Timeline 4.2

Mid-season: Sally, Ginnie, Matt, Jon, Matt Elliot, Andy Greig

Monday 4 May 2009

Mattmatt tries to meet Pwyll again this dawn, at the caern heart. He comes out of Fairyland looking traumatised. The morning goes by quietly, with chores and so on. ME is given a cliath-level chore - to ride herd on the odder Kinfolk and fera on the caern. That'd be us, that would. At noon, we hold a council of war to decide what to do about Cerryn. Driving most of us down to Three Cliffs (...it's in Wales; you expect me to know whereabouts?) and sending Mattmatt off to Chester to speak with the Children of the Violation, we spend the night alternately waiting, sleeping, preparing rituals and staring into space and planning horrible deaths unto the BSDs.

Tuesday 5 May 2009

We spod round till ten to five in the evening; other than a slightly odd interlude with an old Welsh man trying to cast us out of the beach for being incomers and English and therefore Evil, it goes quietly.

Then Mattmatt speaks to the BSDs, who say, very politely, that they would like the London Sept to consider strongly not following the mad Bastet who's persuaded them to try to find and hug the Balancer Wyrm; and if we could pass a bundle of papers on to the London Sept, they'll give Cerryn back. By they way, they'd quite like this to go to Kayd, but they're not that fussed.

Ginnie telecomms Cerryn (...surprisingly easily... We do not look gift horses etc.) and he agrees that there's no possible deal with the BSDs ever. Ginnie expresses some concern over this; not least because it looks like Cerryn's wired to explode. Then Sally has a bit of a discussion with Riklish ('My dear girl, next time you try to break through my wards, please RSVP.' 'GGRRRRRRRDEATH') and then teleports us all to Ussura.

Cerryn fails to explode. He is reunited with Mattmatt (after having been Clearwater Talenned - bless the dumbness of Glade Children) and then we find our other minor problem.

Well, you say 'problem'. It's the most mannerly invasion of Ussura ever, as Abbadon (the Despoiler, Great Traitor and Chief Minion to the Evil Overlord of Somethingorother) is currently wearing a bearskin and linen breeches while hanging out down the tavern at Sally's nearest village, talking cheerfully to the priest. His conversation goes roughly thus: 'This is very good vodka. You shall be brought back into the Imperium, and your heresies shall be destroyed. So, how about a wrestling match?'

The assembled PCs blanch slightly. Sal then notices that her hut is now not so much a hut as a small and very well-reinforced mansion with an underground armoury/training ground, camoflaged artillery emplacements and some lovely new rugs. On enquiry, Abaddon mentions that the Emperor's beacon enabled the troop ship (the flagship of Horus Lupercal) to enter low orbit around the planet, and that, while he'd not really appreciate putting everyone in the world to the sword (and the bolter gun, and the orbital bombardment), obviously he'd do that if that's what it took to bring the planet back into the Empire.

...Oh dear.

Later on that afternoon, when Cerryn's been sent home to have tea and toast and a soothing bath, the Brave Team sit in Ussura to try to work out what on _earth_ to do with Abaddon. After brainstorming the history of the 40k 'verse, the crew have an easy afternoon of considering. This, obviously, being who we are, involves Mattmatt transmitting himself via a tree into another tree 200 miles south of Sal's hut, then transmitting himself 150 miles north of Sal's hut by the same method, and also (apparently) trapping his mind in the body of an arctic hare.

Likewise, being us, the rescue attempt involved a slight detour into another reality and Matt uploading himself into an orbital spy satellite. As you do. Fortunately, having collected all assembled minds and bodies (albeit in a variety of odd containers, including said hare and Ginnie's phone...) they all returned home reasonably intact and all minds and bodies were reunited. Matt has also backed up his brain on his laptop. Enquiring minds should probably be more alarmed by this.

