Session started at 2:10 p.m. on 10/29/05
Attending players: Mike, Nate, Eva, John, James
Presiding GM: Curtis
Major NPC's: Adana Cassenti, Dana Arthur, Brian Welsh, Harry Bryant (aka. Adam McClean), (also William Moss and Cane, sort of)
Back on planet moon...
It is morning, as much as it can be on a planetoid that is in a moon orbit. I am not sure what the dream from last night means. It might be true or not... I am not sure I am ready to face the ramifications if it is true. I had better put it out of my mind for the time being.
We have a meeting at MagiTech this morning. I think Matt has been to their headquarters before, since his mother works there. It is a massive building that towers over the rest of the city. The city it self is not nearly as low as the ones I saw on earth. Despite the fact that they have enhanced the gravity, all the buildings seem to have built up rather than out. It reminds me a bit of New Starshine.
We are escorted to the hundred and twenty fourth floor. It is a very long ride. The elevator makes me a bit nervous. The room we are taken to has a lot of windows and some tables and chairs. There is a beautiful view of the city from up here.
There are several people from MagiTech here for our meeting. There is a woman in her mid thirties with long wavy blond hair and another woman with long brown hair braided down her back. Both are standing waiting for us when we enter.
They are introduced as Adana Cassenti and Dana Arthur. I have a vague memory of Adana being discussed as having some sort of serious conflict with her ex-husband over Magi-Tech itself.
Cassenti invites us to take a seat. She asks us if we can start at the beginning and explain what happened. I suggest that it is Matt's turn to explain everything. Matt suggests that he answers some of their questions. Jeez... Lazy Matt. I guess I still need to pay him back properly after all.
She asks about the man who we left in North Korea. Matt mentions that the man is unstable and has strange abilities with fire. Matt elaborates that we do not know where the man came from or much else about him. The emphasis on what we do not know seems a little unnecessary to me.
Apparently Cassenti is having the man transfered here so that they can question him as well. I doubt they are going to get anything coherent out of him.
The air next to the table shimmers and a younger woman who looks a lot like Adana appears. She glances at us and then speaks to Adana. She tells Adana that the hospital had some sort of fire in the man's room and the man disappeared. Adana thinks for a moment and then says, "He is still alive. He's on Canus." She tells the younger woman, "That will be all, Astarte." and the younger woman leaves.
Adana says that that he is of interest to her. She believes he is quite important. But the situation on Canus is too political for them to touch. Max asks why she thinks he is important. She tells us that a man called William Moss is very interested in the man and she thinks the man will need protecting from Moss.
Adana implies that her company would like us to extract the man from Canus. I ask who is in control of Canus exactly. Dana says that the current regime is "Russian", run by Mikhael Volokhov and his three brothers. She says that Canus and Lupus are at odds with each other. So perhaps they wanted to know who Lupus was holding.
Adana offers to transport us to Canus. She says that they do not track travelers as closely as Canus. So we could simply take normal transportation off of the planet, except for the part where we do not have an ID for the man. Well, and the part where he is either unconscious or raving mad all the time.
I ask if they can provide us with a fake ID for the man. Apparently that is too hard for their company. And they will not send a mage with us. They might be willing to ward us against Divination though. Adana tries to ward Matt, but the white stuff interferes. Apparently he can not be fully warded against divination.
I do not think Bryant had that much trouble getting me an ID. I wonder why it is such a big deal for Magi-Tech?
Max asks about compensation for us for rescuing the man. Adana offers to compensate us with money. A lot of money apparently. Max seems happy with it.
It would be nice to have a little money, but answers would be more useful. I do not think I can successfully push Cassenti for them though.
(The history of when we got to the moon is being slightly re-written. WHen we arrived, Joseph said the city seemed familiar and that he was going to wander and explore. Matt gave Joseph his card and I tell him where he can get a hold of Bryant if he wants.)
("There's already a hamster hive mind." ~Curtis)
Matt gets dragged off to the lab to be examined. It sounds like they are going to take a sample of the white stuff and cleanse him.
Max asks Adana if she has any association with Bryant. She says she has no association with him and seems to find him distasteful. She suspects Bryant serves the Caretaker, but may be misguided. Now that I look at her more closely, Adana seems to be under more stress than I suspected. I would guess that she is holding many plots and secrets together with her will alone...
She says there is some sort of situation with Bryant, Moss, and MagiTech. She will not disclose details. I point out that we are likely to trip over whatever weirdness is going on soon enough. Adana seems to find that thought vaguely humorous.
("Why are you trying to hack Magi-Tech?"
~ Eva
"Uh, because it's there.."
~ Mike
"You know that hacking is illegal right?"
