A cold, dark October night. The endless hissing of rain on concrete, a city drowned in neon tears. Anyone sensible would be inside by now, hiding from the cold and the rain and the things that go bump in the night. Midnight isn’t the safest time to be abroad, especially here and especially now…

“Good evening Milton Keynes. Welcome to The Naked Truth: the place to be if you want to know what’s really going on in our fair city. I’m Beth, your charming host.” Bethany’s fingers move over the sound board as she talks, making a few minor adjustments here and there. A commercial radio host would have someone to do that for her, of course, but then this isn’t exactly a commercial operation. Or, for that matter, an entirely legal one. “I’d like to start tonight’s show with a piece of friendly advice: the word on the street is that there are some not so friendly trolls in the Wavendon Gate area. If you can, avoid the place. If you can’t avoid it, be careful and – if you survive the experience – call in and tell me all about it! I also want to hear from the trolls in the audience: what’s really going on out there? And now…”

Bethany continues to talk, giving her faithful listeners the lowdown on Milton Keynes’ sizeable supernatural community, the way she does every night. After only a very short time, her phone rings.
“Looks like we have a caller, listeners.” Putting the caller on speakerphone, she says: “Good evening, you’re through to The Midnight Hour. What do you want to talk about.”
 There are several long moments of dead air, and then a nervous voice asks: “Are they real?” It sounds like a woman; a nervous or upset woman. Before Bethany can ask her to clarify what ‘they’ are, she continues: “Are… are trolls real?”
 “I’m afraid they are.”
 “Oh.” Another pause, and then: “My son’s gone missing. Last night. He was coming home late.” The caller takes a deep breath. “We live in Wavendon.” She sounds desperate, her voice quavering as if she’s only just managing to hold back tears.
 “Talk to me.” Bethany keeps her voice low and soothing. “Tell me what happened. Maybe I can help.”
 “I hope so. I don’t know what else to do. The police are looking, but…” She trails off.
 “Let’s start with his name.”
 “Eric. He’s called Eric. He’s… Oh God, he’s only fourteen.”
 “And he went missing last night?”
 “Yes, he was coming home from a friend’s house. I don’t like him walking the redways on his own at that time of night, but he insists. You know what boys that age are like.” Bethany makes a sound that may or may not indicate agreement. “Anyway, he rang to let me know he’d set off, but… but he never turned up. No one’s seen him. No one’s seen anything.”
 “Is there anything else you can tell me?”
 “No, I’m afraid not. I’m sorry.”
 “That’s alright, you’ve given me a lot. You did the right thing calling me. Now,” Bethany takes a deep breath. “I know some people who might be able to help. I can’t promise anything, you understand, but we’ll do our best. Okay?”
 “Thank you, oh thank you. I… I just… I just want him to come home…” Her voice wavers, but she holds back the sobs long enough to say: “Find him. Just… please find him.” And then she hangs up.

Ever the professional, Bethany doesn’t miss a beat.
 “You heard it, folks: it looks like something’s come up. I hope you’ll forgive me dear listeners, but I have to leave you with a little night music instead. Try not to miss me too much, and don’t forget to tune in tomorrow night. This is The Midnight Hour, signing off.” Playing the sound-board one-handed – she already has a mixtape queued up – she checks the number of the last call. It’s a mobile number. Making a note of it, she puts the handset away and pulls out her own phone. It’s time for her to phone a friend.

Evelyn cautiously inches forward, closing in on the small sounds of movement from up ahead. It’s hard to move silently when you’re wading through what might charitably be called ‘water’, but she’s had practice. Slowly, she crouches to peer round the corner (staying at normal head height is just asking to get your face ripped off), only to twitch as she comes nose to whisker with a very large rat. Cursing internally, she finishes checking the tunnel and stands up. The rat seems singularly unimpressed. While it could be a darkhound, she’s fairly sure it’s just a rat. ‘Just a fucking huge rat.’ And almost certainly diseased. ‘I’m lucky it didn’t bite me,’ she thinks, closely followed by: ‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ Friday night, and she’s crawling around the sewers chasing up rumours of a Black Court nest. ‘I really need to get a life.’

Because she’s a professional, Evelyn doesn’t jump out of her skin when her phone suddenly starts vibrating. She does, however, swear profusely (if silently) as she quickly retreats to somewhere out of earshot of anything that might be lurking in the darkness up ahead.
 “What?”
 “It’s me.”
 “Shouldn’t you be on the air right now?”
 “Something came up.” Bethany tells Evelyn about the missing child, and the rumours of unruly trolls.
 “I presume you’re heading over there.”
 “Of course.”
 “I’ll meet you there, then. I need to go home and change first.” Glancing around at her surroundings, she adds: “And shower.”
 “What are you up to?”
 “You probably don’t want to… Shit!” Her foot slips in a noxious pool of… something. “Fuck.” As she tries futilely to scrape the clinging muck off, she sighs. “This shit isn’t going to come off, is it?”
 “You’re right, I don’t think I want to know.”

After saying goodbye to Evelyn, Bethany makes another call. This time, it takes several rings before someone answers.
 “Hello?” De La Croix was slumbering peacefully at his desk until he was rudely awakened by the shrill ringing of his half-buried phone. Clutching the black Bakelite handset tightly, he slumps forward, still only barely conscious. His voice is roughened by sleep.
 “Did I wake you?”
 “Ask me in five minutes,” he mutters, dragging a hand over his eyes.
 “I’m sorry about that, but I’m afraid this is an emergency.”
 “What is it?”
 Bethany explains. “So,” she concludes, “I was wondering if you’d be able to ask around a bit; find out what people know about what’s going on in Wavendon, and about these disappearances. You know people.” [1]
 “I suppose I could do that,” he says. After all, it’s not like he’ll be able to get back to sleep any time soon. Fortunately, the people he’s going to have to talk to are also unlikely to be tucked up safely in their beds. A thought occurs to him. “You know, the Accords [2] forbid the local trolls from taking human prey. They can keep pets, but mortals are right off the menu.”
 “Well, we don’t know that they’re eating people. Let’s see what we can find out first.”
 “I’ll go and ask around.”
 “Thank you. Stay in touch.”
 “I will.”

As soon as they hang up the phone, De La Croix gets in his Bentley and heads off to the Bull. It’s well past closing time, of course, but it’s not uncommon for the establishment to hold an after-hours lock-in for the regulars. Luckily, De La Croix is classed as one of these, and gets in without difficulty. There are a number of familiar faces, but one in particular stands out. It belongs to one of a group of men in monks’ robes, carrying flails. A number of empty bottles, cups and glasses are scattered over the nearby table, but only one of them looks as though he’s been doing some serious indulging. Naturally, his is the familiar face. De La Coix heads over.
 “You’ve got to have a proper drink,” Linden is saying. He gestures expansively towards the bar, where a dour-faced barman is casting a beady eye over in their direction. One of the monks sighs.
 “Brother,” he says, “we are supposed to be engaged in ritual purification.” A desultory swish of his flail illustrates his point. “Elderflower tea will be fine.” He sighs again.
 “Alcohol purifies,” Linden points out. “Well, sterilises. Same thing.”
 “Well… alright. I’ll have a gin, I suppose. Since you insist.”
 “Excellent!” Linden signals the barman.
 “Just a half, though,” the monk cautions. “And no tonic.”

A few moments later, the not-so-reluctant monk has his drink in hand, and De La Croix manages to attract Linden’s attention.
 “De La Croix! Come and join us.”
 “Lads’ night out?” De La Croix asks, side-stepping the odd flailing, well, flail.
 “Yeah,” Linden leans against an ancient, mechanical fruit machine. “You know, just a quiet evening of drinking and flagellating with the boys from the Order.” He’s talking about the Order of St Gulthalac.
 “That sounds like… fun.” De La Croix doesn’t sound convinced.
 “Well, I’m more in it for the drinking, but some of them really get into it.” He nods towards one monk who’s wielding his flail energetically, a look of intense concentration on his face. “Brother Ignatius is one of the more dedicated ones.” He starts to say something else, but is interrupted by a grinding noise from inside the machine. [3]
 “Oi!” says the barman. “I’ve told you before.” He gestures with a dishcloth. “I only just got that fixed.”
 “Sorry, mate.” Linden stays exactly where he is. There’s another grinding sound, followed by a sharp snap. The barman shrugs.
 “You break it, you pay for it.”
 “Yeah, yeah.” Turning to De La Croix again, Linden asks: “So, what brings you here this evening?”
 “Bethany rang me, and…”
 “She didn’t send you here to borrow more money off me, did she?”
 “No, she…”
 “Getting someone else to do her dirty work!” Linden points accusingly. “You should know better. You can tell that niece of mine, that…”
 “She didn’t send me to borrow money,” De La Croix interrupts, impatiently. “She didn’t send me to talk to you at all.”
 “Oh.” Frowning, Linden asks: “Well, why didn’t you say so? Why are you here, then?”

De La Croix explains about the missing boy. Unfortunately, the monks are within earshot. When he mentions the possibility of troll involvement, they spring up as one.
 “To arms, brothers!” thunders Brother Ignatius. “There are monsters to slay!” Snatching up their weapons, the monks – minus Linden – pour out into the night. [4] Linden watches them go, then shrugs and turns back to De La Croix.
 “Let’s ask around, shall we?” Between De La Croix’ contacts and Linden’s generosity in buying drinks to ease their way, the two of them manage to get a lead. [5]
 “Hello Dave,” says the old man in the corner, nodding at De La Croix. “Dave,” he says again, nodding at Linden. He calls everyone Dave. No one knows why, but he’s been around long enough that everyone just accepts it as one of his quirks. He tells the two of them that the boy isn’t the first disappearance in the area. According to his sources, all the missing people were travelling the redways late at night. “You need to talk to the Winter Court,” he finishes, nodding sagely.

It’s about one-thirty when Bethany reaches Wavendon. With her headphones on [6], she walks the redways for a while looking for clues, but doesn’t spot anything obvious. [7] As she pokes around in some bushes, the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Spinning around, she finds herself confronted by a huge, looming figure…

Evelyn is driving over the bridge into Wavendon when a figure hurtles over her head, landing somewhere in the darkness below. [8] ‘Fuck! [9] That was Bethany!’ Even as the thought races through her head, she stops the car and jumps out, pistol already in hand. The huge figure thundering along under the bridge is a pretty big clue as to the cause of Bethany’s sudden flight, and it’s heading in the direction of her sudden stop. ‘A troll. Fucking great!’ [10] Luckily, thanks to Bethany, she was expecting something of the kind. That’s why her gun is loaded with iron bullets. [11] Bracing herself against the railing, she takes aim at where she thinks the troll is going to emerge. [12] She shoots as soon as he comes into view, landing a solid hit. Jerking to a halt, the troll spins around – he moves fast for something so big – and fixes her with a furious glare. Bellowing in rage, he raises his fists and prepares to leap. It looks like she’s gotten his attention. [13]

Unfortunately for the troll, he now has his back to Bethany, who has recovered somewhat from the impact. Reaching up to her hair, she pulls out a sharpened iron spike that’s currently masquerading as a hairpin. (She knows her Fae lore. Or, more to the point, Evelyn has told her how to kill them. Her other ‘hairpin’ is made of silver, just in case.) Charging towards the troll, she stabs it expertly in the back of the knee. [14] The troll’s leg gives way, dropping him to one knee. Bellowing in pain and fury, he swings one mighty fist at Bethany. She tries to parry, but he just bulls straight through it, the blow crunching into her face. [15] Once more, she finds herself flying off into darkness.

Now that he’s dealt with Bethany, the troll returns his attention to Evelyn, who lays down suppressive fire while snarling:
 “I wouldn’t.” The troll appears unfazed by her tone, although the bullets seem to give him pause. His hesitation gives Evelyn the chance to take another shot, the iron bullet smacking into his collar bone. He screams, the arm hanging limp and useless. All of a sudden, the small person up on the bridge is looking like a much less tempting target: he’s had enough. Turning, he crashes off into the night, still screaming. [16] Evelyn swears profusely, unable to get a clear shot. Lowering the gun, she peers into the darkness below, looking for movement; looking for anything that doesn’t belong. There’s no telling what kind of attention all that commotion could have drawn. She isn’t waiting long. A small scraping sound, sudden pinprick flare of light; a cigarette. A figure steps forward from the shadows… [17]

Linden and De La Croix pile into Linden’s Bugati. De La Croix is reluctant to leave his prized car behind, but Linden convinces him that it’ll probably be safe in the Bull’s car park. (After all, given the high proportion of Wizards inside the Bull, there aren’t that many people around who’d actually be able to start the thing.) Just to be sure, De La Croix removes the steering wheel and takes it with him. Despite the beers he’s drunk, Linden remains confident in his ability to drive safely, [18] and the two head for the Winter Court’s palace. It’s off to The Centre: MK.

The first hurdle they have to overcome is the Centre’s mortal security force. Given the particular requirements of the job, the night watch is composed of guards who tend to be better informed than the general population. That’s why the watch chief recognises Linden.
 “Is this official business, Sir?” As a (technical) member of the White Council, and a consultant to the Council of Milton Keynes (commonly called the Concrete Council, much to the chagrin of its members), Linden has a certain amount of pull in town.
 “I’m afraid it is,” he replies, gravely.
 “Excuse me one moment, Sirs.” The guard turns away and murmurs something into his radio. A minute or so later, he turns back to them and says: “I’m afraid Lord Kieran is busy with official business of his own at the moment. Perhaps you can make an appointment for another time?”
 “This is very serious business. We’re talking about a possible breach of the Accords.” Leaning closer, Linden pitches his voice low. “If we’re going to sort this out quietly, we need to get in to see Lord Kieran sooner, rather than later. I think that would be best, don’t you?”
 The guard looks uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Sir. I have my orders. I suggest you make an appointment tomorrow.” [19] He starts to close the door, but De La Croix quickly steps forward.
 “George?” he says. “Is that you?”
 “Sir.” George nods to him. “I didn’t see you there. Is this official business for… Oh. Sorry, Sir. I suppose it wouldn’t be. Not any more.” Since giving up the Stationmaster’s position, he doesn’t have any official standing in Milton Keynes any more. He still knows people, however, and George is apparently one of them.
 “No, this isn’t official for me: it’s personal. George, a child has gone missing. It might already be too late for him. If we don’t act now…” He lets his words trail off, leaving it to George’s imagination to fill in the details. George’s discomfort deepens. He looks at his radio, glances back at De La Croix and then sighs. [20] Raising the radio to his lips, he says:
 “It’s George again. I’ll vouch for them. They really need to see Lord Kieran at his earliest convenience. Yes, yes, I understand. Yes, I’ll bear the consequences. Yes.” He looks up, but doesn’t their eyes. “Lord Kieran will see you now.” Stepping aside, he holds the door open. “I believe you know the way.”

Their footsteps echo in shadowed corridors that seem to stretch on forever. The air has an arctic bite; it’s sharp enough that the air-conditioning must be running at full power to maintain it. Darkness pools in every corner and doorway, moving in ways that have nothing to do with the position of the lights. A man – one of the Winter Court Fae – appears to escort them to their destination. The room he leads them to is technically an office, but it looks more like a throne room. A large wooden desk forms an effective barrier, the chair behind it positioned so the occupant can look down upon the room and everyone in it. The Winter Court Envoy is currently engaged in conversation with someone, possibly an aide. He doesn’t bother to look up when the escort announces their presence, only deigning to notice them when they approach his desk.
 “Good evening, gentlemen,” he says. Lounging back in his chair, he dismisses the aide with a negligent wave of his fingers. “I understand you wanted to see me on some urgent, official business. As you can see,” he gestures towards the various Court members scattered around the room. “I’m rather busy myself, so I would appreciate it if you could make it quick.”

Linden strides forward confidently and outlines the situation (a missing child; possible troll involvement), stressing the seriousness of a potential breach of the Unseelie Accords.
 “I have no truck with rumours,” Lord Kieran pronounces, waving a hand airily. “And neither should anyone of any sense.”
 “These are very serious rumours,” Linden points out. “And they’ve got to be looked. I’m sure it would be… easier for all concerned if we settled this business quietly here, rather than raising a big noise at the Council.” The Winter Fae grows very still.
 “Are you threatening me?” he asks, quietly. The temperature plummets a few degrees.
 “No, of course not. I’m just saying, it’d be easier to get to the bottom of things right away. After all, what if someone’s trying to frame you? Making a big noise would only benefit them.
 “Hmm.” Kieran seems only partly mollified by Linden’s words. “Do you have any proof? Of anything?”

