so my semi-shady alcoholic PI, Mai (codename Aurora) has been fighting monsters and conspiracies for a while now, and discovered that Chicago is basically infested with creatures from other worlds who want to take over. (the setting is Dark Conspiracy, the system is custom)
So far we've taken out A LOT of people, like werebears, a mad scientist doctor who turned a bunch of kids into cyborg zombies, a faerie creature that was drowning all the adults and enslaving kids in a town, a club full of sorcerors who were going to summon a demon - so we threw them through a portal into a world full of scary dudes who we'd promised to bring 'some flesh to experiment with' next time we came by… oh a kid who had turned into a mind controlling beehive that was spreading mind control to everyne else…
now we just have to stop the snake people from summoning their master to enslave all of humanity…. and do something about the intensely powerful sorceror whom i call S guy because his name is real long.
i mean there's other stuff but those are the current priorities
the snakes have started distributing this fae plant called “blue lotus” as an ingredient in Coke (one of the mega corporations of the future dystopian chicago) and it makes people's latent empathic energy easy to siphon off - their power source.
so the fae set up a meeting with me, through this elf dude that i discovered was kidnapping and torturing dogs to drain their pain and fear for energy crystals, and of course Mai was like “fuck you can make people scared? well this fauth bog monster made me scared and almost drowned me so let's make a deal…. I'll let you continue to torture dogs - but only the ones that are already dying NO CHEATING and you a) gimme crystals and b) help me make this fauth AFRAID before I murder it for trying to kill me.
for the record, I made the above deal with the elf in secret and if the other PC finds out about it he's gonna go murder the elf lol
and be super pissed at mai
he thinks I just threatened him into submission
but anyway now we come to last night finally
So it's just me playing, and I made another secret fae deal lol. Basically they asked to meet me, and I brought them some whiskey as a gift, cuz that's how Mai rolls, and we met in an abandoned parking lot full of broken glass in which I'd brought like two of those folding camp chairs so we'd have cupholders. This happened to be the same parking lot in which I'd tossed the pack of sorcerers through a portal into the Black Portal for the record.
They offered me a charm to help with the snake people, whom they were also not fond of, in return for a few things - me leaving them alone while they 'do their business here', and doing a task for them.
and I was like wait wait wait, so you want me to murder your enemies and do shit for you and leave you alone, i mean come on man.
I mean obviously I wanted this snake charm, because hell yeah i'm gonna murder their enemies for them
but I negotiated a ward against S guy's magic also, because staying out of the fae's business is something that's gonna piss off my buddies lol. Especially since I found out their business is taking over the distribution of the aforementioned blue lotus that was going into the coke and making a profit off of it –but not using it to summon someone to enslave humanity so that was an upgrade IMO. I agreed to let them make money off of it but any further business they conducted would not be part of the deal. Because the task was to go rescue an elf girl…and her unicorn! from a changeling! in the fae realm!
and Mai was like uhh yes. This is also going to happen.
I mean sure, all the elves and the changeling and /probably/ the unicorn all want to murder me and the fae realm is horrifyingly dangerous, but I GOTTA SEE THIS
So we armored up in the cosplay shop - me and the guys (NPCs) I brought with all got chainmail bikinis to hide under our jackets, and Mai got ridiculous fantasy sword and dagger things We were led in by this contingent of elves and a huge ogre that clearly wanted to eat me. Mai was acting all cool like this was totally normal for her. As they went along she started noticing that main elf was not an elf… possibly a frost being, maybe a dragon? but got distracted by the enormous ethereal beings stalking the woods near them. Everyone went quiet hoping they wouldn't notice….
so I left off as we were being led through the woods by a bunch of elves and 1 hungry ogre pretty much capable of crushing any of us with one hand.
I spent the journey acting cool like journeying into the fae realm was an everyday thing for me, and pestering them with probing questions like “so what exactly are you, you're not an elf, you look frosty.” and “do these other elves realize you're not an elf?” and “can you breathe ice?” (not telling, yes, no)
and then they were like “hang on shhh, everyone quiet” and off to the side were these two enormous beings, sort of misty-ethereal, tall as a house or two. Mai being Mai needed to know how dangerous they were, AND was kinda annoyed at this ogre for drooling at her, so she contrived to trip on a stick just in front of her and make it so the ogre stepped on the stick, attracting the attention of these children of the forest. The elves GTFO'd, Mai and friends ran just far enough to watch the show, and the ogre…. well it didn't go well for her. The children of the forest were children of a fae goddess of the earth, and they basically decided the ogre was a toy and played with her til they ripped an arm off at the very least, before they went out of sight.
Spencer the rescued water sorceror and Axe the biker with a big gun)
Mai is not real good at having either a sense of self preservation, or a moral compass
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we made it back to the runaway elf contingent, who were surprised that we had both survived and found them, but happy because they needed us for the quest - the changeling I needed to kill was basically indestructible to anything other than cold iron, because it'd been in the fae realm long enough to acquire their allergy to it. We just had to go kill it fast enough that we didn't acquire the same allergy before we could use our arsenal on it.
