March 18, 2016

Tenth Meeting: March 18, 2016

Agenda: 1894 Session #8

I noted that Gabriel would get his limp back the first time he went into sunlight. Gabriel's player noted that Gabriel would get more disgruntled, as the one thing De Ville promised him couldn't even be delivered.

Mind, Gabriel was no longer blaming Sebastian for everything. He was blaming De Ville, which was much more justified.

Sebastian received a visit from his mother, Lady Sylvia Wimsey (based very loosely on Sybil from the Lymond books (of which I've only read 1-4) and Lucy's mother from Jo Walton's Farthing) who gave him a heads up that, for some reason, the police seemed to be preparing to arrest him. Sebastian said that perhaps they should go for a visit to Over Stowey, the village near Quantock Lodge. He told his mother everything en route.

Meanwhile, Liesl arrived at the house Gabriel had rented in Over Stowey, bringing Gabriel's beloved dogs. She, Gabriel, and Herman discussed strategy for using explosives to destroy Count De Ville, and Gabriel asked if Liesl could hypnotize him to forget the plans he had made.

Liesl: Listen, do you have a heart condition?

Gabriel: Not currently.

Gabriel, who has Military Science 3, suggested three layers of explosives.

There should be one layer of thermite in the walls of Quantock Lodge. No doubt Ringler / De Ville would smell these and see that they were dealt with.

There should be another layer in the basement of the lodge, carefully made so that they did not have a scent that De Ville could pick up.

Finally, given that De Ville was looking for some kind of Chinese urn, Gabriel had one made that matched the description of what De Ville was looking for. It had unsmellable explosives in its base.

Gabriel wrote his complicated plan down, dubbing it Operation Wedding Cake.

Liesl: With this, you could invade France!

He worked with Herman so that the explosion from the explosives in the basement would have a good chance of decapitating De Ville (especially if mixed with Herman's MOS for explosives). Herman was impressed with Gabriel's plans.

Herman: You could invade France with this.

Gabriel went to his room to get drunk, while Herman and Liesl went outside for some reason I forget.

ANYONE REMEMBER?

The coach carrying Lady Wimsey and Sebastian arrived at Lord Gabriel's home, but somehow, Herman and Liesl weren't immediately aware of it.

DID SEBASTIAN WIRE AHEAD?

No one answered their knock, as the servants were dead, and Gabriel hadn't hired new ones. Sebastian realized that Gabriel would get some grim satisfaction from Sebastian breaking in to his home, so he led his mother around to the servants' entrance -- which was unlocked.

Puzzled, son and mother entered, and worked their way to the parlor.

Lady Wimsey: Sebastian, what on earth happened to Lord Gabriel's parlour?

Sebastian: Lord Gabriel, I believe.

Sebastian's Player: What _did_ happen?

Liesl's Player: Germans.

Herman's Player: Sager.

Indeed, the parlor still had not recovered from the explosion Herman had caused.

Eventually, everyone got together and compared notes. Lady Wimsey saw to getting everyone tea, hiring a couple of temporary servants, and shopping for any necessities, like, oh, iron dust and other delicacies. And, everyone decided they liked her.

She tried to find out from Sebastian if he had yet met anyone he wanted to marry.

Sebastian: No one suitable.

Lady Wimsey: Anyone unsuitable?

Sebastian allowed as how there were two possibilities, to wit, Liesl and Gertrude.

Folks tried to plan the assault on Quantock Lodge. Things stalled for a few minutes until everyone got onto the same page, understanding that Night's Black Agents doesn't require a f*ckton of exhaustive planning. That's what Preparedness and Tactical Fact-Finding Benefits are for. Also, I think Sebastian's played didn't realize at first that Gabriel had filched a key to the lodge and the blueprints. (Sebastican's player isn't sure Preparedness is a great skill if many skills can de facto be used the same say, but that's a different questions.)

So, Gabriel's notes and Military Science were, iirc, essentially a TFFB. Sebastian dressed as one of the staff at Quantock Lodge, getting the actual staff member he was impersonating out of the way, and planted the explosives in the basement and ground floor walls.

Unfortunately, he was impersonating a staff member on whom Count De Ville had been feeding. So, the count beckoned him over for a bit.

And, Sebastian's player made an absurd Preparedness spend for an absurd "I already thought of this" plan: Sebastian had created a fake neck that he had filled with blood drawn by Liesl from the unconscious man whom he was impersonating. This strikes me as over the top, absurd, and exactly what NBA is built for.

