18 January 2007

And Then There Were Four!

Last night, for the first time in five sessions, the entire group made it to our Savage Worlds game and, as anticipated, it made a difference. The session was still somewhat disjointed as the various situations from the past four sessions were aligned and two characters that had not met were brought together but as a player in the game I certainly felt more at home (yet, somehow, more of a fifth wheel character-wise in the particular events of the session).

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Adenaar "woke" to a strange sensation. He had no idea where he was, but was dressed as he had been when he had retired the night following the butchery outside a Free Brigades' safe house. It was just he, his sword and the speaking stone. It took him a while to figure out where he was - whether it was a dream or not was to the forefront of his mind - but the stone spoke up eventually: he had traveled not (just) in space, but in time. He was in Skygarden: the mausoleum of the gods 250 years and more earlier. The stone, or Skygarden itself, informed him that there were 26 gods entombed there, but that the Emperor had "stolen" 13 of them. The inference being that the stolen bodies of the missing gods were the artefacts powering the Sky Cities.

After learning this and sundry less pertinent informations Adenaar was transported back to the present, arriving - with mild confusion - in the hallway in front of the others as they fled the dragon-induced cave-in. Brief introductions followed, for Col had not met Adenaar before, as the Widowmaker captain, Winter, led them flawlessly out of the underfaust. At this point the group split: Kelvin headed for the pub, with Zeff (hoping to find Kasmin there) in tow, whilst Col walked Adenaar back to the restaurant before heading off to catch some shut-eye before his first day at work on the ship being put together amidst the security of the docks. It had been surmised by this point that it was to be powered by one of the missing gods: Trebezond had been a Sky City before it had been crashed as part of the original rebellion.

Next day dawned; Adenaar woke up to find 20 Widowmakers waiting for him, Zeff hadn't slept and went looking for Kasmin whilst Kelvin went to his workshop to work on a flame retardant and Col kept his work appointment. Adenaar's predicament was unnerving but not threatening: the posse of guards had come asking tuition not to arrest, kill or fight: evidently he had made a positive impression after standing toe-to-toe with Chardun Whitehands in the previous brawl. He told them to come back the next day for he had to think about the proposition (of teaching them). Zeff found Kasmin under the Opera House: she had been sleeping in a prop bed and availing herself - and, as it turned out, Zeff - of the prop clothing. A quick rundown of the previous evening's events followed, and Zeff left with word for Adenaar that Kasmin wanted to see him, and "get his size". Col's day as a "keel engineer" on the huge ship brought him into contact with the artefact: a 10" tall "dead" man in a lead coffin, holding a flaming sword. This artefact needed aligning with the hull to permit the ship to fly, and this was Col's remit. He did not get far with that, but did manage to sort out his pay, and score tickets to the launch party and find out about those running the project.

Everyone reconvened in the evening, after variously eventful days. It was then that Col's family ties came into the open: his brother was a Sky City count, and his nephew was revealed as the one running the Trebezond project. Just as tensions were rising following this snippet, Adenaar was warned by the speaking stone that something was coming - and suddenly the group were pulled out of the timeflow and confronted by three 10' tall figures brandishing swords. These temporal assassins, for want of a better descriptor, looked scary, but fell stunningly fast to Adenaar's blade, Kelvin's repeating bow and Col's use of a Sky Cities "zapper" that Zeff had pilfered earlier. Dropping back into time caused a couple to lose their lunches but discussion soon sprung up once more about who Col was, how much trust could be placed in him and how and what the Free Brigades could or would do about the imminent launch of the new Trebezond-class ship. Suggestions of stealing it came to light; Zeff was chastised for questioning if there would be leadership from the Brigades on the issue, told that all were members and should think and act for themselves. Col called Zeff simple, and ended with a blade-tip to his throat, but the situation was backed down before it cut, and Zeff stormed out into the Surtur's Throne evening air...

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Good set up in the end. Seemed to take a while to get to it but large parts of that were down to the way things were organised and the requirements to tie the various threads together (not least as a result of having the first full group of the campaign). Not quite sure what is going to happen next, but having now been explicitly told to do things for himself, and having learnt some new tricks, Zeff is liable to go and cause serious havoc on the Trebezond. Having also been made aware of Col's ties to the Sky Cities, and especially the information that "nothing the Baileys have ever done has been good for the Lowlanders" IC trust is running very low indeed.

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