DRAFT Run log for 970304

Cathryn Travels To Pearl

Cathryn is in Castle Black with Sethra. There is no sign of Ilkandacian. "Where is my companion?" "Possibly still in the Paths of the Dead." "How long will it be before he returns?" "I cannot predict the actions of the most powerful goddess." "Can we start the search now?" "We have to go somewhere else to get on with the search - I have an image." Sethra offers her hand to Cathryn, who takes it.

There is a tear in the fabric of space in front of them; it's someplace black. Very black. Cathryn follows Sethra inside and shifts herself luminous - still black. There is another tear, they step out, and they're in the courtyard of Castle Amber. There are lots of guards pointing guns at them.

Cathryn shifts back into her normal shape, and looks pointedly at the guards. She starts berating the guards for threatening a Dutchess of Amber and an heir of the realm. The guards claim to not recognize her.

A guard runs up to Zack and Malachai, and reports that there is an invasion. There are two elfish looking things at the transfer point, and they didn't trump in. They head over to the courtyard, and overhear Cathryn discussing matters with the guards.

"Your Grace! How wonderful to see you again!" Malachai calls out as he arrives. Malachai explains to the guards that this is Lady Cathryn, a recognized heir to Random and a dutchess of the realm. They lower their weapons.

Cathryn exchanges pointed words with Malachai, and then introduces Sethra to him.

Sethra bows to Malachai, who introduces her to Prince Zacharias and Auricle.

Cathryn and Malachai exchange more pointed words.

Malachai asks after Corwin, Cassandra, and Ingold. Auricle asks after Julian. Cathryn raises an eyebrow at Auricle and ignores her question; she says that she has neither seen nor heard from Corwin or Cassandra in some time, and that she doesn't know where Ingold is.

Zack palms something with Morrolan's seal from his bag, and slips it to Sethra while shaking her hand and telling her to call on him should she ever need anything.

One of the guards taps Malachai on the shoulder and tells him that the ambassador's meeting is now, and that he should leave. He sighs, and heads out.

Zack and Auricle excuse themselves and head out for breakfast.

Auricle's gargoyle fills her in on Cathryn, and reminds her that she was a dinosaur in that fight against Dara. Auricle scolds her gargoyle for not telling her that earlier, and follows Zack.

Cathryn tells Sethra that they can now continue their search; Sethra tells Cathryn that they need to go to a room in the basement.

They head down the stairs, and turn off at one of the levels before the Pattern. She takes Cathryn into a room. For some reason, the guard, who looks rather vigilant, fails to notice either of them as they walk past him. It looks rather like an exercise room. Stone walls, no obvious hidden things. The walls, like all of the walls in Castle Amber, have Pattern in them.

Sethra asks Cathryn to spread out a uniform from the corner in the center of the room. Sethra pulls out various sorcerous tools, some blue stones, and Cara's token. She begins to concentrate, and concentration pours out from her, through the uniform, and fills the room. There is a major flash of power and energy, and the two of them are now somewhere completely else.

They are in the courtyard of a castle that has decent battlements. Cathryn recognizes this as Corwin's castle in Pearl. Sethra falls over. Cathryn examines her, but can't tell if Sethra is living or not. A bunch of guards come over to them, grab them, and rush the two of them off. After the door slams and locks behind them, Cathryn begins to doubt that they were going to give Sethra medical aid. She tries saying, "Corwin. Cassandra. Malachai" No response. She tries to bring up the Logrus - failure. She shifts into a bug, crawls under the door, and flies off.

The castle seems fairly quiet. Cathryn heads off looking for royal chambers. They seem disused. Ditto for the throne room. There is no accumulated dust, but it doesn't have the smell of human occupation. Cathryn leaves the castle and looks for those cat-things. She spots some over thataway.

