Sunday, December 15th 2013, Week 1, Day 1
Jeremiah:
You decide to pay Thorton back in cash, and ask him about the local silversmith. The large vampire is at first hesitant to give you information, but eventually tells you the place you want to visit is 'Black, Yellow, and Silver' in Old Arkham just east of campus. He offers to be your middleman and get what you need, but you find this strange and insist on checking the place out yourself.
-850 USD
As soon as you enter the shop, you can see why Thorton wanted to keep you away. Mixed among the sports memorabilia and beautiful handcrafted silver art is allot of Chaos Circle paraphernalia. As you examine it, a voice rings out from the back.
"Reverend Williams then? I suspected you would show up in spite of Thortons best efforts." A tall man dressed in well worn smiths clothes stands behind the desk.
"I told him you can't keep a Priest of Aijorluk from looking into things. It just doesn't work like that. Arkham has suffered much from conflicts between faith and faith, faith and circle, and circle and circle. As long as you keep your torment and forced conversions to people from outside the area and people who clearly deserve it for non-spiritual reasons, we need not quarrel."
You quickly learn that the man is named Felix Silver, and that he runs the shop with his daughter and one of his apprentices. When you express the desire to purchase some silver, he calls up his daughter to make the sale, for as a circle member he technically isn't allowed to aid a religious cause by doing so.
The girl is in her early twenties and looks a bit strange. Her skin has a slight greenish tint to it and her eyes glow crimsion. Her hair is strange as well: a normal brown tone but with strands as thick as spaghetti that seem to wiggle and squirm in a way that seems independed of her motions. You learn, oddly enough, that the cultists daughter is a priestess in the service of Iambtragleop, whom you vaguely recognize to be an outer god, but not one that has any sort of significant following or interests on earth.
She sells you the silver you need, and as after you complete the transaction you ask about ritual supplies. "Oh." She replies. "We handle pretty much all the non-survival needs of priests and cultists here. Let me see you list; I should be able to make a special order for anything we don't have..."
After a quick look at your list, she gives you the rundown. Hemp oil is sold in half gallon jugs for 15 dollars. On the topic of blood they stock Farratrip Ichor for 15 dollars a pint; you know the Farratrip to be weak outer beings typically in the form of a crab. The Juices of a Woozle would have to be special ordered, but the Priestess suggests that they would cost several hundred to several thousand dollars a pint. The store carries the blood of Ogres, which the shopkeep informs you are just barely strong enough to obtain godhood, for 50 dollars a pint, as well as the more traditional blood of the Titan for 1100 USD a pop.
Grade bred goats are sold for 23 USD, and goats bred especially for ritual sacrifice can be purchased for 600 dollars. They don't usualy bother with coffee beans, as those can be purchased at grocery stores. Miracle Coal goes for 540 USD a pound, and the priestess says she can process it into dust for you free of charge.
The store keeps all sorts of garnets and ceremonial weapons on hand, and you can rent the cloak and staff you need for 7 bucks a day and a 75 Dollar Deposit.
The only two items that are troublesome are the Brittle Magium and the Greek Fire. Brittle Magium is tough to come by because there is very little market for it. The stuff has literaly no functional use outside of awakening and unbinding rituals, so many smiths refuse to deal in the stuff out of fear that their client may dabble in forces he cannot control and doom the world. Braver or more pragmatic smiths are hamstrung by the fact that Brittle Magium is expensive to make, and the formula produces more than they could possibly sell in a lifetime. The store could make you a batch of 200 or so wafers, but it would cost one million and two hundred fifty thousand united states dollars to do so.
Greek fire is another troublesome component, as one of its magical properties is that it releases a powerful hypnotic suggestion to guard and protect the formula to make it when it is crafted. Since formulas can be reverse engineered, most people who can make greek fire would never let any out of their possession. Although it sometimes ends up on the merchant network at a profanely high price, ones best bet is to steal it from one of the old Wizarding Houses that trace their roots back to Ancient Greece, or from the goblin pirates who roam the seas of Valor.
