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This is a summary of part 3 of the Miracle Season game from Gencon this year. (I don't propose to summarize 1 & 2, which I played last year, as I waited long enough that more detail would be lost than preserved.)
Miracle Season is an ongoing game run at Gencon and other cons (I don't know all of which ones, but DragonCon was on the list). If you hope/plan to play in it and are at all worried about spoilers, don't read this because it is quite detailed. A lot of it does not constitute spoilers. The joy of Miracle Season lies in the story, and that depends on both characters and the luck of the draw. (This year's story was arguably highly improbable...fun, but highly improbable.) But certain elements are consistent, else it wouldn't be an ongoing game where you could 'weave in' PCs who were in different sessions for earlier parts. And those elements will be spoilered if you read this.
Most of the fun isn't in "getting it right" though - it's in the tale of how you got there, how your stories wove into it, how you came to get it right (or wrong, for that matter). In that sense I'm not sure this game can be spoilered - that is, knowing the stuff still leaves you poised for fun. But yes, there's an "oo what's THAT?" factor that can be lost if you read past this sentence.
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[This is, of course, only the bits I remember. Thus, pieces may be missing or mis-written. This is especially true for MS3, which I did not summarize until over 24 hours after playing, during which time I also played several other games. Note that the odds were amazingly friendly in this session and there were several major successes and triumphs more than I would have expected for the length of the session. My Cecilia is gross. She is not, barring bizarre luck, THAT gross.]
Cast:
This session begins in the clearing / meadow area where the party in Miracle Season 2 ended, as most people phased back to the real world, and a few (namely our intrepid, or sometimes insane, PCs) not phased back to the real world. (Gabe needs to have a talk with Murphy about his law, as this was a particularly cruel demonstration of it.)
Several of us began the game by running off into the woods. At the end of the last one, Kevin (someone we knew from the mortal world and an NPC) had turned into a wolf (whups, never knew he was a werewolf until now!) and run off into the woods. He was chasing a girl who had spoken to finches, then gone off into the forest with her cloud of finches. Those of us who counted Kevin a good acquaintance and/or a friend, as well as someone (I think Abigail, but I'm not sure) wanting to protect the finch girl all charged off into the woods after them. The dark woods. Charging might not have been that bright; we slowed down. This was Terrance, Cecilia, Kalcy, and I think Abigail. Kalcy had a spell up to try to find Kevin (which we'd eventually realize, as we came full circle, wasn't working so well - whether through failure or superior firepower on the other side, who knows).
Meanwhile, back at the clearing, Alison tried to use her PDA to cast a spell and get a map of the area. It failed. So she tried again, with Sophia helping her by drawing the immediate area on the PDA to try to evoke the map. They drew a disaster and the PDA exploded, injuring Alison a bit and blinding Sophia.
Gabe, also in the clearing, has been muttering to himself, sullen and upset, telling himself that this is not real, he probably got slipped some drug or it is a metaphor for his life in some way, and trying to psychoanalyze the faerie realm. He is more than a bit disturbed by the actions of various people, the apparent reality (which he doesn't accept as real), and the hints of Alison's and Sophia's actions, although they were far enough away he missed some (maybe most?) of the conversation. The exploding PDA was a little harder to miss. He begins writing on his arms. (I never saw what he wrote, although the GM and Sophia did during the course of the game - and so did Terrance, but that's later.)
Alison guides Sophia around for a bit, then over to a tree to feel the bark and such. And as Sophia feels the bark of the tree, the tree speaks to her (later, she will find it is not so much the tree as the spirit of the forest, when the same deep deep male voice speaks to her from various plants along the way). It offers her healing, if she but goes into the forest, with Alison to guide her.
So they go into the forest, the voice guiding the general direction for them and Alison watching out for Sophia's path as far as obstructions. Leaving Gabe alone in the clearing. He tries his cell phone to call home, but it has no reception. He glares at it, then chucks it at the wall he "knows" is there. It lands in the faerie sod, and crystalvine begins growing. (This is the reflection of human technology in the faerie realms, and it grows rapidly. Sometimes it has thorns, sometimes it has poison, sometimes it chokes out all growth, and yet it is also beautiful if you're of that mindset. Even some of the faerie find it so - some, even while hating it.)
