DRAFT Run Log for 970722 Present: Tia - Cassandra Dave K - Ilk, logging Laori - Celeste Dave R - Malachai Kevin - Zack Barb - Cathryn Rich - Ferro Ken - Norton Andrew - Osric ------------------------ Major Events: * Re-Introducing Osric * Shiryu Hatracks Cathryn * The Battle Near the Abyss Begins ------------------------ Catching Ferro Up to Time Ferro arrived at the Courts of Chaos and found the House that he was seeking. He saw that it was spread through multiple shadows, reached out, and grabbed all of it. He felt it get lighter as two people bailed out, and a third person climbed out onto the roof and started chatting with him. It's Jesby. She tries to get Ferro to explain why he is taking her house, and then starts chatting him up and trying to convince him to father a child on her daughter. -------------------- Happy Fun Logrus-Ball Cassandra and Celeste walk towards Cathryn. Malachai notices that the wall just exploded upwards from an explosion centered beneath it, and prepares to deal with hostiles streaming through the gap. Ilkandacian checks out his wall and starts giving it orders. Those shifters near the hole are still streaming upwards, and those farther from the center are rising more quickly. Zack goes up to Benedict to ask him a question. Cathryn goes into avatar form and prepares to kick ass. Norton moves to protect Snarsht. Osric concludes his business, and acquires directions to a good restaurant. Ferro starts bringing the House to Cathryn. As Celeste and Cassandra approach Cathryn, Cathryn turns into a large orange T-Rex. Cassandra turns to face the wall. Celeste turns with her, and notices the wall exploding. It's not magic. Ilk looks at the explosion - it's a Logrus-bomb. Ilk swats at the Logrus-bomb. The essence that is him is being stretched upward. Norton, Cathryn, and Cassandra notice. Cathryn throws Ilk a tendril and tries to stabilize him. Ilk tries to stabilize his form. One of the Erics wanders over to the hole in the wall and ignites. Cassandra wanders over to join Benedict, Corwin, and others in conversation. Norton works on developing a form of x-ray vision that can see through demons. Zack acquires Benedict's attention and tells him that he'd like to chat privately after they've driven off the local rabble. Ilk releases the tendril he has on the ball. Suddenly, Cathryn goes flying up into the air. She drops her tendril to Ilk and shifts into a flying form and starts descending. She looks down and can see the entire Courts. It seems that the demons aren't flat - they're stacked higher farther from the Abyss. Thelbane, the council building, is completely buried. Her House is approaching the Courts from a point on the horizon. She heads towards her mom, who is sitting on the roof. Ilk anchors his essence then swats at the bomb again. He disappears. Celeste sees Ilk get eaten by whatever he was focusing on by the wall. Zack stops heading towards Ilk and turns towards the wall. He brings out a seltzer bottle and tries to douse the Eric, which remains on fire. Norton tosses a demon at the Eric, and the demon catches on fire, too. Zack knocks Eric down, and once the Eric leaves the center of the wall, it stops burning. Norton tries to reverse gravity with the Logrus to prevent Ilk's wall from eroding away, but doesn't know how. He shifts into Ilk and still doesn't know how, but he can see a ball of Logrus in the center of the wall. -------------- At a Rapidly Moving House Jesby Cathryn complains to Ferro that she wanted him to find the old House, not bring her the newly constructed one. She demands that he put the House back where it was and find the real House, which is time-shifted. They arrive at the former site of House Jesby, to discover that it is covered with demons. Cathryn tries to set them on fire by touching them, and they don't ignite. She tries to clear them out with Logrus, and only rearranges them. Ferro directs her to smooth out the demons, and then he sets the House down on top of the sea of demons. -------------- Near the Abyss Norton tries to diagnose the Logrus-bomb. He turns some demons into mini-Logrus croquet balls and starts tossing them through the bomb. Everyone with Pattern nearby becomes uneasy. Zack pokes at the Logrus-bomb, and tries to scoop the wall away from the bomb, with minimal success. ---------- Introducing Osric Ilk is slowly descending over castle Amber. However, it doesn't have a unicorn on the standard - it has a swan. Ilk sprouts wings, considers Logrusing out into shadow, then decides to gain some physical distance away from the castle before attempting the Logrus. Osric hears an explosion above him that is definitely not in keeping with the local tech level. Something plummets towards the ground, then sprouts wings. Osric tracks it in a sorcerous fashion. Ilk peels the sticky note off his shields. Osric observes that that behavior is definitely not natural for this area, and uses spray paint. Ilk heads physically away from the castle, fast, not wanting to cycle his shields here to remove the paint. Osric writes "I'd like to talk to you" Ilk scans for sorcerous energies, and spots a spike in the middle of Amber town. Ilk heads down, and the locals start bouncing arrows off his shields. One leaps from a balcony in an attempt to catch him, is several hundred feet short, and plummets to the ground. Osric writes, "Outside town" Ilk goes invisible and heads out