The party forges stock transfers to Millicent's urchins, but after Virgil masters the fairy queen Aurora with love-in-idleness, they discuss using Aurora's changelings to take control of the Company Board themselves. Annie explains that some paradoxes are actually reductio ad absurdum proofs. They investigate Burgess Lorentz's tontine murder, find Phyla House's Moonwell vampire colony, and free Manfred Unger.
At the end of Game 9, the party had just opened the vault at the Company Ledger House and found three secret police waiting to ambush them. Game 9 had a long combat though, and I asked if the players would like to elide over the fight with these secret police. They agreed, or I convinced them, and they actually let the three secret police go.
They found the Company's current stock transfer ledgers in the vault. Virgil forged the stock transfers to Millicent's urchins using Elgis's forgery kit. The players discussed whether to transfer Garth's stock as well as Ash Turner's, and they decided yes.
There was 200,000 gp worth of stock to transfer, and they discussed how much to transfer to the urchins and how much to themselves. Haden pointed out that transferring stock to themselves would directly link them to people who'd just died, incriminating them, and Virgil suggested they create an LLC to transfer the stock to. They also discussed how just transferring stock to themselves didn't in itself profit them, they would also have to actually sell their ill-gotten stock.
Ultimately they decided not to take any themselves, and give each of the 100 urchins on Millicent's list 2,000 gold pieces worth of stock. Kiltak mentioned that once they'd made the transfer, they wouldn't actually have any leverage over Millicent.
They discussed what to do next. In Game 8 Haden had made an Investigation roll to get clues on Ishild, and had remembered that:
DC 10: Besides the two guards riddle, Ishild was also using Modayle Grellen to research the paradox "this sentence is a lie." At Miss Miller’s salon in Game 6, Annie from the Quaternion Society said she was researching that same paradox.
They decided to talk with Annie again, and went to Morningstar Observatory, the Quaternion Society's guildhall. Annie answered the door and welcomed them in, and they asked her about her work again. She told them again that she was looking at three paradoxes:
Now Annie added that many paradoxes are really reductio ad absurdum arguments - a contradiction that proves some assumption leading to the contradiction isn't true. She looked around to check that no one was listening, and then leaned in and whispered to Haden: "For instance, 'Can Ajana create a rock that Ajana can't lift?' is actually a reductio ad absurdum argument that an all-powerful Ajana can't exist."
Annie also said again that she'd discovered that "some true statements can never be proven true," using Manfred Unger's new math. Haden rolled 20 Intelligence and remembered that when Virgil prayed at the chapel to Ajana in the Cathedral of Gradska, he learned that "the True Name of Ajana is every true statement that can't be proven true."
Haden said they wanted to know more about that, and Annie said she wanted to research it more at the old abandoned Steam Reasoning Guild hall. They all decided to go together the next day. We talked a little about the Steam Reasoning Guild, that it was an ancient guild of mathematicians that built deduction machines. They asked, if the Steam Reasoning Guild's hall had been abandoned for so long, why hadn't anyone torn it down? But Annie (actually I) didn't know.
Haden now suggested that they find his patron, the fairy queen Aurora. He said that Aurora's husband Aurelian had given him a potion to control her, the juice of love-in-idleness:
The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
She shall pursue it with the soul of love.
Haden suggested this could resolve their issues with fairies, and fix Virgil's virginity too.
Dan said this was all like A Midsummer Night's Dream. Actually I based Aurora and Aurelian on Titania and Oberon from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I took love-in-idleness and the poetry describing it directly from there.
They still needed to find Aurora though. Haden knew that the Circle's mushroom ring was in Lofton, but not where in Lofton. He could cast Detect Fey spell at 3rd level, which would have a range of 300 feet. We discussed how big Lofton was, and I said Lofton had been the Gradskan capital before the rest of Hollin existed, so it was the size of a fairly big town.
Virgil suggested getting a truffle pig, and they went to the live-animal market outside the Mooncalf, the Shambles. They bought a large pig there, Squealer, for one gold piece.
They crossed Lofton bridge, south into Lofton, and Haden cast Detect Fey. They let Squealer off the leash and he headed east, toward the old abandoned Lofton Castle.
As they started east though, a silver and red bug crawled out of the ground nearby and flew onto Kiltak and tried to bite him. Kiltak had advantage on DEX saves and saved against it, and knocked it off and killed it. Five more came out of the ground, and two of the party and Squealer failed their saves and were bitten, for 1d8 damage.
They ran toward the castle, and Kiltak picked up Squealer to run with him. We said that Squealer weighed about 500 pounds, but Kiltak rolled 21 on a Strength check, and they escaped the bugs.
As the party got within 300 feet of the castle, Detect Fey started to show about fifty fairies in the castle's courtyard. They went as far as the castle gate and stopped there. They could see the fifty fairies sleeping in a mushroom ring there, in boughs in trees. Elgis mentioned that he had a halberd made of fairy-slaying meteoric iron, and I also mentioned that Haden had a Fey Extinction Event spell on him. How would the fairies respond if the party went in?
