Wicker Valley, episode 14: Witches

We planned to meet up the next day at the Wicker Stop after Michael and me finished our shifts, and then go to the library. I'd had a text from Alabaster, who I suspected was magically hungover again, to tell me that some strange woman with very long hair had been hanging around in the churchyard and had been spotted by Deacon Jones. I'd also got a message back from Rusty with some information on the family tree, the family's interest in the place, and the fact that the fae courts also had an interest in what was going on here, and I suspected these two things might be connected.

But before we could meet up and talk properly, there was a new visitor to the cafe. A woman with very long hair. I heard her ordering some ridiculous skinny latte from Michael, then actually asking if we had kale something-or-other! Like I'd allow kale in my kitchen! Michael managed to sell her on the carrot cake, since it technically contains vegetables.

Then she started hitting on him! At which point I had to go over and make my presence felt, because if I'm going to unnerve people just by being around them I may as well make use of it. I don't remember exactly what she said to me, but I think I might have told her that if she hurt him I would rip her guts out.

Damn Rusty. He always did see right through me.

After a bit of dancing round the subject while she pretended to be a writer and looking for the vicar, we finally established that her name was Elizabeth, she was in fact aware of weird bollocks, and was here for a reason. She was connected to one of the fae courts, and was looking for doppelgangers, who are a harbinger of death but not actually the cause of said death. And the reason for the doppelgangers' presence is something to do with a chosen one.

We needed a private chat. None of us were particularly keen on telling Elizabeth that Michael was the one the doppelganger had appeared as while being dead. But much as I hated to say it, having looked into her head, I was pretty sure she was telling us the truth and at least to some extent we could trust her. If not with everything, then at least to help out with the current situation.

And while we had some privacy, I had something else to tell them about Agnes. Or rather, about the multiple people called Agnes, since it's the name my family traditionally gives the girls who are meant to become the family matriarch. There was the Agnes who'd lived back in the 17th Century, who'd run away from the family for love of a witch, but had been periodically sighted since then. Then there was Aunty Agnes, who frankly I'm terrified of and who nobody wanted showing up around here. And then there was the youngest Agnes. Me.

I thought when I left home and changed my name, I'd got away from my family legacy, but it's looking increasingly like something was always calling me to Wicker Valley.

We rejoined Elizabeth, who'd actually spotted the doppelganger hanging around outside the cafe. She needed to get up close to it, so asked us to go outside to distract it. Which we did. I took the opportunity to take a look inside its head as well. Which might have been a mistake. Normally when I do that I get trains of thought almost like actual trains of words running through someone's head. With the doppelganger, there were no words, only pictures. And all of them were of Michael. Michael getting hurt. Michael getting stabbed. Michael with a red dot laser sight trained on his forehead. Over and over Michael on the point of death.

I burst into tears and threw my arms around him. Which meant that when Adam dragged us both to the ground and the shot echoed in our ears, Michael only had a slight graze rather than a hole right through his head.

Robin tried to get back into Vanessa to get his rifle, but another shot missed him by inches and took out the wing mirror instead. A wall of ice suddenly appeared between us and the shooter, and the next two shots knocked chunks off it. Elizabeth, presumably. She certainly looked like a witch. Although this wasn't really the time to be telling her to get some sunglasses and stop dressing so conspicuously.

Another shot that took out Vanessa's back windows stopped Adam getting to the van. I knew what I had to do. I watched for the flash of the rifle shot, and reached deep inside myself for the primal magic within. I awoke the tree branches around the sniper to bind him in place. It wouldn't last long, I could feel already, but it was long enough for everyone to pile into the van and take off to the junkyard.

All I wanted to do was comfort Michael. Telling him that I'd just seen him die repeatedly probably didn't help.

Back at the junkyard, Adam talked to his police contact, while I checked my messages again. More from Rusty. I'd never known him to be this helpful before. That alone told me how serious things were. He was pretty sure he could help us learn more about Agnes, but it would need all of us to meet up somewhere we felt safe.

I shared his offer with the others. Michael was understandably wary of meeting Rusty again, given how their first meeting went. All I could offer was that Rusty had promised not to kill anyone this time.

