Episkopos Thelo Ethelo, Game 16 Official Recap
Episkopos Thelo Ethelo: Session 16 Official Recap:
When we next meet up with our players, little time had passed, though it was time enough to rest and replenish their stores of energy. With the return of Xander, the team was able to warp directly to Emtrey's private lab, under the safety of his security systems. Rook submitted to Emtrey's assistance, and had his body completely cleansed of any devices capable of tracking him. Rook then quickly left to go find Townshend to have him get started on pulling together contacts to get stories reported on major news networks.
Emtrey then immediately set to examining the strange, nightmarish girl that he had succeeded in capturing in their most recent skirmish. The girl had a collar on, one that seemed similar, if quite a bit more sophisticated, to the “slave” collar Esme's “sister,” Sarah, had been forced to wear. Emtrey started to remove it, but then thought better of it, checking the girl's entire system for “booby traps.”
What Emtrey found chilled him. Someone out there was creating technology as sophisticated as he could make, including different specialized nanite colonies. Emtrey was able to clean the girl's system out, but not without irrevocably damaging the collar. After scanning her, Emtrey decided to leave her in stasis for the time being. From the girl's Alpha wave pattern, even completely sedated and her powers made fully dormant, the girl was still experiencing terrifying nightmares. Gwen suggested that there might be something the people at the temple could do to help the poor girl.
As soon as she had said that, Sam let Emtrey know that he had successfully created a program which had used the information from the three languages on the scroll to decipher the language used in the writing on the machine. However, Sam quickly became alarmed, as he realized that as soon as the language had been successfully deciphered, something had happened, and his translation program had started to expand and self modify.
Sam acted quickly, and moved all of the code onto first a separate terabyte hard drive, and then to a full server to give it enough space to finish expanding. He then severed the server's communication with all outside systems and let the program finish modifying.
When it had finished, Sam, in astonishment, stated that it was attempting communication with the outside world. Sam attached a monitor, camera, and peripherals to allow two way visual communication. The program responded by creating a visual avatar for itself. What the group saw was a woman, fair of skin and hair shaded light, though not exactly blonde. The woman's features were striking, though not uncannily beautiful in the way that Esme and her sister were.
Emtrey introduced himself and asked the entity what they could call her. To Emtrey's surprise, she recognized his name, and remarked at how similar he seemed to the Dr. Morrison she knew, in his younger days. She introduced herself as Anashira, or Ana for short. The program, Ana, asked where, and “when,” she was. Emtrey answered by explaining about the translation work and the program he and Sixis had created to facilitate it. Ana smiled knowingly.
Emtrey introduced Ana to the alien male the group had found on the ship buried on the moon, whom he had taken to calling “The Engineer,” recognizing some similarity in features, and remembering the similiarity the language he had seen written on the ship to the language on the machine. The creature cocked its head curiously, and attempted to speak with her. At first, Ana just listened, but then she started to speak, slowly at first, but more rapidly in moments. The Engineer eventually ended the conversation in his abrupt and peculiar fashion, and went back to monitoring the life pods holding the two other members of his species.
Ana explained to the group that speaking to the Engineer had been like someone who knew Ancient Latin would feel like speaking to someone who was speaking Italian in today's era.
The group decided that they can ill afford to wait any longer. Esme, in particular, was eager to see her husband and Sarah. They contact Sixis, who arrived in his usual quick fashion, but they had to actually persuade him to come, which was unexpected. When Sixis arrived, he seemed even more grumpy and taciturn than usual. When they questioned him about it, Sixis revealed that he had again been forced to fight the strange creature that had destroyed his mechanics' vehicles. Sixis stated that they had both been severaly injured, but that he was pretty much healed now. Sixis told the group that the creature had gotten away, but only barely, and he had no idea where it had escaped to.
After that, the group departed to head to the temple. Xander insisted that it would be important, for reasons he was not exactly sure of, that they take his newly finished flying vessel, instead of just warping to the temple. Emtrey loaded onto the ship the life pod that the girl they had captured currently occupied, as well as the server and peripherals containing the newly awakened Ana AI, and the group set off.
The trip there was uneventful. When the group arrived in the air over the temple, Agent Sheng, the young man they had met in Singapore, requested permission to teleport aboard. Xander lowered the ship's defenses, and Sheng and another young man appeared. The teleporter introduced himself as Bright, then quickly teleported away, leaving Sheng on board to guide the ship down and lead the group into the temple.
As the group entered the temple, Esme recognized many of the men, women, and children that had occupied the carnival among the other inhabitants of the temple. Esme contacted Max over their mental connection, and Max met the group before Sheng had had a chance to lead them all the way inside. Esme literally flew to her husband, and the two embraced passionately. Max led Esme off so that the two of them could get at least a short time alone.
Sheng led the group further down into the temple until they came to what was clearly a very advanced medical and research wing. Emtrey recognized his parents' most advanced work, devices that, even though they had been produced over ten years ago, would be considered far beyond cutting edge today. Emtrey was mystified that his parents' legacy had touched even this place, but filed the thoughts away for later.
While they were in the medical wing, an older man who bore striking resemblance to Agent Sheng met them. His hair was long, a deep blue-black, though liberally strewn with strands of silver and white, and braided in a queue down his back. He wore robes like the other monks at the temple, but around his left hand was wrapped a beaded Rosary with a crucifix pendant. Agent Sheng introduced the man as his grandfather, Paul San Tso Wilks, otherwise known as Zao Zhen Sheng, the grandmaster of their order.
The elder Sheng bowed to the group, and immediately commented on the the girl held in the stasis pod. He enlisted Gwen's help, and took the girl off to one of the private rooms in the hospital wing to see if Gwen and he could help the girl with the nightmares plaguing her mind. Emtrey made as if to follow, but the group was surprised to receive a mental communication from Aria Darmon. Aria let them know that she and Adam were waiting for them down in the subterranean chamber with the machine.
