thessalian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thessalian) wrote2006-05-21 10:21 pm
thessalian) wrote2006-05-21 10:21 pm
Change the World
Okay, so we had our Mage session today. Those of you who are new to my journal and very much aware that a lot of this stuff cannot happen in White Wolf, please keep in mind that this is very much alternate-universe. The set-up goes as follows: the Wyrm is free, insane and pissed off at the players specifically, and the balance of the universe is in serious flux as a result. So there's a lot of chaotic stuff going on that shouldn't be possible, because the Weaver's strands are snapping and the Wyrm is eating the universe one bite at a time. The Wyrm gained its freedom on 1 January, 2000; at the same time, the Millennium bug had an actual catastrophic effect, destroying most technological systems on earth and killing many of the mundanes; the supernaturals are now the majority. This means that Paradox is lessened, but there are other considerations. The Cult of Ecstasy, Verbena and Virtual Adepts (the last of whom were blamed for Y2K) are now almost entirely gone, Pentex has control of the Technocracy and every so often, the world goes foggy and Silent Hill in its horror. One of the PCs has a Destiny (he bought it on his character sheet and everything); he must raise the universe's one hope of salvation -- the one being on the planet who can redeem the Wyrm and restore balance to the Triat. Read back a few write-ups to see what I mean. We call the campaign Year Restart, for the name the world gave Y2K. And now, back to the story.
So child mages. Lots of them. Roaming around Silent Hill whenever one of them manages to escape Wish House or the Water Prison or the school or wherever-the-hell. Of course, they have the mojo because of tweakage by evil, but a fair few of them have managed to escape. One of the things some of them have figured out how to do is to get into those blocked-off doors that are all over Silent Hill, because those are the place the Evil doesn't need and tends to forget about; it's a good place to hide. So the groups that gathered together with Skank and Lucius, mostly under Remus' orders, set up shop in a dingy old motel and hung out there while the air raid sirens went and the world turned to hell outside. The kids had rations and they spent the time working out why the kids knew how long they'd really been in Silent Hill when the adults didn't; time works properly in the places the Evil ignores. So they spent a loooong time waiting for the ick to subside.
This time was not all wasted. Remus came back with some liquid that burned like molten metal in their veins but was apparently the first process to unlocking magic in that place; the adults got half their Arete back. The mini-Thig, Sue, painted up some of Skank's shotgun shells in a patterns she said might do some damage to Pyramid Head, if it worked, which was interesting. It was then, when he had time to think, that Lucius realised, "Michelle looked a bit thick through the middle when we saw her last and I didn't think they'd feed her enough to get fat ... but her arms and legs and face were normal -- bit thin, in fact and ... oh. Magic doesn't work here. Rampant howler monkey sex. And we've been here a long time. Oh. DEAR." The last bit was said out loud, and Skank realised it too. Michelle, held by Maeljin Incarna, was pregnant with Skank's child. After a certain amount of 'muh', the darkness passed and the whole group shunted itself out to what the kids called the 'warning tower'.
There was an old fire tower situated on the edge of town, with an air raid siren mounted onto it. Apparently, this is what the kids were using to warn the kids to get somewhere safe because the dark and scary evil was coming. There was good food and some bunks (the place had been made into something like the TARDIS; a lot bigger inside than out) so the adults crashed out for about a week because, in all technicality, they'd been awake for about six months instead of two days. They ate and made plans for attacking the church; the Euthanatoi and Ecstatics were going to go in first, to set up some speakers in the church building to throw in a little Ecstatic rock 'n roll mojo to up people's fighting abilities, and then they were going in with a classic three-pronged attack, going in through the three church doors. After a strange bit of business where Skank decided to use Spirit Sight and found himself back in the real world (Spirit works strangely there; it's a strange deviation of the Near Umbra, from what people could tell) and they discovered that 'there' was a nowhere-place made of random 'stuff' (even the life wasn't, for instance, Essence of Rat but just 'Life'), they went on the attack. Skank and Lucius had joined Remus in the frontal attack team, hearing Michelle screaming in what could only be labour pains, and Skank managed a truly prodigious kick to the door to open it. "Once More With Feeling"? The door-kick after "Walk Through the Fire"? That on heavy oak-bound church double doors.
