Turning Problems into Bigger Problems
Dec. 9th, 2007 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothFriday, we had a session of the Golden Compass game. I'm trying to wrap it up, so I made the consequences of the nuke from last time be about as bad as possible for everyone concerned.
The party wasted some time waiting for Jana to come back before figuring out that she wasn't, and THEN hurrying to go find her. They found her cuddling naked in bad with a dirty old man and the backup intention craft pilot... well, you know, sharing body heat, to keep them from dying. They found the rest of the town huddling terrified near the building she'd been in, since there was an ARMY of specters floating around Svalbard after the nuke, and only their innate fear of her sword was keeping them at bay.
Eric dove into the freezing water to recover the intention craft -- he lived because of his regeneration, basically. Then Taegan was set free to upgrade it while everyone else slept, since he'd gotten his own sleep while tied up. He added a second laser and attached the personal power supply he'd bought to power it, so that two people could be firing at the same time, in case it came to combat. He didn't have time to add the second portal device (these extras were coming from their old booby-trapped craft) but he loaded it up as cargo.
He was watched -- Jana had also gotten some sleep after all -- so he couldn't go tearing off to sacrifice himself. He did have a theory that if he overcharged multiple portal generators it might be enough to close the portal... but it would take roughly twenty intention crafts' portal devices working at normal power (and in a VERY abnormal mode) to close it, and he didn't think he could overcharge it THAT much, even if he'd had time to hook the second portal device up, which he hadn't.
In the morning, Taegan took the craft up -- way, way up, 11 miles up, until he had line of sight to England to use the (dispelled) telegraph to legitimately contact his actual superiors. The instructions were 'Close the rift at all costs and then return here immediately'. Paraphrased. He was running out of air by that point, so he headed back to report.
They asked Wren to interrogate the prisoners, to get them to tell what had caused the rift and how to close it maybe. They didn't know much of anything useful -- well, except the Pixie of course, who was already talking without needing to be tortured. They didn't really feel good about what Wren did to the pilot -- especially not Caihong, who got to see it afterwards, and had to intervene to save his life. Since he'd been crippled and maimed by Wren's fruitless torture, they decided they might as well use the pilot as the sacrifice for Lord Asriel's portal machine.
So they all got in the modified intention craft and flew back up to Svalbard. Taegan made the last adjustments to the device to turn it into a portal-closer instead of a portal-opener. He hoped. They loaded the prisoner into the cage, and severed his daemon. There was a massive flash of light, energy was drawn down from heaven, and the giant black sphere of doom was gone! How anticlimactic!
Well, except for the humongous bear-shaped specter-godzilla left behind.
Eric: "Is that the spirits of the bears that were sucked into the portal?"
Wren: "I hope not."
Eric wanted to run away, but Caihong thought that they had a chance -- after all, they could hurt it with their weapons, and it couldn't hurt them. Huge or not, it was still a specter. So Jana picked him up and carried him towards the enemy, with Taegan and Eric and the prisoners and Wren in the intention craft buzzing around nearby to take potshots.
Unfortunately, there were two things wrong with their plan. The first was that the specter seemed to be in the middle of a zone of DOOM that Jana and Caihong couldn't really enter. They felt a horrible sickness wash over them as they passed the cliff edge, and for Caihong it was obvious why -- his daemon hadn't come with them. Couldn't, in fact. Jana felt the same way, although she didn't have a daemon.
The second was that the specter could sense Brother Wren in the intention craft, and as an offworld artifact the craft was slightly tangible to specters. The 'slightly' saved it from being smashed to smithereens, but it was still swatted aside like a buzzing fly.
But its leap to hit the intention craft took it out of the zone, and Jana managed to slash it badly -- they could tell because the wound from the weapons was visible, the same as they'd been able to see the specters while they were being zapped by the original probes -- then follow up by throwing her sword when it retreated back in... except that she *almost* lost control of Miroku as it passed into the zone, which would have been bad. So she tried to just ignore the sensations and dive in after it, and managed to get one more hit in, although her wings felt like they were going to tear themselves out of her back.
Then the bear-specter attacked her sword, and VERY nearly broke it. She decided it was time to back off some. It swatted at her again, and while she dodged Miroku out of the way easily, Caihong's needles didn't dodge, and got embedded in the paw... and flung out of it, scattering into the snow.
But the party *had* been steadily hurting the thing, so it decided to retreat into the mountains. Taegan tuned the scanner to ONLY detect the weapons, which made it a lot faster to find the needles in the giant pile of snow... still took about an hour though.
