An Engagement Is Announced at Edwina Campion's Ball
Notes Dump
OOC
We were comparing cupcakes to carrots.
They're nothing alike.
It was a very short conversation.
V: Nothing really happened. I just have paranoid suspicions.
S: That's why I keep V around. S is complicated.
Are you going to say that out loud?
You need... Someone has to be there to protect you from happening to other people.
Oh that's all reight then
So, can we get married yet?
This is my friend. We're getting married.
Why?
Because I'd like to
As would I
why?
we're in love
You know, Sophronia is pretty good at making plans while sweeming to be negligent
I can wait until you finish your game
I will mate in two
Oh very good
Let the record show that S does not know how to play chess
So they build her another body
This is something the humans would get upset about right?
Ah time travel?
Actually not.
If I weren't saving the world!
Oh dear I have nothing to wear
What do you mean -- Nina
Oh right I have outfits never before worn
We think Archibald moved in with the bachelors
Of course I ask you to escort me (R to S)
I knw you are the loytal the servant but I dont think G is a very god person
G is a very gd person who got a little bit confused. With my help.
I am going to assume you have not been doing that
All right
Who's holding the ball?
Um... Edwina Campion?
Of course she is!
George Mace bachelor party, Alec Campion attending
Douglas to debrief Alice, Alice delighted.
Edwina must be invited to wedding. After all, it was announced by Archibald at her ball.
S: I thought it was only christenings to which I had to invite everyone.
Leanna chasing Earl, so went to Paris to see Creahador. Emile went with her, Lady Sage figuring it wouldn't do any more harm.
Henrietta chasing Douglas. Alice recommends studying fencing with Francis or Neville, reading, and writing to Douglas to ask what he likes to read. She can use Henrietta to send coded messages, 2nd letter of each word in Oliver Twist? Douglas originally suggested that as the letter to let him down easy about his (genuine) disappointment that he's rejected for Lord Mace, despite actually impressing Alice (by actual genuine actions, not Actions Designed to Impress Alice).
Graf thinking of a honeymoon that might happen to dip into Africa so as to look for Klaus. He'll need to talk to Gregory.
Archibald doesn't know Gregory = Reginald.
Sophronia went looking for Talos after party. Reginald tried to Block Victor.
Why is a faerie trying to help Talos?
Right, let's go!
That's not Sophronia's work, is it? You'd recognize her work?
No spiders or snakes.
Story Game Bite Sized Chunks
Our OOC chatter:
Kristen: We were comparing cupcakes to carrots.
Me: They're nothing alike.
Kristen: It was a very short conversation.
Kerberos Fate IC chatter:
Reginald decided to escort his fiance, the impulsive 9-inch clockwork fairy Sophronia, home to make sure she wouldn't get into trouble.
Reginald: I'll accompany her home. She should have a protector.
Kristen (who plays Sophronia): Are you going to say that out loud?
Reginald (who knew exactly what he meant from the start, nevertheless says very carefully): Someone should be there to protect you from happening to people.
Sophronia: That's all right then.
The evening's activity was a ball. The players asked me who was holding it, something that isn't usually asked (maybe I'm usually better about specifying), so I decided it was held at the home of the woman they currently most dislike, Edwina Campion.
Reginald attended as Gregory, aka Lord Sage, aka the person Reginald is now stuck pretending to be (albeit with the support of Gregory's parents and his own), as the real Gregory has no intention of returning from his new home in Africa.
Victor: I know you are the loyal servant, but I don't think Gregory is a very good person.
Reginald: Gregory is a very good person who got a little bit confused. With my help.
Alice's fiance, Lord Mace, was working on mending his reputation (which merely means his wild parties will have to be a tad more discreet), and folks speculated about a bachelor party (or equivalent) where Alice attended in her male disguise (which Lord Mace knows all about).
Meanwhile, Reginald / Gregory told Gregory's brother, the not-in-the-loop-about-the-substitution Archibald, about getting engaged to Sophronia. Archibald asked if their mother knew. And their father. And grandfather. And Aunt Rosemary. Once Reginald confirmed all of this, Archibald announced his brother's engagement.
Sophronia realized with horror that Edwina Campion would have to be invited. After all, the engagement had been announced at her ball.
Sophronia: I thought it was only christenings to which I had to invite everyone.
Write Up Attempt
Our OOC chatter:
Kristen: We were comparing cupcakes to carrots.
