Tag: Core Earth

Posted on

Torg update – Session of 5 November 2009

First off, happy 18th birthday to my little sister as of 9:51pm last night.  I was at Trish and Chris’s house, in their basement, playing Torg at the time.  I really don’t think she minded, since I know she was playing an OYO concert.

Now on to the Torg update.

I’m not going to subject anyone who happens to care to read this to a YouTube video of this week’s song, which was “Turn the World Around” by Harry Belafonte.  I told David it was the weirdest song we’ve had so far (Weirder than Gorillaz? He asked.  I said yes.).

At the beginning of this week, the Well of Forever looked back into us…and I don’t think most of us liked what we saw.  What Ren ended up seeing was a reality bridge in Orrorsh and herself using the Starfire Wheel to make it fall apart…only to leave herself open to the demonic frog deity she banished in Ys almost a year ago.

Banishments only last, apparently, a year and a day.

When we all snapped out of it, Mable and Grace fell over unconsious (Liz opted to stay home since her mother got H1N1 and Jen had to stay late at the library), which meant Mei and Christian had to carry them out of the suddenly very unstable cavern….a cavern suddenly very unstable because of artillery that was mowing the lawn for advancing infantry and cavalry.

After barely managing to not get ourselves blown up, killed, or otherwise maimed, we climbed out of the hole to find a Polish patrol standing outside of the hole we climbed out of.  After convincing him that Ren was an American soldier, the others were able to climb out of the hole.  All of us were brought back to a forward post where they ran our IDs again…and that’s where we found out that the guy we thought was named Alex was actually named Anton Fratelli (and declared that if Ren made one Goonies reference….not that she would ever do something like that in the first place because Goonies really wasn’t her thing) and is a CIA operative.  Which Ren suspected after she saw the sniper rifle but never made mention of–why look a gift-horse in the mouth, after all?

Of course, on the ride to behind the lines, Ren and Anton argue.  A lot.  He’s been given the full plot dump, warts and all, and has decided to take Ren to task for it even though most of the circumstances were largely beyond the group’s control (was she really supposed to tell Amarant that he couldn’t become a wall?  Really?  And, for the record, the Order is NOT a snuggie cult).   When we finally make it to the more substantial operations center behind the lines, the party is reunited with Dr. Hatchi Mara-Two (Too?), who is as scattered-brained and special as ever.

Mable’s got some wacky stuff going on with the nanotech virus in her blood.  There’s nothing we can do about it, and Galen did something weird with it.  Greeeat.

From there, lay out the situation–and begin to plan, for once.  Using Anton’s networks, we put out calls to every ally we can think of to come help us storm the papal holdings in Avignon, to stop Odyle before she can break the world.  God only knows if we’ll be able to stop her.  We’ve put out a call to the Knights Templar, to the Mystery Men, to the First Fleet, everyone we can think of.  But we have to find the Knives of Artemis, Mara’s said.  If we can find them, we may have an easy way into the papal palace, a way around the guards.  We hope.  But finding them will be easier said than done…and do we have the time to find them before everything comes to an end?

Posted on

Torg update – Session of 1 October 2009

Ren is a very, very upset kitten right now.  But no one gets to see her cry.

Here we were after last week, thinking that everything was fine, we’d killed the Hunter and he couldn’t hurt us anymore.  We all walked in thinking that all that had to be resolved in the facility was Grace getting Rosebud (the Wraith calls it “Void” — I think I like “Rosebud” better) out of the weird science machine that was masking its presence and then we could leave.  Sufficient to say, we were more than a little bit wrong there.

The Hunter decided it was going to take some of us with it to the grave and quite literally exploded.  Most of us dodged the worst of the blast, but things very quickly went from bad to worse.  The Hunter had decided it was going to take out one of the tanks with it–a tank full of industrial acid.  Most of the others had dodged away from it.  Ren had the misfortune of dodging toward it.  And trying to dodge falling acid.  And getting shoulder-checked out of the way.

By the time she turned around, the only thing she could see where Grant must have been was a very large hole in the ground.

She froze up.  I’m not sure anyone realized she completely froze up, but that’s pretty much what happened.  Christian and Mable jumped down the hole to look for (whatever was left of) him.  By the time they managed to get a little ways away from the hole, Ren managed to recollect herself enough to shine her flashlight down, trying to give them a little more light.

