The Chronicles of Ceteri – C-Team – S01E11

Dramatic Personae

 

Previously…

The Brimstone Law Associates have just found a charming, relaxing moment in seeing Mephisto reunited with his lover.

 

Title Forthcoming

The team returns from the second site with a Babel Stone. Raleigh begins by doing some piecing together of facts to try and identify the one pulling all the strings. Raleigh manages to identify someone who would know the identity of the person we’re looking for- Elias, the head of some of the local crime families.

We’re given the name Roger Friendly. He runs a used magical goods store that is full of alliteration in the name.

We do some prepping and casting of spells to get ready. Magnus gets a tongue-lashing from Olivia, who is now up and ambulatory. Yanay also lays into him, being passive-aggressive in his direction.

It works, and Magnus heads off to gather allies.

Olivia decides to start throwing out orders, announcing that we’re going to try and free up the Conclave HQ from whatever they’ve been trapped inside. Evidently we’re going to have to go through a mystical guardian the Conclave has put into place.

We raid Raleigh’s random collection of gear to get prepped.Olivia is surprisingly onboard with getting ahold of Iuxari the Impala for help crossing through dimensional barriers, even going so far as knowing how to source a soul to pay the Shambler.

Iuxari is summoned, Raleigh crafts an agreement with a loophole that could allows Olivia to fuck over the Impala at a later time.

We’re in a stone platform floating among a sea of stars. Raleigh determines that we’re in a pocket dimension in between.

There’s a few massive webs covering the ground in front of us. Mike breaks a pocket knife trying to cut it- so Raleigh gives it a shot with their flaming sword. Part of the web catches fire and starts melting like hot steel.

Yanay walks forward and a spider phases into existence and attacks her. She spends fatigue for feverish defense and manages to dodge the surprise attack.

The spider’s mouth begins to glow with energy, and it shoots a laser at Yanay, but misses.

Olivia attempts to blast the spider with some kind of sound attack, but it rebounds back from the spider.

The spider then disappears.

It appears behind Aggie and Raleigh, attacking Raleigh. The Outcast Angel manages to parry the spider’s fangs with their sword, causing it damage.

There’s movement as people try and get into position. Yanay preps lightning to blast it, Aggie fast-draws a pistol and ineffectually shoots it, and Olivia steps up to tank it.

The Spider jumps and tries to squash Agrivaine, who easily dodges out of the way.

Mike runs up to the Spider and attacks it with a 5-attack rapid attack, connecting with 4. The spider goes down after Mike dishes out a ton of damage.

We take some time to harvest the unburnt webs, getting 3lbs.

We enter the Custos headquarters. The back entrance is in a supply closet, and a poor dude is half-phased into the floor inside.

Olivia leads us further into the offices. There’s a few bodies strewn around, some that we recognize from our various dealings with the Custos. We run into Ms. Baryl who bums a cigarette from Raleigh and seems to have a wound on her side. Olivia calls Baryl by her first name- Cynthia.

Evidently HQ keeps rearranging itself, causing instances where people without noclip are getting clipped into reality, causing the dude who was half-phased into the floor. Of course the controls that are preventing HQ from returning back to our reality is located in the middle of the disturbances that are rearranging reality.

Olivia deputises Mike as part of the Custos. Leo and Aggie go with Olivia to tend to the wounded and round up everyone. Mike, Yanay and Raleigh go to get the HQ out of its stasis.

 
Aftermath

The big magic field causes Yanay and Raleigh to fall unconscious. Mike reaches the central stone and barely manages to trigger it. The spell terminates, vomiting people who were half-stuck back into the timeline.

Meanwhile, the others find some people behind a door that’s been turned to steel.

We clear out all of the ghouls and then make plans for how to proceed.

After Action Reports/Game Notes
I felt kind of crappy for strong-arming my PCs today – but it’s something the NPC (Olivia) would have done. Even if the rest of the PCs were like “Nope, not doing it!” Travis’s character (Agrivain) would have had to have gone. Like I said. Crappy. BUT! The PCs went along with it and were /really/ smart with what they did – they came up with a nice circumvention to the HQ’s security system (they used one of the “back door” keys to get in – and then made a deal with Iuxori the Impaler – a nasty dimensional shambler that feeds on souls – to get out). That was clever. The magical guardian I set up actually was FIVE spiders – but the ghouls that snuck in and the dimensional instability resulted in the death of the other four (I made the number elastic in case it was too easy, I was running out of time, etc.) leaving only one. Magic didn’t work (duh, mages don’t make magical guardians other mages can hurt easy), but Andre’s character Mike’s steel did quite well. There was a hiccup on the rules (he shouldn’t have been able to Move and Attack and do a rapid strike – but that’s on me), and a few other places, but the game turned out well. The PCs did their thing, everyone but Mike and Yanay decided to stay within the HQ till the Custos were up to snuff, while those two headed back to the Inland (Earth) to make any final preparations.

 

Session Soundtrack

“The Garden of Allah” by Don Henley (closing song)

“In The Meantime” by Spacehog (the three day montage as the PCs are waiting for the custos to get back on their feet)
“Possum Kingdom” by The Toadies
“Out of Time” by The Rolling Stones (closing song)
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