Another One Bites the Dust

[thessalian]

We had another Mage session today. nadriel couldn't make it, but at least that was easy to explain away. lokean also couldn't make it, and that was harder...

So the first order of business was to get to Salem and help Lucille, who was going to have the Gilgul rite performed on her by Rodney and his cronies. On their way, Peter turned to the others and said that he really ought to check on his compatriots in Llandeilo and wasn't going to be any good in this fight anyway, so asked Emily to transport him. Unfortunately, she was driving the bus at the time, so handed Skank the wheel (he was riding shotgun) and vanished, leaving him to scooch into the driver's seat and thankfully not get them all killed. At the same time, Furubashi-san vanished, being replaced with a note that no one could reach, given that they were travelling at over 100mph. Emily returned soon enough, ending up in Skank's lap, and when Prof Smith said that flying would be faster, Emily let Skank have control again and started poking around with the engine (yes, while they were still travelling at speed) and turned the bus into the Royston Vasey-bound equivalent of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. That was amusing, briefly.

In any case, they arrived in Salem in one piece, and after a bit of comedy involving Skank burying Lucius completely in snow by mistake (he was trying a Forces steam blast to clear a path through snowdrifts and it all went wrong), they noticed a black-clad figure also heading to town. Closer examination showed it to be Colum O'Brien. Yes, the SWAT-bastard god Thiggie who got Mind-fucked by Rodney and crushed by falling Savoy three in-game months ago. This was not a Dawn-related resurrection; for one thing, his bones made grating, crunching sounds when he moved. Also, a look at his aura showed it to be pale, like a vampire's, but he was out in daylight, in UV-reflective snow, apparently unconcerned. A bit of thought brought Lucius to the conclusion that he must be a wraith of a particular type that he'd heard about, one with such heavy, driving unfinished business that he bargained to come back physically -- in short, Colum is a Risen. This has ups and downs. Bonus is that Colum is fuck-hard, nigh unkillable and driven to protect his chantrymates. Drawback is that his Shadow is likely to take over and do the random kill-spree thing. And he apparently wanted Rodney to pay for the whole Mind-fucky thing, so at least they had a common goal.

They arrived at a gibbet in the middle of Salem town and found Rodney lording it over a bunch of Sleepers and a few mages. They had just determined Sleeper numbers when Colum pulled guns and went kill-mad. Lucius tried to Entropy the bullets out of the path of Sleepers but screwed up and got both Skank and Professor Smith shot. Then Colum mounted the gibbet to deal with Rodney and both Skank and Professor Smith tried to persuade him not to kill Rodney. Colum wasn't about to kill Skank (sworn to protect him, after all) but Professor Smith was in the way, or so he saw it, so ... well, he'd been warned not to antagonise the Risen... *sigh* Professor Smith got a bullet in the head. My game does not do well for party members. So guido_was_taken rolled up a new character while the rest proceeded.

As it turned out, Prof Smith's sacrifice wasn't even necessary, as the "protect chantrymates" Passion included Rodney. There was a grey area in terms of torture, though, so Colum shot Rodney through the groin and Lucius healed him, making a deliberate 'mistake' with size. So Rodney, being the slimeball, basically asked if Lucius had so much penis envy that he had to make such mistakes, so Lucius and Colum spent a happy fifteen minutes or so with Colum breaking Rodney's ankle for Lucius to heal before Colum broke it again ... and again ... and again... Eventually, Skank started questioning Rodney, who took some persuasion to do anything but scream -- Colum coming back from the dead evidently rattled him somewhat. Skank tried to threaten Rodney into being of use in breaking open the box in which Molly was incarcerated but Rodney wasn't of any use in that case, saying something about, "When you have a prisoner you really want, and you lock them away, do you just leave the key in the lock?" At first, Skank just thought that Rodney had Mind-wiped himself to purge the info of how he did the lock-down, but a little bit more thought told him that someone else had done that office for him. Skank threatened to just kill Rodney and squeeze the information out of his soul (which was the plan when they were sure Colum was going to rip Rodney into tiny, tiny pieces), but Rodney said something to the effect of "My soul's already taken". Which suggests that he went to the Calls -- Rodney was a Nephandus. Which surprised Skank, who didn't think Rodney had the balls, but didn't surprise Lucius a whit.

It was late, and they were tired, so they found a motel and holed up for the night, locking Rodney in a closet and warding the doors as hard as possible. However, Lucius got hit by the effects of Violet's Violet Wand around then, so he approached Lucille and basically asked for sex, saying that she was the most "appropriate" one there. As you can imagine, it didn't impress her in the slightest, so she put him to sleep and had Skank put him to 'bed' in a bathtub full of cold water and icicles, making sure to put a Life rote on him to ensure he didn't die of hypothermia. He woke up cold and miserable the next morning, hung his clothes out to freeze and wrapped himself in his anorak and duvet until Skank showed up with coffee (the CMOD followed them, apparently unfazed by mecha attacks, but then it did survive the destabilisation of the node...) and thawed out his clothes. Then he went back to ask Michelle for some help providing breakfast ingredients. However, Michelle wasn't there. The woman standing there was pale, wan and had bright red hair. She also had what looked for all the world like glass whips. Which she used to good effect to whip Skank in an effort to get him to remove the wards on Rodney. That didn't work but the knowledge that this woman was having Michelle tortured pretty much did it; he let down the wards and let the woman drag the hog-tied Rodney away. Skank screamed for Lucius, who healed Skank and Michelle, who was part of the deal for Rodney's release and had suffered just about every torture known before she was returned. After a bit of healing from both Lucius, herself and by virtue of Crinos form, she managed to tell them that this was another Maeljin Incarna in human form, a Lady Aife -- the Caliph of Pain. Yeah, the Urge Wyrm of Cruelty came a-calling. Big guns now.

