Crown of Creation, 2021

(TITZYBLF 358)

Crown of Creation campaign has started, using Aviatrix's tweaked Gumshoe system, which she's dubbed Catshoe. I am reprising my role as Millicent Lowell, a Normal Human, no really, please ignore what Mother says about being the favorite of the Dark Lord, and definitely ignore what my sister Mirabelle says. Two other players are playing twins, children of previous characters of theirs. One player is playing an unscrupulous businessman sort of trying to find redemption, but not very good at that -- his Drive is Folly -- and another is playing a linguist who was falsely accused of selling Navy secrets. There's been some hints about time travel and alternate realities.

(TITZYBLF 359)

In the second session, the players got Love Letters from the GM, addressed to their characters. Mine read:

Dear Millicent,

In your perfect ordinary life, few things are truly surprising to you, but a discovery made after you returned from Tellus gave even you pause.

[Tellus was an alternate reality where the Castaigne Dynasty ruled the USA. This was before the Yellow King RPG came out, and happened in a previous campaign, set in the 1950s. Crown of Creation is the fourth in a sequence of campaigns that includes Post-Modern Masks of Nyarlathotep (Masks of Nyarlathotep, 1920s), Masks of the Liar (Eternal Lies, 1930s), and The Unanswered Question (Tatters of the King, 1950s). I played Millicent in the second campaign and made a one session guest appearance in the third.]

It seems that somehow you're a real girl again? Maybe? You're definitely not a dreamform anymore.

[That happened after Millicent, like the other PCs, was taken apart and put back together again by a god. For Reasons, Millicent didn't exactly have a normal body at the end of that process, even though everyone else did. It's complicated.]

This leads to some difficult choices.

Mirabelle is dying. Or rather, it seems like her brain is. She has good days and bad days, but the sickliness of her brain is reflected in the sickliness of her human body. (In her other, beautiful form, she isn't so affected, but she's also a much less interesting conversationalist.)

[Mirabelle is Millicent's sister. Sort of. It's complicated. Her other, beautiful form resembles a three-headed (and possibly three-bodied) sphinx.]

She's always been closer to dad's side of the family business, and she has proposed a way to give her some respite: you can exchange cerebral fluids. (Well, fluids in three dimensions... you know what I mean.)

["dad" = Nyarlathotep.]

If you go through with it:

Mirabelle gets much better and is soon able to get around the house and talk to mom's friends. Start the session down 3 Stability but hold 1. Spend that hold to call upon your sister's nature to do something with superhuman strength or resilience.

[This is the option I took.]

How does it make you feel to partake in a little of your original nature?

[I said: Disturbingly great.]

What does Mirabelle gain from you?

[I said the most terrifying thing I could think of: Feelings. Judging from the look on the gm's face, it's the most terrifying thing she could think of as well.

GM: Although... it's not like she doesn't have any feelings. Contempt is a feeling.]

If you don't go through with it:

Mirabelle has the greater talent, but you've always had the greater skill. You weave an enchantment that gives her some respite. Deplete your Magic pool, but hold 1 because of the visions you had during the ritual. Spend that hold to make a prediction that will absolutely come true.

How do you feel about not agreeing to the transfer? How has Vanessa reacted?

[Vanessa, formerly Roger Vane Carlyle, is Millicent's, and thus Mirabelle's, mother. I don't think she would have reacted well if Millicent refused, and while I picked the other option because it was much more interesting, I don't deny that this was also a factor.]

The PCs were all connected to the Delphi Institute, and all wound up going there to help with a sudden death on the premises. The dead woman was a self-proclaimed oracle and called herself Cassandra.

[I think she might be the human child of Hastur by one of the PCs from the previous campaign, but I could be mistaken. UPDATE POST-ZINE: Yep, totally mistaken.]

She lived in a cave which might have been artificial, but there was an odd hatch leading into the ground and a hole in the ceiling.

Millicent had been called because Beth Queen (sort of the head of the Delphi Institute, but there's a board and all that) knew that she was good with Weird Stuff. I think the business man, Kane Kulinsky, was called for the normal stuff -- lawyers and so on. He got Beth to call Rudolfo (Rudy) Fitzgibbons, who currently works for DA, iirc, and I think that involved him coming with his twin, Charlie. She was a journalist now and had just got back from Vietnam. The previous night, Beth had gone out drinking with Tommy Keegan, the last of the group of PCs, and the cops decided to pay him a visit and confirm which bars he and Beth had been at to see if his alibi held. Beth had thoughtfully left certain bars off the list she gave the cops, i.e., the ones that catered primarily to homosexuals.

Folks appeared on site, not just the PCs, but also a number of other people. Things quickly turned into a very odd turf war, as the Air Force (I think?) brought an Expert whom Millicent recognized as a Yithian-possessed human (by which I mean the Yithian pretty much identified themself to her as such), and another organization that at least claimed to be... well didn't claim to be, but intimated they were... whatever it is that NSA might have been calling itself if it existed in the 1960s? That group was led by someone Millicent recognized as an old... enemy? Maybe? Ally? Sort of?

The ally/enemy/whatever suggested she and Millicent talk privately. Millicent agreed, and Tommy, who noticed that Millicent's handbag looked decidedly heavier than when she first entered the oracle's cave, suggested she leave it with him. Millicent had slipped some of the dead woman's books into her bag, books she couldn't read as they were in Hebrew, and she gratefully agreed. Tommy, incidentally, can read Hebrew. I think Charlie took photos of the cave. I know Rudy called a rising star politician he knew, Frank, and got him to agree to stall things. After all, he didn't want to be known as "Folding Frank" when he got to whatever the next stage of his political career was -- I forget whether he was aiming for congress or a governorship.

So the group is starting to cohere as a group, even if Tommy may have a problem with some of Kane's previous actions, even if Charlie is brash and Rudy cautious, while Millicent is... weird. This is good, because whatever killed Cassandra (I gather OOC that it's a flying polyps, but that's not a thing I think anyone knows IC) is still out there, and Millicent, at least, is worried about her sister, her mother, and all the hippies crashing with her mother, including the latest guest who goes by "Lilith" or "Lily" for short.

(TITZYBLF 361)

SPOILERS FOR MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP

Turns out I was wrong about the identity of the oracle. Back when Aviatrix ran her Post-Modern Masks of Nyarlathotep game, she decided to change a few things.

• Roger Vane Carlyle made a bargain with Nyarlathotep and became Vanessa Carlyle. The two gave birth to Millicent, and, in a way, to her sister Mirabelle.
• Hypatia Masters did not give birth to a child of Nyarlathotep, instead making a bargain with N for godlike power, I think in return for not opposing N. Also, she was the daughter of Robert Huston.

Hypatia Masters was the woman calling herself Cassandra, the oracle of the Delphi Institute.

END OF SPOILERS FOR MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP

The PCs are:

• Millicent Lowell: 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. Drive: Duty
• Kane Kulinsky: Unscrupulous Businessman who may be trying to grow a conscience. Or not. Drive: Folly
• Tommy Keegan: Veteran with a General Discharge. This is code for "we'd make it Dishonorable but can't quite get the evidence for that". They think he stole naval base secrets. He didn't. Drive: Revenge
• Charlie (Charlene) Fitzgibbons-Cuevas: Freelance Photographer convinced she will follow in the path of her mother and her half-sister (both of whom were the player's PCs in previous campaigns). Drive: Destiny
• Rudy (Rudolpho) Fitzgibbons-Cuevas: Charlie's twin, lawyer working for the DA. His parents' stories are no longer enough (and the same player had the father as a PC in a previous campaign). Drive: Adventure

All of the PCs are associated with the Delphi Institute, run by Beth Queen. Well, started by Beth. There's a board more or less in charge.