Cathryn lands and shifts into a Sha'um form. Three kittens pounce on her and want her to play with them. She refuses. A fairly big cat comes up to her, sniffs her, and indicates to her that it would be acceptable to it if she walked this way if it wasn't too much of a bother. (Sha'um for "Follow me or die") She follows it over to a hill-sized cat.

The giant cat says something that translates roughly to, "Is there any reason we should not kill you out of hand for taking on our form?" Cathryn explains that she was not here intentionally, that she was looking for Corwin and Cassandra, and that she took the form because it seemed superior to other options. The Sha'um seems mollified by her response and replies that neither Corwin nor Cassandra have been seen recently. Cathryn explains that she is also looking for Jesby and Cara. "Show them to us" She shifts into Jesby and Cara forms. They sniff at her, and say that they were seen running for their lives thataway, two, maybe three weeks ago, in order to avoid being locked up. The large cat indicates that the court is over.

Cathryn goes back to the castle, turns into a bug, and checks out Sethra. She's sitting up. Cathryn re-enters the room.

The AD&D Run Slaughters a Gazebo and Prepares for Battle

The tent tells those inside it that it is about to run out of floor space, and will need to shrink. They shift the corndog-armed sticks back, and the tent shrinks.

They decide to go somewhere else. Cyndia pokes sticks at the blob consisting of Carlton and the master shifter; the sticks break. She hears an occasional giggle from the tent. "I don't think that you're going to reach them. That's a sixth level ward." They try to get advice from the tent; it taunts them for being useless non-shifters, and claims that the ward could only be broken by a master from the Mages' Guild.

"Same drill as last time. The tent's a wise ass." - Cyndia
"Can I light it on fire?" - Blaze
"Carlton's in the tent." - Cyndia
"Carlton's inside a pretty hefty ward - he wouldn't notice." - Blaze

Blaze says that she would need the Spiral to get through that ward.

Blaze goes out to talk to Maria - she says that she can crack the ward, and is currently accumulating the energy needed to do so. Cyndia asks Maria if she can crack the ward from outside the tent, and Maria says that she plans on being outside the tent when the ward goes down.

They leave the tent.

Natasha turns the corn dogs away from the corner.

They warn the tent that they are about to crack the ward, and the tent scoffs at them.

Maria checks to see if everyone is out. "Has anyone seen Theresa recently?" Maria warns the others that they will need to feed her afterwards.

Maria goes from being relaxed, lazy, and unfocused, to attentive and focused for a split second. There is an explosion inside the tent, which catches on fire, and then corndogs start going off.

"Getting killed with your own corndogs is a lousy way to die" - Cyndia

"Do you think it's safe in there?" - Cyndia
"No" - Maria
"Do you think the corndogs are done exploding?" - Cyndia
"No" - Maria

The corndogs keep exploding for quite some time, The demons are oohing and aahing over the pretty explosions and calling out for more. Maria falls over, unconscious.

Some of the mandrakes have stuck their heads out of the bag, and are cheering. Damia shushes them, and pushes them back into the bag. "Awwh, but mom...."

The tent has now burnt to the ground, leaving little puddles that are going "owwww..." Carlton and the master are nowhere to be seen.

"We told you so." - Cyndia
"But we aren't shapeshifters, so we aren't worth listening to" - Damia

[Ignorance, meet Bliss. Bliss, meet Ignorance.]

They ask the tent what happened, and extinguish the fires on it. They ask where the others might have gone.

"I'm not even an acolyte any more, just a puddle." - ex-tent
"Sorry, mister puddle." - Damia

The demons are poking through the debris, finding un-exploded corndogs, and lighting them off. The group tells Natasha to start giving them corndogs, so she conjures up a paper uniform with a little hat and a tray of corndogs, and starts passing them out. They soon notice that although the corndogs are blowing holes in the demons, they don't seem to notice the damage. They stop distributing corndogs to the crowd.

"What would you like us to call you?" - Cyndia
"Mud. My name is mud." - ex-tent

They continue to chat, and realize that the puddle's voice is sounding weaker.

