"Candela Obscura: Ravage of Red Lamp" (CO1x02) is the second episode of Candela Obscura's first chapter. A hunger yearns throughout city streets, as the Circle of the Vassal and the Veil toil to unravel the mysteries of Newfaire's ancient history.
Synopsis[]
Opening introduction[]
A lonely road lies ahead for those whose minds have been cracked asunder. Echoes of past deeds swirl and bubble to the surface, seeking to fracture the grail of our existence. A wary investigator must stay headstrong and resolved, for this treacherous path may falter judgment, if not careful. A voracious hunger stalks the shadow-filled streets, feeding on the impulses of both ne'er-do-wells and those of the strongest moral fiber. Candela and their circles often serve as the last line of defense, putting themselves in harm's way to contain, comprehend, and contend with the horrors that lie in wait. The Circle of the Vassal and the Veil: Assignment Number 442: Ravage of Red Lamp.
Episode introduction[]
The evening grows late in the Red Lamp District, music and revelry echoing through the streets, a thick fog blanketing the area. On the sixth floor of the Getaway Grand Hotel, a middle-aged woman is undoing her formal hairdo and complaining about the complexity of her day dealing with the labor unions of the city. She is there to unwind just a little bit. Behind her, a handsome bare-chested twenty-something man lays back on the bed as she continues to undress. She moves to the bed and he gently pulls her into it.
Back down in the streets, the revelry continues until broken by the sound of two voices screaming.
Part I[]
Auggie is up early, after having spent weeks at his new quarters in the Gilded Rainbow bookshop, when Lightkeeper Alexandra O'Neill walks in and greets them. There's been an event, and the circle will be called together. Over the next hours, the other circle members arrive, and are briefed that overnight, Onette Ferris, a Primary Chamberwoman deeply involved in guild and import tariffs, was attacked and has disappeared from the Getaway Grand Hotel. Passersby saw something shadowy and massive rushing by in the street, and Candela wants them to investigate. Arlo asks if she has anything that will defeat shadow beasts and surprisingly, Alexandra produces a corked vial which can be put on the edge of a bladed weapon. They need to hurry; the Periphery is already investigating.
They head to the Getaway Grand but find its front door guarded by a Periphery officer who refuses to admit them and tells them to come back in an hour. From the alley at the rear of the building, they notice a blown-out window on the sixth floor. A camping homeless person named Terry they find there seems nervous but eventually tells them that he, Skiddy, and Enom were there last night when they heard the glass break and something big and shadowy moved past. Enom is now missing. Skiddy got a better look, and he's now sobering up at the Good Gravy Eatery. Meanwhile, Howard investigates the area and finds strange bits of twitching inhuman, unnatural flesh, taking a brain point. He touches it, and it latches on and begins to push into his hand, but Charlotte manages to carve it away before it causes more damage. As they walk to the Good Gravy, all of the others chastise Howard for his recklessness. At the Eatery, they find a very nervous Skiddy and Auggie orders him food as he confirms Terry's story that Enom, a musician, was taken by a multi-armed bear-sized creature.
They return to the now-unguarded hotel and go up to the sixth floor where a Periphery officer is sitting outside an open door. Arlo distracts him by pretending to faint as the others sneak into the room, then sends him to the kitchen for water. The room has been violently damaged, but there is no blood. There is, however, a Captain of the Periphery present, and a young woman sitting in the bathroom. The Captain demands to know why they are there, and Howard knocks him out with a brass knuckle hit between the eyes. There is a lot of bleed residue in the room, but it's been heavily picked over by the Periphery. The young woman is Kara Belmon, who says she's Onette's assistant and reluctantly tells them Onette had a paramour, Wayland Threed, a musician, whom she would secretly meet here at the hotel. He is also missing.
