The party meets the seven strange women, and they discuss Gwyneth's sword Nadim, taking over the Hobnails, Hughe's loyalty, the Globster's infected, Geoffraie's background, and blowing up the Moonwell. In the Mooncalf scullery, they find two more butchers grinding up Helmholtz, Woodhouse, and Hershcel for the Mooncalf's stew, and defeat them. They enter Miss Miller's opium pipe dream in the Mooncalf opium dens, and they kill her when Gwyneth decides to take over the Mooncalf as a new Miss Miller.
The last game ended when the party defeated the butchers and girls cutting up Parja and Downey in Miss Miller's apartment.
Miss Miller, Helmholtz, Woodhouse, and Herschel weren't there, and Vincent had suggested that Miss Miller might be in the Mooncalf opium dens, and they discussed going there. However, Roland first wanted to alert the Board chairperson Melina and the Admiralty that they'd found Parja and Downey's bodies. Someone asked why Downey was dead if he was Miss Miller's ally.
Geoffraie stepped out of Miller's apartment to go down to the Mooncalf barroom and find runners to deliver Roland's messages. However, in the hall, Geoffraie saw:
When the party comes out of Miss Miller's apartment, they see seven women standing in the hall, leaning against the rail that looks down on the Mooncalf courtyard. They're dressed in black Victorian dresses, with black lace, very patrician. Six of them are youngish women, one is an ancient crone.
The players said that this was Miss Miller and her Toffers gang, but the women said, "We are not Miss Miller." The rest of the party moved into the hall, and Gwyneth and Roland recognized the women as the "seven strange women" they'd encountered twice in the Far Shore. We reviewed the discussion they'd had with the women then, including the discussion of the women's nature.
The women said to them:
You know, when we met before, we went way out of our way to help Vesper. To help Vesper realize his true self - betray Christopher, and take control of Cotton House. Now you've actually broken into Hobnail Prison to free Christopher and you're rehabilitating him in Roland's own home. I mean, really, c'mon. Work with us here.
The party said Vesper had asked them to rescue Christopher from the prison, but the women disparaged the repentant Vesper, saying they preferred the Vesper who sold Christopher out:
Well, that's the reformed introspective Vesper, the Fat Elvis Vesper. The real Vesper - the mover, the Vesper with spunk, the Vesper we love - is the Vesper who wanted control of Cotton House, wanted control of the Coven, and threatened the Fairy Circle with genocide.
Also, if you're in doubt about Vesper's morality, you might consider that he's in league with Kazola - a smith.
Karen asked why being a smith was dubious. Gwyneth succeeded on a History check, so knew that smiths were often associated with devilry because they worked with fire and iron. The party also asked why Vesper would have changed his mind about Christopher, and the women suggested that Vesper had a genuine change of heart. (I believe the official policy from Rob is that Vesper wants to promote Cotton House's fortunes, not just his own.)
Roland had heard enough; he said that working with the women wasn't in anyone's best interest and left for the barroom to find runners. But the women turned their attention to Gwyneth:
Gwyneth and her sword Nadim. You and Nadim have made Divine Smite and necrotic criticals the chocolate and peanut butter of Hollin.
The crits alone are mind-boggling - you're putting up like, Stalin numbers. Just since the last time we talked, you critted on the Coven Maven Astrid, a harpy at the Lofton Eyrie, the Brood Queens' giant scorpionfly, Tamara Marshall, and a butcher in Miss Miller's apartment. And besides those, a prisoner and an inquisitor in Hobnail Prison, in the same fight, after the sword was nerfed.
When Roland was on the truth serum he said he was afraid of the sword, but it's not the sword that made the rolls.
And that doesn't even include the grisly deaths from the Smites - calling down lightning to blow up the brood queen Raven, and burning her sister Sable out from the inside by superheating her own bioluminescent goo.
And all of this was without even taking the coca powder that Mr. Burbage gave you and Geoffraie. I shudder to think what would happen if you were jacked up on the Sherlock.
Gwyneth, we're writing to inform you that the Hollin Entertainment Rating Board has rated your actions AO for Adults Only, for "graphic and prolonged instances of violence" and "intense violence, blood and gore." You go girl!
But the women then said:
It's not really your sword that interests us though, Gwyneth, it's the Ring of Greater Pulchritude. The Black Rose chief Lavinia suggested that the party disguise yourselves to take over the Hobnails. Roland and I think Marina rejected the idea, but I believe you found the idea captivating, and the Ring allows you to Disguise Self at will.
I mean, if you have the balls.
