Timeline 4.4

30 May 2009

Then, we discussed how to deal with the thing we were trying to do - set up a series of worlds in another cluster which would mean we could actually have a secondary set of base-worlds Sal found it easy to jump between. Then we ended up in Aberrant-verse, where we decided we could live reasonably well; it being ultimately and for the next twenty years pretty safe for known supernatural creatures - cos they were all media darlings.

Then Sally managed to scatter us in three different groups across the known realities, and then she managed to find us all again with the help of a considerate Aberrant teleporter. Then, since she'd gone through Star Wars-verse like four times on the way through finding us again, she took Jon there, and he signed up to the Jedi Academy.

Then Mattmatt, while escorting Jon round JA, accidentally went Totemic - he used enough power to create a giant pillar of sunlight centred on him, topped by an image of Bambi, Lord of the Forest. He decided this was not the smartest thing to take back to Anglesey, so when we left Jon behind, we went to Ussura.

Everything was going swimmingly till one of the Space Marines there decided that Mattmatt glowing like a sun god and pointy-eared like an elf meant (with some justification) he was a dodgy xeno. Then the SM decided to kill Mattmatt. Whereupon, as he was swinging, Sally dragged a select team of people out of Ussura to Somewhere Else to stop Mattmatt from dying.

Sadly, this select team was the SM, Sally and Ginnie.

At this point, the SM decided that since he'd started, he might as well continue, and shot Ginnie.

Sally thereupon took what was left of Ginnie's body Away; leaving Abbadon the Destroyer romping alone through... some world somewhere. She then rezzed Ginnie, and then looked round. At the grey skull-shaped castle in the distance. And at the winged unicorn flapping its little flappy wings round above Ginnie's now-tiaraed head. Ginnie did not look amused.

After some Discussion, Ginnie and Sally ended up back in Ussura, and Mattmatt asked Brother-Captain Nathaniel Garro, Legion of One! to help us deal with Abaddon, because Abaddon was a bit barking. Garro agreed to this, and then Sal set out to take us back to Abaddon (after collecting Jon for moral support)...

This... went a little wrong; as our first stop was in the Dresden Files (as we collected - slightly by accident - Carlos Ramirez) and our second was to Amber; a world made not out of earth but of raw magic.

Turns out that channelling this much energy when you try to jump may cause minor issues; as Ramirez and Ginnie were left smoking corpses - and Jon and Andy were left small piles of bones...

So obviously Sal did another suck-and-dump (as she so elegantly named that particular rote...) with the energy of a thunder storm she whipped up and managed, by freaks of fate, to get just enough life into Ramirez to let Mattmatt start his healing; to get motes of energy in Andy (who Mattmatt promptly kicked off the building so he could get in touch with the ground; his Antaeus-like regeneration then kicked in and he rebuilt himself); and to ask very nicely if God would possibly look at Jon and give him another chance, as his damage mostly came from saving someone else's life.

Jon was then promptly miracled back to life; not by Sally's energy but by ...something Else. Then he asked nicely if Ginnie could also be alive again, please. And she was.

The minor side-effects of these shenanigans included: - Jon now having glowing eyes, feet that don't quite touch the floor unless he thinks about it and evanescent, almost invisible wings - Ginnie being able to talk to someone who calls himself Merlin, and instead of being another Princess of Power, being seconded into the Captain Britain Corps - Andy having Husk-like powers to slough off his outer skin instead of meat-sploding to get to his golem form; and that golem form can be made of any substance he chooses, as far as we can tell - there being _something_ odd about Mattmatt and Sal that we've not worked out yet; and - Ramirez being one who, being worthy, finds that he accidentally possesses the power of Thor.

Then Sally dropped Ramirez off at his home, and everyone went back to Anglesey to arm up again after having a lot of weapons and armour blasted off by the earlier incinerations...

It's all go, being us.

Same day, back home again:

Turns out that it is possible for one SM in ordinary armour, one Jedi/SM Knight of the Cross, one elemental, one fairy healer and one combat rezzer can _actually_ take down a SM in Terminator armour with the powers of Judge War. Go figure... In the process, though, Jon's connection to Amber was severed as Sal pumped him full of fairy goodness; Mattmatt lost his Exaltation and is now three times a fairy; and Garro is now an animate suit of armour who looks... a lot like a fairy.

Then ...there was some stuff. Then we realised that Sal had accidentally produced a Si Francis... (there was something here about the Isle of Skye; and Si being left lying around there...?)

Then we went back to Aberrant-verse and dropped by the Rashoud facility for tests, support and signing up (cos, you know, might as well). We were all analysed and explained in Aberrant terms by the nice people there, who suggested that if we wanted to sign up, they'd give us vast sums of money and some natty suits. So we did. Si experimented with tequila and his multiple personalities (as he claimed his alternate power sets were) and then realised that nothing short of dismemberment and ashing would stop his healing factor... Then we agreed to buy a house in Stoke, and a couple of us talked to the nice men from Triton.

