This session was played on 2025-12-06. Clark, Gaia and Maelle celebrate Gaia and Maelle's birthday, and meet a very unnerving umichooan.

Inmediately after the previous session, Claire prepares to defrost and hopefully heal Zach Shpak. Yumiko Kurimoto and Merciful Ariyadna lead them to a room where they are required to clean and disinfect themselves and wear some scrubs. Things get a bit complicated because of the Glove, that Yumiko decides to disinfect in boiling water and alcohol; and Claire's tail, that Ariyadna helps tuck inside her medical scrubs.

All these things done, they finally proceed to the operating theater, where Ariyadna explains the situation, and how she's going to provide oxygen to Zach's brain and prevent him from bleeding out so the wound can be cleaned, and then proceed to knit the flesh. After some very nervous moments, Claire manages to channel the cold again and undo the freezing of Zach, after which the rest is just several hours of very experimental surgery with the help of a telekinetic. In the end Zach is actually saved.

Some days later, Claire accompanies Maelle and Yumiko to Zwosta Train Station to met the incoming party of friends (Ivan Petrenko, Aleksey Petrenko and Lotte Petrenko) who are coming to celebrate Maelle's birthday. It is a very heartwarming scene, only soured because they notice that there's a photographer that has been following them to the train station, and runs away as soon as he's noticed. Claire attempts to grab the man, but he's fast and knows the city well, so she comes back empty-handed.

On the afternoon of what would be Halloween in our timeline, the party meets with a lot of friends in the courtyard of the Hunter's Guildhouse to celebrate Gaia and Maelle's birthday. Ivan and the children meet Derek for the first time (who greets them via Gaia and leaves them flabbergasted) and Child Ariyadna, who is hiding behind Derek and a bit scared of Ivan. Gaia reminds Ariyadna that she can leave and rest if she wants, but Ariyadna remains firmly hidden behind Derek, where she considers it safe.

Riung, who was invited by Gaia last session, arrives at the meeting with gifts and very formal felicitations, and then Mariette does, causing a momentary lull because both her and Riung stand there looking at each other uncomfortably.

Claire notices that the photographer from the train station seems to be again up to something and trying to get images of the party, so she runs after the man. She loses him for a moment, but manages to track his footprints in the bit of snow laying on the ground, only to lose him where he boarded a car to run away.

Another car reaches up to Claire, and she joins Ferret and Iorena Sevel who were going to the party themselves. Iorena explains that the paparazzi have been bothering them quite a bit too; apparently it's one of the tabloids owned by Antoine Motyl that are digging up as much dirt as they can in Iorena to discredit the political coalition to which she belongs.

The birthday party continues with slices of cake and merriment, and finally a small core of the attendees go inside to open gifts in private. The last to be opened is a couple of beautiful wooden boxes containing white eggs, that Riung explains are actually full libraries with as much free information she has been able to scrounge around regarding the kind of beings that have been known to be patrons for dreamwalkers, as AMANDA and the Renegade seem to have become.

And then Gaia tries to ask Riung about the Puppeteer. And the man himself appears in the middle of the Guildhouse, scaring everyone half to death including Riung herself.

In a pretty impressive feat of fast-talking and half lies, Gaia manages to convince the Puppeteer that she knows his name from her dealings with Victor Vituska. The Puppeteer seems to be satisfied with the answer, even though he denies any knowledge of Vituska himself, and leaves to the relief of everyone involved.

After this, Riung excuses herself and leaves too, but Gaia can still feel her looking on them through the Great Dream, and quite scared.

• Claire Dubois
• Gaia Dynko
• Maelle Kurimoto
• Mariette Navia
• Amanda
• Yumiko Kurimoto
• Ariyadna (Merciful)
• Zach Shpak
• Ivan Petrenko
• Aleksey Petrenko
• Lotte Petrenko
• Derek
• Ariyadna (Child)
• Vana Dynko
• Stray Pyotr
• Ferret
• Iorena Sevel
• Riung
• Puppeteer

• Claire: Is [all this cleaning] necessary?
• Ariyadna: If it was me, I would disinfect you with spoooky magic, but we're already asking the doctor here to take a lot of things in faith.
• Both Yumiko and Ariyadna looks at the glove; Yumiko is skeptical about how dirty it can be.
• Ariyadna: Where did you get that, by the way? it looks pretty old.
• Claire: Found it in a river.

• Claire: Could you helped me put the tail away? I'm not sure what the protocol for that would be.

• Claire: Sorry, I'm not really used to have my sternum pulled.
• Ariyadna: No, the sternum is here.

• Ariyadna: I already checked the state of the body a couple times, and things are tense because it is in the verge of brain hypoxia, so I will address that at the same time that I keep the blood contained. while I do that, the wound needs to be cleaned, and only then can we proceed with knitting.

• Claire focus on the frozen shape of Zach, and it brings forth a lot of memories. From the moment that she (then he?) held the poor man as Vituska decided to purge him from life, and how she was so desperate to save him. could not allow him to die, and so she chose to STOP the situation.
• But the situation is no longer untenable, and now there are choices, so Claire focuses on it and now she wants life to continue.
• And so, the subtle machine answers.

• Maelle: Wonder if Ariyadna'll tell aleksey and lotte about the kitsune thing…
• Yumiko: If you don't want ariyadna to tell things you might have to be very explicit about it; she likes telling.
• Maelle: Oh, I won't tell her to not tell. It'll be funny to see what happens.
• Yumiko: She is learning to push boundaries so it's going to be interesting either way.

Rose flew a plane all by herself!

This session might have the longest cast list in the entire campaign so far, but that's what happens when you celebrate two birthdays at once.

And yes, both Gaia and Maelle have birthdays in what would be Halloween.

Iorena's idea of a great gift is a set of plaques saying “you survived, he didn't” made from the knife she used to shank Vituska.

The library eggs that Riung gifted to Gaia and Maelle would usually require the user to be able to interface through the Subtle Machine to read them, but Riung improvised a simple user interface for the ungifted.

The Puppeteer is breaking with umichooan clothing customs by wearing eye-searing colorful clothes. Combined with quite a considerable girth, it makes him stick out of the rest like a sore thumb.

Umichooan insults are very umichooan and include such sentences as:

• I can see a speck of dirt under your sleeve
• Your robes are touching the ground
• I know what you did (which is quite the strong threat, frankly)