So, during the last session, some folks asked "are there any NPCs we were friends with who might still be willing to help us out, despite what's going on?"

After some careful thought, my response is: "I don't know... are there?"

If you've got an idea for a Power you might have allied with at some level, lemme hear it -- I'm always good for new NPCs. No stats necessary -- mostly I'm just looking for name, personality and maybe domain or affiliation. (Better yet, when describing their personality and domain, try using the 'one word descriptions' of each of them.)

(I will be presenting a few of my own, but hell, there's seven of yah... that's a lot of potential allies.)

I was going to do this as an email, but format was a pain:

Quiz question -- Short version: in one word, what is the theme of your character's Personality? In one (different, hopefully) word, what is the theme of your character's Domain?

No sophist arguments that "I've been doing this so long that the one has become the other" -- for the sake of this exercise, A <> B

For the longer explanation of where this question came from and what I mean by the terminology, see below. Feel free to post answers in the comments.

Where this came from:
An interesting comment cropped up on the Nobilis list as people chatted about character generation (not from me):

My opinion is that the hot-button issues for the personality should be in a completely different arena than the hot-button issues for the Estate.
For Example: If your Personality theme is Responsibility, and you're the Power of Duty (or the Power of Irresponsibility)... well, your personality will never tell you anything about your Estate, and your Estate will never tell you anything about your personality.
You will, in short, have no -other- point of view to examine either your Personality or your Estate from.
If your personality theme is Responsibility and you're the Power of Tools though, you can examine the question of responsibility from the issues of tools, and the question of tools from the issues of responsibility. Make sense?

Yep. Does to me, anyway. I thought it might be an interesting thing to mull over if people are having a problem with getting into your character's head.

Flores from oneword having nothing at all to do with the storyline. No, seriously.

"Cousin. I didn't know you were coming."
The Fair-Haired One nodded. "I must admit it surprised me as well." He folded his cloak over one arm and shook water from a wing. "The weather is dreadful."
"Our dark lord is troubled today."
"Ahh."

And another one:

"Aren't you... that's odd, I thought Fate was blind."
"No."
"Hmm, very strange that I'd get that confused."
"You're thinking of Justice... or Love... there are several, actually. I, as you can see, have eyes."
"Pity that."
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, no offense, I'm sure. It's just..."

Senachiel had let it slip that I had allies and now I was curious: Just where do I fit into this tangled little web? Is there a side that I'm on? Do I really have allies or many enemies I don't have faces for?

Senachiel's leaving now and I can't just let him go; he's the only one who knows anything about me, myself included.

Surely there is more information to be had from him if he was not so very distracted by something else. He is flying away (though I think can probably catch up to him), I am not going to let the only one who knows what is going on get away so easily. I jump to the roof of the nearest building and from there to his back and force him to land on the roof of... he is going back to the dead angel’s building. There is talking inside the building, not fighting, so I ask him more questions that need answering. His response is to give me a flower, yes a flower. He says I can contact him with it by pulling the petals off and speaking. He is heading for the front door but I still have questions and there is still no fighting noises, just talking, from inside.

I cut him off and ask him more questions and we talk for a short time until the building does finally erupt in fighting sounds. Senachiel is headed into the building and I can't stall him anymore. I can tell (how can I tell) that here is a man on the third floor and another on floor two. I imagine his "brother" is on floor two so I jump through a window to the third floor. Glass shatters and leather is not as sturdy as one would like in times like this, though my skin is just fine. I let the young-but-white-haired man in the room know he needs to leave because two of them are after him now. I give him a phone number to meet me at (Jessica) and head to talk to her, this lady whose voice is so familiar and yet not. I need to hurry.

The streets are too crowded to simply run through them so I use the rooftops. I am not sure how I know where I am going but I trust the inner voice that is telling me where to turn and which direction to head. I slip into the building and to the penthouse suite. I glide the door open and someone is swinging a bat at my head. It is a very slow swing and I am able in one motion to block and disarm. My attacker it the woman who's been calling me -- her voice matches -- but she looks older and panic stricken.

