It's Monday morning, Monday, October 31, 2022

• Scene up on Piper/Moira's studio space
  • She helps one of the kids, Milo, work on a costume for a party that night
  • After Milo catches the bus to school, agent Alan McCrea, Agnes' partner, shows up
  • As they're talking they spot a homeless man who Piper sees is a satyr, and when he notices them looking at him, he sprints off
  • They give chase, and as he runs through a crowd which erupts into a fight in his wake
    • Piper manages to get the crowd calmed down, but they have lost the satyr
• On the set of the indie film Dracula vs. The Mole People, Blaze is getting ready for an early morning shoot, already in makeup and wardrobe as a mole person
  • She's with her coworker Jimmy Chin getting ready for the scene where the mole people are trying to pin down Dracula as the sun rises
  • As they are prepping and rehearsing, she spots a redheaded sidhe, [Games/Year and a Day/People & Groups/NPCs/Sir Diarmaid|Sir Diarmaid], strolling onto the warehouse set
  • He talks to her about whether she's going to be out tonight, Samhain, fighting the fight
    • He hands her a gun, and tells her that there aren't going to just be chimera out, but Thallain too, and "we" have to put them down permanently
• My brother Paddy walks into Aisling's office and requests her help
  • He explains he needs help with parking tickets and partway through remembers to pay her a singular dollar so he's technically her client
  • He's already drinking, despite it being early morning
  • She gives me a call telling me I need to talk to my brother and get him sorted out
• I get the call as I'm getting onto set of Dracula vs The Mole People, a very hungover second unit director and lighting designer in tow
  • I spend a little time trying to get Jimmy psyched up and inspired for the scene, am no help at all with the script, or lack thereof
  • I call Paddy, but his phone isn't in service
• At the FBI Atlanta field office, Alan comes to see Agnes and tells her about seeing a wanted serial predator outside of Piper's place
  • As Alan leaves to grab Agnes a scone from the cafeteria, she calls Piper and tells her about it
  • Piper describes the guy as a satyr, and Agnes figures out that from that description and causing the riot, he's probably a Nasty, a type of Thallain
• Agnes and Piper start texting the rest of the group about the Nasty, calling us to meet at Piper's studio
  • Blaze takes a big fall and fakes and injury so we "go to the hospital"
  • One the way off set I see Paddy raiding the craft services table
    • I get him to drive us to Piper's while getting him to tell me about his meeting with Aisling
    • He tells me about the tickets and how he needs a forged title
    • I ask him to stay in tonight, and give him some money to get a prepaid phone card so he can turn his phone back on and buy some beer
    • I get him to promise to stay in tonight, though he says his place may not be good since Paul may be looking for him, so I tell him to go to mine
• Once we're all gathered at the studio space, Agnes does a bit of soothsaying and determines the Nasty was here at the studio because he basically saw the place as a glamour buffet and was planning on ravaging some kids
  • Piper closes the studio up early under the pretense of doing it for Halloween
  • Agnes uses a cantrip to try and track the Nasty and we set off following the chimerical fireflies leading our way in Aisling's car with Blaze driving
  • Moira stays behind so she can work on forging a sword
    • Which she knocks out with incredible speed
• We follow the fireflies to Atlantic Station where they eventually disappear into the Bowlero bowling alley
  • It's midday by this point
  • We all head into the Bowlero after some dithering outside
    • We notice as soon as we enter the staff looking nervous…and then notice there's about 20 weird looking chimerical people, all Thallain, in there
  • We immediately back out as the Thallain turn and notice us
  • Agnes texts Piper that we've found a bunch of Thallain, and then snaps a picture and sends it to Alan
• From there it all gets a bit fuzzy, in the mists of Samhain, as an ogre comes bursting out and chucks a bowling ball at us
  • The first thing we remember is all five of us standing in a hell-blasted landscape of red plains under and orange sky, standing before an archway that is constantly shifting between different sorts of gates, one moment old stone, the next a technological marvel, and there are howls coming from a dark wood
  • We all appear to be in the deep Dreaming, and each have some item that we normally don't
  • The ground is littered with the bodies of chimerical creatures, clockwork things, and monsters that we appear to have dispatched
  • There are 7 others with us:
    • A redcap who is very badly burned in sorcerer's robes
    • A 15' tall man made of granite
    • A beardy eshu in robes
    • A boggan woman with a huge arquebus and black eyes
    • A woman who seems to flicker between being old, middle aged, and young
    • An owl pookah with a bow that looks like a ninja
    • A female troll with a giant battle axe
    • A cybernetic looking woman with blade arms, like something out of Metropolis, but weaponized
  • The redcap says "well, this is it," and the eshu says "I don't think we should have brought those dragon slayers with us, they slowed us down too much," and the boggan says "they killed a lot stuff before they died."
