Between The Lights, Session 23/24: Loneliness

[liquidcitrus]

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

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Did you know?

Ten years ago, a city of ten thousand people disappeared into the Kalahari Desert, and we forgot they existed. The only evidence of their existence is their public art, which includes twenty swirly abstract bronzes that turn out to be replications of physics simulations of water turbulence, fifteen statues of small children with bears for heads, and one that looks like a marble bust of Thomas Jefferson from a distance but, up close, is made entirely of hands with raised middle fingers.

-- did-you-kno.mumblr.nob

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Today, things converge.

Session 23 was extremely short (it was, like, one scene long), so I have rolled it into session 24 for the purposes of these logs.

The Lonely Elephant

<HG> There's an elephant. In a tree. Because of course there would be an elephant in a tree, where else would you find an elephant?

The elephant the PCs found in the previous session explains, timidly, that it was sent to keep watch. And then continues: Anze told it that it wasn't even allowed to use force in self-defense. The PCs are about to explain that they just want information on where Anze is, but then Maddie decides to announce that they're going to kill Anze.

As is usual for Anze Torquil's other victims, the elephant has no family or friends, has been completely isolated, and shows more than a few signs of being emotionally abused. Maddie says that she'd be willing to protect the elephant if it lets Maddie take her away from Anze, and Sasha promises that it has friends on the other side: all of Anze's other former anchors. In response, the elephant declares that it is not allowed to have friends. Sasha vehemently disagrees with the idea that someone might be "not allowed" to have friends.

<HG> "I can't have friends."
<Sasha> "Wait wait wait."
<Sasha> "Who the f--k says you can't have friends?"
<Sasha> "I have friends, and f--king look at me."
<HG> "You're allowed."
<Sasha> "We don't give a single solitary s--t about 'Allowed' in this establishment."
<Sasha> Sasha taps the handle of Revolution affectionately.

They drop the "friends" angle and go for Maddie's promise to keep the elephant safe, instead. Elephant is skeptical, because nobody around them keeps any promises. After a bit of discussion, though, the elephant voices a forbidden thought: Anze said that she'd let up on the emotional abuse if it kept to her orders... but Anze Torquil doesn't keep her promises either, so what's the point?

So they tell the elephant about all of the promises they made in Sonja's memory. And how they're still looking to keep them now. And, finally, that Saul promised to kill Anze, so pointing them towards Anze would help them demonstrate their willingness to keep that promise.

<Sasha> Sasha taps her feet. "So, uh. When our friend died, we all made her a promise."
<Sasha> "Maddie promised to write her into the nature of Fog, and so she did, even though now Fog is kind of afraid of her."
<Sasha> "I promised to grow a new Heaven in her name, and I burned that promise into my own dream."
<Sasha> "...And Saul promised to kill Anze. We're kind of working on that now."
<Sasha> "So if you want to see us fulfil a promise, it'd help if we knew where she was."

Eventually Elephant concludes that Anze didn't tell it to stop watching Familia Kethredamen, and didn't tell it to keep her position secret. So it decides to go with them, the better to "watch" them, and point out the right direction.

Pigeon (Reprise)

A bit later, the PCs are accosted by a pigeon. Sasha, after recovering from the disorientation that the bird on her shoulder is not the Raven and cannot do Raven things, confirms: every last signatory of Revolution has been ejected from the Society of Flowers. And thus: Megan Kieros, currently incarnated in that pigeon on Sasha's shoulder, congratulates them.

<HG> "They didn't even manage that many for me. Consider me impressed."

Then Megan says that she'd like to assist them in killing Anze Torquil.

<HG> "I think..." She looks at Saul, pensively, through a pigeon's beady eye. "I'd like to help you with Anze."
<Saul> Saul blinks. "Huh. That's unexpected, though hardly unwelcome."
<HG> "No promises on actually signing on, you understand. But I'll make the attempt, and then we'll see after that."
<Saul> "Absolutely. Anything you can do will be helpful." Saul smiles. "Welcome aboard."

Sasha asks Megan if she knows anything about Anze Torquil. Megan replies that she saw Aliki die. Sasha stops short.

<Sasha> Sasha opens her mouth. Closes her mouth. Opens and closes it again.
<Sasha> "New York," she says out of nowhere. "F--king New York. Of course you saw that."

Here Megan Kieros briefly muses on the experience of spending those last few months and years watching Aliki self-destruct under the influence of Anze Torquil: after a while it stopped being about the schadenfreude of seeing someone powerful brought low, and just became sad.

