Thanks to Eva for this session summary.
These session notes are from Rae’s perspective, and are originally from [http://www.digitalchangeling.com/gaming/session_notes/deus/060520.html].
Session started at 2:23 pm on 5/20/06
Attending players: James, Eva, John, Nate, Mike, Kelsey
Presiding GM: Curtis
So we have until noon tomorrow when StratCo will kill Ti-Lung’s human parents. We should have enough time to deal with StratCo before the alien threat reaches Lupus. I hope that Merlin has a good plan by the time we get back.
(Curtis spends some time getting Mike up to speed.)
(Apparently when Vadril teleported away from the ritual he ended up in Laboro. He witnessed the beginning of a robot revolution. The robots told him that the one called DEE has awakened. They seemed to revere DEE as some sort of robot messiah. Then, strange organic blobs started raining from the sky. The blobs began to absorb everything! It was sort of reminiscent of how Max could explode and absorb everything. Vadril managed to teleport away before the white blobs could reach him. He arrived back in Valhalla. He could hear the very faint aftershocks of the echos and the Royals were scurrying around busily, but the world appeared to be in one piece.)
(Vadril learned that the ritual has succeeded and that the great machine was holding the Void at bay. Other Royals were immediately clamoring for Vadril’s help in analyzing and debugging the workings of the machine in order to keep it running. Vadril told the Royals about what happened on Laboro and he also emailed us.)
I have an email from Vadril. It says, "In Valhalla. Laboro’s gone. Send help." I love how my friends are so far behind the curve. It gives me a warm, fuzzy sort of doom feeling.
Max has headed off to Valhalla to talk to people. We are hoping to get some sort of brilliant plan to handle StratCo worked out in his absence. For some reason I can not comprehend, Matt is thinking about full scale military invasion. I remind him that StratCo is a military corporation. I am not sure how serious he was. Something about finding out that he started out as a corporate research project has bent his mind more than I expected.
(Harry Briant, being played by Kelsey, arrives at Valhalla and meets with Max. Harry tells Max that he was on Laboro and the white stuff was unable to assimilate him. He thinks the junk on Laboro is a mixture of the white stuff we encountered previously and gray goo. Max brings up the subject of StratCo and Harry voices his misgivings about our plan to try to get anything from them. He thinks their security is far too dangerous. The two of them discuss the top hats and our theories about them.)
(It is brought up that the rest of the party does know that Adam Cassenti was present with Mordred’s party when they attacked the site of the ritual. The footage that Brice transmitted to us shows that Adam is now dark and twisted; barely recognizable. Gerald destroyed much of the rest of the army but did not kill Adam, at Adam’s grand-daughter’s request.)
(Harry is trying to enlist Max, and the rest of us in helping with the threat on Laboro. Harry suggests that he should speak with all of us about this. Max invites Vadril to come and join us, before he and Harry head back to Lupus.)
(Meanwhile Vadril is drowning in work. He tries to get things delegated and squared away as much as possible before he follows Max and Harry to Lupus.)
Matt enjoys shiny techno-thinggies way too much. He is practically ecstatic about getting access to the General’s armory. I have this nasty feeling that if we were not always so busy, he would spend his time rolling around in piles of gravitic grenades and anti-matter guns. I like the guy, but his spazzing is getting to be a bit much.
Ti-Lung has made it clear that he thinks only he and Matt have to respond to StratCo’s threats. I am annoyed that he insists on being so stupid about this. If we abandon them to StratCo’s tender mercies they will almost certainly be caught and tortured or killed. After all this time and all the crap we have been through I would have expected both of them to know better than to expect me to be okay with that sort of a retarded plan.
When I question her, Matt’s mom admits to having some information about StratCo, including some 20 year old blueprints of their facilities. It is at least a place to start. I still do not like the barge in and die plan, but as I can not think of much better I will have to brainstorm with what information I have.
Ti-Lung has convinced the General to let him use a quiet area for some sort of "private" conversation. He does not want us to overhear. He says it is personal. I station my self out of human hearing but close enough that I can still make out what he will say. He was babbling about talking to the dragons earlier, so I think maybe he is going to contact someone on Glaurung, possibly Shen-Lung.
(Ti-Lung sends a mental message to the Shen-Lung asking him to come and speak with him. Shen-Lung is cautious and asks him about who he is. Ti-Lung tries to explain, and calls up one of her old memories as proof.)
A man ‘ports in beside Ti-Lung. He has a strange ethereal air about him and I can just make out that his eyes are gold. I am going to guess Shen-Lung then. I try to stay still and quiet. Ti-Lung may not quite realize the range of my hearing, but Shen-Lung will if he sees me.