After all the theorising, Matt figured that we were probably best off asking the man who'd know these things, and started chatting to Magnus the Red, scion of Tzeentch. You know, as you do. Magnus clarified that Abaddon is not quite the 'real' Abaddon; that there may or may not actually be an invasion fleet above us (Abaddon having the power to reinforce his own expectations, maybe?) and that Magnus would quite like us to change the history of the 40k 'verse.

Then we all went home for tea.

Wednesday May 6 2009

Today, we did nothing at all. It was very relaxing. Not having to lurch from disaster to disaster meant that the only things that went wrong were Mattmatt trying to mentally bond with the ghost-forests of Pangaea and ending up with a migraine in the middle of the Rockies. Sal picked him up and we came home again. Matt and Ginnie chopped some wood, Jon did some training and Sal vegged out. The end.

It was the best day ever, and should have been a warning to us for what happened the next few days.

Thursday May 7 2009

Today, we tried to get to London. Obviously, at this point, we remembered that we'd left the camper (the only vehicle we had big enough to carry Jon...) in Swansea, back on Tuesday. It's been a long time since Tuesday. Anyhow. we managed to get to Swansea fine, with Sal dropping us off sleepily and then going back to Anglesey to get a lie in.

Then Jon decided he wanted some jelly babies, and for some reason, everything spiralled from there.

So. It turns out that when Jon drags things through from various other realities, he weakens the walls between worlds. leaving a potential rift there. Then, after an hour or so of Jon playing with the hole and trying to make it go away or make it smaller, the Technocracy flew by and asked us very nicely to stop being reality deviants, give them a blood sample and come along with them for checking; and in return they'd close the rift in reality for us. Which was very sweet.

So obviously, while going through processing in the back of an artic just outside Swansea, Matt and Mattmatt share a frenzy moment and kill everyone there. Our blood samples being out of range right then, we ask Sal nicely if she'd mind moving us out of the immediate blood bath, and then tell Bryn - who deals with Veil cleanup for us, on the understanding that we sort out the blood samples. And it's not even 10am yet...

Back at the ranch in Ussura, Jon tries to drag the vials of blood to him through reality. Turns out the power is great for platonic ideals or generic items, but frickin' awful for specifics, as when he tried to drag his blood back to him, he got ... er, another Space Marine. Sadly, one from a different point in the timeline, who thinks Abbadon is a traitor.

After Some Discussion, Abbadon and the new guy (Garro, apparently) decide that Jon isn't insane and is telling the truth when he says 'I think the Emperor sent you both here to help stop the most hideous betrayal of the Space Marines evah'. which is good, cos they'd've wiped us all out, and then each other, otherwise.

So. It's maybe lunchtime, and we're reasonably ready - we have a plan of what to do next. We figure, let's get out of the time stream and let Sal watch a couple seasons of Heroes, so we can see if we can find Hiro Nakamura, the Temporis-wielding mutant of huggable adorableness.

Obviously, it being a day of the week ending in Y, we end up in Paranoia-verse; and, likewise, given that there's no energy going in Paranoia-verse, we then lurch sideways to a radioactive Dyson sphere with a load of powered-down Necrons. Sally has nearly killed herself by doing this, as the only energy source available was her own body. Equally obviously, while investigating the various tunnels we've landed in, Matt prods one of the powered down Necrons with an energy weapon. The energy weapon goes dead; the Necron goes off to wake all the other Necrons up to restart their reign of terror.

They do this by kidnapping Sally while she's asleep and hooking her up to the ship to act as a power source.

We then go off to collect Sal, and get a little distracted by the gauss cannons. Mostly when Jon gets shot twice and ends up with two nessy holes through his torso, and Ginnie gets shot once and ends up in three parts across the floor. This could have been more fun.

