Timeline 5.1

Series 5 started a year after the end of Series 4.

In the last year, Simon-the-Antichrist was hunted down and, with the seven shivs of Meggido, executed. The Slaaneshi taints and daemons were cleansed, and those Garou who had lost their Rage were reunited with their instinctual selves.

As the series began, Jon departed for the Jedi Temple for training and Matt Elliot returned from Stardock after a year of study. It has been a fortnight since the Final Fight, and the group have a couple of things left over that need to be dealt with.

Clearly, the best place to start was by dropping by Eternia and handing off Ginnie's temporary sword-of-not-Omens.

This would have been an easy win, were it not that we got slightly diverted. Into SLA Industries.

About four hours there involved a lot of exploration and terror; and Matt Elliot downloading the rule books onto his laptop. Then, obviously, the strike teams hit us. We survived three rounds of combat due to stalwart tanking by Andy, and Matt's inspired plan of destabilising the entirety of their consensus to distract the combat team. Sal, showing the ninja-like skill of a ninja, neatly pulled everyone out into Ussura after the realm boundaries had been weakened slightly.

After that, we popped over to Buffy-verse to collect our boxes of cash; and Sal (who had slightly unfortunately developed a Sall-Ra form; slightly more elfin and Ebon-y, with occasional flights into, er, flight) asked her alt on that world (a Wiccan in Salisbury who called herself Tabitha) for a lock of hair for a Pyryem Sally-form. Then we headed back to Ussura, dumped off the cash, popped to Eternia, handed the sword back, and came home for tea.

This would have gone well, were it not for a minor incident.

Sal took Bryn and a few friends out to see Les Mis, because why not; Mattmatt and Andy stayed behind to see if they could get in touch with Andy's patron, Nuada. This involved Mattmatt summoning the Hounds of Arawn, who bit Andy's arm off. Sal, upon her return, attempted to make it better, but instead implanted Andy's space-where-left-arm-was with moonsilver, blood iron and a weird HUD display. In Rifts. Because these things happen to us I don't even know.

In Rifts, Andy also manifested the goob of a Cyber Knight; which proved useful shortly thereafter. Matt dropped off to collect a ton of sekhem to power his long-stored Lunar moonsilver armour, and Ginnie and Mattmatt ruined everything for him by saying the wrong thing in front of a Mummy. His second backup plan, after he'd managed not to tear their heads off, was to pop into Skyrim and nick a ton of stuff out of a game glitch. Since we were there, obviously, so were dragons; and Andy's mega-damage cyber knight sword made short work of the dragon. Whereupon he collected the soul of the dragon and became Dovakhin. This meant he had a kickass soundtrack and the ability to explode things he shouted at, but otherwise was a bit pants; so we kinda wandered off again.

Something something, ended up in Harry Potter by way of a Warhammer world. I'm unclear as to why, sadly. It was relevant at the time; but what became most relevant was the bit where a chaos space marine hitched a ride and started releasing demons. So we decided to hunt it down and slay it with... well, anything we had to hand, really. Sal set a time marker, and then we planned to buy things from Rifts, as a lovely damage- and soak-heavy market.

So we popped off to buy a load of cheap leather jackets and aviator  shades and battered history books, them being good currency in the  world of Rifts, and sold them for creds. After this, we had a kitty  of around 95k to play with; mediocre armour being around 25k a suit  and us wanting 3 for the squishies, basically, and the rest to be  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">spent on whatever we felt like. Mega-damage toys, mostly. Since we  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">were there, we popped into the most expensive armour shop there, just  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">to see the top end - as you do. Then there was some magitech armour that Sal was asked to try on, just to see if it did feel horrible to her.

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">So she tried it, and tried to tap into the energy of the world, just  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">to see how it felt. Clearly, this was the time she _actually_ managed  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">to hit a 17; and we ended up rolling randomly to see where we went. <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Which was 001; the Dark Tower.

