Tending the Horde
Sep. 18th, 2004 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we kind of had another session of the 1890s GURPS game. }:P Most of it was spent processing the ludicrous pile of crap we bought in the previous session, and we didn't get anywhere near done... fortunately, it looks like events will overtake us before we can spend ten years tediously catalouging.
Charlie, JR, and Don were all in separate cars (well, Charlie was walking alongside a pair of horse-drawn carts), but they decided to stick to a convoy, since they all had a lot invested in the goods that were being taken back to Athens with them.
Once they got to Athens, though, they split up -- Don drove Mr. Albion home in his new car, JR went off with a new lady friend he'd met at the auction, and Charlie was left to start unloading all by himself. The others (even JR) came back pretty quickly to help, though (the girl had tried to seduce JR, but he resisted).
JR agreed to let Charlie keep the books he'd bought in his library (they wouldn't even physically fit inside Charlie's tiny apartment), but that meant that Charlie ended up spending a lot of time -- most of his time -- in JR's house. JR hadn't realized he'd *had* a library, but it was a huge mansion, and he'd only lived there ten years, so he couldn't be expected to know *every* room in it.
He summoned the spirit guardian of the north, who had domain over magical knowledge, to ask what enchantments were on all the books and other items -- all of them were enchanted, many of them quite badly. The giant bear spirit said, "You have need of this power, but are too impatient," and gave Charlie the ability to manifest new magical powers -- such as 'analyze magic', in this case -- by meditating on the spirit guardians... and saddled him with a compulsion to meditate constantly.
So he started meditating, and was slowly able to identify a few items out of the thousands they had piled up. A blood-dripping butcher knife was enchanted (badly) with a defensive enchantment, while JR's new rapier could turn into a springbok under moonlight. This took days, though, and eventually he remembered about the 99 highly dangerous cursed totems he had sitting in his basement, and took measures to secure his home against intrusion -- he bought a guard dog. And had a spirit possess it, bound to attack anyone that entered except for him and anyone he brought with him. The advantage of this over just having a guard dog was mostly that if the dog was killed, the spirit could come tell him that so that he could take further action.
At that point, Charlie was made aware (probably by Patch, the wereliger librarian of the Keepers of the Flame who was helping organize the new cursed library they'd set up in JR's house) that one of the vials of 'spices' he'd bought was labeled 'Truth in Sight', or something along those lines, in latin. Since meditating on analyze magic was such a tedious chore, he decided to try to use it to see if perhaps it could more quickly identify the various spells.
It didn't quite do that. After applying a few drops with the eyedropper built into the bottle, all that Charlie noticed at first was that everything seemed to be much more vivid and colorful... and while marvelling at this, he saw a man he didn't recognize slip one of the books under his coat and scurry out of the library. He called out and gave chase after the thief, but was hindered in his pursuit by all the *other* people he didn't recognize that now populated the house, and by the new doorways and corridors that he'd never seen before.
Don and JR intercepted Charlie after he tumbled down the stairs in his reckless pursuit, and it was quickly clear that only he could see these people -- who weren't dressed at all like ordinary people should, and seemed surprised that he could see them -- and doors, and corridors, one of while the thief had already run down. Realizing that he was seeing things reduced him to babbling incoherently for a few minutes, until he got his wits together enough to realize that he'd just dropped a huge hit of acid, or something, and needed to go lie down. By which point Don and JR had already marched him to a spare bedroom, and were holding him down.
He described the drug, and the ensuing hallucinations, to Don and JR more coherently once he'd come down. "Apparently, the person who labeled the bottle thought that the hallucinations were real," was his verdict.
Don and JR, meanwhile, were amusing themselves with other items -- the guns, primarily. One gun had inifite ammo, another had a huge drum of bullets that it reloaded itself from nonmagically. Another was a hand-cannon, that did ENORMOUS damage using normal ordinary bullets, to the target and the weilder both. Don needed a bit of bandaging up after that one.
JR also had an investigator asking annoying questions about some murder that JR had discovered. He seemed to consider Don and Charlie to be prime suspects, so they both played innocent when asked if they could construct giant deadly freezing machines, or kill people as if by giant beasts. He seemed especially interested in Charlie's guard dog, but Charlie pointed out that the animal slayings had started before he'd bought it.