Linden hedges in answer to Kieran’s question, and the two of them talk in circles for a while.
 “Look,” says Linden, eventually. “We’re going to need to talk to some of the people on the ground.”
 “Oh?” The question is accompanied by a quizzically raised eyebrow. “Who?”
 “Trolls, of course.”
 “Well, that isn’t difficult. You apparently know where to find some of them.” Almost as an afterthought, he adds: “I suppose I’d better send someone with you. Just in case.” He doesn’t clarify just in case of what.
 “Can you think of anyone who might have a grudge against you or against your Court?” Kieran shoots Linden a disbelieving look.
 “It would be easier to try to discern who might not hold such a grudge. We have many enemies. Summer, of course, are the obvious candidates. They are extremely jealous of our current prominence in this place. And, speaking of Summer’s agents…” He pins De La Croix with an icy glare. “What is your involvement in this?”

 “You screwed up, Evie B. Let a killer get away.” The figure steps forward, into the yellow light of the streetlamp. “I guess that’s what happens when you pal around with monsters. You get sloppy.”
 “Why the flying fuck are you here, Ben?” Evelyn turns so that she can cover him with the gun without destroying her night vision. She keeps the weapon pointed at the ground for the moment, though. They might be on different sides, but this man isn’t quite an enemy. Not yet. Keeping his movements casual, Ben stoops, scraping flakes of something from the ground into a sample bottle. He stows the bottle in a pocket as he stands up again. Only then does he deign to respond.
 “Probably the same reason you are: trying to find out what’s happening here.”
 “How do we know you’re not behind it?” Bethany glares at Ben as she emerges from the darkness, her voice dripping with suspicion. Ben returns her glare with interest.
 “It’s obviously not us,” he says, as if talking to a child. “They’re killing humans. We don’t kill humans.” He smiles thinly. “Only monsters.” Bethany starts to say something angry, and Ben looks like he’s more than happy to respond in kind, but Evelyn pre-empts them both with a:
 “Shut the fuck up. Both of you. This isn’t the time or the place. Ben: if you don’t have anything useful to add, just piss off. You’re trampling all over a crime scene.”
 “Don’t worry,” he says. “I got what I came for. Now, don’t you have a killer to catch?” [21]

Once they’re certain that Ben’s really left, Evelyn and Bethany check over the scene for themselves. It seems that Ben was collecting a sample of blood, most likely the troll’s blood; spilled during the altercation. Evelyn collects a sample of it for herself. Now that she has the chance to think about it, there was something decidedly off about the troll’s behaviour. [22] If she didn’t know better, she would say it was high on something. But what kind of drug could get a troll high? Putting that thought aside for the moment, she examines the blood trail and the general destruction left in the troll’s wake. It looks like he’s heading towards the city centre.

De La Croix looks to Linden for support, only to find Kieran’s suspicion mirrored in his companion’s eyes.
 “Yes, what’s your game, De La Croix?”
 “I told you.” De La Croix frowns, looking hurt. “Bethany called me.”
 “And how,” asks Kieran, his voice showing only languid interest, “did she come by this information?”
 “Someone called her show. I don’t know who it was. I can call and ask, if you want.” As if on cue, there’s a thunderous noise from out in the corridor and a large troll suddenly bursts through the door. Covered in blood and extremely agitated, he limps to the desk, falling to his knees in front of it.
 “My Lord,” he grunts. “They tried to kill me.” The temperature drops a few more degrees.
 “Who tried to kill you, my subject.” The troll looks around wildly, his gaze fastening on Linden. Flinging out his uninjured arm, he points at the Wizard.
 “His niece!”

The atmosphere was already tense, but at the troll’s words, it practically hums like a live wire. Weapons appear in the hands of the Winter Fae, and some of them – guards, most likely – position themselves as if expecting an attack on their liege.
 “You said you can contact this person,” says Kieran, looking at De La Croix. “I suggest you do so.”
 “Of course. Do you have a landline I can use?” [23] A very short time later, De La Croix is making a call. He turns on the speaker phone, just to address any lingering suspicions that he might be less than honest in reporting her words. Or even calling her at all. She picks up more or less straight away, but before De La Croix can speak, Linden jumps in. He yells at his niece, demanding to know what she’s been up to and why she attacked a subject of the Winter Court. His tirade goes down about as well as can be expected, and the conversation quickly degenerates. Admittedly, it didn’t have far to go, but it doesn’t help matters when the troll – who gets more agitated at the loud voices – starts wailing about how she stabbed him with a sword. Hearing this from the other end – where Bethany also has her handset switched to speakerphone – Evelyn loudly observes:
 “What am I? Chopped liver? I shot the fucker with iron bullets and they’re going on about a sodding hairpin!” As intended, that draws some of the heat away from Bethany and onto her.
 “Evelyn,” murmurs Kieran, somehow managing to make his voice heard over all of the commotion and kerfuffle. “I should have known that you’d be involved.”
 “With all due respect Lord Kieran, shut the fuck up.”
 “It’s clear you haven’t changed.” It’s not clear from his voice whether he’s amused or insulted. Evelyn has to grit her teeth to hold back further insults. “But the lady has a point.” He seems to be addressing everyone now; not just the people on the phone. “We must all be calm if we are to get to the bottom of this. Now,” he says, in a business-like tone. “I would like to know why this troll was attacked. Why my Court is the target of malicious rumours. Why a known associate of the Summer Court – he casts a sharp glance at De La Croix – should join forces with a Wizard of the White Council to threaten and accuse me.”
 “The rumours are public knowledge,” says Bethany. “I don’t know where they started, but they’re all over the place. And a child is missing.”
 “He’s not the only one either,” adds De La Croix. “A few people have gone missing in Wavendon lately. All were last seen heading out on the redways.”
 “People go missing all the time,” says Kieran. “This is a dangerous place. Yet nothing you have told me suggests I should look to my own Court. Quite the contrary, in fact. From where I sit, this is starting to look more and more like a plot against us.” Leaning forward, he fixes Linden and De La Croix with a suspicion-filled glare. His voice hardens; cold and brittle as ice. “You push your way in here,” he says, softly. “You insult me, attempt to threaten me. Two of your… associates gravely wound one of my people.” He gives a thin, sharp smile. “Someone less charitable than I might see this as an attempt at provocation.”

This is not going well. The Winter Fae filling Kieran’s office are still bristling with weapons, all of which seem to be pointing at the two outsiders. Hearing the cold suspicion in  Kieran’s voice, Bethany realises she has to do something to divert the Envoy’s attention from her uncle and De La Croix.
 “The troll attacked me first,” she says, quietly. “I just defended myself. Evelyn protected me. As for proof : look at him. He’s acting strangely, and there is blood around his mouth. Blood! [24] At the very least, this matter requires further investigation.” Her tone is eminently reasonable. “No one is accusing you, Lord Kieran.”
 “There is something wrong with your troll,” Evelyn interjects. Gritting her teeth, she forces herself to try to imitate Bethany’s calm reasonableness. It isn’t easy – especially when she’s talking to Kieran – and she can’t quite conceal the edge in her voice, but at least she’s not hurling obscenities at the Fae. “He looks sick; maybe drugged. I suggest you have someone examine him.”

All eyes are suddenly on the troll. Linden immediately starts questioning him, asking if he’s taken anything, or if he remembers someone doing something to him. The troll seems confused, and becomes more and more nervous. It soon becomes apparent to anyone who knows trolls that this one’s behaviour is a little off. He’s sweating, his pupils are dilated and he just doesn’t seem to be able to keep still. And perhaps there is something around his mouth that maybe, possibly, could be blood. [25] It’s hard to say. In any case, Linden reaches a similar conclusion to Evelyn, and volunteers to examine the troll magically. Kieran agrees, but only on condition that his High Mage do the same. The two of them accompany the troll into a side room, where they perform their rituals. [26] Linden finishes first, but both of them get the same answer: the troll’s blood contains Red Court vampire venom. This is bad. The Winter mage looks terrified. He beckons Linden out of earshot of the troll.
 “We can’t tell him this,” he all but whispers. It’s clear he means Lord Kieran, even though he doesn’t say the name. “It will mean war.”
 “You’re right.” Linden nods. “We’ll have to tell him something else.” He didn’t think it was possible for the other man to become any paler, but somehow he manages to blanch.
 “I can’t lie to him. He’ll know. He’ll know.”
 “You could forget.”
 “What do you mean?” Linden explains how to work the spell. “It’s dangerous,” he notes. “If it goes wrong, it might take everything.”
 “What choice do I have?” The Fae’s tone is bleak. “If I tell him what we found, it will be war. If I lie, he’ll know. And then he’ll kill me. Eventually. This is the only way.”

Bidding the unfortunate mage goodbye, Linden steps out into the main room.
 “Well?” Kieran demands. “What did you find?”
 “Your mage hasn’t finished yet. It’s probably best if he tells you.”
 “Very well.” Kieran doesn’t look pleased at having to wait, but he settles back into his chair. A few minutes later, the High Mage emerges, a look of utter bafflement on his face.
 “My Lord,” he says, bowing to Kieran. “I’m sorry, but… What did I go into that room for?” Unsurprisingly, all eyes turn to Linden.
 “What have you done, Linden?” De La Croix’ demand bursts out ahead of Kieran’s. He eyes the Wizard with suspicion. Linden takes the only reasonable course of action for a man in these circumstances: he lies like a bastard. Putting on a good act, he claims to be experiencing the same kind of memory loss as the Fae mage. Kieran and De La Croix both ask him some hard questions, but in the end Kieran, at least, seems more or less convinced. De La Croix speculates that both Wizards have come into contact with whatever’s affecting the troll: either a spell, or possibly some kind of drug.

As her uncle doesn’t seem to be in immediate danger of meeting a sticky end, Bethany hangs up the phone so she and Evelyn can continue their poking around. Bethany isn’t much of one for investigating, but she does her best to help by reminding Evelyn what’s at stake here. [27] After a few minutes of careful searching, Evelyn discovers a pile of what seems to be troll shit. Carefully separating out the lumps – it’s fortunate she brought gloves – one of them turns out to be a child’s foot. It seems quite fresh, and is still encased in a trainer. There are bite-marks on the exposed flesh, and they look like they’ve been made by troll teeth. There are also some bones in the pile, much older than the foot. They also bear the marks of troll teeth. This isn’t looking good for the Winter Court. [28]

Meanwhile, in the centre, a Fae runs into the room and makes a bee-line for Kieran, whispering in his ear. Kieran looks shocked and announces that the audience is over. Linden and De La Croix are escorted out, the door closed firmly behind them. Something important has clearly just happened. Out in the corridors – which really are much longer than they should be, given the size of the building – Fae are clustered in knots, whispering together. Apparently, the messenger’s news was released out here before he made it into Kieran’s presence. Linden and De La Croix see what they can overhear as they walk past. It isn’t hard. Everyone’s talking about it: the Stationmaster has been killed. Linden wheels around to stare at De La Croix.
 “What have you done?” he accuses.
 “I’ve done nothing!” De La Croix matches him glare for glare. “I’ve been here with you.”
 “What about before that?”
 De La Croix blinks. “Are you seriously asking me if I murdered my own nephew? Do you really think I’d do that?” Linden shakes his head, but it’s more in disgust than in answer.
 “I don’t know. I just don’t know you any more.” [29] The frank exchange of opinions that follows results in Linden driving off, leaving De La Croix standing outside the Centre.

Racing around to his personal assistant’s house, Linden bangs impatiently on the door until a sleepy, rumpled-looking woman answers it.
 “I need you to call my niece,” he says, without preamble. “Tell her to stay where she is: I’m coming over right away.”
 “It’s nearly three in the morning!”
 “So?” Linden is used to keeping late hours, and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that this is way past most people’s bed time.”
 “Never mind,” the tired woman sighs. “Is that all, Mr Avery?”
 “For now. Thanks, Shelley.” With that, he heads back to his car. Shelley shakes her head as she closes the door.
 “You’re not paying me enough for this,” she mutters. But she dutifully makes the call, just like she always does. Bethany tells Evelyn that Linden’s going to meet them shortly.
 “Fine,” Evelyn says, continuing to pick through the troll shit pile. “I’ll hold off on calling in the Cleaners for a little while longer, then.”

At this time of night, without a car or a phone, De La Croix’ options are limited. There is one place he can go – one place he probably should go – but he doesn’t want to. It’s a place he’s turned away from; a place he’s trying to put behind him. And yet… And yet he finds himself heading towards the station. Towards his family. [30] Taking a deep breath, he steps through the door and into the place that the mortals never see; the place that belongs to the Family. His mother is there, coming to see who’s stopping by, no doubt. She stops when she sees him, opening her mouth to speak, but he gets there first.
 “Before you say anything: It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.” Linden’s accusation really seems to have shaken him. His outburst seems to throw his mother a little off-balance. Stepping back a little, she looks at him, eyebrows drawing together in a frown.
 “Why would you think we’d believe that you did?” Her voice, although soft, has an edge of grief, although her face is as composed as ever.
 “I’ve been having a bad day,” he mutters, looking away.
 “What do you know?”
 “Not much.” He shrugs. “Only what I’ve heard at the Winter Court.” A brief pause – not quite a hesitation – and then he continues, quietly: “I know he was killed.”
 “He is… he was only seventeen years old. He was too young to be De La Croix.”
 “This isn’t the time, Mother.” They both sound weary. This is an old argument, the grooves worn too deeply, forming a chasm between them. Maybe it’s just too late to bridge the gap. Meeting his mother’s eyes, De La Croix deliberately changes the subject. “I’ll need to see the body.” His mother inclines her head.
 “You know the way,” she says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to see too. Family business.” She starts to walk away, but then stops, half-turning to face him. “Come to see me when you’re done. We have things to discuss.”

His nephew’s body is lying in a pool of still-wet blood. In life, he was a good-looking boy, but it would be impossible to know that from the ruined mask where his face used to be. It looks like someone shot him at very close range. De La Croix isn’t a forensics expert, but he doesn’t have to be. He’s planning on questioning the only murder’s only witness: the victim. The ritual doesn’t take long to set up, and he pours forth his will, summoning the shade of his nephew to stand within the circle. [31] It’s not really him, of course; it’s just an echo of what he was, but that doesn’t make it any easier. De La Croix asks his questions, and the shade answers them. He saw a man come into his chamber: into the chamber that no one but the Stationmaster and his family should be able to enter. When he confronted the intruder, the man calmly shot him in the face.
 “Did you see what he looked like?”
 “He was… unremarkable. Ordinary.” The shade shrugs his translucent shoulders. “I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd.”
 “Show me.” As the ghost concentrates, an image forms in a nearby mirror. The face is just as unremarkable as he said, but at the same time oddly familiar. De La Croix has seen this man before; enough times that he actually remembers his face. After a moment’s thought, he remembers where he’s seen the man before: talking to Evelyn. He’s seen the two of them together on a handful of occasions.

Dismissing his nephew’s shade, De La Croix starts to call Evelyn, but his mother interrupts before he can do so.
 “Milton Keynes doesn’t have a Stationmaster,” she says, getting straight to the point. “It was bad enough to only have a substitute, but to be without one altogether… This is dangerous, son. It makes us vulnerable.”
 “What do you want from me, Mother?” But he knows what she’s going to ask; knew it before he even came here.
 “Take up the mantle,” she says, simply. “Become what you were meant to be. Save us.”
 “I can’t.” The words are little more than an anguished whisper. “You know I can’t. I walked away from all that. I can’t go back again.”
 “You haven’t changed. Still thinking of your own selfish wants.” The softness of her voice doesn’t in any way blunt the emotions within it. “But we need you. We need you to be De La Croix. To be the Stationmaster. You’re the only one.” Her voice cracks now, and she turns away from him at last. “You’re the only one left.” [32] A tense silence falls, broken when De La Croix heaves a great sigh.
 “I can’t become that again,” he says quietly. “Don’t ask. I can look after it for a short while. Like a steward. I’ll find the murderer. And I’ll try to find someone who can do what I can’t.” Meeting her eyes, he asks: “Will that do?”
 “It’ll have to.” But, despite the apparent coldness of her words, there is something in her eyes: respect, perhaps, or understanding. It’s a start.

