Session 04

{{Sessions
 * date = October 17, 2010
 * enc =
 * log = The time of year is apparently October.

Old Friends
Those of us at Kate's house are awakened by the sound of Kate's phone ringing. It's Dr. Orpheus, calling to say that her friend Richard is in town and wants to speak to her.

Ming and Kate head over to Powell's Books -- her by bike, and him by jogging, with the occasional shortcut through the Nevernever. Richard is a wizard on the White Council. Kate updates him on the current situation.

Richard tells Kate that part of the reason for suggesting that she come out here was because it's removed from the Vampire War, thanks to Boston being relatively closed off in the Nevernever. Unfortunately, recent events (o/t: from one of our backstories) shows that the Red Court is already here. He goes on to say that there are rumors that the local Queen is opposed to the Red Court's interests.

During all this, Dr. Orpheus keeps Ming occupied with some older Chinese texts.

As a side note: In Boston, the Unseelie Accords are generally seen as a collection of rules set up so that the bigger powers can oppress the little guys.

Preparations
Ming and Kate head off to the Island to pick up Hobb. As they enter, so does a large were-sheepdog, known as the Shepherd. He's the ranger of Washington Park and Forest Park, and he walks around with Celeste in human form.

Celeste had called in the Shepherd to talk with the party because she knew that they're going to speak with the Lady. He says that it's easy to find the ferret because she's one of the few weres still present in Forest Park. Someone has laid down an edict that there is no more hunt until midnight.

The Lady is known as the Lady of Boston. She also goes by the Queen that Would Be and the Doctor (for having helped some other fae in the past). Her enemies call her the Would-Be Queen. Some see her as a great and terrible Queen out to wipe out the weres, whereas others see her as a forest protector trying to hold back the worst.

After getting this information, they call Troy to ask him to meet them near the parts of Forest Park away from the zoo and nearer to the Fae. When they get there, they find him waiting for them, compulsively checking his gear. The three of them follow the trails into the park.

The weather was clear, but it's clouding up and getting colder. Hobb can find the trail of the ferret easily because she's not trying to hide her trail. There's the occasional person on the trail. However, once the party passes through a glamour pretending to be a dead end, there's no more presence of people at all.

They get to a clearing where they see a Sidhe woman sitting on a throne made from a tree. She is being attended to by some large creatures that resemble ghouls without actually being dead.

The Queen
The Lady hints that she can find the items we need for the Matsyan ritual if we can either invite her to the Island to speak with Bubbles or to bring the two together to meet personally. "She would love to meet with Bubbles and show him the error of his ways" in believing her to be an enemy. She calls herself the Queen That Will Be.

Kate asks about the Red Court (which makes her note that Kate "must be from the East"). The Lady wishes that as outsiders that they'd leave. She hints that our current foe is connected to the vampires.

She drops more hints that the current threat may be a test of the Island's mettle.

Away from the clearing, the Nevernever near Forest Park is a less sinister part of the same evil forest that bordered the Island.

Hobb does some sneaking around and hears some scurrying. He chases after it when it bolts. He calls out, "Ella, wait up!" and it hesitates and then keeps running. Hobb chases. The chase runs out of the forest, across the road, and onto the back of a train. Eventually, she leaps off the train and scurries under the St. John's Bridge.

She scurries over to a refrigerator box and turns back into a human standing with box for cover. She greets him as Aloysius (sp?). Hobb hasn't seen her in a decade or more. He wonder why she's with the fairy queen, but she thinks that she has the best interests of Boston in mind.

She says that she's more on our side in the William affair than we know and that Bubbles is stumbling into a war that he cannot win.

If the hearts and minds are the key to the ritual, why take them? She's of the opinion that there's more need to shore up forces on our side than to recover only a single soul.

The one who is chosen by the Flayers must have a master. The ritual lets the victim change their choice of masters. The Queen wants Bubbles there because she feels that William will choose as he does. (The Flayers serve the Sea.)

Her choice lies with the Queen, and she's already had her second choice.

Eventually, she convinces him that she's on his side even if he won't believe that the Queen is.

After waiting for a while, we carry Hobb's stuff back with us and head to the Island.

Interlude
We update Celeste on the situation to seek an audience with Bubbles.

Someone notices that the storm front seems to be advancing a tendril along the river.

Bubbles looks bigger and meaner than last night -- more trollish. We tell him the proposal, and he decides to go to Lo Pan for neutral ground. He'd like us to find any alternative.

Ming sniffs around the Nevernever for info but doesn't get anywhere.

He does notice more pixies with ornithopters milling about. They're all getting ready for something tonight to help us out.

Troy looks up purchasing the Island and finds the current snarled situation (which the death of that lady makes more complicated)).

Kate goes off to help Dr. O.

Hobb brings Ella back to the camp. Ella keeps dropping hints that the people of the camp are ill-prepared to face the war ahead of them. She finagles Hobb into letting her meet alone with Celeste. Hobb goes off to find us instead of listening in.

