Wicker Valley, episode 16: Things Fall Apart

Elizabeth had stayed on watch at the tree and was sending up lights as an alarm. We followed Agnes out. The fake me was out and about, scrying. Agnes had a little chat with her and sent her on her way. We were all sure by now that there was something buried under that tree.

Perhaps we could have dug it up a little more discreetly, had Alabaster not forgotten that Agnes could hear our thoughts. Perhaps it was inevitable that things would go badly. But Adam, being the only one shaped for digging (and willing to deal with the tree that he'd peed on earlier), dug up a box that those with good noses thought smelt of roses and rot. There were two hearts inside. That's when Agnes caught up with us and we had to make a hasty departure. I picked up Michael as I went, and only caught the tail end of the psychic screaming.

By now I was starting to think Agnes's pouch of power probably wasn't a literal pouch. It was also this place - the tree, the ley lines, everything.

By now Alabaster was pretty much convinced Agnes was as terrible as most of my family, and understandably so, but I was getting a different impression. We were far enough away for Agnes not to hear our thoughts, but not far enough that she couldn't speak into my mind. We are kin, after all, if rather distantly. She told me that Mary was still alive, just about, but that we had to leave for our own safety. She didn't want to hurt me. It sounds like she saw herself in me, just as I saw myself in her. And she needed help in hiding the magic in this place from our family.

At this point though, we were all a bit stuck on what that meant, or what we were supposed to do, or how we were even going to get back to 2023. So we decided to pay a visit to the only other person around who knew what was going on. The woman who looked like me.

She recognised me, even through my current crow shape, just as I recognised her despite being able to recognise that she was currently possessing Moira, the village elder's adopted daughter. That explained a few things. She told me she was my cousin. That made sense. She had to be pretty closely related to look that much like me, and I'd not seen much of her before I ran away, so hadn't immediately been able to tell exactly who she was.

She gave us her side of things, which she of course made sound pretty plausible. My family can do that. We had to get that box of hearts, we realised. But we shouldn't tell her anything about it, I insisted, which should have been easy enough given that we were communicating via telepathy and only Michael and to a lesser extent Elizabeth were capable of talking to her.

And then Elizabeth, who I'd been thinking I might have rather misjudged on our first meeting, decided to tell everything to my cousin. She didn't seem to think it was a problem, trusting one of my family. Did she not grasp what we are? Didn't the many times I've mentioned how Rusty tried to kill Michael, and he's still my favourite family member not suggest that perhaps she should be a bit cautious around the rest of them? But it was too late. My cousin had already gone, as the others pointed out, and we had to stop her before she got to Agnes.

We chased after her. She was fast, but Elizabeth and me had wings and could take a straighter route. Elizabeth set off some kind of flashbang, which slowed her down. I didn't have my usual magic, but I did have the ability to grow plants, and I brought up a barrier of thick bushes that stopped her in her tracks and seemed to knock her right out of the body she was occupying. The poor fae girl was a bit confused but at least that was one less thing to worry about.

We approached the house once more, ignoring Agnes's psychic yelling to go away, and Adam immediately got himself caught up in a net trap. The rest of us managed to be a little less conspicuous. I looked in through the window. Agnes and Mary were there, along with the box of hearts. Now what? Could we put their hearts back in, like when we put the eyeballs on Agnes's chest? I didn't want either of them to die.

We went in through the chimney. Of course there was no way to hide that we were there, even though we were all trying not to think too loudly. Agnes was more understanding than I expected, and I understood her too. We were worried about changing history, given that Mary was going to be dead pretty soon, and not in five years time like Agnes had said when we told her the date on the tombstone. But Agnes said that that had been a lie, and the real date now was the same year as on the stone.

And then Robin scampered over to the hearts, and asked if he could use the mending spell to try to put Mary's heart back together. I didn't expect it to work, and I don't think Agnes did either. But he placed his paws on the heart, and worked the magic, and a few moments later it started to beat stronger, and colour came back into Mary's face.

