14th Session

Folks were on Ko Krok, an island which belonged to the Sirikhan family of Siam. Alas, only two members of this family were still alive. One was the blind and elderly Ravee Natannee, who wished only to depart Ko Krok for a place of safety. The other was her granddaughter, Savitree Sirikhan, who had killed the rest of the family, and the servants, and the servants' families.

Savitree led the Bangkok cult of the Liar From Beyond from a distance of about fifty miles, working primarily through Thawi Udom, the man who ran the death fights in the Labyrinth, a warren spanning several buildings and going down two levels underground, and Daniel Lowman, the American customs agent and Nectar addict who helped Savitree get out of the USA in 1924, who handled bribing the right people and threatening the competition.

Savitree was now a prisoner, but this, of course, led to the obvious question of what to do with her. Drug her and drag her through Ethiopia? We agreed that wouldn't really be practical. Leave her on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where she could survive, but would be far removed from civilization? Hand her over to the Thai authorities? No one trusted either of those options to work. Killing her was an option, and indeed, the question was really "Why keep this woman alive?"

The answers people came up with were:

• She has knowledge we need, and she's so far been willing to share. But, as others pointed out, she had written down pretty much everything she'd learned, and they had all of her papers and her library. Heck, anything not covered by that she likely talked over with Jeremiah, who was certainly willing to cooperate with Martin and his friends.

• In Ethiopia, there might be a cure for Vito's condition of having a mouth on his arm. If so, perhaps they could test it on Savitree, who had a mouth on one arm and another on the opposite thigh. But, was the amount of work to keep Savitree under control worth it?

Joyce threatened to shoot her unless she took laudanum, but she refused. Someone was curious about what would happen if laudanum were fed to the mouths on her forearm and thigh, and Savitree was curious enough to agree to that experiment. The results were inconclusive.

Lillian was watching Savitree. The player wanted to fiat "choke her out", but I refused to allow this to just happen, particularly as the player had declared, "Lillian comes in. Hey, I choked Savitree out" without so much as giving me a heads up. I don't react particularly well to that for a non-mook NPC.

On the other hand, vetoing it was probably a better reaction than the one I realized I might have done. If it had occurred to me, I might have said, "You did what? ...Okay", and then had the PCs return to find Savitree gone. There is no way you're going to convince me that Lillian can know precisely how long Savitree's going to be out for.

But, while part of me regrets not thinking of this and not doing it, most of me thinks that, on the whole, it would have been a jerk move. That said, there was something I had been considering doing with Savitree so as to make it clear in game that a particular spell existed.

There were two broad options for me with Savitree.

• Let the players and PCs decide what to do with her.
• Use her as a plot device to show certain types of magic existed.

For the second, I'd plotted out a strategy and figured out how to make that work. By the mechanics, it was totally automatically successful, which was actually something I considered a problem. I discussed tweaking the mechanics with Christopher Smith Adair, who came up with a solution we both liked. However, even that solution would be automatically successful on Lillian. And, just as I'm not happy about someone fiating something with someone else's characters or NPCs, I'm not comfortable doing that myself.

On the other hand, given that Lillian's player probably didn't want to be out of the action, I figured the correct option was to ask him what he thought. So, we used the Honorable Old School Technique of Passing Notes.

Me: You want to have reason to get into a physical battle with Savitree and / or a bunch of cultists?

Lillian's Player: Only if it makes a cool story. "I'll fight you you / then if you will..."

Me: It involves magic, teleportation so kind of grey -- but the -> fight would be fair (more or less)

At which point, the player said, "Hell yes."

Me: In that case, she will cast a spell on Lillian which causes her to follow commands for a few minutes. Given she wants to escape, this means she has Lillian uncuff her and stand silently. She makes a diagram on the floor with her own blood and goes through. Lillian is no longer subject to her command and can follow her....

Lillian's Player: I'm in the next room from PCs? The portal is "shimmering" or whatever, could close at any moment?

