Chimera, a gang of bravos Session 2

Chimera, a gang of bravos Session 2

Crew:

Alaka’i Kahananui aka The Kid; a hunter played by Chris

Ask Blindrson aka Ash, aka wanderer; a cutter played by Oskar

Emeline Comber, no known alias’s; a Slide played by Thomas

Faustulus Naqoahouna aka The Elder aka Faus; a Leech(better fit) played by Matt

The theme song for The Chimera kicks in, a cello cover of Michelle Jackson’s smooth criminal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3qxgFE46xw)

We get shots of each character, Ash launching his spear, Emeline getting shot it the head, Faust’s spirit getting blasted out of his body, the Kid diving into a river filled with hungry eels.The rest of the intro is a sequence of gray cloaks getting shot, elderly women wild glowing eyes floating up, punctuated at the end by The Kid firing towards the camera.

The scene opens to Nick Cave’s “Loverman” (https://open.spotify.com/track/5ZMSRwLhj1nxEqVf7e4A5y) playing in the background.

The Kid and Ash are helping Emeline and Faus into the lair. Faust’s eyes are dead and haunted, Emeline is bleeding from a head shot.

Ash gets a physicker he knows, a Tycherosi called Sawtooth, to look at the two, tending to Emeline and Faust. Faust’s eyes snap open to see the tycherosi and pushes the medic away from him staggering out of their lair.

The scene cuts to him staggering through the nightmarket to his friend Quellyn’s house.

The camera shows him entering, and flashes to later that night an Faus exiting the house.

Two blue coats corner Faus and tell him that they would like a ‘talk’ with him.

He lets them put manacles on him. As they walk we snap to him slipping a lockpick into his palm and him picking the manacles. Followed by him hurtling himself through the crowd, the blue coats opening fire as he runs off the shot transitions to a minimalist view of his face as he runs. https://theboardgameshow.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/giuliaghigini-artwork2-eftaios.jpg

The shot opens to The Kid having an awkward conversation with Emeline. “With the the mercs see there were women to help the soldiers with, err… his erm… needs..”. Emeline looks up with crystal clear innocent blue eyes. Despite her worldly act she is clearly uncertain as to what The Kid is asking; “Oh? Im not sure what women could do for soldiers they couldn’t do for themselves? You mean like washing a such?”.

The kid persist in his efforts to find a hooker and get laid, “err no.. I mean women who having sex for money”. Emeline looks shocked “I wouldn’t know anyone like that…. maybe in silkshore..”.

As a disappointed look of frustration floods the kid’s face; Emeline brightens up like she has remembered something “I just realized that one of my friends, Nyryx said she was a prostitute, you know how it is; it’s so hard to remember that your friends have jobs too”.

Smash cut to the tavern the “Naughty Sign” where Emeline introducing the Kid to Nyryx a wide eyed, girlish figure, with a grin like the cat who got the cream as she runs her fingertips along the tattoos on Alaka’i’s muscular arms.

The camera shifts to a painting of a blasted tree in Mistshore park on the wall, zooming in until we we transition to Ash kneeling in front of it praying to his god. (https://astrofella.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/c2a9-iwm-art-2705-wire-by-paul-nash.jpg?w=600&h=463)

The camera starts pulling back as the opening chords of the White stripes “when I hear my name” (https://open.spotify.com/track/6wfLEvrXx2hsoW1LR4rkrJ) starts to play. As the voice starts the opening lines “Wanna disappear..” We see that Ash is surrounded by a horde of hollows, standing completely motionless, their bodies unnaturally still.

As one the hollows open their mouths to speak “Come join us, in our collective we will never been alone.” Ash his eyes wide responds “I am here for my god”. The collective responds “The old gods are dead, we will give birth to the new”. The scene shatters into frank miller style panels for the following action, Ash attunes to the ghost field, detecting whatever is controlling them to all around him. There is an unmistakeable pull to deeper in the park. Then Ash blasting them back with his mind drives them back as he runs from the park, in a shot mirroring Faust’s earlier exit.

We open on the crew sitting down as Ash finishes telling the crew of the park. His skin pale, “What I need is a job to help me shake this off”.

Faus grins “Funny you say that, I was performing some religious rituals for the silver nails” (The camera flashes to Faus sitting in a smoke tent getting stoned). “The nails are willing to pay us to clear up a ghost house in the lost district, apparently there was a lot of unpleasantness and now it is filled with angry ghosts, I believe it is the O’Care house.”

The blood drains from Emeline’s face, the O’Care house is the setting to many urban legends and grimm folk tales. They always end with the hero’s dismembered, insane or just gone, and that was when they still lived.

Emeline raises her hand “could I suggest a different job?”

The scene fades in on the naughty sign tavern with the spirit essence trader Flint talking to the crew. “As you may know someone hit the greycloaks hard. Taking their war chest. Rumor is they are looking for more coin for their battle to take six towers. They are looking to sell spirit essences and some mysterious player is looking to buy them all up.”

The crew tried to read Flint but the old trader was as tight lipped as he was canny.

The crew nods at each other and the scene opens to a deserted street with a group of gray cloaks meeting with hooded figures. As the trade goes down the Kid jumps out firing at the hooded figures, the air shimmering around them. Faus frowning, as time freezes he looks at them in the ghost field. Reality shatters and Faus sees that the eight hooded figures are the same figure, only from different realities. Each figure has weird ghost echoes of their movements slightly divorced from the movements he could see with his physical eyes. One of the figure’s ‘echoes’ looked up at him, pointing a finger at Faus blasting with spirit back almost tearing it out of his body (Dimmer sisters are hardcore). Faus uses his resolve to force his spirit to remain bound to his body, the effort causing his nose and eyes to bleed.

Before he collapses he stammers, “they are not real, use electroplasm”.

Ash then jumps at the robed women throwing a vial of electroplasm at the figures, who screamed as the liquid bubbled and popped.

Emeline then stood in a pose of classical acting leading the gang against the greycloaks. The fight was confusing to the gray cloaks as Emeline’s fighting style was unique, more stage fight than real, aiming at her opponents swords, not them, leaving her guard open to make grandiose movements.

The kid popped in electroplasm bullets to his pistols, the figures of the sisters rising up their eyes glowing, the kid unleashed a series of shots, the empty robes of the sisters falling to the ground, the sisters forms fading list mist in the electroplasm trail of the kid’s bullets.

At this the remaining graycloaks started to run.

The shot ends on Emeline, Ash and the gang shooting down the last of them.

Credits start to roll, to the theme of the Arctic Monkeys “If you were there beware” (https://open.spotify.com/album/6rsQnwaoJHxXJRCDBPkBRw)

Lessons learnt from this session;

As GM it can be hard to watch the prep your players do, they might ask the wrong questions, look in the wrong places and roll 3 on every preparation roll. I was temped to softsoap the score, and Im glad I didn’t as the crew then rolled a 6 on their single engagement dice and proceeded to wreck a combined dimmer sisters, gray cloak force. The win was so much more satisfying to watch because I didn’t lower the difficulty of the score.

Just remember on the path to TPK it just takes a couple of good rolls to turn everything around, play hard and play fair and everyone will have a legendary time.