Deliria: The Miracle Season, Act III

Another write up of this game is at kyrielle's live journal.

This was Part III of The Miracle Season. Laura, Scott, and I had played in parts I and II last year, and Marian had played in part II earlier in the weekend. This meant that four of us walked in with characters. Nevertheless, it still took over two hours for the other three players to create their PCs, not because of the rules, which are fairly simple, but because character creation always takes a while.

GM: Scott Havens

Players:

Laura Davidson -- Cecelia, an art student whose drawings are magical, although she has a very vague understanding of magic. This results in what her player refers to as writing the universe a blank check.

Scott Brown -- Terrence Smith, an actuary who had real adventures whenever he played EverQuest. I am not sure if he realizes yet that the EverQuest adventures were real, but I think so.

Jess -- Sabine Valencia, a witch and Art minor. She was in some of Cecelia's classes.

Carol -- Abigail Turner, I think an older woman, and definitely a witch

Me -- Kalcy, a rock spirit

Deborah Wesel -- Allison Sinclair, aka Ali. She had had done a lot of research on King Arthur, and may have had some kind of connection to him.

Marian Anerud -- Gabe, who had a Deliria score of 0, and was technically "Painfully sane". Nevertheless, Gabe creeped everyone out because of his intensity, coming across as a very much on-the-edge college student. In the previous game, he was already writing on his skin.

Previously, all of the PCs had gotten invited to the most exclusive club, with a really great dj named Kevin. Kevin had done something magical, moving the characters into another realm, although not everyone realized this. Instead of being inside a room, people were now in a forest grove.

Then, something had gone wrong. Kevin had turned into a werewolf and run off into the night. Realities flickered, and people had to decide whether to stay in the forest grove or try to return home. Kalcy, Terrence, and Cecelia all chose to stay. Gabe tried to return home, and, in the actual part II that his player had participated in, had done so. For part III, player and GM agreed that the walls of the club flickered briefly in, and then back out.

Gabe (as walls flicker in): Yes! I made it! (as they flicker out again) No, I didn't.

Abigail, Sabine, and Ali had probably gotten caught, rather than chose to stay, as their players hadn't been in part II.

Kalcy headed off to try to find Kevin, followed by Cecelia and Terrence. Gabe vehemently denied the evidence of his senses, speaking disparagingly about this being the others' fantasy land.

Abigail: Yeah, well, there's no Orlando Bloom, so it's not my fantasy land.

Abigail tried to do magic with her pda to get some idea of where they were, preferably by calling up a map of the area. Sabine tried to help her. The players drew a card, getting a fumble. So, the pda exploded, and Sabine was blinded, leading to the following exchange:

Gabe: Fuck if I know. What do I look like?

Sabine: I can't see.

Abigail, Sabine, and Allison decided to head out, maybe find Kalcy, who seemed to know where she was going. Okay, Kalcy was marching out after a guy who'd just turned into a wolf, but right now, the werewolf seemed a lot less intimidating than Gabe.

Abigail: I was beginning to think you subscribed to the Lone Gunmen, but now I think they subscribe to you.

Gabe (alone in the grove): I'm in a room. I'm in a room. I'm in a room -- Wait, what if I'm not in a room? Oh great. I could convince myself I'm in a room I'm not in.

GM: I was wondering when you'd get there.

Meanwhile, Kalcy, Cecelia, and Terrence heard something coming, fairly loudly. Kalcy told the other two to hide, but they wound up debating instead, so it was just as well that the noise was made by Abigail and Allison helping Sabine along. The other three were much relieved, and tried to explain what they thought was going on.

A few months earlier, three robed figures had showed up at a local coffee shop and frozen everyone in place, except for Kalcy, who'd merged with the pavement. Much property damage was done, and Terrence wound up accidentally promising to deliver something. Unfortunately, what the robed figures wanted was the magic of the town, and that magic was in everyone's blood.

Terrence and Cecelia didn't understand most of this at the time, and Kalcy understood only that there was some kind of war. She talked to the local rocks and tried to prepare herself. Kevin had invited her to the evening's party himself, being at least a little attracted to her. Probably a little attracted to him, and very unaware of this, Kalcy had accepted, and had also accepted Kevin's word that this would be a nice, unstressful party. She was furious that Kevin hadn't realized the new war would strike here. She was still more than a little vague on any concrete details, but Terrence had figured out what he had done, and was trying to make amends, while Cecelia was learning how magic worked.

