3rd Batch of Write Ups

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP AND ETERNAL LIES

It's been a while, and while the players and PCs are the same, some specifics have changed:

GM: Aviatrix

• Millicent Lowell (my character): Child of Vanessa Carlyle and her Dark Lord Nyarlathotep. She doesn't break time and space any more. Now, she's a PI in Los Angeles.
  • Occupation: Occult Detective. Statement: I've seen the weird stuff. (At some point, I'll challenge it and change it to "I AM the weird stuff".
  • Drive: WAS Duty: I have to be Jimmy Wright now. Is In the Blood (or whatever's really in my veins) <strikethrough>I must be Jimmy Wright I can't be Jimmy Wright</strikethrough> I am not Jimmy Wright. I am something <strikethrough>greater than more than other</strikethrough> more than human.
  • Solace: Vanessa and Mirabelle Brady. Mom & Sis. Statement: It's a weird family, but it's mine.

• Kane Kulinsky: Unscrupulous Businessman who may be trying to grow a conscience. Or not.
  • Occupation: Business Mogul.
  • Drive: Folly. Statement: The fear of inadequacy haunts me.
  • Solace: Shelley Scherwin. Niece and Goddaughter.

• Tommy Keegan
  • Occupation: Ex-Navy Linguist.
  • Statement: I've betrayed the US before & I'd do it again. (Despite this, his discharge changed from a General Discharge (code for "we'd make it Dishonorable but can't quite get the evidence for that") to an Honorable Discharge as an unwanted gift from Nyarlathotep.)
  • Drive: WAS Revenge, but at some point changed to Protection: I'll get everyone out of this...
  • Solace: Beth Queen, "Boss", The Mom I never had.

• Charlie (Charlene) Fitzgibbons-Cuevas: Freelance Photographer convinced she will follow in the path of her mother and her step-sister (both of whom were the player's PCs in previous campaigns).
  • Occupation: Freelance Photographer. Statement: There are too many secrets that need to come to light.
  • Drive: Destiny. Statement: I a Charlie Fitzgibbons-Cuevas. I hunt monsters.
  • Solace: Suze Colette. Lover and reporter. Statement: She's become my rock.

• Rudy (Rudolpho) Fitzgibbons-Cuevas: Charlie's twin, lawyer working for the DA.
  • Occupation: Assistant District Attorney. Statement: I endeavor to use my talents for good.
  • Drive: WAS Adventure: Mom and Dad's stories are not enough. I need to have my own adventure. At some point, changed to: Repulsed by the corruption of new money.
  • Solace: Charlie Fitzgibbons-Cuevas. Big Sis. Statement: Needs to learn to stay out of other people's business.

It's been a while. When we last left off, at least some of the group, possibly all of it, with hand waving for exactly how that happened, were inside a huge dome with a couple of giant beetles and more of the beetles crawling on the outside of the dome. The beetles were the bodies that the members of the Great Race of Yith will have transferred their minds to at some point in the far distant future.

I believe they were guided by a human woman who looked like Mina Murray, but didn't have any of her memories. A clone? A future, mind-wiped Mina? I have no idea.

I recall that the Great Race didn't want Banshee, the lost souls/spirits/alternate selves from when the 1924-1937 time loop had gotten resolved/cut in a previous campaign, Masks of the Liar, Aviatrix's remix of Eternal Lies. The Great Race wanted to keep the timeline working in their own best interest. Currently, the timeline our protagonists lived in was the favored timeline, but the Great Race warned that this might not be the case if Banshee got out of control, and if it were not the favored timeline, it would have to be pruned.

Millicent wanted to do something for Banshee, and decided to talk to them. Cap'n Tripps had finally succeeded in synthesizing the drug he'd been working on, the one that required a Certain Substance from a couple of campaigns ago. And the GM made it clear that she'd rather this be a group expedition, on top of which, Millicent's friends don't want her doing dangerous stuff without back up.

And so, everyone went into some kind of place where a lot of folks with displaced / chopped off / damaged timelines were, the people from the alternate (?) 1937 who wanted to live again, the people who were Banshee. And these included Joyce Summers aka Aviatrix's PC when she gets to play in campaigns like this, and her NPC when she's running them. (Aviatrix is very good about keeping Joyce an NPC in the latter.) Joyce wasn't thrilled with the situation, but helped the group get where they were going. She very much wanted to get somewhere better, and Millicent very much wants to help her and all of the others.

