Another night, another safehouse. The Task Force decides to contact Michael Clay's mentor Nico in the hope he can offer insight into the mysterious bee relic and to draw up a plan to take the fight to the enemy...
Knights of the Night
KOTN Actual Play Podcast 34: Shit Luck Ep. 35: "Get Him to the Greek!"
[music] Hello, and welcome to Knights of the Night actual play podcast. This world of darkness story line shit-mock was written and run by our storyteller Scott. [music] And now, please enjoy chapter 12, scene 4, titled "Get Him to the Greek." [music] So this is chapter 12 of the World of Darkness story shit-laught, and with us tonight are Tom playing chapter of Jay. Great playing the character of that person. Tom playing special agent shoe park, and Michael playing Michael Clay. [music] If I want a fast response, I mean, it's already 9 o'clock at night, so probably a phone call would be more expedient. How would you say please? I thought I would try to shamelessly work my versions of everything that I do. Gotcha. That would be greedy if I did that. I see. Alright, so you get Nico on the phone, and he wants to know if you need the keys, what you need the keys to the library again? No keys? You need the keys? No, Nico, my friend. Research. And then keys to your brilliant minds. And I just wanted to have time for a coffee this evening. Or for whatever type of apple teeth he would like. Oh apple teeth. Sure. He strikes me as a brandy man. I'm sure I know what his... Sure, where would you like to meet? My friend. Then I will begin to speak of it in our past and try to establish a word play that will somehow lead him to think of St. Patrick's. And whether we have a compatriot that I will call Patrick, it will really be someone else, whatever. Would you clue him in? That's what I'm hoping to do. I'm sure there's nobody listening. You don't want one. But I'm trying to be subtle and mysterious as is the ways of the ages of Cardora because we've been around for so long. And puzzles and labyrinthine mazes is kind of our thing. So give me a witch plus occult role, please. Thanks. That's a total of five. Do I not subtract anything? Probably at the beginning when he's trying to understand what the hell I'm doing. One doc. Right. I see one success. Okay. His role, solving enigmas, is intelligence plus investigation. So he listens to what you have to say and eventually after about five minutes or so he catches on. Just if it's important, my investigation skill, my specialty is solving enigmas too. Oh, nice. So, yeah. I mean, that would maybe give me a plus one in your occult role there because you're good at solving them so you'd be coming up with that. Sure. Or at least we have a shared history so I could. Right. So do you want me to roll another? No, no, no. I mean, you're fine. Because you got the one success. We hadn't successfully would have gave you the other. We had to succeed and we would give you a dice. We would add one onto it. But no, you're fine. Go ahead and you get the enigma over to him. He stumbles for a fit and, like, Brenda, you sleepy. You know, he doesn't quite catch on what you're doing and eventually he's like, "Oh!" Yes, I think an aperitif would be an order. You know, and then he just goes off from there. Alright, and then I will try to somehow... You think in a neutral location or you bring it up to the homestead? I would like to bring him to St. Patrick's without saying St. Patrick's. Right. Not a problem. So, how was I? You want me to roll for... Yeah, you'll make another roll now. Again, with the... we're using Wits, he said, intelligence and Wits. No, I'm sorry, Wits and what's called? Yeah, because you're trying to throw some of the cult stuff out there that would throw the normal listener off. So that's... Five. Do I take away anything out of these? No, he's not doing it. Alright. We'll just see if he decifers it. Hell yeah, he does. Two successes. Yes, he does. And a half hour later, he's at your... Door. Okay. We let him in. Is he alone or is he dead or not? Oh! Nikko! He gives you the... Can I give him a big hug? Give him the sucker handshake? Yeah. And then he went in with you or is it just you? Uh... Would you prefer this? I would say. This was about a half hour later. Also, it's about 9.30 now. Okay. We were probably going to win. Well, you were talking for a while to make a plan, so let's say 10 o'clock. 