He has (I think after the cell phone, but maybe it was slightly before) become even more disturbed, insisted it wasn't real again, and then tipped over to, "But what if I'm wrong? What if this is real and I'm telling myself it isn't real, instead of not being real?" Not like he believed in it, but just caught in the contradiction, utterly, aware that his mind had become totally untrustworthy since he could neither believe his sight nor know what lay beyond it.
The crystalvine fills the clearing, a pernicious and rapid growth not unlike a glittery optic fiber kudzu, and pushes Gabe to the edge of it. It comes within a foot of the forest but stops there, leaving him standing between the ex-clearing and the forest, no way back and no wish to go forward, even if he does think it's a psychological allegory.
Eventually, the first group (including Cecilia) hears a crashing in the bush - some large creature or something approaching. It is, of course, Alison and Sophia, and all the PCs are in one place again - except Gabe. Although Gabe was unnerving, no one wished that on him IC or OOC (yet - not sure about later), so someone needed to go back and get him. Terrance, as the most rational and rational-looking, volunteered and we agreed. However, there was the question of how they would be sure of finding us again. Alison had an amethyst pendant she wore a lot and had attuned before; she took it off and a locator spell was woven into it, with multiple people contributing. Kalcy and her skill with rocks, of course; Alison and Sophia's witchcraft. Abigail held it but didn't add power to it; Terrance held it but rather than trying to make it locate him, attuned to it mentally since he would be wielding it; he asked Cecilia to paint/imprint circuits on the surface (so he could pretend it was technological...maybe) and she did this, but mostly she simply believed with that impulsive whole-heartedness she's so good at. In the making of it, somehow, Sophia's sight was restored. Not in any way the PCs understood - it just came back as part of it.
Terrance went off to retrieve Gabe, who was spiky, irritable, and while he didn't openly say it wasn't really a techie item, pretty much obviously wasn't buying the "it's a transponder" story even if it were on a fire sale deal at the time. But the locator did work, no matter what it was, and they returned to the group, where Gabe continued to be sullen and sometimes write on himself.
Eventually, the group arrives in a clearing with a great tree in the middle, and from the tree hung God's Eyes, like a yarn-based fruit, a great many of them at all heights. (If you are not familiar with the God's Eye, see http://www.gateofheaven.net/gods%20eye%20page%20instruction.htm for a description.) The voice of the forest told the witches that this was our goal, and further to see the world through eyes not their own to reach our goal.
Cecilia began to draw the tree and the God's Eyes. Gabe was sullen. Others milled about. Cecilia, in her drawing, saw her landlady (who was a PC in sessions 1 & 2 last year) with her landlady's young son. The son was drawing a rain of feathers (an image that has meaning from Miracle Season 1 and/or 2, I forget which, though I recall the image) and looked up and waved at Cecilia - she very much felt they saw each other.
Meanwhile, others decided to look through the real God's Eyes, Alison saw her apartment, but bare of furniture as if no one lived there, with someone - not someone she knew - standing in it. Kalcy saw the frat house back on campus (where Patrick, the frat boy who had been dogging her in episodes 1 and 2, lived - though she didn't see Patrick). Abigail saw King Arthur - alive, standing, hand on his sword which was sunk in the ground. I don't recall the details of this vision. In a different Eye she saw Arthur's body on a boat, sailing out to sea on its own. (Anyone looking through a God's Eye after the first person did, saw the same thing.) I swear there was a reference to fire but I can't remember if it was a separate vision or in one of those.
Kalcy insisted we needed to find Kevin and asked Cecilia, since she'd had a vision and spoken of it, if she could draw him and find him. So she drew him - first his human form, then his wolf form, and then when that got nowhere, she drew a God's Eye between them, expanding it outward until it (partly or wholly, not sure which) covered both, linking them.
At this point, the paper flew up from her notebook, stood vertical, and the God's Eye part opened (faded? ripped? not sure) and became a portal. Through it could be seen a beach, but a very odd beach, with an ocean of bones at its shore instead of one of water. Closer to the portal was of more interest: Kevin, human again but scarcely clad (having ripped his clothes when changing) stood there, his back to us, bound. Further, facing us, stood three robed figures - the Scions, the bad guys from episodes 1 and 2, who want to take back something they feel is theirs by right...but doing so will mean the deaths of many, including many (not quite all, I don't think - for example, I'd be surprised if Gabe were affected) of the PCs. And their friends, like say, Kevin.
