digging into the man’s back.

He is lithe and wiry, the man; lean, with short blonde hair so pale it was almost white. He wears a fine pair of slacks that quite are quite obviously part of an expensive suit, a dark, form-fitting sleeveless shirt somewhere between silk and mesh, and no jacket. A shoulder holster hangs along his left side, empty. He, unlike the room, is not covered in dust.

He raises his other hand (instinct or habit, one might say) to take a drink and discovers he still holds the neck of a whiskey bottle between his fingers. He seems less surprised by the natural inclination of his hand to cling to a bottle even in unconsciousness than he is when he notices that the bottle ends in jagged shards about halfway down.

There is something dark and tacky on the jagged edges of the bottle, and he is not injured (barring the damage the chair is doing). The room does not smell of spilt whiskey, nor does he see broken glass or blood (or footprints… how did I get here?) on the floor as he sits up and looks around.

He stands, wiping the bottle down to erase fingerprints and dropping it on the chair behind him as he looks over the room. Neither his jacket nor the presumably missing pistol are anywhere to be seen so the holster hanging at his side remains both conspicuous and useless. He slips it off, winds the straps around the holster itself and shoves it into a pants pocket where it bulges and ruins the line of his slacks, but does not draw as much attention.

His gaze moves to the bare window and the world beyond. Tenements. Projects. He is certainly not dressed to blend in but, searching his mind, he finds no particular concern about such things. His natural instincts tell him he is more than competent enough to handle the dangers of such places, though he has no idea how or why.

Of course, in searching his mind he finds precious little else in the way of information or memory, which does bother him. He is a well-dressed newborn delivered into an abandoned tenement in an unknown city. The room holds no further information for him beyond that.

Turning to the door he walks into the rest of the world, searching for himself.

[Ambrose Donner, Duke of Lightning, is played by Randy Trimmer]

Macy - Intro Session (0.5)

[edited transcript version of intro session]

GM
You wake up on a psychiatrist couch.

Power of Lust
Actually, for me that makes all kinds of sense.

GM
Taking your own measure, you note that you are dressed in your typical...?

PoL
Leather.

GM
Right. Leather. You have an ornate but serviceable knife in your left hand -- both of which are coated in blood that has long-since gone tacky; in your right hand you hold a cell-phone whose screen indicates you've missed... ten calls. As soon as you register that, the phone starts to ring.

PoL
Answer it, sit up if I haven’t already, and look around the room.

GM
The room is typical Freudian fare: dark read leather and mahogany, heavy drapes over the windows. The female voice on the other end of the line is speaking somewhat loudly, her voice is filled with strain. You're not tracking the words however, as your attention is on the angel sitting in the traditional psychiatrists wing-backed chair across the shadowy room.

PoL
Angel? That’s what it is?

GM
He’s wearing the robes you associate with angel imagery. Also, the big white wings hanging over the back of the chair is a giveaway.

PoL
What’s he... doing?

GM
He looks quite dead: his chest has been split open and youre’ fairly sure even from here that his heart is missing. The voice on the other end of the phone is repeating a name over and over, as though trying to get your attention.

PoL
Is it my name?

GM
You're not sure. You don't remember your name. *Can't* remember, actually...

PoL
Greaaat. What’s the name she’s calling me?

GM
Macy. It doesn’t exactly sound wrong.

PoL
“Who is this?”

GM
“It’s me, obviously. There are people watching my place and all kinds of crazy shit on the news. What happened?”

PoL
Is there a TV in here?

GM
Psychiatrist’s office? There’s a radio in the corner. It just happens to be on the hourly new summary. Massive fire at a Rave in Chicago, firefight in London. Some sort of massive power grid blackout in Malaysia. [assumes caller’s voice] “They said you were dead.”

PoL
“Who?”

GM
“Everyone. Where are you?”

PoL
... “where are you?”

GM
“My place, like a said; being watched.
[long pause. player waits]
New York.”

PoL
“Right.” Where am I?