The group came to a throne where a human form was sitting, someone Millicent recognized from 1937. However, as she also understood, this wasn't the human whose shape it wore. No, this was her "uncle" Daoloth, who very much wished Millicent would end the universe. Folks returned, and Millicent and Charlie talked about maybe sewing up all of the ends of the various cut off timelines and making them a place where Banshee could live. However, on doing some research and / or ritual, Millicent realized she herself wasn't powerful enough to create that. It would take someone like her father or like Daoloth to do it.

My comments in Discord include:

--- Millicent feels like she ought to write a thank-you letter to Uncle Daoloth, because Daoloth/Job actually told her stuff, pretty straightforwardly.

Of course, she also feels like she ought to get utterly high and go looking for Mirabelle's child...

And then, first things first, there is Evidence to Fake! ---

This was to prove a man innocent of a murder he didn't commit. The folks working for the Great Race had. And Rudy was getting tired of waiting for the others to help him here. Finally, folks decided that the best they could do was frame a junkie who'd accidentally overdosed. They found one such person and left a forged confession note on him. The cops were baffled by this, but asked no questions. The innocent man was released.

That off his list, Rudy continued focusing on his political career. He had a campaign manager, Henry Pollata. He'd taken a position on the war in Vietnam: The USA didn't belong there. He was accepting help from Kane.

Kane set Rudy up with Dino Dildoni, amusing himself by using the power Minerva Alexander gave him to make Dino love Rudy like a son and to intensify Rudy's distaste for Dino to outright hatred. Rudy loathed the man!

Nevertheless, Rudy needed political support, even from mobsters like Dino, so he smiled and never let on how he truly felt. And he did some networking during the 1968 Democratic primary, while his sister and Suze did interviews and took photos for the newspapers.

A man approached Rudy privately. Rudy was running as an Independent, and perhaps he might consider running as a Democrat, despite having started off as a Republican. Rudy was not inherently opposed to the idea any more.

However, a condition attached to that was "but not this year". No, for Democratic support, Rudy would need to withdraw and back the Democratic candidate for city council. In exchange, next election cycle, the Democrats would support Rudy in a push for a bigger office than just City Councilman. Rudy thought about this, and declined.

Meanwhile, Charlie and Suze got a tip about where to spot Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel. In Los Angeles. On June 5, 1968. Yes, that is when he was shot. (Yes, the players knew this was about to happen.) Yes, this was traumatic for all present. Heck, Millicent, who wasn't even there, was crushed.

Kane, of course, took this in stride. His new -- friends? Colleagues? -- well, whatever folks like Kissinger were to him, Robert Kennedy's death certainly didn't hurt them. (I'm not saying they had anything to do with this, and I know Kane himself had no connection to the assassination, or at least, none he nor I know about.) Kane, of course, was expected to do favors for his new colleagues, and indeed, I think, owed Miranda two or three favors that he couldn't refuse. She wanted him to set up a meeting with Millicent.

Millicent agreed and learned that Minerva Alexander is Hypatia Masters, or rather, one of her. The Hypatia Masterses of whom I am currently aware are:

• Eldest, who helped the group get home when Vanessa brought everyone to Third Dynasty Egypt
• Another version from Third Dynasty Egypt, who referred to Millicent as an abomination, which Millicent considered fair
• Cassandra, the Oracle of the Delphi Institute, killed by an escaping flying polyps, though precisely who let it out is an interesting question.
• Minerva Alexander, currently speaking to Millicent

In Masks of Nyarlathotep as printed, Hypatia Masters is a woman who makes a bad bargain with Nyarlathotep and, by the time the PCs meet her in the mid-1920s, is a doomed woman with no agency. In Aviatrix's remix, Post Modern Masks of Nyarlathotep, she made a very different bargain with Nyarlathotep. I think it involved:

• Hypatia getting a lot of power. A LOT of power. Also, immortality.
• She agreeing not to interfere directly with Nyarlathotep's plans and vice versa. I think this included Nyarlathotep not being able to spy on her, which is why he asked Kane to spy on Minerva for him. I am not sure whether Kane passed any information on to Nyarlathotep.
• Her anchoring the timeline for Nyarlathotep.