She is growing older by the second because her old master (the angel? my old master?) is dead. She reminds me how to create a mortal anchor with someone and I give her the option of her being bound to me -- it would safe her life, perhaps, so she wants it, and I proceed. As I do a voice tells me to stop. Not the voice in my head but something external, behind me.

Big.

I ignore it; after all they could be talking to anyone and it is not addressing me directly.

I find my body sailing across the room -- not something I initiated, which is annoying. Alright, so I guess this is a fight, and damn this jerk hits hard. If I hadn't already ruin this leather suit I would be even unhappier right now -- going through the middle part of a sectional couch didn't do it any favors. I get back to my feet and really need to hit something. I rush him, ducking under his attack and use the momentum to pick him up and throw him out the patio window. I did mention we are at the top of a building on the penthouse level right? He looks like he might be part bronze. All bronze? Anyway, he's heavy, and this is where it would suck to be him.

He falls, and falls, and falls and the concrete looks as bad has he does when he hits it... goes right through it, actually.

Now the question is do I go after him? He hits hard -- probably dead, right.

Yeah, I do need to see if my new best friend is alright or not. Should teach him a lesson about attacking defenseless women though. I leap out the window and use the patio balconies to slow my descent... except that about halfway down they seem to be quite crumbly all of a sudden and I'm free-falling from thirty-three stories up. Oh, this does not look or feel good. I think I might be able so slow myself a little and at this point that would be a very good thing, so I do that.

Please don't get me wrong, I still going to hit the pavement hard as hell but I don't injure myself too badly doing it. Then the ground rots around me and I fall through the pavement and things get fuzzy from here. He's waiting for me.

We fight, which is expected (well, somewhat expected because I was hoping to gloat over his corpse). Plan A did not workout so well so plan B was to make the corpse now. The electricity guy from the dead angel's house showed up to help at some point and it was not a pretty fight. Bronze guy looked worse then I felt when things were said and done but I guess someone did not appreciate the fight and sent everyone to their separate corners -- something about Not Freaking Out the Straights.

Our corner involved a phone booth that sank into the ground and came out on a rooftop... in Chicago.

We step out of the phone booth and yet another person is up here holding a gun at my face. I don't have any sense of humor for this right now. I ask her to put it away in light of the bad day I am having. She is reluctant but does so when this, well… fungus-ey thing starts talking to us. I need sleep and the fungus-ey thing makes a nice bed for me. I listen to the others talk while I desperately try and return to the restful darkness.

HAVE A DRINK ON ME

It’s not as fun being a thunder god when the guy who’s trying to kill you can shrug off monster lightning bolts. I did the turn-into-electricity thing – all this power stuff comes easy to me – and spread myself over much of the room as a big old plasma pancake. Lots of things started to burn and I had high hopes that Mack the Knife had to breathe at least. I didn’t get to find out because he froze – freeze-framed – the blaze in its tracks. So much for Plan A. I hauled ass down an outlet and off to Atlantic City, New Jersey before I could find out if he could make electricity bleed. Why Atlantic City? It was the first place that occurred to me. Vegas was second… would have been first but it was farther away.

I tried scanning the building for people, for electrical auras, and came up empty. Back to the same room to look for ‘clewes’ as Sherlock Holmes might have said, and, dammit, the guy was still there. I asked him to give me a couple of minutes. He offered to help me throw myself on the mercy of some Court for, ah, people like us. No thanks. The phone next to me rang. Rang. Oh, crap: it’s Gwen. (Hey, I remembered her name.) Couldn’t talk with Avrileros listening …. But she said she could reach me through any phone, and it was a good-sized building. I zapped out to the opposite side, top floor. The phone rang and I picked up.

