log machine :b:roke
"4:00 am monster fueled shitpost-mostly-on-my-phone" machine fully operational
DROWN THE MOON (ABRIDGED) - EPISODE ONE: THE GATHERING STORM
Okay so the important thing to understand about the cast is that a. rook-rook started with slots for me, Escorp, and WK guaranteed since we all needed a break between seasons of In the Rose Garden (the Changeling game scorp runs for those fuckin' weirdos who don't obsessively follow my online life, why wouldn't you online stalk me, what's wrong with you?) and two free b. she sourced potential players from a handful of people which is to say >2 c. these people were all high strung writerly types and the auditions involved Russian roulette and everyone turned in hella solid drafts, even/especially the people who didn't get picked.
So basically the final circle ended up really obsessively polishing their character concepts after the names and numbers were settled as She, the ST, randomly shot at our feet to keep us motivated. and we pretty much all went into The Exalteds with a really solid idea of what our characters were going to be and why.
which i all say as a way of assuring you that this absolute clusterfuck was entirely deliberate and the culmination of a long chain of clear-eyes decision making
trust me
Vo Bian (@EarthScorpion) - The Dragonfly
A surprisingly non-Escorp typical PC in that thus far she doesn't have Big Brains or Big Britishness (and that was kinda the point lol) and is in fact either a cowardly, naive dumbass or a fantastic method actor. From around An-Teng, had a Keri's obliquely happen to her in her backstory because SV's shares exalted setting is more incestuous than Star Wars. if the city of Champoor is "dreaming sea Indian Gotham with shades of post-post apoc Singapore and a half-drowned Hong Kong" then she's very much the femme fatale with a heart of gold with a secret heart of tar with a third heart of gold but surprise it was just gold foil over a heart shaped piece of chocolate that was hiding a razor blade. probably would have a lot of male gaze and the word "dame" used a lot if this was a traditional noire kinda deal. keeps vanishing offscreen. ST keeps insisting it's nothing but who believes their GM anymore lol. Runs a moon themed club in Champoor called the Lady's Smile where she does the lounge singer thing.
Coyote-Among-Bulls (@Winged Knight) - COWBOY DOGMAN
Realm expat dynast from the South, was pretty up there when he got his exaltation and became an unreasonably buff anime old man. Has a hybrid bull-coyote form and a heavy Man With No Name gunslinger vibe. Team dad(dy) in the "vaguely functional adult" "popping off to the corner store for some smokes bbs" and "I want his kids" flavors. His two philosophical positions are "trying to reconcile the monstrous nature of Lunars with not ruining everything forever" and "ruining every relationship he's ever had with anyone forever". Has a rad moonsilver artifact prosthetic arm. Personally pissed off pretty much every Silver Pact elder which is how he landed this chickenshit assignment. Absolutely 110% confirmed to fuck.
Curio (@Gargulec) - Seething Nightmare Mass of Centipedes
Literally a horror movie monster. Straight up like if the thing from It Follows appeared over your shoulder sometimes and went "Hey if there were two people on the moon and one killed another with a rock, would that be fucked up or what". Ex-experimental test subject from Ysyr on the Dreaming Sea, disposed of when she failed to be of use. Became a literal spiritual incarnation of uncleanliness and filth, seething beneath a perfect white porcelain skin. Barely aware that Lunars exist, doesn't actually know what the Pact is, somehow one of Orochi's whole three and a half friends, not 100% sure she has enough object permanence to remember people have their own wants and needs. Somehow also breaks the Appearance scale, mostly for the sake of being a living horror show you can't look away from even if you really really want to. Preferred pronouns she/it/the shell. Refuses to really acknowledge any kind of bond on her social, emotional, or legal. You might not like it but this is What peak libertarian performance looks like.
Wren (@TheOneMoiderah) - ...A, uh, a Wren
Champoori NB native, kleptomaniac, pathological attention whore, whore-whore and general hedonistic moron. Thinks their moon-given powers are basically what they deserve after a genuinely shitty life, treats them like a winning lottery ticket with all the responsibility of a lottery winner. Has the emotional depth of a cap of cough syrup, will wander out of a scene if it's not sufficiently about them. Cartoony and energetic, the tantrums they throw would be pretty funny if they didn't easily escalate to murderously petty spite. Somehow both an incel and a slut. Will sleep with anything male that moves but cannot be confirmed to have fucked a day in their life.
Orochi (@TenfoldShields) - Snake
Softboi Orochimaru; made Power Puff Girls style in a lab with equal parts Gin, Luppi, And Ulquiorra. Borderline amoral nihilist and probably still contributing the most to that 75% of a functional adult out of the group. Nothing is true, everything is permitted, Ma-Ha-Suchi-senpai please notice me I made an army of snake mutant stormtroopers to take over Champoor, do you think they're cool? I think they're cool. Wears a lot of white to fashionably flex on people who can't keep a normal outfit clean in Hurricane Central. Int 5, Manipulation 5, Coyote still can and probably will pick him up and shove him in a locker like a really avant garde wormfic. Hooking up with Jangma, a monsoon god and triad princeling, about as loud, ostentatious, cocky, and short-tempered as you'd expect. Somehow they actually get along really well and it's probably the healthiest onscreen relationship thus far.
So. The season kicks off with a brief prologue to establish the setting's shit in its pre-fucked state. Champoor sits on the coast of the Dreaming Sea, an island of rare stability in a region where Wyld surges can shift terrain and alter the landscape from month to month, much less year to year. Ostensibly a vassal of the militant, zealously faithful Prasad it's about as much of a loyal vassal as, uh, Prasad is a loyal satrapy. And considering that the Realm Civil War's kicked off in earnest, the Blessed Isle got nuked to Hell and back and the Imperial Mountain is laying across the continent like the world's biggest jenga fuckup: Prasad ain't taking orders from anyone.
