DRAFT Run Log for 980714

Present:

Andrew	- Osric
Dave K	- Ilk, logging
Sam	- Jean
Barb	- Cathryne
Lori	- Celeste
Tia	- Cassandra, Damia

------------------------

Major Events:

* Experimenting with a Gwen Gate
* Corwin Boils and Explodes

------------------------

Experimenting with a Gwen Gate


Celeste, Brand, Ilk, Osric, and Jean prime are at ground zero. Damia is
near Clarissa.  Cathryne in a corner reading a treaty between Amber and
Rebma.  Celeste's wards are over Faythe and over Osric's wards over
Clarissa.  Neville nudges his mage. "Do you have any idea what they're
doing?"  "They might be aiming that at us."  Neville and company start
moving out of the line of fire, dragging the mattress behind them.

Osric checks the dials on his machine and pushes the button.

Celeste turns to Brand and asks him to put up shields. Brand pulls out
the Orb. Celeste and Brand argue briefly, and decide to put it back when
they're done. 

The explosion happens. 

Dworkin, Neville and company, Damia, and Cathryne were not warned about
the explosion. 

Neville prays that his shields hold. Cathryne doesn't even bother to
look up. Dworkin grabs all of his juggling balls, hands them to Logrus
Jean, and stomps over to the machine.  Logrus Jean follows. He looks up
at Osric, waggles a finger in front of his face, and says, "Stop that!"
"Stop what?" "Making loud noises. I'm trying to juggle!" "If everything
goes right, there will be no more loud noises." "Well, okay then."

The beam goes through the gate, but only Osric can detect the beam, and
he cannot detect the gate.  The group discusses means of showing Osric
the gate, then realizes that he can use the trump mirror as a
target. Osric scribbles the beam across the back of Celeste's
trump-painting. Celeste feels like someone is giving her root canals in
the back of her head without anesthesia. "Stop it stop it stop it stop
it!"  Osric stops waving the beam around. Celeste stops hurting.
Celeste, Ilk, and Osric discuss the trump mirror.

Brand tries to acquire access to the equipment. Celeste stops him. 

Celeste conjures a series of Christmas lights outlining the gate about
halfway between the trump gate and the painting.

Ilk pivots the trump mirror ninety degrees around a vertical
edge. Celeste can see that someone has removed specific flakes of paint
from the painting that match the path of the beam.

Osric starts scanning the area outlined by the Christmas lights with the
beam, picture tube style.

Ilk asks Norton to make another scout to send through the gate. 
Norton makes a small winged thing with a sign on it reading "Hi, I am
invisible".  It doesn't turn invisible.

Celeste - "Norton - it's not invisible"
Norton  - "Neither were the other ones I made according to everyone else
	   I asked."
Ilk     - "Yes they were."
Norton  - "You could find them. He could find them. She could find them."
Ilk     - "I doubt that they could see them."
Celeste - "I could find them, but I couldn't see them."

The scout zips to the beam, then flies along the beam through the
gate. When this route is pointed out to Norton, he claims that it was
probably the safest route.  "What's a little fire for a phoenix?"

An very small egg rolls back through the gate. "See? No problem!" The
egg is immediately hit by several darts and starts turning white. "Well,
maybe a small problem"

The group discusses the source of the darts. Osric aims at their
estimated point of origin and cranks up the volume to the maximum safe
level for the non-shifters in the room. 

The air around the beam is starting to super-heat.  Osric puts one of his
shields up in a tube around the beam, terminating about a quarter of an
inch from the gate.  The shield is starting to heat. Osric lets some air
in on the emitter-end of the tube, producing a blast of super-heated air
passing through the gate. Celeste conjures ice around the sides and back
of the gate to cut down on the ambient temperature of the room. The ice
evaporates, and super-heated steam starts spilling through the gate as
well. Celeste replenishes the ice.

Cathryne continues working through the treaty with Rebma and keeping an
eye on Clarissa. 

[The plural of Gwen is "We're fucked"]

The group discusses ways of safely observing and/or destroying whatever
is lurking on the far side of the gate. Brand creates a U-shaped glass
rod about two feet on a side and hands it to Osric.  Osric goes over and
stands to the side of the Christmas tree. He raises personal shields,
shifts his eyes to resist being flash blinded, and pokes one edge of the
tube through the plane defined by the Christmas lights. He disappears.

