DRAFT Run log for 961119

Unseelie Faerie

After having breakfast in the White Dragon, Auricle was told that if she was discovered on the Omega campus without a pass, she wouldn't be able to leave. She received a pass to go to class, and left with Zack into Faerie.

Auricle has fun with the crowd tearing the kids apart, and counting on her Gargoyle to ping her in case she loses track of Zack.

*ping*

The sky cracks open, and Wrath of God (well, big bolts of lighting) starts blasting the townfolk. Auricle pancakes and starts burrowing down into the ground. Zack moves a bit away from the storm and tries to put the kid back to sleep. He conjures some chloroform, knocks out the kid, and heads out of town.

The town catches on fire and starts burning down. People scream and die horrible deaths. Auricle gets zapped repeatedly, but manages to successfully burrow down, down, down,... until she runs out of ground and starts falling. She begins to gather herself to grow wings, but hits bottom first, about seven feet down. It's pitch black - no light whatsoever, and attempts to shift to gather more light fail as well - there's none to gather. She asks the gargoyle for directions, but it lost track of Zack in the fight. Auricle moves around trying to find Zack, then flies upwards to burrow up to the town, but there's no roof. She heads down to find the floor, but there's no floor. Hmm. Auricle tries to shift shadow to get light, but can't -- it's dark.

Zack waits outside of the town until it finishes burning down, then heads in to look for Auricle. There are no visible corpses, but some locusts flying around. Zack conjures a little bug zapper, but the batteries don't work. More bugs show up, and start paying attention to him, taking painful bites out of him. Zack changes his scent such that he smells like a rock, and flicks off the ones that are still on him. One of them tears a long strip of flesh with it. The three big bug bites really hurt. Still no sign of Auricle. He conjures some healing salve, puts it on the wounds, and the edges of the wounds turn black. Zack conjures and assembles a sign, writing on it, "Sorry I missed you... if you run into the Queen, tell her you're a friend of Prince Wry, and she shouldn't treat you too badly."

Zack wanders out of town, heading towards court. As he leaves, he notices a horde of locusts covering his sign.

He notices that Faerie isn't changing - he's still on the same road, and it still looks like upstate Maine. Zack opens up a Faerie gate, and two mall cops jump through, calling "We've got you now!" They're carrying very impressive-looking guns. Zack closes the Faerie gate behind the cops, and pulls a Morganti dagger. "Hi, guys". The cops start reading him his rights, rights which include being dragged off by the ears to the mall office. Zack fades out. They conclude their litany, and when Zack declines to reappear, they both pull the triggers. *Zap* and they look at their scarred hands with melted gun dripping around them. The locusts converge, and Zack pokes one of the cops with the Morganti. He screams, and falls over. The locusts swarm on the dead cop, and Zack conjures a sugar water balloon and throws it at the second cop, who is then swarmed as well. The cop tries to slap at the ones eating him, but they don't go splat, and he is ripped to shreds. Zack opens another Faerie gate, and two more mall cops come through. Zack kills them with the Morganti. The first thrust at one of them bounces, and after which the cop proudly announces, "knife-proof vest!" Zack pokes that one in the eye, and the two bodies are subsequently eaten by locusts.

Zack notices that whereas 70-80 locusts land on a body, 200 or so take off after feeding. Zack decides to not feed them any more.

Zack continues walking down the roads, and eventually hitches a ride from a twisted, winged creature driving a little import car. They chat. "What do you do for your living?" "I'm a demon. What do you do for a living?" "I'm kind of a ward of the court" The demon tells Zack that this area is off limits - this is the Interdict Zone. The queen declared this interdict zone just before she disbanded court several years ago. "What general do you follow?" "Ingold" "Oh, you're Ingold's ward? No problem!" At one point during the drive, they pull up alongside a running, screaming woman. The demon rolls down his window, pulls her heart out, puts the heart in a bag between the two seats, then rolls up the window. The woman continues running and screaming.

Zack asks the demon to keep an eye out for Auricle, and to help bring her to him. The demon agrees to do so, and claims that it will put it on Ingold's tab.

They pass a naked woman who is chained to a rock. The demon rolls down the window, reaches out, over the top of the car, pulls out her spleen, and puts it in the bag.

