Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.
Chapter Forty: Mob Against the Tarquins
October 7th, 2011 5:22 PM
Chloe reached over and turned off the news. She was almost certain she could feel her blood pressure rising. The new Occupy Portland movement might have had a tense second day, but what she had just seen on the large television in front of her coming out of New York was disgusting. If they've got to arrest people, can't they do it without trapping them in and pepper spraying them? Fucking kettling pricks. Both because it was getting close to time and because it took the poor taste from her mouth, Chloe abandoned the living room and joined the rest of the party in the kitchen.
Chloe noted as she drained the glass in front of her of water that Brooke was the only one of them that did not have a bottle of beer. She was not missing much, as it was particularly cheap and no one seemed intent on burning anything that night. Well, not the only one, she thought, looking from the end of the table over the party as a whole. She was forgoing the beer for now, too. Max, on the other hand was having her first drink in a while but Chloe was conflicted on this as this had not been a particularly ideal couple of days. Inside her head, Chloe lost the thread of the conversation going on between Max and Brooke.
Max had been less than cheery that morning at breakfast, admitting to a nightmare. It had taken Chloe and Rachel some time to get the nightmare out of her, mostly due to the nature of it and the people they were around. Once alone for a few minutes, Max had confessed through eyes a little too puffy that today was a sort of 'pre-anniversary' of the first time another Chloe Price had died in another timeline. Max's nightmare, she had said, was about a large fire and the sound of a fire alarm. It didn't seem immediately connected, she had told them, but it had scared the hell out of her and it was a miracle she had eaten that morning.
The three of them had talked and agreed to go on with the session that night but Chloe couldn't help but watch Max with some discomfort. The girl hadn't had a drop of anything harder than soda since before Los Angeles. Look, I'm not one to rain on someone's parade but she used to drink a lot more than anyone else I knew. Definitely more than was smart. Chloe shifted her gaze toward the hall. Max and Brooke were around in the kitchen, but Steph, Pompidou and Rachel were nowhere to be seen. Alright, head in the game, miss Dungeon Master.
The notes in front of her were not sparsely written but on the back of the sheet she had a bullet point summary of the immediate situation the player characters were about to be in. First, they were on the verge of being ambushed by Boggards outside of (technically) a Mogogol village. That, Chloe had thought when planning, should be confusing enough unless someone was bright enough to insight check in a timely manner. The Mogogol village head was reclusive and would see no one, not even his own subjects, which was entirely unlike a Mogogol. The village, her notes said, were waiting for arbitrators from a nearby human city. She wondered if the party would impersonate them or simply try to do their job before they could arrive.
When Chloe looked up again the two girls in front of her were quiet. Over the last couple of weeks Brooke had become a closer friend to the group as a whole but as much as Chloe had engaged with her character as a Dungeon Master, she and Brooke hadn't bonded as much as say, Max and Brooke or Steph and Brooke. She supposed that was only natural, that some types of people were better friends than others, but Chloe certainly shared no small number of interests with Brooke. She was going to need to reach out a little bit more.
"So, everything check out with your parents?" Chloe asked Max to fill the lull in the conversation. Much like the night of Max's birthday celebration last year, Max and Rachel had decided to call their families that night and attempt to worm their way into a 'free night' that evening. What this meant was a night where Rose and one of the Caulfields called the school and made it seem as if their daughters were off with members of the family for the evening. As for what else it meant, Chloe intended to spend the evening curled up with her girls on the couch. I could definitely go for that right now.