Terrence noted that Gabe was missing. Kalcy would have left him behind, but the others, especially Terrence, agreed that someone should get Gabe. Hm, karmically speaking, Kalcy was paid for that callousness later, and Terrence is either beginning to make amends or is owed good karma.

Folks raised the question of how Terrence could find the others again. Abigail had an bracelet made of several amethysts. She and Sabine did magic, while Kalcy talked to the rocks. Allison, Terrence, and Cecelia also handled the bracelet, mentally trying to add power according to their individual metaphors. The group effort worked, and everyone took a stone from the bracelet.

Gabe, meanwhile, threw his useless cellphone into a wall. It only looked like part of the forest. The cellphone turned into some kind of crystalline, yet squishy, vine that proceeded to take over the area, threatening to crowd Gabe out.

Terrence: Is anyone out there?

Gabe: No!

Terrence led Gabe out of the now choked grove, trying to give Gabe some kind of framework for what was happening, explaining the locator amethyst as, er, a transponder. Gabe wasn't buying, and said something detailed about hallucinations and corporate drones like Terrence trying to interpret the universe to Gabe's subconscious mind. We were all impressed.

Terrence: Thank you for that...interesting psychological analysis.

Once everyone was united, or perhaps during the creation of the locator spell, Abigail tried to heal Sabine magically. I think Sabine wound up in contact with a tree spirit, or perhaps with the spirit of the forest. It told her that it could heal her, and that all present could find what they were seeking.

Much wandering through the woods followed, along with the following exchange:

Terrence: Animals survive. People enjoy.

Gabe: What are people but animals?

And later:

Someone: Have we found Kevin yet?

Kalcy: No!

Cecelia: I found a bush. The hard way.

Ali: I think we've all done that.

Finally, they came to a large tree that had ojos de dios, god's eyes, instead of fruits hanging from its branches. I think Sabine got her sight back at this point. She touched the tree.

Tree: Hello.

Everyone else proceeded to touch the tree in turn. All except for Kalcy were greeted. Kalcy talks to rocks, but really doesn't understand trees. Marian mimed banging her head against the trunk.

GM: Is Gabe actually doing that?

Marian: Yes.

Tree (as communication blinks on and off): Hel--o. Hel--o. Hel--o.

The tree managed to explain that its visitors needed to see through eyes that were not their own. People started looking through various ojos de dios.

Kalcy saw a room in a fraternity house with a couch. The player knew that the couch was actually an overly amorous suitor named Patrick, but Kalcy was baffled.

Ali saw a boat with a man lying down, surrounded by three women. At least, that's what I remember. Laura remembers Ali seeing King Arthur standing with his hand on his sword, which was sunk into the ground, in one ojo, and the vision of Arthur on the boat in a second.

Abigail saw her house, empty, with someone walking around it, very pleased.

I forget what Gabe, Sabine, and Terrence saw. Anyone looking into an ojo that someone else looked into saw what the first viewer had seen.

Cecelia drew the tree rather than looking through an actual ojo de dios. She saw her landlady, who was a PC in parts I and II last year. She also saw her landlady's young son, who was drawing a rain of feathers. The child looked up and waved to Cecelia.

Kalcy pressed Cecelia to try to get in touch with Kevin with her pictures, iirc. Cecelia sketched a picture of Kevin as man, then next to that, of Kevin as wolf, and then an ojo de dios linking the two. I think Laura drew amazing well, getting one of the two red queens, an automatic success. The paper flew out of her notebook, expanded, and floated, with the ojo de dios becoming an opening through which all could see Kevin and the three robed figures from part I. They were near a boat, on a shore of an ocean of bones.

Kalcy tried to reach through the opening in the paper, but it was too small, and no one wanted to find out what would happen if the paper tore. She threw rocks through, which got the attention of one of the robed figures, but not Kevin's attention. She tried shouting. Kevin turned towards her, and all could see that he was muzzled. His arms were also bound behind his back.

