Session 36 - Codified Interrogation

Plot points/Scenes

Dinner and a Show - Asmir’s Lute Reprisal

• Where to from here?
  • Fritz is more than happy to stick around Stalwartz and craft until we’re eventually run out of town
    • J: “it’s tradition!”
    • Fritz gets Robin to help
  • Jalan also has a new idea for a scheme: remember Nigerian prince emails? How about an Underdark Prince letter?
    • Gets Terrence to help him
    • T: “but...where will you tell them to send the funds?”
    • J: “I’ll just...give the address of somewhere in some town I know we’re gonna be soon”
    • T: “so if someone’s tracking a fleeing career criminal, they now have a forwarding address…”
    • J: “I’ll put it in my brother’s name! Somebody give me a name”
    • M: “your name backwards! Nalaj!”
    • D: “pronounced ‘knowledge’ “
• Meanwhile, Asmir’s Lute has rolled into town and will be performing tonight
  • Playing an original composition that they’ve just written, a story about recent events
  • Normally known for being chipper and upbeat, but this new song is very dark - all their normally bright and cheery sets are dark and depressing and the mood is very somber
  • Fritz decides to take Robin as a de-stressor from their hard day in the shop, the rest of the party trickles in as well
• Show starts with humming, dark mist, a lone man on the stage, sings about a lone city besieged by monsters, the heart of the city fell into darkness, more of the city fell until the walls were enveloped in darkness, those close enough to hear could hear the wails of tortured souls swirling inside the impenetrable dark, and getting sucked into something at the center
  • (Danner and Anna gesticulating madly towards a stunned Phil - who doesn’t get it, and we later have to explain how this is exactly Ragnar’s MO - magical darkness, soul bombing a city…)
• Fritz apologizes to Robin for bringing him to such a sad show, he says “it’s aight”
• People walk around after the show with a collection basket for the troupe
  • Jalan turns to whisper to Terrence: “this is a scam, right?” but Terrence - who Jalan definitely brought with - is nowhere to be seen
  • Fritz donates 10 platinum, is told because of her generous donation she’s now a benefactor, and is invited to a special dinner after the show - plus four - takes Jalan, Drant, Methos, and Robin bc she accidentally suggested him as a plus one before she knew how many people she could take
    • Fantastic dinner, the company is somber
    • Story was true: Stonedeep is enveloped by a dark cloud and something is happening within it - happened five days ago
    • About halfway through the dinner, Terrence shows up and sits next to Jalan, nudges him and asks how the show was
  • Terrence asks Jalan what his gnome’s friend’s last name is
    • J: “I dunno. Something like Cogsworth?”
    • T: “Could it be Swiftcog?”
    • J: “ooh yeah, Fritz? Is your last name Swiftcog?”
    • F: “Yesss…”
    • J: “Okay thanks, Terrence wanted to know”
    • F: “...you should’ve led with that, I wouldn’t have told you.”
  • Terrence also asks Fritz if she constructed “that funny little robot...Jeeves...Jarvis?” she says no but she modified him, he asks with what, mentions that it was probably with stuff that was just lying around the facility because she wanted the old rustic Dwemer metal to match
  • She asks why all the questions, he says he’s just interested in the mechanical arts, and pulls out a stick of dynamite with a watch on it (she jokingly screams that she jumps under the table)
  • He asks what our plans for the rest of the night are, Fritz says she’s gonna take Robin out on the town to get happy after that sob fest
  • At some point during the dinner, Terrence leaves, and we meet back up with him afterwards
  • Terrence warns us all to be on guard, it seems someone has it out for us but he can’t put his finger on it (Fritz almost backs out of bar hopping but decides not to)
  • Jalan wants to go get some drugs
    • Michael pulls out a new ‘toxin’ from the homebrew stuff that Terrence managed to find

Nightcaps and Kneecaps

• Terrence stays sober and watches over us
  • An orc starts to walk up to us, Terrence steps between us and says something that makes the orc turn around super fast and run out of there terrified
    • Jalan asks what he said to the orc, Terrence tells Jalan he just doesn’t trust orcs, and for that matter he doesn’t super trust Methos
• Jalan crit succeeds his Con save against the drugs, Terrence lets him stay up later, he persuades his way into an escort for the night later on
• Fritz pays for Robin’s drinks, trying to get him to have a good time - gets him nice and drunk quickly and home in bed before too late and well before Jalan calls it a night
• Drant just gets drunk and parties, Methos takes two shots and sits in his booster seat and converses with people
  • M: “I puke once but then I apologize and clean it up”
  • D: “I’m sorry, I have to lick this up now”
• Drant passes out super early, wakes up around 1am and something doesn’t feel quite right
  • (we have a whole building rented to us because our caravan is so large)
  • Weird noises and things aren’t adding up: now that he’s fully awake, there’s no noise...
