Thank you so much! I really appreciate your well-wishes, and appreciate that you read my silly little write-ups.
I’m back early! My players started bribing me with rewards if I post the adventure write-ups on time instead of five months after they happen. Usually my reward is DM-mandated group 'fun' - this time, I’m making them play a video game about being a florist for the mafia. Anyway, let’s get started.
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Enjoy the discord sticker someone posts every Monday night.
So much happened in Schism that I’m only going to be able to report 1% of everything cool that happened. If I missed anything critical to explain a chain reaction later down the line, I’m just going to have to backtrack, I suppose!
Between adventures, the players experimented with the syringes Lya had on her person. Cleone remembered using it in her past life to report back to the Obscurati, and everyone started to call it “possession juice.” Gatria, who is the kind of neutral that dances on the line between good and evil, thought to try and trap Nic’s soul in Witch Oil. They had The Family find them a “disposable” hostage and used that person to summon Nicodemus, who got to see this version of the party un-disguised for the first time - sans Cleone, who was too afraid to face him. They asked him to “pitch the Obscurati” to them. He asked for a cigarette, and shared some philosophy. A few sentences in, Gatria got sick of him and slit his throat, then held the Witch Oil up to his corpse. Hoya, the Spirit Medium, only heard the hostage’s soul inside. Once again, my party dips their toes into villainy…
Also, the player characters all spontaneously paired themselves off into romantic relationships. Like I said before, I’ve never seen a group who is so allergically uninterested in romance in media pair their guys off so eagerly. Cleone courted Nathan Jierre, now living incognito in the Cloudwood, and bonded over being an enemy to their nation. Y’all already know about Xambria and Hoya, and Antonia Cippiano and Gatria have been an item since the first adventure. Back before I was the DM, the current party NPC, Marcel, got over his backstory crush and found love... in the party NPC back then. At some point during this game I made an offhand comment that Marcel had a partner who was never going to appear because he didn’t matter, and my players made me introduce him. They ended up getting absurdly attached to him and he became a recurring character (even killing Lorcan Kell with them).
...Which introduces a little plotline that shouldn’t exist. See, the previous DM was kind of obsessed with the Deck of Many Things, and introduced it early. Like, Adventure 1 early. The Duchess had it for some unknown reason, and the PCs requisitioned it. Characters would pull from the deck in emergencies – or if they were the chaotic neutral warlock, whenever they felt like it. One of their “pulls” was a Knight In Shining Armor party NPC, mentioned above, who spontaneously sprung into existence. After many shenanigans, there were two cards left over, which I decided to carry into this game as one-use-each party wipe protection. So anyway, now I have this deck in my game, and I have to reconcile it with Zeitgeist lore.
I decided the deck was created from one of the original Axis Seal Ritual Casters’ Wish that he got when the seal was shut 2000 years ago (perhaps he wished to hold on to the fantastical reality-bending magic after the ritual was complete), and the cards are gilded with the gold from the seal. This means that when the axis seal opens, the cards will lose their magic and become useless pieces of paper (the players won’t need wipe protection in Act III, anyway). The Knight In Shining Armor character will become comatose and will eventually die unless the players close the axis seal before the world enters the gyre, at which point they will probably have bigger problems, anyway. But hey, another way to bully my players for the crime of emotional investment!
What I’m saying is we had a wedding between 6 and 7. I’ve made up a bunch of docker-related lore that isn’t in the book and sold it to my players as canon, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me. One of these little lore facts is that docker weddings often take place on piers or boats with a captain officiating (I know that isn't a thing in real life, but it is here!), that attending arcane casters cast dancing lights as a gift, and that the wedding party must throw themselves into the ocean to ward off bad luck against the happy couple. When Gatria refused to do this, Antonia threw her off the dock herself. The party used their wealth to buy out every bar in Bosum Strand and threw a party that Flint will remember for awhile.
Back on track:
Adventure 5, Schism: Ghost Council Rules Ghost Council Rules
In which my players’ hatred for Alexander Grappa skyrockets to comical levels! Also, they fail in hilarious ways! A player character will die! Sort of!