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">We'd been here once before, years ago, Mattmatt, Sal and I - Andy and  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Matt hadn't come. We were told that the Tower's stairs led to  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Absalom, the First City; and that anyone mortal could come here three  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">times, and no more. Sal had once started a working that led her onto  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">the steps, so this is the last time she can come here while being as  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">she is.

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">In the antechamber, there are windows that show the fields of poppies,  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">burning bright, there's a door that only lets people in and doesn't  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">let them out again, and there's a door to a small balcony, where sits  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">a creature who calls himself the Crimson King. He said that the  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">spiralling staircases led toward creation or destruction - up and  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">down. He didn't confirm which was which, but we were okay with the  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">mythic resonances, and went with up. Well, most of us. Matt stayed  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">at the antechamber, being content with himself and unwilling to risk  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">losing any of his power sets.

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Each flight of stairs led to a small flat section; a 'house', which  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">had different things happen - in the first, we were maybe five years <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">old, and climbed a climing frame in the face of schoolyard bullies. <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Mattmatt had trouble here, remembering the jeers of children.

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">In the second, we were on the playing fields, calling Red Rover - I,  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">smaller and weaker and remembering my senior school, needed the other  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">three to block for me to get through the lines of pre-adolescents bent  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">on cracking my skull.

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">The third was college prom, with each of us having a date of  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">appropriate (or inappropriate) associations. Mattmatt, who'd gone to <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">prom with a girl in real life, had a pudgy and brave gay boy on his  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">arm, clinging slightly worriedly. Sally had her high school <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">sweetheart, who ran off with her best friend. Andy had a girl who was  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">drunk and woozy, where he felt as drunk and eager as any teenager  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">would. I... just had a drunk. Between us, we faced different truths,  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">or dealt with problems one way or another. Sal took longest here,  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">facing her past and acknowledging it.

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">The fourth was Ryan; freshly Embraced and demanding we leave the scene  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">of his crimes. We... well, this time we didn't run. We tried to  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">persuade him to be de-vamped by power of Sal, and then when that  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">didn't work (...because Andy got annoyed by him and hit him, and then  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">it was devolved into combat and then Ryan vanishing), we dealt with  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">the aftermath and stepped on.

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Fifth, we were in Hela's domain; Mattmatt walked in (no mortal could pass that way or risk being trapped forever) to ask to talk to Jez -  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">we were told that Origijez had been caught there, and were trying to  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">bargain for a chance to speak to him. This went reasonably well till  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Mattmatt said that he had four companions; and Matt, as not there,  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">wasn't available and couldn't be brought there... So we have till an  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">arbitrary midnight (time not meaning anything consistent here) to get  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">all five of us there to speak with Jez and... then see what happens.

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Sixth was a man of wealth and taste; he implied and suggested and  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">... we walked past. I think. Or something. I was confused, trying  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">to guess what he was implying rather than ignoring him heartily as the  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">others had.

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Seventh was the Hall of the Warrior; the Archetype of Arthur and all  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">his knights, as well as the Archer, a man in Lincoln Green; Saint  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Sabbat, some others; some of whom laid sleeping in biers and one of  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">whom was awake and talked with us. He pulled Matt to us - Matt hadn't  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">walked the Tower, so this didn't count for his opportunities - and we  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">talked about life and the Tower and the concepts, as best we could. <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Matt investigated the biers and rested his hands on one which vibed  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Rage - and it dissolved under his hands, as Finn mac Cumhail, First of  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">the Fianna, stood awake and greeted him as brother. The Warriors can  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">only be woken when they're actually needed, so we suggested that while he's awake, he go to Ynys Mon, the Isle of Anglesey, where there's a caern of the Fianna. Apparently, Fate then made a glonking noise. ...I call this a Thing, at least. ;P

<span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Andy took his Questions here, and took the Warrior as his patron. <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">Matt planned on resting here - and the three of us, Sally and Mattmatt  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">and I, we looked at the door, and the way onward, and have to decide  <span style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:13px;line-height:1.5;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;">now whether we have the strength to go onwards. We're working on main force of will now, and while we all have some, it's maybe not enough. But this is Sal's last chance to see Absalom, and the city's ahead of us somewhere...