"Yep, they told Wells that my cousin picked me up to go to a family gathering in the morning." The girl grinned at this. This was her cashing in her "birthday gift" from her parents. Not that she's not going to get something in the mail in the next couple of days, or anything. The Caulfields just felt extra bad about not being able to give Max a birthday party (or, as she said had become the case, a birthday dinner) given Max's apparent emotional state. Chloe had done her best to try to set their minds at ease about that part, though. What Max was unaware of was that Ryan Caulfield already had a photo of Max, smiling widely as she sat cuddled up beneath Rachel's arm. It was clear that the nature of their relationship was not a mystery to the Caulfields, either, as Ryan had responded first with a photo of himself giving a thumbs up with his wife in the background and then, 'Next time send one with the three of you so we have something to frame up.' She wasn't sure how Max would respond to her doing that, but the smile on the girl's face in that moment had simply been too much of a relief.
Steph and Rachel made a sudden return from the upper floor of the house, with Pompidou in tow, their steps muffled momentarily by the carpet in the hall. It had been a while since they bothered to get beer on game night and before then, Steph had always been the DM so it was a bit odd to see her set a bottle down beside her dice bag as the two girls 'argued' about something in the player's handbook. You know, I've never actually seen Steph's fake ID. She's never actually said she had one. How does she get her shit?
As soon as the other two settled in Chloe spotted the change at the table almost immediately. Oh, two or three different conversations bounced around, but occasionally a set of eyes would shoot toward Chloe, despite her making a show of looking at her notes. The truth was that she was more than ready for the session. Her reviewing her notes mostly amounted to looking down so she could think in some peace. Eventually, conversation died down a bit more and that was her cue to tilt her DM screen up and start uncovering her notes behind it. She wanted to grin at the way four sets of eyes moved toward the screen at once. Okay, so maybe I haven't fucked this DM thing up.
Chloe joined the others in freeing dice from the confines of her small, stylized dice bag. Rachel and Steph each had a couple of extra sets so that by the time everything was put together they could usually manage any given roll in one go instead of having to balance numbers and reroll certain dice over and over again. Chloe's own set, at least for the purposes of this game, remained behind her screen and in her hands. Throughout most of her life she had decried silly superstitions like throwing salt over one's shoulder when they spilled some, or crossing paths with a black cat, but when it came to her dice she did not like the idea of them falling in the hands of someone who was rolling badly. There was bad energy in the world and it was reserved for the dice of players who had been too lucky or too cocky. She wasn't intent on having it passed onto her dice.
Those landed in a small, compact pile as they escaped their cloth prison and she rubbed her her hands together to give the impression of someone well prepared for what was coming. Rachel made some comment under her breath to Max about Chloe being 'cute when she showed off.' Chloe watched the girl's amusement turn into a challenging glare. What a nerd. She takes this seriously. If anyone was adorable in that moment, it was probably Rachel, genuine emotion in her eyes. Their back and forth before sessions was all in jest but it was proving to be one of the joys of dungeon mastering, something which had proved both less stressful and more tedious than Chloe had anticipated. Oh, she had gone into the game thinking she had everything down pat but it had only taken two sessions for her to realize that she was in over her head. Making rulings on rules that were unclear in the moment was one of the biggest joys of being a dungeon master. It was still early days for this campaign, but Chloe hoped as she prepared to call them 'to order' that she had begun to get a handle on things.
"Alright," Chloe declared, as if to quiet down the table which had been silent for almost a full minute by that point. "I think it's time to kick off."
"You mean 'kick things off'?" Max asked. "I'd rather you not die before the session starts."
"I knew you just loved me for my brain," Chloe replied, sounding affronted. "As if I don't have a winning personality and good looks to boot."
"Well, you're very cute," Rachel added, as if to emphasize the absence of the 'winning personality.' Chloe took it all in stride. 'Taking it in stride' here might mean giving Rachel a bit of a scare later, one way or the other, or grinning a little bit at an inopportune dice roll just to make her paranoid, but she still took it in stride. She gave the bullet-pointed list in front of her a quick glance and then turned the sheet over for a closer look at more detailed notes.
"Last time," Chloe started, "you were given a job by the guard of the town of Niheim to determine why there was such a high number of travelers reporting that they were being robbed along a road into town. While you had some difficulty getting in touch with any of the travelers who made a report, you did find a couple sitting at the roadside cooking their nice rat dinners and lamenting that someone had stolen not just the goods they were taking into town but their horses and cart in the middle of the night."
