Between The Lights, Session 21: Legacy

[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 driver threw the car into reverse. "We're running over that goddamn moose."

-- The Gospel Of Falling Off A Cliff, by Stefanija Atteberry

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This session is long! The shard of Heaven finds a new home, Sasha prepares for war, and Saul and Maddie happen upon some interesting details about Aliki's death.

The Shard of Heaven

<HG> Diane doesn't answer your question. She looks back at all of you, expression suddenly hardened. "Did you know about this?"

The shard of Heaven - the jewel that is all that is left of Sonja's remains - sits in the urn. Diane recognizes it, and her somber mood immediately evaporates. Further discussion establishes that only Saul knew about the shard's existence; the other two have never seen it before. Saul explains that Sonja swore him to silence, and didn't yet have any plans for it.

Diane demands that they protect it with their lives; she's seen shards of Heaven broken before, and cannot bear the thought of it happening again. Familia Kethredamen swears that they will protect it with more than their lives: it is all they have to preserve Sonja's legacy with, and so they will protect it with their fates and their souls.

It is Maddie, of all people, who first proposes its eventual destiny.

<Maddie> "Maybe if we plant it it will grow."
<Saul> "I think Sasha, that you should be the one to bear it, at least until we figure out where to plant it." Saul looks Sasha in the eye. "She believed in your Revolution as a way of bringing things a little closer to Heaven. It seems fitting that you should inherit it."

Everyone agrees, immediately, that the correct thing to do with the shard of Heaven is to plant it, and let it grow into something more. And Sasha has an idea - of where to grow it, and how to protect it.

<Sasha> Sasha reaches out with her spiritus dei, takes the shard in her hand. Revolution stands beside her.
<Sasha> "If I fall, Revolution will endure. If you fall, Revolution will endure. Until the last of us bound by this covenant falls, Revolution will endure."
<Sasha> "From this unyielding rock shall a new Heaven come to be built."
<Sasha> "And what do they say about Heaven?" she asks, jackal grin on her face.
<Sasha> She rams the shard into Revolution's forehead. "Heaven invades."

She plants it into something that, as a law of the world, cannot die or be hurt while there is still a Power bound to its terms. She plants it in Revolution itself.

And in so doing, she makes Revolution into more than just a weapon: she dedicates it as a conduit through which Sasha's determination and Sonja's idealism will transform the world.

An Eavesdropper

<HG> Diane suddenly shuts up, casting her eyes about. She looks into one of the light fixtures, and it flashes brightly back at her.
<HG> She reaches a hand into one of those air conditioning vents that continues to blast entirely-too-cold air. She drags someone out by the ear.
<HG> "Rumor," she says, "it's not polite to eavesdrop."

A certain someone did not openly attend the funeral, but was apparently listening through the air vents the entire time. Diane uncovers Rumor and dumps them on the floor, then waits for an explanation. But Rumor refuses to address the purpose of their visit, even after Saul demands an answer flat-out. Rumor says only that they answer to nobody.

So Maddie corners Rumor with a verbal riposte, forcing them into the position of either accepting slander or denying and destroying a rumor: they are, briefly, rendered speechless.

<Maddie> "You know, I heard Rumor got their estate from a redtooth rite on a toad," Maddie muses.
<HG> Rumor seems like they're trying to reply. Uncertain flowers keep almost showing up on their hands like the pictures on a gambling machine's wheels. But they can't.
<HG> They can't directly refute a rumor.

Maddie pounces on this weakness, and this time successfully forces Rumor to admit that they were here to eavesdrop on the proceedings. Rumor claims that they needed to know what was happening. Diane stands her ground: Rumor wanted to know what was happening. Rumor is suitably cowed by this show of Ancient resolve.

Familia Konstanian tells Rumor to cut it out. After another irritated response, Rumor finally complies. Diane attempts to drag Rumor back in by the ear to finish explaining what they were doing, only for Rumor to leave anyway, with a still-arguing Diane in tow.

To Business

Sasha goes to Locus Liana, and consults with Claudia on how to kill Anze.

