Grendel 1, Heroes 2/5ths
Apr. 8th, 2007 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothFriday night we had a session of the Shadake game, in which Fezzik was the voice of reason and the moral center of the party. Yes, things were that bad.
"...so you see, we can fix everything, just by killing random people! Well, not *random* people, but people who aren't us anyway. And not killing killing, 'turning back into cracks'. Well, not 'back' since we're the one who can go 'back', just 'into' I guess. But first we need to find Hideo and get copies of the knife so that we can do it more than once, 'cause there's more than the one crack."/
They decided to tell Hideo to meet them in the city near the Black Tower, in three hours... but Gwen wanted to check out the basement of the Black Tower for another power-up unit like they'd found in the White Tower, and they weren't sure how long it'd take, so they decided to check out the basement first and then find Hideo afterwards, but before THAT Fezzik wanted to stop in town and get more arrows.
And in town, they were ambushed by a bunch of Ashaman! The street was set on fire, and Fezzik resisted their paralyzation and shielding spells long enough to open a portal to tel'aran'rhiod, but not long enough for him to actually go through that portal. He tried to break free of one or the other several times, but by the time he managed that, and had gone to Gwen and summoned his mech to give him the power boost he needed to break the shield, the fight was over.
Basically, Hariin and Kanwei provided distractions and status effects while Sophia used her new wakizashi angreal to set them all on fire from a distance.
But then the *real* Ashamon started showing up, and they decided to flee into tel'aran'rhiod and all go rejoin Gwen.
Gwen wanted to loot the basement of the black tower, just like Kanwei had looted the basement of the white tower, but Fezzik was leery of that. "Look, we're treasure hunters, right? That means that we take things that are lost and abandoned and lying around unattended, we don't just break into peoples' basements and steal everything that isn't nailed down. Although... I guess if we're really heroes now, saving the world, it'd be okay to go in and take peoples' stuff, since if we're doing it to save the world they wouldn't really mind..."
"I wouldn't, would I?" asked the m'hael, from behind the portal. Apparently, the Black Tower's cache of ter'angreal/mech parts wasn't as unguarded as the White Tower's.
"We were looking for your version of the Accepted portal," Fezzik told him, which was the actual reason they'd come, with stealing being an opportunistic thought.
They didn't have that, but he was able to examine Fezzik's mech, and identify the problem that kept making him nearly burn himself out if he tried to use magic in combat -- "You've got two parallel operating systems, and two power sources, but only one set of power conduits. I can fix that, though."
In return, Fezzik showed him how to open a portal to tel'aran'rhiod. Well, he showed him the female weave, but the M'hael was quite skilled at adaptation and had devices to let him study the female weave and invent the male counterpart (which Fezzik picked up for his own repertoire for the hell of it). He didn't understand what the dreamworld was, though, so Fezzik tried to show him by taking him around. "So we can travel really fast, but supposedly it's metaphysically dangerous to be here in person, because if you die here you're somehow 'more dead' than if you die anywhere else, whatever that means. Oh, and there's nightmares, although I've never seen one --"
Yeah, that teleported him right into a nightmare. Luckily, Sophia knew the theory about how to exit nightmares, and came looking for them after they were gone for a while, and told them how to rescue themselves by disbelieving the nightmare, although it took a few tries for Fezzik to successfully disbelieve.
They also traded some duplicate 'black tower' mechs for a pair of 'white tower' mechs that the M'hael wasn't able to use, which both sides thought was a good trade -- more unique stuff for the party to duplicate, and mechs the black tower could actually put to use.
It was at this point that Fezzik discovered that the person in question was, in fact, the m'hael, and not just some archivist. "Oh, crap. Let's close all these dreamworld portals."
"Why?"
"You know Grendel? The forsaken? Do you want to meet her?"
"Not especially..."
"Then let's close the dreamworld portals."
They did, and the m'hael gave them his blessing to go save the world, and they *didn't* use the knife that they hadn't gotten around to copying yet to kill Grendel, because it was single use. This frustrated them a lot. Also frustrating: knowing that Grendel was lurking in the dreamworld nearby, meaning that they were stuck.
Eventually, they decided they had no choice -- and they could probably pop in and teleport away before Grendel could actually kill them, they hoped. Unfortunately, the dreamworld was all messed up -- sliced into thin strips, like paintings, allowing them to see the immediate future being painted by weird demon creatures, and the immediate past being dissolved away by paint thinner behind them, but not the painting of the present that they were in. And, oh look! There in the future, Grendel was dropping the orb in surprise at seeing the portal! Fezzik painted himself into that picture picking up the orb as she dropped it, then fled into the future as fast as he could, while Grendel burned up his past with balefire.
Sophia and Hariin tried to subdue her, but while Kanwei managed to snatch a claw-thing from her hand, she got away through another portal, which... did bad things to the paintings' reality, unravelling that region of space forwards and backwards in time. Fezzik saw most of the indestructible orb he was holding unravel, then opened his own portal for the party to flee through.