"Right," Brooke said, "poor people."
"Quite," Chloe agreed. It was gratifying to watch the smallest and least important NPCs in the world garner any kind of reaction. Both players and their characters had had a certain sense of urgency in their quest after that scene. "You tracked some footsteps that none of you could identify to a cavern and decided to take a nice long rest outside of the mouth of the cave. Happily, your gear was not missing when you woke up but those strange footsteps were all around your campfire when Isp went to check your game traps, which unfortunately were unsuccessful in netting you anything for breakfast other than your rations. After packing up camp, Isp decided to go in five minutes ahead of you to scout with the agreement he would wait if he discovered anything, right?"
"Yep," Rachel confirmed.
"Nalla decided to go with him," Chloe gestured to Brooke as the four gathered around the table began to watch her, listening close, ready for their cue that the game had started in earnest. "We'll see how that will work out, considering Nalla hasn't been super sneaky so far." This earned a frown and a shrug from the brunette.
"Too late to change my mind," Brooke told her.
"True that," Chloe answered, making finger guns at her. This earned a rolled eye that she appreciated. The somewhat bookish girl had become more than tolerant of Chloe's attitude over their time gaming together but Chloe knew she still came off as 'ridiculous' from time to time. She lowered her tone again, until she was speaking in her 'DM voice' and finished the recap. "As we ended last session the two of you came to the edge of this fairly expansive underground pond and spotted lights and shapes in the water. The cavern around you, voluminous, ceiling crowded with stalactites but floor oddly clear of them, is lit in a blue-green hue from the water filtering out whatever the source of those lights are below."
"I think my insight roll told me that there were small buildings of some sort down there," Brooke chimed in. Chloe nodded.
"There's definitely something," she said, "some kinds of structures. You'd have to go diving to see what they are but all you know for sure is that the tallest you see is well beneath the surface and might even go all the way down to the bottom of the lake. And I think," Chloe said, switching tone a bit, "that is when you heard the voices shouting at you in garbled common."
"Oh right," Max chimed in. "I totally forgot about that. Damn, I wish we'd all gone together, now."
"I did not forget about that," Chloe promised. "And that is where we'll start off." Rachel opened her mouth to say something and, predicting it, Chloe cut across her. "Your passive perception is good but their stealth rolls were better." The blonde took one look at her, squinted as if to say 'I'm watching you' and then picked up and began to roll her D20 across her palm. "You're surrounded by four very obviously amphibian humanoids and now the footprints you've been seeing make sense. They're made by creatures with four long toes and webbed skin stretched across them."
"Mogogols," Rachel said, looking delighted. "But I don't think they can breathe underwater so, that doesn't explain the things in the pond." Chloe did not respond, she simply watched Rachel impassively for a second while internally hoping that the idea that they were being surrounded by Mogogols caught on. Yes, harmless, friendly Mogogol. No need to be concerned. What Rachel didn't know was that the structures beneath the water were basically capped tunnels leading to a Mogogol village in a lower, damp but certainly not subaquatic cavern. Unfortunately, this path as well as the road they had been sent to investigate was frequently hunted by the Mogogol's less scrupulous older cousins, the Boggards.
If they figured it out before combat began, Chloe was going to be surprised. Neither of the characters had a particular reason to know the difference and Chloe had convinced Rachel not to peruse the monster manual during the length of this campaign, so ostensibly the only player who was likely to know what was really happening here was Steph. The brunette in question sat beside Max, twirling a pencil in her hand with a blank sheet of paper in front of her. Chloe was a little relieved to see her preparing to fall into 'roll and sketch' mode rather than staring ominously and knowingly at her. The combat was likely to remain a surprise. Still, these things are nothing for this party.
