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zdashamberTwo weeks ago Sunday, my character Jael of Civil Blood chose not to stop her (PC) mother from killing herself, which destroyed the Pattern of Rebma, and cleared the way for Jael to crown herself Queen of Rebma. It was a hell of an intense damn session. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
a2macgeek was visiting and sat in on the game, playing a NPC, Jenna... She said, "No wonder you guys's campaigns are so short!" I swear though, that was a session of the sort that comes with luck once every 18 months.
Civil Blood is the sequel campaign to New Mutiny, the campaign where I played Orlando. I just hunted down the thing I wrote up about Orlando, and I think it's worth reading... That clusterfuck leads into this clusterfuck nicely. The loyalist with the concussion who trumped King Mordred was Victoria, played by Mary. The loyalist beaten around and buried under a pile of Amberites was Gawain, played by Jeff. The rebel who eventually took the throne was Tsark, played by Bernie.
Mordred's deathcurse, Mike decided, left Orlando pretty much unplayable, which was cool by me since I was looking forward to the glorious opportunity that was playing the daughter of Victoria. Victoria is crazy. A little crazy-like-a-fox, a little just-plain-nuts. I mean, she cut out her own tongue so she wouldn't have to publicly swear fealty to Mordred, and then she took in tow a 10-year old lipreading child (named Mercy) to be her voice. And, during the last campaign, she married a neat sensible NPC named Job (A few sessions previous: "We're going to call your main reasonable guy Job, because he suddenly got promoted to a major part." - Mike). Let me just let the quotes speak for how she married him:
So anyway, the question of Civil Blood is, 50 years later, can a family with ambitions of their own settle under the rule of Tsark, no one's first choice for king? First five sessions, although there was clearly a movement to undermine Tsark, and a variety of people were causing small amounts of trouble, the answer in general seemed to be, "Yes, for now." Session 5, assassination attempts hit Job and Mercy, as someone attempted to get Victoria to flip out in a hopelessly war-inducing manner. Mercy died, and Job was in critical condition.
Which brings us to session 6, when the dogs were breathing close on the heels of the provocateur we all suspect to be Random, that homicidal psycopathic little bitch. And in a last-ditch attempt, he walks into the royal court of Rebma and stabs Moire. Moire named no heir.
Victoria wants the throne of Rebma. She's the daughter of Llewella, all of Moire's children are dead, her grandson Martin isn't a Rebman (which in Civil Blood means you can breathe all water, not just the magic stuff in the city center) and he's male besides. Victoria's been working towards it for more than 50 years, and she's threatened to take it by force if necessary. Jael, Victoria's daughter, would also like Rebma. It's a powerful primal realm. Oh, and the home of the universe's only reliable Pattern, since the one in Amber was bled on a bit last campaign. Jael is willing to merely be crown princess of Rebma, though.
Martin, a NPC, wants anyone but Victoria on the throne of Rebma, since Victoria is a bit crazy, and runs her own shadow as a fanatic theocracy, and he doesn't want his boyhood home to turn out like that. He's not terribly joyous about Jael either, since she's young and it's hard to tell whether she's her mother's follower or not. Tristan, Martin's son, is played byericorange, and wants to aid his dad. And who knows, maybe Jael or Victoria managed to annoy Tristan personally; god, but Eric's brilliant at getting Tristan under Jael's skin!
So Tristan starts poking his nose into the sucession in Rebma as if it's any of his business. Jael makes sure both he and Tsark know that Victoria will bring war to Rebma if she or Jael doesn't get it, but Jael is willing to take it and agree to not make it a theocracy. Tristan wants her to put in a big backdoor so he can take over if she goes back on her word. Jael won't have Rebma the satrapy of any other country.
Victoria talks to Jael about how with the threat of losing Job and Rebma, everything she cares about and has worked towards, she's considering killing herself in the center of the Pattern. Jael decides to stop dicking around and back her mother's claim to Rebma. They arrange for the coronation. Jael requests that Tsark refuse Martin (who split off Garnath into his own kingdom 50 years ago when Tsark took the throne of Amber) any request to allow troops through Amber to Rebma. Tristan brings politics-fu to bear and gets a quarter of the Rebman nobles to denounce Victoria. Victoria kills half of the denouncers. Jael attempts to rescue some when she hears, and tries to convince Tsark that she and her mother are under unusal stress presently from the assassinations and this won't be par for the course.