Then Ginnie accidentally Clairved Byzantium Secundus - or, rather, the world that will one day be called that - and it was a very, very long way away.

Anyhow; then people... did something, then they went to Azeroth. There was some cash involved in their time there. Then Sally scattered folk through the multiverse, and Si ended up in a Germanic village, whereupon he ate, drank, wenched and made a deal with a demon.

Then everyone got together again, and then the party tried to work out what to do with Si, who'd said determinedly that, while he recognised that demons were bad, it was unreasonable of him to go back on his sworn and willingly-made oath. Which was to give a day of his time to a Prince of Slaanesh.

After some minor incidents, during which Si was left on his own in the New Forest in Anglesey-verse by accident (Sal wandering the multiverses and accidentally collecting a variety of additional extra people before finally collecting her peeps and a dragon-god-thing and dropping off Vorox, Aliana Hawkwood and two D&D characters) everyone re-gathered in Anglesey. With no Si.

Short investigations thereafter revealed that Si wasn't MRT, nor was he Face (...Face, at that point, got dropped off in a Random Other World, with Mattmatt and Ginnie; Mattmatt promptly geased Face into leaving them alone, and the pair of them ran away and made for civilisation); and... there was something weird happening in a small town just south of Chicago.

The 'something weird' turned out to be a massacre of a camp of Uktena whose entire role in life was to maintain the bindings on a load of unkillable banes. Good fun, good fun.

Afternoon/evening, 30 May 2009:

It's been a very long day - and got longer. The creature who looked like Si that we found in Chicago turned out to not be Si, but instead a daemonette wearing an Uktena wearing Si's face. Likewise, Davey's pack (who stayed behind in America to help the other Groo there) were then not found again. And people were turning up missing....

The caern was attacked by the dead Uktena, who were trying to corrupt or devour the sept totem. Mattmatt blew his horn and accidentally called the Wild Hunt down on the heart of the caern. This was very handy, as Jon had recently died... Sal woke him with the power of the storm - and the Wild Hunt - meaning he's no longer a fairy, but is coincidentally tied in to the Hunt. Shortly thereafter, Celyn was shot in the head - Sal, again, rezzed him. Thus far, there are no obvious strange side effects...

Anyhow. There was a note left where the sniper was; from the SFS. They suggested they would drop by the caern come sunset, and if we could possibly see our way free to leaving them a fun fight, they'd be much obliged.

As we'd discovered at this point that Bryn (one of the kidnappees) was in Australia and Sal couldn't teleport him to her (...we gained a Scion and a Priest out of this...), we prepped to go to Australia and kick some Slaanesh monsters; finding out that Matt's strange Arawn/Pwyll relationship thing was actually him being a Scion, bringing a Garro along, and leaving the groo behind (...after a discussion going 'They affect your primal emotions; lust, hunger..' 'I'm just askin', but... how does this affect Rage?'). Then Fink called to say 'we don't like this demon after all. Have you ever seen Swordfish...? Also, see you this evening, right?'

Turns out, none of us having seen the film, that what it meant was 'they've hung your friends in separate caves under Ayers Rock and wired the whole place with explosives in a death-trap stylee'.

Si crawled out of the rubble of Ayers Rock (which explosives had levelled, then Sal had broken in half looking for the bodies) and we came back as fast as possible to the caern to see the daemonettes having eaten another six garou; and chewing on Celyn's leg... They all vanished as soon as we appeared; then Sal went back to Australia for one last attempt to bring people back. She managed to bring Angharad back; but was absent for a while.

The death toll, of a 25-person caern, has been 12. Bryn, Delwyn and Davey appear to be werewolves, but don't have Rage right now. Cerryn seems to be something like a moonsilver liquid metal terminator; and Angharad... well, no one's quite sure _what_ she is, but Sal says that she's now Right; and there's nothing else Sal can do to change her.

Then Andy punched Si. After flailing so hard he missed (and may actually have punched the ground in frustration a few times), Jon came over to see what happened; and asked Si if he was prepared to stand trial. Si, confused, explained that he had _no idea_ what was happening, and had no memory of any events since he'd been left in the New Forest, alone and unloved. Then Jon knocked him out.

Then Andy punched Si - and his head came off.

Mattmatt, stunned, left to visit Arawn in an attempt to rez Si - and Si's spirit looked at him in horror, saying '...They're _burning my body_...'

