Apotheosis: 10 sessions in.

(Technically, 9.5. But what the hell, 10 sounds better.)

At present, we have... a cabal!

Current goal: Defeat Ms. Whitman, the psych teacher who claims to be a Bodhisattva and has survived being beaten with a crowbar, removal of her spine and being dumped into a sewer. She's connected to some other world accessible through a suitcase (at the least) and a mysterious Key they've yet to find or locate. The nature of Ms. Whitman and her goals remains a mystery at present, though she claims to want to either enlighten or kill those who killed her in the first place and seems to have returned with preternatural healing, though whether the spider-thing inside her remains is unknown at present.


Members:

Adella: Avatar of the Flying Woman, psychology student, and has an 'in' with a dealer in rituals and occult rumors and lore. Avatars may lack power in the observable sense, but the universe is on her side -- she's once felt infinity itself watch her,and worked a ritual and had it come true.

Delilah: Physics professor and wife to Marcus. She knows a little of the OU, enough to have her own minor trick and to have seen tenebrae before (she believes they're dark matter, and than quantum physics is a lie -- which makes her teaching it quite an interesting experience). She's worried she's in over her head, but the lure of answers to her questions drives her ever onwards.

Marcus: Del's husband; he's mostly playing it cool and keeping cards close to his chest, owing to run-ins with Sleepers and his wife's memory lapse once. Despite having committed no real crime beyond being a drive for a marijuana pickup while demon-possessed, he's the one member of the cabal the police are currently watching.

Nate: A friend with benefits to Adella (one of many). he's still coming to terms with discovering he wasn't ever human and his mechanomancer grandfather seems to have given up most of his memories that could explain why Nate was made, and how he's the product of cbyermancy. So far he's removed one person's spine - by accident - and is trying as hard as he can to act human.

Talnish - mechanical engineering professor and mechanomancer, who has beaten one person with a crowbar (self defense, he says, but whatever makes you sleep at night...) and buried one body dropped on his property outside the city limits as well as seen his dean turn into a giant pig after eating McDonalds. Somehow he's kept his his professorship, but how long that lasts is anyone's guess...

Apotheosis: 5 sessions in.

So far things are moving ahead at a brisk clip. People have been put into paintings, Sleepers arrived (Well, he was on vacation, but even so), Holes in the fabric of reality leading Somewhere Else creating magickal briefcases and turning professors into monsters of some kind, a magical Key having been discovered, demonic possession, the murder of said professor by two students, a clockwork, and another professor. Oh, and an orgy on a mundane level, along with Marcus proving his love to Delilah by not having sex with Sara.

Characters So Far

PCs
Adella - Free spirited college student who has, of recently, been able to float in the air after sex.
Marcus - husband to Delilah, a mail-order husband with skills he never wants to use again and a Key whose provenance he doesn't understand
Talnish - mechanical engineering professor and Mechanomancer

NPCs
Delilah - Physics professor and wife to Marcus, locally considered a 'witch'.
Nate - Friend with benefits for Adella who seems to be a post-post modern automaton who was entirely unaware of that until recently.
Sara - Sex-loving room mate to Adella whose life seems to revolve entirely around sex. Also, apparently hunted by Sleepers.

Other Cast
Martin Caidin Sr. - Nate's grandfather. Known to Talnish as a reclusive mechanomancer outside town.
Father Karl Horne - The priest at St. Jude's, the local Catholic church.
Edith Kilmore - the old lady who runs the heritage house and has apparently met Marcus before, though the latter has no memory of it.
Suzy Quimby - the girl who accidentally painted Sara into a painting. hasn't gone insane quite yet.
Ramona Whitman - the former psych prof turned into some kind of 'thing' by the Other Place. Currently deceased.

Minor Cast
Leon Debran - owner of the Bleeding Crow, never seen yet.
The Bartender - surly 20 going on 40 something bartender at the Bleeding Crow.
Milk Delivery Man - a man who delivers milk, with live cow, to Delilah's house.
Paper boy - the pre-dawn paperboy who delivers papers.

LOLAD 2 Design Notes

Consider a world where weres and vamps DO walk around and live out in the open, no longer hiding. A world where life and death walk among the living and the dead ands gods and magic can be real - for a price. The freedom to be part of the human world again came at a price: fear, mistrust, loathing, desire. The were wanted it, the vamps did not.

Hence the war heating up, over ideology and the end result being that the winner is whoever is left standing. The attrition rate of vampires has risen to staggering levels, weres are kidnapped to be used to find cures for diseases, and the fae - broken and shattered - wander a world of iron and death, without a place to call their own.

It's not a good time to be supernatural. Neither is it a good time to be normal: You're weak, inferior and not believing in the supernatural becomes harder every day as the war encroaches on the mundane world steadily to blood and screams and spells.


This isn't a post-apocalyptic game. The apocalypse happened; the world went on, mostly as normal. Well, for those who value normal. Real magic isn't spells or potions or powers: real magic can nothing on the extent people will go to protect their traditions and illusions. The PCs are living proof this illusion is a lie, and such things aren't liked. Which puts it mildly :)


In the end, the PCs need to find a way to make the world accept them. Killing all the monsters won't do it. Becoming a monster can't. The world keeps changing, and is never want we desire it to be but we still have to find a place to live in it, make a place to call our own. That's the best that can be hoped for, in this life. To dare for more is, of course, what PCs are about...

Some Notes towards LOLAD2

Starting point breakdown (BESM 2):
13 CP for stats.
10 CP for abilities.
30 SP for skills.
No more than 5 points total in defects.

Items of Power and the Magic attribute ARE allowed, within reason. Ditto with Dynamic Sorcery, though to get that you *must* take sixth sense (magic). Additional points (up to 5) can be gained via background stories, in depth backgrounds etc. The additional points CAN violate the above limits for stats and abilities.

Things to keep in mind: The game is set in a city (Location undecided; population ~200,000 people.) The PCs are humans* with a touch of the other who have been recruited - by choice or against their will - by the homeland security neighbourhood watch branch, to try and keep thep the city from being torn apart by the lords of life and death.

You're human - mostly - vastly outlcassed and outnumbered and outgunned. But somehow you have to prevent the city from being destroyed like Trail and Los Vegas and Los Angelas have been so far. You're about the only hope people have, as much as they hate admitting it, and by far the lesser of two evils.

Setting: Post end of the world. The world ended when the Summerland was destroyed in an effort to murder the Adversary. It worked, at the cost of a goddess, much of a town, and an entire were pack. A few survived, some as rumour, other as fact. Details vary, and the truth remains elusive.

Save that the world ended and magic has returned to the one that followed. We're living in the utopia, the post-Ragnarok, the earth after Christ's Second Coming (not only female, but clawed) brought down the Satan of science and ushered in a new era of magic. The world has changed, but many things are the same. A large number of people don't believe the world even ended, no matter if the old dead return and visit them or old gods waken to new power.

It was the end of the world, but somehow life continued on as normal. Bit of a letdown, really. But there is magic, and it's new and wild and the old times of darkness and burning witches have returned as the nights become things to fear again and the cold and bloody war between the were and vamps spills over into the common world of the living and the dead.

The casualties mount. Humanity is no longer fittest, may not survive. Heroes are needed, but this isn't an age of heroes. You've been drafted. Welcome to the world you helped create.