Heroes at last

The UTOPIA Project ended tonight.

As war between the program factions tore Utopia City apart and metahuman awakenings began to spike, the PCs made their way toward the hospital, killing an SEAgent on the way, where the sextuplets here being kept. They reached the hospital and bluffed their way to the children. After some deliberation, they decided it would be better to free the children rather than take the place of their minds and whisked them out of the hospital. The children were informed of their situation, and four of them, upon understanding, fled UTOPIA. The other two began to rampage, and it took the PCs a while to talk them down and convince them to leave. A short time later, The Hidden urged the to keep awakened ones in UTOPIA, as at the rate they were awakening, the Resistance could not intercept them all, and the results of a real-world unchecked superhuman outbreak could be catastrophic. To stall for time, the PCs tracked down several rogues and convinced them that there were prisoners at UDO headquaters who needed freeing. Searching the building and finding only the isolation/reprogramming rooms, True Thomas encountered Hanson and restrained him until they could regroup. Hanson, upon being interrogated, warned them that unless the rogues could be captured and reconditioned, UTOPIA was on the brink of necessitating a total wipe, far gone beyond even the time of the SEA's dissolution. As they deliberated, the four still-loyal UDOperatives returned to report that they had killed the final SEAgent and recaptured the rogues the PCs had brought with them. Hanson, however, having seen what the city had been put through in the past week, had decided that the old methods were, in fact, the more effective (a sentiment with which certain party members did not disagree), and brought UDOperatives to the isolation room. There he made the mistake of ordering them to bring the PCs in with them, at which point the PCs bull-rushed three of the four UDOperatives into the room, knocked out Hanson and the last operative, and freed the rogues before they could be reconditioned. They returned outside to an obliterated and, for the first time in days, quiet, city. They rounded up all rogues remaining in the system and, with the help of the Hidden, began orchestrating an orderly departure from the system. As they began, Sok noticed the UDO headquarters beginning to turn to black. UTOPIA was being wiped after all. They finished the evacuation as quickly as they could, The Hidden being the last to leave at the same time as UDO HQ vanished and the rest of the world began to darken. Knowing there was no longer any hope of escaping, the PCs sought out--and found--a burger restaurant that had not been entirely wrecked. Duke Ballistic rolled well on his cooking check, and as the programmed world fell apart, they were able to enjoy four tasty hamburgers.

"Your last moments are delicious."

The ending is a bittersweet one at worst. Yes, all of the PCs are dead without hope of revival, but they refrained from taking over several metahumans to escape into the real world and, through means direct and indirect, destroyed the old SEA. Utopia City will be recreated under the supervision of a new, slightly edited SEA, but dozens of metahumans have been freed, increasing the odds that UTOPIA will eventually fall.

The End.

Oh, and I forgot

The M&M session was preceded by a D&D session.

The rescue process continued. Unfortunately, a guard poked his head into the building, saw us, and raised the alarm before being killed. Furthermore, the building apparently had shoddy construction, as Garcin's telekinetic slams sent him flying through the roof, further advertising our presence. Everyone summoned the shuttlecraft, packed aboard (except for the saboteur, who was tunneling to the other detainment buildings), and started making runs back to the Calisa.

At this point, we decided that there was no point in being subtle anymore, as what looked like the city's whole army was descending upon our breakout attempt, so we called in the rest of the fleet and began shelling the city. In the meantime the PCs had been located a half-mile beneath a large tower, so Meteledes ordered the Calisa to fly over the tower and focus all of its weaponry straight down until we had cracked the prison wide open. Koslov reappeared on the scene, having somehow escaped, and joined in the attack with a brutality never previously displayed.

Seismic rumblings began across the map. Seconds later, the tower broke open to make way for the ascent of a demon ship. Like the one we discovered in the first session, but fully operational. The Calisa was impaled and destroyed, and demon hearts swarmed into the wreckage. The engineers rushed for the smaller escape vessels while the marines covered their retreat, and Meteledes held off the demon hearts from an engineer who was retrieving the fragments of the intelligent scrying orb/weather eye, ordering what remained of the Calisa and any intelligence therein to self-destruct as soon as all personnel were clear of the blast radius

Current status:

The PCs: Split between imprisonment and a massive air battle.

The fleet as a whole: Declaring war via heavy artillery.

The Calisa: Wrecked.

The city: Bombarded and releasing demon ships.

Situation: Dire.

