New... um... friends. Sort of.
Nov. 16th, 2002 01:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight was Lazar's game, and we finally had a couple new people show up. Call and... er... Zelda? Those were their characters' names, at least. We didn't actually get introduced or anything because they were busy making their characters.
After that, we were thrust together by the call of filthy lucre, and set off on a grand quest to save the world.
Call joins the party as a street samurai in the quite literal sense, wielding a monowire katana with rediculous finesse, while Zelda is a psychic using telekinesis, which is just like magic (same rules) except that it's not magic, and anti-magic stuff doesn't help against it. Yes, he paid for that enhancement during character creation.
Both are humans from earth. Call was a rich kid living off his parents' wealth and chasing an archaic ideal, until they were assassinated a month or so ago, at the beginning of the campaign. He's now heavily in debt from trying to keep up his old lifestyle without his old money.
Zelda's powers were granted by Draxin (a magical mutagenic drug) while he was still in his mother's womb. His first use of them was to emerge from the womb rather... dramatically. And fatally, for his mother. He was raised by a megacorp, although another side effect of Draxin for him is that he appears to be unable to touch solid objects except with his powers, which lets him walk through walls. This let him leave the megacorp's service as soon as he was old enough to want to do so. As another other side effect, he's very open to telepathy, even though he can't use it himself, and is unable to rest within a stone's throw of any other person (presumably, animals aren't loud enough to bother him).
The nuking of St. Louis, which did in fact destroy Zenebatos as well, turned out to be the result of a failed assassination attempt against the (ridiculously powerful) dragon Lixia. She 'bounced the attack back against its originator', which somehow put it in St. Louis, much to the dismay of everyone NO LONGER living there. Yes, she's powerful enough that teleporting it to another world was of negligable difficulty. No, she probably didn't realize that it was a nuke, or in fact consciously cast any spell at all -- she uses Isthmus magic, which is down with the automatic triggers. Yes, she probably would have done it anyway even if she knew what was going to happen as a result.
Apparently, this pissed off Boeing, as they are now openly waging war against her on Ur with an army of Grrlocks, led by the freaking demon-kid who's apparently also providing magical cover for the army, as even an army of magic-immune creatures is helpless against Lixia's power... she could create a mountain of actual real rock over their heads and crush them, or attract all the monsters in a 200 mile radius to come fight on her side, or make dozens of other indirect attacks, but if she's trying to do so, she's being prevented.
As for the party itself...
Nazir was roaming the north, searching for... something... when Vorshath's call came, and immediately went to respond. NKN-Ur was still doing work for the Murrakai in Skypass itself, and only had to go next door.
Marten, with some of his winnings from betting at the race track, replaced his neato gun, and spent the rest of the time instant-messaging and e-mailing Fukachan from Seattle, which was the only city he was sure was not going to be nuked (since his 'friend' from the future had given him other Seattle-based sporting events to bet on in the future). Pretty soon, she arrived, and they spent a few days bumming around the city, eating in all the most expensive restaurants, and otherwise occupying themselves. Until, much to his embarassment, Marten found his bank account empty -- obviously hacked, as it had exactly zero credits.
Figuring that he probably didn't have anything to hide, he called the police to report the theft, and noticed seven urgent messages from Vorshath reminding him that the plane the golem had bought him a ticket for was leaving in one hour...
Excusing himself and apologizing to his date, he ran outside and stole the first car he saw (using his magical lock-opening credit card and acting like nothing was wrong). "Welcome, Mr. President!" said the helpful AI. "Take me to the airport as quickly as possible!" Martin yelled at it, flopping into the driver's seat.
And so it did... it was even nice enough to rearrange the traffic patterns to give him all green lights. Putting four and four together, Martin decided that arriving at the airport in this vehicle might be hazardous to his health, and leapt out of it as it neared the airport, taking to the air with his drak wings. Then, using some of his crystals to boost his beauty to insane levels (200 times normal weasel cuteness), he convinced the crowds of people in front of him to let him go first, since his plane was about to leave, and got on board just in time.
In Gibraltar, the last remaining public gateway to Ur with the irradiation of St. Louis and Zenebatos, he met Call and Zelda... the three of them were the only ones to be allowed to use the gate. Apparently, Vorshath had pull.
