# Session S04: The Steps of Death > [!overview] > [campaign:: [[Candela Obscura - Circle of Uncut Diamonds|Circle of Uncut Diamonds]]] > [session:: S04] > [prev:: [[2024-03-24_S03]]] > [session date:: 2024-03-31] > [campaign date:: ] > [my pc:: [[Sadie Cavendish]]] > [dm:: [[Andrew Pontious|apontious]]] > [player:: [[Nicole van der Hoeven|Nicole]], [[demonem|demonem]], [[+10 Broadsword]], [[Rezin]]] > [pcs:: [[Leopold Maxwell]], [[Celine Valterra]], [[Lily Sinclair]], [[Edward Dedrik]], [[Sadie Cavendish]]] > [active npc:: ] > [discussed npc:: ] > [active locations:: ] > [discussed locations:: ] > > --- > > (tldr:: Summary.) ## Notes - We start out looking at the lead dome, not that far down under the city. - We are looking at a preserved piece of history… thousands of years old. - In some places, the ceiling has collapsed… but some where it is fully intact. - Celine advises caution… doesn't know if they are individual tasks or team tasks. - Edward suggests caution going down the rope that he's looking to set up. - Leopold tries to take a picture or two. - Sadie isn't really paying attention to anything anyone is saying. She's both still overwhelmed from her senses, and in awe, taking in the views. - We start heading down the rope » [[Andrew Pontious|apontious]] is using a countdown dice for this… - [[Edward Dedrik]] » mixed success (countdown die = 5) - We make it to the bottom of the rope based on his roll. - The floor is not fully intact. It's a maze of rubble and ruins. It's in rough shape. - Edward has a look around to see where to go next » mixed success (countdown die = 4) - The way is found… but blocked by rocks. We take the time to reveal a set of stairs… - Lily starts rolling rubble down the steps and Edward suggests poking steps with a shovel. - The is no reaction from the stone, and it rolls down out of sight, into the darkness beyond the lantern light. - Edward then goes down, poking it with a shovel. - He goes to take a next step, and Sadie pulls him backwards, after getting a jolt. - The stairway becomes illuminated to the base of the stairs for Sadie. She sees adornments and ornamentation on the stairs and walls. She sees patterns interwoven in the stairs… They pulse. Her mind is putting colours on these. - The third step is deep red. There are other steps that are red. - The steps are very much a transcendent experience for Sadie. It's colours and energy, and for the first time in her life… bleed doesn't hurt. It almost heals. (I take a drive back.) - We hit a landing, and look around through uncertain passages heading down. - Leopold has memories of deceased people… - Just as we start to think… should we go back? We hit another room. It is a rounded room… but as we look closer, it's a room with five walls, with one plain chair in the middle - Leopold knows his way of getting new memories… for his doctor friend to get a DNA sample, and processes them into eye drops. - He did not have the time to do that with the people in the room with him… - We look around the room and we are looking at the walls. As people stand in a small circle, Sadie can see their reflections appear in the wall… everyone except [[Leopold Maxwell]] - Only Sadie can see the reflections - Sadie and Leopold talk… - Leopold goes any sits in the chair in the middle. …nothing really happens. - Sadie tries remembering - Edward recounts being 10 and his brother (5) had fallen into a well. And then is parents were gone. - Leopold shuts his eyes, and thinks about it… - Celine lost a brother too… except… she killed him. Was told it was an accident, but feels it's her fault directly. She was 8, and shapeshifted… turned into her twin brother. Thought it was fun, they went to show their parents… and the bleed exploded out and killed her brother. - She now works to contain her bleed. - Lily lost her mother, who raised her and her sister. She was rational and brilliant, then one day she jumped off a cliff with no explanation. That's why she was at the auction, looking for the mitre of air that could allow someone to fly. - Sadie recounts her fourth year memory of The Event. - She had been in a small group with four students and a favoured professor. A special invitation to view a private collection of Oldfairen artifacts. Only weeks out from graduating (and that [[Briarbank College]] had bestowed her degree to her, even though she was not conscious during the remaining weeks of her final year.) - She remembers Jack, a fellow student, who had touched an artifact (a knife) with his bare hands even though he shouldn't. He cut his hand. - Sadie is stuttering as she speaks, finding it hard to relive the memory itself. While the room focuses on the life of the lost, she finds it hard to separate herself from the death. - He grew claws… his skin couldn't contain him as his body grew and changed. - So much blood. She remembers just so much blood. (What she didn't say was she remembers severed limbs, too.) - She doesn't remember what happened, as it all went dark for her… but she woke up in hospital some time later, as he sole survivor of that group. Jack — or whatever Jack had become — had been "contained". - The wall shows the memory of her close friends… not their deaths, but their lives. - All four walls contain the memories of Edward, Celine, Lily, and Sadie. Leopold's wall is blank. - Leopold whispers the name "Persephone." - Remembers walking by the canel, and when she was taken from him. - Has tried so hard to find the guilty party responsible. - He sees a red-headed woman who looks almost dismayed at him. - As he relives this… (6) he feels a level of relief (rejuvination) - Sadie sees a blinding flash of light - Leopold kind of… moos? And his chair falls out from under him and tumbles down. - …what Leopold is on is kind of like a luge. It's a chute. It goes longer than he would like… and he tumbles out on to a dark cavern ground. (He takes one body mark.) - The only way out of the room for us is either the way we came, or jump down the chute. - Edward kind of shrugs and jumps in after. (Mixed success » one body mark) He takes the only light source with him. - Sadie feels her way towards the hole in the dark… as do Celine and Lily. - Celine gets a mixed success, and chooses to take a body mark. - Both