Our cast:
- Marco McQueen: 12-year-old sometimes-bully seeking respect and to reconnect with his father. He now knows how to see someone's desires and alter them.
- Miroslav "Mir" Callaghan: 13-year-old goth kid who wants to learn real magic. Thus far he has learned how to call on darkness. But he wants more.
- Nicole "Nikki" Callaghan: sticky fingered 10-year-old sister who traded her emotional attachments for the gift of artistry.
- Rocco McQueen: 10-year-old wheelchair bound genius hacker. He has learned the Contract of Dreams and is seeking to walk again. Then he wants to confront his absent mother.
The Ogre of Mo-Hedge
The brambles of the Hedge press in on the path as the children push through the darkness. Rocco's wheelchair whirs forward as he tries to pick out the garbage and debris that lead the way to the junkyard of Mo-Hedge. Meanwhile, Nikki attempts to convince her dog, Mr. Skittles to sniff out the path for them but the poor animal doesn't understand. The little girl gets very upset with the dog before hurrying down the path to keep up with the others.Navigating the Hedge is an extended Intelligence + Survival roll, each roll representing a half hour of travel. Unfortunately the children, being city dwellers, have no Survival.
Nikki tries to get Mr. Skittles (who as a dog does have Survival) to help but fails the Manipulation + Animal Ken roll. I like how she roleplayed out her continuing decay of personal relationships.
Rocco leads the way, garnering the necessary successes in three rolls, or an hour and a half. Which is important given the late hour.
As their flashlights shine off a hubcap, they know they are on the right path. Soon they spot rusty screws, broken glass and oil stains mixed in the hedge. Marco and Nikki also become aware of something stalking them. Nikki catches a glimpse of it loping in the brambles. Covered in mangy dark fur, it doesn't seem human but also doesn't seem healthy. She keeps Marco between her and the creature. Marco for his part arms himself with a scavenged lead pipe.
Nikki and Marco both have Danger Sense so while this isn't an ambush, I let them know first.
The thorns become sickly, entwined with garbage. They pass an old dishwasher being consumed by the brambles. Then they spot rusting chassis with a tree growing through it. Soon the sickly hedge gives way to mammoth junk piles to either side, covered in jagged metal and broken glass.
They soon reach a crossroads of sorts. The trail that crosses theirs leads from a narrow path lined with sharp knives of metal and glass to a corridor faced with the front ends of cars. Every third headlight gleams dimly, lighting the way. Ahead the piles of wrecked cars grow higher, forming a canyon about the path.
Rocco picks a piece of glass from a junk pile and pricks his finger. As he sucks on his finger he tries to commune with the local Hedge. But he learns nothing.
Contract of Dream 1 lets you learn facts about the local Hedge. Pricking your finger with a thorn (or in this case a shard of glass) allows one to use the Catch. Unfortunately he fails his roll.
Rocco rubs his eyes and Mir yawns as the late hour gets to them. Nikki however notices the mangy beast-man approaching. She hides behind Marco who steps in front of the others.
Most of the characters are now 6 hours past their bedtimes except for Nikki who took a nap earlier (since she planned to be up late). They roll Resolve + Stamina to stay awake. Everyone succeeds but now they suffer a -1 penalty to their actions from tiredness.
The figure identifies itself as Feral Tom. He claims to mean them no harm. Cautiously the children talk him. Tom seems fairly simple-minded and accidentally admits to watching them for the Queen of Shadows. He tells them he was supposed to protect them but sounds uncertain.
Nikki asks the broken Changeling if he can convince her dog to eat Skittles. Hesitantly he agrees. He growls and barks at the small dog and Mr. Skittles in turn eats some candy out of the foul-smelling man's hand.
Tom is a particularly sickly looking Beast. Nikki manipulates him into using his Contract of Fang and Talon to talk to Mr. Skittles. She earns a Beat for finally accomplishing her Aspiration.
They ask Tom where to find a Streetshark. He points to the piles of cars up ahead. Mir looks warily at the stacks of twisted metal and asks if it is safe. Feral Tom walks over to the pile and kicks it. He explains it seems stable enough.
The group wanders down the corridors past old Fords and GM vehicles. Some are familiar like Thunderbirds or Falcons. But then there are the Trucksters and weird 50s cars with massive tail-fins.
As they round a bend, Mir realizes Tom is sniffing him. Disturbed he confronts the strange Beast. Rocco and Mir try to get Tom to explain himself but the twisted creature gets upset and refuses to speak to them.