Everyone arrived at Vorshath's academy at about the same time, and the golem explained their mission -- to find a grrlock shaman who knew about the dragons' creation myths and bring him to Vorshath to study, along with a pair of flitters to overwhelm his antimagic aura. Grrlock shamans were known to travel alone between grrlock tribes. Flitters were tiny magical lizards that flew at a MINIMUM speed of mach 1, making it up to mach 9 when frightened or angry.
But the first step was to find the shaman. It was a long flight up to the north, where (according to Nazir) most of the Grrlocks lived. On the way they stopped to chat with Nathaniel and get him to give them some walking around money (about $12,000 each, equivalent) and passed a massive war (for details, see the paragraph above about the war between Boeing and Lixia). Other than that, the flight was very, very boring, as neither Call nor Zelda cared to talk to Marten or each other (or to take any of his 'magic pills'), while Nazir was locked in his own little world in the driver's seat, and NKN-Ur flew alongside in her own plane.
Marten's plan was to kill all the grrlock and then ask questions, but everyone else, lacking his WELL-JUSTIFIED urge to kill all grrlocks on sight (they turn off the sanity-healing crystal that he wears 24-7, AND they make all his weapons not work in embarassing ways, AND the first three times he encountered them they tried to kill him, AND one of his... er... let's NOT TALK ABOUT THE FOURTH REASON) decided to negotiate, which turned out to be the correct course of action.
After a bit of telepathy tag, the demon-kid appeared. Martin immediately popped a couple capsules of Wiz, hoping to bolster his mental power to resist the kid's assault, should he try anything, as well as his sanity to keep from going off like a loose cannon and shooting the place up. It worked. The kid told them that one of 'his shamans' was available for their use, but they'd have to rescue him from a dragon first.
So, off to see the dragon! Very quickly, thanks to the kid's teleportation magic. The kid promised to distract the dragon while they went after the shaman, so the intrepid band advanced on the cave. Zelda silently ripped the thin wall covering the cave to shreds, and Call took the lead into the dark cavern.
But just as their goal came into sight -- a massive pile of gold and gems, studded with dragon eggs and with the shaman they sought glued to an egg on top of the pile -- Martin's drug-enhanced senses detected the beating of wings behind them, giving the party just enough time to hide as the dragon approached!
Not that it mattered. "Come on out of there," said the dragon to Zelda, who had hidden INSIDE the wall, completely obscured from view, "It won't help you, you know."
last week next week
After that, we were thrust together by the call of filthy lucre, and set off on a grand quest to save the world.
Call joins the party as a street samurai in the quite literal sense, wielding a monowire katana with rediculous finesse, while Zelda is a psychic using telekinesis, which is just like magic (same rules) except that it's not magic, and anti-magic stuff doesn't help against it. Yes, he paid for that enhancement during character creation.
Both are humans from earth. Call was a rich kid living off his parents' wealth and chasing an archaic ideal, until they were assassinated a month or so ago, at the beginning of the campaign. He's now heavily in debt from trying to keep up his old lifestyle without his old money.
Zelda's powers were granted by Draxin (a magical mutagenic drug) while he was still in his mother's womb. His first use of them was to emerge from the womb rather... dramatically. And fatally, for his mother. He was raised by a megacorp, although another side effect of Draxin for him is that he appears to be unable to touch solid objects except with his powers, which lets him walk through walls. This let him leave the megacorp's service as soon as he was old enough to want to do so. As another other side effect, he's very open to telepathy, even though he can't use it himself, and is unable to rest within a stone's throw of any other person (presumably, animals aren't loud enough to bother him).
The nuking of St. Louis, which did in fact destroy Zenebatos as well, turned out to be the result of a failed assassination attempt against the (ridiculously powerful) dragon Lixia. She 'bounced the attack back against its originator', which somehow put it in St. Louis, much to the dismay of everyone NO LONGER living there. Yes, she's powerful enough that teleporting it to another world was of negligable difficulty. No, she probably didn't realize that it was a nuke, or in fact consciously cast any spell at all -- she uses Isthmus magic, which is down with the automatic triggers. Yes, she probably would have done it anyway even if she knew what was going to happen as a result.
Apparently, this pissed off Boeing, as they are now openly waging war against her on Ur with an army of Grrlocks, led by the freaking demon-kid who's apparently also providing magical cover for the army, as even an army of magic-immune creatures is helpless against Lixia's power... she could create a mountain of actual real rock over their heads and crush them, or attract all the monsters in a 200 mile radius to come fight on her side, or make dozens of other indirect attacks, but if she's trying to do so, she's being prevented.
