Between The Lights, Session 18: Sunglasses

[liquidcitrus]

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

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The Bay of Fundy has the largest differences between high and low tide, at 18 feet. The scientists say it's because of the geography of the area funneling all the water. But here, I'm going to tell you what really happened...

-- miracle-chaser, on Livejournal

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Today, a relatively short session. Someone is wearing sunglasses.

Vien (again)

(Sasha is still missing, and as such Revolution is currently traveling with the party.)

They leave the kiln. The sigil of Revolution Diane adopts is a sword-shaped hairstick through a bun.

The fact that Sasha and Revolution cut Diane off is already having consequences: Vien is still here, after all. And she is absolutely furious.

<HG> Vien spits, "What did you do to her!?"
<HG> Diane looks, mildly, at Vien. "It would be best," she says, "for you to tell the Society what happened. Maybe they'll figure out which way the wind's blowing. Or maybe some of them will share your fury, and plot revenge, which is probably the best chance you'll get against us. But in the meantime, the War awaits."

Vien stalks away. The rest of them think about what next to do against Anze. Maddie decides that now she's going to take all of Anze's anchors - immediately reflecting this in a rephrased Bond on her character sheet - and calls on both Fog and Hattie to help her find another one.

All the land from here to the Pacific Ocean?

<HG> HG: [The weird lights] getting installed means someone is doing the installing.

The place is in the Alps. Diane turns out to have a truly impressive number of airline miles stored up, and Aspect 0 means that spending a few hours scrambling up the mountain can be assumed to happen; thus we cut to when they actually find the next Anchor.

Underneath heavy rain, the party finds that someone has been driving stakes into the ground, with those weird Estate-breaking lights on top of them; the lights lead them to a lake, with a cabin next to it. Next to the cabin, someone with a park ranger uniform and triangle sunglasses is busily installing more lights. She yells, over the rain, that they need a permit.

<Maddie> "I own all of the land from here to the Pacific Ocean, so I get to make the rules. You need a permit or you need to go elsewhere."
<HG> Laughter.
<Maddie> "Come out here and let's talk like reasonable people. I'm sure we can come to an agreement."
<Maddie> "I promise I won't bite."
<Maddie> Maddie is crossing her fingers behind her back.

Sunglasses protests that they don't need one, because they are already a park ranger. Maddie retorts that she can make the rules as to what needs a permit because Maddie... owns... all the land... from here to the Pacific Ocean? Look, I don't know how it works either. It's immaterial anyway, since the shard blows it off.

Here Revolution tries to cut the sunglasses in half, fails because they're covered under Anze's ambient Auctoritas, and decides to follow through with the motion anyway for intimidation purposes.

Meaningless

<Maddie> "Anyway -- I'm not actually here to talk about the permit. I'll let it slide this once." Maddie: "I want to offer your... benefactor... a wager, if you catch my drift."
<HG> The park ranger turns around, and taps the temples of their sunglasses. When they turn back to face you, they have different body language and there's a different voice issuing from their mouth. You probably recognize it. <HG> "Don't waste my time," Anze Torquil says, in a clipped annoyed voice.

Maddie manages to convince sunglasses-person to manifest Anze Torquil - who shows up via Treasure-possession - and proposes a wager: they'll name words at each other until one person says a word the other doesn't know, and whoever names the last word wins. Maddie also unilaterally decides that if she wins, she gets the Anchor -- and if Anze wins, she'll get Maddie's heart.

Anze more or less goes "why the hell not" and names a word from some deep-in-the-Not language that Maddie would have no way to recognize. Maddie calls up Sonja for help. Instead of helping Maddie figure out the meaning of the word, Sonja takes another tack and cuts the symbol-referent connection on Anze's word, thus making it completely meaningless.

<HG> Anze says it again. She looks briefly confused.
<Maddie> "...nice try, but gibberish doesn't count."
<Maddie> Maddie does a mic nettle drop
<HG> The figure slowly takes off the sunglasses, and steps on them to crush them.
<HG> You get 1MP. For the fact that you broke a Bond.
<Maddie> "Hey, No More Sunglasses. You got a name?"
<HG> There is someone standing at the edge of the mountain lake. They sway slightly, and then fall.

Anze refuses to concede and breaks the sunglasses (which were the anchor - the person was incidental). Maddie scoops up the remains. Sonja and Revolution help carry the now unconscious previous host of the sunglasses back to the Chancel.

A Crystal Ball

When they return to the Chancel, Keith says that Sasha has some mail. He holds up a crystal ball. The Familia picks it up, and holds onto it for when Sasha returns.

The crystal ball contains a recording of Rhonda Caseworth meeting with Anze Torquil. Anze attempts to drag Rhonda back into a relationship that has abusive patterns. Rhonda refuses to go back to that dynamic, but also disavows any further involvement on anyone's side of the conflict. Both leave unsatisfied.

On The Next Episode...

Sonja Aronsdottir's destiny approaches.