10 o'clock? Light. I think we're going to... Do we want to wait for him to come with us with a stay cut with the doing? We don't have to. No, yeah. You're doing the preliminary work and I'm trying to do my end of it too. Alright. Who has made up with this later or what? That way, when it blows up in your faces, I won't be there either. Do, do, do, do, do. Hi, Kyra group. I've got a hot tip. Um... There's a lot of construction in the area. Now we can dress up as construction people. *laughs* Who's the cop who's the permit? Who's the uh... No, not the village people. But um... Fake mustaches. Yeah, you know what we look like? So we definitely want to stay out of sight in that area. Maybe the drywall mask and goggles or something. If we had to get out and interact or something. *laughs* Got it. Especially like earplugs. Yeah. The type of your cop checkers working here. She's not going out without earplugs. After what you went through in the hospital. Yeah. I'm gonna... Let's go to Samsel's supply. Pick up all this stuff. Uh... Alright, if we're walking, see if we get plus two. If we're using cameras, we get plus two. If we live nearby, we get plus one. Highwalls are other construction. Our other obstacles are minus two and heavily guarded minus three. We have cameras, right? On their phones, we never had an official. Oh, they... He had a... No, we actually... Yeah, cameras. Oh, yeah, that's right. I did it. I brought a camera. Yeah, looking at a bedroom in his backyard at one point. Oh, that's right. That's right. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, so I have that camera. It's got a pretty awesome zoom. *laughs* And... It's expensive. Oh, if you look at where St. Patrick's churches. It's right down the street from... I mean, it's like right here. Invite even bees, like, right here. It's like right down the street. Where's those places for a soup house? *laughs* Or... That's to be out of me. The best place for a safe house. You have your friends closed. Perhaps you should make them so cross that they will make them safe. *laughs* Do we have any... Yeah, sound me, right now? *laughs* Uh, the primary dice pools are width plus intelligence and secondary dice pools is width plus investigation. So we're setting this up? Yeah. I think intelligence and investigation is probably useful. Right. You're all secondary actors to start off with. The primary actor is the one putting all the information together, which will be one of you that puts all the pieces together and collects three ports for everybody once everything is done. Go to go. So you've all become secondary actors. Yeah, the high speeds and intelligence, right? Highs, widths, problems. Highs, intelligence is probably the doctor. Width plus one? No, it's chemistry. Stop relying on what I have. I got a combine I have a total of four. Width and a total of four. So you can get us coffee. Well, the point being you need people far away. You need people mid-range. You need people close up. And that's the way it works. That's what you're trained anyways. Was that one person tries to actually infiltrate the worksite or the actual area, get into the parking lot, see what's going on, like close up the building. One person is kind of watching street, watching for patterns, watching to see what type of traffic's going back and forth. Of course, it's nighttime now, but you can still see if there's windows, you know, if there's guards moving about, you know, within the actual location, you know, those kinds of things. And then someone farther back and have a high-powered camera could be looking at the security systems they might have in place. A lot of things for three people to do on a site. Width plus investigations, which you're going to have for. That's a secondary role. So who's setting up the width and intelligence? Is that the primary role or secondary role? The primary role doesn't happen until all the secondary rules take place. So what is the secondary role? The secondary role is width and investigation. And maybe more than that. For instance, if two wants to, you know, go construction and wants to like, you know, walk up to the site like he's doing some late night inspection or something, he might need, you know, the disguise or if he wants to remain concealed and wants to get as close as possible, he might need a stealth role. So the role you're discussing is more for drawing information, you know, like getting a success so we can draw it together for the final role. It's like the last role you make, but roles up to that point can also be, could take place as well. Maybe we should do this during the day. It's really within a 24 hour period. So if you want to like scope it out at night and then set things up and they start in the morning, I don't think we should be poking around because at nighttime, they're going to be more secure, you know, more suspicious. So we just scope it out and get set up and see where we're going to think at night and then we'll go for it in a morning. Drive by, something along those lines and then maybe there's a coffee shop across the street, a block down. You know, that's very inconspicuous. Corner booth that lets you see out the front window and by 11 o'clock at night, you've got a game plan in mind, which, you know, we can discuss hopefully either before next meeting or whatnot or how you're going to want to handle exactly. We're going to read up on stakeout a little bit more in depth and then we'll hit the stake out as the first thing we do next meeting. Mike, let's do the Nico interview with you back at the apartment in the rectory very quickly. And then we'll have that out of the way so you can decide what you want to do as well, whether you're going to be taking part in stakeout or something else coming in next week. What I want to do first is thank him for coming over, compliment him for honoring our friendship and our