Memorable moments from Dark before the Dawn

[Lady_Prema]

So there are too many moments to pick favourites, but I thought i would post up some of the memorable ones.

On Sunday after defeating Thrivaldi (thanks Dahlia for fighting him too, he was a tough one), drinking his blood alongside Villie and I look up and Scott makes some sort of comment about being a cannibal and I said ‘Somehow I’ve been here before’ - sorry that’s a witchhouse reference to both our characters, but I did think it was oddly reminiscent.

Reflecting on all of my Friday interactions with Daniel, after on Saturday having found out he wasn’t my brother but my father. So creepy in such an awesome way, particularly some of the subtle slips he made.

Using a new ability to look into Charlie’s mind to find out the truth about Ivy’s poisoning - such a great scene and the aftermath really made me realise just how far Kali will go for someone she loves.

Sneak mission 2.0 - man I love these, and this time I got to stealth kill 2 demons! Thanks Chris and Ants for suspending your disbelief enough to allow me to do that. Jackie was also truly terrifying jumping out at me from the bathroom.

Having a conversation with Ivy about fathers and about how usually when someone says I know what you’re going through they don’t understand but in this case having had it happen to me earlier that day I really did know what she was going through.

Being exchanged for the hostages while pretending to look like the hostage, maybe it didn’t go quite as planned but was fun.

All the interactions with Molloch - he is so shifty but somehow I can’t help but trust him which is a little terrifying.

Confiding in Mrs. McCraig only to have her betray me which defined our relationship from there on out.

I’ll post more later, but the weekend was full of so many amazing moments, I’d love to hear some others.

[mandersnz]

The interaction with the Vlaschenkos and Sameera on Friday night; holding a dagger to “the tainted one’s” throat and realising there were a number of others completely ready to put Edwina down, then deferring to Vlaschenko. Edwina’s a bitch, but I like the bouncing off each other that Ants and I do as Vlaschenko.

Watching #74 just NOPE right out on the floor of the taverna after the election results were announced.

The Ambrose/Esther/Jasper/Jack/Charlie stuff. That was quite fun, and a very fitting ending to Ambrose.

Felicity… some things there didn’t go quite as planned on the Saturday night. Good thinking on Villie’s part to do what she did, though!

The big scene between the group of bandits/team PCs/Monster Grandpappy was lots of fun. No apologies from me for causing Villie’s headache, I think we all were a little terrified of her during that bit

Charlotte the blind masseuse. Lots of fun to just relax a bit and muck around with that one.

[TazzyD]

Those sneak kills were good! It was a pity about the terrain, as it worked against you, but you did very well.

[musicforwolves]

I got to diplomacy my way through a hostage situation on Saturday afternoon - Charlie rocking up and saying to the bandits “Hi there, I’m Charlie Calhoun, who might you be? That’s great. This is what you’re getting, and this is how you’re getting it” was really fun, and it may be the first time in this game that I’ve diplomacied properly. I got to do it again a little differently on Saturday evening at Sligachan.

Getting to introduce Jack and Lily to their daughter was a really special moment, and I loved how it all came together.

And the poisoning plot. Oh, man. It’s odd, because I didn’t really take much pleasure in it as a player, and I spent most of Sunday trying to undo the potential damage it could cause, but it illuminated so much of the character for me. I wish it had stayed a secret until session 6, but that’s the way these things go. I could have gotten out of it if I’d wanted to, but it felt so right - the hints had been dropped, and this was the way it was going down. It’s a shame that my friends will never talk to me again, but oh well

[Walter]

I had a great weekend.

My most memorable role would have had to be the Reverend Mathias Gerard, and I had an absolute blast walking around chanting pulp fiction’s version of Ezekiel 24:17 and two psalms translated into Latin (remembered from St Wolfgangs) and making demons run away. Also had a good time giving the last confession thing on Sunday morning at the execution.

I had a couple of excellent fight scenes too, just as random demons, and most notably the continuous brawl up by the playground thing. Fighting during daylight is awesome - you can even see whats going on!

Random bandit (whom I named Jason) resulted in some excellent torture scenes. Most of them he could tolerate enough to make convincing lies (abet with a hint of truth), until he started getting jabbed with a rusty syringe by Dr Moss. Great ending to the character too, just as he thought he would finally be released he was permanently detained, and quite out of the blue too.

Had a good time Saturday night being a villain in the forest, and another excellent brawl, but I am still sad I didn’t get to see the kitten-skin coat.

One last thing I’d like to add is an OOC conversation started by Tania around the role of ritualized teasing and put downs in friendships, something that seems in my experience to be a common thing, and something that I myself fall into the trap of. Some of the things discussed included:

• encouraging positive appraisals rather than negative talk to ones friends
• the difficulty of consent withdrawal (while consent can be given once, the nature of these friendship rituals makes it very hard to withdraw consent at a later point, and friendships, well as peoples’ desires to engage in put-down banter, do change)
• the underlying culture it provides can prop up bullying behaviour (there’s a fine line between consensual banter and verbal abuse, and even at the best of times a lack of reliable knowledge access makes it difficult to know for sure that everyone is on the same page)
• the behaviourism around negative banter (e.g. if person A puts down person B and person B usually responds in kind (banter at best, mutual bullying at worst), then if person B wishes to stop, person A will no longer be getting their reinforcement (which normally takes the form of replied banter), so behaviourally speaking they are likely to initially increase their behaviour to try and elicit this response, meaning that simply not engaging anymore is a difficult process to go through)
• if change is wanted, ensuring that there is plenty of positive reinforcement and practice of more desired forms of discourse (otherwise you just have a dearth of interaction)
• acknowledging that talking about these things can be very important in ensuring no problems arise