Orhan 3 Day 62 TE 6065

Meanwhile in the Shock and Awe simulators, our heroes are on the infinite gray plane.

They ask for the menu options but are interrupted by a great booming voice:

Tethior says, "What's going on in there..." "Stop poking each other with pointed sticks and learn something useful."

The grey plane disolves and we see around us a giant swirling vortex. We're standing on a rectangular mesh that funnels down into the swirling vortex. "In you go!"

Oathar leaps in! Alynna follows. The rest follow.

We are flung through space and time. Tethiors heads appears and we are told that it is time to learn to guide ourselves when we are flung through space-time. "I foresee that you shall need this skill. Do not doubt my word!"

We fight the currents of spacetime and try to find our way. Ouch! (Stupid 3.)

Oathar breaks away from the pack, and find himself lost. They learn things about how spacetime works.

A year passes while we swim the currents.

Once you are in teh correct year, you can shtick each card from 70 days to 7 days. You can spend fate points to change the future and swap out future cards.

Then we learn the chancy gambling version. Oathar goes mad with power.

Winnings:

+70 +100 +20 +150 = 340

Each 100 points above 100 (100 in winnings) is a +1 Misc bonus to a stat, 2 talent points, 5 dev points, +3 RR. (and proportionaly lower as needed.)

For each point under 100, you are at -1 for all rolls.

If you go into the past, they last until they catch up to you... But there are deeper mysteries of spacetime.

If you go into the future. Who the heck knows what happens, since no one ever comes back from the future.

There are ways to travel through space in addition to time, but really, teleporting is easier.

Now we can glimpse into the past and learn...

We look down on Kulthea. It is engulfed in flames. Lava runs across continents, etc. Including Terrania. Oarhan and Charon are hanging around too. Then we head down to the flaming planet. We end up at the giant black palace. It is also in flames. Death Althans are all over the place. A giant black bubble surrounds it. All around we hear the screams of the dying. Demons are showing up from the darkness...

In the distance a monstrous black shape rumbles across the landscape. It turns a big metallic turret and launches nuclear missile in the distance.

Our view moves into the dome of blackness. More Althan bodies everywhere. Burning tapestries, shattered laen art, etc. We go down the blood red carpet. (It's squishy.) Ahead of us is an Althan holding a glowing sword. Around him is a faintly glowing bubble. It's not really glowing, but it's an absense of blackness. With a grim look he struggles forward through the mitril/Eog/Laen doors. He pushes the doors over and beyond them, sitting on a throne of black eog, is a woman. Upon her breast is a chain of black simple links. Around it is a black iron setting with a black stone on black, surrounded by black.

She's surrounded by slumped (dead) Althans.

She raises her head with effort and gives Utha a look that would kill us and hisses at him. "It is mine! Mine alone!"

Utha replies, "It is over Kadaena! Is it sover for you and for me. The time of the Althans has passed from this universe."

"I will live forever! My time is forever!" She reaches out and a black beam pours out of it at him, but stops at his sphere.

"I do not think so,"

"No!! I will not submit!!!"

Utha walks up to her (limping). As he gets closer to her, he slows and staggers as if the sword is glowing even heavier in his hands. Also, the black stone is dragging down Kadaena, as she holds the throne to keep herself up. Tendrils leave form teh stone to gather more souls from the bodies but they are already empty.

Utha chops her head off with a sngle stroke. Her head falls and rolls away, and a crack splits the throne, and a rift opens beneath it. The necklace with the gme falls off the body and into the pit down towards the lava. Hundreds of feet down down down. Just before it reaches the bottom and hits the lava, a little hole opens up in space. A hand reaches out and catches it. It's pulled into the hole and the hole closes and disappears.

We see Utha leaning on the a sheathed sword watching the destruction, and a young man with purple eyes stands next to him.

Tethior says, "So there it was, the end of the first era of ire." "Do you wish to go further?"

Once more our viewpoint is above a green and verdant Kulthea. There are cities of metal and glass. Strange metal vehicles glide through the air and into space. Millions of Althans fill the streets and the skies. Public Parks are filled with ritual circles as people summon playgrounds of their desire.

In some back alley a jagged hole opens and a demon steps out, looks around and cackles... but then suddenly alarms go off, flying cars show up and blast him. "No reason to be alarmed citizens. Nothing to see here."

Up above satellite fly through the air above the space stations in orbit. Orhan is just as usual. Except it's empty. There are bases on other moons, but not Orhan. Charon is similarly uninhabited.

No temples anywhere either.

Yup, Althans were having a great time then. With their hovercars.