Christian found Grant, but didn’t actually see what had happened to him.  Just a figure, heard a voice that sounded awful telling him to stay back.  Grant was scribbling something on some paper.  Then he looked up toward Christian.

 Grant: “Tell them both I’m sorry.”

And then he ran.  Christian and Mable tried to find him, to no avail.  Ren is, in a word, devastated.  But at least he’s still alive.

About that time, before we got Christian and Mable out of the hole, DeSoto comes back carrying Mei, who is quite literally chewing on his cyberarm.  Ren starts muttering a few choice words and gives Mei some happy drugs (mostly a sedative so she stops gnawing on Fred).

While all of this is going on, we can all feel something, and that something is Void interrogating Grace and trying to figure out what’s what.  Grace ends up getting at least part of Void/Rosebud back for long enough to prove to it that her (and our) intentions are honorable.

We pull Christian and Mable out of the hole.  Christian tells Fred and Ren what Grant said, since the message was for the two of them.  And then they tell us about the paper.  There’s a single word written on it.

Legacy.

None of us are sure what it means. Mable has it. Ren might take it from her–Ren doesn’t have anything of Grant. She never did.  Of course, she might not.  She might quietly nurse the hurt and the hope that he’s okay, somehow, somewhere, and that he’ll come back.

Ren ended up punching DeSoto in the chest (he was the closest thing to punch) in frustration and pain.  He invited her to keep doing it if it helped.  But in turning toward Fred, Ren spotted something else that could be a good vent for her wrath.

The Wraith.

The grabs him by his collar and stares at him and starts yelling.  No one interferes in her screaming, though several want to.

Ren: How is it that bad things like that happen to good people, but you’re still here?  Why?  Why?

It was all pretty downhill from there.  Ren ended up with a gun to his head but couldn’t pull the trigger.  She did the Tom Hanks Twitch (from A League of Their Own — I’ll have to find a clip of it on YouTube) and backed off.

And then we started to make our way out of the facility.  When we’re all tramping out the door, we hear something behind us.  Mei goes running back in with weapons out while Christian is yelling for the squishie folk to get the hell out (which we do; there’s a comical image in my head of Ren, Grace, and Mable just kind of standing outside the door to the facility looking at each other funny).  And what does Mei turn her weapons on?  A cowering diplomat decked out in North Face who’s been looking for us–for Amaeren Colby (who isn’t a sergeant, dammit, she’s a Captain, get it right!) because she was connected to Amarant (why he was looking for Amarant, we’ve reallynot quite gotten a good answer on).  Ren’s mask of leadership goes back on and she’s in command of herself, at least for the moment.  We take the guy along (Alexander; he says he was working at one of the Italian embassies but Ren is definately suspecting otherwise, given the sniper rifle he has in his possession) and head to where Wraith stashed some vehicles–it’s an interesting question, is he on our side or is he not?  What game is he playing?

He said he made a promise to Mariah, a promise he kept.  That’s why he’s doing what he’s doing.  And he’s afraid of her.  Afraid of whatever she’s fragmented into.  That much is almost certain.

So we pick up a pair of armored vehicles and then we turn back south again to pick up some of Xander’s gear from his Volvo that he left parked somewhere.  Mable cannibalized part of it for components for a new helmet for Mei.  Mei is looking forward to having a new helmet.

We camped for the night shy of the storm front between Core Earth and Tharkold.  We relaxed for a little while–Ren went off and had a good cry in private, Christian and Fred sparred a little, Mable worked on the helmet.  Everyone that night except for Mei had disturbing, twisted, frightening dreams (which David left up to our imaginations–Ren’s were definately about Grant and Bad Things, Christian’s were about being powerless to stop Bad Things from happening to his children, ect ect).  Ren’s pretty sure that someone aimed that at the group, but she’s not sure who, or how.  It wasn’t normal for that sort of thing to happen near a storm front–realities don’t reach beyond their boundaries like that.  At least, not that she knows of.

In the morning, we passed through the storm front and into Tharkold.  And that’s where we left it for the evening.  Ren has plans to talk to Fred about some things–the sort of things that Grant could never tell her, but maybe Fred knows something.  And maybe between the two of them they can figure out what “legacy” means.

Posted on

Torg update – Session of 24 September 2009

So, it was confirmed.  The subbasements?  Probably the place where Bad Things happened to Mei (Sorry Mei!).  Ren is disturbed by this.