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Sal, Mattmatt and Ginnie headed up the stairs; and after some wobbles, Mattmatt and Ginnie fell, being caught by Patrons. Sal went to visit Absalom, and now is pretty definitely a Concept now. Good times.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Then we popped back, visited Jez, found that Hela won't release a mortal who's been taken fairly into her realm, finally noticed her metaphorically winking at the 'mortal' bit, and started flailing around for ways to make Jez not-Mortal. This was sidelined when Sal produced the Key to the Gates of Pandaemonium and the offers started flooding in.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Due to Mattmatt having an Incident, we lost around four hours of our six-hour find-a-way-to-get-Jez-out getting Arawn to sort out the botch-tangle. Then Sal gave Arawn the Key (after Riklish had asked very nicely for it, complete with around two thousand BSDs as negotiating partners) and we all went back to Jez and said we were working _really hard_ on getting him out.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Now we're going to go deal with a Chaos Space Marine in Harry-Potter-verse after paying our debts in Rifts and making sure we have all the other kit-bits we need. Woo.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">So anyhow; as we worked our way to Rifts, we sort of accidentally (thanks, Sal) fell into Successful-Heresy-40K-verse; in, obviously, Holy Terra; whereupon Magnus the Red gave us an invitation we couldn't refuse. Because it was delivered by several drop-pods of Space Marines, that's why.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">So we had tea with him and his guys, and he said 'why don't you stick around? Horus will be round in a bit.' Thereupon Sal (after some issues of beating her head off the shields) decided (with some strong encouragement from the assembled) to walk the Pattern and see if she could hellride out of the 'verse. The Pattern was walked successfully, and we popped off; sliding from world to world without needing to get through the wards. This meant some exciting stops on the way to our latest location - Azeroth. Specifically, Stormwind.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Here, we've found a source of decent armour, good spells and cool people - for a world which can be taglined as 'in the fluffy sunny fantasy world of Azeroth, there is only War'...

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Matt has trained as a mage, Mattmatt as a priest, Sal as a druid, Andy a paladin and Ginnie as... well, a calligrapher. Best not to think about it, really. On the other hand, the guild we joined said 'borrow some cash off us, pick up decent gear, and pay us back later; preferably while fighting all who would harm the Light.'

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">One day, I swear, we are really going to go deal with that chaos space marine. And the necrons.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">After a week in Azeroth (during which we ran the Scarlet Monastery to see how that went, Cerys the Paladin realised he'd signed up a level 80 Commoner to his guild and demanded Ginnie got trained, and Andy spent a little while blinking in shock at the ridiculousness of the damage output and soak in WoW) we decided that we were probably okay with moving on now, thanks.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">So we headed to Potterverse, Sal landing perfectly, then we ran up all the flights of stairs in the tower block the CSM was on top of, and then... Andy cut him in half and Mattmatt banished his soul. Um. We all felt a little bit surprised.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Then we argued about how to get down from the roof; then headed over to the Nurgling in the hospital. It was squitted in a broom cupboard, then we pulled the fire alarm and Mattmatt Cleansed everyone of disease as they left the building. This took around half an hour; it's hard to get beds out. Then after an argument about getting to the warehouse where the last daemon was (a Knornate puppy), Sal 'ported over. With Ginnie.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">...Whereupon it turns out that basic training in Azeroth and being a liquid metal Terminator mean that you can basically hang out, stunning the puppy over and over till Mattmatt turns up and you can kill it properly. It was, I admit, a little embarrassing for everyone involved. Then the Ministry of Magic popped by, asked for a statement, apparently agreed with our conclusions, and left. We were stunned. So then we headed back home for a couple days and had a rest (during which time Sagittarus of the Zodiac had tea with Ginnie and said 'go investigate this assassination, and we won't follow you home.'), then popped into Rifts, paid the armourer for the armour Sal left behnid in the Tower, picked up some other toys, and got a line on the dude who was bailiffing for a bracer Matt had picked up _somewhere_. So Matt got in touch with him, met up and paid him off. Then we went home. In a fit of nearly overwhelming efficiency. This can only go downhill from here. Fortunately for us, the next step of the To Do list is popping into Exalted, paying Matt's tailor's bill and Mattmatt having a chat with a goddess. How can that go wrong?

