The Gangsters Campaign/Session 9

Vec + Swanwallow

* People are getting murdered in the waters!
* There are fish-people who want to resurrect Adalna, using these medallions
* Some other people (thannasids) want to resurrect this other guy – the Usurper
* Mage Imperium: not very egalitarian. Promise was not prosperity, but safety. Spread out into the cosmos to take over a dangerous & hostile universe, and protect it; success came through intelligence and scholarship. Incan-style authoritarian system. Upper class (Mage Princes) outweighed by a factor of 1,000-100,000, and themselves significantly outnumbering the Seers.
	+ People were generally cheap labor for the government.
	+ Everyday people still get a better deal under the brutal Fialta system (e.g. freedom of movement)
* Her thing is sharing knowledge with chosen people (Seers) – beginning from medieval style technology, maybe some basic travel between planets. Radical imbalance of information (faster-than-light travel) – most of the threat was eventual defectors from the Mage Imperium itself. So conditions for a second Mage Imperium are not there; it’d take a “cosmic cataclysm” for something like the Mage Imperium to emerge again.
* Privately, tells Jerry he’s interested in figuring out how to redirect power from the medallions …. “for the goal of self-government,” Jerry presumes

Randolph + Lenny + Don Prektanos, in Prektanos’s new secret hideout in a tenement basement

* Shows him a letter about potential alliance between Prektanos and half-orc Bob, anti-Trenchies. Need to find an orc who knows about it
* Don Prektanos is scared. He’s having all of his food tasted
	+ Lenny has a very dainty bite of chicken
* Gertrude going rogue: someone fairly high up in the Aeldrum government was apparently using her. Suspect that she’s dead now, or at least in jail. Had plenty of dirt on Prektanos and he hasn’t been hauled off, so probably the betrayal was about something else.
* Don Prektanos pulls Randolph aside and implies that we lean on Lenny’s father, a close friend of Half-Orc Bob for the information we need

Harriet @ Vec’s

* Weird connection: Info is transmitted into medallion from the flesh to the reattached leg, but no loop back
	+ When it’s detached, leg’s internal structure collapses in on itself. “You likely want to dispose of this forthwith, as it is an incredibly awful occult item.” -DM “...Wait. I could have a use for this.” -Harriet
	+ Slightly strange things happen when it’s incinerated. Vec is slightly stressed.
* The new leg is an aetheric device… semi-autonomous; can just strap on with basic medical knowledge. Jerry calibrates it super well to Harriet; she’s most of the way back to full functionality of her old leg
* Harriet reaches into the incinerator to retrieve her medallion (it’s on fire.. Maybe there are more down there???) until Mnimi tells her that one’s spent

Jerry meets Randy

* Harriet suggests Randy write up his interrogation questions in advance, or at least outline them
* Jerry suggests that’s a very government, bureaucratic move. Also, this typewriter will learn the sequence of your soul, to prepare you for assimilation.
* Harriet thinks it’s just slightly possessed, and so writing something up would probably make it more forceful. Half-orb Bob should write up his confession on it.
* Randy is pretty sure Jerry’s at least slightly right, and Harriet is full of it.
* Lenny is sent off for food. He’s bringing some back, which is good, because Vec only stocks oatmeal (food of the proletariat)
* Lenny’s father is pretty close with Half-Orc Bob. Randy proposes pretending to poison Lenny to get info from his father. Does Vec have horse tranquilizers?
* Generally, Half-orc Bob’s gang is like a protectorate of Prektanos’s – exempt from Prektanos’s taxes etc., but has to get his signoff to start a gang war
* The letter they took off the cop was not in the same hand as the cop’s; appears to be a woman’s handwriting, which Vec could recognize if he saw it again
* Lenny talks to his dad about lots of food and neighborhood goss and also about linking him up with Randy
* Jerry interpreting the medallions / mazes: maybe could make arbitrarily complex arrangements using multiple medallions

Off to Lenny’s dad’s place!

