The Blood Wood
Blood for the Blood Wood! Or, rather, today was the excitingest... Arriving at Edinburgh at around 8am, we had a few hours of Collapse at the local YHA. This meant showers, breakfast and naps all round - though Mattmatt's nap took two hours longer than expected, and appeared to involve an hour forty five of sleep-walking around when no one knows where he was, complete with some very odd dreams. As most of Edinburgh appeared intact, we kind of let this one slide and headed back to Arran by public transport. Trains seem very odd, these days.
The countryside had a number of walled-off and burnt-out sections of land, where a 'quarantine zone' had been declared. There's some suggestion that the quarantine is from a Shadowrun virus which turns people into quasi-zombies. Outbreak points appear to be suspiciously close to world-gates/crossing points (Arran and Stoke in the UK, a fair few others across the world); but Arran is the only one which was the centre of an outbreak and then cleansed. Dying appeared to do some good, at least.
When we arrived at Arran, a man-from-the-pub greeted Sal and Mattmatt happily, and seemed to not notice the bit where they may have been dead and buried in this reality. He suggested we go hang out at the pub for a bit later. Mattmatt, eager to become part of the Blood Wood again, heade straight there, with Sal (for the powerly-swapping) and Matt (for the curiosity) in tow. Ginnie and Andy went down the pub, and there discussed good and bad points of world-travelling. This would be the last peaceful bit of the day for a while.
Mattmatt said hi to David, the previously-resurrected paladin of Annwyn and receptionist at Lochranza YHA; then they went on in. Sally then played shuffle-the-energy, and managed to set Matt and Mattmatt on fire. Which was exciting, and no mistake.
Ginnie and Andy, deciding that the better part of friendship is running towards the screams, then got caught up in the slight turmoil.
After a few exciting adventures, including a brief trip into the ocean, power sets are now stabilised as per character pages, there's a Pah-Wraith somewhere in space over this reality, and a baby Necron obelisk in the middle of the Blood Wood. Which has now expanded More Than Somewhat. But these details aside, it's all fine.
Fine.
Obviously, as all we had to do was hang out till dawn so Mattmatt could chat to David about Arawn, it all went horribly wrong. This time, it all went horribly wrong because Ginnie decided to try teleporting and didn't think about the range limitations; and ended up in the gamma quadrant. Now, this wouldn't usually be an issue, but since this was a quasi-WoD-verse, there was an awful lot of Umbra between Here and There; and therefore telepathy and clairv were not accessible.
Ginnie decided to sit around and wait to be rescued, rather than potentially making things Even Worse.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, some stuff happened. It involved a lot of brief visits to a lot of worlds, and - for some reason - Sally travelling everyone through the voids of the Dark Umbra on wings of fiery wind. No, no one else knows where that came from, either. On the other hand, in some manner that got the rest of the group close enough to the world Ginnie was on to link in to comms again.
Then Andy burnt holes in some of the group in space, then Ryan's modified Constitution-class starship launched a Genesis thingy at the planet. Then Andy holed the planet before the probe got there. Then Ginnie Ran Like A Girl away from the laval flows while being GPS for Andy (underground - and under planetary crust, and under magma layer...) and Mattmatt (In Spaaace!), and then Sal teleported everyone to Lake Titicaca. Which was nice. The cloud of superheated steam after the lake was impacted by at least two people travelling at a significant speed at significant temperatures covered everyone leaving the lake; and then we went back to the Blood Wood World.
Then Mattmatt spoke to David, then we waited till mid-afternoon while Sally talked to Andy about Earth Powers and it turned out that they have wildly differing paradigms, then we went and fetched Hiro (destroying a chunk of Arran to get us there, but hey), who, after a phone message which went "Hi, we're heroes from another reality and we need your help; we're at these co-ordinates and it's this time." produced Hiro and Ando, Heroes for Hire!. Sally then took us all back to Swansea, then Hiro and Ando traded the vials of blood (remember those? It was a while back I last wrote about them) for the other vials of blood Matt had replicated from Trek-verse, and then they came back to our time.
Then Mattmatt accidentally cured Hiro of brain cancer, and we gave Hiro a plushie Enterprise (with removable saucer section) as a thank you. Then we dropped them off back in their world, and then we came back to the New Forest, our world. Then we Rite of Cleansinged everything, and then we went back to Anglesey.