As for the party itself...
Nazir was roaming the north, searching for... something... when Vorshath's call came, and immediately went to respond. NKN-Ur was still doing work for the Murrakai in Skypass itself, and only had to go next door.
Marten, with some of his winnings from betting at the race track, replaced his neato gun, and spent the rest of the time instant-messaging and e-mailing Fukachan from Seattle, which was the only city he was sure was not going to be nuked (since his 'friend' from the future had given him other Seattle-based sporting events to bet on in the future). Pretty soon, she arrived, and they spent a few days bumming around the city, eating in all the most expensive restaurants, and otherwise occupying themselves. Until, much to his embarassment, Marten found his bank account empty -- obviously hacked, as it had exactly zero credits.
Figuring that he probably didn't have anything to hide, he called the police to report the theft, and noticed seven urgent messages from Vorshath reminding him that the plane the golem had bought him a ticket for was leaving in one hour...
Excusing himself and apologizing to his date, he ran outside and stole the first car he saw (using his magical lock-opening credit card and acting like nothing was wrong). "Welcome, Mr. President!" said the helpful AI. "Take me to the airport as quickly as possible!" Martin yelled at it, flopping into the driver's seat.
And so it did... it was even nice enough to rearrange the traffic patterns to give him all green lights. Putting four and four together, Martin decided that arriving at the airport in this vehicle might be hazardous to his health, and leapt out of it as it neared the airport, taking to the air with his drak wings. Then, using some of his crystals to boost his beauty to insane levels (200 times normal weasel cuteness), he convinced the crowds of people in front of him to let him go first, since his plane was about to leave, and got on board just in time.
In Gibraltar, the last remaining public gateway to Ur with the irradiation of St. Louis and Zenebatos, he met Call and Zelda... the three of them were the only ones to be allowed to use the gate. Apparently, Vorshath had pull.
Everyone arrived at Vorshath's academy at about the same time, and the golem explained their mission -- to find a grrlock shaman who knew about the dragons' creation myths and bring him to Vorshath to study, along with a pair of flitters to overwhelm his antimagic aura. Grrlock shamans were known to travel alone between grrlock tribes. Flitters were tiny magical lizards that flew at a MINIMUM speed of mach 1, making it up to mach 9 when frightened or angry.
But the first step was to find the shaman. It was a long flight up to the north, where (according to Nazir) most of the Grrlocks lived. On the way they stopped to chat with Nathaniel and get him to give them some walking around money (about $12,000 each, equivalent) and passed a massive war (for details, see the paragraph above about the war between Boeing and Lixia). Other than that, the flight was very, very boring, as neither Call nor Zelda cared to talk to Marten or each other (or to take any of his 'magic pills'), while Nazir was locked in his own little world in the driver's seat, and NKN-Ur flew alongside in her own plane.
Marten's plan was to kill all the grrlock and then ask questions, but everyone else, lacking his WELL-JUSTIFIED urge to kill all grrlocks on sight (they turn off the sanity-healing crystal that he wears 24-7, AND they make all his weapons not work in embarassing ways, AND the first three times he encountered them they tried to kill him, AND one of his... er... let's NOT TALK ABOUT THE FOURTH REASON) decided to negotiate, which turned out to be the correct course of action.
After a bit of telepathy tag, the demon-kid appeared. Martin immediately popped a couple capsules of Wiz, hoping to bolster his mental power to resist the kid's assault, should he try anything, as well as his sanity to keep from going off like a loose cannon and shooting the place up. It worked. The kid told them that one of 'his shamans' was available for their use, but they'd have to rescue him from a dragon first.
So, off to see the dragon! Very quickly, thanks to the kid's teleportation magic. The kid promised to distract the dragon while they went after the shaman, so the intrepid band advanced on the cave. Zelda silently ripped the thin wall covering the cave to shreds, and Call took the lead into the dark cavern.
But just as their goal came into sight -- a massive pile of gold and gems, studded with dragon eggs and with the shaman they sought glued to an egg on top of the pile -- Martin's drug-enhanced senses detected the beating of wings behind them, giving the party just enough time to hide as the dragon approached!
Not that it mattered. "Come on out of there," said the dragon to Zelda, who had hidden INSIDE the wall, completely obscured from view, "It won't help you, you know."
last week next week