The demon claims that Ingold is rumored to be in a big planet-thing, Acme. He decides to take Zack to Acme via the superhighway. They head into a massive, chaotic, run-down city, go up an entrance ramp, down an exit ramp, in a pastoral green place, where they see a small planet-thing hanging in the sky up ahead. The demon drops Zack off at the base of the planet, and leaves.

Omega City Mall Cops Break Easily

Cathryn and Theraat are discussing the differences between shadows as dimensions and Shadows as creatures, when Theraat spots a Shadow (creature, not dimension) walking into a designer nail boutique. She asks Flora if that place is any good, and the two decide to enter. They walk into the shop, and see a living Barbie doll taken to the extreme. Stilt heels, an itty-bitty waist, gigantic breasts, and wearing practically two bandaids on the top and a negligable skirt. The bimbo looks at Theraat and speaks in a nasal voice, and it sounds like she's chewing on something. Theraat looks at Flora, "What would you suggest?" Flora starts determining how to fix the Barbie doll, who, being dumb as a post, replies, "We only do nails here" Theraat selects a chair such that she could observe the Shadow - but the Shadow isn't there. Flora moves towards the chair, and disappears. Theraat sits in the chair, listens to the hideous mall music, and starts categorizing the tools in usefulness as weapons. A lady comes in, looking a lot like the one in the front, and says, "How can I help you?" Theraat gives the doll a hand. The bimbo is well below human norm in grace, and does poorly. About two minutes later, the area associated with the edge of the store breaks - it seems to be a static wall - and another Barbie doll comes flying through with a shiner and the imprint of Flora's rings. Theraat stands up and overrides her drone's protests by handing her the newly arrived drone's hand, and she starts painting it. Theraat pokes her hand through the wall, then follows with her head. Flora is cleaning off her nails in the next room. Theraat asks for some cleaning fluid, and then walks through into Flora's cube.

Cathryn sees a grate decend, blocking off the front of the store that Flora and Theraat went into, and the sign out front turns to closed. Cathryn goes through the grate and starts looking for her companions, ignoring the whining drone. She interrogates whe drone, who is clueless. The drone calls for a manager. Cathryn grills the drone some more. Cathryn goes out the back, leaving a hand behind to keep the door open. There are backs to other stores; they look active and busy. The drone complains about Cathryn leaving the door open. Cathryn tries to pull up the Logrus again, unsuccessfully.

Theraat and Flora split up and explore, looking for the Shadow, after agreeing to meet back in five minutes. Theraat doesn't find anything. She goes back, and doesn't find the one occupied cube she passed through before. She waits a minute; no Flora.

Cathryn pokes her head around the front to look for Benedict, but can't see him. She calls to one person in the group that is still at the table. They chat briefly about the nature of Omega. Bad things tend to happen here, and tend to occupy good folks. She picks up the phone and chats with the person on the other end. "Mall security!" They claim that they didn't send a manager - they sent three security forces. Cathryn hangs up the phone.

*FREEZE!*

Theraat's minute has ended. She picks up a tool, leaves, then returns, and the tools are reset. She walks in an arbitrary direction for a while. She enters the room with the two bimbos; they're fighting with nail polish. After over a hundred cubicles, she finds one with Flora. Flora apparently figured out the non-linearity of the cubes, and discovered how to leave a trail.

They don't head out through the back -- Flora says that that wall disintegrated the thing she threw at it. Flora gently tosses a tool at the wall, such that if there was any static charge on it, it would miss the wall. The tool pings off the wall. She flicks another tool; it goes through the wall, and leaves a hole.

The mall cop standing behind Cathryn is impaled by a pair of nail scissors. Two more mall cops come charging in, holding nasty-looking guns. "What have you done to him! You're under arrest!" They start reading her their rights.

Flora and Theraat go through the door and see Cathryn being menaced by two guys with big nasty guns. Theraat turns to Flora, "We've found Cathryn, and it looks like she's being menaced".

Cathryn notices someone appearing at her back, then before she can move, disappearing, then reappearing. It's Theraat. Theraat asks, "Are you in trouble?" "I came looking for you, this bimbette called the manager, and these guys showed up".