Linden meets up Evelyn and his niece without incident. Surprisingly, no one else seems to have been drawn by the noise of their encounter with the troll. Maybe the people here are used to strange noises late at night. Maybe they’ve just learned to ignore them. Linden tells the two women his suspicions regarding De La Croix, but neither of them seems convinced. When he mentions the venom in the troll’s blood, Evelyn swears profusely.
 “I need to make a call.” Expression as grim as her voice, she starts to pull out her mobile.
 “Are you contacting the Cleaners?” Bethany asks. Evelyn shakes her head.
 “No,” she says. “Someone else.” [33]

As Evelyn disappears off into the darkness to make her call, Bethany shows Linden the smear of troll blood, and the nearby shit-pile. He repeats his magical ritual to analyse the blood, confirming the presence of Red Court vampire venom. This time, however, he tries something else. Concentrating on the venom itself, he ascertains that it doesn’t just come from one vampire, but from several. Does that mean he’s been in close contact with more than one of them? Curious, he analyses the venom further, determining that it’s actually a cocktail of venom from a number of vampires. More than that, although the individual ‘samples’ have a range of ages, it looks like they’ve all been within the troll’s system for the same length of time. It’s not clear whether the venom’s ‘donors’ were still alive at the time of extraction. Either way, this situation is obviously much more complicated than it first appeared. Is someone ‘milking’ Red Court vampires and feeding the venom to trolls? Why? To influence or control them? To inflame their hunger so that they’re willing to break the Accords to satisfy it? Are the vampires themselves doing this? Someone else? Either way, the Winter Court High Mage was right: this information could very well lead to war if it comes out. When Evelyn returns, Linden fills her in on his findings.
 “This is fucked up,” she mutters. Neither of the others disagrees with her assessment. She sighs. “Well, it looks like I have an appointment to speak to someone in the Red Court. I’ll see what I can find out.” With a wave, she starts to head off towards her car.
 “Be careful,” Bethany calls after her.
 “Always.”

 “So,” says Bethany, turning to her uncle. “What now?” Linden frowns.
 “Do you have the number of the person who called your show?”
 “Yes.” Pulling out her phone, she reads out the number. He scribbles it down. “Why?”
 “I want to try to find them. I think I can use the number as a focus.”
 “Do you think that’ll work? Magic and technology don’t tend to play well together.”
 “I won’t know until I try.” He suits the action to the words, letting the power build and then releasing the seeking spell… but nothing happens. There’s an odd sparking sensation, but that’s it.
 “Well?” Linden shrugs.
 “Nothing,” he says.  “Oh well, it was worth a shot.” [34]

Since there seems to be nothing else they can find out from the scene, they decide to see if the police search has turned up anything. They achieve this by simply wandering up to one of the officers who’s currently out and about in the area. Bethany is her usual charming self, [35] and the officer tells them they haven’t managed to find the boy (whose name is Eric Black). He gives them the description, and asks them to contact their local police station if they come across anything that might help the search effort. Once out of earshot of the policeman, Bethany tells Linden that the trainers Eric was wearing sound like they’re an exact match for the one encasing the partially eaten foot. It looks like this isn’t a missing persons case any longer…

Evelyn drives up to Woodhill Prison, the headquarters of the local Red Court vampires. The guards wave her through: she’s expected. Her phone rings just as she’s stepping out of her car: she doesn’t recognise the number, but it’s De La Croix on the other end. He gets right to the point.
 “I need you to tell me if you know this man,” he says, describing the face his dead nephew showed him.
 “He’s a Cleaner,” she says. “Another specialist, like me. Why do you want to know?”
 “He just killed my nephew.”
 “The fuck?” Tersely, De La Croix explains.
 “I need his name,” he says. Evelyn thinks a moment.
 “Let me handle this,” she says quietly. “I have something I need to do right now, but it shouldn’t take long. I’ll follow this up as soon as I’m done.”
 “This has to be dealt with, and quickly.”
 “It will be. I’ll find out what happened; whether it was really him. Then we’ll see.”
 “Fine. Let me know what you find out.”
 “I tell you what I can.” She pauses, and then continues in a softer voice. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
 “Thanks.” De La Croix sounds tired, but then it is very late. Or very early, whichever way you want to look at it. “Talk to you soon.”
 “Goodbye.” They hang up.

Samantha hasn’t changed. She never does, not since that fateful night so many years ago. Sitting at her desk, she looks like a child playing in her daddy’s office, innocent and joyful. At Evelyn’s knock she looks up and smiles, her whole face lighting up.
 “Evie! How wonderful to see you. Come in and sit down.” With an inward shudder, Evelyn does so. ‘I hate this,’ she thinks. ‘I hate being here.’
 “Hello Samantha,” she says. “I’m afraid I can’t stay long. This is… This is a personal visit. Just a chat with an old friend.” Samantha raises her eyebrows, studying Evelyn with interest.
 “I understand,” she says, quietly, and then: “You never come to visit any more.” There is a wistful note in her voice.
 “I’ve been busy.” Which is true as far as it goes, but isn’t the whole truth.
 “Well, you’re here now. Would you like something to eat or drink?”
 “No, thank you.” The pause between the ‘no’ and the ‘thank you’ is perhaps a touch too long for politeness.
 “As you wish.” Samantha leans back in the chair, tucking her feet under her like she used to do when they were children. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
 “About trolls.”
 “Trolls?” Samantha looks puzzled. “What do you mean?”
 “Have any of your people have been… indulging a taste for the exotic?”
 “Feeding on them, you mean? Not as far as I know. We don’t tend to have much to do with the Fae Courts, as a rule. Why do you ask?” Evelyn tells her about the intoxicated troll, and what Linden discovered about the venom’s composition. [36] Samantha looks startled, and possibly a little angry.
 “I haven’t heard of anything like that,” she says. “I’ll look into it.” Frowning, she adds: “This could cause a war. None of us want that. I certainly don’t want that. If this originates from within the Court, I will discover it.”
 “There’s…” Evelyn hesitates, then plunges on anyway. “There’s something else.”
 “Oh?”
 “Someone took a sample of the troll’s blood. This is going to come out sooner or later.”
 “Then you have to stop them before it does. You have to take care of them.” Bristling at Samantha’s commanding tone, Evelyn forces herself to speak calmly.
 “I’ll deal with  it.” Samantha frowns.
 “If that sample ends up in the wrong hands, it won’t matter what the truth is. The Winter Court will have to respond, and then the whole thing will be out of our hands.  You have to…”
 “I know what’s at stake, Samantha,” Evelyn cuts in. “I’ll do my job.” Samantha sighs, resting her elbows on the desk and her chin in her hands. The position makes her look like nothing more than a worried little girl.
 “I hope that’s enough.”
 
Bethany’s phone rings. When she answers it, she’s almost deafened Linden’s rather distraught assistant.
 “They won’t stop calling,” Shelley says, not even bothering with a greeting. “I keep telling them to ring back tomorrow, but they just won’t give up. He has to see them, or I’m never going to get any sleep!”
 “Calm down,” says Bethany, soothingly. “Take a deep breath. And another one. There, that’s better, isn’t it? Now, who’s been calling?”
 “Lady Amaranth of the Summer Court.” Shelley sounds much more composed, if rather tired. “Well, one of her people. She wants to meet with Linden as soon as possible, on Accorded Neutral Ground.”
 “Hold on a moment.” Bethany relays the message to her uncle, who leans close to the phone and shouts:
 “Tell her I’ll meet her at Willen Lake in about half an hour.”
 “Did you get that?” Bethany asks, once Linden’s stepped back again.
 “Not really – too much static.” Bethany repeats Linden’s response. “Fine. I’ll let the Lady know. Will you be with him?”
 “I suppose so.”
 “I’ll call you if there are any problems. Goodbye.”
 “Bye. I hope you manage to get some rest.” Shelley’s response is heartfelt.
 “So do I!”

De La Croix is concerned. With all the night’s activity, it’s clear that something significant is afoot (and not just the one that Bethany and Evelyn found). Whether or not all the disparate events are connected, it couldn’t hurt to take precautions. With that in mind, De La Croix decides to study the Wards and the Ways of Milton Keynes, just to make sure all is as it should be. He’s particularly worried about the bindings laid upon the creature from the outer darkness. The consequences if those should fail simply don’t bear thinking about. The sheer amount of background magic in the city makes such a large-scale divination difficult. Not impossible, not for him, but why take the chance of missing something? Fortunately, he knows a place with just the right resonance; a nexus of energies where he can simply reach out and touch the web. He’s just starting to extend his senses when Linden interrupts him.

 “What are you doing here?” De La Croix’ eyes snap open. He glares at Linden, but before he can reply, Bethany steps forward and hugs him.
 “I’m sorry about your nephew,” she says.
 “Thank you.” He smiles sadly at her. “I…”
 “I bet you’re not.”
 “What?”
 “Not sorry. It’s worked out quite well for you, hasn’t it? Very convenient. Couldn’t have gone more smoothly if you’d done it yourself. In fact…”
 “Shut up, Linden!” Bethany steps between the two men, glaring daggers at her uncle. “This isn’t the time.”
 “I quite agree.” The new voice is calm, but with an edge of… something. Disapproval, perhaps? Interest? Turning to face the speaker, they see a clearly Fae woman. This, then, would be Lady Amaranth. “If I may interrupt you conversation,” she says to Linden, “I believe we have some business.”
 “Yeah,” he says. “You wanted to talk to me.”
 “That’s correct.” She inclines her head. Neither of them seems particularly concerned that Bethany and De La Croix are within earshot. “I called you here because I would like to retain your services.”
 “Oh?”
 “It has come to my attention that Winter are in breach of the Accords. Clearly, this proves them unworthy of the exalted position they hold here.”
 “So, what do you want me to do?”
 “Why, I want you to prove it. Show that, under the Accords, Winter must step aside and cede their position to Summer. That is all. Can you do that?” Linden thinks about it for a moment and then nods decisively.
 “Yeah. Yes, I can do that.” [37]
 “I am most pleased to hear it.” Lady Amaranth smiles. “Now, let us discuss the details of the arrangement…”

Footnotes

[1] Although Bethany has been designed as a fairly social character, De La Croix is the one with the high [Contacts] skill. As the former Stationmaster, he’s certainly had ample opportunity to familiarise himself with the movers and shakers of Milton Keynes’ supernatural community. (Note: I’ll put mechanics terms like skill and stunt names in square brackets, to distinguish them from descriptors.)

[2] The Unseelie Accords are the major piece of legislation governing the treaties and interactions of supernatural beings (and a few notable mortals). They don’t just cover Milton Keynes, although the unique features of Milton Keynes mean that it has a few specific provisions of its own.

[3] Linden is a powerful enough Wizard that he sometimes has problems even with older technology.

[4] The Order of St Gulthalac feature in one of Linden’s aspects. When they cause trouble for him, it’ll give him a fate point.

[5] Linden’s player made a [Rapport] roll modified by [Resources] to give a bonus to De La Croix’ [Contacts] roll.

[6] Bethany’s player was using [Performance] to give herself the aspect [focused] for the scene. The GM has ruled that you can use [Performance] with recorded pieces, as long as it’s something you made or mixed yourself.

[7] Someone failed her [Investigation] roll. I believe there was a failed [Lore] roll as well, but I could be misremembering.

[8] Bethany has the aspects [Damsel in distress] and [Apparently I’m famous]. Her player suggested that one of these might get her into trouble – and, therefore, earn her a fate point – if she went poking around in the dark on her own. She got the troll’s attention, taking the minor consequence [Winded] as a result of being hurled over the bridge. (White Court vampires tend to be fairly tough, so the short flight and sudden stop weren’t likely to do her any severe injury.) This got her a fate point. The encounter wasn’t resolved as a combat. Instead, the GM and player agreed on the consequences and we cut to the next scene.

[9] Evelyn swears a lot. I blame a combination of her army background and her having six older brothers.

[10] A successful [Guns] roll. This trapping should come under [Lore], but Evelyn has a mortal stunt called [Hunter of the supernatural], which allows her to use [Guns] instead of [Lore] for identifying supernatural creatures and their habits and weaknesses.

[11] Another very useful stunt she has is [Guns, lots of guns (and more)]. This is a [Resources] stunt that means she can have items up to her [Resources] level without needing to make a roll. (Ordinarily, you can only have items up to [Resources] level minus two without a roll. You can only make a roll once per scene.)

[12] So, here we are with our first proper combat of the game. Evelyn’s [Alertness] is Good, but she has a stunt that gives her +2 for the purposes of initiative. That meant she acted before the troll. I made a successful [Guns] roll to aim; a manoeuvre that placed the aspect [In my sights] on the troll.

[13] The really great thing about using iron bullets on one of the Fae is that they ignore things like armour and extra wound boxes from [Supernatural toughness]. Additionally, guns have a damage bonus (+2 for pistols). The troll now had the minor consequence of [Enraged]. His action for that round was probably going to be an attack on Bethany, but Evelyn interrupted it with her shot.

[14] Bethany was using her vampiric abilities to give herself extra speed and strength. This boosted her initiative (so that she went at the same time as Evelyn), and gave her a damage bonus, respectively. Bethany’s player used the free tag on [Enraged] – representing the fact that the troll was so focused on Evelyn that he didn’t notice her charge – to give herself +2 to her [Weapons] roll. That was enough to inflict another minor consequence ([Hamstrung]) on the troll.

[15] So, the troll got to have his attack on Bethany after all. The GM succeeded in the attack roll and the player failed her [Weapons] roll to parry it. She conceded at this point, however, taking the medium consequence of [Concussed]. She gained two fate points: one for each consequence taken during the course of this fight.

[16] [Intimidation] is the only social skill that is explicitly permitted to be used in physical combat. Although the rules don’t actually say what that means, our interpretation is that it can be used on your combat initiative (determined by [Alertness]), rather than your social initiative (governed by [Empathy]). Evelyn was trying to intimidate the troll into giving up. Since she was laying down suppressive fire, the roll was [Intimidation] modified by [Guns]. I failed the roll – the troll was still determined to try to bring the bridge down – but she has a [Guns] stunt called [Pin them down]. This has two effects. First, it makes the [In my sights] aspect sticky while the target remains within the same zone. Second, it places a border of one around the zone that they’re in. This meant that the troll had to use this round’s action up closing to attack distance, making [Athletics] roll to succeed. The GM succeeded in the roll, so he could use the next round’s action to attack. If Evelyn had let him. I succeeded well enough in my [Guns] roll to inflict the severe consequence [Broken collarbone], which meant he lost the use of that arm. The GM conceded at this point, as the troll didn’t have a death-wish.

[17] As this was the end of the scene, we resolved the hunger damage that Bethany took from using her powers. Her player rolled fairly badly, and ended up taking three damage on the hunger stress track.

[18] I believe Linden is actually the only character with the [Drive] skill. De La Coix might have it, but I’m not sure. Evelyn and Bethany definitely don’t.

[19] Linden’s player tried a [Rapport] roll modified by [Lore], but failed.

[20] De La Croix’ player used a [Contacts] roll as manoeuvre; determining that he knew the security guard and that the man could be swayed by the plight of a child in trouble. He then followed this up with a successful [Empathy] roll to convince him to let them in to see Lord Kieran. This should possibly have been [Rapport] rather than [Empathy].

[21] Apparently Ben lost his sense of humour somewhere between trying to recruit Evelyn into the Sons of Man and the present encounter. That seems entirely reasonable. Incidentally, I’m not sure it was actually mentioned in Evelyn’s novel summary, but Ben tried to take Bethany hostage at one point. Evelyn persuaded Bethany not to kill him – he used to be a comrade in arms, after all – but there’s a certain amount of bad blood there.

[22] A successful [Guns] roll, using [Hunter of the supernatural] to substitute it for [Lore].