GM
You glance out through the drapes. You’re on the second floor of a brownstone on a residential-looking street filled with dozens of other brownstones -- it almost has to be New York, although you could never explain how you know that.

PoL
“I’m... close to you. I’ll call you back when I’m closer.” Hang up. Wash off the blood from the knife and my hand, wipe it down and stick it in my coat or belt or something until I can dump it. I’m leaving. Oh, but before I wash up, I cut the angel’s throat, just in case.

Other Player
What?

PoL
It looks like I tried to kill him, but I don’t know what kills angels -- I don’t even understand how he IS one -- so I definitely want to make SURE, because right now there isn’t any little voice in my head that’s telling me “It couldn’t have been me!”, so I’m going to assume it was and make sure I do it right.

GM
... Umm... Right. Next player.

-=-=-
Macy, Baroness of Lust, scion of The Fallen, is played by Jackie Testerman

Sian - Intro Session (0.5)

THE POWER OF PUNISHMENT LAY on the cobblestones of a dirty alley. This, as her eyes blinked open, was the first thing she could bring into focus; grimy stones, bits of refuse settled against the juncture of a building's wall and the ground.

Her cheek was pressed against the cobblestones as well, which meant she was lying on her stomach with her back exposed to --

She rolled over, blinking against the noontime sun that snuck through the rooftop barriers overhead to stab at her eyes. The alleyway was dank and old (which seemed familiar) and thick with the stink of molding trash.  (That seemed familiar too, although somehow for a different reason.)

She sat up, resting her arms on her knees. She was wearing slacks, a jacket. Her knuckles were scraped and bruised. A taxicab drove by the mouth of the alley several dozen yards away and she realised she was in London.

She didn’t know how she knew it was London, what or where London was, or why it filled her with a certain relief, but she knew that she knew and she knew she was not wrong.

Forcing herself to her feet, she took stock of her surroundings.  The dead body on the ground between her and the alley’s dead end caught her attention first.

Her reaction was not fear or revulsion but resignation, as though this were a familiar scene playing out for the hundredth time to no happy conclusion. She approached the face down body (too much like her own earlier pose for comfort) and rolled it over.

A flash. A memory. Looking over the shoulder of a London bobby, looking down on a body lying in a very similar -- the same? -- alley. Blood everywhere. the poor woman's eyes wide with terror and death and the stink of blood and offal nearly overwhelming and --

Five... no, seven bullet entry points. Centre mass. Also, his eyes were missing. It did not look as though he’d ever had them.

She remembered. He was striding straight towards her from the dead-end of the alley, half-smiling. She had had a pistol and he had been wearing sun glasses.

Looking around, she found the gun against the wall and shortly thereafter found a holster for it at the small of her back. She didn’t see the sunglasses anywhere.

She frowned. It didn’t feel right, having used a gun. There was something...

Something... off. Wrong weapon. Not the feeling that she wouldn’t have killed someone, but the feeling that it wouldn’t have been this way.

So something was wrong, but that wasn’t the real problem.

She’d been trying to remember her name since she’d first rolled over into the sun, and she couldn’t.

-=-=-
[The nobilis of Punishment is played by Dave Hill.]

The beginning idea

As should be evident by now, there is a HELL of a lot of stuff to process just in the background for Nobilis -- the book is 300 pages and maybe 10 of it is hard rules... the rest are examples and and examples and great great great fiction and more examples.

For a test game, I needed to simplify the background.

That usually means I start killing people.

The idea is simple: character generation is more than involved enough without having to frell with designing Chancels (the players job) and their Imperator (also the player's job, and both come AFTER character creation for a number of reasons.)

So, the premise: The characters are Nobilis whose Imperator is accused of Treason against Creation and the Valde Bellum... it (the Imperator) is found guilty and destroyed.

Usually, that's the end of it: destroying the Imperator means the Chancel breaks apart and/or returns to what it used to be as part of the Prosaic Earth and the Nobilis die from the shock of having a god's soul ripped out of their body.

Didn't happen. Therefore, the treasonous (and they MUST be treasonous if their Imperator was, right?) Nobilis must be hunted down and likewise destroyed. That's the seed of the plot.