Flora looks them up and down and says, "Rent-a-cops, how droll. Come here, guys. No, no. There's a dangerous man behind us - he's the one who threw that at us". "Right then!" the cops explain, and they charge through the wall.

The three chat about relations, niceness of relation, and the implications of being related to different yous.

They decide to leave, and Flora determines that they should set up a trap for those cops. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a little lighter with a tank strapped onto it - an oxy-acetaline torch. She cuts through the gate, picks up the phone, waits for it to finish dialing, holds it away from her head, gives a scream, then hangs up. They leave the store and go back to their table.

Six mall cops come running in, look at the door, look horrified, and run in.

Flora: "I tend to write my own rules, dear. It's safer that way"

Theraat worries about the morality of killing folks. Cathryn and Flora explain that the mall cops aren't real. "Oh, they're illusions?" "Something like that".

Cathryn looks at the stores.

More mall cops are baited into the store when the Shadow chitters at the phone.

They discuss armies.

Theraat: "You have an army?"

Cathryn: "So could you".

Flora turns to a nearby male, vamps him, and says, "See?"

Theraat waits for the fact that she is twelve to penetrate Flora; it fails to do so.

Cathryn and Flora head to Bob's Magic Store, Flora hands Theraat a fat wad of bills and tells her to stay put, get some food, and watch the table. The store has big plastic bins of magical doodads, and there's some impressive stuff behind the counter. Bob is behind the counter; he looks like a dwarf and a tall elegant guy at the same time. The case is magically damping and hard to see through magically.

"Show me your impressive things!" Cathryn says to Bob. Bob chortles. "Strike that. Show me the magical items in the case, please." She asks for transportation stuff. Stuff to go places.

Bob starts swapping in and out the items in the case, and Cathryn notices that there's been lots of dimensional frobs all over the mall.

Bob eventually gets disgusted with Cathryn's gaze flickering between the tall guy and the dwarf, so he dispels the tall guy, only appearing like the dwarf. He says that most people that can see through the illusion don't have much need for his stuff. Bob apparently can only get them to other Omega-type places. Flora and Cathryn buy two mushrooms, as presents for Random. The dwarf offers to take them to Shaw, but says it's not very nice. They don't treat visitors well there.

FLora describes an Earth-like place, and Bob gives them two pendants. "Touch these two together, and anyone touching them will travel.

There are lots of food places here. There are pimply-faced kids serving Flarn and G'ack, as well as more normal fare. Theraat gets some food and heads back to her table. There's a cute guy next to her offering to help carry the food. He looks maybe sixteen or seventeen. Theraat hands him the food and watches him carefully, being almost, but not quite as paranoid as Cathryn. He sits down and arranges his food on the table as well. He says that he's cutting class at the moment. Theraat pumps him for information. He doesn't mention anything about his life before Omega. When pressed, he names himself Jim. He hands her a business card. It reads, "Jim's escort service, night and day, cute girls free." It clears, then displays, "Neat, ain't it?" "I'm programming this from my pocket!" Theraat plays with the device.

Jim: "They de-age you when you get to Omega"

Flora and Cathryn walk up behind Jim. Jim drools in Flora's general direction.

Cathryn hears "That wouldn't happen to be Julian of Amber, would it?" and turns to see a guy in a suit with a badge reading "Omega Vice Squad" The Vice cop refuses to give Jim the pleasure of asking for his pass. Jim is disappointed.

Theraat spills the beans to the Vice cop about Julian of Amber and Julian Warlock; the cop says that Julian Warlock showed up at class.

Flora tells the Vice cop that some students went into that shop, and they then poured some mall cops in. The cop sighs, and reluctantly walks into the store with slumped shoulders.

Back in Faerie

Auricle is fluttering around in a big black cavern. She decides to fall, and drops seven or eight feet then hits the ground.

She burrows through the rock by shifting her bottom surface into acid, and then something starts tossing shovel-fulls of rocks on her from above. Rocks are being thrown down on her from above as quickly as she's burrowing. She heads back up, and there's a net-ish thing above her. She goes through it, and is back above ground.

She's back in town. There's a big green pillar in the middle of town. She shifts into something that can locomote and heads towards the pillar. A bug lands on her. She pokes at it with a pseudopod. It ignores it. More land, and they proceed to eat her. She excretes an acid, and they ignore it. She excretes a base, they ignore it. She shifts to a really big locust, and they keep eating.