JR also spent more time with his girlfriend, who he caught hitting on a random college student. She tried to flirt with both of them, simultaneously, which didn't work out quite as well, and once again he was able to resist her advances.
Six days after the auction was the big graduation party, where students went to schmooze with employers, and employers went to swindle new graduates into unfair contracts. JR had to go, since he needed to replace a bunch of slain mineworkers, including several specialists. Don was expected to go, since he was a student, and probably needed to start networking early, given his reputation. Charlie decided to come along for the free food.
JR was the only one to really fit in at the party, chatting up one of the Rockefellers' daughters, who seemed quite taken with him. But the party had hardly gotten started, when it was ended by an ear-splitting shriek! All eyes turned to the ladies' restroom, where a woman had been horribly slain, torn to shreds by some huge beast!
Not wanting to fight the crowd, Charlie went astral and examined the crime scene from the spirit plane. With his medical training, it was obvious to him that this had not been done by any beast -- the huge claws had struck exactly where they needed to to kill with maximum efficiency. He tried to summon the spirit of the deceased, to ask who the killer was... but her soul was gone!
Since the supernatural was obviously invovled in this slaying, he scanned the crowd for unusual auras, but aside from the usual scattering of untrained wild talents, and people like Mr. Albion who he already knew and despised, but didn't suspect of this murder, the only unnatural aura he saw was JR's lady friend. He returned to his body, and was about to march over and Command her to tell him whether she'd committed the crime, but Agamemnon (his familiar) dissuaded him. "She's not the type."
It was at about that time that he realized JR, who he'd just been standing next to, was missing. He asked Don if he'd seen where he'd gotten off to. "Who?"
Without the drug, Charlie was able to control his fear, and eventually Don admitted that he knew who JR was. But when they went to ask around, it was quickly clear that no one *else* remembered him -- the Rockefeller lass he'd been flirting with all night, for instance, insisted she hadn't talked to anyone all night.
And JR's car was parked in the wrong place, in the student lot where Don would have parked it if it was still *his* car and he hadn't sold it.
last week | next session
I've been really, really tired all day today. I don't know why, but... g'wuhrgl. z.z
Charlie, JR, and Don were all in separate cars (well, Charlie was walking alongside a pair of horse-drawn carts), but they decided to stick to a convoy, since they all had a lot invested in the goods that were being taken back to Athens with them.
Once they got to Athens, though, they split up -- Don drove Mr. Albion home in his new car, JR went off with a new lady friend he'd met at the auction, and Charlie was left to start unloading all by himself. The others (even JR) came back pretty quickly to help, though (the girl had tried to seduce JR, but he resisted).
JR agreed to let Charlie keep the books he'd bought in his library (they wouldn't even physically fit inside Charlie's tiny apartment), but that meant that Charlie ended up spending a lot of time -- most of his time -- in JR's house. JR hadn't realized he'd *had* a library, but it was a huge mansion, and he'd only lived there ten years, so he couldn't be expected to know *every* room in it.
He summoned the spirit guardian of the north, who had domain over magical knowledge, to ask what enchantments were on all the books and other items -- all of them were enchanted, many of them quite badly. The giant bear spirit said, "You have need of this power, but are too impatient," and gave Charlie the ability to manifest new magical powers -- such as 'analyze magic', in this case -- by meditating on the spirit guardians... and saddled him with a compulsion to meditate constantly.
So he started meditating, and was slowly able to identify a few items out of the thousands they had piled up. A blood-dripping butcher knife was enchanted (badly) with a defensive enchantment, while JR's new rapier could turn into a springbok under moonlight. This took days, though, and eventually he remembered about the 99 highly dangerous cursed totems he had sitting in his basement, and took measures to secure his home against intrusion -- he bought a guard dog. And had a spirit possess it, bound to attack anyone that entered except for him and anyone he brought with him. The advantage of this over just having a guard dog was mostly that if the dog was killed, the spirit could come tell him that so that he could take further action.
