Everway: Blood Right
Kat Miller usually runs one or more Everway games at GenCon. This year, she was running no official games, but she offered to run a private game, and invited me and Josh. We brought Julian Lighton along, as he wanted to play something other than Shadowfist for a few hours. We were expecting a fourth, someone who had specifically asked for an Everway demo, but after waiting for quite a while, we decided to start.
One of Kat's recurring villains is Blood. He is often killed, but always comes back. Nothing is beneath him. A few years back, Josh had asked her to write a scenario where Blood was the good guy. She liked the challenge, and said she'd try to come up with something, perhaps something where the climax involved the PCs being at Blood's mercy, and where how he dealt with them would depend on how they had treated him earlier in the scenario.
Kat did something different, however. At long last, Blood had been caught and was standing trial in Everway. It took more than a full day just to read the charges against him.
I'm not sure if Blood Right was the optimal scenario to run with Julian, and I think Josh and I made a mistake playing PCs we'd played before. This made us more of a clique and Julian more on the outside. On the other hand, he did create some lovely moments.
Julian played Tiger, a man who could shape shift into a tiger. Everyone else in his home sphere was dead, and he blamed Blood for this.
I played Finder, a man who, with Josh's character, Manifold, a thirty year old who looked about ten, had thwarted one of Blood's schemes involving sacrificing both a dragon and a demon. Finder had later thwarted Blood's scheme to get himself declared a dragon.
The trio learned that a seer predicted Dire Calamity if Blood's trial were permitted to continue. Finder went to visit a card reader he knew, and she confirmed the seer's vision.
Meanwhile, Tiger and Manifold went to the building where Blood was being held. There, they met Piper, the unofficial mayor of Strangerside, that part of the city where spherewalkers are required to live. Piper looks about 17, and has looked that way for years. He and Manifold commiserated about not being taken seriously, due to their apparent youth. Manifold and Tiger asked the guard, who was an anthropomorphosized tiger, if they could see Blood. He agreed, but required them first to swear that they would neither free nor kill Blood during this visit.
Blood was in some kind of magical stasis. Manifold broke it so he could talk. He was quite willing to talk, but there were two limitations on his conversation. First, he was unable to explain directly what his current mission was. Second, to his annoyance and Manifold's vast amusement, he could not lie.
Rather than his usual combination of con artistry and thugery, Manifold and Tiger pieced together, Blood agreed to perform a service for a dragon. This wasn't an ordinary dragon, like the inhabitants of Coil. Those could take human shape. Blood had once tried to sacrifice one of them (who looked like a teenage girl in human form) and had once tried to get himself declared a dragon so he could become Coil's ruler.
This time, though, Blood was working for a much older kind of dragon. This kind had warred against the gods and lost. The dragon Blood was working for wanted to die. Actually, it was already dead, but, so long as any knew its name, it could not truely die. It was weary, and ready to rest.
Blood carried the name of this dragon within him. If he were killed in this state, the release of power would destroy the entire city of Everway.
Tiger asked Bloud why he'd destroyed Tiger's people. Blood denied having deliberately destroyed their sphere, but, IIRC, his various magical schemes might well have had as an unintended, but unregreted side effect of destroying their sphere.
Josh noted, via email:
-- -- --
The impression one might draw was that his transportation techniques had a small chance of destroying the sphere he came from -- which he didn't know, but might have suspected, and, of course, he -might- not have been responsible at all.
-- -- --
I'm pretty sure he was responsible, and that, even if he hadn't known it before, he figured it out during the conversation with Tiger and Manifold.
Tiger, Manifold, and Finder next went to talk to the man who had actually captured Blood. This was Seneca, another of Kat's recurring villains.
Seneca: I'm a hero! They gave me a medal! (proudly displays medal)
Seneca told a story about how Blood doublecrossed him. They were working together to trick a king into believing Blood was his missing son. Just as the king was about to recognize Blood formally, as his heir, Blood literally stabbed Seneca in the back. He said that he was not the king's son, but had been forced to pretend he was by Seneca, who wanted him to kill the king. The king then trusted Blood completely.
But, now, Seneca had captured him for Everway. And he was a hero now! Finder convinced Seneca to explain what he had done. Seneca said that Artemis had appeared to him and showed him how to bind Blood so that he couldn't escape. This involved some magical rocks, I think from one of the gateways between spheres.