Much to my surprise, everyone was willing to go along with it. Adam even suggested that we meet him there in the junkyard, but it was pointed out that he had a ward specifically to keep things like Rusty out. We finally decided on a cafe - not the Wicker Stop, as the last thing I wanted was my workplace ending up tainted with whatever Rusty was up to, but one on the other side of town - and I sent him directions. I also texted Alabaster. If we were going to have to deal with Rusty, I wanted as many people on my side as possible.

Rusty was already there when we arrived, in a quiet booth. Of course seeing him in his human form made it clear to Michael who it was who'd been ordering jam buns in the Wicker Stop. But there was no time to worry about that. Rusty told us we needed to find Agnes' pouch of power. And he had a way for us to do that. Then he looked at me, told me he was sorry in a way I suspect nobody else could hear, and blew a cloud of powder across us all.

The next thing I knew, I was a crow, perched on a branch outside a little stone cottage out in the woods, knowing with absolute certainly that I was a witch's familiar, the witch was dead, and that my fellow familiars and I were going to have to hunt down the witch hunter and steal his eyes.

Fellow familiars. Yes. There was Adam, now a dog, and Alabaster, unsurprisingly a cat. Robin was a rat and Elizabeth was an owl. And Michael was a spider.

I felt particularly qualified for the job of eyeball removal. But I still remembered that I needed to find Agnes' pouch of power. And Rusty had sent us here to find it.

Wicker Valley, episode 13: Seeing Double

I sent Alabaster a message to invite him to join us at the junkyard. As I suspected, magic hangover, although it clearly hadn't put him off at all and he now wanted to do everything with magic. It was somehow both annoying and encouraging, seeing him embrace his weirder self. He's still insisting his powers come from God, which certainly isn't the case for me, but I think he might be a good influence on me.

We caught him up on the two situations: Michael's vision, and the demonic summoning totem housing estate. There were some wild ideas about staging a fake stabbing for Michael so that the vision would be correct but it would be fake blood. But I didn't think there was anything else we could do about that other than keeping Michael away from kitchen knives, and we needed to focus on the much larger demon problem.

The library was clearly the best place to start hunting, but it was past closing time. After a prolonged explanation of why breaking into a church that was potentially housing a dangerous artefact in the hands of a derranged vicar was not the same as breaking into a perfectly normal library with a librarian we all liked, we finally agreed to go in the morning. That night we would pay a visit to the cemetary and see if we could find Agnes' grave.

We piled into Vanessa the Batvan, and Adam drove us to the cemetary. He had some wild ideas about each of us carrying a piece of rope and pretending that we'd lost a dog if anyone asked us why we were there, but as I pointed out (backed up by Alabaster) it would be a lot simpler for me to just give them a convincing explanation that didn't involve any fake dogs. I liked the aesthetics of the moonlit graveyard and was pretty sure I could make it work.

Adam had some suggestions for how to efficiently search the place, which Alabaster got halfway through before running off and tripping over a headstone. I stayed with Michael, uncomfortably aware how close we were getting to twelve hours after his vision. We didn't find Agnes's grave. What we did find was a headstone for someone called Mary, with an inscription about holding onto her heart forever or something, with the name Agnes. Oh, and a date some time in the late 18th century, back when Wicker Valley was nothing more than a few farmhouses and a church.

Then Michael found a body. Specifically, his body, with the same red hair and borrowed biker jacket, and with a stab wound in the chest. Which made me feel a lot better, now Michael's vision had an explanation that didn't involve him being stabbed, but obviously freaked Michael out a lot.

While I was checking that it really was a duplicate of Michael, and going through the pockets to see if I could find any ID, Adam and Robin took off running. When they got bad, Robin said that he'd seen a third Michael, but Adam, who had caught up with the fleeing figure, had seen a duplicate of himself.

Doppelgangers. We had doppelgangers.

I wanted to know more, specifically about the biology of these creatures since we had a dead one in front of us. I asked Adam if he had some nitrile gloves I could borrow, but while he was fetching them from the van, Alabaster started talking about harvesting organs as spell components, and Michael understandably freaked out even more. He ran off after Adam, and the body in front of us suddenly disappeared.

At least that told us something. The mimicry might not be entirely voluntary. They might just be mimicking the nearest person.