There is last-minute dealing as another option enters the arena: Victoria is willing for Jael to marry Gawain to take the throne of Rebma. Jael had a crush on Gawain at the beginning of the game, so this isn't bad from her POV; also, it puts Gawain and his armies on Amber's doorstep. Gawain can't decide between marrying Jael and civil war amongst the family. Tsark's second son Khrim, played bymotleypolitico, is suggested to all as a marriage option, which also is ok by Jael, since Khrim's perhaps her best friend amongst the family.
Then Tsark, in consultation with Tristan alone, invades Rebma to stop the scheduled coronation, with 25,000 troops. Victoria tells Jael she's going to go walk the Pattern and kill Random. Jael is all thinking, "Well, I'm not going to give up on Rebma just on account of an army that's been stabbed in my back, though it's good that someone's going to kill that litte pigfucker" and sets to checking if the Khrim option would work to check Amber's unbridled aggression.
Various people who are not Jael learn from someone trump spying that Victoria is bleeding on the Rebman Pattern. None of these people call Jael. Sad, because she's just out of the Pattern's trump-blocking effect, where she went to start politicking after talking with Victoria. A mass of Amberites fight towards the Rebman Pattern through the Rebman guard. Jael and Khrim try to get in touch with people like Tsark and Gawain to talk politics. Eventually they get Dara, Tsark's wife, who happens to mention after some chat oh by the way your mother is destroying your Pattern.
Jael runs there, and since she's the heir the guards let her through without trouble, so she gets there before anyone else can. She runs straight across the outermost line all burned out with blood and tackles Victoria away from the rest of it. Victoria turns the dagger on her own throat.
Now, what Mike does with walking bloodied Patterns is that those parts impress on the walker some of the personality and traits of the one who bled--specifically, the worst the bleeder has.
"What would you say the worst bits of your consciousness are, Victoria?" - GM
"Probably the psychotic bits." - Victoria
(Gawain, with a spectacularly failed first Patternwalk on the freshly-broken Amber Pattern, got amnesiac, his memories mixed with Eleanore's and Dara's. Dara was even then Tsark's lover, and so Gawain was for awhile under the impression that he'd fucked Tsark. Damian joked last campaign about how it would be if Tsark walked the Amber Pattern: "Tsark-- you have the distinct feeling you've fucked yourself.")
So Jael runs across this line and gets hit with all of Victoria's pride and despair and tendency to kill anyone in her way... On top of the stress of her father perhaps dying, and her mother lying to her and breaking the last good Pattern, and her country being invaded. And there's Victoria moving to make this equation a lot simpler.
So I let her.
The vortex of suck was keeping Jael from getting them off the Pattern as Khrim and the rest fought their way in. Jael, still in the thrall of fanaticism, had an answer for this; she offered up her mother's body with some dramatic incantation, and was thus freed to step away.
"Her body was utterly consumed." - GM
"This is why I never liked Rebma." - Gawain
Jael, even amongst everything else, was sad that this pretty much shot to hell any chances she'd ever have of a full with Gawain, who's notably weird-stuff averse; but she never doubted the memory of her mother required an ascent into a swirl of Pattern consumation. It was just right.
She called in Orlando to see if there was any way to salvage some of the Pattern... He's walked the Amber Pattern every day for 50 years to keep Mordred's curse at bay, and is thus the family expert. He stated that Victoria's bloodcurse had been on Amber. Jael walked out and and choked down the megalomaniacal despairing impulse to take out Job, too, so there would be no one left who could be used against her. Instead she took the throne of Rebma while the various invaders were either staring at the Pattern or dealing with the colossal dragon that hit Rebma due to all the family strife there. Then for the next day or two she toured the city with her mother's legacy inspiring her to anti-Amber flights of speechifying.
I've been waiting impatiently for two weeks to see how things develop from here. Will Tsark call back his troops? Will Tristan work to bring more war to Rebma? Will Gawain explain himself? And how crazy will Jael show, anyway? Because I have the entire scale to work with, now.
I felt guilty for a bit after. PCs have now died dramatically around me on several occasions. And this worked out so well for me... Jael is going to be so screwed up if she ever stops and thinks about it, but she has vast numbers of things that have to be done right now. She has major goals, and iron-clad motives to work towards them, and unexpected allies to work with. We're up to our elbows in great story.
