GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Eric Fattig, Adrienne Mueller, and Karen Twelves
System: Blades ’68
I forgot the engagement roll! It’s just now as I’m writing this post that I remember in the previous session they rolled a desperate engagement roll, but I totally forgot about it. The session (which might be our last for a while) was a hit, so all is well, I just realize I got so swept up in the narrative that I missed the engagement roll. Desperate situations were had just the same!
The crew was after House Nolburn, which was super haunted, and they gained an unexpected companion to help them along the way.
The play is the thing
While Delta/Rubens and Nav were discussing the feasibility of getting the deed to Nolburn House, Nav noticed the plasmavision set, switched over involuntarily to the security feed and showed someone walking down the hallway to their base, just before she heard a rap on the door. (Rorick was alerting Nav the only way he knew how).
Delta answered and was greeted with some delighted confusion. “Oh charming, a mechanical doorman. Is your master in?”
Delta began some quick computations, thinking that Paolo would want him to say “He isn’t in, but he wants to assure you he had a lovely time and he’ll speak with you soon.”
“Ah, well, perhaps you could let me in. My name is Nolburn and I’m here with a proposition.”
Nav stepped into the doorway. “Which Nolburn. Never mind. We didn’t do it. We weren’t there. We don’t know anything.”
“But I saw you there, and you were marvelous. This mechanical wonder extruded a resonance echo from his chest, and you bested many doppelgangers from the mirror dimensions. I brought a bottle of wine that perhaps we could share as we discuss what we could do together. It’s a ’48. An 848.”
After some further interrogation at the door, Nav allowed a distinguished gentleman by the name of Winthrop Nolburn inside. Yes, the same Winthrop Nolburn that was grandfather to Patrick Nolburn who they knew as a ghost. This Winthrop wasn’t a ghost, but a time traveler from the past coming to correct an error in the present!
Nolburn explained that will all of his line dead, a bond was nearly broken, and thus he was called to the present. He was not completely sure how, but he could only stay for a short time, and he must ensure that the bond is reforged. “The Nolburn line is one of great…ambition. We’ve made deals with creatures both temporal and eternal.”
Eventually Nav and Rubens discovered what he meant was that he had a bond with demon, and as far as he knew the only way to renew such a bond was to bind the demon to another person. The Baron’s didn’t like that idea, though Little Gallo said he’d do it if Nav wanted him to. He was deemed “unsuitable” for the task, but that didn’t leave the Baron’s with a lot of options. Onward!
[At the table there was a lot of discussion about how to contain a demon that I could tell might quickly spiral into lots of investigation so I encouraged everyone to trust in flashbacks to provide support for they learned more about the demon]
Nolburn House
Outside the house was a single Bluecoat, the friendliest Bluecoat you’d ever find in a adverts for Bluecoats. All “top of the day to you” and “have a nice walk” and doffing his cap as you went by. When not engaging with a passersby, he played with a coiled bit of metal (a slinkie) that shimmered with a gradient of vibrant hues.
Nolburn and Delta approached from the front, while Nav (and she later learned Rorick) went in the back. Nolburn gripped the stone head of his cane [Demon Artifact] and Kalpan was lost in a delightful dream state
[Nolburn used one of powers granted to him by the Unbound Coil: Speak Dreams Into Existence. Your words become the dreams or nightmares, heard as the most precious desires or greatest fears. You may leave someone dazed in a dreamlike state, or send them running in fear. He paid for the service in memories…Constable Kaplan’s memories, which turned out to be all of them]
The also noticed two massive pylons in the corner of the front yard (“My garden!!”) that had been placed there recently. The stuck 10′ out of the ground (Nav spotted two in the back of the house as well) and they created a one way barrier for echoes. Delta was able to press through the resistance to enter, but he could not get out. Similarly Rorick, who had been traveling with Nav, and materialized once he was in the house, was also trapped.
Nav flashed back to asking Bowman (aka Pritchard) what happened here and learned that Section Six arrived after the death siren was sounded and then quickly evacuated the house and set the pylons ensuring whatever was inside would not make it out. They’d have to figure out how to deal with these at some point.
Inside the found the remnants of whatever paranormal experiment Patrick Nolburn had hired researchers and occultists to assemble (they never mastered their sibilant “s”) and heard a frightened noise. A man in a lab coat who looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week saw them, realized he was spotted and fled. The Barons chased him down (ironically, Rorick’s baritone was what halted him) and he told them he had been dodging the Nolburn ghosts since the catastrophe last week (see the Baron’s last core). The weak younger Nolburn was confined to the Lunar Sanctum but the elder, more powerful Nolburn was loose.
The told the man (Doyle, the same researcher Paolo had convinced to help him last time) that he would be safe with them and he agreed to follow them and offer what help he could.
