Session started at 2:18 pm on 4/29/06
Attending players: James, Eva, John, Nate
Presiding GM: Curtis
Major NPC's: Glaurung, the dragon high council, Merlin Huntington, the General, Matt's mom, the remains of the occultem lappidem (salt and sulphur), Dr. Wiener, Ron Davis, a squad of Matts, the evil planet of white stuff (which needs a name)
Glaurung is traveling. In less than a half hour, we are to arrive back in one of the human systems.
(Meanwhile, the others are on Lupus. Ti-Lung and Max teleported to the central park. Matt went with Huntington because he no longer has Ivan to teleport him. Merlin has brought him to the General's compound. After Matt contacts the others, he and Merlin meet them in the park. They talk about what just happened at the ritual. Matt quietly confronts his mom about what happened to Ivan. They also talk about what has happened to the occultem lappidem. Merlin still has the stone with them inside and Max is vaguely amused by reading their minds.)
(As Max is examining the mind of sulfur, he sees a vision from the past. He sees a black haired man who uses some sort of electrical power to kill two agents and is possessed by some great power. Max is a bit startled. He recognizes that the scene must be important, even though he does not know exactly what it was. He tries to continue listening to the occultem lappidem and also offers them a telepathic link to talk back to him. When he contacts salt it begins screaming obscenities at him, but eventually calms down to just complaining. It begs Max to help it get away from sulfur. Max begins questioning it and it mostly cooperates in the hope that he will help it. Eventually Max gives up listening to them and consults Merlin about the glyphs and their behavior. Merlin thinks it would be ill advised to try to separate them, since they are now contained and any change might allow them to escape.)
(Merlin is contacted on his computers and tells the others that he has to go and meet with the General. He says that he will be back later and teleports away. While the others are trying to decide what to do, a black van pulls off of the freeway and begins moving over the park towards them. Normally no on is supposed to drive in the park. Max tries to divine why the van is coming towards them and the answer he gets is that the folks in the van are coming to apprehend them. Matt vanishes but the others are still hesitating, when a blond haired man in a white trench-coat, a large, brown haired man in a beat up lab coat, and five guys in riot gear bail out of the van and head towards the group.)
(When Max challenges them and asks what their business is, the blond haired man responds that everyone should stay where they are, that they only want to talk. He seems to be in charge of the little band. Max is trying to read their minds, but he is a bit disturbed that his attempts are blocked on the 5 mooks; the other two are quite brilliant. The mooks all have side arms, but they are holstered. Max and Matt are pretty sure that the side arms are enervin tranq. guns.)
As we are traveling, the council is arguing about how we should fight the Void. Glaurung seems to have some sort of plan. As he is still considering it, we arrive. The travel was much faster than normal. Glaurung must have pulled out all the stops to come to Earth's aid. I can feel the echos, but they are fainter. Glaurung's avatar disappears in a burst of mystic energy. The council feels that it is the time for action. Tiamat asks me to give them an image of where things are happening and I comply with an image of the great Tree on Luna. One by one the council teleports away. I figure I should probably follow them and at the very least see what happens.
I teleport to the moon, but am immediately buffeted to the ground by gale force winds. I smashed painfully into a tree on the way down. I think that broke some ribs. My computer can not contact the net. I try teleporting to Pax and to Earth, but both places are filled with the same buffeting winds and lack of internet. I teleport to Canus and everything seems normal and fine there. Well other than the ravages of war and reconstruction. Stupid General.
I send an email to Max, Matt, and Ti-Lung to find out where they are. While I am waiting, I practice my healing and fix up my ribs. A little healing was definitely worth the work.
(Apparently sulfur spent some time being President Bill Normal. Max gets another flash of memory from it as the men are bearing down on them. Curtis is just about to the "laughing maniacally" stage now, so I am not sure any good can come of this.)
("Oh great. Sulfur has turrets... but with memories."
~ John)(Ti-Lung recognizes the guy in the lab coat, as Dr. Wiener, and is rather pissed off. Wiener greets Ti-Lung as Zee and asks him where he has been all these months. Ti-Lung growls, "Free!" in reply. The men advance to about 10 feet away and stop. The blond identifies himself as Ron Davis and says that he and his friends would also like to speak with Matt. Davis uses a mystic affect to detect Matt's thoughts and succeeds, but the group's general lack of mystic-craft means this goes largely unnoticed. Meanwhile, Matt's mom has gotten control of the van and Matt is considering using it for some sort of diversion/escape.)