  • One of them says "The Crystal Falls was a trap; the white mist was a dead giveaway"
  • Something was said about should not have trusted the satyr in Pike's Crossing
  • The granite inanimae says something about "if we'd just had three more dross we could have bought that solar armor dross outfit thing"
  • Someone asks if everyone has their keys, and we all seem to, each made of iron, they're shape shifting
• Something is said about "are we skipping again" or something like that, and then we come to and find ourselves in front of the Millennium Gate with a bunch of unconscious Thallain at our feet, as well as clockwork creatures like we saw
  • We check and it's the morning of November 1st
  • A morning commuter passing by calls out "good show" as they continue on their way
  • We collect up a number of rough looking chimerical weapons that are anchored to mundane items on the Thallain
  • Piper/Moira collects up some pieces of the clockwork creatures and preserves them with glamor
    • These represent 6 craft projects worth of materials
  • As various of us are checking in with our people, a group of other changelings show up, led by Baron Berin who was out with a war party
  • Eventually a bunch of law enforcement show up, and between Agnes and Berin handle things with them
  • Berin tells us to meet up at Willow's Heart at noon, there will be food
• As we go into Truist Plaza (formerly SunTrust Plaza) the banality ticks way up
  • We are shown to an elevator and taken up to the topmost floor
  • Sidhe are snooty and obnoxious
  • We meet The Tailor, an old nocker, who seems to have been Aoife's mentor early in her life
  • We see the eshu from our vision/future, and recognize him as Asad
    • We approach him but he does not have any memory of what we do
    • We talk to him about keys and quests, and when we tell him about there being 13 keys, he walks off, clearly not wanting to be involved in some quest of that magnitude
• As Asad walks off we're stopped from the thought of pursuing him as King Riordan is announced
  • He is wearing armor and carrying a great sword that seems to have seen a lot of use last night, and looking worn out
  • He asks if anyone has any memories from last night, and I pipe up and tell him about the vision
    • Some folks seem to know what that place and the 13 keys may signify, mention "the Triumph Cask of Sorrows," but I have no clue
  • At that point a green-skinned woman waving a green flag steps forward asking for parlay
    • She's a goblin, and says something about telling us what has happened and will happen, and calls the assembled court usurpers
    • She says a ritual was begun last night on the red plain, and as is customary, we will be given a year and a day before the Fomorians wake and ride on us and destroy us all
    • She specifically calls our motley murderers
    • She then disappears in a puff of smoke
• Riordan announces "we're on war footing"
  • And addresses Aoife and tells her that there is a freehold (the Loren Estate) that we are given watch of as reward for our actions last night, and are to serve as caretakers
• We are given a title to the freehold and a brass key, told we may not be able to get in until after sunset…and good luck
  • Evidently the freehold only appears out of the mist during the evening
  • It's located not far from Willow's Heart on the site of a bank just up Peachtree
  • Sam Springfoot approaches us and congratulates us on the freehold
    • And then proceeds to tell us that it is haunted, by spirits of the antebellum city, and the place is itself a haunt
    • He tells us that children say they've seen the spectral shape of a burnt out manor
    • It's called the Unreal Estate
• While the rest of us eat, Agnes sneaks off to the peruse the library for anything on the 13 keys
  • She does recall very old tales of the Fomorian king and a doomsday device called the Triumph Cask of Sorrows, that he had, or maybe that he was?  It was broken apart, or the Fomorian king was broken apart into 13 pieces, that if assembled again could open the device/artifact, and that would be good or maybe bad?
  • She uncovers a slim volume that is King Riordan's reminiscence of the Dreams of Darker Days in which there is mention of a redcap that was going around beating people with a giant iron key
    • The book mentions several individuals that seem to line up with the people we saw in our vision
      • Stonetooth, who was a roadie for a band
      • A redcap sorcerer that was eaten by a phoenix
      • Asad who was in the same oath circle with the redcap sorcerer
      • There is no mention of the owl pookah, the female troll, or the killer robot
      • There is a mention of a moirae, a type of deep dreaming kith whose description would line up with the woman whose appearance shifted through the three different ages
    • Just after she's pocketed the volume, a librarian comes in and Agnes makes some cryptic statement that she hopes will throw them off
• Around 1:30 or so we all head off to our various jobs to make at least some appearance for the day with the plan to meet back up at the freehold a bit before sunset
  • Which we do
• By the time we arrive, the banks been closed for an hour or so and we park in the back of the parking lot
  • It's a pretty banal place, as the location of a bank
  • As the sun sets, the banality definitely lowers to a point that is less than we would expect to find in this part of town
  • Once the sun sets, a grand, rambling antebellum mansion appears, overlaying the bank
• Once inside, there is evidence that the first few rooms have had someone try and make a go of renovations
  • The higher in the house you go, the less connected to Atlanta and deeper into the Dreaming it seems to be
  • The brass key opens the few doors that are locked
  • We find a weird door in the attic that doesn't open to the brass key, and appears to be against an exterior wall
  • In the basement we find hanging on a lone peg on the wall an old iron key that fits the door in the attic, though that first night on testing it out
  • We're pretty sure the door will lead to the Dreaming