Ascent into Madness
Oct. 2nd, 2004 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we had a session of the 1890 GURPS campaign. Snowwy didn't show up, but his character was missing anyway, so that sort of worked out for the best. We spent the night looking for him, and vanishing one by one, then messed around and never got around to actually rescuing him. Maybe we'll do it next week!
Heading out to the mansion showed that it was no longer, and apparently had never been, owned by JR -- it was instead owned by Mr. Albion. "But where are my books?!" Charlie wondered... Charlie and Don decided not to break into the mansion just yet, though. Instead, they went to check Charlie's place to see if the rest of his stuff was still around. As they were driving past, however, Charlie mentioned Patch, the librarian, and suggested they go see if he would be able to remember JR, or possibly research what might be happening to him.
Patch was home, in his library, with all of Charlie's books. Talking to him, they discovered that he didn't remember JR, and in fact the books were *his*, and he'd given Charlie the money to go to the Auction and buy them, since JR had never been around to pay Charlie the ridiculous sum he'd demanded for saving the mine.
The exchange went something like,
D: "I guess I came out ahead, since I have the car JR commissioned me to build for him and now I own it."
C: "Well if JR never existed, where do you think I got all the money to buy these books?"
P: "They're my books. I gave you the money to buy them for me."
C: "Argh, this means I came out behind!"
D: "So the question is, do you still have to pay him back the rest?"
C: "I'm sure I already paid him the rest back a week ago."
P: "You told me you spent all the money buying the books."
C: "Um... how much did you give me?"
P: "$300."
C: "Then I spent most of it buying the books, yes."
So, they sat around waiting while Patch researched the phenomenon for them. The best reference he could find -- aside from some vague stories about divine punishment -- was a 'fictional' diary written about a man questing for the Holy Grail. He got himself deeper and deeper embedded in strange and mysterious happenings, until finally, as he was about to find the grail, he vanished. The last part of the book was his assistant writing about how he was sure the first part of the book was completely true, but he couldn't find any concrete evidence that his friend had ever existed.
Charlie was a bit baffled as to why *JR* would vanish from an overload of weirdness, since as far as he knew he was the least weird of the three of them. Maybe he had his secrets.
There was some discussion about the steam tunnels. Apparently, Don had seen the assailant who'd killed the girl at the party fleeing into the steam tunnels, and hadn't seen fit to mention it to anyone. A map showed that the network was expansive, and Patch's experiences in the tunnels suggested that tracking someone through them an hour or so after the fact wasn't likely to work. Don did notice that they provided a back door entrance to every important building in Athens...
And, while they were on the subject of the murder, Patch mentioned that the body at the auction had vanished without a trace, which left the police there fuming, because no body would make it hard for them to pin the murder rap on Charlie. Although they didn't know his *name*, exactly... still, they probably would have been able to track him down by talking to the porters, so this was good news.
Then they mused about whether, in light of this new, and some old, information, the hallucinogenic eyedrops might actually be showing the truth after all. Patch said that he'd found the alchemical recipe for them, and that he was surprised they weren't fatally poisonous, since the two prime ingredients were the most poisonous mushroom known to man, and cyanide. He wanted to try it out, though, to see if it would help him read some bizarrely incomprehensible books from the auction, and asked if Charlie could spare some... Charlie had plenty, and little desire to use it, so he and Don went off to get it.
At Charlie's place, he found that most everything -- including some of the things, like the daggers, that he'd had with him at JR's place, and his guard dog, and the 99 totems he'd taken from the mine -- was there. As he walked in, a strange sliver-like demon appeared (although this one had four arms) and told him, cryptically, that if he got three more hosts, the plan could go off as he'd directed. Charlie asked him to 'refresh his memory' on what the hell he was talking about without giving away that he didn't remember, and managed to learn that the hosts needed were probably human babies, two years or younger.
"Agamemnon, what the hell is he talking about?"
"I... don't think you're ready to hear that just yet," his familiar replied.