We stressed the importance of still getting that tombstone made, to avoid temporal paradoxes, and Agnes said that they would move away for a while. And now we knew about the source of Agnes's power, we could protect it. And that was that. We were back in the cafe with Rusty blowing dust all over us.

He asked if he'd found the pouch of power. The others were vague about it. I said nothing. Hiding things from Rusty isn't something I'm good at. But we were home, and knew what needed protecting - from Rusty, from my cousin, from the fae, from anyone else who wanted to mess with it.

I need to have some words with Elizabeth regarding my family, since nothing I've said so far about them seems to have got through to her and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if she started hitting on Rusty. But Alabaster has owned up that he does know what I am, and he seems pretty OK with it, which is one less thing to worry about. Meeting Agnes has clarified a few things for me. She ran away for love. I ran for other reasons. But I've been so focussed on what I didn't want to be, I've not thought enough about what I did want. That changes. Now.

ConDucked 2023

A convention run by the same people as ConTingency and ConDensed but in August? Sign me up!

This time the venue was a boarding school, which naturally was empty for the summer. Game slots began on Thursday afternoon and continued until Sunday afternoon. This worked out well for me. My route there involved passing Silverstone, and attempting that drive on a Grand Prix Friday would likely have been unpleasant. Thursday was still OK though, and I arrived in a little over two hours.

Actually finding my way in was more of a challenge. The boarding house is a separate building to the main school and I initially found myself in the wrong building. Fortunately someone found me and gave me directions. It seems I wasn't only the only person to make that mistake.

Finally I was in the right place, and finding a room was just a matter of finding a single room that hadn't already been claimed. Somewhat unsettlingly, while the bedroom doors had locks, we weren't given any keys, and the rooms remained unlocked for the duration. My room's main light also didn't work. I could have moved rooms, but since I had my camping lantern in my bag, I decided that using that for the small amount of time I was in the room would be less effort than moving.

The first game slot was 2pm, but we also had a briefing and practice fire drill at 2pm, meaning that things kicked off a little later. I picked up my convention cup and complimentary duck, got a coffee and some amazing lemon drizzle cake, and prepared to game.

Game 1: Firefly: The Game

I decided to start things off gently. There were several board games on the schedule for the weekend, and Firefly had space and is one of my favourites. In the interests of simplicity, we went with the 'First time in the captain's chair' scenario, where we had to complete jobs for the two available job suppliers, save up $6000 and then get to Ezra to pay it to Niska.

While I haven't played the game in a while, it soon came back to me, and once I'd managed to buy a particularly effective engine upgrade I was feeling pretty confident. Naturally the game had other ideas. Just as I was nearing the end of a job to deliver seven passengers from one end of the verse to the other, I was boarded by reavers and all of them were killed, leaving me stuck at the wrong end of the verse without the payout I'd been counting on.

It wasn't long after that that another player got the win though, and by then it was time for dinner. A fun way to kick things off and a reminder of how much I love this excellently thematic board game.

Game 2: Cyberpunk Red

I was pretty excited to see Cyberpunk Red on the schedule, and even more so that it was being run in the setting of Cyberpunk 2077/Edgerunners.

Finding a suitable room was something of a challenge for this one. Gaming spaces were a compromise between how many groups were having to share, table availability, and not being near the loud transformer. We bounced between three different spaces before finally settling in the dining room.

I was torn between the solo, the medtech and the netrunner, but that decision was made easy for me when other people immediately picked the first two. I got Selene, a pink haired netrunner with a love of neon colours and a mono-wakazashi. Off we went to meet a fixer, in an artifical net dead zone, which immediately gave her withdrawal symptoms. Then we went on the trail of three missing Arasaka executives and the data they'd stolen.

It's a while since I last played Cyberpunk 2077, but the language came back to me pretty quickly, and pretty soon we were having to explain terms like braindance to people who hadn't played Cyberpunk before. It's an absolute delight to get back into Night City, especially in my favourite version of it. I had a wonderful time as we called contacts to trade info and favours, tracked down the missing people, and of course killed a lot of people, culminating in a big fight with 6th Street at an abandoned motel where I hacked an Arasaka spider tank and drove that around while the others went in after the target.

