Between The Lights, Session 19: Sonja

[liquidcitrus]

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

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No more stalling. No more training. No more love triangles, no more sandwiches, no more chess. There was nothing left for her to do but to walk into the future.

There was a sort of comfort, in that lack of choice. It meant that she couldn't do anything wrong anymore.

-- Sunstories, by Carol Paresi

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Today, a long and emotionally draining session. And, in hindsight, one of the most important in the campaign.

The Retelling

Sonja Aronsdottir begins by speaking a miracle of aspiration. She no longer wants to be from a book that left her without a culture or a home to call her own. She reaches deep into her Author as a Treasure, and retells the way in which she came into the world.

<Sonja> The miracle is this: her book? The badly written one that didn't have a shred of authenticity? That never happened. Not really.
<Sonja> With her Author as an anchor and her own miraculous nature, she speaks to the world that her book was written in a different way. A real way, one that would seem much more plausible to actually happen. One that puts effort into understanding the culture, that tells a genuinely compelling and heart-warming tale.
<Sonja> Because really, her story is hers to tell, not reality's.

It is a Word of Command. It wounds her deeply and fundamentally. She remembers both of her pasts and, as a Divine Wound with an Affliction, is now suspended in a position of active confusion across both simultaneously.

But Sonja Aronsdottir is not the only person who can speak an Imperial Miracle into the world. Anze Torquil sees Sonja's Imperial pronouncement upon the wind, how it is slowly rolling across the world and rewriting it all, and inserts a single, critical scene into Sonja's story:

A scene in which Anze Torquil was an oracle atop a mountain, who spoke a true prophecy, and gave Sonja the weapon that could shatter the evil overlord's only weakness.

Sea-glass

Keith decides that enough is enough, and tells the rest of the Familia to go retrieve Sasha from the glass. (Rhonda had hauled out the lump of glass containing a still-complaining Sasha, and tossed her through the airlock onto a continental shelf somewhere.) Sonja's in no fit state to go adventuring, and Maddie is too busy trying to piece the sunglasses back together to run off like that; Maddie's mother and Sonja's author go in their stead. Sonja reaches through her bracelet-book-incarnation on her author's wrist, and gives him the minimal spark of Aspect needed to go free-diving and push the glass slowly up onto the beach.

Once past the waves and told that her Imperator said to retrieve her, Sasha cuts a hole in the glass using her Revolution-sword and steps out.

<Sasha> "I miss anything?"
<Maddie> "My darling daughter got some broken sunglasses to go with her hat."
<Sonja> "My protagonist rewrote my book, apparently."
<Sonja> "Good times."

It is at this point that the last one of Diane's Anchors - who turns out to be a woman named Annie - surfaces. Previously they had only seen her in the dress that glittered like a white sand beach; here they are on the white sand beach and she just bodysurfs in, instead. She is apparently Diane's wife, and informs them that she is signing to Revolution because Diane has signed to Revolution. This is not a question.

The Familia, despite misgivings about the fact that she was broken by Diane and therefore that this decision is coerced, let her sign on. She disappears back into the waves.

The Glasses Are Talking

Meanwhile, Maddie - continuing with her quest to claim all of Anze's anchors - pieces together the sunglasses, attempting to... rescuscitate them? In a mad science lab? By wrapping them in scotch tape? Look, this is Maddie we're talking about here, I don't know how it works either.

(Though the question to "how is she suppressing being on fire" is that she wraps herself in a fireproof blanket and manipulates everything through tweezers held between the folds, which actually sort of makes sense.)

<HG> The first coherent words you get out of it are "Why the hell are you talking to me like a surgeon? We're in a science lab!"
<Maddie> "Surgeons are totally scientists."
<HG> It makes a frustrated noise, and clicks the other lens into place itself.
<HG> "Now kindly unwrap me from this tape before I try to smash your nose in."

The glasses turn out to be 300% done with Maddie's shenanigans. They also turn out to know an untranslatable language from beyond Creation. Maddie immediately starts taking notes.