The PCs were more or less called in because Cassandra, self-proclaimed oracle who lived in a cave at the institute, had been killed by a creature that Millicent knew was a flying polyp, the enemy of the Yithians, one of whom (or a branch of whom? It's hard to tell with the Great Race, and they shuttle back and forth in time) was possessing the body of an Expert chaperoned by the Air Force who'd come to see what had happened. Who had informed him or the Air Force / how had they known? Good question! He liked pop tarts. Additionally, Rudy had used his contacts to stall the Expert, which resulted in another group getting called in, one which reported to M (Mina -- yes, the one from Dracula and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) of Majestic 12. This is why Millicent slipped some books to Tommy, who learned that, while they appeared to be in Hebrew, this was Hebrew-transliterated Aklo. Between him and Millicent, they learned that Cassandra was apparently centuries old and didn't think much of the human race (although she was or at least used to be human herself, unlike the Expert).

(NB: The GM told us (in February of 2022) that Mina is not, in fact, a vampire. "Not exactly. I mean, definitely not that. But something..." Our characters don't yet know this.)

The Expert spend some time writing equations on the board, which his Air Force escort photographed while keeping Charlie from doing the same, I think. As they were erasing the equations, the Expert discussed the flying polyp situation with Millicent, warning her not to break time lest she get a visit from the Hounds of Tindalos. He said this much less coherently, of course, but Millicent eventually figured out what he meant. Then he said his goodbyes to Millicent, who was confused.

Millicent: You... don't want to see the cave?

After all, that's what he'd been asking to see.

Expert: I have already seen it.

Millicent didn't argue, and both groups of outsiders left.

Folks reviewed what they knew. Cassandra was old, and apparently an oracle, but hadn't seemed to know her own death was coming. She lived in a cave that had a hatch in the floor. The flying polyp -- which Millicent told Charlie it was okay to just call a wind bag, as it was, essentially, a malevolent sentient wind bag -- had left the hatch, smashed through Cassandra, and smashed through the roof of the cave.

In other words, the hatch was opened. But how? Either the lock would have been destroyed or the mystical wards would have been destroyed, and the number of people who could have done such a thing was not large. Millicent could have, but hadn't (as far as both she and I know). Her sister Mirabelle could have. And there were others, but not very many others. Well, okay, there were the Yithians, but they were almost certainly the ones who'd imprisoned the creature in the first place.

Folks were clear that they needed to Do Something about the creature being out there. And they did some canvassing of the area, and figured out that it had probably gone out over the ocean for the moment, if I have my geography correct. But it would want to feed. Oh, and yes, it was generally invisible. Millicent returned home, aka Vanessa's Place, which was full of hippies, some quite good musicians, like Lilith. She updated Mirabelle, neglecting to tell Vanessa. Mirabelle was intrigued, though she reminded her sister that the Yithians always had their own agenda.

She told Millicent that their father, aka Nyarlathotep, wasn't happy with her (Mirabelle).

Millicent: Did he say why?

Mirabelle: I asked and then found myself on Neptune.

She also asked if Millicent wanted to do Liao with her. To her surprise and delight, Millicent said yes. I'm not entirely sure why -- it was an impulsive decision. But it seemed to make sense. Maybe she felt that Things Were Starting Again and that she was tired of this.

Charlie and Rudy also felt that Things Were Starting Again -- only this time, this time was their time. They were determined to be involved. Each wanted to keep the other safe, but realized that this was not in the cards, so they agreed to support each other. Yay loving siblings!

Rudy (at some point during that scene): You do not have to rehash the highlights of our family. Since when have we ever been normal? I am well aware of our eccentricities.

On a more practical level, they decided to figure out where the lightning gun their half-sister used to use was.

Meanwhile, Kane and Tommy talked with Vanessa. She veered a bit in conversation, often breaking off to say that Millicent didn't like her to talk about the current topic -- generally the weird stuff in their lives. Her daughters didn't like it.

Vanessa (with growing intensity): They think I'd break. I didn't break. They tried to break me. But. I. Didn't. Break.

Somewhere around here, she shared a joint with Kane and learned that Cassandra had been killed. She took the news hard.

Vanessa: I never thought I'd outlive Cassie. I guess I didn't. We thought we could change the world. We did change the world. But the cost was too high. (pause) Patti -- Cassandra, I will miss you. I never thought I'd toast your funeral.

Eventually, Kane and Tommy went home.

The next morning, Millicent awoke to Vanessa standing over her.

Vanessa (in the voice a parent uses to let a child know she's in Big Trouble): Millicent Lowell, have you been raiding my stash of Liao?

Millicent, in her late 40s, tripping and/or crashing, managed to explain that she thought it was Mirabelle's or that it was Mirabelle's idea, or something.

Vanessa: Mirabelle, don't think I don't know you're crawling on the walls just because I can't see you!

Vanessa was also angry that Millicent hadn't so much as mentioned Cassandra being dead.

Millicent immediately apologized, having had no idea that Vanessa knew Cassandra.

In fact, I'd assumed that Millicent didn't know most of what had happened in the Post-Modern Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. Later, the GM said that we should assume that, given how many decades it's been, someone or several someones had filled her in, showed her what documentation existed, and so on. That was fine -- she still didn't know that Hypatia Masters was Cassandra, for she had never met the oracle. She filled Vanessa in on the situation. Vanessa was not pleased to hear that Millicent seemed willing to take marching orders from the Yithians.

Vanessa (scornfully): Oh, because they're the "Great Race"!

She reminded Millicent that the Yithians do everything they do for one reason only: To preserve the Yithians. No matter what. No matter what individual lives they might ruin, no matter what other sentient species they might displace by possessing their bodies.

That said, she was very upset about Cassandra's death. Millicent tried to comfort her, something Millicent is not very good at doing. She then promised Vanessa that she'd get, i.e., destroy the thing that had killed Cassandra, or at least see that it was destroyed. Have I mentioned that Millicent has no Reassurance or Flattery, but plenty of Intimidation? Saying she'd get that nasty flying polyps was probably about as effective as she could get in comforting Vanessa.

The next day, folks focused on the lightning gun. Rudy and Charlie managed to get it out of a police evidence room. It seems that their half-sister, Temperance, was arrested a couple of times for her vigilante activities, and that she had the thing on her. Of course, it just looked like a metal tube, so the police had no idea what it really was. The person letting the twins, er, borrow it told them to bring it back, and this was strictly off the record, et cetera. It wasn't as if the stuff they'd confiscated from Temperance wasn't just sitting around gathering dust, but this was evidence, after all.

Me (at the idea of a lightning gun held as evidence by the LAPD): Oh ghod, that's just wrong.

Now that they had the lightning gun, the next step was to make it functional. Kane took it and Tommy to his club, a club of rich men (possibly women as well, but I'm not at all sure), and showed it to someone who showed it to someone who figured yes, he could make this standard issue lightning gun functional. Why, yes, he did know what it was.

This may or may not have been the same person as Dan Helsing, who agreed to come along on the hunt. He hunted Big Game and doing so with a lightning gun would be excellent.

Dialogue I jotted down from this scene:

Person who recognizing the item: It looks like a western Australia lightning gun -- I haven't seen one of those in a while. Oh wait -- this isn't an original. It's [illegible: I think something about it using modern outlets to charge]. I only know of two things this is used for and one presumes [illegible: I think either "you not being human" or "a not really human"].

Kane: You know what they say about presumptions -- they make an ass out of you and --

Tommy (I think -- could have been one of the twins): Actually, that's right.

Kane: Oh.

Meanwhile, the group figured out where they needed to be. While being helped with her crashing from the Liao trip, Millicent learned from folks at Vanessa's Place that there was going to be a Be-In the next day, at Griffith Park. Lots and lots of hippies. Or, looked at another way? A buffet for the invisible wind bag.

Tommy's player couldn't be there for the next session, and his player explained that his friend and landlady locked him into his apartment for his own good after he explained what was going on. This person was his Solace, aka the person who helped him get Stability back, and Tommy's Stability had dipped dangerously low. Well, dangerously low for this early stage of the game.