What’s worse?  The Hunter was lairing down there, we found out.  We uncovered some files in the computer systems that hadn’t been totally gutted in the complex that gave us some information on the D.E.A.M.O.N. project.  As previously stated:  Ren is disturbed.

On top of that, the Hunter set traps for us.  We made our way through the first sub-basement and didn’t find nearly as much as we’d hoped.  From there, the only way down was an elevator shaft that we had to climb down the service ladder of.  It was probably a trap, we knew it was probably a trap, but damn Ren’s medical ethics and her desire to be a do-gooder (she keeps thinking if she can understand what was going on, she can reverse it, or at least mitigate its effects).  We went down.  Down to what was probably the seventh subbasement, where we found a mainframe (at least I think it was pretty close to the mainframe) and found out even more disturbing information.

And then we busted through a wall and found a room with ceilings about thirty feet high and twenty to twenty-five foot tall propane tanks (they weren’t actually propane tanks, they just looked like propane tanks standing on end.  In the middle was a Mad Science device like two we’d seen in Egypt–one in the place where we rescued the Mystery Men, the other when we stopped a sacrifice outside of Cairo.  Of course..the Hunter was waiting for us.  So while Mei tried to taunt it out into the open and the others tried to help her kill it, Ren and Grace headed for said mad science device–hopefully to decipher what it’s all about.

Enter the Sorrow, Grace’s nemesis, a Church Executioner.  But not.  Suspicisions have been confirmed: it was The Wrath all along.  Ahh, Alexander, what are we going to do with your sorry arse?  He baited a trap for us, and not a bad one–but one that might work out to our advantage.  Grace’s symbiote, “Rosebud” is in the Mad Science device.  Ren decided that Grace was more than capable of handling Wraith and headed toward the sounds of violence to help the rest of her cohorts.

Not that they really needed her help.  At best, she distracted the Hunter so it could ultimately be killed.  At worst, she was useless.

But the effect of Mei’s Playing for the Moment was epic.

In the past, I’ve been the only one who’s played for the moment–I’ve done it twice, once when I called my first reality storm (Frog God, grrr, frog god) and then a second time while we were in what was left of the United States.  It was almost the end of the chapter, so it was a good time for Mei to try her luck.

So, epic pwning of the Hunter.  Ren started shooting at it, which distracted it.  Mable got the beast with a molotov cocktail.  Christian and Fred rushed in and got a couple of solid blade hits on the beast.  Grant knocks its helmet off.  And Mei leaps out of her armor suit, kneels on its shoulders, and unloads her gun arm into its head as it flailed around on fire.

I think it’s pretty cooked, now.  I’m okay with this.

And that’s pretty much how it ended, since by that time it was 11 and poor Liz had to be to work before the crack of dawn today.  Mike’s new character still hasn’t appeared.  Çest la vie.  We’ll see what happens.  The resolution on Grace, the Wraith, and Rosebud is going to be first thing next week, probably followed by destroying the installation.  But we shall see.  Sometimes, things just end up getting in the way.

Posted on

Torg update – Session of 17 September 2009

So, we were without one of our tanks to start the session last week, which…could have gone worse.  We were, in fact, attacked by some sort of sky pirates from Nile who Mable happens to have a serious grudge with (the leader was responsible for her fiancee’s death).  The battle resulted in some anti-climax, since Mable didn’t actually get to blow up her nemesis and we couldn’t stop the zepplin from crashing–but at least Frederico DeSoto’s awake now!

From the crashed airship we made our way to the D.E.M.O.N. complex where Ren used to work.  We didn’t manage to get too deep into the ruins of it (the place had been wrecked by something from the outside) before we called it a night (combat takes a long time, especially with us).  Of course, in the sub-basement we walked into is a set-up like the one where Mei was experimented on.  Ren is suddenly very glad her security clearance wasn’t that high, because she doesn’t think she has the stomach for that shit (and really doesn’t want to find out if she really does or not).

Oh, and Grant and Ren are having yet another fight.  Sigh.  Par for the course, I suspect.

Posted on

Torg update – Session of 3 September 2009

So after a somewhat insane day at the university, I got to play Torg on Thursday night, yay!

We picked up on the deck of Red Hood’s ship and chatted with Galen a bit more.  We were told last week (and I forgot to mention it) that Mable had been infected with killer nanites that were trying to decide whether or not they should kill her–they were designed to kill her Race (or something) counterpart.  As a result of this revelation, she spent a lot of time drinking with Chris.