But wait, there's more
Just because the destruction of their Boss didn't kill them doesn't mean there aren't downsides: the PC's start out the story separated from each other, away from their Chancel (just as well, as it's currently occupied by hostile forces), and utterly Amnesiac from the psychic shock of what's just happened.

(Cool, but also a key game-thing: since the players have amnesia, the PLAYERS don't have to keep track of all the background stuff -- they don't even have to remember the game rules... as they slowly remember who and what they are, I can phase in their introduction to the rules and background: one player has an Aspect confrontation... another works with her Domain... another with her Gifts while a fourth is contacted by a Nobilis that wants to help them avoid the forces sent by Lord Entropy.)

When they wake up, each encounters evidence that Things Aren't All Right, and that they've recently been involved in either Fight or Flight. Flashes of memory both help and hinder them at this point. One finds herself in an alleyway in London. Next to her lies the body of a dead man with no eyes, and she remembers (in a sudden flash) shooting him.

Except... she doesn't particularly like guns, and she has a distinct feeling that there is another, better, more appropriate weapon she would have been using...

They don't know who they are, why they can't remember themselves, or what's going on, but they've got a really bad feeling about this.

More (A sort of log of the first session) later.

Just a good read

Hogshead/GoO has a PDF "example of play" available on their website -- basically it's 20 pages right out of the rule book and it's a hell of an entertaining read.

It's also huge. I took the document, excised the two full-page pictures from the document and chopped it down to about a third the size. Download the file if you like -- even if you're not into Nobilis, the example of play is a hoot to read.

Anchors - Making it personal

The way Anchors sort of need to work (if you haven't had a chance to dig deep into the book yet) is that there has to be love and/or hate involved in the Noble/Anchor relationship, and it needs to be a two-way street. You might be an unfeeling, unemotional son of a bitch, but when it comes to these guys, that is an ACT :)

Bottom line, humans might be insects to you, but Anchors aren't -- disgusting little tools, maybe, but they definitely EVOKE that strong hatred. Generally, that means that you, have a reason to hate them or love them, and the emotion should be personal.

Lemme give you an example: let's say I'm a god (har, har). There's a guy from High School I could probably make a Hatred Anchor out of -- I hated him: I hated how he acted, I hated what he did to people, and it was PERSONAL for me.

Conversely, we have Osama Bin Laden. I hate how he acts, what he says, what he stands for, what he does... but I couldn't anchor him, at least not at the moment -- it's not *personal*: If I hung out with the guy for a month (or a week, or a maybe just a day), that hate/disgust could probably become a personal thing. It would certainly help if he was torturing me or my loved ones, etc. I'm sure there's some people in New York that could anchor him, sight-unseen.

Love works the same way: a significant other is an easy example of an anchor that's easy to make, but while I might absolutely worship Joss Whedon's work, there's no way I could anchor him (well, maybe during the second season I could have :)

Anchor Types

Nobilis have mortal servants, known as Anchors, who will work for them and can also serve as servants, representatives, and someone they can even perform miracles through anonymously.

For my reference, there are essentially four different types of Anchors, or more accurately, Anchors usually each have one ability, either chosen from the list below or designed by the player with me:

Aid Miracle: calling on the Anchor with this ability helps out with a small, predefined set of tasks or miracles. For example, a persuasive Anchor can help sway opinions, a hound-spirit can help you hunt. *

Earthly Magic: the Anchor possess some earthly magic that you don't (most certainly not the same thing as a Miracle, basically creating magical equivilants of 20th century tech), which gives you access to it.

Influence: the Anchor has mortal influence, can obtain wealth for you, or provide useful information or assistance within the area of their speciality.