Everyone else went to the Be-In. Many people edged away from Rudy, who practically screamed "narc" in his suit, and who worked for the DA. Millicent managed to be a Cool older person, possibly from dropping more Liao, possibly from letting someone paint her face, possibly just from being... Millicent, when she's relaxed. The idea of relaxed Millicent seemed to frighten the GM, as it meant Millicent's filter, and possibly ethical framework, were down.

They made their way to the roof of the Griffith Park Observatory. At this point, the group met the members of what Charlie promptly dubbed "The B-Team". Of course, they think of the PCs as The B-Team. As Millicent opened her third eye while on Liao, a woman down below followed Millicent's gaze, or more precisely, where Millicent was pointing, and started taking pictures. Rudy went down to intercept her, and realized that she'd once been an intern in an office where he'd worked.

Her name was Santiaga "Tia" Fabri, and she wanted to be a PI. The problem was getting the hours, and she'd hoped to talk to Millicent.

Tia: She's legendary! A woman PI in Los Angeles!

Apparently, there were at most ten women PIs there. The issue was that to get one's license, one has to have worked a certain number of hours in the field, something that is not easy for anyone who isn't a former policeman. And neither Tia nor Millicent had ever been police.

I suspect Millicent had some help. Her mother's sister, Erica, was married to Bradley Grey, who, in this timeline, had been the governor of California. It's likely he pulled some strings. It's likely Millicent doesn't realize this. In any case, Tia wanted to talk to her, hopefully to get Millicent to hire her so she could put in the hours.

(The GM reminded us about a hidden branch of Wright-O'Donnell Investigations, aka WODI, from a couple of campaigns ago. I'm guessing it still exists.)

Tia was also there with her own group, and when she understood what was going on, she suggested some of the main group talk to her people.

Previously, the GM had asked us to make up an NPC or two not connected to a previous campaign, and I'd suggested a professor who reminded Millicent of the eccentric Professor Orange, but who was definitely not the same person. This dovetailed with what the GM had in mind, and so Millicent met Dr. Felix Schattengrau, who was trying to find the same sort of things Millicent was, only with Science! They got on well. Possibly surprisingly, Millicent also got on well with Cap'n Tripps, aka Joey Wayne. Charlie refuses to call him "Cap'n Tripps", and refers to him as "Joseph". This strikes Millicent as rude.

Cap'n Tripps took one look at Millicent and realized that she was not only tripping on Liao, but tripping on the good stuff, from Shanghai. Impressed, Millicent explained the plan, such as it was:

• She needed to be able to see the invisible monster.
• They needed to prepare some kind of lure. Kane would up volunteering or being volunteered, probably the latter, though he didn't object. His Drive is Folly.

Cap'n Tripps thought about this, had both Millicent and Kane write down answers to a bunch of questions, because he is a responsible drug dealer (when he's not tripping out completely), and made concoctions for each of them.

Kane had asked for basically one of everything and paid for it. Handsomely. Cap'n Tripps took this large sum of money and pocketed it, and then put out a sign that said "Free Drugs!"

Meanwhile, up on the roof, Rudy and Charlie were meeting the rest of Tia's friends. One was Louis Van Vinh, clearly the muscle, and clearly competent. The twins liked him. The other was Giselle Biojoux, a New Orleans heiress. They hated her at once.

Thus, the full run down of the B-Team:

• Santiaga "Tia" Fabri: very junior PI, seems to be the leader
• Giselle Bijoux: New Orleans soft-drink heiress, provides working capital
• Louis Van Vinh: Vietnamese refugee, muscle
• Joey "Cap'n Tripps" Wayne: Free-ranging drug enthusiast, maker, follower of the esoteric
• Dr. Felix Schattengrau: former JPL rocket scientist, "they laughed at me at the academy"

Charlie and Rudy would like to poach Louis and perhaps one or two of the others, and ditch the rest. I wonder what the B-Team feels about the, er, A-Team.

Meanwhile, Millicent found a group of hippies, the same ones she'd met outside the oracle's cave before Cassandra died, who seemed to know about the flying polyp. Their leader, Mike, was explaining how they were going to summon the Phoenix. She convinced them to do it atop the observatory, and brought Kane into the center of their circle of seated chanters.

Mike: You brought an offering! Great!

Kane: What?

Millicent: It's fine. You'll be fine.

Kane's Player: Right. What's my Drive again? Right, Folly. It's fine.

So Dan Helsing and Rudy prepared, and Millicent let people know when the flying polyp was arriving. And what she felt from it --

-- was loneliness, not hunger so much.

And it became visible, which caused Dan Helsing to lose too much Stability to actually fire the lightning gun.

Rudy dove for it, aimed, and fired, emptying all the charges at once into the creature. And, fortunately, that was enough to kill it.

Millicent: Okay, we killed it. It didn't kill anyone. I didn't break time and space. I call that a win.

Mike and his fellow hippies strongly disagreed. Millicent and company had killed the Phoenix!

Millicent tried to argue, but was brought up short when Mike told her that the Travelers, meaning the Yithians, didn't know everything, and what, did she just do what they wanted? She didn't know everything either.

And he and his group stormed off, leaving Millicent wondering just how Mike knew about the Yithians, and how he'd found out about the flying polyp, and whether the ceremony she'd originally seen him in, just outside the oracle's cave, when something very lonely cried out and said "We are Banshee!" had anything to do with that.

And had she done the right thing? Surely, the flying polyp would have eaten people, starting with Kane. Er, Kane, whom she'd deliberately made tasty-looking to lure the flying polyp in. But it had killed Cassandra, her mother's friend. Of course, that might have been incidental, as it was released from the prison where it had been trapped for centuries or millennia or even aeons.

And... just how had that hatch been opened anyway?

Either Kane or Tia drove Millicent home, and Tia explained what she wanted to Millicent. Millicent sympathized and agreed that Tia could work for her, though she couldn't promise great pay.

Tia: Do you mind if I record this? You're very high, and I don't know if you'll remember this conversation later.

Millicent: Yeah, that's a good idea.

Millicent went to her sister looking for validation. In the previous session, I'd been under the impression that Mirabelle liked the idea of helping hunt the flying polyp, but when Millicent asked this session, she was dubious.

Mirabelle: I'm not good at... helping people. Unless you want me to keep it as a pet. Keep it on a leash, take it for walks, have it devour tourists?

Millicent demurred, but Mirabelle still greeted her hopefully, with a leash. She got over, or at least mostly concealed, her disappointment after a few moments, but had no validation to give. Philosophical discussions of morality aren't really her thing, and she has good reason to steer clear of the Yithians. Speaking of which, Millicent got a call from the Expert, thanking her for dealing with the flying polyp, and cautioning her against letting herself be used.

Millicent's Thought Balloon: Like you and Beth Queen just used me? Like the Yithians always use people? But... it killed Mom's friend...

Millicent tried to ask... something. I'm not sure even she knew what she wanted to hear.

The Expert: I will tell you this, for you have earned it. There may need to be... correction.

As in correction to the time stream. Millicent shuddered at the implications. I think the Expert also bade her farewell, implying that it intended to return to wherever or whenever it considered home.

Millicent gave Mirabelle a heads up. She also tried to let Vanessa know that the creature who killed Cassandra was dead, but I'm not sure how much attention Vanessa was paying. It was movie night, after all.

Millicent made popcorn (carefully labeling which batch was doctored with drugs and which was not), and folks gathered around the television to watch Now, Voyager, a movie I've not seen, but which the GM maintains that no one human does not cry when watching.

The next day, Rudy and Charlie invited a now crashing and hung over Millicent to have breakfast with them in a diner while they explained that they wanted to help, that they were ready for all the weird adventure that their parents and half-sister had had. They would not be dissuaded.

Tia joined them during this -- or possibly Millicent had met with Tia first and Charlie and Rudy had crashed that? Regardless, Tia had a direction for the eager twins to go in. There was a drug on the market called Void. And there was a hospital where people who overdosed on Void tended to wind up -- and none of them ever returned. What was going on there? Surely not all of them died, and even if they had, what had happened to the bodies?