Mei and Ren can’t make heads or tails of the prophecy that Mei’s trying to sort out.  There’s a few theories floating around in Ren’s brain and she likes none of her theories.  At all.

Galen reported that the new hardware on Fred was keeping him alive.  This got Ren even more worried (she’s very concerned that somehow Odette/Odyle has a kill switch on him, or has otherwise programmed him to do something very, very nasty to the group) and caused Galen to observe that she struck him as someone who worries a lot.  She admitted to it, but asked who else was going to do the worrying.  Galen wanted to know if she was familiar with ulcers and Ren told him she didn’t have one.  “Yet.”  Galen says.  And he’s probably right.

After that, Galen wandered over to Grace and talked to her about Rosebud, her alien symboite we found originally in the Temple of the Starfire Wheel.  He told her in order to get Rosebud back, she had to be patient, humble, and something else.  Either way, the three together had the rest of us snickering and saying “Oh man.  She’s never getting that thing back!”

We decide, ultimately, to go back to one of our many beginnings–the Temple of the Starfire Wheel–to hopefully find something that’s like a clue to where this Well of Forever is.  The Red Hood thinks this is an utterly fantastic idea and decides to continue to chauffer us around–at least for a little while longer.  Ren isn’t about to be looking any gift horses in the mouth at this point and takes what she can get.

We find the Temple of the Starfire Wheel in a little more disrepair than it was before–that is, someone had removed large sections of pictographs from the walls.  We found a passageway that we hadn’t found the first time and Mable blew it open with a shaped charge (much to Ren’s dismay).  At the far end of the place we find a niche that has the D.E.M.O.N. emblem resting in it–clearly, that wasn’t what was originally there.  We all decide that it’s a trap, and Grant finally tells the group what he and Ren had discussed in the past–that Odette had probably been working toward this all along.  Ren admits to trying to kill Odette/Odyle while they were in France and says that if she thought she could have shot straight, she’d have tried to take her out when they first saw her in the streets during the papal speech.  Further, Grant theorizes that the people that made it to the Temple of the Starfire Wheel were deliberately brought there (there was no way that Ren should have survived a Tharkoldu raid, and she admits it).  It was all arranged–and he’s probably just paranoid enough to be right.

The group decides, over Ren’s quiet objections, that we should go to the D.E.M.O.N. installation in Austria where she had worked, regardless of whether or not it’s a trap.  And so we set off again, flying north.

Of course, our troubles neither began nor ended there.  En route, someone spots something on an intercept course.  Rocket Rangers, but of an evil variety.  Mable is livid.  These are the men that killed her fiancee, she tells us.  (Ren was like “What’s going on?  You know about these guys?”  Mable: “They killed my fiancee!”  Ren:  “Oh.  Okay.”)  So now we’re set to fight them, even though they have the advantage of more mobility in flight than we have.

This having been said, we have a grenade launcher and a plasma cannon.  God help us all.

Posted on

Torg update – Hello, Philadelphia!

So, Amaeren Colby and her cohorts, sans one, made it through the Living Lands to Philadelphia, which was a relief.  Tyche was kind of crazy for the duration of our trip through, and I guess we have to go back through it again…but I digress.

Two weeks ago (so the session on March 26), we found the skinchanger that we hadn’t encountered since Aysle that had come back to haunt us.  He had, several days previous, kidnapped Grace’s family and held them for ransom: Grace’s symbiote, “Rosebud.”  Albert (our master of things…crazy and Ourosh) had determined that if what he could glean from his reasearch and the notes of a man named Leon (who I suspect now was part of the Order of Cincinnatus, or something, which is probably why he told me my brother wanted to see me…but I digress again) that the skinchanger could only be unraveled using a ritual and the blood of a true shapeshifter–which was what Leon had been following across the broken United States of America back to Philadelphia. (Note to self: ask Kurst why Leon was following him.)  So that gave us something to do, and an excuse to get an Edenios shaman-type to help us (Strange life help get rid of Corrupted Life?  …that’s about right, Enoch, yes, thank you) find “corrupted life” (the skinchanger) and the “strange life” (the shapeshifter).