I have tried to put down their conversation in as much detail as I could. There was a dark sadness underneath all of it that I am unlikely to forget.
Shen-Lung: What is this about? Ti-Lung: The one you loved lives. I am she as much as she is me
Shen-Lung uses a divination effect to figure out some of what is going on, because Ti-Lung is being obtuse as all hell.
Shen-Lung, startled: Ti… Ti-Lung? What happened to you? Ti-Lung: Touch my mind and you will know more.
They are quiet for a moment. They must be speaking mind to mind.
(They establish telepathic contact and Ti-Lung shows Shen-Lung her memories of leaving Glaurung and how he came to be the way he is.)
Shen-Lung: Why are you telling me all of this? Ti-Lung: Because you have every right to know.
("You might want to use an action point on that." ~ Curtis "No, if he uses all his action points Harry Bryant will kill him." ~ Someone else)
Shen-Lung: What… What do you want from me? Ti-Lung: Possibly your aid, mostly to speak again. Understand that I am essentially two people at this moment, occupying the same body. Shen-Lung: What is it you wish of me? Ti-Lung: In the future we will have to discuss this at length. For now, the parents of my other half are in danger. And understand that I am as loyal and devoted to them as I am to you.
Shen-Lung remains silent, listening.
Ti-Lung: At the very least I would appreciate your council.
He spends some time explaining the situation with StratCo and their threats.
Ti-Lung: I understand that force is not really an option. Surrendering myself is not an option. If it were just my own life I would do whatever was necessary, but it is not.
Shen-Lung thinks for a minute and then replies: It seems that in this situation you have no power over them and your enemies can do as they wish. I would say, speak with them and see if you can pay what they ask.
Ti-Lung tries to explain that StratCo wants him to study. He goes on about how they would like to study what he has become even more that what he was. It sounds like it has all sorts of unpleasant implications for dragon-kind.
They discuss StratCo’s desires for a while. Ti-Lung is afraid that StratCo will do irreversible damage to him if he allows them to study him. Shen-Lung suggests several options for how Ti-Lung can approach the problem. He suggests that we gather more information about StratCo and Zee’s parents so we can better judge our options. I am glad that someone can think reasonably in this situation. I can already think of half a dozen ways to start approaching his suggestions, assuming of course Ti-Lung shares them… With my luck he will run off and turtle-up.
Shen-Lung says he has to go consider things. He wards some sort of affect and tells Ti-Lung to contact him if he needs his assistance. Poor Shen-Lung. Maybe it would have been better if he had never known. After a few confused goodbyes he is gone. Ti-Lung leaves the circle. He looks mildly downtrodden. I follow him quietly and at a distance.
I spend some more time quietly talking to Matt’s mom through my computer. It sounds like we can not really get better information about the inside of StratCo. I do not like Max’s kidnap a random secretary for information plan, it has too many ways of going wrong. I need to catch up with Ti-Lung so that I can talk some of Shen-Lung’s suggestions out of him.
Ti-Lung is talking to Matt about how they could find out more about the Rixmanns. I join in. Ti-Lung needs to learn to watch for pursuit more carefully. I do not think he had any idea I was following him and he is not suspicious when I speak up. Perhaps he is simply too melancholy. I think he wore the insanity far better.
("Does she run on energon cubes?" ~ Nate, about Lefty "Sure, why not." ~ Curtis)
Max, the doctor, and a middle aged businessman arrive to meet with us and Huntington. Merlin lets us use his private study to meet in, since it is relatively secure. I am glad to see that the doctor is not overly scarred by his visit to Laboro. I forgot to berate him about his useless email, but I do not suppose it would have helped much anyway.
Apparently there are some people fussing about us dealing with the "Living Planet" before we deal with Ti-Lung’s parents. Whatever. It is all tied into StratCo. We eventually bring up the information they may have and get folks off our back. Apparently the business man is Harry. Amusing. I guess his old face was a bit too wanted/presumed dead for him.
We start discussing how we are going to tackle StratCo. It seems like some sort of political blackmail is sounding better and better. I ask Ti-Lung what he remembers about Zee’s childhood, but he does not seem to have many hints. Ti-Lung suddenly points out that enervin might be a derivative of the white goo. Yuck. That sound far too plausible for my taste.
The doctor takes a look online, and turns up that enervin was developed by the US government, back when StratCo was still contracting with them. It looks rather suspicious. We also ask the doctor to find out more about the Rixmanns.
Bryant and Huntington are having a quiet conversation about the occultem lappidem. They are plotting something or other.