<Sasha> Sasha is back in her usual Look. Her sword has a very shiny new stone set in the guard. Her uniform has a coffee stain on the apron. A raven perches on her shoulder.
<Sasha> "I need help killing an Excrucian Strategist."
<Sasha> Sasha doesn't bother with preamble or formality because Claudia doesn't give a s--t. They're alike in that way.
<HG> "All right. Who and where?"
<Sasha> "Anze Torquil. We might be able to chose the battlefield. I have bait."

Claudia requests the Raven's files on Anze Torquil via magical fax machine, receives them, and begins going down a mental checklist. What is Anze after? How much do they know about Anze's Bane? Do they want her gone, or permanently dead? What evidence do they have of Anze's actions and methods? How much control do they have over the terms of engagement?

<HG> "You can push a Strategist out of the world by causing them enough grave wounds of any sort. But to kill them you need to induce a total contradiction inside them."
<HG> "So we need to know as much as we can."
<HG> She knows what she's doing.
<HG> It's probably reassuring, actually.
<Sasha> Considering the last time Sasha met this woman she got her ass handed to her, it's a welcome relief.

Sasha answers these questions: Maddie and her Estate; not more than the Raven does; permanently dead; they know of one confirmed death (Sonja) and one confirmed victim (Rhonda), from which they know that Anze isolates people, forges relationships, and then betrays; they have bait.

And how much, Claudia asks, do they know about her Anchors?

Mad Science

Smash cut to Maddie in her "science lab" attempting to Anchor hat, sunglasses, and doombot. (Sasha relinquished possession of the Doombot to Maddie, since Maddie was collecting all the other Anchors too.)

After a brief discussion, she Anchors Hattie, and gains Hattie's power of possession (but doesn't bother using it and perches Hattie on her head instead).

The sunglasses require a bit more persuasion. Maddie promises that once Anze is dead, they can leave her if they want. They attempt to explode instead, but Maddie interrupts the process (a miniature Flurry), casting the Treasure miracle to Anchor the glasses before any actual explosion happens. Now trapped under Maddie's control, they explain that they can do anything that starts with the letters A and R. Augmented reality. Autonomous research. Annihilation resistance.

<Maddie> She hoists Doombot up and tosses it into like... some kind of replica of Frankenstein's resurrection machine from whichever is Maddie's favorite iteration of Cinema Frankenstein
<Maddie> (The machine doesn't actually do anything.)
<Maddie> She flips a heavy lever. There's no lightning, but you could almost mistake the flashing lights for lightning if you crossed your eyes.
<Maddie> "Live!" she shouts

Finally, Maddie hauls the doombot into a Mad Science Machine Of Some Description and pretends to revive it with flashing lights. On the rules end, Maddie's a bit low on TMP and has decided to just take it as a mundane Anchor for now. Because she didn't actually give it any miraculous energy, the doombot continues to just sit there, unsettlingly inert and silent even in the animist Mythic Reality: the self-destruct completely and thoroughly killed it.

<HG> "You realize it's still dead, right?" the sunglasses say, from around your temples.
<Maddie> "Yes. But appearances matter."
<Maddie> "When the time comes, it'll live again, for me."
<Maddie> "Also I am absolutely going to take it somewhere to get it struck by real lightning when we have the time."

All this done, Maddie texts Sasha saying that she's Anchored all three.

So it's Cappy, AR, and a Doombot

It is at this point that Sasha notices something peculiar about these stolen Anchors: they bear a suspicious resemblance to items from popular media. Sasha briefly tosses about the (admittedly harebrained) idea that Anze's vice might in fact be making said references. Claudia replies, in her usual dry and humorless manner, that the Order of the Falling Stars destroyed the Strategist dying of pop culture references a long time ago.

<HG> "We already killed that one back when he tried to eat Pilgrim's Progress."

Claudia suggests that Anze might be using the pop culture references to have common points of cultural contact with the people who she is trying to influence, then asks to see Anze's Anchors: perhaps they might have useful tactical knowledge.

