Session 06

It’s the end of fashion season, with House Crispin hosting for the week. Lilja fends off mediocre suitors, per usual, but otherwise there isn’t a whole lot going on.

At some point, Li trumps Dante. She explains that she’s going to a Shadow she’s never been to before, and needs help getting the time differential down. Li trumps through to The Place, a weird pastoral area with fields of rolling grass. The air feels strange and magical. Suddenly ten feet away, there’s a blizzard. When Li tries to trump Dante back, she gets a lot of interference.

Dante trumps Li after a little while, and Dante sees something big behind her through the connection. Li doesn’t see anything. After a little more talking, Dante sees another shape and realizes it’s a fuck-off-huge dragon. Lilja manages to see it through a mirror, and the dragon starts talking to her, acknowledging her by name.

Lilja explains that she’s looking after Greer’s missing research. Lilja shows Greer’s ring to them, and they identify it as a gift from them. Lilja asks if the dragon can share the content of Greer’s missing research, and the dragon says that they’ll need to ask Tekhetsio first. Eventually, she asks if they’re related to Tek, and the dragon says yes. The dragon introduces himself as Abraxis at Lil’s request, before leaving.

Dante pulls Li through into Rook’s ways, where he has been staying. Rook walks in. After Dante fills Rook in on what Li just saw, Rook invites Li to sit somewhere so they can talk the thing out. Rook shares the fact that Greer and Abraxis were apparently very involved together, to the point that it threatened Greer’s marriage with Yannick. 

Rook gets a Trump call from King Swayvil. He asks Rook if they have time to talk and asks them to step through the connection. Rook finds themselves in one of the rooms in the royal palace. The king asks them how they would feel about being a monarch.

It has come to the attention of the king that Rook is somewhat descended from House Baramin, and he thinks that this might give them a better chance of taking the throne of Amber. He suggests that it may convince the Inquisition to get off their backs. Rook is given some time to think about it.

Robin has a bad “dream” where he wakes up in bed with someone, surrounded on all sides by mirrors. He panics and tries to Shadow Walk out, and manages to wake up in his own bed. He leaves in a panic, and bumps into Harlequin. He gets Harlequin to call Tek, and Tek trumps over immediately. Robin explains to them, disjointedly, that he had a dream where he couldn’t tell which person he was. He also starts seeing a fog rolling along the ground. Through Logrus Sight, Harlequin learns that it’s from somewhere outside of Chaos and swirling around Robin.

Harlequin pulls in Rook to help. Lilja calls Tek at the time and starts asking about the missing research. Tek is surprised to hear this, and then shocked to hear that Abraxis wanted him to have the ring. Rook hustles the rest of the group slightly down the hallway so as not to crowd him. 

Rook takes a look at Robin with the Logrus, while Harlequin calls the guard to warn them to keep an eye out for intruders. Rook finds out that the fog is a strange lingering taint from elsewhere, but not where it came from. And then the three Bad Stuff kids disappear.

Harlequin calls Li to explain what just happened. Dante steps in and asks Harlequin to bring them through.

Team Bad Stuff finds themselves in a grey plane, the Dead Lands. The Iron Scarab approaches them to say hello, but they’re not super-interested in going with him. And then the bat-winged guys show up to get them. The Iron Scarab informs them that Crow is somewhere, maybe being held. Dante manages to make a connection and pulls them back through.

Then the team all has a big talk about everything going on. Secrets are revealed. Confessions are spilled. Everyone talks about all the people trying to kill them. Things are pretty tense.

And just when things are winding down, Robin notices the fog in again. They start to panic. Rook discovers and tells Tek that he’s actually using an ability that’s slowly decaying the reality around Robin. Tek leaves to try and fix the issue - with the Serpent working in the background to try and close the connection. Lilja asks Dante why he’s so upset with Tek, and Dante explains that he feels like Tek is basically the same as Crow.

Dante takes Rook to go talk to Yannick to check in and ask some questions about the jewel artifact. The answers are pretty mundane.

Harlequin notices that weird tendrils are feeling up Robin from the ceiling - Rook is able to explain that it’s probably okay, just a friend helping out. Li relegates them to the kitchen and the remaining siblings eat some food.

Meanwhile, Dante gets a trump call from Mandor, asking if Marco is with him. When Dante says no, Mandor hangs up. Dante tries to call Marco, but he’s resisting trump calls. Rook and Dante both start to feel something building up around Robin. They rush there, and Rook finds that the Serpent tentacles are fighting back against something else trying to get in.

Tek, elsewhere, calls Abraxis. He asks for help, and specifically, asks to hear everything he can about the decay. Abraxis calls it a blight, something inherited by all of his kind. Tek then asks with urgency if he can throw an idea his way. He says, instead of wiping out House Carion in revenge for the Blood War, why not use them to get an unpayable debt instead? Abraxis explains that they did seek the House’s help at one point, and it went poorly for them. He also shares that their politics are not as agile as Tek was hoping it was. After a little more talking, Abraxis at least says he’ll consider what it would take to convince him to go along with the plan. Tek asks for any other help, but Abraxis has to think about it. Tek finally asks about the Decay that he’s causing, but Abraxis doesn’t understand why it’s happening the way it is.

And then back with the sitting room circus, Rook helps push along the Serpent’s logrus. Robin starts talking to the weapon and gets a creepy voice back. After a terse argument, the weapon presence disappears and Sam appears in the room. He explains that the presence reached out to the Unicorn for help. He says he’ll try to take care of it, and leaves. Also, Lilja threw up on him at some point.

Dante and Rook travel through a few of Marco’s places to hide out in shadow, though they are unsuccessful in finding him at any of them and Dantaylion leaves some notes at them for Marco to call him. With some trepidation he uses trump spying to see where Marco could be and gets enough information seeing Marco going through some things in a storage unit to tell Rook and Rook can get them there. It’s a mostly modern shadow with a purple sky, a storage facility. They go through a bit looking very out of place with Rook subtly helping some movers get a couch into one. They do eventually find Marco in local fashion going through some boxes. Dante knocks on the doorway to not startle him but Marco startles anyway and almost goes for a weapon but stops when he sees it’s Dante. They have some awkward pleasantries and Dante explains that he was worried because Marco wasn’t answering his trumps and things have been wild lately and Marco agrees that’s understandable, he was just dealing with family business. It’s awkward. Rook leans away from the doorway to keep from getting in the way when Harlequin suddenly calls Rook.

Robin and Harlequin have a little heart-to-heart and then decide to go drink and break shit.

After a little more time with Marco, Dante starts to think he’s hiding something. Marco eventually admits that he’s discovered some family history his dad was hiding that he just wants to sort out. Dante admits to Marco that their house is being hunted down for heresy right now. Marco admits that he found out he’s been adopted, which puts his chance at succession of house Sawall into jeopardy. Dante admits that he’s loved him since he met him. Awkward but cute romance ensues.

All three of them sort through Marco’s family boxes for a while. It’s cute.

Tek, meanwhile, all on his own and totally out of ideas, Tek goes to the owl shrine, where Crow appears to him. Tek freaks out and tries to kill him before he suddenly disappears. He gets a call from Robin, which he promptly ignores. After another call he finally answers, but refuses Robin’s offers to try and help. Someone appears next to Tek, a woman in simple clothes with long hair and green eyes--and she says that she’s looking for the owl.

Tek asks if there’s anything he can do to help, and they say that there isn’t - but that maybe they can eventually raise Tek’s primogen god as well.