(Meanwhile, Max is listening to Salt and Sulfur’s minds. They are a mess. Without physical form or their third part they are more chaotic than ever and fight each other constantly.)
Max is talking about possibly using the occultem lappidem to deal with the white stuff, but this sounds like a questionable plan. We have no idea how the gray goo and the white stuff got put together in the first place. Merlin and Harry seem to think that the occultem lappidem could be used to stop the nanite threat but they are not really considering its changed state. I remain quiet because I have no better plan, but their carelessness irritates me, since they could get us all killed.
According to Harry the occultem lapidem was a stone before the Mercury incident. The first use of it caused it to bond to Harry, I think in the form of the glyphs. I am not really to clear on all this. Harry’s being a bit obtuse. I thought he had done small scale tests before the accident, and I know he had the glyphs on Mercury before it all went wrong. Perhaps the ambrosia clouded that part of his memory because it was too horrible.
Merlin once again suggests that Max have the silvery arm removed. I had not realized it, but I think it has his shoulder now. Max is unwilling to make a decision. He is going to get his stupid ass killed again if he puts it off much longer.
Ti-Lung reminds folks that we need information about the Rixmanns. The doctor does his best, but it looks like they have not been officially associated with StratCo for years. The doctor can not find much about where the Rixmanns are supposed to be now. The doctor does find some indications that other Rixmanns have been associated with StratCo through its history. Curious. I wonder if the company owned them or vice versa. The whole situation with Ti-Lung seems to suggest they do not have as much power as they might want at the moment at least.
(Max is trying to remember anything the occultem lappedim knows about StratCo. He gets a fragment of much older memory, but can not really identify what is happening in it.)
Harry is still urging non-violent means of getting information out of StratCo. Unfortunately we just do not have enough information to use any of them.
The guys are talking about some elf that they saw at the battle on Luna. Suddenly Harry starts swearing. He tells us that "the elf is Evan Cassenti." The picture that Matt sends me is rather sickly and twisted looking, with dark skin and white hair. Ah, blackmail material. Suddenly things are looking up.
Now the guys are fussing about the term blackmail. You can not extort information or favors from someone and not call it what it is; that is just dishonest. Anyway, at least we have more leverage. Over all this is a giant mess. I will have to hope that Evan’s current state has severely impaired his judgement.
Ti-Lung is going to send a blackmail email to Davis. Heh.
The doctor sets up a network of redundant copies of our blackmail info with a fail safe that will send out the information if Ti-Lung does not tell it not to every day. If the world stops exploding violently at some point I think I want to learn how to do this programming thing the doctor makes so much use of.
(Curtis rants about how much Notepad sucks for a while.)
(Bryant is trying to get more details about the archeological dig out of Zuul, but she claims that she can not say anything without Adana’s permission. Bryant asks if she can ask Adana for permission. She agrees and zips off to talk to Adana.)
We banter around trying to figure out a better plan, but do not have much luck. Eventually Ti-Lung gets an email back. StratCo is not willing to deal, so I guess we will be releasing the information. So much for that idea…
Zuul is suddenly telling us that Adana has rearranged her schedule and will be coming to talk to us ASAP. Exciting. I guess Zuul ran off to talk with her while I was not paying attention. We will have to figure out how to break the news to Adana gently.
We head to the park to meet her. It is about 4am at this point. I had forgotten how quickly it gets dark here. Adana meets us in the park, along with another woman, who I think is Zuul in some sort of android form.
Adana tells us that she is hesitant to give us information because it could harm her or her company. Bryant is able to convince her that we do not want to know much about where the information came from; we only need to know how to counter the threat from Laboro. She explains that there was an independent company who was excavating a site on the Mediterranean. This company uncovered some of the white stuff deep underground. She says that the ship that attacked the barrier during the ritual is the culmination of the research on that white substance. That’s quite a leap there. I wonder how the hell folks got super powerful mega-ship out of annoying white hive-mind goo. I guess the living world did suggest that it had some sort of teleportation powers, albeit very slow ones.
StratCo apparently has some knowledge of the research involved, but Adana is being vague on how much. She suggests that Mercaba spent some time working on it, but when Mercury was destroyed that set the research back to square one. The scientist in charge of the research, Sagitarius, escaped destruction and continued working on the substance. I am not clear on what exactly Sagitarius is, as Adana is referring to it in a gender neutral way. I did not think that was a very common thing to do in English. Anyway, she says that it eventually created the ships. I guess that would be DEE and the other one?
She has shifted to talking about "the Miller Algorithm" which I am not familiar with. I will have to look it up later. I think there was a transition in there that I did not follow. She says that if we want more detailed information on the research we would need to find Sagitarius or those who worked below it. That sounds like a time sink with only a minor hope of producing useful results to me.
