The Week in Stories - Many Games That Start With M

Monsterhearts, Monster of the Week,  Masque of the Red Death

We've played first sessions or early sessions of a number of games in the last week or so, so it's time to get down on the screen what I want to remember about each!

First up, we have Monsterhearts 2.  We've been trying to get this going for quite a while, but the scheduling gods have not been with us. It was the first game with a couple of new people, and Monsterhearts is a heck of a game to throw them into! (I think they had roleplayed before, but this was an introduction to what we so casually call "our style of gaming.") It demands a lot, if you're going to get the most out of it.

Delightfully, everybody meshed really well right away. We had in our group a Selkie, a Witch, a Fae, a Werewolf, and an Infernal. It was Halloween, with the prospect of a beach party that night, despite the recent disappearance of a classmate (merely the latest in a string of disappearances over the previous year.)  I was playing the Fae, and there were a couple of things I wanted to explore with this character, both of them related to my own teenage years.

The first is that my last year of high school was probably my pinnacle of being comfortable with being eccentric. (Not that I've been sparklingly normal in the years since, and as I get older I reclaim more and more of my weirdness.) I got good grades, I never hurt anyone, I was just a little strange, and I loved it. The Fae felt like a good way to explore that, and I gave her one of my quirks right away - that last year, I never sat in a desk. I would sit on top of the desk behind mine, if possible, or on the floor, but I was done with desks. I wasn't disruptive, I just wouldn't do it, and because I was a good student, teachers didn't hassle me about it. (I also tended to take my shoes off somewhere during the day, and then have to retrace my steps at the end to find them. Bare feet always, and that hasn't much changed.)

Click here to see a photo that, to me, captures Crow really well 

That's more of a surface thing, although fun. The other part was how very seriously I took everything. How even though I could tell something was a joke, I'd still respond seriously, because it felt more important to tell my truth than be funny. The Fae, with their absolute seriousness about promises and what people said they'd do, fits with that well also.  When picking options on the character sheet, I added that Crow (I've had a thing with crows recently, so that name jumped out at me) was fae-blooded, and came up with a story of being half-fae, her human father having a dalliance with a fae woman, then 30 years later, a baby being left on his doorstep. She passes him off as her grandfather, and what they both have in common is a burning desire to get back to the Fae Realm.

And when the GM asked us to pick something we wanted for the evening, it wasn't a great leap to say that she wanted the party to be the best ever, as much like the festivities she got to go to with the Fae once a year as possible. To do so, she wanted...chemical enhancement, to help her classmates let down their inhibitions. So of course she went to the Infernal. After threatening a classmate because she'd loaned him a pen, and he'd promised to give it back, and had reneged.

(Honestly, a lot of things happened, and I don't think I can get them all down and have this be a reasonable length, so I'm going to keep it to what happened to Crow.)

Later, she was at the beach trying to get it ready for the party, and changing into her particularly skimpy costume, and happened to be there at the same time as the Werewolf dropped by with her minions. That led to the most direct lead-up to a sex scene ever, as the Werewolf lacked subtlety, and Crow, modesty. It didn't feel like emotionally laden sex, but Crow asked Scarlett to save the first dance of the evening for her.

At the party, the Infernal was late (because he found out the drugs his Power had given him had nasty side effects and decided not to subject all his classmates to that), but that was enough to piss Crow off. Scarlett showed up in a costume designed to upset the Selkie, then turned the Selkie's upset back on her aggressively, and then, switching affect again, that she was there for a first dance with that sexy lady, Crow. Later, she chased the Selkie down the beach, and not in a friendly manner. No wonder Dominique was confused.

Sage, the Witch, came to the party but stayed up on the bluffs, gazing into the abyss to find out what had happened to the most recently disappeared classmate of his, a boy who he'd had a crush on. The answers were troubling, but the identity of the killer wasn't forthcoming. Heartsore, he stumbled down to the beach, just as Crow was passing out the substitute (and not as good) drugs that Xander the Infernal had brought. She asked Sage if he'd come with her into the Faerie realm, and he readily agreed.

There, everything seemed to pulse and breathe, and it made Sage uneasy, but Crow was finally content. She held out her arms to him, and he came to her. Afterwards, he took a sympathetic token from her, and she asked for his help in punishing Xander for having broken a promise.

It was a great start to the game, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.

Monster of the Week

I have finally joined Bill's online game - we weren't sure it would work to have both of us on on the same wifi, but it seems to work okay. I had tried once before, using Roll20, but I have to say that the audio problems we had made it less than an optimal experience. Particularly the way the noise would cut out as each new person would talk, which meant there were a lot of pauses as people waited to hear if someone else would talk, or missed half of what someone had said. It's not insurmountable, but for anything even remotely near dramatic play, that seemed like it would make it much more difficult.

He'd moved to using Discord for the audio, and that seemed to work much better, although the fact that I'm getting over a cold meant that I'm sure I disturbed people with my coughing. But it was time for roving monster hunting! Most of the evening was spent setting up characters, and then we played very late, trying to get the first adventure in.

I'm playing Val, a Crooked, a former fixer who betrayed her former partner and left her for dead, before making a deal with the devil that comes due in a year. We also have a TV vampire host, part of a legion of TV host monster hunters; a Mundane who is a math professor; a Professional with a large organization behind him, and a holy luchador, out to make sure the apocalypse happens on schedule.  

Count Floyd and the luchador, Fantasmo! were both contacted before the mission started. Floyd was told merely to observe the monster we would find, not intervene, and Fantasmo! was told to help the monster in its task.

Alerted by a string of disappearances, the team headed to Detroit. After hitting a bar, they found a neighborhood that had been occupied the day before, but now looked like it'd been deserted for years. A youngster from the next street told them about a house that moved, and they were able to confirm this with some young men who were trying not to look scared.

When they tracked the moving house down, they found it occupied by a Taker. Fantasmo! ventured into the basement and found several young men rotating there in mid-air, being drained. He set them free, and the house started to fight back. Meanwhile, upstairs in the bathroom, Val came upon the figure of the Taker in a pile of stuffed animals. It attacked her, a slick heart held in a metal chest.

The professional tried to help, but was knocked down. Count Floyd, heeding his instructions, stayed out of the fight. But when Val called for help and Fantasmo! came to help his team out, he couldn't refrain from fighting the monster instead of hunting it. While Fantasmo! kept the Taker busy, Val was able to reach into the chest and pull out the heart, narrowly escaping having the rusty metal chest close on her arm.

For a first session, it was fun. I like Discord better for online audio, and I'm looking forward to playing more of this one.