Kalcy reached through the portal, but since it was drawn on a journal that Cece carries with her, it was of course not very large and only Kalcy's arm fit. She'd wanted to go through but if she'd tried the paper seemed like it would tear, so she backed off and had Cece write a note for Kevin. She stuck it through and waved it around, but Kevin was facing the wrong way and the Scions didn't even seem to notice. So then she called Kevin's name, which caused him to turn around - at which point it could clearly be seen he was also muzzled, so he couldn't answer. (She'd wanted to ask him what they should do.) The robed figures also heard, of course, and turned to face the portal more exactly (looking at it, instead of generally facing that direction) and saw Kalcy's arm, so she pulled it back. (Where the note ended up, I don't believe was actually established. Nor do I know if it had a drawing on the back, as Cecilia was showing a tendency to double-side her pages by this point.)
Kalcy then wanted a way to get him out of there and either she or someone else suggested Cecilia draw a bridge. Cece couldn't see how that would help right away, since the paper would be too small for it to work, but the witches mused about using perspective like having someone walk out of a TV or your laptop screen, and once they said that she got the idea and began drawing. Meanwhile, the witches were working with a stick as a focus, trying to turn it into the bridge; Sophia looked at Cecilia's pad, confirmed they were on the same page, and adjusted their efforts to match it. She also saw the beginnings of figures drawn at the bottom of the page that weren't part of the bridge with Kevin on it....
Kalcy spoke to a rock and sent it through the portal to cut Kevin's bonds, which it did, just as the witches and Cecilia completed their work and the bridge - actually - went - up! In Cecilia's book, across the bottom, the three figures of the Scions facing out, and Cecilia herself drawn facing them, her face unseen but her posture sharp and defiant. As the bridge went up, the real Scions looked through the portal straight at her; she froze a beat, then lifted her chin and glared back. There are, after all, some steps you can't easily undo.
Kevin crossed to the bridge, put his foot on it...and froze. The Scions can do that, and had done so to prevent him from escaping them. For a moment those on the other side also froze - then Cecilia went to her own bridge, dropping her sketchbook and such from nerveless fingers, and crossed the portal (proving the size trick on the bridge did work, I guess...). She grabbed Kevin and shoved him behind her, toward the portal and through it, while she stood between him and the Scions; they didn't freeze her. But the portal began to close. The witches shoved a twig through, not on the bridge, and it emerged as a giant log. Cecilia realized what it had to be and clung to the end of it, pulled back across the portal to much scraping.
Sophia tried to convince Cecilia that this fulfilled her drawn promise to defy the Scions. Cecilia doesn't think it does - it was too trivial, too small, and she didn't do anything relating to each of them individually - which is how the promise was made, three promises, one for each of them. Yes, it was an act of defiance, but she doesn't think it had the scope to meet the original promise; whether she's right or not, she expects that to come back to bite her in the future. And she'll almost surely face them again if it does (or seems to), because it's better than a promise broken.
And it was all for nothing, or less than nothing. Kevin's body arrived, limp, boneless, and soulless. And already cold. The Scions had taken him for what they wanted, unable to hold him as they'd originally intended - alive and in his body. He might have died anyway at some point, but the group (and Cecilia in particular) sealed it by rescuing him, for a sad irony. And my guess is that that is why Cecilia was not frozen - because the Scions were busy reaping what they wanted most before it got away. (I'm not sure if they closed the portal or if it would have gone on its own. That may be another reason they didn't bind her - they may have been trying to do so by closing her escape route.)
Having brought him across, they left him laid out in the clearing, since they had no idea where they were going or whether it would be a better place. Beneath the God's Eyes on the tree might not be such a horrid final resting place for your body. Farewells were said (or not), and they left the clearing in pursuit of their next path...hoping to get either home, or to the Sea of Bones (since dealing with the Scions might mean home). And thus the session ended.