Troy goes off to the Pied Cow. He meets the proprietors Opal and Celeste (and a little caterpillar smoking a hooka as color). Opal sees his aura and gives him the choice of teas to help deal with it or to forget it. Troy decides to deal with it, and she offers to come talk with him.

Al Walsh, Troy's friend at Innotek who has been managed Troy's self-decrypting file. It is actually asking for him but wants him to keep "Jessica" away. When Troy gets there, Al's working on some sort of oddball contraption that involves a gramophone, copper tubing, fiber optics, and electrical and mechanical switches. The data told him to build the machine. Beyond this point, it wants a hardware upgrade and to be connected to an IP address which is in that room.

When he does, without upgrading the hardware, it repeats all its messages but changes the reference to Jessica to Kate.

Research
Kate finds out more about the Matsyan. The used to serve the Sea for thousands of years. Then a rift opened and the Flayers emerged and became the favored servants of the Sea. Some of the Matsyan turn against the Sea and the Flayers. In the 6th Century, some teamed up with humans and wrote a book about how to fight the Flayers. The Flayers destroy someone's personality and make them into a receptacle for the Sea to flow into. The Matsyan use the witnesses to rewind the explosion and recreate the victim's soul to give them a chance to choose a different path. The spirit that is brought back is always incomplete.

At the final moments of the choosing, the victim steps into the real world from the Nevernever and is claimed. The ritual must be performed in the minute that follows.

The ritual is pretty gray thanks to being close to necromancy.

Richard asks about how the meeting with the Fae went. He suggests that the deal with Bubbles is local politics and that we need to look beyond this to what she could do for the War. Richard says that he can't fault Kate's decisions since she knows the situation on the ground better than he does. He does say that the Sidhe typically get what they want, but it's a matter of who's allied to who afterwards.

The Queen was a major force in removing Black Court vampires from Boston a century ago.

Build-Up
Hobb heads over to Troy's penthouse to contact him. Troy asks him to meet at Powell's, but Hobb is busy, so he asks to meet at his place (the Island) in an hour or so.

Hobb heads back. Ella is gone, and Celeste is sitting off to the side with a grave look on her face. The talk for a while, and Hobb finds out that Ella left. On the way out, he hears Celeste and Bubbles talking. Bubbles will meet with the Queen under Lo Pan's protection in the Chinese Gardens.

Celeste thinks that Bubbles will do anything for William, and it will be his downfall.

Ming was chatting with the steam pixies around the Chinese Gardens, when he pops back over, he sees that the gardens are mostly unpopulated, with some guards standing near the entrance.

I can hear Bubbles talking to the Queen. I can mostly hear his side of the conversation. He doesn't want to do what she wants. But if he's the only one who can do it, he'll talk with "her" and pick his successor. He then knocks away a flower and storms off. The Queen vanishes behind a flower bush. Ming leaves in the real world later.

We swap stories a bit. Troy tells us about the computer program. I tell them about Bubbles talking to the Queen. Hobb tells us about the need for Bubbles to be there when the choice is made.

St. John's Bridge is an important gate. Many things latch onto it to come through.

We go to talk to Bubbles. He's going to pass the camp on to Celeste. He doesn't see anything else that he can do. Bubbles has accepted the notion that he must be there to help Billy decide but is deciding what to do.

Entanglements
The group decides to go looking for some things that might be symbolically useful for the ritual. One idea is to find manacles in the Shanghai tunnels that used to keep slaves. They head in through the burnt-out building they'd left through not too long ago.

Hobb leads them through the tunnels by way of his Legendary smell-based tracking skills. The group leaves a string behind and eventually crosses it at least once following the path.

After 45 minutes, they come to a set of iron doors with the sound of bellows on the other side. They shove open the door to see a room with a fire and a lot of metal, but the unnatural darkness keeps them from seeing much. (Even Troy's floodlight is very dampened.)

Hobb smells metal, fire, and a light smell of charred flesh in here... some human, and some unidentifiable. The lower room seems to be a giant iron crematorium. Ming can tell that most of the people who were burned here were dead first.

Most.

They follow the string back to where it crossed over itself, only to find that the string they're following is tied off to another string and doesn't continue. However, that string was not actually theirs and does not have their scent.

Hobb follows their scent trail back, but he smells a human smell after a while. They follow it until all of them can smell the blood, sweat, and smell of human waste. There is another iron door, with a small grate window. Kate can barely hear shallow breathing. They knock lightly, and a voice croaks out, "Help me!"

Upon opening it, the smell is overwhelming. Most of the people in here are corpses that have been dead for a while; all of them are women. Only one person is still barely alive. They brought bolt cutters, so they cut her free.

They manage to navigate back outside, and as they exit the building, they see a man flick away a cigarette and walk away around the corner. Rather than pursue him, they take the woman back to the Island. }}