I noted that the portal was not, in fact, shimmering, so Lillian had no idea whether or when it would stop working.

Lillian unsheathed her kukri and called a warning to her companions as she stepped through the portal. This got cut off mid-sentence, but got the important fact across -- that Savitree was escaping.

Mechanically, Savtiree had cast two spells. The first took control of Lillian so that she followed Savitree's instructions. This spell, as described in Rough Magicks, iirc, is way, way too easy, as it's basically "spend a point (if you're a 0 Sanity NPC) and control someone". The modification Christopher Adair had suggested was to make the cost equal to the victim's Stability Rating (not Pool). We also agreed that Savitree would spend 8 points, as she had no way of knowing what anyone's Stability Rating was. I rolled a 1 on the die, for a total of 9. This was enough for Lillian, Vito, or Martin, but wouldn't have been enough for Joyce or Darla. On top of this, she was casting Create Hyperspace Gate.

NPC Mages might have 0 Sanity, but they generally needed Stability to power their spells, particularly if one doesn't use a magic stat, which I don't for this game. Oddly, I could come up with multiple sources of Stability for Savitree (Ravee, Jeremaiah, Daniel, Thawi, and possibly Sir Mask-A-Lot, aka Puey Pramoj).

The gate led to the Labyrinth. Arguably, she should have taken Lillian's knife and / or tried to kill or render Lillian unconscious. But, on the meta-level, this didn't strike me as a fair thing to fiat, especially when the player was specifically okaying my fiating an escape leading to the fight he'd been looking forward to, and on the narrative level, Savitree didn't have a lot of time. If she couldn't be sure of a kill or rendering Lillian unconscious, she had to prioritize escaping before the others wandered in. As for her choice of destination, it was some place Savitree had been before, so she could make a gate that went there, and a place where she had allies, albeit none of them were as good at fighting as she was.

It was dark on the other side of the gate, but I decided to simplify things by ruling that this was a condition that applied to all sides, and therefore boiled down to no mechanical effect. Lillian came through the gate and immediately attacked, but Savitree had been expecting that and was no longer where Lillian expected her to be. Savitree counterattacked.

Then, Joyce and Darla came through the gate, weapons drawn, and started taking care of Savitree's goons. After all, the fight with Savitree was Lillian's fight, right? Joyce also had some kind of light ready, I think a flare that one can activate and toss. Martin stayed behind, aware that he wasn't necessarily useful in a fight in unknown territory, and Vito stayed behind to make sure that Martin (and Jeremiah and Ravee) were safe.

Joyce and Darla quickly dealt with the thugs, but Savitree was getting the upper hand in the fight with Lillian. Lillian had what her player called "the Mal moment", after a particular scene from Firefly.

Lillian: Will someone please kill this b*tch?

Joyce obliged, getting a 5 for the headshot, though I forget whether that was the damage or the roll to hit.

Joyce: You know what I like about this place? It needs burning.

Joyce definitely seemed to be in her element, although she did regret potentially trespassing on Lillian's prerogative.

Joyce: Lillian, sorry I had to take her out for you.

Lillian didn't seem to mind. She was covered in blood, though not much of it was hers, iirc. The current situation could be summed up as:

• Bloody Lillian
• Vito in a dress
• Brain in a jar

The question was where to go from here. I think Joyce said something about using white phosphorus grenades until they ran out. Lillian had a more practical concern.

Lillian: What rendezvous, Captain?

And, was this the time for a final strike on the Labyrinth? On the one hand, three of them were armed and inside it. On the other hand, there were only three of them, and those with firearms did have a limited amount of ammunition. Also, Lillian had some idea of how to get outside, as she and Martin had needed to escape from the Labyrinth mere days ago. So, our heroines made a wise tactical retreat. Once outside, Joyce made arrangements for contacts to keep an eye on the exits from the Labyrinth. One could argue whether the PCs knew all of them, but it was definitely time to wrap the Bangkok locale, so, with one exception I'll describe later, that worked. Also, with one or two exceptions, everyone else in the Labyrinth was probably stuck there, given that they were mostly cultists worshipping the Bangkok Mouth, and that Mouth was not exactly mobile. Savitree could have opened a new Mouth, but she was dead.