Brand   - "Oops." 
Celeste - "Oops? What do you mean, oops?"
Brand   - "Well, that should have worked. Hmm..."
Celeste - "Brand! He's gone!"
Brand   - "Yeah, maybe he went through the trump?"
Celeste - "That's not good."
Bran    - "I'll go in after him."
Celeste - "No!"
Ilk     - "Does anyone have a trump of Osric?"

Cassandra trumps Osric and disappears. Malachai whips out Cassandra's
trump and disappears. 

Brand turns to Celeste and says, "That shouldn't have happened that
way. I'd better try something" "What?" "Here, hold this."  Brand
gestures, sending the orb to orbit Celeste's head, and disappears.

Sandy Jean turns to sandy Corwin and tells him what just happened.

S. Jean     - "Hey Corwin - Cassandra just vanished"
S. Corwin   - "What?"
S. Jean     - "Yeah - she tried to trump somebody, and then she just
               went poof. I think she got sucked through a trump gate."
S. Corwin   - "Ilk. Do you have any way of getting in touch with
               Princess	Chandra?" 
Ilkandacian - "I believe that I could send a message to her guild."
S. Corwin   - "Would you kindly tell her that her new apprentice was just
               kidnapped? 
Ilkandacian - "If you would care to write the message, I shall deliver
               it." 
S. Corwin   - "Certainly. Pen? Paper?"

Ilk hands over writing implements.  Sandy Corwin writes a note, signs it
as the second of the Warriors Guild, and hands it to Ilk. Ilk sends the
note to the Assassins Guild.

Celeste whips out Brand's trump. Ilk yells.

Ilk     - "No!"
Celeste - "What?" 
Ilk     - "You don't want to get stuck there with everyone else. We need
           to mount a rescue." 
Celeste - "Why not? They might need more help on the other side."
Ilk     - But maybe they're getting stuck somewhere, and if we just go
          through, we'll be stuck as well."
Celeste - "Fine"

Celeste puts the card away. 

All of a sudden, there is a bump. When Ilk looks up after bending over
the side of the boat, there is a member of the assassins guild leaning
over him. "Where?" Ilk gestures to Corwin. The assassin and Corwin
exchange some quiet comments, then Corwin points to Jean. The assassin
comes over to Jean. "How did you get this information?" "Oh, I saw her
get sucked up." "From were?" "The grand courtroom in Amber. There's a
trump gate in there. And Osric vanished, and she vanished, and Malachai
vanished, and that's it." "Thank you." 

The assassin dives off the boat into the sea of demons. There is a
slight rippling in the demons marking his passage.

Ilk     - "Do you think that we should shut it off on the grounds that
           it might be blasting the friendlies, or should we leave it on
           to blast the opposition?"   
Celeste - "Shut it off!"  

Ilk in the courtroom hits the emergency stop switch on Osric's
machine. There is a cycling sound, and the machine shakes itself into a
halt. It didn't stop that way last time. The air continues to grow
hot. 

Celeste - "I think the thing is still on. Great sound effects!" 
Ilk     - "Hey Merlin? Could you put this somewhere, like in orbit? I
           think that it might explode or something."
Merlin  - "Orbit?"
Ilk     - "Away. Outside the castle."
Merlin  - "Oh, yeah. I could put it outside the castle."
Celeste - "Really far! Really far!"
Ilk     - "Well, don't break it. He might want it back."
Celeste - "Could you make a little pocket or something where it won't
           bother anyone when it blows up?"
Merlin  - "Yeah, sure."
Celeste - "Why are we asking Merlin?"

"Merlin" opens what appears to be a star-speckled rift in space, pushes
the machine through, and closes the rift behind it.  "Where did that
go?"  "Oh, out in space somewhere. About six hundred shadows that way."

Jean prime approaches Ilk.  "Hey Ilk? If you make me another body, I'll
go through." Ilk conjures a body. Jean determines it to not be not very
tangible. Norton is scornful.  Ilk challenges him to do make a better
one.  Norton goes off, grabs some rabbits, and returns with a giant
bunny in tow. 

Jean - "Hey Ilk, is court over yet?" 
Ilk  - "There are still enough people here that it should be safe." 
Jean - "No, is court over? Can I kill the bunny? Mom said that I
        couldn't cast spells during court."

Instead of budding into the bunny, Jean picks it up and throws it
through the gate. It is darted three or four times before it disappears.
Jean contemplates budding into the mattress or the juggling balls.  Ilk
offers to alter bodies for Jean by tossing them into shadow and altering
the shadow around them.

