Let it be known across the land that Dr. Ren Colby is a mess.
Last week, the heroic (hair-brained?) death of Albert Westin caused a major panic across the streets of Avignon, since he turned into a werewolf and lept onto the dias where the pope was standing, giving a speech that was a call to crusade against demons–demons like the scary, snarling werewolf that turned some random guy in the pope’s entourage into goo (I know he wasn’t a random guy, I’m just not exactly sure who it actually was). Panic in the streets ensues and suddenly, there’s two groups of us seperated in a city gone insane.
Ren, of course, is on drugs and bleeding from the neck after trying to hack the GodNet. So render her (and me) halfway to useless for most of the session. I was largely comic relief for quite a wihle (for all the seriousness of the content of this week’s session…most of us laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe). Mercifully, she’s with…the newly dubbed “Team requires Adult Supervision”–two of our Nile characters, Grace and Mable (Molotov Dolly). Of course, being on drugs and blood loss…Ren isn’t exactly adult supervision at this time. The three ladies end up trying to work their way back to where we were staying without incident. But when does anything ever happen to us without incident? That’s right, next to never.
In the meantime, Grant, Anotep, and Mei have been left to their own devices in the courtyard where the speech was being held. Thank god Grant was there, because if he hadn’t been, I don’t think that we’d have ever seen Anotep and Mei ever again. They start threading their way through the crowds, also trying to get back to our lodgings. Also like the ladies…nothing goes according to plan.
Grant, Anotep, and Mei get lost in some side streets that are more like alleyways–a result of Grant’s attempt to steer Mei clear of people, which were pushing her to the brink of a complete and total meltdown. At a point, as things start to get damper and cooler, they stop and Mei asks Grant if he’s sure they’re going the right way. He tells her very slowly that they aren’t, but he’s not looking at her — he’s looking at something else. And it’s ugly, and it’s in armor, and it wants to eat their faces. Badly.
So Mei comes up with a plan–and it wasn’t a bad plan, considering she was in powered armor. She was going to pwn it in the face as a distraction so the “squishies” (Anotep and Grant) could run and then she was going to bring up the rear and keep herself between them and the fugly. Brilliant plan. It would have worked, too, if Grant’s hero gene hadn’t flared up again.
For the record, when he wakes up…Ren is either going to slug him or jump his bones. Maybe both. Either way, there’s a lecture in his future.
Mei was in the process of stabbing the ugly in the face and Anotep had started to run when Grant takes out his pistols and starts his run. He runs up Mei’s back, steps on her head and jumps, firing down on the ugly as he’s flipping in mid-air and lands behind the thing.
He’s wearing no armor.
This thing has claws.
And it used them on Grant. It whirled, plunged its claws into his belly, and slams him against the wall. He goes down, unconscious and bleeding. Mei is like “Shit.”
I’m flailing at the other end of the table, unable to do anything since I’m nowhere near where they are.
Shortly thereafter, enter Christian Sauve, a French cyberknight, who proceeds to help Mei chase off the ugly and rescue Grant from bleeding to death in some back alley of Avignon. Mei gathers up Grant and takes off running, leaving Christian in her dust. Christian, for his part, sort of shrugs this off and hooks up with Anotep, escorting him back to our lodgings (Christian had been traveling with the same group of knights and nobles as the rest of us).
So Ren, Grace, Mable, and the privateer we rescued, a woman named the Red Hood, are bumming around in our lodgings, talking. Red has figured out that we’re definately not from “around here” (upon being asked how she knew, she looked at Ren and said “the pistol”–meaning the sidearm Ren had used to take out one of the thugs that they’d run into in the alley), Grace and Mable are mostly talking with her while Ren is getting her neck taken care of and definately thinking about passing out in the near future, before the drugs wear off.
And then Mei practically kicks the door down, screaming Ren’s name, a broken and bleeding and unconscious Grant Stockbridge in her arms. The first words out of Ren’s mouth were something along the lines of “What the hell happened?!” And then she’s getting to work on Grant, who managed to be inches away from getting himself killed when the fugly palmed him.
From that point out, Ren became pretty useless since her world was full of taking care of Grant. She’s been feeling pretty guilty about something she said to him while they were back in London, having inadvertantly hurt him deeply. Things had been fairly icy ever since, though the only one who really knew anything was up was Mable, and that was because Ren told her that things were uncomfortably awkward between she and Grant (Mable knew Grant and his late wife, Allison–she and Allison “Lady Domino” Stockbridge had been close professional friends–and as near as Ren can figure, she’s the Core Earth version of the Terran Allison Stockbridge). So load that guilt up on top of him almost getting himself killed…yeah. She’s kind of a mess.
The group tries to bluff Christian when he shows up at our room later (much hilarity ensues; Kristie was totally on her game this week and it was fantastic and hysterical) and does manage to temporarily distract him. Most of the group heads to dinner while Ren stays in the room with the unconscious Grant. During this time, she goes through the late, lamented Albert’s bag of books and such and finds a letter on top, addressed to her as “Miss Decker.” She decides to follow the instructions as laid out in the letter, settles down on the bed next to Grant, and writes in her journal until she can’t stay awake anymore. She finally lies down with her head on his chest so she can hear his heartbeat and goes to sleep.
In the meantime, at dinner, our identities are totally blown by Red, who doesn’t understand that we’re incognito. More hilarity ensues. Mei does a lot of flailing, Grace does a lot of flailing, and I totally should have leant Liz my sweatdrop for Mable. Anotep finally decides that serving food isn’t doing anyone any good and wanders back down to our room, where against Ren’s request he does some mathematically magical rituals (Math Woogie-Woogie, as Mike calls it) and heals both her and Grant while they’re still asleep.
Christian decides he’s going to join us, since he’s not all that enamored with the pope anyway. He has some possible leads on where we might be able to find Frederico DeSoto–our Ren-proclaimed top target at the moment–though they’re not that great. But they’re worth looking into (we’re going to decide which options are most worth looking into next week). We’ve also made noises about using Red’s zepplin to get the hell out of Avignon, but she keeps asking how we’re going to pay her.
I’m sure we’ll figure out how to pay her if we decide to go that route. We’re planning to pick up on the morning of the next day this coming Thursday.
Stay tuned for a journal update coming soon! It’s already in progress.