Masque of the Red Death

We also got in a session of our Victorian game, Masque of the Red Death. Roydon, my character, had barely recovered from the bender he'd gone on after seeing his dead fiancee in the crowd at one of his magic shows, and later smelling her perfume in his dressing room. While his sister, Lady Felicity, and the scientist Hewitt took some of the liquid they'd encountered in last session to be analyzed, Roydon went back to the theatre and approached the seat in which he'd seen Carrie sitting. Using his mentalist powers, he reached out and discovered that what was sitting there had been the shape-changing creature that had killed Carrie, toying with him, enjoying the torment it was causing. Which meant (presumably) that Carrie was really dead.

When tracking the creature, he came across one of the leading member of the Daedalus Lodge, Mahi Dev, who was also tracking the creature, which she called a Rakshasa. It had also killed someone close to her. Maybe they could join forces....

(Felicity and Hewitt discovered that the liquid was alive, and seemed to have hypnotic/compulsive powers. And yet they didn't destroy it....)

Hewitt also found out that one of his upstairs neighbours, a medical student, had been dismissed from his position at the hospital for having asked too many questions about a secret ward to which a man who had gone suddenly blind had been admitted. He had snooped and found about a dozen men being held in appalling conditions, but when he made a stink about it, he was summarily dismissed and the ward quickly emptied.

When we travelled out to Deptford, Felicity did so with her mother in tow, and revealed that she'd been in contact with her brother, which distressed their mother. Roydon was still being obstinate and refusing to give up the shameful stage and being openly affected by grief. Felicity tried to reassure her mother that she was hoping to be a good influence on Roydon.

In Deptford and the nearby tony neighborhood, the team split up. Kim went to the home of the doctor who had been in charge of the special ward (but was not on any medical register) and found it being guarded by tough-looking men, and a light in the upstairs window. Hewitt went to the hospital and made his way to the deserted ward in the basement, seeing for himself the despicable conditions these men were being held in, and getting information from a friendly (or, at least, bribable) porter.

Roydon found the pub that the first disappearing patient had frequented, and was directed to his wife, who was greatly distressed that she'd taken her husband to the hospital, and now no one could tell her where he was. She revealed that the blindness had started very suddenly.

Back at Felicity's off-season house, Roydon came face to face with his mother, and that didn't go well. Then he found out that Felicity had told everyone about Carrie, and was upset that she'd betrayed his confidence. Felicity tried to reassure him that perhaps everything he'd been seeing meant that she was alive, but he shut that down. She was dead, he said flatly. And whatever had killed her was tormenting him, deliberately.

Kim and Hewitt came to the house as well, and the group started to make plans for an infiltration of the doctor's house, where, they believed, the patients were being held. Hewitt had brought a strap from the one of the beds he'd found in the ward, and Roydon took it to perform psychometry. He was immediately (and thankfully, temporarily) struck blind. He could sense some of the things to which the patients had been subjected, but even more importantly, could tell that the patients were feeling drawn there by a strange call....

The Week in Stories - Masque of the Red Death

In personal stories, the last little bit has been rough. It's now been 7 months since my mother died, and this week is the 7 year anniversary of my father's death. I am getting through, but I've been erratic in keeping up on book reviews and the Dust Cover Dust-Up, and finally decided to scrap the latter. I went through all the books by myself in the same way, and will post a Top Ten Books of the Year list soon, but I don't have the mental energy to detail my struggles to pick between dearly loved books this year. I quit trying to make myself do it, and I feel a lot better for that decision.

Another part of having a tough go is that it had been a while between gaming sessions, and I find that when I go without gaming for a while, my grump quotient shoots through the roof. Nothing like slipping into someone else's problems to help me blow off steam. So I was extraordinarily glad when we sat down for the second session of Masque of the Red Death, our Victorian monster hunter game. Yes, it's supposed to be a lighter game, but my character has some juicy bits.

Previously on Masque of the Red Death....

After writing up last session, I thought a lot about my character. I liked how he came out in the first episode, but it was definitely Roydon at his best, and his best wasn't what I was interested in exploring. I figured out that if I wanted his traumatic past to come up, I needed to do some serious thinking about what, specifically, would touch on his past experiences and what reactions might be provoked.

I did this in concert with another player, since she's playing Roydon's lover, and was going to take the brunt of whatever reaction he had. I wanted to make sure I wasn't doing anything that would deprotagonize her character or make the game less fun! We both bought in to the idea of Roydon dealing with trauma, but we definitely needed to collaborate on what that would look like, with full veto power in her court.

Once the two of us were happy about the results, and excited to see them in practice, I forwarded the list on to the GM (also my husband), and he kindly included them on my updated character sheet for easy reference. This was good, since I came up with them about three weeks before we ended up playing and wasn't entirely sure I remembered them all!

I'll talk about them and how they ended up working so far, after a bit of a recap:

Episode Two: The Hampstead Horror

The episode began with our intrepid heroes being inducted into the Daedalus Lodge, the secret monster-hunting society behind the rather more pedestrian Icarus Club.

Lady Felicity decided it would be only kind if she picked up her brother and his paramour and gave them a lift to the club, although she started to rethink that as her carriage went into rather sketchy territory. Roydon was already in a bad mood, which had started when Abigail offered to fasten his cufflinks. He would treat her rather shabbily for the rest of the day, to her confusion and dismay.

Rather than talking for half an hour to give us exposition, Bill wrote a six-page scripted scene that we read each other, getting the lore we needed behind the organization we had just joined. (I think I love it more when the scripts are character flashbacks, but this was certainly an effective way to get that much info out in a way that engaged us all.) We also met the demon that had killed Hewitt's father, which he now carried in an "impenetrable" glass vial around his neck.

At the end of the vignette we read, there was a reference to a former monster hunter, Henry, who, despite being "the best of us all," still fell prey to corrupting forces. (I was delighted with myself that I figured out the reference from that alone.) After some in-character discussion with the members who welcomed us, we were taken on a field trip to see Henry's body - huge, distorted, who would have thought that Dr. Henry Jekyll would end up like that?

After our induction, we moved into a research phase, using Blades In The Dark-style clocks. We each got to come up with our own research project (or collaborate), and starting bringing in elements we wanted to see in the future stories. (I also got a clock for "Roydon Goes On A Bender," and that started filling up fairly quickly.)

Roydon started researching shapeshifters, looking for whatever had attacked him and killed(?) his fiancee. I made some minor progress, but nothing specific yet.

Then we want on to the third phase of the way Bill sees it going - personal scenes. We could either call for something or ask Bill for a suggestion. I did the latter, and he suggested we see Roydon and Abigail's stage magic show. That was a lot of fun, and went well at first. Roydon used his psychometry (I think this is my second character with that ability - apparently I find it particularly interesting!) to read the history of objects and stun his audience, although he was more cynical in an aside to Abigail than to the owner.

Then the whole performance went sideways. Roydon, looking up into the balcony, saw the pale face of his dead(?) fiancee there. He went white and walked down the stairs and into the crowd. Abigail tried to pass it off as part of the performance and bring him back, but he was somewhere else. The crowd came to their feet and surrounded him, and when he looked back, she was gone. After some stunned stillness, he stormed off, and Abigail managed to bring the show to a successful conclusion, but only with great difficulty.

