jennafans | Between The Lights, Session 6: Deathday

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

<TigerAnchor> hey so your faq mentioned that mr. attractive is so attractive that he will literally turn you to crystal
<TigerAnchor> how does that even work
<superliner> Miracles.
<TigerAnchor> that is a very helpful answer
<TigerAnchor> thanks superliner
<9663996> physics-textbook-in-the-trash.jpg
<9663996> the real question you should be asking is: why wouldn't seeing someone beautiful turn you into crystal

-- #cascadia, irc.nobilisers.net

Lionel's player had to drop out due to limited availability. So I just concluded he was dead. Everyone else then proceeds to hold a... is this even a funeral? Well, whatever it is.

Diane Spinnaker proceeds to steal the show.

Note that, as per Your Creation May Vary, my particular Diane Spinnaker is... not the best sort of person. This is because I am running Between The Lights with an underlying premise - a notional Campaign Convention, really - along the lines of "power cannot be taken by clean hands". You can portray Diane Spinnaker differently. You probably should.

This time, I am experimenting with adding more detail about what certain actions imply, so as to provide context for the detailed political stuff that will be happening here.

Oh

<HG> Apparently, Lionel has died trying to put something somewhere that is extremely physically implausible.
<HG> The Darklord Kethredamen says this with a straight face, insofar as one can have a straight face when your face is made of three lines and a circle.
<Maddie> "I feel kind of bad saying this right after he died, but can I have his estate?"
<Sonja> "Maddie!"
<HG> Keith bites Maddie. It isn't particularly hard, but it's enough to mean that he's doing nothing of the sort.

So, considering Lionel is apparently just dead, they decide to hold a funeral in the way that the Powers of the Dark like to hold a funeral. Which is to say: a deathday party.

Okay then. Apparently they prepare for a deathday party. (I probably should have expected this. I didn't.)

For convenience, we decided to put the meeting with Diane Spinnaker at the deathday party, so as not to be too repetitive with the social visits and mixers and such.

An Entrance

The Familia Kethredamen is doing the usual sort of pre-gathering socializing, with the usual group of midrange Nobles and higher spirits that usually appear at their various balls. And then -

<HG> Diane makes an entrance. With an entourage. They are impeccably dressed and in perfect sync as they fan out and -
<HG> Wait, those aren't Anchors or servants.
<HG> Those are actual Nobles.
<HG> You suddenly feel underdressed.

Diane's sheer social presence silences the room as she walks in. Well. The room, except for Familia Kethredamen. Maddie realizes this slightly too late. Sasha, on the other hand, knows precisely what she's doing.

<Maddie> Maddie tags Diane Spinnaker
<Maddie> and then kind of holds her breath, waiting to see what she'll do
<Maddie> "You're it," she explains, voice faltering
<HG> She very calmly takes out a notepad and writes a single word on it.
<HG> She puts the notepad away.
<HG> "You were saying?"
<Sasha> Sasha straightens up the pin on her apron and tucks a strand of greasy hair behind her ear
<Sasha> "Diane Spinnaker! Wonderful of you to come!"
<Sasha> She smiles like a jackal

Diane's Anchors go mix with the crowd. Maddie goes off to play various children's board games with one of those Anchors, a woman in a cape of raven-feathers. (She applies Aspect to playing those board games. So does raven-feathers. They end up in an escalating bid war of adding Strike to their Aspect miracles, which Maddie eventually wins.)

Machinations

Diane peels off to buttonhole Sonja. They have an exchange about this being Lionel's deathday party, and eventually Diane works her way around to the reason she is here:

<HG> "It is an ancient pact with the Imperators, from a time before the War, time beyond time, that Nobles may choose the Song that most calls them, and are not required to follow those of their Imperators. We continue to defend this pact, because it is very nearly impossible to force a Noble against their own conscience, and we do not want them to try.
<HG> "And we will not just defend this pact against the Imperators. We also make it clear that those of a Familia are permitted to choose Songs of their own, without pressure from even their closest of celestial siblings."
<HG> "If..." She shoots a look back over her shoulder. "Sasha... gives you any trouble about it, let anyone know. Anyone at all."

Diane Spinnaker has, very carefully, stated that she is willing to defend Sonja. More specifically, that Aliki's influence might interfere with Sonja making her own decisions about how to participate in Noble society. After all, the shadows of Aliki's political machinations continue to warp Society, and the way Society sees Familia Kethredamen, even after Aliki herself has disappeared.

To snatch one of "Aliki's" own familia out from under her nose - what a coup that would be! Of course, later events will make this attempted move entirely irrelevant. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Sasha, who has been eavesdropping on Diane's conversation with Sonja, concludes (not unreasonably) that Diane is making a veiled threat. She decides it's time to make a drastic move. So she summons Rhonda.

<HG> Rhonda has mud-covered rubber gloves on. And mud-covered rubber boots.
<HG> And when you summon her, she takes one look at the room and throws herself down on her knees in obesiance.
<Sasha> "Hello Rhonda. Glad you could make it."
<Sasha> Sasha continues grinning.

So, remember that bit where, when Diane came in with other Nobles as Anchors, it was a display of her strength and power? (I am, for these purposes, presuming that keeping another Noble anchored is exceptionally difficult, no matter how high your Treasure, because the real problem is keeping them subservient. A spontaneous bounceback from the state of Defeat could wrench an anchored Noble free, if they didn't want to be there.)