-4200 USD
+3 Cloaks worth of silver
Alchemey Shop Search Result = 11
You find a tailor and purchase all the copper and cloth that you need to craft three Star Cloaks without incident.
-300 USD
+3 Cloaks worth of copper and cloth
Returning home you visit the prisoners in the shed outback and get to work interrogating the prisoners in a painful fashion. You learn that the vampires are named Freedia and Heinrich, and that they are members of a particularly nasty minor vampire court that interests itself in turning and... otherwise abusing minors. You learn that most of the rest of their court had already left for a particularly easy going elf colony in another universe where their behavior would be tolerated, and that the two you had captured were simply waiting behind to take the last batch of children over when they were ready.
Disgusted by the bloodsuckers, you turn your attention to the hag. Who quickly reveals information that you find even more disturbing: She had formed her coven using Vich Gor'Teerech as a patron, and was doing his work by elevating children to the significantly less mortal state of Vampire or Kinderhag.
This revelation has some significance. On one hand you might want the hag dead as soon as possible; you doubt your friends would take it well if they found out that you were worshiping the same god who gave to greenlight to that monsterous place they burnt, and the longer she draws breath, the better chance they have of finding out. It also implies, although you are not sure if a god would hold a coven of hags to the same standards and rules as a priest, that she likely has stockpiles of goods out there; You could torture her for their location and go claim them yourself. Also, as she is a servant of an Outer God, you could just release her to earn Aijorluk's favor for protecting a fellow outer being loyalist. Knowing what you know about Aijorluk, you suspect you could torture her for the stuff you want and then free her for twice the divine attention!
+ New Opportunities
With the rest of your days work done, you nap until sunset and get to work making Star Cloaks. You craft your own cloak first, in the name of the conqueror. It comes out perfectly crafted with a deep golden glow, and fits you quite nicely. You then set about making a Fen Fwa cloak for Miles, which again comes out quite nicely and glows a deep starry blue. You are fairly sure it will fit him well enough.
You start working on the third cloak. It starts to take shape as the most beautiful in the set, with a lovely orange glow, but before you can finish it your sewing machine stops working. You suspect it has just overloaded on the cosmic energies involved in the ritual and just needs a rest, so you resolve to finish the cloak later and return to sleep.
-Cloak Components
+1 Vich Gor'Teerech Star Cloak
+1 Fen Fwa Star Cloak
+1 Incomplete Fen Fwa Star Cloak (Grants +2 to the ritual attempt to try and finish it)
Results = 9, 14, and 8
Miles:
The day starts off quite poorly when you attempt to retrieve your stash. You find your old office without any trouble, but when you attempt to open the safe you find it rusted shut. You were half expecting this; up through the second world war your older itterations used a version of the Multidemensional Safe Charm that was susecptable to a particularly nasty variant of mage rust that could only be removed with vintage wine from the casters country of origin. You will either need brute force or expensive french wine to get at your stuff now.
Result = 4
Your stash opportunity has been modified
Although you don't have as much to trade as you expected to have, you prepare yourself for a midday nap and a lucid dreaming field-trip to a foreign market. After a brief dream featuring some of the women in your past lives, you find yourself at a bazaar sitting at the foot of a volcano in some fire elemental universe. You ask around about Woozle Blood, and learn that it is currenttly going for about the equivalent of 1700 USD a pint, but nobody around has any to sell.
Desperate for some beads to work with, you seek out and find the Bulk Man, who happens to be a rather large fire genie. Bulkmen are merchants who trade with the network itself, selling it the magical materials and spells it needs to maintain itself in return for the large amounts of random beaded goods it receives from spells such as your own Force Deposit. The Bulkmen then claim what they find intresting or valuable from their 'bulk order' and sell the rest to the crafters who know the secret of working with beads.
