Eleventh Session
Nikoli and Ned found the group that Ned said could help us out. They connected to Nikoli’s node, then through me to Eddie, and my dog on Dee, to everyone else on Dee. They start to discuss things, but there’s no time. I get a connection on Lupus, and give them all a live feed of the situation. This kicks everyone into gear. Given the situation I’ll excuse their lack of awe at getting a live feed from a distant settlement.
On Lupus, I track down Merlin Huntington. He is the person the terrorist is looking for, and second in command on Lupus. I introduce myself via his computer. He’s tracking the events of the terrorist, so he is at least aware of what’s going on. Actually he’s in a storage container with 4 guards. There’s enough room for everyone else to arrive as well. But before that happened, I tell Huntington that the terrorist is a nanite creature controled by two devices in his forehead and hand. He requests that if we can help, to arrive there. He provides a shot of where he’s at and Ariona is able to bring everyone else in.
Huntington’s plan is to bomb the place in 10 minutes, so time is short. Aparently something we did caused the terrorist to stumble for a moment.
Ariona plays her flute and creates a portal to near where Bryant is. Everyone rushes him. A memeber (Matt) of the other group fires an antimatter gun at Bryant and destoyes everything in a 20ft raduis, which (thanks to some quick dodging) no one in the group was affected. I wish they would let me know if they plan on doing things like this. I tried to send the video to Dee, but he didn’t respond. I sent it to my dog instead to try and remove evidence of the gun. Unfortunatly they still had a live feed turned on. Hopefully the authorities will cut the feed and only hav e a few copies of the recordings, but I don’t know if that’s the case yet.
Anyways, it destroyed the figure, and created a hole in the floor, but everything was covered in nanites, so there was plenty of him left around to reform.
Lot of chaos ensued. Here’s a quick highlight reel: Matt cast attack magic at Huntington, Meechum changes into a wolf like creature and back again, Nikoli uses his rust monster tenticle to uncover one of the human statues, Zee breathes fire on a bunch of statues(people encases in nanites).
Then a bunch of nanites startings flying at Huntingon, Rae hits it with magic, then Huntington disappears (before it hits). The terrorist reforms and shouts “This is all your fault, Cohen!”. (Note to self, see who Cohen is).
Zee hits the terrorist with another blast, which seems to be quite effective. One of the glyphs appear on him and explodes. Ariona tries to talk some sense into Bryant, but with disasterous results. A mouth forms in his chest, and then shouts out ‘Consume!’. He, and all the other nanite covered objects (and people) explode.
Ned and Ariona pass out after nanites fly everywhere. The nanite goo starts flowing downstairs. A large section of it drops as the crown on the lower floor. I come out of one of the cameras and grab it to get it out of here. Don’t need any more craziness with the crown at the moment.
While I’m picking up the crown, Huntington returns to the basesment, shouts at the goo, and sends an electric blast at it.
I grab the crown and leave through a connection. I try my dog but… <curtis needs to fill in this blank>.
The rest of the group finds that Bryant survived and ported away to his office. He appeared there only for a moment before porting again (checked the logs).
Questions: What’s up with Dee? Where did Bryant go? How much was broadcast, and how much was just stored? What will the reactions to our actions be? Did they broadcast any images of me grabbing the crown?
Twelth Session
Dee shot my dog!
While we were out dealing with Bryant, Dee’s droid started unloading all his cargo, including the dog and Cain. When I appeared, he refered to me as “Organic life form, you are not wanted. Please leave.”. I went back into my dog, and that was okay. But I tried to check his logs to see what had happened, and this was not okay. He ended up shooting the dog as I went back to my fish.
Nikoli chanced Bryant to his office, but he had already left. He came by my dorm as a safe place to hide out until things get figured out, though it wasn’t long before we had to leave.
Back on Lupus, Khan wanted to see us, not that I’m supprised. He has the recordings of the Bryant incident to hold over us, so everyone else goes. I keep tabs on it through Nikoli’s computer after delivering the crown. Nikoli notices that Sulfer has a gliph attached to the crown, and after confering with Huntington, they destroy it. Then they get carted off to see Khan.
Unfortunatly, they recorded me taking the crown, so Khan demanded that I show up as well, so I did. Speaking through the compter wasn’t good enough. I did take the sword as my walking stick though.