Haden gave Virgil the love-in-idleness and he snuck into the courtyard by himself. With Haden's Guidance, Virgil rolled 16 on a Stealth check, and successfully snuck through the castle's courtyard and up the tree where Aurora was sleeping. He put three drops of love-in-idleness on each of Aurora's eyes, then woke her. They immediately started to trade amorous compliments; I took Aurora's compliments from Titania's compliments to Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The players now discussed what they actually wanted from Aurora. They discussed different versions of the fairies leaving the Company Board, leaving the mortal world alone, and leaving Hollin alone. Virgil told Aurora, “My love for you is so consuming, this should be our world and let the mortal world go." He rolled a 21 Persuasion and Aurora agreed, telling him, "Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful." She also assigned four fairy maidens to wait on him, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed.
Virgil and Aurora made love. Afterwards Virgil told Aurora, "Let the blending of our souls blend out realms together. Blend the ethereal realm with our mortal realms...our consummation will represent that," and "The peace within us be without us. So within as without." And also, "I’m the king of consummation" and "We did it twice."
I asked what concrete thing Virgil would ask Aurora for. The players suggested that Aurora "separate herself from the Board" or put Virgil on the Board. The party knew two fairies on the board, Lilly and Holly, and ultimately Virgil asked for Aurora's permission to talk with Lilly and Holly. Aurora agreed and gave Virgil an apricot and a dewberry to show Lilly and Holly, to prove she had sent him.
Virgil left the mushroom ring and gave the remaining love-in-idleness back to Haden. We discussed that the love-in-idleness would have a finite number of applications left, say three. The players asked how long Aurora would be in love with Virgil, and (again based on A Midsummer Night's Dream) I said indefinitely; she would be in love with Virgil until the effect was explicitly dispelled, say with another application of love-in-idleness.
Virgil went to Lilly's house, which we said would be near the other affluent manors near the Great Council Square.
Lilly answered the door. Virgil told her, "Aurora gave you this dewberry," and "Aurora has asked me to give you this dewberry, and asks you to release the bonds on the mortal world and give me control of the Board."
Surprised, Lilly repeated, "Aurora wants me to release control of the board?" and Virgil replied, “Yes, this is what the dewberry is for.”
Not immediately sure what to do, Lilly told Virgil he seemed nice and asked him to come back the next day. He agreed.
The party had a day before they were supposed to go to the Steam Reasoning Hall with Annie, and before Virgil was supposed to check back with Lilly.
The players discussed at some length how they might satisfy Ishild's request for an honest person.
I pointed out that they'd forged stock over to Millicent's urchins, but they hadn't closed the loop with her. They agreed and went back to the Cisterns to talk with her.
They told Millicent that they'd transferred all of Ash Turner and Garth's stock to the urchins, 200,000 gold pieces, and she thanked them. She told them there were two other things they could do to help her reclaim the throne: hire Miss Miller's girls to sway more shareholders to her cause, and visit Hollin's guilds, many of which were started with royal charters and owed the crown their allegiance. She suggested Barber Hall in particular.
Interestingly, the players now started to discuss how they could take control of the Board. They'd given the urchins stock to help Millicent take control of the Board, and I asked them whether they were saying they wanted control of the Board instead of giving it to Millicent. Dan said yes and Fayne emphatically said yes. They started to discuss that they'd surrendered some leverage to Millicent, whether Miss Miller's girls and the guilds might help them instead of Millicent, and whether they could use love-in-idleness on Miss Miller's girls or even on the women on the Board - Lilly, Holly, and Anya, the Keeper of Lion's mouth. They asked what Anya looked like, and I rolled 3d6 = 12 CHA for her...a little above average.
We did a brief recap of the campaign threads, an updated version of the recap from Game 8. During the recap, we discussed how the party had said they wanted to get the human babies back from the Circle, for Zoe Shaw, the Volsteads, and the Whitmans. So now that Aurora was under Virgil's spell, he went back to the mushroom ring to ask her about the babies.
Aurora told Virgil that the human babies were in the mushroom ring, and that they were safe. She said the Circle had the human babies because replacing human babies with fairy changelings let them take control of the Company. Further, if the Circle raised the human babies, they could reinsert them back into Hollin's human society as adults, as Circle agents.
The players suggested that the fairies' long game was a failure. I argued they had successfully taken control of the Company Board, and arguably Hollin, using the changelings. But Mike (I believe) contrasted their 1,000-year long play with the party's own success, arguing that the party might take control of the Board after only about a week of game time. I counterargued that as part of their 1,000-year long play, the Circle had also brought down the Gradskan/Brock royal throne, about 400 years ago.