Just then, the young officer returns with water, and Auggie manages to swipe the Captain's badge while pretending to help him. They tell the officer the Captain just keeled over and rapidly exit. As they leave the hotel, they see three uniformed field officers of the OUP enter, one of whom is the officer that interrogated Auggie in their first adventure and seems to recognize him. They decide to pursue the angle that two of the three missing persons are musicians, and find in the newspaper that Wayland was scheduled to play with a trio in The Revisionary Restaurant.
As they head in that direction, however, Auggie notices they're being followed by an OUP agent.
Break[]
Part II[]
Trying to shake their tail, they jump on a cable car, but the OUP agent jumps on too. He greets Charlotte by name and says he's just there to watch them. They tell him they're going to church, and he sarcastically asks them to teach him of The Ascendancy's majesty. Charlotte takes a brain point from the stress. They hop off one at a time, but he sticks to Charlotte who heads into a church and a private confessional. There, she asks the priest for help escaping from the man following her and with his aid, manages to duck out the back door but takes a point of body damage in the process.
Rejoining at The Revisionary restaurant, they discover the trio Wayland played in consisted of Kara, Wayland, and Theodore, but the musicians normally don't arrive until sunset four hours off. However, Kara Belmon came by a few hours ago to cancel for the foreseeable future. The party recognizes the name as being Onette Ferris' assistant. They go to the Ferris estate and using Arlo's name are admitted and greeted by Aaron, the missing Onette's husband who is despondent that word is getting around not only that she's missing but that she was with a man when it happened. Arlo mentions her similar experience with the Eastons a few years back, and says that when Eddie went missing, people said all sorts of things. Aaron suspects Onette has run off with her paramour. He confirms Kara is indeed Onette's assistant. Aaron has a strange injury to his hand: a spidering black spot that proves a strong source of bleed that started about a day and a half ago. Coincidentally at about the same time he bought Onette an emerald imported from Otherwhere and set in a necklace by Dorna Ashefar at the Alizarin Gallery in The Varnish. They were introduced to Dorna by Kara. As Arlo inspects the wound on Aaron's hand, she feels a strange hunger and urge to pull it toward her, taking a bleed and worsening the existing damage to her gloved hand. As they leave, Arlo suddenly tells him, "You should cut your hand off."
Fan art of Auggie and Arlo, by Elaine Tipping.[art 1]
Outside, Arlo displays the injury to her own hand, a weird void or black hole. She explains that in the recent past, she was engaged to a young man named Eddie Easton, who was interested in Oldfaire relics and may have done "some bad things". One day Arlo came to see him and he was being pulled through some sort of portal by a strange gray-skinned creature. In her attempt to save him, her arm went through, turning it cracked and gray and causing her to wear a glove permanently on it. After their last assignment, a weird void or black hole appeared in its center. Auggie asks if she's single now, and Arlo refers to their earlier ruse when Auggie called her his "woman", saying they're now engaged. Arlo also asks if anyone's heard of the Red Hand (which Eddie had some dealings with), and Charlotte knows they're clandestine procurers and dealers in Oldfairen artifacts, hungry for both money and power.
They immediately go to the Alizarin Gallery, remembering that Layla was working for a gloved woman there when she found the exploding charcoal sold to Donald in "Candela Obscura: The Cold Embrace" (CO1x01)). The Gallery is busy with a strange exhibit and Charlotte takes a brain point under the stress of the ethical conflict she experiences there watching the elite and powerful of the city move among artistic representations of exotic Oldfairen artifacts. Dorna recognizes her when she asks her about Oldfairen history, explaining that they have no hard facts of what destroyed the civilization, only their relics. Charlotte name drops the Red Hand casually, and convinces Dorna to share that she has contacts that have recently acquired some interesting pieces, although the only jewel among them was recently sold. Dorna, however, recognizes Arlo, and several large gentlemen approach her, telling her she needs to leave. When Auggie tries to intervene, they unceremoniously tell him to leave as well, and throw him out. Howard joins them.