Agent: the Anchor is multitalented and can be given tasks on a session-to-session basis, such as retrieving needed tools that you don't have time to go after or protecting an area from spies or sabotuers -- in mundane RPG campaigns, anchors talented enough to be a Noble's "agent" anchor would be the PC. Their relative effectiveness is generally a function of your Spirit. *

Addendum
Your Noble can not directly control the actions of their Anchor except by performing an Aspect miracle through them (with the appropriate cost in AMPs). This means, particularly, that an Anchor is a representative, not an avatar. They can convey messages from their Noble, but do not constitute the same thing as having the Noble in attendance in a social situation.

Estate thought 2, Manifestations

I've been trying to figure how to do things where you might be inclined to pick up a secondary Estate just to get a specific feel for the character -- Frex, "J'hon Wu, the Power of Guns" might want to have doves burst into frame whenever he does an Aspect miracle of 4 or higher.

A 'book' example of this is Delerium of the Endless and her butterflies/fish/whatever -- a more subtle example might be the sound of wings whenever Death is around.

The problem is, even spending 1 point on something like this is a heck of a lot for a special effect.

Alternately (ripping off an idea I saw on a website last week), I might have players pick a manifestation of their power (though perhaps not part of the Estate itself) that would accompany expressions of their power (regardless of which actual Stat's being used).

To use an example from the current game, the Power of Electricity might decide that his manifestation is a minor power surge or fluctuation in the area affected. When he tries to search for somebody with Divination, they might figure out that he's looking for them by the lights flickering in the area a little and the static on the television.

This might add some fun and maybe provide information indirectly (NPCs would also have recognizable manifestations the players could pick up on). For stealthy stuff, a Power could usually restrain their manifestations, although if they couldn't it'd probably be a good Handicap :).

Dunno. I'm just thinking out loud today.

What you've gotten yourself into:

A bit of flores from the Nobilis list

He sat in his suit, candy-striped, and poured the bag of beans onto the table.
"There's a flavour here, the red one, that you'll really like, and another, the blue one, that you'll really hate. There are two that are good, one bad and four you'll be indifferent to. You have to eat them all, and usually in handfuls, not one flavour at a time. That's your life."
"And after I Commence there are more red ones and fewer blue ones?"
"Oh no. There are just fewer bland ones, and you never get to the bottom of the bag." - from the musical "He Said He Could"

[written by Timothy Ferguson]

The Twilight of Eternity!

Another Ripping Yarn of HMIA Bonaventure!

"Engage the Atomics!"

At Captain Lady Rebecca's firm command, Chief Imagineer Lady Haley grinned and pressed forward the brightly-burnished lever that pulled the graphite rods from the great radium core at the center of the Her Imperial Majesty's Aethership Bonaventure. Mighty lightnings, a cosmic Saint Elmo's Fire, danced about the craft's great aetheric sails. The finest ship in the fleet, in the last century of this new one, the Bonaventure was a shining star moving amongst the firmament, cruising the aether like a clipper ship of a bygone age.

Rebecca smoothed down her deep blue uniform. Her hair, beneath the captain's hat, was ginger in color, tied back modestly. "Well," she proclaimed, sitting with satisfaction, her eyes taking in the Bonaventure's bridge. The damage done by the Pumpkin Dragon had been patched and polished, until nothing could be seen of the fiery burns that had ripped through the ship's hull but a week ago. "A fine job, my brethren. The Imperatorial Command will be pleased."

"Damned straight," the Lord Adam replied from the helm. A golden glow seeped from his eyes, lighting up his face. His hands gripped the wheel with easy confidence. "The many nations of Rigel will offer no shelter to the Excrucian menace."

A grim figure of black leather and white lace, spoke from the Guard station. "Those who did," murmured the Lady Sian, menacingly, as she stroked the large chromed vortex blaster at her side, "will do so no longer. Though --" Her eyes dropped. "-- many brave warriors of the Chancels Legion gave their lives for that victory."

"And they will be remembered forever," declaimed the Lady Amala. Green and sweeping was her gown, laced in gold, setting off the chocolate brown of her dusky skin. "Throughout Rigel, for so long as any mortals live there, their names will be known in song, and their sacrifice held up as the bravest of the brave."