What they saw was pretty horrific. The flank teams were already engaged, already taking (but causing) some serious losses, and six pyramid-headed monstrosities were blocking the aisle to the back of the church, where Michelle lay bound to an altar in silver manacles. A zombie nurse was taking away an infant-shaped bundle in a blanket, and Skank decided to test his new Pyramid-Head-killing rounds, and they worked like a charm; one got blown clean in half. Remus took hold of the fallen great knife of one of the fallen things and dealt death as only one trained by Molly could. After the Pyramid Heads were deceased, Sue gave the adults each some other extra advantages, too; for Skank, a flashlight with a large bulb that would give him a one-shot advantage against anything that might show up, and for Lucius, a clip of pistol bullets painted in the anti-Pyramid sigils. With that, they took off in the direction the nurses went.
They found items, obviously. One of the most important ones actually came from Kuo-Li; An Bian had apparently found a way to bring the Wyrm -- the entire Wyrm -- into a suitably powerful human vessel. However, in the original attempt, An Bian's avatar had fractured and he was never seen again. Further notes, in handwriting recognised as Kuo-Li's, were notes on how to reverse it; something involving white liquid (picked up last session), a black bowl, a purple stone and heart's blood (which they were all for getting from Rodney, who was twisted and bound into a confessional booth with barbed wire). In Peter's handwriting, shaky for obviously being written with the wrong hand, was the word "DRAWERS". They found the button to the lift that would take them to the catacombs and used it.
There was a spider-worm incident. Lucius wasted all his Pyramid-Head killing bullets on them, and then accidentally shot Skank through the shoulder with one of the regular bullets, before losing it completely and running away with all the necessary items to reverse the ritual to go hide in the lift. Skank killed them all, including Queen Spider-Worm, before going back to fetch Lucius and slap him repeatedly (well, he was hysterical). Then they found the rest of the items, including batteries for Skank's flashlight, and headed for where the ritual was taking place.
The two abducted kids had been sacrificed by then, and Susanna stuck them to the floor, took their weapons thanks to a Mind-botch from Lucius (he was trying a variant of No-Mind to keep Susanna from seeing Skank's flashlight, and wound up projecting that information to her instead), broke the flashlight bulb, tossed it aside, and started cutting gouges into Skank's infant daughter. Skank made himself fall over and broke both ankles retrieving the flashlight, used Forces to do what the glass in the bulb would have done and managed not only to free them but to take down the barrier standing between them and the altar. Then he launched himself at Susanna and rammed her head into the corner of the altar. Turned out to be a disguised zombie nurse. In the end, they got out with Peter, Rose, Romulus, Molly and the baby, torching the place behind them. When they got back up, the church proper was a charnel house, and the survivors (less than half of them, in the end) had started a little MASH out in the graveyard. Michelle, due to maltreatment during her pregnancy and delivery with Prime-charged forceps, was in a very bad state, and Molly's head-meat was nearly mush.
Eventually, after two days' medic-stuff, they took everyone back to the fire tower. Michelle was dying, Molly and Peter were still unconscious, and the Life-gifted children were running themselves ragged trying to save who they could. Eventually, something like 25 of the 70-odd child mages survived to make the trip back to the battle bus. Unfortunately, they were attacked by pyramid heads on the way, and Michelle died during the battle, sending Skank into a mad building-kicking frenzy of enraged grief. When they got him to see at least some reason, they put Michelle's body in temporal stasis to avoid decomposition and set out for the real world. Only, Skank botched and found out that the Silent Hill world is very, very close to Malfeas ... because he drove the bus right into Malfeas. He managed to rouse Molly enough to get them the hell out, but it nearly killed her to do it. So the Correspondence-gifted child mages got them to Los Angeles quick-smart.
While Skank got Doctor Science to fix Molly up, he talked to Sgt Hard-Bitch and Amanda, who told him that they'd been gone a year and a bit and suggested that, if Michelle had been put into stasis immediately after death, there was a chance for her to be revived now that she was in proper medical facilities. Unfortunately, the Wyrm wasn't done fucking with them yet, sending a bloody great black dragon to steal the entire battle bus with Michelle's body still inside. Skank chased after it on Grinch and, after some aerial pursuit and fire-dodging, saw the door fly off the bus just before the dragon dropped the bus. Skank used Forces to catch the bus and held it ... only to see Michelle's body falling, as it had fallen out of the open door on the side of the bus. He let the bus down, landed, looked for the body (or its crushed and mangled remains, at least) and found ... nothing.