Zack is standing below a big blue marble. He knocks on the bottom, a door opens, a stairway drops to the ground, and he heads up. He's standing on ground, next to the White Dragon. There is no stairwell back down.

He opens up a Faerie gate, and two mall cops pop out of it. Two decency cops pop out from behind a tree. "You're going to see Judge Wyrm" They drag off the mall cops.

Zack goes through the gate. There are 15-20 mall cops surrounding the site of the gate, and they start reading his rights. Zack realizes that he just went from Omega to Omega City by a Faerie gate. Either that, or the mall is in Faerie. Zack pops back through the Faerie gate, and the mall cops shout "Charge!" The decency police on the other side of the gate say, "Excuse me, son. We have a big delivery coming." A paddy-wagon floats up and a ramp stretches down to the gate. The mall cops charge through the gate, up the ramp, and into the paddy wagon.

Zack goes back into the mall and moves to the side. He sees a guy with slumping shoulders resignedly walking into a nail shop. Mall shops push past him and charge towards the spot where the gate was.

Cathryn, Theraat, and Flora notice a movement of mall cops towards a new spot. They try to determine where Benedict went -- to the most defensible place, probably. Flora looks up... there's a dome above them. That's probably it.

Zack opens a new Faerie gate in the center of the mob of mall cops. He whips up an illusion of a guy that runs through the gate. The cops charge through the gate. He modifies the illusion to repeat occasionally to attract more mall cops, then spots a little girl poking at his gate.

Theraat is poking at the gate with eating implements, testing it.

Zack: "Don't poke at that - it's dangerous."

Cathryn notices that Theraat is talking to Zack and heads over.

Cathryn: "Are you the Zack I know?"

Zack: "Ah, Cathryn, I'm happy to see you."

Theraat: "You must know each other -- I'll leave you here. Cathryn - is he one of my relatives, too?"

Flora tells Cathryn that while they're catching up, she'll go to check out the dome with Theraat.

Cathryn explains to Zack that this isn't his reality, it's an alternate universe.

Cathryn: "You're a prisoner here"

Zack: "No, I haven't been sentenced yet, I have a pass".

Zack admits that his Faerie gates are having some problems.

Cathryn: "This isn't a good place - Flora and Benedict can't shift shadow here, except for very minor things, and I can't bring up the Logrus."

Zack tries to shift shadow and fails - the place is frozen somehow. It's immutable.

Cathryn: "The Julian here isn't from this universe - he's from a third one"

Zack: "You've been travelling a bit?"

Cathryn: "Not on purpose."

They continue chatting.

Another Omega Vice cop wanders up to them. "Excuse me a moment..." He asks where Julian of Amber is. He asks if they saw an Omega Vice cop. Cathryn says he went into the nail shop. The cop sighs and calls for backups. Two more arrive, and two of them enter the nail shop, and the third stays outside.

Flora and Theraat have reached the outside of the mall, and have climbed about a hundred feet up. Lots of mall cops come out and point guns at them, and tells them to come down and surrender. Flora drops a grenade on the mall cops, and the two continue up the wall.

The third guy outside the nail shop yells "Oh, shit!" and hits the ground.

Cathryn shifts to a gaseous form and Zack drops to the ground and brings up shields.

The nail shop explodes. It's a really, really big explosion, as if someone took all of those dimensions and slammed them back together again. Cathryn is spread throughout the mall, and Zack's shields are painted by cosmetics.

A bimbo-piece flies through the glass in the dome in front of Theraat. Flora looks down and says, "It looks like they've solved that problem" They decide to circle the dome and look for Benedict from their vantage point. They spot Benedict and Julian on the rim of the dome.

Cathryn notices Benedict, Julian, Flora, and Theraat on the roof, and Zack on the ground, looking intact behind his shields. There are piles of dead bodies all around, and lots of mall cops running around in a panic. The Omega vice cop stands up, brushes himself off, then walks forward and starts sifting through the rubble looking for his partners.