This distraction annoyed Don, who left to wait outside. Charlie proceeded into his lab, found the true-sight eyedrops, and picked them up, at which point his familiar chimed in, "So, you're going to have another of your friends try this, now?" "They asked, and it's their funeral if it's poisonous." "I wonder if you'll remember them this time." "So this has happened to other people I used to know?" "I... think I can say, truthfully, that it led to the downfall of the person you bought it from."
So, in case Patch vanished without a trace, like Agamemnon was hinting he might, Charlie decided to write a short account of what was going on and a detailed account of what he was about to try, which took about fifteen minutes. When he got outside, Don, and the car, were missing. And the streetlights were gas powered instead of electric. Had Don vanished too?
Charlie considered trying the eyedrops right away to see if he could spot Don, assuming Don was still in the area, but couldn't make himself use it. What if it drove him crazy, and he thought he saw Don, but was really just hallucinating? BUT! If he and Patch used it at the same time, they could compare their hallucinations and figure out if it was actually working for real. Yes, that would work! So, he walked over to the library, and proposed the experiment, which Patch agreed to readily.
They doped themselves up, and sure enough, they saw other people using the library. The most notable was a samurai-type with ceramic gauntlets and mask who seemed to be guarding the place, or the people. Charlie noted him down -- they were writing down their hallucinations, so that they could read the description afterwards and see if it matched -- and searched the building for secret passages, like he'd seen in JR's mansion. He didn't find any, although he did find a first-and-a-half floor.
There was a commotion downstairs, and Charlie ran down to see the samurai fighting a ghoulish figure with very long fingernails. The fight was too quick to follow, but when it ended the samurai's belt fluttered to the ground. Charlie ran out to try to pick it up, as evidence for after the drug wore off, but a little girl scavenged it before he could get to it. He sighed and walked back inside, and wrote down everything, as planned.
After a few minutes, the sense of increased perception from the hallucinogen wore off, but Charlie could still see the new people in the library, and the second floor, and everything. He sat around waiting for Patch to come down, chatting with him about what was going on -- but not giving details -- and about what Patch was reading... then the drug wore off for Patch, and he stopped being able to see Charlie.
Dammit.
Patch took the true-sight ointment and locked it back in his cabinet with the rest of the alchemical stuff Charlie had bought, and which should have been back at his place. Dammit. Then wrote down that he was going to erase his memory, then try the ointment again, so that he could compare his experiences with the previous try, and went off to meditate.
Charlie stole back the ointments that looked useful, then changed into a bird -- one of the powers granted him by Agamemnon -- and flew over the city looking for Don's car.
Don, meanwhile, had retrieved most of his belongings from his room -- HIS things were all strange themselves, and had vanished off with him, so he still had everything -- and loaded them up in his car, then gone down to the mud flats by the river to test out a weapon he was designing. It didn't work so well -- the heat from the crystals detonating melted the barrel. The loud explosion and flash made it easy for Charlie to find him, though.
Don, because he was a bastard, decided to ignore Charlie's presence. His companion -- a blue creature that had brought Don over into this alternate world, as he called it -- answered Charlie's questions, though, which ruined the practical joke. It came out that JR was being held prisoner in Mr. Albion's house -- his new house, that is, JR's old mansion -- and that they had to go rescue him, but they'd be fighting people who... well, it was suggested that they use moonlight to fight them, because that would mean they would be taken alive instead of killed on sight, if they failed. Fortunately, Don had the moon in his trunk, and had been using it to power his headlights.
No, really.
So, it was off to rescue JR, but Charlie wanted to make a few stops first. The first stop was back at Patch's place. Don had mentioned that he was an alchemist as well as a gadgeteer, so Charlie wanted to ask patch to make an antidote for the true sight, or at least give them the original formula so that they could reverse it. Patch was on the true-sight drug again, so he could *see* Charlie, but of course he didn't remember Charlie, and got very suspicious when Charlie mentioned the Keepers, and started to stonewall. So Charlie summoned Oolan, the guild messenger who he still felt a connection to, who verified his membership in the order to Patch, and Patch agreed to come up with a theoretical formula for an antidote, and store it in his safe -- it was too dangerous to leave out where anyone could see it.