I believe Gwyneth said no, and the women turned to Geoffraie, asking the same thing. But Geoffraie also said he didn't have the desire to do that:
Geoffraie would be interested in a little subterfuge to get to the bottom of this matter and help resolve the indignities that have been bestowed on people, but not interested in the long term. Only to advance our investigation.
Gwyneth agreed with Geoffraie, saying that she wasn't interested in leading the Hobnails full time, but was interested in her destiny to be a great hero of lore and legend. The women argued that Gwyneth had volunteered to join Burgess's watch, and to provide muscle for Velvet. But Gwyneth said that at least in Velvet's case, that was just to "get an in" and "not an intention as a full time career."
The women then turned from Geoffraie to Hughe, saying, "Hughe is the party's...ally?" They elaborated, as Scott's notes say, throwing Hughe under the bus:
Well, Hughe carries around this Coven weapon, the Shank of Banishment, or the Blade of Banishing as Hughe calls it. It sends boss enemies to another plane of existence. And then one day you all stumble into the lair of like 50 super-legendary vampires. Just the first of these vampires is handing you your asses, he's got 150 hits. Your normal death machine Gwyneth is literally running scared, and the vampire has picked up her Crazy-Ass™ sword to turn against the party. A sword that apparently, if we go by Gwyneth's record, fires up an Aurora Borealis of necrotic death whenever it escapes its sheath. If he crits, it will start the greatest total party kill of all time, and the vampire does roll a 19 twice, only missing the crit because we just nerfed the sword game before last. But the party is still hanging on.
And then Hughe comes up in the initiative order. Hughe's Blade of Banishing actually Banishes as a bonus action. But Hughe is like, "Uh, I maintain a long-standing policy to reserve Banishment for exclusive use against extra-planar entities."
Frankly, it sounds exactly like the kind of excuse the secret traitor would give in a traitor mechanic board game.
Also, I believe Hughe failed to mention that he can also Turn Undead, which sounds like your go-to vampire fix.
We noted that Keith wasn't actually at the game to defend Hughe. However, there was some audible grumbling (that I interpreted as) receptive to the women's argument. Gwyneth said their argument was "interesting," and I believe that Marina explicitly asked out loud if Hughe was a traitor.
The women asked the party about the Globster. The party said:
Marina: The water was very cold [Marina stares off into space]. There was this big glass thing, there was this crazy thing. Our only choice was to kill it.
Geoffraie: It was hacking our minds.
Marina: Yeah, it wasn't good. Something had to be done. The water was very, very cold.
They party had asked Gregor if there could be more globsters, but the women argued that anyone infected with the globster's viral consciousness essentially was a globster. They also argued that the party had evidence from Hobnail Prison - the cannons and blasted-down brick walls - that some infected had escaped the prison before the party ever arrived.
Marina agreed that there could be infected in Hollin. Gwyneth asked if Christopher Cotton might be infected, and the women noted that the party had actually found the globster "training all of its malevolence on Christopher." They asked if the infected could be cured, and the women said the party might ask Patience, an alienist (psychologist) at Meade Hospital.
Marina asked if the women were assassins, and they said no. They were outside the story looking in, and wanted to help the party fulfill themselves. In this spirit, they turned back to Geoffraie, asking what Geoffraie wanted and why he was with the party. Fred/Geoffraie, Karen/Gwyneth, and Dennis/Women discussed (again my notes):
Fred: Geoffraie is simple: he's out to help people who are in trouble. Help people with dignity, he doesn't want people to be abused. He's pretty simple.
Seven strange women: What about his actual background? For instance, why can Geoffraie attack four times in six seconds?
Fred: Geoffraie came from a small village, at one point he had a run-in with a proud noble that gave him a beating and bruised him, and Geoffraie swore that would never happen again. So, he improved himself physically and mentally to defend himself, his friends, and others against that type of behavior. So, somewhat altruistic and somewhat just trying to make up for what he couldn't do when he was younger.
Karen: Like Robin Hood, but have more ambition.
Fred: Yes, he would like to have bards sing his name. Heroic escapades throughout history.
The women also asked about Phyla House, and whether the party intended to return and eradicate all of the vampires. The party said they were lucky to get out with their lives, and Marina reiterated the women's accusation that Hughe had weapons he purposely didn't use. The women said:
Two years ago a dust explosion blew up a grain tower in Goldmorton, a little town outside of Hollin. One second Goldmorton was there, and the next second there was a black smudge where Goldmorton used to be.
A grain tower and a Moonwell have pretty similar geometry. The right mixture of grain dust, oxygen, and fire in a confined space like that...well you know, shit can happen.
I believe that Downey investigated the Goldmorton explosion for the Admiralty.