With Aspect 3 perfect timing, this is exactly when Maddie shows up in the doorway, wearing the hat and sunglasses and carrying the doombot slung over her shoulder. Maddie tells Claudia that "ARthur" (as she has nicknamed the sunglasses) is the most talkative. Claudia tries to ask the sunglasses for more information on Anze, but the sunglasses are snarkily unhelpful. (Claudia, for her part, continues to be stoic.) Eventually Claudia concludes that she needs to ask Toby for assistance with this technology stuff.

Book Learning

Saul has been spending his time trying to find more information on Anze Torquil in the books that line the Chancel's back corridors. After a few hours flipping through books, he realizes that he has miracles now and they could make the process substantially faster. He picks a Lesser Sacrifice of Metaphors. I try to warn Saul's player that this will probably have knockon effects, because if he removes the "demands effort for comprehension" from books, it will apply to absolutely everyone. But everyone else eggs Saul's player on.

<Sasha> since when does familia kethradamen care about knockon effects

Anyway: the Lesser Sacrifice makes all the books instantly comprehensible at a touch.

<HG> All right. You drag your finger across the spine of a book and suddenly find yourself comprehending everything in it.
<HG> Run a hand along a shelf and get the same.
<Saul> Now just to go touch every book in the chancel!
<Saul> That's... a lot of books, Saul thinks to himself, suddenly realizing he might've gone a bit in over his head.

Saul and Maddie then spend most of the next few days running by bookshelves slapping every single book in Locus Kethredamen, using an Aspect 4 miracle to make their minds fast enough to comprehend the information. This is when I realize that that's two consecutive Powers of Metaphors who decided to read every single book in the Chancel, and we all conclude that this is just a thing that Powers of Metaphors do. So... what if it was also a tradition, for Powers of Metaphors to leave a legacy of diaries and notes for their successors?

Upon realizing that these diaries, which were previously written in code so deep that it would take a miracle to comprehend them, contain sensitive information, Saul realizes what he's done and hurriedly puts the "demands effort for comprehension" property back into the books of the Chancel.

What's the sensitive information, you may ask?

<HG> Anyway, Saul.
<HG> You've found something interesting.
<HG> A few years before her death, Aliki suddenly dropped all her social contacts and became really secretive.
<HG> It looked really suspicious.
<HG> Everyone outside the Familia assumed it was a trick.
<HG> But they knew better.
<HG> Maddie would know this too, from direct experience.
<HG> Who else do you know that pulls people away from all their social contacts...?

Suspiciously familiar circumstances surrounding the death of Aliki of the Dark.

Suspiciously Anze-shaped circumstances.

A Refusal

All this investigation done, Saul brings Sasha and Maddie into one of Locus Kethredamen's maximally warded conference-rooms. Sasha asks: what's the occasion? Saul describes what he's found.

<Saul> He motions for them to follow him, then he leads them into a meeting room. "I found out what killed Aliki."
<Sasha> "Her cutting out her heart and feeding it to me."
<HG> you're not wrong
<Sasha> Sasha narrows her eyes. "I don't see the relevance."
<Saul> "Anze Torquil did the same thing to her that she did to Rhonda. Cut her support networks away until she eventually self-destructed. That's why she got so secluded towards the end."

Maddie puts two and two together: this must be why Aliki stopped attending everything. Anze must have peeled Aliki away from life, in preparation for peeling Fog away from Maddie herself.

Sasha refuses to acknowledge that Aliki could ever be a "victim" of Anze Torquil. She insists that Aliki was always in control, even to the very end. Saul starts trying to argue this, but then Maddie tells everyone to focus on the real enemy.

<Maddie> "I don't think it changes anything either way. What we have to do is the same."
<Sasha> "Three times, then, has she attacked this Familia."
<Sasha> That divine fire burns in Sasha's eyes, coils around her words, singes her hair and lights up her blade.
<Sasha> "There will not be a fourth."

On The Next Episode...

The Familia prepares to take the fight to Anze, and encounters an unexpected obstacle.