Meanwhile, on the island, Vito tapped against the cylinder that held Jeremiah's brain.

Vito: <tink> <tink>

Jeremiah: Ow! <beat> Just kidding.

Vito (leaning an elbow on the canister): You're all right, Jerry.

Jeremiah, to Martin: Where did you pick him -up-?

Martin's player said that Martin would tell Jeremiah the whole story. I asked if that included details like Martin becoming Samuel Jenner's lover for the last year or, Martin having sex with Samantha Abercrombie when she gave him his first hit of Nectar, and Martin having sex with Samson Trammel. As we noted, Martin seemed to be sleeping with a lot of Sams who were very bad for him. (Ironically, the secretary at the UCLA History Department with whom he flirted was named Samantha Burnish.)

Vito's Player: Vito won't give away secrets because snitches get stitches.

Martin's Player: If you f*ck someone because you think your boyfriend's dead and then you find he's alive, you probably should tell him.

So, he told Jeremiah everything.

Joyce, Darla, and Lillian returned to Ko Krok. Lillian confirmed that Savitree was dead.

Vito: You can tell me how you did her later.

Lillian: Joyce gets that one.

Vito: So it was a team job.

The group arranged with the villagers in Pattaya to help them get people, books, and boats back from Ko Krok to the mainland.

Vito, as Martin watches Thai men load books onto boats: Martin, focus! Jeremiah!

Folks discussed how to take the Labyrinth.

Vito: The problem is, if you want me to act in my capacity as a lawyer, I'm going to need a pair of pants.

They actually had a lot in the way of human resources:

• Joyce had a trio of foreign mercenaries who were already working for her. These were Heinrich, Jean Luc, Fan (pronounced Fohn).
• Joyce had also recruited a network of urchins to spy on people and carry messages. As I had pointed out, these urchins were not orphans.
• Therefore, Joyce could also draw on their families, which she did, telling them about the very bad men who were threatening their children. Sure, this wasn't actually true. But, the cultists did know about the network of urchins, and they were certainly ruthless enough to be willing to harm them if this were a useful course of action.
• Jeremiah was friendly with a lot of people from whom he bought antiques back when he had a body. Martin had visited them all before leaving the USA and gotten the names of their relatives in Bangkok. He and Joyce visited these people, establishing yet another network of contacts.
• Vito had the skills to figure out which authorities needed to be bribed to turn a blind eye towards the upcoming attack on the Labyrinth, and Joyce and Martin had the language skills to help him set that up.
• Joyce and Darla had seen two men trying, unsuccessfully, to speak to Daniel Lowman, who wasn't home when they came calling. These two men, Arun and Thep, represented a group of dock workers who were annoyed that they were not getting a cut of the money that Daniel was using to bribe the authorities to turn a blind eye to the death fights. Joyce and Vito agreed that this wasn't right and assured the dock workers of support for their civic minded initiative.
• Siripong, a man who had hoped to set up a rival death match ring, had been threatened by Daniel with having his arms cut off if he didn't rethink this course of action. He was recruited with the promise of being able to set up his own arena without having to worry about Daniel or the competition from the cult, although Joyce warned him that she'd deal with him severely and fatally if the new death matches actually resulted in frequent deaths. A death could happen once in a while, but not too often.

Siripong: How often is too often? (As the others eye him threateningly) I do not want to die! How often is too often?

Darla used a Psychoanalysis Spend to explain the economics of this to him. If the matches resulted in only the occasional death, he'd actually make more money, as people would keep coming, never sure when they would have the supreme entertainment of seeing an actual death.

Credit Rating and Streetwise were used for winning over and bribing the appropriate people in the government and the underworld.

One resource that no one tried to use was the Hyperspace Gate on Ko Krok. Granted, it wouldn't have been a huge surprise the second time around, and granted, I'm just as glad that wasn't how things went down. But, I was half expecting folks to toss grenades or something through it.