The Matrix Exploded

The UTOPIA Project is nearing its conclusion. Here is a recap of everything I have been too lazy to previously describe:

• Aizen was replaced by Duke Ballistic, a basic powerhouse.
• The PCs were taken off active duty during a damage control period, and other programs filled in for them.
• While dealing with one Count Maledict, the UDO replacements were ambushed by unknown metahumans, and the PCs were called in as backup. After a long and vicious fight, Maledict was subdued, but one of the metahumans, an invisible one, escaped. The PCs were restored to active duty.
• A few days later, the PCs are split up to deal with a city-wide wave of crises organized by the SEA. Equinox was ambushed and captured. The others tracked him to the SEA hideout, where they managed to steal a copy of the UTOPIA-Scan program they had been using to monitor the city and rescue Equinox (with the help of the invisible mutant, for reasons unknown to them).
• Equinox, however, had had everything revealed to him by the SEAgents, and their arguments had swayed him back to their side. He split with the party.
• The PCs returned to headquarters, where they shared the revelations of Equinox with their superior. Knowing that awareness of UTOPIA contradicted the whole reason the UDO had been created in the first place, he escorted the PCs to a chamber where they could have their memories reprogrammed. The PCs, understandably, ran like hell, and within minutes they had gone from government-run peacekeepers to wanted criminals. Proteus was sniped in the head during their escape but just barely survived.
• They escaped through the sewers and took refuge in Equinox's old house, where they ran into The Hidden again (the invisible one), who sensed that he might be able to recruit the PCs in the fight against UTOPIA. When they agreed, he promised to look into ways to get them out. The PCs went back to the sewers to hide until they heard back from him.
• In the days to come, the conflicts between the SEA and the UDO, fueled by the PCs flight and Equinox's defection, broke into an all-out war, ravaging Utopia City. At one point, the PCs got pulled into the center of a battle between a radiation-controlling SEAgent and a UDOperative with a literal Hyperspace Arsenal. They thoroughly crushed the Operative, at which point the Agent thanked them and took off. The PCs dragged Arsenal back into the sewers, where they shared the true nature of UTOPIA with him. Aware that, knowing this now, he could not return to base without suffering a wipe, Arsenal begrudgingly stayed with the PCs as they returned to Equinox's house to eat.
• Inside, The Hidden met them again, having discovered a way to bring the PCs into the real world. The method, however, required them to completely wipe out the minds of several metahumans, making The Hidden reluctant to even bring it up. Before they could resolve the moral pros and cons, the lot were discovered by a squad of SEAgents, led by none other than Equinox.
• The resulting battle leveled over two dozen residential blocks. Arsenal, forced to decide where his loyalties lay anew, sided with the PCs and was fried for his troubles. Sok and True Thomas were knocked out (although they escaped death) by an SEAgent's electric cannon, but ultimately every single Agent was killed, Equinox included. The session ended with The hidden remarking on the effect this would have on the continuing street war between the SEA and UDO and the PCs, obviously UDO no more, gave themselves a new team name: The Balance of Power.

Campaign catch-up

I missed updating for the last couple of sessions, so now I'll attempt to recap what happened since we teleported away from the doomed elven town.

• Given the choice between extracting an orb from the dwarves and pursuing another, we chose to pursue another.
• We ran into a long-wandering ambassador (new PC) from the dragon-ruled continent, to which we were flying.
• Upon arrival, a "cleansing" appeared to be going on. Interrogation of the not-Nazis-I-swear led us to a Temple of Doom, which we investigated.
• Inside, we passed many, many deactivated traps until we reached a room with a large, ominous book on a pedestal. After debating what to do with it, we decided that the rest of us would vacate the temple and then Gerrard would attempt to take the book.
• Gerrard, not having learned from touching the explosive crystal way back when, snatched the book immediately and ran (using his blinking tunic) back through the wall through which we had entered. Everybody else sensed that something terribly bad had happened. Koslov and Garcin (Aleistair's replacement) decided to throw up a wall of force separating them from the rest of the party and knock a hole in the stone wall to find out what was beyond. Cue clouds of acidic, disintegrating, soul-trapping dust that annihilated them instantly. The rest of us, knowing the wall of force would not last long, began desperately strategizing and casting spells to help us survive. I had one idea involving my most recently-acquired binder powers, but just before the wall ran out, I was visited by Sethos, who offered the tools for all of us to escape in exchange for my soul. Not seeing much other choice (and not planning to die soon anyway), I agreed, promptly receiving several scrolls of Time Stop and a cube of force.
• Back to normal time. I used my last Miracle for the day to compress the fog into a 2-ft sphere, around which I summoned a Sphere of Annihilation (a rare and powerful artifact, and exactly what it says on the tin. Do Not Touch). Those of us still alive managed to use Sethos' toys (I didn't tell them where I got them) to get past the rest of the traps (all of which had been activated my moving the book) on the way out. We then sent in trap-disabling specialists to clear out the temple and revived Garcin, Koslov, and Gerrard. The first two immediately attempted to slaughter the latter again, but they were restrained. Gerrard, having proved himself dangerously unstable yet again, was carted off to the loony bin and out of the campaign. (His replacement character is Not-The-Doctor-I-Swear, who flies around in Not-The-TARDIS-I-Swear)
• Further exploration orb-wise took us to the regent of the nation: a bratty young man with an overinflated ego. At one point, some of us accepted his invitation to join him in hunting dire eagles (illusions created for his benefit, actually). During the "hunt," an assassination attempt was made on him (foiled by the party, albeit with some reluctance). Kosliv, Ulgrath (an illusionist PC in the employ of the Athertons), and I investigated this further (not all of the party was with us), eventually leading to us becoming trapped and powerless in a mind-screwy interrogation room. Ulgrath disappeared through a mysterious door, and Koslov was drenched in modified demon blood, providing the final clue to him that we were within an Abaci Macabre.
• Cue to outside the palace, where the others have gotten wind of trouble on the inside. It was also discovered that the Calisa had been seized. Everyone switched over to playing various Atherton marines (I got Meteledes, who has progressed from merely dying and getting hurt a lot to actually being a masochist) for the retaking of the ship. Given the marines' sneaking and dispatching capabilities as a team, this part was a success. Regaining access to the scrying orb, we found where the rest of the crew and specialists (read: PCs) were being held.
• Currently, we are halfway through rescuing the crew (and absolutely massacring their captors in the process), after which we will come after the PCs.

