Notes:
-I find a wikipedia page for Leshies while researching the intraweb. Also find a recipe for water pie as well (depression era food)
-Abe spends time talking with Gideon
-Dip also spends time searching wikipedia for speedrunning videos
-Squiggly goes back to the depot from session one and finds a hidden hatch
-We hit the road next morning with Mayor Wallace and while on the road and while cresting one of the hills Squiggly and I spot the skull of the Nightmare Stag before it disappears, cursing us both.
-The rest of the trip is uneventful.
-We arrive at The Ram’s Head inn which has its door ajar. As we enter we’re hit with a waft of smells and scents that have a strange bluish hue to them.
-We then see a tall, thin man with a bluish hue dressed in wealthy attire, fine silks and fabrics with bright colors, and he has a third arm coming out from under his right arm that is long and gangly. His face has some strange distinctions from a human face, and he doesn’t seem particularly human.
-Weirdly enough, the place feels incredibly friendly, to the point that it feels like even the curse of the Nightmare Stag wouldn’t take effect here.
-He warmly invites us in and offers us any drink of our choice prior to serving the main course, and tells us his name is Sata.
-I try to discern this Sata’s motives and find an insane degree of benevolence that is genuinely terrifying, but a parent who only wants the best for their child.
-We’re served an appetizer of spiced meat skewers with a sumac drizzle. It tastes tangy yet delicious and savory. He serves Dip a meat alternative version with tofu instead.
-Myself, Joseph, Dip, Abe, and Wallace all eat it, while Squiggly avoids eating it, and then Sata left into another room without a window to prepare the next meal and Squiggly took some food samples and other things and tried to see into the room that Sata left into.
-Joseph remembered the day his strength failed him when someone was crushed by an incoming ceremony wagon, and Abe experienced the day of his first sending ceremony. Joseph was bringing in the goods from the Elders during one of the ceremonies of the wagons arriving and someone being chosen, and one of the villagers was crushed by a cart due to an accident. We’re all watching this, and even though Dip and I weren’t there, we are there now.
-(In the original timeline the cart lost control and it rolled down and crushed someone. Only Abe and Joseph were present for that)
-Upon the cart losing control, Joseph tries to bring the cart back under his control and Dip decides to fuck around and do something else. Joseph manages to surprisingly stop the cart, but this changes reality, and there will be consequences.
-Abe rounds up the chosen and crowd into a frenzy to figure out what’s happened and for a brief moment he sees two Josephs, with the real one latched onto the cart, with the old Joseph moving in to follow suit, rewriting history. Abe still delivers the same speech about fate despite the circumstances, partially righting the history. I approach Lucille in the memory and tell her that she’s going back sooner than she expects, and she gives me a hug.
-Dip, the crazy woman she is, finds Rose in the memory and has her project Dip’s memory for Rose to show everything that’s happened in our time. Someone from West Village hears and sees some of this (possibly an Elder narc?)
-Squiggly sees a bunch of different expressions on our faces and collects food samples and a bunch of other stuff and finds that Sata has left to go boxes for her. She asks Sata some stuff and he says “to recall and remember what’s most important in life. What is needed. Um, we only offer the finest of dishes, to evoke the most important of memories or otherwise, because it’s what people need, because some people need comfort in trying times. People will do exactly what they need to do and when they want to do it, just like you have opted not to take part and your comrades have. You have chosen not to experience this and live vicariously an experience like your friends, just like they decided instead to recall. What’s your favorite childhood meal (in reference to Squiggly).
-“I just understand that I am here to help ya’ll” (Sata said this)
-Squiggly remembers the original event but now recalls that the events we changed in Joseph's memories are what now actually happened.
-When Joseph tastes the last bite, he notices the drizzle is no longer sumac, its sweeter, almost like an almond glaze (cause it's a sweet memory now).
-Wallace seems to have not noticed that anything has changed? Maybe this was all an attempt to get us here.
-For the next course, Sata provides two trays of pies called bastila, a treat offered during Wagon arrival ceremonies, a flakey pie filled with meat, egg, coriander, and saffron, an overall sweet dish.
-The memory is of Squiggly being taught how to make the bastila pies, and it was a satisfying moment because it was the first time Squiggly saw the effort of their actions come to fruition. Abe, who is also there, seems to understand that Priest Magamar is supposed to be there, but isn’t for some odd reason. We’re all working on the pies.
-Abe and I try to find where Magamar is, and in the process I ask Councilwoman Vani. She informs us that he’s supposed to be with Councilwoman Rose about an hour or so from now and that she doesn’t know where he normally goes after that fact.