Meanwhile, Hewitt went back out to Graydon House with his pet demon-in-a-jar and a magic detector. There, he was able to confirm that there was indeed a shit-ton of magic, but not a lot more. He tried to close the gap with magnets, but the sound of approaching heavy footsteps convinced him to beat a retreat.

Lady Felicity lunched at the Icarus Club, eating with a friend of her father, a rather pompous older man with an excess of harrumphing. From him, she learned more of the history of the past and present masters of Graydon House, as well as some tidbits from the less monster-hunty side of the world.

Kimball was walking down the street when he realized he was being followed. On eluding his first pursuer, he became aware of two more. Eventually, he decided to allow them to catch up, and found himself being ushered into a carriage occupied by Lord Somerset, head of the Foreign Office. Somerset had some questions about when Kimball had left the service and why. In particular, he wanted to know whether or not the experience Kim had had included seeing "the castle." Kim, confused, said no, and Somerset did not elaborate further.

We ran out of time for Abigail to have a scene, and she had been part of Roydon's, so we ended the game there. We're maybe hoping that Abigail can track Roydon down post-show and have it out at the start of next session.

Character Thoughts:

I felt like the triggers all worked fairly well, although at least one player took my shorthand list literally in a way that made me cock an eyebrow. One of them was written down as "cufflinks," and surprise, surprise, it doesn't mean that you show my character cufflinks, and he freaks out. It means that when a woman he cares about adjust his dress in a way that feels caring, that prompts memories of what he's lost and makes him push said woman (i.e. Abigail) away because he can't deal with the loss he suffered previously. It does not, oh hell no, excuse his behaviour, but it does offer some insight into why. (Amanda and I were all about playing out a relationship that might not be the best for the people involved.)

However, that shortform meant that one other player tried to show me his shirt sleeves at one point, going "ooh, cufflinks." Uh...yeah. That's...not going to do it.

If last session was Roydon at his best, this was definitely getting closer to the worst. He kept pushing Abigail away, often without even realizing that he'd done it, so wrapped up in his own pain was he. And we got to push on a couple of the sore spots, both ones that make him edgy, abrupt, and leaning towards drinking a lot. The only one we didn't get to really explore was the one that will provoke a different reaction....

That one was a tricky one to work out. I wanted something that made him very overprotective of Abigail, but it can't be happening all the time - she's the most physically capable person in the party, and it's no fun for her player if I'm constantly acting like she can't do anything. (Historical accuracy be fucking damned - I hate using historical settings as an excuse to make sure women know they would be treated badly at the time. REALLY? NO FUCKING KIDDING.) It's happened to me while playing female characters, and now, with my first male character, I didn't want to turn around and do the same to someone else, unless that was the specific adversity they wanted.


I feel like we found a good way to work the overprotectiveness in, given that entirely voluntary restraint. We found a specific, limited, and evocative set of circumstances that would make Roydon act uncharacteristically - notably, his default is to believe that Abigail is entirely capable and doesn't need protecting, so this should stand out as strange. It will be triggered when he sees something supernatural looming over Abigail when she's in a vulnerable position. It's specific because it will remind him of what he saw when Carrie was killed(?), it won't happen all the time, and it will be distinctly different from the norm.

I really can't wait. Oh, this relationship is going to get messy, and that's going to be interesting.

The Week in Stories: Masque of the Red Death

Character Creation

A week ago, we made up characters and started to play our first session of Masque of the Red Death - prep took longer than we're used to, so we didn't get a lot of playing time in, but character creation was fun. Amanda, whom I've played with for a long time, and I both wanted tarot readings to base our characters on, so she came over a little early and I did them for both of us. As always, this led interesting places.

Notably, the first thing that fell into place connecting the two characters was that in the "sex, death, and occult interests" (I think, but it could also have been in the "romance" spot), Amanda got the Ace of Wands. Which, in the Robin Wood deck, is an extraordinarily phallic card. A wand with DNA running down the middle of it, with two sunflowers as balls. So, she started off interpreting that as that she was in a relationship, but possibly a relationship that was only sex-deep.

Then I did mine next, and the very first card, in the "appearance, health, wellbeing" spot, was that same Ace of Wands. Which was interesting - I really don't tend to play male characters. I mean, I might have for a one-shot, but I've been more comfortable playing women or non-binary characters and given the general under-representation of those groups in the hobby, was good with that. But this seemed pretty clear - a guy, and probably the guy Amanda's character was sleeping with? We batted that idea around for a while, and decided that was the case. And also that the sex was really good.

However, another woman kept showing up in my cards, and where Amanda's cards had been almost all blondes, my reading was tending heavily towards dark-haired women. (The deck we were using has really no ethnic diversity, alas.)  And, in the "marriage" spot, I got the Death card. So it seemed clear that while my character and Amanda's were sleeping together, my character had lost someone he was in no way over. I decided it was a fiancee, and that it was in losing her that my character had had his first encounter with the supernatural.

(My darling husband Bill, as GM, had told us to think up a first encounter with the supernatural, and that it had to have a cost. I later saw the sheet where it laid out how to do that mechanically and was amused that I'd already incorporated no less than three of the "costs" into my character - losing someone close to my character, turning away from my family and friends, and an alcohol problem.)

Amanda and I collectively decided that her character didn't know about my character's deceased (or at least disappeared - the body was never found, and it's always good to give the GM some juicy potential for a lost love coming back as some kind of supernatural horror) fiancee. My character hadn't shared that, and didn't plan to.

Which gave rise to a whole bunch of little ideas we came up with about how much my character (Roydon St. James) thought about his fiancee. That he and Amanda's character, Abbie, had first slept together on the first anniversary of his fiancee's death, when he was looking for distraction. That the reason he always knew exactly how long they'd been together (8 months, 23 days) was not romantic - at least not for her. It's because he always knew exactly how long it had been since Carrie had died. Ouch.

When we sat down to game, I ran upstairs and grabbed the locket I have with pictures of my parents inside it - it looks like it could be vaguely Victorian, at least for the purposes of the game, so I put it on and tucked it inside my shirt - always there, always hidden.

In play, Roydon ended up being more gallant than I was expecting - maybe because some of the other characters kept questioning the abilities of his lover and of his sister (one of the other players came up with a backstory with similar parents, so it was a good opportunity to throw another connection in there), and Roydon kept coming to their defense. (That's part just him, part how much I don't really enjoy when playing a historically-rooted game means I get to deal with rampant sexism unless that is specifically the challenge I've asked for. Apparently that defensiveness extends to my male characters, at least in this case.)  Roydon and Abbie were sweeter than I was expecting, and that's actually a good place to start out.

