![[previous]](gu-prev.gif){kind=small}
![[next]](gu-next.gif){kind=small}
Back to the index.
A messenger from House Cara outside Thelbane tells Ilk the House has been under attack internally since he entered Thelbane. Ilk asks Jean why he didn't say anything. Jean didn't see anything - it was all inside the House. Ilk asks Caine, Raven, Zack, and Random for help. Random wimps out. Caine asks if Ilk wants some sailors, then sends Raven out for reinforcements.
Jean charges into House Cara. Enemy mages are melting his hosts. Jean tries to swat the most annoying mages.
There is a Logrus note being handed to Ilk, with the signature of the guy on the roof. A section of the roof just fell down.
Ilk follows the attackers' ways inside House Cara back to House Helgram. He doesn't feel so good. There are molecules of his shifters melting in front of his eyes.
Jean goes through some of the ways. They lead to Helgram, and all of him there unrack all of the really nasty spells that Celeste told him to never cast.
Ilk tries to trump Cassandra. He fails. He asks Jean to help push. Ilk finds himself in the center of a nasty chaos storm. There are some Jean bits winging about. He tries to pull himself out, and decides to reach directly for the Logrus and stop before he makes it all of the way there.
There is feedback along the Jeans.
The Jeans tractored into the form of a mecha are now one huge Jean. The rock giant has broken out in purple spots that are growing worms. One of the penta-Jeans has turned into marzipan and has begun to melt. A number of Jean's spaceships are now bristling with weapons.
Cassandra notices that one of the five Jeans with her has grown icy cold.
Cassandra - "Jean? You're cold, Jean."
Jean - "My brain was melting."
[Helgram now has a wading pool of chaos!]
"Zack" trumps around, looking for reinforcements.
Norton keeps going down the list, with no success until he reaches Talos. Talos is already in a firefight, so "Zack" hangs up.
He gets through to Cassandra. Cassandra drags Cailin along, claiming "you need practice." They come through.
Norton borrows Osric's trump from Cassandra. They establish contact, and start passing Osric's army through.
Ilk and Norton in "Zack" discuss the possibilities of getting Zack back into his body.
Norton - "Hey! You're talking to me!"
Celeste(?) - "It was the only way to get
you out of my head."
A message is relayed - need Norton in Chaos.
Norton knows that he needs to rest, and asks Ilk if her can speed things up here. Ilk notices that Norton has control over the time flow of this shadow, and twists the knob. They play with the knob a bit, then settle down for a very quick nap.
[The GM is a liar]
"Zack" and Cassandra work out some plans for mopping up the attackers in the House and discuss possible treachery. They start issuing commands. Osric, "Zack", and Cassandra start ordering around the armies.
Norton wakes up in his shadow. Norton and Ilk in Norton look for Zack's body, and find it, encased with Pattern, in a room in an island about a mile away from Rebma.
Ilk spends (?)
There are sharks infesting the waters around the island. Various techniques are tried to repel them, until Norton puts a 'L' on his head. He puts one on Faythe's head, and the Jeans refuse. The Jeans just rip apart sharks the old fashioned way.
There is a polite attack at Neville's door. "Excuse me, sir - we are managing the evacuation." "What?" He bows appropriate to someone at his door.
The messenger is invited into Neville's room.
"I believe we are currently under attack... There is a large hole that was just ripped into the center of the House, and it is now growing."
"Where are we going?" The messenger replies that they are evacuating to one of their black zone kingdoms, and that the majority of the casualties were their shock troops, but a number of the elders were also caught in the explosion.
Neville - "What is the nature of the hole?"
Neville asks if he and his mages could take a look at the hole, and is told that the two teams that were sent have not returned, and the hole grew after the second team.
The visitor leaves the room.
Neville asks his mages if they want to stick with him or stay here. They stay that sticking here is their best chance of survival - their enemy has approached him, so might stop to listen for an answer before attacking.
Neville and company start severing ways inside the House to and from the part of the House with the hole.
He notices several House mages casting at the hole and occasionally being eaten by it. He notices a number of little things scurrying past, away from the hole, and decides to not bother the Jeans. Jean decides to leave one of the mattresses around to keep an eye on things.
Ilk drifts towards a shallow and climbs out. There is a tingle at the edge of which he is uncertain.