We did the flash-forward “prologue” at ObCon, which melted everyone’s brains. We had to end the session early because they took so much mental whiplash that no one could continue to play. The players ended up choosing Ken, Oscan, Livia, Gran, and Xavier. And I did something that was extremely risky but paid off dividends – I let Amielle’s player from Bonds of Forced Faith take control of her indefinitely. I knew she would put a lot of passion into the character, since she knocked it out of the park in BoFF. I handed over everything she needed to know about Amielle- her proposal, her demo, and what she knows about Nicodemus (but not Roland), her plans for getting the guards on her good side- and then relinquished her from my control. I said that one could interpret Amielle’s character many ways (Zeitvice plays her as a “I failed at my job so well, so that no one else would do it and succeed” mole, for example), but how she wanted to play her was up to her. And without telling her why, I told her that Amielle and Catherine need an excuse to work together in a later adventure, so play nice, but what she does with Amielle other than that is no longer my concern. I did NOT hand over Roland to his player, because she hadn’t figured out he is part of the Ob yet, and Harkover was played by a guest.
She decided that Amielle either genuinely wanted her proposal- to carve out a perfect future exactly the way she envisioned, with no major compromises- or nothing at all, and was willing to betray the Obscurati to get what she wanted. She spurned the ploy of the Watchmaker’s Watchmen, and eventually approached Reed MacBannin and formed the Watchmaker’s Arboretum, creating a pastoral clockwork future instead of a technologically-driven one. In our BoFF, if you recall, the Contessa and Roland were lovers-to-enemies, and had a bloodline that eventually led to Reed. In our game, Amielle looked out for Roland’s secret witch-child before she died, and in death, watched over the MacBannin family over generations through general hauntings or living-person possession. The irony of her best friend being the descendant of the Red Contessa is not lost on her.
She didn't even bother replying to my information packet, she just sent me this image.
Back in the present, the party received Alexander Grappa’s letter, and immediately proposed they kill Alexander and just keep Leone hostage, so deep was their grudge. Sometimes players tell me that they share stories about our game with friends and family – someone said called their Mom and told her about our adventures during Cauldron Born, about Alexander and his metal boys, and their mother just shook her head and said “some people shouldn’t be parents.” I could never imagine talking to my mother about tabletop RPG, so it was quite the mental image. I think about it all the time. And so do the players! They hate him!
The party met with Roland and completely bought his bluff that he was just concerned about Flint’s wellbeing while they frittered away the King’s gold. They spent some time trying to politically bully Catherine Romana into proposing some anti-pollution legislation for Flint, since she claimed to be so concerned about industry and the fey – I told them that this bill would be pending parliamentary approval and wouldn’t happen before the end of this adventure. They also got the Web from Copperhat by seeing through Beshela’s lies (at least one party member has a +30 in any given social skill…). Nobody thought to sense motive on Copperhat, though!
They found Alexander at record speeds and curbstomped Leone, but not before I tricked everyone into drinking the poison at Joe Hobner’s place. I would have had first-move PC kill too, since Gatria failed her Fort save against Robert the Black’s subsequent assassination attempt, but I was feeling nice, and just paralyzed her for thirteen rounds. Getting a bad roll on the first move in Initiative that led to instant death felt cruel, so I warned them that if it happened again, someone would actually die this time. (
Psst… This is foreshadowing for later.) Yeah, I’m a pushover, but I need Gatria to be around when Morgan Cippiano goes on trial in Adventure 11, because it will be delicious.
Not much to say about the rest of the hunt, but the players absolutely loved The Strange One and his Kobolds. They made great use of them, and Mona said she was going to arrange all the kobolds in a row and give them each a little kiss on the head.
Once the party had Leone in tow, they interrogated Alexander and took their frustrations out on him. Gave him the full prisoner treatment and kept him Webbed at all times.
Courtesy of the transcript!
The ice caverns were pretty straightforward. The players decided to put Xambria into her new robot body rather than sacrifice the human researcher, though it took them a moment. A PC gifted Xambria a sugar glider to keep her company while Hoya was away, since she was lonely. I was pro-giving Xambria a sugar glider.
You should give Xambria a sugar glider. (But if you get one in real life, you should get two.)
The party made Alexander swear that HE would free the Lich, and then immediately webbed him once Leone was cast out of the body ("No, stop, are you going put me in the w-"). The Lich raged and said they had made a deal, but they answered that the person he made a deal with was gone, now, so tough luck. I made a show of the Lich casting something, but nothing happened. The party wondered if the Lich could still get to Alexander, not knowing that the Lich was actually powerless. It was a tense trip back to Crysillyir.
