07:34 <Crion> So this is Christmas. Or it will be soon. Aster is, improbably, at the Greybox -- Richard's probably around somewhere, but he's got the lights down and a bottle of wine sitting next to a bottle of water. He needs a break from the lab, from his apartment...from Sam's apartment. He's getting used to being so social again. 07:34 <Crion> Bob should be here soon. 07:37 <tom> There's motion on the CCTV display; lights blink on. If Aster wheels his chair over, he'll be treated to the sight of a stout evergreen christmas tree waiting patiently in the rain outside the Greybox door, the jacketed arms of a man wrapped around its midsection. 07:37 <Crion> Fucking hell. He groans as he stands up. 07:37 <Crion> Getting old. 07:38 <Crion> Instead of hitting the buzzer he opens the door himself. 07:38 <tom> "Hey man," Says the tree. 07:39 <Crion> Aster: "You're lucky there's a reverse angle where I can see most of your face," and all of that jacket. 07:39 <tom> "We still don't have any shapeshifter proofing." 07:39 <Crion> Aster: "I'm sure I've got an iron letter opener around here somewhere. Or a silver one." 07:40 <tom> Bob carefully walks the tree tip-first through the door with Aster's help. There's bags of various oddments (not Oddments) hanging off his jacketed arms. 07:40 <tom> "...It's just fucking depressing in here, y'know? Get some festiveness up in this bitch." 07:41 <Crion> Aster, while helping: "We're just going to have to take it out again in a week. There's no circuits in this, right? Otherwise Richard needs to clear it." 07:42 <Crion> "Everything has a wifi connection these days." 07:42 <tom> "Not unless they started putting chips in their trees- I mean, I don't think so, but, you know how fucked this country is now." 07:43 <Crion> Aster checks his phone. There's no new hotspots, at least, so that's something. 07:43 <tom> Bob raises the fucking thing like the flag on Iwo Jima up into its metal stand with Aster's assistance. "Phew," he dusts the loose needles from his arms. 07:43 <tom> "Alright. You got the ruleset we agreed on?" 07:43 <Crion> Aster: "I have a ruleset." 07:44 <Crion> "There are still some important parts to talk through. Like how mind-control works." 07:44 <tom> Bob lifts the armloads of bags up onto the conference table. Much of it is nondescript- some festive wrapping paper, a few boxed gifts, an orange juicer helpfully labellled 'from Fortunato', and so on. 07:45 <tom> "I figure we can abstract most of that shit into basic combat values, yeah? In effect being mind-controlled is the same as being killed already." 07:45 <Crion> Aster: "It's not what happens when mind-control occurs that concerns me. Its the conditions it occurs under." 07:46 <Crion> "For instance, I propose that we skip the combat stage entirely when a vampire uses mind-control against someone with a blood bond." 07:46 <Crion> "To them, of course." 07:47 <Crion> "Also it is quite simply a different proposition for you or I to resist mental Domination than a sword to the head." 07:47 <tom> Bob's unfolding a large tiled board depicting the city and its surrounding environs- helpfully abstracted to show suburbs, river crossings, and various thoroughfares around the city-center. The whole thing goes onto the conference table, where Bob slots it together one piece at a time. 07:48 <tom> "Sure, sure, although, you know, we're bit players in this. Like the Athletics or the wizards, we're not the stars of the show." 07:48 <tom> "The real question is how many civilians get pulped in the mix." 07:48 <tom> Aster might notice that the denser parts of the city are depicted with a deeper tinge of red- boxes of suburbs representing more lucrative feeding grounds, perhaps. 07:49 <Crion> Aster: "I mean. I'm here to try to learn some lessons to apply from this exercise." 07:49 <Crion> "Not get a high score." 07:49 <Crion> "So I think we are, in fact, stars of this show." 07:49 <tom> "Sure, but the goal is to win. That's the value of the model, to demonstrate how they might play it." 07:49 <Crion> "I don't actually care if all the wizards die." 07:50 <tom> Bob, seemingly hurt: "Even Clo?" 07:50 <Crion> "Who?" 07:50 <tom> "Nice old lady, helped us out when we needed some info on the Gardener case." 07:50 <Crion> Aster waves a hand. "She's had a good life." 07:50 <tom> "Damn man, that's cold..." 07:51 <Crion> "I'm showing her the same courtesy she'd show us. What are the victory conditions, here?" 07:53 <tom> Bob sweeps his hands over the board. "Control of territory. At the start, both sides have their core starting area- Salfold, Eccles, Weaste, those are the Vie Core. Manchester metro's where the Court gets their cores." 