Me: They're nothing alike.
Kristen: It was a very short conversation.
Victor told Reginald about failing to find Talos.
Victor: Nothing really happened. I just have paranoid suspicions.
Kristen: That's why I keep Victor around. Sophronia is complicated.
Reginald decided to escort his fiance, the impulsive 9-inch clockwork fairy Sophronia, home to make sure she wouldn't get into trouble.
Reginald: I'll accompany her home. She should have a protector.
Kristen: Are you going to say that out loud?
Reginald (who knew exactly what he meant from the start, nevertheless says very carefully): You need... Someone should be there to protect you from happening to people.
Sophronia: That's all right then.
Meanwhile, Victor went to the Durless residence to speak to Lord Durless, the father of Angelia, with whom Victor was in love.
Victor: So, can we get married yet?
Lord Durless did not particularly like the idea of Angelina marrying Victor, but did know that Victor was more compatible with Angelina than anyone of her own class. And, she did have a reputation for being odd already. But, he was still concerned with what such a wedding would do to Angelina in Society. Victor decided to talk to Angelina's sister, Rachel, especially as he also wanted to talk to her husband.
Rachel agreed that there were social issues, but was willing to do what she could to mitigate them, like making sure Victor was present at the next ball. Meanwhile, Sophronia introduced Gregory to her father.
Sophronia: This is my friend. We're getting married.
Merrill (astonished): Why?
Sophronia: Because I'd like to.
Gregory: As would I.
Merrill: Why?
Gregory (I think): We're in love.
Merrill still had trouble taking this in, but decided that this would help him distract Gregory long enough for Sophronia to find a note Talos had left her describing how she could reach him. Sophronia made sure to leave enough information for Gregory to come across so he'd know what was going on, but not, I think, enough to let him follow her. Still, if something had actually gone wrong, it would likely have been enough for him to bring to Victor so they could rescue her.
Kristen: You know, Sophronia is pretty good at making plans while seeming to be negligent.
Gregory easily figured out that Merrill was deliberately distracting him, but he took that in good grace.
Sophronia followed directions that would have been hard for someone who was not nine inches tall and could not see through fae illusions to follow. She found Talos in the back room, or perhaps the cellar, of some drinking establishment or other, playing a game of chess with someone. The pieces were about Sophronia's height.
Sophronia: I can wait until you finish your game.
Talos: I will mate in two.
Sophronia: Oh very good!
Kristen: Let the record show that Sophronia does not know how to play chess.
Sophronia and her cousin (or perhaps her child, looked at one way) discussed many things, including Alice as a Martian. Sophronia described it as "So, they built her another body."
Talos (either about that or something else): This is something the humans would get upset about, right?
Talos considered Leon, Merrill, and Sophronia to be the equivalent of parents, although he also considers Sophronia his cousin. I think he probably considers Herman his uncle. He considers human affairs a sort of game, like chess, but he is also convinced that it is wrong for so many humans to live in poverty and hardship. In other words, Victor's concern that Talos had sided with the Chartists was essentially correct.
Sophronia talked about making sure not to do things that would make humans want to destroy one, like, you know, scaring them. And, well, Talos was ever so much scarier to humans than she was because he was so much larger. Talos said he would be careful. He doesn't want to cause Sophronia grief.
I explained to the players at this point that, when Kristen had Sophronia suggest making Talos very smart, I decided that there was no need for two brilliant robots, so The Turk from the core book has been folded into Talos.
I forget the context of this:
Ah time travel?
Actually not.
Meanwhile, Alice found out about the ball.
Alice: If I weren't saving the world! Oh dear, I have nothing to wear!
GM: What do you mean? You have Nina, the chaperone and tailor.
Alice: Oh right! I have outfits never before worn!
At this point, we tried to remember whether Gregory's brother, Archibald, had moved in with The Bachelors (Douglas, Gerald, and Robert) and decided that he had.
The players asked me who was holding the ball, something that isn't usually asked (maybe I'm usually better about specifying), so I decided it was held at the home of the woman they currently most dislike, Edwina Campion.
Reginald attended as Gregory, aka Lord Sage, aka the person Reginald is now stuck pretending to be (albeit with the support of Gregory's parents and his own), as the real Gregory has no intention of returning from his new home in Africa.
Victor: I know you are the loyal servant, but I don't think Gregory is a very good person.
