Session started at 6:36 pm on 05/29/2007
Attending players: Sarah, Michael, Ben, and Eva
Presiding GM: Aaron
We board the flight heading towards Boston. Most of us take a rest for about an hour and then Ajax heads up to talk to the pilot. Hopefully he can convince them to stop somewhere else so that we don't have to end up in Boston and don't have to use violence.
(Ajax talks to the the pilot about stopping in DC. The corp folks apparently tell the pilot that we will be debriefed in Boston. He manages to convince her to land in New York. She seems to know that something fishy is going on, but the fact that we saved all their lives carries over into enough gratitude to get her to look the other way.)
Ajax has convinced the pilot to stop in New York City. Hopefully the corp folks will not be waiting for us with open arms. As the plane nears the Massachusetts, the pilot begins to turn west.
Then there is aloud scream from the cockpit and the plane slams, skids, and bounces violently to a halt. I had just stood up to head to the rest room and have to resort to tumbling down the aisle to keep from getting killed. I still smack up into the bulkhead and bruse my shoulder pretty badly.
When I get to my feet I can see out the side windows that we have crashed into a... mountain. What the hell?
There are people scurrying around outside in the snow. They seem just as suprised to see us here as we are to be here. Most of them look like campers, I think.
The nose of the plane is crushed in and the flight crew are all dead. It looks like about half of the exits are non-functional. The doctor begins summoning an earth elemental to keep the plane from sliding down the mountain while we evacuate on to the mountainside.
Ajax and I manage to evacuate the plane, but the elemental doesn't appear. The doctor has a rather worn look, so I'm guessing that didn't go so well. We get everyone out of the plane without further injury or catastrophe.
Now we just need to figure out how we hit a mountain in Massachusetts. According to the campers, who are mostly friendly college age kids, the mountain has been "appearing" and "disappearing" every few days.
I'll admit that I don't have a lot of experience with mountains, but I'm pretty sure that's not normal mountain behavior. I'm starting to wonder if we have some sort of spiritual kick me sign affixed to our backs. For once I'd like a nice quiet extraction or smash and grab without vampires, ocean monsters, or mystic mountains cropping up...
The campers say the mountain is appearing for about a day at a time, disappearing at sunset, returning in a few days time. Most of the passengers appear to be okay and Ajax points out that climbing down the mountain is going to be extremely hard. We take up the camper's offer to rest back at their camp.
The doctor informs us that the mountain is probably an alchera, a magical construct that can be created and will then disappear later on. She says that the repeated and long appearances of this mountain suggest that this one is not a typical alchera. She also says that generally they are associated with some sort of famous mystical site or object. I'm not seeing any tibetan monasteries here, so there must be some other cause for this weirdness.
When we arrive, we see that the camp is mostly full of drunk college kids. There is a lot of alcohol and a lot of sauced teens and twenty somethings acting like it's spring break in Cancun. Most of our rescue-ee's have some drinks and try to relax. I keep my eye on Ajax, but he seems to be mostly behaving himself.
(Rather than actually behave himself he's just rolling very, very well hid his occasional sips from the rest of us.)
I take a short nap after asking Yorick to wake me if all hell brakes loose.
(While I'm resting, the others have noticed that we are at about 30,000 feet up, but are warm and not having trouble breathing.)
(Ajax is actually drinking and getting tipsy. Yorick is keeping an eye on him and it is beginning to be obvious that something is wrong with him. Ajax stumbles and falls. He thinks he's even groggier than the drinks should have made him. He tells Yorick he's going to go take a nap.)
By the time I wake up Ajax is passed out. At least he seems to be uninjured and not full of vomit.
The doctor was just summoning a small earth elemental. It appears immediately. Apparently something strange is going on with astral space here. After talking to the elemental for a while the doctor reports that we are we are in an elemental plane which corresponds to our human emotion of bliss. This is not particularly the sort of news I was hoping for, but it does explain the general air of cheerful debauchery that pervades the party.
The doctor takes a nap and I watch over her. The rest of the day is relatively uneventful.
At dusk the mountain slowly fades and the ground rushes up at us. Suddenly we are in a small rural town. The campers inform us that we are in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. We're still several hours west of Boston so that's good. According to Ajax there is a car rental place across the river from us. We arrange rides for ourselves and the folks from the plane over to the car rental place. Most of the college kids who were camping on the mountain are friendly and happy to give us rides.
The guy at the rental counter is creepy. His name tag identifies him as Demitrius. He asks us to come into the back room to "negotiate" a car. He knows our names. He claimes that someone called Tantilus brought the mountain and he wants to hire us to kill Tantilus so the mountain doesn't come any more. Uh... again with less babble please?
"I am a great and powerful wizard, and can offer you great prices on rental cars."
~ Demitrius, aka. Mr. JohnsonHe says he is a member of a wizardly order that has been "following our exploits." The doctor spots a tattoo on his arm. He tries to cover it up, but we force him to show it to us. It's the tattoo. We sort of freak out on him.
He tries to explain to us that the symbol is the one of his order and it corresonds to the shape of the river in this town. Now that I look at the satilite photos again, it is. We don't really trust him but we're willing to hear him out. He explains that the group is doing something very bad and he, as well as a few other members, does not want it too happen. He wants to hire us to stop it.
He digs out a shoe box, full of dirty socks, digs around in it and pulls out six orangish lumps of metal. Ajax identifies them via the comm as orichalchum, extremely expensive stuff.
We are pretty sure we want more info, so we interrogate our would-be Johnson. He says that in two sunrises the mountain will return and if the mountain is still around at dusk of that day it will never leave earth again. It will cause problems with flight paths as well as opening up the plane to some extreme spiritual badness. His group has apparently summoned a spirit called Tantilus. Some of the members of his group want this to be happening and some don't, but apparently they can't stop it inside the group for whatever reasons.
After some questioning we get out of him that Tantilus has been around for several months and he/she/it can change form and feed on desires. Crap. That means it's almost certainly the spirit from Boston.
Apparently most of the members of his order are out of town and if Tantilus manages to make the mountain permanent, more of his kind will be able to access this realm. Erg. That means he'll probably come after us with his buddies. This day just gets better and better.
After some arguing we get Mr. Johnson to give us one of the orichalcum balls. We've been promised the other five after the job is done. I don't ever expect those to materialize, but according to Ajax the one is worth about 50K even when we take into account the pain and cost of liquidating it, so that should be sufficient payment even if Mr. Johnson tries to turn on us.
End of Session