Going back to the surgery-bunker, he found a pegasus -- or, more accurately, the Pegasus totem spirit of the Black Fury tribe, waiting for him, abundantly pissed off. Pegasus told him that Michelle had been taken back to her pack for revival and healing, and that the pack wanted the child. Skank basically told Pegasus to piss off, bollocks, and stomped off to have a look at his still-unnamed daughter. She looked about three months old at this point, was Awakened already ... and was also definitely Garou. Lucius wondered how old she was and went to check ... triple-botch, so Lucius accidentally aged her to two years old, freaked out and legged it to hide in a room and whimper "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit". Skank decided, right then and there, to call the girl Dawn, told her her name (she'd apparently already picked up the rudiments of speech and bipedal ambulation from the adults around her), gave her his shirt and went off to kick Marwood in the shins. However, Lucius decided that enough was enough and before Skank could do anything, came out and punched Skank, blacking his eye. A punch-up ensued, which left Lucius winded on the floor, and Skank went to find some makeshift clothes for Dawn Redux ... who showed, when he got there, that she could actually go Crinos at will. At aged two. Yes, it's supposed to be impossible, but consider Michelle; she's impossible too. Skank had already decided that he wasn't giving his daughter to Michelle's pack, but this clinched it; she was a Mage and couldn't be raised into that by Garou.
Molly, sixteen and with fixed head-meat, came in at that point and offered to be an intermediary with the Furies. She came back a bit mauled and annoyed, having had to duel with one of the Furies (but she'd brought the pyramid-head great knife that Sue had loaded on the bus after the last battle, the only one that survived the dragon incident and held her own, though she didn't kill her opponent so now has a very pissed-off amazon-type Garou very pissed off at her) and found out that Michelle was a) alive, b) no longer a mage (but still full Garou) and c) didn't remember Skank but did remember her child. So the gang decided to fuck a bunch of this and go to Horizon to try to sort shit out. Between their organisational skills, their acceptance of the young Tremere members among them as a Trad in their own right and the fact that their magic was amplified in the 'real world', the mages decided that the young mages who seemed to lead the band of Silent Hill children would make a nice little Council of Traditions, particularly since they were disinclined to just give orders from on high. Sgt Hard-Bitch had spent the year collecting reinforcements, so there are now about 60 Void Engineers (all those that survived the series of suicide missions upon which the Void Engineers were sent by their superiors) willing to help when the cabal storms Horizon and deposes the current Quiet-riddled regime.
So they're going to change the world. Not that they haven't already. The universe, such as it is, may stand a chance after all.
So child mages. Lots of them. Roaming around Silent Hill whenever one of them manages to escape Wish House or the Water Prison or the school or wherever-the-hell. Of course, they have the mojo because of tweakage by evil, but a fair few of them have managed to escape. One of the things some of them have figured out how to do is to get into those blocked-off doors that are all over Silent Hill, because those are the place the Evil doesn't need and tends to forget about; it's a good place to hide. So the groups that gathered together with Skank and Lucius, mostly under Remus' orders, set up shop in a dingy old motel and hung out there while the air raid sirens went and the world turned to hell outside. The kids had rations and they spent the time working out why the kids knew how long they'd really been in Silent Hill when the adults didn't; time works properly in the places the Evil ignores. So they spent a loooong time waiting for the ick to subside.
This time was not all wasted. Remus came back with some liquid that burned like molten metal in their veins but was apparently the first process to unlocking magic in that place; the adults got half their Arete back. The mini-Thig, Sue, painted up some of Skank's shotgun shells in a patterns she said might do some damage to Pyramid Head, if it worked, which was interesting. It was then, when he had time to think, that Lucius realised, "Michelle looked a bit thick through the middle when we saw her last and I didn't think they'd feed her enough to get fat ... but her arms and legs and face were normal -- bit thin, in fact and ... oh. Magic doesn't work here. Rampant howler monkey sex. And we've been here a long time. Oh. DEAR." The last bit was said out loud, and Skank realised it too. Michelle, held by Maeljin Incarna, was pregnant with Skank's child. After a certain amount of 'muh', the darkness passed and the whole group shunted itself out to what the kids called the 'warning tower'.
