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?

Torg update – Session of 22 October 2009

This session’s music: The Night by Disturbed

Call it a first.  We never get through that much material on a single night of gaming.  David was shocked we pressed so far (he had two scenes prepped — one involving a combat sequence, the other not involving a combat sequence.  The dice liked us, and we made it through combat quicker than anticipated).  Two scenes in one night.  Usually takes us longer.

But I digress.

After escaping from Mei’s brain and hopefully controlling her leakage issues, we forged onward, heading toward where we figured the Well of Forever was located.  As we soldiered on, we encountered troops mustering for a major offensive–French, cyberpapacy troops as well as NATO/US/allied troops getting ready to lay the smack down on the technodemons.  Their survival is far from assured and victory…well.  I’m not going to get into what I think their chances really are.

We did have another close encounter with Galen, who ended up leading us down to the caves that held an ancient temple and the Well of Forever.  He told us a bit about what the location really is–a place where reality thins.  Each world has its own Well.  This one is…well…kind of a mess due to the Tharkoldu encroachment on the area (if Ren had a way to make it a hard point…she probably would).  He also explained to us that there is a piece lacking from the story we got at the Temple of the Starfire Wheel — there is a third piece, one that lays between creation and destruction: the matter which is the object of creation and destruction, the form.  That is what Grace’s symbiote, Void, is linked to (perhaps actually is–I’m not sure).

Of course, we come to quickly find out that’s what Odyle wanted from us, why she wanted us to come to the Well–she needs Void for her plan.  Of course, she was in no mood to play nice with any of us, nor was she in the mood (at first) to let us know what she was planning.  When she started to lose control of matters and Fred started to get…well…upset with her, she sicced a group of technodemons on us.

I was shocked by the fact that it was a standard, not a dramatic scene.  Then David reminded me that it wasn’t scene four yet.  And I was like “Crap.”

We, however, were largely competant when it came to dice.  I took the fight as an opportunity to play with the fighting style that Ren had been learning from Grant before we left London for France, the style he and Allison had created.

Giving enemies setback results based on running around like crazy people is fun.  And useful.

It was all over in under ten rounds–six technodemons dead and we weren’t in bad shape, either.

And then we went off chasing Odyle and Fred, who’d walked out of the chamber.  We found Odyle.  Fred is apparently on his way back to Avignon (and probably his imminent demise.  Damn him!)…and she was soon to be away as well.

She wants to destroy everything and then rebuild it.  She wants Void to help her.  Void…doesn’t see a reason not to see what Odyle’s all about, but–mercifully–doesn’t trust Odyle.  Morality is lost on the poor symbiote.  But Void told us where Odyle is going: Avignon, with Void and the Wheel, to where the pope’s Darkness Device rests.

To destroy the world and create it anew.

We’re off gaming this coming week due to Youmacon (I, unfortunately, will be wholly unable to attend due to work).  We will see what lies ahead of us come November 5, when we gaze into the Well of Forever…and the Well gazes back.

Torg update – Session of 15 October 2009

Theme music for this week: Duvet by Boa

So during the last session, we essentially got to see what rattles around in the buried, lost parts of Mei’s mind.  When she pulled out her limiter chip…she did more damage to herself than she thought.  Imagine that!  Because things are never as simple as they seem.  Our nightmares have been all her fault– no wonder they started before we actually got into Tharkold!

Things started out simple enough.  We camped at the base of the poor dead man that we buried with honors.  Mable and Ren had a fight about Ren wanting Mable to listen so Mable doesn’t get killed…and Mable says that if she died she would die with honor and that’s more important than staying alive.  This resulted in Ren announcing that she was taking a walk, which she did.  And then was later joined by Christian, who got to be the first PC to see Ren break down and cry in the wake of recent events (*gasp*  the ice bitch is HUMAN? imagine that).

In the morning, we moved on and thought that we ran afoul of a group of technodemons–or so we thought.  This, however, wasn’t the case.  Galen told us (well, told Ren, who told everyone else) that we were caught in something called a mindquake and what we were seeing wasn’t real.  Of course, the rabbit hole went much, much deeper than that.

Basically, we got a total review of Mei’s history–everything that she didn’t remember started to fall into place.  She and Galen have known each other for a very, very long time (it’s kind of sweet, actually).  She’s the object of a prophecy that had been captured by the technodemons, then “rescued” by the Americans, and then escaped again and was rescued by Galen, who gave her a series of false memories–to protect her, in part.  Then he dropped her off in Philadelphia with Decker and told him that if a group was heading to France, she should be sent with them (we’re such pawns of fate, I swear.  Ren turned to Mei at one point, held out her hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Death, nice to meet you.”  Mei replies, “Hi, I’m the Hanged Man, it’s a pleasure.”).

The big problem is this: Mei has to keep mental control if she’s not going to project/capture us in her brain.  Mei is…not the most mentally stable of the group (then again, I have to wonder who is).

And this week?  This week we go to the Well of Forever.  And we have no plan as to how we’re going to handle this.  We’re so boned.

Torg update – Session of 9 October 2009

This session’s song – Hero of War by Rise Against

So we picked up already in Tharkold for this week’s session of Torg, which sees us in an act entitled “Galen’s War” (we didn’t have that information before, I don’t think).  We’d been traveling in the world of gray for a week and everyone except for Mei had been having nasty nightmares (as I said to Jen on the way home, Ren wouldn’t have been overly concerned about her own dreams if everyone else hadn’t been having nightmares, too).  After that first week in Tharkold, the technomage that’s appeared to the group twice now (Mei’s seen him more than that) appeared and implied that we’d done something wrong at the D.E.A.M.O.N. facility (this said, I’m not really sure what else we were supposed to do there)–then fed us a third prophecy, this one truncated (cut off, in fact).  Ren scribbled it down in her journal:

The city’s cold blood teaches us to survive
Just keep my heart in your eyes and we’ll stay alive
The third arrives…

Before the leaves have fallen
Before we lock the doors
There must be the third and last dance
This one will last forever
Metropolis watches and thoughtfully smiles
She’s taken you to your home

It can only take place
When the struggle between
our children has ended
Now the Miracle and the Sleeper know–

It doesn’t make much sense, not yet, and we’ve all got theories on it, none of which make much sense.  After handing over this bit of confusion, Galen then told us that there was something looking for us here that wasn’t Odyle/Odette/Mariah and the Wraith–someone else.

Well, we found out soon enough who it was.

There was a solider that had been the only one of his unit to survive the destruction of the stelae here last year and had happened to witness us scooping up DeSoto and leaving–never realizing he was there, and alone (David has admitted to coming up with the idea for this character back when we landed in America last winter–he’s been waiting for us to return to Tharkold for us to meet him).  He lived and breathed revenge on us until four months ago, when he died, somehow managing to preserve his consciousness in a computer system.

Greeeeat.  He launched an attack on our vehicles and forced us to abandon them.  Mable figured out which direction he was in.  We then fought our way past some automated defenses and found our way into his bunker, where we found his corpse, four months dead.  While Christian, Fred, and Ren buried this poor, unfortunate First Sergeant, Mei jacked into his computer and started looking for him.  She reported he was somewhere inside the Tharkoldu end of the ‘net.  Xander took over about then, and he was punching keys when we called it a night.

Ahhh, Tharkold.  How I hate thee already.

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.

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.