Some time passed. Beth Queen held an event at the Delphi Institute, splitting the guests into two rooms so that they'd mingle with people who weren't in their usual circles. She was hoping to spark ideas and humanity learning more and stuff like that. This is generally a terrible idea in a Lovecraftian game, as those who know the opening of the story "The Call of Cthulhu" know:

-- -- --

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

-- -- --

Millicent brought hashish brownies to Mike and his hippies, who were now living together in a house in LA. She meant it as a sort of apology, unsure of her welcome. The brownies were certainly welcome.

Millicent (trying to explain): You see, I'm a gun. That's all I am.

Mike: No, Millie, you're not a gun. You're... a flower.

Millicent wasn't sure about that, but she was glad Mike was at least on speaking terms with her.

His fellow hippies seemed more like disciples now, and he was calling himself Anata. I looked up the word and learned that "anatta" is a term referring to the Buddhist doctrine of non-self, or as wikipedia puts it, "that no unchanging, permanent self or essence can be found in any phenomenon." The GM jotted that down, saying it wasn't what she'd had in mind, but that it fit what she was doing.

Mike/Anata also had a strange tattoo. Millicent studied it and realized in shock that it spelled out the secret name of Azathoth in Aklo. She asked Mike point blank how he'd learned that, and he said something about how this sort of thing wasn't that hard to learn, possibly alluding to some book or other. Mike's group was were planning a trip to San Francisco for another Be-In, and invited Millicent to come along. They were arranging for a bus.

Either Vanessa and Mirabelle were already planning to go or Millicent invited Mirabelle; I forget which. She was surprised that Lilith was going, as Lilith had come to LA because she thought the scene in San Francisco wasn't what it used to be. Lilith said that had been true, but money or a recording contract had changed that. In other words, she wasn't as small a fish in the musician pond any more.

Charlie arranged to use the original building her mother once used for LASAS, the Los Angeles Society for Archeological Studies, where Charlie once walked with a Yithian in the basement. Mina eventually took over LASAS, folding it into Majestic-12, but Ruby, Charlie's mother, still owned the building. This, Charlie decided, would become the group's base.

Millicent went to Cassandra's cave, with Kane to keep an eye on her. There, she took Liao and tried to get some idea who had opened the hatch containing the polyp in the first place. And it was as if time forked into three branches. She saw...

• Beth Queen smashing the lock on the hatch over and over until it broke.
• Mirabelle ripping the hatch open.
• Someone hidden from her breaking the wards.

There aren't many people who could hide from her third eye. IIRC, Mina couldn't. Mike as Millicent first met him and also, I think, at the Be-In at the observatory couldn't. But Mike-as-Anata? With the True Name of Azathoth tattooed on his body? Possibly -- but he hadn't been like that at the time the hatch was smashed. Of course, it's always possible to break time and space, as Millicent knew all too well.

As for Mirabelle, Millicent had already talked with her sister.

GM: Yes, but did you ask her if she'd done that.

Me (thinking, unsure): ...no?

Millicent wanted to talk to Beth, tell her that she just had to hear Beth say that she hadn't broken open the hatch. It made no sense for Beth to have done that, then called Millicent and the others to help, and not told them this important detail. Right? Right?

We decided Millicent would do that next session.

That didn't happen, and Millicent didn't ask Mirabelle about it either. In theory, Millicent was simply too busy preparing for the Be-In. In practice, I think Millicent is afraid that she'll learn she herself did this, even though that seems impossible.

The twins pulled Tommy and Kane into their plan to infiltrate the hospital as a favor to the B-Team.

Tommy (who, you'll recall, had been locked in his apartment when the group first met them): The B-Team?

Charlie: Yeah, we want Louis, maybe Tia or the Professor, but we definitely want to ditch Giselle and Joseph.

They'd invited Louis to the planning meeting. And I slid the card the GM had made for Louis, complete with picture, over to Tommy's player. As expected, the player reacted the same way I did -- Louis is quite good-looking.

Tommy's attention was piqued, and he became much more interested in helping infiltrate the hospital to learn what was going on with the missing OD patients. And everyone started shipping Tommy and Louis.

Tommy got a job at the hospital under an assumed name, working in the records room. He tried to find something about the missing patients, and after much, much searching, while keeping up a running patter about his non-existent family and his fear that he was doing the job wrong, generally annoying and/or putting his apathetic co-worker to sleep, he found a single slip of paper.

IIRC, it was a pay stub signed by one C. Winter. This led him to a particular floor of the hospital, where he wasn't allowed in the door. He gave them a spiel about how he needed to account for this because his boss would be on his case if he didn't empty his in box into his out box and could they please get someone to explain it or sign off on it or something?

(NotTommy's boss is played by Linda Hunt, and probably knows nothing about the nefarious goings on. She just wants someone capable of doing boring paperwork to do boring paperwork. She's almost certainly not as much of a jerk as he made her out to be.)

One of the men guarding the floor took the slip, went off, and eventually gave it back, saying they couldn't help and he had to go away. But keeping his eyes and ears open, Tommy learned a couple of things.

• The men guarding the floor were armed with M-16s, and were holding them such that they could easily bring them up and fire them. Carrying military issue weaponry is not standard procedure for any normal USA hospital in 1967 (and, as the GM noted, indicated that they were connected with the USA government).
• C. Winters was Cyrus Winters. Tommy caught a glimpse of him when the office door opened. The man was not a medical doctor of any kind.

Either Tommy or someone else learned the name of a nurse who'd worked on that floor for a time. Some of the group went to talk to her.

She was nervous about saying anything, but ultimate relieved that someone was looking into this.

Additionally, Millicent and Kane went to ask Cap'n Tripps about Void and what it did, quite probably in the previous session. What the group learned was:

• Theoretically, Void gives one hallucinations of past life experiences.
• For some reason, I think this usually involved the 1920s.
• The patients in that part of the hospital are treated oddly, but I forget the details. I'm not sure if it has something to do with sunlight or what. But I think they were moved into one large room for some hours of the day and then moved back into their separate rooms.

Tommy decided not to quit the hospital job just yet. (He'd planned to just not show up, citing, if anyone found him and asked, his failure to clear his in-box.)

Meanwhile, folks decided to send Rudy with Millicent on the Be-In because a) that was a pairing we hadn't yet done and b) Rudy in his suit screaming "narc" getting on the hippie bus with Millicent was a hilarious idea we couldn't resist. Did I mention that the bus was driven by Neal Cassady with his usual skill and lack of concern for safety margins? This annoyed Rudy and made Millicent nostalgic.

Millicent: It's just like when Ruby flew the plane.

Mirabelle was walking with a cane, and Millicent helped her on and off the bus. She wasn't doing as well as she'd been. Millicent wondered if they should do the brain fluid transfer thing again, but obviously, this wasn't a thing they could do just then.

Millicent paused by the bench that was a memorial for Lily, a drag queen from Bangkok she remembered fondly, and for Jimmy Wright, whom she’d been trying to emulate. Then she prepared for herself for whatever was about to happen.

She had previously gone to Cap'n Tripps for a little something that wouldn't harsh Mike/Anata's vibe at the Be-In, and she took it. She's not sure exactly what happened, but there was chanting. And Mirabelle and Mike seemed to be getting intimate. Millicent had a vague idea that perhaps she should be interfering, but Mirabelle seemed so happy!

Millicent: I am flower, not a gun. I am a flower.

Rudy spread out a towel and opened a picnic basket. This drew several hippies over to the "narc", who was willing to share his food, and the hippies reciprocated. Rudy may not have taken any drugs, but he probably got a contact high.

He watched a bemused woman with an umbrella walk over. She had been taking a walk and stumbled onto the Be-In. She and Rudy got to talking, and she introduced herself as Lucy. After sunset, they took a walk, and then Rudy came home with her to a building with two or three others, all pale like Lucy. If you think you know where this is going, you're right.

