Episode 1 Scene 2 - The Plot Thickens

Tanvi eventually managed to corral the group back into the main room. Rubbing her forehead and sighing, she said, 'alright, so whilst those two are resting in the infirmary, perhaps we should continue with the investigation. Remember, people, we are looking for reports, rumours, and references to the sword.'

'Mum,' her daughter squeaked out, awkwardly raising and lowering her hand, 'I think this is something but it's really vague.' She drew everyone's attention to a Royal Society news bulletin from the year nineteen ninety-nine. Once everyone else was gathered around her, she read it aloud, 'Oscar Blakely, our man in New York, reports that the Sword of Kings, missing since nineteen eleven, has been sold at auction in New Orleans.'

'That's a good find,' she assured her daughter, gently patting her shoulder, 'but you're right, it couldn't be more vague.' She thought for a while before giving directions, 'alright, everyone else keep doing your own thing. Priyanshi, let's have a look through records for auction houses dealing in magical artefacts. There can't be many.' With that, the mother and daughter duo scoured the library for any books concerning the artefact trade or New Orleans more generally.

After a while, her daughter squeaked again, her voice a whisper as though she had to respect the ordinary rules of a library, 'mum, come look at this.' What she showed her was a most interesting picture indeed, a photograph of a large burned down building, taken in nineteen ninety-nine. 'That can't be a coincidence.'

'It could,' she reasoned, 'but it's still worth looking into.'

After an hour of tracking everything down, her daughter was ready to present her findings to the group, which Tanvi insisted that she do. She stood off to the side and all the others, including Josh and Valentine, were seated. After glancing towards her mother for a look of reassurance, which she received, Priyanshi began, 'um, okay, so this news bulletin was published on the first of February, nineteen ninety-nine, and it said that, according to Mister Blakely, the sword had been sold at auction in New Orleans, but didn't say to who or even which auction house. Then, a day later, Le Malin, a cabaret that was known to host events for more monstrous clientele, including auctions, burned down. A few people died, including the owner's daughter, and she placed a bounty on a satyr.'

'What's a satyr?' Coming from one of Lydia's friends, Tiffany, the one with dyed blonde hair and large breasts, who liked to wear tight-fitting and revealing tops, the question wasn't surprising. Tanvi looked again to her daughter, to encourage her to give the answer.

'Um, we'll they're like a faun, like, um, half-man and half-goat. They have the upper body of a man, though they usually have horns, and the hind legs of a goat. They also,' she hesitated before saying the next part.

'Go on, Pri, they can handle it.'

'Well, they also have a very large phallus.' Her daughter's cheeks flushed and the comment earned her a chorus of laughter, from everyone except Valentine, who had no reaction, and Joshua, who seemed irritated by the immaturity of it all. 'Um, anyway, a few of our people, um, Society people, followed it up but all anyone could figure out was that he'd gone to New York.' Priyanshi had to take a moment, after that, to collect herself. 'So, anyway, that made me think about how Oscar Blakely was supposedly in New York when he gave the report or associated with New York, in some way. Well, I thought that might not be a coincidence.'

'Very good,' Tanvi said, taking over from her daughter, 'I'll put a call in for information on Oscar Blakely and, in the meantime, I'd like everyone to start looking into sightings of satyrs, especially in and around New York.'

She had to stay on the line for a while, but eventually Tanvi was put through to someone who'd been in charge of Mister Blakely. The man's posh accent crackled over the line as he spoke, 'I don't really know how best to tell you this but Oscar Blakely is dead.'

'What?!' Tanvi's raised voice earned her stares from the teens.

'He was killed over a year ago, May or April of ninety-nine, if I recall. The details were quite gruesome.'

Her mind was whirring, 'nineteen ninety-nine?'

'Yeah.'

'What happened? What killed him?'

'No one knows who killed him, as for what happened ...'

'I'm a big girl, I can handle it.'

'He was ****, and then they slashed his throat. The cleaning lady had quite a shock, I expect.'

'Thank you ... uh, for the information. Bye.' Tanvi put the phone down immediately after and relayed the information to the group. Except for Valentine and Joshua, whose faces renamed stoical, they were all visibly shocked or appalled. 'So, has anyone found anything?'

Lydia spoke immediately, 'I have, well, um, I don't know how relevant it is but I looked for references to that bounty the cabaret owner, Valerie Dubois, offered. In here, there's a bit of correspondence between a Society person and some kind of demon hunter, and they talk about why so few people are interested. Basically, regular monster hunters don't like her because of her relationships with demons and monsters are uninterested because she's human.'

'That's surprising, actually. I'd have expected her to be a vampire or a succubus. That's a really interesting bit of information, Lydia, but I don't think it helps right now.'

If the girl was annoyed by that comment, she didn't show it, and the group got back to work reviewing satyr sightings. Seemingly onto something, after a while, her daughter abruptly got up and rushed to the foyer, returning with a booklet from the mail tray. 'Mum, look at this,' she said as she raced back to her seat, 'okay, it starts in January, classic satyr case, girl does missing the previous year, comes back dishevelled and pregnant, won't say where she went or who the father is, baby's furry and deformed, our people get involved. This is in Astoria, right, then the guy they sent to investigate, James Robinson, who's literally still on the case, reports that he's tracked a satyr to a park in New Jersey. This is from the monthly news bulletin that just got delivered like a few days ago.'

Tanvi smiled widely at her daughter, 'good work, okay, I'll see if I can get in touch with our man, Robinson.'

Notes:

The rolls here were a little troublesome, because I was trying to get Monster Of The Week to do something that I should've presumably used Mythic Game Master Emulator for. I basically took a bunch of "Investigate A Mystery" move rolls, and tried to make the questions fit. The first roll got me a 7, which I spent on "What Is Being Concealed Here?" and is where I came up with the idea that the address where an auction took place was being hidden.

The next roll was a 12, thanks to "Lore Library", which I spent on "What Kind Of Creature Is It?" and "Where Did It Go?" The difficulty, of course, is that these are questions for a standard monster mystery, so that's when I came up with the idea of the satyr, the fire and the idea of it fleeing to New York, which I could tie back to the guy who made the initial suspicious report. After that, a lot of other things started to fit together in my head.

I then used Lydia's move "Oops!" to add something to the mix, and I decided on this idea that the cabaret owner was human, because the "humanity versus the beast" dichotomy is a theme I'm already quite attached to. After that I rolled another "Investigate A Mystery" roll to wrap things up, and got an 8, which I spent to ask "Where Did It Go?" again, this time in the way I assume it's actually intended.

The chaos factor gets bumped around after each scene but, unfortunately, it never came into play, largely because I wasn't using Mythic properly. Hopefully, it'll become more relevant in my next session/episode, when I know at least slightly more about what I'm doing.