SJE/Session66
Session 66
What Goes Up...
The scene opens with Shizu surrounded by servants of darkness; 3 nemissaries to her front and 3 hardened killers cutting off her retreat. Rav skating across the surface of the ship dodging the Implosion Bows, and, through the sky shield tear the Capt, Alana and Brand riding thunderbirds.
As the Watch hurl themselves towards the mighty Sky-Eater, its captain steps out from the Ziggurat Control Centre, at the vessel's apex. He wearins a tri-corn hat of Western Design at a jaunty angle and two scarlet sash bandoliers across his chest, each nestling a variety of flame pieces, Essence pistols and Maggot Revolvers. Seeing the defences breached he snarled at the boarding party.
”Aargh! Who be boarding the ship o’ Captain of the Bloodsoaked Sail?” said Cap’n Blood, before drawing twin maggot revolvers and launching a hail of shots at the oncoming Thunderbird 1 and Brand on its beak! Above him, Blood’s anima of dark sails flowed with his essence.
The two thunderbirds dove, whirling to avoid the patchwork of essence beams, implosion arrows and maggots that sewed the sky ike a comforter of death; Alana and Brand flew to battle Blood while the Capt sent his bird low over the surface of the Sky-Eater, to sweep up the pyramid’s stairs to its apex.
As Blood sidesteps from the door of the ziggurat to prepare for the first assault, the Capt flew past and, reaching out to grasp one of the many flags of enemy ships that adorned the Sky-eater, he leapt off the bird and waited. When no shots came from the doorway he jumped in, essence cannon raised and charged.
Down below, Rav saw a group of hardened killers racing up the ziggurat’s stairs to support their Captain. Leaving aside the fun of tricking the implosion bows to shoot parts of the ship in futile efforts to hit and then hurt him, he landed in their path – ‘you claim to be hardened killers’ he snarled, ‘you are naught but small children, far from home’
To his left Shizu waited until the six foes struck, then delicately leapt out of the circle of steel to land behind the killers and unleash a barrage of knives. While their living servants writhed in agony, pieces of dead flesh and bone fell from the nemissaries. Driven by the necrotic energy of the spirits the corpses moved to retaliate. From the corner of her eye, Shizu caught a glimpse of an implosion bow bearing on her position. Unable to see shelter on the ship’s surface she marshalled her valour and charged towards the vast weapon, her mind desperately searching for any trace of memory of a past life that could help outwit this monster.
In the control room, the Capt took in the obsidian walls, the strange figures inscribed on every surface, the ghostly technicians and, in the centre of the room a towering crystal oozing blood that ran in rivulets through the floor. Behind the crystal squatted an altar to some dark Neverborn, its sacrifices feeding the crystal.
Flicking a switch on the cannon, the Capt smiled at the whine that indicated power up. His anima flared as he poured essence into the cannon and into his archery charm. Yet the cannon’s bolts outdid even his anima. When the salvo ended the Capt looked in triumph at . . . the . . . still standing, barely scratched crystal and the array of potholes in the wall beyond (24 dice attack, 4 damage!!!!!! To a stationary object).
Captain Blood stepped from the shadows to the Captain’s left and lowered a maggot pistol barrel to his head, its barrel emitting the stench of rotting flesh. ‘Aaaaggh, dodge this ye healthy dog’ said Blood, enraged that a landlubber would penetrate his captain’s cabin.
Meanwhile Rav’s challenge caused the killers to pause for a second but, driven by fear and hate, they moved forward. That second was all Rav needed. His direlance flicked in and out of the mob, leaving bodies and body parts to slick the floor of the vessel and send the survivors reeling. Leaping in the air, he back flipped and as he landed speared another whole, then flipped forward again to slice the final killer open ,who collapsed flailing desperately as his guts joined those of his companions. Exulting in his prowess, Rav barely noticed the sting as one of his feathers was blown off. Turning he saw the responsible Implosion Bow and leapt into the air to deal with it.
Shizu sprinted, arrow like, to the Implosion Bow targeting her. Judging the moment perfectly, in one swift move she grabbed a piece of bone from the floor, jammed it into the mechanism preventing the bow from moving and her foot flashed around to strike the trigger. The Implosion Bow discharged its payload into the opposite Bow, destroying it and causing an impact felt across the vessel. The three pursuing nemissaries leapt into attack position around her, confident that this time she was dead. Shizu smiled, the smile of a Solar with a combo still to deploy.
On the top of the ziggurat, Brand and Alana rushed into the doorway to see the Capt turn to face Blood, an unlit cigar in his mouth
“Light Me” he said, a split second before Blood unleashed a triple burst. Blinded by the Capt’s aura and his aim knocked by the recoil, the sky pirate hit with only one maggot, that immediately, and perhaps rather pointlessly all things considered, started to burrow into the Captain’s brain.