I told Gwen about the dead angel. She said he’d been Lust and that, since his heart was gone, there had to be a new one somewhere. Avrileros was Eternity. Gwen told me who the other members of my familia were and told me to be careful with Death. Death was dangerous. He’d been in the chancel when it was invaded and fought his way out past an Inquisitor. “Things fell down.” One of the ways into the chancel was in New Orleans.

A woman walked in, making no noise at all, good-looking, athletic and I knew right away who the new Lust was. She introduced herself as Macy, said people were closing in on us and we should leave. I could hear two people pounding up the stairs. I told her about the wire trick and she gave me a phone number. She busted out a window and jumped to the next building. Right. Sure, she probably had something to do with cutting the heart out of the old Lust but she could have done me some real damage had she been so inclined. I zapped out – and it went wrong.

I was flesh, not plasma, on a rooftop surrounded by new age hippy weirdos, and a big, hairy guy offering me a bottle of Jack Daniels, and an older, normal looking woman with her own bottle in a lawn chair. Hairy Guy started to explain things to me. I accepted the bottle and took a swig. Hairy Guy – Hank – told me he worked for June/Reality and was Summoning us according to her orders. Fine. “Sorry to drink and run, but I’m supposed to meet with Lust – I’m pretty sure she’s Lust – right about now.” The bulb on a wire I’d apparently come in on was toast but the outlet was still good. “I’ll be back.” I changed, zapped in, found a phone and used the number.

I was in a very expensive and partially trashed apartment next to an ancient woman in designer clothes that didn’t fit her. I switched forms and she took it in stride. She indicated that Macy had gone out the broken window and over the broken balcony rail. Right.

I followed in a nice swan dive and changed well before I hit the ground, flattening out without taking any damage next to a big crater or sinkhole in the street. Macy was in the breached service tunnel fighting a big man who was either wearing a fantastically articulated brass suit or had metal skin. The way he banged into things he might be solid metal all the way through. Macy was holding her own. They were fast, faster than anything human, faster than rattlesnakes and stronger than grizzly bears, trickier than Jackie Chan on the best day of his life. Brass Monkey did tricks. He caused some poor guy to drive his car into the hole at Macy. He didn’t die when I hit him with lightning. He did something to the crowd – there was a crowd by now – and they all rushed me like I was a pop star giving free aurographs. I jumped into the hole before anyone could electrocute himself as Brass Monkey jumped out, and Macy followed. “Jumped out” doesn’t really convey what they did. They didn’t quite ‘leap tall buildings in a single bound’ but it did look like they’d land a block or two away. I grabbed a wire and zapped to a streetlight a block and a half in the right direction.

Macy had gone farther than Brass Monkey. We converged on him for Round 2. He looked hurt but so did she. The civilians all around us dropped to the ground, all the cars, machinery and electricals quit as far as we could see. Brass Monkey fell squawking (you can squawk in a basso profundo voice, if you try hard) into a hole that appeared underneath him. A VOICE (imagine a very angry, 200 foot tall woman) told us to not do anything like this in her city ever again. A phone booth rose out of the ground and she ordered us into it before The Bronze Man’s friends showed up. We did that. It sank back into the ground into calm darkness, then rose out of that rooftop with Hank, his new age accomplices, the older lady and two new additions. A very tough woman was holding a large gun on us and a talking mushroom person was looking on. Punishment and Fungus, right. We were in Chicago. Note to self: City Woman not limited to one city.

Macy snapped at Punishment about where the gun should be pointed. I introduced myself with a smile, a bow and current hopping between fingertips. Fungus wanted to know who Macy was. I described our fight with The Bronze Man and the VOICE. Information was exchanged. I tried the contacting your people mentally thing and soon was looking out of Gwen’s eyes. She was in a warehouse full of our people being guarded by gun-toting intruders. She was in lying low but in considerable danger of being caught. I asked her about other ‘anchors’ I might have. I had one more, an FBI director named Skinner whom I did not like at all. I described the scene and the facts to my, ah, familia. Fungus said she’d work on an herbal cure for amnesia. Myself, I figured we needed guns, lots of guns. I considered my FBI contact and smiled. A couple of stoned New Agers recoiled.

