Sam: When last we left the cabal, they had chased away Ninja the Technocrat and achieved enlightenment by means of large quantities of alcohol. Walter and Draw, roll me a Stamina + Streetwise, dif 8 to avoid hangover.
(they roll)
Bill: Two successes.
Nate: Hell no. Can I refresh myself with Life 2?
Sam: I suppose so. Under the circumstances, though, I'd say it's vulgar. Dif 6.
Nate (rolls): 2 successes.
Sam: Very well. You manage to move from Crippled to merely Hurt, and you should recover in a couple hours. Until then, you'll have a
pounding, though not crippling, headache.
Bill: What about Draw? Is he okay?
Sam: I'm going to say he's also Hurt. You don't drink yourself into a Seeking without paying the price.
Bill: Time for a little hair of the dog. Life 2. Dif?
Sam: Not as vulgar for you. Dif 4, including specialty focus.
Bill (rolls): Three successes.
Sam: After a couple sips of whiskey, you feel just fine.
Bill: Draw practically leaps out of bed, whistling a happy tune as he skips downstairs for breakfast.
Nate: Walter eyes Draw meaningfully as he eats his dry toast. "The Oh God of Hangovers must hate you."
Bill (ooc): That sure would make an interesting Avatar for a Cultist, don't you think?
Ed: Homer and Allan come downstairs a few minutes after the two boozers.
John: "Um, Walter, you know that little chapel in the basement?"
Nate: "Yes. What about it?"
John: "Well, a ninja with a BFG kind of broke into the hospital last night and trashed the place."
Nate: "WHAT?!?"
John: "Yeah. We scared him off, but you're gonna have to order a new pew, and you might want to do something about the bloodstains on the
carpet and the scorch marks on the walls."
Nate: "Blood stains? Scorch marks? A new pew?"
Mary (ooc): That's an interesting question. Where do you buy pews? I mean, is there a pastors' catalog or something where you order all
your communion wine and gold crosses? I mean, I doubt a christian bookstore sells pews...
Bill (ooc): Maybe there's a religious furniture store out there somewhere.
Mary (ooc): Pews, Altars, Etc?
Bill (ooc): Yes, they have a Pews, Altars, Etc. Superstore, too. It includes aisles of furniture for Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Pagans,
and even Satanists.
John (ooc): Riiight... That's a turf war just waiting to happen...
Nate (clears his throat): "A new pew?"
John: "Like I said, he had a BFG...
Fanny (ooc): What's a BFG?
John (ooc): A big fucking gun.
Sam (ooc): Actually, it wasn't all that big - just kind of an oversized sci-fi pistol that shot plasma...
John (ooc): Any device in a modern setting that shoots plasma is, by definition, a BFG, Sam.
Nate: Walter winces. "Why would a ninja break into Serenity Hospital. We have no emnity with the Akashic Brotherhood."
Ed: "Truth to tell, Walter, I think the 'BFG' part is more important than the 'ninja' is, in this story. He also had a PPG and appeared
to be looking for something with it."
Bill (ooc): PPG?
Ed (ooc): I think that's right. It's that scanner device out of Ghostbusters that lets them detect supernatural activity.
Bill (ooc): Oh yes. It's been a while.
Nate (ooc): "If someone asks you if you're a god, you say YES!"
Ed (ooc): "No one steps on a church in MY town!"
Nate (ooc): "She sleeps on top of her covers - three FEET above her covers..."
Sam (ooc): Alright, but back to reality...
Fanny: "It was difficult to read his mind, but I got a glimpse of a For Sale sign outside of the hospital."
Mary: "It doesn't make any sense. Why would the Technocracy be interested in buying an old mission hospital, other than to make our lives miserable, of course?"
Nate: "Well, there's more to this old hospital than a few doctors and several nurses and nuns. They might be after the Node in the basement chapel."
Mary: "There's a NODE in the basement?!? Why didn't you mention this to us before?"
Nate: "Well, I haven't known any of you very long, and the subject hadn't really come up, yet. Besides, it's just a little Node. I don't see why the Technocracy would go through the trouble for such a tiny trickle of Quintessence."
John: "There has to be more to it than that, or they wouldn't have sent an agent in the middle of the night. Is there Tass down there?"
Nate (ooc): I don't know. Is there?
Sam: Um, sure. It collects in the Eucharist down there."
John (ooc): Oh really? How much Tass are we talking about here?
Sam: Not that much. Five points, maybe.
Nate (ooc): Like anyone else but Walter has the Prime 3 required to get the Quint out of the Tass...
John (ooc): You can turn the Tass into Quint and give it to all of us.
Bill (ooc): There's actually an easier way, and all you need is Prime 1 and a bit of downtime.
