Talking About the Weather (OOC)

Quite right. That makes that whole aspect icky. Let's avoid that.

Popular media has depicted it that way, interlinking vampires with sex, but that is merely part of the marketing. Elliot's focus is on the 'power' point of the 'money, sex and power' triangle, with 'money' being a means to that end. 'Sex' mainly features into it as part of his attempt to lure more people in. He wants Emma's to help him build his image, so he is playing along, but his work to keep the previous feeding as pleasant for her as possible left it a mostly bland, like giving blood.
Boy, are the neighbors ever going to talk about the new tenant who walked her giant tortoise into the lift. :)

Sorry guys, but I'll be off from tomorrow to Wednesday next week (so, Aug 28th to Sept 4th). Travelling again, and I'm afraid I'll have no availability to post. Given this, perhaps it's better if Jacob doesn't go to see Elliot, or you can just leave him waiting at the entrance.

Then let's leave Jacob with Lizabeth? Rather not leave her alone, after all?

Do you want to retcon the 'invitation' and have Teddy say 'no', or retcon the whole introduction and leave Jacob with the car? Or do you want to show us Jacob deciding to not go?

Okay, I just posted to state Jacob finally decides not to go, he's afraid that Elliot wouldn't be happy to see him around when he was not invited, and this could somehow backfire on Benji.

You guys can decide how you want to put your characters together.

Does Elliot designate Benji as the 'someone' who will provide the answers Emma needs and deal with her dress shopping? Does he assume Benji has the means to navigate the political situation and find out where the soirée is and how to get funds/payments/accounts for a dress? Does he?

Or does Emma latch onto Benji for her own reasons? Does she see him as a way to get out of this tense situation? Does she see him as another interesting vampire for her to study? Does she wait outside as Benji talks to Elliot and ambush him on the way out (as opposed to being told to wait for him)?

Does Emma try to get in on Benji's meeting, or try to overhear it? How?

Or does Benji offer to help Emma for some reason? This seems a weaker connection, but all options are open.

Anything else is fair game too.

I think we will have to do our shopping through the doors, they don't let you take the dresses away when you window shop and the fitting options are sparse. :)

Someone will have to vouch for Emma, that she is allowed to 'spend on Elliot's account'. Any vampire in his Faction should be able to do that with a shopkeeper in the know, so we can delegate Benji to do it if we want. A little power-play from Elliot? Or just: 'you are here and have nothing better to do (for me), take care of this'? That gives Benji the motivation, but turns Emma into a bit of a burden. Benji probably wants to get back to his protection of Lizabeth, so he is unlikely to want Emma around without some external motivation, using Elliot as the lever fixes our problems?

The other obvious choice would be Teddy. :)
I think it would need a little effort to get in on that meeting. There is a powerful artifact in play and Elliot probably does not want everyone knowing he has interests and possible access. You might be able to have him, now, consider you part of his retinue and therefore 'on his side', but that paints Elliot as a bit naive for his position, which is fine if we want to go that route.

If you, the player, want to be part of the conversation, then we don't want to leave it up to dice. But if you are happy for Emma to be left in the dark on that topic we can have you wait and try to make the meeting as fast as possible.

Leaving you out of Elliot's conversation about Lizabeth could also help Benji trust you and not assume you are interested just as Elliot's spy. You might have to show some defiance to Elliot to get Benji's trust, but you can do that while pumping him for information while shopping?

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We can arrange for Benji to find out about the soirée tonight. It might be a chance to meet-and-greet, which could be valuable.

• Would Benji want to go to such a thing? We can provide hints that it might help his current situation to provide the motivation, or he could be 'forced' to go and attend to Emma? As a 200+ year-old vampire he might be expected to attend, though maybe people don't actually expect him to actually attend? :)

These hob-nob parties are usually a good way to gain power. Jacob may want to attend, and we can deal with getting him an invitation, as he can increase his networking and find people to ask about this damnable book. There are bound to be all sorts of people, from all walks of life, so you all may get to Put Faces to Names and possible gain a whole new 'level' in this society. :)

He’s a pretty open book so he’ll be happy to answer her questions once they get chatting. We just need an excuse for them to continue talking after this scene with Elliot. Maybe we use the shopping trip vagueGM proposed as an opportunity for Emma and Benji to get acquainted and for Emma to pepper Benji with questions?
Both, perhaps? The latter is kind of a power play too
I like that! Benji feels like a bit of an odd duck among other vampires, so I don’t think he would usually attend such events, but maybe they send him invitations anyway, not expecting him to actually turn up.
Either could work!