Lily and Sadie take a body mark and the countdown goes to 2… - We are in a tall cavern that is wider than it is long… in the middle is a chasm, wider than we could jump. - In the middle is a stone bridge with no guardrails - This reminds Lily of her dream - Lily takes the dagger out - In the dream, Lily had no agency. But here, Lily feels like she's in control. - Lily tells Sadie, if something happens to her, go to [[Lucien LaRoux]] and tell him that [[Olive Sinclair]] should flee because the [[Dagger of Sorrow]] would be lost… - Lily feels that Sadie is like Olive… filled with unexplainable things. - Lily quickly tries slicing her palm with the [[Dagger of Sorrow]] » takes 1 body mark, 1 bleed mark… and then Lily steps on to the bridge - She makes it to the middle… and wonders if it's what her mother saw - Edward makes it across the bridge… and we all do, one by one. - As Sadie was looking at the dagger, it shone with such malevolence, that it actually short-curcuited her senses. She now senses nothing down here. Nothing. - Lily takes a moment to try and heal Edward, since she knows his challenge is yet to come. - While he does this, he recounts a similar experience. - We take a tunnel down further, until it becomes a more regularly carved cavern. - When Edward holds up the lantern… the floor is writhing with snakes. - Edward does a survey roll (mixed success) and of those he can identify, there are poisonous snakes among them - Sadie gives him a handkerchef and Leopold gives him some hair product to create a makeshift torch to help scare back the snakes » mixed success (countdown clock goes to 1) - Edward goes first and does get bit, but it's not poisonous (1 body mark) - We…might? hear sounds behind us… - Down into another hallway, filled with masks along the wall. - There are ten black and white ornate masks down the hall on either side. - Celine asks Sadie if she can sense anything - Sadie reaches out and touches Leopold. Where in the past, she could feel the tear between a protector and a killer… now, she feels nothing. - Celine recognizes these from a performance, where the chorus was wearing these masks. - Celine takes her gloves off, and both are completely burned and scar tissue. She puts her hands near the masks, seeing if she can feel anything — any bleed — at all. - She feels a sense of resistence. - She rolls her sleeves up, and there are burns up her body… she finds a piece of her arm that isn't scarred, and sees if there's any difference. - She had been at this theatre performance as a spy, and is tracking a mark, but doesn't know who the mark is. The person is a person of interest to the nation… and they are a member of the chorus. It's low lighting, the room is smoky… and at the end she gets distracted. In the intermission, she picks a masked chorus member is to blend in, so she can try to trail the person. - It goes a bit wrong, because she picks the person that it is. (She picks the frowning mask, and comes face to face with the frowning mask.) - She catches a glimpse of the person's face - The mission is memorable, because it's one of the few she has failed. - She can't pick out the mask the person was wearing from the twenty masks. - …but she thinks she can shift into the face of the mark. - She takes a point of bleed every time she does this. - …but mixed success, so the countdown has hit zero. - Celine's face and body shifts into this man, her mark… and she can instantly tell which mask it is. - As she reaches for it, Red Hand goons rush into the room with tommy guns. At least four or five goons, and [[Thomas Cavendish]] appears from behind them. He spots Sadie instantly. - As Celine touches it, the roof basically disappears and there's a shaft appear above, with starlight appearing from above - Coming down from the shaft is a flame, and it descends. - The goons shoot at it… and it hits, but does nothing. - Leopold shoots at the goon from the car that he remembers (mixed success) and shoots him… his gun lowers at the shot, and the goon shoots Leopold back. - Lily looks at the fire, and it almost looks like it has wings. - Edward takes up position to shoot at them if they shoot at us. - Sadie backs up towards the fire, knowing it's safer to be burned than to be near Thomas. - Celine basically pushes Leopold directly into the fire - It's a searing pain and he screams. - But then instead of searing his body… it seaps into him, and his body and mind basically becomes flame. - Thomas does actually reach out and cry out in fear seeing Sadie nearly consumed by flame - She never knew if there was anything real there for what he felt about her… or if it was only transactional. - The other memories within Leopold grow fainter, and his own memories return to him more. His mind becomes whole, and a feeling of triumph. This, it turns out, is exactly what he was looking for. - The flames rise through the shaft… and we all rise with it. It's very dreamlike. - We see Thomas and the goons disappear below us as we rise to the surface. - We find ourselves laying in a construction site. - Celine has turns back to herself. - Leopold's moustache looks more golden now… *(gilded)* - Sadie's questions from this, if this does turn into a campaign (adding to this over time…) - [[Sadie Cavendish]] - Does she still have her bleed sensitivity after the [[Dagger of Sorrow]]? - What was it about being closer to Oldfaire that made her feel *better* compared to the pain experiencing Oldfairen artifacts while in Newfaire? - What happened to Thomas? - Thomas following her vs. Thomas reaching for her at the end - …is he even alive or able to get out? - [[Leopold Maxwell]] - What happened to Leopold? - At the end of the session? - If Sadie still has her senses, does she sense protector or killer vibes off him now that he's whole… - Originally, that split his mind(s)? - Who was Persephone, and what actually happened to her? - [[Lily Sinclair]] - Who the heck is [[Lucien LaRoux]]? - What's up with the [[Dagger of Sorrow]] now? - [[Celine Valterra]] - What does Celine know about the Red Hand? (S03 had mentioned seeing her and Thomas together at the [[Obelisk House]].) - If she contains bleed… doesn't that make Celine a phenomena now? - [[Edward Dedrik]] - What happened to his parents?