And flash forward, again, to ObCon! Things immediately got interesting. I decided that I would let the players see who the duplicant was from the get-go, because I knew the latent threat of Pemberton watching them would ratchet up the tension. I also let the party form a little philosophical club to go to the speeches with, instead of forcing them to go with just Erskine. Without hesitation, Hoya invited Pemberton, anyway. Everyone watched on as she did this, utterly speechless. When she returned, the party conversation basically went like this:
“Who you got there, Hoya?”
“The duplicant. I’m curious about him.”
“Did it cross your mind that he is probably Pemberton? Why are you letting Pemberton into the party?”
“…OH NO.”
It turns out the player didn’t make the connection, while everyone else thought it was obvious and didn’t need to be said. We wrote this off in character as Hoya being naïve. Either way, it was extremely funny.
Pemberton-As-Erskine has joined the party! A little parody of the rpg Deltarune.
This obliviousness happened
again when Zoltan died. After some sleuthing, the players figured out MacBannin was responsible, and Mona immediately ratted on him to Nicodemus. I gave her a ‘are you sure you want to do that’ DM warning by having Nicodemus ask her (who was playing Ken) to testify about the Bonds of Forced Faith ritual, so they could publicly banish MacBannin in front of the entire convocation. She refused… but then narced on him
again! when MacBannin came by to kill Leone and admitted he was a mole. Mona ran out of the room and cried for Daddy Nic, instead of hearing Reed out. Afterwards, the rest of the players asked what the heck she was thinking. Turns out, she just didn’t put together he was on the party’s side… in spite of me saying it twice. Seriously, we even had a cutscene of Amielle asking Reed what the heck he was up to when she wanted to form a coalition. Whoops? Something about this adventure just melted my players’ brains.
So MacBannin fled and did not help them in the final fight. I decided since he didn’t get his big hero moment, he’ll be back for Adventure 9.
(For what it is worth, Cleone, as Livia, invited Gardienne de Cherage, and Xavier invited the Danoran spy who was chummy with him in the introduction. His name escapes me.)
To be honest, the people they chose to invite into their group surprised me, because I had expected them to mingle with Luc Jierre, Ottavia, Bree, and Zo (the B-team member from Cauldron Born who broke Ottavia out of jail and fled with her). The players were extremely attached to them in Adventure 4, and were overjoyed to see them again. Still, I had them exchange ideas before the vote. Luc admitted he was most interested in Colossus, which frustrated Ottavia. Luc asked the party for their opinion, and Hoya, pretending to be Oscan, eagerly agreed that Luc was right, and Colossus was the best choice, which embolded Luc.
…(DM giggling).
Finona Duvall was with Luc’s group, as well! Unlike Luc, Ottavia and Bree, she was utterly uninterested in engaging in the philosophies of the Ob, and was looking for a way to get out of dodge after the party abandoned her at the train station in Adventure 4. The party caught her alone, admitted who they were, and she punched Gatria in the arm and wept angry tears. Still, she agreed she would leave with them at the end of the convocation. She voted for Colossus in round 1 on a whim - I knew the party would be unable to resist saving her if she got caught up in the massacre.
I’m backtracking a bit, but during the proposals, the players kind of… bullied Catherine. They picked on her a lot this adventure, for some reason. They all thought her ideas were bad, and let their villainous personas, particularly Oscan and Ken, lay into her. But Oscan voted for her anyway, even after everything he said… even after pouring wine all over Catherine to make her leave when she aggressively tried to court Livia’s approval. Mixed messages.
The party liked Cula’s proposal, but weren’t fond of Han’s. The general consensus of the party at this point is that modifying the planes isn’t evil, but the Obscurati will require a change of leadership for it to be truly good. If they pursue this idea, I will have Nic accuse them of taking credit for his plan, and letting him take the fall for the evil he had to do to get them there, but we’ll put a pin in this for now.
Cleone and Nic got their quiet walk on the beach during the interrogations. And of course, Hoya got the Humble Hook, and according to the players this was one of the best and most memorable moments of the game. No one was expecting it, and everyone was shocked- shocked! – to realize that when I had Ashima Shimtu liken Hoya to Triegenes, it meant I had planned to give Hoya the hook “as far back as our second adventure”. C’mon, guys, as if I haven’t been planting seeds for Adventure 12 and 13 this entire game… Anyway, maybe they will tone the villainy down for a bit.