1. Three bands.

Vera still wore three gold rings on her hands: a wedding band, an engagement ring, and a "promise" ring. Which is a lot of rings to hold together a marriage that isn't working.

As she drove, I worked. Some call it meddling, but I call it--well, I call it meddling, too. Some other power had touched her heart, twiddled with it, and left it unable to love without trying to possess. I untwiddled most of it: it was like loosening an iron band around her heart, only less metallic. There was some other damage (her husband had cheated on her with an old girlfriend, I think) but I left it on its own.

Hearts are funny. The things you use to hold them together sometimes defeat the purpose of having a heart in the first place.

2. Tourists.

Breaking things is harder for me than fixing them. I wasn't feeling quite myself as we stopped at a convenience store for gas on east side of the Indiana state line. Thinking back, I suppose it isn't necessary to stop every couple of hundred miles for gas when you can make a tank of gas last a couple of thousand miles. Then again, I could walk into the bathroom in Indiana and have Hank bring me directly to Chicago.

The bathrooms were clean. They sold silver spoons with state symbols on them. Imagine selling spoons for Pennsylvania in Indiana. Imagine buying them. Tourists.

I like tourists. Oh, sometimes you'll see escapists, the ones who are traveling from instead of just traveling, and it's a shame when parents try to educate their children by forcing them to do something against their nature. But what good is the world without the world's largest rubber-band ball?

3. Guard Dogs for Clouds

I had narrowed my choices to a package of orange slices and a tin of old-fashioned drugstore peppermints (and leaning slightly toward the peppermints) when I noticed that I hadn't been noticing.

A woman on the other side of the candy rack stared at me. Everyone in the store was staring--not at me, but at something in particular. The man at the counter growled at a young lady who'd been trying to buy cigarettes a moment before. A mother snatched a bottle of lemonade away from her child.

"Mine!" she said.

The woman accused me of ruining things, and included Vera by name.

Aha.

The Someone.

4. Justice.

When you're young, justice is more about possession than it is about healing.

The Someone accused Amaciel of terrible things. I don't know how much of what she said was true. I love Amaciel, but the ways and plans of his kind are beyond what I can bear to know sometimes. He may have done the things she told me. I only know the Someone before me was in pain, and like to hurt the mortals.

I can't help thinking of them as my mortals, sometimes. At least Vera had gone back out to the car before the woman had appeared.

Well. Time to meddle.

I'd almost convinced the woman to stop shouting accusations and get down to the details when other Someones appeared. Inquisitors?

Just here for the orange slices, I guess.

Fungus arrives at Mt. Baldy in Southern California. The small green spot near a mountain creek is empty, but there are sounds of a road nearby. He is below the mountain community and above the suburbs, in a no-man’s-land that is very sparsely populated. It is easy to shamble down the mountain near the road, but out of sight. As he enters the northern fringe of Claremont, he is drawn towards a storm culvert. The sturdy grate opens easily to the touch. A simple magnetic latch keeps the grate closed. Oozing down into the sewer-pipe he finds a little water and some fungus. They greet him.

“Welcome your Grace.”

“We always enjoy your visits.”

“I seem to have misplaced my memory.” The Graf complains.

“We would lay down our life-form to find it, but we don’t know where to find it.”

“Where do I go when I come here?” He asks.

Some of the molds on the walls fluoresce to show the way, bowing and scraping as their forms allow. The florescence leads down a sewer-pipe with a trickle of water running down the center. Off of an otherwise unmarked side passage, there is a ramp up to an ordinary door.

