Mixed bag
So, let’s see… when we left Renate, she’d just taken her friends dancing.
(The whole thing about dancing… okay, let me try to explain in brief. Rien’s enigma is his alter ego, nicknamed “Trancey,” who comes to the fore to kick butt and take names whenever Rien’s in trouble. Rien has reason to loathe Trancey, not least because he can’t control or even remember what Trancey does, but he can’t do away with Trancey because he has few usable defense skills of his own. On dancing night, Trancey treated Renate to a spectacular dance-floor turn, and somehow managed to let Rien remember the whole thing. Rien was most thrilled.)
The struggle to keep the Lan’yarian mafia (known as the Ruido Grande) out of Ilium has turned into a several-front war. On the one hand, we have the Thieves’ Guild trying to keep its anti-Lan’yarian elements from getting assassinated. On the other hand, we have the Black Sheep gang trying to hold back the Toy Soldiers gang, which has gone over to the enemy in a major way. On the third hand, we have the Cosmic Arrows and Ultra Box gangs, the former being swayed by a flashy Ruido Grande swordsman willing to teach them some tricks, the latter being proselytized by Ruido-Grande-affiliated demon missionaries.
So Renate’s been kinda busy, the last few days.
Two assassinations have been prevented. Rien and a chance-met new ally are trying to bring the Cosmic Arrows down a few pegs. Aryk, along with his old seminary buddies, is doing a bit of Ultra Box proselytization. This involved a rap competition that was absolutely, positively, laugh-till-your-lungs-bleed funny. (It also showed that Aryk has a long way to go to understand the workings of privilege, not that that’s surprising.)
And Renate had to go beg for some time from the Black Sheep’s leader, a nouveau-titled vampire in negotiations with the Ruido Grande. (Which led to an absolutely priceless aside from the GM: “I’m going to get a vampiress to help me fight a gang war and I haven’t a THING to wear!”)
Current situation: The Black Sheep are rampaging against both the Toy Soldiers and the Ultra Box; Renate may have to try to rein them in, as their leader insisted upon same. Exactly where the seminarians stand with respect to the demon missionaries isn’t quite clear, nor do we know what’s happened with the Cosmic Arrows. Aside from preventing another assassination, the Thieves’ Guild has been quiet. And Renate has to present two victories to the Black Sheep’s leader within a week if the Sheep are to keep fighting—if the Sheep do not decide to dump their leader, as a tantalizing rumor has it they are considering.
On tap: regrouping and figuring out where our efforts are best placed next.
On a personal level, Renate is deeply uncomfortable with the ethics of all this. She doesn’t like working with gangs and grifters, though she admits that they have been the sole organized opposition to the Ruido Grande’s conquest, and she knows full well that they cannot be eliminated without serious social upheaval. Unbeknownst to her, the Thieves’ Guild has paid her and her allies for the assassination preventions; when she does find out, her share of the money will be returned.
There may be a ray of hope in the Black Sheep’s defection; that remains to be seen. In the main, though, Renate is planning with a quaking heart to put the whole ugly story in front of the Ilium public via her contacts in the newspaper world—and that done, she’ll take her lumps for her part in the entire mess.
On the plus side, Renate managed to find Rien/Trancey a valuable new friend. Ren is rather intimidated by Rien/Trancey, though being a loyal little soul, she does her best. The mere strangeness of it is bad enough, though in her country-girl way she recognizes that the entire world is pretty gosh-darned strange and why should Rien/Trancey be any different? But his troubles feel a little overwhelming at times, so she’s very pleased to have found a way to share them with someone else.
Powered by FireStats