Since you don't have much to offer the genie at the moment, the two of you work out a deal: He sends 20 of his assorted beads to your dream-catcher, and you send him some gems when they are ready. The genie gives you two earth weeks to get him the gems before he sells the contract on the open market. The deal is safeish for both of you; the debt you pick up is small enough to walk out on without too bad of a hit to the balance, and the genie would likely break even or at least come close by selling the contract when and if he loses patience.
You wake up and find the new beads on your dreamcatcher, and a written contract by your bed.
+Contract (Miles owes the Fire Genie 30 Infernal Dubloons worth of gems or twice the amount in other goods and services)
+Enbeaded pair of Truck Mudflaps
+Enbeaded rotting chunk of goat meat
+Enbeaded assortment of tangled power-cords
+Enbeaded fertile kobold egg
+Enbeaded dwarven towercap ale recipe
+Enbeaded knowledge 'Map to the Dragon's Lair'
+Enbeaded half consumed bottle of human blood
+Enbeaded 20 minutes worth of human agony
+Enbeaded set of 7 petri dishes
+Enbeaded set of 5 crude stone clubs
+Enbeaded copper dagger
+Enbeaded powerlevel 1 neutral evil soul
+Enbeaded wagonwheel
+Enbeaded undead bullfrog skeleton
+Enbeaded knowledge 'The basics of doing laundry'
+Enbeaded collection of hotel towels
+Enbeaded primitive firework
+Enbeaded broken toaster
+Enbeaded tray of 6 meat pies
+Enbeaded 15 gallons of beach sand
Result = 10
You spend some time crafting beads into proper gems. This takes a bit longer than you expected; the jump must have put you out of practice, but eventually around bedtime you get your two gems. Jan is already getting ready to tuck in for the night, so you have missed your chance to practice with her.
-Beads
+2 Gems
Tell me what beads you used, and I will give you the details of your gems during reflection. Also let me know if you are loading your armlets and claiming your new spells.
Ritual Results = 14 and 12
Craft: Composition Results = 6
Vortanna
You spend a few hours with the children. Fredric had sent the ones who were still human away to be brainwashed into forgetting what happened and reunited with their families, so only the vampire kids remain. Most of them are some combination of frightened, depressed, and thirsty. You are able to cheer some of them up a little bit with some jokes and games, but decide to make a quick retreat when some of them start eyeing you hungrily.
Deciding to spend the day in the library, you open some books in search of anything relating to your powers, dreams, or fate in general. Again you are at first disappointed. There are casters called Mystics who can sometimes see the future, but they do so with a contract from a living universe that collects secrets; they usually can only see intent and calculate probability, and have no concept of something as powerful as 'fate'.
Likewise looking into the Pattern Spiders proves fruitless at first. You pull out a few indexes of notable arachnid species throughout the multiverse, and although you read about a good number of creatures that could easily give you nightmares, none of them match the spiders in the dreams you already have.
As a last resort, you turn to books about dream interpretation. While you are browsing that part of the library, a title catches your eye.
Vortanna: Dreams on the Weaving of This World's Fate
You pull the book out and find the cover has an illustration of a girl, not unlike yourself, holding a planet in her hand and grinning wickedly. You decide it might be prudent to read that particular book.
It isn't particularly thick, so you get through it in about 3 hours. It is written cryptically, so you can't understand it perfectly, but what you can pick up is almost as disturbing as yesterday's mission; if not more so. Several passages describe your dreams perfectly and in vivid detail, while others seem to refer to your life... and perhaps your future
'She who knows the fate will be born of fool who know naught'
'Ignited and empowered by a dream...'
'It begins in earnest when she comes to Arkham'
'A foe... or more will rise from her five companions'
'The world may not accept its fate, and make out of her a villain'
The last line in the entire book is expecialy unerving, particulary in light of yesterday's events.
'What the bloodrusher sees on the job will be how she judges the world...'