07:53 <tom> "I'd say controlling three-quarters of the board is the win condition, as well as eliminating the leaders of the opposing faction." 07:56 <tom> Bob reaches into his bag and pulls out a little fabric bag, rattling it in his hand. He upends it onto the table; little plastic chits come spilling out. "The bigger ones represent more yoked vampires, the little ones are your basic-bitches. Vie's got more stronger guys, but fewer overall tokens. I think on the balance the Court's the stronger faction because you can afford to take more 07:56 <tom> losses and your Cores are centered in one area, you've got less space to defend." 07:57 <tom> He distributes the tokens accordingly; one pile goes over to Aster, while he keeps the rest, mostly larger square-ish tokens, for himself. One large token- it appears to be a Mausoleum of some kind- goes over the Gorton Cemetary. "That's the vault. If you put tokens on it you get some more little dudes at the start of the upkeep phase." 08:00 <tom> Another little cardboard insert goes out onto the table- a group of tracks, with scales from one to five. "That's your police stars for the various minor factions. Look, here's us-" He taps his finger on the track with the same logo Willie put on the business card- "And, you know, Benni's losers, the Diamond, the Tors, the Pyramid- the more you do stuff that pisses them off, the more 08:00 <tom> your heat rating goes up. If you do enough stuff to piss them off, they get activated under your opponent's control." 08:01 <tom> "You can also do stuff to take them out of the fight, of course, other than killing them." 08:02 <tom> Bob rubs his chin. "I'm forgetting something, I know it..." he glances over the setup. 08:08 <tom> The board fills out with tokens as Bob places the remaining pieces. There's a stylized plastic tree that goes up by the Irwell, as well as a couple transparent turquoise tokens- representing the trass trade, apparently. Those guy into a series of square boxes on the side of the board along with a whole buttload of little red teardrops representing blood supplies. 08:08 <tom> go* 08:10 <tom> That stuff's more important during the economy phase- Aster'll get into it later. 08:14 <tom> The man was very explicit- no exploding dice, either literal or metaphoric. 08:23 <tom> While Aster reviews the setup, Bob busies himself with stringing up the festive lights around the the trunk of the christmas tree. 22:24 <tom> Bob's wrapping his remaining gifts in colorful paper and setting them under the tree. 22:25 <tom> ...Pouring some kind of maple syrup mixture into the tree stand's water supply. 22:25 <Crion> Well, it's not especially realistic, but then: did he and his friends ever really get into George McClellan's head well enough to win any of those battles he lost? 22:25 <Crion> So that's more a failure of expectations for the genre than anything else. 22:25 <Crion> Aster: "How do you determine 'stuff that pisses them off?' Is there a deck of event cards or something?" That modern concession to narrative. 22:27 <tom> "Alright." He takes up a chair by the back and slides into his seat on his end of the map. "There's a few things. You'll note Strangeways... here..." He taps his finger on the prison. "Everyone's got their areas. If you raise the heat in the area, we move up the track. Escalating violence overall will get more attention." 22:27 <tom> "The real thing we're afraid of, right? That's if the whole thing just unravels into escalating violence." 22:28 <Crion> Aster: "That sounds correct." 22:29 <tom> He sighs, sinking down into his padded seat. "Ready? I'm happy to flip a coin to see who goes first. The assumption is that we start in a state of cold war until one of us moves into the other's core." 22:29 <tom> "You know... crossing the river." 22:30 <tom> He produces a coin. "Call it." 22:31 <Crion> Aster: "Tails." 22:31 <tom> The coin flashes in the fluorescent light. 22:31 <Crion> Wait, have we decided who's playing who? 22:32 <tom> Bob has already stacked up all the inchcape pieces over on his side of the map. 22:32 <Crion> Mmmm. 22:32 <tom> "Your move." 22:37 <Crion> Aster, still not quite clear on the rules of the game, seizes on the idea of 'more little dudes' and begins positioning himself to take Gorton Cemetary. This isn't granular enough to really have specialized hero pieces (is it?) but he imagines that's the work of Leticia and other various occult-adjacents. 