Suddenly, they hear explosions from the gallery. The guests begin screaming and running out while the party members push in, joining Charlotte. They see heavy impacts against a closed door and hear screams and breaking materials coming from its other side. Howard and Auggie kick the door open, and they see the entire right-hand wall of the office is splintered and pushed open in an eight-foot hole. Within the room is a many-limbed gray bulbous creature with multiple heads that turn and look at them. Both Howard and Auggie take a brain. It charges past, down the hall and out the doors into the city, leaving a strong smell of sewage behind. Arlo and Howard charge after it, while Auggie and Charlotte stay back, finding a pair of black gloves with red stitching and a small locked briefcase, both of which they take. As they run after the others, Charlotte sees a strip of flesh trying to embed itself in her arm, taking a bleed before she pulls it away.
Meanwhile, Arlo and Howard chase the horrible creature, unexpectedly running into it and seeing it appears to be made of the horribly twisted and grotesque bodies of those it has absorbed. Howard takes a body as he is pulled towards its mouth. He sprinkles the vial Alexandra Elise O'Neill gave them onto his brass knuckles but misses his swing and takes his fourth brain. His mind snaps.
The others arrive and see Dorna, still alive, half within the creature as it sprints off. Charlotte follows as the others try to help the catatonic Howard and watches the creature trying to wedge itself through a sewer grate. She puts on the gloves and opens the briefcase, finding five obsidian shards about an inch-and-a-half long, set in a row. Frantic, she grabs three and throws them, causing the creature to scream in pain. She notices both the emerald and the faces of Onette and her lover within the creature as Charlotte is flung against a wall, taking a brain and a bleed as the creature disappears into the sewer. Joined by the others, they discover that the nails cause the sloughed off shreds of flesh left by the creature to melt, sizzle, and die. Arlo puts one hand near a strip of fresh and uses Let Them In. She feels an ancient, undying hunger, a being older than anything she's seen, which in the past was broken into pieces and forgotten. No fear comes from the ancient entity, but the creature born from its hunger and corruption is extremely scared.
Howard comes to, calmly takes a scalpel from his equipment kit and makes a small incision in the top of his head. He then pulls out a crank drill, puts it on top of his skull, and turns the crank, drilling a hole into his head. He removes a small circle of skull and puts it away before putting his hat back on. Permanently scarred, he loses some Focus for Inspect and Analysis and gains a point of Sense. The others watch, horrified. Afterward, he seems chipper and cheerful. Arlo explains the creature went into the sewer and they need to follow, so they climb down. Arlo reads of an Oldfairen myth that heinous criminals were punished by being bound to a shard of Gredarn, a demon of endless hunger, where they remained eternally hungry. She speculates the emerald was one such shard. Following the trail of bleed, they descend and hear multiple screaming voices begging for freedom. They find the creature holding Dorna and slowly pressing her into it as she screams, "I don't know! I'm just a dealer for Lycus!"
Thinking music may have some connection with the creature, Auggie begins singing "Happy Birthday", but it rushes them. Charlotte throws the remaining two obsidian spikes at its mouth and it shrieks in pain, but throws Charlotte across the room. She takes another body and is unconscious. Auggie shoots the gun he stole from the police captain, hitting the creature and shattering the emerald shard, but is grabbed by it, taking a bleed. Arlo removes her glove and draws runes in the dust in a Forbidden Ritual. As her arm sinks into the stone, the walls of the sewer slowly close in, holding the creature in place as it starts falling apart, the magic of the emerald now destroyed. The last bits left intact are the two lovers, and Odette apologizes to Wayland before they collapse into a sloughing mass of melting flesh.
Arlo's hand is intact but she has trouble standing, and Howard helps her out. Auggie is able to squeeze through the collapsed wall of the tunnel and reach the unconscious Charlotte. They all manage to regain the street, under the horrified eyes of passersby, and Howard tells them it was a gas leak. Arlo notices the gray tinge to her arm has now traveled onto her shoulder and neck, an immediate bleed scar from the Ritual. She loses Sway and gains Sense.
