So another one bit the dust. We all saw Albert’s imminent demise comimg as players, though probably not quite in the spectacular fashion he went out. Though I get ahead of myself.
We start out on the pilgrim road to Avignon with a potential crusader against the technodemons. He’s rabble-rousing and building a peasant army as we go, Ren is getting sicker and sicker to her stomach as we skirt along the border of Germany and France, where the evidence of slave raiding is quite clear. She knows what that looks and feels like. This, of course, means she gets more and more quiet and withdrawn as we move along the border. Grace asks what’s wrong and Ren lies through her teeth. Of course nothing’s wrong!
So, at one point as we’re getting closer to Avignon, Grace wanders away from camp to clean her weapons. She proceeds to get into a fight with the Executioner we met before, who apparently wants to know what we’re up to before he kills us all. In the meantime, ignorant of Grace’s straits, Ren pulls Mable out into the woods to talk about Allison, who Ren wants to know more about. This is going to have to be played out via e-mail a bit since Liz doesn’t know much about Allison (David’s the one with all of that information). We end up stumbling upon the aftermath of the little duel between the Executioner and Grace but don’t learn very much about the situation.
We make Avignon a few days later, and it’s a seething mass of humanity so thick you can barely move in the streets. Amotep keeps going on and on about how awful and disease-ridden it is, saying that slaves in Egypt aren’t treated this badly (Grant turns to Ren at her eyeroll and says “Well, it’s true.”). Ren doesn’t disagree that it’s bad, she just chooses not to dwell on how bad it is. We eventually make it to our quarters in a less dirty area of the city and settle in for the night. Much to Mei’s chagrin, she’s been informed that the pope is giving a speech the next day that’s essentially going to be the call to crusade against the technodemons and that we’re all going to go listen. All right, minor wrench in our plans, since part of the reason we’d come to Avignon was to continue our hunt for DeSoto. So…we come up with yet another plan. We decide that while we’re at the speech, before the speech, Mable is going to swoon and Grace and Ren are going to drag her off to go lay down–of course, we’re not going to actually go lay down, we’re going to go hack the GodNet to see if we can get a lead on where DeSoto is. The others are going to stay and listen to the speech because we really don’t have a way to get them out of it.
So the next morning, we go to the speech almost before the sun’s up. Mable isn’t going to have a hard time faking a faint in her outfit, since she can barely breathe (she gets a promise that we’ll loosen her ties after we’re out of the crowds). We actually get primo “seats” for this speech–we can actually see that there’s figures on the dias from where we’re standing! Mable fakes her faint and the three of us beat feet further away to find a place to do our hacking. We eventually find our way to a saint’s shrine that has a terminal that Ren sneaks in to try to access as the speech begins.
Problem. There’s no keyboard.
So Ren sneaks back out and tells Mable and Grace that we need a new plan. Mable asks why and Ren brings her inside to show her. Mable looks at the apparatus for a few minutes and finally says that we don’t have any other choices–Ren’s going to have to improvise a head jack for herself to get into the computer, which is an idea that Ren’s wholly uncomfortable with. But she does it anyway, since someone’s got to and she’s the only one with a chance at success.
So she novacanes herself up and stabs a needle into the back of her neck with some wires attached with Mable’s help and then she’s in the GodNet.
…and God talks to her. It’s kind of scary.
And of course, the OS and organization of this computer system makes no sense. So Ren starts working at trying to sort through that mess so she can start trying to find the information she needs.
In the meantime, Albert has moved forward in the crowds listening to the speech, having seen someone on the dias he recognized (and apparently needed to kill). And someone starts tapping on the back of Mei’s armor.
Ting ting ting ting ting!
“Stop it!”
Ting ting ting ting ting!
“Stop it!”
Ting ting ting ting ting!
“Stop it!”
She finally turns around and there’s Odette, but it’s not Odette, it’s her evil half. And she taunts Mei. This is very amusing, since Mei is played by Odette’s former character (and David plays a very, very bad Odette. Which is fine, since we’re dealing with Odayle, Odette’s evil half). Of course, Amotep is staring at this mess very confused and Grant is the color of a bedsheet since he can’t do a damned thing without blowing all of us. Odette finishes her taunting of them and then bounces off to come find where we are.
And a few minutes later, Albert makes his move. Trish drops a martyr card, goes RAWR PUPPY and leaps up onto the dias, turning one figure up there into goo.
Then proceeds to be obliterated by energy weapons fire. Chaos and panic ensues. Chaos and panic Ren can feel on the GodNet. So she starts to pull out. As she’s pulling out, she hears the obnoxiously endearing voice of an old ally, our good friend the Tachicomas:
“Hey! Where’d you go?!”
And then she’s out demanding to know what’s going on. Grace tells her Albert just got himself killed. Ren utters a string of explicatives and tries to get back onto the GodNet, but the node is dead–like the system’s shut down as a security protocol in the midst of the panic.
And then Odette finds us. She taunts Grace, wondering aloud if Odette was ever real, is she in the back of Odayle’s head screaming to get out, to make Odayle stop. Grace isn’t sure what to do. Odette/Odayle taunts Ren. Ren counters. She taunts us all. Frederico DeSoto comes up in the midst of the conversation. Odette/Odayle says she really didn’t care much for him anyway and skips away. Ren laughs.
“Lying is a sin.”
And then we stumble out into the mess to try to find the others, or our way back to our lodgings. We’re not sure which yet. I’m bleeding from the neck thanks to my attempt to hack the GodNet. I’m muchly looking forward to Grant’s reaction to that. As Jen said in the car…at least it’d get them talking again.
…and as a side note…there was a zepplin that looked Nile when we arrived in Avignon. Grant and Mable both confirmed that it could be from there, but it wasn’t anything they knew about. So we’ll have to check that out. Soon…
