We resume where we left off two sessions ago to find our heroes clinging to the side of a cliff.
Desiree finds herself in a padded room, and after a nice lunch of glop in the cheerfully painted common room she goes into an interview with the very nice young doctor who's trying to cure her of her elfin delusions. He calls her Darcy Fordham. She's pretty resistant, so he shows her videotape of an earlier session where she admits that it was all a delusion born out of a story she made up after being dumped by Victor. Later her sister Anne visits, very concerned about her... but Anne is about to marry Victor! Perhaps this explains why for the rest of the evening Desiree keeps insisting that nothing is real.
Miles finds himself pursued by members of court, caught, and convicted of assassinating the Countess. They heat up a big iron cross and are about to tie him to it.
Sidonie is thrown into a vision of an extremely boring future life, but the whole depression of the situation just slides off her like soap off a goblin.
Magda faces off against her future self, who informs her that one of them will die, thus either putting future self out of her misery or making sure it never happens. They fight, and Madga is wounded somewhat before disarming future self and fleeing past some dioramas: "Magda massacres the Fomorians", "Magda defends the Duchess" - Duchess Day that is, against the armies of Sir Ten apparently, "Magda slaughters the Traitors" being of course everyone else, and finally "Magda cuts the Chains that Bind" in which she kills her family. After getting a little way away, she is lured back into conflict, and the future Magda gets one of the Tenth Children back from her, forcing Magda to fight. Future Magda gets cut in half when the Tenth Child absorbs its twin.
Then Soraya stumbles into Sidonie's nightmare looking somewhat haggard and proceeds to drive them both into a wall at over a hundred miles an hour. It hurts, but they are able to move into Mile's horrible fate, and all jump on the cross, which hurts worse (well, it takes a little persuasion for Sidonie, but she goes). Then they all get electrocuted in Desiree's dreamworld (electroshock therapy, don't you know) and arrive to find that the Magda has already killed her counterpart! They wait around for some more pain to come along, and it does, but it's all emotional - Magda finds Bill cheating on her and the kids are screaming and everyone else is standing around unsure how to share this pain. Finally Miles goes ballistic and starts hacking at things with an axe, which Magda takes from him - and chops everyone to bits! But it works, and they pass through Pricilla's nightmare of bunny-torture in finally face their persecutor.
Milton, who has been watching, tried to shoot the fomorian-corrupted bit of Sir Ten (it claims to be Three) but it only used the pain to make the other's nightmares worse. He shoots it again, slowing it down, and then Desiree, coming out of her shock, uses body magic on it and causes it to explode! There's fomorian everywhere and the heroes leave and send in the nocker cleanup squad. The Countess is still asleep, still has the pain, but the fomorian taint has retreated from it, so some progress has been made. Meanwhile the pieces of Three seem to be slowly glomming back together inside the containment unit the nockers have put together...
Player Notes:
Funny that this particular bit of pain should come up. Maggie's
been feeling like she's been neglecting her family for several runs
now (not that she would ever burden her comrades with these foolish
apprehensions.) She's way squished. -MIN