Yesterdays game

[Lee Gonzales]

Fredricksmires,

A few points regarding yesterday's adventure in the sleepy port town of Calisto. 

Several terrifying points rattle around in your minds as you all sink into sleep:

* The villagers and researchers seemed to kill each other, some savagly and some with more seeming expertise. The wounds on the bodies showed this as did the positions of the people as they fell. And - sadly some of the later bodies seemed to be suicides, some worse than others. 

* The scenes down below was chaos and destruction incarnate. Similiar horrors have been witnessed in history due to ancient clerics using spells like blade barrier or wizards acid cloud. 

* The books you found detail the Chateau and most of the details of the physical structures and carvings. There was ad additional runic pattern that had a different order than what Markley had seen before. Perhaps this is meaningful?

* In the afternoon after you returned Fischer summons you to his office and lays out the damage and town for you via a magical projection. It has been flattened, the Chateau destroyed and a massive fire used to cleanse the area. The warships have been returned to patrol around Port Victor and he orders you all to return back to search the remains of the town and Chateau. You don't expect to find much, but he is damn insistent that we must know for certain. He also has several magical sensors he wishes you to place around the area.

You each have roles to play and everybody did some interesting work last night. A few character notes from the action:

* Jalen rocked. Being a paladin in his element is powerful and Gary has done and excellent job of building a kick ass fighter. This made this encounter much easier than I expected. 

* Sam made several excellent tactics rolls, this helped you all a lot in the things you did not have to fight and the ability to gain several substantial advantages which frankly were not terrifically evident, but made a big difference. 

* Avartre's continued use of the bag of tricks keeps coming in handy. The creatures used as combatants and bait made a big difference as well. 

* Avatre, Alessa, Jalen and Alexanders bravery in going down into the basement lab and aiding Markley in finding the missing journals substantially decreased the time it took to get in and out. Further the superior will of the characters attacked by the lurker made a big difference as well. Your high saves... saved you. Avatre summoning a Celestial viper was a surprise and it helped keep the lurker busy and distracted. 

* The quick action to get to the Ship made a big difference in survivability. You could have tried to stay and fight the BEAST in the fog. It was driven off by WARSHIPS and disappeared into the frozen north, hopefully crippled or fatally wounded. It is not, but you can hope :-)

* Cliff, Scarlet and Seid's fast action in getting the engine moving faster increased the chances of finding the materials you needed intact. This action plus moving through the town fast ment you had a lot more opportunity for avoiding issues and substantial peril. 

 

What all do you do now? Markley has investigations, Cliff will have some notes to review offline. But what about the rest? Many mysteries remain. 

--
Lee

"People, ideas, and hardware in that order!" - John Boyd

leegonzales.com

[Gary Mascenik]

Jalen seems more disturbed than anyone has seen him, but upon reflection it's not the horrors that he saw causing this as much as it is that he feels responsible... that thing is still out there because he couldn't kill it, and who knows what horrors it will wreak before it can be stopped. In every meeting and every briefing he brings it up "when do we go after it?", "any word on it's location?", "would you like us to form a team and hunt it down? We'll need some resources, I can detail it for you". Any thought that it was killed he dismisses without even a second thought "even if it can be killed, it hasn't been; not until we hunt it down will it meet it's end. It's not an animal, it won't just die from a wound, it's made of chaos". And he pushes leadership "We need some funding for items. Protection from evil is paramount. From what I saw glitterdust will be also. Do you have any outsider bane weapons?" You all are used to Jalen being a silken glove on an iron fist, but the silk is missing now, he's completely focused and driven.

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[Monica Jones]

Alessa recalled her first few months at the monastery, where she was sent at 10 years old. That willful, chaotic child is a distant memory, like a dream she had a long time ago, but her first real lesson with her Sensei has remained strong. Master Ellec had instructed her to be the river, to let the world flow over her and around her. In that way, he had said, she would shape the world and herself. 

He took her down to the river, had her strip naked and threw her in. Winter was just fading into spring, and the water was freezing. Alessa had struggled, angry as hell, to swim upstream to the bank where he stood serenely. Time after time she exhausted herself in the frigid water before he threw her a rope to pull her in. After weeks of this, she stopped fighting the stream. She allowed herself to float gently down the river. Her body adjusted to the temperature, and it was no longer unpleasant. Eventually, she reached a bend where it was easy to pull herself up onto the grass. She dried off in the sunlight for a few minutes before making her way back up the path to where Ellec stood, smiling proudly. It was then that the naked child by the river finally understood his lesson.

It was difficult to be the river now, when the flow of this particular river was sweeping the world into chaos and death. 

The people of that town never stood a chance, and many more would die if they couldn't put an end to the incursions. That the world could sink into the chaos she had witnessed in the Maelstrom..,

No. She would not allow that to happen. 

As Jalen busied himself with procuring the material possessions they would need for the battles ahead, Alessa worried about the internal struggles they would all face. Perception shaped reality, as she learned in the Maelstrom during her training, and wayward minds would destroy them. She increased her meditations and encouraged those who joined her to do the same, impressing upon them that their will and discipline would be their most potent weapons in the battles ahead. 

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