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Possibly fortunately, it doesn't seem to have gone as wrong as it could do. Yet.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">In Exalted, Matt paid for his armour (and for a Celestial Manse, as the armourer was so appalled at how Matt was powering the suit that he practically gave away the heavenly real estate; which therefore means Matt now has proper hearthstones to plug into his shiny metal armour), and Mattmatt got lost. After a chat with the Lady of the Lost, he said that she'd agreed to give him his Eruption back (as evidenced by his newer, shinier, fairier glow) in return for him giving the tome of healing magics he'd collected to a person of her choice. Who, upon investigation, appeared to be hanging in a cage in a Death Lord's palace.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Sally, meantime, Exalted Some Dude, who is now riding around the wilds of the north with a magic horse made of wind. Sally says 'I don't even know his _name_!' Dude says 'I worship you!' Everyone else says *facepalm*... Then again, how bad can it be?

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">After this little flight of fancy, Sal ported us to the Death Lord's palace. Oh; wait - she ported Andy and Mattmatt over. Matt and Ginnie, going 'its just 80 miles; we can be there in a...' then were swept up by Sal as she took them the short cut. Andy came along for the port, as happens sometimes, and they all four ended up on Elysium, a space station. Sal then used the power of WoW, dragged out of Ginnie and Andy, to power her next jump; which took us to B5. Whereupon Kosh wandered by, said something cryptic (...something about light, and something about there being no future at the mo? I don't even know...) and then lent us his spaceship to get us down to the planet. Whereupon Sal popped us all back to Exalted. How long in Mattmatt's subjective time-sense this has taken, we aren't really sure...

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">It took a remarkably short time to deal with the Exalted problem (largely by the power of Magma Krakens and suchlike); when the Exalted circle did their woogy magic, and all healing magics vanished. Uh, possibly everywhere; no one's quite sure about the extent of it yet.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Then we had a chat, said hi, and Sally met her counterpart - the Maiden of Voyages. Who said 'would you like to be sent to where you should go next?'

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Whereupon we appeared in the Vorlon fighter we'd previously taken with us, and in Voyager's slipstream in a trans-warp conduit.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">We got onto Voyager by the power of saying 'Hi, please can we come on board?' and then gave them evidence that Ryan's minions were trying to do something bad to Voyager (this while the cast were planning on working out how to collapse the trans-warp conduit with 18 precisely deployed quantum torpedoes, in about five minutes' time; this is relevant for reasons of PC...).

