Emilio wants to meet Vittorio in a crowded restaurant… but he ends up dead before he can tip his hand to Vittorio. He is poisoned, and dies at the table.
Huntington is a fan of the Art of War, and quotes it occasionally.
Some thoughts about the Destroyer and the Destiny Force
- The Destroyer represents a blight on the tapestry that is the universe – a blight on the Destiny Force itself.
- The Destiny Force exists at the end of time, at the center of the black hole, with tendrils reaching back to manipulate events.
- The Destroyer seeks to kill the Destiny Force itself, because the Destiny Force is the ultimate psionic being created with mystic energy.
- The Destiny Force is to the Caretaker as the Caretaker is to humanity.
- Jasmine begins to be able to see through time, but from the perspective of the Void.
- If Jasmine wishes to deny her destiny, the universe must be destroyed. Thus, Jasmine attempts to help the Destroyer do so. So Jasmine’s goal is to assist the Destroyer in consuming the Destiny Force. This goal, were it to be achieved, would have unknown results with respect to existence as a whole (but the universe would cease to exist).
- The Destiny Force is trying to preserve the tapestry; the Destroyer is trying to unmake it.
- One way to conceptualize the Destiny Force’s "choosing" of three individuals as representations of pieces of Divine Grammar is that the Noun "ran away" and rebelled; this view is not necessarily contradictory with the Destiny Force’s purposeful interactions.
- The Divine Calculus and Divine Grammar may have been represented in the past as well (as a gnomish fortune teller and a friendly trucker), and may have guided the parties from Pax toward the creation of the Caretaker, knowing it would be vitally important later.
- Emmanuel is of the same "species" of scientists responsible for the universe’s creation, by pumping a black hole (in the "anti-universe" made up of antimatter) full of mystic energy; he had been on an expedition to another galaxy, and when he returned, he found the galaxy destroyed; he sent in "probes" (the gravitational eddies or singularities) to test the nature of the black hole before heading into it himself.
- Perhaps the original "anti-universe" is created by pumping the Destroyer full of mystic energy. Perhaps the PCs are led to believe (and it may even be true) that the Destroyer can be "cleansed" through this process.
- The Deus Ex Machina could be adapted from its original use (distraction of the Destroyer), to then serve as a conduit for mystic energy, to pump the Destroyer full of such energy, in an attempt to alter or cleanse it.
- Emmanuel’s backlash was caused by the fact that he was not part of the universe’s tapestry; but his merger with Gaia "stabilized" him so that he now is. Perhaps there is a way to "stabilize" the Destroyer as well?
- If the Destroyer is the "Destiny Force of the anti-universe," because it is pumped full of mystic energy, awakened, and resides at the end of anti-time… then the Destiny Force of this universe must become the "anti-Destroyer."
- Perhaps when the Destroyer "takes" something, it begins to exist in the anti-universe, is born there somehow, or something like that. If the Destiny Force is "taken," it could be shunted into the anti-universe and become the anti-Destroyer.
- The Destiny Force is currently directly touching a number of individuals: Noun, Brice and Max. Arguably, it is linked to the Divine Calculus as well. One or more of those characters, if they are destroyed by the explosion when the Destroyer is awakened – or if they are simply subsumed by the Destroyer at some point – could be the link to the Destiny Force required for it to be born as the anti-Destroyer in the anti-universe.
- Ideally, Brice dies (perhaps at the hands of Jasmine?) and becomes the seed of the anti-Destroyer.
- Since antimatter and matter cancel one another, it could be possible for the two universes to entire cancel one another out, obliterating each other. To accomplish this, the conduit between universes would be need to be expanded and fully opened, such that matter and antimatter can flow freely from one to the other. In this circumstance, all existence ends.
Jasmine’s backstory
- Grew up in France, middle child of five. From youngest to oldest: Valérie (Old French: valor, strong), Noémi (Hebrew: pleasant one, beauty above all), Jasmine (Persian: jasmine flower, gift from God), Aimée (Latin: beloved), Benjamin (Hebrew: youngest).
- As a result, always overlooked, nothing special.
- Until one day, she developed strange powers of probability, that manifested when her parents were in danger; she caused something "lucky" to happen that saved them.
- She uses her newfound abilities to win at gambling – a lot. But her family disapproves, and eventually none of the gambling establishments will allow her entry.
- She has a falling out with her family, and decides to make it on her own.
- Some other stuff, TBD.
- She is desperate for money, and gets the job offer to abduct Bernstein.
- Things go wrong; she is betrayed.
- She goes into hiding, and eventually hooks up with Daniel Ocean.
- She travels to Canis to meet him, and begins learning his trade (con artistry and thievery).
- Two of her sisters (Noémi – noEH-MEE – and Aimée – em-EH) miss her, and travel to Canis to visit, since she let it slip to them that that was where she was going.
- Lupus invades Canis, and her siblings are killed in the war, as "collateral damage" of the invasion, before Jasmine’s very eyes.
- Ocean flees Canis during the assault, abandoning Jasmine.
- Unable to escape, Jasmine nonetheless survives due to her luck.
- Betrayed and broken, she seeks out her parents for comfort back home (luckily she finds a mystic, Shiela Lewis, capable of transporting her, who does so for free due to her state of extreme shock, mumbling about home), but her parents blame her for the Noémi and Aimée’s deaths, and they disown her. Even her baby brother Benjamin gives her a broken, sad look before turning away from her.
- Jasmine then turns to Brice for comfort because there is no one else. She goes to Brice in tears and tells him she’s done something horrible. Jasmine does tell Brice she loves him. Maybe one things leads to another and they have sex (in which case maybe Jasmine gets pregnant, proceeding down the path of the prophecy). Or maybe Brice takes Jasmine into the digital world, and it opens her mind somehow, so that she begins to read the tapestry of reality.
There may be a villain striving for (either purposefully or inadvertently) the merger, and thus destruction, of the twin universes (Twin Tiers, anyone?). It could be Huntington’s fate, since he serves no master but himself. It could be Mordred. It could be William Moss.
The final session involves three groups each accomplishing a separate goal. These goals could correspond to the three villains above somehow. Maybe they must each stop a villain from achieving the annihilation of all existence.
Handling time paradox
Since Noun and Nikolai are screwing with time a lot, the space-time continuum is becoming strained. Time-related paradox is growing more prevalent. Brice’s connections to other machines strain time as well, and result in strange distortions (that neatly correspond to out-of-game realities). Also, perhaps the "holes in the tapestry" provide an opening for Jasmine to direct the Destroyer through to the end of time itself, to eliminate the Destiny Force.