Game Session Three
Episkopos Thelo Ethelo:
Game session three
Official recap:
Characters introduced:
NPC’S:
Craig Dikaios: Special Agent In Charge, Dallas FBI Field Office. Assigned to the FBI taskforce that Emtrey’s parents and the Darmons were working with when they were attempting to bring down Unity Medical Group.
Adam Darmon: Gwen’s father, husband of Aria Darmon, friend of Emtrey’s parents, Active for quite some time. Very much involved in the happenings leading up to the downfall of Unity Medical Group.
Aria Darmon: Gwen’s mother, wife of Adam Darmon, friend of Emtrey’s parents. She and Adam were somehow centrally involved in the most recent explosion of Active emergence back toward the end of the 90’s and the beginning of this decade.
Session 3 opened back in Emtrey’s secret personal medical facility. The group had succeeded in taking down the Unity Medical Group’s formerly defunct testing facility and rescuing Samuel Atkins, Eleka Stavros, and Jericho Sixis.
Jericho, despite being unconscious when the team first arrived to rescue him, had already healed completely from his ordeal, and was mostly just hungry.
Sam and Stavros were provided medical attention by Emtrey, and both seemed none the worse for wear. Stavros was initially wary of everyone, but Gwen, Esmeralda and Emtrey quickly calmed and reassured her. Once Stavros found out that Christopher Efkeria was the one that pointed the group their way, and that they had pulled her out of the Unity facility, she swiftly adjusted to her new surroundings. Stavros stated she had been a part of the dealings with Unity previously, and would gladly sign up again to make sure whoever was behind them went down for good.
Sam revealed that he had been the one to get Jericho and himself both captured. He had enlisted Jericho’s help to see if they could somehow interfere with or stop the kidnapping of little Samuel Duanda. Sam Atkins and Jericho had successfully made it into the server room of the Unity facility in Fort Worth on the same night that the team had rescued little Sam, and Atkins had actually succeeded in tying up the system’s security to allow them to get the information they needed to perform the rescue.
Sam then stated that it had been after that, when security had been on high alert, that he and Jericho had been caught. He and Jericho had nearly fought their way clear, but a very powerful Active with psychic abilities, a tall, thin man with dark hair and round glasses, succeeded in stopping them. Sam did not remember how their capture had actually come about, because the tall man looked at him once, and with that look, knocked him unconscious.
Jericho said that his memory from the Thursday evening before that until the Monday following, when he woke in the Unity testing facility on Lake Palestine, was completely blank. Jericho agreed to allow Gwen to try and help him recover the missing memories. After Emtrey gave Jericho a sedative to let him sleep, Gwen was successfully able to reach into his mind and restore his missing memory.
When Jericho awoke, he related that the reason he could not remember those missing days was because the tall man had literally had to blast his mind repeatedly to get past his resiliency in order to knock him unconscious.
Jericho had exhibited his powerful control over lightning to the group during the escape from the facility. Sam and Stavros proceeded to explain what they could do. Sam demonstrated his complete control over technology, and Stavros demonstrated both a remarkable fighting ability, as well as the ability to produce firearms of increasing size and complicated utility out of thin air.
They both agreed to join Emtrey, Stavros as the second in command of security under Chris, and acting head in his absence, and Sam as the head of IT for M3.
Everyone went their separate ways for a few days.
Xander managed to save the life of a tabloid reporter in his guise as Time Knight, and drum up some business for his motorcycle shop while doing it.
Esmeralda continued the training of her new understudy, but also hit the streets of Dallas, hitting up her contacts for any mention of strange activities, from rises in vigilantism, to rises in crime, to just plain weird, unexplainable occurrences. What she found was widespread mention of the tabloid article detailing how Time Knight saved the reporter.
Jericho had, over the past year, taken it upon himself to try to establish some semblance of order in his gang plagued neighborhood. He had saved his next door neighbors, an elderly Hispanic lady, her daughter, and her daugher’s young children, and had earned a reputation with the gangs as a frightening “brujo,” or male witch. He had been keeping up his relationship with his next door neighbors since then.