"And Amala knows how to spin a catchy tune," quipped Lord Graham from the telephore station. His uniform was an odd mixture of brown and orange motley. He doffed his feathered beret to the Lady Alana, who scowled for a moment at the mockery, then broke into a grin.

"We've entered the Aetheric Stream, Lady Captain," announced Haley, snapping a sharp salute. She wore overalls and a rainbow colored blouse, like an engineer, though she bore a Noble rank like any of the other officers present. She flashed a smile at Sian. "Like a spear thrusting across the heavens." Sian flushed, and Graham laughed.

"Thank you, Haley," Rebecca replied. "And be sure, Sian, that those who died will not be forgotten amongst our ranks, either. I will propose to the Imperatorial Command that the new fleet of aetherships, planned to expand Her Imperial Majesty's Stellar Empire to the Magellanic Clouds and beyond, be named after the brave officers of the Chancels Legion who fell in battle against the Horde of the Wall. Not least of which will be your bold General Strafe."

Sian nodded with thanks.

"The Magellanic Clouds. I hear it's rainy there," Graham noted. His hands played over the glowing dials and indicators of the ship's communications. "Or overcast, at least.

"I've served in the Magellanics," Adam averred. "A distant mission for the Church. I look forward to bringing the great Sun's rays to its dappled mists permanently."

"I was actually joking," murmured Graham, to himself.

A silver flicker darted through the command cabin. "SeniorratingOReillytoseethecaptaincaptain ..."

Rebecca nodded. "Send him in, Faeguard Telendrindel."

"Ayecaptainmiladybeccabyenow!" The tiny figure flitted away through the steel and mahogany door from the cabin.

"The Fae Guard's status, Lady Sian?" the captain inquired. "Are their numbers back to specification?"

She stood to attention. "Aye, at full strength, ma'am. When we repelled boarders, they held off the Darkeyes long enough for me to return from the surface. What losses we took they've since replaced."

"Good job," Rebecca replied. "Pass on my complements to your Folk, then. Just --" She smiled. "-- suggest to them once again if they need to replenish their numbers, they might choose more, ah, discreet locations than the crew mess."

Sian flushed, and sat back down.

A few moments later, a man in red fatigues and brass helm marched in, boots clicking on the polished wood planking, and snapped a salute to Rebecca. "Ma'am."

"Senior Rating O'Reilly. You and the crew served this aethership proudly during the final battle."

"T'weren't naught, ma'am. Simply obeying y'r orders, ma'am."

"The sacrifices from the below-decks do not go unnoticed, O'Reilly."

He bowed. "I just wanted to report that we've all ship-shape an' Bristol fashion, ma'am."

"Indeed. A finer crew one could not ask. Though -- perhaps I should send Lady Sian below, to inspect. The black glove test. I understand she's familiar with Bristol."

To his credit, the rating did not flinch. "If ye wish, though we're ready for aught. An' the crew would lief as have the Lady Haley. Not," he added quickly, "that the Lady Sian is not welcome."

"Maybe we could both go. That'd be fun," Haley opined.

"Anomaly to the forward port side," Adam suddenly snapped out, his eyes on the televiewer screen ahead. He consult an indicator to his right. "An imperial orthicraft," he added, peering at the glowing green aetherscope.

Rebecca frowned. "It's too early for word of the Rigel victory to have reached Earth, even via runners on the World Tree."

"Shall I call the hands to battle-stations?" Sian queried.

The captain shook her head. "No. 'Tis an imperial craft, aright. One of the new models, built for the Council. Any telephore signal?"

Graham shook his head. "No. You know those Council types. They figure you'll roll out the red carpet without their even having to introduce themselves."

Amala made a rude noise.

"Haley, go with O'Reilly," Rebecca decided. "Be sure and express our gratitude. We'll take care of the hospitality."

Haley grinned, waved at her fellow Nobles, and ducked out, pulling the rating after her.

"I say it's medals for everyone," Graham opined. "With the casualties, that's at least several hundred for each of us."

"Not funny," Sian retorted. She looked at Rebecca. "A new campaign, perhaps? Her Imperial Majesty's forces are widespread now, but the Bonaventure is ready for further action. I've heard rumors of an incursion at the Horsehead Nebula."