    • ANNA STARTS FLIPPING SHIT making the connection between Ragnar’s silence sword and the ‘soul-bombing’ of Stonedeep (A: “Stalwartz is about to get wiped off the map and we’re inside it” P: “noooo that’s not gonna happen” A: “but what fucking if we gotta go man”)
• Drant sneakily follows the unnatural silence into an adjacent room, where he sees some guy with Jarvis on his back crawling out a window, briefly turns invisible
  • D: “Well, here comes the thorn whip, my dude.”
• Drant hits him, and it’s almost as if all the sound the man had been making that was magically made silent was emitted at once, Drant takes thunder damage and everyone in the building wakes up
• The person is visibly stunned by the explosion, Jarvis is tied up on the floor next to him...he panics, runs to jump out the window, is not very graceful and sort of falls out and bounces off a terrace below, falling prone
• We determine this is Fritz’s room (because both Jarvis and 5H33N would be with Fritz): she wakes up to a huge bang, Jarvis is on the ground tied up, a man jumps out her window, Drant with Thorn Whip in hand shouts that there was a man trying to steal Jarvis who jumped out the window
  • F: “....follow him!”
  • Drant jumps out the window
• People trickle into the room as Drant jumps out the window, Methos spider-web rappels down the building, Fritz waits for Gregory, tells Gregory and Vincent to stay and guard Jarvis
  • Gregory not armored, but with a dagger
  • Jalan doesn’t show up: it’s only 1am, he probably isn’t even back yet
  • DM makes the note that none of us are armored, Fritz excitedly exclaims that she is, and slams her chestplate and her armor deploys
• Drant lands on top of the guy, starts special-punching (slow-punching) him, his speed is reduced by 10ft, but Drant takes a shit ton of electric damage from some capacitor that shatters on Drant’s impact
• Methos rappels down into range, misses on a net attack
• Chase on!
  • The guy runs, even with his slightly slowed speed manages to keep a little bit of distance
    • Methos the bounty hunter quickly calculates where he thinks the guy will be headed, cuts off to the side and stretches a net across an alleyway, the guy barrels into it, falls over, Methos leaps on top of him with a poison-coated dagger to his throat and growls to stay put
  • Fritz recognizes that the suit the intruder is wearing is nearly identical to the other Mechanical Enlightenment suits that Robin’s group wore but a little bit different, and also recognizes that he’s making some mouth motions that indicate he might be going for a suicide tooth pill
    • A history check with her similar experience with Robin tells her that his back left molar, second from back is the pill
    • A luck check says she has a pliers
    • Nearly failed strength check to pull the tooth out faster than the guy can bite down, she turns the pliers sideways so the dude trying to bite down on the tooth instead bites down on her pliers, so hard that he passes out from the pain and from the pain of her finally successfully pulling his tooth
• Maneuvering back through the city to the house
  • Methos re-webs our prisoner so he’s secure, then with a really great investigation check purposefully routes us through the shitty part of town because we would be in major fucking trouble if any townsguard saw us dragging an unconscious and bloodied man in a flux suit around
    • He also uses his disguise kit to attempt to disguise the guy’s face - he sorta sucks, Fritz pours some booze on top of him in an attempt to just make him look passed-out drunk
  • In some alleyway, two figures step out in front menacingly while two more step out behind us
    • Drant did notice them but didn’t think they were a threat because...it’s in the bad part of town at night, there’s people everywhere
    • “Wouldn’t it be a shame if your friend there happened to lose all of his possessions while he was passed out drunk?”
    • One of them pulls out a couple of brown bags, “don’t worry! You won’t even have to see it!
    • Dragonborn, high elf, leprechaun, tabaxi
• Combat
  • Fritz screams “neeeeeeeeeeeetttt” at the sight of the dude pulling out body bags, dives for the Dragonborn’s knees, wins initiative and crumples his knee to the ground with bone shards flying out - he starts screaming, but nobody else is phased
  • Fritz goes for the most haughty-looking guy (characteristically, the high elf) with her second attack - does almost twice the damage on this hit and he also crumples to the ground screaming
  • Leprechaun runs, tabaxi is fine
  • Fritz snarls at the tabaxi, the tabaxi turns tail (ha)
  • Now we’re left with two screaming thugs (dragonborn and high elf) clutching their knees
  • F: *gleefully sheaths her warhammer* “Jalan’s gonna have the best time when he gets home! Now we have three interrogation guests!”