Virgil rolled a 17 Intelligence check and felt that even though he had wooed Aurora, the Circle as a whole wasn't likely to give the human children back, or just give up on their long play. They briefly discussed whether to rescue the human babies, but Barnaby, Kiltak, and Virgil suggested the party should "tap out" regarding the human children and focus on taking control of the Board.
The party took a long rest. During the long rest, Elgis was visited by Terian, his former martial master. Terian said he had some bad news:
The party went to the Ulms' house to investigate. In Game 5, they'd seen Giles Ulm tell Burgess that Selma was dead and the Ulms' home. So, when they arrived at the house, they weren't surprised to find Selma's body on the kitchen floor. However, they also found Giles Ulm and Burgess dead there.
Barnaby cast Speak with Dead on Burgess, and they asked him some questions.
Haden rolled an Investigation - a 23 - and I said regarding numbers 3 and 4, it was super-obvious that Selma, Giles, and Burgess had all been killed because of the tontine.
Kiltak said that the killer clearly had the tontine list - who would have the list? I said that ideally only the bank would have the list, but I also pointed out that they already had a bank paper that seemed like the tontine subscriber list, which they'd taken from Garth's wallet.
They reviewed that list to see who was still alive. They knew that everyone on the list was dead except Christopher Cotton, Miss Miller, and Lolani Phyla.
On number 3, although Burgess said he didn't have any clues who the attacker was, I pointed out that the party had the Bat's Head Rapier / Shortsword and a gunpowder weapon from the attacker; and that Phyla House imported gunpowder made from bat guano.
They went to the Phyla House manor, which was just south of the Whitmans' house in Dunham.
Phyla House manor, ground floor
They knocked at the front door on Ballard Street, but no one answered, and the door was locked. They went around to the back door and Virgil picked the lock.
They went inside to D, which was a kitchen. They noticed that it was well-stocked, but the floor and everything else were covered in a thin layer of dust. They went to B. In the corridor they also noticed dust, but the dust had been disturbed in a path going from A to B. B was a library, and they also noticed on the floor in front of one of the bookshelves, there was a dustless arc on the floor that suggested the bookshelf could swing out.
They looked for some special book that might operate the shelf. Most of the books seemed relevant to a business that made and imported gunpowder, but one book jumped out at them:
Hemophilia and Other Diseases of the Blood
They took the book from the shelf and the shelf swung open. Barnaby had the highest Medicine and he claimed the book.
Behind the bookcase they found a wide curving stair going down to an underground inverted tower, the Moonwell. It was similar to the real-life Quinta Da Regaleira Initiation Well, although it wasn't open to the sky.
The Moonwell's spiral stair had about 10 spirals, and maybe 4-5 doors leading off of each spiral, so maybe 40 or 50 doors total. There was a big bas-relief carving of the moon on the floor at the bottom of the well, which cast silver light that lit the whole well.
Mike asserted that the first or last doors would be the interesting ones, and they went into the first door, F on the map.
Phyla House moonwell, first spiral
Inside they saw a man with a sword, and a man inside a cage with an astronomical clock, similar to Prague's astronomical clock.
Astronomical clock
They rolled initiative, but it was six on one, and Virgil and Haden bloodied him with 75 points of damage before he could even act. The man regenerated 10 hits on his turn, and the party asked whether he was a vampire or a werewolf, and they rolled and thought he was a vampire. The party easily finished him, with Virgil knocking him out with nonlethal damage early on the second round.
They brought the man around to question him, but he immediately dispersed into a Moon Shadow, the same way the Mooncalf attacker had in Game 5.
The man in the cage was intently focused on them. He was highly disheveled and looked like he'd been captive for a very long time. He rattled the cage's bars violently and shouted, "Let me out of here! Let me the fuck out of here!"
Kiltak did let him out of the cage, but collared him to question him. They asked where they were, and he told them it was the Phyla House Moonwell, a vampire colony. They asked who he was, and he said he was Manfred Unger, the mathematician. We reviewed previous references to Manfred in the campaign: they'd found his book Astronomical Clocks and the End Time at Gramercy Books in Game 5, and Annie told them she was extending Manfred's work at Miss Miller's salon in Game 6.
They asked Manfred why he was imprisoned there. Manfred said he was an expert on astronomical clocks, and they captured him and forced him to make clocks for them. They asked why Phyla House would be interested in astronomical clocks; he said as vampires, they wanted to know more about when the sun rose and set. In addition, Phyla House was actually based near the north pole on Hilde, and they wanted to know what days the sun would be up all day there, or not come up at all.
Haden asked if Manfred knew what eclipses were coming up, but Manfred didn't know what day it was. When they told him the date, he immediately gave them the dates of the next three eclipses, which were all a few years away.
They wanted to talk with Manfred more, but he was eager to escape. They let him go, but he agreed to meet with them at Morningstar Observatory the next day.
Kiltak said, "We're going to go all the way down and kill these bastards."