(When Ti-Lung demands to know why they have come here, Davis addresses him as "Subject Zee" and tries to convince him to come with Davis back to "his company". Ti-Lung is agitated by Davis' words. Then Dr. Weiner speaks up and says that they have only Zee's best interest at heart and that they want to understand why his process was "a success". He adds "Please, if you do not cooperate I can not assure that your parents will be safe! It would be out of my hands..." The doctor has an obnoxious groveling manner about him. Ti-Lung is livid but he does not strike yet. In the background, the van drifts to the ground and shuts down. Matt has a suspicion that Davis may know where he is and that the van was hacked.)
(Max asks why they want to talk to Matt. Davis says that his company only wants what is rightfully theirs. He snaps his fingers and one of the mooks takes off his helmet, and the mook is Matt! Ti-Lung finds this highly amusing and makes some veiled threats against the mook. Matt begins having a very heated, silent discussion with his mother.)
(Davis is saying that this is their last chance to come along peacefully. One of the mooks says, "Give it up unit zero," in a deep voice that sounds suspiciously like Matt's. Ti-Lung responds, "Upon hearing your diplomatic requests, I have prepared a counter offer." and he breaths fire on the three mooks to the left of Davis and one of them falls to the ground screaming. Everyone goes on initiative. Max shape shifts to look like Davis and attempts to grapple him. Davis nimbly steps aside and Max is not able to touch him. Max's homunculus steps up by Davis and changes to look like him too. Matt shoots at one of the mooks, but misses. He also manages to get the van running and it flies towards the two uninjured mooks. They drop to the ground and the van skims over them. Matt takes a shot at one of them but misses.)
(One of the guys on the ground pulls out a pistol and shoots Ti-Lung twice. They guys were correct that the mooks have enervin tranquilizer darts in their guns. Ti-Lung feels muddy headed and loses his connection to mystic energy, but does not pass out. The other mooks open up on him as well, but his shots ping off Ti-Lung's hide. Davis takes a step back from the "fake Davis" and he busts out a huge mind effect to force Max to surrender. Max fails his will save and falls to his knees. Max's homunculus is immune to mind control, so it continues trying to grapple Davis. Ti-Lung charges one of the mooks but his claws can not penetrate the man's armor. Matt latches on to the van and sets it down violently on one of the two mooks who are prone on the ground. There is a sickening crunch and Matt zips the van up 15 feet in the air in the hope of not absorbing the man's soul. Davis takes another step back and throws a pyrotechnic affect at Matt. Matt barely swerves the van out of the way of the blast and avoids the damage. Max's homunculus steps back and breaths fire on Davis and Dr. Weiner. Davis manages to dive out of the way, but Dr. Weiner takes a huge bucket of fire to the face and falls the the ground, burnt or dead.)
(Nate takes a couple of calls about a party he has arranged in real life.... The other players wait, but are a bit annoyed. Nate's phone rings again. It is James. He tells Nate to stop answering his phone. Curtis laughs and gives James a plot point.)
(Matt spins the van over to Ti-Lung, throws the side door open, and yells for him to jump in. Ti-Lung does and they speed away into the trees. Meanwhile, Davis orders his men to take down his "double", i.e.. the homunculus. It responds and says, "No, take him down!" pointing at Davis. Two of the mooks hesitate, confused. The other two just saw it breath fire, which presumably their boss can not do, so they try to tackle it. One of them grabs it but fails to pin its arms. The other punches it in the back of its head. The homunculus is not doing so well. It tries to bite the guy who is grappling him but fails and decides to play dead in the hopes of not being killed. Matt bails out of the van and sends it back, with Ti-Lung still in it, to grab Max. Meanwhile, Davis berates the mooks who are not attacking and they move up to the homunculus and kick it to death. Max slumps over, coughing up blood. Fortunately, the van swings by, Ti-Lung pulls Max in, and they speeds off in to the busy freeway traffic.)