Seneca was delighted to hear that Blood couldn't lie, but offended by the questions about his vision.
Seneca: I'm a hero! I have a medal!
Finder: But, how do you know it really was Artemis?
Seneca: I know! Do you think I'm not good enough to get a vision from Artemis? I have a medal.
Finder (trying to sooth him): Yes, yes. You saw Artemis. I believe you. I'm just not sure I trust Artemis.
Seneca stormed out, perhaps guessing that Finder was just humoring him.
Finder, Tiger, and Manifold went to Coil, which was far more primal and disturbing than it had been on Finder's last visit. Two of Coil's inhabitants appeared in human form and spoke with the spherewalkers. When they heard the whole story, they instructed the spherewalkers to bring Blood to Coil.
The trio returned and explained the situation to Piper. He convinced the guards to let them in to see Blood, and he stayed behind after they left. Finder tried to tell Piper not to take the blame for them, but Piper can be stubborn.
I didn't remember exactly how Blook had been captured and bound, but Kat reminded me via email:
-- -- --
Because Blood can rip through spheres, in order to catch and keep him, Seneca had to catch his essence through a gate. He used special stones from a gate that he knew Blood was traveling through and just before Blood could step through, the stones were removed Blood's essence was contained in the stones.
Artemis knew Blood couldn't use his power while containing the Dragon's name and used Seneca (poor lovable sap that he is. . .Seneca just wants to be loved....) guiding him to the right gate at the right time.
-- -- --
Manifold, Tiger, and Finder brought these stones, and hence, Blood's essence, and hence, Blood himself, to Coil. There, he released the dragon's name, telling it to a person who, it became clear, was Coil incarnate. This allowed the dead dragon to rest at last.
The man known as Blood now looked around, asking where he was and where his friends were. He called himself by a different name.
In releasing the dead dragon's name, Blood lost much of his memory, reverting to who he was just before he first discovered that he could spherewalk. He was horrified by spherewalkers.
Blood: They're murderous, thieving criminals!
Finder started gently explaining that, yes, some of them were, and that he had the face of one of the worst.
Tiger looked at the man who had been Blood.
Julian: I could rip his throat out right now, couldn't I?
We all agreed that Tiger could. Oh, sure, if one goes by stats and abilities, it would probably have been theoretically possible for Manifold and Finder to stop him, but it would have been utterly uncool. This was Julian's and Tiger's moment, not an exercise in tactics.
In other words, we were using a Narrativist perspective, not a Simulationist one. We were also not using mechanics -- except perhaps Jonathan Tweet's law of Drama for Everway, and then, in a fairly subtle way, one which specified that Finder and Manifold would not be allowed to upstage Tiger, nor would their players be allowed to upstage Julian. And, oh yes, we were roleplaying, in the style we find generally rewarding.
So:
Julian: I could rip his throat out right now, couldn't I? (general agreement) (pause of exactly the correct dramatic length): I don't.
Kat said, via email:
-- -- --
(This part made the game for me. I'd have let Julian rip Blood's throat out by the way. Putting him in the position of facing the man who destroyed his sphere who can't even remember the event was powerful.
The challenge in blood right isn't just to make Blood innocent of a crime enough for Spherewalkers to side with him- In this tale Blood was transformed into an innocent, by the time the game is over if Blood is able to unburdon the Dragons name he is rewarded with forgetting the dragon inside him, and made innocent again. I hope this made for a fufilling story for you guys, it was a blast for me.
-- -- --
And there Blood Right ended, except for two bits of explanation.
First, Finder was more correct than he knew. It was indeed Artemis who appeared to Seneca. She wanted to prevent Blood from releasing the dragon's name, for she wanted to destroy the dragon, not to allow him to pass on his memories to the dragon who was the spirit of Coil. The gods remember the war against the ancient dragons, and Artemis was quite willing to destroy Everway to achieve her goal.
Second, Piper did not claim ignorance of what Finder, Tiger, and Manifold had planned. Instead, as Finder had feared, he claimed resposibility for it. Kat said that this had given her an idea for a new convention scenario, Piper's Plight II, where the events of Blood Right threaten to lead to a war that will tear Strangerside apart.
Kat said, via email, "Kat: Thanks for writing this, reading it over I am reminded of how The Sequel to this really needs to be a LARP."