One thing Cyberpunk Red has kept from earlier versions is its d10 system, which results in crits and fumbles happen twice as often as in d20 games. Well, that's the theory. In practice, fumbles come up whenever it would be particularly embarrassing. To the point where at point Selene was watching the fight through the spider tank's cameras and used the tannoy to shout "Stop flirting!" to her team mate and the enemy body guard, who'd done nothing but dance around each other. It put me in mind of a similarly embarrassing fight from one of our home CP2020 games in which nobody on either side managed to hit anyone on the other side (while managing to accidentally hit our own teammates several times) and which ended when both sides were too embarrassed to continue.

Anyway, it was brilliant, and I'm feel inspired to get back to running cyberpunk games myself.

Game 3: Black Code

I decided to skip the Friday morning slot. I hadn't slept too well due to the emergency exit light in my room being extremely bright, the mattress being a little lumpy, and the toilet making noises, so after getting up significantly earlier than usual for breakfast I decided to take a nap.

In the afternoon I'd signed up for Heart, but nobody else had. Another game had only two players. So the two GMs decided that they'd combine groups, and suggested that we play Black Code instead. I enthusiastically agreed.

I picked up Aedon, the same character I'd played in my previous two games of Black Code, who I was getting quite attached to. Our mission was a prisoner transport, with a stop-off at the Temple so he could do a confession. Naturally we had to deal with a number of interruptions along the way, and Aedon ended up going through a lot of her healing supplies, mostly on herself.

Since I last played Black Code I've finally got round to reading the book, and it was very useful to have a reminder of how it feels to play. The biggest challenge when I start running cyberpunk games again is going to be picking a system.

Game 4: Kult: Divinity Lost

Another outing for Disco Inferno. I was a little nervous about this one, as my group was going to be all the same people I'd just been playing Black Code with, plus one other friend, and I was feeling a lot of pressure to deliver. It's been one of my more stressful scenarios to run, not least because the content tends to push it in directions I sometimes find uncomfortable. Also I was going to be running it with five people this time, and normally my limit is four.

Of course I was quickly reminded of how much the player group makes the game. They threw themselves into my take on the 1979 disco scene with enthusiasm, and I felt much better after this run than I did after the last one. This scenario's getting retired pretty soon as I have more in the pipeline (plus older ones that I enjoy running more) but it's very nice to have a good run of it to look back on.

Kult scenarios don't tend to have good endings, but this group got what I'd call the least bad one.

I'm hoping to get the same group back again for some games at ConTingency (minus the one other friend, who's already played them) as they're so much fun to play with.

Game 5: Heart

I slept much better on Friday night, having figured out the comfy part of the mattress and how to use a hankerchief to shade me from the green exit light. Even so I wasn't sure if I was going to play in the morning slot until I saw that the game of Heart that didn't happen on Friday was going to happen on Saturday morning.

I've heard of Heart before but never had a chance to play, and I was keen to see what it was like. Weird. It was weird. A fantasy setting with steampunk elements but so much more weirdness than that. My character exemplified that. Dr Shelby was a deep apiarist. Once she'd been a mad scientist, thrown out of the city for a bit too much experimenting on her own colleagues. Down in the Heart she'd run into some magic bees, who colonised her body. I found myself switching between saying 'I' and 'We' when talking in character, as exactly who was more dominant in that moment shifted.

"What weapons do you have?" "Bees."

We had a mission to track down a missing train and rescue the passengers, which proved complicated and involved a fight with a giant spider, as well as a fair amount of tinkering with magical devices and a short trip through the land of the dead with the help of another PC, a partially dead gnoll. There we found a man who'd been run over by a train and was in several pieces, and was a bit upset about not being able to move. I put him back together with some wax and extruded bone and a few spare bees, and Snags the gnoll brought him back from the land of the dead with us. We were rather pleased with Daemon the Zombee.

I liked the system for Heart, with no hitpoints as such but a system of escalating stress building to unpleasant fallout. Also my bees could be used to help other people with mind stress, providing they didn't mind some minor side effects.