When we finally confront Sethos, I have figured out how Hakh'net will sort through his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and pick a side. The DM really wants to know, but I think he can find out with the rest of the group. And I know you might be reading this now, so I won't say it here, either! :P

Never underestimate the power of dramatic timing.

Final math class was today, and our tutor let us replace it with a game of softball (note to self: next time, do not wear a turtleneck!). During the time were were waiting for the opposing class to arrive and warming up, I found myself practice-pitching to Gerrard. After a few swings of varying quality , I realized the conclusion to the 1812 overture was playing, and we were almost at the big finish, so I held off the pitch.

Daa daa DAAA da daa, daaaa, da da da da daaa, d*pitch*a da

WHAM! Right on the first great downbeat, Gerrard connects and the ball goes flying over the horizon. I'm not one for sports, but that was a Crowning Moment of Awesome.

Why, in MY day...

No run-through the night before opening? Not even a cue-through??

Incidentally, we'll be using real eyes for the Gloucester scene. Oh, yes!

These eclipses do portend these divisions.

King Lear goes up in 3...well, 2 days, now. Monsma is a great Lear. Rehearsals are going well, we have most of our costumes ready, and the swords have arrived. Good thing, too: Edmund snapped his sword-dowel while running the fight with Edgar. That and the whole two-days-until-opening part. I have a burgundy (surprise, surprise) hooded cloak which I am enjoying way too much. I don't actually wear the hood up, but still.

Two and a half weeks left in the year. 3 music classes, 5 Greek classes, 5 math classes, 4 lab classes, and 5 seminars.

The airship campaign is nearing its conclusion. At this stage, it could go one of several ways, possibly including certain PCs betraying the party and fleeing the world before it asplode.

Doom (the movie)

I just saw it. I loved it.

Yes, it is poorly-acted, incredibly cheesy and predictable, and not at all scary. And you will likely think Doom terrible if you go in expecting it to be a legitimate, takes-itself-seriously horror movie. Because it is not: it is a parody of horror movies and a celebration of First Person Shooters. If you have doubts that it is not intended as a parody, I present the following points as evidence:

• Just before Pinky is jumped by one of the monsters, his last words are, "Oh god, there's something right behind me, isn't th--"
• The Rock's last words while getting dragged through a doorway are, "I'm not supposed to die yet!" (He doesn't.)
• There were shout-outs not just to the game itself, but to well-known mods for the game.
• The final confrontation (not even counting the FPS segment--more on that later) could have been put in a game as the final boss fight, and it would fit PERFECTLY. Entering a large, circular, two-level room, dropping your weapons to go mano a mano with the for-now-human boss, once he reaches half health he starts mutating and gets a difficulty upgrade, and you then need to figure out how to kill him with the environment?
• The movie as a whole was so trope-heavy, including lampshadings (such as the two mentioned above) that we couldn't even call them all out, try as we might.
• When the scientist realizes, "This thing didn't kill [character]...it IS [character]!" the marine in the lab responds, "What?" Not a horrified or incredulous what, an I-don't-get-it what. Cue scene change.
• The first-person segment. Yes, it is obvious what they are doing here, and it comes late enough in the movie to be hilarious. The enemy appearances, player movement patterns, and even reloading actions are spot-on, there is a weapon pickup (the chainsaw, of course), Doom Guy encounters a mini-boss where he needs to use the new weapon to prevail, and they even worked in a RESPAWN!

