Battle Not With Monsters

Battle Not With Monsters
Part of The Name of Heaven
Date 2085-05-18 GM jit Location Matrix (EvoGrid) Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	The World Tree Trio	The Holy Order of Beast Hunters	Cathode and Their Beasts
Caliban	Br34ker chiTIN b0z0	Foundation Entities	Foundation Entities
Casualties and losses
N/A	The Host of the World Tree Trio Has Been Destroyed, and b0z0 Has Been Touched by Dissonance (RIP b0z0)	Caliban Has Ended the World	Cathode Has Refused the Preservation of Their History, and Caliban Has Ended the World

Summary

"Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin." -Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

"They were trying to run, trying to hide. But the rock would not hide them; the dead tree gave no shelter." -Stephen King, Carrie

Background

Cecelia Cross, like many technomancers, is keeping tabs on Heaven. Unlike many technomancers, however, she does not hold delusions like "utopia" so dear. Heaven is a curiosity to be tracked and manipulated, and its Heavenseekers the whetstone by which promising tools might become sharp.

And Caliban is a very promising tool.

The Meet

Cecelia Cross invites Caliban in for a chat at one of her personal hosts. "Invites," however, is a bit of a misnomer - Cecelia instructs Caliban to meet her at one of her personal hosts, and forces her to find her own way in. Caliban busts down the large wooden doors of the woman's gothic castle, and as she does, Cecelia pauses a large, floating, digital clock just beside her. It is the time, in minutes and seconds, between her invitation and Caliban's arrival.

She tells Caliban that she can do better.

The job is simple. There is a host, and she would like its data destroyed. She provides a location - a Rating Five host on the EvoGrid - and instructions to clear the archive and destroy the host if she would like. Caliban does not press too deeply for details, though learns that the host's entrance is a beneath a wide and shady tree in a public park on the grid.

As Cecelia's fractured tool leaves her host, the timer clicks, resets, and begins counting up once again.

The Plan

Caliban smokes a lot of red mescaline, like an irresponsible amount, and descends into the depths of the EvoGrid. From the inside of a world-sized dodecahedron, she navigates toward the public park, strips bark and bench to the quick of their code by sight alone, and determines that a host is running silent. Its entrance - a rabbit's burrow, tucked beneath a tree. The fractured beast steps forward, and to the general anxiety and fright of those who might be enjoying the sculpting at this late hour, she begins to dig.

She gains her MARK by tearing it apart. Her clawed hands plunge into moist earth and pile its cool flesh to the side, until that hole is wide enough, and deep enough, for her to slip into the void beyond - she falls, so much like Alice, into a nightmarish wonderland.

The Host of the World Tree Trio

The fields are vast and green and rolling with gentle breeze, flat save for a vast, mountainous oak at the very center of the host. Its trunk is carved into a massive, spiraling staircase marching ever upward toward its peak, where its living wood grows naturally into an intricate belltower, as one might find on a church.

Two personas chat casually at the base of the stairway - a bugman, chromatically chitinous, whose carapace gleams in rainbow hues, and a bright and colorful harlequinn jester, face painted and outfit devilishly dapper. A comically cartoonish ladybug perches on the bugman chiTIN's shoulder. The two of them wonder where their companion br34ker might be, and discuss aloud their leads toward finding the Matrix's own legendary Heaven.

Caliban does not know or care what they're talking about. Sharp eyes catch a glint of the underpinnings of the host, datatrails leading somewhere deeper, darker, and ever more sinister than this lying facade. Her broken steps trudge carefully past the two of them to ascend the stairway to the belltower, and after a lengthy climb, she finds herself in a casual lounge. Bookshelves line the walls, and wide windows the ceiling and upper rafters. She peruses the stac, running a grating hand along all the books' even little spines, and finally touches one that screams at her presence.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She pulls, and the bookcase swings open to reveal a hallway, and an elevator, and a single button pointing down.

She descends, as she has so often before, into the belly of the beast.

The Foundation, and Blood Born of Lies

Caliban awakens as a Hunter. Gritty cobblestone and distant flame and the smell of fresh blood fill her senses. A body, freshly maimed, lies just a few yards to her side, gutted and spilled and gently pooling through the crevices of the alley. Screams and clashing blades and hideous, crunchy, bestial 8-bit cries.

Emerging from the alley and gauging her surroundings, she comes to a crossroads where a small squadron of hardy men and women in combat leathers intersect her path. They greet her from mounted horseback, ask of her name, and question her presence without a partner. She informs them that they were maimed and dead, and they console her for her loss.

The leader, a man who describes himself as a captain of the Holy Order, tells Caliban that it is dangerous to be out alone, and to follow them back to the tower at the center of this city to regroup and rest and tell her story. The Cardinal will be speaking as well, and it will be nourishment for body and soul alike. She reluctantly agrees, for the sake of not yet breaking the paradigm before it can be reckoned.

Aftermath

This run directly precedes RIP Bozo.

Game Quotes

Amusing quote from game.