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At the start of this session, the PCs were in three main areas. First, Alec and Tess were in Locus Gandhara, the chancel of the Inquisitorial Imperator Ram-Khvastra. Second, Nezha, Thechari, Allen and Abraham were in Mohenjodaro. Finally, Sylvia was guarding the chancel. Alec and Tess started play the night before Tess was due to appear in front of the Inquisitorial Court. Before that, <X>, the Power of Coping, took Alec and Tess on a tour of the chancel. The chancel was divided into three cities -- Scotate, the Groves of Youth, and Photopolis. The three cities overlapped in some mystical sense that is probably beyond mortal comprehension, but fortunately Alec and Tess were no longer mortal and had no difficulties. Each city corresponded to some phase of a life: the Groves of Youth corresponded to the time of youth, when the pursuit of art, science and sensual pleasure dominate life; Photopolis, the seat of the chancel's government, was the time of responsibility mature adulthood; and Scotate was the nightmare city that connected to death and its terrors. They were taken on a tour through the city, and were shown some of its wonders. <X> claimed that the Groves of Youth, for example, had artists who worked in every conceivable form, though when Tess asked about basket-weaving, he had to admit Locus Gandhara's artistic basket-weaver only did that part-time. They were then taken to a rave, which under Tess's influence quickly went from playing some kind of peppy dance music to ambient gloomcore. There, Alec and Tess asked about what they might expect the next day. <X> told them that Tess was likely to be asked a single question, and that while this would be painful she would likely survive unless Ram-Khvastra took it into Its head to ask her a second question. He told her that of the six Powers that had faced the Inquisition, three had been asked the second question and died. But he added that he didn't think It was likely to doom her, because all three had had false estates. When pressed for an example, he came up with the example of maat. This was not the divine order sacred to the ancient Egyptions, but rather a beverage once known in the second age of the world, that gave people vigor and increased social cohesion. The estates of tea, coffee and conversation would, he suggested, clearly be false estates that were mere echoes of the now-lost maat. Tess and Alec carefully took this opportunity to not tell the Inquisitor that Thechari actually held the Estate of Tea. At this point, Alec excused himself, because he was receiving a call from his sister Sylvia. The reason for Sylvia's call actually began in the morning. She had awoken to receive a telegram, from no one but marked with Akraisel's seal, addressed to her. It warned of danger in the city, and included a map to it. As the sole Noble still within the chancel, she took it as her responsibility to find out what the problem was and to deal with it. As she set out, she performed a miracle of Cities, to ensure that traffic jams and congestion would prevent anyone from being able to easily approach the danger zone, and then arrived in a section of WWII-era Berlin with a bunch of reporters in front of a podium. She asked one of the reporters what he was waiting for, and was told that a press conference was about to start, and that the announcers were due to come from the building in front of her (a particularly odius specimen of Albert Speer's melodramatic architectural excess). She approached the building and was halted by some jack-booted thugs, who told her that she could not pass. When pressed, they told her that they had contacted their superiors, who would arrive shortly. Sylvia summoned the chancel's own guards, and ordered them to violently clear away the Nazis if they did not stand down peacefully. Just before a confrontation was about to break out, a man came out of the building to address the waiting crowd. He was, he announced, the Graf Futility, a Power in service to the Fallen Angel Makatiel. He and his Familia -- the Powers of Ambition, Fanaticism, the Wasteland, and Banality -- were filing a lawsuit against the angel Akraisel for unlawful appropriation of some Nazi-era buildings they regarded as their own. He presented Sylvia with some forty thousand pages of legal documentation, and then he gave her a stiff Prussian bow and departed. When she examined the papers, she saw that they could either choose a mutually acceptable third party as the judge, or go before Lord Entropy's court. Since she knew little about, and cared nothing for, the law, she went to the Realm's Heart and contacted Alec, thinking him able to find or create a suitable lawyer for the chancel. (There were no lawyers in the chancel, as social