Sasha begins winding up for a monologue about how no, she is certain that Aliki's agency wasn't overridden by Anze, that Aliki gave her heart to Sasha of her own free will, only to be interrupted. Megan explains that Aliki's death blindsided Anze, and made Anze retreat for a year trying to repair her plans.

<Sasha> Sasha grins. "THAT sounds like the Aliki of the Dark I knew. For er. About a hundred seconds."

Bane

It is here that Megan reveals one more thing: at the moment Sasha was ennobled, Anze Torquil had nearly finished isolating Maddie Clarkson from all social support.

<Sasha> "So. What, throwing Rhonda at me, Flowering Diane and Maddie, whatever the f--k she was doing with Hattie-- that was, uh, her flailing about like a chicken with its head cut off?"
<HG> "She was almost finished cutting Maddie off from everyone when you came up."
<Sasha> Sasha sputters, her confident facade beaten into small pieces and scattered on the wind like dust. She looks at Maddie.

Maddie puts on a brave face, claiming that even if she didn't have friends (she didn't) she totally had admirers, but Megan retorts that her "admirers" were either fair-weather friends or basically powerless. Sasha, for her part, is suddenly intensely regretting not using the Sight on Maddie when they first met; she says something limp about how Maddie looks fine now, but nobody's confidence is restored in the slightest.

Maddie, reading the mood, tells everyone to focus, and points out that they all knew Anze Torquil was after her, so this isn't new information.

So Sasha asks if Megan knows anything about Anze Torquil's death, and Megan points out that Anze's favorite tactic - her only tactic, really - is forcing people into total social isolation. This is when everyone realizes the direction of the trail I've been leaving them this entire time:

This Strategist has the power to force her Bane onto others to manipulate and torment them; twists her own curse into a source of dreadful power.

Anze Torquil is dying of loneliness.

Practicalities

So everyone discusses strategy: first up, how do they prevent Anze from cutting herself apart and fleeing rather than dying? Maddie says she can use fog to wrap Anze up and prevent her from seeing any escape; Saul offers that since the pen is mightier than the sword, he has what may as well be the Soul-Carving Pen; and Sasha --

<Sasha> Sasha suddenly says a word so vile I cannot bear to repeat it.
<Saul> (Saul quickly covers Maddie's ears so that she doesn't hear the whole thing.)
<Sasha> "I sure used to have an Anchor with powers about containing things."
<Sasha> Sasha is simultaneously irate and despondent.

Sasha once knew Rhonda. Rhonda is the Duchess of Cups. Cups contain things. The most straightforward way for Sasha to contain Anze Torquil would have been to get Rhonda to do it... but alas, Sasha has completely ruined her relationship with Rhonda. So Sasha goes over her other options. Revolution cannot be used for containing anything because its whole mission statement is about breaking free. But she does know someone who has a great deal of experience killing Excrucians.

<Sasha> Cell Phone texts Claudia [anze bane == loneliness?? how 2 kill]
<HG> [that actually makes it harder stop]
<HG> [if we go physically beat her up that means she stops being lonely stop]
<HG> [wed need to hold her down stop]
<Maddie> "Aha! I was right!"

Claudia (who is ending all her text messages with "stop" telegraph-style because I thought, correctly, that it would inject some much-needed levity) points out that if they go after Anze to kill her, Anze will no longer be lonely and thus will not be naturally dying of her Bane. She suggests that someone hold Anze down while everyone else wails on her with large miracles.

Maddie offers that she can use fog to hold Anze down, to which Claudia points out that since Maddie's the one Anze is after, Maddie will be at the center of the fighting. Sasha jokes that she's the greater threat here, but concedes the point.

<Sasha> Sasha: [i was sort of hoping she'd be worried about the irate dyke with the messer and a grudge]

Claudia says she'll consult the Stars' tactician for more specific advice, and exits the scene just as Maddie starts sticking "stop" to the end of the sentences she is saying out loud.

Appear

Sasha has her cellphone text everyone who might help them with the entire Anze thing.

<Sasha> [WE'RE KILLING ANZE. CANCEL YOUR PLANS.]
<Sasha> [LAST TIME WE TRIED THIS TWO PEOPLE SHOWED UP AND ONE OF THEM I'M SORRY TO SAY WAS DISTRACTED BY A F--KING STICK]
<HG> Toby: [I'll call who I can]
<HG> Punctuation: [gimme 24h so I can extract myself from my current duties ;;]
<HG> Acadia: [Understood. I'll swing by your Chancel and you can give me directions from there.]
<HG> Diane: [Go f--k yourself.]
<HG> One of these is not like the others.