With one of them vanished and the other one having got away from Adam and Robin, there wasn't much else we could do though, and the mystery of Agnes was getting deeper. We decided on a visit to the church - or rather, Alabaster did and we all agreed we would go with him to help search the parish records. Or keep an eye on him. On the way I sent Rusty an email. I had a hunch our family tree would have something interesting in it.

Alabaster still had the key to the church but decided to magic the door open anyway, just because he could. He tried to hide the resulting nosebleed but I know a magical backlash when I see one. Still, we were in.

While the others searched record, I tried to ignore the horrible itching from being yet again in a church, and checked my replies. Rusty had some questions, and insisted that I didn't want to get involved with Agnes. I agreed, but told him there was a chance Agnes was trying to get involved with us.

They did find something in the records. Mary from the gravestone. Mary, with a surname starting with Ma and the rest scratched out. I was pretty sure I knew what that would turn out to be. And she was survived by Agnes. We were getting closer. But not close enough. At least the others were all on board with the idea that Agnes might be a shade more immortal than your average aunty.

Wicker Valley, episode 12: Family Matters

We gathered in the Wicker Stop the next morning. Alabaster wasn't there - I suspected a magic hangover - but Robin was back. He'd had to pay a visit to his old 'company' to convince the higher ups that the members who'd lost some 'product' in a failed delivery weren't making it up when they claimed to have been attacked by a werewolf. I don't know why he's so cagey about his past. Adam used to work for the Foundation, after all, and I'm...who I am. A biker gang doesn't seem too bad in comparison.

We were just started to talk about werewolves when something weird happened to Michael. One moment he was gliding around the cafe on his rollerskates like normal and the next he'd frozen and gone crashing into a wall. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with him, but I took him back to the basket room all the same. He'd had a vision, it sounded like, where he'd been stabbed with a kitchen knife. One of his mum's, probably.

Robin then suddenly transformed into...well, a wolf man, I guess? He had a whole new nose and ears. Which certainly answered some of the questions I'd had about him recently. He said he could smell two of Michael. Hah, I thought. If Alabaster was here he'd immediately want to do some magic to reveal hidden creatures. Which wasn't actually a bad idea, now I came to think about it. I silently thanked the absent Alabaster and sent Adam to the kitchen to get the salt and a bag of flour.

Through the combination of magic and flour, I brought the second Michael into view. Except it wasn't a second Michael. It was our Michael, but displaced in time. By about, oh, twelve hours or so. Which meant...

Well, it meant I didn't plan on letting Michael out of my sight, or near any kitchen knives, for at least the next twelve hours, and Robin went off to find a spare motorcycle jacket for him to give him a bit of protection. We still had our shift to finish at the cafe but we planned to meet up again at the junkyard afterwards.

Except I'd just handed over to the next shift and taken off my apron when I spotted a very familiar face sitting at a cafe table. And actually ordering jam buns from Michael. I stood staring at him until Michael interrupted me to tell me the new customer said the buns were great, just like the ones his sister used to make.

I waited until Michael was out of the way, then went and slid into the seat opposite. He had some nerve coming here, I told him, but he wasn't interested. I tried to steer him off talking about Michael, brushing it off as nothing more than coworkers. I don't know if he bought it. We always did see right through each other.

Thankfully he moved on to his actual reason for being here. The amount of weird bollocks, as Adam now has me calling it, in town was getting the family's attention. I assured him that the coin and associated entity had been dealt with, and I was trying to keep things quiet, but he pointed out that the construction site on the edge of town was having occult symbols built right into it. And if that carried on we could have aunties showing up right in town.

I can't remember if I thanked him for the tip, although I probably should have done. He's an arsehole, but having him show up in town is a whole different matter to the rest of the family. At least he's still partly human.

Back at the junkyard, Adam had something to show us. I was wondering how we were going to get around after the state the combination of stone dogs, battery acid and magic had left his van in, but he revealed a brand new van! And when I say brand new, I mean entirely constructed out of scrap. I don't think there was a single unused part on the thing. But it looked pretty cool, and had plenty of room and space for weapon storage. There was some debate about the name. The Mystery Machine was a popular choice, although given the way he keeps referring to me and Robin as Batman and Robin I was surprised it wasn't the Batmobile. Vanessa was also considered for a while.