[23] Given their effect on technology, Wizards don’t tend to carry mobile phones around with them.

[24] Bethany was lying about the blood. She was trying to get Kieran to treat this as a serious matter and to distract him from his suspicions about Linden and De La Croix. The [Deceit] roll was successful.

[25] Maybe Bethany wasn’t lying after all. If so, it was completely by accident. She certainly never noticed the blood at the time.

[26] Linden used [Thaumaturgy], which seems to be an extremely potent ability.

[27] Bethany used [Performance] to give Evelyn a bonus by reminding her that children were involved. It counted as a rousing speech.

[28] At this point, it had been a scene since Bethany suffered hunger damage and consequences (mild and moderate). Since she has [Inhuman recovery], she activated it this scene, which meant that the mild consequence disappeared within a few minutes and the moderate consequence disappeared at the end of the scene. Also, since she used a one refresh ability, she had to roll her [Discipline] to resist a one damage hunger attack. She easily passed this, which meant that the previous damage on her hunger track also disappeared. Oddly, using her abilities actually made her less hungry. If she doesn’t use any of her vampiric abilities in a scene, can the player choose to defend against a zero damage hunger attack?

[29] Linden has an aspect along the lines of [What’s your angle?], representing the fact that he just doesn’t trust other people and their motivations. This is why he’s been so suspicious of De La Croix, and even of Bethany. The player gained a fate point for this, although it doesn’t actually seem to have caused him any personal inconvenience.

[30] De La Croix has an aspect related to his family ties, which the GM compelled at this point. Going to see his family – people he’s been actively avoiding – instead of doing something else netted him a fate point.

[32] This is another application of [Thaumaturgy]. Affecting a corpse – or parts of it – with magic would break one of the Laws of Magic, but simply summoning up a ghost to talk to is fine.

[31] At this point, the GM compelled De La Croix’ aspect of [Can I save the city, or destroy it?], putting the player in a dilemma. I believe the GM intended that accepting the compel would mean that De La Croix became the Stationmaster once more, with all the difficulties that entailed (not least the forced neutrality that was the reason he walked away in the first place). However, De La Croix’ player didn’t see that outcome as something his character would ever do. He was also concerned that it might render the character unplayable, rather than just challenging. (Although we didn’t really discuss this until later, this raised the idea of defining aspects by what they can’t do as well as what they can.) Instead, he offered the GM a compromise: rather than taking up the mantle as a way to save Milton Keynes, he would dedicate himself to solving the murder and finding a replacement Stationmaster. Those goals certainly have the potential to make his life awkward. Later, this was expanded to include the character taking temporary stewardship of the position. This was largely because we realised that the player was going to be absent for the next session or so, and it was a convenient way of taking the character out of play for a short time. I don’t remember if he got a fate point for that or not.

[33] At this point, the GM compelled Evelyn’s [Conflicted loyalties] aspect to encourage me to call the Cleaners, thus putting the cat nicely among the pigeons. (I think that’s who he thought she was going to call.) I had something different in mind, however. Turning down the compel cost me one of my precious fate points, but the advantage of playing a mortal is that I can afford to do that on occasion. (Evelyn has a refresh of four.)

[34] If I understood Linden’s player’s reasoning correctly, he was trying to treat the woman’s mobile number as a name for the purposes of targeting her with magic (in this case, a locator spell). As this was a divination, no roll was involved. The GM allowed the attempt, but offered the player a fate point because Wizards don’t get on too well with technology (compelling his high concept aspect). The player accepted, and the woman’s phone got toasted.

[35] A successful [Rapport] roll to get information out of the policeman.

[36] Evelyn had two main reasons for going to see Samantha. First, there was a possibility that she might be able to get some information out of her. They were friends once, after all (back when Samantha was human), and they have worked together in the past (Evelyn’s novel). Her gut instinct tells her that Samantha isn’t involved with this, even if elements of her Court are. It’s not that she trusts her, exactly – she doesn’t – but she doesn’t think it’s her style. If it’s not an official Red Court operation, or if it’s being perpetrated by outsiders, then potentially Samantha can shut it down (possibly by passing information to Evelyn so she and her associates can deal with it). She’s fully aware that she could be completely wrong about Samantha, however, which leads into the second reason for her visit. If elements within the Red Court are involved, then telling Samantha potentially gives them the chance to cover their tracks. That’s the point: if they cover it up successfully (or, more likely, find a scapegoat), then it might avert a war. If the other party involved had been anything other than Fae, then she might have hesitated, but she sees them as worse monsters than the vampires. (Of course, ‘cover up’ might well mean ‘kill everyone who knows’. That’s why she didn’t tell Samantha exactly who else knew, and why she made the point that the information was potentially going to come out anyway, thanks to that other blood sample.) She’s really not happy with the idea of the perpetrators getting away, especially as children have been killed, but in the short term it’s a price she’ll pay for keeping the peace. In the long term, one way or another, she’s planning on bringing those responsible to justice, personally if necessary. After all, she kills monsters.

[37] I believe there was a compel involved here, but I could be mistaken.

Dramatis Personae

Protagonists

· Evelyn Amelia Blunt, a mortal black ops specialist working for the Cleaners
· De La Croix, formerly the Stationmaster of Milton Keynes, now a mage with a mission
· Bethany Dina Laksmi Smith, a White Court vampire and pirate radio show host
· Linden Thorne, Wizard and lawyer; specialist in supernatural contract law

Supporting Characters

The Ceyhanes Family

· De La Croix’ mother
· De La Croix’ nephew, custodian of the office of Stationmaster

Red Court Vampires

· Samantha Margaret Grey, of prominent but unclear position

Sons of Man

· Benjamin Daniels

Summer Court Fae

· Lady Amaranth, apparently a person of some stature within the Court

Winter Court Fae

· Lord Kiernan, the Winter Court’s envoy to Milton Keynes
· The Winter Court high mage
· An unnamed troll
· George, a mortal security guard

Miscellaneous

· The proprietor of the Bull tavern
· An old man who knows some things
· Some brothers of the Order of St Gulthalac
· Mrs Black, a caller to Bethany’s radio show
· Shelley, Linden’s personal assistant

Here are the first ones. They’re not full-fleshed yet by any means, but I’ll probably add the missing detail on the fly.

Amaranth

A powerful Summer Court fae with an interest in Milton Keynes, although it’s unclear what her goals are. Amaranth is the one who saved Evelyn’s child.

Aspect: I always have plans.

Ties into Evelyn’s aspect of: Black ops Cleaner indentured to the Summer Court.

Evelyn is an integral part of some of these plans. She could gain a fate point whenever Amaranth’s manipulations significantly inconvenience her.

Jonas Cairns

The head of the Cleaners in Milton Keynes. Evelyn’s boss.

Aspect: By the book.

Ties into Evelyn’s aspect of: It’s better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission.

Whenever Evelyn does something that isn’t by the book (like working with a bunch of supernaturals) and it comes to his attention, he’s likely to ream her out for it. She could gain a fate point whenever being in trouble with the boss in this way causes her problems.

Benjamin Daniels

Formerly a member of the SAS and now a part of the Sons of Man. They recruited him in the aftermath of the same disaster that saw Evelyn join the Cleaners.

Aspect: I never forget what’s owed.

Ties into Evelyn’s aspect of: I saved the Red Court from the Sons of Man.

Evelyn saved Ben’s life, asking Bethany not to kill him when he tried to take her hostage. However, he also swore vengeance on her for her interference in the Sons’ plans. He’s not going to forget either debt in a hurry. She could gain fate points whenever he tries to repay his debt or make her pay for what she did.

Samantha Margaret Grey

A Red Court vampire with the seeming of an eleven year old girl. She and Evelyn were best friends as children. Now, she holds a prominent position in the Milton Keynes Red Court.

Aspect: Better the devil you know.

Ties into Evelyn’s aspect of: I saved the Red Court from the Sons of Man.

There’s something to be said for the familiar. Evelyn and Samantha may be on opposite sides of a line now, but they were friends once, and Evelyn did save the Red Court from the Sons of Man. That means Samantha might be willing to help her old friend out once in a while. However, it also means if she needs a favour from someone with Cleaner connections, it’s likely to be Evelyn that she approaches. Evelyn could get fate points whenever doing (or being asked for) such a favour ends up costing her.

Kieran

The official envoy of the Winter Court, acting as liaison to the Cleaners and the supernatural community and protecting the Court’s interests in Milton Keynes. Kieran is the father of Evelyn’s child.

Aspect: All that glitters.

Ties into Evelyn’s aspect of: Conflicted loyalties

The aspect represents both Kieran’s ability to charm and dazzle, and his need to chase and possess that which interests him. Evelyn has caught his attention and she, in turn, is fascinated by him. However, the fact that she simply doesn’t know whether he enspelled her or not makes her deeply uncomfortable, so she’s decided to avoid him for the time being. At least until she has the whole thing sorted out in her mind. She hasn’t told him about the child. She could get fate points when he turns up and complicates her life.

Professor Merrill Lyons

Author and professor of anthropology and folklore. Not know to be anything other than human, but the breadth and accuracy of his knowledge suggests that he’s clued in. The Cleaners are keeping an eye on him.

Aspect: Knowledge is power

Rebecca Skavis

A white court vampire who’s been in the area since World War II, possibly before.
For a long time she’s kept a low profile, building up her power base, but she
couldn’t remain hidden forever and is now regarded by all three power bases as an
itch too troublesome to scratch, at least for now. She is a master swordswoman, and
taught Bethany everything she knows. She is also fiercely territorial, and regards
Bethany as well as the Lakes Estate as her own property. Woe betide anyone who
trespasses.

Options: She is also a mistress the various types of WCV emotion, able to inflict lust and fear as well as despair. She uses this to good effect to control the gangs, using a combination of fear and lust to keep them under control. She is persona non grata with the greater WCV community, and has been biding her time here in practical exile. It’s likely that her recent actions helping Bethany have stirred things back up again, making the both of them targets.

Skills:
Superb: Weaponry
Great:
Good: Intimidation, Presence, Rapport, Deceit

Aspects:
What’s mine is mine – Her territorial streak, which grants her bonuses defending what’s hers, as well as causing trouble, both for herself and for Bethany, especially now Bethany owes her a debt.

Apologies for leaving you hanging if you’d read the first draft of this write-up (preserved on this blog for historical reasons) and found that it ended halfway through. As mentioned in my previous post, we ended up taking much, much longer over character generation than we’d planned, and given that we’d decided to revise the city burning afterwards to fix some weak Aspects, everything got held up.

Considering that we made a fair number of revisions, and not just to the Aspects, I’m going include some of the previously-posted material in this post as well, with the modifications we’ve made, so this will present the entire result of the city generation. I won’t repeat the general comments I made about the process, though; if you want those, scroll down for the post named “Burning Milton Keynes (Part 1)”.

Themes

Amalgamation

As mentioned in an earlier post, Milton Keynes is a brand new town incorporating old villages which, in turn, were built on Saxon, Roman and neolithic settlements. It’s lots of places brought together into one. Almost all of its residents are originally from somewhere else. Again, as discussed earlier, Milton Keynes is the “city in the forest”, and is all about the amalgamation of nature and artifice. Everything is green and everything is concrete. The city is best known for concrete cows, after all!

Nexus Point

Wolverton, in north Milton Keynes, was at the heart of Britain’s railway system. The Grand Union canal passes through the town, as does Watling Street, built over the Roman road known as Iter II. People who believe in ley lines think that a large number of them join in Milton Keynes. The various strange structures around MK (more on these later) are laid out in a straight line, deliberately joined together.

Surveillance

Milton Keynes is, per capita, the most surveilled town in the most surveilled country in the world. There are CCTV cameras everywhere, watching everything you do. Charles Stross used this fact to great effect in his novella, The Concrete Jungle.

Locations

Willen Park – Aspect: Accorded Neutral Ground

At first glance, Willen Park is a pretty standard city park. Then you notice odd things: the buddhist monastery; the giant pagoda built to stave off nuclear war; the tree festooned with ribbons, prayers and offerings to the dead; a labyrinth carved in the soil, punctuated with bronze discs with ancient sun faces; a stone circle built only a few years ago, fusing Celtic and Native American designs and used as a living worship site by local neopagans. There’s also a man-made lake in the centre of the park, with an island in the middle. And, across the road there’s man-made wood with the trees laid out in the floor-plan of a cathedral, positioned so that it’s in a straight line with the other features mentioned and with the old neolithic sacred mound at Secklow and a beacon in Campbell park.

Everything in this place is about old traditions, some of them prehistoric, reinvented for the modern world. It’s the very essence of Milton Keynes. Given the fact that someone has gone out of their way to make Willen Park both peaceful and magically significant, we’ve decided that it is the Accorded Neutral Ground for the city, taking the same role as McAnally’s in Chicago, only with more trees and less beer.

Oh, and the monk who founded the peace pagoda died there in a bizarre lawnmower accident. Given the purpose of the park, if this wasn’t a real accident then whoever is responsible is in for a whole world of pain should they be found out.

Themes: rebirth, reinvention, peace, mysteries, lawnmowers.

NPC: The current head of the monastery, a mortal representative to the Concrete Council (more on them later).

A touch of magic: Well, all these weird features have to have a use, right?

The Lakes Estate – Aspect: Hopelessness and desperation

Milton Keynes isn’t all old villages. The majority of the accommodation is new, and it’s grouped together in cookie-cutter estates dotted all over the town. These estates are somewhere between crowded urban housing and suburban blandness. The houses in a given estate all tend to look similar, if not the same, and the estates themselves are hidden from the outside world by thick walls of trees. You can drive through Milton Keynes for hours and know no more of these estates than names on street signs.

The Lakes Estate is a bit different, in that the quality of the housing is lower (largely pre-fabricated aluminium structures), the standard of living of the residents is poorer and, in general, it’s probably the roughest and most deprived part of Milton Keynes. In other words, it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet for White Court vampires who feed on despair.

Themes: Contained, man-made, mundane (possible protection from magic), fiefdom.

A touch of magic: this place is a powder kegs of repressed emotions and desperation. The White Court manage it carefully.

NPC: A White Court vampire, shepherding the residents of Bradwell to give him the desperation he needs to sustenance.

Bletchley Park – Aspect: Buried Secrets

Bletchley Park is a manor house in the south of Milton Keynes. It is best known as Station X, the centre of Britain’s code-breaking efforts in the second world war. It was here that Alan Turing’s team broke the Enigma code, providing the allies with vital intelligence. Also, vitally, this was the birthplace of the first electronic computer and, hence, of the information age.

Now, Bletchley Park is a museum, but one badly short of funding. It’s hanging on by its fingertips, a but shabby in places and in imminent danger of closure.

Themes: the manor house, decaying glory, old technology, birth of the information age, where it all changed, dangerous experiments.

A touch of magic: In our Dresdenified Milton Keynes, Bletchley Park has additional significance. The magical basis of Milton Keynes will be discussed a bit further on, but a part of it is that Bletchley Park was more than just the centre of the code-breaking effort; it was also central to Britain’s magical resources in the war. The mystical forces of Nazi Germany were fought here by British wizards, and in doing so they tapped into the forces dormant in this town, to potentially disastrous effect. Again, though, more on that later.

Also, from a magical perspective, this is where it all changed. Wizards have trouble with modern technology, and this is where it came from. Maybe in the old relays and valves of the Colossus machine and the Bombes there could be the genesis of a technology that wizards can actually use. For this reason alone, some wizards are very interested in what happened here.

NPC: The curator of the museum, a secret White Council wizard.

Wolverton – Aspect: Multicultural

Wolverton was the home of Wolverton Railway Works, where much of Britain’s rolling stock was built and maintained. It was such a driving force for the area that three towns, Wolverton, Stony Stratford and New Bradwell) were effectively built to house the workers (all three existed before, but in much, much smaller forms). It was a shining example of Victorian enterprise and engineering. Now, Wolverton works is partly derelict, and the rest of it is now a large Tesco supermarket. The town itself, while not too run down, is definitely a shadow of its former self.

Themes: The railway, decay, overcrowded, rich ethnic mix, canal, ancient history, lost town, starvation, the secret garden.

