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session:13

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Session 13

This session was played on 2025-09-20. Clark, Gaia and Maelle reach a Malian fort where Derek and Mauto can rest, and Gaia attempts to learm dreamwalking, with worrying results.

Plot

After the previous session, the entire party rides fast to put some space between themselves and the aberrations. As they do so, Derek loses more and more steam, and when they finally reach one of the forts in the road, it has become slower than the horses.

Also, as they enter the fortification, Mauto falls out of her horse, totally exhausted. Clark attempts to jump and grab her but only manages to faceplant on the ground. Some local medics get Mauto and Schidera to a place where they can be treated, but they have to be reminded that Derek is also sick.

Since Derek does not fit in regular buildings, two medics end trying to treat it on the side entrance of the hospital building. Sadly for everyone involved, these are human doctors, not veterinarians, and the most convincing of them is also the least competent, so Derek ends being injected some stuff that gives it a very bad night.

Preparing for bed, Clark comes to discover that his last time channeling the cold has made his breasts grow noticeably, which gives him quite the panic attack.

Later during the night, AMANDA contacts Gaia and gives her a task to complete to learn about dreamwalking: fetch an actual item from her next dream. The dream ends being quite depressing, though: she is in the Zwosta hunter guildhouse, resting against Derek, and trying to remember something. As the dream progresses she first can not remember where she saw Amanda for the last time, and then she remembers that Derek is dead, because of the doctor needles.

Gaia wakes up with a scream and runs out to meet Derek, who is having a pretty bad time but tries to comfort the girl. The way it tries to comfort her is by insisting on how little worth it has, and how she should not waste tears on those like it, which only makes Gaia cry harder.

And then she is greeted by Victor Vituska.

Gaia has a moment of panic where she's not sure if she's dreaming or not, but decides to solve the situation by lucid-dreaming herself into Vituska not being there. This seems to be sufficient to dispel the whatever it was… for the moment.

Going back inside the hospital, Gaia gets disoriented for a moment and finds herself in presence of the corpses of the six rigasian soldiers that the party killed during the hunt for Maal. Whose voices start asking her why they had to die, when all they wanted was to help her. This makes Gaia understandably angry and she ends shouting to the apparitions that it was not her fault, it was Clark's and they shoot her first.

Gaia is interrupted by one of the doctors and this seems to interrupt the situation, the bodies of the six dead men dissappearing. She then goes back to the rest of the party, still looking quite distressed. Maelle makes an attempt to talk to her, but they are all interrupted again by Vituska, who this time lays down on Clark, telling him he's the same kind of “cockroach” that Zach was.

Having finally had enough, Gaia grabs her rifle and shoots the Vituska apparition on the head. This kills him to the horror of Maelle and particularly Clark, whose face ends covered in bloody remains of Vituska's face. The shoot also alarms the entirety of the hospital, that see the dead body on the floor and panic. The entire party is then captured and put in a small cellar room.

At this point, Clark is half-frozen looking at where Vituska's head exploded in front of him, Maelle spends quite a time having a good cry and then manages to become functional by dissociating, and Gaia curls on a corner to cry herself asleep.

Sleep is not a relief for Gaia though, since she ends dreaming of her biological mother laying into her for shooting Vituska, and blaming Iorena for ever letting her get her hands on a gun.

In an effort to end this, Gaia attempts to dreamwalk as far away as possible and ends in the same dream of the White Tower of Umichoo where Clark met Riung. Riung finds her, still highly distressed, and tries to comfort her and provide some guidance and delicious cookies.

Back on the real world, but still in a jail cell, Gaia wakes up from the dream with a very delicate and beautiful plate of the finest cookies ever tasted, that she shares with the rest of the party.

Cast

Quotes

  • Gaia: Hey, is Rigas okay?
  • Maelle: He should be… you are talking about Schidera, right? Just to clarify.
  • Gaia: Yeah?
  • Maelle: Why does Clark look like a woman from this angle?
  • Gaia: He looks like a woman from every angle.
  • Clark: Hey, I can hear you.
  • Clark: I once saw a person shaking on the floor because some kind of stroke. A trepanation was surprisingly effective at stopping that; too bad they weren't able to speak afterward.
  • So the fucking medic who got a -4 in medicine also got a 4 in negotiation to convince the rest he was right.
  • Derek: What… can I do for you, little speaker?
  • Gaia: I had a dream you're dead.
  • Derek: I… am alive still. I can serve.
  • Gaia: You can rest, not serve.
  • Derek: They bred us strong. You do not have to worry. I can endure until I can't anymore, and then I will pass on, allowing you to keep living as you should. Do not waste tears on those like me.
  • Vituska: Fancy meeting you here, Miss Dynko.
  • Dead Soldier: Why did you do this? We wanted to help you.
  • Vituska: You people are like cockroaches, aren't you? I understand now why you got so incensed about me putting down that monster. You are like her, only… worse. At least she wanted to be something better. Unlike you.
  • Gaia puts a bullet between Vituska's eyes. His head explodes like an overripe melon and quite a sizeable part of it gets ON Clark.
  • Also, the shot basically wakes up everyone in the hospital.
  • Clark: Red, red, soo much red.
  • Maelle: It… it'll be okay, Clark. I promise.
  • Riung: Ah, I see.
  • And suddenly you are elsewhere, it's a round white room, with an ornate round white window that looks to where you were before. You are sitting on the most comfortable couch you have ever sat on, you are wearing the most cozy blanket you have ever felt, and in front of you there's a plate of something that looks like cookies and glass of something: both look and smell delicious and comforting.
  • Riung: Take your time, child, there's no hurry.
  • Gaia: I, uh… fucked everything up. We were like, going to Iorena, and it was going good enough. But like the evil Vituska appeared and I shot him because hes evil and now we are in jail and I don't know how long will we stay there. And like, what now? Can we still get to the portal? Without Derek or that anagusi woman? I guess we could just try to keep going in the same direction but that's risky…
  • The cookies are the most delicious cookies you have ever tasted. Like, holy shit, that's cookie perfection.
  • Congratulations, Maelle, the cookie cured your headache.

Trivia

A Rose by any other name is still a Rose.

Apparently this being session 13 means that luck was absolutely against the party. For most of the game, they got very bad rolls.

There is an (as yet) unnamed medical organization that seems to originate among the anagusi but also has practicioners from the timelines they have contact with, and they have both medical training and tools directly from the much more advanced anagusi.

The player's (and storyteller's) reaction to that one medic that rolled natural -4 on medicine and natural 4 in convincing everyone else he was right was heart-wrenching because poor Derek can't get a break.

Vituska is even more disgusted by queer AMAB people than AFAB ones; sadly, this is historically (and contemporarily) accurate.

Riung told Gaia a story of that time on her past where she fucked up in every conceivable way. Except from Gaia's point of view, that story has not happened yet… it will, though.

Riung's cookies seem to be able to heal headaches, Maelle's menstrual symptoms, and bad sleep. An hypothetical version with chocolate might be too much for regular people.

Also, the storyteller does not like chocolate.

session/13.txt · Last modified: by quirky