Between The Lights, Session 15: Court

[liquidcitrus]

This is an actual-play writeup of a game I am running on the Jenna Moran fanclub on Discord.

---

They got Al Capone for tax evasion, in the end. Not his commissioning of murders, not his smuggling operation, not any other part of his criminal empire. Because tax evasion was what they had the evidence for.

The Windflower Law of the Code Fidelitatis is the same. Evidence of treachery or subtle malice could be difficult, or impossible, to find. But the existence of Anchors is trivial to prove.

As above, so below.

-- The Other Side of Reality, by Caitlin Katsaros

---

Today, Sasha goes to court! And also the others are there, I guess.

Content note: In this session, there is blood that is simultaneously also bugs, because Mythic Reality. Two phobias for the price of one!

Antarctica

Sasha's raven pin has broken in half. (Well, technically she's wearing it as a necklace now, but details.) The other half has disintegrated.

The implication is clear: Sasha is no longer a Robber-and-Raven. She is only a Robber. And this happened to everyone else, too.

<Sasha> ...Approximately five minutes into the Pin Hunt, Sasha realizes what it means.
<Sasha> "...People are going to be pissed."
<Sasha> Sasha is smiling like a jackal, now.

As with the last time she pissed off major fractions of Noble society, Sasha decides to run off to somewhere remote to, in theory, hide from the consequences. Though she picks Antarctica, this time, instead of Siberia, and takes the rest of the Familia with her. This is exactly as effective as it was last time, which is to say: not at all.

<HG> There is someone behind you.
<HG> It's not a person. Not exactly. You don't so much see them. But there is a qualia, associated with them.
<HG> You feel yourself being flensed.

And who finds Sasha there? Hugh Rosewood. An Ogre. Lord Entropy's hand. And why is he there? To summon them to the Locust Court, about Rhonda.

<HG> "You, Sasha Konstanian, Baroness Alienation, are needed in evidence at the trial of the Duchess of Cups."

Sasha knows when she can't get out of something. She assents. The other PCs come along.

The Court

The Locust Court is a place of solace, and so Maddie is returned temporarily to herself. In here, she doesn't have to be burning fog. The reason for this is rapidly revealed: the Chancel is made almost entirely of wood and paper. Past the antechamber - the place of rest, the great hall of thousands of pews where people recover from dementia animus - is a second set of doors. And then they are in the courtroom itself.

<HG> The doors open as you approach, creaking of ancient wood. Beyond is a clearing, within a circle of trees. Their leaves are blank paper, ready to be plucked and used.
<Sonja> Okay, no big deal. Protagonists go into the lair of evil all the time. Totally fine.
<Sonja> (spoiler alert: she's not fine)

Rhonda is in the position of the defense; Surolam sits motionless where the judge ought to be; the prosecution is a jar of blood. And the court clerks are direwolves. One wolf operates the jar of blood, which is to say that they drip a bit of blood onto a fresh parchment-leaf and read it aloud. After everyone's names have been announced, the blood asks: What is the nature of Sasha's relationship with Rhonda?

Sasha answers, in total honesty, that it is love.

<Maddie> Maddie lets the bodyguard act slip for 1.5 seconds, just long enough to make it clear that she's giggled.
<HG> "We are surprised," the blood's words continue, "that you would admit so readily to the breaking of the Windflower Law."
<Sonja> Sonja looks tense. She wants to interfere, to say "clearly it was a mistake", to encourage Sasha to take back what she said. But she can't. Not in good conscience.

And then Rhonda denies that it was ever love in the first place.

<HG> Rhonda stares directly at Sasha. "No," she says, in a voice that seems tinny and far-away. "As I have told you. She is my superior. It is not love."

Inversion

Just like that, the Court lets Rhonda free. They take Sasha instead.

<HG> There is a wolf gently unwinding a golden chain from around Rhonda. She looks at Sasha in desperation. She makes a motion, tries to reach out, but then she is carried through the doors, beyond your sight.
<HG> "She is innocent of the Law," says the blood. "And you are not."

Sasha claims, in her defense, that it would be more immoral not to love someone, under the circumstances. The jar of blood demands that Maddie and Sonja leave. Sasha tells them to look after Rhonda. The others protest, but they are fairly shoved out the door by Hugh Rosewood.

<Sonja> "Please tell me you have a plan," Sonja whispers.
<Sasha> "When was the last time I had a plan for anything."

Sonja and Maddie find themselves outside the courtroom doors, in the great hall of the Locust Court. They worry. Maddie suggests that if Sasha doesn't come out, they need to go ahead with the rebellion; Sonja just paces anxiously.

Meanwhile, in the courtroom, Hugh Rosewood forces Sasha into contact with more of the blood.

<HG> Hugh is carrying a larger jar, this one unglazed earthenware. He places it in front of Sasha. He delicately removes the lid of the jar, setting aside the waxed cotton that lined it.
<HG> He takes Sasha's hand, yanking the rest of her along without thought or sympathy, and roughly shoves it into the jar, and the blood inside.

And the blood becomes scarabs, and the scarabs pour into Sasha's mind.