"You may experience drowsiness and a desire for more bees."

Game 6: Call of Cthulhu

Adventus Regis is the first part of Ripples from Carcosa, a set of three scenarios set in different time periods but linked together in a rather unusual campaign. This part was set in ancient Rome, and involved a group of people going on holiday in a Roman resort town.

I picked up Tula, a slave from Britannia who was basically a tour guide, saving up her tips from resort guests to buy her freedom. A nice way of doing the character, as it gave me additional motivation to stick with the group even after things were going extremely badly.

I enjoyed this scenario, and might consider running it myself some times, but I would definitely include content warnings. It includes some harm to animals that I know some people would not be OK with, and some of us were close to tapping out at that point. A good reminder of why safety tools exist.

Game 7: Cyberpunk Red

Friday night's GM was back with another Cyberpunk 2077 game. I picked up Selene again, which gave me the opportunity for a little continuity from the previous game, even though the rest of the group was different. This time we were all hanging out in the Afterlife, looking for work. Having totally failed the facedown roll to actually get into the club, I'd had a short conversation with the bouncer about how I'd hacked an Arasaka spider tank and caused a lot of trouble for 6th Street, which lead to the first fight of the session when some 6th Street gang members ambushed us when we were about to leave. I say ambushed...when there's a solo in the party, ambushes often go rather differently.

We were trying to recover a cyberware implant that would allow us to enter a building where the data we needed to steal was, and after a certain amount of messing about, managed to get hold of the man it was inside. But then came the serious issue of getting it out of him, and with no medtech with us this time, we made a horrible mess, made even worse by the fact we were doing it while being pursued by Trauma Team. When TT caught up with us, their operative found himself offended on a professional level by how bad it was.

Then he rolled a 1 and killed the guy.

Once we shook off Trauma Team, we finally took the remains to a ripperdoc, and discovered that we'd been looking in entirely the wrong part of his head. Of course.

By the end of the session, Selene was using a cryochamber containing her creepy uncle and a woman who looked exactly like her as a coffee table. I regret only the the GM lives far enough away that we can't make this a regular campaign.

Game 8: Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Back into the GM's chair for another trip to Sherwood Forest with Robyn Hood and her Merry Maids. The three players picked Robyn Hood, Briar Tuck and Alanna Dale as their characters, and selected the archery contest and prisoner rescue as their plot combination. And off they went, coming up with strange plans for getting into the castle, attracting the attention of NPCs, going on strange detours, and finally engaging in a massive sword fight that involving swinging on chandeliers, wrapping people up in tapestries, an inplausible number of wardrobe malfunctions, and which ultimately came down to Robyn facing off agains the Sheriff of Nottingham himself.

What I hadn't realised at the start is that one player had never played a PBTA game before. Fortunately with all the instructions on the playbooks, this is a pretty easy one to pick up, with the only thing that really stands out being the use of strings. I broke out the box of tiny skulls for this one, as I like being able to hand people an object when they gain a string on an NPC.

A thoroughly enjoyable bit of swashbuckling. I think this one can do a few more conventions before I retire it. And after that...pirates?

And that was the end. There was one more slot on Sunday afternoon, but the games that interested me were all full and I knew I had a long drive home ahead of me. So I stuck around until after lunch, said some goodbyes, and went on my way.

Reflections

It was great. Despite my niggles with the room, it was a nice little en suite room with a decent shower and plenty of room for my stuff. It also came with full board, which I heard someone describe as 'school dinners, but good school dinners', which summed it up pretty well. Nothing special, but every meal tasted good. While not as convenient as ConDensed practically on my doorstep, the slightly longer event made the drive worthwhile.

My one regret is that I couldn't spend more time with one friend, who couldn't be there for the whole event, but at least we did get one game together. And I'm managing to learn some people's names and faces - if only because I ended up seeing a lot of the same faces in the various games I was in, thanks to overlapping tastes. And that means new friends.