Ilk tries to send a note to Zack saying, "Fell into Chaos storm. Feeling better now. Resting." Cassandra receives the note, is confused, and passes it off to Zack. Cailin and Osric are surprised. Jean tells them that there is a big black swirly sucky thing on the other side of a number of the gates in Helgram.
Zack - "How did it get there?"
Jean - "I'm sure I don't know."
"I'm sure that those spells that Celeste told me never to cast had nothing to do about it."
Norton trumps Celeste. She is asleep, and answers the trump call in her sleep, while walking along the beach with Brand in her dreams. There's a Norton off to the side waving, but not in the frame. They exchange pleasantries, and then Norton gets to the point.
"Ah, the little demon boy."
A little demon in footy pajamas appears next to the little Norton and starts waving.
Norton asks ?
Brand turns into a yeti and runs off.
"Are you awake?"
The Norton in the background shakes his
head negatively.
Norton - "What would happen if he let them
all go at once?"
Celeste - "Don't."
Norton - "What if he already did that?"
The horses turn into yetis and run off.
Celeste - "Where?"
Norton - "House Helgram."
Celeste - "He did this in Chaos?"
Norton - "I believe so."
Celeste - "I'm in Amber. Bye-bye."
Norton asks Celeste in her head to picture Ilk. He concentrates on it, and connects to the Ilk next to the Primal Pattern.
Norton - "There's a big sucking black hole
in the middle of Chaos."
Ilk - "And I'm a ballista bolt pointed across
the Primal Pattern at Dworkin."
Ilk - "Hey, Suhuy?"
Suhuy - "Is it in our [...?]"
Norton - "Enjoy your flight"
Norton drops the contact.
Jean moves the heavily armed flying saucers around House Cara and starts taking potshots. House Cara is being shelled. Zack turns to Jean.
"There's something called collateral damage. Let me explain it to you."
Zack checks with Cassandra, and then approves Jean's plan of attacking House Helgram. Ten saucers zip through the ways. Eight of him encounter the hole; two are flung clear. One is flung back out of the hole as a giant walking stick. The walking stick shields and comes around for another pass. One of the two saucers unracks spells, and the other starts using the wave motion gun.
Neville tries to point the two saucers at each other, and is suddenly no longer at his House. He's standing in a room marked as the reception room to the Mages Guild along with his two mages.
Jean thinks the wave motion gun splatted that one, and the saucers and the stick wander around some more causing damage.
Neville looks at his mages. One of their beards is still smoking. They discuss the situation briefly, then portal back after verifying that those things are gone and resume trying to close ways, deal with the hole, and then meet with the others in the black zone.
Cassandra is getting a trump call. It's her master. Princess Chandra says that Flora is here wishing to take a contract out on the ones who hurt her child. Cassandra asks Jean about the situation, and Jean says that the people that were trying to[...]
Jean experiments with the buttons, trying to find something that will kill someone without damaging their brain. He has little success - shifters are hard to kill softly. At one point he loses one of his ships - someone did something to short out all of the connections and leave it motionless. The walking stick picks up the saucer while being covered by the other saucer.
Jean summons the mecha-Jean, and has the local Jeans mob the area. Jean tells the folks at Cara that he just broke a hole through the outside of House Helgram. Jean realizes that he's losing at House Helgram. He sends over the other forty flying saucers, and is soon no longer losing.
Zack asks Jean to look for approaching armies.
Jean notices that the ground is starting to soften around Cara. He tells the others. Osric and Cailin look - nothing magical is happening down there. Zack is fairly certain that someone is trying to add a lot of instability to the area. He contemplates throwing Pattern at it.
Jean tries a spell that he thinks might help on a corner of the House. It slows things a bit. Zack tries to use Pattern to stabilize things a bit. They look around for Caine, but can't find him. Jean tries to show Cailin and Osric how to help. Osric is not physically present. Cailin starts working along crystalline lines. The walls slow their move to translucency and the floor goes diamond.
Zack asks Jean if he knows where any Ilks are, and asks him to tell Ilk that someone is destabilizing the area around House Cara. "Suhuy? What could one theoretically do about that?" "Suhuy, could you deal with that?" "Sure."
Pattern-Suhuy walks over to Jean. "May I borrow your hand for a moment?" Jean holds out his hand. Suhuy draws something on the hand and flows through it. There is now a Suhuy in his head shifting things around until he can flow out of the right one.
Suhuy comes out of the Jean closest to the council on House Cara.
