Hallucination Nation 3: Newt Fucking Dies (Spiritually)

Hallucination Nation 3: Newt Fucking Dies (Spiritually)
Date 2082-9-11 GM Sleevey Location Ork Underground Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Raven (Defunct)
Newt (As played by Discogoblin)	Great Form Beast Spirit Adept Acolyte
Casualties and losses
2 of Newt’s edge

Summary

Newt breaks free of Raven’s hold on her. Grenades and blood magic knives may or may not make an appearance.

Background

Newt grew up in the Ork Underground. When she SURGEd, she was driven out into the lowest levels of the underground. An awful place. Unfortunately for little Newt, she awakened as a seer as well. The pointless human suffering and waste that congealed into that place drove her a little bit insane.

Raven came to her and offered her a purpose. That she had a purpose. That the meaningless suffering had stories and souls. That Newt awakened with a destiny to keep those stories alive. With her curiosity and her desire to have a meaning in this life, she followed Raven as devoutly as one can.

Before Newt was a runner she was a scavenger. As she became more capable and stronger, Raven began directing her towards more and more dangerous and violent artifacts. Exploiting that natural curiosity to have Newt assense more and more terrible things.

Newt’s Dream

Newt dreamed. She dreamed of being in a pool of thick, black liquid. She could breathe and swim but it was everywhere, drowning her vision. She pushed and pushed and paddled her way to the surface. A pond in a stone pool, it’s surface covered in raven feathers. A single tunnel filled with flickering candlelight. Newt paddled to the edge of the pool and climbed out. It was there she took a look at herself. Her old, flesh limbs were back and she clad in a strange tunic. Her revolver was nowhere to be found. She fashioned a shiv out of her belt buckle and pushed on.

The hallway ended in a thick wooden door. After listening at it and peeking underneath, Newt opened the door as quietly as she could and stepped into the room beyond.

It was the largest room Newt had ever seen. A library of sorts, stretching out far past the eye can see in every direction. Spire of shelves stretching up and out and in and beyond, defying physics itself. A veritable house of Escher. The shelves were stocked with everything one could imagine. Trinkets and buttons and commlinks and books and guns and bones and so so much more. Newt assensed the place, finding an enormous background count aspected to Raven herself. A metaplane. Raven’s metaplane.

Newt stepped further in. The place was not empty, with many different metahumans (and some spirits) perusing the collection. She found a pair of scholars speaking and asked them about the place. They advised her to speak with the mistress Raven. When Newt asked them how long they had been there, the taller gentleman froze up. He had forgotten. Newt walked away.

As she glanced through the place, looking for some sort of order, she spotted a familiar Gauss Rifle. She stood before it for a moment, thinking of her time with the weapon. The great form toxic spirit she saw. How she had brought the weapon here. It was time to speak to Raven.

She grabbed a gun off one of the shelves. For just a moment, the background mana pressed in. The overwhelming weight, pushing at her like a crushing rock. Then it was gone. A doorway had opened.

The path led to a circular clearing. A great pile of objects in the center, forming a perch for Raven herself. The Throne of Disparate Things. Raven herself spoke to her. She told her what a perfect vessel she could. She gave Newt a choice to become something better. Something MORE. A fusion of Raven and Newt. Raven’s vessel, her eyes on the mortal plane. Something stronger than either of them.

Newt refused.

The background count rose. The pressing weight returned. The library began to fall. The Raven’s eyes opened. Cataract filled and disgusting. Her usual form. Newt uttered a single word before blacking out.

“Bitch.”

Newt did not wake up in her body. She awoke in an opera theatre. The orchestra just starting. A see of masked face. Raven masks. As raven glanced around, her cyberarms were back. Her ruger was there. As the frog looked for an exit, a voice begged her to stay.

The source of the voice was a great shifting form. The Cyber-limbed man with a hunting rifle. The Spinradical J who forced her to eat pufferfish. The Fey who used mindmagic on her. Every single person who had slighted her or looked at her like a freak, all shifting across its features.

“Why don’t you enjoy the show?”

On the stage was .. Newt. Strung up with hooks through her cyberlimbs. Red blood running down. If Newt didn’t do it, someone else would. Newt politely told him to fuck off by shooting him in the head.

The metaplane began to fall apart as Newt made her escape, leaping over the balcony and out of a door in the orchestra pit. She awakened in her own body. One bullet was missing from her Ruger. Raven was nowhere to be seen.