long history together and that I make it clear that I will owe him favors in the future to kind of put him in a positive frame of mind. Yes, he's very appreciative. I will explain to him in limited terms that I'm on a mission. And there are, you know, our enemies, you know, are about us here and the resource that I'm doing will be key to ending their threat. And so this is why it's not just, you know, personal imperative but it's a kind of imperative for our community. Right. And I will share with him all the information I gained for him allowing us access to the thing and I will even be prepared. Yeah, I see it. Absolutely. Oh, the idol? Yes. Yes, I will show him the idol. So he plays out in the table and he gets a little bit of a closer look than he did in the library, the brief glance glimpse that you gave him. Right. He reads the notes of the research you did for him. And I share and we will talk shop at a level of, you know, that I couldn't do with, you know, anyone else as laymen but we are talking, you know, this. And, you know, I think that this is the ban with the spirit. I think, you know, we've got a ritual here. He's heard of bands. He's heard of bad things happening when you don't get it right. Right. So he's nervous for you. You know, you must be 100% certain you have the ban. That's why you're here. If you do not have the ban, bad things will happen, Micah. Well, I suspect it is this idol. And if we need to know as fast as we can, or we'll just have to chance it. No chance in getting it out. It is not a good idea. The ban, it seems to me from your notes, Crowley has good information on spirits. I think it would be wise for you. Yes, my cohort Chiu Park mentioned the same thing, but I dismissed his grandmother. Oh, no, he's a wise one, Chiu. I think that Crowley should be investigated further. All right. So issue is to, are there any particular texts or books that you can think of that that you can help facilitate this research, Niko? Perhaps something in the vaults? Have they just tried to arrive? He thinks, you know, I need to go back and do research to help, but... Oh, he's going to die. No, question, question. Since we deal with esoteric of, you know, ancient documents and resources, but at the same time, we're all about information storage and retrieval. Has any of this been put on some type of optical computer network that we can, like, use the computer to help research? The answer is yes. Oh, no, I'm not sorry. I'm asking as a storyteller, not as a, I'm posing the question to Niko. You've probably heard of vast databases somewhere. Right. Okay. So that there are vast databases somewhere way above your level. Well, right. Now, good. Now, having established that, I mean, you know, Niko, I... Oh, he knows things. He knows things. But I am not... I do have a status here. Grandmaster of, you know, it is above me, Niko. I know we're, I'm asking for a level-purple clearance, but... Well, let us, let us go to the library. Let me research tonight. Okay. And go to the library tomorrow. Again, and we, we, we attack Crowley with vigor. Okay. Yes. Wait, we, we go together, you go... No, we go together. Oh, it was good. Oh, yes. Yes. I agree. Right. I know now. I know the secrets. I will, it's safe with me, my friend. Right. Good. I trust you implicitly, Niko. Right, because that's never going on before. So, um... You talk more on a, on a high level. He gives you a little bit of his information. He kind of sets you straight on, on the vans. Um, in a sense that, you know, they are rituals that take place. You're right, you do have to be in the right place at the right time and have the right instances of items to make the ritual work. But it's not an actual ritual. It's not a spell that you cast. Uh, anyone, if they happen to walk past, like, let's again say, you use the example of the food spirit. Like, you know, any Joe Smough was walking on the street and dropped a piece of bubblicious gum on the ground and the, in the glutton spirit was there. And the glutton's ban was, I have to eat before I can keep moving. It would stop and eat, if just some random person on the street dropped it. The bans doesn't matter. There's no magic in the sense of you have to be talented. It's more of, you need to have the right items in the right place when the spirit's there. And he, you know, he wants to do more research and he thinks that you guys can learn more. He thinks you just touched the surface about the idol, but there's probably, he thinks Crowley talked about this idol more now that he knows what it is. And there is that reference to, in a circle, they clasped arms and knelt, waiting within their twine arms, raised to the heavens, pleading for the lord of bees. That was the summon of the, the Libby lord. Right, there's probably more of what your, uh, frightened of. Summoning the evil, uh, no, in the evil spirits, uh, some sort. Uh, that's probably what they did. They were, they were summoning it. That's different. Alright, ban is, you will cause this entity to do something or not do something. I cannot attack you, uh, or I must attack my allies. You know, it's, it's something