ZEITGEIST [ZEITGEIST] The Continuing Adventures of Korrigan & Co.

[gideonpepys]

Session 251, Part One

Prologue

There was no time to mourn for Harkover. The threat he had posed to Flint was averted; they had reclaimed the city, snapped the citizens free of the hivemind, and shut off the gas lamps. The first part of Operation Ettin was complete. To begin the second, they needed to get back to Cauldron Hill.

At that moment, they noticed that the clouds over the hill were roiling and parting to form a gap through which the night sky could be seen. It took the form of a raven, perched atop Cauldron Hill, and through it they could see the sparkling glow of the Gyre. It was an incredible sight. (“Just so you know,” said Gale, via messenger wind, “that’s not me.”) Korrigan vaguely remembered something similar to this contained in the prophecies of Nevard Sechim.

The gap did not last long – just a few minutes. Its source was not apparent, not even to Leon. However, Leon was able to say that its appearance coincided with the disappearance of all of the hivemind filaments. But there was no time to ponder the mystery of all this in any depth.

One or two matters could be dealt with hastily before they made for the hill. The dragon had done significant damage to the Coaltongue, but there was no time to waste on repairs. To get to Axis Island in time, the ship would have to set sail now and that was the order they gave.

Nor did they have any time to spare on Linia’s message from the Gyre. All of that would have to wait until they had dealt with the distant capitals.

So they left Delft, Gale and Grimsley to rally the city and made their way back to Isaac’s hideout. There they found Wondermaker, in his dapper gentleman form.

Wondermaker had set up his duplicant tech a short way up the hill. Seven tall, metal chairs in a circle, with all manner of cables and doodads protruding from them. Fitted to the top of each one was what appeared to be a black top hat with a dial at the front, depicting a variety of draconic icons. His assistants – four wererats – were just putting the finishing touches to these mechanisms.

Wondermaker explained that this device would capture a fragment of the occupant’s soul in witchoil, and cause their entire being to be transferred into the corresponding duplicant – identified by the combination of draconic sigils chosen by pointing the three hands on each dial.

“I have also solved the problem of sending someone to help Pemberton,” he said. “But it will require someone with a mastery of spirits and a knowledge of how to command them. A residue of Pemberton’s soul remains in this duplicant, just enough to trace it to any other he has occupied. My guess is there will be others on Pemberton’s island that he has used, and we might be able to glean their draconic sigils, although we won’t be to occupy them.”

Uru was the obvious choice; he did as he was told by Wondermaker and was able to ‘look’ out of the eyes of another duplicant. This duplicant appeared to be underwater. That wouldn’t do. Could Uru access another? The answer seemed to be no. So they tried Pardo’s duplicant instead, and this one scored a palpable hit: Around him, Uru could see many other duplicants; in the distance he heard gnolls talking in their harsh, gnashing tongue. He looked down at the duplicant’s chassis and found the sigils etched there. Using Korrigan’s telepathic network, he was able to relay them to Wondermaker.

This had caused a delay, but there was another problem still to solve: they needed to send seven powerful individuals to seven different places. How could they send Conquo anywhere? He had no soul. “It depends on where he needs to go,” said Cyneburg. “I might be able to take him there.”

Uru would head for Pemberton’s Island; Leon called dibs on Cherage – his old home; Rumdoom wanted to go to Trekhom, for obvious reasons, although Wondermaker said it would be useful to send someone able to use a sniper rifle, to make best use of the towers. Rumdoom shrugged. He’d had some basic firearms training in the military, he wasn’t worried about that. So that left Seobriga, Slate, Alais Primos and Sentosa. Gupta chose Sentosa; Korrigan would go to Slate. Of the remaining two, Cyneburg had only been to Seobriga since the Great Eclipse; Conquo happily said that it was also the only place that he had been, so at least he would know his way around. That left Alais Primos to Quratulain. Poetic justice, perhaps?

At the mention of Sentosa, Wondermaker raised another problem – he had no duplicants there; Leon hadn’t been to Elfaivar since the Great Eclipse; nor had Cyneburg. Gupta asked Gale if she could get her there fast enough. Gale replied no. Then Gupta idly wondered if her connection to Hewanharimau would be strong enough to transport her to the temple. It felt like a vain hope, but it sparked recognition in Linia. “You need no connection to another god,” she said, “for you yourself are divine.” Gale thanked her for the compliment, and said she wasn’t too shabby herself, before Linia insisted: “I know something of what transpired in the Gyre. You became a god there, claiming all aspects of Srasma. Your sundered spirits may not yet have unified, but divinity knows no bounds; you carry its spark within you even now.”