So. By the power of Mattmatt, Ginnie Doesn't Die. Sadly, she is left a coherent and stable unit as a head, a torso and one arm. Then, once she's awake and not-screaming enough, she collects Sal back onto brainlink, and asks nicely if Sal could possibly help her recover her, you know, lost limbs. Sal, generously, shares the Necron energy. Ginnie would curse the uncaring skies at this point, but honestly, is happy enough at having, you know, all relevant limbs that the whole being a dead and non-organic being who can no longer feel pain, weariness or death was kind of secondary at that point.

So Sal then hopped us - and the Necron ship, and the Necrons - to Anita Blake-verse. We can tell cos our knickers changed to silky things. It's worrying when your underwear is a reliable indicator of which reality you're in. Anyhow, yeah - we then hopped back to the Dyson sphere to collect Matt and Jon (who'd been left hanging in the pit that the ship used to be in, and had in the meantime learnt that Matt had some kind of telekinesis as they nearly fell...) and hopefully take the Necrons back with us. Sadly, the EvilDeathLordMcNasty with them decided to separate them from Sal's jump capacity.

So then we went back to the Dyson Sphere, picked up a battered old Rogue Trader spaceship and took it back to Ussura. This bit was way more complicated than you might think.

So now, it's roughly noon (Sal shunting us back into the time stream roughly where we left) on Thursday; Sal's lost about three stone of fat and muscle mass and gained three plug sockets in her spine, Matt's gained a Rogue Trader (and is lolloping around it with the biggest grin I've seen away from the Joker's face) and Ginnie's currently an animate non-organic non-life form possessed of the pure spirit of the Destroyer Wyrm.

I really don't like Thursdays...

Dear diary. Today was yet more of the Best Day Ever! We tweedled around Ussura parking the spaceship, found out it had an Eldar soulstone on board one of the shuttles, accidentally summoned Slaanesh, kicked around five 'verses (roughly in order: City of Heroes, Trinity, Resident Evil, Fading Suns Istakhr and Star Trek) and nearly killed Mattmatt. On the bright side, we also found out that Mattmatt, when Healed Of What Ailed Him (...Sal stealing all his and Ginnie's energy to power a jump out of ResEvilVerse, then being 'helped' with CPR that mostly broke his ribs...) also and coincidentally was healed of his connection to the Blood Wood; transposing instead some weird stuff he's not worked out yet.

He's not worked it out yet because we've spent the past (subjective) day and a half in Star Trek Verse, as Sal regains body mass (mmm, tasty medicines...) and Matt and Mattmatt go all gooey-eyed over tricorders, medical tricorders, dermal regenerators and holodecks.

And then - and just for fun - we discover an exciting new race in the Star Trek Verse; 'Arcturans'. Arcturans have body temperatures around about room temp. They have core temperatures significantly below that. They have a space in their torsos where a human's heart would normally be. They have retractable canines. They have glowing ice-blue eyes...

Stardate: Something something 2371. Still.

After an exciting holodeck incident (Matt: "The safeties are off... Give me a second. The safeties are back on, and the program is going to give us an alert when something odd happens." Later: *bing!* the 'Arcturan' Mattmatt was chatting earlier appears in holographic form with burning blue claws. Mattmatt: "Computer, freeze program. Computer, alter mode of new occupant to Social. Computer, alter information output to Always Truthful. Computer, restart program.") we have a chat with the Starfleet Ensign vampire. He mentions Voyager - and tries to give Ginnie a can of coke; as he said that he's been asked to. We ask the name of the 'Arcturan' who's asked him to do this, and end up having a chat with the science officer 'Edgar T. Weishaar', who... may well still be Conditioned by Ginnie. Anyhow; he mentions that there are seventeen Arcturans listed to be on board Voyager; including nine 'priests', who will be doing some kind of ritual...

The vampires mention that the only person who's seemed suspicious of them is Cmdr Ben Sisko of DS9. We create a care package of information, and then plan on going to New Orleans to see Joseph Sisko, on the offchance he can get a message to DS9 faster than we could fly there (two weeks by civilian ship; and Voyager's leaving in three).