that it compels the, uh, the spirit to do. And you just need to be there with the right mixture for it to happen. The right alchemy of items. Okay, well then Nico, let's go to the library and let's pull an all-nighter. Oh tonight, good idea. I think tomorrow, but do you think tonight? I think I've already rested, right? Well, you've got five or six hours now. Yeah, so, and, uh, this is urgent. This is urgent. I don't say it's very urgent, and I will take the time to tap, uh, a little text message. That little text message. I'm out. Alright, Nico says if it, if it means that much to you, my friend. Yes, Nico, I will gladly arm and arm go with you back to the library. Leaving the protective safety of the church. The church. And that's where we'll end it for the evening. Okay. And so we will, uh, play go wrong. Yes, everyone roll die time please. Let me jump in here quickly and let you know if you're just interested in listening to the story you can stop now. But if you want to hear the players make some guesses on what's going on, please continue on. Oh, what the hell am I going for? Okay, I'm rolling for Katie. And she got a nine. I got a nine. Just kidding. Seven. I do. No, I got three. And then they're all some. I'm trying to pipe. I know I had six. Five. She's really going to roll three. Five. Anything you learned about the storyline or supernatural tonight, it was not the most, um, action packs. Yes. Learn that possibly, um, because Benjamin is, uh, CEO of the Corporation's father. Um, forget her name at the moment. Her name is Meredith. Actually her name. Um, possibly. So that might be something to look into. Um, found out that, um, Tony is sick with something. And his conspiracy wants his parts back. It's kind of interesting and weird. Um, and other than that, it's just really, you have to do more research and, um, more, um, investigating, figure out what the ban is, exactly what we need to do to apply it. And maybe how we can, um, infiltrate their honeycomb hideout and, um, do this ritual. Take over the locus. Locus. Locus. Right. It's a locus of power. What it's worth. Mike, your next. Uh, thanks. Well, uh, combine them both into one tonight. Is anything supernatural? Anything, um, storyline? Well, I've had to go to my old mentor to, uh, basically calling the big guns for research. And I think we've got a good solid lead on getting a clear answer on the ban by researching Crowley. And I want that information as soon as possible. Um, I think that, uh, I'm not quite sure what it means with, uh, Tony and Kitty not being able to either heal him or protect him. Um, whatever type of trust I might have had in Dr. Lucius is completely blown out of the water because I'm not entirely sure who would say he's playing for. And I think he's going to f us hard. And, uh, I think, uh, I think we're also running an extremely high risk by letting anything with our old, uh, survivor. So. Wow. Okay. Who's next? Um, Tony, I learned that Tony had a notice that, uh, I couldn't occur in a pair of magic. Well, I would say that it may be magic except we took him to, to the magic person who came up with the exact. And apparently the werewolf stuff occurred while I was on the phone. Right. So what would I learn tonight? Uh, there's some fight going on between a motorcycle gang and, uh, bees and, uh, my, my, uh, conspiracy wanted me to kill somebody today, which is disconcerting and I really don't want to talk anymore. Okay. Tom. I learned the opposite of it, Michael Dennis. Dr. Lucius can't indeed be trusted to come to the group and save Tony at the cost of his own professional life as well as I can tell. Yeah, or he's a good liar and he was even got the shit kicked out of him to do it. Quite better waiting to convince you because I got to do one of the shit. Well, yeah, wasn't that the trick to fool them is a trick of the useful one. So. I don't know. Scratch, scratch. Mmm. Oh, my text is quick. Keep the shit out of me. I also learned that apparently Dr. Lucius likes pain. And he gets off me and repeatedly asks people to beat the shit out of him. Yeah, no, most of it's been covered away. Okay. Another wrap up. Um. Well, you find out how you did. Well, yeah. Let me tell you something used to happen though. If Greg had killed Tony as he was instructed to do right off the bat. We're rolling to the next, you know, you're going to the library. They're going in their scouting mission and I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm saying. To me, you had a 50/50 chance whether you're going to follow your conspiracy to keep your job and keep your, you know, your glamorous lifestyle. You can't kill Jim. Well, he is, you know, he loves ladies and he loves the lifestyle. Uh, yeah. But, um, it was, to me, it was 50/50 of what he was going to do. And if he hadn't of saved Jim and then chosen the way he chose to save Jim, you know, which was very, it was a very kind of, it was still very effective. Um, then how was it convoluted? I made him look like he was dead. I stuck him out of the hospital and dumped the guys and I. Right, I thought you were going to make him look like he was dead, take him