Of course, that would presumably destroy the Temple of Night and the sanctum there. The repercussions of destroying the sanctum could be...extreme.
The party asked why messing with the sanctum was so dangerous. The women told them that the sanctum was a home on earth of the night and moon goddess Vali, "an actual god-level god."
The women also told the party that Vali was the warlock patron of a female warlock in town, Altair; and that they might be able to find Altair through Vitani, a conspicuous foreigner in town who also had a vested interest in eradicating Phyla House.
Marina commented that a dust explosion might work and that they even had a formula, I think referring to the fact that they had Downey's notebook. Gwyneth also suggested the possibility of just blowing the lid off the Moonwell, exposing the Moonwell to sunlight. We (I think Scott) clarified that the "lid" in this case would be the Phyla House manor.
The discussion with the seven women wrapped up and the women left. Gwyneth concluded that instead of taking over the Hobnails like the women suggested, she would rather take over Miss Miller's Toffers gang. Karen compared the women to the talking urns (?) from the Disney Hercules movie.
They still had Velvet tied up from the fight, and now Marina questioned her. She said that Tuesday night, Downey and Miss Miller were here in Miss Miller's apartment, celebrating their win on the Anti-Banqueting Bill, and getting ready for the Tuesday night salon; Vincent was there too. Helmholtz, Parja, Woodhouse, and Herschel came in and angrily confronted them about the bill, and a fight broke out. Helmholtz, Parja, Woodhouse, and Herschel all died, and on Miss Miller's side, Downey died too.
The party asked where Miss Miller and the other bodies were. Velvet said that Miss Miller might be in the opium dens, and that there were two other butchers who had taken the other bodies down to the Mooncalf's basement scullery.
Gwyneth (I think) asked Velvet why they should let her go, and Velvet just said - as she choked back pathetic tears:
Miss Gwyneth, for the small consideration of just a few gold pieces a month, my organization and I can ensure that the...undeserving skanks of this town don't steal your very fine man.
They were unconvinced but they let Velvet go anyway.
They headed down to the scullery. On the way down in the barroom, they again saw Vincent, and Roland talked with him briefly. Vincent was still convinced that he and the party were collaborators in the tontine chaos, while Roland suggested that Vincent "take a vacation."
They went to the basement scullery, taking the northeast stair down.
Room 3 was a busy scullery, crowded with harried workers washing dishes and linens, cutting vegetables, boiling soup stock, etc. None of the busy workers noticed them as they crossed the room to 1. Looking in the door of 1, they saw a long line of meat hanging from the ceiling. Two butchers were working there, one cutting at a table, and one working a sausage grinder.
They fought. Marina came first in the initiative order, and told the butchers to drop their knives or die. Instead the butchers turned on the party, and as the butcher at the sausage grinder turned towards them, Marina saw that he was grinding up Helmholtz.
Marina, Gwyneth, and Roland focused on that first butcher and Marina trained her Hunter's Mark on him. Roland finished him with a sneak attack in the second round, which Scott described as, 'Roland's standing toe-to-toe with Marina, levels his crossbow, puts one right through his eye. Roland says, "You could have just surrendered." Roland is almost sad.'
Meanwhile Geoffraie attacked the second butcher, who responded, scoring two criticals against Geoffraie in the first round. Bloodied, Geoffraie used his Second Wind and recovered maximum hits. Meanwhile, Marina, Boom, and Gwyneth came to his assistance, attacking. Gwyneth had been rolling near-crits (19s) through the combat, and finally scored an actual critical. Between the critical and a smite, Gwyneth scored a spectacular 49 points of damage, finishing the butcher. Karen described the damage as, "Take the sword overhead, straight for the neck. Crack down straight to the groin, death emanates from the room.
After finishing the second butcher, the party saw that he had been cutting up two bodies that they didn't recognize - Woodhouse and Herschel.
They checked room 2, which was stocked with tabacco for the Mooncalf's pipe room above.
They backtracked to the Mooncalf's other stair, the northwest stair, and took it down to the Mooncalf opium dens.
When they came out of the stairs, they were in the northern big circular room, shown by the stair icon. Most of the opium den rooms were open and easily accessible, with smokers laying everywhere on cots or blankets with their opium pipes and other paraphernalia nearby.
Three of the rooms were closed off by doors, shown by the little door icons on the map: the small northernmost room, the large southernmost room, and the other room northeast of that one. (There's actually one other door shown on the map, to the little appendix-like room, which is a stair down to more opium dens.)