Sasha has just countered this with her own display of strength and power, by demonstrating that she too can Anchor another Noble. And that's a direct threat.

<HG> Diane Spinnaker is, for quite possibly the first time that you have ever seen, speechless.

Sasha Speaks

Sasha climbs onto a table and opens her mouth. Her inherited social status silences the room. And then she begins talking.

<Sasha> "I'd like to ask you all what, precisely, the f--k we think we're doing scheming behind each other's backs like a gaggle of schoolgirls."
<Sasha> "I heard Diane Spinnaker-- you all know Diane, right? I heard her reassuring my sister celestis, my good friend Sonja, that she and hers, whoever they might be, would protect her if I attempted to snatch her from Heaven."
<Sasha> Sasha looks wounded. It's at least six percent genuine.
<Sasha> "Why would I ever do that? Why should I care? Why should I allow such petty differences of Song drive a wedge between us?"
<Sasha> "If you haven't forgotten, we are in the middle of a War. All Estates are vulnerable. By all indications, we are losing."

Sasha goes on a rather extensive rant about petty differences between Songs dividing society, and about how they ought to be uniting to fight the Valde Bellum. The room continues to be utterly silent, until Diane pulls one of her Anchors out of this shocked silence and towards herself.

<HG> He is next to Diane. "Bran," she whispers to him.
<HG> "I can't," he whispers back.
<HG> Diane Spinnaker puts her hand on the peacock-hatted man's shoulder. A meaningful look is exchanged between them.

Meanwhile, Sasha has decided that making a clean break between herself and Aliki might help everyone else realize that she's serious.

<Sasha> Sasha takes a feather from the raven. The feather becomes a sword of black glass in her hand.
<Sasha> A figure of flickering flame appears in front of her. Its details are indistinct. Its identity is unmistakable.
<Sasha> Aliki.
<Sasha> The figure puts its hand on her shoulder.
<Sasha> The sword is through the figure. The raven croaks. A bell tolls. Aliki is smoke. She blows away in the wind.
<Sasha> Treasure 7 Weaponization of the Raven to cut the bonds between Aliki and Sasha's identities.

She tells the Raven to sever the link between her and Aliki's identity.

Bran

An action has an equal, and opposite, reaction.

<HG> The man in the peacock-feather hat - Bran, she said he was? - is on the table, staring Sasha down. To her face.
<HG> Wait, when did he become the one facing forwards, and Sasha the one with her back to the crowd?
<HG> "You," says Bran, with the voice of the Society behind him, "are six months old. Many of us have been here for centuries. A few - " he gestures towards Soil's-Regal - "have been here for millenia."
<HG> "How dare you."
<HG> The crowd begins to roar. He shushes them, with a single hand motion.

Sasha's stunt with the raven has not improved the standing of her arguments. It has, in fact, destroyed almost all of the social credit she was previously able to siphon from Aliki's memory.

Bran attempts to impress upon Sasha that she is not the first one to demand reform. She is not the first one to demand that the social fabric change, and that if Society hasn't bent for any of them, it won't bend for her, either. And he says that the Society has an essential use that nothing can replace.

<HG> "Lord Entropy's laws are not enough. The Living Society is how we confine blood feuds to the few individuals that started them. How we resolve arguments that will never otherwise cease. How we deal with those who have failed in their duty to the War."
<HG> "There is no mercy in the laws of the Darkest Lord. We are the ones who provide mercy and redemption."

Sasha continues her expansive, profanity-laden rant about how the frivolous nonsense of the Society is heads stuck somewhere they don't belong.

<Sasha> "Because maybe it looks grandiose and proper to you, but all I see is the same cliquish horses--t I've seen in every town, every country, everywhere I've ever been, mortal or immortal."

At some point she realizes that maybe her phrasing has gone too far, and uses a Lesser Creation of Alienation to remove the mood of the message from the literal content.

Dirt

Most of the crowd accepts this miracle of Alienation. But one exception is a certain Noble of Soil. He has Wounded against this (in theory, in a notional manner, since he is an NPC), and is deeply offended by Sasha's insolence and her attempt to cover it up.

Sasha let Soil have seven baseless accusations against her honor. He uses one now.

<HG> "You knowingly aid the enemy."

He accuses Sasha of being in league with the very Excrucians that she claims to be trying to rally Society to fight. But Sasha has no time to react, because Soil's-Regal buries every major individual involved - Diane's anchors, Sonja, and all - in a massive pile of dirt.

And in response, Sonja uses a Lesser Enchantment of Metaphors to make the dirt metaphorical.

After I recover from my shock and helpless laughter at the notion of turning the literal dirt into metaphorical dirt, most of the crowd leaves the party before anything else happens.

The most involved participants - Soil, Diane and her Anchors, and Familia Kethredamen - haven't left yet. But Maddie does have a mortal skill on her character sheet that is relevant to the situation. The skill is called "Kick Bite Wriggle Scream" (yes, really). Using it, she demands that these last stragglers leave the party. They comply.

<HG> Soil throws up his hands and leaves.
<HG> Diane Spinnaker's party just sorta... slides out the door. Politely.
<HG> You are now alone.

In the aftermath: Sasha says something along the lines of "Well, I'd call that progress." Maddie believes that Sasha's speech was awesome. And Sonja is furious at Sasha for ruining her attempt to get closer to Noble society.

On The Next Episode...

A painting, a confrontation high above the Siberian tundra, and an emoji.