Ilk contemplates going through the gate, and decides that Suhuy's
instruction to "Deal with it" probably includes investigating the far
side.  Ilk tries to acquire a dead servant's corpse for Jean, and
discovers that they have been tidied out of existence by Flora's staff.
Ilk asks Caine if he would like to join their battle against a foe
against which he has obviously been preparing for some time.

Caine - "How often do you see me walking into blind alleys?"
Ilk   - "I don't know you very well. You might do it all the time."
Raven - "He's got a point."

Ilk has an idea for how to maintain contact while going through the
gate. 

Ilk     - "Celeste?"
Celeste - "Yeah?"
Ilk     - "Do you know Verra?"
Celeste - "Yeah"
Ilk     - "Can you communicate with her?"
Celeste - "Maybe"
Ilk     - "Do you think we could use her as a relay?"
Celeste - "You're kidding, right?"
Ilk     - "It might work! I can contact her, you can contact her."
Celeste - "Use her as a relay?"
Ilk     - "For information."
Celeste - "Wait. You're saying we can both contact her?  Let me get this 
	   straight. You want to use her as a relay, because we're not
	   going to be in the same place how?"
Ilk     - "Well..."
Celeste - "Are you thinking of going through that gate?"
Ilk     - "You see, Suhuy gave me about five minutes to solve the
           problem of this gate here... and I do have spares."
Celeste - "I see. So you're going to jump through the gate. After you
           told me not to."
Ilk     - "Yeah." 
Celeste - "Why do I find this not your best idea to date? Why don't I
	   jump through the gate?"
Ilk     - "If you're on this side, you can handle the other side of a
	   relay." 
Celeste - "And if you're on this side, you can handle it from here."
Ilk     - "There are more of me than there are of you." 
Celeste - "That's a revolting notion. Go." 

Ilk trumps Jean, and passes his stuff and some basic information
through to the Ilk on grand tour, keeping Verra's pearl and the trump of
Jean. He then conjures up a cane-shaped object. 

Celeste calls out on the god channel, and gets the sensation of someone
panting, as if in an exertion, but doesn't find Verra. "Ilk? She's
busy." 

Ilk contacts Verra. She's not in the place of the gods, she's sitting
and talking to a eight year old girl. They chat; he flatters her. Ilk
asks Verra if she could relay information for him. Verra declares that
Ilk is silly for all of this traveling; it is far more useful to stay
in one place and let people come to you. 

Cathryne thinks that there might be a way to circumvent the treaty with
Rebma, but it would involve an adoption.  Martin would have to declare
that his grandmother's line was predominant over his
grandfather's. Cathryne is horrified at the notion of declaring Damia's
line predominant over Oberon's. She keeps looking for another loophole. 

Jean tries to bud into the beanbag. He succeeds. There are no memories
here - this is a blank slate. He tries to go mobile. 

Neville sees the beanbag sprout thousands of tiny wooden legs and start
scurrying around.  Next it grows fur.

Verra - "Who is that young lady who was bargaining with me who came out
         not so well?"
Ilk   - "Oh, Cathryne."
Verra - "Is she around?"
Ilk   - "Yes"
Verra - "Oh good."
Ilk   - "Would you like to pass information through her?"
Verra - "I would appreciate that. Here, pass her this."

Verra hands Ilk a pearl for Cathryne. He passes the pearl to Cathryne
with a tendril, along with a note.  Cathryne activates the pearl.

Verra blossoms into Cathryne's mind, looks around a bit, decides that it
is safe, and then backs off a bit.  Verra mentions that Ilk asked her to
relay information for him.  Cathryne decides to have a talk with Ilk
later.  Verra mentions that Cathryne seems to be spending a lot of time
trying to uphold her part of their bargain. As it turns out, the first
lover that Cathryne sent her was barely a passing moment's
distraction. He got distracted, bounced off somewhere, and got himself
messily disabled.

Neville pokes his mage. "Hey - I thought he was dead." "So did I. Should
we reinforce that?" "I don't know." Jean tries to grow useful sensory
organs. A large tree, sporting four trumpet-shaped loudspeakers, grows
out of the top of the mattress and starts broadcasting the baby elephant
walk.  "Okay, Ilk. It's ready." Ilk and Jean chat over the trump
contact. Neville's mage tries to contact the mattress, and fails.
Neville looks suspiciously over at Norton. Norton is not paying any
attention to what is going on here.