A touch of magic: Wolverton is built on the site of an ancient village whose residents were starved out by the local lord. There has to be some psychic residue from that! There are also a number of old festivals that are still followed to this day (like the lantern festival), a secret garden hidden down by the canal, with all sorts of odd features, including a stone spiral, and, outside the main shopping centre, a statue of a South American fertility god. All of this points to some slightly clued-in mortals who are trying to do something with magic, maybe to protect the town or maybe to build power.

NPC: The head of the town council, who knows just enough about magic to make himself unintentionally dangerous.

The Centre:MK – Aspect: Surveillance

Not that long ago, The Centre:MK (as it’s now called) was the largest shopping mall in Europe. It’s since been eclipsed, but it’s still pretty damned big. As with all things in Milton Keynes, it’s also pretty damned unusual.

There is an old Saxon meeting mound, ripe with magical importance, tucked around the back of the Centre. To this day, local pagans conduct surreptitious rituals here.

Midsummer Boulevard, which is reputed to line up with the sunrise on Midsummer’s Day, runs into the Centre. In fact the sun actually rises slightly off from the boulevard, but the rumour was actually started by the town planner who designed it. In the real world this is just a bit of fun. In the Dresdenverse, there could be more serious reasons.

When the new wing was built a few years ago, a condition of its construction was to preserve the historic oak tree that was already there. The designers built a court around it, turning it into a feature. Despite this effort, it is none too healthy. It has also been surrounded by concrete cows. There is a plaque in the court saying that these are the Concrete Cows, but they are still quite visible in Bancroft, so something strange is going on here.

Themes: Integration of history, magic and architecture, blatant names, hiding in plain sight, commerce, artificial, the tree, the other concrete cows, statuary, the homeless.

A touch of magic: In the Dresdenverse version of Milton Keynes, the tree was preserved because the Summer Court deemed it important and exerted influence to keep it intact. The importance is ostensibly because a very old dryad lives in it, but the real reason is that she guards a weak point between the mundane world and the NeverNever. In fact, this location is so important to both courts of faerie that they have surreptitiously bought the Centre:MK and take turns in managing it. At present Winter is in control, but there are a number of agents of Summer, hidden amongst the city’s homeless community, keeping an eye on the place.

NPC: The Winter Court emissary, currently running the Centre from behind the scenes.

Stony Stratford – Aspect: A place to tell stories

Stony Stratford is an old town on the northern edge of Milton Keynes. It was where the young princes supposedly murdered in the Tower of London by Richard III were captured; it saw combat during the English civil war, with the historic Eleanor cross located there being destroyed in the fighting, and it is the birthplace of the phrase, “A Cock and Bull story”, after the gossip exchanged between two of the pubs on the high street, the Cock and the Bull.

Even today, the town has a very old-fashioned feel to it, with lots of winding little back-streets, and is crammed full of old pubs.

Themes: History, Cock and Bull stories, difficult to get around.

A touch of magic: the pubs of Stony Stratford are still a living grapevine of gossip for the supernatural community. While none of them have the accorded neutral ground status of McAnally’s in Chicago, the general truce in Milton Keynes does prevent all-out warfare from breaking out here, and it’s a good place to find out what the word on the street is.

NPC: The publican of the private drinking club located in the cellar of The Bull.

Elder Gate – Aspect: Gateway to the City

Located at the other end of Midsummer Boulevard from The Centre:MK, and housing the Central Milton Keynes train station, Elder Gate is the first place many visitors to Milton Keynes find themselves. It itself, it’s a pretty unremarkable building, surrounded by offices and covered with reflective glass, but the name hints at its true purpose.

Themes: train station, bus station, mirrors, Elder House, gateway to the city, midsummer, sacred geometry, station manager

A touch of magic: this is the point where the barriers between worlds is weakest. People have been drawn to this spot for as long as there have been people in this land, and they’re not the only ones. The spot is guarded by a mysterious family line of magicians, each known only by the name De la Croix or the title Station Master. Their job is to preserve the sanctity of this place and to stop it being misused or something leaking out and corrupting the town.

NPC: The current Station Master is not a true De la Croix, as the last one abandoned his neutrality and his duties, leaving an emergency stand-in behind. This is a recipe for trouble.

Woodhill Prison – Aspect: Red Court Stronghold

HMP Woodhill, opened in 1992, is a high security prison on the western edge of Milton Keynes. It has housed many of the UK’s most notorious prisoners.

Themes: high-security, microcosm, concrete sheep, secrecy, vampire stronghold

A touch of magic: in the Dresdenverse version of Milton Keynes, the Red Court was central to the creation of the town. They used their influence over mortals to mold the city to what was required, and ended up doing a great service to all, even if it was just in the cause of self-interest. And Woodhill Prison was their ultimate reward.

The prison is secretly run by the Red Court. It operates inside the justice system of the mundane world, but the Red Court use its strong walls to protect their presence in Milton Keynes. The prisoners also make a handy source of food.

NPC: The Red Court emissary to Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes General Hospital – Aspect: White Council Stronghold

As with most towns of its size, Milton Keynes has a large and sprawling general hospital. It also has two psychiatric units tucked around the back of the main buildings, including a secure unit. Also, as with most of Milton Keynes, it is home to some bizarre artwork, including a large totem pole covered with leering faces, right outside one of the psychiatric units.

Themes: Psychiatric units, warren, illness, badly-lit, White Council presence, warped reality

A touch of magic: In the Dresdenverse, one of the psychiatric units is in fact run by the White Council. They use it for the treatment of wizards who have become mentally ill; no mortal hospital is capable of dealing with such a thing. There are rumours, however, that the purpose of the unit is not to treat these wizards but to use them as weapons or power sources for the struggle against the other factions in town.

NPC: Dragdna Voronova, Russian Wizard, old friend of Linden Thorn and now manager of the White Council unit.

Who cares about the city?

Pretty well everyone, and this will take some explaining. Building on the idea that there have been settlements here since prehistoric times, but that Milton Keynes itself didn’t come into being until the late 1960s, we devised a new, secret history.

Simply put, this is the place where the barrier between our world, the NeverNever, Hell and the realms beyond the Outer Gates is weakest. As a result, it has become a nexus, a place of power and a grave risk to humans and supernaturals alike.

Back in neolithic times, wise men and women, along with entities from the NeverNever, worked rituals to keep the gateways stable. Their magic was strong, and while the area was still a natural crossing point between worlds, the barriers would hold and, most importantly, entities from beyond the Outer Gate could not get through. The first De la Croix was created to guard the barriers, although history has lost the name they used before the Normans brought the French language to the land.

Then, during the second world war, everything changed. As has been revealed in recent years, Bletchley Park was the home of the British code breaking effort, and the birthplace of the electronic computer. In the Dresdenverse, there was also a magical component to the work, with scryers and diviners working in an isolated block (called M Block) away from the delicate machines. The intelligence they gathered was also vital to the war effort, and when the Nazis started to use the various magical artefacts that Heinrich Himmler’s Ahnenerbe SS had gathered as weapons, it was M Block that formulated the wards and counter-attacks.

The secret war with Germany escalated, though, and great magical power was required to veil Operation Overlord from Nazi magicians. At this point the wizards in M Block realised they were sitting on one of the biggest magical power sources the world had seen and made the desperate decision to tap into it. While this was a success, it greatly weakened the barriers put in place thousands of years before, and trapped some of the staff of M Block between worlds.

Over the next twenty years, things got worse. The barriers weakened further, and various factions normally hostile to each other found themselves working together to save their very existence. In the end, it was a Red Court vampire who came up with the answer: they would build a great magical grid in the shape of a town, using the principles of sacred geometry, and the various factions would keep a presence there to keep it powered up and the barrier contained. The Red Court took the lead in manipulating naïve mortals into creating the new town of Milton Keynes as this grid.

For the last forty years an uneasy truce has held between the different factions involved. The main players are the Red Court, the White Council, the Summer and Winter Courts of Fae and various clued-in mortals. Members of all these factions meet regularly to try to keep the peace; various smartarses call them The Concrete Council. There is a White Court presence as well, although unofficial, and various other supernaturals come to Milton Keynes to take advantage of the comparative safety, as no one wants to risk starting a war on a powder keg.

More recently, other players have become involved. The British security services have a department that looks after supernatural risks, called The Cleaners. They don’t participate in the Concrete Council, and do not enjoy the same protections that the other players do. They do, however, take action when others are afraid to do so.

There is a small local group of religiously-motivated monster hunters, called The Order of St. Guthlac. They aren’t necessarily as clued-in as they think, and they are dangerous fanatics, but they are also on the side of the angels.

There is also another human faction, calling themselves The Sons of Man. They know of the existence of non-human entities in the world, and see themselves as the protectors of mankind. Their idea of protection involves killing anything that isn’t human. Whereas one could see The Order of St. Guthlac as, for example, Opus Dei, The Sons of Man have more in common with the KKK or Combat 18 in their apporach, and are largely secular.

The current situation in Milton Keynes is a bit like Berlin during the cold war: none of the factions trusts each other and each would happily kill the others if they thought it was safe. There is a lot of politics, backstabbing and scheming, but little open hostility. This does not mean that bad things do not happen; they simply happen when no one is looking.

Who keeps the peace?

The peace is mainly kept by the Concrete Council, but this is a very shaky, tenuous peace. They don’t care about individual transgressions or injustices, only events that could threaten the stability of Milton Keynes.

The Station Master – currently the acting, ersatz De la Croix – acts as a neutral party to guard the barriers themselves and make sure that nothing crosses through that shouldn’t.

The Cleaners take short, decisive action when anything happens to threaten the well-being of the human population or the interests of the British government.

How do normals cope?

Mostly by being completely oblivious to what’s going on. The Concrete Council tries to keep supernatural activity in Milton Keynes as quiet as possible, and an average citizen will rarely see anything too strange happening.

Also, as mentioned, The Cleaners, The Order of St. Guthlac and The Sons of Man take different approaches to protecting the human populace.

What kinds of supernatural communities are there?

We’re covered this in earlier sections, but just to recap:

• The Red Court have a stronghold in Woodhill prison.
• The White Court have a small presence feeding off the inhabitants of The Lakes Estate.
• The Summer and Winter fae both have presences in The Centre:MK, with the Winter Court currently in control.
• The White Council run a psychiatric unit in Milton Keynes General Hospital.

What we didn’t take into account was that creating the characters took us three and a half sessions of three hours each. Given that we also missed a few weeks, this meant a delay of well over a month.

I’m pretty convinced that the game mechanics themselves were not the cause of the long creation process; what really happened is that we spent too long talking about every aspect of the characters’ backstories, and how they fitted into the secret history of Milton Keynes that we were creating. In some respects this was a good thing, as we now have a very good idea of who these people are, as well as lots of plot hooks for me to incorporate. I did find myself saying, “Let’s save some good stuff for play” an awful lot, though.

At the end of the process I asked the others why they thought it had taken so long, especially given that they have all created at least two Spirit of the Century characters each, both times in a single three-hour session. The general consensus was that they felt that the Dresden characters were somehow more “serious”. This was a combination of feeling constrained by canon in a way that SotC characters aren’t, in that they felt that they had to work more to make the characters fit in, and that the tone of the game was different and they held themselves to higher standards of verisimilitude.

Where this really bogged us down was in the creation of the novels. While I did remind everyone a number of times that we only needed two sentences and some very loose content, everyone seemed to get really into fleshing them out, and each one almost became a meta-game session where the story was spun out and the other characters drawn in. What could have been a five-minute hashing out of a quick blurb turned into, almost universally, an hour or two of intense discussion.

I would be very interested to hear if this ties in with anyone else’s experience.

The skills and stunts section went much more smoothly. I hadn’t had time to read the Spellcasting section by the time we incorporated it, but Seana had committed the whole thing to memory and did a wonderful job serving as rules oracle. She even wrote a couple of quick summaries, which I must ask her to post to the site.

We opted to use a refresh of 8, 25 skill points and a skill cap of Great, as we wanted to have competent characters, including one wizard. No one mentioned being too constrained by this, and I think the characters we ended up with are pretty interesting and playable.

We also followed the advice about looking for ways in which the characters’ Aspects could be Invoked, Compelled or Tagged, and if you look at the entries for them you should see some of these listed. It will certainly help me a lot when I come to run the game.

The only hiccough was that Seana ended up having to scale her concept for her character, Bethany Smith, back a fair bit after I said a very belated “no” to one important facet: initially she was supposed to have been a spellcaster as well as a White Court vampire, and Seana came up with a backstory that involved Bethany having been injured supernaturally, resulting in the loss of her magical abilities, only to recover them by stealing Excalibur’s scabbard and drawing on its healing energy to restore her magical power. This was the justification to get an Item of Power, and my initial reaction was that it would be an interesting opportunity to see these rules in action.

I started having misgivings, though, when I realised that the scabbard had no real impact on Bethany’s character beyond an Aspect about it being stolen. Looking at a character like Michael Carpenter, the Sword of the Cross that he carries defines who he is; his whole life revolves around it, and he is its servant as much as its master. For Bethany it seemed like it was just a mystical sticking plaster and utility item. I discussed this with Seana and she agreed, so Bethany changed radically.

Apart from this, I think the characters turned out pretty much as first planned. Linden Thorn is maybe not a formidable skill wise as he should be, especially as he’s a lawyer who will have trouble making any rolls relating to mundane law, but as that’s not the core of his character we should be OK.

Anyway, in summary, while the character generation process took about four times as long as I would have liked, it was both enjoyable and successful, and has laid the groundwork for what I hope will be a great game.

Black ops Cleaner indentured to the Summer Court

Invoke
Favours, status, information or help related to the Cleaners, her army background or the fae
Compel
Trouble related to the above. Superiors giving orders, Summer court patron calling in a favour, etc.
Tag
Superiors giving orders, Summer Court patron leaning on her, reluctance to go up against either

Theme

Conflicted loyalties

Invoke:
Strength of will, desire to succeed in a goal related to loyalties
Compel:
Trouble related to loyalties; choosing between them, conflicting goals
Tag:
Threats, offers of help, blackmail

Background

Aspect: I won’t let them get me like they got Samantha.

Invoke:
Resisting supernaturals
Compel:
Trouble involving supernaturals; anything involving Samantha; paranoia about a particular person or situation
Tag:
Keeping her off-balance in conflicts involving the supernatural or Samantha, paranoia (as above)

Evelyn Amelia Blunt is the youngest child of Michael Adam Blunt and Genevieve Summerfield. Her parents’ marriage was something of a scandal back in the day. The traditional, conservative, staunchly Catholic, old-money Blunts took great exception to their youngest son eloping with a free-spirited artist. She didn’t even have the decency to take her husband’s name. Nevertheless, what was done was done. Despite certain dire predictions, Michael and Genevieve’s marriage remained strong and they eventually managed to win his parents’ acceptance. This feat was due mostly to Genevieve’s determination, although the birth of their first child helped a great deal.

With six older brothers, it was pretty much guaranteed that Evelyn was going to grow up something of a tomboy. Genevieve did her best to instil some ladylike qualities in her only daughter, but even she eventually had to admit defeat. Part of her efforts involved introducing the young Evelyn to Samantha Grey, the daughter of one of her friends. Samantha was just about the cutest, most girly little girl it was possible to imagine, but despite all that, she and Evelyn quickly became best friends. Unfortunately, Samantha didn’t prove to be quite the good influence that Genevieve had hoped for. Looking angelic isn’t the same thing as being angelic, and the two girls managed to get themselves into a great deal of trouble. Evelyn never did manage to get the hang of being ladylike. In fact, it was because of Samantha that she ended up in the SAS.

When her best friend in all the world didn’t show up for her eleventh birthday party, she knew that something was wrong. When no one answered the phone at Samantha’s house, she was sure of it. The party went ahead anyway – largely at her mother’s insistence – but she was far too anxious and miserable to actually enjoy it. In the end, she sneaked out, leaped onto her brand new BMX bike and headed for Samantha’s house as fast as she could pedal. Samantha’s street was a hive of activity, lit by the flashing blue lights of police squad cars. The house itself was barricaded behind a line of crime scene tape, and police officers seemed to be everywhere. Clumps of people were standing around, whispering among themselves as they watched the proceedings. The word on their lips was ‘murder’.