<HG> As you unwrap the tape, the glasses wriggle out, then stop short, looking at Hattie. "[untranslatable], what are you doing here!?"
<Maddie> "...wait. What was that you said?"
<HG> "What, [untranslatable]? It means [continued untranslatable gibberish]."
<Maddie> Under the fireproof blanket, Maddie's fog-fire eyes light up.
<Maddie> "I need you to teach me that word."

The Seer on the Mountain

So, there is a mountain in remote Iceland - a real location, due to Sonja's miracle ensuring that her book now has far more historical accuracy - that Sonja climbs, in hope of finding the wisdom of Anze Torquil the oracle once more.

<HG> She's there, exactly as you expected. Same robes. Same branch of hawthorn in her right hand. Same blindfold, tied on with an exceptionally elaborate knot in the back.
<HG> "You escaped your book," she says, quietly. "So, so did I."

And so: here sits Anze Torquil, exactly as Sonja remembered. Anze maintains the fiction that she is from Sonja's world. Sonja, now thoroughly freaked out that someone from her book could be an Excrucian, tries to save her with words. Because she is made of words, and her words have never failed her before.

<HG> "Kethredamen never did give you a choice," says Anze. "He just reached in and took you."
<HG> "How do you know that someone who would do that is on the right side?"

Only, this time words do fail her. Anze Torquil deftly parries every emotion, disproves every logical argument. Despite all of Sonja's best efforts at YA Protagonist speeches and acts, Anze refuses to listen to her. This is the first time Sonja has been truly unable to persuade someone to stop fighting. She begins to despair.

<HG> Anze is obscured by drifting volcanic smoke. "Ages and ages of heroes and villains have come to me. All have perished in their time. I continue to endure."
<Sonja> Sonja takes a step back. Tears threaten to well up in her eyes. "I don't want to fight you."
<HG> "The right side of history shall prevail in the end."
<Sonja> "There won't be a history left if you have your way. I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry, but I can't just stand by and do nothing." Sonja turns to leave. She clenches her fists tightly.

Sonja's impending mental breakdown is rudely interrupted by the fact that Anze Torquil sends her falling off a cliff.

Help

Anze Torquil cuts Sonja's footing out from under her, causing her to slip down a precipitous drop.

Meanwhile, Sasha reflexively reaches for her sword's spirit to come to Sonja's aid. And so Revolution swoops in, grabs Sonja as she falls, and asks what she was doing there. Sonja explains.

<Sonja> Sonja glances back where she had met Anze. "Anze was there. We spoke. She's from my book, she got taken out of it too."
<Sasha> "She's not."
<Sasha> "She stole your past and made it hers to manipulate you."
<Sasha> Revolution actually has an emotion right now. It is fury
<Sasha> "She will pay dearly."

Revolution, now galvanized against Anze Torquil, puts Sonja down at the bottom of the cliff, and tries to call upon all the signatories of Revolution for help. (Offscreen, I'd let Sasha's player go recruit a handful of characters to add to Revolution, so there's actually quite a few more that I could have added. But for sanity's sake I didn't even try to fit most of them into this scene.)

<Sasha> let the entire New Society know that here is an enemy of the world

A dog who also happens to be a Noble arrives. Anze Torquil throws the branch that she has in her hands and compels the dog to run off to catch it, immediately removing said dog from the scene. Punctuation's vultures circle, confused, because the sulfuric fumes of volcano smell more rotten and dead than Anze does. Nobody else is in evidence.

Revolution internally sighs and goes in for the kill herself.

A Fight on a Cliff

At this point we go into a detailed miraculous conflict that I can't weave into nearly as pretty a narrative as usual; here's the blow-by-blow.

Revolution, acting with Sasha's guidance, tries to cut Anze down; she finds herself running into the Auctoritas that Anze carries passively, and Sasha adds a Bond for Strike: she is trying to cut Anze down because Anze hurt Rhonda. (As has been established in the previous session, with the crystal ball recording where Anze demonstrated being Rhonda's abuser.)

