Session 11: Scavenger Hunt

 October 5th, 2013 

Over the course of the next three months, our protagonists settled in to freehold life and reclaiming some sense of order in their shattered worlds.

Time-Skip Flavor

The motley also renewed their motley pledge—including Hannah this time—and made improvements to their Hollow.

In the beginning of October, the Autumn Court announced a freehold-wide scavenger hunt they were sponsoring, with a list of ten items to find and a top prize of guest-of-honor status at the Court's Halloween fete at the end of the month (catered dinner, free tickets to the costume party, and free rooms for the night at the Providence Biltmore Hotel, where the party would be held). Enthusiastic about her new membership in the motley, Hannah signed the group up for the scavenger hunt because she thought it'd be fun. Reluctantly the rest of the group went along with the idea.

The list consisted of the following ten items:

The motley decided to tackle the easier items first, and set out to pick up some dry ice or rent a fog machine for their grave photo, as well as hit up used bookstores in the city for a copy of the book. After Eric managed to only find audiobooks, Tia located a reasonably-worn paperback copy and set about thumbing through it to wear it down further, then she, Eric, and Simon went to Swan Point Cemetery to set up the fog machine while Chiara, Hannah, and Francois decided to visit the Roger Williams Park Zoo to try to get exotic bird feathers.

Unfortunately for Chiara, she wasn't able to sweet-talk a zookeeper into letting them take a handful of feathers, and then Francois got himself kicked out after getting bit by one of the birds when he tried to just sneak in and swipe some feathers. Chiara called up Tia and company, who were having much better luck photographing the grave with fake fog, and asked them to send Simon by the zoo when they were done. Simon arrived and worked his skills of persuasion, netting the group a handful of flamingo, penguin, and kookaburra feathers.

The next stop was the John Hay Library to snap a photo of their anthropodermically bound books, which Hannah found to her disgust meant “bound in human skin.” Simon convinced a library clerk to let them get a good shot of the books. The group decided to use one of their clay dream-vessels for the “clay artifact” item—Eric suggested Francois' vessel—and after a quick stop at the Hollow to pick it up, it was on to the New Moon Goblin Market to acquire the items that couldn't easily be found in the human world.

The New Moon Market, unlike White Spire, was a collection of boat-shops linked together by bridges and gangplanks. The motley “took a long walk off a short pier” to get there, and immediately began searching for what they needed. They found a spider-like merchant selling trinkets like boxes, bottles, and globes containing various lullabies, poems, compliments, etc. After some conversation to determine what the motley needed, the merchant recommended a particular bottle containing a human-written poem about food (Christina Rossetti's “Goblin Market”) that could be reused indefinitely, paid for with a week's worth of Glamour donations from Simon. Elsewhere in the market the motley picked up an intricately carved skull, a very fancy Hedgespun mask that looked like a kitschy sequin and rhinestone creation to mortals, and a human fingerbone.

On their way back out of the market, someone shouted, “Hey! You!” They turned to see another changeling—an Ogre gargantuan—pointing at Simon. He accused Simon of causing the ogre's abduction by selling him out to another drug dealer. Somehow this ogre knew Simon, though he called him Peter, and he was looking for payback. Francois and Tia distracted the ogre while Simon and Eric both slipped away into the market, with Tia and the ogre getting in each other's faces and Francois trying to convince the ogre that Simon had nothing to do with it.

Ultimately Francois got the ogre to reveal his name—Tybalt—and learned that it was ten years prior that Tybalt had been taken by the Gentry and he'd only just escaped a year ago. Francois ended up agreeing to a Pledge, albeit not entirely intentionally, to bring Simon to the Dexter Training Ground park on the following Tuesday at noon, or else bring evidence that Simon had nothing to do with Tybalt's abduction.

The motley regrouped outside the market and headed to Providence City Hall for the final item on their list, evidence of ghostly activity. Chiara picked up a bedsheet to dress up as a bedsheet ghost, for lack of a better way to force ghostly activity to happen, and Eric tried to use Tia's camera to snap a photo. Instead, he fumbled and dropped the camera, breaking part of it. With Tia's help in invoking one of his Contracts, he was able to fix it better than before, and snapped the photo. Upon viewing the Polaroid, Francois was the first to spot an actual ghostly figure, which Eric sensed with Kenning as it rode the elevator upward into the building and disappeared. The motley beat a hasty retreat.

The group got their items turned in before the deadline and received their score, and after the deadline passed learned that they were the lucky team to win the competition and the guest-of-honor prize. The Autumn Court has their tickets and room reservation waiting for them to be picked up later, and they were able to take their scavenger hunt items home to their Hollow to keep.

NPCs Met
None.

Enemies
Tybalt, Ogre gargantuan who claims Simon was responsible for his abduction.

Other Stuff
Session 10: Ghostly Dealings (Part 3)

Session 12: The Winter Court's Errand (Part 1)