Doom falls squarely into the Guilty Pleasures category, but if you are familiar with such video games it's definitely good for a laugh.

Seminar paper complete!

I chose to write on Lucretius and his section on death. My question was, "If death is nothing to us, then should we bother to prolong our lives?" 

My answer was, "Yes."

Mitigating factors

Today, I passed on an honest warning to the crew to defend against aerial attacks and divinations.

BUT I made a deal with Graz'zt's buddy to do a couple of chores for him in exchange for money and goods.

BUT I still plan to double-cross Graz'zt in the end.

BUT I destroyed the enchantment protecting a peaceful elven city from a horde of slavering demons under Graz'zt's friend's command.

BUT I used my magic to wipe out over six thousand of said slavering demons while the rest of the party wiped out another nine or ten thousand.

BUT I used particularly vile magic to do so and lied to the party about my spell choices.

BUT I fully resurrected Gerrard after he was decapitated.

BUT I also made a promise to kill Koslov.

BUT I joined the party in attacking Graz'zt's friend when he appeared on the field, and he is now rather miffed at me, apparently withholding the rest of my payment.

BUT I am still the most able entity to clear off the rest of his to-do list and reagin his good graces enough to obtain the rest of my reward.

BUT I may have a method of killing Graz'zt right now.

BUT the party's employer may have discovered the true nature of the magic I wield.

BUT I have never directly hurt the party and can provide benefits no other party member can.

At the end of the session, the DM said that he had rather expected me to show my true colors. Good luck deciphering that: the only colors I wear are my own.

A sticky situation

My second character (the secretly-a-walking-blasphemy one) has entered the airship campaign. So far the others have no idea what I am, and even their guesses as to what I can do are rather off-base. This is good, as there will be much subterfuge and deception in my future.

Long-term goal recap: Thanks to the meddlings of the wizard Sethos, the Material Plane has been cut off from the rest of the cosmos. This in turn, is causing creator deity Vateo to sicken and, if nothing is done, die. I couldn't give a damn about him personally (my Start of Darkness has given me a hatred of all gods and their devout), but if he dies, he will probably take the cosmos with him, and that puts a far more bitter taste in my mouth. Most everyone else is motivated to save Vateo by the goodness of their hearts, but I suppose the means justify the ends. Doing so requires us to retrieve the three orbs Sethos used to create the planar barrier. I have a nasty feeling that killing Sethos himself would also work and be faster; see below for why this feeling is nasty.

In the meantime, before the party picked me up from the tower where I had been asleep/in stasis for the last 500 years (starting just before Great Cataclysm), I had been researching vestiges (Vestiges are enigmatic beings who exist beyond the gods, and yet are near-powerless. they grant abilities to those who bind them in exchange for being able to re-experience existence vicariously. I make pacts with these vestiges and then cheat them out of their experience in order to enhance the spells I steal from the gods.) and had just discovered a new one by the name of Graz'zt. This piqued my curiosity: as far as I knew, Graz'zt was a powerful demon lord and not at all inconvenienced with vestige-dom. Summoning him up for a conversation before making the usual pact, I learned that he was now in this state due to a curse placed on him by Sethos, and he wanted me to join an expedition to find Sethos in order to convince him to lift the curse on him; in return, I would be given dominion over a layer of the Abyss (naturally, I knew better than to take Graz'zt at face value!). If Sethos could not be convinced to lift the curse voluntarily, killing him would also work.

Naturally, I see Graz'zt's potential freedom as detrimental to my well-being, but beyond that, he is rather more potent than most vestiges accessible to me (nearly all of them) due to the fact that I can conjure any one of three agents of his, all of whom are potent magic-users in their own right. Thus I have two reasons, one more selfish than the other, to keep Graz'zt confined. 

Complication #1. If, as I suspect, killing Sethos will lift the planar barrier, the party may well attempt that instead of chasing down three MacGuffins.

Complication #2. If I explain to the party that killing Sethos will free Graz'zt, I risk revealing that I willingly maintain correspondence with a demon lord (as the cherry on the top of my hot fudge sundae of evil and lies).

Complication #3. When I bind Graz'zt, he still gets to experience the world through me, which includes hitching a ride on my senses (though not, most fortunately, my thoughts, which are nigh-impenetrable anyway). Thus, any actions toward ensuring that he never is freed must be undertaken when I do not have an ex-demon lord bound to me, and if I simply neglect him after our first two conversations, I will look very suspicious (sure, he can't do anything about it now, but if my betrayal falls through or is later undone, I will have a very angry Graz'zt coming after me). Fortunately, I have a means of kicking him out in a hurry, should I need to.

