LogMotW:Quoth the Raven-Jason-1

Game log for the 2022/01/31 session of MotW:Quoth the Raven, as taken by Jason

Dec 22, 2018

The day dawns cold as hell, 28 degrees Farenheit. It snowed and nobody knows how to drive. Poor Damien has to be there when the hardware store opens (got shovels to sell, one assumes), and Chet's got some serious concerns about how this is going to impact his El Dorado. The weather map shows this unusually intense cold front centered right on Pine Box. Chet decides to go to Costco's AV section, find the remote, and find a weather forecast that will tell him when this cold will break. He realizes that the storm is not natural. It's staying here and somehow gaining speed, and that ain't natural.

Everyone hears a bell ringing about mid-morning. The only bell in town is in the town square - there are no church bells in this town. Sammy teleports to right behind City Hall and then comes out to take a look. There's a garden laid out in the square, and a monument to the town's first settlers, and the bell. He approaches and realizes there's no clapper in the bell, nor no mechanism to swing it. It's swinging and ringing anyway.

Shortly thereafter, the bell is briefly drowned out by the sound of a shitty El Dorado, as Chet brings Jacob over. Jacob begins looking around, and finds that the plants around the settler statues conceal a plaque saying, "Valerian Longbaugh," and then in smaller text under that, "That which is valued is freely given." Sammy looks at the bell and notices that someone carved, "For a good time call xxx-xxx-xxxx" into the support beam for it. Sammy does not believe that's directly related to this current issue. Chet looks around a bit more and reads about how this park / statue commemorates the 1828 arrival of the settlers and how they celebrated midwinter with the aboriginal inhabitants of the area.

Sougand realizes the sound isn't going to end and gets up so he be angry at the world.

The cops show up at the park and begin their own investigation.

Sougand shows up on foot, with a bigass thing of coffee in his hand. He begins walking around, looking for signs of magic. As he does, a white SUV pulls up, and a woman gets out. She's blond, perfect paper-white skin, and staggeringly beautiful. She walks up to Sougand and asks if he has, "the gift." She appears to be a human female, though Sougand reserves judgement. Two huge WWE-scale guys, with equally white skin, get out of the car and move to flank her. He tells her that if she catches him after 4, he has the gift of gab. She walks away without another word. He can tell that she thinks of herself as a "Daughter of Lilith," and he makes his way over to Sammy, Chet, and Jacob to discuss what he just learned. She begins walking to the center of the park, and some other people begin to approach her. She asks everyone she meets if they have the gift. She touches one of the randos she spoke to, and he freezes over with ice and falls down. Several people in the crowd decide that this is time to throw down, and guns appear. She pays no attention to any of this and walks toward the statue. The bell stops right when the SUV shows up.

Jacob and Sougand go for cover. Damien pops out of the hardware store and waves them over. Chet's there and gone so quickly that if you blinked, you might miss it. Unfortunately, being a wise-ass, he hollers, "I got yer gift over here, lady," as he drives off. The SUV follows him. It's not clear that it's obeying the laws of physics. Sougand puts the whammy on their SUV, which causes it to hit a snowbank and get stuck long enough for Chet to lose them. Sougand finds a bigass stone knife lying in the snow and swipes it. A couple minutes later, he hears the lady scream as she realizes what she lost.

Sammy, Sougand, and Damien all end up in the hardware store, with Chet long gone and Jacob in a coffee store somewhere. The frozen guy's been medevacced and no shots were actually fired. The paperwhites have all gone. Chet's find someplace to hole up and get smashed off this flask. The rest of Our Heroes gather in the back of the hardware store. Sougand asks everyone what they make of the knife. Sammy discovers it can send the soul of "the gift" through "the portal" to "the Prince of Frost." Damien inquires as to where they want, so Sougand briefly attunes his mind to the thugs in the SUV, and discovers that they went over to the fancy side of town. Jacob seizes on that information, checks some stuff online, and concludes that the next crisis will happen in Lost Pond. He gives Chet a call, and hears it ringing from three aisles over. He wanders over and gets briefed in. They collectively decide that breaking the knife might be a good idea, so Sougand goes over to the sledge hammer aisle, props the knife up, and takes a big old swing at it. The cold comes up the shaft of the hammer and freezes his arms solid. He begins muttering about how they should put it on a grill and try to burn it instead. Everyone seems to think he's being an idiot, but Damien still helps him put it on the grill. Chet jumps in and tells him the knife is not their problem, because they should give it to the mermaids at Starbucks, and Sougand caves with bad grace. Chet takes them to the Starbucks drive-through and passes the knife through the drive-through along with his cash payment. He does not wait for change. Sammy asks about pumpkin spice and then Chet goes into some sort of elaborate oral presentation on allspice and its components.