Marco tries a different tack, apologizing to the poor thing first and gradually manages to get Tom to open up. The Beast tells them he smelled the Wyrd on Mir. While Nikki mocks her brother for being "Weird", Tom reverently explains the Wyrd is magic and fate bound up in one.
Here we use the Social Maneuvering rules. They need to open 1 Door (Feral Tom's Composure). Mir rolls Manipulation + Persuasion -1 (for the Door to open) -1 (for tiredness). He fails. Rocco also tries and fails. Marco (with a larger penalty due to his friends bungling) though succeeds.
As for the scent, apparently Feral Tom can smell Mir's Charmed Life merit.
Pushing on they spot a huge car atop a heap six chassis high. A single massive fin emerges from the top of the car. They have found the Streetshark. From the ground, the rusting hulk's grill appears to be missing but Marco decides to get a closer look. While the others watch, he clambers up the pile of cars to the top of the heap.
Wandering off the path is dangerous. In Mo-Hedge, characters have to roll Dexterity + Athletics to avoid taking 3 dice of Bashing damage. Marco succeeds though.
Up close the Streetshark is huge with menacing if cracked headlights for eyes. The car's "mouth", its grill, is empty and a dark tunnel opens out in front of Marco. Watching its dead eyes carefully, Marco props his lead pipe in the mouth and takes a look inside. He doesn't see any teeth but the tunnel goes back quite a bit further. He calls down to the others that he is taking a look and climbs in.
Crawling into the darkness, he feels around for any teeth. After a few feet of crawling he hears some sort of noise from deeper down the tunnel. It sounds like metallic clattering and dull thumping. He crawls deeper and deeper until he finds the end of the 'cave' and a tunnel descending down into the junk heap.
Sounds of chopping and cooking waft up the tunnel. Curious Marco crawls down. About 10 yards down, he comes to a grill and a small kitchen lit by a single swaying light bulb.
Marco is being stealthy here and does fairly well on his Dexterity + Stealth roll.
Looking through the grate, he can make out a wooden table in the center of the room and a stove on the left wall. He can also see the skinny denim clad legs of the cook. On the far side of the room is a large cage hanging from the ceiling. Something is inside but he can't make out what.
Carefully Marco moves the grate aside.
The cook doesn't react.
Marco rolls Dexterity + Stealth at a -1 penalty (on top of tiredness) and beats out the cook's Wits + Composure roll.
Now with a better look around he can see he is in a well stocked kitchen. Pots and pans hang from the ceiling along with knives and hunks of unidentifiable meat. A pot of boiling vegetables sits on the stove while a thin stick-like man chops more. In the cage he can see a girl not much younger than himself. Her eyes are pitch black and her coarse dark hair stands up stiffly.
Doors to his right and across the room are closed while a hallway leads directly to the left. A key hangs on a hook beside it. Marco considers his next move.
He could go for the key or he could pick the lock. Marco rolls Intelligence + Larceny to gauge the difficulty. He figures the lock while sturdy is fairly primitive.
Outside the others wonder what is taking Marco so long. Then Nikki hears someone approaching. She warns them and Mir gestures for them to get close. Calling on darkness he enhances their chances of remaining hidden. Feral Tom however flees, leaving them to whatever is coming down the path. What little light there is seems to dim. Mir and Rocco hide next to the junk pile while Nikki skitters off to hide beneath a rusty Chevy.
Mir invokes the Contract of Shadows doubling environmental penalties to spot them from -2 to -4. Then they roll Dexterity + Stealth. Mir and Rocco get one success while Nikki gets three.
Soon a bulky ogre comes down the path its skin the color and texture of scratched metal. Hunched over, it arms are almost as thick as its legs while its mouth is full of shiny teeth of chrome. Yellow hair sticks up on its head in spikes. But what grabs their attention most of all is the necklace around his neck. Made leather, it carries 9 shark teeth made of shiny chrome.
Now we meet Chrome-Tooth the Ogre who has collect most of the Streetshark teeth in the region. Luckily for the PCs the increased penalties cause him to fail to spot them.
The Ogre wanders down the path, passing within inches of Mir and Rocco's location before heading back the way he came. Nikki realizes the Ogre was just patrolling. Looking over the path she spots a broken stove atop crushed van overlooking the path. It would be the perfect spot to hide from the Ogre and then snatch the necklace off of its neck.
Nikki rolls Intelligence + Larceny to determine the best location to snatch the necklace. She gets 5 successes! We decide she gets a Condition: Like a Ninja that will give her a +2 bonus to her next Stealth roll. Which she will need soon.