Millicent came back to herself, seeing Mirabelle tangled up with Mike/Anata. Her sister was practically glowing, probably literally. Rudy was gone.

Worried, Millicent asked around and tracked Rudy to the building he'd gone into with Lucy. She arrived at the same time as a gas-masked vigilante carrying a sword, and the inhabitants of the house quickly fled, leaving a dazed and bleeding Rudy behind. I think only Lucy had fed on him.

Rudy (staring up at the vigilante): Temperance?

It was indeed his half-sister, and she was not happy to see Rudy in trouble and Millicent with her.

Millicent gave a confused explanation that failed to mollify Temperance, who threatened Millicent, and, more importantly, Vanessa.

Millicent: If you try to hurt her, I will end you.

This may be the first time Millicent has ever actually threatened someone in anger.

Temperance (far too used to over the top stuff like this): Maybe this confrontation was destined to happen!

Millicent: Maybe. But not over Vanessa!

Temperance backed off, though not down, for the moment, and Millicent patched Rudy up. He didn't understand what had happened and where Lucy had gone.

Millicent: Your mother's going to kill me.

Temperance (into a walkie talkie): The bats have flown the coop.

Millicent got Rudy back on the bus. She noticed that Mirabelle still had her cane, but was no longer using it. She wondered whether Mirabelle was pregnant, and if so, just what that meant.

Meanwhile, Kane had been making connections. Beth had made him a member of the board of directors of the Delphi Institute, happy to have someone on it who knew that the weird stuff was real. He was now approached by Dr. Anne Robinson, who worked for Mina, and hence, Majestic-12.

She said that this organization is concerned about the Void situation. They really hope that the people taking Void are only hallucinating past lives, as the alternatives are far less desirable. She wanted to be kept in the loop there.

She also wanted him to report on the Delphi Institute and on Millicent.

Anne: Millicent Lowell is the most dangerous being on the planet.

Me: Me? Not Mirabelle?

GM: Mirabelle knows she's unstable.

An interesting point. I think Millicent believes that Mirabelle is really the Special One, and that she, Millicent, never really was. In this, she may be wrong, but it's an honest mistake.

She wants desperately to believe that she doesn't want to be Special. She wants to be normal. Normal is good. Normal doesn't break space and time. Normal doesn't make people vanish because the timeline shifted or drive hot French professors insane. There's nothing wrong with Normal.

But after the exchange of brain fluid with her sister and getting a taste of her sister's power... well, as I told the GM, it felt "disturbingly good".

Kane either agreed to help Anne or at least didn't say he wouldn’t. I think he agreed, and that he has his fingers in as many pies as he can find.

Miscellaneous Quotes From the Sessions

They're not as bright as you think they are.

They don't have to be bright. They just have to be legion. And believe me, they are. Legion.

-- -- --

I'm not asking hippies any more questions.

-- -- --

I'm not making the next session, so I told folks that Millicent could volunteer to be a fake Void overdose patient. She'd probably try to fake being Lily. What could possibly go wrong?

I will remind the GM that Millicent still has a burst of superhuman strength or endurance, due to the brain fluid transfer and let her decide whether to use it that session.

Also, at some point, Millicent needs to challenge her Drive statement, which is "I must be Jimmy Wright now."

I think the new statement would either be "I can't be Jimmy Wright" or "I'm not Jimmy Wright". I would have to change my Drive as well. It could be Destiny or In the Blood. It could be something that encapsulates the hippie experience, as Millicent is as lost in her own way as some of the hippies looking for a new path, a new truth. She wants to break the cycle, but she doesn't want to break the planet. Maybe "Lost" is the best way to describe it? But it needs to be something where it's clear when she's following her Drive into danger and when she's denying her Drive, so something about searching for a new way would be better.

(TITZYBLF 362)

SPOILERS FOR MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP in these write ups

The PCs are:

• Millicent Lowell: 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. Drive: Duty
• Kane Kulinsky: Unscrupulous Businessman who may be trying to grow a conscience. Or not. Drive: Folly
• Tommy Keegan: Veteran with a General Discharge. This is code for "we'd make it Dishonorable but can't quite get the evidence for that". They think he stole naval base secrets. He didn't. Drive: Revenge
• 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). Drive: Destiny
• Rudy (Rudolpho) Fitzgibbons-Cuevas: Charlie's twin, lawyer working for the DA. His parents' stories are no longer enough (and the same player had the father as a PC in a previous campaign). Drive: Adventure

I missed the previous session, where the group, or at least some of it, had decided to look into the matter of people on a drug known as Void who had supposedly overdosed and definitely been collected by a hospital in Los Angeles where they were held in very odd circumstances and guarded by men with SMGs for someone named C. Winter who was not a doctor. Tommy filled Millicent in on some of what had happened, at least as far as he knew.

Apparently, the folks with SMGs had orders to shoot the patients if things got weird or if, say, a group of people snuck or broke in to investigate. So, some of the patients were killed. But some were rescued. He explained that the patients were generally kept separated, and never allowed to gather in groups of 10 or more, because when that happened, things got very strange. Apparently, folks on Void were possessed by people from the past. When enough of them were together, their possession was sort of contagious. Tommy himself had briefly been possessed. And none of the people from the past had any memories after 1937.

Millicent: Uh-oh.

Tommy: What happened in 1937?

Millicent: ... I ... managed not to destroy the world.

Charlie's player thought that was very much a Worthy Accomplishment.

Charlie was very annoyed at Rudy. It seems that the vampires he'd met in San Francisco followed him to Los Angeles and were now living with him. And he absolutely refused to talk about this with Charlie.

She confronted him in his office, sweeping his papers of his desk. Apparently, he also hadn't been returning her calls for at least a week. He insisted he was fine, and what was going on was none of her business.

Mina from Majestic-12 contacted Charlie. She wasn't sure whether to be impressed or annoyed by the business at the hospital. On the one hand, it effectively ended a program that she definitely wanted ended. On the other, a lot of the patients were apparently at large and could infect other people with possession. This meant that Mina and Majestic-12 had to spend resources to deal with that, which meant they couldn't use them to deal with other issues, like, for example, vampires.

Mina was a vampire herself, but one generally trying to protect humanity as a whole, and she wanted Charlie to "resolve" the vampire situation, by which she meant destroy the vampires living with Rudy.

Well, destroy at least three of them -- Lucy and the vampires she'd created, Nadja and Henri. Dominique had indicated a willingness to turn on the others in return for being left alone.

Mina gave Charlie a note, in case there might be some opportunity to talk with Lucy before the killing. She also gave Charlie a dossier of what information she had about vampires. The GM let us decide just what rules actually applied to vampires. My notes say that we decided that a vampire can't call someone unless that person personally gave the vampire their phone number, and I think the same is true about visiting them. They can function in daylight, but are generally much weaker, especially if they haven't been feeding well.

Charlie asked Millicent to accompany her, and ultimately decided to make this a purely diplomatic visit. I'm not sure how much of this was by choice and how much because she was somewhat outgunned and didn't want to try to convince Millicent to try to kill the vampires with whatever eldritch power Millicent had.

Millicent was worrying about her sister, who was very pregnant, despite having only gotten pregnant a few weeks ago. Mirabelle wasn't exactly completely not worried, but did tell Millicent that all of this might be the best way to make things work out. Their mother, Vanessa, decided that she needed to get something from her sister Erica's home.

Erica wasn't exactly thrilled to see Vanessa and Millicent (though she didn't mind Charlie being there), but figured that she'd best let them get whatever it was that they wanted and leave. This turned out to be some kind of gem that Vanessa called the Shining Trapezohedron, and she cautioned Millicent and Charlie about closing the box on it and keeping it in the dark. She returned to preparing for a birthing / fertility ritual for Mirabelle at her home.