The Plan

Being a vessel for raven, an empty shell for her eyes and ears on the mortal plane, is probably a fate worse than death. Having one’s mind locked away while their body is taken and used as her puppet … no one should have to deal with that. So Newt loaded her revolver and equipped her new, Voidblack full-body-armor.

She knew where Raven would be, the first place where Raven came to her. She would find their vessel and free them. Or die trying. Break the chains of Raven. Let her burn.

The Run

Newt crept through the underground, deeper and deeper. She dodged the ghouls and crept along for about 4 hours until she came to the very trash heap where Raven appeared to her. Where she was guided. Shown that there is more worth in the world than she thought, that the mindless cruelty and waste and violence and trash forever piling up had a reason to exist.

The entrance tunnel was filled with mono-wire. She ducked and slipped through until she came to the edge of the trash pit. She peered in. Two figures. One with their back to her, a tall suited man with a raven patterned scarf. The other, cross legged in the center of a circle. A pentagram with an item and each point. A twisted hunk of metal that used to be a crucifix. A broken red samurai katana. A book. A bloodstained, fired bullet. And a putrefied, rotted arm. Newt’s arm.

Newt’s third eye opened and she gave the trash heap another astral look. An enormous, great form spirit towered before her on the astral, taking a ghostly, feathered form. But that was not the worst part. Newt peered into the aura of the figure in the circle. It belonged to none other than Amelia Novak.

With a deep breath in, Newt took a puff of Kami and leaped towards the great form spirit. As she did, the Blood Athame Dagger spoke to her, promising power. Power. Fuck that. Newt forced her aura through the weapon until it went quiet. Then she jammed it into the Spirit’s eye.

As the spirit roared in pain, Newt hit the ground in a roll. The acolyte of Raven turned to her. A suited man with a raven mask. He smiled. “Poor little Newt. We gave you this gift.” He dashed forward, a single, blindingly fast strike to the 3rd eye. “We can take it away.”

Newt’s magic began to fade away. The thing she had relied on for so long, taken away like it was nothing. The hole once filled with magic filled with blinding rage.

Newt quick-drew her revolver and placed a bullet into the eye of the Adept. She turned and punted her own severed arm out of the circle, breaking it, just as the spirit routed on her and began its assault. Faster than even an adept’s eye could trace, the spirit began leaping off the walls in a rapid series of blows, cutting across Newt’s arms and legs and armor. Newt fired in response but the bullets only met empty air. The barrage continued. Sparks filled the air. Then all at once, it stopped. The spirit slunk through the astral as Newt glanced around. Then, it materialized behind her and, with one mighty strike, sent the frog flying through the air. She hit the side wall hard. Bones cracked. Her vision blurred. She saw Amelia Novak in the circle. She saw the spirit, still standing. It was over. Her vision faded to black.

Her emergency stim patch hit. The frog’s eyes snapped open. She was out of tricks. Her parasitic mentor had abandoned her. Her allies were nowhere to be found. Even her magic betrayed her. Every last trick, save for one.

Newt pulled the bandolier of grenades off her vest. With fire in her heart and her mind focused to a razorblade of certainty, she hurled it directly at the Great Form spirit. As the fire filled the room and launched her backwards, her tusks shone with the light of her new mentor. Her new guide. One that came from herself. One she would choose. As she hit stone for the second time and her vision began to fade away again. A smile on her frog features. Maybe she would die here but she would die on her terms.

Aftermath

Newt woke up. A good sign. Amelia Novak had fished her out of the wreckage and made sure she wasn’t dead. Sporting some nasty scars but alive and not a vessel of raven. With a few awkward words back and forth about why a spirit wanted to possess her, Newt said her goodbyes and departed.

Her whole body hurt, her mentor was gone and yet she had never been stronger,

Rewards

Buying off Raven Mentor and Getting BOAR at Chargen prices: (10 RVP) 6 Karma (6 RVP) 2 cdp

Game Quotes

”Raven was gaslight gatekeep girlbossing hard” - Disco

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Newt

"Good riddance. To have spent so much of my life under the control of that parasite... I wish that I'd been carrying more grenades. I feel awful, both physically and spiritually, but my body is my own and that's all I can ask for. I'll have to give a proper apology to Amelia later, not that there's anything I can really do to right my wrongs. I'm just glad she's okay. I don't really know what I'm going to do now that I'm no longer Raven's vessel, what there even is to do, but maybe I'll check out that neighborhood under Renton Samsara told me about. That seems nice."