She was less happy to hear my story about how we were able to escape but the ogre was not, and how it was so tragic and should we say a prayer or something? So sad. So tragic.
we made it the rest of the way to the village without incident, where we stopped just outside at the place they had a cache of iron weapons, and then Mai convinced one of the actual elves that other fantastically dangerous creatures she's met from other realms were way more hospitable than them and it should definitely show her around the village (lol)
meanwhile literally everyone else, victoria-notanelf, elves, and humans alike are all like “wtf mai aren't we in a hurry?”
but no, Mai had to go visit the elf village. It's not like she'd get another chance! So their group is friggin armed to the teeth with cold iron and they just go sightseeing in this village, draw a huge crowd of people totally not sure what the hell is going on or if we are dangerous or not, and Mai is like “I NEED ELF CLOTHES” so she goes to a shop and tries to buy a cloak but the shopkeeper is just like “OMG JUST TAKE IT AND GO” so she 's like “Sorry thanks! here's a 20!” and leaves money for her lol.
then she's on her way to the bar because Mai's an inveterate alcoholic and what better thing to do than get boozed up on some elven whiskey right? But then the head honcho of the village came over to be snooty and grouchy at her, and Mai was “very nice” to them for Mai which is like complimenting “this whole thing” meaning their city, and saying things like “I mean I'm not really that good at diplomacy usually I just insult people and kill them, but I'm working on it!” and then a minute later “Oh yeah that wasn't supposed to be a threat, I wasn't threatening you, I like you guys.”
So basically they gave me some whiskey to get me to leave A+ diplomacying
(I gave them a 20!)
Elves in this world are basically selfish jerks 100%
so Now they go follow the trail of death and destruction left behind by the changeling, which is really weird to follow because it keeps changing into new things so the footprints are all weird, but it's using its deathy power to carve a path through the woods apparently. Partway there, Mai notices she's being followed, has the others go on ahead as she hangs back, and I mean kind of fails to ambush this guy, but it turns out to be a scared elf kid so he's not that tough to intimidate anyway once she's spotted. After a lot of “very nice” questioning Mai discovers that he is the runaway girl-with-the-unicorn's brother, Ovil, and he definitely shouldn't have come after them and will probably get in trouble when he goes back if he's discovered because elves are kinda awful in general.
Ovil claims the changeling is intelligent and convinced the girl Seela to come with him because the elves were just abusing the unicorn for its power (true) and the unicorn didn't like it (also true) and they would be better off with the changeling….(i mean, no.)
Mai, having learned that basically the elves just really want the unicorn for its power, and seela because she controls the unicorn with her innocence, is now not thrilled about actually completing her deal, ward against S-guy notwithstanding, so she's looking for a way out… so when she tracks them down in a ginormous temple, finding the unicorn and seela in a huge room together, she tries to bargain with them to find a third way.
Mai attempted to mind read the unicorn and the girl to make sure they aren't the changeling but totally failed (oh yeah Mai is a powerful psychic I forgot to tell you that bit) and the unicorn basically blinds her mind with light and talks to her telepathically. Which was like talking with a huge hangover
But they came to an arrangement, that Mai would leave the two of them alone if the unicorn would give her useful intel on how to defeat S guy. Mai told the girl she could come talk to her brother over by them as she listened to the intel, because she noticed something… That ain't no unicorn. And as the changeling-unicorn said earlier as one of its own arguments to her, /deals made under the influence of lies aren't legit/
At this point Mai just wanted to basically set Seela, Ovil and the unicorn free to run away from everything trying to use them for power, and demanded that they be allowed to take the unicorn and leave, or they'd kill it. There was a detente for a while, but then Mai and co made a move for the hallway she guessed the unicorn was down, and battle ensued. They drove the changeling off of them but not before it had managed to collapse the tunnel and run.
She tried to get Seela to summon the unicorn but she said it had to be able to hear her, but since it was in the fae underworld, there were other ways to get to it than the stairs. So the kids found another portal and everyone went down into the underworld, which was mostly dark except for some glowy bits and plants. They found the unicorn mostly by listening to the changeling's increasingly frustrated attempts to get it to do literally anything other than edge away from it when it got close.
THIS unicorn was even more magical than the fake one, glowing faintly and having a sort of magical presence to it.
They snuck up on the extremely distracted changeling and unloaded all their considerable weaponry on it. As it tried to shift into various forms and they hacked off chunks of it, Mai yelled back “Cover your eyes, kids!” because after all this thing was seela's friend. She's kind of gullible that way.
Now covered in changeling blood and iron, and y'know some of her own here and there, Mai decides she needs to pet this unicorn. The unicorn is having /nothing/ to do with her.
Super disappointed because after all she /rescued/ the /unicorn/ from a /terrible fate probably/ she sulked a bit and then Seela pointed out she was wearing a shit ton of iron and if she got rid of it she could convince the unicorn to let her pet it. Mai stripped down to her t-shirt and jeans, kicking off her steel toed boots even, and giving her favoritest gun to b3 for safe keeping (even though mechanical items including guns don't work in the fae realm and the slingshot she'd brought was way more effective, she dumped that one on the floor with the rest)
Mai smeared blood all over the unicorn's pristine nose by accident
but it didn't seem to mind!
Satisfied with her mission being complete, Mai devised a clever ruse to avoid having the elves come after them on the earth plane - they gathered up all the changeling chunks and brought them back to the temple, where they arranged them in vaguely human shapes and then doused them in (human) whiskey and lit em on fire!
Then they took the 2 kids and the unicorn back to Earth with them, because they'd probably just die alone and they'd be used in any elf village. 4 days had passed when they got back, even though it seemed like less than one had passed in the fae realm. With the unicorn cleverly disguised by dint of having an elf cloak thrown over its head and back, they smuggled it and the elf kids into a panel van and drove them out into the countryside around where they'd killed that fauth (Fae creature drowing people) - but not exactly there because that's bad juju - and set them up to live there, with the woman who'd been mind controlled by the fauth (and still thought she was a faerie princess) and her boyfriend, and this woman who's kid was the bee hivemind - and her daughter, and maybe later we'll bring out the cyborg kids when people aren't so allergic to metal
we've acquired a lot of kids
the end, and also mai had her faery booze and got drunk and kind of sick from it.