There was an old fire tower situated on the edge of town, with an air raid siren mounted onto it. Apparently, this is what the kids were using to warn the kids to get somewhere safe because the dark and scary evil was coming. There was good food and some bunks (the place had been made into something like the TARDIS; a lot bigger inside than out) so the adults crashed out for about a week because, in all technicality, they'd been awake for about six months instead of two days. They ate and made plans for attacking the church; the Euthanatoi and Ecstatics were going to go in first, to set up some speakers in the church building to throw in a little Ecstatic rock 'n roll mojo to up people's fighting abilities, and then they were going in with a classic three-pronged attack, going in through the three church doors. After a strange bit of business where Skank decided to use Spirit Sight and found himself back in the real world (Spirit works strangely there; it's a strange deviation of the Near Umbra, from what people could tell) and they discovered that 'there' was a nowhere-place made of random 'stuff' (even the life wasn't, for instance, Essence of Rat but just 'Life'), they went on the attack. Skank and Lucius had joined Remus in the frontal attack team, hearing Michelle screaming in what could only be labour pains, and Skank managed a truly prodigious kick to the door to open it. "Once More With Feeling"? The door-kick after "Walk Through the Fire"? That on heavy oak-bound church double doors.
What they saw was pretty horrific. The flank teams were already engaged, already taking (but causing) some serious losses, and six pyramid-headed monstrosities were blocking the aisle to the back of the church, where Michelle lay bound to an altar in silver manacles. A zombie nurse was taking away an infant-shaped bundle in a blanket, and Skank decided to test his new Pyramid-Head-killing rounds, and they worked like a charm; one got blown clean in half. Remus took hold of the fallen great knife of one of the fallen things and dealt death as only one trained by Molly could. After the Pyramid Heads were deceased, Sue gave the adults each some other extra advantages, too; for Skank, a flashlight with a large bulb that would give him a one-shot advantage against anything that might show up, and for Lucius, a clip of pistol bullets painted in the anti-Pyramid sigils. With that, they took off in the direction the nurses went.
They found items, obviously. One of the most important ones actually came from Kuo-Li; An Bian had apparently found a way to bring the Wyrm -- the entire Wyrm -- into a suitably powerful human vessel. However, in the original attempt, An Bian's avatar had fractured and he was never seen again. Further notes, in handwriting recognised as Kuo-Li's, were notes on how to reverse it; something involving white liquid (picked up last session), a black bowl, a purple stone and heart's blood (which they were all for getting from Rodney, who was twisted and bound into a confessional booth with barbed wire). In Peter's handwriting, shaky for obviously being written with the wrong hand, was the word "DRAWERS". They found the button to the lift that would take them to the catacombs and used it.
There was a spider-worm incident. Lucius wasted all his Pyramid-Head killing bullets on them, and then accidentally shot Skank through the shoulder with one of the regular bullets, before losing it completely and running away with all the necessary items to reverse the ritual to go hide in the lift. Skank killed them all, including Queen Spider-Worm, before going back to fetch Lucius and slap him repeatedly (well, he was hysterical). Then they found the rest of the items, including batteries for Skank's flashlight, and headed for where the ritual was taking place.
The two abducted kids had been sacrificed by then, and Susanna stuck them to the floor, took their weapons thanks to a Mind-botch from Lucius (he was trying a variant of No-Mind to keep Susanna from seeing Skank's flashlight, and wound up projecting that information to her instead), broke the flashlight bulb, tossed it aside, and started cutting gouges into Skank's infant daughter. Skank made himself fall over and broke both ankles retrieving the flashlight, used Forces to do what the glass in the bulb would have done and managed not only to free them but to take down the barrier standing between them and the altar. Then he launched himself at Susanna and rammed her head into the corner of the altar. Turned out to be a disguised zombie nurse. In the end, they got out with Peter, Rose, Romulus, Molly and the baby, torching the place behind them. When they got back up, the church proper was a charnel house, and the survivors (less than half of them, in the end) had started a little MASH out in the graveyard. Michelle, due to maltreatment during her pregnancy and delivery with Prime-charged forceps, was in a very bad state, and Molly's head-meat was nearly mush.