Millicent and Charlie went to Rudy's apartment while he was out. Charlie tried the door, but Rudy had had the locks changed. Humiliated, Charlie knocked. Dominique answered the door, and I think Charlie said she was there to parley. Dominique asked that Millicent remain outside, as she knew what Millicent was.

Dominique: I cannot make you do this, of course, but I ask that you stay outside in the name of... the understanding between beings such as ourselves.

Millicent looked to Charlie for instructions, and Charlie agreed that she should stay outside, at least so long as no one tried to hurt Charlie.

The others were in the bedroom. Henri and Nadja each grabbed one of Charlie's arms while Lucy sat up in bed. Charlie reiterated that she'd just come to talk, and Lucy had her minion vampires release her. She gave Lucy the note from Mina. Lucy was utterly unimpressed by it and handed it back to Charlie.

The note went into some detail about how Mina should have killed Lucy when Lucy first turned, how Mina blamed herself, and how she took no pleasure from Lucy's impending end. And Mina signed it "Your loving mother".

Me: How sanctimonious.

GM: Have you met her?

Yes, yes, I (and I think Millicent) had.

Meanwhile, Dominique reiterated being willing to help destroy Lucy and her minions. They were basically all from Dracula's lineage, even though the novel was indeed a work of fiction. Dominique was from a much better lineage, that of Carmilla.

Charlie collected Millicent and left Rudy's apartment.

On Midsummer of 1967, aka the summer solstice, Vanessa held A Fertility Rite for the blessing of Mirabelle Brady, which is what the one page handout from the GM called it. There were many hippies in attendance, including Mike/Anata's group, and a trio of musicians -- Lilith Lamb, Skip Spence, and Charles Miller (the last two of whom are real people). An arch decorated with Egyptian symbols, including properly-inverted ankhs, had been created. Vanessa gave herself the title of Celebrant and Millicent the title of Co-Celebrant.

Tommy and Kane were there, and Tommy had invited Louis, the man he was interested in, along. Charlie and Rudy were there, alternately not speaking to and arguing with each other. Millicent did approach Rudy before things started, asking if he was all right, what with the vampires, and adding that as long as he was, it wasn't any of her business. Rudy was annoyed that Charlie had decided to tell his business to Millicent, but grudgingly allowed as how at least Millicent understood what was and wasn't her business, unlike his sister.

I think Tommy, Louis, and Rudy helped support Mirabelle when she came out, Rudy because it was a way to avoid talking to / being talked at by Charlie. Millicent, of course, was near her sister and her mother. I'm not sure exactly why Kane was close by, as he certainly wasn't about to do any sort of labor, but probably he was there to volunteer Tommy's services.

And that's why, when mist rolled in at the climax of the ceremony and the group (Mirabelle, Vanessa, Millicent, Louis, Tommy, Kane, and Rudy) walked through the arch, they found themselves in ancient Egypt, I believe the third dynasty, give or take, and the city of Memphis. Charlie dove through after them once she realized something weird was going on.

This resulted in a massive loss of Stability, and I decided it was time to use the mechanics for challenging a Statement. I challenged Millicent's Drive statement: I must be Jimmy Wright now.

Me: I think it's now: I cannot be Jimmy Wright.

GM: You are so much more.

I decided that would be "I cannot be Jimmy Wright -- I am something greater than human."

I think the Drive itself has changed from Duty to either In the Blood or Destiny.

Vanessa had been to this time before, along with Jack Brady, Sir Aubrey Penhew, Hypatia Masters, Dr. Robert Huston, and Dr. Miriam Mwimbe. Indeed, I think this is when and where Vanessa conceived Millicent, with the help of her Dark Lord, aka Nyarlathotep.

Sir Aubrey currently ruled and had been making some changes. A surprising number of people in Memphis spoke reasonable English, at Sir Aubrey found their language far too difficult to bother learning. He was a little confused about why the others were there, but happy to help out, so long as it involved little or no actual effort on his part.

Jack Brady was thoroughly weirded out by the entire situation, and it probably didn't help when Millicent saw him.

Millicent: Uncle Jack?

Jack Brady: Do I know you?

Millicent: ...Not yet.

She had long believed that Jack was her father (though she'd known better since no later than 1937).

She apologized, at least to Tommy, possibly to the others. Tommy was very shaken, and said that he'd liked Vanessa until just a few moments ago.

Millicent had been at least somewhat aware that the ceremony Vanessa did involved calling on Nyarlathotep, but she had sort of expected maybe the Crawling Chaos would show up in Los Angeles. She didn't understand why they all wound up in ancient Memphis instead.

GM: Vanessa pass up a chance to relive the glory days of her youth?

Vanessa's younger self was probably around somewhere, but fortunately, like Dr. Huston, did not put in an appearance.

Tommy wanted to hear that they could get home. Millicent said she thought she could probably do that. Tommy wanted to hear something more definite. Correctly parsing this as a request to tell a soothing lie,

Millicent said that once they'd done whatever they needed to do to help Mirabelle, she could definitely get them home.

Dr. Mwimbe: I came to ancient Memphis and what do I find? More white people.

I think she was able to help advise, explaining that what Mirabelle would need was a certain herb that was in a certain temple, and they'd have to talk to the high priestess about that. Millicent had decidedly mixed feelings about the doctor, which mostly boiled down to not wanting to tick her off. But she also noted, aloud, that the doctor reminded her of a brilliant woman she'd met in Dallol.

Rudy went to a temple where he could satisfy carnal urges. Millicent and Charlie went to the temple where the priestess was supposed to be, but they were stopped by women warriors with polearms. Charlie was jealous of those polearms. They managed to explain their business and were told that the priestess was currently out -- but that blur of dust was her returning.

The priestess moved faster than humanly possible, and listened to Millicent's request. The priestess was Hypatia Masters who had made a deal with Nyarlathotep for power.

Priestess: You are an abomination.

Millicent: ...Yes.

Priestess: Well, abominations can f*ck off unless the boss says otherwise. I'll check with the boss. And she returned to the temple.

And Hypatia Masters met with Kane, Louis, and Tommy to help them get the plant. But I'm not sure it was the same Hypatia Masters. She instructed them to say "Eldest sent me" if they ran into trouble -- I'm not sure if she specified that the trouble might be feline.

Hypatia sent them to someone who was or would become Omar Shakti so that he could disguise them as the appropriate type of sacred prostitute to walk into the temple, warning them not to say it was she who had sent them and that they would probably need a diversion to grab the herb.

The diversion was Charlie, who went into the temple and wound up stirring up trouble. I'm not sure whether she was coordinating with the men or not. But they wound up with the flower -- and with the attention of the cats, of which there were many, led by a disturbing white cat.

Tommy: Eldest sent me!

The cat came to a sudden halt, the other cats piling up behind it. It flicked its tail five times, then stopped, then slowly flicked its tail once. The message was clear: It was giving the group a countdown.

They ran for the door, where Millicent was waiting (I think along with a litter, though with the possible exception of Kane, I'm not sure anyone bothered with it). I'm not sure Rudy started off with them, but he either joined them or was collected by his sister. Charlie also managed to grab an axe, and I'm pretty sure she killed at one of the women warriors.

Once everyone was together and reunited with Vanessa and Mirabelle, with a mob chasing them and Sir Aubrey demanding to know what was going on, Millicent broke time and space to get the group home.

The group stumbled out from the arch, back outside at Vanessa's place on the evening of the summer solstice in 1967. Mirabelle, landing on her hands and knees, was looking much better and was no longer pregnant.

After a moment's confusion, everyone in the audience applauded, most not sure what had just happened, but figuring it was all part of the show. Vanessa threw her head back and laughed. It was a laugh with more than a little of villainous mastermind to it.

Vanessa: Oh, sorry. I'm not supposed to do that, am I?

And that was where we broke the session, although the players of Charlie and Rudy kept arguing their characters' positions even after the game ended. I was surprised Charlie hadn't put Millicent into the category of Threat-or-Menace, but Charlie had decided Millicent was all right when Millicent when with her to visit the vampires.