Now, for the challenge. To find the small ways in which he is too wrapped up in his pain to be a good partner all the time. To find the ways in which he hides his secrets, the moments when they almost bubble to the surface. The times that remind him of the death of his fiancee so keenly it's harder to hide the pain. (Having his sister about is great - she'll likely spill the beans sooner or later.) When does he drink? What does it look like? When does he lose control, or almost so? How does he hurt Abbie inadvertently? I've shot this character through with fractures, now it's a matter of finding the right kind of pressure to bring them to the fore.

No One Gets Out Alive: Final Character Thoughts and Bonus Backstory!

Character Thoughts - Jo

I think this may be the first time I’ve had a character really and truly die in a game. Sure, I had a monster hunter die at the end of a campaign and be brought back to life. I also had a character who was the only one to survive a Deadlands game, with the mission of telling the tale so her companions wouldn’t be forgotten. But as far as campaigns go, I think this is the first time death was absolutely the end. I tend to be very attached to my characters, and hope for happy endings. I’m okay with this death, though. I mean, given the title of the game, it isn’t like it wasn’t telegraphed.

At the end, it all came down to a couple of dice rolls - I rolled to see if Jo could get everyone out, and only partially succeeded. She went back in anyway, and Bill had Michael’s player roll to see if I survived, and he failed. (He'd already spent all his tokens on resisting Miss Maudie’s ghost ordering him to kill my character.) Michael survived, but that may not be a blessing - he’s badly injured, lost his wife, and guilty of two murders and massive financial fraud.  It’s a sad but fitting end to our ghost story.

Going into the last session, I knew there were two huge reveals on the horizon, and I had no idea how Jo would react to either of them, and I really didn’t want to decide in advance. I thought about them, but figured that we’d see how it felt in the moment. Then, in the same scene, we finally hit the reveal that Michael knew about Jo’s affair, and that Michael had killed his brother earlier that day. I was a little surprised but pleased with the way both went.

For the first, when Michael told Jo he knew about her affair, I had at least half expected that I’d get really defensive and belligerent - it’s how Jo reacted to Lisette trying to make her feel remorse for her actions as a teenager, after all. But with this, a betrayal she knew was a betrayal, and her husband finding out, the reaction was much quieter, with no real defense of her actions offered. She didn’t push back, and she didn’t really ask for forgiveness. She did say she’d fucked up. I liked the quiet reaction more than the defensive one I’d been expecting to have. Of course, it wasn’t the time to sit down and hash out their entire marriage, but I came out of that thinking that things weren’t good, but they weren’t necessarily entirely doomed? At least, you know, until Jo died twenty minutes later.  

As to the second reveal, how Jo would react to finding out her husband was capable of murder, it was a lot less clear-cut than I’d been expecting. When it came right down to it, Michael didn’t say the words explicitly, and the obliqueness was enough that Jo got it, but didn’t have to get it entirely. She knew what he was saying, but she could hear it and yet not process it. I had a feeling that her initial reaction would probably not be entirely condemnatory - it’s hard to switch gears that quickly about someone you love and have been with that long. In the long run, though, if she’d survived and had time to think about it, the horror would have slowly grown.

A large part of why Jo could more or less understand what Michael had done but not deal with it yet was a personality trait that she had through the entire game, but which really took control in the final episode. As a surgeon, and because I thought it would be very useful in a haunted house game, her secondary trait was “Calm Under Pressure.” When faced with everything going to shit, Jo was constantly triaging, putting her emotions aside (and frequently last) in order to do what needed to be done.

In many ways, this was a microcosm of the entire character, and a look at how that ability could serve her well in short term emergency situations, and yet be the same trait that screwed up her life when constantly applied to a very busy life, when it always meant putting the less urgent things (her marriage, time to relax, self-care) last. Her dramatic poles were Bulling Through vs. Taking the Easy Way, and except for that affair, she never took the easy way. In fact, it’s probably what killed her, in the end. She’d saved her kids and her husband, but there was one thing left she could try to do, and she did it. Poor Jo.

While triaging like that is a character trait I share, I’m also a much more emotional person than Jo, and less able to put everything off until an easier day that will never come. It was interesting how, during the finale, I was often tense, but never on the verge of breaking down. Every supernatural thing Jo saw unsettled her, but she would deal with it by refocusing on the matter at hand. It might have scarred her for life, but at the time, she did what she had to do.

Was that the best choice? Lisette and Michael’s players both went to incredible places dealing with the fears and stresses and breaking down, becoming more and more unstable, while I never felt like Jo lost her stability. That makes her good as a foil, but maybe that’s a hint to trying playing someone less stable in a future game. (On the other hand, I might already be doing that in TimeWatch, where I feel like Millie is constantly teetering on the edge of a breakdown.) Still, it’ll be a challenge, to try another character where triaging is not part of her innate abilities, someone who has more potential to be overwhelmed.

If we’re talking about playing characters who differ from myself in some important way, let’s go back to one of my primary stated goals in playing Jo. I am fairly in touch with my emotions and sometimes far too attuned to the emotions of people around me. So I had wanted to play a character who was not that, someone who was not emotionally intelligent, not nurturing, who might be surprised by what she actually felt, if she ever understood she felt it.

I feel like I succeeded moderately well. Jo as a parent was definitely not nurturing, although I also don’t think she was a terrible mother, either. She made some fairly obvious mistakes that she wouldn’t understand, including her confrontational manner in regards to her daughter acting out. She never understood that Maddie was acting out, in part, because she knew her mother was having an affair, and saw it as a betrayal of her father. (Which, of course, it was.) And when Tyler had been scared by the apparition at his window, she wasn’t as understanding as she could have been, but she didn’t belittle him, either. She tried to direct him to what she thought was the most likely answer, and that was probably not as helpful as a hug would have been.

As a wife, Jo was also certainly not emotionally intelligent - her marriage was crumbling, and she had no idea what to do about it. She even thought her husband wouldn’t realize she was having an affair. When on the island, she was trying to reach out and find a common ground and history, to rekindle a romance. It felt like Jo and Michael were never actually adversaries, but they didn’t remember very well how to be allies anymore. The possibility was there, the past had proven it could be done, but neither had the resources to figure it out in the present.

And as a friend, Jo sucked. She fought like hell to have no space for Lisette, at the cost of hurting Lisette time and time again. Renewing that friendship would have meant examining some painful things about herself, and some unlikeable things she’d done. Given her jealousy over Lisette and Michael’s connection, it was much easier to decide Lisette was the enemy and treat her as such. I was delighted, though, by the small moments of friendship that snuck past her armour. The closeness never lasted long, but these were two people who remembered the patterns of friendship on a cellular level.

Outside of musing over the psychology of my own character, one thing I never realized until after the game was that when the three of us picked the evocative phrases for the haunt, we were also picking mechanical aspects. Each of those phrases (ours were “The Whisper,” “The Mirror,” and “The Door”) meant that the ghosts had a specific power. Bill says he did this so the ghosts weren’t all powerful and there were rules he had to follow. I thought that worked well, and we inadvertently picked some of the most psychological of the powers!

