Wrapping up for the Summer, Part 2!
Before I go, a word on Lavanya and Xambria, to clarify some of the strange goings-on during the convocation:
When Lavanya spoke to Leon at the table (in front of the other players), she simply told him to ‘speak to Erskine Haffkruger’ (which he obviously could not do, as Erskine died before he got the chance). But that was just the lie Leon told his friends, at her behest. We handled what Lavanya actually said in an email. She told him she currently inhabited Erskine in the same way he inhabited Xavier – using the same mortal possession ritual (which, she said, he had taught her). She said she was trying to help, but couldn’t tell him everything, as per usual. This time, though, she was going to let him handle the problem himself instead of intervening directly, as she had tried to do with Borne, to no avail. She told him to trust Macbannin (but this information was contained in a ‘dream bubble’ that would only burst at the right moment). Then she handed him a copy of the absurdist web and told him to give it to anyone who asked for it, and not to question them if they did so.
Unbeknownst to Leon, Lavanya also appeared to Macbannin, as he extracted Erskine Haffkruger’s soul. She told him that Korrigan’s unit were not dead, that they were here at the convocation, and that they needed his help. (She didn’t tell him who they were because Lavanya has to be careful to only nudge events in the intended direction. If she just came out and told Leon everything she knew, for example, the whole timeline would be different, and the outcome of her intervention would be impossible to predict. Both she and Leon have learned this lesson the hard way.)
I should add that I finally know who Lavanya is now, but I’m saving that revelation for later.
Meanwhile, of course, Xambria was making her own plans to switch sides. While this was DM fiat (to replace Pemberton’s intervention), the player and I worked together to figure out just exactly how Xambria would go about this and the rationale behind her actions. She has been with the unit for a long time, but never really felt herself to be a true part of the group. Her sense of loyalty was nascent at best. But she certainly had no reason to wish the unit any harm. So she began her ‘journey’ to defection by seeing if she could persuade the others round to her way of thinking. Matters were greatly simplified when her player’s workload prevented him from engaging in email exchanges with the others (targeting those he felt he might be able to persuade) and a train cancellation stopped him turning up to the next session. That meant that Xambria had become so besotted with the Obscurati Grand Design – so intellectually awe-struck – that she had completely gone native.
Once she had established that persuasion was a non-starter, she took the opportunity of her one-to-one with Nicodemus to establish that he would be ‘lenient’ with hypothetical spies. (She wanted to belive this, so she believed it. It might also have been true, under other circumstances. Who knows?) She also had to be cautious because Livia Hatfield is herself a spy. So Xambria suppressed Livia without telling the others, and during her talk with Nicodemus told him, as Livia, that she heard a rumour before leaving Slate that RHC officers were planning to infiltrate a high-level meeting. But before she investigated any further she sounded Nicodemus out on what he reaction would be. These were patriotic countrymen, and 'Livia' would not want to betray them to certain death. Nicodemus reassured her that he would give them the chance to join the Obscurati, if they were willing.
Xambria’s remaining reservation was the large number of delegates devoted to the Colossus faction. When that stumbling block was removed (albeit in a quite ruthless way), she chose that moment and revealed herself. Having taken the absurdist web from Leon, she believed that she had them imprisoned, so they would have to surrender, not die, and reconsider their loyalties over the term of their imprisonment.
It has to be said that this really was a triumph of wishful thinking over common sense (after all, it was Xambria who killed Lya Jierre, and now she plans to go cap-in-hand to the conspiracy her uncle leads…). But that’s what was going on ‘behind the scenes’ before her Judas moment.
The aim of all this was to avoid two key areas of difficulty:
1. Awkwardness when the players discover Macbannin’s murder plot. My players were intent on remaining undiscovered, and were unlikely to reveal themselves without a nudge. Interestingly, Gupta’s player (roleplaying her sense of indignation and anger towards the Ob, whose actions had caused the death of her family) blurted out a lot of information about Macbannin’s actions when challenging his morality, in such a way that it might have tipped their hand even without Lavanya’s tip-off. This created a lovely confluence of factors that helped a potentially eggy moment develop with greater ease. Leon’s sudden revelation of their true identities was equally dramatic. You should have seen the other players’ faces!
2. Pemberton’s intervention during ‘Splinter Cell’ was something I didn’t really want to use. A great twist, but one that required him to see through the players’ ruse by DM fiat. I wanted to give them the chance to stay hidden and Xambria’s betrayal worked to achieve that. Secondly, it also suggested that the players need not have gone to the lengths of using the mortal possession ritual. There was a ‘come one, come all’ feeling to the Ob convention. Having the duplicant intercepted instead reinforced just how tight Ob security was. And having Macbannin give the players the bomb also meant they an ‘ace-in-the-hole’ should they find themselves in a tight corner. (The explosion still cleared the room and set the flight encounters off.)
Xambria’s treachery really was as dramatically successful as I had hoped. The double-twist that Leon had pulled a fast one and still had the absurdist web was almost as much fun (and gave Xambria’s player a shock of his own). It was a great way of ratcheting up the tension – as we had with Macbannin’s exposure a session earlier. If we’d had to break for the summer on either of those two week, I’d have gone away happy.
Now I just need to decide what the Ob will do with Xambria, who was left behind, along with her clockwork simulacrum. Will they reward her? Make use of her? Or punish her? (Would Lya Jierre even know that it was Xambria who shot her? It was in the back of the head, after all.)
One thought I’m having is that Lya Jierre might show up in Xambria’s clockwork automaton at the end of adventure #9. Or the pair of them might be working together to defeat the unit.
Also – quick question: can eladrin have children with humans?
Anyway, that’s it for now. Might post a few idle ramblings over summer, but who knows if I’ll have time?