I'd spent a lot of time thinking about Hyperspace Gates. Given the way the group had split forces, I figured that the only way to have Savitree get a chance to talk with Martin in a situation where she felt enough in control to spill useful details would be if she had him on her island before Joyce, Lillian, and Darla came by. But, the women were all heading to the island first thing in the morning, while Martin woke up at the crack of noon and then walked into the Labyrinth in Bangkok, about fifty miles away.

Well, Savitree had been expecting Martin to do that. She also expected his friends to attack the Labyrinth. She had no idea that they a) knew her name and who she was (Martin got that information from Samson Trammel) or b) knew anything about Ko Krok. So, if she'd made a Hyperspace Gate there, she could have the cultists send Martin through and then erase it. They had to erase it, as they were expecting an attack.

Of course, this meant that when Savitree created her second Hyperspace Gate, she couldn't order anyone on the other side to come through and destroy it by using the first Hyperspace Gate. That gate had been destroyed. If she'd managed to get even a 20 minute head start, she might have been able to create a second gate and send folks back to destroy the first one and attack PCs on Ko Krok, but there was no way that was happening.

The trickiest part of all this, I think, was not keeping all the various possibilities in my head, but figuring out how to plan smart for Savitree -- but only taking into account what she knew. There had to be gaping holes in her plan, not so much for fair play, although fair play is an important consideration (there is a very fine line between "this is Lovecraftian horror, so the universe isn't fair" -- which is totally the situation in Eternal Lies -- and the GM being a jerk to the players (which includes authors writing scenarios where they expect the GM to be a jerk to the players)), but because, while Savitree knew an awful lot about the group and its plans, there were a few important things she did not know. And, not knowing them meant that what seemed like an immense error from the point of view of someone who knew the big picture was actually the tactically correct move from the point of view of Savitree, who thought her island and identity were safe, but that the Labyrinth was the biggest target. Without those assumptions, she might have gone to the Labyrinth and, when things started getting hairy, tried to decamp with Martin, but with them, it really made the most sense to put him where she felt most secure and where all her research tools and resources, including Jeremiah, were.

Returning to our regularly scheduled write up, Martin made a Credit Rating spend on Ravee Natanee, despite being the poorest member of the group. He wanted to make sure the old woman had a chance to recover from her ordeal of many years.

Chris: Ravee is now on Vito's Christmas Card list.

Joyce: Wow. I don't think -I'm- on his Christmas Card list.

Vito: I see you too often.

Vito also made a Credit Rating spend to fund the urchins going to school, though neither he nor I have the foggiest idea of what the education system of 1937 Bangkok was like. But, even if it was not entirely an appropriate gesture, it was a very Vito gesture.

Vito was also trying to get used to having the extra mouth on his arm. When Joyce flew folks back to Bangkok from Pattaya, he strapped the wrist on that arm above his head, a position he seemed not entirely unfamiliar with.

Vito: Poke me awake if there's any trouble.

Someone: That's no longer a stress position. It's now a comfort position.

Folks settled back into their Bangkok suite, with Martin setting things up to make sure the essentials were taken care of.

Martin (as his comrades return): Coffee? Laudanum?

Vito (you had him at "coffee") (kissing Martin on the forehead): You are the most beautiful person in the f*cking world right now.

Vito thought that Martin was actually doing very well and was generally trustworthy, perhaps because he was reunited, however strangely, with Jeremiah. Joyce was less certain.

Joyce: Don't trust him around drugs or guys.

Martin got a letter from Samson Trammel and replied.

Samson Trammel's 3rd Letter to Martin

Martin's Bangkok Letter to Samson Trammel

Plans were finalized. The fathers of the urchins were watching the exits from the Labyrinth, but weren't expected to engage directly with any of the cultists. The dockworkers and other criminals were told to hang back and club anyone who got past Joyce, Darla, Lillian, Vito, and the mercenaries. Joyce's plan was to start at the top, clear each level with white phosphorous grenades, and shoot anyone who ran out. Darla noted that Sir Mask-A-Lot didn't seem to be a cultist and told the others that they should speak with him. This was duly noted.