Then the drug wore off again, and he stopped being able to see them. They saw him write down that he'd have to find an assistant to test the drug with him and make sure its effects were real, since the most recent hallucinations had tread on dangerous territory.
Then Charlie asked Don to come with him back to his former place -- maybe the enchanted knives would still be there? His dog was there, at least, and he gave the spirit possessing it new orders -- to follow him around and defend him from anyone that threatened him. It was still a doctor's office, but of a licensed doctor now, and much richer and better equipped. Charlie looted it of a portable medical kit and all the expensive drugs, then -- after walking around the sliver-spirit, who was still standing there and presumably still waiting for scrumptious babies -- headed into the basement to see if his things were there.
Strangely, the basement was locked. He had a spell to get past the locked door, and insisted that Don come with him, since he didn't want him vanishing again.
The basement was still a ritual space, but the rituals being performed there were much darker than the ones Charlie usually got into -- Charlie didn't need to keep young virgins locked up in cages, for example. If any of Charlie's things were still around, they were locked in a walled off, warded area.
Don offered to blow up the wall, letting them inside, but wouldn't do it unless the prisoners were freed first, so that they wouldn't be killed by shrapnel. Charlie had no *objection* to freeing the prisoners, although he didn't see any benefit in it to them, and so helped Don remove them from the cages and shove them up the stairs and outside. They couldn't see Don or Charlie, and seemed broken by long confinement, so they needed a lot of coaxing.
About that time, the devil appeared. Charlie and the horned, spade-tailed, red-skinned creature blustered back and forth about who was the thief and had stolen whose possessions, but the devil seemed inclined to let Charlie be, since he *did* have a demon familiar of his own. He tried to bargain with Charlie -- he'd give Charlie a holy weapon if Charlie let him take a year of his memories, but Charlie was a little spooked about the whole losing memories thing. "There are things that have happened recently that suggest I might have already lost memories I didn't want to lose." "Oh, believe me, you wanted to lose them."
After a bit more talking the devil admitted that the weapon he was offering was already owned by one of Charlie's friends, and the only other reasonable substitute was underground, guarded by fanatical monks, in a place where Charlie wouldn't even be able to breathe... so, yeah, no deal. Charlie left, borrowed a gun from Don, and started blessing the bullets himself, although all his 'blessing' could do is make them able to affect spirits. Since they had no idea what they were going up against, he figued it *might* work.
But before they could get far, a werewolf pounced off a building roof and murdered one of the escaped virgins right in front of their eyes. And by 'right in front' I mean 'three feet away'. Startled, and exhausted, they trained their guns on the thing and fired! Of course, they didn't have silver bullets, so that didn't really help.
Charlie stumbled back, and managed to dodge the werewolf's counter-attack, and his dog leaped on its side, failing to connect, and Don pulled out his melted rifle, sans barrel, and blasted the werewolf in the side with a huge blast of fire from point blank range... and it looked slightly injured. Then Charlie's 'stench' spell went off on its own, and everyone collapsed choking and gagging. By the time they crawled out of the cloud, the werewolf -- which they could see now had two tails -- was up on a lamppost looking thoroughly disgusted (apparently, werewolfs have an acute sense of smell), and lept off, leaving them alive, if not entirely unhurt.
Don told Charlie to tend to the wounded-and-possibly-dead escapee. He was still alive, but his wounds already looked infected, which shouldn't have been possible that quickly. "We should kill him," Charlie said, "He's going to turn into a werewolf."
"Can't you just use your magic to cure him or something?" Don asked. Although the normal rituals against disease had to be used *before* you contracted it, Charlie remembered the meditation power the bear spirit had given him -- using that, there might be a way. Since he needed to rest for a couple hours anyway before he'd be up to any more fighting (the door spell, blessing fifty bullets, and putting out a cloud of stench had exhausted him completely), spending that time meditating on a cure seemed acceptable... surely they had at least that long before the victim turned on them.
last session | next session
Next week, we'll hopefully have Snowwy back. And Stacey joining us, although I don't know as what. Maybe we'll even get around to rescuing Snowwy's character?