In short, while the rest of the party has to save the world, I have to save the world without letting the man responsible die, without alerting one of my greatest sources of power to the fact that I intend to stab it in the back, and without altering the party to the facts that I correspond with a demon lord, steal godly power on a regular basis, and am undead.

I will deceive the party while simultaneously assisting them, betray a demon lord while simultaneously exploiting him, and save a would-be deicide while simultaneously thwarting him, all on top of my daily routine of cheating half the individuals from whom I derive power and stealing my power outright from the other half, or I will die trying.

Mutants & Masterminds is begin!

At last! An actual chance to get to know the system beyond reading the books!

Today was the first meeting of my campaign: The UTOPIA Project. Basically, the PCs are a local branch of super-powered peacekeeping force called the Utopian Defense Organization. Only one member of the party knows that they are the successors to the disgraced and dissolved Systemic Equilbrium Agency. What nobody in the party knows (yet) is that my campaign is based on The Matrix (Hey, come back! I've done plenty to make it my own!); nor do they know that they (and their predecessors) are programs. I'll talk more about the setting as a whole in future updates.

Cast list:

Sok Thorgrimson: A former army member and the only one without any powers.

Equinox: A shadow controller with black ops training and and ex-member of the SEA. He is the only one who knows that such an organization ever existed.

Aizen: A powerful telekinetic with telescopic vision.

Proteus: An extremely versatile mimic.

True Thomas: A warrior of the gods with a magical spear and a portal device.

The PCs' first assignment (Sok was not present initially) was to deal with a powerhouse-type mutant trashing up downtown and ranting like a conspiracy theorist nutjob. Finding him wasn't hard, and despite his prejudices against the party ("You're working for THEM!!!") they managed to talk the mutant, who identified himself as Crazy Train, down. Questioning him, they learned he had been told that everybody in the world was really a brainwashed metahuman, except they could only use their powers if they could wake up, which is what happened to him, and the party wasn't real at all. Party reaction: "Ooookayyyyy. Who told you this?" Crazy Train briefly described the people he had been talking to (grey on grey on grey with grey accessories), but in the middle of the interrogation Aizen spotted the beginnings of a bank robbery a half-mile down the street. Equinox stayed behind to question Crazy Train further while the others ran off to handle the robbery.

Upon seeing the PCs approaching, a lookout promptly alerted those inside, one of whom responded, "You've gotta be kidding! They told me they'd be busy!" At which point it clicked for the players that Crazy Train had been set up as a distraction. A fight quickly broke out, resulting in a higher death toll than I'd anticipated; the party got off without a scratch, but some were more inclined to use lethal force than had been approved by the UDO, and poor handling of a hostage situation led to three civilians dying by shotgun. Sok arrived shortly into the fight, and Thomas used his portals to evacuate the building.

In the meantime, Equinox had convinced Crazy Train to take him to where he had met his informants. Crazy Train led Equinox in the direction of the robbery/fight, pulling up short and observing, "Huh. There they are now." Two extremely grey men stepped out of car and ordered the party to return to base immediately and report a failure or else. Equinox immediately recognized the two men as SEAgents and concealed himself in Crazy Train's shadow before they noticed him.

The ensuing super-brawl...did not go as I anticipated. On the one hand, I learned that I can afford to go much harder on the PCs with the significant fights, as they won decisively (in fact, they caused more harm to themselves that their foes did). On the other hand...it was a fiasco for the Utopian Defense Organization.

