Game: Secret of Cats
Module: When the Spirit Moves You
Catamis Personae
Fio, a Vindictive Namer
Smokey, A venerable Seeker
Blackie, A Fearless Shaper
Lucky, a Tough Warden
[Scene 1]
The cats arrive at the Burnt Place, a museum burned down over fifty years ago, and haunted by Jebediah Morton, and Scarlet, the cat who has taken him as her burden. They are there to update the wards on Scarlet’s territory. However, neither Scarlet nor Jebediah Morton -- known as The Burning Ghost -- are there.
Instead, inside they find a charred, smoldering corpse, a melted plastic bottle and a small black box with a window on the front. Through the window, the cats can see a very tiny human and an even tinier cat, caught in a loop of actions.
[Note: This is a cell phone, that while the players picked up right away, continued to play their cats as not knowing what the thing was]
In those actions, the tiny human, who calls himself "Gabriel Summoner" with his cat, "Santeria", tells the story of the Burnt Place -- how Jebediah Morton, who couldn’t handle the grim truth of the his Grandfather, Ezekiel, died burning the museum down. Throughout his telling of the story, Gabriel lifts up his hand to reveal it is on fire, but seems neither surprised or in pain. That is, until there is a flash and the enraged burning ghost appears, looking furious. The cat on the human's bolts as the entire window is filled with flame. The window goes black, and then repeats.
Blackie, after investigation, explains that most likely, the fire from the Burning Ghost must have ignited the fluid in the bottle, which would have made a very big fire.
[Blackie succeeded on his investigation roll, with the benefit of their Reconstruction stunt.]
[A Separate Scene is created as Smokey interacts with the ghost]
As the cats search around, Smokey senses another spirit -- far from the world of the living. Smokey leads the spirit back, though has to suffer through the spirit’s trauma to do so. The spirit says its name is Gabriel Summoner, just like the man in the window, but this burden is much larger, and much deader. As he gradually accepts his situation of being dead and talking to cats. Gabriel shows Fio how to swipe and paw at the small box until the window goes dark and he seems satisfied and says that he’ll be famous. After a moment though, he became angry and blamed the Burning Ghost for his death, but the Burning Ghost is nowhere to be found.
[The Spirit has aspects of Closer to Death than Life and Hiding from the Burning Ghost on top of its Stealth of Fair (+2 to make it difficult to detect) The player rolled under the target number, which is a failure or a success with a cost. Smokey chooses to Share the Spirit's Trauma to be able to communicate with it and help it.
[New Scene]
Before they leave, Lucky wards the Burnt place against evil spirits and curious humans
[Warding roll, which is successful]
Confused by the spirit's talk of fame, the other cats seek out Scarlet, led by Smokey.
[Note: While Smokey doesn’t know Scarlet’s True Name, he has been around her quite a bit, so there is neither a weak nor strong link, and the player rolls success]
Scarlet is near Historic City Hall, on the trail of the cat that was with the human that arrived. She is surprised to learn that the human is dead and that Jebediah is gone. Scarlet panics, and races back to the Burned Place to find out what happened.
[Scene, return to the Burnt Place]
Furious over the disappearance of Jebediah, Scarlet interrogates Gabriel Summoner, but he doesn’t know what happened after he died, just after the Burning Ghost set him on fire.
When asked about the fire that didn’t hurt him, Gabriel explains that the fluid in the bottle was part of a trick he does, where he makes himself look on fire. He didn’t expect a real ghost, who would really set him on fire, and that the fire on his hand was just for his fans.
A small group of rats appear, drawn by the smell of the burnt corpse. They are driven off by the cats. The cats realize that the body will draw more rats and worse: not the kind of seers, mediums, and fakers that come around on the tours leading up to Halloween. Those people could be pushed off with a Ward of boredom. No these were people not so easily pushed away -- The Blue Men and their dogs, Slayers, 'Ghostbusters', Witches or WitchHunters. The body must go, the best option seems to be to animate it somehow through Fio’s Naming. But it is no small task to animate a corpse. Gabriel, who has no desire to face the Burning Ghost again, let alone share the afterlife with him, decides to help, but he is just not sure how -- he needs the help of his cat, Santeria.