Joseph Sisko is a very courteous and very stubborn old man. He suggests we go to DS9 ourselves; so... Sal teleports us there, remarkably neatly. We arrive in the middle of Quark's; and after some discussion, it was noted that the Defiant has also gone AWOL under the command of Thomas Riker; a clone of William Riker, and an Arcturan convert. With Keiko O'Brien on board.

Further discussion suggested that there was something very odd about Worf; and Mattmatt and Jon confirmed with woog that he feels in the Force and empathically like a Changeling.

There's a bit of a fight, getting the Changelings infiltrating the station captured. It involves holing the outer wall of the station, a slightly unexpected trip into near space by Mattmatt and Jon, and the deathless quote: "Odo, please stun that datapad."

Ginnie then checks on the locations of the four missing DS9 people - Worf, Dax and Miles O'Brien being replaced by Changelings and Keiko O'Brien being kidnapped by Thomas Riker - after a minor incident where Sal weaponises her energy-draining talent to prevent herself behing hurt by the fake O'Brien. Evidence strongly suggests that she's stolen the life energy of the changeling; and is now a changeling, physically, herself. No one is entirely sure if this is a permanent change, but... hey.

Keiko is on board the Defiant; travelling at warp speed from Cardassian space to Empok Nor (triangulation - gotta love it...); Worf and Dax are on board a Cardassian capital ship in convoy with the Defiant, and O'Brien appears to be on the Founders' homeworld.

Discussion (and a brief Matt-check online) suggests that Ryan's babies are being cautious about chroniton particles; which were used to exorcise Keiko of the pah-wraith which would have possessed her later in the timeline in another reality. [Ed: do you have any idea what time travel does to my tenses? O.o]. There is some suggestion that the Arcturans, the Dominion and the Cardassians are all hangin' out, being loved up allies - or at least working together. There is also some suggestion that the 'cult of the pah-wraiths' is involved? Seriously, I got nothin'. Anyhow; be ready for the next exciting installment of 'Days of our Lives'...

Later; same world, same day.

Sisko appeared rather excited over our (re)discovery of the Founders' homeworld, so we pop over to the Gamma Quadrant to check it out. There are a couple of minor conversations in the wormhole, and some messages need to be passed on to Sisko. After a brief and exciting peek around via Ginnie's brain ('...So this Astronavigation and Clairv I've got works _really well_ on planets instead of people? Who knew!'), we triangulate and correlate and confirm the location, then decide to look for a planet with a pile of Oberth-class ships.

Sadly, we do this before Ginnie figures out _why_ people are asking her to look for them, and then as promptly have a Romulan Warbird decloaking in front of our baby runabout.

After heroic action on the part of the poor, benighted redshirt who was sent to keep an eye on us managing to manouevre round one volley, Mattmatt, who managed to (variously) eat a plasma torpedo, act as the runabout's shields for two more of them, and Jon who managed to shoot a phaser through another plasma torpedo, dissipating it instants before it would have fried us, we popped back to DS9 courtesy of Sally 'I can't transport tech - apart from all the times I'm amazingly good at it' Brewer.

Then we looked a bit blank when Sisko says that he can't figure out how to move his spare ships into place at Empok Nor before the Defiant and the Galor-class Cardassian warship in convoy with it get there, and point at Sal with mild confusion. Sisko headdesks at our blase assumption of Superme Cosmic Powerz and then gives us three hours to rest, prep and train, then two hours in which to get a Klingon Bird of Prey to Empok Nor.

The training we all do varies wildly. Sal paints some walls and gets a nap; Mattmatt goes for combat and energy training, Matt plugs himself into the flight simulator and Ginnie gets Jon to shoot her in the foot with a wide range of weaponry to see how much damage she can take. This is not as fun as it sounds. Fortunately, Matt had loads of fun making a spaceship swoosh around; and Mattmatt managed to drain all the power from the runabout he was practising on. It's a hard life, being him. So then he pushed it back to the station and tried not to look too embarrassed at his cosmic success. And then anima-flared the excess energy off into space. :)

...So now - to Empok Nor - and beyond! Or something, at least.