into a field near town. He spots the sorcerous flare, drops below the tree line, re-vizes, and lands. Ilk realizes that his form is a bit soft, solidifies his form, and grows clothing. Osric notices that Ilk is definitely a shapeshifter. They chat at some length. Osric states that he is looking for the Real Amber, and eventually mentions Merlin's name. Ilk says that Corwin and two of Merlin's siblings are currently in the Courts of Chaos. Osric claims to possess a method of travel to the Courts, but states that it may take several days of subjective travel. Ilk agrees, despite Osric's insistence that he be placed under a sensory deprivation spell during the trip. Osric leads Ilk back into town and down an alley, where Ilk drops his shields and Osric casts a sensory deprivation spell, Osric leads Ilk a distance on foot and then into a vehicle, which accelerates strongly for a while. They continue their conversation during the trip. -------- Near the Abyss Lots of stuff happens near the Abyss. [The logger's character was busy in conversation with Osric, so people should tell me what happened here] Zack and Norton discuss the differences between Houses and Guilds. Norton directs the Mothras to catch sailing shifters and pass them back down to demons that he has rebuilding the wall. Sethra shows up, Norton starts randomizing, Cathryn and Norton both try to find Ilk with the Logrus, and their tendrils don't seem to connect, and go nowhere. --------- What Happens if you Throw Up in the Fringe? Osric starts feeling mentally nauseous, for no apparent reason. He chats with Ilk briefly, then drops the sensory deprivation spell. Ilk sees that their vehicle is on a long, straight silvery ribbon in a very strange environment, and feels like his essence is being pulled in all directions at once. It's not very pleasant. Ilk starts bringing up the Logrus to see if he can determine why Osric is feeling nauseous, but becomes extremely nauseous himself and aborts after a few nanoseconds. Osric's nausea spikes, and then declines again. They conclude that someone is probably searching for them with Logrus, and Osric re-establishes the sensory deprivation spell and steers for a gate. Osric and Ilk leave the ribbon and enter real space. Ilk sees two tendrils connect, one from Cathryn bearing a note, and one from Norton, bearing insanity. Ilk sends a tendril back to Norton and starts damping the insanity, and chats with Cathryn. "Where are you?" "In another reality. Back RSN." "Again?!" She says that Ferro took her house, and has returned it, and that they're at House Jesby dealing with finding the real house. Ilk asks Osric if he would mind being Logrus-pulled to the site of the battle where Corwin is probably located, then pulls the two of them through to Norton. ----------------- In the Basement of House Jesby [This section courtesy of Cathryne's player.] Cathryne attempts to convince Ferro that finding the old house is a better solution. He says he might be able to help, and asks to go to a large room in the basement. Cathryne takes him to one of the large torture rooms. In the middle of the room is Lord Talos from the Torturers' Guild. He isn't moving, and doesn't respond to Cathryne talking to him. She tries to touch him, and it gets logarithmically difficult to touch him the closer she gets. She continues to try until she hears a squeak from Ferro. She stops, and he tells she was slowing down the closer she got. They briefly discuss if that could be related to the house being phased out of the time stream. Ferro says he has an idea, and starts to draw a Pattern on the floor. It's not supposed to be permanent, but this is considerably harder to create than other Patterns he's done. Cathryne kills time by Logrusing a note to Ilk, which takes some effort to get through. After some time, Carthyne looks more closely at what Ferro is doing and realizes he's drawing a permanent Pattern! She yells at him to stop, but gets no reaction. She quickly sends a note up to her mother saying "could get House back, price of which is Pattern in basement." The note comes back with "NO!" and Jesby appears. Cathryne tries standing in front of Ferro to block his way, but it's painful, kind of like standing on a part of the pattern without starting at the beginning. She tries throwing something at him, which happens to be a heavy autopsy table with trays for blood. It hits him and lands in front of him, which he interprets as the first veil. She tries to knock him off the path with a Logrus tendril. ----------------- Near the Abyss Snarsht approaches within a whisker-length of Ilk and yells at him for what happened. When Ilk expresses confusion, Snarsht plays back the scene between Norton and Sethra into Ilk's mind. Ilk agrees to try harder to stay near Norton in the future. Much conversation happens. Ilk notices that Shiryu has taken control of his shadow storm. Sethra is taken back to Dragaera by Zack to prevent the feedback loop with Norton. More un-logged stuff happens. [hey guys, help me out here!] Ilk tries to reach to Mandor, and is blocked. The block is fairly massive, generated by the equivalent of seventy or eighty Logrus-users. Ilk asks Norton for a boost. Norton pushes through with a Pattern-laced tendril, and one of the enemy calls out, "They have struck the first blow! We now must defend our honor!" Norton starts making a pile of Eric hand grenades and a