As they get into Lost Pond, they see the SUV parked, doors open, engine off. Jacob asks Chet to stop, and so Chet rolls up behind it. Sammy and Jacob get out and look inside. It's spotless inside. Jacob pulls a metal wedge out of a pocket and hammers it into the ignition. Sammy looks around for the tall pale lady, and listens for sounds of screaming. All he sees is the curtains on houses twitching. He notices that the name on the mailbox of the house where the SUV is pulled over is Longbaugh. Sammy looks through the front windows to see what he can see. The door opens and an elderly gentleman wearing a suit pokes his head out and asks, "Can I help you, sir?" He seems to think everyone is fine. Damien hears someone upstairs saying, "I don't have the gift." That sounds bad. Sougand catches sight of some tall pale folks coming out the backdoor, accompanied by a fifty-something woman walking stiffly. Sougand points her out to the rest of the Scoobies, and sends the thought to her, "Run, they're going to kill you!" Chet puts the El Dorado in gear and tries to sideswipe the paperwhites. The car is bouncing wildly across the snow, Sammy hanging out the window trying to coach Chet up, and loses some ground when the car hits a topiary. Sammy stars hearing her voice in his head saying, "I know you, Child of Adam." Sammy banishes her with a clap of his hands. Sammy now knows the thugs for Fomorians, and her for the Faerie Queen of Frost.

Chet gets out of the door, baseball bat in hand, and calls, "Where'd the bitch go?" One thug throws the woman over his shoulder and begins moving toward the lake and the bandstand. Sammy, Chet, Sougand, and Damien go running after them. Sougand sends a jinx there way, slowing them down and getting the woman to start squirming and screaming. Chet distracts the thug who was staying behind to protect the one carrying the woman. Sammy gets past, but he won't be able to reach the first one before he lifts the woman up onto the altar. Damian sprints past them both and tries to knock down the thug holding the woman. The impact stuns her. She hears a clap, and a sort of curtain opens in the air over the lake, and a paperwhite man comes out and says, "Good, you've bought me the gift." Damien tells the woman to run for it. Sougand starts chanting and manages to bar the Prince of Winter from the land. Damien says he's going to get the girl to the car. Sammy tells the Prince that he's not on the nice list, then punches the Fomorian. The Fomorian feels that! Chet yells out to the woman that she needs to go where they can't find her, so she should get in the car. She believes him! She heads for the car. Damien pulls his pistol and moves to protect her.

So, the Fomorian near the lake is fighting Sammy more or less for its life, and the one that was pulling rear guard is fighting Chet, but it really wants to go after Sougand. Chet's about to get a whuppin' when Damien shows up, and now that it's two on one, the thug/giant/thing can't get past. Sammy throws another hand at the Fomorian and cracks its head open. Sougand sees the Prince muttering and trying to make some magic happen. Sougand changes tacks and bars the area to the creature the Prince was trying to summon, but this direct confrontation with the will of a Prince of Faerie gives him a headache and a nosebleed. The Prince keeps thinking, "give me the gift," and Sougand sends, "We done take it back, motherfucker."

Damien tries to shoot the thug but manages to wing Chet instead. In the background, sirens. Sammy goes running over. Chet starts making a snowball. Once the woman arrives at the car, Jacob suddenly realizes that the Prince of Winter wants that is freely given. The first gift was salt, bread, and whiskey. Perhaps if they give the Prince some more snacks, he'll bugger off? He goes scrounging through the El Dorado and comes away with some stale Twinkies and half a bottle of jack. The woman will help. Sammy tries to help out Chet and clocks the Fomorian. Damien stabs the giant with his silver dagger, and that seems to land in a way the baseball bat didn't. Chet, meanwhile, has made himself a snowball that has the Costco logo on it, pelts the thug with it, and catches it right between the eyes. It falls down, and the Prince thinks, "well, fuck." Jacob arrives at the stone and offers up the gifts. The Prince thinks, "Thank you," and disappears. The snow stops and everyone feels a warm breeze. The thug/giants vanish.

The Scoobies conclude it is time to vacate. The lady of the house invites them in, but Sammy encourages her to forget they were ever there. She slips Chet a calling card.