This was something of a shock, and begged questions Gupta did not have time to ask. But she recognised the truth of it at once. Elfaivar was hers, much as the mountains belonged to Uru. But if she tried to go there and succeeded, how would she get back? “Take the sending stone,” said Leon. “I’ll follow the voice and bring you back.”

And so it was decided.

They sat in their respective chairs and final preparations were made.

“Remember,” said Cyneburg. “To free the people, you need to take out the focus of the hivemind. To save them, you have to destroy the lanterns.”

“My telepathic network will keep us all in touch,” said Korrigan. “But don’t use it within a hivemind until your presence is already exposed; even then, use wisely, as you may expose another whose mission is not complete.”

They nodded in agreement. Wondermaker waited for Gupta before he began the procedure. She closed her eyes and meditated for a moment. Then she vanished! Cyneburg whisked Conquo away too. At that, one of the wererats threw a lever and the top hats descended.

“Wait!” cried Quratulain, who realised that, morally, she had come to rely very heavily on Korrigan and now did not want to let him down – released without qualm like a fox in a chicken coop. “Any tips for dealing with the clergy?”

Korrigan gave her a pithy answer, then all were subsumed and awoke… elsewhere.

 

[Crispy120286]

I've actually started re-reading your campaign from the beginning since I started running my own Zeitgeist Campaign. I don't think i'll be any good writing a nice journal like you do. I much more enjoy reading them.

 

[Echolocation]

I read it, mainly to see how someone else interprets parts of the campaign and try to steal idea's , I have read the start and the later sections of the thread but never had the stamina to read the whole thing as it was well underway before I started to look at Zeitgeist

I've read this campaign log in a similar style and with similar objectives to Andrew Moreton. Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences. Along with others in the forum, your ideas and stories have helped me flesh out my version of Lanjyr. I think my players have a better time because of it

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 251, Part Two

The Chancellor's Motorcade

Rumdoom pulled off the sheet covering his duplicant and discovered that it was standing in a closet, along with a couple of others. These duplicants of Wondermaker's were different to Pemberton's - less like a solid skeleton and more like a wire mesh impression of a humanoid form; able to take on the shape of the occupant more precisely. There were a number of implements lying about, including the aforementioned sniper rifle. He took that, and a hammer, which immediately took on the shape of the Stone of Not. He was alone, though. No retinue; not even Hildegaard. There was a certain clarity about that. A sense of purpose and freedom.

The closet was locked so he barged it open and found himself in an impressive public building, where high, vaulted ceilings echoed to the sounds of silence and emptiness. The corridor he was on led to a vast chamber lined with rows of seats and tables facing a large podium. This was the Drakren parliament building. But there was no one hear.

Just then, he heard a cough, echoing from across the way. He followed the noise and came to the main exit, lightly guarded by two dwarves. The saw him and told him to halt. He didn’t halt. Instead he ‘notted’ them both, except the Stone did not ‘not’ them, it merely worked as a hammer might and dropped them to the ground instead.

Out of the building into the street. Signs that a parade had passed; abandoned banners, ticker tape and barriers to keep back crowds that had since moved on. In the distance – cheering: the parade was still going elsewhere. He began to follow, tireless but slow. He’d never catch the parade at this rate. Would his clockwork carriage be accessible, he wondered? He reached into his coat pocket, where it was normally kept, and there it was! His entire being had been translated, belongings and all. Incredible what they could do nowadays.

Following in the carriage caused him to gain on the parade in no time. Soon he began to pass through streets where the crowds had yet to disperse. They began to cheer him too, thinking he was a latecomer. He waved back, just to play along. Ahead, in the distance, he could see the parade itself – huge numbers of soldiers, mechanical and otherwise, along with military hardware on show for the people of Trekhom, who had made them.

Rumdoom didn’t fancy getting too close and pulled up at a nearby tower. There were a lot of them in Trekhom. This one was heavily guarded. Rumdoom jumped out of his carriage, ran into the middle of them, froze them solid with a cold blast and entered the tower.