[The difficulty to animate a body is 11, because of its size. The cats will have to build up several advantages to build this up to a reachable number. Controlled items are Good at something and Bad at something. Its decided that the animated body is good at Flailing, but bad at mobility.
The actual trip to the cemetery is handled by a 3 victory contest of overcoming Fair (+2) difficulty. Failure created a cumulative +1 to the next attempt as *some* progress had been made, but also allowed people to introduce complications, the GM being the most likely culprit.]
[New Scene for Blackie and Smokey]
While Fio and Lucky gather what they need to control the corpse, Smokey finds a tangible connection between Gabriel and Santeria, and decides to follow it after some consideration, Blackie decides to go along.
[Note: Smokey has a weak link to Santeria, having seen a picture of the cat and heard its given name. His roll matches Santeria’s Will, and the GM invokes the link by making the Smokey A target for the hell dogs]
As they reach the Millie Ross Play Park, they feel an unholy chill in the air and see the spectral form of gaunt Mastiffs, with eyes glowing a sickening green and emerald flames licking from their mouths.
In the fight that followed, Blackie managed to rend one dog to smoke, but not before Smokey was badly mauled by the other dog. Before the remaining hound can finish Smokey off, another cat appears. A black cat with skeletal white markings. While the hound is distracted Blackie disrupts the other hound.
[This is a straight up set of exchanges, with the Blackie spending two fate points to make his attacks particularly deadly. Smokey also uses Seeking to create an advantage of being Behind a set of Terracotta Pots. The pots hamper the dogs attacks, but Smokey has a terrible fighting roll but between fate points and the advantage he created, manages to survive with a moderate consequence of Mauled by Dogs. ]
[Santeria used a provoke attack against the remaining hell dog to keep it from attacking Smokey again. Hell Dogs, while good at tracking their targets and Great at Biting, are not very clever. Normally they would be good at staying on target, but that target is technically Santeria, so the provoke attack is successful.]
After the smoke cleared, Santeria explained to Blackie and Smokey that those dogs are not ordinary dogs, but "Hell Dogs". Ten months ago, Gabriel made a deal with the beast for magical powers, as Gabriel's familiar, she felt Gabriel's death and knew Hell Dogs would hunt them both. Santeria knew the Beat had many, many Hell Dogs, and that her best chance was to go with cats that had already managed to defeat two of them. The cats make plans on introducing Santeria to the Parliament, to which Santeria agrees, even though she doesn't really know what a Parliament is.
[Scene: The Burnt Place]
Fio determined that one of the ways to make it easier to move the corpse -- since it is recently dead -- is if she knew the True Name of the original inhabitant. As a Namer, she knew that "Gabriel Summoner" was not his true name. Gabriel explains its a stage name, but will not give up his true name.
[Fio rolls exceedingly well on her deception, so while she doesn’t gain the True Name, she does get valuable information]
Before Fio could press further, Blackie and Smokey returned with Santeria. Santeria interrupted and told Gabriel not to give his true name, because her name and Gabriel's name were connected as she was his"familiar". But she said she could help move the corpse, by giving some of her vitality to Gabriel.
[Scene]
Scarlet promised to watch over Fio's body while Fio controlled the corpse with the help of Gabriel and Santeria. Together they managed some shambling steps and resisted a brief desire for brains. On a cold January night in Silver Ford Maine, no one should be out, but it was wise to have a disguise anyway, so the other cats search for clothing in McNab’s Junkyard. There, they found a dress, some sunglasses, and some dirty red and white baseball cap. The cheap fabrics of the dress and hat melted to the smoldering corpse, but it was better than nothing.
[The players establish that Silver Ford is under Quarantine as a reason that people shouldn’t be about. It is also The Dead of Night to further reduce those chances. The clothing was found with a Good Territory roll from Smokey]
[Scene: The first roll on the contest to the cemetery, described above was a lucky match, so a minor complication is introduced.]
