If you read last week’s post (Scientists: 1 / Minotaur: 0) you know why Neils is my favorite Mage. His player is always a good sport about having to stab his fellow PCs in the back, and between you and me I’m pretty sure he enjoys it almost as much as I do.

His fellow PCs enjoy it a bit less than that, so when we last left off Damien was bitch-slapping Neils in the real world to wake him up and drag him out of astral space. (And also because it was fun.)

Fortunately I had already come up with a nifty way to keep the players together even if some folks had missed a previous session or they had taken Astral Damage (Willpower drains) and wound up knocked out of the realm. I didn’t want to leave anyone in the unenviable position of being removed from the action for an entire session or more, so I gave them an artifact called the Rings of Astral Unity. (Note: this artifact actually exists in the Astral Realms book.) It’s the kind of thing it makes sense for the Consilium to have, especially since one of the members of their star relic acquisitions team is a Mastigos. There are a lot of stats involved which I won’t post here because you should visit your Friendly Local Game Store and buy the book! In essence, there are twelve rings which help to bind twelve characters’ Astral Selves together. If you are wearing one of the rings in the physical world, and someone else is wearing one of the rings in the physical world, you will be able to home in on each other in Astral Space. So miraculously, just in time for the next session to begin (the bitch-slapping was the closing scene of the previous session), the characters that have been knocked out of Astral Space can start recouping some Will Power (they are in the Consilium stronghold so there are options available to them) and join those who are still there. This is a fortunate thing because not everyone was able to make the next session, and those who could were largely those who had been knocked out of Morgan’s Oneiros.

Aenaiyah managed to stay in Morgan’s Oneiros because she wasn’t directly involved in the fight going on in the observation deck. Thinking quickly, she tells Morgan’s True Self that this is HIS MIND DAMMIT and as such he can impose his will over it. He shrugs in his best “that’s lovely, but I have no idea what to do” way, and Aenaiyah forces herself to calmly ask him to think about his happy place. This was an excellent plan! It takes him a few beats because he hasn’t been very happy just lately (there were some RESOLVE+COMPOSURE rolls involved), but when he really thinks about it he realizes that he was happiest in the time shortly before his father died: when he, his Mom, and his Dad would go for picnics at the lake.

Fade To: Family Picnic at the Lake!

There are a whole bunch of kids and families around. There is a tire swing positioned just perfectly to get a good swinging leap into the water. There is a dock that kids are also using to jump into the water, and loads of running, splashing kids with their sandwich chomping parents. This is a place just filled with happy little trees. Good times!

I don’t quite remember the exact particulars of what came next. (Aenaiyah: feel free to fill us in with a comment.) I remember Aenaiyah wanting to visit the time when Morgan was in the service, thinking that this would be a good idea because he would be strongest then because he had gotten away from the abusive situation and was a soldier. I remember consulting my notes and knowing in that black hole where my heart should be that this was the worst idea possible because the time period she had chosen was smack in the midst of his being experimented on, and thus actually being his weakest state, and laughing a bit inside. I remember Aenaiyah casting a time spell to look at all of the times that Morgan had spent at the Lake overlapping each other – though for the life of me I can’t remember what the goal was. I do remember that whatever it was had been a good idea, but that it left her with a horrible timey-wimey headache. I had decided that such a spell would cause an effect like the WORST LAG EVER in World of Warcraft – characters doubling up and moving in a glitchy “mouse-trail” fashion, sounds being overlaid an insane number of times, and all sorts of other strangeness. It was a lot of fun to describe, and I really wish I could remember why she had done it because, like I said, it had been a really good idea! (And this group doesn’t have those very often!)

It was at this point that the other Cabal Mages arrived, and were… confused. They had a hard time finding Aenaiyah and Morgan in the chaos, but eventually Aenaiyah got everything sorted and the group had a discussion. They decided that with Morgan’s True Self now freed from the drugged stupor, it was time to put him back in charge. To do that they would need to break into the fortress from whence Morgan’s Alter-Ego was ruling his mind.

This would ultimately be the final battle of the storyline. I wanted it to be epic. I wanted it to be memorable. I wanted to SUCK THEIR WILLS TO LIVE!

I didn’t quite get everything I wanted that day, but I think I did manage to make it memorable… and maybe just a bit epic. As always, the only will to live that got sucked that day was my own.

Tune in next week for the Exciting* Conclusion**!

*Opinions may vary
**Until the “next book” starts. Coming Soon[tm]!