Between The Lights, Session 22: Searching

[liquidcitrus]

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

---

She woke with a start, to darkness all around her; to a sensation of floating; to a silence that pressed thickly into her ears.

"Is this what it's like to be dead?" she asked; but her voice was swallowed by the night.

-- Sunstories, by Carol Paresi

---

Today, Maddie goes looking for some other Anchor of Anze's, and Sasha receives an unpleasant surprise.

Strategy

<Maddie> A scene of everyone gathered in a war room.
<Maddie> Maddie is standing at a podium (on a stool, obviously) and pointing at a blackboard as she narrates this. She's wearing a graduation cap on top of Hattie.
<Maddie> "Which leaves one more anchor for me to get my hands on before we take the fight to her."

So, the first part of the session is mostly spent discussing what to do next. The most obvious answer, offers Maddie's player, is to go look for more Anchors. Both in-character and out-of-character, we try to figure out what the next Anchor of Anze's might be. Eventually everyone comes to the conclusion that, since every other one of Anze's anchors is a warped replica of something from pop culture, this one should be too. Eventually we settle on making it an elephant with wings for ears. You know, like Dumbo.

Anyway, Sasha, Saul, and Maddie argue about whether to even bother with the elephant. While Maddie wants to search for the elephant because she wants to deprive Anze of every Anchor, and Saul thinks that it would be fitting to take all her regalia before going after her, Sasha just wants to get this over with and find Anze now.

<Sasha> Sasha looks even more tired than usual. One begins to question her dedication to the silver sword and black uniform bit, given the situation at hand.
<Sasha> "Maddie, do we really need this f--king elephant?" she asks.
<Maddie> "We need to cut all of Anze's support if we want to take her down for real."
<Saul> "Agreed. Besides, it's what she deserves given... her methods."
<Saul> "In the worst case we could question it. It's entirely possible that it would have valuable intel."
<Sasha> "We have three of her Anchors already. While I'm all for poetic justice, I also want her dead."
<Saul> "We all do, if you'll recall. I just think this is a good place to start." Saul crosses his arms.
<Maddie> "You guys can run off if you like, but I'm going to meet the elephant with your help or without it."
<Sasha> "I don't really care if it happens in an aestheticly pleasing way or not. We have nothing to prove to anybody, and it's not like she'll appreciate the irony when she's doing whatever Strategists do when they're dead."

It is here that Claudia, who is also there as a consultant on fighting Excrucians, brings up a very good point: poetic justice and irony actually work extremely well as Excrucian-killing tools, because, well, this is Nobilis, and Nobilis runs on mythic rules. Sasha shakes her head and lets everyone overrule her.

Now for the next question: how are they going to find an elephant?

<Sasha> "The last three we found because they were trying to f--k with us."
<Sasha> I don't think she'll be throwing yet another Anchor at us."
<Sasha> "...Regardless of how effective the last one was."
<Maddie> "Right. This time we go on the offensive."
<Maddie> "...ARthur, can you do Animal wRangling?"
<Sasha> "Ranglin'."
<HG> "... I'll allow it."
<Maddie> Maddie sighs. "I'm bad with magic toys. This is going to take some time."

Valerian

<Sasha> I think while Maddie is furrowing her brow about how to make Animal Ranglin' happen, Sasha's discreetly asking Raven if it knows anything.
<HG> The Raven is notable by its sudden absence.

Sasha finds that she can't get information from the Raven because she can't find the Raven at all. Diane attempts the same and fails.

Dismayed, she explains: there is only one way for someone to get cut off from the Accords. Most of the rest of the Society has to gather at the Engine, and collectively disavow the existence of the people they wish to exile. The last time this happened was more than three hundred years ago.