Brand and Alana leapt to attack, their animas flooding the room and driving back Blood’s own dark shadow. Wherever Alana’s radiance fell, the obsidian, basalt, ichor and blood smoked under the power of the UCS. Four blows they struck at Blood, who effortlessly leapt from shadow to shadow. Still they tracked him and two blows landed, to be absorbed by the fell power of his anima.
Alana could hear the crew swarming up the stairs and knew in seconds they would be over-run. Swinging another blow at Blood she then spun, ducked low and sliced the feet from under the legs of the new arrivals.
Meanwhile the Capt, cigar lit by the passing of one super heated maggot, inhaled, plucked it from his mouth and plunged the lighted end deep into the bore hole, cooking the maggot. Looking at his weapon, he noticed a small dial with scribbles on the side and tried to remember the lessons on writing Orchid had drilled in. In a flash it came to him and he corrected his mistake turning the cannon upto 11. Aiming at both crystal and altar he delivered a much more devastating series of blasts, leaving the crystal bleeding and cracked. Immediately the ship lurched and fell 100 feet.
Alana grabbed a nearby control to steady herself, Brand and Shizu deployed athletics charms, Rav found himself flying, a gang of hardened killers falling back to the surface of the ship, Blood – the ship’s captain, could never be wrong footed and braced himself between wall and ceiling. The Capt slammed into the ceiling and then down to the floor again.
Outraged, Blood shouted “Ahhhh, you be a fool to try your luck with me- I’ll fly us to the Well of the Void and make ye walk the plank!” Backing up his claim he unleashed a powerful combo of shots at the prone Capt. Yet his rage overcame him and the maggots flew wild, bouncing off armour and jaw as the Captain used 5fold Bulkwark Stance to twist and dodge. The final shot hit, but in the one place the Capt was impervious – his mouth. ‘mmm, crunchy’ he said as he bit down on the wriggling grub.
Brand paused to assess the flows of essence and saw that the ship was driven by the output of this malevolent crystal and that its power unleashed could destroy the ship.
‘Time I think for the Captain to go down with his ship’ roared Brand and, ignoring his own Captain’s surprised and worried look, swung at the crystal. His daiklaive sheared off the top third. For a second all was silent, then the ship lurched and fell as a geyser of blood and essence erupted, taking off the stone roof and forcing a surprised Rav to bank sharply.
The Circle rapidly realised it was time to leave the ship – Shizu, Brand and Alana leapt onto the back of thunderbirds that swooped to recover them while the Capt turned to see if he could finish off Blood. A desperate Blood tried to work one of the elemental statues to bring more support to the rapidly sinking ship. Seeing this Rav flew down and with a single blow sheared through the stone gargoyle containing the circuitry. Blood leapt to another one.
Behind him the Capt wrestled the central slab from the altar, turned to Blood and said triumphantly ’Dodge this’. Blood’s reflexes honed by war and blinded by fear instinctively took him to the shadows, while his mind realising his mistake a second too later, as the altar smashed the controls, dooming the ship and shattering the consecrated basalt. With seconds to spare Rav dove in to pluck the Captain from doom. As he was lifted away from the falling the ship, he channelled the last of his essence, burning a dawn Caste mark into Solaria Magna with the falling ship as its centre.
In the palace the Princess Magnificent looked up from her maps of the coming battle, the blood still wet on the parchment. “Its getting a little too dark” she thought.
As the Watch bailed out of the falling Sky-Eater, Blood hung on to the eldritch carvings for dear unlife. He could already feel the pains of torture that the First and Forsaken Lion would personally oversee for the loss of the ship. With one last exertion, he braced the ship for impact, his dark Essence flowing over the kilometre wide starfish and hardening its hull at the instant of impact!
<SIZE="6">CRASH!!!!SJE/SIZE>
Only as the first part of the vessel crashed through the palace roof did the Princess grasp the situation, grab and open her umbrella in time to shield her from the thousands of tons of falling rock. The umbrella’s impenetrable nature carved a three foot wide tunnel through the surface of the sky vessel, leaving the Princess trapped, if only for the moment.
Outside Solaria Magna experienced a hard rain as zombies, gun turrets and human servants flew to their doom, while the massed legions of undead in the City were obliterated under the Sky-Eater’s weight. Ghosts screamed as their fetters were smashed, Abyssals fled to the outskirts and the ground trembled for miles around and yet the dark core of the structure held together, a grim sore on the surface of Creation.
Picking himself up, Captain Blood turned to survey the damage. Though the guns and zombie crew were crushed in the fall, the superstructure was still intact. His last, desperate charm has saved his ship, leaving him drained of Essence and Will. ”Yarr…”mused Captain Blood to himself “If’n we sacrifice every living thing in yonder city, she’ll fly again” as he tilts his hat back to a jaunty angle...