-Squiggly goes back and leaves notes for herself about all the times she got caught doing bad stuff, doing so successfully.
-Abe and I manage to sneak out of the front gate in the memory by lying about Atani having forgotten his lunch and Rose gives us a letter to give to Magamar when we find him.
-Magamar doing his traditional communing “please, I have to recollect my thoughts” and is clearly wearing some kind of earbuds.
-I read the letter Rose gives me before forging the wax seal on it again: It’s a request for the goods being shipped that are coming in for the shop to be delivered. Sudo will also be at the shop with Rose, so she can make her delivery as usual.
-Magamar says “two birds one stone” in response to reading the letter from Rose, maybe he’s altering their memories in some capacity or another?
-Squiggly (now in Rose’s shop) is investigating a puzzle box she once broke in there when she was younger (still in the memory) and manages to open it, finding a set of finely crafted clock hands, an hour, minute, and second hand, similar to the clock tower. Alongside them is a piece of quartz that goes with them. Rose then enters the shop with Sudo, and after so Squiggly hears Rose saying, “The shipments are supposed to come in and I believe Magamar wants you to meet you in particular. He was very insistent that he had something for you”
-Something falls from the cart and Abe and I find another cypher like the burner phone and hear a familiar voice (dunno who) from Jenkins’ camp: “I don’t give a damn how fast it goes. I need more people, we’re meeting the quota. I don’t care if it causes instability, just get it done.” Magamar says “but the people, it's such a harsh pressure on the community, the people can’t keep suffering. I might tear the community apart.” The voice says “Magamar, I won’t ask again, get it done.” This seems like the tail end of the conversation, and Magamar looks grumpy afterwards, and has something under his arm and is heading ahead.
-Squiggly sees Magamar hand something to Councilman Sudo before we all come out of the memory.
-Dip, who is out of the dream/memory, finds that the door to the weird room Sata keeps going into with no windows is ajar. Dip manages to open the door, and Sata is on the other side, and the room is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It looks like the inside of a Tardis. There’s smoke billowing in jagged fractal patterns, and the same type of thing is in Sata’s eyes. Dip feels like everything she knows is a lie, but it isn’t, but it is. Sata says he’s never been here before, and he’s not a time traveler. He stops Dip from going further into the room for her own safety.
-Sata brings out the final course, a dessert of dark chocolate cherry and anise cake.
-As we all dive in, it’s my memory. We see little me, lost in the scrub. I’m looking for a child I don’t know yet is Atani in the scrub during a lightning storm. There’s hostility in the air, a howl in the distance, whether it be wind or worse. As young Amati scrambles off into the scrub, Dip runs to scoop him up, and lightning flashes and blinds her, and then he’s gone.
-As a group we follow, getting closer and closer. We hear in the distance a low lullaby “Hush now, hide, all you little ones, rush now, into the middle of nowhere, singing and laughter will die”, which gets louder and louder, as we come across the depot.
-We go into the hatch that Squiggly found, and in the depot is a cut in reality with an OSR man in a white lab coat in the middle of it with goggles on his face. He says “This might be it, yes yes!”, as claws reach through the gap.
-Both little Amati and Atani scream as the skull enters from the rift, almost not like a skull at first, like a deer or moose as the flesh peels off of its face as it steps through, screaming. There’s equipment here that we've never seen OSR use before, at least in West Village. The being slashes out in rage, causing equipment to begin to collapse on the kids as more than the creature begins to erupt from the rift.
-Squiggly and Joseph save little Amati and Atani. Dip pulls the scientist away from the portal as he’s attacked (his name is Dr. Moreau) and then the portal collapses in. I took Dr. Moreau’s notes and shoved them down a hatch in the hopes that someone can claim them in the future.
-Dip falls backwards, being sucked into the portal, and hits the Nightmare Stag and it looks at her and its flesh starts to reform as they go back into the portal and go into a green forest with greenery and vibrancy, and it then throws Dip back through the portal into a wall in our reality, seemingly trying to save her. Dip thinks she hears a voice, but its gone.
-As the portal closes, thunder ripples through the air, and the memory fades as we’re back in the restaurant.
-I try to punch the Mayor who is being obnoxious about the food not knowing the events that just happened, and Sata stops me, telling me the meal is concluded.
-I get the feeling that the Nightmare Stag is still somehow somewhere in the scrubs despite what happened in the memory.
-After the meal we return to the village and though we see the Nightmare Stag along the way, it doesn’t stun Squiggly and I despite our curse.
-Little Amati and Atani forgot the events of that one night because they both experienced extreme alienation causing them to forget the circumstance