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Anyhow, as Janeway sent security to collect the nine Ryan-spawn, as they ported out. Matt spotted this was happening (best crit ever...) and immediately rerouted the transporters; leaving two behind in Engineering, two got telefragged, four were materialised in space, floating slightly haplessly and lacking in any way of travelling; and one got away due to him having intrinsic teleportation capacity.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">They left booby traps, though - killing two of the security team; and also blowing the engines. Matt immediately headed for Engineering and plugged himself in to jump start the warp coils; Mattmatt went into space to be the shields, Andy went to Engineering to whack the last of the Ryan-spawn, and I set up as sensors. This left Sally to Exalt the now-dead and/or dying redshirts.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">This... was a tad overenthusiastic. As the ship wobbled in space, she managed to, in fact, Exalt about 60% of the crew, including all of the command crew bar Tuvok. This put them out of commission for a couple of minutes, as they assimilated their new demigodly powers. <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">During which time, obviously, all the Plot was happening. The Shadow ship shoots at us; Mattmatt soaking some of it, but mostly we end up with an exciting redecoration for Voyager, as a large hole goes almost all the way through the ship. Horizon, the newly-named Vorlon fighter who'd adopted Matt, was also Exalted by Sal (being, obvs, the goddess of Travel and the like; this... made more sense than it should have...), pulled itself together faster than the average humanoid and pootled off to fight the Shadow ship. A couple of lucky shots (including one that Sal forced the universe to acknowledge as being lucky afterwards; this... may have peeved the Q a tad...) and Mattmatt doing his magical whammy meant that the Shadow ship was basically running dead in the water.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">This was helpful, as Andy, after having hugged the vampires to death (turns out being basically a magma golem is super bad for vampires who take their power from the cold of space...), starts sorting out the targetting for the qtorpedoes (remember them?) with a Ginnie-HUD and nothing else to help. Eighteen rolls later, the warp conduit explodes.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Mattmatt, with a faint howl of agony, manages just about to maintain an atmosphere and shielding within the ship, as Matt runs low on energy to feed into the engines... So Andy decides to turn himself into energy, as he can, and use that to power the ship to get it ahead of the blast wave.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">This worked rather too well. He vanishes from the mindlink, and the damage he takes effectively vaporises him. Sal desperately flails as the energy as he goes, grabbing a double handful of something that might be called a soul, and then realises that what she needs is somewhere to put it.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Ginnie, meantime, fresh from tidying up the five minds hooked into the ship's computers (and coincidentally creating a slightly clunky mental network between them) creates a geode for Sal to put Andy's power/soul into; this gives him enough mental capacity to have a mind again. Since the geode is essentially created of similar nanites to her form, he's capable of assimilating raw materials into the geode to increase its mass; and is reborn as Andy: Techno-organic virus man!.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Upon inspection, as the... let's say 60% of Voyager that's left cruises along, we take a look at what's actually going on. The speed Andy gave us has... accidentally carried us out of the universe, as we were in a subsection anyway due to transwarp and subspace bubbles and stuff. It's also left a nicely uncontrolled nuclear furnace over the nacelles, which is probably what's left of Andy's last body - we might be able to get it back, but we have bigger fish to fry right now. Like the fact that Mattmatt's shield is the only thing keeping the ship intact and oxygenated; the fact we're not entirely certain how to turn round or slow down, and we're really not terribly good at navigating in here... <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Other than that, we're all fine! We totally thwarted Ryan's plan, and severely damaged his ship. We just, you know, have to put Voyager back in the right place with as many people as we can still alive on it. And possibly untangle the, er, technopathic/telepathic mental network Ginnie incidentally set up around the command crew's neural interfaces.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">So: we were left with a very holey Voyager hurtling through the Bleed, with no real certainty on how to manoeuvre or get back into realspace, with about 1/5 of the crew Exalted and the command crew being steadily hiveminded.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Obviously, our first priorities were to re-establish, say, working life support that didn't rely on Mattmatt's shields. Given the lack of reasonable material, Ginnie suggested (without actually mentioning the known downsides...) that Andy use the techno-organic-virus-created body to convert spare parts, crates and furnishings into hull material to re-grow the exterior of the ship. <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">The known downsides of this included infecting the ship with the TOVirus.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">This meant the TOV basically converted the ship and all essential systems inside it. When it merged with the five-in-one command crew, they took control of it and stopped it going any further. Then Mattmatt and Andy between them got the ship back into _a_ realspace (we weren't being too picky at that point) and we slowed down to sub-light in the vicinity of a solar system with an earth-type planet in it. ...after some jiggling and Andy dropping off to Husk out of the TOV.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">The Five-in-One asked us to take all the non-infected crew members away from the ship while they discussed the ramifications of being made up of TOV, and we toddled down onto the planet with Tuvok, the Doctor and around 40-ish crew (out of 150) who were either human or human-and-Exalted, setting down on a comfortably temperate uninhabited island.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Then they got on with Star Trekking a solution, and we got on with some good old fashioned exploring because really, why not. After some scanning, we discovered that the world was a post-apocalyptic, post-redevelopment future Earth, at a mediaeval level of technology with some woogy magic involving the colour spectrum. Also and coincidentally, that there were caches of Ancient-Atlantean-Technology (...okay, pre-apocalypse high tech, whatever).

