So second run through of the Red Tower
I wanted to play one of your scenarios for a change so I talked one of my star wars/mage skype guys into running one with me in it.
We went with Changeling the Lost in The Red Tower.
Finn the Irishm (me) - Soldier kith
Edwardo the Mexican - BloodBrute/Draconic kith
Madaline the WASP - Romancer/Incubus kith
Boris the Russian - Corpsegrinder/Gristlegrinder kith
Seth the American mutt - Hunterheart kith
Even though we all had played the scenario before, we had a great time.
So the premise is that there had been a spike of disappearances in the meat-packing district. Additionally the Hedge around the meat-packing district, while always dangerous, was becoming more dangerous (even by Hedge standards). Everyone suspects the activity of a Keeper but someone has to confirm it. So our plucky motley, calling ourselves the South Side Toll, hit the pavement.
Immediately Boris and Edwardo have a hard time casing the packing plants because...they're Hispanic and Russian in Chicago in the 30s. Cops hassle them (that's twice now, if I didn't love bacon so much...) and they find out that none ever works for the Chambliss factory. They also managed to learn a socialist reporter disappeared while investigating the Chambliss plant. For some reason the socialist crowd thought Boris was a fellow comrade socialist because he had a Russian accent and were most talkative concerning the reporter. (PCs manage not to jaw at the cops and get arrested)
Madaline, Finn and Seth braved the Hedge and went to the local goblin market for answers. Seth ended up trading the memory of the last time his daughter sat on his lap listening to the radio with him before his abduction to a goblin for the names of a group of privateers (changeling slavers) who were operating in the area.
Everyone regrouped and swapped info.
Madaline and Seth go talk to the offices of the The Worker and get their mitts on Chappa's address book. They next hit his apartment and find that the place has been ramsacked. At first no one wants to be of any help but eventually the Romancer/Succubus loses her patience and seduces a 50 year old serbian immigrant woman named Senka and gets descriptions of the men who hit Chappa's place. While that is going on, Seth finds the folder in the bathroom...a little soggy.
In the meantime Finn, Boris and Edwardo go back into the Hedge and look for the privateers' hollow. After beating a rather large hedge beast tiger in a game of riddles, they are directed to said hollow and discover it has a hedge gate near it. Using the gate they come back into the real world into an abandoned building next to the Chambliss plant. And by using the gate, I mean a pack of wandering wolves made of rose bushes and tree bark with thorn fangs dripping with black goo had them diving through the gate for their very lives. The Hedge does stuff like that to you.
While searching the building for clues, several cars pull up outside and the trio hide. Seven shady looking men enter and then descend into a previously hidden trapdoor. The players manage to hear the men talking and hearing their names, deducing they must be the privateers. Deciding it would be best to get the hell out, the trio sneak away to meet up with the rest of the group.
Everyone meets up and compare notes. They report the IDs of the privateers and the location of their hollow to the Autumn King, Autumn is the reigning season. They are told to keep digging and when they feel it is time, the King send in a posse of Autumn and Summer courtiers to deal with the privateers and their hollow.
Finn and Seth stake out the abandoned building with the Hedge Gate. However things go pear-shaped when one of the union rabble rousers, who happens to be a courtier, pops his Bedlum ability. The union strikers are sent into an emotional frenzy and attack scabs that are being brought in work a plant. Finn and Seth have to fight their way out of what becomes a riot.
(I felt this was a little bit of a blatant delaying tactic on the part of the GM but it was historiacally authentic so I rolled with it)
Meanwhile Madaline, Boris and Edwardo head to the County Records and take a very hard look at Chambliss and find all sorts of weird facts. The factory was never inspected by the FDA, doesn't pay income tax, doesn't seem to make beef and is engaged in weird property games. The trio then becomes convinced that Chambliss was really abducted in Brazil all those decades ago and was replaced by a fetch. Then they start jumping to wild conclusions that obviously the fetch and privateers are working for some unknown Keeper who is abducting people and buying cattle for unknown reason.
Further digging turns up all the Borkowski weirdness and the trio is off to investigate the house. They swing by and try to talk but are stonewalled, flattly. However they do figure out one important detail...the Borkowskis are under some sort of enscrollment but players are unable to break it.
More regrouping, notes are compared and wounds iced.
They decide to check out the secret chamber in teh building next ot the Chambliss factory. Sneaking in they discover it an old speakeasy that appears to have access to the old underground cattle tunnels. We had to duck into them when the privateers showed up. After about an hour they left, talking about heading to their hollow. We sneak out and ring the Autumn King that he should send people right away if he wants to take out the privateers in one swoop. About an hour later the Autumn King himself shows up with about a dozen Summer and Autumn Courtiers and we all hit enter the Hedge and hit the hollow.
Crazy battle, bark-bears, thorn whips....a cigar smoking, luger totting pitbull looking hedge beast. Lady Bugs loving Aphids....mass hystaria.
Anyway one of the privateers escapes and flees back through the hedge gate. We the players pursue and follow him into the underground cattle tunnels...and run smack into two Cham-Vi Juntan. We freak because we realize A)they're not fae and B) Boris tells us they're not alive. They attack and we actually make short work of them despite our injuries. As a Solider Kith I am a golden god with all things with a blade so I go buck-wild with my meat cleaver and chop the hell out of #1. Then Boris, being a corpsegrinder, bites the jaw off of #1 and starts eating it. This momentarily confuses the second Cham-Vi Juntan because one of us is acting very canibal/ghoul like manner. Madeline unloads her shotgun into the second ghoul and Seth and Edwardo with their Lethal Mein claws F him up. Yes Madaline has a shotgun. A very special Token shotgun that has the nice ability of when it shoots you, you are cursed with bad luck for a round.
We push on after the last privateer, worried now by the undead creatures, the piles of rotting cattle corpses and bones...and Boris still munching on the ghoul skull. Damn corpsegrinders. But after five hours the game was called. We never got to finish.
It was explained after the fact that Chambliss had fallen into the clutches of a exiled True-Fae in Brazil and had been enscrolled by the creature. Chambliss brought the Exiled back to Chicago where IT took over the factory and the Chambliss Estate. The Exiled Fae got a hold of a changeling with the Contracts of Shade and Spirit and used the poor bastard to open Black Gate...portals to the Underworld. The Exile had struck a deal with some nightmarish entity. The entity was supplied with cattle so it could use the cattle flesh for some, probably not pleasant, purposes and in return the Exile got use of ghouls as real world agents. Also the Exile hired/blackmailed/coerced privateers to abduct humans and exchange them for changeling slaves in goblin markets. Eventually the Exile Fae happened to return to Arcadia and retake his realm.
The end game was to uncover this and bring down the full wrath of the Courts on the Exile...I'm glad we never made it that far because even an Exiled Fae is scary. An Exile with ghouls, a factory half in the real world, half in the Hedge and open Death Gates? F that noise!