As his thunderbird circled the vast plume of smoke and dust that marked their victory, an elated Brand waited in anticipation for the ship to fall apart. Outraged that it seemed to be holding together he sent his will across the desert to the waiting Giant Robot Head. Instantly a golden lens-flare drew all attention to Solaria Minor as, with a high chime, the laser blast leapt the 20 miles to connect to the black ziggurat. It struck the control room and, using the sky-eater’s own essence channels, coursed downwards through the ship. A second later, level by level from its peak, the black pyramid exploded as the brilliance of the solar energy annihilated the shadows of the underworld. The Sky Eater was blown to smithereens! All that remained was dust, bone and, slowly floating down to earth in the breeze, a pirate’s hat which eventually settled into the black dust.
The delighted Circle returned to Solaria Minor, there to celebrate and in the words of Brand ‘sleep, the sleep of the victorious’. ‘Wouldn’t the citizens of Solaria want to sleep with the victorious instead?’ mused the Captain, forgetting his marriage for a second, but reminded again by Brand’s raised eyebrow. ‘Very well, sleep it is’.
For some of the more thoughtful of the Circle though, sleep proved an elusive catch. They knew the Princess Magnificent lurked still in the dusty heart of the still extant Shadowland and that until she was defeated, no one could sleep soundly. Shizu mused that, given the Princess Magnificent once ruled Solaria, perhaps more lore about her history and any potential weakness could be found in its records. Legend has it that every Deathlord has one weakness that leads to permanent death…
Shizu sent at once for the best storytellers and Folk Lorists in Solaria to tell her its history, even as Brand and Alana hit the parchment stacks in the Apocrypha section of the Temple of the Unconquered Sun. The storytellers told Shizu of the Golden Age when the glorious Shining Ones ruled Solaria. It was a time where milk and honey flowed through the streets till all had their fill. And so wise and beneficent were the Shiny Ones, that they saw the Solarians in their sticky, dairy plight and caused great channels and tunnels to be built to separate the milk and honey and get it out of the streets where it was flooding the homes and making walking a very sticky proposition altogether! Praise Be!
Meanwhile, Alana and Brand had more success (9 and 13 respectively!) and discovered a tale of how the Princess who ruled this land was a great beauty. Indeed, so unique were her pale skinned features (unlike most golden-tanned Solars), and so jealous was she to preserve them and so gain the admiration of others, that she grew to avoid the light of the sun, carrying with her a parasol to ward off the Suns rays. In this was she remained alabaster-white, a unique snowflake amongst her peers. If that was the Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers in life, what would the sun do to her in death?
All eyes turned towards Shizu, after all what Night Caste could resist the challenge of parting the Deathlord from her ever-present 13-belled umbrella. . . .
The Captain returned to his room, to find Cathak Aron about to bite into an apple, taken from the package his Burning Feather had left. ‘What are you doing?’ asked the Captain, concerned that his wife would be angry. ‘Looking for the good stuff’ said Aron, ‘I know you always stash some away – like that stuff in the temple’.
‘That’s for the citizens to boost their spirits against the coming battle’. ‘Bah, they don’t need to fight – we’ll do that. All they need to do is get back to praying, brewing and paying taxes’
‘Anyway’, said the Capt ‘why don’t you get a few of the lads and lasses together and we can organise a prayer meeting for my wife – know what I mean’. Aron amiably shuffled off, handing the apple to the Capt.
Looking at it, it seemed a very nice apple, much nicer than the ones you get in the desert usually, not to mention the fact it was gold and not green or red. The Capt saw that there were two apples, spying the other still in the wrapping. ‘Well’ he thought’ I have just saved Creation, again, and if she’s angry with me – making up is half the fun isn’t it, and I do need something on the stomach for the prayer meeting’. With that thought in mind he bit into the apple. It tasted amazing, the best fruit ever.
Leaving his essence cannon tucked under the pillow he wandered out, rapidly eating one, then both apples. Pausing to look in the mirror on the way out, he couldn’t help but think how handsome he was – his hair and beard glossy, his eyes bright, his teeth shining as if they had their own anima. Even his burns and wounds of the recent battle were fading away. So overcome with energy and joy, he failed to notice that whatever his hands touched it was left blanched and white, as the sudden effects of reaching essence 5 manifested through his body.
Rav’s dreams were wild that night. Basked by a full moon, he was visited by a summons – the presence of many No-moon’s calling for a meeting of all Lunars, a Grand Moot. Mixing human language with the powerful signals of the hum, the howls the shriek and the roar, they told him that the Moor would discuss policy and the time for the Lunar Rising. He awoke half-transformed, still able to smell the musk and blood of his fellows.
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