It was a long climb, but he kept up a stolid pace, reaching the top in about five minutes. The roof was open and gave a commanding view of Trekhom. He could see several lantern towers in the distance, and one close by – about half a mile away, in the centre of a triangular industrial district which the parade was now passing through.

Through his scope, Rumdoom could see that the focus of the parade was a carriage drawn by a spidery Ob contraption. In the carriage sat the philosopher Hastenschrieft Willimarkanova, a tedious and long-winded Ob officer Rumdoom had already had the misfortune of encountering on Mutravir. Alongside him sat Vlendham Heid. Rumdoom felt an unexpectedly strong connection between him and Vlendham, but he shrugged it off. Both Heid and Willimarkanova were waving to the crowd; Heid somewhat lamely; Willimarkanova with regal poise. At this distance, either one of them could be the focus of the hivemind. Rumdoom decided to pop them both.

He took aim with the sniper rifle and focused first on Willimarkanova. He took a deep breath and uttered an eschatological pronouncement to render his aim true.

Then a shot rang out. Not his! It whistled past his head and sprayed him with masonry and golden sparkles, lighting him up like a firefly. He ducked back behind cover and then took a peek out to see if he could locate the shooter. It wasn’t hard; they weren’t attempting to hide: stood in the Ob lantern tower, reloading, was Kvarti Gorbatiy.

Rumdoom shouldered his rifle, grabbed the Stone of Not, and used Fourmyle Jaunt to get to the lantern tower. He found himself in the midst of an Obscurati construct squad that was too slow to react to his sudden arrival. Not so Kvarti, who cracked him on the head with the butt of his rifle and knocked him to the floor. Rumdoom was so taken aback by this turn of events that he lost his grip on the Stone of Not, which clattered across the floor. Rumdoom used another empowered cold burst to freeze the constructs, but Kvarti shrugged it off and fired at point blank range. Rumdoom flailed about him. Where was Thurgid when you needed a weapon? He jumped to his feet as Kvarti reloaded and fired again.

“Stop being such a naughty word!” he shouted at Kvarti with all the volume and ire he could muster. “It’s me! Rumdoom! We’ve butted heads!”

Kvarti blinked and squinted and all of a sudden snapped out of it. “Rumdoom? What am I doing? I am very sorry, my friend. I did not know you.”

“It’s the hivemind,” said Rumdoom. “To snap everyone out of it we need to take out the focus. Come on. You take Willimarkanova, and I’ll take Heid.”

“What? Wait. Why are we shooting at Heid?”

“He might be the focus for all I know.”

“Well, I can tell you, he’s not. It’s Willimarkanova.”

“Let’s shoot him, then.”

“Her. Willimarkanova is a her.”

“Really? I could have sworn she was a man. This new fashion for shaving confuses things. Right, well, let’s both shoot him, then.”

“Her.”

Even before they levelled their rifles, the lantern towers began to glow red. The Ob’s hand must have been tipped by activity elsewhere. Should they take out the lanterns first?

“No time,” said Kvarti, with a nod to a military bunker the parade was heading for. “Now’s our window. But the Ob has granted me the power to teleport between towers, all the better to provide overwatch for our dear leader. I can take allies with me. Let’s shoot Willimarkanova first, then see what we can do about the lanterns.

Rumdoom agreed.

The happy cheers of the crowd, soon turn to cries of fear and dismay as the head of Hastenschreift Willimarkanova was turned into a fine, red mist. Shortly after that, the nearby lantern tower exploded. It was followed by another, then another. It wasn’t long before all the towers and their clockwork defenders were dealt with. Then Rumdoom flew down to address the crowd. …

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 251, Part Three

Alais Primos

Quratulain found herself lying beneath a sheet. She stayed still for a moment, to absorb Korrigan’s response to her question: “Don’t punish people for the faith that came to them with mother’s milk.” Quratulain let her hand stray to her belly. She was not alone after all. Would she be able to nurse her baby, she wondered? Would that be with milk or with machine oil?