Emtrey, Sixis, and Xander met a somewhat annoyed looking Esme, Max in tow, down in the chamber. Adam and Aria were waiting for them. The group witnessed a very strange interaction between Adam, Aria, and the AI. The AI's Ana avatar looked at Adam and Aria, and everyone present noticed that something passed between them, starting with very well concealed jealousy on the AI's part that ran to acceptance, and then some sort of realization that made the AI smirk. No words passed between the three, and the interaction lasted no more than a few moments, but it left the group somewhat puzzled.
However, as soon as Emtrey faced the AI toward the machine to have it start beginning translating the machine, something curious happened. The AI froze in place, and the machine began to flash, various sections activating and subsiding. Emtrey stepped forward, thinking to stop the process, but Adam and Max both warned him not to. Emtrey stepped toward the machine and began tracing the language with his fingers, trying to make sense of what was going on. As he touched the machine, knowledge began to pour into his head, and he began to recognize the writing on the machine with more and more increasing certainty.
The group saw Emtrey's muscles arch and spasm, his eyelids fluttering, as he became a part of whatever was happening with the machine. When the reaction finally let Emtrey go, the machine went completely dark. Max, puzzlement on his face, walked toward the machine and touched it himself.
“I can't hear it,” Max said.
Emtrey looked at the AI server, and found that it too was dark, completely inactive. Everyone else noticed that Adam had collapsed to his knees, and Aria was holding him protectively. Suddenly, in the center of the machine, lights began to reappear. Slowly, the machine made as if it was reactivating, and for a few moments, in the open center of the machine's great wheel shape, a three dimensional picture hologram of Anashira appeared.
Suddenly, Max cried out, “All defenses are down!”
And all hell broke loose.
A massive clock portal, reminiscent of Time Knight's but with the hands running backward, appeared in the midst of the room. When it finished opening, soldiers, Rook's mirror images once again, began marching through. Behind them, the group could see more soldiers, and behind them, a literal horde of squat, disgusting, twisted creatures. Beyond them, farther still, the group could see three figures, one clearly Omega, one a massive demonic figure with great wings and glowing red eyes, and last, there also stood the man who called himself Kyrios.
Esme, seeing Kyrios, went into a fury and slammed her foot into the ground, sending a shockwave ahead of her, knocking the first ranks of soldiers off their feet. The group made quick work of them, while Max stayed with the machine, concentrating on helping it finish its process of reactivating and getting its defenses back up.
As the fighting continued, Adam, Aria, Sixis, Xander, and Esme drove the incoming attackers back through the gate, and took the fight to them on the other side. As they did so, another portal opened, and Kyrios stepped from where he had been standing beside Omega into the temple. Emtrey elected to stay behind, and he and two of his unoccupied clones took on Kyrios alone.
Xander, operating on hunches he had gained from watching how Omega was acting during the fight so far, believed that Omega's joining with the other side might be reluctant at best, so he tested the gate into the temple to see if there was any resistance to him closing it to keep any more enemies from getting through. There was no resistance at all, so Xander forced the warp gate closed.
As Xander was in the process of closing the gate, Emtrey and the two of his clones that he had with him unleashed a chain of stun attacks upon Kyrios. Together, they succeeded in knocking him down, but even prone and unconscious, Kyrios fought Emtrey's attempts to render him powerless.
Emtrey, finally succeeded in taking Kyrios down completely, shutting off his Node altogether and locking him into a state of unconsciousness. However Emtrey, suddenly started in horror. As soon as Xander succeeded in closing the gate from the other side, Emtrey heard a series of popping noises, and suddenly, one by one, three more combatants were teleported into the chamber, each time by a man with pale skin and dark hair, wearing a black trench coat. Each time, as the man deposited a combatant, he immediately disappeared again, returning with another. By the time the teleporter disappeared the last time, Emtrey and his two clones stood to face M.U. Nity, Drone, and Trinity.
The fight began to rage once more. The group on the other side of the gate laid waste to the forces outside. Xander called in a strike from his ship, the Ragnarok, destroying over half of the horde of twisted creatures. Sixis took down the remaining soldiers, and Esme took down the remaining imps, while Adam and Aria took on the massive winged demonic creature. Omega was nowhere to be seen. However, while their fight went on, the group was completely unaware that Emtrey and his clones were fighting desperately to defend Max and the machine.
Emtrey dodged attacks from Drone's massive robotic constructs, M.U. Nity's hand to hand attacks, and blasts of power from Trinity's devices, but he and the clones kept the three of them at bay, trying desperately to buy Max and the Machine more time. Emtrey kept wondering where the temple's own defenders were, as he had seen ample evidence that there were many people of power here. However, he fought on, and just when it looked like Emtrey might have been about to succeed in taking down the three Bliss agents, Emtrey again heard that same popping sound that had heralded the incoming teleporter.
And behind him, to Emtrey's dismay, stood the real Kyrios, a wave of destructive telekinetic energy ready to release.
Emtrey almost had his own blast of bio-energy ready, but Kyrios was just a fraction of a second quicker. The wave caught everyone in the chamber, sending Emtrey and his clones tumbling, taking down M.U. Nity, Drone, and Trinity in the process. Worse still, the blast smashed into Max, severing his connection with the Machine. In whatever way the symbiotic relationship between the Machine and Max worked, when Max's physical connection to it was severed, something happened. The reactivation sequence stopped, and the Machine went dark once more, sections of it sending off sparks and jolts of electricity.
The teleporter returned, grasped Kyrios, and they both disappeared.
End of game session 16.