So we crossed the Mississippi and made it through the very nasty barrier between Core Earth and the Living Land.  The fairy didn’t fare so well, and the Kadandrin (Amarant) had to burn most of the possibilities he’d earned in the previous scene to make it through as himself and not a stick-wielding savage.  Most of us had some possibility energy burned out of us in the transition (even me — I rolled decently, but the axiom difference was way high, so I still lost a possibility even with my incredible total in Reality).  And then began our strange trek through the Living Lands, which I won’t bore anyone who happens to be reading this, I’ll just get to the good parts.  After explaining sleeping to Enoch (the Eidenos that’s decided to guide us until he can watch us probably get pwned by “strange life” and “corrupted life”) and what we ate, we walked for a few days (how can you tell?  The sun never sets.) until we finally found the shapeshifter (“strange life”) in a clearing.  Albert gets naked and blessed by Lanla…then goes to chat.

The first thing the shapeshifter says is something along the lines of “My god man!  Where are your pants?!”  Perfect Victorian accent.

Brief hilarity ensues, then the shit hits the fan.  Skinchanger shows up, having eaten an Eidenos, among other things.

Combat ensues, including everyone except for Odette (our Cyberpapacy heretic God-wielding Xena-when-no-one’s-lookin’ sixteen year old girl-child) and me ending up backhanded into trees.  The only reason Odette and I didn’t suffer that fate was because we knew we were useless in this fight…and were covering Albert during the fight so he could make the amulet to unravel the skinchanger.  (I should mention that the fairy was completely unconscious during this particular section of the game because of player absence that week).

And then Albert drops the bombshell:  someone with incredible faith has to plunge the amulet into the skinchanger’s heart.

Well isn’t that just frakkin’ peachy?  Odette’s elected, since faith is definately her money skill.  But even her faith isn’t enough.  So I run up behind her, shove our Eternity Shard into her hand and tell her to use it to help.

So it works.  And we’re betrayed.  Betrayed by cute little Odette, who’s apparently possessed and not really herself.  Or is herself.  Or something.  None of it makes much sense yet, other than she walked up a Dimthread with Wraith to go see the pope.  With our Eternity Shard, the Starfire Wheel.  The weapon of hope.

Albert and I look at each other, say a bad word, and run for the Dimthread…and bounce off.

Well, crap.

That was the 26 March gaming session.  Then there was last night.

Last night found us at the beginning still in that clearing, with a goo-covered skinchanger (now bereft of all the skins he’d stolen, now just an old man in a yucky pile of goo) and the shapeshifter staring at us.  And Amarant’s RI is going crazy in his brain and has changed his administrator password.  The fairy’s babbling nonsense in my ear and the shapeshifter wants to know what we’re going to do with goo-man.  We’re definately thinking about killing him.  Shapeshifter looks at Grace, who the skinchanger had hurt the most.

“You strike me as one that’s like Decker.  You’d say something stupid like ‘Don’t kill him, he could be useful.  He could be saved.’ Or something like that.”

Grace had been ready to kill what was left inside of the goo, but damn her black and white Nile Empire morality.  She couldn’t do it.  And what the shapeshifter said stopped Albert or Amaeren from doing it for her (never mind that Amaeren is suddenly wondering how the shapeshifter knows her oldest brother).  So we tie up the old man and decide that we’re going to take him back to Philadelphia with us; the shapeshifter is going to take us there.

What does Amarant do?  Picks up his plasma rifle and hands it to Amaeren.

“This has a blast radius of approximately thirty feet.  I’m going to walk out into the mist.  When I’ve reached a safe distance, shoot me.”

…right.  I’ve just lost cute thing and now I’m going to kill you?  I tried to coldcock him with the rifle and missed.  Grace tried to knock him out, too, and failed.  So we tied him up, too, and set out on our way.

Enoch is very confused.  He doesn’t know what to do.  I think…that he’s started to like us and isn’t sure what to do about it.  We end up leaving him at the border of the Living Land and Philadelphia after three of us told him “thank you” in one voice.

The shapeshifter has introduced himself as Kurst but hasn’t given us any explanation of anything since apparently (and I believe it!) the jungle has ears.  We walk into the killing fields outside of what’s left of Philadelphia and he holds up this coin toward the city.  When we ask him what he was doing, he told us that he was letting Decker know he was back.

Amaeren is trying not to show how excited and nervous she is at the same time.  That goes out the window when we get into the center of the city and to the museum-cum-command center and Andrew Decker walks out the doors of it and down the steps wearing this…almost ridiculous monk’s robe.  It’s the first time she’s seen anyone from her family in months–only the third or fourth time she’s seen one of her brothers since the original bridgefall the year before. 