The puddle makes a bad pun about Carlton departing, and Cyndia throws a corndog at it. The corndog explodes, slaying the poor, defenseless puddle.

[Okay, so they killed a tent, not a gazebo. Gazebo makes a better section title. Deal. :-P]

Maria starts coming to. They feed her.

Cyndia leaves a note saying that the master seems to have disappeared along with Carlton, but if they reappear, please send them to Random or Benedict.

They go to Random's, and it's still free of demons. They knock on the door. A staff member flames Random for being a lazy, worthless, no-good coward while informing them that Random is preparing to flee.

They head upstairs. Random is throwing things all over the place in a panic. They tell him that Carlton and the shifter who was trying to help them are gone. Random misinterprets. They flame each other.

Damia gets Random's trump of Oberon, Cyndia gets Random's trump of Benedict. Random throws cards extremely well.

Cyndia tries to shift out of the Courts using the Spiral, and ends up on the Courts' side of the Abyss. She tries again, but fails to cross again. There are lots of demons around the Abyss, and they seem to be climbing out of it.

Damia tries Oberon's trump, but it is blocked.

Cyndia tries Benedict's trump, and he answers. He is quite disturbed when Cyndia tells him that her brother just disappeared, along with the shifter that was fixing him. Cyndia mentions that they are with Random who is about to flee. Benedict is not surprised at Random's action, and offers to invade the Shapeshifters' Guild for them to recover his son.

[It's not a charge card, it's a trump]

Cyndia tells Benedict how many people and birds she is going to be sending through to him. She feels Benedict walking with the trump to a better receiving point, which is something that cannot be done with Cobalt-style trumps. He absentmindedly kills three people as he walks.

Cyndia walks downstairs and the trump link stays up, much to her surprise. Damia goes with her, and chats with the majordomo, warning him about the message they left at the Shapeshifters' Guild. They ask him to forward any messages to them via Benedict. The majordomo asks if there is any truth to the rumor that she is the queen of Amber, and she reluctantly admits that there may be some truth in that rumor. Yet another person offers their condolences to Damia upon finding out that she is Random's mother.

The majordomo makes the assumption that the entire clan are Amberites, and therefore entitled to free reign of the facilities, and refuses to hear any arguments to the contrary. He is confused when Damia mentions that Cyndia is a family member and Benedict's daughter. The majordomo introduces himself as Rool.

When Damia tells Cyndia that the edict of the king is that there are no interrelations between family members, she is vastly amused.

They go to Benedict, throwing the birds through first. As they are passing the birds through, they see a few demons pop into existence nearby, scream, catch on fire, and float up into the air.

Benedict is standing outside a fairly impressive-looking building. The birds are being stabled by thoroughly battered people with many old wounds. Occasionally a phalanx of warriors emerges from inside, the leader runs over, talks with Benedict for 10-15 seconds in a very concise military language, and then runs out. Cyndia and her rook listen and try to learn the language.

Benedict fills Cyndia in on the situation - the Courts are being overrun by demons that are appearing all over the place without disappearing from any known location, and crawling out of the Abyss. Many houses are beset, and many have fallen from within. Benedict says that he has been securing all of the locations that he can secure, and that the Warlord has acquired his assistance in securing the meeting hall.

Benedict asks for Cyndia's favorite attack form, saying that he will try to fit her into a formation. "Aerial" Benedict offers to fit her and the rooks into a gryphon wing when they return for new instructions in 15-17 minutes.

Benedict realizes that he has been ignoring the others, and looks to see if he can do anything with them. He looks them up and down, and mostly dismisses them.

Cyndia says that Damia is a skilled healer, but after some discussion, Benedict determines that her inability to heal shapeshifters negates most of her usefulness, since almost no non-shapeshifters survive long enough to be healed. Damia argues against the cruelty in abandoning non-shifters on the field of battle. Damia asks if there are any Amberites that need healing, and Benedict tells her that "Martin is inside with his arm half-severed... he was in a bit of a tiff and was not as careful as he should have been."