The story made all the headlines: ‘Parents brutally slain, little girl missing’. Evelyn wasn’t supposed to read those articles or watch the news reports, but she did anyway. It didn’t help. They didn’t know anything. Worse, they seemed to take a morbid delight in speculating about what gruesome fate might have befallen her missing friend. The worry gnawed at her until it was almost a physical pain, only growing sharper as weeks went by with no word. She didn’t give up, though; didn’t stop hoping. And then, one night, that hope was rewarded.

One moment, she was lost in dreams. The next, she was jolted awake. As she lay there, trying to work out what had disturbed her, her answer came in the form of a gentle tapping at her window. Blearily opening her eyes, she looked towards the window. Through the gap where the curtains didn’t quite meet, she could just about make out a shape; a figure. There was someone outside.
“Evelyn…” The voice was accompanied by more tapping. “Evelyn, it’s me. Come on.” A few moments of silence, and then: “Wake up, you dozy cow!”
“Sam?” She padded over to the window and peered out. Sure enough, her friend stood there on the narrow ledge, nose pressed up against the glass. “Samantha? What are you doing out there?”
“Waiting for you.”
“But…” How could she be out there like nothing happened? Was this a dream? A thousand questions crowded her tongue, but before she could ask any of them, Samantha interrupted with irritated impatience.
“Are you going to open the window or what? I can’t hold on forever.”
“Oh. Right.” This was Samantha. Questions could wait. “Careful.” She slid the window upwards and stepped back, but Samantha just stood there, frowning a little. She frowned back. “Aren’t you coming in?”
“I’ve changed my mind. Why don’t you come out here?” With those words, she turned and gripped the branch of the old tree, climbing down with the ease of familiarity. Without hesitation, Evelyn followed. Too impatient to climb all the way, she jumped the last couple of feet. Even so, Samantha was already some distance away. She must have started running as soon as her feet hit the ground. “Race you to the stream,” she called back as she disappeared through the gap in the hedge. Muttering a few words she wasn’t supposed to say – she’d learned them from her brothers, of course – Evelyn hared after her.

She was confident she’d catch Samantha: she’d always been the faster one. But somehow, this time, she just couldn’t keep up. By the time she reached the finish line, flushed and out of breath, the other girl was stretched casually out on her grass as if she’d been waiting for ages. The damp and the chill didn’t seem to bother her. She wasn’t even breathing hard; her skin as porcelain pale as it ever was.

“Aren’t you cold?” Evelyn leaned against a tree, trying not to show her exhaustion. Even under these strange circumstances, her pride wouldn’t let her do anything else.
“Not really.” Samantha’s voice was distant and dreamy.
A few moments of silence, apart from the gentle trickling of water, and then: “What happened?”
“It isn’t important.”
“But… Your parents. They were…” She couldn’t finish the sentence; couldn’t say that word. “I’m so sorry, Sam.” Hesitating briefly, she asked, in a voice barely above a whisper: “Were you there, when they… when it happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Still that same detached, far away tone.
“Where have you been? The police looked for you. I looked for you.”
“And now you’ve found me.” She got to her feet, frowning as she noticed the grass stains on her clothes. “Damn. I liked this skirt.”
“You’re the one who lay down on wet grass,” Evelyn pointed out. “Are you sure you’re not cold?”
A shrug. “I feel fine.”
“Well, you’re acting weird.”
“You’re the weird one.”
“I am not!”
“Yes, you are.” But she smiled when she said it, and it was impossible to hold on to the irritation. Samantha was back and everything was going to be alright.

Impulsively, Evelyn wrapped her arms around the other girl, hugging her tightly.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispered. “I was so worried.” The relief was so overwhelming that it took her a few heartbeats to notice that Samantha had gone completely still in the embrace, arms held rigidly at her sides. As soon as she realised, she all but leaped back. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, trying not to show how much the reaction hurt. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” ‘Stupid!’ she scolded herself. ‘Of course she’s on edge, with what she’s just been through. I shouldn’t have just blundered in like that.’
“I have to go.” Samantha didn’t sound distant any more. Her voice was hoarse and thick; strangely intense. She bowed her head so that her fine blonde hair fell across her face like a veil, hiding her expression.
“But you just got here!” Evelyn started to reach out again, but then caught herself and settled for shifting her weight restlessly from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry if I spooked you. I didn’t mean to. I won’t hug you again if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s not that, Evie. It’s…” Samantha sighs. “I can’t explain. I just have to go.”
“Will you come back?”
She nods slowly. “Tomorrow night. If you want me to.”
“Of course I do! What kind of a daft question is that?” She shook her head, the knot in her throat easing a little.
“Good. That’s good.” The words sound relieved, as if Samantha hadn’t been sure what her answer would be. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, then.”
“Tomorrow,” Evelyn echoed, softly. Samantha turned to leave, but then abruptly spun around to face her. The moonlight played strange tricks with shadow so that her eyes looked almost black.
“You can’t tell anyone I was here,” she said.
“But…”
“No one. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but…”
“If you do, then I’ll never come back. Never.”
Evelyn stared at her, shocked and uncertain. “But why? Everyone’s so worried. Is it because… Are you afraid of the people who… who hurt your parents?” Her voice lost its uncertainty, the next sentences broadcasting defiance into the night. “You don’t have to be. I’ll protect you, Sam. They’ll have to get through me first!”
Samantha gave a tiny smile. “I know,” she said. “You always were the brave one.” The smile faded. “But this is different. You can’t protect me this time. And you can’t tell anyone you saw me.”
“You’re sure? That’s really what you want?”
“Yes.”
Evelyn sighed heavily. “Then I won’t tell,” she said, reluctantly.
“Promise me.”
“I just said…”
“Promise!”
“Fine! I promise I won’t tell anyone you were here tonight. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” She pantomimed the actions; they always did when it was really, really serious. “Happy now?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She tilted her head quizzically. “What was the death?”
“Ebola. I was reading about it the other day and it sounds nasty.” She said that last word in the same tone someone else might have said ‘really, really cool!’ “It makes you explode!”
“That can’t be true.”
“Well, it makes all your blood vessels burst, which is practically the same thing. Blood spraying everywhere! You wouldn’t want to have to clean up after one of those, that’s for sure.”
“Umm, yeah.” Samantha’s voice sounded strange again. “Anyway, I really have to go. Bye, Evelyn.” She turned away.
“Goodbye. See you tomorrow night?”
“I’ll be here.” And with that, Samantha ran off into the trees. Evelyn tried to follow – ‘I never said I wouldn’t try to see where she went!’ – but it was no use. Samantha had vanished without a trace.

True to her word, Samantha returned the following night, the night after that and every night for the next week. The girls played and talked, exploring the woods and having adventures. It was almost as if things were back to normal; as if the events of Evelyn’s birthday had never happened. Almost. But there were still so many unanswered questions. Every time Evelyn tried to ask about what happened, or where she’d been for the past few weeks, Samantha either ignored the question, or said it wasn’t important. Evelyn pressed the issue once, and Samantha just left. She spent a restless day wondering if she’d gone for good that time, but her friend was back the following night as if nothing had happened. Clearly, the direct approach wasn’t going to work.

The last night started out much like any of the others. They raced again – Samantha won, again – and spent some time rambling around the woods while they talked about people they knew. It wasn’t an accident that their path took them past certain important places. The tree-house they kept meaning to finish. The pond where they were convinced they saw an ichthyosaurus that one time. The tree they climbed to get away from a rabid wolf. (Well, okay, it might have been a dog. And maybe it wasn’t literally rabid, but it was certainly chasing them, even though they hadn’t technically been trespassing.) Places that meant something to them, and their friendship. Evelyn made sure to point these out. It wasn’t the most subtle approach, perhaps, but it was the only thing she could think of. She also made sure to take every opportunity to refer to times when she’d protected her friend. Like the time she took the blame for throwing that mud ball at one of the local bullies.

Samantha shook her head.
“I was sure they were going to catch you.”
“Nah, not me. Too fast. Besides – they didn’t know these woods like we do.” She flashed a wicked grin. “You should’ve seen their faces when they got dumped in that hole on their arses. I knew that log wouldn’t take them tromping across it like a herd of elephants.”
“They got you later, though, didn’t they?”
Evelyn shrugged. “That was later, though. And it was worth it.” She looked at Samantha. “I’m your friend, Sam. I’ll always look out for you. That’s what friends do.”
“I know, but…”
“And you know you can trust me, right?”
“Of course.”
“I mean, I’ve always kept every secret you’ve asked me to. Always.”
Samantha sighed heavily. “I know that. I do trust you, Evie, but it’s… complicated. Things are different now.”
“I’m still your friend. What’s complicated about that?”
Samantha started to say something, but then stopped, a look of panic spreading over her face. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. I left my watch on my bedside table. Why?”
“I have to go. I’ve stayed too long; I have to…” She turned to leave just as the first rays of sunlight slipped over the horizon, bathing her in their gentle, golden glow.
“What is it?” Evelyn asked. “What’s wrong?” But the words died in her throat as Samantha started to scream. The sound was raw and agonised, and somehow inhuman. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Samantha’s skin blistered, bubbled and then evaporated, revealing black, leathery hide underneath. Before her horrified eyes, her best friend became a monster. No, it was worse than that: she’d been a monster all along. The creature turned and fled, leaving Evelyn helpless to do anything other than stare after her. Only one coherent thought stood out from the confused mass of emotion inside her: things were never going to be the same again.

Since that night, Evelyn dedicated herself to fighting against the monsters that walk alongside humanity. After being dragged to a counsellor by her worried mother – and teased mercilessly by her brothers – she learned to keep her mouth shut about what happened. Instead, she concentrated on doing everything she could to make sure that what happened to her friend wouldn’t happen to her, or to anyone else she cared about. She took martial arts classes, read every book about the supernatural she could get her hands on, and kept her eyes and ears open. When she was old enough, she joined the army. Of course, between her family’s long and distinguished tradition of service, competition with her brothers and the war stories her adored grandfather told her, she would almost certainly have done that anyway. It was in her blood. If it wasn’t for Samantha, though, she might not have pushed herself as hard and as far as she did.

Evelyn joined the SAS, and acquired a distinguished service record of her own, but that still wasn’t enough. Hearing rumours of an even more elite unit – one sent in to deal with foes that weren’t precisely human – she tried to find out more. The main question on her mind was: where could she sign up? Unfortunately, all her leads turned into dead ends. Before she could formulate another plan, her squad were sent into the field. The assignment was last-minute and very hush-hush. Some terrorists had taken a group of people hostage and were threatening to kill them. Unfortunately, they’d lucked out and managed to get hold of someone very important indeed. The only saving grace was that the terrorists didn’t seem to realise what a valuable asset they had in their hands. Command wanted to make sure it stayed that way. The squad’s orders were to extract the hostages and to make sure that any information the enemy might have gotten from the VIP died with them. If rescue wasn’t possible, then they were to terminate. Although not the preferred outcome, it was judged preferable to letting him stay in their hands. The squad weren’t told what made the VIP so important: they didn’t need to know.

On the surface of it, the mission seemed straightforward enough. None of the squad members actually believed it would be that easy, of course, but no one expected the clusterfuck it turned into. They went in under cover of night. Infiltrating the compound went off without a hitch, but there was no sign of the hostages. Aside from the few guards they encountered on their way in – far fewer than they’d been led to expect – the base seemed to have been mostly abandoned. Something wasn’t right here, but they had their orders. When they found what looked like a concealed cellar entrance, they had no choice but to investigate. And that’s when it all went to hell.

The “cellar” turned out to be a network of tunnels and passages. These looked old, pre-dating the compound above it (although someone had since rigged up makeshift electric lights). They must have belonged to whatever building had stood here before the terrorists moved in. Presumably, this was where they would find the hostages, and the rest of the terrorists. The only strange thing was that there didn’t appear to be any guards. Cautiously, they moved in and started to scout out the underground complex. A little way in, they came to what seemed to be a major intersection. Davies, on point, was just turning back to tell them it was clear when something tore him apart. After a brief, frozen moment, training took over. The squad started to move… and then the lights went out.

Movement in the darkness; breath of air, warm sticky rain. Charnel stench and tang of iron. Abel and Jefferies missing from sound-off; not even a cry to mark their passing. No one moved that fast or that quietly, no one. Were the terrorists pumping PCP? That wasn’t in the intel, but they could take that up with command if they ever made it out of here. More movement, from behind them this time, cutting off their avenue of retreat. How did the enemy get behind them? Rending noises and a pained, gurgling cry. A wounded man they somehow had to try to treat; to move without killing him. All while trying to protect themselves from an enemy they couldn’t see; an enemy who seemed to be just playing with their prey. Someone clicked on a torch, the benefits of sight outweighing the risks of visibility. It was Jensen, dimly illuminated as he quickly played the beam over the scene in the tunnel. It showed Stevens bending over the downed man, trying vainly to staunch the flow of blood while Ben and Evelyn stood guard. It also showed other figures looming from the shadows. The enemy. And the enemy weren’t human.

They looked like walking corpses. Jensen just freaked out completely when he got a look at them. Dropping his torch to the ground, he screamed and gibbered and sprayed bullets like water. He seemed to either have forgotten or simply not care about his own people in the line of fire. The bullets didn’t seem to bother the… the creatures at all, but they did get their attention. When they pounced on him, it was like something out of a nature documentary; a pride of lions bringing down a zebra. He didn’t die cleanly, but his unwitting sacrifice gave the others a chance. Recovering her wits, Evelyn got the others moving, Ben and Stevens all-but dragging the Edwards with them. They weren’t going to leave any more of them to the monsters if they could help it.

Just four of them left out of an eight-man squad. Three and a half, really, since Edwards was almost certainly going to die without serious medical attention. There was no point in running – they didn’t even know where the exit was at this point, and those things were just too fast – but they could set an ambush. The dead-things-pouncing were like something Bela Lugosi might play, which gave Evelyn a couple of ideas.

The vampires raced round the corner to find themselves confronted by Evelyn holding up a crucifix, chanting the Lord’s prayer. (Under these circumstances, it was pretty much the only one she could remember.) She thought she was screaming the words, but so much gunfire in the enclosed tunnels meant had all but wiped out her hearing. She didn’t know if this would work – at this point, blind faith was all she had to go on – but there weren’t many options. They did pause, but only momentarily. Fortunately, that was all the time Ben and Stevens needed to light the flares. Even monsters – well, these monsters – didn’t like a faceful of fire.

The flares gave them an edge, but the vampires were still tremendously fast and strong, shrugging off bullets like they weren’t there. Once they were down, decapitation – another of Evelyn’s ideas – kept them down, but that took time. Staking would have been quicker, but there weren’t any suitable stakes conveniently to hand. Stevens’ flare went out, and the creatures were on him less than a heartbeat later. They didn’t drag out his death like they did Jensen’s. Then Evelyn and Ben fought back to back, trying to force their way through. Their only hope was to make it to the exit before their dwindling supply of flares ran out, and before either of them were too badly hurt to keep moving. But the monsters kept coming, and they weren’t even sure where the way out was. They kept on fighting, knowing that, ultimately, they were going to lose, but neither of them willing to give up.

First one flare died, and then the other. Darkness closed in. Someone chuckled, the sound rich with anticipation, and then everything was blood and confusion. Separating them was the first thing the monsters did. Then came the chase. The creatures were back to playing again: perhaps payback for the fire, and for their own injuries and losses. A slash here, a blow there, but nothing fatal, not yet. Evelyn still had her crucifix, but it wasn’t holding them back this time. It was hard to have faith knowing she was going to be killed by something like that.

When the cavalry showed up, she almost didn’t recognise it for what it was. First, there was s tremendous explosion. It shook the tunnels, making her stumble and fall. She thought that was it; that they’d be on her before she hit the ground, but then the whole place was flooded with light. It was like sunlight on a clear summer’s day, almost blinding after the pitch darkness. She knew that was impossible – dawn was still hours away – but there it was. Something screamed, inhuman and agonised, and for the first time since this nightmare began, she started to think she might actually live through this. People started to flood into the tunnels, people dressed like she was, but carrying swords and stakes and, in a couple of cases, things that looked remarkably like flamethrowers. There seemed to be a lot of them. Whoever they were, they took down the vampires with ruthless efficiency. They almost killed Evelyn too, but hesitated when she dropped her weapons and put her hands up. One of them pointed at her crucifix – the chain was wrapped around one wrist to leave her hands free – and said something she didn’t hear. He called over another man who seemed to be in charge, and then her part in things was pretty much over.