Martin watched as folks got into position. At the last minute, he called a warning to the doorman at the Fragrant Honey Shop, yelling at the man to get out of the way. The doorman did.

The grenades went into the ground level. When the dust had cleared, few cultists emerged, but those did were shot. Then, a komodo dragon drugged with Nectar emerged.

This was, of course, a complete indulgence. I'd been intrigued by the notion of a Nectar-drugged komodo dragon since Cat's player first suggested it, and she quickly worked up some stats. Everyone dogpiled on it, while Martin's player watched us in bemusement. Martin himself returned to the hotel suite, not wanting to get in the way of the fighting.

While the komodo dragon had been given a high scuffling score (20), it really was no match against several opponents with firearms. So, while one of the mercenaries was fatally wounded, the creature was quickly taken down.

Lillian: I'm not dressing that thing.

Joyce did insist on getting something out of it, at least a pair of boots or a purse. I think she's also considering herself a dragon slayer.

We now returned to the more serious business of dealing with the thugs in the Labyrinth, as the invaders moved down. They dealt with more thugs and found Sir Mask-A-Lot, who did not try to oppose the people pointing guns at him. They talked with him in his room, which was as clean as he could keep it, under the circumstances. He wasn't currently wearing his mask, as he wasn't harvesting Nectar from the Mouth. He was wearing the tattered remnants of a French Foreign Legionnaire uniform, which got him some respect from Joyce. (I forget whether the text actually had him being a Legionnaire, or whether that only his father or his grandfather, but given I established in game he was one, in my game, he clearly was.)

Folks asked his name, and he told them that he was called Xuc, which means "feces". Vito asked what he wanted to be called, and he said that it didn't matter, so Vito, ever the soul of politeness, called him Mr. Shit. Eventually, someone managed to get him to give his actual name, Puey Pramoj.

He confirmed that he did not consider himself a cultist. He was there to watch the Mouth and took a not utterly un-Zenlike satisfaction in doing his job. He was aware that it was a dangerous supernatural phenomenon, but in his experience, the worst evils of the world tended to be perpetrated by humans.

That didn't mean that he was unconcerned about the dangers that the mouth posed. Indeed, while he did not realize that Savitree Sirikhan was the head of the Bangkok cult, he had been hired by her to monitor the situation and take whatever action he deemed necessary.

Darla: They hired an auditor.

He had come up with a plan to destroy the Mouth, one that would work in theory. However, he didn't want to tell them about it without some reassurance that they wouldn't actually try to do it. I think this is actually a weak spot in the text. If a group of investigators get into a position where they can destroy the Mouth of Bangkok and choose not to lie to a potential ally, the Keeper's supposed to punish them by withholding this information because they didn't follow the single course of action given in the text? That doesn't seem in the spirit of Gumshoe to me.

The group told Pramoj that it had already destroyed two Mouths, one in Los Angeles and one in Mexico City. But, he said that the method used there was not sufficient. They noted that they were going to do their best to destroy the Bangkok Mouth and appealed to him to make sure that it was done correctly. This seemed to me a reasonable approach, and they did have Reassurance and Flattery, both skills which I thought potentially useful here. Reluctantly, Pramoj agreed to explain what they'd done wrong and how they should try to destroy a Mouth.

Basically, they had collapsed a building on top of both the Los Angeles and the Mexico City Mouths. Now, that did need to happen, yes, but immediately after that happened, it was necessary to blow the Mouth up from within. If one only blew it up from within, the pieces would spray all over the area, and they might somehow generate new mouths. But, if one only blew up the surroundings outside a Mouth, it might eventually chew its way through the debris.

Folks realized that they'd likely have return at some point to deal with the two Mouths. Sure, they probably weren't chewing their way through the debris that day, or even in the next week or month, but they were still out there. In addition, Lillian feared there was a Mouth under Joy Grove, and I think one somewhere else.