I think we might have settled on the Batvan. We'll see how it goes.

I didn't tell the others about my visitor, but did tell them that we needed to revisit the construction site and see exactly what was going on there, also pointing out that it would likely be free of kitchen knives. Michael looked great in the motorcycle jacket but I was too stressed to properly appreciate it. So we piled into the Batvan and drove to the site.

Things were moving fast now the moss hag was gone. A bunch of houses were already built or close to being built, and getting in undetected was going to be a bigger challenge. There were people there though, being walked around by staff, which gave me an idea. I asked Adam if he had any hi vis jackets and hard hats in the van. He didn't, but knew exactly where to find some at the junkyard. So a short time later, in we went, with Robin playing the sales rep, Michael and me as the young couple thinking about buying their first home, and Adam as the uncle who would be financing it.

Between the site plan and a look at the place, it was pretty clear that there were indeed family symbols being built into this place. The main road layout was in the shape of the summoning totem we'd encountered before. Which meant this entire estate could be one massive summoning circle.

We caught up with one of the real reps and asked for a talk. Marketing people always want to tell you stories about brands and logos and stuff, so I figured this would be no different, especially with the aid of the voice of temptation. And so we got the story of how the land had belonged to an old woman called Agnes, who had sold it on the condition that the roads were laid out in this way.

Michael called Gillian, who told him about Aunty Agnes, who wasn't really an aunty, but had known her mum. And suddenly the pieces started to fit together in my mind. Aunties. Had an Aunty Agnes been mentioned in the cafe? I wasn't sure, and it's not like I have a comprehensive knowledge of my family members, but Gillian's mum had owned a bunch of books with our family crest on and she had to have got them from somewhere after all. Was this all a cunning ploy on the part of one of my aunts to get herself summoned? I had a horrifying image of exactly what could end up manifesting in the middle of the housing estate.

At least there were some vaguely concrete things we could do. Find out as much as possible about Aunty Agnes, find out exactly what was in the contract regarding the estate, and then - and this was going to be the difficult part - change the plans.

A Weekend With Good Friends 2023

I've been part of every A Weekend With Good Friends convention, but covid significantly reduced my participation in the previous event. This time I was back in full health and ready to do as much stuff as I could fit in. Which on this occasion included a number of panel discussions. We've not had them at previous AWWGF events, but it's been a popular request. The guests were a mix of industry professionals, authors, podcasters and GMs, including me.

Game 1: Relics of House Dragonfly

I've been seeing Exuviae: Relics of House Dragonfly at various conventions for a while now, but never actually played it. I decided it was time to change that. This was a slightly different variation on the game, using a D6 system instead of the original game's playing cards, which was certainly easier to manage in an online game.

The premise is that it's the 1940s, and you live in a bayside city that's controlled by an insect cult, and you've decided to do something about it. Character creation was a simple matter of figuring out what kind of person you are, how you found out about the cult, and why you want to stop them, plus the significantly more difficult matter of choosing a name. So a nightclub singer, an up and coming actress and a cryptographer set out to investigate the cult, found some horrible things, and very nearly rescued my character's best friend, only for a bad dice roll to ensure that only the cryptographer got out alive.

One unusual feature of this game is that instead of voice chat we played in text. Having played MUSH games for some time before I ever played tabletop, this was a familiar style of RP for me, but also one that I'd not done for over fifteen years. It was a fun reminder of how we did things in the days before ubiquitous internet voice chat. According to the GM it's taking off again in the FKR movement. All the same, while it was fun for a one-off, I don't think I'll be making a habit of it.

This is another game I own but don't remember buying, meaning I almost certainly picked it up in a charity bundle on DTRPG. If you also bought those bundles I strongly recommend checking this one out. It's ideal for low prep intrigue, and could probably be very easily reskinned for something other than an insect cult. I hope to give it a shot myself some time.

Games 2-4 were all me GMing things I've talked about before so let's skip over those and go straight to...

Game 5: Delta Green

An original scenario, "The Violence of Pure Reason", written by one of the GM's home group. This was truly excellent. I like when the mythos gets tied in with real world phenomena, in this case a notorious information hazard which hinted at what we would eventually encounter. We selected from a number of pre-gens, which meant that none of us had the occult skill, which seemed like a hindrance to the characters but ultimately we were able to find other ways to the information we needed.

