Last night Patrick, Tracy, Josh, and I played a “quick” game of My Life with Master. (Unfortunately, Jeff’s schedule and Josh’s prevented us from saving Lady Blackbird once again. We’ll save her one day soon.)
A villainous, nameless Master haunted a dark woods in lower Moldovia; often coalescing into the form of billowing mist or a dark cloaked figure with tendrils of fog snaking.
He was loyally served by Killian, who could seep through walls when not observed. Unfortunately, Killian was crippled by a fear of the illness in buildings and refused to breathe while inside one.
Darva maintained a house and baked cookies like a normal resident of the benighted town… but her words were incomprehensible to those grounded by work. She was supernaturally persuasive to children and the elderly… she racked up quite a body count in her service.
Alexi was traumatized by the death of his religious parents; he giggled whenever he read christian texts. He had the power to read anything, though… and he stuttered uncontrollably unless he was reading.
Let’s just say that they were horrible, horrible people.
Alexi attempted to corrupt Father Plankovich with a dark grimoire, and brought a dear librarian, Tilly, with him to the Vicscount’s home, where he punched the butler and dashed up the stairs, stole a book, and crashed through the windows to the unforgiving ground below. When he returned to the Master, he read out bloody and complicated rituals that set all of the minions on grisly tasks.
Killian began by terrorizing the men in a local fort, setting the barracks of fire with guardsmen inside, and throwing a guard walking the wall through the burning roof. Later he led a group of town elders to lurk behind trees and fire on a patrol of soldiers as they crossed the bridge into the woods; cloaking the soldiers in dank fog as he rushed forward and plunged his hatchet into their skulls.
Darva began by convincing her “sister”, Agnes, to wait until her parents were asleep, then take her clothes down to the living room and throw hot coals on the drapes, furniture, and her own heaped clothes. Later she had the children in the town’s orphanage join her at the side of the river; the largest bashed in a child’s head, then ran to attack approaching adults while she snapped the necks of the remaining younglings. The evening ended with her trying to acquire a platter of fear; two dozen prisoners for their waithlike master and his brethren to devour deep in the woods.
In the end, Alexi’s love for Tilly led him to resist a final fiendish command by the master, and brought peace to the land. Alexi and Darva integrated into the town. Killian “died” during an exorcism in the church, but a cloud of dank mist fled from his lungs out the windows… a new master in the making.