Practically speaking the insaaaaanely important port city is run by the Five Fingers, a powerful crime syndicate that's basically become the government, itself run by the massive water dragon Tenepeshu (who's the reason the city's always raining essentially). Jangma's one of her kids and co-runs the triad-alike with Blink (a Ysyr woman, like Curio) and Jeyen Te (DB Sorcerer, big Al Capone mobster vibes). Orochi's having himself a villainous brunch at Champoor's pre-eminent teahouse. A quiet little spot where the service is affable and professional, everyone's some kinda heavy hitter, violence is forbidden and people in the daily breakfast rush have a personal body count higher than some Realm legions.
Orochi's basically been in Champoor for awhile at this point, running his own personal surgical practice and tending to the rich and the powerful while quietly building an army of aforementioned snake mutants, preparing for his own shot at the crown. He's pretty plugged into the rumor mill so after getting a heads up from Big Man (the teahouse owner) that there's Something Odd In The Air he does some of his usual rounds. Hits up his boyfriend, hears all about how he's quietly cozying up with House Nagara (one of Champoor's old, long-decaying-now-kinda-just-rotted merchant DB families that were supplanted by Tenepeshu) in preparation for a big power play. There's a bit of back and forth about how "haha no no, we'll definitely betray each other one day" "swing at me and you better not miss fucker~" which I
think counts as dirty talk. Orochi goes home in a pretty good mood mulling stuff over, when one of his soldiers shows up with a creepy message carried by a creepy cricket on entirely normal human skin.
Just, y'know, Ma-Ha-Suchi dropping a line that, hey, the Silver Pact has decided that the city is too much of a wild card so a full Circle is being dispatched to ensure that, whatever Tenepeshu decides in the days to come as Champoor moves towards total autonomy from Prasad, her interests align with the Pact. With a pretty explicit "I know exactly what you're planning so impress me kid" line buried in the message.
so hahaha no pressure for anyone.
Coyote and Wren arrive, Bian appears, every (not literally) sniffs each other like a pack of dogs meeting up for the first time and spends awhile taking each other's measure at Bian's club. The mood is tense: Curio is fucking weird, Orochi escaped from the set of Hannibal and they want him back, Coyote is unimpressed with most everyone and everything but is kinda good naturedly putting up with fwb Wren anyhow, Wren is trying to figure out how to steal everything that's not nailed down and nail everyone that's standing up, Bian's just really happy that everyone's getting along so well she's really happy to meet her fellow champions of the moon and haha hey ignore that Prasadi DB making a scene in the background and wait what do you mean he has a kid in cuffs tied up outside like he had to duck into a 7/11 for a bit?
Oh. Oh like that. Oh exactly like that huh? Oh full Kevin Spacey style?
Oh...
In terms of, like, visceral turns one thing
@mothematics did a really good job of setting up in the first session, as I've said before, is the kinda pitch black tragicomedy and horror of the setting. Shit like that is (obviously) jarring and appalling but it's also part and parcel of a place like Champoor, or what Champoor is intended to be: this morally bankrupt, rain-soaked skyline where every fond dream and nightmarish thing you can imagine is for sale.
And that's kinda the thing: everything in Champoor is fun and games until it isn't. Everyone's friends and having good time until they aren't. The monstrous isn't even exceptional or comment-worthy it's just...mundanely Unfortunate and whether it's played for comedy or tragedy really just depends on the scene setting and the lighting. And if you don't like what you see just turn your back on it and play some upbeat music.
The Circle meets up at the Five Fingers compound and waits for their audience with Tenepeshu, the head of the aforementioned House Nagara, a man called the Firefly, is inside having a pretty Angry argument with the goddess while his daughter waits in the antechamber with us. Jangma drops by to say hi, we see some of the tension in the Five Fingers given that he and Blink can't really stand each other, Curio scare-flirts at him and then almost instantly gets distracted, Isi Nagara (the DB daughter) has a catty back and forth with the Circle about it. Wren doesn't really know what they're doing here and didn't pay attention at the briefing.
So then we go in for our audience, we get the "I am the great and powerful snake queen" speech only instead of a man behind a curtain it's a godserpent the size of a subway train welcoming us to her city, get get set to start negotiations and-
A gigantic statue falls on her.
Boom.
Smush.
Dead.
Like dead dead, real and truly dead, we're all soaked in rainwater and blood and kind of just stuck there as a second later the screaming starts and half the triad pours into the chamber and oh my god the boss is dead there's brains everywhere and hey who's that kid on the roof, looking down through the skylight. He looks like he just escaped from Kevin Spacey's basement.
Everything's chaos basically, the triad captains are all but accusing each other, accusing Nagara, Wren seizes the attention of all the murderous capitalists in the room before abruptly realizing they Want No Part In That Shit and drop it in Orochi's lap while Coyote legs it after the fleeing witness with Bian's help.
As the only vaguely neutral party in all of this (nobody in the room but Jangma, in fairness, knows about the snake mutant army so it totally counts) Orochi declares that the Circle will handle the investigation and nobody presses it, possibly out of fear that he'll go full Maads and everyone in earshot will end up with terminal depression and chronophobia. The kid breaks a leg trying to make a jump, Coyote brings him back to the club for Orochi (the group's medic basically) to treat and it turns out that a. yeah it's same kid b. he's not just any kid his name's Sinla Adlahkta, the Prasadi Governor's
son and as the session ends in the great tradition of precocious murder-brats he's got a morally compromising deal for us.
Keep the man from earlier away from him (okay not that bit) and kill his father, the militant representative of a brutal theocracy who keeps lobbying for the Prasad armies to burn the whole city to the ground.
Yeah.
That bit.