Huntington defended us and our actions to Khan, but he wanted to be sure that we weren’t allies of McLean (whoever that is).
Khan want’s huntington to read our minds, which, after much discussion and reluctance, happens. However, he doesn’t read our minds, he insteaed convays some information.
“I’m sure the rest of you realize that this is a farce. But, to placate Khan. . . .”
The result of this is that we agreed to help Huntington with the crown (well, allow him to help us).
Then Zee wanted the crown… he started shaking and the crown turns into a tophat. His face turns into a white mask. He gains white gloves and a suit that is half white and half black. He leaps/flips twards the door, whipping out a cane from his suit and slashing the door open.
Huntington engulfs the figure in a ball of fire, leaving only the hat. No idea what happened to the figure, if he left, or if he was incinerated.
Then we started fighting over the crown. I ended up taking it and leaving until things calmed down. Unfortunatly this only escalated things further. He said I had 10 seconds to return it. He started counting, but as he reached 7 (from 10) then his rail guns went off.
After the burst, which all of our group survived, Huntington arrived and ‘convinved’ Khan that everything was fine, and that we cooperated fully.
I created a connection to Huntington’s palmtop with the intention of having him let us know when he’s ready to study the crown.
Now the question is, what the heck happened to Dee?
Thirteenth Session
Need notes posted!!!
A decent night sleep will do wonders, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. Unfortunately, a hacker’s work is never done. I was excepting a response from Nikolai, or a solid night of sleep. After-all, we were resting in a military compound on Lupus, and I was sleeping inside of a computer. But a hand woke me up instead. The hand belonged to Sartus Morningdew, Adana Cassenti’s personal body guard. I don’t know how he managed to get inside the network, or to find me, but he did, after only 3 hours of sleep.
He was almost completely drained, but he needed my help. He managed to pull Adana into the network where she’ll be safe, but neither he, nor Benek Tolorin (Evan Cassenti’s bodyguard) have the strength to get her out. He knows of no one else who could get her out, so here he was. I’d like to know how he got into the network, but only Benek Tolorin could answer that for me.
As for WHY Adana needs rescuing… Time for a little recap. We were hiding Cain on Dee at the request of William Moss and the Caretaker. There was an approaching threat (the same entity that destroyed Percipi) and a ritual that involved joining Cain to Luna is their proposed defense against this threat. This ritual will be similar to the formation of the caretaker out of Gaea and Emanuel, only this time it will combine Cain and Luna. Anyways, we were hiding Cain on Dee, but were called away to help deal with a situation on Lupus involving a terrorist threatening the mystic port (see session 11).
So what does this have to do with Adana? Well, while we were out on Lupus, several organic ships attacked Dee in an attempt to regain possession of Cain. She wanted to make sure the ritual was the only way to proceed before allowing it to happen. But, Dee became enraged, destroyed the ships, didn’t respond to me when I arrived earlier. Destroying the ships didn’t satisfy his rage, so he went to Luna. There he destroyed Magi-tek, (which freed Mordred..) and attacked the heart-tree. Adana was trying to protect the heart-tree when she was nailed to it by several driods with rail-guns (once through each wrist and foot). Sartus’s hand appeared and pulled Adana into the network. The caretaker than showed up and managed to end the attack. I believe that Dee left after that.
So much for trying to work together.
Anyways.. So after getting Sartus’s message, I leave Ariona a message as her alarm, which I set to go off, which said "Sorry to disturb you. Very imporant, just press play." I had left a transcript with my conversation with Sartus on Nikoli’s computer.
Shhhh be verwy verwy quiet, I’m hunting foolish elven CEOs… well just one actually. Sartus told me she was in a secure Network on Luna, and that Magitek had been destroyed. That leaved the university and the Pax grid. Since the only network near the heart tree was the Pax sensor grid, I started there. I found her in a sensor node, though this one was a little different than the rest. It seemed to glow with an energy similar to mine. I will definitely have to check this out again when I have more time.
After finding and questioning her, I took her hand and brought her out of the network near the heart tree. Many gaeans were in the area trying to repair the damage. They were hopeful about the health of the heart tree. Magitek, however, was another story. The building was now nothing but a pile of rubble.