~ Eva
"I... have bad social skills."
~ Mike)(The doctor gets stomped when he tries to hack Magi-Tech's security. Folks have a long discussion of how "modern" computer security works in the game.)
(Apparently there are at least 6 people in this universe who are 27th level or higher... Yikes!)
Adana starts talking to Max about Bryant. She knows roughly what Bryant is but wants more details. I suggest that the fastest way for her to find out is to read Max's mind. Then I have to explain how that works... it seems to disturb her. Max found the suggestion darkly amusing. Adana questions Max about Bryant and Max tells her that Bryant used to be Adam McClean.
Apparently Bryant/McClean's company was the one developing the nano-tech that was being presented when everything went wrong in Max's nightmare.
("Where the hell is James?"
~ John at about 3:29pm
"Being eaten by turtles... very slowly..."
~ Eva)Adana asks how Max can control the machines. Max shows her the glyph on his hand and says that he used it to separate himself from the mass of Mercury. Adana asks where it came from. Max says that McClean had it when Mercury was destroyed. Adana asks if Max could lose control and destroy the world. Max says he does not think he is likely to be able to do that... At least not as well as Bryant. Adana implies that Mercury might not have been an accident after all. She really dislikes Bryant...
(Off in the lab, Dana takes a blood sample from Matt, then commands his nanites to get rid of the white stuff inside him. They do.)
Matt comes back.
"Did I miss anything?"
~ Matt
"Probably, yes."
~ RekariAdana wards Matt again. She apologizes that she can not use more magic to ward us, since she needs to save some for protecting her company from the many threats it is facing. She will not tell us what threats those are. Dana asks if she can not actually tell us what is going on. Adana rebuffs Dana and will not tell us anything. She is going to regret that eventually.
We start talking about where the best place to teleport to in order to get the man. Adana tells us that the man is lying face down in an alley. Adana magically teleports us there.
(We all receive +3 wealth bonus from Adana as pre-payment.)
We are at the mouth of an alley. It is day and there is a regular street outside the alley. There is a sun and a smaller star in the sky. The man is down at the end of the alley lying on his face. He appears to be breathing. Matt wanders off after muttering something about getting vodka.
We still do not have a good plan. I check the man's pockets. He has an ID. Nifty. He has hair in his ID picture and it says his name is Zebadiah Schinder. I guess I will call him Zeb. I think we should put a hat on him since his ID looks so different. People fuss about hats and kerchiefs. Eventually Max makes a hat for me. I put the hat on Zeb.
I ask if anyone knows where we are going. I also ask folks to make sure that Zeb is not a wanted felon, so we can use his ID with out major complications.
(The doctor does some research on Zeb online. He pulls Zeb's parents' names.)
Matt and I have an argument about where we are going to transport to. He does not want to go to Luna straight away. We settle on going to Earth then contacting folks on Luna. Matt requests a car to take us to the mystic port. He thoughtfully makes sure it is big enough for me.
("You stick out like a blue thumb."
~ Nate to Mike)Matt finds a monitoring device in the car, but we take it to the mystic-port anyway. As we get out of the car, there is an explosion from inside the mystic port. The roar of the explosion gets louder, not quieter. We pile back in the car and move away a bit so we are not caught in the chaos.
Multiple explosions are continuing and the entire mystic-port building seems to be collapsing in on itself. If I had to guess I would bet that this is going to stop all transport on and off of this world for a while. I gathered this is the only mystic-port on this world.
The doctor thinks that the explosions look like a chained gravidic bomb, whatever that is.
We drop off the doctor and Matt so they can help with the rescue efforts in the mystic-port. Max, Zeb, and I head to go to a nearby hotel to stay out of the way.
(James shows up at 4:20pm, in a disturbing costume.)
(Curtis talks James through what has happened to Zeb.)
Zeb wakes up after we arrive at the hotel. He seems more coherent than normal. He thinks he was from Earth originally, probably... He also mentions that he has been to the moon. He does not seem to have a very good sense of time.
(Back at the mystic-port Matt and the doctor are helping the rescuers.)
Since I have managed to work out the very basics of teleporation (woot leveling!), I am going to go back to Earth or Luna and try to find someone we can pay to get us all out of here. Max is setting something up on my eBook to make it send an electronic message out to try to hire a free-lance teleporter. I am not entirely sure how folks normally hire teleporters, but Max seems certain this should work. He tells me that I need to go to the mystic-port nearby to meet up with whoever responds to the message.
I do not really like the idea of grabbing a random mage for this, but since we can not use Magi-Tech's mages it is the best we will be able to manage. I think I am going to focus more on learning teleportation magic in the future.