While Nikki prepares for the theft, Mir decides to check on Marco. He climbs up the pile of junked cars with some difficulty. At one point he pulls himself up to the next ledge on to see two jagged spikes of glass to either side of where he placed his hand. He reaches the mouth of the Streetshark and calls in. With no answer he climbs inside.
Mir rolls Dexterity + Athletics (which he lacks) and fails. Luckily for him none of the damage dice succeed.
In the kitchen, the light bulb flickers. The cook walks out into the hall and opens a door. Sounds of gunfire and video game carnage blare out of the room as the cook shouts at someone called King to go check the generator.
Marco doesn't wait to see what happens. He runs across the room, pulling out some tools from his kit on the way. As the pale girl pleads for him to get her out, he pops the lock. They rush out of the room. Marco thinks he sees the cook turn his way but by that point he and the girl are climbing into the tunnel and upwards.
The bulb flickering is due Mir's contract outside. Marco rolls Dexterity + Larceny +2 (for his tool kit) -1 for tiredness. He succeeds and the crude lock opens. He doesn't do as well on the escape, rolling no successes on his Dexterity + Stealth. Marco turns down my offer of a Beat for a Dramatic Failure. It is unclear if he has been noticed.
Hurriedly climbing up the tunnel, they collide with Mir. As the Goth tries to find out what is going on, a cry echos up from below. Marco pushes everyone out of the Streetshark.
While they clamber down the pile of wrecked cars, Nikki and Rocco hide. From her vantage point she sees two figures emerge from around the bend. One is the Ogre who heads their way. The other is boy with skin hanging loose on his body like a bulldog. He takes a path in the opposite direction.
With the Ogre approaching everyone tries to hide. But the chrome toothed Ogre spots the girl and comes charging in. He flinches a moment as he passes the stove overlooking the path but fails to notice Nikki hiding there or the necklace he was wearing vanish into her pocket.
He also doesn't see Marco come up behind him. With a crack the boy smashes the Ogre across the back with a lead pipe with enough force to bend it. The creature grunts in pain as it collapses to its hands and knees. Before it can react, he brings the now bent pipe down on the monster again. It collapses in pain.
So first Nikki snatches the necklace. The Ogre, Chrome-Tooth, is focused on the escaped prisoner so Nikki's Sleight-of-Hand merit comes into play. She just has to be unnoticed. Using her Like a Ninja Condition she beats Chrome-Tooth's roll to notice and gets away clean. She gains a Beat.
Then Marco decides to launch a surprise attack. Since the PCs all beat Chrome-Tooth's Perception roll, he gets an attack without having to worry about defense. He gets 2 successes on his Strength + Weaponry roll. Adding the weapon's base damage of 1 Lethal, he deals 3 Lethal.
At this point Chrome-Tooth needs to spend willpower to attack. But before I can decide that, Marco goes again. He rolls Strength + Weaponry - 3 (Chrome-Tooth's defense) -1 (for tiredness) -1 (since his weapon has partially broken in the first attack). He spends Willpower and manages a success. Chrome-Tooth takes 2 more Lethal and gives up the fight.
Marco clearly gains some respect from this and so gains a Beat.
The children flee the junkyard. The last thing they hear is the cook asking if the Ogre, Chrome-Tooth is okay.
They catch their breath a short distance away. The girl introduces herself as Charlie. She explains that Chrome-Tooth and his gang were planning to eat her. They question her a little and learn she isn't from around here. Deciding they have had enough excitement for one night, they decide to find a way out of the Hedge.
As they get going again, Nikki hands over one of the teeth to Rocco.
And he gets a Beat for getting closer to his goal of walking again.
It turns out to be harder to find the way back. Mir leads the way as Rocco fights against his need to sleep. As they wander away from the junkyard they pass a comfy car seat and a soft patch of grass.
It is the grass that gets Mir. He stops to rest a moment and instantly dozes off. As Marco turns to wake him, Rocco crashes into him. His brother has fallen asleep while driving the electric wheelchair. Even Nikki seems to be dragging. Marco wakes everyone and rallies them to finding a way out.
With the excitement over everyone makes a Resolve + Stamina roll with tiredness penalties. Mir and Rocco fail and fall asleep. Nikki succeeds but is now tired. It is up to Marco to keep people going.
Escaping the Hedge is an extended Wits + Investigation roll with each roll taking a half hour. It takes 3 rolls but eventually they find a way out. Finding new exits to the Hedge is an Aspiration of Nikki so she gains a Beat.
They eventually come across an old wooden door lying flat on the ground. A small amount of snow lies clumped near the base. Charlie opens the door for them and they all stumble out into the icy cold of Detroit.