Ariona became impatient because I didn’t take time to update her every 2 seconds or so, so she used her flute to bring herself, Vitto, and Meechum through. Once I saw the portal, I told her not to come because the area was guarded by gaians, but, as can be expected, she didn’t listen. They started helping in the recovery efforts. Vito went to check out the Magitek building, specifically the lowest basement. Ariona helped pump some healing magic into the heart tree. Adana goes to speak to Luna.
After everyone is finished, Ariona uses her flute to bring us to Nikoai. There we look up some data on Mordred We find out he was the son of Morgan Le Fay. She taught him the black arts, and he defeated Arthur in battle. Mordred survived only because he stored his life essence in his finger tip, which he severed.
Ah.. rest. A decent night’s sleep will do wonders.
Before he disappeared, Sartus said, "Don’t fear your new powers. I see you have been afraid to use them, but they can only serve to help you, as long as you protect that which you have brought here."
I’m not sure exactly means by what I have brought here. Maybe he’s referring to the magic that I have, or the energy that I seem to hold. I wonder how he knows about any of this, especially since I don’t think that I’ve met him before. I should look into it more.
He also mentioned that Magitek would reward me greatly, though there doesn’t seem to be much Magitek left.
Fourteenth Session
We have arrived point where Dee dropped our stuff. We’re riding in the Grey Storm, which is a ship that Nikoli borrowed from his father. Fortunately, the remains of my dog are still there. Unfortunately Cain, and anything of real value were gone. There were remains from several organic ships that attacked Dee. I haven’t seen, or even heard of anything like this. I asked Adana Cassenti about the ships, but she was quite busy. She has Pax, and Magitek’s recovery to handle, as well as managing research about the void to worry about.
According to Adam (Dee’s droid, but no longer connected to Dee), the organic ships attacked by sending an electric pulse along vines that touched the ship. Dee, on the other hand, seemed to be able to use Miller 2 to enhance his weapons.
Adam noticed that some asteroids were slightly out of place. Eventually they figured out that the displacement was caused by Dee’s gravitic wake, and that of another ship which happened to leave the exact same way we arrived from. We didn’t detect any ships on the way it, but they could have been cloaked. If that was the case, they would have been heading back to where Nikoli came from, Arcadia.
So off to Arcadia we go.
I was just about to check on Adana Cossenti, but I got a message from Jasmine.
Email from Jasmine:
Video: distraught and crying. Her past week. Everything’s gone wrong, everyone’s turned against her. She can’t stay here, has to get out, hep me.
From France. Cheap Hotel.
I asked Vitto to help out, but I checked on her in her room. I enter the room invisible to check it out. Everything seems okay, so I try to calm her down. She tries to explain that she was on Canis when Ariona opens a portal into her room. Vitto comes in invisible and checks out the area. He becomes visible and says that there’s a tracker in the hall that would have seen her come in. She didn’t react well to Vitto’s presence, or the portal.
She was concerned that my friends will all turn against me. I manage to placate her and we go through the portal to join everyone else on the Grey Storm.
Adam leads us to a comfortable room on the ship, where I calmed her down some more, and managed to get a little history from her.
Her story starts on Canis…
Daniel Ocean (stole the crown when Bryant was looking to buy it from the Volkovs) was teaching her some things. Things went sour there and he left her to die when troops were deployed.
Ran away from home, why she ended up on Canis, but she cares about her sisters. 2 of them snuck away from home to visit her on Canis. then the war started, they tried to run, and her sisters were crushed, but somehow she survived.
She was teleported to earth by a nice lady?
told her parents, fight, exiled and disowned.
She was middle of 5. She was visited by sisters 2 and 4.
Eight years ago there was an accident that should have killed her parents (shuttle collision) and her. And since that day she has been lucky, and since that it’s only worked for her. She believes that the world is out to get her.
She made money gambling… but was eventually banned from any and all gambling establishments…
Then she fell asleep. Sleep sounded quite good….
…
We woke up in the Pax University’s network. I’m not sure how we got there. Later Vitto told us that we blinked a few times, and then vanished. Apparently we were gone for quite a few hours. Jasmine was wowed by the experience.
I lead her back to the Grey Storm, and we reappeared in the same room that we left.
Vitto tries to offer Jasmine a job, but now is not the time. She’s been through a lot, and doesn’t trust Vitto. Can’t really blame her. I trust that Vitto needs me (us even more), so he wants to keep us around.