Diane Spinnaker, still frustrated and stewing in social rejection, tells Sasha to shove it. Saul sends a sympathetic message with Sasha's apologies, and in return Diane says that if Sasha really wants to apologize she can do so herself. So Sasha apologizes to the illumination of the sun, and Diane will hear it because she is the Power of Illumination.

Here Diane appears via sunbeam, drags Sasha into the forest, and starts venting her loneliness and anger. Sasha... well, she can't exactly say she regrets what she's done, because she doesn't, but she can say that she regrets that the waves she cast have hurt Diane so badly.

<Sasha>  "I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this whole affair but I didn't mean for this to happen."

They discuss their respective backgrounds. Sasha talks about how she was let down by society-with-a-lowercase-s over and over again. Diane talks about how she was once the princess of a kingdom that no longer exists.

Then Sasha offers to release Diane from Revolution. Diane refuses, and says that the Society wouldn't take her back anyway, not after what she did.

<Sasha> Sasha sighs. Lays back on the dirt. "You could renounce the res, you know. I'd be pissed but I don't think anyone else would blame you."
<HG> "And would they take me back, in the Society of Flowers?"
<HG> "There's no reversing the Rite of Rupture. I'm sure they could make an exception, but the mos maiorum is against it and it would take me destroying you to redeem myself. Which even now I find myself loath to do."

Letting Go

...You know, I'm just going to reproduce the rest of this Sasha Monologue. (I have removed, condensed, and/or rephrased a handful of lines to tighten things up, but most of it's here.)

<Sasha> "Look, Diane. I'm going to tell you something you already know."
<Sasha> "You're not mad at me. Well. Scratch that. You probably are, actually. But the actual problem at hand isn't me."
<Sasha> "What happened is that doing what you want and doing what was mos maiorum have run into conflict for the first time in a long-ass while. Everyone you thought was with you when you were following the rules turned on you as soon as it became politically convenient. You feel let down by Society and your friends, probably including me since I was such a b-tch to you when the news broke."
<Sasha> "The..." She shakes her head. "The reason I created Revolution instead of just turning into a bird and hanging out with Megan Kieros, all respect to her, is because I got pissed. I saw how Society treated us. I saw how Society treated, say, Acadia West [when he couldn't hack the Code of Heaven]. How they treated Rhonda because of what Anze had done to her. How, no offense, you treated your Anchors. And moreover?" She wipes her face. Dirt coats it. "How they treated Sonja."
<Sasha> "Sonja was the nicest person in Creation. All she wanted to do was be the hero. And because I am [a terrible person], she got punished for it."
<Sasha> "For about ten minutes after Sonja's funeral, I thought-- maybe, maybe there can be peace. Maybe I could take Revolution to Misenchronic Engine and fix whatever's wrong with it and we could be just people, we wouldn't have to squabble for power, we could focus on saving the world." Sasha gestures and waves. Tracks of tears carve lines on the dirt on her face. She swings about a placid Revolution to prove her point. "I thought, we have Diane with us. Surely, surely they'll see that I'm right. Instead they decided to [declare all of us socially dead]."
<Sasha> "If they'd demanded I join the Snakes, or the Stars, I would have welcomed it. Hell, I'd have faced down Entropy again with a smile. So that wouldn't have [been a punishment]. The only thing they could do to hurt me was to hurt [everyone around me]. So they went after you the same reason they went after Sonja. And I am so f--king done with people being hurt in the name of stopping me."

Here they briefly talk about how Cheshire of the Dark (see interlude 22.5), the heir to Aliki's old position as the first of the Dark, stood up to the rest of Society and told everyone that punishing that many people for one person's crimes was unacceptable. Sasha files her away, as someone worth talking to after all this Anze business is over.

And finally, finally, Diane agrees to help.

<HG> "Thank you," she says. "For that."
<HG> "For taking me seriously."
<HG> "You'll have me," she says. "And - "
<HG> She reaches into thin air with both hands. A smallsword materializes, its sheath the deepest of sky blues, gilt flowers twining down its length. "You'll have my sword."
<Sasha> Sasha smirks, tips her hat, and walks back to go kill Anze Torquil.
<Sasha> Revolution taps Diane on the shoulder.
<Sasha> "...Now that we aren't feuding, Diane. I need you to tell me about Heaven."

On The Next Episode...

A descent, and then an ascent.