Mary (ooc): He's right. Heart's Blood to bring yourself to Bruised and gain a Quint. One day later, you're completely healed. Repeat ad nauseum.
Nate (ooc): Cool. And Walter has Life 3, so he could heal everyone back up to full strength. Then it wouldn't even require downtime.
Sam (ooc): It doesn't work like that. Wounds inflicted by Heart's Blood can't be healed with magic.
Nate (ooc): Oh well. But still...
John (ooc): Yes. Remind me to hurt myself later to get the Quint...
Nate: "There is a small reservoir of Prime down there, but not so much that it would attract the interest of the Technocracy."
Mary: "Of course, there's always a chance that the property value of the neighborhood really IS about to go up, and the Syndicate wants to build a new Pews, Altars, Etc Superstore here."
Ed: "Actually, he mentioned turning the place into a Wal-Mart..."
John (ooc): A Wal-Mart? What kind of crack-smoking moron in Parliment decided to give them permission to build over here?
Bill (ooc): Didn't you know? Sam Walton is a member of the Syndicate.
John (ooc): Was a member. He died a while back, didn't he?
Bill (ooc): Nope. He was Embraced by the Ventrue and continues his reign of destruction.
Mary (ooc): Bill! Rule Zero?
Sam scribbles something behind his GM's screen.
Nate (ooc): Too late. If Sam Walton wasn't a Ventrue with Syndicate connections before, he is now.
John (ooc): Be honest, Sam. Between Bill and I, do you have to do any planning for this game?
Sam (ooc): If I said no, would it keep either of you from giving me ideas?
John (ooc): Probably not, but I was just curious.
Nate: "A Wal-Mart? Why would they want to open a discount store in Edinburgh?"
Bill: "Because the Americans are jealous that we still have clothes stores that don't suck?"
Fanny: "Or perhaps they're trying to destroy the Europeans' sense of history so the Technocracy can rewrite it completely."
John: "What?"
Bill (ooc): Sam, why are you smiling?
Sam (ooc): No reason, Bill.
Fanny: "Think about it. The States have all but erased all their history before the Colonies, so they can be convinced to believe whatever the Technocracy wants them to believe about the ancient history of their continent. But Europe and Asia and Africa still have places that have been around since before the Technocracy was founded, so they haven't forgotten the truth about history."
Eyes widen all around the table.
Bill (ooc): Okay, Fanny, you're starting to frighten me.
John (ooc): Me, too. Have you been reading Sam's gaming notebook?
Fanny shakes her head.
Bill: "What Christabel is saying makes a lot of sense. Every Cultist knows that Time is the most difficult Sphere to use without accumulating Paradox. So many strange events happen without magic that most other Spheres can be brushed off as a coincidence, under the right circumstances. Quantum physics and Chaos Theory can explain many things, and everyone has come to believe that technology can accomplish just about anything. In spite of all the movies about time travel, no one believes it is possible to change the past."
Mary: "But how can building a Wal-Mart in Edinburgh change the past?"
Bill: "Paradox is a funny thing. It ignores coincidences, even if the laws of reality have been broken."
Ed: "I'm confused."
Nate (ooc): So am I. Can I make some kind of check to figure out what the heck they're talking about?
Sam: Sure. Intelligence + Enigmas, dif 8.
Nate (rolls): Nope.
Ed (ooc): How about me?
Sam: Okay. Same dif.
Ed (rolls): Two successes.
Sam: It works something like this. The Technocracy can't change history on a large scale because there is too much evidence against the kind of history they would write. People have an idea that history is a process, that things are not the same now as they were two hundred years ago. The Technocracy gets some of their respectable reputation - and, as result, reduced Paradox - from the idea that they are constantly making new discoveries. It lets them invent new things without suffering huge Paradox backlashes. But history also helps the Traditions, since they can claim mystical knowledge that predates even the rise of technology. If the Technocracy could make itself older than the Traditions, not only would it be harder to eliminate (much as the Traditions have been), it could more easily dismiss the importance of magic and faith. Of course, it isn't easy to change the past, because they have to change history itself, first. They've changed a lot of history, but people still know that the belief in Yahweh predates the belief in the Scientific Method.
Bill (ooc): The process is slow.
Sam: Yes. They made a mistake by inventing the printing press, much less by letting the Digital Web exist, because now Sleepers expect to be able to find information on any subject in a matter of minutes. So, the Technocracy can't burn the books and expect people not to notice. They have to crush all curiosity about the past.
Fanny (ooc): But every time someone sees a castle and wonders about it, they might look for its history. Then they find out that steam power is a new concept and that people used to believe in magic and faeries and miracles. Even rational people sometimes put a little more weight on an idea if it is older than the others.
Nate (ooc): So, if you wipe out all the old buildings, people won't think to study the history of castles and knights in shining armor and stuff, and so the Consensus doesn't notice if the Technocracy changes the past.