The door opens into a black-lit observation room. There is a large window in the far wall that looks out at the lab proper. A red light goes on as the door is opened and off again when it is closed behind the Graf. There are several trays of mushrooms, molds, spores and other fungus on large tables in the observation room. Each tray is labeled in a careful crabbed hand. There are several bins of compost along one wall. The fungus here is sleepy and uninformed. Fungus moves into the next room. Dr. Wirtz, (where does she know that name from?) enters the room.

“Your Grace!” Dr. Wirtz calls in surprise.

“I seem to have misplaced my memory.” Fungus explains

“I didn’t know that you were susceptible to cranial trauma.” He says puzzled.

“People are trying to kill me.” She adds.

“Are they after just you or your family too?” Fungus looks blank.

“Your other aspects?” He tries again. “The chancel?”

Fungus searches for recognition. “Nope, nothing there.”

“Maybe if you reformed.” Dr. Wirtz suggests. “You sort of die and reform elsewhere.”

Fungus looks for the memory elusive. “I traveled from one place to another earlier.”

“Was there rotting involved.”

“No, I used a mushroom ring.”

Dr. Wirtz describes the trans-location process. They agree to try an experiment using the test room. But first, Fungus tries to determine how secure the lab is. Dr. Wirtz explains some of the security precautions and feels confident that other Nobles do not know of his relationship with the Graf. He goes on to explain how it is difficult to track Nobles. Dr. Wirtz decides to alter his form of address and to watch his words. He also tries to clarify their relationship. The Graf breaks off the discussion to try to reform. She relaxes and focuses on her body, her form. She feels it slowly decompose. She releases the bonds that support her structure and sinks into the floor, leaving a molding pile of organic matter. In the experiment room she rises from the bin of compost. This form is different from the last left behind in the other room.

“It looks like you did it.” A pleased Dr. Wirtz exclaims. “Is your memory any better?”

Fungus searches once again for those stray memories. He finds a web of knowledge, history, feelings, and a lifetime of memories, many lifetimes of memories. The re-birth has given her a start on the path to recovery. Just as he realizes his predicament, he feels someone praying to him. He is pleased that he remembers what prayer is and how to answer the prayer.

“I pray to the Graf of Fungus. This is Sîân, Punishment.”

Fungus goes to the greenroom and picks an appropriate flower. (I have a green-room?) Plucking a petal off of the bloom, he says “I assume that your mind is Swiss cheese too.”

“If by that you mean there are a lot of holes in it – Yes.”

“What do you need?”

“I’ve been summoned and June is gathering everyone.”

Punishment goes on to explain or at least describe, Hank, the hippies, Guilt. Fungus decides to join them in her own fashion rather than wait to be summoned. They fix the location in Chicago. When Siân tosses some of the summoning mushrooms away from her person, Fungus is able to divine where the group is gathered. They gather sufficient organic material together in that spot for the Graf to reform there. The new form is much like the last only more white. Punishment and Hank begin to explain the situation in more detail. As they do, Fungus requests something polyester to wear. Hank first brings an old stained Mexican blanket poncho, which would decompose after a few hours.
Repeating the request for an artificial fiber nets Fungus a raincoat, cheap plastic hat, and galoshes. These will do. When the Graf travels in the human world, she usually looks like a homeless person. It solves so many problems. Nobody looks closely at them. They can be smelly. They can talk to things that aren’t there. It works for the Graf.

Fungus notices that the hippies are freaking a bit at the scene on the roof. There has been a bit too much excitement for the straights. She creates some special mushrooms and gives them to Hank to distribute. While the hippies are tripping and Guilt is tippling, Hank, Punishment, and Fungus discuss summoning Death. Food and drink are provided. Punishment, who hasn’t eaten in centuries, consumes a bologna sandwich with gusto. Fungus wonders what else has changed. The Imperator's death has taken its toll in many ways. Just then Electricity and the new Lust show up in a phone booth. There is much catching up and gun pointing.