After you finish, you check the publishing information and learn the book was written by a Maya Maliesian, and published in Boston in 1917. Deciding to look into the author, you find a copy of a biography published in 2003. You learn Maya is a Eudemonic Hag and a madwoman who regularly writes jibberish nonsense that many Chaos Cultists and Priests will try to interpret as prophecies. Her most famous work, Vortanna, became exceedingly popular in the 1920s because people thought it prophisized the rise of a hero who would save Arkham from the madness afflicting it at the time. Maya is still alive, or at least she was 10 years ago when the biography was published, and runs a small independent printing and publishing company in Boston where she makes a meager living peddling her own and similar works while occasionally working as a member of a coven.
You ask the libarian if they have any more of Maya's books on the shelves, and he tells you no. Maya Maliesian has very little standing in academic circles, and no school would be caught dead with any of her books. Miskatonic makes an exception for Vortanna, because of the book's connection to the town's history. When you point out your name, and your resemblance to the person on the cover, he agrees that it might be in your best interest to check out some of her other writings nonetheless, and arranges to have more Maya Maliesian books transferred from a nearby public library for your reading pleasure. He also gives you the address to Maya's printing house in Boston.
+New Opprotunity
+Starting in 2 days, you may take a +2 bonus to research on the topics of fate, pattern spiders, your dreams, ect.
Results = 14
Francis:
You wake up, wolf down breakfast, and set about practicing your new spell. It takes a few hours to get down, but it isn't particularly difficult. By late morning, you have gotten to the point where you would feel comfortable using it in battle.
+New Spell Learned
Result = 13
Bundling up and borrowing a sharp knife and some twine from Thorton, you head on outside and practice making stuff from the things in your environment. After a hard day's work you manage to set up a basic shelter, a campfire, and several remotely functional snare traps. Feeling that you have improved as an outdoorswoman, you triumphantly return inside!
+1 Rank in Craft: Survival Crafting
You spend the rest of your day writing a few short pieces on your experiences yesterday. It makes you a bit sad and uncomfortable to write about the Kinderhags, but Thor's symbol in all its glory inspires a pretty triumphant piece of written work.
+2 Magically Potent Writing
Right before bedtime to chug down that potion of Angel Blood the hunter had given you. At first nothing seems to happen, but right before you drift off, a jolt of holy energy flows through you, stimulating your internal reserves! Assuming this is a good thing, you go to sleep.
+New Feature... MUHAHAHAHAHA! That dice was not your friend!
Alice:
After bundling up to face the cold Massachusetts morning, you head out to Old Arkham and begin wandering the streets in search of something intresting. You search a few run down buildings only to find that they have been stripped down to nothing. Eventually however you do find something rather interesting that looks totally out of place from what you have seen in Arkham so far; a black man.
He is working on fixing a motorcycle and not having a whole lot of luck. You approach and introduce yourself, and learn his name is Herald. Herald as it turns out is a licensed Grim Reaper, a professional manipulator who puts the sick and dying out of their misery, and sees that their souls are used in a positive way. He had just finished attending to a dying bum who has lived in Old Arkham for years, and now his bike wouldn't start.
"I hate to be a burden miss, but if I can bum 200 bucks off of you for a teleport out of town, I'll send you some of my brother's performance texts. You are a stage mage right? You look like one anyway..."
Result = 9
After dealing with the reaper, you head to the library and spend the rest of the day buried in your books. You learn to your dismay that Vampireism is almost impossible to cure once it reaches its final stages. Although this normally takes some time, a good alchemist can ensure that this happens in a matter of hours or days. You suspect that is what the hags had the brothers doing.
You do however find an interesting, if not a bit expensive, ritual that uplifts a vampire from a weak or common bloodline and turns it into a more powerful creature with fewer natural weaknesses. You make a copy of the pages describing it, in case you ever want to learn it to help one of the kids; or heaven forbid one of the bloodrushers.