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">The which we immediately set out to loot. Well, the one in the Antarctic, at least, on the grounds that, given the level of civilisation the world had, there wasn't likely to be any dramatic necessity that brought the plot down _there_ any time soon. It had a large amount of woogy stuff, including refined dilithium crystals and flat-packs which could be programmed to create habitations; depending on how many you put together and how many crystals were used to power them, they could be used to create anything from a small house to a working space station city.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">We had a rest, then found out that the Doctor and Tuvok had worked out how to reverse any TOV infection which hadn't got past 50% reassignment; and that the Voyager Five-in-One had a set of new objectives - first, to seek out new life and new civilisations in such fashion as to be uninfectious; second, to find a way of ensuring that they were non-infectious and, preferably, a means of separating themselves out of the Consensus if they needed/wanted to; and third, to give everyone in their crew a choice on what to do next - whether to go with them on their mission, to go home, or to do something else.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">We got all the crew together, and after the Doctor had cleaned the infection out of those he could, they mostly decided to stay. The Exalted all said that they'd prefer to explore on their own, maybe meeting up every so often to pass information - and we offered them a chance to explore the Rifts-verses, the which they jumped at.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">In apology for the horrible things we'd caused to happen to the ship, we paid in dilithium and flat-packs - made out of solid light somehow, they were uninfectable and very durable, which meant that the crewmen who weren't infected would be able to minimise contact. Then Matt bought the Delta Flyer - a souped-up shuttle with warp capacity - for some more dilithium, and Sal got them home like a ninja. We witnessed a touching parting, as Tom Paris, part of the Five-in-One, separated himself enough to say goodbye to B'Elanna Torres and their newborn child; she was going back to the Federation for the child's sake, taking news of Ryan's 'Arcturan' evil.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">And then we collapsed in an untidy heap.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">We were not collapsed long before we were on our way again. We _planned_ to just pop in to DS9, say hi to Sisko and head home. Sadly, as is usually the case with these things, we ended up doing a drive-by on Star Trek San Fran and hopping out to a random uninhabited planet, where we planned to wait for a couple hours to meet up with Horizon. This would have been fine, albeit boring, were there not a Thing on the planet. The which was investigated by the power of '...Oh, sensors are the ones _next_ to the transporter buttons... I knew that...'

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">But yes; after some poking around, the people in the cryo chambers started to wake up, and we bounced out. To another world. Then, after some brief exploration, are now hoping to hop back before the people in the cryo-tubes cause havoc...

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">The exploration involved Andy having a chat with Nuada and getting acknowledged as a proper Scion; this means he got to whale on some mooks and then duel with a shadow-man and Cat Sith, before being given access to the War purview. Who knew? Nuada was equally helpful with suggestions on how to get Jez out of Hela's realm - 'Try a frontal assault; they're just undead. But I'd avoid Fenris, if I were you. I mean, as I'm Me, I'd just go straight through, but eh.'

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Obviously, since we're us, getting back to the cryo-tubes was a little problematic.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">After some dancing around the cosmos via a variety of places (the only two that really mattered being a Weyland Yutani storage platform in the mid-Atlantic, where Andy found his first Warband follower - a souped-up clone of Master Sergeant Hicks - and Ming the Merciless' house on Mongo, where Ming found that we had spotted his existence and he would therefore come, at some point, to blow up our world. I think Andy's query sums up how worried we are about that one - 'Can I practice coring planets on Mongo? PLEEEEEASE?')