Back in Faerie Again

Auricle shifts to diamond. The locusts ignore it, and fly off. She looks at the signpost that is now revealed, and reads it. She wanders thataway down a road, and a moving carridge thingy drives by. There's a winged thing in it that rolls down the window and grabs at her. She grabs back and the arm rips off as the car continues. "Hey, give me that back." She returns the arm, and the demon puts it back. It knits into place. "How did you do that?" She tries to rip the other arm off for a demonstration, but the demon dodges. The demon offers her a bit of spleen, she eats a bit, then returns it. The demon grumps a lot, discovers that she is the one that Zack mentioned, and the offers her a ride. They drive off along the same route, and reach the marble. The demon continues its rant for another hour after they reach the marble. She waits for a bit, then touches it. A stairway comes down. It says, "Welcome!" She pushes the stairway back up and waits for Zack to return.

Leaving Omega

The stuff has stopped pinging off Zack's shields, he cleans them and looks around. The mall cops are running towards the nail shop. Zack levitates up, and spots Theraat, Benedict, Flora, and Julian standing on the rim of the dome. He can't see Cathryn.

Cathryn starts collecting herself at the same spot as the rest of them.

Benedict pulls a piece of rubble off the edge and tosses it casually over the edge. It hits something, which screams and falls.

There are three Omega Vice cops working themselves out of the rubble, joining the fourth outside the shop.

The group at the edge chats.

Cathryn shapes a mouth and warns Julian that there are Vice Cops looking for him. He panics briefly, until Zack conjures a pass for him, which Benedict signs.

Theraat speculates about joining the Decency Police, and Julian goes completely pale. He warns her to not even think that.

Julian speculates that he might be able to get them back to this place's Amber, utilizing a loophole in Trump.

Julian tells Benedict not to worry about his daughter - she'll be out in four years. Benedict asks about visiting rights.

Theraat asks about transportation - when they get to an Amber, can they just try the Pattern again?

Benedict says that they shouldn't trust the Pattern in important matters like that.

They speculate over which way they should head down - via the outside or inside. Benedict lofts a few shards of glass over the edge. Screams happen. Cathryn jumps off the edge and sprouts wings, heading down the outside of the mall. Flora and Theraat start climbing down. Benedict jumps, tumbles along the wall to slow his fall, and lands holding two pieces of glass, which he imbeds in the throats of two mall cops. Zack floats down and lands beside Benedict. A mob of mall cops converges on them, and two nasty, flea-bitten types come up and start harassing the mall cops, telling them they're out of their jurisdiction.

Cathryn whips out the amulets.

Theraat: Where are we going to?

Cathryn: I don't know.

They join hands and use the amulet, accidentally pulling an Omega City cop with them. They're in an earth-like place. Cathryn reaches for the Logrus, it's there. Zack tries to shift, it's hard, but it's real-real, not plastic-real. Flora looks around - "Home! Mosquitoes. "

They look around. It's a forest. They head to a nearby hut. The cop is scribbling his resignation onto his pad, and drops his hat, coat, and other insignia of office onto the ground, and dumps sticks over it. Zack hands the cop a gold watch and a fishing pole. The cop wanders off towards the stream.

They reach the hut. Zack goes off to knock on the door, and Benedict says, "Don't bother - it's abandoned." Theraat asks how he knows, and he shows her the signs. They all make sense once he points them out.

Zack: "How long?"

Benedict: "Four to five days"

Cathryn: "So, we're in a fourth one."

Flora: "Fourth, fifth, who keeps count"

Cathryn's trumps are cold. She trumps Random. It's a King Random. "... and who are you?" "The daughter of an alternate you" The trump connection breaks.

They go into the hut. Flora starts setting up for a bath. Benedict sits down and starts writing, then pulls out a trump, makes contact, hands the note through, then breaks the contact.

Cathryn: "Is this your Amber?"

Benedict: "No - I was verifying that"

Zack: "Who was that?"

Benedict: "Me" He grins. "I was explaining where Julian's pass came from"

Flora chases everyone out so she can bathe, and the rest of them chat outside.

Zack has noticed that the Dworkin-made trumps go to the nearest match, but the others don't. Fiona made the trumps for everyone after Random.

Left Behind in Faerie-Omega

Auricle is waiting below a giant blue marble for Zack to return.

--EORun--