  • There was a person of the Inquisition that noticed us as we walk into our rented house
    • We tell them that the intruder (who we stash out of sight in the house) is our drunk friend, but while we were trying to get home, we were mugged by these two
    • G: “did you really have to kneecap them?”
    • F: “well see, sir, it’s the only thing I can reach! It was self-defense!”
    • He takes the two thugs away and we return to investigate our new mechanical friend...

Roundabout Words

• Fritz investigates our captive’s flux suit for a way to safely take it off: this guy’s flux suit isn’t the same as the last ones we’ve encountered - seems way more form fitting
  • Huge capacitor on the chest that seems to have powered the suit, but it was royally fucked up by some impact
  • F: *pointedly looks at Drant*
  • D: “I mean, I could punch it and give the power back-”
  • F: “no-”
• Fritz fetches Robin, thinking he might have some insight on how this suit would be different to remove than his own
  • He puts on clothes (sleeping naked for the win ayyyy)
  • Stumbles into the room, takes one glance at the guy and starts mumbling about why we woke him up for this shit, he’s still drunk and has a headache and wants to go to sleep -
  • On Fritz’s excited suggestion (this is something she’d wanted to make with her own alchemy proficiency for a long time but never had the time) Methos makes Robin some Pedialyte-caliber hangover cure shit with his alchemist’s kit, Robin immediately feels much better
  • Robin inspects the suit: “Looks like one of the better models...there were conscripts like me, then if you actually proved yourself to be useful and trustworthy you could choose either a Brute track or Stealth track and would get specialized suits...Look at its collar...if it has a 2 on the inside of the collar, we don’t have to worry. Anything below tier 2 they don’t trust you to take off your own suit and it’ll self-destruct if you try, anything above a 2 is good, the higher number the higher your rank”
    • Intruder here has a 4 on the inside of his suit - whoo boy, we caught a big one
  • Fritz prepares to take off the suit, but has Methos standing by with webs just in case this guy is now faking unconsciousness and is going to try to run
    • The moment the suit is off, the guy is does a kip-up and is ready to go, attempts to run away but Methos is faster and the guy faceplants
• Drant fetches Jalan
  • We discover that Jalan has in fact been home the entire time, he’s just been in his room entertaining his escort (charmed with wits and charisma instead of coin, he seems to be very proud of that) and really couldn’t be bothered to see what the commotion is about
  • J: “I think she might be the one! I...don’t remember her name, but-”
  • D: “is she here?”
  • J: “yes.”
  • D: “....I throw her out the window.”
  • J: “what?!”
  • (D: “you’re on the first floor, you’ll be fiiinne”
  • It happens, she sulks back in, grabs her clothes, yells at “Patrick” (Jalan’s alias) and leaves
• Fritz starts explaining quickly to Jalan, he stops her when she’s nearly done with a stupefied look…”I’m super high right now” (he didn’t catch anything she just said)
  • F: “.....Methooooss”
  • Methos gets him un-drunk super easily, doesn’t do super well on the de-drugs but Jalan starts sobering up on his own...Fritz re-explains everything she was saying before, then sums up “so here you go! Waiting for your masterful interrogation!”
• We decide to bring him to the cellar, away from windows, and have Gregory constantly patrolling the house above and looking out windows, etc., making sure nothing’s too fishy and nobody is obviously following us
• Jalan requests that we fetch a chair with two kitty-corner legs sawed off, and we scatter caltrops on the floor - the chair is unsteady and whoever is sitting in it has to work to keep themselves up
• Good cop, bad cop, bad cop, good cop (Jalan, Fritz, Drant, Methos) - and Fishfingers is also in the room
• Jalan takes off the prisoner’s gag
  • J: “What’s your name?”
    • I: *in elvish* “fuck you speaking in your filthy common tongue”
  • Jalan looks pointedly at Drant, Drant Thorn Whips the chair out from under him, Fishfingers puts him back in the chair (that’s Fishfingers’ job)
  • J: “if you lie to us or don’t answer the question, we’re going to have to hurt you”
    • I: “you’re a humanoid”
  • J: “I asked your name”
    • I: “I am a named individual, yes”
    • *Thorn Whip*
  • I: *dwarvish* “I am the third son of eternal darkness”
    • F: *in dwarvish* “how many languages do you know, pal?”