They northernmost room was closest, and they went there first. Roland put his ear to the door and heard the sound of the sea, like a seashell. Roland cracked open the door and looked in, and was surprised to see the deck of a ship with sailors busily working all over it. It was as if the door was a door coming up from a lower deck. He could see the open sky, and the deck was rocking back and forth. He peeked in a little further, and could see Cankerblossom / Mr. Burbage in the front of the ship, leaning against the ship's figurehead and smoking opium. Roland called out to him, asking if he'd seen Miss Miller; Cankerblossom responded in a lazy opium daze that he hadn't seen her.
They left and went to the next closed room. Roland again listened and this time couldn't hear anything. He opened the door and looked in, seeing the inside of a large room shaped like the inside of an egg, except for the level floor. Two naval officers were talking near the door. One saw Roland and said to the other, "Permission for civilians to come aboard sir." The other replied, "Permission granted," and the first told Roland, "Welcome aboard." However, Roland closed the door and moved onto the last room.
They went into the last closed room, and the door opened onto a cloud. They were high in the atmosphere; columns of clouds rose high above them, and Miss Miller was seated on the highest cloud smoking her opium pipe. The whole scene was like a ceiling painting in a baroque church, where Jesus and Mary would normally be seated on the highest cloud.
Miss Miller welcomed them in, and lifted their cloud to her level with the wave of a hand. She offered the different party members a hit from her pipe, and Geoffraie and Gwyneth accepted.
They had a wide-ranging discussion. When Miss Miller found out who they were, she brought up the tontine, and said that she and the party were now confederates in thinning the tontine out. Gwyneth recounted her discussion with Velvet, confronted Miss Miller about the killings in her apartment, and accused Miss Miller of cannibalism. Miss Miller defended herself, saying that swaying the Council votes with winks and smiles was completely legal and that Helmholtz and the others had attacked her in her own home. She also said that since the Mooncalf predated any other establishment or organization in Hollin, she enjoyed a "liberty" that prevented the Hollin authorities from enforcing their laws inside the Mooncalf. So, she could do anything she wanted there. Gwyneth accused Miss Miller of atrocities and of "sausaging" the people of Hollin, but Miss Miller accused the party of murder in turn. The players commented that it was hard to pin Miss Miller down because she spoke in Dennis's calm, reasonable voice.
Marina asked about Downey, and Miss Miller described Downey's coal coking patent and the Parja's opposition to it. She said Downey also had a new formula for gunpowder, which would replace the bat guano that Phyla House supplied with a chemical that was only available on Cotton House's ancestral lands. She also mentioned that Downey's house was "an interesting place." She thanked the party for eliminating Lolani Phyla from the tontine.
Gwyneth had confronted Miss Miller most directly, and the party was waiting to see what Gwyneth would do. Karen decided that even stoned, Gwyneth would probably attack Miss Miller. Scott's notes describe what happened next:
Roland suggests to Gwyneth that she might want to take over Ms Miller’s place in control of the Mooncalf. Gwyneth decides to seize her destiny and attacks Ms Miller. The party joins in. 2 Butchers, Velvet and Vincent arrive dressed as cherubs (figments of her opium dreams). Ms Miller sprays Geoffraie with a blue “perfume” mister (DC 15 WIS save), he makes the save. The mister is the same as sold by the Hollin Apothecary. Velvet uses a blue mister. Vincent stabs Roland. Roland hits Ms Miller with the Bat’s Head Rapier and its nightmare power makes Ms Millers’ dream world dingy, trashy, unkempt, sooty clouds. Marina gets the KO on Ms Miller with an arrow through the heart. The dream turns red. We’re in the opium den room. Ms Miller is dead on the floor.
With Miss Miller's pipe dream shut down, the players wondered what the logic of the opium dens and pipe dreams were, and whether e.g. the three rooms had enabled them. They revisited the first two closed rooms and found that the ship deck and egg-shaped vessel were still there.
This was the last game in the Master of Revels mini-campaign, and the players discussed what they might like to do next. Gwyneth planned to take over the Mooncalf as the new Miss Miller, and planned to go through Miss Miller's rooms and correspondences to learn to be her. The party all said they might take apartments in the Mooncalf, with Roland moving out of his rickety home/office on Market Street. Scott noted that they still had Vincent's invitation to the Black Cabaret, and Karen and Tracy said they still had to deal with the infected in Hollin. Tracy noted, "That affects me," and Scott said wryly, "I'm sure it will be fine." Scott said that Roland was looking forward to their next meeting with the seven strange women.
Here are Scott's notes for this game. Thanks to Scott for taking great notes through the entire Master of Revels. :)
Here is a AI-generated podcast describing games 3-6, which follows the earlier AI podcast covering games 1 and 2.