As Joyce and Vito shot any surviving cultists who approached, Pramoj explained that he'd worked out some of the practical details, albeit in a purely theoretical sense. He had buried explosives in the concrete floor of the chamber where the Bangkok Mouth was, leaving holes for the fuses. He had a box of fuses on a shelf above his bed. He could pack a dead or unconscious or unresisting human body with explosives in about a minute.

The Mouth horked up Nectar in entirely random quantities. But, it reliably consumed everything put into it. So, the idea was to put fuses into the explosives in the concrete, light the fuse for the explosives on the body, drop the body into the Mouth, retreat quickly from the chamber, lighting the fuses as one went, and then run like heck. Again, he stressed, this tactic had never been field tested.

At this point, the biggest threat remaining in the Labyrinth, apart from the Bangkok Mouth, was Thawi Udom, the man who ran the death fights. He'd cleaned out his room of weapons, but his firearms were ill-cared for and he was not very good at using them. But, where was he?

Folks were willing to make a Spend to figure this out, but, after I figured it out myself, it seemed to me that it probably wouldn't take a Spend.

Me: So, Thawi's a cultist and a believer. Where do you think he's going to make his stand?

Players: By the Mouth.

Lillian: I am going to Intimidate him by the threat of humiliating him in front of his god if he doesn't fight me.

I find this aesthetically pleasing. There's a problem that occurs in scenarios when one has an NPC or three who logically should be immune to certain types of approaches. On the one hand, yes, Thawi Udom, big, insane, devout cultist, really should not be intimidated by threats of physical harm, death, and so in. It makes no sense. But, on the other hand, it is really annoying to be told, "So, nothing's really going to work on this NPC" or "This one particular tactic -- and only this one particular tactic -- will work on this NPC." Saying, "Well, obviously we're not going to be able to intimidate Thawi Udom with threats of violence -- he lives for that -- but we can intimidate him into doing something strategically suboptimal because he doesn't want to look like a coward in front of his god, so, actually, we're using Intimidate to enrage him, even if there's no precise skill for that" works for me.

So, Lillian called Thawi out, and when he moved towards her, she grabbed him and threw him into the center of three folks armed with firearms: Joyce, Darla, and Vito. They proceeded to shoot him, although he did manage to throw his knife into Vito for 7 points (and he was also down 3 Stability at this point), bringing the mobster down to 1 Health.

Vito worried about whether Thawi's knife had Nectar on it, fearing he'd grow a second extra mouth. He relaxed a bit when he remembered that Savitree hadn't merely stabbed him with a Nectar-laced spear; she had cast a spell as well.

Joyce was also reassuring.

Joyce: Don't worry, Vito. I'd cut it out of you.

Vito: You are a peach. You are such a f*cking peach.

Lillian spent some time talking with Puey Pramoj, learning more about explosives, i.e., raising her Explosives skill to 3. Thawi's corpse was stuffed with explosives and fed to the Mouth. The fuses were lit, and everyone cleared the Labyrinth before the explosion.

Meanwhile, Martin was having tea with Ravee and Jeremiah in the hotel suite. All right, Jeremiah wasn't drinking tea these days, but Martin had automatically poured a cup for him anyway. He was very surprised when the cup started moving on its own. Ravee, being blind, did not notice this.

Martin asked if Jeremiah were doing this. He wasn't. A young woman's voice informed him that it was Amelia Burroughs, aka Vito's lost Amelia, aka Amelia of Carcosa. The tea cup lifted and slowly emptied as the apparently invisible apparently Amelia apparently drank. After a bit of small talk, Martin decided to bring apparently invisible apparently Amelia onto the terrace.