    • I: *starts speaking in Sylvan*
    • F: *starts speaking in Primordial*
    • I: *surprised, responds in Primordial, says something about it being good to control elementals*
    • F: *cheerfully* “I learned it in college. Got to get those latin credits in somehow! But my friend wanted to know...what’s your name?”
    • I: Repeats his name again in dwarvish: “third son of eternal darkness”
      • “I chose it for myself...back when I was a conscript, I was very edgy”
  • Fritz cheerfully suggests that we call the Third Son of Eternal Darkness Tsed, as his initials abbreviated - he seems actually pleased with it and compliments her for coming up with a better name than he had
    • Fritz relays his name to the group, then in politely requesting that he continue to answer our questions realizes that she was supposed to be the bad cop - she is very bad at good cop bad cop
    • Once she realizes this, she throws out a half-hearted threat that if he doesn’t cooperate, we’ll torture him - he was right on the verge of cooperating but now he clams up
• Fritz calls Robin in to hopefully bond because of their similar circumstances
  • Robin walks in playing with a weird clockwork frog mechanism
  • Didn’t catch exactly who was talking here: but they monologue about Soular Power capturing prisoners and how sometimes their prisoners are just tortured and then discarded, but “I guess Nevermore has lasted kind of a long time, so what the hell, I’ll give it a shot”
    • Jalan and Fritz exchange a worried glance - if it’s Tsed talking, then they know about Nevermore
  • Robin tries to sympathise and buddy up with Tsed, Tsed tries to bite Robin but Robin’s too fast, Tsed starts spitting in Primordial at Robin “you are the weak!”
  • Laughs at Jalan’s mention of the word “evil,” Jalan mentions how his grandmother is evil, Tsed says she was probably just doing what she thought was best for her grandkids
  • Jalan just wants intel! We don’t want to hurt him, or kill him, look! We even adopted Robin! We can arrange to have him sent to another city after we’re done here and he’ll never have to go back to his masters because he lost his suit and he’d be a failure…
    • Pretty good persuasion check, Tsed nods...
  • T: *now speaking in Common* “as much as I would love to tell you, I am rendered unable to willfully betray my masters”
• Methos takes this cue to search Tsed’s head for an implant - series of incisions on the back of the head, about a quarter-sized area around the center top of his head
  • Fritz fetches Alvira, thinking maybe they could tag-team surgically remove the implant
  • Alvira: “this is way out of my league...I can try, see what I can figure out, but I really think it might be more than I can do.”
  • We drop it - it’s way too risky, and we have a willing and conscious participant at least right now - we’ll see what we can do with this
  • [we also determine that this implant functions as some sort of Comprehend Languages enchantment, which might explain why Tsed speaks so many languages]
• J: “are there more of your team out there?”
  • T: “I really wish we could have a tea party, but we’d be short a couple people”
  • There are a few of his friends still in the city
• J: “if I were looking for the best apples, where would I go?”
  • T: “apple trees grow everywhere…”
  • The Mechanical Enlightenment has branches everywhere
• J: “who’s the best person at baking apple pie and what do they look like?”
  • T: “have you heard of the Gourmet?”
    • Conversation...the Gourmet (in Skyrim’s) schtick (DM provides that assuming the questline hasn’t happened…) the Gourmet wrote a book and toured the country cooking but since nobody knew what the Gourmet looked like the questline was able to work
  • So: the “Gourmet” (the head of the Mechanical Enlightenment) is known by reputation and not by physical presence - he could be anyone
• Tsed is very adamant that: “I need to not be aware that I am betraying my leader”
  • We realize that this roundabout questioning is really the only way we’re going to get around this - we start to step outside the room between questions to discuss the best way to ask and so Tsed has no context for anything we’re asking, hopefully it’s easier to subvert his implant
• J: “I saw you at the tavern down in Chesapeake bay awhile ago. How did you know how to send us mail there?”
  • Wordlessly morphs into a female high elf, an orc, into Jalan, into Terrence, and back into his human form
  • So, he’s a changeling or otherwise able to change his appearance, and was able to keep tabs on us by changing into people close to us
• J: “obviously I’m an attractive person. Do you think I’m attractive?”
