The adventure begins at a DART light rail station in Dallas near Love Field… on one side, the Yakuza… on the other, KBZ (a psychotic Korean gang). In the middle? Two pretty, cute, Japanese girls.
It just goes downhill from there.
How we got there
Midori, who works at the Meido Kafe, came to Ren with a … problem. She needed to get to Nevada and totally avoid any Yakuza entanglements. As Han said… Well, that’s the trick isn’t it?
Everything seemed going to plan as the girls waited at Love Field for the Southwest flight 185, heading out from Love Field… when Ren noticed a few faces she recognized. Yakuza faces. However she also noticed KBZ faces as well… something was going and it just wasn’t worth her life to be around to find out what.
She panicked and calls Conor who then contacts his “Fire Support” (Elena) to come with. She hasn’t patrolled Love Field in a while, so she agrees. Conor tells Ren to stay out of trouble, and that he’d be there in 15 minutes. Ren threw up a Glamour veil and fled with her friend.
Ren and Midori fled the airport to the DART Rail (planning to head to DFW and get a flight out at the other airport) when suddenly… the discover that the DART Rail station is “the place to be” at dinnertime.
So back to the point when the gunfire started… and the lightning bolts!
When the train pulled in, everything had just gotten tense. Matthew stepped off the train and looked up to see two groups of asians with guns drawn and some kind of red skinned man-thing with lightning crackling from his hands! Fun.
Ren pushed Midori into the train, and Matthew establishes a defensive shield to protect them and then Mr. Lightninghands threw his bolt of energy at the Yakuza. Officially at this point, the solid excrement had hit the overhead air circulation device.
The heroes worked to get innocent bystanders out of the way and out of the line of fire of these two gangs shooting bullets (via an emergency exit window on the other side of the train) and hexing the technology all around them (especially the cameras). All seemed well when the Yakuza started to flee and the heroes heard the voice of Wani… one of the nastier members of the local Yakuza talking to Ren.
However, it wasn’t until Wani’s head disconnected from his neck and he went all horror movie creature on everyone that it really got nasty. To say that most of the heroes “wigged out” would be an understatement. You see… Wani is Jade Court.
The heroes were having none of it so Conor let into the creature’s floating guts with his powerful punches and Elena put a bullet into its chest viscera. The Koreans had caused the Yakuza toughs to flee, and Mr. Lightninghands came around to see the “fun” over on the other side of the train. Perhaps discretion is the better part of valor because Wani fled the scene in a dramatic way… his “body” dissolved into ectoplasm and he fled straight up and into the sky!
The heroes fled the scene, leaving one of the poor bystanders stricken by the trauma of seeing a Jade Court monster in all its “hunting form” glory for the police to find. Then they beat feat for Conor’s M-Streets apartment (the nearest of their various “safe houses”).
Conor didn’t talk much and just went to go take a shower… to say that he didn’t take the full horrific visage of Wani’s “Hunting Form” well would be an understatement. Ren felt somewhat guilty and went to go comfort him in her own way… for the next hour or so anyway.
Matthew spent this time trying to bring Midori out of her catatonic state! Slowly, with patience, he at least got her sipping some of Conor’s tea and she went from curled up in a ball on the floor, to curled up in a ball on the couch with a blanket over her shoulders and a mug of warm beverage in her hands.
When Ren finally reappeared they took Midori home to her parents house in Carrollton. By this time, the shooting at the Railway station was all over the local news. After getting Midori’s parents to agree to not open the doors to anyone… they went to Ren’s Uncle’s shop to discuss the events of the past few hours.
Most everyone was traumatized or tired so not much was done until everyone got some sleep. Elena woke screaming (nightmares) and Uncle cast a spell to help her sleep without dreams.
In the morning, Ren went to go get Conor and after breakfast, a great deal of Ren’s mysterious backstory became known and her ties to the yakuza. The morning ended with Ren planning to head back to Carrollton and talk with Midori about the events of the previous day and teach her a few things about not talking about “too much.”
Game date: 3/8/2012 GM Wolfhound
- Minor Advancement (Conor, Elena, Ren, and Matthew’s 2nd)
Fate System Highlight
One of the more interesting scenes of the session is posted here for GMs to help study ways to do mental and social challenges in the system.
Ren’s player wanted to “comfort” Conor. He had suffered a Severe and Mild Mental Consequence from Wani’s Incite Emotion: Fear attack earlier. The two characters have “history” in this regard so Conor’s player was open to the idea as it seemed perfectly in-character for “Conor the womanizer.” However, the player wasn’t sure if Conor was “up for it” and wanted to let the dice decide and he would roll with the scene either way based on the outcome. Within the scene, as Conor was taking his hot and blissfully mind-numbing shower, Ren simply went in and joined him there.
Game mechanically, Ren’s player called up a quote from Conor and Ren’s backstory (on this site) about her being like a “deep fried Twinkie” to tag Conor’s “The Colleens are Going to be the Death of Me” Aspect (A Deep-Fried Twinkie = once in a while is great, but too much will kill you!). This was a pretty creative use of backstory and aspects so the group decided it qualified as a great scene aspect, a Presence roll was made and it was set. Ren then tagged it to get her a bonus to another secondary Presence roll to actually try and persuade Conor to forget things for a while and focus on … other things (like her). Technically I suppose the first of these two rolls should have been a Rapport roll – to represent reaching Conor as he was withdrawn into his mental shell – but hindsight is 20-20. We did it with two Presence rolls.
On the flip side, Conor would roll Discipline as a Defense to the Presence attack, and Conor’s player self-tagged his own Consequences to add to the defense (the logic being that he was just mentally a basketcase after seeing a monster unlike any in his experience and thus in no mood for the “horizontal tango” tonight). Even with the free tags on his own Consequences… he rolls worse than Ren does and so technically Ren is successful with her Social attack. The net was zero (so since Ren was the initiator of the attack, technically she wins a Mediocre success).
Armed with the results of the dice… the players carry on with the scene and Ren successfully takes Conor’s mind off what just happened to him. Since it was only a Mediocre success (zero) it was an awkward and utterly forgettable experience for the both of them. Which actually in the scope of what the scene is supposed to represent … that’s totally fine. An hour or so later, Ren leaves Conor sleeping peacefully in his room. The GM rules that this more than counts for purposes recovery and the Mild Consequence is removed (and likewise the Severe may “begin” the recovery process).
As a group, we thought this was a really neat way of leveraging both Scene and character Aspects (as well as tagging Consequences) to resolve an area where the players weren’t sure how it would play out. Obviously this scene could have been played out without dice… but because it was, it seemed less forced and more… well… like “Fate.”
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