Heading out to the mansion showed that it was no longer, and apparently had never been, owned by JR -- it was instead owned by Mr. Albion. "But where are my books?!" Charlie wondered... Charlie and Don decided not to break into the mansion just yet, though. Instead, they went to check Charlie's place to see if the rest of his stuff was still around. As they were driving past, however, Charlie mentioned Patch, the librarian, and suggested they go see if he would be able to remember JR, or possibly research what might be happening to him.
Patch was home, in his library, with all of Charlie's books. Talking to him, they discovered that he didn't remember JR, and in fact the books were *his*, and he'd given Charlie the money to go to the Auction and buy them, since JR had never been around to pay Charlie the ridiculous sum he'd demanded for saving the mine.
The exchange went something like,
D: "I guess I came out ahead, since I have the car JR commissioned me to build for him and now I own it."
C: "Well if JR never existed, where do you think I got all the money to buy these books?"
P: "They're my books. I gave you the money to buy them for me."
C: "Argh, this means I came out behind!"
D: "So the question is, do you still have to pay him back the rest?"
C: "I'm sure I already paid him the rest back a week ago."
P: "You told me you spent all the money buying the books."
C: "Um... how much did you give me?"
P: "$300."
C: "Then I spent most of it buying the books, yes."
So, they sat around waiting while Patch researched the phenomenon for them. The best reference he could find -- aside from some vague stories about divine punishment -- was a 'fictional' diary written about a man questing for the Holy Grail. He got himself deeper and deeper embedded in strange and mysterious happenings, until finally, as he was about to find the grail, he vanished. The last part of the book was his assistant writing about how he was sure the first part of the book was completely true, but he couldn't find any concrete evidence that his friend had ever existed.
Charlie was a bit baffled as to why *JR* would vanish from an overload of weirdness, since as far as he knew he was the least weird of the three of them. Maybe he had his secrets.
There was some discussion about the steam tunnels. Apparently, Don had seen the assailant who'd killed the girl at the party fleeing into the steam tunnels, and hadn't seen fit to mention it to anyone. A map showed that the network was expansive, and Patch's experiences in the tunnels suggested that tracking someone through them an hour or so after the fact wasn't likely to work. Don did notice that they provided a back door entrance to every important building in Athens...
And, while they were on the subject of the murder, Patch mentioned that the body at the auction had vanished without a trace, which left the police there fuming, because no body would make it hard for them to pin the murder rap on Charlie. Although they didn't know his *name*, exactly... still, they probably would have been able to track him down by talking to the porters, so this was good news.
Then they mused about whether, in light of this new, and some old, information, the hallucinogenic eyedrops might actually be showing the truth after all. Patch said that he'd found the alchemical recipe for them, and that he was surprised they weren't fatally poisonous, since the two prime ingredients were the most poisonous mushroom known to man, and cyanide. He wanted to try it out, though, to see if it would help him read some bizarrely incomprehensible books from the auction, and asked if Charlie could spare some... Charlie had plenty, and little desire to use it, so he and Don went off to get it.
At Charlie's place, he found that most everything -- including some of the things, like the daggers, that he'd had with him at JR's place, and his guard dog, and the 99 totems he'd taken from the mine -- was there. As he walked in, a strange sliver-like demon appeared (although this one had four arms) and told him, cryptically, that if he got three more hosts, the plan could go off as he'd directed. Charlie asked him to 'refresh his memory' on what the hell he was talking about without giving away that he didn't remember, and managed to learn that the hosts needed were probably human babies, two years or younger.
"Agamemnon, what the hell is he talking about?"
"I... don't think you're ready to hear that just yet," his familiar replied.
This distraction annoyed Don, who left to wait outside. Charlie proceeded into his lab, found the true-sight eyedrops, and picked them up, at which point his familiar chimed in, "So, you're going to have another of your friends try this, now?" "They asked, and it's their funeral if it's poisonous." "I wonder if you'll remember them this time." "So this has happened to other people I used to know?" "I... think I can say, truthfully, that it led to the downfall of the person you bought it from."
