Awake, Dear Heart
| Awake, Dear Heart | |||||||||
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 The Well of Darkness | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Cecelia Cross .dat | The Dissonance | ||||||||
| Ca1yps0 | Dissonant Technomancers | ||||||||
| A Submersion Ordeal for Ca1yps0 | |||||||||
Summary
In which Ca1yps0 frees her Fault sprite Faulty and helps many people
Background
After the events of The Deepest Dive, Cecelia Cross has been looking into the problems that the Dissonance creates for her and the world as a whole. Understanding that the information that she got from .dat on the Dissonance Well near New Haven has given her new insights into those under her care at the Lucien Cross Memorial Hospital in Tacoma. Understanding that Ca1yps0 has a vested interest in the Well and the people that were imprisoned within, Cecelia comes up with a plan to send the mermaid into the Resonance to assist .dat and the other sprites of Haven, to see if the Dissonance can be defeated.
A Night on the Boat
Ca1yps0 has not been sleeping well, between having a dissonant White Eye that she has been taking care of, the temptation of a God Chip that lingers over her head, and the intense feelings of dread and guilt that live in her mind after being a member of Ex Pacis. She is awoken by a flash of memory of Pricilla, her friend that introduced her to the tribe, giving her the God Chip file and remembering the sensation of it opening up her mind to the possibilities of the Otaku. Waking with a start, she releases herself into the water of her cave, and is greeted by the revelation that Cecelia Cross has made her way into the mermaid's cave.
Inviting herself onto the houseboat, Ca1yps0 attempts to distract the dissonant by playing chess with an anthro drone that distracts her while Cecelia explains that .dat has indicated that he is ready to go to the Dissonance Well and attempt to free Faulty. She also makes the "request" of Ca1yps0 that she record a simsense file on a datachip that a machine sprite in inhabiting so that she could see what the Dissonance feels like.
Ca1yps0 agrees, after learning that Pricilla, whose real name is Valorie Frisk, is in fact in the Lucian Cross Memorial Hospital, and goes to prepare after an awkward moment where her Anthro Drone, hacked and altered by the White Eye, comes onto the deck and shoots a harpoon into the deck of her houseboat, letting the Cross heiress know that something was wrong.
The Calm before the Storm
Trying to make herself calm before facing the trial of the Great Firewall, Ca1yps0 spends some time making sure that her affairs are in order, checking her simsense feeds for her steaming career, and spending some time in her favorite Matrix bars. She is interrupted in a moment of quiet contemplation by a message from Pricilla, the University of Kyoto student that introduced her to Taranis Lú's rogue host. Rezzing over to the rogue host, Ca1 finds the student and engages in a nice conversation where Pricilla fangirls over the mermaid's simsense files and Ca1yps0 gives her the premium offerings. After taking off, Ca1yps0 takes a moment in her sensory deprivation tank and dives into the Resonance.
The Storm
Passing through The Great Firewall, Ca1yps0 is greeted by images of Crash 2.0, the tragedy and crisis that came from the crash. Though when she arrives at the Renraku Arcology and sees where Deus should be looking over his terrible work, she instead sees herself with blank white eyes. She passes through the firewall and gets back into the Resonance, finding the corrupted wasteland that surrounds New Haven, and moving across the land to find the sprite's city. She arrives and finds that instead of a righteous army ready to bring justice to the Dissonance in their centuries-long war, there is only .dat, sitting on a stone before the city. Frustrated by the fact the sprites will not aid her, the mermaid takes a stand before the city and belts out a rousing speech, calling out the regular sprites and drawing an army of a hundred twenty-eight fault sprite warriors.
The runner leads the charge towards the Dissonance well, and hurls a resonance spike at the gates of what appears to be a dissonant city. The gates explode and the sprites begin to engage with the many Dissonant Technos and Otaku that have been trapped in the Well since the Crash. Ca1yps0 engages in combat with several Dissonants and manages to strike one down, scare another off, and by using her Resonance ability to clean the dissonance off one of her peers, saves another. While .dat and the other sprites continue to fight in the courtyard, Ca1yps0 speeds towards the interior and has to dive in the inky-blackness of the Matrix corruption.
She follows a pulsing light to the prison section of the Well, she finds Faulty locked alongside many of the Otaku and Technomancers that have been trapped here during their own dives. However the pulsing light turns out to be Pricilla, corrupted by the Dissonance and taken on the shape of her body emerging from the head of an anglerfish. Ca1yps0 frees Faulty who joins her in the pitched battle against her closest friend, and while she attempts to clean the dissonance from Pricilla, it is attached far too tightly to get off.
Pooling together her powers with that of Cecelia's Machine Sprite and Faulty, she embraces her friend and channels all the power of the resonance she has into one last attempt. Erupting in a supernova of Resonance, the dissonance well begins to crack and shatter, falling apart at the seams as Pricilla is freed from the corrupting influence and the otaku and technomancers who had been imprisoned for so long were freed from their corruption as well. Pricilla and Ca1yps0 find themselves in a blank room, where Pricilla apologizes for getting involved with Ex Pacis and drawing Ca1yps0 in, and the two former otaku embrace, happy to once again be with one another.
Aftermath
Emerging from her sensory deprivation tank before she chokes to death on her own blood, Ca1yps0 gathers herself and heads to the Lucian Cross Memorial Hospital. Several news outlets are there, presumably called by Cecelia Cross, to celebrate finding a way of awakening people who had been in comas for almost two decades. Ca1yps0 is let into a side door and is thrilled to see so many of her peers awakening, though to a much different world than they knew before. She finds Valorie Frisk, and the two embrace in meatspace.
Ca1yps0 discusses how she will help Valorie set up a new life for herself in LA as well as explaining the trouble that she will find as a Technomancer in 2082, before returning to her boat, feeling a bit lighter without the corruption of her dissonance weighing her down.
Rewards
- Sprite Affinity: Fault Sprites (7 RVP)
- Can buy off Taint of Dissonance at chargen Price
- Silence is Golden (9 RVP)
- Submersion grade 5!
Game Quotes
-Ca1yps0, embracing Pricilla to free her from the Dissonance |
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Ca1yps0
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ‘em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do.
Their manners are more gentle, kind,
than of our generation you shall find.
O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!