Evelyn was searched, disarmed (although they let her keep her crucifix), cuffed and hustled above-ground. Whoever they were, they weren’t taking any chances. After having seen what was down in those tunnels, though, she couldn’t exactly blame them. First, they took her to a field-medic to be examined and patched up. (She was badly injured. The only thing keeping her on her feet was sheer bloody-minded stubbornness. That was aided by the drugs they gave her.) After that – and over the medic’s objections – they escorted her into one of the buildings that the newcomers had apparently appropriated for their own use. There were questions. Lots of questions: who she was, what she was doing there, what had happened. What she did down there and why. Her childhood. Samantha. They just went on and on and on. So many question. Some of them the same questions, over and over again, asked in different ways. She tried to ask questions of her own – about the others, about what those things really were; about who the flying fuck this outfit was – but they just ignored them. The debriefing (or, more properly, interrogation) seemed to go on forever. Eventually, however, they let her sleep.

The next day, they told her that she was the only member of her squad who survived the scourge of Black Court vampires. And then they explained what Black Court vampires were. And then they made her a job offer. That was how Evelyn came to join the Cleaners.

Questions:

Did whoever sent in an SAS squad know about the nest of Black Court vampires beforehand? Were Evelyn’s squad used as stalking horses? If so, why them? Was it coincidence, or did Evelyn piss off the wrong person with her digging? Was there really a hostage? If so, it must have been someone important to the Cleaners. Or, maybe there wasn’t a hostage. Maybe they were intending to take a prisoner. Or maybe they just wanted to wipe out the nest. If the mission had been infiltrated by the Sons of Man, this could be where they recruited Ben. If they spirited him away secretly, that would explain why he was assumed to be dead.

What shaped you?

Aspect: Better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission.

Invoke:
To get something done, to be as ruthless as she needs to be.
Compel:
To go ahead and act, when perhaps waiting might be the better option (the easiest way isn’t always the right way).
Tag:
Guilt trips

During an assignment, Evelyn came into contact with the Winter Court’s envoy to Milton Keynes. He seduced her, probably with the assistance of faerie glamour (and possibly fae wine) and they went to bed. The morning after, she deeply regretted the night before. She didn’t know whether she was really in her right mind when she said yes. She couldn’t say that it was non-consensual, but there was enough room for doubt that she feels deeply uncomfortable over the whole affair, and about him.

Time passed. She had no more contact with the Winter fae. There were other assignments, including dealing with a group of Ghouls who were causing trouble. The Cleaners wanted them taken out. During the course of the operation, the action got a little more up close and personal than she would prefer. Still, the targets were dealt with, and none of the team were killed or seriously injured. All in all, the mission was counted as a success. Shortly after afterwards, Evelyn discovered that she was pregnant. After a certain amount of denial (and swearing, and wanton destruction of property), she accepted that her liaison with the Winter fae was going to have some lasting consequences. She was going to keep the child, of course (that was never in doubt) and resolved to try to be careful from now on. Unfortunately, the decision was taken out of her hands. The Ghouls had been trying to find out who was responsible for the hit on them. Maybe the Cleaners even told them, to hammer home that they had the ability to enforce the detente if necessary. Or maybe the Ghouls were just that good. In any case, they mounted a counter-attack. Evelyn was jumped. She survived the attack, but was injured and started to miscarry.

In desperation, Evelyn sought out a Summer Court fae she’d heard was in town. She reasoned that if anyone could save her child, it would be one of those. She was right, and the faerie agreed to aid her – for a price. She took Evelyn into the nevernever (for the task required magics too potent for the mortal world) and worked the healing. The magic also quickened the child’s growth, bringing it to term in a matter of hours. Evelyn gave birth in the Summer lands, with a faerie midwife. It was only then that the fae told her the price was the child itself. She would never have agreed to that if she’d known, but nevertheless she had agreed. The faerie was by far her superior in the matter of making bargains. There was no clear way out of this – she was still in Summer’s realm, after all – so she offered a new bargain: her service for her child. The deal was accepted, more or less. Even if it wasn’t quite the one she’d hoped for, it was better than nothing. When she has completed a number of favours for her patron, she will be reunited with her child.

When the bargaining was concluded, the faerie sent her back to her own world with admonishment that she would be in touch. Naturally, she said nothing to her superiors about the bargain. Their stance on their agents being compromised is both well known and not negotiable. Firing her is the least they would do. For a time, nothing happened. Discreetly, she started looking into ways of trying to get herself free of the agreement. When more time went by without contact from her patron, she decided to be more pro-active. She went to the faerie with something that she thought must be worth one of the favours. The fae made encouraging noises, so she went ahead… only to find out that, because it wasn’t specifically requested of her, it didn’t count. She hasn’t made that mistake again.

The first favour wasn’t so bad. The next one was worse, but she didn’t have a choice. The third, well, she’s in it up to her neck now. There haven’t been many more since, though. The fae is being somewhat miserly, no doubt loath to lose her cat’s paw just yet. Evelyn is finding the whole thing rather frustrating.

As well as trying to find a way out of the bargain, she’s also been trying to find out what happened to her child. There was nothing in the agreement stopping her from looking, after all. To that end, she’s started to make contact with some of the Summer fae currently hiding among Milton Keynes’ homeless population. She hasn’t got very far yet, but she’s persevering. (Maybe she’s heard a rumour that’s led her to believe her child is in Milton Keynes and is all grown up? Or maybe that’s something that should happen in play. Certainly, she knows time flows differently in the nevernever, so she knows she’s not necessarily looking for a newborn.)

The whole incident has left her with a mile-wide streak of guilt and sizeable grudge against the fae. The extent of her distrust might be considered paranoid if it weren’t largely justified. There’s a certain amount of fear when she considers how easily she was influenced and tricked by the Winter and Summer fae, respectively. Strangely, though, she’s also fascinated by them. And by him. Not that she’d ever admit it, even to herself.

Novel: Fool’s Mate

Supporting: Bethany Smith and Delacroix

Aspect:
I saved the Red Court from the Sons of Man
Invoke:
Favours or information from the Red Court, intimidating members of the Red Court or the Sons of Man, reputation among the Cleaners and the supernatural community
Compel:
Machinations of the Red Court and the Sons of Man, revenge attempts by the Sons of Man, people asking for her help because of her actions
Tag:
Attacking her confidence and sense of humanity (pointing out that she’s helped the monsters against the humans)

“Identify yourself,” I snarled, keeping my gun trained on the intruder. What can I say? I’m cranky when I’ve just woken up. He was bloody lucky I didn’t start by firing a warning shot into his left kneecap.
“Asking questions before shooting? Don’t tell me the Blunt Instrument’s mellowing in her old age?” That voice… I knew that voice. And that damned annoying nickname. I shifted position slightly to get a better look at his face. It really was him, or at least something that looked and sounded like him. This… changed things. Luckily, I was prepared. I’m always prepared. Crucifix at the ready, I palmed a globe of holy saline solution – don’t look at me; it’s a prototype – and made sure I was out of spitting distance.
“Ben?”
“In the flesh, Evie B.”
“Huh.” I was tempted to shoot him just on general principles. “I see you have that same problem with getting my name right.”
“And the same great arse?” I ignored that. Acknowledging the remark would have been far beneath my dignity. Besides: I’ve seen better arses.
“There’s just one small problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I went to your funeral.”

For most people, meeting up with an old colleague doesn’t mean a member of your old SAS unit breaking into your house in the middle of the night. Evelyn Blunt isn’t most people. That’s why she works for the Cleaners, keeping the supernatural inhabitants of Milton Keynes in check and preserving the fragile détente. The Sons of Man are offering her the chance to do something more than that: to deal with the supernatural threats to humankind once and for all. It’s an offer she can’t refuse… or is it?

What are the Sons of Man really up to? Can Evelyn stop the mysterious De La Croix rushing in where angels fear to tread? Is Bethany, the pretty DJ she rescued, quite as innocent as she seems?

In a game where black and white are only different shades of grey, how can she tell her friends from her enemies?

Supporting Role in: Heart of Thorns (Linden Thorn)

Aspect: What’s the worst that could happen?

Invoke:
Tactics/casing rolls. Planning for every eventuality. Rolls to avoid being surprised.
Compel:
Anything that can go wrong, will.
Tag:
Always expecting the worst of someone. (Deceit to make her think someone else is lying, or to throw suspicion on someone else.)

When the Cleaners set their best wetworks agent on his case, can Linden convince Evelyn not to kill him?

Supporting Role in: The Waiting Room (De La Croix)

Aspect: The wrong place at the wrong time.

Invoke:
To be in a particular place at a particular time. Bonuses to aiming at someone.
Compel:
The wrong place at the wrong time (standing over a body holding a gun as the police show up).
Tag:
Bonus to someone else aiming at her. Penalty for establishing alibis.

When Evelyn finds herself trapped in the Waiting Room, can she survive its horrors long enough to join forces with some unlikely allies?

High Concept : Renegade Arcane Attorney
An experienced white council wizard who now works to help those mortals who need or are caught up in deals with supernatural entities as a mediator and negotiator. This is complicated by his membership in the Order of St Guthlac, a group of dedicated religious monster hunters.
Thorn is a dedicated idealist and humanitarian and has a deep mistrust of the white council and is haunted by the things he saw in his time at Bletchley park trying to use an entity from beyond to assist in the war effort.. He has only recently come to terms with that.

Reccuring theme : Rebel With Too Many Causes.

Throughout his early life serving the white council and apprenticing for wizards in Bolshevik Russia and the Spanish civil war – up till his time at Bletchley park till today – Linden has had his rod to bear. Always having to use a means which harms as well as heals, a double edged sword to all his actions, and sometimes realizing he is on the wrong side all along. Even now his membership of the order and his career are at odds.

Where did you come from

Born 7th July 1907
Wizardly family, white council
Executed for crimes which are still secret among the white council
Taken in by a white council member Elder Reeves, raised till his late teens
Found out about his past, ran away and roamed Europe

Aspect : Yeah, but whats in it for you?

What Shaped you?

Moved around Europe, ending up in Bolshevik Russia, under the tutelage of a revolutionary Sorcerer Dragdna Voronov.
Learned odd evocation schools, Metal, Wood.
Realized the powers were being used for the wrong purposes, left the sect with some bad blood. Went back to wandering Europe.
Rendered Assistance in the Spanish civil war, met up with his cousin again
Drafted into work by the white council at Bletchley park as war broke out.
Assisted in opening up a portal to draw power from the entity under Milton Keynes
Made an unwilling channel for the entity that is interfacing with the area. He was the first wizard to channel the entity, as he was considered expendable.
Took part in the ending ritual which went disastrously wrong.
Stayed in MK and helped in its rebuilding, a broken wizard and guilt ridden.
Opened up his consulting business after MK sees a rise in supernatural activity with the influx of mortals.

Aspect : When bad things happen to good people, I make it my bidness.

First Novel : Heart of Thorns

Linden Thorn, arcane lawyer, just took the most dangerous case of his career. When major pharmaceutical corporation Glenco are trying to trial a new artificial heart, they need a little push of an infernal kind and only Thorn can do that kind of negotiation. When Glenco’s directors change the deal and the demon takes control, it decides Linden needs to be the one under the knife.

- Pursued by The Cleaners best wet worker, Evelyn Blunt and the psychotic Order of St Guthlac, Thorn has noone to turn to, other than
His niece Bethany is the only one who can help him, and reveals her true power when forced to protect Linden.

-Resolution : Gaining the trust of Evelyn after Beth’s intervention, Thorn stages a final showdown with the Order. At the showdown, he manages to summon forth the demon Xajorkith he assists the order and Blunt subduing it and binds it into his own heart.

Aspect : Ill never stop still channeling the beast

Guest Starring in : The Waiting Room
In the midst of vanishing citizens, rouge magicians and a shadowy cult, can the wayward station master solve the mystery of the Waiting Room before it too claims him? Partnered with the wizard Linden Thorn, who can open the one door the world walker can not, can the two also rescue an unlikely ally, Blunt, trapped in the Room awaiting whatever lies beyond…
-Arcane Attorney Linden Thorn is the only one who can defend De La Croix to the white council, but as the web tightens, he is forced to call on his contacts in the order of st. Guthlac to face the horrors of the waiting rooms denizens.
Aspect : The Order gives me strength, but I give them mine.
Guest Starring in : Absence of Regrets
Bethany is forced to call on her Wizard uncle, Linden Thorn to help track down the missing children by mystical means and assist in putting a stop to their plot.

Aspect : Not another fucking cultist!

Skills

Lore +4
Conviction +4
Discipline +3
Resources +3
Scholarship +2
Rapport +2
Alertness +2
Drive +1
Presence +1
Empathy +1
Deceit +1
Endurance+1

Theme: “Can I save the city (or destroy it)?”

Name: “de la Croix”

Where did you come from: “Just the next in the Ceyhanes Line”

The Ceyhanes family. Outwardly, local landowners, upper class snobs. An of money family looked on as lofty, arrogant and generally out of touch from the public. Inwardly, the self-apointed saviors of the city from the horror that lurks just beyond the world. The family, or more aptly described ‘cult’, offer up their offspring to become the guardian of the city. They offer up their offspring to become the next to guard the boarders between the worlds. Those on the outside call it ‘the stationmaster’. Those on the inside know they are truely the ‘de la Croix’ – always to sit on the fence, always to be impartial, to maintain the balance, never to become involved.

What shaped you: “Friend of the Summer Fey”

There comes a time when you have to make a choice. For the most recent ‘de la Croix’ it came when he found the Summer Fey was waining, the tree dying. It was then he knew that sitting on the fence wasn’t going to work, so he jumped down, taking his title with him for his own and ran to their aid. The tree still stands, dying, but not yet dead, as it would have been a long time ago were it not for him. As such, a void has been left that is only partially filled. There might be a new stationmaster, but he is certainly no ‘de la Croix’.

Novel: The Waiting Room (“Keeper of the Waiting Room”)

In the midst of vanishing citizens, rouge magicians and a shadowy cult, can the wayward station master solve the mystery of the Waiting Room before it too claims him? Partnered with the wizard Linden Thorne, who can open the one door the world walker can not, can the two also rescue an unlikely ally, Blunt, trapped in the Room awaiting whatever lies beyond… [Edit as needed!]

Guest Appearance 1: Absence of Regrets (“Ties that Bind”)

Crossing paths with Bethany Smith, de la Croix finds himself with an ally in his quest to find his missing niece before she befalls the same terrible fate that students across the city are suffering all too often. [Edit as needed!]

Guest Appearance 2: Fool’s Mate (“I rush in where Angels fear to tread!”)

Making sure the balance of power is not tipped, a loose cannon by the name of de la Croix can’t help but become involved. It’s his city, and he won’t let anyone from outside tip the scales of power, one way or the other. [Edit as needed!]

Character Sheet:

Great: Lore

Good: Contacts, Conviction, Discipline

Fair: Alertness, Empathy, Presence, Resources

Average: Endurance, Investigation, Raport, Scholarship

Class: Sorceror

Refresh Rate: 1

Stunts: Sight (-1), Thaumaturgy: World Walking (-3: +1 discipline from item, +1 compelling from specialisation), Evocation: Spirit (-3: +1 strength from specialisation, +1 discipline from item; plus Water and Fire)

High Concept: White Court vampire pirate radio broadcaster and DJ

• Invoke: Help seducing someone, feeding, general music and broadcast stuff
• Tag: Using white court weaknesses or nature against me
• Compel: Feeding, something happening in the club network, an interesting story to follow up

Theme: Truth, Lies and Consequences

I’ve made it my mission to get the truth of at least some of what happens out to the mortal inhabitants of the city.  At the same time, I am a creature of lies, concealing the truth of what I am and what I have done from those around me, especially those I care about.  The conflict comes when the truth I put out on air may just be a little too hot to handle.  Will I add some judicious shading of the truth, or damn the consequences?  And what about when the lies I have woven around mysefl threaten to be shattered?  And what about when the consequences of these truths and lies, good or bad, come home to roost?