Miracle Season is an ongoing game run at Gencon and other cons (I don't know all of which ones, but DragonCon was on the list). If you hope/plan to play in it and are at all worried about spoilers, don't read this because it is quite detailed. A lot of it does not constitute spoilers. The joy of Miracle Season lies in the story, and that depends on both characters and the luck of the draw. (This year's story was arguably highly improbable...fun, but highly improbable.) But certain elements are consistent, else it wouldn't be an ongoing game where you could 'weave in' PCs who were in different sessions for earlier parts. And those elements will be spoilered if you read this.
Most of the fun isn't in "getting it right" though - it's in the tale of how you got there, how your stories wove into it, how you came to get it right (or wrong, for that matter). In that sense I'm not sure this game can be spoilered - that is, knowing the stuff still leaves you poised for fun. But yes, there's an "oo what's THAT?" factor that can be lost if you read past this sentence.
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[This is, of course, only the bits I remember. Thus, pieces may be missing or mis-written. This is especially true for MS3, which I did not summarize until over 24 hours after playing, during which time I also played several other games. Note that the odds were amazingly friendly in this session and there were several major successes and triumphs more than I would have expected for the length of the session. My Cecilia is gross. She is not, barring bizarre luck, THAT gross.]
Cast:
- Cecilia (my character, an artist with faerie wishcraft all tied up with her drawing/painting, and an impulsive streak (particularly with art and magic) that dominates her personality)
- Terrance (an actuary who also happens to journey to the faerie realms via his online games)
- Kalcy (a rock spirit who has taken on human form)
- Gabe (a seriously malcontent youth on a bad path, with a deliria 0 - completely 'sane' in terms of faerie stuff, not so very sane in terms of social and coping, especially when dumped in faerie realms...)
- Abigail (an Arthurian scholar)
- Alison (a witch who works partly with technical tools, as well as the traditional ones)
- Sophia (another witch, this one younger and a classmate of Cecilia's - although Sophia was an art minor, not an art major)
This session begins in the clearing / meadow area where the party in Miracle Season 2 ended, as most people phased back to the real world, and a few (namely our intrepid, or sometimes insane, PCs) not phased back to the real world. (Gabe needs to have a talk with Murphy about his law, as this was a particularly cruel demonstration of it.)
Several of us began the game by running off into the woods. At the end of the last one, Kevin (someone we knew from the mortal world and an NPC) had turned into a wolf (whups, never knew he was a werewolf until now!) and run off into the woods. He was chasing a girl who had spoken to finches, then gone off into the forest with her cloud of finches. Those of us who counted Kevin a good acquaintance and/or a friend, as well as someone (I think Abigail, but I'm not sure) wanting to protect the finch girl all charged off into the woods after them. The dark woods. Charging might not have been that bright; we slowed down. This was Terrance, Cecilia, Kalcy, and I think Abigail. Kalcy had a spell up to try to find Kevin (which we'd eventually realize, as we came full circle, wasn't working so well - whether through failure or superior firepower on the other side, who knows).
Meanwhile, back at the clearing, Alison tried to use her PDA to cast a spell and get a map of the area. It failed. So she tried again, with Sophia helping her by drawing the immediate area on the PDA to try to evoke the map. They drew a disaster and the PDA exploded, injuring Alison a bit and blinding Sophia.
Gabe, also in the clearing, has been muttering to himself, sullen and upset, telling himself that this is not real, he probably got slipped some drug or it is a metaphor for his life in some way, and trying to psychoanalyze the faerie realm. He is more than a bit disturbed by the actions of various people, the apparent reality (which he doesn't accept as real), and the hints of Alison's and Sophia's actions, although they were far enough away he missed some (maybe most?) of the conversation. The exploding PDA was a little harder to miss. He begins writing on his arms. (I never saw what he wrote, although the GM and Sophia did during the course of the game - and so did Terrance, but that's later.)
Alison guides Sophia around for a bit, then over to a tree to feel the bark and such. And as Sophia feels the bark of the tree, the tree speaks to her (later, she will find it is not so much the tree as the spirit of the forest, when the same deep deep male voice speaks to her from various plants along the way). It offers her healing, if she but goes into the forest, with Alison to guide her.
So they go into the forest, the voice guiding the general direction for them and Alison watching out for Sophia's path as far as obstructions. Leaving Gabe alone in the clearing. He tries his cell phone to call home, but it has no reception. He glares at it, then chucks it at the wall he "knows" is there. It lands in the faerie sod, and crystalvine begins growing. (This is the reflection of human technology in the faerie realms, and it grows rapidly. Sometimes it has thorns, sometimes it has poison, sometimes it chokes out all growth, and yet it is also beautiful if you're of that mindset. Even some of the faerie find it so - some, even while hating it.)