We get to Arcadia and meet with Nikoli’s father, Boris. He confirms that the rest of the stuff is around. Nikoli gets us a guest house to use as a base. Jasmine and I stayed there while other members checked out the City looking for clues at to Cain’s where-abouts. Vitto also stayed with us.
Eventually Nikoli and Ariona track Cain down. He’s talking to a captain of the ship which found the wreckage. It seems like they have been very successful raiders. I took Jasmine with me through the network, but there is no outside connection into the bunker that leads to the port where the ship is docked.
Soon everyone else shows up, I produce a keycard from the code that they got from the crew, and in we go. I could access the network once inside. But anyways, when we went inside, there was a greeting room with a large black man inside. Nikoli says that the Lutenant sent them, and that they are there to talk to the boss. The black man then disappears through a doorway down a hallway. I follow him on the network, but he does through a another door, but there’s now survailence in there. I try to access his jack, but something is keeping a close eye on it.
Jasmine notices a few things in the room that we’re waiting in that aren’t to her liking. I check through the network and there are quite a few traps laid for this room. I go ahead and disable them.
The black man comes back and leads us back to the room he was just in. Inside the room is Cain… and something else. Cain takes a little yellow marble out from his newly installed jack and says he won’t be needing it any more. Then a black tendril comes out of his head to crush the marble and absorb something from it. The black man reacts poorly to this, and tries to stop him, but is killed by Cain for his effort. Apparently the marble was a zodiac computer. Impressive technology, even if it is several hundred years old.
Cain is willing to come with us, but he is missing a droid servant that was sent to Laboro. He wants him back before he’s willing to travel. So off to Laboro we go.
We get there, and I query the network for this droid’s location, and it tells me where he is, but also that he’s preaching to the children?!? Some of the party runs off in that direction. Adam is some kind of celebrity, ‘the first’. Apparently Dee has been here (is still here) and has freed many more AIs, out target among them. Adam stands up, smiles and says, “I must go. My creator wishes to speak with me.” Reality shifts, and Adam disappears.
Fourteen S (Saturday Guest Session)
What have we done? I thought that the ritual was going to save us from this impending doom, but yet it seems to have brought it. I don’t know if the doom will happen, or if it would have happened soon anyways, and maybe the ritual has created something that can stop it, but I just don’t know.
We’re all fleeing the scene, as we were told to evacuate the system. Again, not what I was expecting.
But here I’m starting at the end, but most of the preceding details seem unimportant now. Alfadir took the crown and used it to command Cain and Luna to join. Luna was reluctant and referred to Cain as a bad man. The result looks like a 9 year old girl and goes by the name of Lilith.
The ritual took place inside a protective barrier, but that didn’t mean that everything ran smoothly. As Cain ingests the souls from a onyx stone knows as the oversoul, two jets of light leap from the crown towards Cain. Zee and Huntington stop them, then absorb them into the now empty oversoul.
Also the man with the black and white top hat makes an appearance. And Zee is still with us as well. He ended up incinerated yet again.
Mordred also made an appearance, but he was outside the barrier. Oh yes.. outside the barrier the rest of my usual group was involved in fighting a wave of Gaea’s Order. Unfortunately, someone disabled the weapon systems in the surveillance system, so I couldn’t just mow them down. I did blast a few fireballs in the field to help Gareld make it to Mordred.
I gave Gareld his sword back, as he could put it to much better use than I. Also we had agreed to give it back at some point, and that point seemed like now.
Oh, and as a side note, I took Jasmine to the same glowing node that I found Adona Casenti in. She was looking around the node and became frantic. She saw that I was to die. "All the lines, it’s a spiral, all the lines go there." She wanted to get out, but we just moved to another node for a moment.
"It was true, and maybe there’s notingI can do , but I have to try, I’ll find a way to save you. Maybe if I destroy that writing, then it won’t happen."
Other nodes have different writings about all kinds of things. But she keeps seeing lines in the other nodes that lead back to the one that says I’m going to die.
I don’t know what to do with this. If it’s unavoidable, then what can I do. She can’t tell me any details, such as where or when. And most people die eventually, so maybe it means eventually. But why would someone write that. The only thing I can think of is to ask Noun. Unfortunatly, I don’t know where he is, nor do I have a connection to anyone in his group. Actually I’d probably have to talk to Pronoun, but it’s the same thing.
Fifteenth Session
Ritual Prep - take 2.