So, in case Patch vanished without a trace, like Agamemnon was hinting he might, Charlie decided to write a short account of what was going on and a detailed account of what he was about to try, which took about fifteen minutes. When he got outside, Don, and the car, were missing. And the streetlights were gas powered instead of electric. Had Don vanished too?
Charlie considered trying the eyedrops right away to see if he could spot Don, assuming Don was still in the area, but couldn't make himself use it. What if it drove him crazy, and he thought he saw Don, but was really just hallucinating? BUT! If he and Patch used it at the same time, they could compare their hallucinations and figure out if it was actually working for real. Yes, that would work! So, he walked over to the library, and proposed the experiment, which Patch agreed to readily.
They doped themselves up, and sure enough, they saw other people using the library. The most notable was a samurai-type with ceramic gauntlets and mask who seemed to be guarding the place, or the people. Charlie noted him down -- they were writing down their hallucinations, so that they could read the description afterwards and see if it matched -- and searched the building for secret passages, like he'd seen in JR's mansion. He didn't find any, although he did find a first-and-a-half floor.
There was a commotion downstairs, and Charlie ran down to see the samurai fighting a ghoulish figure with very long fingernails. The fight was too quick to follow, but when it ended the samurai's belt fluttered to the ground. Charlie ran out to try to pick it up, as evidence for after the drug wore off, but a little girl scavenged it before he could get to it. He sighed and walked back inside, and wrote down everything, as planned.
After a few minutes, the sense of increased perception from the hallucinogen wore off, but Charlie could still see the new people in the library, and the second floor, and everything. He sat around waiting for Patch to come down, chatting with him about what was going on -- but not giving details -- and about what Patch was reading... then the drug wore off for Patch, and he stopped being able to see Charlie.
Dammit.
Patch took the true-sight ointment and locked it back in his cabinet with the rest of the alchemical stuff Charlie had bought, and which should have been back at his place. Dammit. Then wrote down that he was going to erase his memory, then try the ointment again, so that he could compare his experiences with the previous try, and went off to meditate.
Charlie stole back the ointments that looked useful, then changed into a bird -- one of the powers granted him by Agamemnon -- and flew over the city looking for Don's car.
Don, meanwhile, had retrieved most of his belongings from his room -- HIS things were all strange themselves, and had vanished off with him, so he still had everything -- and loaded them up in his car, then gone down to the mud flats by the river to test out a weapon he was designing. It didn't work so well -- the heat from the crystals detonating melted the barrel. The loud explosion and flash made it easy for Charlie to find him, though.
Don, because he was a bastard, decided to ignore Charlie's presence. His companion -- a blue creature that had brought Don over into this alternate world, as he called it -- answered Charlie's questions, though, which ruined the practical joke. It came out that JR was being held prisoner in Mr. Albion's house -- his new house, that is, JR's old mansion -- and that they had to go rescue him, but they'd be fighting people who... well, it was suggested that they use moonlight to fight them, because that would mean they would be taken alive instead of killed on sight, if they failed. Fortunately, Don had the moon in his trunk, and had been using it to power his headlights.
No, really.
So, it was off to rescue JR, but Charlie wanted to make a few stops first. The first stop was back at Patch's place. Don had mentioned that he was an alchemist as well as a gadgeteer, so Charlie wanted to ask patch to make an antidote for the true sight, or at least give them the original formula so that they could reverse it. Patch was on the true-sight drug again, so he could *see* Charlie, but of course he didn't remember Charlie, and got very suspicious when Charlie mentioned the Keepers, and started to stonewall. So Charlie summoned Oolan, the guild messenger who he still felt a connection to, who verified his membership in the order to Patch, and Patch agreed to come up with a theoretical formula for an antidote, and store it in his safe -- it was too dangerous to leave out where anyone could see it.