We have certainly had a history of great drama-heavy games before, and I am so privileged to be playing with this awesome group of people, all of whom I trust so much to do interesting things, be interesting characters, and to explore bravely together in scenes that can get into emotional territory.  This particular game started with a mandate to have drama-centric game, to play hard and with passion, to embrace characters and a situation that would put pressure just about everywhere. It did not disappoint. So this is my personal thank you to my husband, for being an awesome GM, and the other two players for being so astoundingly daring and kickass in what they bring to the table.

The "Official" Backstory, direct from the GM's pen:

In the Prohibition era, Maudie and Galen McBride were smuggling alcohol into northern New York State with the Stewart brothers, Ewan and Neil. They secured their hold on the liquor rackets with acts of horrifying violence, cowing their enemies. Maudie ran the "business" side, managing the money, while the men got their hands dirty. The distillery that supplied the operation was built into the foundations of Strathclyde House, in a secret sub-basement.

Neil was the most dangerous member of the operation, leading brutal attacks on their competitors, often leaving his mark with a curved skinning knife (which gave him his nickname, "Skinner"). The most notorious of these was a raid on a rumrunning operation in New York where he arranged for their competitors to be strung up from a tree outside a country garage they used as a distribution point and skinned alive. The incident loomed large in the news, as a boy in the employ of the Americans hid himself when he saw a car full of masked men approaching. He reported the incident in gruesome detail, including the quote (from Neil) that became a sensational headline: "No one gets out alive."

After the publicity, Maudie told Galen that they would need to get rid of Skinner. He was too dangerous, too unpredictable, and her plan had always been to sink the profits of their illicit enterprises into legitimate business ventures, expanding the McBride family fortunes. Galen killed Skinner, walling him up in a recess of the basement distillery, which would soon be bricked up and forgotten as Prohibition wound down. Without Skinner's muscle, Ewan was no match for Galen, and agreed to a payout that was a small fraction of what he believed he was owed. He took his money and put it into a shipping business, which his son Bruce would build into an international empire.

But Skinner wasn't quite done with the McBrides. Maudie and Neil had been sleeping together for years, under Galen's nose, and Maudie found herself pregnant. She quietly dealt with the inconvenience herself, and hid away the mortal remains of Skinner's child in the walls of Strathclyde House, where no one would ever find it. With that small detail accounted for, she was the sole proprietor of a financial empire... all of it in her name, and under her control, which would leave Galen a bitter and hateful man until his death.

The Week in Stories: No One Gets Out Alive - "Here in the Dark"

Previous Recaps: 
No One Gets Out Alive Character Creation 
Episode 1: "The Drop Off" 
Episode 2: "Another Midnight" 
Episode 3: "The Inevitability of Death"

Episode 4: "Here in the Dark"

And with this, our fourth sitting, we wrapped the whole damn thing up. We knew it was a possibility going in, everyone played hard, the ghosts came out to play, as did the secrets, and, as hinted all along in the name of the game, some of the characters died in the gloriously messy finale. Here's the recap, and I'll put up a second post shortly with all my character thoughts and some bonus backstory written by the GM!

The session opened right where we'd left off, just after Michael had gotten a series of texts and photos on a phone that wasn't supposed to be getting reception, of his son, alone and terrified against a red brick wall, and the word "MORE". He asked Jo, urgently, where Tyler was. Jo said she presumed he was in his room, but Michael said no, there was someone on the island, someone evil, and he'd taken Tyler.

Michael passed Jo his phone, but when she took it, the screen was dead. Worried that witnessing his brother's death had been too much for him, Jo asked Michael to sit down, and for Lisette to go upstairs and check if Tyler and Maddie were there. Michael protested, saying that they had to figure out what to do about the company, but Jo said that they could deal with that tomorrow. Getting his phone back, Michael could clearly see the photos of Tyler, and said he had to go out and find his son. He was somewhere on the island, scared. Jo let him go, worried.

Michael grabbed a flashlight and headed off into the rain that had started to pour down on the island. He convinced himself that the background behind Tyler in the picture was from the foundation of an old ruined house in the woods.

Meanwhile, Lisette found no one in Tyler's room, but could hear Madeleine crying through the door. She knocked tentatively, and Maddie came to the door and threw herself, crying, into Lisette's arms. Lisette held her uncomfortably, and asked what was wrong. Maddie was incredulous as she said, tearfully, that Uncle Matthew was dead, that's what was wrong.

Lisette tried to comfort her as Jo came upstairs. From where she was down the hallway, Jo could see Lisette reach into her pocket and pass something small to Maddie. Jo called out to ask if Tyler had been in his room, and when Lisette replied that he wasn't, she walked down the hallway and briskly held out her hand, palm-up, to Maddie, asking her for whatever Lisette had just given her.

Maddie stared at her mother, confused. Lisette said that she hadn't given Maddie anything, but Jo clearly didn't believe her and continued to ask Maddie to hand it over. Now. As Lisette reached out to try to explain, a pill bottle fell from her pocket on to the floor. Jo's lips thinned as she picked it up, seeing some of Miss Maudie's pills. She looked at Lisette, noting her large pupils, and asked if Lisette were high. Lisette protested, unconvincingly, that she wasn't. Maddie pulled away from her mother and spat something horrible and teenager-ish at her, before running off.

Lisette tried to explain that she hadn't given anything to Maddie, that she didn't remember putting those pills in her pocket. She said she hadn't even wanted to stay on the island, that Michael had convinced her. This did not impress Jo. Lisette said mournfully that she didn't want anything to do with this family anymore.  When Jo stalked off, Lisette looked down and when she looked at it, now the name on the bottle of pills read Jo Ross.

Somewhere around this point, the lights went out, as claps of thunder and lightning lashed the island.

Meanwhile, out in the driving rain and dark, Michael trekked through the woods, yelling for Tyler. When he got to the foundation of the ruined building, he couldn't see anyone, but climbed over the low remaining wall anyway, jumping in, and landing on a ripped tin can, which pierced his foot through.  There was no sign of his son. Bleeding and swearing, Michael tried to make his way back out, but slipped on the mud. His phone lit up again and two more images appeared, of Jo with Adam, her colleague (and the man she was having an affair with), smiling a smile that she used to turn only on Michael. Michael scowled, and resumed his painful struggle out of the foundation. When he got out, he realized he had a knife in his hand, the skinning knife that the man with the burlap sack had carried.