It was this last that Minerva now found annoying. She wanted to stop doing that. And for that, she needed Millicent's help.

She said she's always wondered which of them would win in a fight. After all, she had to work for everything she had; it wasn't just given to her.

Millicent privately thought that this was somewhat hypocritical, and she may have a point. Sure, Millicent is blithely unaware of her own privilege, not simply as Nyarlathotep's child, but also as a child of Vanessa Carlyle. She's been taken care of by the Carlyles and the Greys, two families with a lot of money and political influence. She doesn't realize how vital this was to her becoming one of the very, very, very few women private investigators in Los Angeles.

And she didn't need to "earn" whatever power she has. Heck, Nyarlathotep, while he wants her to do... something... and is disappointed that she isn't doing it ("You had ONE job!"), is neither telling her what it is nor making her life difficult. But Minerva/Hypatia is stuck living through linear time to anchor the timeline.

Or, to put it another way, having been granted a LOT of power by Nyarlathotep and having things her own way, Minerva's decided it's too much work to keep up her end of the bargain. She wants to be able to stop without giving up the power. Cry me a river.

Millicent said nothing of her thoughts. She asked Minerva what she could do to help. Minerva wanted to find a universe / parallel reality where she -- Hypatia Masters -- was dead. She could then move there safely. And she thought she'd picked one out. All Millicent had to do was to go with some of her friends and take a look.

Millicent was surprised at the "with some of her friends" part of this. It's not that she didn't consider Tommy and the Fitzgibbons-Cuevas twins to be friends; it's just that she didn't think friends should be bringing friends on dangerous dimension-hopping adventures. Tommy disagreed when Millicent discussed this with him. He said that he'd almost certainly slip away and do the dimension hopping himself if he were Millicent, but that it was a terrible idea, and she should absolutely not do it.

I think this is around the time Millicent finally learned where her sister's child was. The child was, as near as I can tell, conceived during some kind of ritual in San Francisco, and born during a ritual Vanessa held in Los Angeles, one which involved a trip to Third Dynasty Egypt. When Mirabelle returned to the present, she was no longer pregnant, but no one, including her, had seen the child.

Mirabelle asked Millicent if she'd seen the child, more than once. Of course, Aviatrix pointed out that Mirabelle had not asked Millicent to find the child.

DIGRESSION: OOC, this was fine because, as soon as she said that, I clearly remembered that, no, actually, Mirabelle hadn't. Also, it was completely in character for the Mirabelle-Millicent relationship.

Caveat: Still, this is the sort of thing to go very lightly on, because there comes a point where "So, did you remember Every Single Word the NPCs did and didn't say, and realize that you were making inferences that rational people might make? No? Ha!" gets very annoying.

Corollary: Sometimes, GMs haven't said what they think they've said. This came up once with a different GM when a player was listening very carefully and at least once when I was gming. The situations were different, however.

In my case, the stakes were relatively low, and the OOC conversation was:

Player: Ah, you screwed up.

Me: Yep.

Player (happily): Thought so.

Why "happily"? Because that player is fine with "I screwed up" and not fine with anyone telling him that what he knows danged well happened did not. Most players would probably agree. Also, I was not trying to fool anyone or play "gotcha!"

In the other situation, the GM was willing to believe they'd not said what they'd thought they said, and did apologize. However, they'd been trying to use clever wording to make us think someone was dead when they weren't. We'd worked hard to have the PCs kill that someone, and the person who was supposed to use the clever wording had absolutely no motivation to try to mislead the group. This was exactly the sort of thing the player had expected, which is why the player paid careful attention to the wording. This is not the kind of relationship I want to have with my GM as a player, nor with my players as a GM. END DIGRESSION

Nevertheless, Millicent eventually received help from an unexpected source. One of the many people staying at her mother's house was a musician calling herself Lilith. She had stayed once before, left for San Francisco and made it big (or at least, bigger than before), then come back to Vanessa's place. She regularly played for Mirabelle when Mirabelle had a rough night, and for Millicent as well, often asking, "Rough night?"

She now gave Millicent an address to go to when looking for Mirabelle's child. Lilith had clearly struggled with the question of whether she ought, and didn't want Millicent to let anyone know she'd done this.