It's now still Thursday 7 May 2009, around noon, and we are actually about fifty miles further away from London than we were at 8 this morning. On the other hand, Sal smells slightly of violets, Mattmatt has had 'I missed you' sex, and Jon and Andy have been put on Angharad's List of Eligible Bachelors. I suspect Matt is not long for avoiding this list; but at least he's got an excuse for being unavailable - he's currently trying to work out how to present everything that happened 'today' to a Galliard in such a fashion that loses him the least Renown...
We had an afternoon off for the rest of the day. Sometimes, there's nothing else you can do. Jon meditated, Matt made Clearwater Talens (all together now: 'Photosyyyynthesis!'), and Andy was introduced to the sept at large and Angharad in particular. Since a short skinny-dipping session by the entirety of the eligible females on the caern for Andy's benefit, he seems quite taken with Jenna West; a homid BF who came to Anglesey with two metis BFs, to look after them. She is, apparently, kinda cute. Then she smashed his glasses.
We all ate ridiculous amounts of venison, and then we... got to sleep. No, really. Nothing notable happened. It was great. Oh, also Matt told Bryn that going to London was an insane plan, and he wasn't prepared to take the people with large wanted posters to the biggest city in the country. And Cerryn's mother was taken in for questioning about his association with Mattmatt.
Friday 8 May 2009
Today, we did nothing at all. If by 'nothing' you mean 'combat training with Ceryn, wearing Andy out till he almost threw up then magically got better when standing on non-Caern earth, working out Ginnie had accidentally downloaded a full defensive combat package from the Emperor's Children somewhere, bouncing briefly to BSG-verse when Andy hit Sal, and Sal actually managing to tackle Bryn in combat as a bear'. And that was our morning. The afternoon was spent vegging, chatting and watching Mattmatt vanish through the various vibrational frequencies of the universes. The evening was spent down the pub. Jenna and Andy were getting on really well (apart from Jenna being kind of awful at tact, discretion, flirting or, you know, anything that involves talking to people - what Auspice is she, now?); Jon found a 19-year-old sci-fi fan who found the idea of a nine foot tall Kinfolk to be oddly endearing; and Matt got hit on by Eliza Drake, a Fang Kin who Delwyn _really_ disapproves of. Mattmatt evilly eavesdropped into the girls' emotions and passed all the gossip on, Sally gave Helpful Advice ('Get in there, my son!'), and Ginnie got approached by the mad Fury girl about going to do some worshippin' of the moon. Then we all had another quiet night.
We are _enjoying_ our R&R. Tomorrow, we need to talk about KPIs, problems out there in the multiverse we should solve and what we should pack for our next trip; and in three days' time... something is happening. I can't for the life of me remember what, though...
Saturday 9 May - Wednesday 13 May
During this time, Jon's sword was fixed to be useable, Sal agreed to set up a second cluster of worlds, we fixed on the Necrons as being our next Thing To Do, Matt picked up a psi sword of the Space Wolves which he promptly bent into the service of his own leet psychic powers, went to the Wheel of Ptah and got given a new rank and a bag and a flint knife, Andy got shown round the Rogue Trader and snaffled a bag of weaponry, Ginnie made a Sylie and fed different world's spiders to Ananasa and gained a rank, and Mattmatt experimented with wandering up and down the energy spectrum. We're not entirely certain how this went so well.
Now; onward - to NuWoD-verse, and then to Anita Blake.
Monday 18 October 2010
NuWoD turns out to be a lot less fun than you might think; there's an ents company building a stadium in the middle of Arran, and _everywhere_ is filled with WtF territory - which sets Andy on edge and makes Matt's Rage grow just a little bit higher than is safe for normal people. As we travel from Arran to Hampstead Heath via the SallyBus, then to Stone (a small town outside Stoke that appears magically not-territory) by train, Andy assimilates into Kael, complete with magical ring. Sally insists that we must return this ring. We have no way of contacting Kael. We wait till morning to leave this reality. Ginnie accidentally assimilates into a vampire, and starts burning as the sun hits her. Sally sleeps through this, waking only when Mattmatt steals her quilt to stop Ginnie burning. Matt and Mattmatt leave the B&B we're staying in by the back door as Sal stumbles out front and tries to collect the energy to leave - in front of a group of interested passers by. This would not normally be a problem, but it turns out that NuWoD Mages have stigmata, and Sal's is ribbons of coloured light all round her. Sal passes this off as residual chemicals from the fire. This works out just as well as you might expect, and she is hustled into an ambulance (shortly followed by Andy, as he demands to be allowed to go with her, and collects her phone from the nice policeman) and sedated.