On Laboro, Dee has obviously been busy. Dee has freed most, if not all, of the AIs from the Lore chip. Bruce, our target, was disappointed, but he was willing to come with us. Ariona opened a portal for us all to return to Arcadia,
We got back to Cain, and while he was dismayed that Bruce had changed, but was going to work with it.
I tried to examine Scorpio’s state from before his soul was eaten by Cain. I found a few interesting looking files, but he had strong defenses. The first document is Scorpio.plan which appears to contain a cashflow spreadsheet with information about selling various Gaian organs for large profit, upgrading the Supernova, and bringing various parts back to something called Boneyard 47. There’s also something called Treasure.arr! which has the payout distribution for the pirate crews. It also contains references to various other documents which may contain more important information.
Our next trial was to find a ride. The well fortified warship seemed like a good option. Unfortunately, the ship was still loyal to Scorpio. After being shown a video of Scorpio’s demise, he appeared to accept it, but he wanted revenge… on Cain….
It warmed up it’s lasers and shot at Cain. Unfortunately, this happened before I could shut them down. The shots knocked Cain out, and left him bleeding. I threw up a wall of force in front of the lasers to block them as other people got Cain out of the room. I gave my remaining doses of OJ to Jasmine and instructed her to bring them to Vito, who then fed it to Cain over the next several round. After several doses, Cain started improving.
The ship takes off. I manage to get logged into the ship, disable the weapons, and land the ship. Otherwise Boris might try and take the ship down, which would be a shame.
We end up taking off on the Grey Storm, and head towards the moon.
Next up, Vitto’s meeting.
Ariona opened a portal for Nikoli and Vitto to get to earth. I hid with Jasmine in Nikoli’s computer.
Vittorio sits down in a Japanese hibachi restaurant at about five minutes before the meeting time. Around twenty minutes later, an extremely nervous-looking man walks in, and sits at the table next to Vittorio. He tells Vittorio that something bad is going down. It’s happening tonight. “Your father’s in on it! They’re all in on it! Everybody’s going to die!” At this point, Vittorio’s contact begins coughing violently, and quickly collapses on the table in convulsions.
The hibachi chef stops his display and attempts to perform CPR, as Nikolai is beckoned over and attempts to target the man with healing magic. However, when he tries, he discovers that he cannot target the contact with his effect. Nikolai and Vittorio realize that his soul has already escaped.
Harry Bryant had contracts with many members of Vitto’s organization. They all gave their souls (and the souls of their families) to the Caretaker. The souls are required for the ritual. It’s unfortunate that many innocent family members souls were taken, as well as Vitto’s organization weakened, but if they are required for the ritual, taking them from crime families might be one of the best sources for souls.
Vitto is unlikely to agree, especially as his family would be included in this. He gets Ariona to open a portal to his parent’s home. He goes in with Ariona, Nikoli, and Unity. Both of his parents start to convulse. Ariona notices that nanites are responsible. Nikoli tries to heal Vitto’s father, but the results aren’t what one would hope. While it seems like he might have stopped the nanites, Bryant had a plan B. Abaddon steps out of dark smoke into the room and take’s Vitto’s father’s soul with his Scythe. Everyone flees through the portal back onto the ship.
Vitto remembered that this event caused the rift between him and Bryant. Vitto didn’t think that the Caretaker would support actions this drastic, though I’m not sure any more if he’s correct. Bryant sent Vitto an email saying "I’m sorry" but Vitto didn’t want to deal with it right then.
Everyone retires for the night. Well, at least Jasmine and I do. Nikolai has news for us in the morning. The ritual is to take place in about 10 hours. We’re about nine hours from Luna, so everything seems to be right on schedule….
Also, Adana Cassenti sends Ariona an email basicly saying that she’s out of options, so she will support the ritual. We’ll probably still face considerable opposition, but her with her support, the strength of the opposition is weakened.
I take Jasmine through the network to Luna to help with the preparations.
Sixteenth Session
(need notes posted)
The ritual - take 2.
Before forming the barrier, Ariona opened a portal to Noun for me. I walked through with Jasmine and greeted Noun. We greeted him, and I explained that I needed his advice on something. I brought him, Pronoun, and Jasmine to the white node in Pax. Jasmine pointed out the message about my death to Noun.
