Session Eight: the next morning, the group sought the dragon. They played Parcheesi and drank tea with him, and the sluagh was saddled with the responsibility of informing the sidhe that she was pregnant. There was a spectacular fight between the sluagh and the sidhe triggered by the sluagh referring to the sidhe as a “fucking slut.” They fled from the dragon after Lady Caroline yelled “It’s safe, you cowards!” and offended the dragon who thought she was implying that he was a coward. They rode on and hit freezing cold winter. The group camped by a cairn. Polly took Tom to Loco Angeles and the sluagh was deeply grieved to lose her companion. The party went through a frozen pass and was… freezing cold. Things were relatively unremarkable. During a scouting expedition, the sluagh spotted a campfire 300 feet up a cliff. The satyr tried and failed to reach it. They returned to their camp spot (next to a magical sword embedded in a rock) and informed the others of its presence. The eshu had the sluagh lead him to the campfire. He Hopscotched on up to the campfire, leaving the troll and the sluagh at the foot of it. When he returned, they went back to the camp. That night, while the sluagh kept watch, she was lured out of the protective circle of the camp by the sound of a soul-tuggingly beautiful song. When she returned, she and the eshu talked, and Calistan told the sluagh that he would be killed. The sluagh promised not to say anything to the rest of the group. They rode on, in tense silence because the eshu was brooding and the sluagh wasn’t speaking and the troll is a mute. The group came across an overhang with living shadows and chased them off with a Molotov cocktail. The entire mood of the group had really crashed and burned by this point, which set them up perfectly for the eshu’s dramatic death. The man from the campfire appeared with a horn and blew, chasing off the snowstorm around them. The eshu charged him down on Dmitri, after which the glacial walls collapsed and closed him off from the rest of the party. The remaining group members were beset by icelings. The sluagh couldn’t do anything about them, because the horn blast completely wiped her out and made her bleed from the ears. The troll, the satyr, and the sidhe fought off the icelings… which left them sitting in a frozen wasteland grieving for a dead companion.
Player’s Note: two words… fucking ridiculous. The sluagh lost her butterfly, her eshu, and possibly her hearing. She was further burdened by this quest and saw yet another sacrifice to its success. She’s grieving and furious and guilty…I think. I’m not sure how to treat her at all right now, because I’m an emotional person and she’s not an emotional character. This was a terribly tense, angsty session and it made me hate everyone. After two light-hearted, fluffy sessions abounding with humor, this one intentionally ripped the characters up. Caroline cried really hard after this session was over… and I admit, I cried, too. The Revenge of the Gamer Chicks laid down a term for this kind of thing, “killing Gabriel,” after an NPC in a Mage game who was actually mourned over at his death by both the players and the characters. Today was a “killing Gabriel” day.