Sam: There's more to it than that, but that's one important aspect of changing the past. Also in there is to make students hate studying history and any subject related to it.
John (ooc): But if they refuse to teach history, won't people become curious and study it on their own?
Sam (ooc): Yes, but if they REQUIRE children to study history and ancient literature, but teach it in such a way that everyone hates those subjects, who is going to be wandering around the library looking for Caesar's Commentaries on the Gaelic Wars?
Bill (ooc): So, basically, you make people hate old ideas and cling to the latest fashion. Then you eliminate all evidence of the real past in order to put up Wal-Marts and McDonalds, all in the name of progress. The Consensus's view of history shifts, and then the Technocracy alters the past while no one is looking, burns the old history books, and writes themselves in as being bigger than Jesus ever was.
Sam (ooc): Pretty much.
Mary (ooc): Sounds like that has a few holes, but I guess it works well enough.
Sam: I'm glad you approve.
Ed (ooc): I'm still lost, but my character understands, I guess.
Sam: Basically, if the Technocracy modernizes Edinburgh and destroys all the old buildings, they'll be able to go back in time and prevent the Traditions from ever existing.
Ed (ooc): Oh, I guess that would be pretty bad for us, wouldn't it?
John (ooc): Um, yes. You could say it would be Egon bad.
Mary (ooc): Not bad for improvising, Sam, but you really need to start planning before each session...
Sam (ooc): Thank you, Mary, but I planned this one.
Mary (ooc): How did Fanny figure it out so quickly, then?
Fanny (ooc): I gave him the idea.
Mary (ooc): Why aren't you writing stories, Fanny?
Fanny (ooc): I would, if I had a talent for it, like you four do.
Nate: "We have to stop them from destroying history."
Mary: "But how can we? We're only one little cabal of mages against the entire weight of reality..."
Bill (ooc): Well, Sam, you've managed to include all the Traditions' usual opponents in a single game. I hope you're happy.
John (ooc): Not quite. We haven't met any Marauders, yet.
Mary (ooc): Shut up, John. I don't want to deal with OPP.
John (ooc): OPP? Isn't that the name of a band or song or something?
Mary (ooc): Here, it's just an acronym for Other People's Paradox.
John (ooc): Ah. I see.
Nate: "We have to try."
John: "Don't we have enough on our plate already? I have people to kill in this lifetime, and I can't be the Hand of Fate if I'm locked away in a Technocratic compound, now can I?"
Mary: "Homer is right. William will get away if we don't find his trail quickly. I'm not going to take that risk."
Nate: "But they're going to knock down Serenity Hospital!"
Ed: "Guys, it's his home you're talking about."
Nate: "Not to mention all the sick and the nuns and friars who live here."
Mary: "I hate to say it, Walter, but it will take time to bring in the bulldozers. They're not exactly going to knock down the hospital on a weekend, you know. The people in charge and the Church will take this thing to court, if necessary. It will be months before they can push through a demolition order."
Ed: "They have a point. And if the bulldozers get here before we get back, the other nurses can always go all Arthur Dent on them."
Bill: "You can be certain Sir William is up to no good, by now. Let's finish one quest before we go chasing down another impossible mission."
Nate: "Very well. But have we found a way to track down the Nephandi, yet?"
Bill: "I think I can arrange it. Someone find me some whiskey and a piano. It's time I played a little Chopin..."
Fanny: "You know how to play the piano?"
Bill: "No, but get enough whiskey in me, and I'll fake it."
Nate: "How will that help us find the Nephandi's Flying Circus?"
Sam: Yes, how?
Bill: "You use a dowsing rod to find water. You use an alcoholic playing a piano to find an open pub. I'm thinking those Nephandi have to have something intoxicating with them somewhere. I'll just tap into the collective alcoholic unconscious to find their liquor cabinet and a time when it will be open. From there, it's just a matter of transportation."
John (ooc): I think that's the most screwed up excuse for using a Correspondence and Time Effect I have ever heard.
Bill (ooc): Will it work, Sam?
Sam: I'm beginning to think you've renounced your tea-totalling ways in an effort to get into character, Bill, but I don't see why not. You can find a piano and some whiskey. The Effect is Vulgar, but without witnesses. Dif 6.
Bill: Willpower. (rolls) My oh my, four successes.
Sam: Okay... I really have no idea where the Nephandi went, to be honest, so we'll pick this up next week, if that's okay with everyone else...
ST (Sam) - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Clara (Mary) - Mary Shelley
Christabel (Fanny) - Fanny Brawne
Draw (Bill) - William Blake
Homer (John) - John Keats
Walter (Nate) - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Allan (Ed) - Edgar Allan Poe