Chloe lost track of time as the game unfolded. It was easy to do if she wasn't careful but usually one of the players caught on shortly before they would usually break and gave her a warning. This time, everyone seemed intent on the story which began to unfold after the Boggard ambush. Several jokes about frog legs for dinner and three offended Mogogol—not to mention, a failed charisma roll to make up for this-later, and the party was on the verge of being invited down to the village. Let's see what they do here.
"The tallest of these Mogogol looks at you, Nalla and says in this raspy, croaking common, 'Are you the arbitrators sent from Fore Well? The ones sent to help us'?"
"Um," Brooke started, and then shifted to her character's voice, having caught on fast to that particular part of roleplaying. "'No. Are you trying to make a deal with them?' She gestures to the three dead and one unconscious Boggard."
"The Mogogol in front of you-you still can't place their sex or gender-shakes their head and says, 'No, with our Brog, our leader. He behaves unusually, does not speak to the people.' At this point, they gesture to another of the Mogogol who came up during your fight and says, 'Mother Mogogol-Who-Croaks-In-Her-Sleep was the apprentice-'" Chloe was cut off by a short peel of laughter that passed from person to person. She waited with a smirk as things got quiet and continued, "'was the apprentice, until the master Lore Keeper went to reason with the Brog. He entered the Brog's chambers without permission and has not come out since. It has been two days. We had rather hoped you were the arbitrators.'"
"I wanna roll insight on something," Steph announced. At Chloe's nod she rolled. "After my INT modifier that's a sixteen."
"What did you want to know?" Chloe asked, aware she probably should have questioned the girl before.
"Were they watching this whole time hoping we were the arbitrators? Because if so that sounds like they're kind of desperate."
"Well," Chloe said, pondering how the character might come to the answer. "They're looking a little waterlogged and awful disappointed. So yeah, it might be fair for Mara to assume that they totally interfered with the robbery because they thought you were their arbitrators."
"Wonder if they would have just let it happen if they'd known we weren't?" Max pondered. Max had been fairly quiet all night so far, but given what she had revealed to Chloe and Rachel that morning it was not surprising. Then again, her Tiefling fighter was mostly built to punch things and maybe she thought it was better to let the bard do the talking.
"Could be," Chloe answered. "But like Nalla said, Mogogol are usually friendly in most stories people tell about them. Often super helpful. In fact, the Lore Keeper-"
"What was her name again, Chloe?" Steph asked, as if to see if Chloe could read it with a straight face again.
"Mother Mogogol-Who-Doesn't-Piss-Off-The-DM," Chloe responded, earning a small smirk from the artist who had already begun to sketch the scene in progress. Chloe personally found such habits exhausting and would never have been able to played at the same time as she drew but it apparently helped Steph relax. "Anyway, she says, 'It isn't unheard of for Brogs to take two or three days in isolation during times of peace. Heavy lies the head that wears the Green Corona, and all of that. We are not at peace, constantly being harried by Broggard border raids and the Brog has not left his cavern in a is most unusual.' And while you all mull over that, we're gonna have to have a break because I need a cigarette."
For a moment there looked like there might be some disagreement on the break issue, which was particularly gratifying, but in the end, stretching and groaning the party broke. I could pop a beer, Chloe thought as she covered her notes and such with her GM screen. It was mostly a symbolic gesture: she did not think anyone would peek. I could raid what's left of my stash and have a toke? Turning the idea over in her head, Chloe decided to join the others in stretching.
"Snack time," Max declared. That means she's done with the beer, so that's a plus. Judging by how quiet she had been, the night had not gone as well for Max as they had wanted, so it was probably better she grabbed something to eat.
"I think I'll have a drink after all," Brooke told them, as if asking permission. Steph's response was to gesture grandiosly with one arm toward the refrigerator. On the other side of the kitchen Max was pouring a bowl of pretzels. Reaching for the cigarettes in her pocket, Chloe waved at Rachel to get her attention and then told her she was going out back. No sooner had the word 'out' escaped her mouth than Pompidou stuck his head out from beneath the table, rose to his feet and tore from the kitchen to the back door.
