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AWAKENED: GAME ONE Awakened (Formerly known as dreamers)
We complete the great ritual that will stop the pending world destruction, and it succeeds. In turn, the world goes back to the way it was with a few strange side effects. First off, the general consensus is that things didn’t quite go back perfectly; something is slightly off. Probably the biggest adjustment is that it’s as if we’ve vanished from the world for a year and now have reappeared, with everyone wondering where we were. So there is a lot of time spent reseating ourselves into things, mainly with developing stories. Turns out anything we stowed away during out time out of the loop is now gone, as if it were never there. What’s more, while we are back in things, former wolf-girl, Eloise Vane, who has been running around with Nathan, is no longer connected to her family. They’ve never heard of her. Simon and Hank have to get hold of their funds again, but proving themselves alive after declarations of death. Ryan has wife problems, since from their point of view he “ran out on them”. While some of us can start back at the top, some of us are back at the bottom, without their jobs (if they had one to begin with). Once everyone settles in comes the next heaping spoonful of crazy. We are sent letters, individually, by Microsoft, accompanied by checks for $10k. The letters request a meeting. Some of us are reticent to participate, or even cash the check, despite financial problems. This all smacks of the first campaign’s “prize winning” scenario, when we all won a trip to Malibu before everything went to hell. Three of us decide to go (Hank—man of business, Simon—well known musician, and Gabriel—who seems appropriate since this is a gamble). The other three will conference call in. Failed to mention with whom the meeting took place: None other than Billy G himself. Mr. Gates shows up, funky haircut and all, and gives the three a tour of compound and then talks to them about how he knows what they are and how he’ll kill them when they sleep. Well, not that last part. As far as we know. He actually says he has some power not unlike ours. Gabriel tests this by reading his mind. The thoughts he reads: “Oh crap, he’s reading my mind!” Bill knows that the world is failing. This is reinforced by Ryan who with “Time” as his sphere, can see glimpses of the future that end in massive death. They don’t know specifics, but Gates says that the world can be fixed by judicious application of a book of knowledge that is secured in a museum in England. It’s very old and called Di Vermis Mistriis (Translated by him as “The book of mystery”). We confer and end up deciding to do it. We leave behind all we care about again, then fly to England on Bill’s private jet. We end up casing the joint, complete with photos and our heightened senses. The book it seems requires special sense like ours in order to properly read because it is written in 4 dimensions. Thus we only see 3 of it, and the same is true of Bill Gates. We would have to teach him how to read it. Forgot to mention a few things about our world that are different to us: First, our Shadow Powers it is discovered through trial and error, only work at night. Next, our energy (formerly essence, now mana) does not replenish on its own. Fortunatley for us, Bill Gates built Microsoft in Redmond so that he could tap a manse of energy that is there. He lets us use some of it to recoup before our flight to England. Now back to our theft, already in progress: The crew going in are Gabriel “con-man” Jones and Nathan “left my dog-cannon at home” Blank. With the aid of two suits designed by Hank Reardon to make us even more stealthy, we not only get in, use our senses to avoid sensors and disable security systems, but we get out again unnoticed. As we watch the news the next day pre-departure the wheels come off the wagon. Happy September 11th. Seems that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center, followed by another. We’re grounded for two days, during which time we sit and read and wait for problems to clear. Of course we realize eventually that our ally in the first campaign who helped us avert Armageddon, Rigis, was set up in the WTC. This means his office (and possibly him) are gone. Attempts to contact loved ones of ours go unanswered, creating a panic. Additionally, during the reading process, there are a number of botches. Most notable of which is when Jack blows his roll and tries to run off with the book. Nathan’s high perception alerts the gang who catches him on the stairwell as he shouts to us “Don’t hurt Lindsay! Don’t hurt Lindsay!” sounding suspiciously like Cog. (“No Kill I! No Kill I!” Coincidence? I don’t think so.) Hank’s drug gun puts him out and when he comes back he’s normal. We get back to the states on the fourth day after. Investigating Simon’s house we discover through use of our senses that a number of people had been in his family apartment. They had recently been visited by six men, meeting the description in general of gang members. Many likely had meth and weed in their systems, but at least one had traces of some unknown substance that Jack Sims could not identify with Life sense. Gabriel uses his luck power to try and find clues; this takes the form of stabbing a phone book and turning to the page it reached. Signs point to Los Angeles. There, in the city of murdered angles (oh, wait, wrong game), we try to gather our clues about families and such. Finding Jack Sims place in pretty much the same state as Simon’s, Gabriel whips out a phone book and does his trick and we end up with the name of a woman. We go to her place and x-ray surveillance shows that she’s not alone; in fact she seems to be “in the act” with someone. We tell Ryan we’ll “just talk” but end up breaking in and muscling him. Turns out he has a gun but never gets to use it. The guy is not one of the people we’re looking for (the abductors) but the woman has the same unknown stuff in her system. We end up prying from her the location of her drug contact. Her supplier is a gang member. Jack Sims dresses up (with help) as a local and uses his power to disguise appearance to some degree, and goes in to look around. He figures out where this guy is. Armed with that knowledge we sit around all night in the car (with Simon and Ryan back guarding the book) until the guy leaves. Then our very poor tailing skills lead us to follow them to an area where they proceed to gun the car, spin around and try to gun us down! A hail of bullets from an uzi puts holes in Jack, our healer. Nathan leaps over and drives the car away. End episode one. Notes on the book: It is a knowledge store. Seems it is a tool to learn “secrets” of various kinds. If we learn enough minor secrets (about such things as counterspelling, converting mana to health, health to mana, etc.) then we can learn bigger secrets. Needless to say Bill Gates wants us to teach him the book. |