"Zack", Cassandra, and Cailin can all see Pattern Suhuy - Norton cannot.
Pattern Suhuy asks if he can join in the spell and asks for Cailin's hand for a moment. Suhuy inscribes something in Cailin's hand. It looks to Cailin like a couple of notes of music. Then tendrils of stability start flowing through the crystalline structure he has created. Zack has a very disconcerting feeling about this. It feels like he's drawing a Pattern.
Ilk in Home gets the heebie-geebies. He opens a gate to Cara, fails, and tries a bit farther away repeatedly above the ground near House Cara, and finally gets through. He notices the Pattern energy swirling around the house.
Ilk - "Guys? Why are you filling my House with Pattern?"
The situation is discussed briefly, then Zack asks if he can borrow Atalanta's cat to go talk to Ilk. They play with the horse.
Ilk and Zack talk. Zack passes a trump of Cassandra to Ilk. They chat.
Cailin and Cassandra come through. Jean tractors the boat, the starcore is dropped, and the group heads off.
Zack hears screams as the Pattern works its way inside the walls of the house. Zack mentions that Pattern is bad for the inhabitants, and the ghost of Suhuy hadn't realized that.
Jean tries to pull people through the Pattern, and they die horribly. He discusses the problem with Cassandra. She trumps Zack. He reassures them that the Pattern stopped at the walls.
Jean is pinned in place by lots of Helgramites. They're dying by the hundreds to keep him from gaining ground.
Jean fills REN on what is going on. REN is not amused. Ilk feels a summoning. He sends a tendril towards the source, and finds it in the center of the Dancers guild. Ilk and REN chat via the Jean band. REN is cynical, and passes power from Jean to Ilk through the summoning.
More info is acquired about the black zone. A Dzurlord army is found, most of the way to Ygg. Ilk opens a bug in front of the commander and greets him, and the commander returns by casting a bug in front of Ilk. They say that the enemy has been running in front of them for some time. Ilk invites them to come assault an enemy stronghold. The commander rips a crude two-stage gate through to Chaos via the orb.
The commander is reluctant to follow Cassandra's lead. She challenges him for command. He accepts.
Cassandra dodges his first blow and slaps him along the side of the head. His eyes go from cool green to ice green and screams something incomprehensible. She sidesteps him again and slaps him again. He augers into the dirt, apparently unconscious. Cailin notices that he's not out cold, but in the middle of a spell that is intended to dissipate her very existence. He starts unweaving it, and tells Cassandra. She kicks him in the kidney and insults him repeatedly. He's bleeding from where she kicked him. He wanders off to have a chat with his medic. None of the other Dzurlords rise to her repeated challenge. One of the Dzurlords who happens to be female comes over to her and thanks her, saying that her brother has been beating the snot out of her for years. She also suggests that Cassandra take his sword as a matter of honor.
Cassandra takes his weapon. She now has a Morganti greatsword slung across her back.
They enter the black zone kingdom.
The bell echoing in Ferethyn's castle was getting louder and louder, and just when Ilk was beginning to shift to deal with the vibrations, the room began to turn, as if the entire. He plays with the bell, and is almost squished. Ilk pokes his hand into the space and is sucked through.
There are three others Ilks there After some brief confusion, Ilk raises the sign of the Logrus and notices that none of the others have Logrus.
One is insistent that he is the only, real Ilk. One is being passive, and the third is in shock.
They search the room. There are impressions in the stonework, such that if all four of them stood in the right niche, something would happen.
Ilk maneuvers the arrogant one into "discovering" the impressions and then leading the effort to get everyone in the correct niches.
They all cycle out, one at a time.
Ilk is now in something similar to a pleasure dome. No specific people. No Ferethyn, no Vlad, no Suhuy, no Logrus. Ilk continues. He works out the pattern of pleasures to sample to get out.
He's in a cell in Amber. Well, not really. It just looks like Amber. He can't externalize Logrus or raise magic. He sticks his hand through the food slot and pops off the bar and wanders around. He notices that the area isn't quite accurate, and that the walls, floor, and ceiling don't seem to have Pattern in them. He goes up to the door to the Pattern room, opens it, and wedges the door open with the bar from the door to his room. He looks inside - there's no Pattern, but a sitting room that looks a lot like the room he first entered in Ferethyn's castle.
Ilk enters the room, and the presence of Pattern fades away.
Back to the index.