Jean feels himself being dragged back towards the friends of his newest
body magically, and tells Ilk that he'd better hurry. Ilk sneaks a tiny
Logrus tendril over to mattress Jean.

Neville looks at his mage. "Can you keep control of him? We might be
held responsible if he did anything."  "I think so." Neville tells the
mage to send him home. 

Ilk pokes the gate. Ilk disappears. Jean disappears. Neville's mage
disappears.  Ilk's tendril to Jean fries as they pass through the gate.


--------------------


The GM hauls Osric's player outside. 

The GM hauls Cassandra's player outside. 

The GM hauls Jean's player outside.


----------------

Ilk Explores a Gwen Gate


Ilk goes through the gate and is falling. He grows wings. The wings
brush the edges of a gate, which burns. Ilk tries to adjust the geometry
of his wings to match the shape of the gate, and lands. A dart impacts
between his shoulder blades. Ilk ejects the chunk of flesh around the
dart and tendri's out. The darted piece goes white almost instantly, and
fails to tendri. Ilk is in a large bowl on a giant table. There is a
square trump gate near the bottom of the bowl. Ilk experiments, tossing
inanimate chunks of matter at the gate. The bits get darted and
disappear, with the exception of the bits that pass through the corners
of the gate. Those pieces simply disappear. Ilk casts a bug onto a chunk
of detrius and tosses it through. The bug goes down when it impacts the
gate.

Ilk contacts Verra. They chat, then Verra puts him directly into
Cathryne's mind. Cathryne rants.  After some urging, she starts
half-heartedly passing notes back and forth with Caine. Caine trumps
Cathryne. They discuss Ilk's experiences. Caine asks Ilk if the
experiment is reproducible, so Ilk solidifies into a long, thin
snakelike form and pours through a corner of the gate. He passes
through, falls, and is then on the edge of a space platform high over
the planet below, with a ship descending towards him. He has not been
darted yet, but tendri's out anyway. He's still in contact with Verra,
Cathryne, and Caine. The gate here is near the center of the platform.

Ilk sees people starting to unload the ship dangerously close to the
gate, so moves the unloaders, their cargo, and the spaceship to a nearby
platform.  He goes about six light years over to the edge of the shadow,
spreads out, generates a massive Sign of the Logrus, and swats the gate
with it. There is a massive explosion.

Ilk solidifies on a different planet, trumps Jean, and goes through the
contact to mattress Jean. 

Ilk finds himself standing in a dark place, covered with a black gooey
substance. He shifts to compensate for the black stuff, starts
bioluminescing, and grows appropriate sensory organs.  Mattress Jean is
now covered with thick black goo. Jean notices that he succeeded in
creating operational eyes - they just didn't have any light to see
by. Mattress Jean starts working on bioluminescence. 

They chat, and Jean starts leading Ilk back to where he first appeared
in this place. Ilk notices a trail, that was etched in the floor by the
acidic black stuff being exuded by the mattress. They find the
gate. There are what appear to be the remnants of darted rats in the
room, but no Helgramite mage. Ilk tendris out and explores the
shadow. It is entirely composed of a network of underground caverns, and
there are no other Real things here.  The most interesting thing that he
finds are the Logrus tracks of an inconclusive duel fought here by
Chaosians long ago - they both survived to Logrus-pull out. 

Ilk asks for a trump of Cassandra. Jean prime goes to Corwin, and is
dealt with suspiciously. Ilk asks Jean prime to pull him through the
trump contact, after moving to a safe distance so Corwin doesn't
accidentally spit him on Greyswandir.

Jean carefully measures out a distance somewhat longer than a standard
lunge, then pulls Ilk through. 


----------------

Corwin Boils and Explodes


Ilk suddenly appears next to Logrus Jean in the grand courtroom. Caine
bows to Ilk. Ilk returns the bow, and bows to Corwin. Corwin is glaring
at Ilk suspiciously. Ilk explains that he wants to trump Cassandra
because she might be stuck, not being shadow-mobile. Corwin holds out
the trump, and places his hand on Ilk's shoulder. They both push, and
are blocked. Jean helps. It's still blocked. Ilk calls over Celeste. She
pushes, and Corwin boils and falls apart. Norton looks horrified. There
is frost encasing Ilk's hand and the trump card.  

Ilk calls over to Norton, who is horrified at the impermanence of
his work, and says that there is nothing there left to be revivified.