22:39 <tom> Bob watches Aster's move for the Mausoleum with cold indifference. Bob, for his part, brings out every single one of his elders right up to the bridge denoting the border into Court territory, all at once. Aster's left scrambling to catch up with many of his pieces already committed to raising more neonates from the Vault, and realizes too late the feint. With all of the WASC's resources 22:39 <tom> thus committed, Vie's ghouls are able to carry out one simple task, penetrating deep into Court territory. Thankfully, it doesn't seem like a fatal blow; all they do is storm one little apartment next to the Trade hall, and haul off a single hostage. 22:39 <tom> Bob crosses the Nameless House track off the board. 22:40 <Crion> Drily: "So we'll attempt to avoid that in real life." 22:40 <tom> He exhales cold vapor. "Your move." 22:42 <tom> The tracks on the other factions goes up by one as the violence escalates. 22:45 <Crion> Aster: "Outside of the rules of this game, I contest the implication that this move by Inchcape removes us from the board, rather than maxing out our...whatever. Anger meter. Rage chart. Anyway. Are the elders all deployed to that bridge, then?" 22:46 <tom> The eyes peering over Bob's steepled fingers are entirely reptilian. His head sways with the beat of an unheard tune on his headphones. "If they take a hostage, we can't act without them killing her. Would you let her die?" 22:47 <tom> Bill: "I bet you would." 22:47 <Crion> Aster, mildly: "I dispute the premise.'[ 22:47 <Crion> *" 22:47 <tom> "Mmm." 22:48 <Crion> Aster attempts to have one of his contingents ford the river, sneak around behind the elders, and burn Inchcape; he realizes too late into the turn that he doesn't have enough moves to actually get there in time before Bob could simply move back and protect the manor. 22:48 <tom> Inchcape burns anyway; a surprise, considering his strong position. It becomes clear to Aster that Bob isn't planning to defend a single god-damn thing. 22:49 <tom> A series of bombings rock central Manchester; right near the most popular late night clubbing sites. The whole area is shut down for weeks. 22:50 <tom> He takes the lion's share of the little red teardrops. 22:50 <tom> The other factions' tracks continue to escalate. Now multiple groups are on the verge of intervening to halt the bloodshed. 22:53 <tom> It looks like the whole thing's about to unspool into a series of massacres and counter-massacres with no clear winner. Bob's coup de-grace fails; even in their weakened state, the Court has too many pawns for a simple decapitation blow. 22:54 <tom> He hasn't split up Vie's elders even once for the entire duration of the game. All together, they represent a near-unbeatable force, though one with limited manuevering capability. 22:54 <Crion> Aster decides to just start throwing the WASC at the VI4 in direct waves of terrorism and rapacity -- Sergio's apartment is the first to get wiped off the map -- but it's too little too late. 22:54 <tom> Instead, Bob destroys the world. His final move; he bombs the Tatterdam. 22:55 <tom> The Tors are removed from the board before they can intervene. The mage orders go after each other in the aftermath and cancel one another out. 22:55 <Crion> Aster, scanning the board: "Did you really win in the minimum possible moves?" 22:55 <Crion> "I feel like I was just Fool's Mated." 22:55 <tom> Bill ignores him: "That'd give her some real problems." 22:55 <tom> "Hm?" 22:55 <tom> "Oh, sorry. Do you wanna refloat your ships?" 22:56 <Crion> "Fool's Mate. It's the chess move you do to your little cousin when he's five, he uncovers his king, and you move your queen to put him in checkmate on the diagonal." 22:56 <Crion> "No, no. I think you've made your point. We'll play again when I've had time to study the rules some more." 22:56 <tom> He deflates, looking a bit sheepish. "Do you think the ruleset needs some work?" 22:57 <Crion> "They might. I need to figure out how much of it was my fault for poor play. It seems like the outside factions should have more influence, and/or that decapitation strikes shouldn't be so easy." 22:58 <Crion> "But again I did spend two turns telling the Court basically to go play in the woods." 22:59 <Crion> Sipping some wine. "Under no circumstances is this House getting removed from play if Inchcape kidnaps Willie." 22:59 <tom> "How would we act without them killing her?" 22:59 <tom> He leans back in his chair. Aster can see his hands are trembling slightly. 23:00 <Crion> Aster: "I don't know if that's apprehension or pessimism on your part, or a direct shot at me for my pragmatism, as it sounded like it might be. But we would act." 23:00 <Crion> "Well, you're right in one sense: It's outside the scope of this board game." 23:00 <Crion> "I suspect it would begin with me grovelling in front of a bunch of mages." 