  • T: “you’re attractive because you’re rich”
• J: “what about Fritz?”
  • T: “you’re all attractive because you’re rich, but not because you have gold”
  • As we sort of suspected with the attempted theft of Jarvis, he’s after the knowledge we have, not the money or anything about us really specifically
• J: “how soon can we expect to have guests for the tea party?”
  • T: “I was supposed to have a tea party at sunrise, but I’m not feeling tea right now”
  • He and his team were going to meet up at sunrise, but now he won’t
    • Maybe embarrassed? Or because he’s tied up here? Or would be punished for not delivering?
• J: “is there any etiquette to your tea parties?”
  • T: “everyone brings a gift. Those who do not bring gifts cannot attend”
  • He is expected to bring a prize back to his meeting and so is everyone else, and those who don’t complete their tasks cannot return
• M: “are you aware of what gifts the others bring?”
  • T: “it’s always surprises. One time someone gifted another their life, that’s pretty common”
  • You don’t show up without your quarry, or you give yourself instead?
• Tsed jumps in, unprovoked:
  • T: “I was trying to give them their life forever”
    • (he loses a little blood out of his nose at this point)
    • Jarvis is the golden ticket? The team that brings back Jarvis wins freedom?
• J: “did anybody else know that you were bringing the gift that you planned on bringing?”
  • T: “sometimes tea party guests are assigned gifts which sort of ruins the surprise”
  • Occasionally they’re given specific tasks but not always, even if they’re not they still have to find something to bring back to their team
• J: “are there any bigger whales than the one you’re hunting?”
  • T: “no, we’ve been after this whale for a very, very long time.”
  • He’s very emphatic about the long time part - whatever piece Jarvis plays in this is something much bigger
  • We were discussing that the power plant was potentially the whale
• J: “did you have all the puzzle pieces before we bought the box?”
  • T: “we did! But we perhaps had all the puzzle pieces before you were born. We thought they were destroyed but recently we learned they weren’t, they were scattered, but then we found out that you brought them together”
  • This was a big one: the Mechanical Enlightenment has been searching for whatever it’s after for generations - it was in pieces, thought to be destroyed, but then something about when we came along showed that not only they’re not destroyed, but they’re starting to be brought back together
• Tsed volunteers another thing unprovoked:
  • T: “one of you was present when the first puzzle piece we thought was destroyed was brought together” *looks very pointedly at Fritz*
  • ….so much discussion:
  • We posture that maybe it was something to do with Jarvis making Fritz a system administrator, that maybe when we brought the system back online and Fritz was put in charge something happened: but then we remember that the facility was online for hundreds and hundreds of years before we came along, and was only shut off for like a week before we turned it back on - and also Jalan and Drant were present for that though they weren’t made administrators
  • Jalan remembers that Terrence had been asking about Fritz’s past…”could it have had something to do with your past? Your name, Swiftcog? Something happened with your dad, right?”
    • *DM airhorns*
  • Fritz shakily recounts her backstory with her dad, the stuff he’d been working on and the stuff she’d helped with, the secrecy and red tape, and how she happened to be gone one day when she was 10 and when she came back the town was just a crater, how the Swiftcog name became a scarlet letter and how her once renowned dad’s name was smeared, how she went to the university and how they found out who she was, and why she spent so much time there, glosses over why she left...
    • M: “what do you remember?”
    • J: “the town was just gone? Or it was rubble?”
    • D: “turn the interrogation on Fritz! Thorn Whip! Thorn Whip!”
    • F: “I don’t remember!! I was ten! This was like sixty odd years ago! It was a crater, it was rubble, I don’t know, there was nobody left, and I just left…”
      • Discussion of going to Stonedeep to see if the remnants of whatever Asmir’s Lute saw look anything like what Fritz saw way back when, and if so, maybe if someone like Nevermore would be able to recognize if the crater was a legit explosion or more like ‘this town suddenly magically disappeared’
    • D: “what kind of tinker was your dad?”
    • F: “an engineer...he could make anything!” and she goes on to talk about some of the fun stuff he would make for her and her mom, a mechanical-horse-drawn carriage that one of her chores was to oil, a horse-less vehicle that could traverse rough terrain very quickly, little toys and mechanisms...
  • So...whatever Fritz’s dad Oruhim was working on, was something that the Mechanical Enlightenment was very much after...and it was apparently completed because “one of you was present when it came together” - does that mean they commissioned it? Who did? What was it? Where is it now, did they get their hands on it? Did it fail?