Anyway, I'll maybe let you know how it comes out. Who will come to the wake?
a2macgeek was visiting and sat in on the game, playing a NPC, Jenna... She said, "No wonder you guys's campaigns are so short!" I swear though, that was a session of the sort that comes with luck once every 18 months.Civil Blood is the sequel campaign to New Mutiny, the campaign where I played Orlando. I just hunted down the thing I wrote up about Orlando, and I think it's worth reading... That clusterfuck leads into this clusterfuck nicely. The loyalist with the concussion who trumped King Mordred was Victoria, played by Mary. The loyalist beaten around and buried under a pile of Amberites was Gawain, played by Jeff. The rebel who eventually took the throne was Tsark, played by Bernie.
Mordred's deathcurse, Mike decided, left Orlando pretty much unplayable, which was cool by me since I was looking forward to the glorious opportunity that was playing the daughter of Victoria. Victoria is crazy. A little crazy-like-a-fox, a little just-plain-nuts. I mean, she cut out her own tongue so she wouldn't have to publicly swear fealty to Mordred, and then she took in tow a 10-year old lipreading child (named Mercy) to be her voice. And, during the last campaign, she married a neat sensible NPC named Job (A few sessions previous: "We're going to call your main reasonable guy Job, because he suddenly got promoted to a major part." - Mike). Let me just let the quotes speak for how she married him:
"We are here to announce our future wedding plans." - Victoria, royal we (through Mercy)Tell me you could resist playing the child of that marriage.
"To who, your highness?" - Job
"To you." - Victoria
"Oh." - Job
"Be ready at midnight." - Victoria
"Tonight?" - Job, nearly squeaking
So anyway, the question of Civil Blood is, 50 years later, can a family with ambitions of their own settle under the rule of Tsark, no one's first choice for king? First five sessions, although there was clearly a movement to undermine Tsark, and a variety of people were causing small amounts of trouble, the answer in general seemed to be, "Yes, for now." Session 5, assassination attempts hit Job and Mercy, as someone attempted to get Victoria to flip out in a hopelessly war-inducing manner. Mercy died, and Job was in critical condition.
Which brings us to session 6, when the dogs were breathing close on the heels of the provocateur we all suspect to be Random, that homicidal psycopathic little bitch. And in a last-ditch attempt, he walks into the royal court of Rebma and stabs Moire. Moire named no heir.
Victoria wants the throne of Rebma. She's the daughter of Llewella, all of Moire's children are dead, her grandson Martin isn't a Rebman (which in Civil Blood means you can breathe all water, not just the magic stuff in the city center) and he's male besides. Victoria's been working towards it for more than 50 years, and she's threatened to take it by force if necessary. Jael, Victoria's daughter, would also like Rebma. It's a powerful primal realm. Oh, and the home of the universe's only reliable Pattern, since the one in Amber was bled on a bit last campaign. Jael is willing to merely be crown princess of Rebma, though.
Martin, a NPC, wants anyone but Victoria on the throne of Rebma, since Victoria is a bit crazy, and runs her own shadow as a fanatic theocracy, and he doesn't want his boyhood home to turn out like that. He's not terribly joyous about Jael either, since she's young and it's hard to tell whether she's her mother's follower or not. Tristan, Martin's son, is played by
ericorange, and wants to aid his dad. And who knows, maybe Jael or Victoria managed to annoy Tristan personally; god, but Eric's brilliant at getting Tristan under Jael's skin!So Tristan starts poking his nose into the sucession in Rebma as if it's any of his business. Jael makes sure both he and Tsark know that Victoria will bring war to Rebma if she or Jael doesn't get it, but Jael is willing to take it and agree to not make it a theocracy. Tristan wants her to put in a big backdoor so he can take over if she goes back on her word. Jael won't have Rebma the satrapy of any other country.
Victoria talks to Jael about how with the threat of losing Job and Rebma, everything she cares about and has worked towards, she's considering killing herself in the center of the Pattern. Jael decides to stop dicking around and back her mother's claim to Rebma. They arrange for the coronation. Jael requests that Tsark refuse Martin (who split off Garnath into his own kingdom 50 years ago when Tsark took the throne of Amber) any request to allow troops through Amber to Rebma. Tristan brings politics-fu to bear and gets a quarter of the Rebman nobles to denounce Victoria. Victoria kills half of the denouncers. Jael attempts to rescue some when she hears, and tries to convince Tsark that she and her mother are under unusal stress presently from the assassinations and this won't be par for the course.