+Opprotunity to Learn Vampire Improvement Ritual
Result = 18
Learning to improve vampires in such inspires you look into your own human form and how it can be improved. As you head to the front to check out the card catalouge, the peridocal rack catches your eye. Apparently there is such as thing as the 'New England Shapeshifter's Quarterly'. You grab the latest issue and give it good read.
The magazine offers information on a spell in great detail for each magical framework each issue. This quarter's spell for performance mages is a powerful Shadow Form transformation. The spell looks like it would be rather taxing to cast, but you are pretty sure that it is not beyond your ability level. You also take note on a small article that mentions that several shapeshifter fraternities and sororities are holding tryouts for those willing to sacrifice some of their human identity to gain more power or additional forms. The tryouts, as it turn out, run this Monday through Friday...
+Opprotunity to learn a new spell
+New Exploration Opprotunity
Result = 18
Leilani
You start the morning out trying to cheer yourself up by researching the lighter side of the magical world. You end up finding a 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' style book that consists solely of stories written by people recounting their first experiences with magic. Some of the tales are touching, some are quite tragic, and some are downright inspirational. You finish your reading feeling a bit better than you did when you started, but without having learned anything particulary substantial or useful.
Result = 6
Your next topic is the history of Arkham, which turns out to be quite a lengthy topic indeed. Arkham was founded early in the colonial era and thrived alongside rival city Boston for a good many years. By the time of the civil war, it was the fifth largest population center in the country, and rivaled Dublin and Belfast for having the western world's most diverse and powerful population of casters.
The town however suffered greatly during a 50 year stretch from 1880 to 1930. Monsters would attack, prominent citizens would go mad and butcher their families and neighbors in cold blood, natural disasters would reign rampant, and various religions and branches of the Chaos Circle would clash openly in the streets. It got so bad that in 1919 The Court of the Ancients sealed the town from mundane access and scrubbed it from mundane history completely, leaving only a handful of semi-fictionalized accounts of the Arkham, its glory, and its madness behind.
By the time things calmed down again, all that was left of the once great city was a sleepy college town.
Blame for the madness was shuffled all around. The town at the time was home to many followers of the insane and wicked god Azathoth, who was popularly named as a culprit. Azathoth's followers claimed their god was defecting to the Chaos Circle and was trying to kill or disenfranchise as many of his followers as possible so that he could abondon his godhood to do so.
Others say that the glorious bastard god Fen Fwa, who may or may not have been a meer servant of Azathoth at that time, was matching wits in a high stakes game of chess with the legendary chaos cultist Courage, who lived in Arkham during that time, and that both parties were using the town and its people as pawns. Older Priests of the star god have admitted there is some truth to this theory, while most of Fen Fwa's new age clergy adamantly preach that the Mother Planner has been a god since before the beginning of time, and a benevolent one at that.
Some say the fault all belongs to the Cultist Courage, who keeps the Dread Cthulhu as an apprentice and perhaps an even stronger creature as a master. The man himself even admitted that a 7.0 earthquake in 1902 was an unfortunate side effect of his communication with others in the circle.
Problems were amplified by the mercenaries and 'heroes' who came to town to investigate, and would more often cause more chaos than they solved. Sellspells who were desperate or bored would rape and rob openly in the streets with little fear of reprisal in most cases.
To make things even worse many religions, chaos cults, and old families would take advantage of the situation to settle old blood feuds and blame the violence on higher powers.
Contemporary experts believe that the troubles were a combination of some or all of the above factors, and caution against trying to lay blame on any one party; even today there are beings in Arkham who remember the crazyness, and there role and loyalties relating to it. Blame the wrong party within earshot of the wrong crowd and you could still wind up dead in a gutter.
By the time you finish, you feel that you have a firm enough grasp on local history to more effective when it comes to exploring the ruins around town.
Permanent +1 Bonus to Exploring Old Arkham
Result = 9
You finish off your studies for the day trying to learn about some new illusion spells that work at a longer range; you find a good handful, but sadly they are all for performance mages and not conjurers.
Result = 6
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