When last we left our party, it was with:
- Alice dead
- Teddy devastated by Alice‘s death
- Saleem devastated by the death of his family
- Agatha Broadmoor, the psychic from the other group who we rescued from being sacrificed to Netocris, absolutely cheerful with survival
- Somerset WRACKED with survivor’s guilt – only he and Evelyn remain of the original party
- Ared the lone survivor of his own group & at a loss for direction
- Caliope struggling to maintain a hold on her sanity, and
- Evelyn… probably out of her head on cocaine, honestly, but her player hasn’t yet said what she was doing in her absence on Sunday’s game. :)
We felt the wisest course of action was to Get The Hell Out of Egypt. Somerset offered Saleem the heartbreaking task of bringing Alice’s body back to Texas and a job managing his estate in either New York or Scotland, should Saleem desire. Saleem accepted the task, after burying his own family, which Somerset also paid for, and will write to let Somerset know whether he wishes to take up estate management.
Agatha, after thanking us for getting her out of that “spot of trouble, if we hadn’t been there, I’d have been in a bit of a sticky wicket, wot!”, gave us all a very British “cheerio!” and departed on the bicycle she magically procured from somewhere, with the admonishment to look her up if we ever needed a psychic.
Freddy (Evelyn’s gay fiance) has decided to stay on in Cairo a while, as he’s found some new friends and isn’t ready to abandon them yet.
Dr Willie Preston, much to Somerset’s dismay, joined us on the ship to Shanghai.
Somerset: oh GOD, does this mean i have to pay for HIM, TOO?
Teddy, offended: I have money!
Somerset, dubiously: How much money?
Me: He has a credit rating of 4!
Somerset, with top credit rating of 6, shuddering delicately: Poverty. Living on the edge of poverty. No, I couldn’t let you pay for him. Evelyn, how do these people live with such desperate finances?
GM: Teddy, how much have you told Willie about all of this?
Teddy: Given that we went off together on an Excellent Adventure, I assume I’ve told Willie everything.
Somerset: Oh god. Have we actually committed any crimes in front of Teddy? Any murders? Any disposing of bodies?
Me: no, he was distracted from the suicidal artist by Alice’s return, so he missed the stuffing the body in the suitcase and the dumping of the suitcase into the lake, and Somerset took him away so he didn’t see Evelyn beat up the kid in the warehouse, and there was the break-in at the factory in Essex but he didn’t mind that as long as none of their new friends, the factory workers, got hurt or in trouble.
DM: well there were all the murders at the Edward Gavigan thing in England but Teddy knew what was going on there, right
Me: Yeah, Teddy was on board for that, that was Necessary Murder
Somerset: okay, okay, whew, Willie doesn’t know about all the criming we do, that’s good then
Teddy: My companion in arms knows of the great evil in the world, and the dark gods we must face to destroy that evil!
GM: Yes, Willie has Seen Some Shit at this point, okay.
So we all piled onto a quite new and fancy ship (though not fancy enough for Evelyn and Somerset, of course), and spent three very quiet weeks traveling to the other side of the world. The highlights were, more or less:
- Teddy managed a crit success (I think, def a success, anyway) on a shock card from losing Alice, so while he spent a lot of time looking tragically and handsomely off to the horizon, he…appears to be transferring his ‘Person of Solace’ strength card from Alice to … well, Willie, obviously, without too much difficulty
- Somerset reading a bunch of mythos books, none of which drove him any madder than he already is
- Ared SHAVED and CUT HIS HAIR so he would fit in better in the world outside of Egypt, and please let me remind you that this man is based on Oded Fehr, so we all more or less dropped our teeth when he appeared clean-shaven and incredibly beautiful. We assume Evelyn has in fact spontaneously combusted
- Ared and Teddy also each read at least one mythos book without losing their minds
- Teddy dedicated himself to the art of learning to blow shit up (in Dillon’s honor!) and getting better at fistfights
- Caliope and Evelyn did Mysterious Things which we’ll hear about next session bc their players weren’t available to tell us in the moment :)
- (oh that reminds me i have to ask the GM if Evelyn, Caliope, and Teddy get any extra XP for the little side adventure they did with chasing Bast around Cairo, I just need a couple extras for language stuff… :D)
Somerset is an emotional ruin, guys. He could cope with Dillon’s death – they were soldiers, compatriots, etc, and every day after the war that they lived was a good one – but he feels responsible for the now many-years-ago death of Sam, who haunts him, and horribly guilty about Alice’s death, as she was the youngest and, to his mind, the most innocent of the original group, and she was not meant to die so horribly. Poor damn Somerset.
Finally we arrived in Shanghai, where Somerset and Evelyn decided we must, of course, stay at the very nicest hotel, where they asked if we would like a local guide.
All of us, thinking of what happened to Saleem’s family: …
Somerset, finally: …do you have any…single men as guides?
Concierge: Of course. And so you know, all of our guides carry protection
All of us: SIR. WHAT DO YOU THINK WE INTEND TO DO WITH THIS UNMARRIED GU….never mind, we’ve got Evelyn in this group, it’s probably a good guess
So we were introduced to… I’ve forgotten his first name already. His surname is Li, though, and he’s a young, serious man carrying a Big Gun and a knife.
All of us: we like him already
So shortly after our arrival, we went from the Nice Hotel to a Much Less Nice Part Of Town, to a pub where we have asked after Jack Brady, the man from the Carlyle expedition who was at first presumed dead, but most recently last sighted in Shanghai…
(I’ve forgotten several funny things Somerset said, but that’s the trouble with not writing these up DURING the adventure…)