The most recent session was today, aka 20 November 2021.

Tommy and Louis tried to wrap their heads around what had just happened. And Tommy decided to take a risk and asked Louis point blank if he were ever interested in men.

Louis: I don't think I can see you again.

And he left. And we all noticed that he hadn't actually answered Tommy's question.

Tommy stood there alone, and it wasn't even raining.

GM: So you don't even have that.

Rudy was doing better, for certain values of better that involved living with four vampires.

GM: So, I'm going to ask you a leading question. We know what they're getting from you. What are you getting from them?

Rudy's player: Companionship.

We understood that included sex.

GM: Yes, but -- anything else?

Rudy's player: They clean up the place.

Me: Rudy has very simple needs.

Rudy's player explained that Rudy was very lonely, and the vampires really did provide him with companionship.

Charlie decided she needed to go apologize to Rudy. She called him from a diner, but got Dominique, who asked if Rudy were at home.

Rudy: Well, yes, in the sense that I'm here, but no, I don't want to talk to her.

Charlie started cursing on the phone, and Dominique handed Rudy the phone.

Dominique: I could talk to her, but I don't want to.

Someone: That is the ultimate French statement.

Charlie explained that she wanted to apologize. Rudy refused to come to the diner. If she wanted to apologize in person, she could come to his apartment.

Charlie: I'd rather do it in private, not in front of four vampires.

Rudy: I have more than one room in my apartment.

He pointed out that for someone who wanted to apologize, she was making a lot of conditions.

Charlie agreed to come over, and the vampires let her in and turned on the music loud enough that they could at least give the siblings the illusion of privacy. Even though they were in another room, the siblings knew better.

Rudy: They can still hear us.

Charlie: I know -- they can hear my f*cking heartbeat.

I think Rudy told her that was an exaggeration. Charlie really did try to apologize, explaining how her idea that she had a destiny as the next Fitzgibbon-Cuevas woman was messing her up, but she kept rubbing Rudy the wrong way. He felt she was treating him as a child, and her attempts to dig herself out of the hole had the reverse effect.

She did get him to explain why he was letting them live with him, that he was lonely. She didn't understand that, as he could have just about any woman he wanted. He asked if this were about her being jealous. She pointed out that he had coworkers. He pointed out that these weren't friends.

Things started to deteriorate, and she left after saying that he'd been warned about his guests. She didn't get why he didn't get that they were vampires and that vampires killed people.

Dominique went into the hallway with her.

Dominique: Now what? Don't leave me hanging!

Charlie wasn't sure what to do, but agreed to stay in contact with Dominique.

Inside, Lucy asked Rudy if he wanted his guests to leave.

Lucy: We don't usually stay this long in one place.

He said that was up to them. He certainly wasn't kicking them out.

Lucy: If we left, you could come with us.

He was tempted by the offer and by the idea of immortality, but turned her down. She and Henri worked on relieving his tension.

Millicent spent quality time with her sister and mother, which meant her Stability went from -7 to -3. She was still processing the Egypt trip.

Joey came by, full of ideas he had from reading Dune.

Millicent: Cap'n Tripps!

He was delighted -- most people refused to call him by that name. He was surprised Millicent hadn't read Dune.

Cap'n Tripps: It's about astronauts who take psychedelic drugs to travel through space.

We agreed that was a great description of Dune. (Okay, maybe it leaves a bit out...)

Millicent: I mostly read detective stories.

Cap'n Tripps: But that's what you do for work!

Millicent pointed out that the stories she read had very little in common with what actual detectives do. Cap'n Tripps conceded the point, noting that he was a drug user and dealer who was reading a book about people using a psychedelic drug.

The book had got him thinking, though. Like, this Void stuff supposedly had people seeing the past, right? Well, this book had this drug, melange, which had people seeing the future. Maybe he could create something like that.

This is, of course, a terrible idea. But Millicent didn't think she could talk him out of it. What was she supposed to do? Kill him? Threaten him? No, the best thing to do was try to help him do this as safely as possible. Maybe create some kind of primer.

Me: Principles of Magic Or How Not to Break the World (I Hope).

And she did try to give him advice. First of all, he had to avoid the Hounds of Tindalos. Think of them as antibodies -- like in Fantastic Voyage, when they're all shrunk down? Only in this case, in time.

Cap'n Tripps (writing in his notebook): Avoid antibodies.

And then there were the guardians. She explained about the Great Race.

Cap'n Tripps: Maybe we should talk to one of them. It sounds like they know all about this stuff.

Millicent said that the problem was that they probably would either refuse to answer or give a very cryptic answer, and explained that they wanted the timeline to stay a particular way -- the way that guaranteed they'd survive.

She thought that maybe she and Cap'n Tripps should sit down with Mike/Anata, as the man with Azathoth's true name tattooed on his body, the man who had somehow gotten Mirabelle pregnant (and what had happened to the baby?) might understand some bits that she didn't.

Yep, Millicent was shaken. -3 Stability.

GM: You could always go to a therapist.

Me: Someone who she could talk to about what she really is?

GM: Well, there's Cap'n Tripps. And Kakatakak (one of the Great Race).

Getting in touch with K was tricky, and K might not like what she'd been doing. As for Cap'n Tripps, just who was helping whom with therapy was an interesting question.

Mina called Charlie during the night. The previous session, Charlie had indicated that she was ready to kill the vampires living with her brother. And yet, nothing had been done.

Charlie apologized and gave a confused explanation of her torn feelings. Mina was oddly sympathetic, knowing this problem all too well. And if Charlie wanted to walk away from all of this, that was fine. But if Charlie truly wanted to embrace her destiny as a Fitzgibbon-Cuevas woman, well, this was for humanity. And those who protect humanity do give up some of their own humanity as a result.

Beth Queen had a chat with Tommy in his office. This involved alcohol. Tommy protested he was trying not to drink at work. She noted that she was his boss, he worked for her, and she needed a drink and didn't want to drink alone. She also smoked, unaware that Tommy had decided to quit smoking.

Yep, he came back from ancient Egypt, had a ... can you even call it a break up when you haven't been together? And as a result, decided to start having a healthier lifestyle Right Now, because there's no way that's self sabotage, it is? (In fairness, one can make that decision under vaguely similar circumstances without it being self destructive, but Tommy's player made it clear that this was not what was happening.)

He talked about how his type was either the rebel who was brave and fighting the system or someone who was pretty, but not terribly bright. She noted that her type seemed to be older men who had to be heroes. Daddy heroes.

She explained that she used to be a different person. Literally. That is, as far as she understood it, she used to be some kind of gun moll working for Jimmy Wright, a man who wanted to quit being a hero but never could, and she had some kind of crush on her boss. And then, in 1937, something happened -- the world was saved, more or less, but there was this weird time loop involved that got cut, and then things changed, so she was now a college graduate, and that's who she was. It's just that she had started to remember the other life. This included remembering how to do things -- like shoot guns -- that she never learned in this life.

Beth: You know how some folks wonder what they might have been if things had gone differently? Well, I know, and it didn't make me happy.

Tommy raised the subject of Vanessa, whom he'd liked until she dragged him and Louis to ancient Egypt. He asked Beth if Vanessa had done that to them deliberately.

Beth said Vanessa hadn't, but did have... boundary issues. Like she didn't have skin between her and other people.

Tommy: I liked that about her when I first met her.

I'm wondering if that's a subtle GM hint, as I think one of Nyarlathotep's many faces is the Skinless One.

He asked about Millicent. Beth said that Millicent wasn't entirely human but wanted really badly to be human, and tried hard to be human and nothing else, so much so that she seemed to be putting herself in a very narrow box, cutting herself off from all of the possibilities of human-ness. On the other hand, maybe that was a good thing? After all, if Millicent decided to stop limiting herself, Beth wasn't sure what would happen.