Proteus, who had copied Crazy Train's powers and picked up a shotgun from the first bank robber he incapacitated, fired at Agent Sleeper with no effect. Sleeper, in fact, rolled fantastically well on his Toughness saves for most of the fight, although his jets of knockout gas were not so effective. Agent Fritz resisted Aizen's attempts to grab him telekinetically, faked him out, and fired a blast of electricity that sent Aizen flying over the city block. Sok stayed inside the bank and used the last robber he had knocked out as a human shield before finishing him off with a shotgun. Thomas, in the most impressive stunt of the session, used Sok's car to knock Fritz through a portal whose exit was 400 feet up...and finished driving through himself, landing on the Agent. Miraculously, the car was not completely smashed to pieces, and a quick flurry of Hero Point expenditure kept him from breaking half the bones in his body. Proteus charged Sleeper and punched him across the street, making a large wall dent right next to the hole made by a robber previously launched by Aizen. Equinox attempted to snare Sleeper in his own shadow (unsuccessfully), causing the agent to suspect who might be on the scene, while Crazy Train decided, "Screw this! I'm outta here!" and took off. Aizen, deciding he needed a weapon, lifted...the top two stories of an apartment building. Cue screams of, "SOMEBODY SAVE US!" from the abducted and occupied section of building. Equinox tried and failed to use his powers to KO Sleeper, revealing himself in the process to both agents, who failed to hide their recognition of him. Proteus grabbed the totaled car and broke it in half over Sleeper's head to surprisingly little effect...forgetting that True Thomas was STILL INSIDE. He went flying out, and upon recovery, started using his portals to take the barely-conscious Fritz back to base. They did, however, wind up in the path of Crazy Train, who ran over them quite easily in his bid for freedom. Fritz managed to pull himself together just enough to fire another electric blast at Thomas, who dodged and portal-manipulated Crazy Train into trampling Fritz again, knocking the SEAgent unconscious. Sock charged and punched Sleeper to no effect, Proteus clobbered him again with the remaining half of the car (rendering it smithereens), sending Sleeper the rest of the way through the wall (making that side of the building very unstable) to collapse in a pile of rubble. Aizen, who had climbed onto the roof of the bank while still holding the apartment section some 150 feet above him, threw it at the now-distant Crazy Train...forgetting that, due to the two stories' weight, he could only throw it ten feet. Cue massive piece of architecture with civilians inside falling 150 feet onto Aizen's head, crashing through the roof of the bank, falling another 50 feet with him now inside, and then collapsing on top of him under its own weight and damage. Aizen got off luckily in merely being knocked thoroughly unconscious; all the tenants were killed. Equinox asked Sleeper who their assistant was, only to get the response, "Let's think about this logically. Who is the only person present who has displayed the ability to move large objects without touching them?" Equinox then knocked out Sleeper, but not before being threatened, "You should not have gone over." At this point, everyone started heading back to base by different routes (Thomas with Fritz in tow), except for Equinox, who searched through the rubble to find Aizen...and executed him with a knife through the back of the neck for his murders. He then called base directly to give his report. Upon hearing that SEAgents had been involved, their superior's (Douglas Hanson) response was one of shock and, initially, denial. He would not, however, hear a word of Equinox's suggestion that Aizen had been planted to sabotage them, stating that such an occurrence was even more impossible that the SEA's continued existence. Overall, he was very displeased to hear about the collateral damage both in buildings and lives, and as he hung up Equinox caught him muttering, "We can't have another wipe. Not again."

Although the individual SEAgents on the scene have been defeated, taken into custody (Crazy Train escaped and remains at large), and--unbeknownst to the party--completely deleted from UTOPIA, their mission was ultimately to discredit the UDO. And with the party responsible for 3 ruined buildings, 2 criminal deaths, 3 hostage deaths, and 20 bystander deaths, that mission, contrary to what I anticipated, was a resounding success. 

The Nature of Things

Impending two-hour discussion or no, it is very difficult to take Lucretius seriously when he starts talking about the mind and soul being made of tiny, round seeds or things tasting bad because they have sharp atoms.

Mmm...extra credits

Turns out that my AP scores got me a bunch of extra credits for college. As in, more than 80% of what I'll have from all my classes this year.

Ketchup

San Diego trip. I'm back.

Museums: Too kid-friendly.

Stayed at UCSD campus. Incredible room rented.

Saw family friends and relations. Fun.

Need to prepare more for M&M campaign.

Still have Greek homework. Not much.

Got official acceptance letter from SOU. 10k annual scholarship. Score!

Improvement

Heard back from SOU, and they've accepted me. And since they were my second choice after UCSC, it looks like that's where I'll be going.

Not off to the best start

Heard back from UCSC today, and it turns out they don't have room for my application.

The Scientific Method III

So, Peter, what did you do today?

Oh, I made sulfuric acid explode and was dismissed early when some other guys created a deadly gas. You?

That's a first

I believe today is the first day where a class has been canceled due to tutor illness.

In other news, I am now in a third campaign (not including the Mutants & Masterminds campaign I plan to run). I probably won't post this one, as it will have a much low I-am-not-making-this-up quotient. For a first-level, core-only campaign, however, the party is pretty diverse. We have a Chaotic Good half-elf kleptomanic rogue, a Lawful Good elven cleric (though he's not playing as particularly Good so far), a Neutral (human?) narcissistic/alcoholic bard, a Chaotic Neutral dwarven fighter, a Neutral Evil (originally Neutral, but the DM smacked him down a step after munching on some drow corpses [I'm not seeing it, but whatever]) goblin druid, and a Chaotic Good human wizard with a foul imagination for spell use (that's me).