"Okay," they said, back in the vault, "The dreamworld is very not safe right now." So, apparently, they needed another way out of the black tower. Hopefully, they wouldn't also need a replacement orb... there was still about 40% of it left.
last session | next session
"...so you see, we can fix everything, just by killing random people! Well, not *random* people, but people who aren't us anyway. And not killing killing, 'turning back into cracks'. Well, not 'back' since we're the one who can go 'back', just 'into' I guess. But first we need to find Hideo and get copies of the knife so that we can do it more than once, 'cause there's more than the one crack."/
They decided to tell Hideo to meet them in the city near the Black Tower, in three hours... but Gwen wanted to check out the basement of the Black Tower for another power-up unit like they'd found in the White Tower, and they weren't sure how long it'd take, so they decided to check out the basement first and then find Hideo afterwards, but before THAT Fezzik wanted to stop in town and get more arrows.
And in town, they were ambushed by a bunch of Ashaman! The street was set on fire, and Fezzik resisted their paralyzation and shielding spells long enough to open a portal to tel'aran'rhiod, but not long enough for him to actually go through that portal. He tried to break free of one or the other several times, but by the time he managed that, and had gone to Gwen and summoned his mech to give him the power boost he needed to break the shield, the fight was over.
Basically, Hariin and Kanwei provided distractions and status effects while Sophia used her new wakizashi angreal to set them all on fire from a distance.
But then the *real* Ashamon started showing up, and they decided to flee into tel'aran'rhiod and all go rejoin Gwen.
Gwen wanted to loot the basement of the black tower, just like Kanwei had looted the basement of the white tower, but Fezzik was leery of that. "Look, we're treasure hunters, right? That means that we take things that are lost and abandoned and lying around unattended, we don't just break into peoples' basements and steal everything that isn't nailed down. Although... I guess if we're really heroes now, saving the world, it'd be okay to go in and take peoples' stuff, since if we're doing it to save the world they wouldn't really mind..."
"I wouldn't, would I?" asked the m'hael, from behind the portal. Apparently, the Black Tower's cache of ter'angreal/mech parts wasn't as unguarded as the White Tower's.
"We were looking for your version of the Accepted portal," Fezzik told him, which was the actual reason they'd come, with stealing being an opportunistic thought.
They didn't have that, but he was able to examine Fezzik's mech, and identify the problem that kept making him nearly burn himself out if he tried to use magic in combat -- "You've got two parallel operating systems, and two power sources, but only one set of power conduits. I can fix that, though."
In return, Fezzik showed him how to open a portal to tel'aran'rhiod. Well, he showed him the female weave, but the M'hael was quite skilled at adaptation and had devices to let him study the female weave and invent the male counterpart (which Fezzik picked up for his own repertoire for the hell of it). He didn't understand what the dreamworld was, though, so Fezzik tried to show him by taking him around. "So we can travel really fast, but supposedly it's metaphysically dangerous to be here in person, because if you die here you're somehow 'more dead' than if you die anywhere else, whatever that means. Oh, and there's nightmares, although I've never seen one --"
Yeah, that teleported him right into a nightmare. Luckily, Sophia knew the theory about how to exit nightmares, and came looking for them after they were gone for a while, and told them how to rescue themselves by disbelieving the nightmare, although it took a few tries for Fezzik to successfully disbelieve.
They also traded some duplicate 'black tower' mechs for a pair of 'white tower' mechs that the M'hael wasn't able to use, which both sides thought was a good trade -- more unique stuff for the party to duplicate, and mechs the black tower could actually put to use.
It was at this point that Fezzik discovered that the person in question was, in fact, the m'hael, and not just some archivist. "Oh, crap. Let's close all these dreamworld portals."
"Why?"
"You know Grendel? The forsaken? Do you want to meet her?"
"Not especially..."
"Then let's close the dreamworld portals."
They did, and the m'hael gave them his blessing to go save the world, and they *didn't* use the knife that they hadn't gotten around to copying yet to kill Grendel, because it was single use. This frustrated them a lot. Also frustrating: knowing that Grendel was lurking in the dreamworld nearby, meaning that they were stuck.
Eventually, they decided they had no choice -- and they could probably pop in and teleport away before Grendel could actually kill them, they hoped. Unfortunately, the dreamworld was all messed up -- sliced into thin strips, like paintings, allowing them to see the immediate future being painted by weird demon creatures, and the immediate past being dissolved away by paint thinner behind them, but not the painting of the present that they were in. And, oh look! There in the future, Grendel was dropping the orb in surprise at seeing the portal! Fezzik painted himself into that picture picking up the orb as she dropped it, then fled into the future as fast as he could, while Grendel burned up his past with balefire.
Sophia and Hariin tried to subdue her, but while Kanwei managed to snatch a claw-thing from her hand, she got away through another portal, which... did bad things to the paintings' reality, unravelling that region of space forwards and backwards in time. Fezzik saw most of the indestructible orb he was holding unravel, then opened his own portal for the party to flee through.
"Okay," they said, back in the vault, "The dreamworld is very not safe right now." So, apparently, they needed another way out of the black tower. Hopefully, they wouldn't also need a replacement orb... there was still about 40% of it left.
last session | next session