down yourself to the morgue, the temporary morgue and hide his body. That was less convoluted. What? And then Tony wakes up in the middle of the cell mine. What the fuck am I? Why am I here? So, but no, I mean, no, it was a bad idea. They're just saying, how could we have finished tonight? How could you have finished? Greg could have killed Tony right off the bat and said he was going to die anyways. Let's move on. And he could have done that and he didn't. Damn it. And I know Greg wouldn't do that, but I didn't know that Lucius wouldn't do that. We haven't found Lucius. I mean, I have it like I got him kind of, but I didn't know exactly how he would deal with that kind of ultimatum. He wouldn't do that. Right. So, had that he went up. So, had that half. You got Wilmer's part. So, you've been wanting to kill a lot of people like that. But had that happened, you'd have been right off the research and they would have been right off to the stakeout. And then whatever happens there, then the next step is, let's take a look at the job if we can't. This is like the commando raid where they parachute in behind enemy lines. Dude breaks his leg, can't leave him behind to get up to top him. Wow. Are you going to suggest killing me now? They come up with the alternatives. Parachute on his ass and dump him into the enemy territory and hope that he gets in a hospital in a POW camp. Our fate works in bed. It's just like being a werewolf. Being a werewolf trapped in a siren prison. The rest of your life have burned. Take him from saving me. Well, that's how you try to argue that whole thing. That's why you want to kill them. If they were some death, see it's worse than that. So, we're actually helping them. Well, you know, the whole idea that there's mental, I mean, not mental. There's moral dilemmas, you know, within the game. There's one thing that makes this particular system, you don't get a lot of these moral questions in the end. Kill the ore or kill the ore. I mean, that's good. I enjoy it to get my kill on. But I really enjoy some of the, like, you guys going back and forth, like just wrestling over bigger ideas sometimes. I really enjoy that as a story telling. Oh. Might not be as fun for a player. No. But from my perspective, it's really fun to see you guys deal with, like, larger moral issues. That's fun. But get your kill on next week. See, you look at it as a moral issue. My character never looked at it as a moral issue. My character looked at it as, how can I get my ass out of this and still keep both sides happy? That's the way my guy looks at it. See, and then you may not know all of this, but because it was discussed, I only recently discovered. But all last, I'm sorry, last time, to pull off on Greg's. But last week, I mean, whether the werewolf lived or died, you know, like, um, really tied up in the chair. That's a big issue for the entire night was, you know, I mean, it came with a lot of her heads. Not real nasty. Just, Mike's body should die. Um, Katie, Jim's character, was quite appalled by him and was not thrilled with the idea of a werewolf and thought she wanted maybe it to die. Whereas, she and Tom were a little bit more, to start to be neutral. So it ended up being a pretty cool and such. How's it going to prove that he killed a giant meme, right? He ate them. He ate him. I thought that was... The third part, I ate him. Right. That was like, you know, how's it going to go? How's it going to go? From my character's standpoint, he's a soldier. And when you're in the war front, you do everything you can to protect your men. Once the man's dead and there's nothing you can do for him, you don't go all crazy and shoot. You still gotta remain rational. You gotta make decisions that keep the rest of your people alive. Attacking that werewolf, he would have killed all of us. He was that powerful. Well, I wasn't saying that we were attacking when he was already. I was just saying kill him while he was still under. And because... The dude took the heroin, my aim-lined it, and like 30 seconds later was rational. Not to mention these methadone that I... Well, I'm just saying the methadone, we don't know how they're going to kill himself. My group particularly hates werewolves. So that's why I'm so... But I wrestled over everything I wanted to say. Which was... Why would my character want to kill him? Yeah, but I still can't help but think that that's still... Well, he does have information that I suppose we need. He's far more dangerous alive than the world. Thanks for listening to Knights of the Night at Actual Play Podcast. Visit kotnpodcast.com for more information on this and other adventures. Where you will find character stats, photos, storytelling, props, and even a form for comments and suggestions. Or you could email us directly at feedback@kotnpodcast.com. Or contact us via Twitter or leave a message on Facebook. All music for this podcast was created and performed by Zen Audio Smith. If you'd like custom professional music created for your podcast or business, please visit ZenAudioSmith.com. And please join us next episode for more mystery and adventure. [Music]