While waiting for Ginnie to wake up and re-initiate telecomms, Sal and Andy are questioned by the police on suspicion of terrorist activity, and then arrested on ditto. Matt and Mattmatt just have a fairly boring day in the woods outside the town. Upon Ginnie reawakening, it is suggested that maybe leaving town - and reality - now would be quite nice; as Andy, in the meantime, has managed to disintegrate the police cell doors, which confused the nice policemen a lot.
Then, while Sal and Andy are being Polite Prisoners, Mattmatt accidentally leaves this plane of reality while looking for Sal's phone to steal it form the evidence locker, and Matt tries a dermal regenerator on Ginnie, on the offchance that it will help with some of the damage she's taken from the sunlight. It a) doesn't and b) causes her to frenzy. Sal uses her patented tactic of dealing with frenzy by dropping Ginnie - and everyone else - into a freshwater lake. Sadly, her aim was a little off, and the team (less Mattmatt) end up in another reality in Antarctica. Shortly thereafter, team-less-Mattmatt were in Psy-Changeling 'verse, trying to deal with hypothermia.
Team then goes to collect Mattmatt (who has, by this time, due to sheerest coincidence found his way back to NuWoD), and head forth from this place to pastures new; ending up in Wild Cards 'verse with Eros computers - a place not quite baseline Wild Cards, but close enough to give a basis of understanding. Matt and Sally's phone between them commit interdimensional credit card fraud, and then we find a B&B for the night.
Wednesday 20 October 2010
This was all going swimmingly, and we were even seriously considering using this world as one of the new nest of realities, when the next morning Antonio Villanova wanders up to us in the middle of the street in Anglesey and introduces himself politely, and asks for a lift home. After a brief panic, we see no real reason to disagree, but suggest meeting later on that day in Bangor, so we have time to chat. Before getting the train, Matt asks Ginnie to try shapeshifting to change her face, and they wander off to a quiet beach to try this.
The hour or so spent working through this goes startlingly well; and things only really turn disastrous when Mattmatt, doing some practicing on his own account, manages to turn his blood into napalm and starts burning to death. Andy, being nearish, tries to stop it and accidentally turns into a humanoid flame elemental. Sally, as the ranged elementalist, tries to dump water over the pair of them; sadly, the nearest water source was the sea - something that's lethal to both Andy and Mattmatt. The mini-tidal wave is currently incoming... Next, Sal tries grabbing Mattmatt and Andy, and instead nearly burns her arms off. Ginnie has just reached the rest of the group and has stopped to cover her hands in material to give some protection from the raging inferno surrounding Mattmatt, Matt is racing to the them in wolf form at supernatural speeds and Sal, staring at the burnt remains of herself, prepares to possibly do something drastic...
It's all very exciting, out in the wide worlds.
Sal's dramatic moment fades quietly; Andy takes to the air, Mattmatt fights off the pain for long enough to glow - and, by flipping which power set he's using, turns the fire off from himself. Then he goes for the sky as well - instants before the wave shears off the rock face where Sally, Matt and Ginnie are scrambling about.
Sal is knocked unconscious by the fall - Matt, in crinos, drags her to the surface as the fires on her arms gutter out. Ginnie shuttles Clearwater Talens and pours the Gnosis into Sal, Mother's Touching the worst of the damage off. Gifts can't touch the damage Mattmatt is in, though; according to the tricorder, his molecular bonds are loosened. He's officially discombobulated...
Sal, though, when she wakes up, seems _different_. She oozes a horrible sex appeal, all those in her close proximity seem inclined to give into thier baser instincts and it and Andy is badly affected by her proximity. She herself is convinced that she did something bad to her soul in order to survive the fall down the cliff face and the impact of the water.