23:00 <tom> His eyebrows go up in genuine shock. "You're shittin' me." 23:01 <Crion> Aster waves his glass. "It's not like I haven't done it before in my day job. Frankly they get a kick out of it, when it comes from the guy who's been a prick to them up until now." 23:01 <Crion> "We might not even have to grovel, with Badawi's connections." 23:01 <tom> "Do you think they'd throw in for a vampire civil war on our account?" 23:02 <tom> "I don't honestly think they would." 23:02 <Crion> Aster: "In this conception the vampire civil war is happening, whether they like it or not." 23:02 <Crion> "What were the consequences of them sitting it out in this boardgame?" 23:02 <Crion> "Complete ruination for them and the changelings." 23:02 <Crion> "After a campaign of pedestrian bombings." 23:03 <tom> "Hm..." 23:03 <Crion> "Frankly I think every faction unites against VI4 the minute they blow up something on the high street." 23:03 <Crion> "Can't be in downtown Manchester acting like the RA." 23:03 <tom> "That just increases the incentive for them to give the Tors and the wizards a big distraction as quickly as they can." 23:04 <Crion> Aster: "I think it increases the incentive to keep this a shadow war. Distracting mages? You need a very big distraction for that." 23:04 <Crion> "And as distraction that size is likely to get us and everyone else interested." 23:05 <tom> "Yeah..." He rubs his chin. "I guess that's just how I'd do it if I started at a disadvantage. Cause as much chaos as you can to overturn the board." 23:06 <Crion> Aster: "Obviously I was in no position to punish and this might not be in the rules, but clustering the elders like that makes them a very convenient target for reprisal as well if everyone's working together. Just shoot, I don't know, the black hole gun at them." 23:07 <tom> "That's true. I dunno how we'd get to that level of granularity though... the combat values we've got have to be really abstracted. I mean how do you account for a game that includes Carl and Weaste and Fortunato on the same team?" 23:08 <Crion> Aster sighs and sits back. He knows what's going on here, or thinks he does. He just doesn't really know how to play...therapist. 23:08 <Crion> Aster: "Once you get too granular it becomes one of those Dungeons and Dragons board games..." 23:08 <tom> "At least in those you win sometimes." 23:10 <tom> He leans back in his seat and steeples his fingers. "I was all ready to go to Seveneaves, you know, do that dungeon crawl." 23:10 <Crion> Aster: "If you mean me specifically, no, I've got little use for those. This is supposed to be the sort of board game I'm good at but clearly I'm rusty." 23:10 <Crion> Aster: "But I get the feeling that by 'you,' you meant you." 23:10 <Crion> "Mmmm." 23:12 <tom> He can't meet the man's eyes, even behind his visor. So he looks at the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree instead. "I spent the last couple days letting the families know what happened to their MIAs." 23:13 <tom> "All because we pussed out at the last moment and decided to go to Liverpool." 23:13 <Crion> Aster: "I...what?" 23:13 <Crion> "You certainly didn't fucking tell them vampires existed I hope." 23:13 <tom> "Course not." 23:13 <tom> "But they know they're dead." 23:14 <tom> "Luckily, two of them were homeless, no extant family. Made it easier." 23:14 <Crion> Aster: "That's very noble of you. It also means the police might be looking for an American in connection with a number of missing persons cases that have now been ruled homicides." 23:14 <tom> "I don't care." 23:15 <tom> "But hey, Badawi and Rolf got to stay winning." 23:15 <Crion> Aster: "Well I fucking do. Willie does. So does Badawi. Rolf..." He pauses. "Rolf probably thinks it's funny, but that's not the point." 23:15 <tom> His fury peaks, like a wave, and the man slumps back down into his seat. 23:16 <tom> "I'm going to go home and pretend to care about my girl's fake problems." 23:16 <tom> "You have a nice night, bro." 23:17 <tom> He gets up, and leaves. 23:17 <Crion> Aster watches Bob leave speechless, trying to decide what to say, trying to figure out if there's anything he can say that won't make it worse because clearly his choices so far haven't been helping, and then when he's gone he throws the glass of wine against the wall and bellows "FUCK!" 23:18 <Crion> He closes his eyes and sits there for a few minutes in silence, then gets up to neatly put away the boardgame and clean up the glass and wine. 23:18 <Crion> He leaves the lights on the Christmas tree on when he goes.