While no people were out in the middle of the night, Tick-Tock the death-seeking crow was-- and reminded Fio of her debt to Tick-tock for an eyeball. Despite Gabriel's resistance, Fio paid on her debt with one of Gabriel's burned eyes.
[The GM decides to use an NPC - Tick-tock to potentially introduce a complication. Tick-Tock has the Aspects: Fio Owes Me a Death and Drawn to Meaningful Deaths. Gabriel’s resistance to Fio is represented by a contest of Gabriel’s Force against Fio’s naming. Gabriel really doesn’t have much of a chance of resisting.]
The crow ate the eye and relayed its last seconds of sight -- surrounded by flames, panicked, tripping over the and then falling to the floor, the nail piercing his skull, the Burning Ghost, blazing above him. The cats realize that the Burning Man meant to frighten Gabriel, but Gabriel’s death had been accidental.
[Scene: A new roll of the contest fails. This lets a +1 carry over to the next roll.]
As they plod up the street, it isn’t long before they are followed by white mine rats, drawn to the smell of the corpse. The cats fought them and killed the rats, though Smokey was badly injured in the fight, but after a short rest returned, determined to see the corpse to the cemetery.
[Straight up combat and exchanges. Smokey, already having a major consequence, and not being much of a fighter, concedes after getting a minor consequence. Rather than risk an extreme consequence, he concedes, leaving the scene and getting two fate points for it -- as he was at 0 fate points, these points are very valuable]
[Scene: The roll to proceed on the contest is a terrible failure, despite the +1]
Despite the victory over the rats, Fio found walking as a burden near impossible -- it doesn’t have enough legs. They fell many times, face planting on the sidewalk and scattering teeth over the street, and one of the corpses’ arms snaps off at the elbow. The corpse was forced to walk with two legs, since now it had to hold one arm in its other hand.
[The corpse has the aspect A Farewell to Arm]
[Scene: Before the roll, Fio creates an advantage to work better with Gabriel in controlling the corpse, and manages to Succeed With Style. This lets them reach the cemetery, and get warning of the hell dogs chasing them]
As the corpse reached the gates of the cemetery, the cats heard the howl of more hell dogs. Down the street, they see the shadowy forms emerge from the Astral into the physical plane. The cats quickly formed a plan to put the corpse into a mausoleum (in order to make a small ward) and ward it from the hell dogs, but they didn’t have a sacrifice or found a place to put the corpse yet, and Gabriel and Santeria fled the corpse, leaving Fio to guide it herself. To distract the dogs, Fio threw the arm, and the hell dogs chased after. Blackie chased after the dogs.
[Using the arm was funny and clever, and using A Farewell to Arm gave them something to distract the dogs with. The Deception roll was to determine just how distracted the dogs are. The deception roll was successful. The challenge at this point is to get the corpse to a wardable area, find a sacrifice, and set up a ward before the hell dogs return.]
As the dogs pursued the thrown arm, Smokey used his sight to find a mouse in an old mausoleum and Fio followed into the mausoleum.
[Smokey does a combined Seeking and Fight roll for hunting. He succeeds with style, powered by one of his new fate points by succeeding, and finds both the mouse and the mausoleum.]
They "hid" the sacrificed mouse in the corpses' eye socket. As Smokey made the ward,
Blackie fought the three dogs, blinding one and the two others chased after him. But he escaped up a tree, after fending off bites on his legs and back.
[This starts as an exchange of fighting to get the dogs attention. Blackie's escape turns into an Athletic contest, with the dogs still attacking. Blackie decides to escape up a tree. He is successful, but not before he takes a minor and moderate consequence]
Unable to capture Blackie, the dogs went back to the cemetery, but could not cross the ward. So now they sit, and they watch.
[Scene]
Fio returned to her cat body and told Scarlet what happened, and offered to keep her company while they waited for the Burning Ghost to return.
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