"'Tis not horses' heads you seek, Lady Sian," Graham quipped, "but --" He broke off. "The orthicraft is hailing us to come alongside, Captain. About time." Though the Fool, Graham was all business when his duty called. As were they all. The Nobles of the Bonaventure were the finest the Imperatorial Command had.

"Acknowledge. Send them to the forward docking port," Rebecca stated. "Sian. Why don't you escort whomever's aboard there up here."

Sian leapt up, saluted the captain, set a hand to her vortex blaster, and strode from the command deck.

When she returned, her face was clouded. About her flitted a dozen fairies, all bearing gleaming spears, and murmuring an angry buzz. "Captain," Sian announced, coldly. "Lord Desecration comes, bearing orders."

The bridge fell silent. Not even Graham had a witty remark to make. At length, Rebecca stood, smoothed her uniform again. "Bring him in," she ordered. This was her ship. She would not let the presence of one of Entropy's Nobles shake her.

Sian returned a moment later, the darkness-shrouded figure of Meon following. Sian returned to her post, at the captain's left, but did not sit. Her hand remained resting, casually, on her blaster.

"Milady Captain Justice," Meon said, executing a sketchy bow. "I bring orders from Lord Entropy and the Imperatorial Council."

Rebecca would not let her eyes search those of the others. She could feel Adam's soft glow at the Helm, and it warmed her. She would have welcomed a joke from Graham, but he was silent at Communications. Amala, too, was silent at the Scientific console. Haley's welcome smile was missing below-decks, and Rebecca was suddenly sure that was best. At her side, at the Weaponry station, menace and anger wisped from Sian like a cloud, even as her Fae took up station at the door to the bridge.

"I stand ready to execute their orders," Rebecca replied. That Meon was here meant the commands were serious. What new danger were they to face? She was suddenly sure, whatever it might be, that they would be equal to it. That was enough to relax her, slightly. But only for a moment.

"With the Imperator's greetings," Meon pronounced, his raspy voice at once more formal than the most rigid drill sergeant, "you are to bring the Aethership Bonaventure back to Earth. There this command will be dissolved."

"What?" Adam shouted, prominences flickering from his body through his dress uniform.

"Absurd," cried Amala, the cabin to reverberate to the harmonics in her voice.

"I don't get it," muttered Graham. His face, usually smiling, was a mask of apprehension.

By her side, Sian remained silent. Rebecca was grateful for that, as it gave her an anchor of calm. This was a travesty. "I know the Bonaventure has not failed the will of the Council," she retorted. "Why, then, is this action taken. Has Her Imperial Majesty been informed?"

"Victoria? She has shuffled off the mortal coil, and so the treaty which bound the Imperators to her will is null and void."

That drew gasps. The Immortal Empress had lived five hundred years. Even so, "But -- why --"

"Treachery is upon us, Milady Justice." Meon smiled, a grimace in fact. "An Imperator of the Dark, fearing the mortal humans have advanced too far, need us too little, has slain the Empress. With the treaty gone, betrayal is possible. Thus, history is to be ... revised. A hand of cards picked back up to be replayed. All this --" A black-gloved hand gestured about. "-- is to be no more. Five centuries of time as the Prosaic reckons it, to the date of the Great Concord, is to be wiped from the memory of mankind, erased like a wire recording." He chuckled. "No physical trace will remain."

"But -- this ship --"

A grey-toothed grin. "-- will never have existed. Nor the colonies of Rigel -- nor Antares, nor Ultima Thule, nor the Corelands Desert. Not for most of a century will humanity venture back into space, and we will have naught to do with it. And it will be -- I am told -- a sorry, flimsy imitation of this, your proud vessel."

Sian at last made a sound. Rebecca threw her a glance. She was pale, was her security officer. "And those who have died," she said. "Are their lives to be made good? Are their sacrifices to be for naught?"