I forget much of the conversation, but I remember that Martin decided that Amelia was only a kid in her mid-twenties (well, she was in her mid-twenties when she was lost in Carcosa, in any case), so he kept calling her "kiddo". He explained to her that all he really wanted was to have his boyfriend back in the flesh so they could both go back to living together on the Lower East Side, selling antiques. He explained about Samson Trammel's offer of Nyarlathotep's help, and asked her if she could ask Hastur / the King in Yellow for a counter-offer.

Amelia was not exactly thrilled, and had enough experience to know that "Can I get the impossible without paying a price I find morally reprehensible" was a dubious proposition at best, but she agreed to take the message. She asked if she should tell Vito about this. At first, Martin said no, but he later relented and said she could tell Vito whatever she wanted to.

Martin: God, I'm not a very good host right now.

At one point, I know Amelia amused Martin by swearing like a sailor, but I forget what prompted that.

When the others returned, Martin told Vito about Amelia being on the terrace. Vito made a beeline in that direction. Unlike Martin, he could see Amelia, though, like Martin, he was not entirely sure that Amelia was really Amelia, rather than, say, a trick of Hastur. He was pleased that Martin had okayed Amelia telling him about Martin's request to pass a message to Hastur, convinced that Amelia had a good effect on people. After all, she made Vito a better person, and perhaps some day, she could make the King in Yellow a better person, too.

Quote whose context I forget:

Vito: Much as I love hanging out with Marty and the brain...

Meanwhile, Joyce had her own plan for helping Jeremiah. The player had done some research and discovered that Elekro, Westinghouse Electric Corporation's smoking robot, had been on exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuyTRbj8QSA -- Monotone alert, both on Elektro's part and on the part of his human handler when giving phone instructions.)

Surely, argued the player, it wouldn't be so hard for Joyce to just whip up a robot as a sort of giant waldo that Jeremiah could control with his voice, perhaps from a wheelchair. Joyce started working on a set of blueprints.

Joyce: Say, Martin, what handedness is Jeremiah?

Martin: Left.

Joyce: Dang. (flips blueprint)

Martin (suddenly wary): Why?

Joyce: Oh, no reason.

She did ask Jeremiah what he thought about the idea of having a robot body. Jeremiah asked if he could have some time to think about that one, and Joyce agreed. She continued to work on the project, just in case.

Meanwhile, Vito's player said that he'd finally figured out who Vito's hitherto nameless mistress was: Hillary Quarrie, from Tatters of the King. This made an odd amount of sense. Vito talked about possibly going to see her, as she might be able to help him out. Of course, he allowed as how there was a bit of a catch.

Vito: Thing is, she runs a cult.

Darla: Oh, good.

Folks discussed what they'd learned from Savitree's notes, which included her plans to kidnap Douglas Henslowe, Edgar Job, and their doctors, Cecil Walker and Jonathan Keaton. Folks decided they'd best send warning telegrams to Joy Grove, alerting Cecil, Douglas, and Edgar.

GM: Are you sending one to Dr. Keaton as well?

Lillian: ...I suppose.

Vito gave Remy a call to let him know to be careful on general principles, and also to tell him that he'd be getting more books, these from Savitree Sirikhan's library (once Martin culled the best of them), not to sell, but to keep safe. Remy reluctantly agreed not to sell them.

At this point, the group had 3 points of Library Use to spare, and rather than spend them on speeding up reading through Savitree's papers, I suggested folks describe extras they hoped to find. Martin, of course, wanted to find everything he could that might help get Jeremiah re-embodied. Folks also thought that they should look for information on magic rocks, like the one Douglas Henslowe stole from Ramon Echevarria. That rock was in a safety deposit box, along with Henslowe's journal and Trammel's Testament.

I'm not sure if there's enough about that in the library to be worth the point, but if not, they can spend it on something else. And, there's the third point to spend.

They also learned more about Savitree's plans and history, her relations with various cultists, and some more details about Montgomery Donovan of Malta.

Lillian (on hearing Trammel mentioned her in a letter): What? -I- want to read that letter. (after reading it, about Trammel): All talk, no action.

GM: Cuz he didn't want you to kill him.

Lillian: I'm worth it.