    • Fritz is adamant her dad was a good guy and if he was hired or otherwise employed by this cult, mustn’t have thought they were evil, but more likely didn’t know what exactly he was being hired to do - he had been as rebellious and adventurous and good hearted as she herself is now and there’s no way he could’ve-
    • J: “but what if your dad was the leader of this cult??”
    • F: “no! He couldn’t be!”
    • J: “but what if-”
    • F: “no-”
  • And upon realizing that Terrence was the one asking the questions tonight...Fritz runs upstairs and sweeps the house - Terrence isn’t here
    • She calls Roll Call, waking everybody in the house up to meet in the living room - everybody but Terrence and Nevermore are present, Jalan peeks in Nevermore’s room and he’s in there, just having none of our middle of the night shit
      • (we give a brief explanation of Nevermore to Kyle, I am endlessly in awe of how smoothly we got to fit this beautiful and extremely powerful character into two campaigns and it is my favorite thing in the entire world)
  • On Terrence: when Tsed did his funny little changeling thing earlier, he had turned into Terrence briefly…
    • Jalan had brought Terrence to the Asmir’s Lute thing, which probably was awkward for him since he used to be a part of the troupe, so he bailed...but then partway through the dinner he showed up, asked some very pointed questions, and left again, then met up with us to go bar hopping - though none of us asked him at that point about the weird questions he’d been asking so it’s super plausible that the Terrence we were talking to at the Asmir’s Lute Dinner was actually Tsed
    • And on the other faces he adopted...Jalan (well surprise surprise), an orc (a successful history check on Jalan’s part says yes, the orc Tsed just turned into was the orc that approached Terrence at the bar, and that something Terrence said to the orc scared him badly enough to back off)
    • And the high elf? We’ve only met a few - notably Victor Jackson (wasn’t him), and the lady Carissa was secretly meeting with back in Stonedeep - Jalan thinks about it but can neither confirm nor deny that that was her, but Fritz is leaning towards it maybe was...which means that Carissa might’ve been in cahoots with the Mechanical Enlightenment
      • And on the note of Carissa, she was super pissed when we voted her out of office and wandered the countryside proclaiming the wonders of making electricity - a free (or government?) resource - a private business venture is very profitable (I guess in an attempt to undercut Soular Power)
  • With all of these absolutely batshit revelations, we shakily return to your previously scheduled questioning
• J: “are you after the whole chicken or the insides?”
  • T: “I’m more of a leg guy myself”
  • They’re more after what Jarvis has than Jarvis himself
  • (DM seems to suggest that Fritz had - in doing her modifications on Jarvis - used some pieces of scrap that she’d been carrying around with her since she was like ten as “a memento” which makes like zero sense, she instead postures that the only relics she has of that time were some of her dad’s schematics in an old portfolio of his, a Swiftcog seal, a Swiftcog stamp, and a Swiftcog mold that she uses to imprint everything she works on
    • Kyle through Methos suggests maybe the mold is something special
    • Somebody questions the validity that she would have her dad schematics after all this time but yes she 100% does, but it’s just like the basest simplest designs that she and her dad worked on together or that she begged him for a copy of that he let her keep in an old beat-up portfolio of his as a keepsake, she never had access to his more advanced schematics and certainly not the contracted secretive ones - she was only 10 - by now the portfolio is much more full of her own work than remnants of his but she has a few pages of designs in his handwriting that she fondly keeps tucked away very safe
• J: “are there any poachers on your land?”
  • T: “no, we only hunt on private grounds that no one knows about”
  • As far as Tsed knows, only the Mechanical Enlightenment is hunting this down, there’s no rival group after the prize
• J: “do you have any significant others up in the mountains?”
  • T: “I don’t really date mountain girls. They sort of gross me out. I stick to cities. Women there have more innovation.”
  • This cult is based in the cities because of tech...these guys have no association with the First Yell in the mountains or whatever darkness monster-y things are happening up there, and they’re assuming the ‘uncivilized’ mountain people have no interest in the tech that the ME is
• J: “are the mountain girls going after wild game?”
  • T: “I spend so little time in the mountains, I don’t know what they get up to but I don’t approve of it. They’re practically not even humanoid as far as I’m concerned”
  • Tsed is a little bit racist against the monstrous races, and he (and maybe the Mechanical Enlightenment at large) don’t really know what the mountain cult is up to and don’t really care
• M: “I’m new to the group. What kind of attractive am I to you?”
