Tuesday, November 15, 2022

• I sleep in the freehold

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

This week on Soothsayer

• Agnes investigates the body
  • She determines she was knocked out by blunt force trauma to the back of the head, likely with an object of opportunity
    • It was a single blow
  • The killer took the unconscious victim somewhere, stabbed her to death there, and then moved her to the final location where she was found, staging that scene with the faux ritual designs
  • Time of death was sometime between 5:00 and 8:00 on Sunday the 13th
  • Tox screen came back clean
    • Agnes and Alan go to interview Dr. Elijah Barnes, who was listed as one of Jenny's emergency contacts

On the house…let's meditate on that

• Blaze is at work and the Herald comes in
  • She makes him an iced coffee on the house
    • The question is raised of how he knows where she works, and the assumption he knows where she lives
      • There is definitely an implied threat there it seems
• When he leaves, Blaze catches him talking briefly to a more real, and solid looking person outside who he seems to indicate to keep watching the place
  • She can't tell his kith from here, but is pretty sure there is something fae about him
  • She eventually caves into the curiosity and takes the watcher a cup of coffee
    • He's definitely some sort of bigfoot thing
    • He tells her she should tell his boss something soon so he doesn't have to rip her ferret ears off her head
• Blaze texts the group about not being able to leave or else she'll get ripped apart
  • We get a loose description, but enough of us are able to piece it together and Moira remembers seeing one at the bowling alley on Halloween
  • I ask if she needs help and we all end up heading to the coffee shop by our various means
    • I go and pick up Paddy's car, because surely nothing bad can come of that
• We eventually converge on the coffee shop
  • Moira smartly through the back door from an alley, Aoife surreptitiously through the front, and me charging in
  • Blaze explains what has happened
• I come up with the plan for Blaze to turn into a ferret and for Aoife to carry her out in her bag
  • They leave the front in one direction, I go in the other direction and clock the bigfoot, but he doesn't seem to notice me
    • Which is weird, because I was trying to distract him from Aoife
      • So maybe he can't see me like the Herald couldn't?
• We decide to regroup to eat lunch
  • Aoife stops at a place called Thinking Man Tavern, but I say hell no, as the prominent feature is a big copy of the Thinker statue over the bar, that is definitely watching me
  • So we leave and make 3 more failed attempts to find a place that is open, we eventually land at Sun In My Belly
• Moira makes a quick and dirty necklace to put a key on for Blaze
  • It's not the best crafted thing she's made, but it should resize with her when she turns into a ferret
• We head back to the coffeeshop to put the key to the test, to see if it hides Blaze from the bigfoot
  • It totally does, though we're pretty sure if we interacted with him or did something terribly strange he would notice

Meanwhile, back in Macon

• Agnes goes to speak with Victor Hawthorne, curator at the Tubman museum (former curator of GA Music Hall of Fame), who was Jenny's boss
  • She worked as his assistant at the museum
  • Possible Motive: Rumors suggest a strained professional relationship
• Agnes has the distinct feeling that he is lying when he says that he doesn't know any more, but he lawyers up
  • She notes a spot where some item is clearly missing from his desk/shelf, and sees that the furniture and rug are slightly askew, as if someone fell unexpectedly here
• She searches the victims desk and there is a clear absence of a notebook
  • Her assumption is that someone has removed it, as it could contain incriminating info
  • Hawthorne said if she kept a notebook, she must have taken it home with her

This wasn't a statue sort of neighborhood

• Moira needs to get to the studio, and Blaze drives my/Paddy's car there for the kids to paint up like an art car
• When they get down that way, Moira notices that there are a lot of statues in the neighborhood that weren't there before
  • She sends Blaze to get her jug, because they weren't here yesterday
  • And like, there are A LOT of statues, including some very large ones
• Blaze makes the long drive through the start of rush hour to get i

I guess we need to talk to the king

• Back in town, we debate whether we should just got to Willow's Heart to try and talk to the king
  • We decide that the best course of action may be to go back to see Athelstan and make us his problem, seeing if he's told the king we have information about Baron Berin's death
• Aoife and I decide to go do that, parking over by the student center and then making our way to the Glade
  • Athelstan isn't there, and the werewolves are dicks
• Aoife heads back to work and I jump on MARTA and kill a couple hours down near our freehold for it to get to sundown
  • I sleep in the freehold that night

