Oh man... Mage last night...
From Telkoth.net
Mage last night was crazy and out of its mind...
This is part of the Hollow Earth campaign... last time we played, we left off with three Naga surrendering. They were trying to attack an Agarthan monk's hut out in the hilly country. We'd predicted the attack (with judicious use of Time and Entropy) and set some traps (with ridiculous levels of Prime and Life), and quickly brought the Naga to their, um... joints they have.
Anyway, we were headed down to see what they wanted to talk about, when we realized that, in fact, a trap had been set for us... as several in our party went down the cliff-side path into the valley of surrendering Naga, one of our time-skilled friends screamed over the pouring rain (the storm for which had been brought in by our Hermetic) that "they were transporting in." That's when grid lines started to spark over the area, Correspondance wards being put up far too late... this was a well planned attack.
For the Naga, whose will-workers are very earth-based shaman, sparking grids preceding a correspondence effect is a bit out of place... clearly they were not working on their own, and in fact my character had noticed during the short battle ending last session - but hadn't had the chance to report it - that while there were indeed magical, life-enhancing effects on the Naga, they were not put there by Naga... rather, they were put there by Nephandi - Barabbi - servents of the Infernal Lords.
Yay!!
We were able to make further transportation difficult, but still, ranks of Naga sizzled into the field, surrounding five of our party.
Our Hermetic and ex-Technocrat - part of the five in the center - immediately lept into their "room within a briefcase", pulling the briefcase itself with them. An unfortnate paradox backlash left them co-located for a while, but at least they were safe within the briefcase... which they were holding... ow.
Professor Porter began to flee the center immediately, but of course Professor Maxwell Harvey and his Octopus familiar held their ground as ink began to cloud the area and Harvey pulled the waiting effect of his massive Prime trap from the top of the cliff down to the center.
Paul - that'd be me - hastily contracted with a spirit of the Earth to create the ground beneath the Naga to give way... I offered to build a shine to the Earth once this battle was over; people would come and worship here, and plant gardens... the spirit agreed :)
Things really did get completely out of control... eventually Max Harvey set off his nuclear Prime effect, destroying Naga in the area... but only after I had a leg chopped off, retreated to the World of the Dead, from which I hastily escaped by traveling back through the bridge to the real world created by the death of a Naga which was created by a Hermetic lightning bolt (and thank god for that! prime effects don't leave anything behind, even in the world of the dead...) Porter had been tossed into a shard realm of prime within the effect of Harvey's explosion, escaped, naked, in the middle of battle, and quickly employed Life 3 to squeeze through a small window created between the briefcase room and the real world, through which effects were being cast by the ex-Technocrat... mud slides had already torn apart bits of the land... but that nuclear Prime explosion left no sign that anything had happened... not in this world, or the Umbra, or even in the World of the Dead.
There's a little history about the Hollow Earth that's worth mentioning at this point. Atlantis, some time before, had destroyed itself in a war with Lumeria... and according to White Wolf, this destruction had come about through nuclear explosions created entirely with Prime magic. Remains of Atlantis lie within Hollow Earth, reminding the monks of Agartha the tragedies of such reckless acts; reminding them that a repeat of this must never be allowed.
Naturally, they noticed our explosion immediately, and a group of them came up to us soon after we'd regrouped and reattached missing limbs and organs. We retold the battle in perfect detail, highlighting the important facts, etc (Time and Entropy...). The monks agreed not to banish us this time... but to calm the hell down, even if it is to eliminate Naga. In any case, we would have to rebuild the area... there was a monk living here who we'd come to protect, and we'd done more than knock down his house.
So, we stayed around to help him rebuild... the soil was rebuilt and seeded, the Umbra was repaired, and I even bandaged up the World of the Dead, which had not escaped the explosion.
The session ended with metaphysical conversation, and eventually our ex-Technocrat, Joan, went missing... all we found left inside the briefcase room was a bank statement ("balance: 0.00"), one of Harvey's many weapons (this one a Prime gun that leaves no traces), and a necklace which seems to contain many spirits within it... Paul beleives Joan acensended... but we'll have to wait 'til next session for further investigation...