None of which particularly helped when we did encounter an unnatural entity, while thoroughly unequipped to deal with it. Final death count: 2/4.

Games-wise, I think this was the highlight of the convention. Everything I want from a Delta Green one-shot. Properly creepy, lots of scope for investigation, freedom to follow up different leads while still getting where we needed to be.

Game 6: Quietus

Game 6 should have been a game of Call of Cthulhu, but with the GM too ill to run it I was happy to spot a free space in my second choice of game. Quietus is a game of melancholy horror, inspired by films like The Babadook, so I had a fair idea what I was in for, even without having played it before.

We began with character creation, which starts off with a simple question: what have you lost? There was one other player, and we decided to tie our stories together, so we decided Richard and Violet had been coworkers at a financial business of some kind. He'd been caught embezzling from the business to pay his child's healthcare bills, which caused the company to fold and she'd lost her home because she was living in a company flat. Then we needed an isolated location, for which we went for the traditional cabin in the woods, and a thing that had gone wrong, which was Violet's car breaking down.

We were already having a great time and that was just character creation. We took a short break when that finished so the GM could figure out how things were going to go from there.

Badly. They went badly. It started with spilt oatmeal and ended with us setting the entire cabin on fire. Ultimately we did manage to accumulate enough hope to escape the horror, but in the end we both went for very downbeat endings for our characters. They'd not been doing well prior to the events in the woods. Perhaps embracing the horror was the only thing that they could do?

And that was a wrap. Another great weekend where I got to try new games and spend time with some great people. Plus there were the panels! But that's a subject for a different post.

Wicker Valley, episode 11: Meltdown

It was Michael who came up with the idea of using magic to find the coin. There was no point driving all the way to Lancaster to visit the vicar at the hospital if the coin was still in Wicker Valley. Fortunately the junkyard had everything I needed: a map of the town, and a weight on a string. Alabaster was complaining about witchcraft, but I ignored him. I set the pendulum swinging and focussed my thoughts on the coin.

Just as I was starting to think it wasn't working, the pendulum suddenly swung almost horizontal. Not in Wicker Valley then, but based on the direction it was in Lancaster. A vision filled my mind. An older man, wearing a sweater vest, collecting the vicar's robes and other effects in a plastic bag. Which meant someone else had got there first. But who? I vaguely recognised him, so I was pretty sure he was a local who'd dropped by the Wicker Stop once or twice, but I couldn't place him.

Adam suggested one of us call the hospital, pretend to be from the diocese and ask to collect the vicar's things, at which point we could hopefully find out who had actually collected them. He suggested I do it, but I was pretty sure Alabaster would do a better job of sounding like he was from the diocese. Soon he had a name for us. Deacon Jones. Michael knew him. His wife was friends with Michael's mum. And that gave us options. Michael had no trouble convincing his mum to invite the deacon and his wife round for dinner, along with himself and a friend. Now the only question was whether the coin would be on him, or if he'd leave it at his own house.

In fact, there were two questions. Why had a black car with two suspicious looking men in it been sitting outside the Deacon's house all this time? It was probably the feds from the church, so a question for Adam. But in the mean time, we had a coin to retrieve.

Robin had had to answer an urgent call from a friend, so it was just the four of us. Alabaster was pretty sure that he could get the coin off the Deacon, so he would go with Michael to the dinner. Adam and me would break into his house. Alabaster seemed unimpressed by my bringing up breaking and entering, which seemed a bit unreasonable for someone about to engage in pickpocketing, but we got in the van and drove off. Thankfully the stone birds seemed to have decided to lay off for a bit, although what we were hearing on the police scanner suggested they were still around town.

We parked up, and Adam and me headed for the Deacon's house, conveniently very close to Michael's mum's house. I was on the look out for upstairs open windows, pretty unlikely at the time of year but you never knew. Except when we tried the front door, it wasn't locked. This was worrying. It suggested that there might still be someone here. We found the bag of the vicar's things, tipped out on the floor and searched through. And then we heard sounds from upstairs.