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">As we stopped by Aberrant to drop Hicks off, De Vries were kind enough to leave me a note saying that Interpol had asked T2M-Europe to drop by and arrest me for the murder of Some Dude in Eastern Germany. I shook my fist at Leo, and then we wandered on to Star Trek - via Series 41.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Series 41, on the Walker Scale, is the starter-worlds where all the PYers come from, which specific world depending on how many people have left it and when. So... we found our way home, kinda. There, at the Rising Sun in Stoke, we found the Shamen of the Road; some of the people who live on the dregs of magic the world has and try to push it further towards a magical environment. They passed us to Stone, who took us home for a chat.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Stone explained the reasoning behind the Millenium Foundation; to try to put people into the places of the Big Ten personified Entities in an attempt to give said Entities some kind of free will. We agreed that both the Shamen's plan and the Foundation's were good and worthwhile, and we'd do our best to help them out.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Then we went to the crossing point, and are poised to move on...

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">After a brief pop-hop to collect Horizon and the (now sadly battered) Delta Flyer, Matt stashed the Delta Flyer in Yu Shan (apparently, his ballroom is already hosting the armoury, and they're seriously considering knocking some bedrooms together for more space for Kit. Lootin' hands have minor downsides...) and Sal hopped us to DS9; a mere 18 months after we left. We'll take it. :D

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Andy dealt with Quark for some goods; the dilithium we picked up on Black Prism-verse apparently being good enough for trade here. 21 crystals got him the spare parts needed to fix the Delta Flyer (which had been beaten up by the people in cryo-pods we woke up; who were apparently Pa-Shock? - some kind of gengineered Romulan/human/Khan hybrids, anyhow, who were introduced into the timestream like a century prior to DS9-time), 20 rifles (probably of Klingon origin), an industrial replicator and a free Jem'hadar pistol. But not the VIP membership of Quark's.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Then we passed the Prophets' message on to Sisko, who asked us to go on a trip with him and some of his command crew. On the Defiant. To Romulus. A brief scout showed that the problem was the Scimitar, a spaceship with some kind of bio-weapon that's not meant to be built for a good decade yet... So we're currently discussing how best to sort this one out. Andy points out that coring the moon it's being built on is a plan. Everyone else points out that all of Andy's plans lately have had something to do with coring large planetary objects...