Sal convinced that her soul has been irrevocably corrupted and after some playing around with sense wyrm it's discovered that being in her presence leads to a certain level of wyrm taint/corruption This leads to some discussion on where best to go to get Sal cleansed with Matt stating that the friendly elder gurahl would be the best place to start, the majorioty rule is followed and the party get in touch with Villanova to say they may be delayed, and then hop to Buffy-verse to see whether Giles is willing to get us in touch with the coven who helped cleanse Willow after she went to the bad.
Thursday 21 October 2010
Sadly, it appears that we're still assimilating; leading to Ginnie being a vampire - and Andy being a (female) Slayer... Bright side? Giles is hitting the books for us. Down side? Sal appears to be a succubus right now, and Ethan Rayne's in town...
That night turns into an exciting cross-country trek to Chicago to sing for Lorne - and to take receipt of several tons of gold from Wolfram and Hart. The latter was not planned... Jon appears, having been sent over to join the party by the Karma Police; and is shocked at Sal's somewhat daemonette looks. He also notes that it seems that Andy is looking kinda Khorney. We are awaiting results, currently.
We stop off briefly at a camping lot. It, obviously, turns out to be a Demonic Camping Lot with an Ancient Evil asleep under it; which we wake up. Sal gives him $300, is made Goddess of Hedgehogs, and then we go back to Sunnydale. Cheapest ascension ever.
On the way back, we investigate the six suitcases and one small bag delivered by courier. The small bag contains $5m in $100 bills and a manifest, saying that the contents of the bags in total are worth $180m. The other six suitcases contain (after discussion with the metal fairy in the car, rather than bothering with guesses...) gold, electrum/mithril, lunar argent/moonsilver, Pyrean gold/bloodsteel, Stygian iron/necronium and thaumium/primium. What we're to do with several tons of rare metals, I'm not entirely sure, but it could be fun...
Giles suggests three ways of dealing with the demonic thing: Forcing the bargainer to materialise so it cam be hit by a 5'4 blonde with an axe (our survey suggests: Bad Idea), finding out the specific contractual terms in order to find the break clause; (our survey suggests: We have no idea how to find out the contractual terms outwith asking Wolfram and Hart), and ascetic living for a couple decades (our survey suggests: A little bit of a long term solution, and unlikely to get people back home any time soon).
Matt decides to go through the racks of holy items and buy one of everything. Mattmatt refuses to go near him till he stops wearing the anti-fairy specifics. Sally and Andy are twitchy about going near most of them, as is Ginnie while temporarily a vampire.
Sal thinks she could sort this out herself by the power of her cleansing ritual. She attempts this in Edinburgh, and discovers that the area is saturated in chaos magics, so can't be used to cleanse herself. She therefore considers other worlds which might be less chaotic and more attuned to healing; and tries to get to the Mists of Avalon - leaving the metal in the suitcases in Giles' care. We end up in Lensmen-verse. This is quite surprising for everyone involved...
We're greeted by Unattached Lensman Arthur Kimball Kinnison; grandson of Kim Kinnison. He then takes us out for dinner. Ginny attempts to not swoon as much as possible, while trying her very hardest to tell him she is currently not accepting proposals of any sort even from very nice unattached lensmen...(although this last part may not last). She is fairly sure she's good at saying no to people like that, though. Besides, Product Of Freaky Incest and not really very human being... Also, shut up, drool drool drool. ;P Also _also_, Ginnie was dead at the time, and see? _DED_. No drool. Also also also, Ginnie felt picked on by her horrible packmates but was too busy leaking at the stiff upper lipness of the lensman to notice.
Then we all de-assimilate from the obvious aspects of Buffy-verse (the succubus thing, the vampire thing)...
Anyhow. After that exciting interlude, Jon took Mattmatt off to make sure he didn't bother the waiters, while Sal took herself off to see if she could find the Lands of Crystal Dragon Arthur. Sadly, she bounced herself to NuWoD, and, after being punched in the stomach, did what Sallies always do, and ported herself and several other people Somewhere Else.
The SOP this time turned out to be Ginnie and Matt, but not Andy - and, sadly, the man who'd punched her in the stomach; Kael.
This was slightly less awful that it could have been as Kael was persuaded (or 'bribed' as we also call it) to help exorcise Sal and collect her soul from ... wherever it was. As the Exalted-verse they were currently in wasn't trying to kill anyone just then, Matt decided that the better part of not being involved in a massacre was staying behind; so Sal and Ginnie took Kael back home.