At Empok Nor

We arrived on the opposite side of the system from the station, just in time to see the Defiant, cloak and shields down, transporting people across to Empok Nor. Then Jon and Mattmatt (plus Benighted Redshirt) popped over and stormed the ship. This took all of two minutes.

Meantime, on the station, we registered a few new ships - a Firefly class all dressed up in Reaver gear, and a Blue Star (?) from B5. The Blue Star came at the Bird of Prey, and shot at us. This would have been scary were it not for the leet psychic skills which meant that Matt shot it out of the sky. With Thomas Riker on board. ...oh well. One less blue-eye.

Then Mattmatt headed off into space to try to get into Empok Nor and/or turn its shields off. He felt something like FS jumpgate 'batteries'/tech; twisted the shields and accidentally popped it into another dimension, which is probably the Dark Between The Stars. This was minorly inconvenient, as we're not sure if it can come back, and if so, what kind of weird and wonderful tech it'll have on board.

Sisko suggested strongly that the Bird of Prey be  lost ; and that we go sort out Empok Nor while he deals with everything else.

Sal felt around the closed-wormhole/place where Empok Nor was/jumpgateish thing, and didn't find anything on the other side - but did manage to drag Andy Greig on board. Which was surprising for all concerned. At some point in discussions, Mattmatt started glowing blue, and someone asked 'why is it always blue?' whereupon Mattmatt decided to be yellow instead, and promptly left the universe.

Ginnie then attempted to clairv through Sally's amulet to see the multiverse at once to try to spot Mattmatt, and succeeded instead in dumping everyone except Mattmatt (in another reality) and Matt (clinging desperately to the ship and refusing to leave it) into Mordor.

You know, as you do.

Then Sauron had a nice chat with Andy, and gave him a Ring. Fortunately, not the One, but still; one of the Nine is more than enough for us; as, when Sal brought us all back (Mattmatt having arrived back on his own in the meantime), nearly everyone thought that it was Really Cute, and maybe they could just borrow it. For a bit...

Now; when you have one of the Nine Rings of Power floating around your lounge, you don't _expect_ your priorities to divert much. But a brief diversion through realities (...these things happen) after a blaster exploded in Andy's hand meant that he ended up being imbued with the powers of living earth and fire, and an unexpected aptitude for weaponry and building things. Especially things that destroy other things. Then, after a short conversation with the voice inside his head, Jon suggested that since we didn't seem much able to find any other group of people to help us out, charging at the Monster From The Void (whose tentacles were clearly visible to Mattmatt once he bled through the energetic layers in the universe - no, I have no idea what I'm talking about either...) and hitting it with Fidelacchius would be a _good_ idea.

And, given that he manifested Heroic Competence, Utter Self-Confidence and a prismatic dragon called Sarah, who were we to disagree?

So we were slid down the energy scale by Mattmatt, and then hit the tentacled monster and the Empok Nor it held cradled gently in a couple of its smaller tentacles (just to give you a sense of the scale of the thing). And... well, I'd say it was a qualified success; in that the wormhole/rift was closed, the Thing from the Void beaten back and Empok Nor destroyed, at the cost of the Bird of Prey and about five seconds of Very Tense being-in-space-ness. Turns out that, when four of the party can survive vacuum, the other two that can't are still very, very vulnerable... On the other hand, Andy's unexpected being-able-to-live-in-a-vacuum thing turned out to be remarkably handy.

Jon, though, did actually snog Sally alive again. Which made everyone giggle a little bit.

Then we appeared in Arran, in the world we last left to die in a heroic explosion of spiders at the end of Series 3. Then we went to Edinburgh, and collapsed in a YHA.

...One day, we'll get to London...