So, the explosives were planted, and Gabriel now knew nothing about them. He did know that he was going to visit Count De Ville with the urn the count had been looking for, but not that this urn had explosives in it.

Well, at least, that was the theory. In practice, Herman had told Gabriel to be very careful with the urn. Very, very careful. Gabriel put one and one together. But, he didn't actually _know_ the urn had explosives in it, and anyway, he had decided that if he died making sure that Count De Ville was destroyed, that would be all right.

So, Gabriel went inside. Sebastian also prepared to go inside, in disguise, of course, as one of the servants.

Liesl: Go! Go, you mad genius!

And she kissed Sebastian on the cheek.

Liesl: Look, I'm Austrian -- I'm impulsive!

Sebastian: I thought _you_ were the mad genius.

And in he went.

Now, during this time, one group of NPCs was taking care of another so that logical actions wouldn't clutter up the game board for the PCs. That is:

Colonel Sir Edward Ridley Colborne Bradford, KCB, KCSI, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was one of Count De Ville's circle of Satanists.

When Sebastian had revealed this to Gertrude Bell, who was working for Edom, she quickly made her excuses and left, which made it pretty clear that the Commissioner was in Edom -- and betraying Edom.

In addition, Sebastian gave Inspector Cotford, his Source of Stability whose boss's boss was the Commissioner a heads up and highly edited version of the truth (leaving almost everything out), he suggested that the inspector might want to take a vacation in Over Stowey -- and might perhaps recommend to some of his fellow police that they do the same.

The Commissioner led a large group of police into a series of carriages that drove around the Chicksand house where De Ville had been staying in London, through a magical gate near the house, and out into the woods right near the lodge. The police had no idea that they were no longer in London and set up a protective cordon around the house.

Edom, having been given a heads up, showed up to have words and actions with the Commissioner, a process made easier when Inspector Cotford and his friends arrived, asking their fellow police what they were doing so far from London. And they could prove that this wasn't London, after all.

None of this was played out in anything but the broadest strokes, as it was the large game board on which the PCs had made the requisite intelligent moves for this to be Not Their Problem.

Inside the lodge, however, was a very different matter.

First, Gabriel discovered that Quentin and Juliette Parton were both present. He had left them safe in his manor, which was also his Safety. Unfortunately, while his Safety was not burned, Count De Ville used his mental link with Juliette to summon her, and she dragged Quentin along with her.

BETSY, DO YOU RECALL IF SHE PICKED HIM UP AND CARRIED HIM? I VAGUELY THINK I SAID THAT?

Now, Gabriel was fully prepared to die, but he did not want his fiance or her brother to die.

As for Sebastian, he didn't particularly want Gabriel, his ex-fiance Juliette, or Juliette's brother to die -- and he certainly didn't want Gertrude Bell to die. Yes, the Edom Agent had disguised herself as plucky reporter Kate Reed.

Outside the lodge, Herman and Liesl watched, planning to set off the explosives if they got an obvious signal that it should be done or after half an hour. Meanwhile, they speculated about linguistic oddities.

Herman: Bobbies -- do they bobble?

Liesl: Wouldn't they call them pigeons?

Inside, Gabriel put the urn into a side room, although he allowed De Ville to spot him doing it. De Ville started making a speech, but stopped, smelling the explosives in the walls. He had his cultists dig it out, and used his powers to confirm that Gabriel knew nothing about the explosives.

My assumption is that the MOS from Liesl covered that, and should have done so even if Dracula were the one doing the interrogating. Mind, I'm not sure what a GM is supposed to do if one uses an MOS in a "X skill means I totally succeed in killing Dracula" situation at the beginning of a campaign.

Gabriel confirmed that Quentin, at least, had no idea what was going on. He told Quentin to get Juliette out of there as soon as possible, then made a long, flattering speech to and about De Ville, then presented the urn, showing it to the people in the room.

Sebastian identified himself to Gertrude during the speech.

De Ville (to Gabriel): Careful -- that is a very delicate item. You do not know what it does.

Gabriel: Actually, I think I do.

And he threw it at De Ville.

BOOM!

Me: I thought I'd need the chase rules, not the explosion rules.

Sebastian's Player: You _always_ need the explosion rules.

Too true, for NBA. Seriously, I am not able to come up with many situations in which blowing everything up is not a valid tactic.

At this point, Herman and Liesl saw the explosion and decided that it was time to set off the explosives in the basement.