How does Lilith happen to know where Mirabelle's niece might be? How does she help Mirabelle and Millicent with her music? How does she seem to know when Millicent's having a rough night? These are all good questions. I am wondering (and Millicent is starting to wonder, some sessions later) whether Lilith is another Hypatia Masters, and if so, whether she's Eldest, the particular Hypatia Masters that Minerva is afraid will catch up to her.

Millicent, Tommy, and Tommy's boyfriend, Louis, went to the desert, to the address Lilith had given Millicent. There, they found Millicent's niece and learned a few things.

• She's calling herself Lorelei.
• She appears to be a fully adult human woman, despite having been conceived a year or two ago.
• She wanted to know who told Millicent where to find her, but Millicent didn't tell her.
• Anata, the man who may or may not in some sense be her father and who has a tattoo of the True Name of Azathoth, knows where she is and seems to be staying there with her.
• Anata and several other hippies (?) are there with machine guns. Very well armed hippies.
• Lorelei may or may not be planning to end the world. But what does that really mean? After all, doesn't the world end, in some sense, when the sun goes down? How sure are you that when the sun comes up, it isn't a new world?
• And in 1937, the world was ended for the many who call themselves Banshee.
• Even if Millicent could knit them a space out of all the broken timelines, it would just be delaying the inevitable, rather like Mirabelle's situation, kind of cannibalizing one's energy.
• This isn't to say that's a bad thing to do, and I remember thinking that it might be like hospice care. I don't recall whether I came up with that or Lorelei said it.
• Lorelei is really powerful. She did something, and suddenly, Louis, whose relationship with Tommy has been moving at a fairly slow pace, decided that this was the perfect time to have sex with Tommy. Tommy managed to keep both of their clothes on and virtues intact and get Louis into the car, where Millicent joined them.
• Millicent did first tell Lorelei that this was Not Cool. Lorelei didn't understand (or perhaps merely claimed not to understand?) -- she wasn't making Louis do anything more than he wanted to do anyway.

Millicent drove, dropping Tommy and Louis off somewhere private. She and Tommy agreed that a) he and Louis should stay far away from her niece and b) what Lorelei had done was Not Cool.

You might think that this would give the men pause when it came to joining Millicent on dimension hopping. You would be wrong. Tommy intends to protect Millicent. Louis intends to protect Tommy.

Folks followed the gizmo that Minerva gave Millicent, and they went to an alternate Los Angeles, breaking in to someone's home/office.

That someone turned out to be that world's Joyce Summers, who got the drop on Tommy and had everyone disarm. When questions, she raised the perfectly reasonable point that they'd broken into her home, armed, and perhaps they could tell her what the f*ck was going on.

They did, and she was able to help them. Yes, Hypatia Masters was dead in this world. Very, very dead.

You see, this was the universe in which Joyce was a PC. Well, technically, she was still an NPC, of course. But it was the universe where she had gone through the events of Masks of Nyarlathotep, the more traditional version, where Hypatia Masters had doomed herself by making the terrible bargain with Nyarlathotep. She had died in the 1920s. And, in the 1930s, Joyce had gone through the events of Eternal Lies.

This last was a present to me, as I'd been the one gming that run of Eternal Lies. In other words, I'd been given the rare opportunity to play, briefly, in my own game universe, where I've run:

• Tatters of the King
• Eternal Lies
• Several stand-alone scenarios
• Our Ladies of Sorrow
• All but the last leg of a four generational campaign of Dracula Dossier (we will finish that last leg one of these years, I think)

In any case, while Joyce wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of demigoddess Hypatia Masters moving into her universe, she reckoned that, so long as Hypatia didn't force Joyce to notice, it was probably all right.

Folks returned home, and Minerva learned that the expedition was a success and the parallel universe one suited to her needs. Exactly what this means is not yet clear. Her secret occult conspiracy is dedicated to the idea of No Gods, No Fate, iirc. And, as she told Millicent quite frankly, Millicent shouldn't be trusting her.

So, why did Millicent help her? Er, she asked? And didn't threaten? Well, that's part of it. But as I said after the game: "Oh, that's why Millicent is sympathetic to Minerva's request. Minerva wants to tune in and drop out, just like the hippies!"

Yes, I'm sure that's it. I'm sure Minerva, who runs a secret occult conspiracy with members like Henry Kissinger, cannot possibly be up to anything bad.