A short one this week. Last time, the wizard freaks met an elderly wizard, wrecked his car, and made friends with Philadelphia's local cult of Apollo.
This week, the cult sends them a letter - to celebrate the animation of their bronze idol to Apollo, they're inviting patrons and losers alike to a drug-filled feast on neutral ground, under the idol's eyes. The PCs weigh this against their other option, trudging around in damp graveyards after a novice necromancer, and decide the option with "light" and "people" and "alcohol" is preferable.
At the party they met a couple more of the city's lesser factions:
- Kanopy Pharmaceuticals, a rapidly-expanding grey market parachemistry company, headed by "the Marquis", one of the billion petty lords of the sidhe.
- and members of the private infraspatial club Commune Ataraxia, who eat gold.
Among the Marquis' guards Valrel notices Islwyn, a runaway scion that the Vampire's Head hopes to capture and execute. She knows the Marquis is desperate for a peace treaty with the Head, so she lies - give me Islwyn, and the Head will sign whatever you want.
Islwyn is sent out to die - it turned out he'd turned into a Troubled Antihero, pulled his fangs out, and tried to become a defender of the weak and powerless. He only gets as far as "Wait, you don't ha-" before the PCs blow his leg smoove off with a .50 cal and drag him off to get thrown into the maw of the Head. Valrel is allowed to sip from the hideous omnidirectional spray of blood and will soon morph into a full vampire - the other scions politely applaud, and nobody pays attention to Toka scooping up Islwyn's garage-built UV-lightsaber vampire-killing spear.
On the way back they are mildly annoyed by a token force of "city bugs", man-sized parasitic wasps farmed (for some godforsaken reason) by the Apollo cult's main rival. This poses no threat to anybody, but the city bug herders didn't want anyone to forget about how much they hate everyone.
Back in the party, Joe Normal tries a Kanopy-original entheogen and awakens in Ynn. As he wanders through the Garden, he realizes he can no longer feel the strings of the Pyramid in the back of his head. When he reawakens, he begs the Marquis for more - and the sidhe nods. Of course, for a price.
Analysis
This is more like it - a self-operating game. I did no prep until about an hour before the game, when I rolled twice on the Big Spreadsheet and learned that Commune Ataraxia and the City Bug Herders were acting this week. Since they're both related to the House of Musagetes, who just got the zôn last session, it was clear the House would be celebrating, and the city bugs would start swinging. (The Commune Ataraxia job was an interception of Kanopy's entheogen couriers that the PCs flatly ignored.)
Though that's the bare minimum, and even if the game's self-sustaining it'll need some work to shine. Basic bestiaries and expanded plans for the 5 minor factions (especially the City Bug Herders, who need the most work - for instance, a name. And an explanation for why they want to own man-sized parasitic wasps), actually finishing the patron jobs, etc. It's in a really "building the rails in front of the train" place right now, and it's a bit tiring.
Oh - and it turns out that however-many years of online roleplaying have left me with absolutely no capability to act out personalities. Almost all of my NPCs talk in the same way and make the same jokes, but I don't really care - the important part is that they want different things.
Next week everything will get... harsh, as the negotiations between Kanopy and the Vampire's Head evaporate.
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