Airship campaign resumes

Finally.

Since my backup character is not yet scheduled to make an appearance (probably next session), today I helped the DM run things. This included handling party splits, calculating ship damage and the effects thereof, rules adjudications, and running most of the fights (especially as the monsters involved had all been written up by me as part of my Legend of Zelda Bestiary).

If the previous session was The War, this session was The Siege. After the party got back to the ship, they were commanded by the captain to investigate a number of disturbances detected on board. While they weren't looking, Zerin (who had the orb), believing the party couldn't be trusted, teleported out of there, taking the orb with him. At the same time, a disoriented swordsman appeared on this ship (his backup character; Zerin ain't coming back). Shrugging, the party roped him into helping them out.

They headed toward the engine room first: it had been at 30% power when they returned, having sustained damage from last session, but as they watched the gauge it had fallen to 20%. Belowdecks their progress was immediately obstructed by a quarter of flying skulls, which they dispatched very easily. Not so easy to dispatch, however, were a pair of bat-shrouded, scythe-wielding foes and a giant, shadowy eyeball with tentacles. The bat enemies were defeated without overmuch trouble, but the dark eye proved impervious to both swords and spells. Aleistair's spear* was rather effective, but the real fight-ender was Koslov's discovery that bludgeoning attacks were its greatest vulnerability. During the fight, the ship's last engines went offline and it stalled.

*At the player's request, the DM and I helped re-stat Aleistair as a spear-wielding magic-user. We did, however, mess with him a bit: annoyed at the difficulty of actually getting the player's input beyond "make him good," we, while still adhering to what he wanted, turned the character into an extended (har!) penis joke and collection of double entendres. Real mature, I know, but everyone has been highly amused by the fact that he hasn't caught on yet.

Back to the session: When the party reached the engine room, it had been completely wrecked. The engineers stationed there were incapable of working to fix the engines on account of having been cut in half. Some party members stayed behind to try to get at least one engine up and running again while others began scouting the ship. Gerrard, one of the latter, was ambushed multiple times by robed, masked assassins, though he managed to fight them off. Eventually, Gerrard and Aleistair separately reached the heater room (the ship was held aloft by magically heated helium sacs). By the time they did, the heaters too had been destroyed, and five more eye monsters were waiting in the room. Aleistair's magic remained ineffective, and he quickly withdrew. Gerrard got in some lucky hits with his tentacles (don't ask) and managed to kill the beasts.

While Obelix and Koslov continued laboring to get an engine back online, contact had been completely lost with Missinget, who had dealing with troubles at the front of the ship this whole time, and Gerrard used his psionic powers to attempt to repair the heater. Eventually and with great effort, he succeeded. Meanwhile, the ship began to lose altitude at a gradually-increasing rate, a sign that the gas bags were being destroyed. After some 30 (of 50 total) had been lost, the not-Zerin swordsman found the cause: three axe-wielding golems, the same ones who had smashed up the engine and heater, were wading through the helium envelope, destroying sacs as they went. He managed to distract them for a full minute before taking a mortal chop and being left for dead while the constructs went back to work. Gerrard, luckily, reached the scene at this point and still had enough of a psionic reserve to overcome the golems.

This did not, however, mean victory. Of the 50 helium sacs, only 5 remained, and the ship was plummeting toward the ocean at great speed. Exhausting the Air and Fire elemental cores retrieved from the demon ship way back when would be able to restore the envelope if it weren't for the fact that a gigantic hole had been smashed in the side of the ship. Obelix mimicked a shadow conjuration to duplicate a Web spell and beat the 80% odds of failure to plug the whole. Aleistair then (with Obelix's consent) pulled the water from his body (fatally) to create a water elemental which would shield the web from the incoming rush of fire when the elemental cores were blown. They cleared the area, the cores were blown, and the envelope was successfully refilled (not-Zerin, however, was killed in the blast). One engine had been successfully restores by now, and the ship began to pull up. 

All this had been occurring in the rear and mid-ship. Other magical battles between the crew and various fiends had been taking place at the prow, which now sported a massive and weighty tree. The party managed to smash through and dislodge it, relieving the ship of much weight.

The ship had been at 10,000 ft when it began to sink. Less than 1,000 feet from the water, it finally leveled out.

The party then swept the ship for survivors. Less than a quarter of all marines and engineers had survived, and only 3 high-ranking crew members could be found. They went looking for Missinget, starting in the library, where they last had contact with her.

DM: Under one of the bookcases--

Me: *starts playing the theme of Aeris*

Aleistair: Oh, fuck no.

