Grand Ellipse
See, it's three weeks later and Lady A has only just made it onto the taiga. I'm so pathetic. But it appears that Miss Theophilus has gotten ahead of me anyway, so it may be moot. I'm looking forward to playing an evil character in the next one if at all possible... Then I can sabatoge without guilt!

RQ this weekend looks to be trying, as I've not really come up with a good bang-for-the-buck finale for the whole Yelorna Rune-Lady vs. Master Thief Griselda plot. Usually I try hard not to have plots that are driven by NPC interaction: "Ok, you sit there while two powerful NPC's have a long and involved conversation." In my mind, the PC's should always be the central actors in a game; this particular plot is weaving a bit toward the Powerful NPC Showdown trap, and I don't want that to happen. (For those keeping score at home, Jenna's new character is a member of the cult of Yelorna Star Maiden; two sessions ago she roped the party into helping her attempt to steal a valuable cult document from a den of thieves. Unfortunately they were woefully outclassed by the thieves, and ended up getting caught and questioned. Jenna was saddled with a ransom message for the document to take back to her boss, the incredibly badassed Rune Lady Morganeth. Now Jenna's character is on unicorn pooper-scooper duty as punishment for sneaking off and trying to get this document with a bunch of ragtag mercenaries, and Morganeth is planning to go meet Griselda and do the swap.) My thought is that this plot needs to be wound up quickly; you never do find out what Morganeth had to give for the document. (Not money, Griselda's rolling in cash.) Instead Pat's character shows up with a new motivation for the party--he hasn't played since the last big sunday session, and I could make a case for his having been hired to do something in Pavis... Find Balasor's Axe, perhaps. That'll appease the boys who want to go kill some stuff, and Jenna could get detailed to go along as the Yelorna representative, poop and all. Hmm.

Masks of Nyarlathotep proceeds apace, except that I haven't updated the website in a while. It's not that nothing's happened, but that they had a couple major things happen in the space of a few game hours and I have yet to distill it into the more shorthanded form I like to use in the Timeline Entries. They're deep within the Dark City beneath the Great Sandy Desert, and have obtained a powerful weapon and killed a bunch of zombie-style dudes. Too bad for the zombies, it wasn't their fault! I'm hoping to finish the Australia section in two more sessions, but it just depends. There's a lot of city still to explore, if they choose to do it. Or they could just get da fuck outta dodge, always a good plan in this game.....