Back at the house, Lisette grabbed Jo’s purse, intent on proving that Jo was trying to frame her again. With the lights out, she went into the kitchen and lit a candle. She looked at the knives in the kitchen, feeling like she needed a weapon, but decided that something blunt would be much better. She went into the dining room, intending to pick up a poker that was leaning against the fireplace. Suddenly, the lightning flashed, and Lisette was surrounded by people in the room. She shrunk back, but as the light faded, so did the people. She made a dash for the poker, then back to the kitchen and out into the night to find a lantern in the gardener’s shed.

Jo was in search of Maddie when she heard the distinct sounds of two people having sex in her and Michael’s bedroom. Thinking it might be Michael and Lisette, she opened the door angrily, only to see a very large man having enthusiastic sex with a small woman - Miss Maudie, when she was very much younger. Jo could see clothes strewn over the floor, including a burlap sack with two holes cut out for eyes. After finishing, Miss Maudie cast her eyes towards the door - but clearly didn’t see Jo standing there.

Lisette had made her way to the gardener’s shed and found an oil lantern and lit it. With that in one hand and the poker in the other, she started back to the fence, only to see Skinner, the man with the burlap sack over his head and a skinning knife in his hand, heading towards her. The camera flipped, and we saw from Michael’s perspective that he was heading towards the light, and calling out for Lisette while she saw something quite different and fled for the house. He pursued her, worried that she was going to betray his trust and the family.

Losing sight of Lisette, Michael come up to the kitchen window, seeing Jo standing there with a butcher’s knife in her hand. For her part, Jo saw the figure on the other side of the glass as the man with the burlap sack, complete with knife. She pulled back and yelled at him to go away. Michael, frustrated, called out to Jo to let him in, and she recognized him, but he looked even more dishevelled and crazy than he actually was. She hesitated, then finally unlocked the door.

When Michael stumbled inside, Jo tried to see what shape he was in, physically, but Michael was fixated on the idea of finding Lisette, and needing to determine where her loyalties lay. Jo didn’t understand why this was so important, tonight, when their son was missing, so Michael finally told her about the financial trouble the company was in, the trouble he was in, that he could go to jail. Was she with him? Loyal to the family?

Jo pushed back - how could he not have told her this? How could he have kept this secret? Michael narrowed his eyes. She was one to talk about keeping secrets. Jo demanded to know what he meant by that. He knew about Adam, Michael replied. Did she really think she could keep that secret? That he wouldn’t know?

Jo stilled. She really thought he didn’t, she said softly. Come on, Jo, Michael said. He wasn’t an idiot. So, where did she stand? Was she loyal to the family? Jo looked at him, still confused. What did he mean loyal to the family? Michael said, with difficulty, that they all needed to pull together to survive this. He strongly hinted, but didn’t say outright, that he’d had to kill his brother Matthew to keep the family going, and that he’d do anything to protect Jo and their kids. Jo could guess at what he meant, but the ambiguity let her put it aside for the moment. She continued to triage the situation - they had to find their kids, first. Then they could talk.

Outside, both Jo and Michael could see a figure run across the lawn - it looked like their daughter, Maddie. Jo sighed and picked up the kitchen knife again. She’d go after their daughter, and wanted defence against whatever was stalking them. At the door to outside, she paused, and haltingly, tried to explain. She’d wanted to come to the island to see what she and Michael still had between them, what might be possible. But she’d screwed it all up.

Back with Lisette, as she ran from the figure of Skinner. She ran into the building on the other side. But where she ended up as she went through was not where she intended. She was suddenly in the secret passage, between floors. Lisette started shaking, terrified. Noises echoed around the small staircase, and Lisette started to head up towards the attic, but stopped when a stone fell right past her and landed at her feet. In the brick wall in front of her face, there was a small hole, and inside was a package of small bones, wrapped in paper. The newspaper showed three bodies hung up like in an abattoir. It dated to Prohibition, and heavily implicated Michael’s grandparents and their enforcer in the murders. A headline read “No One Gets Out Alive!”

Lisette recoiled and started moving rapidly down the stairs to the creepy basement. Once there, the lantern-light glinted eerily off the walls.  She shrank down, against the wall, trying to block out the manifestations, utterly lost.

The sound of a phone ringing lured Michael, still bleeding and limping, into the east wing of the house. There he saw Miss Maudie. She praised him for being a good boy, the one she could always count on, but now demanded that he take care of Josephine. She wasn’t really part of the family, after all. Never had been. And now she’d shown her true colors. Michael resisted, swearing to his grandmother that Jo loved this family. Miss Maudie’s eyes narrowed in scorn. She demanded more.

Outside, Jo continued toward the dock, looking for Maddie. On the dock itself, she stared out into the water, then noticed something just below the surface of the water. It was a face. It was many faces, glinting just below the surface. They were watching her, and began to break the surface in pursuit of her. Jo stumbled backwards and ran up the hill, back towards the house.

Lisette heard the sound of someone scared in the basement, and found Maddie there, trembling. Maddie was scared, and Tyler was missing, and her parents were upsetting. Lisette hugged her close, trying to comfort her.

Just then Michael heard the noises coming from the basement. Still clutching the skinning knife he’d found in the ruins, he ventured down the slippery stairs, and found Lisette and Maddie. He was bloody and looked crazed. Lisette pushed Maddie behind her as she got to her feet. With a shaking voice, she said she didn’t want to be part of the family any more, she just wanted to leave.

Michael asked how he could know that she wouldn’t betray the family, tell everyone about what had happened with the company. Lisette swore she wouldn’t, clutching the poker tightly. She just wanted to go to her mother, and be done with this entire family forever. Michael got angrier at this, accusing Lisette of never caring about the family, of never really being a part of it. Maddie whimpered behind Lisette’s back. Scared, Lisette told Michael to move so she could leave. He couldn’t do that, they needed to talk.

Lisette lashed out with her poker, catching Michael on the side of the head. Startled, he jabbed out with the knife, stabbing Lisette in the stomach. They both fell to the floor. Lisette crawled her way over to him, painfully, and threw the knife across the room away from them both. Maddie shrieked and ran up the stairs. As Lisette had fallen, she had dropped the lantern, which broke and started a fire.

Maddie ran to the door and almost straight into her mother on the porch. Maddie was nearly incoherent, talking about her father and Lisette and people going crazy. Jo told her to stay on the porch or the lawn, where she could see the door. She’d be right back. As Jo entered the basement, she could see her husband and Lisette on the floor, and assessed that both were in danger of dying if not treated quickly. Just then, though, she heard Tyler yelling.

Jo ran to the wall, seeing the red brick, and a spot that looked different from the rest. Picking up Lisette’s poker, she started to smash at the wall, getting through it relatively quickly. The fire was spreading, though, starting to fill the basement with smoke. Covering her mouth, Jo went through the hole she had made, to see her son in an alcove, with the hand of a skeleton of a very large man with a burlap sack over his face on Tyler’s shoulder. Jo broke the hand away and she and Tyler climbed out rapidly.