Charlie came in then, looking for books in Enochian. Why? Because she wanted to carve the word for Death on the axe she picked up in ancient Egypt.

Me: You're making a golem!

Charlie's player: No, I'm not making a golem.

The player knew the story about the writing on the golem's head. But essentially, a golem's a machine animated by a word. I don't see why a golem can't be axe-shaped.

Why Enochian? Well, as I think Beth explained, Everyone Knows that Dr. John Dee invented Enochian, calling it the language of the angels. But we also know that he was part of her intelligence network. And the invented Enochian was part of a disinformation campaign -- just like the novel Dracula was, and various other works of fiction. Directrix Mina Murray wasn't actually named Mina at birth.

At some point, Kane started participating in the conversation, even though the door was closed and he was in his own office, not theirs. No, he didn't want to come to their office -- his was far nicer. He may have eventually come over anyway.

We decided that the building they were, whose construction had been overseen by Charlie's mother, had a listening post room, and that when the place was remodeled later, the people doing the work didn't know that and turned that area into what was now Kane's office.

Charlie was trying to explain about wanting to deal with "the four vampires living in my brother's apartment".

Beth (I think): You want to be careful about that, because I'm sure that's an illegal sublet.

Charlie: That's what you're worried about?

Tommy: Hey, you know there's nothing wrong with being bitten if it's consensual -- I've lived in San Francisco.

She tried to explain and metaphors got thrown around. Tommy asked what if Charlie were with someone she loved like she loved her current girlfriend, and I think was going towards either "and she was a vampire" or "and she bit you when in the throes of passion". Charlie countered by asking about Tommy's favorite dog, and Tommy reiterated what he said about his type, referring to the pretty but not smart type as being like a Golden Retriever. Charlie asked what if he were with someone like that, and then found out that his Golden Retriever guy regularly went out and strangled someone to death? No philosophical questions were definitively settled.

Kane was keeping some of the folks rescued from the hospital at a place in, I think, Malibu. If I understand correctly, there had been Reds, people whose possessing personality tried to convince him and the others that they were the original personality, but he was hosting the Blues, who still had a possessing personality and there was an ongoing struggle for control.

Millicent came to visit these people and hear their stories and try to understand what their presence might mean. They were nervous around her, though, because she seemed to make the possessing personality stronger. I spent an Occupation point to ask what they wished Millicent would do, and she realized that the possessing people wanted her to help them live again.

Minerva Alexander visited Kane in his office. She wanted to know why he'd not accepted her invitation to her round table breakfasts on Wednesday mornings. He offered her some of the cheeses on his board.

Someone OOC: You've got a charcuterie board in your office?

Kane's player: You can't expect me to drink all those mimosas on an empty stomach!

He convinced her to come with him to visit the Blues in Malibu. She agreed, having no idea what she was about to see.

Meanwhile, Charlie got in touch with Dominique who agreed to make sure Charlie had the best chance of killing Lucy, Nadja, and Henri. She also offered to turn Charlie into a vampire. Charlie decided that this was not a line she wanted to cross yet.

Charlie arrived in the afternoon, and the three vampires were sleeping. (Dominique had caught a plane to New York and started growing out a mustache, not wanting to rely on Mina's forbearance.) As she brought the axe down, Lucy woke and grabbed it.

Lucy: You know this will hurt him terribly.

Charlie pressed the axe down, tears in her eyes, but still able to overpower Lucy during the day.

And cut to Charlie and a bloody mattress with three corpses. But what to do about them? After all, she didn't want Rudy accused of murdering his houseguests. Perhaps she should burn it down?

Charlie probably would have done that, if necessary, though how much that would have helped is an interesting question, as these vampires did not turn to dust after dying permanently. But she called Mina, who had a clean up crew take care of the mess.

Mina gave Charlie what comfort she could, explaining that somehow, the vampirism passed to her child, and the child chose to take the name "Lucy" and throw the whole thing in Mina's face. Mina's real name was Kate Reed, something she suggested Charlie forget.

Charlie left a note for her brother. It read:

Mother gave up her sanity.

Temperance gave up her normality.

I'm giving up you.

She did get a point of Stability back for following her Drive.

Tommy headed to Malibu, I think. He found Cap'n Tripps, who was very agitated. It was June 1968, said Cap'n Tripps. Or was it? Was he coming from there or going to there? When was it now?

Tommy said that it was August of 1967 (which means at least 6 weeks passed since the Midsummer ritual). Cap'n Tripps noted that he couldn't go back in time any earlier than 1937. It was as if there were a barrier there. (And, while I'm aware this is fallout from a previous campaign, I'm also wondering if the GM is working in anything from The Final Revelation.)

Cap'n Tripps wasn't sure what he should or shouldn't say about the future, because what if he changed things? He should have listened to Millicent about the antibodies! What if telling Tommy exposed him? Tommy's player spent a point of Reassurance to get Cap'n Tripps to tell him something. Cap'n Tripps wrote it down and handed it to him (and the GM handed it to the player). Whatever it was, it apparently happened at of after "the holiday party". Then, Cap'n Tripps went outside. The disturbing thing -- one of them, anyway, was that Tommy couldn't see the other man through the window. But he still got a point of Stability for following his Drive of Protector.

Kane introduced Minerva to the Blues. They got agitated and said, "We are Banshee!"

Minerva: What the f*ck is going on here?

Kane did not give her a useful answer, and wouldn't let the Blues go back to their room just yet. The player made a spend to ask a question. I'm not sure what the exact question was, but the answer was that Minerva didn't want them. She wanted them to die. They knew her, but wouldn't say how.

Minerva: I underestimated you. I won't make that mistake again. What do you know?

Kane: All I know is that I know nothing.

She left.

Kane: Interesting. I thought the intimidation would be in the other direction.

He praised the Blues for how well they handled the situation. Sure, they didn't do perfectly at pretending to be normal, but he had sprung this on them, after all.

He still plans to go to the round table breakfast the next day, Wednesday, in the morning, and I think also made afternoon and evening plans, though I forget what they are.

Tommy called Vanessa to ask to come over and talk to her. She agreed. When he arrived, he found Millicent talking with a cheerful Cap'n Tripps, and suggested she come with him to talk with Vanessa. Millicent, still protective of her mother, agreed.

Vanessa was nervous about this, but brought them to her room, as Tommy wanted privacy in this haven for hippies. He started to explain about his encounter earlier in the day with time-displaced Cap'n Tripps. Vanessa got agitated and apologized for pulling him through time and that it had probably only worked because it was a time and place she'd been to before. She wasn't sure what to do about the situation he was asking about. Millicent intervened and assured her mother that this had nothing to do with anything Vanessa had done, that everything was well.

Vanessa: I... think I should lie down (looks around, realizing Millicent and Tommy want to finish the conversation with each other, privately)... (to Millicent) in your room?

Millicent assured Vanessa that she could bring Tommy to her own room and not displace her mother.

Tommy explained that he'd seen Cap'n Tripps a few hours ago. Millicent said he'd been at Vanessa's all day. But, given that Tommy had seen 1968 Cap'n Tripps, that made sense. Cap'n Tripps had told him (via the note) that two people Tommy cared about would die, and Tommy didn't want this to happen. But if he stopped it, would bad things happen?

Millicent didn't know, but figured that since Tommy was going to try anyway, the thing to do was try to make it less likely that bad things or a paradox would happen. What if he got stage blood?

The problem was that Tommy didn't know exactly how it happened. "By violence" was about all he knew. Was it poison? Something else? He didn't know.

Millicent said that the thing to do was make sure that however the news got out, it got out in a way that could be false. If someone saw dead bodies, okay, make sure the bodies look dead, but aren't. If it's an obituary, well, newspapers make mistakes.

And that's about when we broke. I think next time, we may start with Wednesday, especially as Kane has a full day planned, and Rudy doesn't yet know about his murdered houseguests. But after that, the GM said we're going to jump to the holiday party. This sounds appropriately ominous.

2nd Batch of Write Ups