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Chatting through the problem of taking out a Romulan weapon research station and experimental ship and weapon-platform for Evil Radiation that kills all life, we decide to get some support and equipment. Some discussion follows on the best way to get into and out of the Romulan Star Empire; some dedicated scouting informs us of the defences of the base we're trying to get to and the ship we're trying to destroy. Our two best ideas are 'see if any of us are ATA-gened and go pick up a Puddlejumper' (stymied by no one being ATA-active. Solved by Bashir going 'Oh, I can woog that one... Kill your friend, inject him with ATA then, and he'll be ATA-active when his system restarts.' This went high-lariously as Andy shoots Ginnie instead of Matt while trying to kill him. She reforms a few minutes later looking peeved, and then the plan goes as planned.) and 'pop to Potter-verse and buy some Felix Felicis'. No one can actually work out how this could be a bad plan, so... we do that. After bribing Sal with the promise of a wand of her very own.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">We do this by dropping by Azeroth for a day, running a couple raids, getting some training and a pile of gold. Hicks decides to train as a Warrior, because real men don't wear dresses. Ginnie and Andy get their goob back. Mattmatt makes a scrying stone. Then we drop by Diagon Alley, buy 12 hours' Luck, two wands, a Durmstrang-style staff and open an account at Gringotts.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Matt and Andy take a pile of Volatiles to Anglesey, and leave them giggling over the Life, it being basically Gnosis, and confused over the Water. Though one of these was repurposed for Celyn, as obviously what the Goose needs is a magical water balloon. There's a nice quiet day, and then we pop back to the Defiant after maybe two or three minutes away because Sally is a ninja.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Then we have more of a chat about how to deal with the Romulan Star Empire, and Mattmatt reveals to Hicks that he's a gengineered clone with Alien DNA. He... does not take this well. In good news, he's prepared to finish the mission 'because I really need to shoot someone'. In bad news, he'll finish out the week and see whether or not he's prepared to take the contract on further.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">The mission went surprisingly well - Q, after dropping by to wag a finger severely at Sal, insists that no human is to do anything that humans in this timeline can't do. He does, though, leave behind a microscopic amount of Red Matter, as a polite hint as to what humans can actually do, here and now; and this hint is more than enough to gently encourage the party to go forth. The Felix Felicis means that the Defiant flies like a ninja through the Romulan space defences (helped no end by Mattmatt's scintillating work on the sensors, where he at one point drops a mug on a button and accidentally realises that we're heading towards a dense grid with just enough time for Matt to veer the ship onto another course...) and we settle near enough to the station to pootle over with a bit of EVA action. This went almost perfectly; as Sally and Ginnie end up whirling in space for a few slightly worrying minutes before Matt remembers that he's got TK and hauls them in, long-sufferingly.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Inside the Scimitaresque, Matt breaks into the reactor core and dumps a couple of fusion blocks with timers on; then the team ninjes through to an airlock, and Hicks and Andy disable (or 'neatly kill', as the case may be) the guards and we head on further itno the station. It's decided that, as we have a reasonably short window of opportunity, that we should send Matt (as our invisible technopathic mage werewolf in Exalted power armour) to go do all the hard work, and get Andy and Hicks to do all the wet work, while Mattmatt, Sally and Ginnie toddle along behind. Then we get back to the ship, Matt remembers that the Picard's clone is hanging out there and transports him and any other non-combatants nearby into escape pods and throws them into space just ahead of the respectable explosions which take out the ship, all the thaleron generators and a large chunk of the base. Plus personnel.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">We discuss how best to get back (Sisko's plan - 'I was going to peg it, abandon the Defiant, and work my way home...') and decide that clearly Sally hopping us out-verse and then back in again is the best plan. This worked pretty neatly, apart from the bit where we go to one place (Red Mars, for ref...) and the defiant and its crew go to another 'verse. Sal, like a boss, manages to flip us from where we were to the five-minute window we were off the Defiant in the past; and from there, to six months in future where the Defiant has been left in BSG-space and the three DS9 crew have been integrated into the crew of Galactica.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">When contacted, Sisko asks for six more months, during which time he thinks he can make sure that they'll have a better chance against the Cylons, and we agree. We hop forward six months and four days, and pick them up to go home. (By the bye, Sisko pings as a Scion; and has pretty definitely Fate-bound a number of the BSG crew.)

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">After a little bit of time-faff, we get back to DS9 like two months after we left, but without having set off any Romulan detection grids. Then Andy and Matt pick up their Vast Amounts Of Stuff and we head home for a bit of leave.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">After a brief discussion about comparative morality, we have a chat with a Mr Archer, of the Ordo Cognitas/Conoscens (?) - he translates this as the Order of the Wise/Learned, and says that their responsibility is to keep knowledge in the right place. He was at the Romulan research station, and says that he was there to make sure no one died of thaleron radiation then. He asks if we can do a job for him; extract a political prisoner from a fascist alter-Britain, relatively high biotech, high faith-magics. We politely decline as we could really do with a rest and he says it's a bit time sensitive.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Then we go have a rest. For three days, this is supremely uneventful; then Mattmatt creates a hole in space-time to the Void by throwing magic at an ex-WoW bag; and Sally steals everyone else's luck and uses it to make her sponges come out amazingly light and fluffy.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">This... to be honest, this could have gone worse. Some dudes came through who were like the big bad guys from the Riftwar series, the Groo beat up on them, died by having the life sucked out of them, Sal drained the area of all energy to rez them (which coincidentally killed all the bad guys and closed the hole) and... apart from a strange niggling feeling that maybe Bryn is a bit Balancer/Destroyer Wyrmy now, we think it actually worked out okay. Maybe.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">After this is dealt with, Mattmatt explains his plan for how to put healing magics back in the multiverse. This involves Skyrim, D&D, Star Trek and Destiny's Garden... so we start in WoW, obviously to get the money to get the stuff we want in Skyrim to get the stuff we want in D&D.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19.5px;">Then something odd happens. Stay tuned for part 2!