Missinget was found dead, her wounds matching weapons such as Aleistar (or his duplicates) might carry. Another Aleistar doppel was found dead nearby with similar wounds, and the seemingly good doppel sported a wound that would match a drow-made dagger, when questioned too closely about it, however, he said, "too clever," and vanished.

An attempt to scry upon Zerin revealed him walking with a man of unfamiliar appearance who quickly noticed and canceled the scrying.

Recap:

Obelix is dead.

Missinget is dead.

Zerin is AWOL, and he took the orb with him.

Zerin's replacement is dead.

The ship is horribly damaged, currently with 10% engine capacity. (Gerrard's private ship is in better condition)

Well over half the crew is dead.

The party's resources are quite drained.

Hopefully they'll find a spot of civilization before long.

Sobering

Crack is cheaper.

The only thing more jaw-dropping than the realization of how expensive your hobby is is the realization of how expensive everyone else's hobbies are.

The story of my life

Me: [recites the Othello Rap in tandem with Missinget]

Classmate: That's the most I've heard you speak ever.

Well, I got cast this time.

Casting landed in my inbox a couple minutes ago. I am Burgundy.

Oh, yeah: my lab tutor is Lear.

Curses! Foiled again!

There was another blood drive today. I signed up, but was again prevented from giving blood. This time because I remain ill. See? It's not my fault my alignment comes up as True Neutral!

King Lear casting will be announced later today. Auditions were yesterday. I did a couple of Edmund readings, including the "thou, nature, art my goddess" monologue. I though I did pretty well with it, although the ending was a little weak. I also read for Oswald (mainly to fill out the scene for someone else reading as Regan), Edgar (think I did pretty well with the cliff monologue), and the fool (could have been improved), and I found an excuse to rattle off Kent's insult. Got to show off my memorization skills somewhat.

Made of Win

Oh hell, I can't get the full picture to appear, so here's the link.

For the record

There was a nice coyote chorus outside just now.

Yowza!

I just learned that auditions for King Lear are this Wednesday. *knucklecrack* Better get ready. I really hope that the audition handouts include Edmund's monologue.

The Eldritch Fellowship of the Icosahedron

RPGers (myself included) are organizing to make a charter and become a group officially recognized by polity. That means we will get funding. There are that many gamers at St. John's. I knew we were prolific, but until seeing the crowd tonight I had no idea. It's going to make transferring a little sad, as the social dynamic here is one I have enjoyed quite a bit.

But still: official RPG organization on campus! We have the Power!

Also:

Aiyaiyah

Gerrard's player has some rather interesting views on international relations. On the way out of seminar we were having a debate over conflict between stronger and weaker countries. Says he, if A has a bigger gun than B it is A's right to kill B as it is in A's best interest, eliminating competition with B and preventing B from killing A first. Says I, it would not benefit A, as it would be a waste of time, resources, and, in the event of retaliation, lives. Says he, states act this way. Says I, since C, D, and E, could overpower A by banding together, why haven't they done so? Says he, because there would be too many internal conflicts to have an effective alliance. Says I, given the case of two equal powers, given that A knows B is capable of responding in kind to an attack, A will not attack B, and vice versa. Says he, this is why deterrence is important, and that if A has the opportunity to wipe out B it will. Says I, why? Says he, so that A will have less competition on the world stage. We eventually took this all the way to A being the only country left standing on the globe and on top of the heap by default, at which point I brought up the, under his philosophy, likely occurrence that the citizens of A who want the country run differently would start civil wars. Says he, so kill them. Says I, it is not in humanity's best interests for us to blow each other up. Says he, you live in a utopia! Says I, you live in a radioactive desert! 

Now if only I could get this engaged during the seminar.

Irony

Auditions for The Importance of Being Earnest are this evening. I would be down there right now, but college auditions will require me to be elsewhere during important periods of time coming up on (and possibly including) performance. Attempts to pursue theater are foiled by... attempts to pursue theater. *headdesk*

Back to square one.

I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in deciding to go to St. John's College. I'm not doing what I love, I'm not preparing to do what I love, and this learning process isn't one with which I fit well. I am now looking, not into liberal arts colleges that offer some theater, but into strong theater programs. Unfortunately, I came to this conclusion a little late in the winter for many colleges to still be accepting applications for next fall, but some are. I hope this time around I can find a place that really fits me.

Alumni Day

Went back to visit my high school today. It was great to see everybody again, catch up with Behind-the-Commons Folks, hear how things are going in the theatre, who loses and who wins, who's in, who's--[EDITOR: You've already used that reference!] Oh, shut up. *hits editor with a frying pan*

Vince, Ratched, Little Sally, Candy, and Hope were all there in the afternoon. No Lockstock, though.

I tried to check my mailbox a couple of times before remembering that I don't go here anymore.