Wha? I did not add those to the templates‽ Now I have to remember the process. :(

Let me know when I can safely edit your sheet to add that, we don't want edit conflicts.

Also, should I move the Let It Out Abilities to somewhere more noticeable? Like below the Moves as in the Reference sheet [ref]? If so, everyone should let me know when I can do that for them or do it themselves, that is a h3, for the record.

Done.

No worries. We seem to have assumed/arranged that vampires also shop during the day, so we can leave that part for tomorrow and let you get back to David.
If you really think you will need it. My experience with separate threads is that people get confused and messy about keeping them separate and, in the long run, they make it harder to follow what happened. If we are disciplined about keeping what should be in them only in them (which is not always possible where they are not also very separate in the fiction) then they can help.
My concern is that we won't have answers to your questions yet. I don't know what sort of questions you are thinking about, but most questions about the world are probably better answered in the fiction as they come up. When it does come up, we can flash back to this supposed conversation to see how Emma learned a thing that would have been handled here.

Let me know if you need that thread.

Unless you think think the shopping storyline will go on much longer than the next four days (when gnomius is expected back) and you want to overlap it with 'main events' like the ball, it still fits in the current RP thread, I would think.

We also need to conciser how much of Benji's 'personal life' actually has answers, so your questions might run into a wall of 'I don't know that yet, let's play to find out?'. This is not a criticism or a problem, just something to bear in mind while asking in character questions not related to current events.

@Delirium you don’t have to actually answer that, I just thought it was funny :P
I don’t think Benji’s stepped foot in a clothing store in quite a while…

Probably the shopping trip will happen after gnomius gets back, right? Emma still has her scene with David to do and Benji will need to check on Lizabeth and then help Jacob with the statues in Hyde Park (once gnomius is back). Maybe, when we get to it, we could start the shopping trip in the main thread and then, if it’s taking too long, we could migrate it to another thread?
I’m happy to make stuff up! It occurs to me that Benji answering Emma’s questions could very well qualify for Benji’s Keep Your Friends Close Move (When you figure someone out by helping them indulge a true hunger, take a 10+ instead of rolling. If they are in your Circle, take +1 ongoing to act on the answers to your questions until time passes.) so maybe the questions will go both ways :)

I was going to ignore the Hyde Park bit of your message even before we started this conversation. :)
Let's not force a wait for absent players if we don't need to. There is no time pressure on the book Scheme (aside from wanting the Advance), so it can happen afterwards. Though it does seem like a more interesting solution than getting answers from the party-goers, so we should try to shoehorn it in, even if we do it out of sequence.

Jacob does not have an invitation to this soirée, we can talk about if the is unusual and if he wants to make a plan to go (forger, after all :) when the player is back. (There are no +1s, so Elliot has to arrange an invite for Emma, so that is kind of a big deal (one she might not appreciate yet :)).
Those may well take us till gnomius is back. Let's play it by ear. It is easy to have Jacob be busy with work till those events line up.

We can also leave it up to gnomius whether Jecob stayed with Lizabeth after parting ways. Your port leaves that open.

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That is the theory anyway. I have seldom seen that work out any better than preemptively starting a new thread. By the time it becomes apparent a new thread would have been the right thing it is usually too late and confusing to swap for the end of it. Similarly when making new threads for single purposes I almost always see them end up too short to have bothered.

It is always a delicate balancing act. :(
Absolutely. That does seem like her 'True Hunger' (at this time). So Elliot's power-play of foisting her off on you feeds into your wants and desires. No need to tell Elliot that. :)

It will be up to you two, as you play the scene, when, or even if, the Moves need to come into play. Emma could roll Figure Someone Out to cap the number of questions, but that seems a bit low and they are not exactly the sort of questions she is wanting to gossip about. I suggest we just roleplay it, while noting that we are Triggering Benji's Move. This seems like a rather easy trigger to come back to later when you need the mechanics.