We ran up the stairs. One person left in one of the rooms, one who'd left rapidly via a window. I followed that one, opening my wings as I left the window to get the best possible view from above, while Adam dealt with whoever was left behind. I figured there were enough reports of giant birds in the area I didn't have to worry too much about being seen after dark. I tracked the running man across several dark gardens, and dropped down ahead of him into some shadows so I could confront him on the ground.

It was one of the feds, unsurprisingly, although not the one Adam knew, and he immediately pulled a gun on me. I stayed calm. He hadn't shot me yet, and I had my voice. I got a few things out of him. He was from an organisation calling themselves the Foundation, and Adam used to be one of them. In fact, he used to do pretty much the same thing this guy did now. I don't know if he expected that to affect my opinion of Adam. He's not the only one with a dark past, after all. He wanted to know what my interest in the coin was, so I just told him that it was causing trouble for people I like.

Anyway, the Foundation wanted the coin, and insisted that it should be brought to him immediately if we found it. I didn't like that idea at all, but it didn't seem like the time to argue, so I took the card he gave me and waited until he was gone, then got back in the van with Adam.

Then I got a message from Alabaster saying he'd got the coin. Time to go. But as he and Michael came out of the house, I saw Michael suddenly look both ways down the street. I followed his gaze. We had company. Big dogs, and when they started to move, the thunk of their feet on the tarmac told us they were made of stone.

They both ran for the van. There was the sound of tearing metal as something I later realised was a stone cat got thrown off the roof. And then we were moving. I felt under the seat for my shotgun and took a shot at the dogs, with a burst of stone chips as my reward. Michael was attempting to use the bottles of battery acid, although I think he did more damage to the van than the dogs. Alabaster...well, I could feel the magic he was slinging at them. Adam's driving was gaining us ground, but one dog was still too close for comfort. I took one more shot, shattering it enough for us to get away and through the wards.

At last we could relax a bit. Adam started up the electric furnace and we took a look at Michael and Alabaster's injuries. Bad, but not life threatening, although it would have been nice to have Robin and his dubious surgery skills there all the same. And Alabaster had given up pretending not to be using magic, to the point of admitting he'd jinxed the coin out of the deacon's pocket. He was keen to try a bit of healing magic on Michael, but on hearing that Alabaster had never tried it before, he wasn't keen on the idea. I did convince Alabaster that he should let me try to heal him rather than using magic on himself. Not that I'd done it before either, but I understood the principle well enough. I just had to do it in reverse. I drew the acid burns out of his hand, giving myself a nosebleed in the process, but I suppressed that well enough.

The furnace was hot. Adam for some reason decided he was going to try to cut the coin in half with bolt cutters, which entirely did not work. Then Alabaster tried to magically damage it, managing to inflict some light scratches on the coin and himself. I didn't think Michael was daft enough to try anything, but all the same I encouraged Adam to get on with melting the thing. Bad enough I had to be in its presence. It quickly melted away.

Then the alarms went off, and I saw the same fed from before on the cameras, trying to get into the junkyard with a pair of boltcutters. The ward was taking care of that. You'd think he'd know better. I went out to talk to him, followed by Alabaster who was still very excited about having finally come out about his magic. The fed wasn't completely stupid though. This time when he pulled his gun, he pointed it at Alabaster.

He knew we had the coin, and was threatening to bring the whole foundation down on us if we didn't hand it over so it could be used for its proper purpose. I liked the idea even less. There was a bit of negotiation (and I think Alabaster wants to learn to do the voice of tempation, which seems like a lot for someone who was accusing me of witchcraft a few hours earlier) and finally we agreed that we had twelve hours to hand it over.

Or as I saw it, twelve hours to make sure nobody could use this thing ever again.

Adam ground down the ingot of metal that the melted coin had now become until it was no more than dust and filings. Then he divided it between four bags. We took one each, and each went out to dispose of it in our own way. I waited until Alabaster had left, and then took to the air. Best to let him deal with accepting who he is before he had to deal with what I am. Scattering the dust into a large body of water like the sea seemed like the way to go.

So now I just have to talk to the fed again. I think I'll tell him the Foundation are welcome to the coin if they can find all the bits. And if he causes trouble for me and my friends again, I will make him regret it.