problems were dealt with via spirit surgery.) Meanwhile, in the archaic past, Nezha decided that she would not wait to meet the Council of Nine -- instead, she decided to perform some miracles and see who turned up. For her first miracle, she went to a local temple and tried to tell the city that from dusk until dawn, every whim would flare into raging desire, leaving the mortals of the city with true passions that they could pursue at the coming of the morning. This -- mysteriously -- did not work, but did attract the attention of a local Power, who styled herself the Hierophant. She did not give her Estate (unless that was her Estate), but it seems to have something to do with hidden mysteries and such. She was apparently annoyed, and asked Nezha who she served and where she came from. Nezha told her, and then told her that she had come to the past to search for soma. The Hierophant told Nezha that she would help her, if Nezha would perform a miracle for the Light: give humans the qualities they need to survive into the next ages of the world. Nezha took a criminal, and gave him the will to seek his own survival at all costs, and the knowledge of how to achieve it. And then, she took a hero, and gave him the desire for ultimate transcendence: the strength to overcome his desires and seek enlightenment. The two of them then argued a little bit about the nature of mankind, with Nezha finally explaining that she sought to raise all mankind up to the Imperial purple. The Hierophant warned her -- using a massive miracle -- that mankind would always surprise her, and Nezha laughed, telling her that if she knew what her creation would do then there would be no point in making it. The Hierophant then told her where to travel to find the soma plant. Back at the chancel, Sylvia stood within the Realm's Heart, and contacted Alec with the news. She told him about the lawsuit, and he told her that he and Tess would return as soon as possible, which would be immediately after the lawsuit; sometime the next day. Sylvia then went to her favorite nightclub to relax, and await the return of Tess and Alec. There, she received a threat from the Semiotic Liberation Front, promising an attack on the Hanging Gardens at midnight. She called up the city's defense force, who arranged for a great fireworks display on the other side of the city at midnight (to draw crowds away from the Gardens), and then went there to see what they would do. The Semioticians had arranged for a clown to show up, that gave children balloons that carried them off into the sky. Sylvia then conjured into existence an air rescue unit for the chancel, who flew in on strange floating platforms. They rescued the children, but when the balloons were popped they were sprayed with confetti that caused them to turn into balloon people who refused to return to Earth. She then called into being a whirlwind to catch the remaining confetti before it fell on the civilians, and told the air pirates that they could sail out of the chancel if they wished. Back at Locus Gandhara, Tess finally appeared before the Court of Ram-Khvastra. There, Ram-Khvastra asked her what she loved enough to make her betray anything, and Tess told It that the love of her Imperator was foremost in her soul. Then <Y>, the Power of Stalking, appeared before the Court, and testified that while Tess was married, and had a family, she had not bothered visiting them in the time since her ennoblement, and that she could not contradict Tess's testimony. Tess then asked her question, which was why art had lost its soul, and her brain was filled with a series of images from 1957 -- from Luther Vandright's art show. She and Alec then quickly excused themselves, and returned to the City of Lost Alleys via Lahore, pausing only briefly to wonder at the strange floating platform from which air-chanteys could be heard. In 2500 BC, Nezha and the others took an air-car that the Hierophant had provided and followed the map to a jungle. There, they fought off attacks from giant carnivorous plants and man-eating tigers (one of whom Nezha tamed) to make their way to a hidden valley in which a ziggurat could be seen. As they climbed the ziggurat, they were met by a troop of soldiers led by a Noble -- the Lord of Denial. He heard their request, and then said no. He then ordered his troops to kill the intruders and then departed. Nezha attempted to seize their loyalties, but failed once again. It was Allen who saved the day, by calling out to Alec, who, across a gulf of five thousand years, manifested in his Anchor and slew all fifty men with a single bullet. Yeah, he's just that cool. They then ascended to the top of the ziggurat and took the soma from the garden at its summit. |
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