Anze is cut through deeply, Revolution going through like butter. No effect seems evident, though that's because an Excrucian Strategist can Destroy having been wounded and just bleed off MP (which is actually serious harm to her; if a Strategist runs out of MP they have to disappear back into the Void).

Anze cuts out Sonja's ability to see and hear. Sonja Wounds against this, mitigating it to merely being blind. She stumbles around in a daze, struggling and failing to orient herself.

Sasha reaches through and attempts to do an Imperial Miracle of Revolution to destroy Anze's World-Breaker's Hand. A bit of negotiation and a "Wound" on Anze's part later, Anze is unable to use the World-Breaker's Hand on anyone other than Sasha. (Which is an effect Anze will wriggle out of later, because Strategist, but for the purposes of this conflict it's out.)

With one hand, Anze reaches through Sasha's mystic link - the trail of miracle that extends between Sasha's presence in this scene and her physical body - and uses it to remotely punch Sasha. (She's Immortal. It's fine.) Sasha takes this as a sign that she's doing something right, and grins.

But with the other hand, Anze Torquil picks up a small rock, and hucks it down at Sonja (who is at the bottom of the cliff that she is on top of) with unerring aim. It hits Sonja's skull at terminal velocity. Sonja, who is blind and disoriented, mitigates this down from a cracked skull into a concussion with another Wound.

Metal

Sonja, instead of shielding herself or trying to counterattack, screams up at the combatants to please stop fighting. They either don't hear, or pretend not to hear.

Anze Torquil hurls herself onto Revolution's blade. Revolution nails her through the heart...

...or, rather, the bomb implanted in Anze Torquil's heart. Which explodes, sending red-hot shards of metal in all directions.

Revolution, who cannot die or be hurt while there is a Power bound by her terms (which is an Affliction common to all res), is entirely unaffected by the flying flaming shrapnel. Unfortunately, there is someone underneath them that is still entirely flammable and has not made any move to defend herself.

A shroud of glittering hot steel falls through the air towards Sonja Aronsdottir, who stares, unknowing, at the sky. As it descends, she says, disbelievingly, "But I'm the hero..."

The shrapnel, still more than hot enough to ignite paper, hits Sonja's last Health Level. Sonja is Defeated.

Revolution, who can do nothing but fight, who is made of steel and destruction, who has no talent save a cutting edge: Revolution screams, and stabs Anze Torquil again and again until all that is left is a charred titanium skeleton.

Engraved upon it is three words.

Actually a Doombot

The Aftermath

At this point I briefly duck out and negotiate with Sonja's player as to whether she wants Sonja back; technically, by the rules as written, Sonja's player doesn't have any say in this owing to not having any Health Levels, but I wanted to be polite and ask. Sonja's player tells me that this is a final death. And so her fate is writ upon the world.

Revolution, stunned by the fact that she couldn't salvage this situation, constitutionally unable to help or heal, flees back into her sword-form. In lieu of forcing her to act, and with a vague hope of possibly one day making a mechanical knight, Sasha reaches through and anchors the Doombot. Through the Doombot, she examines the situation.

There is a body, charred beyond recognition, at the bottom of the cliff. Once upon a time it was Sonja Aronsdottir. Now it will never be again.

Prosaic Reality is already papering over the fight and explosion by proposing that this was a very small volcanic eruption.

Sasha tells her cellphone to notify Maddie of what happened. Maddie does not believe it.

Finding herself helpless in the face of this, Sasha breaks down into tears. Diane offers... well, she can't do sympathy. Understanding, then.

<HG> Diane comes to Sasha, then.
<HG> "Hello," she says, quietly, kneeling down to Sasha's level. "I believe I know what she's doing."
<HG> "She's reducing the number of pieces on the board."
<HG> "It's what I would do."
<Sasha> "Is this supposed to be comforting?"
<Sasha> "No, it wouldn't be. Heaven doesn't do comfort."
<HG> "You wanted to kill an Excrucian Strategist."
<Sasha> "I wanted to."
<Sasha> "Now I am going to."

On The Next Episode...

A funeral.