Charlie is not nearly dressed warm enough for this. Nikki suggests she could go to the homeless shelter several blocks away but Marco and Rocco suggest she use the empty apartment in their building. Together the five children trudge the couple blocks through the snow to Reichardt Apartments.
Once home, Marco carries Rocco and his wheelchair up the stairs to avoid waking their father and the rest of the inhabitants with the noise of the elevator. Charlie follows behind him. As they slip inside, Rocco doesn't see his father anywhere. The 10-year-old worries, assuming he must be waiting for them in their room.
Marco pokes his head in. He's not there.
Then they hear their father's snores from his room. It seems they have gotten away with sneaking out. Relaxing, Rocco offers Charlie his bed, while he sleeps in his wheelchair.
Nikki and Mir meanwhile slip back into their room via the bedroom window, pulling Mr. Skittles in with him. As Mir moves to his side of the room, he notices his mother sitting in chair by the door. Angrily she asks where they have been.
Nikki muttering sleepily blames Mir but Mrs. Callaghan sees through the lie. She forces Mir to tell her what they were doing. He admits that they were out wandering around with friends. She gives them a stern lecture and grounds them for the rest of the holiday.
The next morning there is a knock at the door of the McQueen brother's room. Rocco wakes with a start and a painful crink in his neck. Sometime in the night he slipped from his wheelchair onto the marginally more comfortable floor. He quickly pulls himself into bed angling his body to hide Charlie.
A moment later their father pokes his head in and asks if they are sleeping in. He tells them he is about to head out to work but wanted to know if they wanted to go out to dinner tonight. The brothers seem enthusiastic and comment they might visit him at the shop. The father closes the door, never realizing they were hiding a girl in their room. Rocco turns to make a smart ass comment to Charlie and is pushed off the bed.
The Callaghans spend the day stuck inside. Mir manages to talk briefly with Rocco via walkie-talkie before Nikki threatens to tell Mom. Over breakfast, her mother tries to connect with Nikki and find out what is going on with her. She gets nowhere however and is left even more worried.
Ah trading emotional relationships away! What is the worst that can happen?
Nikki spends the day drawing while Mir starts a journal on the strange things he has encountered.
Rocco and Marco meanwhile break into the empty apartment and set up a living space for Charlie in there. Its cold and bare but it is better than outside.
Later they take a bus to their father's shop. On the way to the bus station, Ryan flags them down. The straw haired kid tells Marco that their friend Chris was injured last night. He was hit by a car and is in the hospital. For a moment Marco wants to go see his friend but Rocco reminds him that they probably couldn't get in to see him anyway. They continue to the bus stop.
On the bus ride, Rocco works on his brother, trying to convince him to spend more time with their father. Marco agrees to help out at the shop more.
An hour later they reach McQueen's Auto Repair. As they spot their father they see him talking to an attractive blond woman. There is a flicker as they see past the Mask and realize her hair is actually a damp mass of seaweed. Rocco tells Marco to go ahead and gets a better look at the webbed fingered woman before she drives off.
Their father is happy to see them and tells them there is someone he is hoping to introduce them to tonight. He admits it was the woman they just saw. Her name is Ruzena and it is clear Mr. McQueen is smitten with her. Marco and Rocco keep their misgivings to themselves.
Evening arrives and as the Callaghans stew inside there is a knock at the door. Mir and Nikki look up surprised as their mother opens the door. She throws her arms around the blond-haired man who stumbles in. Their long absent father has come home!
Despite their punishment, Mr. Callaghan ends the evening by showering the kids with presents. Among the various toys, Nikki gets an art book and Miroslav gets a VHS tape of Hellbound: Hellraiser II. He regales them with stories of his travels and plays he has been doing in Boston and New York. Mir is interested in New York City and asks if they might visit it. Mr. Callaghan says he won't be going back to there soon but that he might take them down south to Atlanta in February.
The McQueens meanwhile go out to eat at one of those restaurants with memorabilia on the wall. Ruzena meets them there. Up close they can see her scaly skin and entrancing blue eyes.
Marco spends dinner sulking and nursing his suspicions. Rocco on the other hand questions her and tries to figure out how smart she is. Halfway through dinner, Rocco nudges Marco and whispers for him to distract their father for him. Marco gamely complies.
So Rocco is trying to determine how smart she is. I decided a Wits + Study would allow him a rough gauge. He succeeds and learns she is of roughly average intelligence.
Marco meanwhile rolls Manipulation + Persuasion -2 (his father's Composure) to convince his father to look at something with him across the restaurant. This is basically using the Social Maneuvering rules for hard leveraging. Marco succeeds.