Adana asks what has happened to her ex-husband and we are forced to tell her. She is quite shocked and angry. She says that there must be some way to help Evan, to save him. We try to figure some way to get to him or get him out of StratCo. Adana assures us that if she can heal him, she should be able to convince him to get StratCo to turn over Zee’s parents.
I gather from Max’s babbling that his father is awake now, and we might be able to get Evan to meet with him. Interesting, but hardly likely given the state Evan is in. Adana is calling Max’s father a naturalist. I do not really understand what she means by it. She seems to be saying he went back on that philosophy, whatever it is. I am gathering that Evan was at least some what allied with Max’s father for a time. I am not quite following all the implications here.
We can not seem to find anything that would tempt Evan or StratCo, except possibly his ex-wife and children. Adana suggests that we offer an exchange of hostages. I can not imagine he would be willing to do so. She suggests that she be the hostage. He might bite on that. We quickly formulate a plan of how to "hold" and exchange the hostages. We will borrow one of the General’s shuttles and make the exchange in space to make it vaguely plausible that we could overpower and hold Adana.
(The players agree to use our Destiny Token to assure that Evan Cassenti will come and make the hostage exchange personally.)
Adana warns us that Evan has taken more interest in psyonics than she and he will likely be able to use quite a bit of magic in space. Ti-Lung and I plan how we can stop him. I will counter his magic and Ti-Lung will try to purge the evil influences from him.
Ti-Lung sends our ransom message demanding that Evan Cassenti come himself at noon to exact the hostage transfer or we will kill Adana. Yay threats! I feel so much better about this plan.
We have a little over six hours until the deadline, so I get some rest.
When I wake, Ti-Lung has already gotten a reply from Evan. It says:
"Your parents will be returned, but if any harm has come to Adana or if you try anything, you all will be destroyed."
Well, at least he still cares. In a backwards crazy, evil way… but what can you really hope for, I guess.
We all position ourselves around the airlock and await Cassenti’s arrival. Rather than arriving in a ship, he arrives in a fiery looking bubble, with the Rixmanns tied up and blindfolded. We open the airlock and wait while the bubble approaches and enters.
He is angry. He demands that we produce Adana and Ti-Lung demands proof that the two people he has brought are his parents. Max thinks for a second and confirms that they seem right. I am not sure how Max knows, as he has never shown signs of psionic powers before. I am too busy watching Evan to file it away for later inquiry.
Evan says he will give us one of them before and one after we turn over Adana. He pushes the woman out of the bubble, but it does not break. We can not cast though the bubble. Crap. He tries to pull out some sort of psionic affect that I can not recognize and I manage to slap it down. That infuriates him.
Everything is about to come to a turning point. As previously discussed, Matt arcs the ship down into the mystic sphere of influence of Lupus so that Adana will be able to cast in mere seconds.
Max has moved up behind Ti-Lung (and linked with him) in preparation for all hell braking loose. I was not quite sure what happened next at the time, but later Ti-Lung explained. Max’s innate abilities allowed him to project Ti-Lung’s healing magic through the bubble to hit Evan. What those innate abilities are caused by, I have absolutely no frikkin clue. I think I am just going to stop wondering at how weird Max is. There seems to be no end to it.
Evan gives out a tortured scream as the healing magic hits him and falls to his knees. The bubble vanishes with his concentration.
As soon as the bubble is down Adana and Ti-Lung begins channeling more healing than I have ever seen outside the High Council into Evan. He keels over, obviously in pain and begins thrashing about.
(Vadril tries to read Evan’s mind in order to discover what is happening inside of him. He is almost sucked into Evan’s nightmare world, but manages to steel his mind against it. He sees Mordred whispering dark thoughts in Evan’s ear, offering him power. Vadril can feel that the healing is beginning to have an effect on him, slowly scouring Mordred’s shadow from his mind.)
As I watch Evan begins to return to normal. His skin pales to a more natural pink and the other marks of his corruption begin to fade. I do not think how Mordred did this to him in the first place bears close examination. Everything about Mordred was far too creepy.
For the moment all of us are watching Evan. Out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of mystic energy and I turn my head just in time to see the damn frikkin’ top hat appear and slash off Max’s arm with its cane. Blue blood spatters everywhere. Max curses loudly but the top hat has already ported away.
A bunch of people throw healing at Max, so he is out of the woods, but the top hat did not get all of the silver stuff. As the healing magic hits him the silver crawls up the side of his neck and across his chest. Now there would be no getting it off even if he wanted to. The damn moron had to wait and not do anything about it…
End of Session