It's a Wednesday night at the Holiday Inn Express

• That night, while in her hotel room, Agnes sees the ghostly form of Jenny, mangled from her injuries, walk through the wall
  • Except it wasn't actually a ghost, it was some Dreaming effect made to convince someone that there was a ghost
• She does a reading and determines that the false ghost is for her benefit, similar to the recent ghost sightings in Atlanta, which may not actually be ghosts either?
• Agnes sends a group text that is entirely not helpful, reading only "ghosts in Macon too"

Thursday, November 17, 2022

An unexpected cold snap

• Aoife wakes up in the wee hours in her apartment, very cold, it having dropped into the teens overnight
  • She spots an apparition of an old woman pouring a cup of tea, who turns to her and says "I poisoned my husband with this cup of tea…would you like some dear?" and when Aoife declines the apparition says "but I brewed it special!" and spooks out like in Ghostbusters
• Aoife threatens the apparition with her magical hair stick and blasts it with Sovereign…which doesn't connect to the apparition but something on the other end of it, that is way, way to high of a rank for her to effect
  • The apparition leaves, and her place starts to warm back up
• She texts us, which we see when we wake up near dawn
  • The thing she connected to was of a much higher rank in a metaphysical sort of way, like a power or entity with a title the fae would have recognized
• I ask Pneumatic if there is some sort of high titled muckity muck that might send false ghosts
  • She didn't interact with anything in particular that fits that, but it sounds like the sort of thing a Fomorian Principality could do
  • She unfortunately doesn't know of any specific Principalities aside from the Face in the Stone

Rise and sidhe

• We wander out of the freehold at dawn and find a very tired looking grump Sidhe in House Fiona armor waiting on the stoop
  • He introduces himself of Sam Fionna (Sam of House Fiona) and he's here because Athelstan finally got off his ass
  • The king was his squire, but then got mega promoted
• I text Aoife to see if there's a way to know he's who he says he is and is actually on the king's business
  • She's positive she knows who he is, and yeah, his story checks out
  • She's going to meet us at a Starbucks in Colony Square
• I straight up tell him about the Herald showing up and talking to one of us and that he came out and said he killed Berin
  • After we tell him about the Herald in enough detail, he says he doesn't want to know more and should make this Riordan's problem and asks if we're good to go to the freehold

Alan cracks the case

• In the wee hours Alan turns up at Agnes' door saying he's cracked it
• It was a smuggling operation
  • Things have been turning up on the black market from the now closed Georgia Music Hall of Fame that Hawthorne ran
• They get a 4:00 AM warrant and the cops haul Hawthorne in
• It looks like this case will close itself up nicely, so Agnes heads back to Atlanta, conveniently making it back in time to meet up with us to see the king

What's shaking Your Majesty?

• Sam takes us up to see the king around 9:00 or 9:30
  • They've cleared out the staff and court for privacy, with only Sam and the King in the room
• The king is sitting on his throne, wearing his impressive armor, looking beleaguered by his responsibilities
• We give him the run down on the Herald, the Face in the Stone, and the snakes and ghosts stuff being the work of Fomorian Principalities
• The King tells us "every so often the Dreaming likes to kick together a plucky group of randos to solve a problem," and 20 years ago he was part of one suck group, and he thinks he isn't anymore and that we are
• He can't give us official status because we have Shadow Court problem (like Baroness Sabrina)
  • He tells us he could try and give this problem to other people, but we assume that won't work and it will probably cause more problems
• We tell him about the other people from our vision and confirms a couple identities
• He gives us Sam's cell phone number to contact in case we get in trouble or need to urgently contact the king
  • He also gives Agnes a library card so she can access the books in the court and not steal any more
  • He's also going to give us funds and a "cool" van
  • And we can get parking registered/validated at the freehold

Next time

• We decide to head through the cabin room door next, and then the pub room after that