Without rambling on about every choice, that more or less brings us to the end of the convocation.
EVERYONE must read the absolutely raw speech Amielle’s player gave before the final vote. I knew that she wouldn’t sway any NPCs (other than Gardienne), but the PCs had a freaking crisis. Were they doing the right thing by opposing the Ob? Letting an enthusiastic player be Amielle is possibly my DM masterstroke.
Original image by catcrumb.
Catherine, having been needled and bullied by the party the entire adventure, ineffectual at gaining the mass support she needed, and realizing her power was slipping away, had a mental breakdown during her final appeal. I delivered the same speeches she gave in the book, but with a wild, fraying edge. Everyone fell completely silent (in real life, and in game) until Vicemi began the vote. The party tried to stop it, claiming the mental stress had been too much and they needed to delay, but Nicodemus forced it to go on. I made a show of someone dragging the near-unconscious Alexander from the medical wing to cast his vote. When it came time for Finona to vote, she lost her nerve and freaked out – while it wasn’t verbalized, everyone could sense that something very bad was going to happen if they didn’t vote for the ‘right choice’. Gatria, in a rare moment of kindness, held her hand, calmed her down, and told her to vote for the same thing she did (Watchmakers).
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Thank you for enjoying our silly little memes.
Due to the party’s meddling, Colossus did not get a supermajority. Miller’s Panarchists came in second, and Watchmaker’s Arboretum third. But if Colossus’ votes weren’t counted, Miller’s Panarchists would win – so Nic said he had an idea for how to solve the problem, and then began the Blue Banquet. Hoya passed her Will Save not to be pacified for voting Colossus as Oscan, and the party passed a bluff check to smuggle her out. Luc and Catherine were trapped in the main hall while everyone else was pulled out to the Foyer.
I decided to be extra and let Nic give a little concession speech to a pacified Catherine, where he explained exactly why her type had no place in the Obscurati. Then I cut the session. The players took a whole week to decide if they were going to act to save Luc and Catherine – or as the players call her, “the DM’s trash wife.” I told them that they should make their decision independently of the fact that she’s my favourite character! Seriously, though, the party agreed that she might be beyond saving from her own ideology, but she did not deserve death. As well, nobody wanted to tell her brother (who, remember, is living incognito as a docker in my game) that she had died, especially when they had promised him they would look out for her…
But they also agreed they’d have a clean win if they escaped without causing a scene. So, they left Catherine and Luc to die.
After this, the massacre began, and Pemberton meddled. Because the party had been extremely committed to secrecy, and played their parts in perfect character without any incidents, I let Pemberton not figure out who they were. Still, he mentioned he expected they were here, and when Nic said they were dead, he replied “I’ll believe that when I have their corpses in hand.” I’m hoping to provide “no one is allowed to kill you except for me” vibes from him all through Act III.
Pemberton’s bomb messed Bree up badly and literally vaporized Zo. I felt a little bad for killing her from max HP in one roll, but her player said it was fine; she got what she deserved for betraying the RHC in Cauldron Born.
The party grabbed Ottavia (who was fighting them, trying to save Luc), Finona, Bree, and… Kelland the cat, who had run out of the room after Catherine died (my players would have mutinied if a cat got killed, okay?). They all fled on their ship. MacBannin used the Shadowlisk to stand in the way, but the party outmaneuvered him. On the boat, Ottavia blamed them for Luc’s death, but mostly, she blamed herself for failing to protect him.
The adventure ended with the party visiting Catherine’s brother and giving him Kelland, who was just an ordinary cat now, and offering their condolences. He said nothing and coldly told them to leave. To this day, they wonder if they should have acted differently...
As a fun callback, the King liquidated all of House Romana's assets to pay for the anti-pollution measures, and publicly disgraced her legacy for treason against the crown.
(…I also might have told them that Catherine had a descendant in Zeitgeist 2 who now won’t exist, to which they responded “it’s fine, Clare can be Catherine’s brother’s descendant." A happy ending!

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Thanks so much for reading! See you in a few months for Diaspora, which is already going off the rails.