Jon asked for payment for his services from Uriel; and Uriel let him have one life. He chose Soph; as the only Elder Theurge in the UK and as payment to the Nation. In return, though, the Other Side got to bring someone back. Soph was brought back at the place she'd died, though - and Ginnie, Clairving, did point out the massive military and probably Technocratic presence on site. So we slid to the New Forest (leaving the random dude from Malazan, the random dude from Scion and... were there any other random dudes? Yeah, them, anyhow) with the dangerously under-manned sept and bounced on to Australia.

This... could have been more successful. Turns out the techs can spot a clairv and/or an incoming teleport; there was a squad with guns out waiting for us when we arrived. Deciding the better part of survival was not getting shot in the face, we promptly establised our bona fides ('we've met Colonel Walker of the Ninth?' '...Ninth _what_?' '...void... cavalry?' 'Where?' '...Offworld...') and then told the truth, and nothing but the truth. We may have avoided the whole truth bit by a smidgeon, but who really wants to know about petty details _anyway_? Anyhow, they were so surprised at our free and frank explanations that when Si randomly turned up oin the middle of the compound we were in custody in, they didn't even ask us if we were sure when Andy told them Si was a Nephandi. Who'd strangely come back from the dead. WHAT?

It turns out that, after our supportive and helpful explanation, they decided that keeping us out of the way while they hunted down the monsters looking like random werewolves (...and possibly some random werewolves too. But on the whole, clearing up the Slaaneshi threat seemed more relevant...) was a good idea. And then they sent us to an orbital station around Saturn.

Sally was distressed by this, and decided to stay in her room. The others were slightly more interested, and spent a couple of days kicking around and relaxing until the flotilla of Wraith darts and hive ships appeared on the ranged sensors, harrying a damaged Goa'uld pyramid.

Because it's impossible to be a clairvoyant without a certain level of inherent nosiness, Ginnie took a closer look and accidentally got possessed by a hive queen for all of, oo, three seconds. This ...didn't seem to do anything. We are all suitably suspicious. It took a whole ten seconds before Ginnie was roaming out there again and inspecting the pyramid thingy instead. To be rewarded by the sight of the SG1 team on the bridge, trying to hold off the angry mob of Jaffa. Communicating this with 'The Highway' (...seriously, the CO of this base is [insert military title here] Highway. I am a _tad_ amused.), he then altered his orders to the fighters of the Void Cav; and... Si, wanting to know what was going on (since Ginnie refused to have him in her brain) tried to Astral out. And found out that he could body-swap people. And did so with the assembled; transposing bodies with the SG1 team.

I'm just going to go over where the bodies and spirits were after Si finished screwing up, rather than sorting out the details:

Us wearing Cam vamps Cam vamps wearing London Garou London Garou wearing SG1 SG1 wearing us.

It turns out that in order to swap _back_ to bodies, you only need to be close enough to where your spirit should be. It was terribly exciting.

After the hijinks that ensued from that little run (including a trip to ASOIAF, to Krynn, to Terminator-verse and to Azeroth, leaving behind a random demon prince from one world in another), Matt Elliot was briefly with the group - and as quickly made a run to a safe place. Si, during this, had somehow managed to move on to Someone Else.

The VE were very nice about the whole thing when we got back to the New Forest, and suggested that we don't you know, go anywhere. Ever again. With the addition of primium bracelets.

This didn't stop Si. Next thing we know, we're in Seventh Sea; and then hop to Covenant; leaving Jon and Ginnie behind in SS. After this, Sal tries to get everyone back to SS; and... accidentally, while working through Evie's body, manages to dump everyone _somewhere else_.

Then she leaves, after Andy and Mattmatt gently encourage her to run like a girl. This.. would have worked better had everyone else been with her. Or anyone else, in fact. She also, in the confusion, has no clear recollection of where exactly in the multiverse she was...

Andy, Mattmatt and Si were met by the gentlemen of the Word Bearers; and it _just_ went downhill from there. Sal, on the other hand, met Death Rich; who was really helpful, restoring her to a new, improved version of her own body (killing her original body at the same time, but who's counting?) and letting her take Evie's body back to SS, where she's wearing Nancy. She then takes Jon back to the training world for Jedi, and swaps Jon and Duncan (while relieving Duncan of sundry thefted items... but letting him nick the towels.) Then they came back to SS with Duncan...

So we currently now have Andy, Mattmatt and Si in the care of the Word Bearers, somewhere in the Warp of the Imperium of Man in the 30th millenium, wearing Roo Percy, Will Godolphin and Tom the half-and-half; and Sally, Jon and Ginnie in Seventh Sea wearing Sal's own body, Jon's own body and Solveig. Roo, Will and Tom are wearing the figurehead, Peter Winter and Ryan's char from SS.

The series ends with Si trying to take over the world thanks to Slaanesh, and us trying to smack him down. A lot. To death. Repeatedly.