He then spent three days blagging vast numbers of magi to come visit and help in Crazy Plan #1 (Steal Sal's soul from Slaanesh, exorcise the fragment of S~ in Sal, hit S~'s embodied avatar till it goes away while the previous two are going on); Sal spent the time talking paradigm to some actual Mages ('So I do this, and this, and this-' 'Of course you do. You wanna come learn some cool magic?') and Ginnie practiced biokinesis. Mmm, biokinesis...
Then there was the ritual, and the fight, and then there was a beheaded Doc Spartan and a cleansed Sal in the Isle of Wight (apparently there's a fake-Verbena Node there, as well as an army of retired boating enthusiasts...); and then there was a resurrected Doc Spartan and a very relieved Sally.
Then we did a dot-and-carry-one to make sure that Kael got his reward (primium and some of the other metal) and got back to his reality (turns out we were in one two doors down from where he actually lived...) and now all we need to do is collect everyone else from the various realities they're scattered in, cleanse the others of us still oogy, and... try to work out how to pay for the moonsilver armour that Matt may have managed to order from Yu Shan. O.o
...Totally worth it. :P
Lost track of time
Over the next month, Sal and Ginnie hung out with Kael while he learned Do, and did nothing at all special. Sal may have knitted and made perfume; Ginnie jogged a lot. Then we went back in time a month, collected Andy from when we left him, and took him to Paranormal Romance Verse. Or 'Hell', as it is colloquially known.
In this 'verse, every brooding stereotype was fulfilled within _hours_ of getting into the world. Andy got jiggy with a tormented psychic witch who worked in a 7-11 and had an amazing flat of loft-conversion-ness; then we all went out and Sal tried cleansing things in a lake Renowned For Its Mystic Healing Properties.
This would have worked better if Sal had figured out what to target better. She got rid of Andy's connection to Slaanesh ('How can we tell he's cleansed?' '...I slept with _that??' '...He's cleansed.') - and also, apparently, his fiery goob. Meanwhile, she also connected Ginnie to the soul of a Hollow Man; someone who was a magical null powered by depression. This could have gone better for Ginnie.
After a brief discussion, we dropped Andy off in Lens-verse shortly after he left and collected Mattmatt from there, as his blood-thorns might have been better able to sort out Ginnie's sulking - er, emotional void that sucked in all that was good and hopeful. Then, when this didn't appear to do much good, we picked Matt up from Yu Shan, where he'd spent the past four days hangin' out with the Lunars. Then, when he couldn't figure anything out, someone suggested that the Exalts might be able to sort things out; so we went back to Yu Shan.
Ginnie then got healed by the power of some random Lunar squinting at her and being all like 'oh, sure. Zot.' Then she got tattooed up with moonsilver after the shortest Life Story ever; and then Mattmatt appeared to be all Exalted; then Sal and Mattmatt chatted about the betrayal of the Solars by the Sidereals who got the Dragon-Blooded to... oh, do _something_; I dunno, I wasn't paying attention.
Anyhow. The Lunars overheard this. They were all like 'We Must Now Tell Everyone The Evuls. Also, ta very much. Wanna come to a conclave?' So we went to a ...somethingorother on the last day of somethingorother. Then we went back to Anglesey so Ginnie could get a sammich, Matt could get bacon, Sal could get a bath and Mattmatt could get 'I've been gone for an indeterminate and subjective period of time between a week and six weeks, also I'm your Solar' sex.
I think this makes the date
Wednesday 20 May 2009
So it took about two hours for this all to go a little bit wrong.
We remembered we needed to pop back to Romanceverse and steal back Ananasa's essence that Sal left lying around there; and also sort out the slightly awkward bit where Sal had hideously wyrm-tainted a perfectly innocent lake in cleansing Andy. This ...could have gone better.
When Bruin asked Bryn if he could go cleanse a chunk of 'Umbra', Bryn Looked at Matt and asked why we hadn't seen fit to mention this bit beforehand. To, you know, him. Matt beat his head gently against a table, and started writing up what he could say to explain this one while Bryn asked far and wide about whether there were any Red Talons who could do a bit of un-ooging.