Meon chuckled. "Isn't that the finest part, Lady Punishment? Their deaths, their great giving of all, and all they died for, are stricken from the books. None will remember them. No statues. No monuments. No leaves in books of memorial. No stained glass or obelisks. Mother will forget son, son his father's death. Naught will remain but dust and ashes, and what nightmares may come to them on blackened nights. Though, if it is any comfort, milady --" He leered at her. "-- you will remember them. Every detail. We Nobles will not be affected by the magicks."

"No!" Sian took a step forward. About her, the Fae of her security contingent buzzed and hummed menacingly. "You cannot do this. It -- it isn't fair." She looked up at Rebecca. "Do something!"

What? What could she do in the face of such orders. "Lord Meon, I must -- I will protest. I will appeal to the Imperatorial Council --"

"The Council, you will find, is not what it once was. Bound by the old queen, they now bow before power. That means my lord, Entropy. And this is his decision. The magic is not all his, but imposed upon us. But he guides the final outcome. Will you dispute with him, Justice?"

"Why you --" Adam took a step forward, now fully aflame, engulfed like the sun-stars about them.

"Stand down!" Rebecca snapped. Adam started, stared at her, then turned away, back to his station, his blazing light subdued.

"For what it's worth," Meon continued, almost reluctantly, "it's not that there's that much choice. As I said, treachery drives Milord to this. There'd be little else he could do. Things in the new century will be much -- simpler. The Prosaic will drift from the Mythic. Things will be -- well, frankly, dull. But that's the way Lord Entropy wishes it."

"Lady Sian," Rebecca commanded, "escort Lord Meon back to his ship. He will return under his own power. If we are under orders, we will make all speed to Earth. There we'll get to the bottom of this."

"Aye, captain," Sian replied, darkly. "Lord Meon, you will come with us." The Fae guard formed a ring about him. "I suggest, milord, you walk the path we direct. This is still a war zone, and you are not authorized to wander at will. Some Folk of the Guard might attack first, ask questions second."

Meon laughed, and let Sian lead the way off the bridge, back to where his ship was docked. As they left, Rebecca heard him say, "Don't get too attached to these little vermin, Punishment -- I understand the changes will affect them, too ..."

*   *   *

They met, at length, in the captain's dining room. Faeries waited upon them, for the regular crew would not be allowed to overhear the conversation. Rebecca had ordered them not to speak to the crew of what was coming.

Rebecca set down her thick crystal wine glass, most of the deep blue Antarean Shiraz left untouched. She'd broken into the guest stores, however, since such items would no longer exist after their return. Amala had proposed, as was her duty as youngest, a toast to the late Empress, but there seemed little joy in any of their quaffs.

"I have been in contact with my Imperator, as no doubt you have."

Sian bowed her head, and would not answer.

Graham snorted. "Unavoidable, he says. Unstable and dangerous this time has been, he says. Regretful, but inevitable, he says."

"Damn it!" Adam snarled, slamming a fist on the table. He left a scorch mark in the lacquer finish. "It defies belief. All we've done, all we've accomplished -- to be wiped out, just like that."

"Not just us," Sian noted, quietly.

"No songs to remember anyone by," intoned Graham, sadness tinging his voice. "A pity, that."

"A pity? Is that all you can say?" Adam roared. "We should defy them! Not let this happen. We --"

"I have," Rebecca declared, quietly. "As Justice's Regal, I have told my Imperator that this is an unjust decision. I have told him I will challenge Lord Entropy to single combat, to decide it."

There was shocked silence around the table. Haley broke it, her eyes wide. "But -- he'll kill you."

Rebecca shrugged. "So many others have died. One more cannot matter. I owe it to the crew -- and to the ship."

"We'll stand by your side," Sian averred, animation again in her face, her voice. She got to her feet. "With what power we've gained in Her Imperial Majesty's service, we --"

"Yes!" shouted Adam.

"We're with you," swore Alana.

"To the --" began Graham.

"No," Rebecca cut in, flatly. "Single combat it must be, else it is rebellion. I strictly forbid it. And, if you've any love for me, or respect for my authority, you will obey."