Reginald: Gregory is a very good person who got a little bit confused. With my help.
Alice's fiance, Lord Mace, was working on mending his reputation (which merely means his wild parties will have to be a tad more discreet), and the players speculated about a bachelor party (or equivalent) where Alice attended in her male disguise (which Lord Mace knows all about).
Gregory did his best to help Victor with his reputation. He gave Victor a temporary Aspect, iirc. We discussed how to do a social conflict, given that this should take some time.
We decided to create a long stress track (25 boxes, but I can shorten it if we think things are dragging) and give Society As A Whole a skill at social conflict of Supernatural +6, and allow a limited number of rolls per session to move Society towards accepting this particular marriage. Every five or so boxes, there should be an Aspect reflecting Society gradually softening towards it. I'm guessing the first one should be At Least He's Trying, given that Victor's got an Aspect of Truth Before Tact. The first two boxes were checked off in this session.
Meanwhile, Reginald / Gregory told Gregory's brother, the not-in-the-loop-about-the-substitution Archibald, about getting engaged to Sophronia. Archibald asked if their mother knew. And their father. And grandfather. And Aunt Rosemary. Once Reginald confirmed all of this, Archibald announced his brother's engagement.
Sophronia realized with horror that Edwina Campion would have to be invited. After all, the engagement had been announced at her ball.
Sophronia: I thought it was only christenings to which I had to invite everyone.
Alice spoke with Douglas, who'd unsuccessfully tried to court her. He revealed that he'd been, ah, recruited and given Mr. Creighton's position vis a vis the Martian Affair. Alice was quite impressed. Sadly, she had no intention of wedding Douglas, as she found George Mace more to her taste.
Douglas was sad about this, but said that she could write him a letter explaining all about how she wasn't interested in him, and that could also be her report on the Martian business. They discussed what code or cypher they'd use. It has something to do with the second letter of each word in Oliver Twist.
Henrietta Doyle was annoyed that Douglas wasn't interested in her, as he was the first male non-relative she'd found of her own class who she trusted to be able to take care of her. But, she'd bungled everything by having her brother challenge him to a duel. Sophronia and Alice both tried to get her to consider learning to take care of herself, but she didn't want Francis (courting her beloved cousin Robert) to teach her, and she was afraid of Neville (her brother's tutor, also a spirit). She was willing to read the sorts of books that Douglas read, and Alice suggested writing to Douglas about the books, figuring that she could use the innocent Henrietta to pass coded messages about the Martian Menace to him.
Josh: What's the point if you're not being ridiculously complicated?
Victor found Rachel Durless's husband, Graf von Gheistbiennenstock, and told the graf about the graf's brother, Klaus von Gheistbiennenstock, vanishing in the middle of Africa. Well, in a particular part of Africa. The graf thought that perhaps he and his wife might take a honeymoon that brought them near the area in question. NB: I see I noted that the graf would need to talk to Gregory about this, as Gregory knows a lot about the area.
Reginald noticed that neither Emile nor Leanna were present, and found out from Archibald what had happened. Leanna had fallen in love with the Fairy Earl, as he had not killed her. It may seem a low bar, but from her point of view, he'd put his plans aside rather than use her to fulfill them. But, he had rejected her, feeling he wasn't good for her (or for anyone, really). So, she had run off to Paris, where Dominick Crehador was, hoping that the medium could teach her more about being a medium. That way, she could prove to the earl that she had something to offer. Emile had gone off to make sure that she was all right, and Lady Sage had been heard to remark that it was unlikely that Emile could do any more harm.
Between sessions, I decided that there may be more going on than meets Archibald's eye, but Lady Sage was not about to tell Archibald anything he didn't need to know. Whether she would have told Gregory is an interesting question, but the revelation about Gregory being Reginald, and the lost Reginald actually being Gregory who had spurned his birthright had distracted her from answering it.
Sophronia decided to go find Talos, and Victor decided to follow her, while Reginald decided to pursue Victor to stop him from following Sophronia. We decided that this would slow Victor down for long enough for Sophronia to get far enough ahead that Victor would then be stopped by the fae illusion.
Victor: Why is a faerie trying to help Talos?
Reginald: Right, let's go!
Victor: That's not Sophronia's work, is it? You'd recognize her work?
Reginald: There are no spiders or snakes. It's not her work.