There a giant park where they are starting to construct a palace. The first structures and towers are going up. The pools arr being filled, etc.. A very familiar palace. Every so often an Althan will come by and get rid of the seams between walls and things. And auto polishing.

Then we find ourselves staring at a bunch of buildings with space ships on teh ground next to the building with big tubes connecting. Then one rolls out to a long flat runway and head off into space.

Inside the tallest spire at the spaceport, there are banks and banks of screens with blinky lights. On one of the screens it says, "Alert, Alert, Alert. Comet detected." "How unuusal, the activity on that comet seems to have picked up." The comet approaches Charon. "Remote monitoring station on Charon is detecting activity." "What, it's been dead there for millions of years!." "The ministry of magic has detected disturbances in the upper atmosphere. They demand to know what's going on."

As the comet's tail swashes over Charon, it appears to pulse with life. Evil red life. "Energy readings off the scale!!!"

On Charon, something stirs...

We fly further into the past. It's a pristine verdant Kulthea. Swamps and jungles and birds and wind and waters. No people though. As we look around, pale hairless quadrupeds wearing skins gather around fires standing on two legs instead of four as of only recently. They ahve six fingers and toes. They grunt and paint pictures and debate how to stick spear into pig. In the sky... Orhan and Charon.

We zoom out and everything becomes shifty and indistinct. We see a great splitting in space. A jagged line appears throughout space with expands into a rip. Through the rip comes a dozen balls of light. They hover in space for a bit and then move off to land on Orhan.

Then the rift closes, but it doesn't really heal and mostly just dangles there. The balls of light settle on Orhan and turn their gaze down upon Kulthea. Soon after, one more thing pops out of the rift. A tiny little pinprick sphere of blackness. It flies down to Kulthea and pricks the surface like a balloon. A little while later there's a giant eruption on the other side and a giant pillar trails up into the sky and a tiny black pinprick continues off into space.

Time passes. The savages develop mysticism and engineering and pottery, and all that. They build an empire and the light on Orhan just watch. Eventually, the Althans go to space. But they never land on Orhan. They form a mighty empire. Then the empire collapses, (back to the first vision). Then the lights resolve in to the gods we know. They travel down to Kulthea and pick up animals and plants and althans and althan experiments and all that stuff and bring them to Orhan.

Once the skies clear, some of them descend back down from Orhan and bunnies are reestablished and carrots are replanted.

That's when temples show up.

After the collapse is also when a number of black tendrils reach down from Charon and seem to meld with all the death and doom down there and suck it up, growing and becoming more powerful. As demons show up, instead of getting blasted, they get touched with Charonian tendrils and say "Yes, I will serve."

We zoom forward and eventually Kulthea looks much like it does now. Suddenly, a starship appears with swooping lines and the like. On the side it says, ANDROMEDA. On board are a bunch of Althans. In the background on their displays is another grid with swirly things marking a loop around the edge of the whirlpool thing. They look down and say, "Huh. We must do something." the ponder a bit, and then send down a shuttle. It goes to the barrier and a hole opens and it flies in to land on Kulthea. then more of them come down and they start building things like a tower with portals on top. Lo! They are the Earthwardens.. They have digging machines that burrow through the earth and make coral roads.

They build all kinds of stuff across the planet. They teach native tribes, etc. Then, they say, "It is time." They gather up to their ships, go back out, close the hole, and warps back to the Andromeda Galaxy.

A long time later, secret master number 1 emerges from his cryogenic suspension tube and looks around and investigates the new stuff. "How the heck did all this get here?"

Then the great council forms on Karilon. The original thirteen declare it year 1 of the second era.

Lookign carefully at the time after the barrier went up we see several areas that suck less, where there are presumably orbs of rebirth. (Shortly after the disaster.)

On the other side of the barrier, several althans emerge from their cryogenic suspension tubes. This happens shortly after the doom. They immediately subjugate the population.

After the barrier went up, on this side of the planet, Andraax and seven other althan meet in an underground cave with a giant white crystal. They go around for thousands of years hunting down any bad Althans on this side. (This is when we show up and kill Lorgalis's father.)

Ondoval is swept away in a flowstorm and vanishes into the void.

Most of the original 8 are killed. One of them, a woman is swept to the outer void. As she swept out there, tentacle surroudn her and suck her into the outer void. (Blinky like tentacles.) Tethior says, "That, was Shrek's mother." Shrek is half-althan/half-agoth.

The heart of agoth is part of the device that allows shreck to be in this world and bind him into his current form. That's why Voorig Kye wanted it.

About 1% of althans could use magic. They were the K'Ta'Viri.