A day passes while everyone catches their breath. Everyone except for Sidonie, that is: Anastasia goes to Germany to be with Sidonie's mother and make it harder for Sidonie to get her life back. Naturally Sidonie stows away on a plane and chases after her. Soraya vanishes into the dreaming again.
The next day Magda discusses fomorian-proofing her house with Milton and Desiree over the phone, a plan which is tragically not to be. They agree to meet at court in the evening to execute the plan. Desiree talks to Victor about power and politics, and he tells her that Sir Ten was trying to steal some of the Duchess' power as a ruler with his little play, and also that the Duke might jump in if a war were to start, though Victor would try to restrain him. Desiree questions Victor about his agenda, and he's pretty non-commital about it, but promises to try to tell her more things in the future. He limps off back to Boston to keep the Duke under control.
Magda arrives early at court to find the Countess, back from seeing the Duchess, destressing in her bathing pool. Apparently things went very poorly: the Countess thinks the Duchess may take action against Magda and the others, at which point there will be a difficult choice to make about who to stand by. The Duchess's spy network is touched on, and the Countess reveals that she has someone making overtures to the Queen about perhaps stepping in and dealing with the Duchess. Oh, and the Duchess thinks that Soraya is a diabolist.
Magda goes downstairs to find Milton and Desiree but instead finds that two of the Duchess's knights are nailing a proclamation to the door. Magda, Desiree, and Soraya are declared to be traitors to the Duchy and will be found and punished. Luckily the knights either don't see or choose to ignore Magda, as well as Desiree and Milton who are hiding in the crowd. Desiree disguises herself as Lady Amalthea and creates a stir as she leaves. Magda doesn't bother. Who notices Milton anyway? They head to Milton's gothic mansion to hole up and call Miles to come over as well.
They discuss what to do for quite a while before deciding that Desiree, still disguised as Amalthea, will go over to Boston and try to find out what's up with the Duke, while Miles will go to petition the Duchess. Victor calls Desiree to inform her that the Duke was advised that the Gizmos were bad by the Seer (something she had asked about earlier) and Miles wants to find out what made the Duchess think they were good. Miles is also having trouble: his arm is paining him a lot, and the others figure out it has something to do with the Seer (though Miles really can't confirm anything about the Seer).
Miles's petition is shot down as soon as he comes in the door, but the Duchess allows him to talk about other things. He finds out that the Seer told the Duchess that it was important to get in good with the Gizmos because they're the future. He also finds out that Soraya dragged the Duchess to Hell and consorted with demons, who gave her some jewelry for it! The Duchess doesn't expect Miles to turn Soraya in, but she admonishes him not to get in the way, and tells him he would best be rid of such a diabolical wife.
Desiree charms the court of Boston in her borrowed form, and eventually gets in to see the Duke who is quite taken with her. Victor, however, seems to see through her disguise instantaneously, and leaves her with the Duke. She talks to the Duke about many things, finding out that he was going to do something rash because of his wounded pride in the Gizmo affair, but that Victor restrained him. She has to leave suddenly because of a phone call, but more on that later.
Miles is driving home and talking to Milton on his cell phone. Talk turns to the seer, and as they're considering whacking him Miles's pain returns tenfold, causing him to go over the division and into oncoming traffic. The line goes dead. Milton rushes to the scene, finding Miles trapped in his car with firemen trying to cut him out. He calls Magda, who arrives at the scene and pries open the minivan - "Gosh, I've heard of hysterical strength before, but I'd never seen it". Miles is rushed to the hospital, kept alive by the EMTs with a little help from Milton.
At the hospital, Miles is being operated on. Desiree arrives and they decide to pretend she's his wife so that she can see him. Milton notices a small demonic cameraman recording Desiree pretending to be Miles's wife.
Miles in fact makes it through the operation, but while he's on the table the Seer talks to him, irritated that Miles didn't die. He sends Miles to the bottom of some ocean with a message - a horrible message which is received by an entity so horrible and alien that Miles can't really deal.
Desiree comes in after the operation and sets her magical powers on Miles to great effect: he'll heal miraculously quickly. She also makes him concious. Miles raves about the Seer and how he's really evil and tried to kill him and sent him to the bottom of the sea with a message. Then he is astonished that the curse which prevented him from talking isn't working any more. Desiree puts him back to sleep to avoid telling him his left arm was lost in the accident.
Afterwards those who are concious discuss what to do... the Seer seems to be the main villain, but what about Victor? And those demonic cameramen...
Player Notes:
Desiree is finally made to tell Milton and Magda coherant
information about Victor, including the fact that she thinks he tried
to do some sort of strange magical thing to her before. However, she
manages not to mention to them or to Victor her conversation with
Charlie (which actually happened last run), in which Charlie suspected
Victor of wanting to do something unspecified with the city's ley
lines... -ALH