The Graf contacts Moonbeam, his mystic assistant, in the chancel. She is okay and not locked up as many of the other chancel inhabitants have been. They have closed her shop and many others and enforced a curfew on the populous. Many have been locked up for curfew infractions and other transgressions. After a brief description of what is going on, Fungus asks after herbs for amnesia. She lists some, but most won’t work on nobles. Moonbeam will do some research into rites that might help and stay out of trouble.

Fungus is in a large park, tall buildings ring the green swath. Like a metal faerie ring. It is Central Park in NYC. The sun warms Fungus’ face and causes him to turn away. She hears voices. The faeries are grumbling about the nasty air, the trash, and the bums that urinate on the dryads. A deep shiver runs through Fungus, a sense of wrongness. A pixie spirit flits by his face/front. Fungus squints to see him.

“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 wonders why she knows where she is and who this is but not who she is. As she rolls over, she notices a vibrant mushroom ring. The molds speak to her, humming with pleasure. But there is wrongness here too.

Fungus tries to discern the direction or location of the wrongness. He follows it to a nearby copse of trees, shambling and absorbing leaves as he goes. There is a faerie ring of simple button cap mushrooms in a cave. The mushrooms 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?” Tinkerboy asks.

“What thing? Fungus rumbles.

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

The ring is where the wrongness is. Fungus steps into the circle of toadstools and nothing happens. S/He relaxes and the chanting 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 fungus.

“There it is! Get it!” A voice calls out and feet pound towards Fungus.

“Kill him!” Other voices join in.

A wall of fungus appears across the cave, and choking pores fill the air. Fungus works without thought. Bullets impact the temporary wall. The pursuers cough and more bullets fly. Some of them pierce the mold wall. Fungus is unharmed. Quickly searching around, Fungus finds several other Faerie Rings. He spies one that makes him smile. It is a perfect circle of morel mushrooms - earthy and spongy. Working quickly, Fungus puts a scuff near a ring of little death-caps and fills the cave with blinding spores. He hopes that it will confuse the pursuers. He leaps for the morel ring and lands with more finesse than one would expect from a shambling mound. Fungus’ companions sing out and raise their voices in a magical chant. It is different from before, lower and with more resonance.

Fungus drops through the floor of the cave and lands in a shaded spot by a mountain stream. There is a tang of pollution in the air and a condom on the soft moss. She hears a car pass by not to 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.

Hmmm, today must be fat-naked-drunken-man-day. Really that is all there is to say about it. Well, not really all, but I feel that you may not be up to hearing about all of it.

For some reason the Soup Kitchen faded away and a shabby room appeared. In it stood a man in a pair of drawer's that had seen better day's...about a decade ago, and the room reeked of sex.

The Man introduced himself as Hank…and he handed me a bottle of Scotch. The Label said Talisker 25 years. I pulled out the cork and partook. Smooth, and nicely aged.

The Hank told me several things, after I asked him to look in to this bleeding thing that was going on. He rambled on about somebody named June, God people, Donner, Lust, Sian, and Death. Nun of this made any sense. He then told that he had great legs and that I should appreciate them. I did not, and told him to put on some pants. I also asked him about the "Bronzeman"…nothing.

We moved to the roof. And by we, I mean Hank the two women that he had been having sex with and a whole bunch of Hippies.

The next bit of entertainment was Hank and the Hippies putting Hank's holy collection drawers on their heads and dancing around. Soon a person that Hank calls Donner appears and soon leaves. Really bad grunting on Hanks part brought forth A stunningly beautiful young lady in Latex with a gun in her hand. He calls her Sian. She must have been cold, poor thing, and I told Hank to get her some clothes. He looked perplexed.

This was some very good Scotch that Hank had given me.

During the conversation between Sian and Hank I find out that I have a Hank of two of my own. How utterly wunderful for me.

Things kind of blanked out for a while.

The Hank passed out mushrooms to the woman in Latex and the Hippies. I watched with some amusement as they soon thought that they could fly. I tried to talk reason into them by asking them what their mothers would think of their behavior. This brought a rebuke from Hank and lots of crying from the Hippies. I was feeling pretty good right now.