With ConDensed a bit up in the air at the moment due to venue issues, I'm very happy that we had this new convention, impressed that we raised over £1100 for charity, and I hope we'll be doing this for years to come.

Wicker Valley, episode 15: Animal Adventures

Looking around the place told us we hadn't gone far geographically. One tree in particular looked out of place, and we soon recognised it as being in the middle of the new construction site. Adam peed on it. Dog instincts, apparently, but just once, just once, it would be nice to get through a mystery without Robin or Adam peeing on anything. Elizabeth seemed to think that that was just what men are like, but Michael's never peed on anything while I was around.

We needed a plan, but first, something was up with Michael. At first I thought he was just struggling to deal with having significantly more limbs than usual, but it turns out he was having a vision. The witch hunter in a tavern, talking to a woman, who was going to pay him but was unhappy about him finishing the job.

Robin had become overcome by the need to tidy the witch's cottage and was hard at work, while Alabaster was just doing regular cat stuff: sitting around, looking pretty and ignoring everyone. The rest of us got to work. The easiest way to find Agnes's pouch was to ask her where it was, which would be a lot easier if she was alive. So off we went to the gnome village.

Getting in to the village was easy enough. Elizabeth and me could fly, Michael was small enough to crawl through gaps or be carried, and Adam could just do dog stuff and get let in through the gates. The tavern was more of a challenge. I looked through the windows, and did manage to find the witch hunter's room, but he wasn't in it. Michael had a look downstairs. He wasn't there either.

We kept searching. Adam managed to meet a friendly cook around the back of the village elder's house, and not long afterwards the witch hunter and the woman from Michael's vision emerged from the house. He went to the tavern. She went elsewhere. Michael lost her in the crowd, but I spotted the house she went into and while the other two went to the tavern, we went for a closer look.

It was me. Or at least, it was someone who looked exactly like me, scrying over a map and using the same words I was taught as a child. It was such a shock I fell off the windowsill. Who was she? I was expecting a fae. And it was Agnes who was my relative, not this other woman. And even then, why would she look exactly like me? Michael seemed in a bit of a state as well, as far as I could tell from his spidery little face.

We needed Agnes, and that meant we needed eyeballs. Back to the tavern, where Adam and Elizabeth confirmed that he was now in his room. I had an idea. If we dropped some burning twigs down the chimney to light the fire, then stopped up the chimney, we could incapacitate him with smoke. Easier said than done. Magic is trickier when you're a bird. Fortunately Elizabeth was there to help out, as was Alabaster who'd finally come to take a look at things. After a number of failed attempts, and almost setting my own feet on fire, they lent me enough power to get the fire lit. They blocked up the chimney with wings and fur. Adam lay outside the bedroom door to keep it closed and stop the smoke escaping that way. And soon the witch hunter was unconscious.

Michael and me went in. I pecked out his eyeballs, and Michael spun a little silk bag to carry them in. And we fled, along with Adam, causing chaos on the way out and almost losing the eyeballs, except Michael had figured out his web spinners by then and grabbed them with a silk line. And then we were out.

Back at Agnes's cottage the place was spotless. I put the eyeballs on her chest and soon she revived. At which point things got even more complicated as we had to try to explain about being from several hundred years in the future, and that her familiars were all still fine and we had their memories as well as ours. She didn't like the idea of any of our family getting hold of the pouch and honestly I could understand that.

Then Mary showed up, and Agnes was quite relieved that we'd managed to get her alive again before that as it would have been a very nasty shock. Then there was another nasty shock when we mentioned that Mary was going to be dead in the future, which didn't seem very surprising to me, but apparently was to Agnes. So Mary had to leave the house while we talked more about that.

Adam asked me the most ridiculous question he's ever asked me: did my family often go to the bad? We don't go to the bad, we start out at the bad! I've had to make an active choice to be a nice person. Didn't he remember when we first met and he tried to kill me?

Anyway, I hope we didn't cause a temporal paradox but what I really wanted was to know about the woman who looked like me. Agnes thought she was a fae, which made sense, but she probably wasn't a doppelganger. So what on earth was she?