There is last-minute dealing as another option enters the arena: Victoria is willing for Jael to marry Gawain to take the throne of Rebma. Jael had a crush on Gawain at the beginning of the game, so this isn't bad from her POV; also, it puts Gawain and his armies on Amber's doorstep. Gawain can't decide between marrying Jael and civil war amongst the family. Tsark's second son Khrim, played by
motleypolitico, is suggested to all as a marriage option, which also is ok by Jael, since Khrim's perhaps her best friend amongst the family. Then Tsark, in consultation with Tristan alone, invades Rebma to stop the scheduled coronation, with 25,000 troops. Victoria tells Jael she's going to go walk the Pattern and kill Random. Jael is all thinking, "Well, I'm not going to give up on Rebma just on account of an army that's been stabbed in my back, though it's good that someone's going to kill that litte pigfucker" and sets to checking if the Khrim option would work to check Amber's unbridled aggression.
Various people who are not Jael learn from someone trump spying that Victoria is bleeding on the Rebman Pattern. None of these people call Jael. Sad, because she's just out of the Pattern's trump-blocking effect, where she went to start politicking after talking with Victoria. A mass of Amberites fight towards the Rebman Pattern through the Rebman guard. Jael and Khrim try to get in touch with people like Tsark and Gawain to talk politics. Eventually they get Dara, Tsark's wife, who happens to mention after some chat oh by the way your mother is destroying your Pattern.
Jael runs there, and since she's the heir the guards let her through without trouble, so she gets there before anyone else can. She runs straight across the outermost line all burned out with blood and tackles Victoria away from the rest of it. Victoria turns the dagger on her own throat.
Now, what Mike does with walking bloodied Patterns is that those parts impress on the walker some of the personality and traits of the one who bled--specifically, the worst the bleeder has.
"What would you say the worst bits of your consciousness are, Victoria?" - GM
"Probably the psychotic bits." - Victoria
(Gawain, with a spectacularly failed first Patternwalk on the freshly-broken Amber Pattern, got amnesiac, his memories mixed with Eleanore's and Dara's. Dara was even then Tsark's lover, and so Gawain was for awhile under the impression that he'd fucked Tsark. Damian joked last campaign about how it would be if Tsark walked the Amber Pattern: "Tsark-- you have the distinct feeling you've fucked yourself.")
So Jael runs across this line and gets hit with all of Victoria's pride and despair and tendency to kill anyone in her way... On top of the stress of her father perhaps dying, and her mother lying to her and breaking the last good Pattern, and her country being invaded. And there's Victoria moving to make this equation a lot simpler.
So I let her.
The vortex of suck was keeping Jael from getting them off the Pattern as Khrim and the rest fought their way in. Jael, still in the thrall of fanaticism, had an answer for this; she offered up her mother's body with some dramatic incantation, and was thus freed to step away.
"Her body was utterly consumed." - GM
"This is why I never liked Rebma." - Gawain
Jael, even amongst everything else, was sad that this pretty much shot to hell any chances she'd ever have of a full with Gawain, who's notably weird-stuff averse; but she never doubted the memory of her mother required an ascent into a swirl of Pattern consumation. It was just right.
She called in Orlando to see if there was any way to salvage some of the Pattern... He's walked the Amber Pattern every day for 50 years to keep Mordred's curse at bay, and is thus the family expert. He stated that Victoria's bloodcurse had been on Amber. Jael walked out and and choked down the megalomaniacal despairing impulse to take out Job, too, so there would be no one left who could be used against her. Instead she took the throne of Rebma while the various invaders were either staring at the Pattern or dealing with the colossal dragon that hit Rebma due to all the family strife there. Then for the next day or two she toured the city with her mother's legacy inspiring her to anti-Amber flights of speechifying.
I've been waiting impatiently for two weeks to see how things develop from here. Will Tsark call back his troops? Will Tristan work to bring more war to Rebma? Will Gawain explain himself? And how crazy will Jael show, anyway? Because I have the entire scale to work with, now.
I felt guilty for a bit after. PCs have now died dramatically around me on several occasions. And this worked out so well for me... Jael is going to be so screwed up if she ever stops and thinks about it, but she has vast numbers of things that have to be done right now. She has major goals, and iron-clad motives to work towards them, and unexpected allies to work with. We're up to our elbows in great story.
Anyway, I'll maybe let you know how it comes out. Who will come to the wake?
no subject
Date: 2006-02-04 12:00 am (UTC)