As the fire spread, Jo had Tyler help her lift Michael to get her up the stairs, and looked at where Lisette was lying unconscious, biting her lip. But between her husband and former best friend, she made her choice. She, Tyler, and Michael made it out onto the porch and down the stairs to Maddie, watching as the fire spread through the house.

Jo left Michael alone on the lawn, and ran back up the stairs to the porch. She hesitated and went in, intending to go no further if it was too dangerous. However, Michael watched, horrified, as the house collapsed around his wife.

An emergency boat pulled up at the dock, and Michael could see Perry and others running up the hill. Maddie started to shriek about her father being a murderer, Tyler was huddled in a ball, and the house continued to burn.

The Week in Stories: No One Gets Out Alive - "The Inevitability of Death"

Previous Recaps: 
No One Gets Out Alive Character Creation 
Episode 1: "The Drop Off" 
Episode 2: "Another Midnight" 

Episode 3: "The Inevitability of Death"

It had been almost two months since we'd last played No One Gets Out Alive, so I wasn't sure if we'd be rusty or find it hard to find our ways back into these characters. But while it wasn't quite the heady rush of the second session, it was easier than I expected, and some really good stuff hit the table. We're heading into the home stretch - Bill says one or two more sessions.


What Happened With The Haunting

Michael came downstairs the next morning to find Mr. VanKoughnett, the man who had brought them out to the island, having coffee with Michael's brother Matthew and son Tyler. Matthew said that Diana, their sister, had called Mr. Vankoughnett from the land line still in Miss Maudie's quarters for a ride into town for the day. Anybody else who wanted to go, could. Tyler was eager to get off the island, for one, still spooked by his experiences the day before.

Diana stalked into the room, and Michael asked if he could speak to her alone. She tried to fend him off, but Michael quietly asked the others to leave. (I think maybe Tyler stayed and Michael didn't notice?)  Michael asked Diana why she was doing this - she'd never cared about the company before. She'd always been happy to let him do the work. Diana slyly said that she just wanted to be more involved - the company was hers too, after all. Michael shot back that the company was his. And that she'd get money from it, same as always. Just trust him and let him handle it. Diana said that she just wasn't willing to do that anymore, and left.

Michael went out into the entryway of the house, to see Jo getting her things ready to go. Jo said she was going to go in and get a few things, and Michael reminded her about talking to her father. Jo said she'd try, but not to get his hopes up. Michael told her to invite her father for supper on the island, and the two would talk. Jo grimaced, but agreed to try. Maddy went too, glad to get off the island and back to cell signals.

At the boat, Lisette got on board too, saying she wanted to see her mother. The boat pulled away from the dock, leaving Michael and Matthew alone on the island. Lisette offered Jo coffee from a thermos, which Jo reluctantly accepted. Lisette spoke of hoping to see her mother again, and that she was tempted to just stay in town. Maybe that would be a good idea, Jo advised. Maddie, at the bow, stretched out her phone to try to catch the first signals. As they pulled in to the dock, everyone could clearly see that there was a cell tower on top of one of the local buildings - it was weird that it wouldn't cover the island.

Once in town, Maddy took off immediately. Jo asked Tyler if he'd like to come with her to see his grandfather. Tyler was enthusiastic - they almost never got to see him! Driving there in the car they'd left by the docks, Jo cautioned Tyler that sometimes his grandfather was...unreasonable. That he might say nasty things about Tyler's father. Tyler was confused as to why, but Jo told him that it was for reasons that had nothing to do with Michael, just an unreasonable grudge from the previous generation.

They pulled up to the gates for a huge house enclosed by stone walls, by the water with a view of Strathclyde in the distance. Jo pressed the button at the gate, and when her father's assistant answered, she said that it was Jo. He replied, "Ah, Miss Stewart," and Jo gritted her teeth and answered "Mrs. Ross." She was already regretting this particular promise to Michael. They pulled up to the house, and her father, Bruce Stewart, was standing on the porch. He called Tyler up and gave him a big hug, telling him that there was a Playstation in the house that he could go play if he wanted.

Jo and her father awkwardly hugged, and he showed off his new living room furniture, which looked expensive and Scandinavian. Jo complimented it hesitantly, and he said he didn't much like it, but it was what was in these days. Jo suggested maybe he could just decorate for his own comfort, but he treated that suggestion like it was nonsensical.

Jo finally broached why she'd come. She said it was time that her father finally accepted her marriage - a marriage that had been in existence for almost two decades! Michael wanted to talk to Bruce, so come to the island for dinner, Michael would cook, and they could finally put this insane vendetta behind them. (I maybe didn't say insane vendetta.)

Her father's face hardened. He would never trust a McBride. Jo tried in vain to protest that Michael was a Ross, his grandparents were the ones who were McBrides, and they were dead. It didn't make any sense to hold Michael at fault for the actions of his grandparents. And she was a Ross too, she had been for 18 years and that wasn't going to change. She chose Michael, she trusted him.

Bruce kept pushing: Jo thought she could trust her husband, did she? He was a McBride, he'd betray her in the end. Who would she trust, her father or Michael? How was the marriage, anyway? Jo, fighting far harder for Michael's request than she'd intended to, spurred on by anger at her father's disrespect for her entire adult life, said that between the man she'd been married to for 18 years and the father who'd refused to even meet her husband, she'd pick Michael to trust, thanks.

Taking a deep breath, Jo tried again. If he wouldn't go to Strathclyde on the island, then, for her, have Michael here at his house for dinner. Finally acknowledge her marriage, listen to whatever Michael had to say. Bruce turned her down flat, saying all the McBrides were the same, and he could tell her why. Frustrated, Jo said she didn't want to hear old family history, and she was done with her father. If he couldn't respect her choices, her life, then she was finished dealing with this. She collected Tyler and left.

Meanwhile, back on the island, Michael was pressing his brother Matthew on what their sister was planning. Matthew kept telling Michael that the easiest thing to do was just to let Diana have what she wanted. Just give her the financial info on the company! She'd back right off, and all this could go away. Michael was less than willing, partly because he'd been the only one to pour his time and energy into the company, but mostly because he'd been committing financial chicanery to hide the problems the company was having.

Matthew wanted a way to get Diana off his back, right? So why not just sign over the voting rights for his shares to Michael, just for now, and then Michael could make her back down. Matthew whined that Diana had made him promise not to, and Michael knew what she was like. Just give her what she wants, he repeated. Michael gave him the papers to sign, urged him to just go ahead, and he could keep on receiving the checks and not worrying about it, like always. Matthew looked tempted, but shook his head, obviously more scared of Diana than Michael.

Oh, Matthew added, I got that file you sent me, I just haven't had time to open it. Michael, who had opened his laptop on this island without wifi just to see his incriminating erased spreadsheet get sent to someone earlier in the morning, blanched. Don't worry about it, he told Matthew. He was going to go up on the roof to see what kind of work it might come. Matthew could come and help.