Poor guy, she thought as he crossed the room, nails clack-clacking against the floor. Probably needs to pee. Cool air rushed into the room when Chloe opened the door. Behind her Rachel and Brooke were talking when they both suddenly went quiet, apparently having realized the same thing Chloe just had: it was hot as hell in the kitchen. Pompidou passed through the back door and out to the yard where he rushed for a far corner of the lawn. Enjoying the quick brush of the breeze against her face, lit a cigarette and stepped out, leaving the door wide open. If anyone was cold they could shut it behind her.
Stretching, she looked up into the night sky, watching a thin trail of smoke lit by the light spilling from the kitchen as it reached toward the stars. Pompidou did his business on the other side of the yard, giving Chloe a few seconds of peace to enjoy the brief feeling of relief as she popped her neck and rolled her shoulders. Her companion in the back yard eventually made a return to her side and lifted his head up to look expectantly at her. Though she would much rather continue to stretch her legs, she had some difficulty saying no to Pompidou when he looked expectantly at her. She knelt down.
Immediately, he dropped onto his side, front right paw raised in the air to give her better access to his chest and stomach. Hunkering down, she gave the dog a quick tap on the end of his nose. He responded by sticking his tongue out and panting, whereas usually he took it as a sign she wanted to play. Chloe obliged the dog and was rubbing his belly with her free hand when Steph stepped out back.
Steph, Chloe knew, was just a little buzzed. It was easy to recognize the state in Steph because of how she became somewhat less reserved when buzzed. If you'd told me when I started hanging out with Steph that she was holding back, I'd have called you a liar. Chloe couldn't help but be a little bit relieved that when she looked up from Pompidou and took a quick draw from her cigarette, Steph was not holding a beer. Keeping the party sober sounded ideal, especially since there was a chance there might be a political and conversational bent to the remainder of the session.
"Hey, Dungeon Master," Steph greeted.
"How ya doing?" Chloe asked. Having abandoned her post as official belly rubber, Chloe was treated to a pathetic look on the dog's face as he rolled onto his stomach and watched the two of them. "Having fun?' Chloe offered her cigarette to Steph, who shook her head. She often forgot that while Steph would partake in a bit of grass she wasn't a fan of tobacco.
"Absolutely. It's going really well." Chloe took this to be praise as well as an answer to her honest question. She hadn't been fishing for that, but it was nice to know that Steph didn't think she was fucking up. "You gave Nalla and Isp chances to roll things they really needed. I think everyone's having fun. Even Max." Steph didn't know the specifics of what had Max upset but she wasn't stupid. "Honestly, you're doing fine." When the girl tossed an arm around Chloe's shoulders and made as if to deliver a noogie, Chloe nudged her off, grinning. She definitely usually holds back.
"Thanks, Steph." For some time, Chloe had been worried that Steph-what was the phrase-held a candle for her. That had been particularly stressful for a few reasons. First, she was still paranoid that she was taking advantage of Steph by staying at the house. There wasn't much either of them could do to quiet that voice in the back of Chloe's head but she tried not to bother Steph about it often. The fear, unfortunately, made its presence known on the regular. The second and perhaps most pressing concern Chloe had dealt with when the possibility of Steph quietly having feelings for her occurred to her was that, quite frankly, it would not have been reciprocated. Chloe wasn't stupid: she knew she and Steph could have been compatible. There were just not feelings there. Thankfully, she must have misinterpreted something, as things had been great between them of late.
"So, you gonna come in and have some pretzels or something before we pick back up?" Chloe pondered this for a second as she pulled on the rapidly dwindling cigarette. She called for Pompidou and gestured toward the open door, but he responded by rolling around in the grass at their feet. That seems like a no, Chloe thought as she followed Steph to the door. She left him to enjoy himself before coming in for the night.