There was clothes shopping and sulking from most people involved and then they headed for Falmouth, a port town in which they gathered they could find a deep sea vessel of some description. When they arrived, Lucille stalked off and found guido_was_taken's new character, a 'psychic' investigator named John Grey. She kissed him first, making sure Lucius could see (Lucius then buggered off back to the bus) and then asked him where she might find a deep sea vessel. He said he'd look into it and get back to her; at her request, he also suggested a restaurant. After some scrying and finding someone with a nice big fast-looking boat who was thinking "Bored. Skint. Argh!", he went back and joined up with the party.

When they got to the boat, it turned out that Ajahn had told the captain (Malcolm Reynolds -- I wasn't feeling very imaginative about names just today) to wait there for them, describing Skank as the most identifiable member of the party. It turned out that Captain Reynolds was a mage himself (though the crew were Sleepers), and was not impressed that nephandi were possibly going to show up on the journey. Thankfully, the conversation held by Lucius and John ensured that they got relative privacy on the ship, and they realised about midway through the journey that they had never got around to reading the note that had replaced Furubashi-san in the bus from three days previously. After some comedy and Lucius putting his foot in it again, causing Emily to hide behind crates in the cargo area, Emily sent Skank back to the bus to get the note, which stated that Furubashi-san had been taken by the Akashic Brotherhood to stand trial. They didn't say what for. The charges are assumed to be trumped-up.

Eventually, they reached the coordinates that Lucius had for Molly's location. The notes that Michelle had retrieved when she rescued the party (because they 'reeked of Bookboy and Weaselbitch') said that not only was it warded to keep Molly in, but it eliminated her need for food and other bodily functions while speeding up the sense of passing time in the box so that every twelve hours or so seemed like a week, and kept her conscious the whole way. So they were mentally gearing themselves up for trauma when they finally got the box up. They hooled Skank and Michelle's mind together and sent her down, Skank providing protection from the pressure and looking through her eyes to see if anything was going wrong. It took her an hour to get down and she had to fight Wyrm-squid when she got down there, but she retrieved the box and Skank hauled her up again, also protecting her from the bends.

All that remained was to open the coffin-sized box. There was a glass panel in the box, and no other obvious faults for a lid or anything, so they tapped out the glass, Lucius directing Skank as how best to cut so that there would be no shattered glass in Molly's face. When they got that out of the way, Molly was still unresponsive but there was a fault line arond the front of the box that was obviously a lid. After some struggle, Skank got the lid off and was confronted with a screaming, panicking, extremely untactile Molly. All attempts to calm her failed -- she only went from screaming to whimpering -- so they set up a suicide watch on her and left it at that.

All was calm until a grey figure enveloped by a thick grey cloud turned up and turned its attentions on Molly. Skank got in the way and was hit by massive despair. He rallied quite well and refused to simply up and off himself to let it get a shot at Molly, even when it threatened the lives of the others, so it infected the others with total despair and went away. Most of the mages and all of the crew were affected, and Lucille and Emily tried to off themselves along with the rest of the crew. Emily nearly crushed herself to death by pushing the heavy crates over so they'd fall on her, and Lucille tried hanging. There was much panic and Molly fell overboard -- it took Skank and Captain Reynolds using everything they had to get her back on deck. Several botches hit at this point -- John and Lucius tried to link minds to perform a Life rote on Emily to make sure she'd survive for awhile under the crates and John linked to Skank by accident. Twice. Lucius, meanwhile, tried moving the boxes by hand, triple-botched a roll and wound up under the boxes with half his bones broken. Then John tried to move the boxes off Emily with Skank's Forces and another Mind hookup, but one Correspondence botch made Skank trash the infirmary and one botched Forces roll made the boxes heavier on Emily, causing more damage. Eventually, they got things settled but two members of the crew died; Lucille tried her best and Lucius assisted admirably, but they couldn't save everyone.

The captain was not impressed. Asked if they could get home any quicker. Skank went to find Emily, who had been left (albeit healed) in the pool of her own blood and the litter of crates, and she blipped the whole boat back to Falmouth. The party was summarily thrown off the ship and are currently holed up in a big hotel on the outskirts of Falmouth, resting up.

So next week, Peter Grafton will be rather shocked to find Furubashi-san missing, Professor Smith dead, and this new guy John Grey with the heavy Arcane in the party. But so it goes. And there will be quotes on weaselbitch's journal soon.

We're such a destructive bunch...