Sebastian's player said that, given that Sebastian is the one who set the explosives in the first place, and given he was going into the house, and given he had no death wish, Sebastian had un-set the explosives. The player also had an OOC reason for this: he wanted the fight in progress to happen for a couple of rounds, not get shut down.

Herman's and Liesl's player were all right with this. Indeed, they had the action cut back and forth, and each time it cut to them, they expressed bafflement about why the explosives hadn't gone off and pantomimed trying to detonate them again and following the very long fuse to see what was wrong. I asked how long it would take for them to fix the problem and detonate the explosives, and we agreed that three rounds sounded correct.

At the beginning of the session, I had given Gabriel's player the sheet I'd made with the stat block for dogs. Gabriel now threw open either the door or a window of the lodge, I forget which

ANYONE REMEMBER?

and blew his whistle, summoning his dogs, who ran past Herman and Liesl. I said that they were joined by another, larger dog.

Gabriel: Dasher -- Dancer -- Who the hell are _you_?

Someone: Six dogs and Santa Claus -- Old Nick!

The dogs fell on Count De Ville, who, while not dead, had been wounded by the exploding urn. Gabriel gave a philosophical mental shrug, figuring that the dogs must have found a friend. Liesl and Sebastian knew who the dog had to be.

DID HERMAN KNOW AS WELL?

At this point, my notes and memory both get vague. I think Sebastian and Gertrude got into a fight with the woman who'd been pretending to be Carmilla's "mama" and whom Carmilla had made into a vampire. My notes mention a "Sager-approved weapon", and I think we decided that the amazingly lackluster damage results meant that "Mama" had learned from Sebastian's iron collar and was wearing a steel plate over her heart.

Eventually, Sebastian was able to grab Gertrude and flee from the lodge, resetting the explosives as he went, at roughly about the same time Herman and Liesl found the end of the fuse and were about to reattach it anyway.

Liesl: Wait -- Herman, are _we_ out of range of the explosives?

Herman: Oh! Ah... Let me do some calculations.

Herman, Liesl, Sebastian, and Gertrude (piggybacking on Sebastian's Athletics or vice versa) threw themselves behind a convenient stone wall. Herman detonated the explosives as Gabriel limped out of Quantock Lodge, thus putting himself, if not entirely deliberately, out of the instant annihilation zone.

Folks were varying degrees of wounded, and I think Gabriel was Seriously Wounded. But, amazingly, none of the PCs were dead. Nor was Gertrude. The dogs were fine.

Count De Ville was quite definitely dead, as was "Mama", her head rolling out of the demolished Quantock Lodge. Any survivors of the Satanic cult were arrested. Francis Douglas, personal assistant to Prime Minister Rosebery and hypnotized thrall of Carmilla's mother, while not a cultist per se, had been inside the building, and was killed.

Lady Wimsey brought everyone to her home, aka Sebastian's Safety, to recuperate. And there we broke.

Sebastian's player said that he was going to move a point retroactively into telegraphy to account for Sebastian's trick with the explosives. At least, that's what my notes say; I'm not sure what the actual skill in question was.

We agreed that next session should be the final 1894 session. I asked the players what needed to be in that session.

Liesl's player said that she thought that there should be two more therapy sessions with Liesl and Dracula. I asked about whether she'd visit her cousin, Immanuel Hildesheim / Jonathan Harker at Seward's asylum. The player said she would and was unsure whether she'd be rescuing him or mercy killing him. I thought that was odd given that a) Liesl had decided that saving his life had to take priority, even if it meant his mind was destroyed and b) Liesl had basically handed Hildesheim over to the asylum without so much as examining the man.

Gabriel's player wanted some kind of resolution of the situation with Juliette and Quentin. I looked up a couple of things in the Unredacted Dracula, asked a couple of questions of the authors, then asked Gabriel's player and Sebastian's player which way they wanted things to go and got their answer.

Sebastian's player wanted to find out if there were still some sort of threat to the crown, which I totally forgot about, and some sort of resolution vis Edom.

Beatrice's player wanted Beatrice asserting some sort of control over her life, which pointed to a flaw in my gming, as well as an interesting issue with the Hypnotism MOS. I suspect it's potentially an issue with any MOS. That is, an MOS can knock the bottom out of a GM's plans, but it can also take agency away from a fellow player. I'm not sure how to compensate for that, but I figured out some things I could have done better on the non-MOS gming end of things.