Mattmatt helped Matt with his spiel, translating it into Groo - and coincidentally and accidentally (as we realised later) doing Solar Wazz at it. Which Delwyn, upon reading, then fell for. A short trip to Dri Seint later, and Matt and Mattmatt were grovelling to the man who keeps the Silver Record for the Fianna tribe and explaining that they hadn't _intended_ to Glamour anyone... Mattmatt is still cringing a little inside from where the piece was still accepted into the Record on technical merit...
The Red Talons came through shortly thereafter. By some power of luck or fate or sheer bloody-mindedness, Sal managed to 'port fifteen unknown and very hostile Groo, as well as her normal team, to Romanceverse perfectly. They promptly fanned out and started butchering everything even faintly Wyrmy, while Andy ran for the caff we'd had a perfectly nice breakfast in a subjective day or so ago and an in-world half-day. Matt, being as good a Groo as he possibly could with the shadow of 'you let Sally do _WHAT_?' hanging over him, hunted with the Talons to clear the rest of the ten-mile circle.
Then they cleansed the place. Andy felt _much_ better; Sal and Ginnie ducked...
Bringing the Talons back to Anglesey was also startlingly easy; and then we settled down to wait for whatever Bryn would decide to do about the incoming Scandal about his missus wyrm-tainting large chunks of the Umbra. Till we got bored, at least.
Early Staphron, c. 300 years post-Riftwar
So while we were waiting, we decided that a good thing to do would be to hop over to Elvendar and chat to the elves there about whether or not people who weren't Sal could use the portal-sticks; and if so, whether they would teach us. The answers to that were 'yes, some of you' and 'not a hope'. So we hopped down to Stardock, got a boat over and accidentally got enrolled as students. This was particularly awkward, as it turns out that anyone with something that looks like true magic gets stuck there till they've finished their education. Which was, after some experimentation and some gross manipulations of reality, everyone bar Jon.
...Oh well. On the bright side, about a half a day into this, Andy severed the portal connection between Elvandar and Anglesey; which means we have some time to sort things out without Bryn thinking we've made a run for it...
Some time later, Mattmatt turns himself into a winged alien monstrosity and it's so cool! He's all like ReeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeEEEEEeeeee and HIIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiSSSSsssSSSsss and *scuttle*, and his blood is all acidy and he can make it explode outwards! But it does come with very strong hunting instincts, as Jon finds out when Mattmatt accidentally tries to eat him. Fun times.
Over the next few months (it feels like about a month for us; their calendar's whacked. Well, built to cater to a 200-day year; very roughly, every year on Krondor is equal to half a year for us), we train variously. Jon, who travelled to the Mountains of the Quor to meet with beings who are... Life, or the Force, in essence, meditates for the time; occasionally interspersed with snarky comments and sniggers as he has our conversations drifting at the back of his mind. Andy apprentices himself to the blacksmith, who teaches him metalwork, material physics and alchemy while Andy works out to learn to defend himself naturally. Mattmatt learns how to get through mazes, to problem-solve and to recognise a large number of historical figures from various areas in the world from the man he's apprenticed himself to. Matt vanishes into studying proper magic. Ginnie learns mental shielding and gardening (...It's payment. And possibly education in patience...). Sally learns how to cook, and writes a lot of stories...
It's coming up to early Wochem, and winter is technically well on its way, by now. On the other hand, Stardock's far enough south to never get more than mild winters; the days stay at a settled 10 hours light, 10 hours dark throughout the year.
Things start to go interestingly when Master Calvor sends Mattmatt through the door on a mission to steal a panthathian idol from a recreation of a pantathian temple in Novindus. An initial attempt at infiltrating by creating a layer of scales over his skin goes disastrously wrong when Mattmatt discovers that (a) he's accidentally created a layer of scales over his nose and mouth and hence now can't breathe; and (b) he can't get rid of them now that he's created them. Nine hours of extreme itching, irritation and intense grumpiness follow as he sloughs his scales much like a snake has to.
The next tactic involves disguising himself as a slave, and blending in with the slaves in their slave hut. This works fine up until the point where they clap the slaves in irons. Which, it turns out, aren't named "Irons" because they're ironic. This also provides Matt with the valuable information that iron chains rob him of the use of all of his powers that would be useful for, say, getting out of chains. Eventually he escapes through virtue of shanking a guard to death with the spike that was holding the chains to the wall, and taking his keys.