Then they headed back to the village at full speed, because they rememebered that oops, they'd left them alone without anything to hold the specters at bay other than the rather pathetic probes and zappers. Sure enough, the village was nearly wiped out, with only four unscathed survivors and a couple who Caihong could partially heal (he could have fully healed them if he'd been willing to spend the potential, but he wasn't). They refloated the ship with the intention craft, tuned the detector to detect pixies (this was possible because they were offworld critters, but not anywhere near as easy as the needles) and found the last pixie hibernating in a sock drawer.
After he was captured and jarred, the boat was fit to use to evacuate Svalbard, which had hundreds or thousands of ordinary specters as well as the giant bear-thing, and was thus not fit for human life. The bears were still there, although they'd retreated to the mountains, and since they weren't affected by specters the survivors would probably be okay. VERY VERY PISSED, but okay. Another reason to leave.
So they flew their stolen intention craft to England, dodged a bunch of friendly fire, and landed it in a courtyard at Jordan College, where the Order's director was based. She scolded them for taking so long -- according to the alethiometer, they only had until midnight to close the *other* five rifts before the angels would protect creation by 'severing' those worlds entirely.
Taegan bemoaned the fact that Asrial's equipment wasn't portable, and that there's no way the enemy would agree to help them close it with their intention craft. Lyra informed him that one of the rifts was in *their* world (oops!) so there might be some possibility of negotiation.
Oh, and they got an update on the progress of the war -- basically, their world had been winning, thanks to using spirit-guided antiaircraft shells (not the sort fired at the party, luckily -- they weren't safe to use near cities since the evil spirits guiding them were freed by the shell's explosion) to down the intention craft and severed troops (aka 'with their daemons cut away') to fight in areas swarmed by specters. In fact, the Army had captured a portal and were holding it open to support a counterstrike.
As for the order, Lyra and Wren were, besides the kids, the ONLY members at the moment, since the rest had been killed in action or eaten by specters in an incident Wren had previously alluded to -- the latter were still alive in a sanitarium in London, but not very useful unless they were somehow healed. Lyra did have some of the resources of her college at her disposal, though, and on the kids' suggestion sent an intern to go get some art students to paint their intention craft with a big Union Jack so they wouldn't get shot at by their own side as much.
last session | next session
Saturday, I saw the Golden Compass movie, which explained or showed a bunch of stuff that kind of contradicted some of the details of how things have been working in the game. Things like photographs being crystals, daemons clearly dissolving into Dust, etc. Ahwell.
The party wasted some time waiting for Jana to come back before figuring out that she wasn't, and THEN hurrying to go find her. They found her cuddling naked in bad with a dirty old man and the backup intention craft pilot... well, you know, sharing body heat, to keep them from dying. They found the rest of the town huddling terrified near the building she'd been in, since there was an ARMY of specters floating around Svalbard after the nuke, and only their innate fear of her sword was keeping them at bay.
Eric dove into the freezing water to recover the intention craft -- he lived because of his regeneration, basically. Then Taegan was set free to upgrade it while everyone else slept, since he'd gotten his own sleep while tied up. He added a second laser and attached the personal power supply he'd bought to power it, so that two people could be firing at the same time, in case it came to combat. He didn't have time to add the second portal device (these extras were coming from their old booby-trapped craft) but he loaded it up as cargo.
He was watched -- Jana had also gotten some sleep after all -- so he couldn't go tearing off to sacrifice himself. He did have a theory that if he overcharged multiple portal generators it might be enough to close the portal... but it would take roughly twenty intention crafts' portal devices working at normal power (and in a VERY abnormal mode) to close it, and he didn't think he could overcharge it THAT much, even if he'd had time to hook the second portal device up, which he hadn't.
In the morning, Taegan took the craft up -- way, way up, 11 miles up, until he had line of sight to England to use the (dispelled) telegraph to legitimately contact his actual superiors. The instructions were 'Close the rift at all costs and then return here immediately'. Paraphrased. He was running out of air by that point, so he headed back to report.
They asked Wren to interrogate the prisoners, to get them to tell what had caused the rift and how to close it maybe. They didn't know much of anything useful -- well, except the Pixie of course, who was already talking without needing to be tortured. They didn't really feel good about what Wren did to the pilot -- especially not Caihong, who got to see it afterwards, and had to intervene to save his life. Since he'd been crippled and maimed by Wren's fruitless torture, they decided they might as well use the pilot as the sacrifice for Lord Asriel's portal machine.
So they all got in the modified intention craft and flew back up to Svalbard. Taegan made the last adjustments to the device to turn it into a portal-closer instead of a portal-opener. He hoped. They loaded the prisoner into the cage, and severed his daemon. There was a massive flash of light, energy was drawn down from heaven, and the giant black sphere of doom was gone! How anticlimactic!
