So…a plan come up with shortly before leaving for session kind of sort of worked (yes, Vee, you’re right and we’re crazy, but maybe what we ended up doing might work out for us). No evacuation plan for the Inquisition prison we were going to break into…but misdirection seemed to work in our favor, at least for a while.
While on our way to the site of the Inquisition prison where Frederico DeSoto’s being held, Ren suggests that maybe we should let Mable set off some explosive distractions–the sort of things that will let some of us sneak inside hopefully unnoticed. She intended it to be a lot more hands-off than it ended up being, but in the end I’m generally more flexible than most. The plan, of course, gets changed even before we start setting it up and the group splits between an infiltration team (Ren, Grant, Grace, and Ano) and team violence (Christian, Mei, and Mable). Grant and Mable are going to rig up some explosives in optimal places and Grant’s going to find a good way in for the infiltration team first and then we’re going to start in, hoping to rescue Fred without everyone getting dead.
Ren, of course, chooses this moment to grab Grant by the collar and kiss him full-on, earning a surprised (but not displeased) look from him and a very dirty look from Mable. She tells him to be careful and he tells her “It’s better with the mask.” And then Mable and Grant go to set up explosives for the distraction team violence will be responsible for. They come back in the same amount of pieces we went them off in. In the meantime, Ren muses to herself about wearing the mask or not. She decides she’s going to.
Team violence wanders off first. They walk into what appears (key word being “appears”) to be a run-down old Cathedral. Inside appears to be more of the same until Mei notices and wastes a camera. Which results in a hologram appearing–a hologram of our good friend the Marquis, the same one who put some of us (ie, Ren) through walls while we were in Japan, the same one we hoped had died in that warehouse we tried to blow up in Japan. He advises us to get the hell out of Dodge. He’s basically told in his dreams, we’re coming to get Fred and that’s the end of it (we’re really not sure why Christian decided to tell him that we were after Fred). Which earned us a “bring it” and the hologram disappearing. Mei finds the entrance to the lower levels–basically, the prison and the like–and rips the door up and open.
Violence ensues, though it’s a bit of time before we get the explosion that the infiltration team was waiting for. As soon as we get that first explosion, Grant takes off like a shot without saying a word and the rest of us are at his heels. Of course, we’re in the first hallway when we just barely miss getting toasted by a trap (he saved Ren, again) but with the infiltration team cut in half by a very, very heavy stone slab. Of course…this could be both a good thing and a bad thing. It depends on who you ask. So Ren and Grant head off to find Fred while Grace and Ano are left to figure out another way in.
Insane violence is taking place outside. Ano and Grace find a new way into the tunnels…but it’s not too long before they run into our old friend the Marquis. Grace starts trying to talk to him after throwing Ano back down the hallway. Grant and Ren reach an impasse and have two options: either they wander around blindly trying to find the prison cells or they abuse some guards and “convince” them to tell us where they are. Grant is once again surprised when Ren’s okay with hitting the abuse the guard button. So we run into a group of four guards. Grant pwns three of them and Ren trains both guns on the last and makes him shit himself in fear (apparently, the punk didn’t feel very lucky). And then she gets to see a bit of Grant’s dark side (…something tells me he’s a little surprised how okay with it she is) as he “convinces” the guard to tell us where to find the prison cells before the guard is rendered violently unconscious.
Meanwhile, topside, the demon that almost gutted Grant the day before has shown up and gotten its claws into Mable. Thank god that Mei was paying attention, because otherwise we’d be needing another demolitions tech. Things went from bad to worse up there because the demon has a slight edge on Mei. Chris eventually manages to intervene and they slowly start to push the demon back. And that’s the cliffhanger they were left with.
Somewhere between the surface and the prison cells, Grace manages to get some interesting information out of the Marquis. Apparently, he’s been questioning a lot of the same things we’ve been questioning. Grace finally asks him, “Why don’t you just let us take Fred and leave France and never come back.”
Marquis: “What does that get me other than killed by the Inquistors for losing my charge?”
Grace pauses, and then: “You could always come with us.”
And that’s the cliffhanger that she was left with.
Grant and Ren reach the prison block after abusing some more guards. Grant produces a ring of keys and once again brings up the phrase, “You’re not going to like this.”
“You use that around me a lot.”
“Well, you tend to not like anything that involves danger.”
Which is true. Danger means people are going to get hurt. Getting hurt is bad. But once again she surprises him. He’s managed to lift a key ring from one of the guards, but this is a place where they lock up all kinds of bad people. We’ve got to open cells and let some potentially very nasty shit loose. Ren grins at him and holds out her hand for the key ring.
“You’re a better shot than I am.”
This he can’t disagree with. But before Ren can get the first door unlocked, Odyle shows up and starts taunting Ren. Of course, Ren deduces that she’s here to cause trouble–big surprise. Grant’s disappeared in the meantime, and Ren trusts that he’ll have her back if she needs him–when she needs him the most, since that’s his style. Odyle underestimates Ren, thinking that she hadn’t made a decision on whether or not she can hurt the girl. Ren, of course, has made her decision.
Damn guns jamming. Odyle gets annoyed with Ren’s attempt to solve the problem once and for all and smacks her in the head with her zotty staff. It was pain. Odyle asks if she’s ready to do it the easy way now. Ren shrugs and decides to play prisoner, for the time being. And that’s where my cliffhanger was, in part.
Ano, meanwhile, has made it to Fred’s cell at about the same time as Grant, who looks at Ano and tells him that his only job now is to get the man in that cell safely out of the prison.
Grant: “I left someone behind that I have to go pick up.”
He picks the lock and dashes off. And that’s where we cut for the evening.
We’ll have a week off next week since some of the crew will be at GenCon. I’ve teased David about consistently giving us cliffhangers when we’re going to be off for a week. It happens every time.
It’ll be interesting to see how all of this plays out. Hopefully–hopefully–in our favor. We’ll have to see.