  • T: “oh, you’re perfectly fine. But you’re a male, not really my type”
  • So he’s not as attractive to him as the rest of us - probably because he’s literally brand new, but it’s interesting that he’s considering Methos attractive at all
• M: “we have the theory that this may be red versus yellow, you’re part of the red group, but is there any orange?”
  • T: “orange is my least favorite color”
  • These lines (between the ME and the Yells) don’t cross - or those that do, are -
  • T: “I don’t know what color orange is”
  • So no, there is no crossing over between the ME and the Yells
• Drant is getting impatient
  • He keeps bringing up that he’s getting tired of words, he just wants to hit and hurt, Fritz emphasizes that we’re making great progress, this is really the best we could ask for
  • D: “but he’s not talking straight. Let’s just take that thing out of his head and talk with real words”
  • F: “we talked to our resident surgeon and our resident surgeon said ‘bitch, what? No! That’s impossible!”
  • D: “our resident surgeon who’s in college!”
  • J: “who else do you think we’ll find here?”
  • T: “if you want, I can answer one question honestly-”
    • Everybody: “no”
    • He probably has one suicide question - he can bypass the implant once and then it’s kaput, he’s still too valuable
• J: “are there many people in your choir who can sing at your level?”
  • T: “I’m a pretty specialized singer if I do say so myself. There are a select few, though we are never told the exact number”
  • He doesn’t know how many other people are Tier 4 in the ME but there aren’t very many, and he’s pretty close to the top
• M: “what vocal part are you in your choir?”
  • T: “not quite a soprano, maybe a little higher than alto”
  • So he’s really pretty close to the top, “assistant to regional manager”
• J: “are you expected to show up to the nest with the rest of the flock, even though you are seedless?”
  • T: “yes, I’m supposed to show up with the seeds, though I am expected either way”
  • This meeting his team has at sunrise, he will be missed if he doesn’t show up
• J: “how soon will you get grounded if you show up late to class?”
  • T: “almost immediately. Well, if I show up late to class...I’m usually not late, so the teachers are pretty lenient with me, but they are in general very strict.”
  • There is a very small window after he doesn’t show up to his meeting at sunrise before his team will search for him - they may be a bit more lenient with him because of his rank/prowess but they will come fairly quickly
• J: “what if you don’t show up at all?”
  • T: “they will probably show up at my home. But I haven’t had a home for awhile…”
  • So his ‘home’ is his suit...if he skips this meeting, they’ll show up at his suit
• We start talking about if they know the suit is off and if somebody would’ve been notified that it was disconnected
  • Methos does a quick sweep of the house looking for anything out of place
  • Black substance curling around the hinge of the door, something’s not right - it’s some sort of mechanism to sense when the door opens and shuts (disguised to look like grease but actually mechanical, slid onto the hinges)
  • Found it also on the window of the room that Jarvis was in
• J: “did you install the new doorbell on our front door?”
  • T: “oh yeah! I’m really into technical stuff, I could actually show you how it works-”
  • Everybody: “no-”
• INSIGHT
  • Fritz crit succeeds on her insight, even though she’s got a -1 modifier: she believes he’s helping out as much as he can, but he’s not super on our side, he’s looking for a chance to escape but he’s being authentic in his answers
• J: “where is the lantern on your clothing?”
  • T: doesn’t know how to answer
  • We were trying to ascertain where the tracking device on his suit was but that was without context a sort of vague question
• J: “how does your family know where your home is?”
  • T: “the people who don’t listen to orders, the people find their families and kill them”
  • Some discussion that the ME might go to punishing Tsed’s family before searching for his suit, but that doesn’t make sense -
  • T: “I’m not the one interrogating here, but Jalan, don’t you have some friends that exist?”
  • (D: *snickers*
  • Discussion of Jalan’s lady friends...Samantha (Patrick’s affair) (T: “I don’t care about your affairs, I’m thinking of your relationships!”), Zavala, Naomi...
  • T: “I can’t believe you haven’t mentioned him yet…”
  • F: “...Terrence?”
  • T: *smiles and nods* “what’s the saying when people are similar? The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree?”
    • F: “shit! all we knew about Terrence before this is that he was into some ‘shady business’ before he joined Asmir’s Lute...we assumed he was just a run of the mill career criminal, but was he a part of this cult??”
• J: “do you share the same roots as Terrence?”
  • T: “yes.”