If this is accurate, there are multiple points where I die within a time frame of weeks to months. While there are multiple points, all paths lead to one of them. Noun observes that my opposite seems to be forcing all the paths to these results. Jasmine protests that she’s the only thing not trying to kill me.
We discuss this, and the results we are seeing are effectively the results of a simulation of the universe. However this simulation doesn’t take into account certain factors. These certain factors are the same as the ‘glowies’ as Vito calls them. So me, Jasmine, Nikoli, and Noun all have the possiblity of creating an effect that was not taken into account by the simulation.
I can do nothing but continue to live my life as I would. Jasmine is still worried, and not totally convinced, but she’s going to say with me (not leave like she was thinking of when Noun was explaining that she was the cause the paths.)
Noun also comments that I create order around me. I would only assume that the "black glowies" create chaos. Maybe the writings mean that chaos is going to win?
…
What’s going on here? This is an interesting place to have Deja Vu, but what does it mean? Everything about the ritual seemed familiar, but some of it felt wrong. I don’t know how else to explain it. As events transpired, everything seemed familiar, as if it had already happened, or at least already happened to me. But not everything happened as I expected. Every once in a while I would remember something before it happened, but usually it seemed to come to me as it happened. How this differs from just experiencing something is hard to describe.
Ariona was here, inside the bubble, at least at the start of the Ritual, but I’m not sure she should have been. When the black and white top hat figure appeared, she blasted it with some fire magic. It seemed like that bolt should have come from Matt.
I sensed Rae was going to be summoned away before she left. I managed to hack a connection to her computer and get a connection with her. I can now see that she ended up in an ancient dragon cave. She ended up opening a door and going to the dragon world where she was greeted with awe and confusion. Apparently she was exiled, but her act of opening the door was prophesied. This confused them, but eventually the dragons listened to her.
The dragons knew of the threat of this void creature. They have been fleeing it for many many years. I wish I knew something of this before now. Maybe the ritual could have been avoided.
As the ritual continued, I had a strange sense of foreboding. Then it hit me. Mordred makes an appearance out in the field. He opens portals upon portals upon portals through which many strange and twisted creatures step out. They begin assaulting the barrier as well.
Seeker and Ariona leave the bubble to deal with the additional threats. I travel through the network and lay down some fireballs to clear a path for Gerald to reach Mordred. After that, my attention was returned to the ritual.
The ritual continues, and succeeds, like it must. I was getting agitated near the end, but too much was going on. After the ritual completes, and Lilith is formed, things get chaotic. Void echoes start appearing all around us. Huntington advises everyone to leave the system and join him on Lupus. Most of my companions were trying to finish up their various tasks so I tried to stay around and help.
Then it hit. Pain upon pain upon pain. Jasmine and I collapse in pain, but she disappears, claimed by the void.
Seventeenth Session
Pain and anguish. My body is wrapped in pain caused by the nearness of the void creature. Jasmine has disappeared, taken by the void.
By the time I come to, ten days have past and we’re in Ariona’s appartment. I hadn’t been out for ten days, but we lost time while in the Void. Nikolai had to pull some stunts to save Ariona after she had tried to enter the void.
I don’t even have time to try to figure out what happened to Jasmine. Ariona managed to get herself trapped in a book she received in the post. Somehow it was ready to be delivered to her when she escaped Luna. The book is called The Blue Rose. The blue rose is a mystical rose that wasn’t created until several hundred years ago through genetic engineering. But long before that, it was an object of desire of an evil sorceress named Baba Yaga. She was defeated when she was trapped in a book. This book in fact, as Nikolai discovered as he dared to try to read the first chapter.
Vito wants to destroy the book, Adam is trying to use some simple folk tale style tricks to release the prisoners. I tried to connect to Ariona’s jack, but I couldn’t get a connection! We also discovered that if left open on the same chapter, after about ten minutes, we gain the ability to interact with the captive. They can perceive what the could view from the page with their picture on it. Also, the chapter has a short story version of the captive’s life.
I traced the tracking info on the package back to Ariona’s old boss, who now works for Strat-Co. I infiltrated their network and convinced him to come with us. He warned me that it was a high security area, and that I shouldn’t try anything, but I was feeling cocky, so I tried to mess with the camera in the room, and failed. Then I entered the room invisible and tried to grab his arm. This was a mistake.
I was bombarded with strange waves that brought me to the floor. I was then pummeled into unconsciousness.