Then the drug wore off again, and he stopped being able to see them. They saw him write down that he'd have to find an assistant to test the drug with him and make sure its effects were real, since the most recent hallucinations had tread on dangerous territory.
Then Charlie asked Don to come with him back to his former place -- maybe the enchanted knives would still be there? His dog was there, at least, and he gave the spirit possessing it new orders -- to follow him around and defend him from anyone that threatened him. It was still a doctor's office, but of a licensed doctor now, and much richer and better equipped. Charlie looted it of a portable medical kit and all the expensive drugs, then -- after walking around the sliver-spirit, who was still standing there and presumably still waiting for scrumptious babies -- headed into the basement to see if his things were there.
Strangely, the basement was locked. He had a spell to get past the locked door, and insisted that Don come with him, since he didn't want him vanishing again.
The basement was still a ritual space, but the rituals being performed there were much darker than the ones Charlie usually got into -- Charlie didn't need to keep young virgins locked up in cages, for example. If any of Charlie's things were still around, they were locked in a walled off, warded area.
Don offered to blow up the wall, letting them inside, but wouldn't do it unless the prisoners were freed first, so that they wouldn't be killed by shrapnel. Charlie had no *objection* to freeing the prisoners, although he didn't see any benefit in it to them, and so helped Don remove them from the cages and shove them up the stairs and outside. They couldn't see Don or Charlie, and seemed broken by long confinement, so they needed a lot of coaxing.
About that time, the devil appeared. Charlie and the horned, spade-tailed, red-skinned creature blustered back and forth about who was the thief and had stolen whose possessions, but the devil seemed inclined to let Charlie be, since he *did* have a demon familiar of his own. He tried to bargain with Charlie -- he'd give Charlie a holy weapon if Charlie let him take a year of his memories, but Charlie was a little spooked about the whole losing memories thing. "There are things that have happened recently that suggest I might have already lost memories I didn't want to lose." "Oh, believe me, you wanted to lose them."
After a bit more talking the devil admitted that the weapon he was offering was already owned by one of Charlie's friends, and the only other reasonable substitute was underground, guarded by fanatical monks, in a place where Charlie wouldn't even be able to breathe... so, yeah, no deal. Charlie left, borrowed a gun from Don, and started blessing the bullets himself, although all his 'blessing' could do is make them able to affect spirits. Since they had no idea what they were going up against, he figued it *might* work.
But before they could get far, a werewolf pounced off a building roof and murdered one of the escaped virgins right in front of their eyes. And by 'right in front' I mean 'three feet away'. Startled, and exhausted, they trained their guns on the thing and fired! Of course, they didn't have silver bullets, so that didn't really help.
Charlie stumbled back, and managed to dodge the werewolf's counter-attack, and his dog leaped on its side, failing to connect, and Don pulled out his melted rifle, sans barrel, and blasted the werewolf in the side with a huge blast of fire from point blank range... and it looked slightly injured. Then Charlie's 'stench' spell went off on its own, and everyone collapsed choking and gagging. By the time they crawled out of the cloud, the werewolf -- which they could see now had two tails -- was up on a lamppost looking thoroughly disgusted (apparently, werewolfs have an acute sense of smell), and lept off, leaving them alive, if not entirely unhurt.
Don told Charlie to tend to the wounded-and-possibly-dead escapee. He was still alive, but his wounds already looked infected, which shouldn't have been possible that quickly. "We should kill him," Charlie said, "He's going to turn into a werewolf."
"Can't you just use your magic to cure him or something?" Don asked. Although the normal rituals against disease had to be used *before* you contracted it, Charlie remembered the meditation power the bear spirit had given him -- using that, there might be a way. Since he needed to rest for a couple hours anyway before he'd be up to any more fighting (the door spell, blessing fifty bullets, and putting out a cloud of stench had exhausted him completely), spending that time meditating on a cure seemed acceptable... surely they had at least that long before the victim turned on them.
last session | next session
Next week, we'll hopefully have Snowwy back. And Stacey joining us, although I don't know as what. Maybe we'll even get around to rescuing Snowwy's character?