When Jericho called his next door neighbor to check on her and her family after his absence, he discovered that the car that he had driven to the Unity facility in Fort Worth had been driven back to his home. The description of the man that had driven his car home was unmistakably the man with round glasses that had kept them from escaping that first night.
Jericho had another vehicle that he had been working to restore still safe in his garage, and apparently unmolested. So, Jericho enlisted the help of Xander and Joe to actually dismantle the returned vehicle while he finished his restoration work. Xander found the car that the be-spectacled man had returned had been filled with various surveillance devices, though their placing seemed almost nonchalant, not very well hidden, and, seemingly, intentionally so. Xander and Jericho agreed that their newfound adversaries were sending some kind of message.
Jericho promptly took up residence in Xander’s shop, which had a back room with a bunk, and a bathroom with a shower. He began making plans to figure out how to move his next store neighbors, but had not yet succeeded in doing so when Emtrey called them all back together.
In the intervening time, Emtrey had made several discoveries. First, he had made in depth studies of the physiology of the Null that he had captured. The Null’s skin was uniformly grey, though splotched and mottled with darker shades all over. The Null had no eyes, no external sign of ears, and no visible nostrils, and yet, its reaction to sensory tests was extremely high. It’s fingers and toes were oddly fused, its hands with two fused fingers and a thumb, and its toes fused into two large conglomerate digits.
Internally, its organs were still largely unchanged, though its senses of smell, taste, touch, and hearing were all wildly increased, and its corresponding organs showed change in structure. The Null’s node, the extra section of brain that appears when Actives gain their powers, was not abnormally large, but there was widespread damage to the tissues surrounding the node.
Emtrey had not yet had a chance to begin studying how to counteract the Null’s phasing ability, when he hit upon other bits of pertinent information. Emtrey found that there was a direct correspondence between the beginning of the end for Unity and the voluntary demotion / semi-retirement of one of its original founders, Mark Exagorazo. That lead ended in frustration for Emtrey, as Mark’s tracks went completely cold after Unity’s final downfall. He seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet.
Emtrey also discovered that one of the agents that had been assigned to the FBI taskforce that had been given the task of helping his parents take down Unity, Craig Dikaios, had taken up residence in Dallas, and was now the head of the FBI field office there.
Emtrey, hungry for information, set up a meeting with both Dikaios and Gwen’s parents, Adam and Aria, at the same time on Saturday, 6 p.m. Emtrey called the rest of the group, and everyone converged on M3 corporate headquarters in Dallas.
Noticeably, Sam and Stavros both stayed behind at Emtrey’s private lab, Sam to use his power over technology to override the Null’s control systems and keep it calm, and Stavros to provide solid backup for Sam, in case the Null escaped his control.
Xander, Esmeralda, and Jericho all arrived before Dikaios and the Darmons. Esmeralda brought up her findings about Time Knight and the tabloid article to the group. Emtrey promised Xander a few words about that later, but let it slide for the time being, as Special Agent Dikaios and the Darmons had all arrived at the same time. The group watched the three meet through the security camera feed, as they encountered one another in the front lobby.
Craig Dikaios showed no signs of being anything other than human, and seemed to be an unassuming man, though there was a clear glint of intelligence in his eyes. Adam Darmon stood 6’ 2”, and might have been considered imposing, but there was an air of vast, imperturbable calm about him. Aria was a woman of remarkable beauty, small, dark of hair, with eyes much like her daughter’s, a striking blue.
The three of them definitely recognized one another. Adam and Dikaios shook hands and smiled, and Aria hugged the FBI agent, to his chagrin, though he smiled and returned the embrace. The three of them entered the elevators together with Emtrey’s authorization, and took the long ride to Emtrey’s office, three quarters of the way to the top of the building.
Adam, Aria, and Special Agent Dikaios stepped into Emtrey’s office and quickly introduced themselves. Adam and Aria both stated they recognized Emtrey, and Aria even went as far as giving Emtrey a hug, which embarrassed him somewhat.
As the meeting progressed, the three of them quickly broke down the information that they had. The most important revelations were as follows.
First, while they were confident that they really did destroy Unity as a company for good, Adam firmly believed that there was a force, some group or entity behind Unity. That force had a track record of providing assistance to people, people who usually started out with ideas that were beneficial to the world, but were later expected to be obedient to a much more sinister cause, in exchange for that initial assistance. The only name they had found that really indicated that force's presence was the name "Mr. Alice."