I have a death grip on my bottle and nobody tries to hard to take it away from me. This is a good thing.

After a short while the Donner person returns with a lovely young lady whose mother must be completely ashamed of her. WHORE kept leaping from deep with in my mind, I forced it back with some more scotch. But her name turns out to be Macy...you know like the Store.

Yada, Yada, Yada, Chancel. Yada, Yada, Yada, Yada, Chancel.

For some reason Chancel seemed to be ringing a bell deep in the back of my head. It was the only thing that made sense so far to day. I must ask the fashion challenged lump of a woman sitting next me what that word is.

Lust: *Giggle* This is fun! (as she leaps on to the Roof)

Randy: She get's that a lot...

***

Jackie: Did I intercept him? Because I want to Ride him...while slapping his ass!

Randy: Yeah...she's just trying to get a rise out of the him.

HG: Justin...you probably need to be somewhere else right now.

Justin: No...I'm fine...

***

Jackie: Hey...two on one isn't fair...fun, but not fair.

***

Margie: Dave...you should've known better then to have given Doyce something long to play with while HG'ing (Doyce absentmindedly swinging a six iron).

Dave: Well...with Jackie playing Lust and all... it seemed like a good idea at the time.

***

Stan: Are they as smart as Tinkerboy? (referring to the fungus spirits in the storm sewer in which Fungus has found herself)

HG: No no... Tinkerboy is a Frelling Genius in the Mythic World.

***

HG: Stan...Randy was whining about Guilt having to much influence on the Chancel.

Dave: Yeah, and is he going to be sorry about that!

***

Dave: ...And Vindalu is really a Portuguese word...

Margie: Hey! You. Quit bogarting my discoveries!

***

Dave: My gun wavers back and forth between Imagination and the Plant she's holding.

Randy (sotto voce): PUT THE PLANT DOWN!

***

HG (to Donner): You hear a high hat and a fuzz guitar coming toward you (as Lust approaches).

***

HG (to Punishment): As Imagination and you talk, you have your spear...

Jackie: ...Which is very Phallic...

HG: ...and it's vibrating anytime you point it at anything it wants to be shoved into...

Stan: ...again, very phallic...

Jackie, as Lust: Hey! No fair! I'm not there!

***

Doyce doing a happy little dance while telling us Hank has his boxer's on his head as a headdress. Just... Visualize that for a moment. Either thing.

***

Punishment (to Guilt): Should I try the mushroom thing? [calling Fungus with a prayer]

Guilt: (quite drunk) ...sure...Trip out...

***

Stan: Yep...because Lust is all about the penetration.

Dave: No she is not. She is all about wanting the penetration.

***

Donner: Have you seen Lust?

Old Woman: What, the new one?

Donner: Ahhh, yeah.

Old Woman: Macy?

Donner: Uhhh, yeah.

Old Woman: She went down (pointing toward a broken window)...

Dave: But of course she did!

Old Woman: ...with a large statue.

Stan: Well that's new.

***

HG to Jackie: It's just like a level 5 Aspect attack, except it has range and headlights. (Referring to the airborne car hurtling at Lust.)

***

Margie (speaking as Lust, on How Lust is Summoned): Verily, whenever five or more are gathered in my name... I shall come.

***

HG: An Anchor is... well, Hank, for example.

Guilt: We all have a Hank...I'm not feeling too good about this.

Karma is bullshit.

I mean that when I say it and I believe it -- you don’t get what you put in and you don’t get what you deserve -- you get whatever the hell the Universe feels like dumping on you.

I believe that. It still doesn’t keep me from thinking about what I did to deserve some of this shit.

I met a god a couple years back. Goddess. Whatever. The Queen of all Reality, basically, is a tough old woman from Iowa or some other middle-of-nowhere place and I caught her attention. I don’t think I’m lucky because of that. Mostly the opposite.