When she threw off the sheet, she saw that she was in the top floor of a tower, where a cracked skylight had let in rain, causing the whole of the building’s wooden frame to rot. The floorboards creaked alarmingly as she stood. Glass double doors opened out onto an ornate marble balcony that gave her a majestic view of the city, and the magnificent Grand Librarium, nearby. As everywhere else, snow had fallen and the air was below freezing. Alais Primos did not have the ubiquitous gaslight lamps of Flint, but it did have four lantern towers dispersed around the valley, glowing a docile brown. Another, reddish glow emanated from the caldera of Enzyo Mons, throwing the great cathedral into silhouette. Quratulain noticed that the building looked different – its towers appeared to have fallen.

Before she could ponder this matter, she registered sobs that had been a distant background noise since her arrival on the balcony. They came from the square down below, where a huddle of defiant worshippers knelt and prayed together. No doubt this was in defiance of the Ob - at this very moment city guardsmen approached the crowd from two directions.

Quratulain jumped off the balcony and used her jet boots to slow her descent. On the way down she noticed one of the praying figures was very different from the others: a gigantic man in golden armour, around whom the others seemed to be clustered as if for his protection. He was a clergy godhand and now Quratulain recognised him as Aulus Atticus, whom the unit had left in charge of Alais Primos, after the wresting control from Vitus Sigismund. She remembered that he had been an especial friend and ally of the king, who had made a great impression on him some time before she was rescued from the Vault of Heresies. He stood protectively over his followers as she descended; his piercing blue eyes bespoke great concern for them.

Quratulain spoke loudly to rally the prayerful and warn the approaching soldiers: “The king of Risur has returned and this world will be restored.” Though her words staved off more sobbing, she knew the soldiers wouldn’t listen, but she felt she ought to at least read them their rights before disposing of them. “I have to K before I am Q” she thought to herself. Then she opened fire.

Aulus Atticus joined her, felling the soldiers with radiant fists. When they were done, he said, “I know you. You are the Mechanical Devil of Kurat-Ul-Ain, murderer of hierarchs. But I also know you as a friend and ally of King Baldrey of Risur. Are you here alone?”

Quratulain confirmed that she was, that she and her allies were stretched thinly trying to save the whole world at once.

Atticus told her that Alais Primos was now under the sway of Arch Secula Natalia Degaspare, the venal Ob officer and sole remaining hierarch, whom they had found skulking in the Grand Librarium, back when they came to get the Axis Seal Ritual. Now she presided over the methodical deconstruction of the Cathedral of Triegenes. Hundreds of dominated people clung to scaffolding around the building, chipping free bricks one at a time, then carrying them down so Natalia could disenchant them. She was heavily guarded.

Quratulain decided to head for the cathedral first. Atticus went with her. When they were only halfway up the mount, she stopped to look over the city again and saw where the lantern towers were positioned. The Ob had simply repurposed the old bell towers that had once guarded against the fey, ringing with golden Urim energy to prevent teleportation. Quratulain worried that if they challenged Degaspare, the lanterns would be lit, and there would be no time for them to reach them all. So she changed her mind and decided to start with the towers.

She and Atticus now set off at a run. Both of them were very fast, he despite his golden plate. The first bell tower was surrounded by soldiers. They ran through them as they opened fire, bullets ricocheting off them. Atticus smashed through the locked door, while Quratulain stood behind him deflecting more bullets. Inside was a construct squad. Quratulain drew her pistols and blasted a path through them towards the stairs, which they instantly took. The constructs waved their grindsaw arms and gave pursuit, along with a press of soldiers.

On the narrow bottle-neck of the stairs, Atticus held them. Each of his blows summoned an angel, until there were three blocking the way. Then he joined Quratulain up top just after she blasted the lantern apart. From there, they each used Fourmyle Jaunt to travel to a separate tower. They took those out too, noting that there was no explosion from the first one as there had been in Flint, perhaps because the towers had not turned red yet? Maybe it would happen once they did?

But their actions had been noticed, and warning bells began to peal across the city, filling the air with futile, golden radiance. Through this noise they ran, separately, converging on the final lamp. Before they could get there, it turned purple.

This wasn’t the light of Jiese, but of Av, now the plane of death. At once, Quratulain felt something plucking, tugging at her very essence. She resisted at first, but in the end both she and Atticus succumbed, as did everyone else around them – everyone in the light of this final lantern was drawn out of their own bodies, to float above the streets in spirit form. Quratulain looked down and saw her baby curled up inside her. She was not surprised or perturbed to see its little bovine head.