While Marco and Mr. McQueen go to look at what looks like some antique car parts across the room, Rocco drops his act. He directly confronts Ruzena with the knowledge of what she is. He wants to know if she really cares for him. She says she does but lets slip that this was not the case initially and that she had some other purpose. He asks her not to hurt his father.
The silence that answers his request is broken up when the other McQueens return. The rest of dinner is uneventful if less cheerful.
The next day is New Year's Eve. Mrs. Callaghan has to mind the shop and leaves her husband to watch the kids. Nikki sees her chance and convinces her father to let her out to see a friend in the building.
Nikki's dad is a softie. He puts up very little resistance to her Manipulation + Persuasion roll.
Mir meanwhile pumps his father for the old fairy tale stories, especially the one where his father was blessed by a faerie princess when he was born. Mr. Callaghan seems to be preoccupied though, looking out the window every few minutes. When Mir asks him how long he is staying, he says a week, but Mir can tell he is lying.
Mir succeeds on a Wits + Subterfuge to see through his father's lies.
Nikki goes across the hall to visit Charlie. The Changeling girl has managed to scavenge some bedding and set up a small nest in the apartment. The two talk awkwardly. Charlie is a runaway, having fled some abusive family in Ohio. Nikki seems to like the idea of running away. Nikki is intrigued by how far the girl has traveled.
Nikki asks if she wants to play with Mr. Skittles. Charlie says yes and they play awhile. Then Nikki asks if Charlie can help her find some Goblin Fruits. Charlie opens a door into the Hedge and they wander for a couple of hours until they find a strange vine with a dozen fruit hanging off of it.
Foraging in the Hedge is a Wits + Survival roll. It takes a few rolls before they succeed as neither Nikki or Charlie is very good at this.
The fruits resemble warty apples that are wrinkly on one end. Charlie calls them Appleworts. As Nikki bites into one, she taste a mix of apple and prune as well as the heady taste of Glamour. She eats several of them and takes the rest back with her.
Appleworts just give 1 Glamour when eaten.
Once back out of the Hedge she heads back to her room. Along the way she shows off the odd fruit to Mir. Looking over her spoils she sees that all but 2 have withered away though.
Since Nikki has Wyrd 0, she can only bring back 2 Goblin Fruits.
Mir decides to find some Glamour of his own. Convincing his father to let him go out, he looks for the Vaughn twins. He finds them outside making a snowman with their little sister, Willow. He approaches the twins asking if they want to know what happened after they fled the night of the blackout.
Reluctantly they agree. He tells them a blood chilling tale of horror and the Hedge and they flee in fear. As he soaks in the fear tinged Glamour he sees their 4-year-old sister is completely unaffected.
Mir gets 4 successes on a Manipulation + Occult roll as he uses his occult knowledge to scare the 9-year-olds. He gains that much Glamour.
Mir then goes to talk to Rocco about his experience. Rocco fills his friend in on the situation of his father's girlfriend. Frustrated with how things are turning out, the younger kid decides it is time to find his mom. Mir leaves him to it and heads back downstairs to his apartment.
Rocco does some computer searches and hacks into a city database for an hour until he finally tracks down his mother. She lives across town in an upscale apartment. He slides back in his chair, surprised at how easy it was. He calls down to Mir and lets him know. His friend is amused it took Rocco so long to start searching.
The roll was an Intelligence + Computer + 1 (Hacking specialty) +2 (computer) -4 (for the database security). Finding his mother was never supposed to be very hard. It is more interesting to see what he does when he gets to her.
After some discussion the children decide to go to the Witch-House first. Rocco calls McQueen Auto Repair to get his brother. One of the workers, Zeb, picks up. He gets Marco after a minute and Rocco gets him to come home.
An hour later, the children use the new gateway into the Hedge from the apartment where Charlie is staying. Once in the Hedge they follow the darkest path they can find.
After an hour the walls of the Hedge have merged overhead and only their flashlights give them any illumination. Then the tunnel breaks open revealing a blackened sky. The Witch-House looms above them, like the grotesque child of a some fantasy castle and a Victorian manor house.
In the interest of time and pacing, I fast forwarded them to the Witch-House so we could start with the main action next session.
Time for experience. Nikki resolved two Aspirations and one Condition for 3 Beats. Marco and Rocco made progress to a long-term Aspiration so they get a Beat. Rocco gets another Beat for locating his mom. The session was low on Conditions and Dramatic Failures. But there was great roleplaying all around so I award 2 Beats to everyone. We average the Beats to get (3+2+1)/4=1.5 which we round up to 2. Added to the group Beats, everyone gets 4 Beats.
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