At that point, Charlie was made aware (probably by Patch, the wereliger librarian of the Keepers of the Flame who was helping organize the new cursed library they'd set up in JR's house) that one of the vials of 'spices' he'd bought was labeled 'Truth in Sight', or something along those lines, in latin. Since meditating on analyze magic was such a tedious chore, he decided to try to use it to see if perhaps it could more quickly identify the various spells.
It didn't quite do that. After applying a few drops with the eyedropper built into the bottle, all that Charlie noticed at first was that everything seemed to be much more vivid and colorful... and while marvelling at this, he saw a man he didn't recognize slip one of the books under his coat and scurry out of the library. He called out and gave chase after the thief, but was hindered in his pursuit by all the *other* people he didn't recognize that now populated the house, and by the new doorways and corridors that he'd never seen before.
Don and JR intercepted Charlie after he tumbled down the stairs in his reckless pursuit, and it was quickly clear that only he could see these people -- who weren't dressed at all like ordinary people should, and seemed surprised that he could see them -- and doors, and corridors, one of while the thief had already run down. Realizing that he was seeing things reduced him to babbling incoherently for a few minutes, until he got his wits together enough to realize that he'd just dropped a huge hit of acid, or something, and needed to go lie down. By which point Don and JR had already marched him to a spare bedroom, and were holding him down.
He described the drug, and the ensuing hallucinations, to Don and JR more coherently once he'd come down. "Apparently, the person who labeled the bottle thought that the hallucinations were real," was his verdict.
Don and JR, meanwhile, were amusing themselves with other items -- the guns, primarily. One gun had inifite ammo, another had a huge drum of bullets that it reloaded itself from nonmagically. Another was a hand-cannon, that did ENORMOUS damage using normal ordinary bullets, to the target and the weilder both. Don needed a bit of bandaging up after that one.
JR also had an investigator asking annoying questions about some murder that JR had discovered. He seemed to consider Don and Charlie to be prime suspects, so they both played innocent when asked if they could construct giant deadly freezing machines, or kill people as if by giant beasts. He seemed especially interested in Charlie's guard dog, but Charlie pointed out that the animal slayings had started before he'd bought it.
JR also spent more time with his girlfriend, who he caught hitting on a random college student. She tried to flirt with both of them, simultaneously, which didn't work out quite as well, and once again he was able to resist her advances.
Six days after the auction was the big graduation party, where students went to schmooze with employers, and employers went to swindle new graduates into unfair contracts. JR had to go, since he needed to replace a bunch of slain mineworkers, including several specialists. Don was expected to go, since he was a student, and probably needed to start networking early, given his reputation. Charlie decided to come along for the free food.
JR was the only one to really fit in at the party, chatting up one of the Rockefellers' daughters, who seemed quite taken with him. But the party had hardly gotten started, when it was ended by an ear-splitting shriek! All eyes turned to the ladies' restroom, where a woman had been horribly slain, torn to shreds by some huge beast!
Not wanting to fight the crowd, Charlie went astral and examined the crime scene from the spirit plane. With his medical training, it was obvious to him that this had not been done by any beast -- the huge claws had struck exactly where they needed to to kill with maximum efficiency. He tried to summon the spirit of the deceased, to ask who the killer was... but her soul was gone!
Since the supernatural was obviously invovled in this slaying, he scanned the crowd for unusual auras, but aside from the usual scattering of untrained wild talents, and people like Mr. Albion who he already knew and despised, but didn't suspect of this murder, the only unnatural aura he saw was JR's lady friend. He returned to his body, and was about to march over and Command her to tell him whether she'd committed the crime, but Agamemnon (his familiar) dissuaded him. "She's not the type."
It was at about that time that he realized JR, who he'd just been standing next to, was missing. He asked Don if he'd seen where he'd gotten off to. "Who?"
Without the drug, Charlie was able to control his fear, and eventually Don admitted that he knew who JR was. But when they went to ask around, it was quickly clear that no one *else* remembered him -- the Rockefeller lass he'd been flirting with all night, for instance, insisted she hadn't talked to anyone all night.
And JR's car was parked in the wrong place, in the student lot where Don would have parked it if it was still *his* car and he hadn't sold it.
last week | next session
I've been really, really tired all day today. I don't know why, but... g'wuhrgl. z.z
