Session Date: 10/16/2023
Things start heating up. Zerch is hoping that Bosch’s plan will work and Crawforde will give up the Seal of Infinity. Crawforde draws his rapier and acts like he’s definitely a big scary guy, but nobody buys it at all. Zerch rushes Crawforde and tries to attack him, to be stopped by Tabby, This pisses him off and combat begins. We manage to take care of the ghouls and Zerch and protect all of the passengers. The officer that stuck around, Horgat, introduces himself to us, and he thinks he did an awful lot in this combat (it was Faylen). It’s not long before everyone else on the train (not Horgat and Crawforde) recognizes Tabby, Mary, and Faylen as the heroes of the hour. The three of us also explain that Bosch was also part of the plan and we couldn’t have done it without them.
A college-aged girl starts talking to Faylen and asking him about where he likes to hang out, what school is like, etc. She very, very clearly has a crush on him but he very clearly doesn’t understand this. The party all watches this for a moment and Bosch quietly giggles and tells Tabby and Mary not to tell Faylen about this.
Bosch is walking around with the plush seal and tells about the adventure in Halfdown, embellishing where it’s appropriate.
Tabby has far more drinking buddies on the rest of the ride.
Mary finds an environmentalist from the city and she sits down to chat and swap notes with them.
We do realize the fact that the one ghoul that got away likely went back to Kincaid and we may get off the train to have targets painted on our backs. When Bosch does finally finish his story, he goes to Crawforde and asks to see the sliver of the Seal that Crawforde has. Crawforde takes Bosch and the others to the first cabin car to show Bosch the piece of the Seal. Crawforde produces a piece of string, and Mary can tell that he is being incredibly sincere. Crawforde is trying hard to try to figure out what is happening and Bosch waves the string around, trying to activate it. Faylen uses detect magic and can tell that the string is not magical at all — it’s just a piece of string. He says as much and Crawforde starts yelling and having a reaction, to which Faylen thinks that perhaps this reaction is partially the cognitive dissonance of the spell placed upon his mind to alter his memories and the truth.
As a group we offer what comfort we can and sit him down and help him through this reaction. It helps him get through what has been going on in his mind and it will definitely take him some time — possibly up to a few hours — before he can really come to, but we have time on this train. When he does come to, Mary helps to question and ask where he was beforehand.
Crawforde recalls a woman before. Faylen recalls whispers about a secretive branch of the Commonwealth Government — essentially, a special crimes unit or intelligence agency — that uses a perception filter. When you interact with a person like this they seem normal, but when you recall anything about them you draw a blank. I have heard of the Misconduct Department — this isn’t an official name, but rather a legend attached to it.
Faylen explains all of this and discusses the possibilities: possibly it was a smear campaign to spread misinformation so that the Seal is believed to be fine, possibly the Seal is broken and they’re trying to hide it, or something else entirely. We aren’t sure.
We eventually leave Crawforde to rest and piece together what he can and then we spend the rest of the journey in calm. We arrive in Brex Grana.