“I’m in charge of Reality,” she told me over greasy spoon ham and eggs one morning.

“You’re in charge of old hotels and dirty sheets and old boxer shorts with holes where they shouldn’t be and cheap wine and piss and hate and regrets and misunderstandings,” I said and took a drink of lousy coffee. “Good for you.”

She looked at me for a long time. “That’s not all there is in Reality.”

“That’s all there is in mine.”

Which I guess means a lot to her -- what my Reality is, I mean. I guess she really can’t just wave her hand and make me the king of Persia or something -- Reality is what it is and my reality is a vacant lot full of empties most of the time.

Still, she wanted me around. Said I’d give her some perspective. I called it the bug’s eye view and she got mad at me for awhile, but that passed. I’ve got a way with the women, even the old ones that are really gods. Her name is June.

Things don’t ever get boring with June involved. She called me in my head and woke me up out of a dream I was having that I wouldn’t miss; told me to expect company and get some things together that I couldn’t afford. Gods were coming over for a visit and they like expensive single-malt, I guess. Then she told me how to call these gods up. I wrote it down (first thing I’d written in two weeks) and got going.

One summoning involved some fucking, so I called up Linda and Judy and her fat cousin and got to that first, but no gods showed up. Messed up the bed, though.

The next one was easy. I read a poem from some asshole I’d never heard while the girls were showering off and some mean-faced old woman was suddenly sitting in my only chair and complaining about the decor. I handed her one of the bottles of good stuff and hoped to hell she’d shut up.

We kept going like that: recitations, rain dances on the roof; one guy was made out of nothing but electricity and just about made me piss myself -- no one can tell me I’m a coward, because I’ll say it first. We called up a woman who's supposed to be Punishment (who looked real good except for the gun in her hand), Fungus (some kind of damn I-don’t-even-know-what), but June told me to wait on calling Death.

Death. June keeps bad company.

Then the guy made out of sparks showed back up with a girl that...

I thought I had to die to go to heaven. I wanted to jump into that and just burrow around with my eyes closed til I died. It scared me more than the electricity guy did, mostly becuase I could tell that whatever she was doing, it wasn’t really working on me. Not really, but I can’t imagine it being any worse.

I had five gods on the roof of my building, talking about other gods and getting in fights that flattened buildings and what to do about it and asking me to explain things and June still wasn’t there. The thing that scared me the most was that I might forget all of it before I got a chance to write it down just like it happened. I even tried to keep a handle on the beer and stay straight.

But it didn’t work. I did forget. This isn’t the way it happened at all.

It was worse, but I can’t figure out how to explain it.

Okay, it's now... lesse, the 12th.

Next game is a week from this Saturday, afternoonish. Mark your calendars.

Quick reminder that turning in quote collections and thought records before the next game session earn you happy happy MP regen. Turning them in later earns you a big smile and a hearty and fond hair tousling. You pick.

(That said, I'm aware that I owe De a half-session of some kind and Lee a bunch of emails, otherwise they don't have anything to write about. Duly noted and such will be forthcoming.)

I'm very glad to be past BenCon and back to something like our normal gaming schedule. Also very glad that the next session is a mere ~9 days away instead of a month. Much better.

One of the interesting and unlooked-for 'bits' that's come up in the current game is the idea that (some of) the characters are being dumped back into the chilly and shocking water tank of Humanity for the first time in a very long time (or Ever) -- the death of the Imperator, having robbed them of Immortality (which I realized after the fact is something I think of as cutting you off from the human condition), leaving them with hunger pangs, emotional pangs... a near-flood of human feelings.

A cynic might think that, for an Imperator whose stated concept revolves around the Human Condition (electricity, lust, guilt, life (fungus), punishment, reality, death), this can only be seen as a good thing even if it's hard on those affected. What are his Nobilis, after all, if not the closest and most well-understood of the Humans whom the Imperator wishes to study/understand? :)