Matt is fussing about people connecting us to MagiTech if we go straight back to Luna. I think this is ridiculous. They are far more likely to connect us to Bryant. Matt wants to go to Earth and then Luna, but this seems like a waste of time to me. We are not nearly stealthy enough to deter someone who is really determined anyway. Eventually we settle on me going back to Pax, then sending the email requesting the help.
I teleport back to Pax city.
("What are you worried about? You're fire proof!"
~ Rekari
"I'm not fire proof, more fire resistant."
~ Max
"Are you really fire resistant?"
~ Curtis [somewhat surprised]
"...No."
~ Nate)(Max and Zeb have a hilarious conversation which I am not present for.)
I am outside of Mercaba's office on Luna. I send the message Max set up and head to the mystic-port. The person at the front desk of the mystic-port says that my contact will be with me shortly. Almost immediately a short man in sunglasses appears next to me. I explain the situation on Canus and he agrees to teleport us back for the agreed fee. He asks that we meet him at the Central Park. He seems to be somewhat of a show-off, but I think he will do fine for our needs.
I teleport back to the hotel and let Max know what is going on. He contacts the others so they can meet us. We drive over to Central Park. The mage is there. I ask him to take us back to the mystic-port on Pax. I teleport there after he has teleported anyone else.
Zeb apparently prefers to be referred to as Z.
Z is not happy with the idea of going to Magi-Tech. He seems to be fine with seeing Adana, but Magi-Tech upsets him. We are going over to Matt's apartment for now.
On an unrelated note, I am glad that Z is less violent/crazy and more coherent than I would have expected. We are going to have to make sure to keep him away from doctors though. I find the whole idea of using physical surgery rather than magic somewhat disgusting myself, but he seems to find it phobic-ally terrifying.
(Max finds out that the mage who teleported us to Pax was Brian Welsh.)
Matt's apartment is very small. Very Very Small... I am going to try very hard to be out of the way...
Max got an email from Bryant! He says Bryant has a problem he wants us to help with. I ask if I can go along to see Bryant. Max says he wants to talk to him alone, but he is fine with me coming as long as I give them some time to talk. We head off to see Bryant.
Bryant seems to be very jittery and nervous when we arrive at his office. He starts telling us about what has been happening while we were off in space.
Bryant tells us that the monster hand originally belonged to a man named Cane. Apparently Cane died centuries ago and his body was kept deep in the lower levels of Magi-Tech. Bryant says that Cane had allies who were "undead". Bryant claims that Cane was the original creator of a kind of undead called vampires. They somehow got into MagiTech and "reawakened" him.
Bryant is being a bit incoherent. He is babbling something about Cane staying dead because he did not have his hand. He also mentioned Moss and says that Moss was supposed to have cleansed Cane but something went wrong.
I am not sure what these undead vampire creatures he is talking about are. Max seems to have some kind of vague idea, though Bryant's claims have surprised him too. I will have to ask Max about it later.
Bryant says there is an object that he wants us to get in order to subdue Cane.
Bryant says that Moss had a sanctum in the forest where he could do research, but it has been compromised and now Moss has gone underground. I think Bryant said some special name for the forest, but I missed it. Perhaps it is like the forest with the great tree that I saw on Percepie.
He says the object is the Crown of Nebuchadnezzar. He says he will go find Moss while we retrieve the Crown. I do not like approaching this with little to no plan. He had better give us more clear information about the crown once he has calmed down.
I ask Bryant to gather up the information that he has about the Crown for us and I will let Max talk to him alone.
Before I can leave the room, Bryant starts babbling something about Adana and MagiTech being anti-Caretaker and unleashing Cane... Jeez. He is seeing conspiracies everywhere. I would really like to talk to Moss though. I would not be surprised if he has a better idea of what is actually going on.
I think Bryant is playing with fire. He seems very forthright, but the chances are high that he may be being mislead by others if he is not talking to the Caretaker directly. I suppose that it is also possible that the Caretaker is insane. I am going to hope that is not the explanation. Either way, we might as well go get the Crown. At the very worst it sounds like a powerful artifact that we can use for leverage.
"Max, please don't kill him, because that would make this more confusing."
~ Rae(Back at Matt's apartment, Adana appears and begins talking to Z and Matt.)
(We all receive another +3 wealth bonus from Adana as the rest of our payment.)
(Matt shows Adana some clips of our conversation with Bryant, that Max sent him, and demands information. She says that Cane is the root of all vampires. He is the first child of man, who was tainted by Emmanuel. She says that Cane was revived by the other vampires and that Bryant is the one who broke his body out of MagiTech. She shows Matt a video as proof... a description of the video will be forth coming after the events it contains actually happen...)
End of Session