• Invoke: Help spreading truth, discovering the truth and lying
• Tag: Using my lies, truths or the consequences of such against me
• Compel: The consequences of my actions coming back to haunt me, telling more truth on the radio show than is strictly wise, misleading in a personal matter even when the unvarnished truth might be better.

Background:

Maria Thorn never had an easy life.  After her mother was killed by the White Council and her brother lost, her father fled with her, always on the run.  So perhaps it wasn’t a surprise when she was romanced by a
mysterious handsome stranger calling himself John Smith (no one ever claimed that White Court vampires ever had to be particularly imaginative) that she fell madly in love with him.  She was still on the run, though, only John had bought his own enemies into the mix – his family.  Together, they managed to make a third enemy, one more terrible still.  But there was happiness too, as they brought a child into the world, Bethany, on 31st October, 1923.

They managed to stay ahead of their enemies until Bethany was eight.  She doesn’t remember who or what killed them, or why they left her alive.  Her travels started again when her mother’s brother, an angry wizard called Linden, took her under his wing, blaming the White Council for her mother’s death.  After travelling around Europe for a while, he stopped in Spain, where he helped fight the fascists in the civil war.  Bethany
saw the horrors of war first hand, the cheapness of human life and the best and easiest way to manipulate people is to lie to them.  After his side was defeated, he left for the UK, his home.

Linden got involved in the Bletchley project in 1940/1 and dragged his by then somewhat fractious ward along.  Alongside the more well known codebreaking project, sorcerors and wizards gathered to cast assive rituals to protect Britain from Nazi sorcerous attack.  They drew upon the entity bound beneath what is now Milton Keynes as an energy source.  Since she was not magically talented, despite her parentage, Bethany felt a restlessness she couldn’t put a name to. She spent more and more time outside of the project, alternately attracted and repelled by the lust she inspired in men.

During this time, she met a mysterious beautiful woman named Rebecca Skavis, who intrigued her, befriended her, encouraged her worst instincts and eventually awakened her to her White Court heritage, though she never developed a taste for the despair that Rebecca thrived on.  The scarring left by the horrors of war and a general disdain for humanity (beginning with her obvious superiority to them and encouraged by Rebecca) gave her a general view of humanity as chattel, and led to her involvement in some nasty
things.  She was also her tutor in fencing (Linden disdained the physical arts), though Bethany was never as adept as her mentor.

Rebecca secured her a place in the Political Warfare Executive, the centre for grey and black propaganda in the UK, based in Woburn Abbey, just a few miles away.  Bethany took to this with a vengeance, and was
especially adept at the subtle interplay of information and disinformation to encourage confusion and loss of morale in the enemy troops. She successfully kept her heritage from Linden, who never suspected what his niece was doing outside of work.  Indeed, he was somewhat grateful that she was much more pliant as her darker emotions were focussed elsewhere.

Aspect: You never knew half of what I did.

• Invoke: Helping deceive someone, performing violent acts, either physical or by feeding
• Tag:  Rebecca in any kind of conflict with me, anyone using my past against me in a social conflict
• Compel: Shadows from my past, especially anything to do with Rebecca

What shaped me:
This ended when the Bletchley project spun out of control.  Giving the entity a foothold by drawing upon it too deeply, it opened a rift in Bletchley Park, sucking people, mundanes and mages both, into the realm
of the entity, to be feasted upon.  A cascade failure opened up a similar rift around the Hellschrieber installed in the PWE, sucking her and a few others in.

She spent the next six decades trapped inside the rift.  In far enough that the entity could feed upon her soul.  Not far enough in that she could be consumed.  She was released just a few years ago by Delacroix, the rogue stationmaster who has power over boundaries and space within Milton Keynes.

Bethany stumbled out of the rift, more than half mad, into a world changed beyond her dreams. Possibly her shocked state helped her accept things that would have been considered impossible when she had last been on Earth.  It all seemed so strange, anyway.  It was almost by accident that she walked into a club in Milton Keynes city centre, drawn by the strange beat, and she discovered how much music had changed in six decades.  She took to it like a fish in water, finding and entrancing a local DJ called Mad Horse, who taught her the skills to work in this decade.  Growing ever more hungry, yet having lost the taste for feeding on souls in her long confinement, she slaked her appetite by convincing various club owners to let her play so she could inspire lust in the crowd. It was a simple thing to skim some of that energy off the top.

Slowly she became aware of the more supernatural side of things in Milton Keynes, and noticed for herself how many such things preyed upon humans in their ignorance.  She decided to do something about it, and started up a pirate radio station local to Milton Keynes (called ‘the Dead of Night) to’ inform the masses about what’s going on, and maybe save a few of them from the lurkers.  So far, most people dismiss her
as a crank, but many people tune in anyway to listen to her smoky, sexy voice and always interesting show.

Aspect: I spent 60 years trapped in the gates to the realm of the Nameless One.

• Invoke: Help in resisting pain, or determination generally
• Tag:  Intimidation by anyone threatening return to the Old Ones, or by the Old Ones or by their servants.  Help resisting my feeding attacks
• Compel: Flashbacks.  Have to help anyone being fed on/being tortured, or organise a warning/rescue if I think that that *might* be going on

Novel: Board Op

Bethany is surprised when she is ambushed in her broadcast station – an old van – by, of all things, a recruitment agent with a pitch that she can’t turn down.  Accepting the job with Conix FM, against her better judgment, she is plunged into a backroom battle for survival as she attempts to find out who, or what, controls the station and the corporation behind it using her arsenal of looks and lies.

Co-Star: Linden

Co-Star: De La Croix

Aspect: Earned a place on the board by killing Antoine Raith with the aid of Rebecca Skavis

• Invoke: Knowing what the corporation is doing
• Tag:
• Compel: Complications due to the Raith family (and their enemies) now knowing of my existence (such as assassins, thugs or repatriation agents), repaying the favour to Rebecca

Co-Starring in: Heart of Thorns

His niece Bethany is the only one who can help him, and reveals her true power when forced to protect Linden.

Aspect: Apparently I’m famous now

Bethany has managed to get quite a following amongst some segments of the supernatural community and mortal hangers on.  Naturally, this has benefits and drawbacks.  (Hey, you were wondering what her ‘true power’ was.)

• Invoke: Social rolls involving people amongst the supernatural community, contacting rolls in the supernatural community, (for effect) I happen to have a fan around, or
• Tag: Social rolls amongst people whom I may have irritated with one broadcast or another, rolls to avoid notice amongst people who may have heard me.
• Compel: A fan coming along at the wrong time.  Being recognised at the wrong time.  Someone turning up with a grudge.

Co-Starring in: Fool’s Mate

And what does role does Bethany Smith, a mysterious and beautful woman Evelyn rescues from trolls, play in events?

Aspect: Damsel in Distress?

• Invoke: Leading people to underestimate me, surprise attacks, appealing for protection, setting enemies at each other’s throats whilst I am in their custody
• Tag: Bonus to enemies trying to capture me
• Compel: Captured or threatened by enemies, especially by myself.

Skills

• Great: Deceit
• Good: Discipline, Performance, Weapons
• Fair: Empathy, Presence, Rapport
• Average: Alertness, Athletics, Conviction, Endurance, Investigation, Lore

Stunts

• Incite Emotion (-1)
• Emotional Vampire (-1)
• Hunger (+1)
• Inhuman Recovery (-1)
• Inhuman Speed (-2)
• Inhuman Strength (-2)

Refresh: 2

 Mortal Stunts:

I think it’s worth emphasizing that stunt effectively costs you one refresh, so if you’re not going to use it on average once each session (twice a session if it gives you a +1 bonus) then you might want to think long and hard about whether or not you really want the stunt, or are willing to ‘fake’ it in game with an aspect and a FATE point.

 Is there a circumstance when a one step time reduction isn’t inferior to a +1 bonus to an action?  As I understand it, if you succeed, a +1 bonus can be used to give you a one time step reduction, but it can be used to make you succeed, and do other things too.

Supernatural Stunts:

(White Court Vampires and associated stunts are going to have their own section.  For some reason, possibly the fact that I was interested in playing one, I had a lot to say about them.)

Magic Allergy. 

You get +3 Lore for purposes of supernatural alertness, but suffer +1 stress from magical attacks.  Oh, and the fact that you are allergic may sometimes mean that the intended effect doesn’t work on you.  Maybe.  If you’re lucky.  In general, it seems like you’d be better off taking the mortal stunt +2 Lore for supernatural awareness and not losing the 2 refresh.  To be honest, given your allergy to magic meaning that you probably aren’t a fully fledged supernatural, I think that they’d be better off making this a mortal stunt.

(Inhuman/Superhuman/Mythic} Strength

Bruising Strength gives you bonuses whenever you use Might against a living being, but cannot be used in conjunction with Hammer Blows, which gives you extra stress when you hit with a muscle powered weapon.  However, given description, you can complement a Fists or Weapons roll with Might.  Superior Strength means that you automatically add +1/+2/+3 to your roll doing this, whilst gaining extra stress if you hit, thus gaining the best of both worlds.

The easy way to get around this is to explicitly disallow Superior Strength in conjunction with Hammer Blows.  I think that’s probably the intended spirit of the rules.

Templates:

Changelings

They appear to be probably the most powerful template so far.  Not only can they pick and choose their powers, rather than having to take a set suite of powers, which might include some powers you are less interested in, but they can easily ‘advance’ should they need to, even mid game.  This allows them a lot of flexibility.

Minor talents

This would appear to be the weakest template.  Not only do they miss out on most of the power of supernatural stunts, they also miss out on the +2 refresh that mortals get.  I’d probably suggest giving them +1 refresh if they only get a 1 refresh supernatural stunt, just to reflect this halfway house.

White Court Vampires:

As previously mentioned, I was kind of interested in playing them.  I guess that’s why I had so many problems with them.  The first thing is that they are very strongly pushed to having Deceit/Intimidation and Discipline at high levels, and, given most of their refresh pool has to be taken up with physical combat powers, there would seem to be a big push to having decent combat skills too, just not to waste those powers you’ve had to take.  The result would be that, in general, White Court vampires just aren’t that likeable.  (It’s quite hard to get a good Rapport score once you get past all the other things.)  And, given the high Deceit score, ye average White Court vampire would seem to resemble more a used car salesman than a suave sophisticate.  Which is odd, especially for the Raith family, which is what I was really concentrating on.

Also according to the Bestiary, PC white court vampires are fairly pants specimen of their kind.  (Bestiary Whote Court vamps are Inhuman normally, tempts the hunger to boost to Superhuman, as opposed to normal human usually and tempts hunger to boost to Inhuman for PCs.)  Of course this latter fact may change twixt now and final product.

Incite Emotion:

The basic level of this seems fairly underwhelming, looking at it in mechanical terms

Incite Fear – Since you could do the base effect (using Intimidation as a maneuver to inflict an aspect on someone) anyway, all it seems to do is remove any penalty for not being in a position of strength.  And you have to touch them.  Given other -1 refresh supernatural stunts, for example cloak of shadows, which removes all penalties for seeing in darkness AND and +2 stealth rolls in darkness AND no penalties whilst moving quickly in darkness, it seems a little weak.
Incite Lust – What this seems to allow you to do is to allow you to do lust style manevuers, only using deceit instead of rapport.  And you have to touch them.  This is more than a little weak, even for a mortal stunt, and doesn’t help the White Court’s image as master seducers.  I mean, I’d be far more worried about someone with equivalent Rapport and a stunt that gives them +2 to seduction, and he’s just human.
Incite Despair – I’m fairly sure you could do this with just Deceit anyway, without even touching them.

The stronger versions can also be pretty much replicated by mortal stunts, which can happily give +2 stress to attacks.  And you won’t have to touch them.  The fact that people defend using Discipline against all this isn’t exactly a benefit, either, as both wizards and vampires need good Discipline for other reasons, and no template requires good Resolve.

As a side note, Incite emotion never seems to give you an option to go to range, which is odd because Thomas does use it at range several times.  (Just been rereading Small Favour where he uses it unconsciously on a woman in the gym.)

Feeding:

I’m wavering here.  From the flavour text, it looks like as PCs, we’re supposed to not feed directly from someone, and certainly the main obvious benefit (healing if you kill someone) would seem to be out of bounds for a PC, which, since this costs 1 refresh, balancing out the Hunger disadvantage, leaves you with a PC who has to be careful about using his abilities and/or taking damage whenever he uses them, in return for being able to use Deceit/Intimidation for a fairly lukewarm attack.  I can see the whole ‘temptation to use dark power’ thing here, but at the moment, vampires are the only characters are forced to spend refresh on powers they’re not really going to use unless they’re an NPC.

This changes with a reading of one seemingly innocuous line of the feeding power.  It can be used in conjunction with Incite Emotion, using the same roll.  This would seem to indicate that you can inflict an aspect/block (using Incite Emotion) and do damage with a single roll.  Or, if you have the more potent Incite Emotion, you can do two damaging attacks at once, one at +2 stress.  This obviously turns this into something of a monster attack, which doesn’t really seem to be borne out by the books, where White Court vampires use blades, fists and guns rather than this.

It would seem that the usual way of Raith family feeding is to seduce the target, and then feed.  However, feeding is an attack in game terminology, so how do you decide whether or not a PC should go with the flow or defend himself, possibly even physically?  The obvious suggestion is to tag the incite emotion to compel compliance.  (If this is what is intended, it might be an idea to mention this in the text since I didn’t see it for a while.)  The problem comes in that a new tagable aspect is inflicted with every successful attack, thus potentially running people out of FATE points very quickly if they don’t want to be taken out of fights.  (This actually affects big bad NPCs worse than PCS, since many of them start off in FATE point debt, not giving them a choice about whether or not they’re taken out of the conflict).

Defining which targets can be affected by Incite emotion/Feeding would be useful.  All I’ve got from the text so far is that human can be fed on and ghosts usually can’t apart from when they possessing someone (which means that not having a soul does not render you immune).  We know that White Court vampire can be fed from from White Night, but I’m unsure about who else works.

Hunger:

It says that you recover Hunger Stress boxes and consequences when you feed for a ‘significant’ portion of a scene.  It might be useful to have more guidance on what significant means.  What about if I just take in ambient emotion for the scene?  What if I force someone to concede in a single feeding attack?  (Not killing them.)  I’m not feeding for very much of a scene at all, but I’ve done the next best thing to killing them, which one would imagine would be good for some mojo.  If you have to make successful attacks for the majority of the scene for this to count, you’re either going to need to damage a lot of people otherwise you’ll kill someone just by filling in all their boxes.  Also, does the rejuvenation happen before or after the hunger attack takes place?  I’m assuming after, because otherwise you could take damage from using your feeding ability (which, after all, by the rules inflicts a dmage 1 hunger attack on you at the end of the scene).

Which is a good point – do you take hunger damage at all in a scene in which you kill someone?  Otherwise, you’ll take that damage 1 attack at the end of the scene (from using the feeding power), and might end up not being that satisifed anyway.  Of course, if you don’t take damage, then you can feel free to use all of your abilities in that scene without worry.  That may or may not be what is intended

If you succeed in defending against an attack at the end of a scene, you regain all lost stress boxes.  (Though consequences heal as normal and powers don’t come back until you feed.)  So, assuming you take stress from the strain of using your abilities, the best way to heal it is to use a minor ability the next scene to provoke a light attack.  Frex, in a White Court vampire’s case, use Inhuman Recovery to heal physical consequences from a big fight will provoke a strength 1 attack, which should generally be easy to defend against.  There is a chance of this method backfiring, but I imagine in general it’s better than the alternative of just leaving the stress there until your next big scene.

Skills:

In the skills section, we have explicit defense and fortitude skills for physical, mental and social combat.  (Mental combat being a new addition since SOTC.)  We only have initiative skills for physical and social combat, but not mental.  It’s possible this is covered in the rules section, which is so far missing, but I thought it’s worth a shout out.