Later:

Lillian (still about Trammel): He's an asshole.

Joyce: A man wanting to have sex with a woman is a jackass, but then, I might be biased.

Lillian or Darla: Yes.

Joyce: I hold no grudges. I'm like a Bedouin chief -- I hold them for eight generations.

Savitree had also acquired copies of various files from Joy Grove. Martin read Dr. Keaton's notes on Lillian, which I created based on Lillian's player's suggestions. Martin found Dr. Keaton too sexist even by Martin's own misogynistic standards.

From Dr. Keaton's Files on Lillian

Martin also found a copy of Cecil's letter to Lillian.

Dr. Cecil Walker's 1st Letter to Lillian

Martin (handing it to Lillian): This appears to be a letter from Cecil. I am not reading this.

Lillian told him and Joyce that they could read all except the first four paragraphs of it, as the rest was actually useful information about his thoughts on the various cultists.

I also had a summary of what folks were able to conclude about the odds of various GOOs being the Liar based on not only Savitree's library, but other things they had learned.

And, there was a survey map of the Devouring Mountain, which Jonathan Brooks had called Mount Kailash. This map showed the route one needed to take. However, Savitree had told them that she had sent her people along that route, thinking that the Liar was Y'golonac. Her people had found nothing other than the natural features one might expect to find on a mountain.

I asked where people were planning to go next. Possibilities included Malta, Ethiopia, the Yucatan, and North America, to check on things like the Mexico and Los Angeles Mouths, friends and sources of Stability, information folks back home were keeping an eye out for, and so on. The consensus was to go to Ethiopia, after doing such research as could be done on the place in Bangkok.

Darla: And maybe, just maybe, there won't be another blood bath.

Martin: All I want is to be with my boyfriend on the lower east side and selling antiques.

As folks wrapped up loose ends, Joyce saw in the paper news of a rival of hers that shook her perhaps more than all of the disturbing things she saw, suffered, and inflicted.

Joyce: Aw, hell!

Lillian: What's the matter, Joyce?

Joyce: Amelia's plane is missing.

Lillian: Amelia has a plane?

Joyce: Not that Amelia.

Lillian: Oh.

Amelia Earhart had started her round the world flight some weeks ago game time, and she and Joyce met briefly some days ago game time. And now, Joyce was pretty darned sure Amelia was dead.

Joyce: It's been over fourteen hours.

And, there's only so much fuel Amelia's plane could carry.

Jeremiah: I'm... sorry?

Joyce: No, you should be. No one should die like that.

Lillian: She died doing what she loved. We should all be so lucky.

It was an oddly poignant moment in a session full of a lot of violence and research.

[Given we added a few days so that Amelia and Joyce could actually meet in Bangkok, I figure that last leg was departing Lae, Papua New Guinea on 11 July 1937, failing to arrive in Howland Island.]

-- -- --

Bangkok was definitely a bumpy part of the campaign. I wasn't thrilled with my gming, and part of that may have been going from 3-sometimes-4 players to 5 players and trying to balance more variables in my head. Josh pointed out to me that another part of it may have been the Bangkok chapter. This is a chapter where the authors clearly want at least some of the PCs to be overcome and stuck into pits, naked, with no likely way out, and getting a new mouth. The default is that the PCs have no real allies (unless you count Ravee, and they have to survive to get to her), unlike Los Angeles and Mexico City, where they might well be working with the local authorities, and where there are colorful allies like Genial and Elena. To be fair, the Bangkok section does allow for creating a One Honest Man desperate to bring down the crooked politician whom Daniel Lowman pays off because said crooked politician is keeping any of the funds collected for an orphanage from reaching the orphanage. But that's not the default, and with no allies, basically, the PCs are fighting for survival in a situation that's perhaps too much of a dungeon crawl for my tastes.

After the session, Vito's player wrote a few in character notes, including one to Amelia, which he sent to Amelia's player from the Tatters game, and she sent a quick response.

Vito Writes to Amelia Burroughs, His Priest, and His Mistress