October 27 2016
Agenda: Carmilla Sanction: Character Creation Session
Dexter's player decided to sit this one out, so we have five players. Four are reprising their PCs from Dracula Dossier 1940:
- Joyce Summers: USA, horror survivalist, pilot extraordinare
- Hedy Lamarr: Yes, THE Hedy Lamarr, genius, actress, and Joyce's lover
- Vito de Genarra: USA mobster and major
- Isabella Hildescheim: Granddaughter of Immanuel Hildescheim (who was Jonathan Harker) and the cousin of Liesl Rosenzweig (from the 1894 campaign)
Quimby Pockets's player decided that Quimby's arc had a logical end in the 1940 campaign, so he decided to create someone new, Karin Feirsinger.
So, who were these intrepid heroes, and why were they going on a mission to kill the vampire Carmilla?
Joyce Summers had been in Yugoslavia until 1944, and then in Paris until 1948. She hadn't originally had a burning desire to get home -- until she tried to go back to America and found that she was denied reentry. Something about flying with the forces of communist countries, I think?
In any case, having been denied entry, Joyce became determined to return. While she didn't think much of Edom, she did support destroying threats to humanity, and Carmilla certainly qualified. Also, she made a deal that, after the mission, Edom would pull strings with its American allies so that Joyce would be allowed to go home again. The player notes that she's likely to decide that this doesn't work out, likely either because Edom doesn't keep its end of the bargain or because it has less pull than its people think it does with America.
- Drive: Thrill Seeker
- Solace: Martin Locksley. The player wrote Joyce's letters to him before, during, and after the events of 1948.
- Symbol: 1894 Winchester Lever Action Rifle
- Safety: Safe house in the French sector of Vienna, run by Rene (I think it was originally something in the Russian sector, but the player changed it, which is fine as it hasn't yet come up in play.)
Hedy Lamarr learned about the 1940 mission by being the WWII equivalent of a white hat hacker. She overheard Edom planning to recruit Dracula to fight the Axis, and informed them of what she'd heard, how to close the holes in their security and announced that she'd be joining the mission.
She'd been motivated by vengeance against the Axis at the time. But, she'd met Joyce, and the two had become lovers, changing her drive. She'd found out about the Carmilla mission the way she'd found out about the other and had joined Joyce in Paris, worried about the pilot.
- Drive: Comradeship
- Solace: Gertrude Keisler (Mother)
- Symbol: Music Box
- Safety: Childhood Home (Vienna)
Karin Feirsinger's family had been killed by cultists, so she learned how to fight against them and those like them. She was eventually contacted by Edom and recruited for this mission.
Karin and Hedy were childhood friends, and they had stayed in touch. Of course, until they met on this mission, neither knew about the other's secret life. Both women kept their correspondence to purely mundane matters, such as new dresses and tea parties and the like.
- Drive: Revenge (Cultists)
- Solace: TBD
- Symbol: Locket with a picture of her children
- Safety: Convent near her family home, just outside of Vienna
Major de Genarra, aka Vito, had not only worked with the group in 1940; he had also worked with Joyce and their mutual friend Martin Locksley a few years before that, and he'd been fighting the mythos almost as long as Joyce had. This mission was personal for him. While he had nothing against Dracula himself, as Dracula seemed honorable to him, and Dracula's Roma had rescued him from a plane crash, Carmilla was quite another matter. She had bitten another member of the 1940 group, Dexter Raymond, whom Vito considered as a nephew. If Dexter was not to turn into a vampire when he died, then Carmilla had to die before him.
- Drive: Slayer
- Solace: Martin Locksley. Martin and his lover, Jeremiah Rhodes, were fostering Vito's daughter, Vivian.
- Symbol: Sketch book, a tie to some of Vito's earlier adventures against the Mythos and to companions lost in body and / ot soul fighting it
- Safety: Maltese temple and secret base of a knight of Malta who was guarding the island against mystical threats
Isabella Hildescheim had ties to Edom going back before 1840 and to the organization her cousin Liesl founded in Palestine. Her loyalty to Edom itself was probably stronger than any of her companions', but her loyalty to her cousin's organization was probably stronger still.
- Drive: Patriotism (Zion)
- Solace: Liesl Rosenzweig (cousin)
- Symbol: The Dracula Dossier
- Safety: TBD
Also, everyone was assigned codenames. The players negotiated to decide who got which.
- Joyce: Wolf
- Hedy: Fox
- Karin: Owl
- Isabella: Moth
- Vito: Backe (which means "bat" and is pronounced "bake", so chosen as not to be mistaken with "rat", which was ironic as no one wound up with the codename "Rat".)
Vito's player couldn't make the session, but we filled him in afterwards.
Vito: It makes me sound like a bookie. Not that I haven't run book before. (pause) Code names. They're giving us f*cking code names.
Joyce: Yes. They're giving us f*cking code names.
Vito: Bake. Reminds me of my arson days.
The game would start in April of 1948. As for how Edom found out that Carmilla was in Vienna, we're thinking that Mrs. Pat, one of the 1894 PCs, told another, Sebastian Wimsey, where Carmilla was.
Folks knew out of character that Mrs. Pat had beome one of Carmilla's lieutenants, as well as a vampire herself. I don't know if we decided whether or not Sebastian knows this. But, Mrs. Pat would like to be her own vampire, so she leaked information to Sebastian.
She and Sebastian had been friends for a long time, and it may be that Sebastian does know she's a vampire. Sebastian's take on vampires has been:
- Dracula is not like the other vampires
- It's not hard to work with Dracula if you dont' try to betray him
- It might be quite safe to have a vampire working for Edom if the vampire isn't Dracula and isn't mistreated
So, possibilities are open. But, Sebastian is not going on this mission himself.
A couple of notes on the mechanics:
We decided not to alter the number of points PCs received, including Network and Cover points. I suspect I should have pushed harder for lowering those two, but I also suspect it won't make much of a difference. We decided not to use the Trust mechanics.
We talked about flashbacks, as I wanted to jump right into the action, but also wanted folks to benefit from narrating flashbacks as the spirit moved them. We decided that each player could call for up to two per session, and that each flashback would give the player a 1 point refresh to any investigative skill.