Well, except for the humongous bear-shaped specter-godzilla left behind.
Eric: "Is that the spirits of the bears that were sucked into the portal?"
Wren: "I hope not."
Eric wanted to run away, but Caihong thought that they had a chance -- after all, they could hurt it with their weapons, and it couldn't hurt them. Huge or not, it was still a specter. So Jana picked him up and carried him towards the enemy, with Taegan and Eric and the prisoners and Wren in the intention craft buzzing around nearby to take potshots.
Unfortunately, there were two things wrong with their plan. The first was that the specter seemed to be in the middle of a zone of DOOM that Jana and Caihong couldn't really enter. They felt a horrible sickness wash over them as they passed the cliff edge, and for Caihong it was obvious why -- his daemon hadn't come with them. Couldn't, in fact. Jana felt the same way, although she didn't have a daemon.
The second was that the specter could sense Brother Wren in the intention craft, and as an offworld artifact the craft was slightly tangible to specters. The 'slightly' saved it from being smashed to smithereens, but it was still swatted aside like a buzzing fly.
But its leap to hit the intention craft took it out of the zone, and Jana managed to slash it badly -- they could tell because the wound from the weapons was visible, the same as they'd been able to see the specters while they were being zapped by the original probes -- then follow up by throwing her sword when it retreated back in... except that she *almost* lost control of Miroku as it passed into the zone, which would have been bad. So she tried to just ignore the sensations and dive in after it, and managed to get one more hit in, although her wings felt like they were going to tear themselves out of her back.
Then the bear-specter attacked her sword, and VERY nearly broke it. She decided it was time to back off some. It swatted at her again, and while she dodged Miroku out of the way easily, Caihong's needles didn't dodge, and got embedded in the paw... and flung out of it, scattering into the snow.
But the party *had* been steadily hurting the thing, so it decided to retreat into the mountains. Taegan tuned the scanner to ONLY detect the weapons, which made it a lot faster to find the needles in the giant pile of snow... still took about an hour though.
Then they headed back to the village at full speed, because they rememebered that oops, they'd left them alone without anything to hold the specters at bay other than the rather pathetic probes and zappers. Sure enough, the village was nearly wiped out, with only four unscathed survivors and a couple who Caihong could partially heal (he could have fully healed them if he'd been willing to spend the potential, but he wasn't). They refloated the ship with the intention craft, tuned the detector to detect pixies (this was possible because they were offworld critters, but not anywhere near as easy as the needles) and found the last pixie hibernating in a sock drawer.
After he was captured and jarred, the boat was fit to use to evacuate Svalbard, which had hundreds or thousands of ordinary specters as well as the giant bear-thing, and was thus not fit for human life. The bears were still there, although they'd retreated to the mountains, and since they weren't affected by specters the survivors would probably be okay. VERY VERY PISSED, but okay. Another reason to leave.
So they flew their stolen intention craft to England, dodged a bunch of friendly fire, and landed it in a courtyard at Jordan College, where the Order's director was based. She scolded them for taking so long -- according to the alethiometer, they only had until midnight to close the *other* five rifts before the angels would protect creation by 'severing' those worlds entirely.
Taegan bemoaned the fact that Asrial's equipment wasn't portable, and that there's no way the enemy would agree to help them close it with their intention craft. Lyra informed him that one of the rifts was in *their* world (oops!) so there might be some possibility of negotiation.
Oh, and they got an update on the progress of the war -- basically, their world had been winning, thanks to using spirit-guided antiaircraft shells (not the sort fired at the party, luckily -- they weren't safe to use near cities since the evil spirits guiding them were freed by the shell's explosion) to down the intention craft and severed troops (aka 'with their daemons cut away') to fight in areas swarmed by specters. In fact, the Army had captured a portal and were holding it open to support a counterstrike.
As for the order, Lyra and Wren were, besides the kids, the ONLY members at the moment, since the rest had been killed in action or eaten by specters in an incident Wren had previously alluded to -- the latter were still alive in a sanitarium in London, but not very useful unless they were somehow healed. Lyra did have some of the resources of her college at her disposal, though, and on the kids' suggestion sent an intern to go get some art students to paint their intention craft with a big Union Jack so they wouldn't get shot at by their own side as much.
last session | next session
Saturday, I saw the Golden Compass movie, which explained or showed a bunch of stuff that kind of contradicted some of the details of how things have been working in the game. Things like photographs being crystals, daemons clearly dissolving into Dust, etc. Ahwell.