That revelation led Agent Dikaios to mentioning Mark Exagorazo, which immediately caught Emtrey’s attention. Craig stated that Mark had been an absolutely brilliant man, and the true driving force behind Unity. However, Mark had seemed genuinely disgusted when he finally understood the full import of some of the negative actions of Unity, and had voluntarily taken a much more limited role in the company, while keeping his shares. He remained the single highest stock holder, though he did not have enough stock to fully control the company on his own. His detractors formed a power block and kept him from completely turning the company around.
After that, when Mark had moved into his less hands on role, he had started using his brilliance to feed the Darmons, the Morrisons, and Agent Dikaios specifically, information that he was able to smuggle out. That information held so much detail about Unity’s more ghastly actions, that while their investigations had already had a fairly high level of success with the Morrisons’ and Darmons’ help, after Mark’s assistance began, Unity swiftly started to crumble.
The second item of import was one that still caused the Darmons great personal pain. Adam and Aria revealed that the source, the “template” of the Nulls had, in fact, been their own son. They were not sure how the activation caused the strange state that it did, but Unity found that the result was a creature useful enough when controlled that it was somehow able to capture the pattern and use it to create more.
The Darmons and agent Dikaios both illustrated the larger implications of Unity’s (and the as yet not fully identified group behind Unity’s twisting) actions. As far as any of the three had experienced, the group behind Unity had used the company, and many others before it, for as far back as anyone had been able to research, to swiftly stop any kind of massive increase in the population of Actives by killing them as swiftly as they found them, along with their immediate families. All of their experiments were driven by that goal.
Adam and Aria stated that when Mark Exagorazo was finally made to understand the full import of what his company was being used to do, he made every effort to bring them down. When Emtrey responded that raised the necessity for direct contact with Mark, Adam stated that not even he knew where Mark actually was. He did, however, have the name of a contact, Gerard Meador that might have some information to get them started.
Agent Dikaios stated that he had to take his leave at that time, but Adam and Aria both agreed to stay to answer more questions as they could. However, nearly as soon as Dikaios had left, Esmeralda received a mental communication from Max that was much clearer than such communications had been since he had been absent from the carnival.
Max indicated that he had returned to the carnival, and there was information that he needed to share with Esmeralda, but the communication was cut off completely after Esmeralda heard his voice in her mind say “The signs are in place.” Esmeralda could not reach him again through their link, which had not happened for as long as she could remember.
Esmeralda became visibly pale, and when asked what was wrong, she told the group that she had been in mental communication with Max, but that communication was cut off, and she could not establish it again. Esmeralda told the others that she was heading to the carnival find out what was wrong. The others, including the Darmons, stated they would accompany her.
Xander was able to teleport them all to the edge of the carnival, but was, as before, unable to get any farther than the border. This seemed to relieve the Darmons somewhat. Esmeralda immediately bolted into the carnival, heading first toward the trailer she and Max shared. The others ranged out quickly behind her, though the Darmons glanced at one another, seemingly troubled by something, before they stepped into the carnival grounds.
While everyone had taken a moment to prepare before following Esmeralda, Xander had manifested no less than 6 beings that seemed to be duplicates of himself, though each different in minor details. As Xander ran to catch up to Esmeralda, the six other Xanders ducked into the tent containing the weapons for the carnival's martial arts act and came out carrying display swords and spears.
As Xander's doppelgangers armed themselves, Aria Darmon showed that her daughter took after her in more ways than one. Aria reached out to each of the minds in the group and, despite some initial hesitancy from Jericho, established a mental link through which they could communicate instantly.
Adam shone with a brilliant light for a moment, and when that light faded, what the group saw was this.:
Emtrey took a more subtle approach, and used his shape-shifting powers to take a form that, while still human, looked nothing at all like himself. The result was "Mayhem” from the Allstate commercials.:
Esmeralda quickly reached her trailer, but when she didn't find Max there, she concentrated, and the group saw the effects of her power over her own physical density when used to become more massive. The stairs leading up to the trailer's front door shattered beneath her, and Esmeralda sped out from the wreckage, her feet pounding craters into the earth as she ran.