  • Fucking Terrence was either a part of the Mechanical Enlightenment, or he was Tsed’s “family” that he was insinuating before
• J: “where is that apple? Do you know where that apple is?”
  • T: “the apple is going to start rotting after sunrise”
  • Terrence is safely stashed somewhere, but will be killed after sunrise, either if Tsed doesn’t return to his people or regardless
• D: “where did you dispose of your wrapper?”
  • T: “I use the same trash can every time I eat candy”
  • ...so, Terrence is somewhere that other things that the Mechanical Enlightenment gather are?
• M: “is there a garbage man that collects your trash?”
  • T: “yes. And he’s an asshole.”
  • F: “...who have we met here that’s an asshole”
  • Somebody mentions “Roger!”
• F: “is your garbage man more prestigious than his title suggests?”
  • T: *shakes his head, loss for words
  • Fritz was trying to ask if the “garbage man” actually held a pretty prestigious position (in the upper ranks of the government, Roger, perhaps)
• M: “how often does your garbage man collect your trash?”
  • T: “All the time! I actually heard that the garbage man had a run-in with someone who didn’t want to give up their trash…”
  • It is fucking Roger
  • D: “Terrence is in with the magical items! Now we have to do the heist!”
  • J: “Heist! Heist! Heist!”
  • F: “DM you’re a fucking genius-”
• J: “are the birdwatchers going to the landfill?”
  • T: “yes”
  • Whoever the “birdwatchers” are, they will be headed to the Embassy to their loot dump: if the “birdwatchers” are the “birds” that were going to return to the “nest” with their “seeds,” we’re just talking Tsed’s team - if the “birdwatchers” are like higher-ups that “watch” those “birds” - who knows how high up those guys are
• F: “is the garbage can the same thing as your nest”
  • T: “no, I plan to go to the nest to roost for awhile, then I will collect what remains of the garbage”
  • The meeting place of Tsed’s team is not the Embassy cellar, but the team meeting at that “tea party” will be headed there after they meet up
• M: “how do you prefer to go to the nest?”
  • T: “uh...on foot”
  • So within walking distance, and not on a body of water or in the air
• J: “let’s say there’s a reservation for a restaurant...where are you being seated?”
  • T: “actually outside of the restaurant. northside outside, the first parking spot on the outside of the building”
  • Assuming outside of town, on the north side, somewhere very close to the outside walls of Stalwartz
• M: “does your reservation have a view?”
  • T: “actually, it has a lack of a view”
  • Maybe it’s underground - at the least, it’s hidden
• Jalan tries to get him to draw a map of Napoli’s, he convulses and drops the pen
  • Kyle through Methos gets nervous how many times we can push the boundary of his implant before he splats, Fritz thinks it’s more like ‘approach the line as many times as you want but once you cross it, it’s over’
• J: “would I feel at home at your reservation?”
  • T: *transforms into a drow* “yes. Very at home”
  • So, almost certainly confirmed underground
• F: “is your reservation on the menu?”
  • T: “sort of. You know those asterisks they put on the menus? It’s in the fine print”
  • This location isn’t advertised, but it isn’t something that nobody’s heard of before
• F: “is your restaurant family owned?”
  • T: “not family owned. We’re a sort of set up shop where we can sort of group”
  • The ME didn’t construct this place and they aren’t holed up there permanently
• D: “is the place well kept or are you still making renovations, or have you settled in awhile?”
  • T: “renovations! Ha! We won’t be doing renovations here”
  • Temporary, probably only set up here because we’re here
• M: “what is the waiting period to be seated at the reservation?”
  • T: “I don’t think there’s a line of people waiting to get into this place…”
  • Didn’t get it, we were trying to ask how long it would take to get there
• J: “who recommended this place to you? Who would I talk to to possibly get seats?”
  • T: “oh, the garbage man!”
  • Roger knows exactly where this meeting place is
• Talks of cults and Fritz finally joining one
  • J: “hey! What if your dad is a part of this cult? Would you join a cult then?”
  • F: “I can’t do this right now”
• Discussing why they would wait to dispose of Terrence…
  • Maybe whenever an ME agent changes their appearance to look like someone, they confiscate that person to avoid any awkward confrontations with themselves, and then they deliver them alive back to their people as if nothing happened (maybe with mind wiping or something to remove suspicion), but if the agent is captured and compromised they will kill the kidnapped person to destroy evidence

Plot type

Session

Parent Plot

Act 4: Untitled