I was woken up when some crazy ‘doctor’ whiffed smelling salts under my nose. More pain. I was strapped down to a table with some drug (enervin) coursing through my veins. He was holding a couple of sharp instruments and was threatening to ‘see what makes me tick.’ He asked me my name and I told him I was Baba Yaga. It seemed appropriate given the situation. I then re-accessed the network and disappeared into it. I watched the ‘nice doctor’ flounder, wondering what happened. I would have loved to torment him, but I had a job to do.
I found Bernstien again, and told him that Ariona needed help, that we were at her apartment, and he was going to get himself there.
Back on Luna, Bernstein found a V.W. arcane mark in the book. After casting detect magic, I could see it too. This confirmed suspisions that Vondre Willowtree was behind this. She happens to be Bernstien’s boss, and he protests. But Ariona explains that she was an elf that thought they needed to remain pure, and therefore hates Ariona, her mother, and her father for getting involved with a non-elf.
We decide to move to my dorm room instead. It was a little cramped, but Ariona’s apartment didn’t feel safe any more.
In the mean time, we have figured out that someone is trapped in the book if they see their true name written. We then write Vondre Willowtree’s name in elven in the book. I took the book, found Vondre through the network, became invisible, and interrupted her tea by plopping the book down on her table. As I let go, the book became visible, and the thump of the book hitting the table caused her to look down, and she was sucked down into the book.
Before, Ariona tried to port out of the book, but succeeded only in porting the book. Now before we were going to let Vondre have a shot, I put a dimensional anchor on the book so that she couldn’t port away. Somehow this anchor lasted through to the next day when Ariona tried to port herself with the book to Adana, but I’ll get to that. Maybe the enervin caused my spell to last longer? That’s about the only thing I can think of at the moment, though I haven’t really tested it for duration under any other conditions.
Unfortunately, she didn’t know how to let someone out either. Someone stole the page. We flipped back to Erica, and she divined that Nald Pipwhistle stole the page.
I found him over the network. He was at Eric Lencher’s Brotherhood. I told him that Vondre needed his help, but that didn’t convince him. Turns out that she fired him for being a brotherhood spy, which he was. I then leveled with him and explained that I didn’t care about her, but about several other people she trapped in the book. He had his own side-quest. His mother is in jail, and his assets were frozen, so he couldn’t bail her out. His mother was Deblin Gabblesmocks, the reporter who was proclaiming that Strat-Co and Magitek were really still the same company. I managed to free one of Nald’s accounts, and pay the bail. I also offered to bring him to his mother. He mentioned that the way to release someone is to say their name three times.
He offered to toss in an extra file: “Super Ultimate Top Secret Classified Information On The Substance Found At A Dig By StratCo Twenty Years Ago, Also Known As The White Goo, Properties Of – AKA Properties of the Juice” We sent this file to the people fighting the white good on some outer colonies.
We free Ariona and her mother. They decide to have Adana figure out what to do with Vondre.
Once things were settled, I asked Nikolai to check to see if he could find Jasmine. I was drawn back to the node in the network where I found Adana.
Once there I see Nikolai at the archway and two other figures. One a skinny man in overalls with stubble and saggy jowls with a sad expression on his face, and the other is half his height, a gnome woman in a white robe. (Joe and Miara.)
Joe says "A portal will open to Reality’s End." Miara says "It is not fated that you will open the portal, but you are the portal." Joe continues, "“So it’s our sad duty to tell you that you’re faced with a terrible choice. You can either end your life or become the means for the universe’s destruction."
I see Nikolai pull Jasmine through the archway, veiled in dark energy. She says :Thank you. Now we can open it. We can send the destroyer away." She also asks me to wait for her.
I feel myself getting pulled towards the archway. I only have a couple seconds to decide if I am going to trust these strange people, sacrifice myself so that the universe will live another day, or if I trust Jasmine and hope to see her on the other side. Even if I die, there are still many present threats to the universe as we know it. But if my death can at least allow others to fight for their survival, isn’t it worth it?
In the end, I decide to be selfish, and I place my trust in Jasmine. Maybe she’s been tainted by her time in the void, maybe she’s been playing me the whole time, but I trust her.
I get torn and twisted over the archway. It starts to glow white and all of reality collapses..
I now find myself standing at the end of time.