Pompidou had turned out to be better behaved than even Chloe had expected. He had a tendency to bark when anyone came to the door, which had turned away more than one neighbor looking to hire Chloe to look at their car, weed-whacker or lawnmower. Chloe did her best in these situations to explain he was harmless to anyone who did not mean them harm but some people understood and others didn't. She couldn't be assed about the second group. Besides, business on that front was not drying up as quickly as she expected it would: people in this neighborhood seemed to love the idea of hiring the punk who lived down the street rather than be overcharged at the local auto shop. For smaller jobs like someone who could not figure out how to restring their weed eater, Chloe would occasionally not ask for any compensation at all, simply that they hire her if anything else should arise.
"Alright." After returning from the restroom and securing a beer, herself, Chloe popped the top and settled into her seat. Steph had gone back to her sketching while engaged in a conversation with Brooke. By the sound of things it was about the Occupy Wall Street protests which were still spreading across the country like a wildfire. Their conversation immediately brought to mind the news report earlier in the night and Chloe had to try hard not to let it ruin her mood. Occupy Portland, being so new, had not quite seen as many arrests or as much unrest as New York City had, but was still all over the news. Police were not handling themselves very well in New York, Chloe thought. She just hoped the Portland PD kept its cool. Chloe had her own opinion on the protests and going into it was likely to make the twenty minute break that was coming to an end turn into an hour long one and possibly even enough to make her give genuine thought to looking up where she could park in Portland. Think about that tomorrow. Tonight, tabletop.
"Are you all good to go?" Chloe asked. It took her a moment to shake the question of how much money it might cost to get some blankets and socks to the camp in Lownsdale or Chapman Squares. No one immediately said no to her proposal to continue the game so Chloe lifted her DM screen, popped her knuckles and then made as if to continue before reaching for the pretzels in the middle of the table at the last second. "Good," Chloe declared before biting down. "Because I need a second." When she was done, Max leapt right into things.
"I want to try to figure out what the Boggards are doing patrolling the upper cavern when the Mogogol wealth is downstairs," she told Chloe.
"That's an insight check." On the outside Chloe responded impassively, but inwardly she was scrambling to decide precisely what she could say. Oh, I've got it. "Go ahead and roll." The familiar and comforting sound of a die hitting the table came to her ears. I love these people, Chloe thought as she surveyed the table as a whole. The back door was still letting in some cool evening air and Rachel seemed to be enjoying it, judging by the way she closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair, smiling. Or she's tired, I don't know.
"Seventeen," Max declared after double checking her character sheet. Must have rolled high. Her INT is her dumpstat. Chloe made a show of 'hmming' and rubbing her chin before she answered. It was just one of those showmanship things.
"Well, the ones you faced earlier were clearly dressing and acting like thieves, so best case scenario they just want to rob any Mogogols who stray too far from fishing the lake or anyone coming to visit them."
"What about worst case scenario?" Max asked.
"Well, Boggards are carnivores and the Mogogol are meat, so there's that." Brooke inhaled sharply, as if to indicate some sympathy for the kinder, more generally lawfully good aligned of the two groups of frogmen.
"But hey," Chloe continued, brightening her tone. "Great news. So are you four. You could always sacrifice yourself to the Boggards to buy the Mogogol some time."
"Unlikely," Max responded and Chloe grinned at her.
"That's the spirit," Chloe told them when Steph and Brooke nodded their agreement. "Damn the innocents suffering, you're a band of traveling murderhobos. Now, Mother Mogogol-Who-Croaks-In-Her-Sleep is waiting on you. So let's find out what you do next."
Though part of Chloe's mind was discontent with thoughts of what was happening in Portland and New York, as well as several other cities, her life was here in front of her. She decided to ask herself questions about her interests in what was happening elsewhere later, and focus on the game. It was a luxury a lot of people did not have and she thought it would be shitty to let it go to waste.