* Kind of a squalid tenement… with a shack on top!
* 2-3 story tenement but it’s all the same apartment!
* Appears to be a clean, safe neighborhood, if poor
* Lenny’s dad is very big. He’s also super proud of Lenny and his budding journalism career.
* Has a big Aeldrum flag hanging in his place… modified ATC, crossed with a rifle and a lance. It appears that he was a drop-trooper – there to ransack, instill terror, and break the morale of the Fialta.
* Does Randolph know him? Ought to, but hasn’t run across him.
* He’s not proud of being a shock trooper, but is proud that that’s how he got into that place. Unlike most, he probably served enough time (because a tough gig) to earn citizenship during the war. The fact that he owns a home is pretty good – he’s proud of that. “Pull yourself up by the murderous bootstraps, kind of thing” – Quay
* Lenny is a budding food columnist, they say. He got shot [at] “because they were doing photos” for the top of the column
* Randy says they’re investigating deaths among the Trenchies – and he’s nervous, but only because it sounds dangerous for Lenny
* Randy shows him the letter – he says he doesn’t talk shop with Bob, but doesn’t think it would be a good thing for him to do.
	+ This neighborhood is safe because of some kind of protection. Back in the day, that was probably Lenny’s father; it’s likely that he brokered the arrangement between Half-orc Bob and Prektanos, and would be unhappy to see it violated
	+ Asks for confirmation “for the story” – he can’t provide it. Anyone else who could?
* Bob has friends who work with the wharf gangs. He was planning something big

Lenny and his dad (Rich Craw) continue to be really dang heartwarming

Harriet and Jerry bond about occult things

* Jerry claims he wants help with the medallion mazes; Harriet decides on an agent-based model
* The typewriter has really good equation handling, so Harriet starts doing the work on there. And then she keeps going, for hours and hours, breaking her fingernails, fingertips bleeding, until the typewriter drains her of mental & physical energy and she collapses (3 days of work in 12 hours… this sounds strangely familiar)
* Turns out she’s actually devised a pretty good model of blood flow through the mazes

Pontooners visit: Vec & Mnimi visit the siblings (ex-barjacks)

* They are either doing or have approved of any theoretical dredging in the area
* Vec goes inside to wait for the lieutenants
* Mnimi hides under a wooden walkway, and directly over them passes the veiled entity, thousands of hexagonal teeth grinding against each other. The veil is a sensory apparatus, seeping through cracks in the wood, almost finding Mnimi… but not quite.
* Lieutenants (Allan & Rebecca) show up and they’ve aged prematurely – totally exhausted, smoking and blinking in unison
* Vec asks about the Trenchies working with Half-orc Bob…
* Allan is stuttering… likely because he cannot or will not give his full attention to Vec. he doesn’t necessarily \*want\* to be … it’s like he’s fighting something, a problem consuming his attention.
* Offers to introduce Vec to “the boss” – Mnimi realizes it’s the veiled buddy; Vec doesn’t know yet
* Their attention wanders again and Vec takes the opportunity to ask again
* Someone took the tapestry of a will and wove it into space… so that this thing, no matter what you did to it, would remain bound tightly to reality. If you wanted to shield yourself from a god, this is what it would look like.
* This is an intelligence recorded and maintained through a collection of artifacts very much like the medallions.
	+ Is it the souls? The souls are the medium. The medium is not the product. The souls are not the point.
* What are you doing here, and what are your intentions?
	+ I am the promise of the heir to come. I am the promise and the seal that Hieranthotat will walk again.
* It starts absorbing Vec, who backs up… it hisses, don’t you want to know how to outlast the gods? And, guys, he kinda does.
* Mnimi terrifies Allan & Rebecca for long enough to distract the veiled thing, who releases Vec (and slips him the mirror), and he runs.
	+ ...but it senses Mnimi, and slips down through the floor to her, trying to envelop her. The terror she feels and the terror it senses ricochet off each other, driving her completely insane: the unity is broken.