Scarabs

(Technically this was run as Minisession 15.5, but it was also just two hours after the previous events, on the same day. So for the purposes of summary I'm just going to put it right here.)

Scarabs are Lord Entropy's. They sift through Sasha's mind, dispassionately. Sasha, for her part, holds herself together by remembering that she is the harbinger and keeper of Revolution.

The scarabs notice this. They look more deeply. What is Sasha doing? And why?

<HG> Slowly, they examine - or, possibly, you examine, it's hard to tell - your motivations, there.
<Sasha> The Cneph-honest truth is that she didn't expect it to get this far. She didn't expect to find words to explain what she feels. She just knows that she has seen the face of the world, and hated it, and means to burn herself out in destroying it.

And then the scarabs arrive at a conclusion, withdraw, and give Sasha her due punishment.

I'm just going to dump the next scene in here wholesale, because I cannot bear to summarize it.

The Imperial Miracle

<HG> You have heard of the greater miracles that the Imperators weave at the depths of the world. You have felt the distant waves, like earthquakes, as an Imperial Miracle thunders by and leaves the world subtly changed in its wake.
<HG> This one is not subtle, and this one is not far away.
<HG> You are being rendered unable to communicate; not by speaking, not by writing, not by leaving things undone for others to find, not by making wordless faces of desperation.
<HG> It is not a complete destruction. It allows you to continue to fight the Excrucians. And it allows you to continue to uncover the treacheries and lies and sins of the powerful, by causing them to trip and fall into admitting it in a way that would turn public opinion against them.
<HG> It is a punishment too perfect for you, too well-aimed at your soul.
<Sasha> No.
<Sasha> To try and stay the course of an Imperial Miracle is as simple and as impossible as swallowing the inrushing tide.
<Sasha> The white fire that burns in Sasha's chest offers her compromises-- ways to preserve the thing she calls a "self" in the wake of this unanswerable magic.
<Sasha> She tells the white fire that burns in her chest to go f--k itself.
<Sasha> Lord Entropy, for all his mystique, for all his greater-than-human divinity, for all his wretched sin and corruption, is still a person. And nobody has a right to treat anyone this way. Nobody has a right to play puppetmaster with a living soul.
<Sasha> She refuses. If it scars her, if it breaks her, if it kills her or makes her worse than she would have been, she will not stand for this.
<HG> The pronouncement upon the world does not change. It continues, unabated, setting you ajangle like a windchime partially sunk into roaring whitewater, tossing you about like a boat unanchored in a storm, echoing through you like a flood washing downriver, slowly and inexorably destroying town after town.
<HG> Or, perhaps, these metaphors are only partially true, because it is not water that roars through you like a hurricane's winds. It is blood.
<HG> Your very bones threaten to shake themselves free.
<HG> It might not be possible, you think, for an Imperator to un-speak an Imperial Miracle once it is spoken. But even if he could, you get that distinct sense that the Darkest Lord, the prophecied destroyer, the prophecied savior, Lord Entropy of the Evil World and the corruption-blood, would not take this back.
<HG> Tell me, then.
<HG> If you are taking two Deadly Wounds, to stand in front of an Imperial Miracle and plant your feet upon the earth and refuse to move, what are they?
<Sasha> The fire flares. It writes a law into Sasha's nature.
<Sasha> My words are too important to silence.
<Sasha> This would be enough to stay the miracle's worst effects. This would be the compromise she refused to take.
<Sasha> Instead, it flares further. Light burns in every vessel of her body. Her eyes are like torch sconces.
<Sasha> I am being consumed by my own divinity.
<HG> How curious.
<HG> This is not unprecedented. A few other Nobles have taken on the impossible task of refusing an Imperial Miracle completely. And a few have even succeeded at outlasting the Miracle itself, at standing against it and waiting for the fire to burn out.
<HG> But there is one thing that you never needed to stand against. A peculiarly-shaped hole.
<HG> Even in the depths of the prison of silence he would have trapped you in, you were still allowed to reveal the hypocrisy of power. You would still have been able to reveal Diane Spinnaker, in the process of intimidating another into silence; or the Council of the Light, plotting amongst themselves to reallocate the scarce resources of the War and use them for personal gain.
<HG> And even as the fire spills out of you, the whuff of the hot air ruffling the leaves of the parchment-trees and singeing the nearest bench of wood, you realize:
<HG> Lord Entropy might have silenced you. But he would have left you your purpose. He would have allowed you to continue your work.
<HG> It's practically an endorsement.
<Sasha> Sasha looks up, in the vague direction of Hugh Rosewood and the big jar of Entropy.
<Sasha> She looks up and smiles, and light shines through her teeth.
<Sasha> Sasha sighs, and light escapes her. She brushes herself off and singes her clothing. She looks up.
<Sasha> "I have to talk to Rhonda."
<HG> The doors open when you approach them.
<HG> They shut behind you when you leave.

On The Next Episode...

A proper Excrucian fight, not like all those weaksauce ones that have occurred so far. You know, with the big miracles and the semantics and all that.