grenade launcher. Norton sends another Pattern-tendril through, and Ilk piggy-backs on it through the Logrus-block. They make it through, and hit a Logrus-disturbance near House Jesby. They're in contact with a tendril in contact with Cathryn in contact with Ferro drawing a Pattern. Norton pulls back. Ilk can't, and hurts a lot. Norton walks over to the Realms Master and tells him that someone is drawing a Pattern in House Jesby. "Show me." Ilk stops hurting, and Shiryu disappears. The shadow storm disappears as well. --------------- Shiryu Hatracks Cathryn Ferro stops walking, and Shiryu is standing in front of Cathryn. The Realms Master gives Cathryn the stupid lecture for trying to draw a Pattern in his Courts, and accuses her of trying to welsh out of their deal. She defends her actions, saying that she didn't know what Ferro was doing, that she didn't mean for him to do what he did, and that she tried to stop him once she realized that he was drawing a Pattern. Shiryu tells her that he provided a physical structure so that her House would not lose status, and that she could easily re-populate the House in a hundred years or so, but that there is no hurry to find her House now. Shiryu says that since Cathryn is just a child, she can leave and he will clean up her mess, but that when she is an adult, he will not. She doesn't leave, and continues to defend her actions. She starts accusing Shiryu of being behind the disappearance of her House. As a warning, Shiryu turns Cathryn into a tiny worm, with no shapeshifting or Logrus ability whatsoever, and then turns her back. Cathryn demands to know when Shiryu last saw Dara. Cathryn finds herself sitting in a room in which a conversation has just broken off, and Mandor is talking with her. She is forced to nod her head along with the conversation, then finds herself leaving. On her way out, she sees a hat-rack lying on a table that has been cut in half and reconnected with duct tape and wood glue. Cathryn finds herself back where she was before. She starts accusing the Realms Master of turning Dara into her natural form, and asks what favor he was returning by fixing Dara and taking House Jesby out of time. She finds herself in the form of a hat rack on Mandor's table. Ferro finds himself touched by a Logrus tendril, and then he notices that his foot didn't entirely stop moving, but that the place where his foot is descending to isn't there. Ferro tries to place his foot there anyway, and his foot comes down on his imagination and keeps going down. He continues forward, and he is plummeting. There's no resistance, and he's still moving, but there's no glowing trail behind him, so he's probably no longer drawing a Pattern. Ferro shifts himself into the shape of a Pattern, and starts rippling along it, still trying to reach a time-shifted House Jesby. ------------------- The Battle Near the Abyss Begins The first wave attacks. Cassandra is using Sith death bolts, disrupting one creature's life force at a time. Celeste tries to show her how to do it more efficiently. Malachai goes into La Machine mode. [He slices! He dices! He even does Chaosians!] Osric draws power from his gate and goes defensive. All of those with mage-sight see a really cool shield made of a combo of Pattern and an unknown power source. Norton shifts towards his undead form, pulls in some Corwin-ish combat features, and attacks. Zack looks at the Osric's shield, then starts fighting light saber and Morganti. The Morganti really bothers Celeste. Ilk defends against far too many Logrus attacks, and directs his troops. Cassandra dominates a cannon fodder and sends it back to kill its commander. It is redominated, and returns to the fight. Corwin is fighting with Greyswandir. Martin has split Werewindle again and is fighting with it, while leaving it quivering in the floor of the Pattern Party. Ingold is standing on the wall, pointing the Wand of Not Yet Now Shoot Me Not Yet at things that aren't visible, and the nonexistent things explode. Celeste sees that Ingold is folding their own energies against them. That bothers her on a fundamental level. Norton and vampiric friends try to find a minor officer and swarm it. Celeste's magical tricks don't work well against shifters. Ilk sends a company of shifters that weren't part of the wall forward. Some are turned back on him. Ilk waffles over how to re-turn them, and ends up just melting them. Norton's x-ray demon vision comes up. He looks around - there are a lot more troops than they expected. About ten to twelve times more. Celeste disappears, Cassandra notices, and tells Martin, on the grounds that Helgram might have kidnaped her. Snarsht is currently standing fairly still on the other side of the battlements, waiting for the enemy to approach him. There are a bunch of grasshoppers clustered around his feet, along with some large and leprous frogs. Cassandra tries to trump Celeste. It's blocked. Norton trumps Corwin, and tells him that there are lots more troops out there than they expected, and gives numbers and distributions. Corwin calls out to Benedict in an obscure language. Benedict calls out to Zack and orders the Sidhe to withdraw. Benedict turns to Ilk and says, "Your troops. I want them." "Where?" Ilk starts ordering the battlements about. Cassandra is fighting back to back with Martin. Norton is sneaking. Osric is watching. Zack is wreaking havoc. --EORun--