After a moment, Sian sat. Silence, again.

"But he'll kill you," Haley said, plaintively.

Rebecca forced a smile. "Surely you, of all people, can envision another outcome."

She shook her head. "No. I can't." That ended the conversation again.

At length, Adam muttered, "I'll quit."

"Adam, no," Alana pled.

"No, I'm serious. Dammit, if that's how they treat us, then I'm through. My Master will let me go, and if he doesn't, I'll accept whatever his judgment for breaking fealty, but I won't work for them again. No more."

"I'm with you, then," Alana told him, after a moment.

"What?"

"I'll quit, too. We can go off somewhere, together. I --" She cut off, not willing yet to share that emotion.

"The rest of you -- come with us," Adam told the table. "If we make a stand, all leave, maybe they'll change their mind. At the very least, we'll have clean consciences."

Silence, then Sian shook her head. "No. I've a duty."

"Duty to those who would betray you? Duty to those --"

"The duty is mine," she shouted at him. "What they're doing -- it makes no difference. I swore to Amaciel my service, and it is his to have, for so long as he'll have it."

Alana shook her head. "Don't you even care --"

"Of course I bloody care!" Sian screamed back. "They're taking everything -- what we've done for the past decades, the advances we've made, the victories, the sacrifices. They're taking it all. And that's not all. The mortals, they'll be controlled, guided, kept from advancing too far, too fast. No travel to the stars for another hundred years. And those stars won't be inhabited, but lifeless rocks about balls of flaming gas. They're taking it all."

"They can't take your friends," Haley said, extending a hand toward her.

"They can!" Sian retorted. "The Fae Guard? Gone. No fairies, save in the Mythic. Naught magical, save in the Mythic. All those friends -- allies, brethren, comrades in arms, trusted and trusting servants -- wiped out of existence, though they'd never been."

She stood again, faced Rebecca. "Captain, please -- I beg you. Let me join you. I canna leave my post, like these others, but I can follow you. Let me fight by your side, even if it means --"

"No." Rebecca stood as well. "If I die, then I die. I'll not have the blood of my officers on my hands -- nor that of my -- friends." She looked at them all. "Do what you must. I bind you to no further service, nor will I report your plans. This much, I can do. I can do no other." She turned, and walked stiffly out of the captain's dining room.

Sian slumped back down into her gleaming chair.

"The rest of you, then," Adam said. "Come with us. At least we can be together."

Graham slowly shook his head. "No. No, I like the idea, but, frankly, I don't think I want to spend the rest of my days being reminded by you all of what we once had, and what was lost." He gave them a crooked smile, took off his hat, and tossed it onto the table. "I'll find some place of my own. Alone. Nothing personal, of course." He got up, nodded to them. "See you in the funny papers." Then he left.

Adam stared at the closing door, then uttered an oath. "Haley, what about you?"

Haley shrank back into her chair. "No. I can't. I -- I just can't. Besides --" She gave a weak, crooked grin. "-- someone has to look after Sian, right? I mean, you two, Amala, Adam, you'll have each other. Sian's going to be stuck on her own. That's not fair."

Adam and Amala looked at each other, then got up and left as well. The door hissed shut behind them.

"So, we gonna stick together?" Haley said, trying not to sound terrified.

Sian shook her head. "I canna." She looked up at her friend. "I canna do this. I canna leave, but I canna stay. I -- won't live with this knowledge, Haley, knowing what we had and lost. What's been taken from us. I dinna want to But I won't betray my oath. That's -- I suppose that's all I have left."

Haley extended a hand for a moment, then, when it wasn't taken, pulled it back. "You have me. You have the others."

Sian shook her head again. "No. I dinna. I canna continue." The she straightened out. "But -- I will. I have to go on. That's what's the important thing. I just have to figure out how." Her lips thinned. "An' I think I do. God help me, but I think I do."

And at the bleak sound in her voice, Haley felt very, very cold, as though the clement aether through which they sailed had become a frozen vacuum, and she'd suddenly lost her friend into that black void beyond ...