Eventually, after two days' medic-stuff, they took everyone back to the fire tower. Michelle was dying, Molly and Peter were still unconscious, and the Life-gifted children were running themselves ragged trying to save who they could. Eventually, something like 25 of the 70-odd child mages survived to make the trip back to the battle bus. Unfortunately, they were attacked by pyramid heads on the way, and Michelle died during the battle, sending Skank into a mad building-kicking frenzy of enraged grief. When they got him to see at least some reason, they put Michelle's body in temporal stasis to avoid decomposition and set out for the real world. Only, Skank botched and found out that the Silent Hill world is very, very close to Malfeas ... because he drove the bus right into Malfeas. He managed to rouse Molly enough to get them the hell out, but it nearly killed her to do it. So the Correspondence-gifted child mages got them to Los Angeles quick-smart.
While Skank got Doctor Science to fix Molly up, he talked to Sgt Hard-Bitch and Amanda, who told him that they'd been gone a year and a bit and suggested that, if Michelle had been put into stasis immediately after death, there was a chance for her to be revived now that she was in proper medical facilities. Unfortunately, the Wyrm wasn't done fucking with them yet, sending a bloody great black dragon to steal the entire battle bus with Michelle's body still inside. Skank chased after it on Grinch and, after some aerial pursuit and fire-dodging, saw the door fly off the bus just before the dragon dropped the bus. Skank used Forces to catch the bus and held it ... only to see Michelle's body falling, as it had fallen out of the open door on the side of the bus. He let the bus down, landed, looked for the body (or its crushed and mangled remains, at least) and found ... nothing.
Going back to the surgery-bunker, he found a pegasus -- or, more accurately, the Pegasus totem spirit of the Black Fury tribe, waiting for him, abundantly pissed off. Pegasus told him that Michelle had been taken back to her pack for revival and healing, and that the pack wanted the child. Skank basically told Pegasus to piss off, bollocks, and stomped off to have a look at his still-unnamed daughter. She looked about three months old at this point, was Awakened already ... and was also definitely Garou. Lucius wondered how old she was and went to check ... triple-botch, so Lucius accidentally aged her to two years old, freaked out and legged it to hide in a room and whimper "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit". Skank decided, right then and there, to call the girl Dawn, told her her name (she'd apparently already picked up the rudiments of speech and bipedal ambulation from the adults around her), gave her his shirt and went off to kick Marwood in the shins. However, Lucius decided that enough was enough and before Skank could do anything, came out and punched Skank, blacking his eye. A punch-up ensued, which left Lucius winded on the floor, and Skank went to find some makeshift clothes for Dawn Redux ... who showed, when he got there, that she could actually go Crinos at will. At aged two. Yes, it's supposed to be impossible, but consider Michelle; she's impossible too. Skank had already decided that he wasn't giving his daughter to Michelle's pack, but this clinched it; she was a Mage and couldn't be raised into that by Garou.
Molly, sixteen and with fixed head-meat, came in at that point and offered to be an intermediary with the Furies. She came back a bit mauled and annoyed, having had to duel with one of the Furies (but she'd brought the pyramid-head great knife that Sue had loaded on the bus after the last battle, the only one that survived the dragon incident and held her own, though she didn't kill her opponent so now has a very pissed-off amazon-type Garou very pissed off at her) and found out that Michelle was a) alive, b) no longer a mage (but still full Garou) and c) didn't remember Skank but did remember her child. So the gang decided to fuck a bunch of this and go to Horizon to try to sort shit out. Between their organisational skills, their acceptance of the young Tremere members among them as a Trad in their own right and the fact that their magic was amplified in the 'real world', the mages decided that the young mages who seemed to lead the band of Silent Hill children would make a nice little Council of Traditions, particularly since they were disinclined to just give orders from on high. Sgt Hard-Bitch had spent the year collecting reinforcements, so there are now about 60 Void Engineers (all those that survived the series of suicide missions upon which the Void Engineers were sent by their superiors) willing to help when the cabal storms Horizon and deposes the current Quiet-riddled regime.
So they're going to change the world. Not that they haven't already. The universe, such as it is, may stand a chance after all.
How to operate with a blown mind
Just sit back and enjoy the ride
no subject