They go to the Gilded Rainbow, where Reggie rushes off for a doctor for Charlotte. She regains consciousness, and asks about the other victims, but no one saw what happened to Dorna. Charlotte's right hand no longer functions, a permanent scar. She loses a Move and gains a Survey.
Later, Lightkeeper Alexandra arrives. They admit they got their asses kicked, but the beast is dead. Charlotte tells Alexandra the Red Hand were responsible, and Howard suggests as a cover story they spread the word that the damage at the Gallery was caused by an escaped zoo bear with the mange. Alexandra thanks them for their work, and tells them that more would have died without their efforts. For now, take the time they need to recover.
Post-Game[]
They go through their circle sheet. They again fulfilled all of the three Illumination Questions. Everyone again hit one of their Illumination Key XP triggers as well:
- Ashley - Do Something Illegal, Make a Deal, Deceive
- Anjali - Deceive
- Laura - Consult My Text, Act Bizarre
- Robbie - Make a Plan
They spend their resources: 3 Stitch to heal; 3 Refresh to recover drives and resistances; and 4 Train, which give a player one bonus die for the next session. Each of them take a Train; everyone but Laura takes a Stitch and a Refresh as well. Normally, they would choose a new circle ability later, but because there is only one episode left for this circle, they both level up and choose a new circle ability now.
They briefly roleplay the circumstances. Auggie visits Arlo's house and asks to take a bath, then Arlo takes him shopping and buys him a suit. Charlotte, dealing with the fact that for the first time in ten years she's taken serious damage, goes directly to the Danbury Estate to see the elderly and half-there Gertrude. Gertrude recognizes that Charlotte has had a bad time, comforting her with her hard-earned wisdom as a former member of Candela Obscura. Howard goes to his lonely home, first triggering a device on his desk that projects a blue misty face, then opening his well-concealed stash of Scarlet Shake and sprinkling it on his pipe's tobacco before leaning back and addressing the misty face, saying, "Well, Dean, into the unknown. Let's find Arlo's beau." The mist sucks into the newly trepanned hole in his head.
Featured characters[]
Circle of the Vassal and the Veil
New
- Aaron Ferris, Onette's husband
- Dorna Ashefar, runs the Alizarin Gallery and sold Onette the emerald
- Kara Belmon, a young woman, Onette's assistant
- Onette Ferris, a Primary Chamberwoman
- Skiddy, street person who saw the shadow creature
- Tecan, a bouncer at the Gallery
- Chief Teren Roakes of the Periphery
- Terry Bode, street person who saw the shadow creature
- Wayland Threed, Onette's paramour and a musician
Returning
- Aaron Weimer, lead investigator with the OUP
- Alexandra Elise O'Neill
- Prof. Errol Dennings, professor of Halen history at the University
- Gertrude, former Candela member and mentor of Charlotte
- Reggie, owner of the Gilded Rainbow bookshop
- Sherman, who cares for Gertrude at the Danbury Estate
- Ms. Thomas, in service in the Black home
Mentioned
- Dean, someone or something known to Howard
- Eddie Easton, former fiancé of Arlo
- Eliza Farrington, mentioned by Arlo
- Enom, street person and musician missing since the attack
- Lycus, the person for whom Dorna works
- Simon Terefon, Getaway Grand Hotel owner
- Mr. Tellbrook, a butler or servant in the Black home
- Theodore, a musician playing with Wayland Threed and Kara Belmon
Quotations[]
- Arlo: (about Onette) Maybe she has a hard time finding anyone to be intimate with. Maybe she's very shy in her everyday life and she looks forward to finding someone who will let her be herself for a moment.
- Howard: (after drilling a hole in his head) Well. Sometimes you just have to expand your mind.
Trivia[]
References[]
Art:
- ↑ Fan art of Auggie and Arlo, by Elaine Tipping (source). Used with permission.
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