Back on the mainland, Lisette approached her mother's house, which was nicely maintained, with beautiful flowers. Lisette gathered a few for her mother, an old habit, before approaching the door. Her mother answered and happily gathered Lisette into her arms. Lisette was looking much better than the last time her mother had seen her, she was informed.

Lisette told her mother that she was here on the island because Miss Maudie had left her some money in her will, but she'd been surprised her mother wasn't on the island working. She'd been fired, her mother explained. Miss Maudie had grown increasingly erratic and was taking more medication than she should have been, so Lisette's mother had called her doctor, just once, to express concern. Dr. Skinner? Lisette asked, having seen the name scrawled in the back of Miss Maudie's notebook. No, her mother said, puzzled. But it had been the best day of her life, being fired. Now she was away from the island, which she said was growing increasingly evil.

And she worked for Bruce Stewart, Jo's father, now, and he paid twice what the McBrides ever had. She was doing well. But Lisette should stay in town, and not go back to the island. At all. Lisette's mother's voice grew more urgent as she spoke. Lisette looked around at the cozy little house, and said she wanted to stay, but she'd at least have to go back to get her stuff. Her mother suggested having Mr. Vankoughnett get her things for her, but Lisette demurred. She'd have to talk to Michael briefly, and get her suitcase, and then she'd come right back. She'd stay here after that.

On the island, Michael and Matthew walked on the roof, at the tallest part of the building. Michael bent to pull up a couple of shingles, to see what kind of damage there was. Matthew stood near the edge, looking across the water at the town. What a dump. He'd be glad to get out of here. Why were they looking at the roof anyway? To see if it could be fixed, Michael said with some ire. He asked once again about the papers.

Matthew gave the same answer he had downstairs, walking closer to the edge. Michael stared at him. As Matthew turned back, Michael lunged and hit Matthew across the midriff. Matthew teetered on the edge of the building for a moment, and Michael could have reached out to grab him, but he only watched as Matthew finally lost his balance and fell several stories to the ground.

Michael crept to the edge of the roof and stared down at his brother's body, crookedly lying on the ground. He climbed downstairs and went over to the body, and it was more than apparent that Matthew was quite dead.

He called 911, explaining that he was at Strathclyde, he was Michael Ross, Michael McBride Ross, and there'd been an accident. His brother had fallen off the roof and wasn't moving. The person on the other end asked a few questions, and reassured him that there'd be a boat along shortly with a paramedic. Michael hung up the phone and drank from a whiskey bottle. When he opened his eyes, there was a word scrawled on the wall across from Miss Maudie's chair that he hadn't seen before. It said MORE.

Later, the boat finally pulled up by the dock, and Perry Snider, a paramedic, came on shore. He looked over Matthew, and tried to do what he could, but it was obvious he was dead. He didn't seem to have any suspicions about the death, when Michael explained that they'd been up on the roof looking at the shingles, and he'd turned around, and Matthew was just...gone.

Back in town, Jo had dropped Tyler off in the small downtown before driving out of the ways. She stopped the car by the side of the road and got out of the car, leaning against the hood. She called Adam, the man with whom she'd been sleeping. He answered casually, asking how she was, and she wasn't quite sure how to answer. They talked easily for a while, and he told her to make an excuse and come back to the city. Jo was tempted, but temporized, saying there were a few more things she needed to sort out here.

Adam urged her not to always make things so difficult. She could just walk away, come to the city, the two of them could fly off to Europe or wherever she wanted. Jo paused for a long time, weighing her options. Perhaps it was having just so vehemently defended her husband to her father that made her finally say that she wasn't good at taking the easy way. Adam didn't sound hurt, but he did end the conversation quickly.

Jo headed back to the dock and rounded up her children, joining Lisette on the boat. Diana was nowhere to be seen. Jo was glad to hear that Lisette was planning on just picking up her things and going back to town afterwards. Lisette wasn't surprised. But when they got to the island, the emergency boat was just pulling away. Michael stood on the docks, looking white.

Michael sent the kids up to the house before telling Jo and Lisette about Matthew's death. It was perhaps notable how little grief either woman expressed, but Jo was worried about Michael, who looked haunted. She also thought she heard a whisper in her ear that Michael had killed Matthew, but shook her head, wondering where that thought came from. She told him to come and sit down and they'd talk. Lisette had a breath of air go past her ear, saying "he was pushed." Michael heard a whisper in his ear, telling him "they know."

Lisette offered to get her bags and go, but Michael reacted strongly. She needed to stay and with her part in the will, he'd need her support to stop Diana. He needed her there. Jo glared daggers at Lisette, but Lisette relented and agreed to stay.

Jo told Michael that he could worry about the company tomorrow, or in a couple of days. Tonight, she'd give him something to make him sleep, and he needed to eat - he was obviously in shock. Michael kept fixating on Diana not being there.

Lisette went into Miss Maudie's rooms to call her mother and let her know that she'd be staying. Her mother wasn't happy, but there wasn't much she could do. She started to tell Lisette something, urgently, but the line went dead. Lisette couldn't get back through, then in frustration, went through Miss Maudie's pill bottles, looking for more than what she'd taken the day before. All the bottles were empty.

As evening fell, Michael's phone buzzed, as a bunch of pictures started to come in - pictures of Tyler, looking scared and lost. The word MORE was superimposed on the picture.

Cut to black.

Character Thoughts:

It's interesting to me how apparent it is that the harder people push on Jo's marriage, try to get her to admit that there are problems, the more she digs in her heels and defends it. More than that, while she was just under pressure from life and busyness and responsibility and an absent husband, she was thinking of breaking up her marriage, but when that pressure is put on her marriage itself, she turned around and more or less recommitted to it - even if only in front of other people and in her own head.

She came to the island to try to see if there was anything left of her marriage to salvage, and while there hasn't been a real rekindling of the relationship, it hasn't felt a lot worse. And she's been surrounded by people asking solicitously if her marriage is really okay (Lisette), with all the attendant suggestion that it isn't, or by people straight out telling her her marriage was wrong from the beginning (her father), and in both cases, the reaction has been to shut the other person down and defend her husband and her life with all her might.

Of course, if she actually wanted to see if there's something to salvage of her marriage, she'd have to have an honest talk with her husband about it, and they haven't gotten there yet. Ah, characters who are not good with their emotions.

Also of interest to me is that I really have no idea how she'll react when she finds out her husband killed his own brother. I will be very interested to see. I think I may need to push on that, ask questions that that whisper may have sparked, push Michael on his attraction to Lisette - which may in turn get Jo pushed back on the fact that she's been cheating.

Bill tells us we have only one or two sessions left, depending on how hard we play next time, so we're scheduling the next sitting soon to keep up the momentum. I'm expecting the supernatural to get ramped up, and I look forward to the emotional conversations that will happen surrounded by spookiness and fear.