<HG> "The Valerian Clause," she breathes. "This is a problem."
<HG> "The Accords at Babylon contain a rule," she says, "that if a majority of Noble society could gather at the Engine and agree to eject someone from the Accords..."
<Sasha> "...Wait, the majority? The... that's like a hundred and fifty people."
<HG> "It's not that the majority has to agree. It's that the majority has to be physically present, travel away from their duties, leave behind their work."
<HG> "That's far harder than just getting them to say yes."
<Sasha> Sasha grins like a jackal, but some worry shows through. "...Mission accomplished, isn't it?"

Sasha points out that, well, they did manage to unify Society.

Against them.

Sasha Puts Her Foot In Her Mouth Again

Meanwhile, Claudia of Constantinople, who can't be ejected because her soul is permanently bonded to the Web of Khedeb Neret and the Falling Stars, demonstrates that she is perfectly capable of pulling out and asking the Raven for the information they wanted. Upon seeing the Raven, seeing the Society she was in all her life, Diane Spinnaker breaks down.

<HG> "... ah. Of course she'd keep hers, she's in the Stars, they can't kick her out of that! And yet here I am."
<HG> Diane buries her face in her hands.
<Sasha> Unthinkingly, Sasha blurts out: "Where was this compassion when I lost Sonja?"
<HG> She stands up, and at a brisk walk leaves the room. There are tear tracks on her cheeks.

Sasha puts her foot in her mouth again. Diane leaves the room in tears.

Saul follows, to try and console her. He tries to commiserate with her about losing friends, at which Diane snaps: she's used to losing friends to death, Nobles fight in a war. This is not losing friends. This is a collective betrayal which almost certainly included many people she believed to be her friends.

<HG> "I didn't lose them. They made an active effort to abandon me."
<HG> "Probably Vien organized it. Mixolydia was almost certainly there, she's had her eyes on my position since 1885, the Master of Corn would be all too happy to knock Heaven down a peg, Mary, I don't know if Mary was there but if she's still crushing on Vien she'd probably go along with it..."
<HG> The words rush out.
<HG> "I don't know! That's the worst part! They cut me off in a way that I can't tell who actually did it because I can't access the records anymore!"
<HG> "Lady Acera probably wasn't that type but I can't be sure --"

Saul silently comforts Diane as she panic-spirals about who might have participated in kicking her out.

The Beach Episode And The Japan Episode: A Two For One Deal

<HG> Claudia can tell you where they last saw a flying elephant with huge ears that didn't belong there
<HG> Okinawa
<HG> Diane's infinite airline miles can get you there fine, you probably rent a car or something to where it was last sighted, you presumably poke around and ask people where to see the elephant you saw in the news the other day like a dumb tourist, etc etc
<HG> After you have been pointed to at least three separate local zoos that contain only elephants with normal ears and no weird ones, you are somehow on a boat with a tour group going to an island.

I decide to skip over the less interesting parts of the search for a certain elephant, and put the PCs in with a tour group in Okinawa. After a brief digression about what they're wearing and how much they know about Japan (apparently Saul was stationed in a military base in Japan for a while, and Maddie has only ever watched dubbed anime), they arrive. They then immediately leave out the back door instead of going with their tour group, heading up a mountain for a better view.

<Sasha> yeah okay I'm going to do a Persona 4 Lesser Enchantment of "targets the unusual" on a paper airplane from Sasha's limitless supply of mundane bulls--t from the 7-11
<Sasha> then Sasha's going to toss it and wait for it to target the unusual
<Saul> The Monkey's Paw grants your wish and the paper plane just keeps bopping Maddie in the head repeatedly
<Sasha> Sasha snaps her fingers.
<Sasha> "This isn't 'unusual' as far as Nobles go."
<Sasha> "I'm looking for unusual as far as elephants go."
<Sasha> She scowls at the paper airplane.
<HG> The paper airplane wilts a bit, then flies away again.

Sasha uses a bit of Persona to get a paper airplane to point them towards the elephant. It takes a while, but eventually they find the elephant. Up a tree.

<HG> It begs you, "Please don't hurt me."

On The Next Episode...

Tying up some loose ends, recruiting the last few allies, and so on.