Damia goes inside to work on Martin.

The others chat about battle. Cyndia will be in bird form, Blaze will do magely stuff, and Natasha will drop marshmallow fluff on the enemy. The others will stay here.

Inside, Martin is arguing that he wants to get a scar out of this wound, and the medic is trying to knit him up neatly. Damia takes over and shooes out the Warriors' Guild person. After some discussion, Damia gives in and pokes the barbell-shaped pins through Martin. Martin shows off a golden, very powerful blade to Damia, then runs out past the others to rejoin the fun.

Damia goes back outside.

Damia argues with a healer, and then Benedict, over the value of healers in combat and threatens to walk out into the battle herself, alone. Cyndia invites Damia to come along with them; Benedict objects to "my queen" entering the battle. Cyndia reiterates the invitation, and Benedict accedes to his daughter's judgement. Cyndia quietly orders the rooks to protect Damia.

Damage Control

Ilkandacian is still in the Paths of the Dead, negotiating with Verra. He explains to her that Cathryn and he are conducting a single search, not two separate searches, and Verra agrees that that compensation has already been arranged for that search. Verra then states that the only matter remaining is recompensating her for the trip back. "What manner of boon would you want from me for that service?" "Thirty minutes of your time..." "Gladly" "...in my bedchambers." "Lead the way."

Verra is very good -- excellent for a non-shapeshifter.

After thirty minutes and a mutual catching of breath, Verra offers to send Ilkandacian anywhere within her range, including Sethra's current location. Ilk agrees. Verra invites him to return, and reaches in a way not within this dimension, pulls out a small black pebble, and hands it to him. She says that it will contact her. Ilk takes and studies the pebble briefly - it's a reverse scrying device with no obvious tricks. He absorbs it into himself, and Verra twists space around him, and he's in a room that has Pattern-laced walls.

Ilkandacian pulls in his Logrus tendrils tighter as he arrives, and sees Sethra and Cathryn enter a rift in space, very similar to the one that he saw Ingold and the AD&D run step through. He studies the rift, and concludes that Logrus works oddly in that place, magic does not work at all, and that if he tried to follow, he might end up stuck. He reaches for Cathryn with a Logrus tendril and isn't sure if he makes a connection or not, which is a very unusual outcome. The rift closes, and he discovers that the tendril doesn't want to drop. He leaves it up.

Assuming that the Pattern in the walls implies an Amber-ish environment, Ilk shifts from Dragaeran form into his standard human form. The room looks like an exercise room of some kind, and there is a small uniform in the corner. After failing to find anything hidden, he leaves the room, deciding to remain visible and just talk his way out.

Ilk wanders down a long hallway towards a lantern-lit area and notices a guard. The guard fails to notice him, but starts at a scuttling rat. Ilk magically scopes out the guard - his mind has been muddled somewhat, and the magic has just a touch of a Dragaeran tinge in it. It's not Sethra's signature, but it might be Verra's. Ilk continues to a stairwell and heads up, following Cathryn's Logrus-trail and not leaving one of his own.

After quite some time, he encounters a guard. "Hello there." "Halt!" "Greetings. How goes?" "This is a restricted area. What are you doing here?" "Leaving." "How did you get down here? Where is your pass?" "I was following the Dutchess Cathryn." "You must have entered during the last shift - you're not on my log." The guard flips through his log book. Ilk wanders over and looks at the book as well. "Lady Cathryn and entourage." "See?", and Ilk points at that line. "You should still have a pass. Here, let me write you one." The guard scribbles on a piece of paper and signs it. Ilk thanks the guard, makes a pocket for the pass, and tucks it inside. They chat briefly, and the guard mentions that the pass might keep him from being shot out of hand -- everyone is very edgy due to "all of the recent invasions". Hmm.