Kurst: “I found some strays.”

Amaeren glomps Decker and hugs him like she’s not going to let go and babbles something about Tolwyn saying he was alive and here and then it trailing off into something less than coherent.

Decker: “Right.  Strays.”

Massive plotdump ensues about the nature of the war, the beginning of the war, and the revelation that we’ve actually already encountered easily the scariest High Lord, the Gaunt Man, and seen what a maelstrom does.  And we pick up a new member to our crew (the replacement character for Odette’s player), a girl from Tharkoldu named Minlei (though we don’t exactly know where she’s from yet, just that Decker’s sending her with us).  At some point, Decker looked at Amaeren and said “You can trust these two as if they were me.” with indications toward Minlei and Kurst.  Grace looks at Amaeran.  Some minor dialogue ensues which ends with Amaeren saying, “He’s my big brother. I’d trust him with my life.”

Grace: “But would you trust him with ours?”

Amaeren: “That depends on how stupid you’re going to be.”

We eventually ended up in the tactical communications center for the Order of Cincinnatus, which is apparently this secret organization dedicated to ensuring the safety and protection of Earth…in part by ensuring that leaders remain humble and no one individual garners too much power (in hindsight, now that I think about it, it kind of sounds like the Harpers…no wonder that was tugging in the back of my brain last night).  Decker mentioned more than once that the Order was one of those things that Amaeren “wasn’t ready for” when she left on assignment for the USMC in Germany.

So we’re in the tactical communications center; Minlei and Tyche and Grace are working on putting Amarant’s brain back together again (he’s been fighting with his RI the entire time, trying to regain full control of his capabilities).  And Grace and I…notice stuff.  Like a familiar face on one of the screens.

HolycrapGrantisalivethankgod.

Amaeren feels a lot more relief than she probably should have, but considering how guilty she felt when she left Egypt…

So she wanders up behind Decker, taps him on the shoulder, and casually asks how long he’s been talking to Grant.

Decker: “About five minutes, why?”

That, of course, wasn’t what she meant.  In the meantime, Grant has gone pasty on the screen and is all like, “You’re alive!”

And then Amaeren walks out of frame.  And he tells her to get back here.  And she does.

Grant (the Spider): “You know, you shouldn’t get your carriage drivers eaten. It’s rude!”

Yeah, that didn’t quite register until later, after we broke the news to Frederico DeSoto (yes, Odette, Fred is alive! — Kristie twitched for a good five minutes) about what happened to Odette.  Of course, Grace and Amaeren didn’t really want to tell DeSoto about what happened…but…yeah.

Amaeren: “We’ll pick you up.”

Grant: “No, we’ll meet you in France.  You need to go to England first.  Decker, did you get that last data feed I sent you?”

Decker: “Yeah.”

Grant: “He can explain, then.”

Apparently, Grant didn’t rescue DeSoto from certain doom in Ourosh so he could march off and get himself killed.  Apparently, they’re in Jerusalem, and DeSoto has reformed the Knights Templar.  Decker takes credit for helping with the name.

Long story short, my brother has lots of explaining to do at some point here, more than what’s come up in front of everyone else thus far.

More hilarity ensued after we left the TacCom center and headed back upstairs for dinner.  Albert and Minlei argue about how to fix Amarant’s brain.  Tyche and Amarant fix his brain in the midst of the arguing.  Grace and Amaeren start drinking and watch with some measure of annoyance (Grace) and mild amusement (Ren).  And then Decker comes back and tells us why we have to go to England again: Draconis is breaking free.  All the fey have disappeared, except for one–Tyche.  Only a fey can open the door to where the others went, and Queen Mab is desperately needed to help secure the Darkness Device again.

So we have to go to England, via Canada, before we go to France and get back our Eternity Shard–and our Odette, perhaps.  Though even that’s not as it seems, since Odette was once Mariah…and that’s another thing none of us really understand quite yet, I don’t think.  She set out to fix what was going wrong with the Pope when she parted company with Decker, Kurst, and the rest.  Seems that either there’s a triplecross going on…or that she’s failed.

Something’s said about contacting a member of the Order if needed, and then Amaeren asks how we’d find them.  In response, Decker flips her a coin–the symbol of the Order.

“Welcome aboard.”

Yup.  Lots of explaining to do…