The common-folk were wailing, freed from the hivemind, but terrified. Quratulain and Atticus stayed focused and flew towards the tower, where – even as they did so – the purple light began to dim as everything real receded.

In this form, they had no way of affecting the lantern. Atticus thought perhaps to summon an angel, but he had summoned all he could this day. Quratulain wondered if she could somehow reverse the power of her icon of Nem, and render herself tangible? But, no.

So she used her power to calculate an answer from all of the available data and deduced that the only way to solve this situation was to inscribe another spell on the golden bell, something that, when it rang, would shatter the lantern.

Easier said than done. She had no spells; only guns.

It did not take a predictive equation to realise that she needed to get someone else involved…

End of Session

 

[RangerWickett]

I like the thematic connections in these bits. Q disliking the Clergy and then working with one of them. Rumdoom wanting to assassinate me.

I wonder how the others will play out.

 

[gideonpepys]

I like the thematic connections in these bits. Q disliking the Clergy and then working with one of them.

Me too. I figured they'd choose the ones they did and thought it would work out quite nicely. (Q didn't 'choose' hers, it was the only one left over, but that was fun too.)

Rumdoom wanting to assassinate me.

What do you mean 'me'?

 

[RangerWickett]

It me.

 

[gideonpepys]

Mini-Session 252

DM's Note: I was fairly confident my group would enjoy sitting through each others' solo missions (or, at the very least, put up with it). But it helped that the solos got started around the patchy Xmas/New Year period. As it happens, one of the players was going to a miss their 'slot' in the regular sessions, but a bunch of us were round at his house playing Gloomhaven, so I ran his solo mission at the end of that.

Sentosa

When Gupta first translated herself into the Temple of Hewanharimau, her senses seemed to be magnified by the act of invoking her own divinity. Although the temple was dark and quiet, she could sense turmoil, noise and arcane energy without. Her mundane senses registered the immediate stench of death. Bodies littered the floor of the temple; more dead eladrin. Gupta saw that they were covered in disfiguring buboes: a plague had taken them. She stood in wonder and realised that this plague had been introduced deliberately. Maybe one or two of those quarantined here were still alive, but they remained beyond her power to heal them.

Just as she made to leave, a light bathed the chamber. She turned to see a bright object hovering above the altar, over the bowl full of tiger’s blood Gupta had once drunk from. It was the arsenal of Dhebisu, which once belonged to Uriel. It’s presence her served to confirm his absence; Uriel would not be returning from the Gyre, it seemed.

Gupta reached out and claimed the arsenal.

She went outside, and found a raging storm and rains so heavy she could barely see her way. There was no one close by, so she oriented herself and headed for the Temple of Srasma. As she went, despite the storm, she could see that some of the buildings here in Rumah Terakir had been restored to their former glory; or rather, had been supplanted by their echoes in the pocket plane of Sentosa, when the plane had been ‘emptied’ by the Great Eclipse. She also noticed glyphs of warding and other, physical landmines that ought to have been hidden from her, and was thereby able to avoid them. “How are you able to sense all these things?” asked Xambria, but Gupta did not know.

As she negotiated her way through the muddy streets, a pair of rajput emerged up from hiding and challenged her. They were weary and twitchy, but slightly mollified when one of them recognised her. He went to speak to the matriarch while the other waited with Gupta. She maintained a military professionalism and in that way, coaxed him to open up a little. He told her that the forces of the Obscurati were camped in the jungle just outside Sentosa. (They were calling it ‘Sentosa’, then, this mish-mash of two cities.) The glyphs and mines served as their only ‘wall’, but there were enough humans – ‘over ten thousand’ – that they could enter the city at any time. Instead, they waited for the matriarch to surrender, while subjecting the populace to a variety of horrors: First, they bombarded the outskirts, which was why they were abandoned now; the matriarch could raise magical shields, but only in a much smaller area. Then came the storm, which had raged for weeks. And the humans had sent a plague, too…

This part of his story was interrupted when the other rajput returned. The matriarch wished to speak with Gupta, and so they led her through to the centre of the half-ruined city, to the foot of the Temple of Srasma. They passed by the remaining inhabitants along the way, who came out to look at her despite the storm. They were exhausted and starved. Most were clustered in homes beneath the great tree of the Akela Sathi, which made Gupta think of poor Helandra.