He has (I think after the cell phone, but maybe it was slightly before) become even more disturbed, insisted it wasn't real again, and then tipped over to, "But what if I'm wrong? What if this is real and I'm telling myself it isn't real, instead of not being real?" Not like he believed in it, but just caught in the contradiction, utterly, aware that his mind had become totally untrustworthy since he could neither believe his sight nor know what lay beyond it.
The crystalvine fills the clearing, a pernicious and rapid growth not unlike a glittery optic fiber kudzu, and pushes Gabe to the edge of it. It comes within a foot of the forest but stops there, leaving him standing between the ex-clearing and the forest, no way back and no wish to go forward, even if he does think it's a psychological allegory.
Eventually, the first group (including Cecilia) hears a crashing in the bush - some large creature or something approaching. It is, of course, Alison and Sophia, and all the PCs are in one place again - except Gabe. Although Gabe was unnerving, no one wished that on him IC or OOC (yet - not sure about later), so someone needed to go back and get him. Terrance, as the most rational and rational-looking, volunteered and we agreed. However, there was the question of how they would be sure of finding us again. Alison had an amethyst pendant she wore a lot and had attuned before; she took it off and a locator spell was woven into it, with multiple people contributing. Kalcy and her skill with rocks, of course; Alison and Sophia's witchcraft. Abigail held it but didn't add power to it; Terrance held it but rather than trying to make it locate him, attuned to it mentally since he would be wielding it; he asked Cecilia to paint/imprint circuits on the surface (so he could pretend it was technological...maybe) and she did this, but mostly she simply believed with that impulsive whole-heartedness she's so good at. In the making of it, somehow, Sophia's sight was restored. Not in any way the PCs understood - it just came back as part of it.
Terrance went off to retrieve Gabe, who was spiky, irritable, and while he didn't openly say it wasn't really a techie item, pretty much obviously wasn't buying the "it's a transponder" story even if it were on a fire sale deal at the time. But the locator did work, no matter what it was, and they returned to the group, where Gabe continued to be sullen and sometimes write on himself.
Eventually, the group arrives in a clearing with a great tree in the middle, and from the tree hung God's Eyes, like a yarn-based fruit, a great many of them at all heights. (If you are not familiar with the God's Eye, see http://www.gateofheaven.net/gods%20eye%20page%20instruction.htm for a description.) The voice of the forest told the witches that this was our goal, and further to see the world through eyes not their own to reach our goal.
Cecilia began to draw the tree and the God's Eyes. Gabe was sullen. Others milled about. Cecilia, in her drawing, saw her landlady (who was a PC in sessions 1 & 2 last year) with her landlady's young son. The son was drawing a rain of feathers (an image that has meaning from Miracle Season 1 and/or 2, I forget which, though I recall the image) and looked up and waved at Cecilia - she very much felt they saw each other.
Meanwhile, others decided to look through the real God's Eyes, Alison saw her apartment, but bare of furniture as if no one lived there, with someone - not someone she knew - standing in it. Kalcy saw the frat house back on campus (where Patrick, the frat boy who had been dogging her in episodes 1 and 2, lived - though she didn't see Patrick). Abigail saw King Arthur - alive, standing, hand on his sword which was sunk in the ground. I don't recall the details of this vision. In a different Eye she saw Arthur's body on a boat, sailing out to sea on its own. (Anyone looking through a God's Eye after the first person did, saw the same thing.) I swear there was a reference to fire but I can't remember if it was a separate vision or in one of those.
Kalcy insisted we needed to find Kevin and asked Cecilia, since she'd had a vision and spoken of it, if she could draw him and find him. So she drew him - first his human form, then his wolf form, and then when that got nowhere, she drew a God's Eye between them, expanding it outward until it (partly or wholly, not sure which) covered both, linking them.