(Ti-Lung gets an email from Davis saying he and unit zero must report to StratCo headquarters by noon tomorrow or Zee's parents will die.)
I eventually get an email from Matt saying that they are on Lupus. Okay... I should really talk to them about setting up some standard places to meet. I teleport to the park in Lupus. It looks like someone had a fight here. There are a group of tough looking guys getting into a grey van, but I do not see my friends around anywhere. I stay out of site and watch the men leave. Almost immediately my computer tells me I have another email from Ti-Lung. It says that they are under attack and I should not come to Lupus until I contact them. Argh! Does no one think before they do stupid shit? G-net cries for my retarded friends...
I send Ti-Lung and Matt an instant message asking if they understand how G-net works and also, where are they? All I get back from Matt is, "Can't talk; hiding." How terribly not useful.
(Matt and his mom have an interesting conversation about how she got his gene data and what she did with it.)
"So I was a chance discovery and a curious experiment?"
~ Matt to his mom
"Is that any different than a normal pregnancy?"
~ Eva"Don't worry, he's a man of... well I don't want to say honor 'cause he's not."
~ Matt's Mom, referring to a hacker who caught her in StratCo's serversTi-Lung eventually lets me know that they are heading to the General's compound. I 'port there and Merlin is waiting outside. He indicates that something else bad is going down but he does not want to discuss it in the open. When the others arrive we head down into the General's war room. He tells us that some enemy has attacked Laboro and it seems many of the colonists there have been wiped out. I gather that Laboro is a mining colony, so the loss is terrible but not staggering. Apparently there is some evidence that the attackers are alien... not so great. With some prompting from Huntington, the General agrees to show us the pictures they have. The first image he shows us is of two horrified dwarves coated in some white substance. The second image is of a person with milky white eyes. Damn it! How the hell did that thing follow us? Is every screwed up thing in the damn universe is going to try to fry the frikkin humans?!?
Merlin seems to think that our interaction with the white stuff planet might have caused it to come after the human worlds. Apparently they seem to think that the planet was less than a light year from Lupus, so not as far away as we thought. Matt turns over some images he collected of the stars on that world so they can confirm its place in space.
The other images they show us are extremely disturbing. The creatures of the white stuff world seem to be able to shift in to a liquid form. We had no inkling of this while we were there. The General has videos of the creatures tearing apart the machinery and buildings of Laboro to form some sort of enormous harness. It is a terrible mind bending shape. It burns at my brain and it reminds me of the arch they were going to use in the ritual. Nothing good can come of this.
Ti-Lung asks the General if this threat is public knowledge. The General says no, but he expects that it will leak soon. Ti-Lung gets the General to allow him to disclose it to StratCo in order to extend some sort of deadline. Apparently Stratco is threatening to kill Ti-Lung's human parents. Not so fun. I am not entirely clear on the details, but I assume that Ti-Lung will explain once we are not under the General's chrome-plated non-eyes.
(Ti-Lung emails Davis.)
(Matt's mom is telling him that Stratco apparently was also doing some research on the white stuff but they unearthed some of it in an archeological dig in the Mediterranean quite a long time ago. Matt seems a bit annoyed by his mother's hacker proclivities. I do not think he knew her as well as he thought he did.)
(The Saturday group agrees to use our destiny token to defer the attack from Laboro to the longer part of the estimated time, about two weeks, rather than the shorter end, about two days. This will give us time to deal with StratCo before the crazy aliens arrive.)
Matt tells us about StratCo's research information about the white stuff. He suggests that we go to StratCo to save Ti-Lung's parents and take whatever information they have on the white stuff. This sounds like a dangerous but good idea. I am hoping there is time for a better plan than "show up and get stuff." We will see.
(Ti-Lung gets an email back from Davis. Davis refuses to extend the deadline and has attached an image of Ti-Lung's parents strapped down and sedated. The image is tagged with their names. Varick and Elsa Rixmann are apparently Zee's parents, and his real name is Siegfried Rixmann. James froths at the mouth a bit and Curtis laughs maniacally for a while.)
(We have an interesting discussion of where the souls of some of the Royals came from. Curtis continues the laughing maniacally trend.)
End of Session