Dark Before Dawn Session Summary: Taylor's Special Door Session

Dr. Jonathon Taylor was coming down off a red pill stolen from the fae realm in the second door session and it left him feeling pretty down, as fae pills tend to do.  He was feeling so depressed he chose to activate his stone to see where it took him.

We held the game in my house so that it looked nice and homely, put a roast in the oven, took out a Christmas tree and put birthday decorations around. When he first stepped into the realm, a set of warped Christmas songs (Very Scary Christmas) was playing and everyone but Seamus O'Baoill (actually a representation of Seamus possessed by the Taylor demon) was pretending to be dead around the table.

When Seamus encouraged Taylor to sit, everyone popped up with a "Surprise!"  There was much laughter and mirth from everyone but Taylor.  Then Siobhan had to blow out the five candles on her deathday cake and Taylor was invited to cut it into slices for them … slices which oozed with jam (representing gore). Although it was ostensibly Siobhan's deathday, Taylor kept being invited to do things as the guest of honour.

There was a rousing game of Pass the Parcel with a note from one of Taylor's old patients beneath each layer which Taylor was invited to read to the table no matter who got to unwrap the layer. The patient notes were sad because they were from children in a palliative care cancer ward but they were also inspiring because they were patients he had legitimately helped as he had never harmed any children.  As you may be starting to realise, the entire thing was a play on his old miseries and horrors designed to either break him or motivate him to actually accomplish his dreams.

His guests tied into such guilt.  His prior self (or rather the Strix he had become) was responsible for Embracing Siobhan (using Dominate on Seamus), torturing and killing both sire and sibling (Hadley and Talitha), and creating the demon that possessed Seamus in Campaign one, everything tied into that. There was also an NPC called Julia Dannenburg who had been spying on him under the guise of a depressed Suicide King present for these festivities.

The final layer of the Pass the Parcel was blood stained and when he opened it he found Nurse Cassandra's skull with a little identifying note. I was also portraying Nurse Cassandra, fetching knives and bringing out the cake, giggling and never speaking (my character's tongue was ripped out but he never really looked at me long enough to notice).

Then there was a game of Musical Chairs. Taylor was very reticent about playing and tried to fail on several occasions but the second-to-last person kept refusing to sit or even walked away saying they'd already lost.  Only a few people were allowed to win on their own.  Siobhan "won" the first time and was really excited for her present but when people started saying her prize was to be tortured, she became very scared and started begging Taylor not to hurt her. When Taylor refused to harm her, Talitha went to do so and when he Dominated her to not hurt her, he instead had to allow her to cut off one of his thumbs.

And then Siobhan eagerly said that they should play Musical Chairs again!

And on they went, though this time the winner was Talitha.

The final time it was Taylor himself who won and Talitha Salvatore tortured him quite well under the gentle instruction of "Seamus O'Baoill" who had dropped his Irish accent in favour of Taylor's odd style of speech. I went off to get dressed as the final NPC (the Evil Queen Fae) as the rest of the Cast poked and prodded him emotionally to see if he would break or harden his resolve. After he made a heartening speech about doing better, the Evil Queen arrived and spoke with him awhile, gave him clues as to how to break Cassandra out of the core and he was allowed to leave.