At this point, the paper flew up from her notebook, stood vertical, and the God's Eye part opened (faded? ripped? not sure) and became a portal. Through it could be seen a beach, but a very odd beach, with an ocean of bones at its shore instead of one of water. Closer to the portal was of more interest: Kevin, human again but scarcely clad (having ripped his clothes when changing) stood there, his back to us, bound. Further, facing us, stood three robed figures - the Scions, the bad guys from episodes 1 and 2, who want to take back something they feel is theirs by right...but doing so will mean the deaths of many, including many (not quite all, I don't think - for example, I'd be surprised if Gabe were affected) of the PCs. And their friends, like say, Kevin.
Kalcy reached through the portal, but since it was drawn on a journal that Cece carries with her, it was of course not very large and only Kalcy's arm fit. She'd wanted to go through but if she'd tried the paper seemed like it would tear, so she backed off and had Cece write a note for Kevin. She stuck it through and waved it around, but Kevin was facing the wrong way and the Scions didn't even seem to notice. So then she called Kevin's name, which caused him to turn around - at which point it could clearly be seen he was also muzzled, so he couldn't answer. (She'd wanted to ask him what they should do.) The robed figures also heard, of course, and turned to face the portal more exactly (looking at it, instead of generally facing that direction) and saw Kalcy's arm, so she pulled it back. (Where the note ended up, I don't believe was actually established. Nor do I know if it had a drawing on the back, as Cecilia was showing a tendency to double-side her pages by this point.)
Kalcy then wanted a way to get him out of there and either she or someone else suggested Cecilia draw a bridge. Cece couldn't see how that would help right away, since the paper would be too small for it to work, but the witches mused about using perspective like having someone walk out of a TV or your laptop screen, and once they said that she got the idea and began drawing. Meanwhile, the witches were working with a stick as a focus, trying to turn it into the bridge; Sophia looked at Cecilia's pad, confirmed they were on the same page, and adjusted their efforts to match it. She also saw the beginnings of figures drawn at the bottom of the page that weren't part of the bridge with Kevin on it....
Kalcy spoke to a rock and sent it through the portal to cut Kevin's bonds, which it did, just as the witches and Cecilia completed their work and the bridge - actually - went - up! In Cecilia's book, across the bottom, the three figures of the Scions facing out, and Cecilia herself drawn facing them, her face unseen but her posture sharp and defiant. As the bridge went up, the real Scions looked through the portal straight at her; she froze a beat, then lifted her chin and glared back. There are, after all, some steps you can't easily undo.
Kevin crossed to the bridge, put his foot on it...and froze. The Scions can do that, and had done so to prevent him from escaping them. For a moment those on the other side also froze - then Cecilia went to her own bridge, dropping her sketchbook and such from nerveless fingers, and crossed the portal (proving the size trick on the bridge did work, I guess...). She grabbed Kevin and shoved him behind her, toward the portal and through it, while she stood between him and the Scions; they didn't freeze her. But the portal began to close. The witches shoved a twig through, not on the bridge, and it emerged as a giant log. Cecilia realized what it had to be and clung to the end of it, pulled back across the portal to much scraping.
Sophia tried to convince Cecilia that this fulfilled her drawn promise to defy the Scions. Cecilia doesn't think it does - it was too trivial, too small, and she didn't do anything relating to each of them individually - which is how the promise was made, three promises, one for each of them. Yes, it was an act of defiance, but she doesn't think it had the scope to meet the original promise; whether she's right or not, she expects that to come back to bite her in the future. And she'll almost surely face them again if it does (or seems to), because it's better than a promise broken.
And it was all for nothing, or less than nothing. Kevin's body arrived, limp, boneless, and soulless. And already cold. The Scions had taken him for what they wanted, unable to hold him as they'd originally intended - alive and in his body. He might have died anyway at some point, but the group (and Cecilia in particular) sealed it by rescuing him, for a sad irony. And my guess is that that is why Cecilia was not frozen - because the Scions were busy reaping what they wanted most before it got away. (I'm not sure if they closed the portal or if it would have gone on its own. That may be another reason they didn't bind her - they may have been trying to do so by closing her escape route.)
Having brought him across, they left him laid out in the clearing, since they had no idea where they were going or whether it would be a better place. Beneath the God's Eyes on the tree might not be such a horrid final resting place for your body. Farewells were said (or not), and they left the clearing in pursuit of their next path...hoping to get either home, or to the Sea of Bones (since dealing with the Scions might mean home). And thus the session ended.