Mattmatt, upon returning, realises that the Pantathian place wasn't actually an illusion - and that the other slaves weren't, either. After a brief conversation, the Dynamic Five decide to trundle off - well, Matt stayed behind with a book, and Sal couldn't get through the wards, but... the Dynamic Three went. Mostly. Accompanied by four jars of naphtha.
After some discussion on the far side (with Jon's help via the inevitable telecomms), Andy was volunteered to meatsplode and Transmit himself over to the basement cell the slaves were being kept in, and see whether he could get a physical connection to the slaves so Sal could try to port them to her. After a very frustrating few minutes, Sal managed to teleport all bar one of the slaves - and Mattmatt - with her, to the opposite side of the world to Stardock. Also, a dude called Jommy came with her.
This left Andy in the cell with one slave, and Ginnie hanging out by the way home. So Andy created a bubble of air and moved it through the rock back to the scarp where she was waiting.
This would have gone far better if Ginnie hadn't been all like 'Oh, yeah, this is your quickest route to me, from the basement to the top of a cliff. ...What do you mean, there's a flat plain filled with evil snake men in between us? ...Oh.'
Shortly thereafter, Andy was fighting for his and the slave's life while Ginnie randomly Psychic Assaulted the priest; and Jon, from the other side of the world, channelled the powers of ...somethingorother... and bamfed himself, slightly unexpectedly, into the fight.
Mattmatt, by this point, was gummy-bearing his way across the continent in a desperate attempt to get to the fight, and after a very short time the assembled decided that the better part of valour was hiding in a hole. Andy rolled the hole across the landscape a bit, and then waited for Mattmatt. Sadly, the priests were zeroing on the party - when Ginnie, foolishly, took off her amulet and promptly got struck by lightning. Then Andy and Jon were forced to fight more; and then Ginnie and the slave got lightning bolted to death.
Sal then decided that the thought 'Ginnie is dead; I could rez her, but I shouldn't do that.' was so Starkly Impossible as to make her eyes bleed, and promptly kicked Ginnie's brain into activity again; with just enough leftover bloody-mindedness to keep Jon standing as Mattmatt hauled horse over the last ten miles to the fight.
Shortly thereafter, with Andy having walled off a small segment of the fight to give the boys on the ground a brief rest break and Ginnie healing herself up, everyone apart from Sal got back together (Mattmatt exploding a few snake-men hearts on the way) and pegged it for the way out.
The next few days were spent, variously, finding a magical tutor (Sal), hitting bits of metal with other bits of metal (Andy), reading more books (Matt) and massive surgery (Mattmatt and Jon, on Ginnie). Then Mattmatt headed off to Elvandar to see if they had any thoughts on open-heart surgery, and Andy and Ginnie introduced Midkemia to Newton's Laws and SUVAT.
So... yes. We left Midkemia after a slight incident involving Sal's screaming frustration at the magicians of Stardock being unable to help her with her magic. She understood this fact as true after she failed to ask any of them to help her with her magic, and instead spent two months learning how to cook.
Then there was the Incident where Sal, having failed to do any magic for two months because she wasn't taking any tuition or trying to learn, accidentally whirled half the party into pre-setting Fading Suns. Then accidentally left Andy there and picked me up; so she, Mattmatt and Ginnie ended up in Carnevale world.
Carnevale, August 1934
Carnevale, for those of us who know nothing about it, is baseline normal world set in Depression-era dustbowl America, with two people who are the only supernatural elements in that world. It's considered to be a series for the discerning viewer, where 'discerning' reads 'people who think that Twin Peaks is a bit straightforward and simplistic'. It was cancelled because too many viewers thought it was mind-numbingly depressing and hopeless.
So... then Mattmatt, Sal and Ginnie spent nine months quartering the Rockies, looking for the crossing point, and hibernating over-winter.
Then we got out; launching ourselves desperately to Somewhere Else. We ended up, after a bit of time-faff, with Andy having spent nine months in Fading Suns, Jon having spent about two and a half months in Midkemia, and us having been gone for ten days from Anglesey (as we went back in order to bathe...)