Winthrop new the secret panel that opened the stairwell in the basement below. It smelled of sea water and something from the depths. As they descended the found the floor was knee deep with dark water, not even their lights would penetrate. From it kelp grew and formed cocoons around one, two, three, ten, twenty or more things that perhaps once were people, but now had translucent skin, a glow from inside, gills, and wounds that seeped void see water.
They noticed the the water was not still, but moved with some torsion, slowly swirling towards the center deeper inside the basement behind more of these kelp monstrosities.
That’s when Nav remembered she brought two items that she had procured from the Ankhayat Consortium (Flashback to acquire asset, spending a ton of stacks to make sure it was Tier 4 and on par with Nolburn senior’s ghost). This is also when Nav learned that the obsidian spire that connects Iruvians to Kyata is not a prison, it is the celestial creature’s natural form. Another hope for way to bind the demon without binding it to a person dashed, but hey, they had ghostbusters gear:
Resonance accelerator pack: A handheld particle-thrower connected to a backpack-sized resonance accelerator. Blasts a stream of highly focused, polarized electroplasmic energy. Suitable for grappling with a resonance entity and dragging it into a containment unit.
Echo containment unit: A device used to hold a single resonance entity for containment and safe transport. Designed for Class I – IV resonance entities. Not advised for Class V or above.
The continued moving forward until they reached the center of the room where a whirlpool swirled and offered to slowly pull any of them into oblivion.
There a few things realizations occoured:
- Winthrop knew he was in the presence of Thulmadar, the Unbound Coil, both his master and his servant.
- Nav remembered to the first time she touched the obsidian spire and saw for the first time the gift that Khayat had given people. It taught them to hunt leviathans. It taught them science and history. Khayat sought to teach…and this creature, another serpent of water was Khayat’s rival, that wants to end all learning…end all minds.
- Rubens, recalled his research, this was the demon that he had learned the true name of in those notes [And now that Adrienne as a player, read the notes notes from that session, Delta gained the Deadlock: Demon Lure, but also learned a ritual for binding the creature himself!]
As Nav and Delta leaned in conspiratorially to discuss what to do the current of the whirlpool increased, and Doyle gave Nolburn a conspiratorial look of his own, just as he shoved Nav forward into the maw to feed his master!!!! (Yep, Doyle was super possessed by the ghost of Nolburn senior).
Delta grabbed Nav, but the current was strong and Doyle wasn’t going to give up easily, He keep tryin to push her further in. Luckily at this moment, Delta realized he had a the accelerator pack…and let rip a white cone of polarized electroplasmic energy that slowly pulled the possessing ghost of Winthrop Nolburn out of Doyle and then the living Nolburn caged him inside the echo containment unit, getting singed by electroplasmic energy and gaining temporal instability in the proceses!
The Nav stepped closer to the maw and called of her connection to Khayat to summon silver chains that gripped the edges of the swirling maw and caged it…just as they tightened around Nav herself. With the power of a borrowed will she pulled the Unbound Coil from it’s roost and sent it, along with some of the “children” that were mature enough through the roof into the sky and into the Blue above!
[Mechanically, Nav took two forms of Level 4 Harm, crushed to death by chains that Delta resisted by interposing his body so they crushed him as well, and Soul Obliteration which Nav resisted by holding onto her own humanity, though her eyes did appear like smokey glass after this. Finally, the demon rising up from the depths was going to destroy Nolburn House and every every other building within five blocks, which Noburn resisted by asserting his control over the demon and coaxed to to leave in a more gentle fashion, merely tearing through the roof and causing terrible damage to Nolburn house. That was a lot of resists!]
With that much destruction in a place with that much observation, they knew authorities would be there soon, and so the Barons ducked into their Echo Safehouse to escape!
Aftermath
We decided they were able to take a few artifacts (non-supernatural ones) from the house so they got:
- 4 Stacks (2 to the Gallos)
- 8 Heat (Devastating and Chaotic!)
- 5 Rep
Thoughts on the Game
Whenever I present powerful supernatural creatures I feel like I do them a disservice. Sure the Coil offered Nav eternal life and the power to wreak vengeance on all of her foes, but I don’t think she was ever really tempted. Should she have to give more to Khayat to draw on it’s power? Probably yes as well, but in the moment, it seems pretty cool to use the connection she forged a while back and her backing faction to give supernatural aid here.
Disappointment in my own inability to bring gravitas aside, we had a great time and as this may be our last session (at least for a while) it was fun to end on a high note (very high…the unbound coil keep extending it’s existence past the blue into the depths above!).
I was happy that Nav and Rorick got to interact more. That Delta got to show he cared, and that Winthrop didn’t decide to side with his own angry ghost!