Then, at the center of the carnival, a ball of fire and the shockwave of an explosion drew everyone's attention. Esmeralda changed course, and sped toward the area of the conflagration. The rest of the group had caught up to her as she had paused to check the trailer, and so all drew near enough to the epicenter of the blast to see what was left at the same time. All of them expected to see the carousel, that odd menagerie of strange creatures that seemed untouched by time when Xander had examined it when he had first come to the carnival, to be a smoking ruin, for there was no doubt that the explosion had come from it, or had been aimed at it.
The carousel, however, seemed to be without a scratch. It was slowly moving in a clockwise direction, but as the group neared, it stopped, then began turning in the other direction, and building up speed.
Then, Esmeralda cried out Max's name, fear and rage and rage lending her voice strength, for she had finally caught sight of Max. He was facing the carousel, and was in truly dire straits. He was surrounded by what seemed to be a transparent, wavering wall of shadow, like dark electrons in their light-speed, constantly changing orbit around the nucleus of an atom. However, for brief moments, the group could see parts of the wall actually break off and intersect with Max, and for the span of a blink of an eye, reveal their true form.:
The “wall” was not a wall at all, but a host of fearsome, insect-like creatures moving so fast that they could be seen only as a constant blur of motion, except in the moments they chose to attack.
Max seemed to, at times, blur as well, and then one of the creatures would disappear, but there were too many of them, and Max had started taking damage that was not immediately healing.
Adam Darmon raised his sword into the air, and light burst forth from it, not an individual beam, but a large flare that lifted overhead, and then burst into what looked like falling stars. Where the stars struck, the dark creatures disintegrated.
Aria Darmon concentrated, and blue energy began to form around her, but she took no further action.
Jericho Sixis also stopped and focused, forming a widening ball of electricity in his hands, but took his time to build up the power.
Esmeralda tried to reach out with her mind to grab one of the creatures telekinetically, but to no avail.
Emtrey took his time, aimed, and succeeded in hitting one of the creatures with the energy weapon that had been so effective with the Nulls, but it took the full force of the damage and shrugged it off. Emtrey did, however, draw that individual creature's attention.
The creature stopped for a moment, which was all Xander needed. Xander sent two of his summoned soldiers away, one to protect Emtrey, and one to protect Aria, and took the rest to attack the creature whose attention Emtrey had drawn. Each of the four clones moved with incredible speed, attacking the creature repeatedly with their borrowed weapons, but the dark being slid between their attacks.
However, that left Xander able to act with his full concentration. Xander swung his huge sword twice, and the creature was rocked by the blows, but when Xander was done, it was still on its feet.
Four times, the creature's limbs, sharp as blades, lashed out. Twice, Xander was able to evade the attacks, but the creature scored two blows. However, though he was wounded, bleeding, Xander had one more trick up his sleeve.
Xander raised his hand, and the signature of his time-controlling powers appeared in the air around Adam Darmon. Adam blurred into motion. Adam too, swung his blade at the creature, and, while it staggered, it did not go down. With his other hand, Adam reached out to Xander, and with a touch, healed his wounds completely.
The extra speed that Xander had granted Adam then allowed him to act again, and he blasted the wounded creature in front of them with a beam of pure, white light from his hand, which reduced the creature down to a charred, smoking exoskeleton.
The majority of the beings, though, were still surrounding Max, and he was slowly being driven to his knees...
...Until Aria and Jericho unleashed the power they had been building.
Aria's head snapped up, and the blue light that had been building around her lashed out in a wave. The blue wave of power washed over the dark creatures, and stopped each and every one of them cold, frozen in place. Max rose to his feet, and in that breath before Jericho unleashed his gathered storm of lightning, the group could see his wounds mending.
At last, though, Jericho Sixis released the energy he had been harnessing. Lightning arced out from his hands and lanced toward first one of the dark creatures, then jumped to each of them, spreading between them, seeming to build and build, until finally, all of the creatures exploded into clouds of ash.
Max lifted his head and strode toward the slowly turning carousel, which creaked to a stop once more.
“It is not over,” he said.
End of session three.