Ilk reaches the top of the stairwell, and upon seeing three unmarked corridors and noticing that Castle Amber has finished eating this section of Cathryn's Logrus-trail, decides to head directly out to Arden to look for Cara's seal. He shifts for maximum inconspicuous armor, brings up magical shields to standby status, and teleports into Arden, near the area where his troops were fighting during Julian's invasion.

He arrives in the middle of a horde of soldiers who are all pointing guns at him, and Logrus-pulls a few shadows over, vacating the target area just in time to let the soldiers shoot each other in the crossfire.

He decides to Logrus-search for Cara's seal from here, and fails to find it, but notices that there are three areas where the Logrus is blocked. He tries to stick a magical probe into those areas, and notices that magic is blocked there, as well. Ilk casts an invisibility spell on himself and teleports to the fringes of one of those areas, which are being given a wide berth by the soldiers. The first dead area corresponds to the place where Vlad was standing before he disappeared. Ilk shifts his eyes to look for the ring, but the dead area is just bare smooth black glass. Ilk receives the impression that Pattern and shapeshifting wouldn't work in one of those zones, either, and to test this theory, shifts into a three-hundred pound bunny rabbit and pokes a paw into the zone. His paw fades into view, and starts reverting into his demon form. Ilk withdraws his hand, the invisibility is restored, and he starts regaining control over his hand.

Ilk hops over to the second dead spot, and notices that it corresponds to where he was standing during the battle. The third spot seems to be centered on where Cathryn was standing during the battle as well...

Ilk fails to spot the ring in any of the dead zones, and, while he is waffling, he is tripped over by a running soldier. A number of the items that the soldier was carrying fall into the dead zone and start melting. Ilk decides not to burrow under the zones and teleports Home.

He pokes around in Home. No echo. Still no success finding Vlad. Ilk works some more on reinforcing Home against Vlad's absence. Ilk acquires a status report from one of his troops in House Cara - the flow of tiny black demons has been decreased to a trickle, and those are being easily mopped up. Ilk acquires a status report from a staff member, who invites him to join them in their card game inside their fiery bubble.

Ilk scrys magically into House Cara and then teleports into the antechamber. He wanders around for a while checking on matters. Once he has reassured himself that the situation here is stable, he looks outside the House. The area is filled with demons. They don't appear to be hostile, but they are exhibiting a great deal of solidarity. Ilk tries to poke a tendril out and see if they are affected similarly to the little black demons, but hits a powerful but crude Logrus shield, being held up by many of the demons. Rather than bulldoze through the shield and annoy the demons, Ilk punts.

Ilk finds House members who are not currently within the house, and notifies those not otherwise preoccupied that the House is safe, should they need a place to shelter.

Ilk sends out a Logrus tendril to Suhuy's place, and finds it completely hard blocked, which is a very rare occurance, considering that Suhuy can selectively block tendrils and usually admits Ilk. He leaves a message for Suhuy, stating that he is around, and that if his presence could be of assistance in any way, he is available.

Ilk scrys into the antechamber of the Council rooms and spots Marial's apprentice pacing back and forth. He projects an illusion of himself into the room, and chats with her. She's upset at having been left behind when everyone else left. The Warlord left to go talk with Benedict, and the demons outside won't attack, even when she taunts them. She also mentions that there was an explosion not too long ago over by the Shapeshifters' Guild.

After telling some appropriate House Cara members that they should contact him via his troops, and telling his troops to contact him via Home, he teleports into the antechamber of the Shapeshifters' Guild. They're doing a fire theme today; Ilk shifts into his Avatar form. They are preoccupied with themselves and have no useful information about the demon situation. Ilk pokes part of himself through the wall to check out the area in front of the Guild. It looks like an explosion took place a while ago; there are demons covering the entire area. Ilk returns to House Cara.

Ilkandacian tries to scry into the antechamber of the Warriors' Guild and is blocked, so he raises shields and teleports into the inside transfer point. He is not attacked, and walks outside.

--EORun--