Cecelia sketched furiously. Kalcy threw a sharp rock through the paper and made it start sawing through the ropes binding Kevin's arms. Sabine, Abigail, and Ali, and possibly Terrence as well, tried to combine whatever power they had. In short, everyone was, as the GM put it, trying to combine magics that were never meant to work together with absolutely no knowledge of what they were doing. He asked all the players whether their characters thought this would work, would not work, or would be risky. Apart from Gabe, we figured they would believe that it would work, though at least a couple that it would be risky.

I drew a red 10, which meant that Kalcy had no problem getting the rocks to do her bidding. Laura drew the other red queen for Cecelia. And Carol drew the only red king in the deck, which grants a maximum success. The GM said that he'd never seen such a collection of wild successes.

Cecelia drew a picture of herself facing the three robed figures, this being a vaguely defined promise of what she would do if the magic worked. The two witches poked a stick through the hole and used it to make a bridge on the other side at the same time as Cecelia drew a bridge. The idea was that the hole in the paper was like a television screen, so we could play games with perspective.

Kevin's arms were freed and he started to run across the bridge, then froze, still on the other side.

Lisa: Oh, right, they can do that.

Cecelia went through the hole, and, keeping her back to the others while facing the robed figures, just as in her picture, she pushed Kevin through the hole. As soon as he was through, the hole started to close up.

Gabe, during all of this, had gone from writing on his skin to trying to poke himself with a sharp object, while Terrence tried to stop him. Meanwhile, the other four tried to get Cecelia back.

The stick Cecelia had pushed through was now too small for the opening, so they pushed another one through.

GM: Okay, a giant log shoves itself practically in your face.

Cecelia grabbed the log, and then her friends started pulling her out, or trying to. At first, pulling the stick back nearly had the effect of scraping her off the log. At the last minute, she tumbled through the hole, which then closed. The paper fluttered to the ground.

Kalcy picked Kevin off the ground, where he had fallen after being pushed through. He was completely limp. Abigail and Sabine tried to help him, but found only an utterly mundane, unmagical spark of consciousness, which quickly faded. As the GM explained, as soon as the robed figures knew that Kevin would be rescued, they salvaged what they could. Rescuing Cecelia had definitely been the right call, as, all other moral issues aside, she would otherwise have been sacrificed for a husk.

At that point, part III drew to its close with something to lead the characters on to part IV, as far as I can tell. For Ali, it was a Celtic cross that tattooed itself painfully on her shoulder in blue dye. Kalcy felt the stones she'd thrown through the ojo de dios. One of the ojos de dios detached from the tree and landed in Abigail's hand. It and the stones were clearly guiding people to the shore of bone.

Cecelia heard a voice which she thought was Kevin's saying, "They know more than you think. Don't let them do this to anyone else." And, her promise had been to stand against the three robed figures. She didn't think facing them while pushing Kevin's body through the paper counted as a fulfillment of that promise.

I don't recall what Gabe's thing was, and my notes for the other two are hard to read, "Cloning path" for Sabine, and something that looks like "Char hand" for Terrence. I think this meant that his hand briefly turned into his character's, but I don't recall whether that gave an indication of direction.

On the whole, I enjoyed the game, but it was also frustrating. It wasn't that Kevin wasn't saved. That was foreshadowed, however unintentionally, by the characters from last year providing exposition about the robed figures, and it fit. Partly, it may be a sense that a lot of time was spent blundering around in the woods. Mostly, though, I think it has to do with the way the parts of the Miracle Season are structured.

Parts I and II ended in medias res, though in a way that made sense. The first part ended with the realization that something big and terrible was coming. The second ended with a decision about what to do given the fallout from part I, though I am not sure how part II alone felt to those who played it. Part III was the next chapter, and that's my main source of frustration. It resolved little, and now, I'll have to wait at least a year to play in parts IV, V, and VI. I guess that's a tribute to the GM. I want to find out what happens next. It's like a campaign, but I wish there was less of a delay between sessions.

We voted for Best Player, each person voting for two people. Marian won first place, for her intense and creepy Gabe, but she had already won for part II, and the two prizes Scott had were identical to the one she already had: A CD with a rules patch and several extras for Deliria. So, he gave the CDs to the second and third place winners, Laura and me. I'm a little surprised I took it, since I'm not sure my roleplay was good, as opposed to pushy, but I was delighted to have the material. I know that one of my votes went to Gabe, though I forget whether the other went to Laura or to Scott. Laura and Scott don't generally vote for each other for the same reason that Josh and I don't generally vote for each other.