You may have noticed that I am a fan of making the Player Characters fight each other. There are several reasons for this, first and foremost being that the Player Characters in Mage are tremendously overpowered. Or maybe the fact that if the PCs are fighting each other I don’t have to stat any bad guys comes first. It’s pretty much a photo finish. I mean, take last week’s Minotaur for example. I spent all kinds of time tweaking his stats to make sure that he had a good chance of hurting those pesky PCs while at the same time not being likely to one-shot kill them. (Slow death is always more fun.) I give him a solid range of interesting powers that make sense to his concept, and how does he repay me? NOT ONE SINGLE SUCCESS!

So the Mages manage to make their way into Morgan’s Oneiros. Now it’s true that I wanted them to get there, because if they didn’t I did all that planning for nothing, but they should have been beaten up a bit when they got there.  Instead they roll outta that morgue drawer fresh as daisies*!

And why wouldn’t they roll out of a morgue drawer? One of the defining moments of Morgan’s life was the death of his father. Furthermore, I really want to send these jerks a message that I want them dead. So yeah, morgue drawer. In fact, when the Mages were using Matter Magic to scan around the labyrinth I had them pick up the presence of some pockets where the dirt around them was missing… regularly spaced pockets that are roughly 6 feet long by 3 feet deep by 3 feet wide.

But I digress.

As they pile out of the morgue drawer Damien attempts to summon one of Morgan’s Daimons and fails miserably. This failure will come into play shortly.

What they enter is a corridor with a very military feel to it – think Stargate SG-1:

Very grey, but with colored lines on the floor that can help you to not get lost if you happen to know which colors lead where. Fate magic leads the troupe down the blue line to a room filled with a bunch of scientists. Exactly Neils’ kinda place! There are all manner of dials, and flashy lights, and buttons to push – FUN! There are also loads of guys in lab coats. As always, Aenaiyah casts Perfect Moment and then brashly runs in to ask for status updates and such. Riff-Raff and Argus cover the door. Argus is naturally invisible. Neils starts looking over a scientist’s shoulder and acting like he should be there. Damien, Arrow, and Rex move toward the observation window.

Aenaiyah finds out that the patient is fully under, and that his vital signs are stable. She insists on heading in to check on him physically to make sure everything is in place. That Perfect Moment spell she cast earlier lets her get away with this. She heads down the spiral staircase into the operating theater.

Damien, Arrow, and Rex look through the window to see a man who looks suspiciously like the Morgan they saw at the zombie house lying strapped to an adjustable medical gurney with a bunch of IV lines sticking out of each arm, each hooked up to a large IV bag. A woman is sitting next to him, holding his hand, and saying soothing things like “Rest dear, you’re safe now. It’s OK, you just need to get some rest. It will all be better when you wake up.” Damien and Arrow covertly start casting buff spells on the sleeper to make him resistant to the drugs (Arrow) and to increase his mental alertness (Damien). Rex is holding an action in case Aenaiyah winds up needing some help. None of them has done anything that would alert the scientists that anything is amiss, so no one is paying any attention to them.

And then Neils goes to touch a dial. And the scientist who is manning that panel realizes he shouldn’t be there and stabs him with a needle.

Roll for initiative!

The scientist has a surprise round on Neils because he plays it cool and doesn’t start yelling or anything. He simply acts like he’s going to tell Neils what something does and then injects him full of a mind altering drug. I ❤ Neils.

The other characters do not know that Neils has been drugged, and go about their business. Aenaiyah is talking with the woman sitting next to Morgan’s true self and discovers that this woman is his mother. (or, to be more precise, his concept of his mother. Which is to say, she is his negative Daimon of Complacency – as per my previous post.) Aenaiyah, thinking “Oh! Damien tried to summon Morgan’s Daimon to help us before, this must be her!” engages her in conversation, which leaves her feeling very soothed and calm indeed.

Despite the fact that all hell has not quite broken loose yet, Riff-Raff pulls his gun and tells everyone to stay where they are.

The scientists, on their respective rounds, listen to the gun-toting maniac and stay where they are.

When we get to Neils’ round he rolls a reflexive RESOLVE + STAMINA save versus the drug, and Neils being the favorite absolutely fails to save versus PC-on-PC action. As such, I describe to him what he sees:

You see colors swirling all around you. You have an extreme sense of clarity of purpose. There are three people standing by the observation window who really shouldn’t be there. Additionally, there is a crazy person standing in the doorway waving a gun in people’s faces.

And Neils’ strikes the gun wielding psycho with magic lightning.

As Neils attacks Riff-Raff (the gun wielding psycho) one of the doctors who has a held action makes a break for it and runs into the hallway. His goal is to pull an alarm and get some backup down here! Sadly, Argus was quicker (and invisible) and tackled him before he could get to the alarm. The doctor was caught completely off-guard (no defense) and can’t actually see Argus to stab him with psychotropic drugs.

Riff-Raff crumples to the ground with multiple points of aggravated damage from Neils’ vicious attack. (I love that guy!)

Aenaiyah needs to roll some RESOLVE+COMPOSURE to shake off the soothing effects of Morgan’s mother. (Thanks Damien!) She somehow manages (fiesty wench) and starts pulling IV needles out of Morgan’s arm, much to mother’s distress. Mother has no physical prowess whatsoever, but does continue to work her manipulative abilities on Aenaiyah to convince her that Morgan needs these medicines to get better and that she’s hurting him by ripping the needles out of his arm, and his arms are indeed bleeding because she isn’t being all that gentle about it.

Damien is continuing his attempts to use Mind Magic to wake Morgan up, and now he can very definitely feel the presence of another mind here working against him from outside.

For the record kids: this is why we shouldn’t tell the bad guys when their best operative might start working against them!

The scientists (who are really mental constructs themselves) are attempting to re-stabilize Morgan’s drug induced sleep while Neils continues to roast Riff-Raff with some sweet, sweet lightning. Argus continues to grapple with the doctor in the hall (who is in turn trying to stab him with psychotropic drugs) so that reinforcements don’t get called.

Neils has just blasted Riff-Raff into unconsciousness (and right out of Morgan’s Onerios). Arrow took his round to scoot downstairs to help Aenaiyah with Morgan (he is trying to purge the drugs from Morgan’s system), which leaves Neils with one target in the room: Damien! Neils Mage Lightnings Damien, who is getting way too close to waking up Morgan because the GM can’t roll for SH*T this session. Damien hangs on and attempts to help waking Morgan. Argus bests the doctor in the hall and goes in to find out what the hell is going on in the other room. Aenaiyah continues to rip needles out of Morgan’s arm while Arrow heals up the bleeding wounds. Scientists are unconscious. Morgan’s poor old Mom is begging Aenaiyah to stop hurting her son! Damien is struggling Braino-a-Braino with his ex-wife’s grandfather in a tug-of-war over Morgan’s mind!

And then Neils zaps Damien with Mage Lightning just before Damien can wake Morgan up! (GO NEILS GO! GO NEILS GO!)

Aenaiyah rips the final needles out of Morgan’s arms and he begins to wake, while Arrow makes his mother fall asleep using Life Magic.

Argus is about to shoot Neils in the face when Neils disappears without warning. In the waking world Damien has just full on bitch slapped Neils’ body so that he will be dragged out of Morgan’s Oneiros too. (And also because he was really pissed at Neils.)

To Be Continued…

*Daisies… Morgue Drawer… yeah, I went there.