Celeste - "I don't think that we can get through that."
Ilk     - "Celeste? What does that mean?"
Celeste - "I don't think that it means anything good."
Ilk     - "Hey Norton? Can you fix him again?"
Norton  - "No. Owwww."
Ilk     - "You can just give him a new body."
Norton  - "There's nothing there any more. Well, I could reanimate that,
	   but it wouldn't be Corwin."
Jean    - "What happened to his soul?"
Norton  - "It's not here anymore."
Ilk     - "Did it go through?"
Norton  - "I don't know."
Jean    - "Is it with Cassandra?"
Norton  - "I don't know."

On the other end of reality...

S. Jean   - "Hey Corwin?"
S. Corwin - "What?"
S. Jean   - "Do you feel different?"
S. Corwin - "Nope."
S. Jean   - "Got more of a soul?"
S. Corwin - "How do you tell?"
S. Jean   - "I don't know. Good question."
S. Corwin - "Norton?"
Norton    - "You seem en-souled."
S. Jean   - "See anything unusual?"
Norton    - "I'd have to rip it out to find out. Want me to?"
S. Corwin - "No, that's all right. I'll just stay over here.

Ilk puts the trump and the attached hand away, growing a new hand. He
starts fixing the frozen bits, and discovers that the trump is eating
shapeshifter energy and continuing to grow colder.  He discusses this
with Celeste. Celeste asks for a look at the trump card.  "Hey Malachai,
could you turn... oh, wait, he's not here." Ilk pulls out the trump and
attached hand-sicle and shows it to Celeste. Celeste notices that the
contact is still present and draining power from her. She tries to break
the contact and fails.  Cathryne notices the ruckus and reinforces her
wards. "Oh, well - I didn't need that hand anyway." Ilk and Celeste
waffle, then call over "Merlin". He turns off all of the trump in the
room except for the gate in the center of the room briefly, then
restores trump. The card fails to keep getting colder. Ilk puts the
trump and hand back inside him and starts fixing the hand.

Jean scavenges from Corwin's corpse and takes Corwin's trump deck. Jean
gets a headache. Jean prime walks over and hands the trumps to Logrus
Jean, who gets an even bigger headache and hands them back.

Ilk asks "Merlin" if he can find Cassandra.  "Merlin" walks over to the
corner, sticks his staff into the floor, floats into the air over it,
and concentrates. Corwin's remains smoke a little bit more, and "Merlin"
disappears.

Merlin, floating on top of his staff, appears directly in front of
Cassandra.

Jean goes over to Flora. She looks down and says, "You shouldn't be
holding those. Here, let me hold them for you." Jean hands the deck to
Flora, and his headache goes away. "Is there one of you or dad in
there?" "Perhaps." "It would help." "Let me look."  Flora goes through a
trump deck and hands Jean her trump. Jean gets a slight bit of headache.
"It hurts my head. Why?"  As he looks at it, it comes into
concentration.  The power in it is screaming to be let out, and when he
concentrates on it, he can let it out. "Mom? Why is the trump
screaming?" "Give me that!" She takes the card back, reaches under her
dress, pulls out a piece of silk wrapping, wraps the trumps in them,
looks around, reaches into her purse, pulls out a small lead box, puts
the trumps in the box, pulls out some strapping tape, wraps the
strapping tape around the box, goes over to the throne, does something
to it that causes a small compartment in the front of the throne to
open, shoves the box in the compartment, shuts the compartment, and
walks back over to Jean.

Jean  - "...not good, mom."
Flora - "That will keep them from screaming. I hope."
Jean  - "Why were they screaming?"
Flora - "I don't know."
Jean  - "It felt like there was power that wanted to get out."
Flora - "That's not a good thing."
Jean  - "I didn't think so. I didn't let it out."

Everyone else just saw Flora fidget, go over to the throne, fidget with
it, then return to Jean. 

Jean consults his mother on taking Corwin's slashy thingy. She tells him
that he might cut himself. 


----------------

Elsewhere


Mattress Jean is working on customizing his body. He's
bioluminescing. The biolumuminescent parts taste like slushies of the
same color.  He discovers that pincers can cut rats in half nicely, and
extends hair into tentacles, which he uses to dip rats into the acid
that he drips behind him.

The Pattern-circuit has finished dumping Toram onto the Pattern. Ilk,
Suhuy, and Suhuy stand around and chat. Ilk tries to trump Norton, and
hits a block. 


--EORun--