At the foot of the Temple of Srasma stood a magical dome of force. Inside was Athrylla Valanar and her closest advisors. Gupta could see that the storm had denied them rest and so they had few spells remaining. They were helpless. The Ob forces could sweep in and take them at any time.

Though weary, Athrylla remained beautiful, proud and austere. “Gupta Porras. I last saw you leaving Sentosa in the company of Kasvarina Varal. " (It was nice of her not to mention Helandra's murder.) "Our situation since then has deteriorated somewhat. Can you give me a reason not to regret my decision to free Kasvarina?”

Gupta said that those responsible for the Great Eclipse were camped outside the city. Kasvarina was now a foe to them, not an ally.

“Shortly after the initial bombardment that began this siege,” said Athrylla, “a child messenger came to Sentosa bearing a letter. It purported to be from Kasvarina and demanded our surrender. I am to hand control of all the lands that were once Elfaivar over to Cula Ravjahani, who was for many years Kasvarina’s second-in-command at the enclave Ushanti.”

Gupta remembered Cula Ravjahani from the Convocation. She had led the Miller’s Pyre faction, and been a ruthless participant in the purge of the Colossal Conclave. Matunaaga had felled her and taken her vekeshi blade, but he must not have finished the job. (“She’ll be the focus of the hivemind,” whispered Xambria.)

“It was only a few days later that we realized the child had been magically infected with a plague that rapidly spread through the city. We depleted our stock of scrolls and other healing items in a fight against the disease, and those whom we could not cure we quarantined at the temple of Hewanharimau, without anyone to tend them.”

“They’re all dead now,” Gupta confirmed. She noticed as she spoke that one of Athrylla’s older male advisors had been staring at her intently, wide-eyed. He leaned in to whisper to Athrylla who then said, “I am told you bear a spark of the female divine. Not the curse you stole from Hewanharimau - another.”

Gupta told her, matter-of-factly, that she had claimed that spark from Srasma herself. “I am not Srasma,” she said, “I am the god that is needed.”

With that, she raised her hands and shared healing around the dome, restoring the vigour of the exhausted eladrin elders. It was only really a very small thing. Practically speaking, it would not help at all, but it was sufficient to alter Athrylla’s mood to one of positivity and optimism. Maybe Gupta was the answer to their problems after all? So when Gupta asked if there was any way Ravjahani could be convinced to come to Sentosa, instead of dismissing the idea, Athrylla embellished it: “No. But she would come out into no-man’s-land to accept my surrender. …”

*
​

About an hour later, Athrylla Valanar and her retinue walked out through the same gate where the unit had faced the ten-headed-lion, and came to a halt in the deep footprint left before the gate by the colossus, Borne, as he searched for his ‘mother’. Among Athrylla's retinue was an unusually short, female rajput, bearing a very bright, silver spear. (It was most unusual for eladrin to risk their women in combat –perhaps this was a sign of their desperation?)

The magical storm abated suddenly and the tree-line shook, as Ravjahani’s army advanced to observe the surrender first hand. As they stepped out from the jungle, their line stretched out for a mile in either direction: thousands of soldiers drawn from every colony in Elfaivar.

The vekeshi apostate, Cula Ravjahani walked out to meet the matriarch, accompanied by bookpin bodyguards.

“There are no ghost councillors with her,” said Xambria. “But she is the focus of the hivemind.”

Gupta made her mind up to strike before Ravjahani could even begin to speak, but even as her body put her plan into motion – to use the icon of apet to teleport behind her foe – it did so in a way Gupta could not have bidden, nor anticipated. Since the revelation of her divinity, she had noticed a frisson of power within her – as more and more eladrin began to hear that Srasma had returned. (Xambria had said how strange it was to be inside her head right now. Like witnessing a miracle first-hand.)

Instead of teleporting, her body began to grow, to expand, until, in an instant, she towered over twelve-feet tall. Her skin was blue, with green tiger stripes, her eyes blazed with fury; her rajput’s helm became a towering crown; the arsenal a flaming sword. Her other hand reached out for Cula Ravjhani, who quailed and sank to her knees.

When the goddess touched her, her whole personality was stripped away. She was suddenly no one, just like Catherine Romana.

End of Mini-session

 

[RangerWickett]

Gupta does some terrifying naughty word to people she defeats.