The Cure For The Soul
| The Cure For The Soul | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Loyell Alexandria | Major Corp | ||||||||
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Artemisia Babylon Brokkr Catharsis Fennec |
Character1 Character2 | ||||||||
Summary
Background
Fennec is streaming, and picks up Biggie Beefcake as he calls. Teasing both Biggie and chat, Fennec accepts the job. Catharsis is trying to make dinner, with Loyell causing as much chaos as he can for the decker when Messner Vukotic calls. Spirit wrangling continues as Messner explains what he needs, and Catharsis accepts the job. Brokkr is stiffed by a the family with a 5% tip on his taxi ride, as Alice Kane calls, explaining that the dwarf needs to head for E-Vue. Babylon is restocking their magical sundries and preparing her finger razors as a weapon focus. Mush calls, and distracts the mage from any further restocking with a job. Babylon is stopped by her dear friend and parole officer, Charles Dreyfus. He grills her for a moment about her family that has been kidnapped from Ares HQ. Artemisia is talking with a customer, awkwardly info dumping until a new woman enters. As Arti is attacked by how large and French Julie d'Aubigny is, the woman asks for Artemisia under her shadowrunning name, Julie stating that she wants her sword back. Arti attempts to tell the woman she doesn't have the sword, but is slapped with a glove for her lies, and a duel is demanded. Arti, realizing she has lost a customer, accepts the duel, and states her terms: To the blood, and if she wins, Julie has to buy a book. Catharsis then shoots to call Arti to let her know she's getting ready to head out of town--Instead she gets a busy signal and a text from Ace Powers to the stream of the duel that is on going.Brodie J pays out his various debts as the duel goes in Arti's favor, with Julie passing out due to being poisoned by an unknown third party. In a panic, Arti calls Cathy, who helps Julie get to a hospital, but also get the vampire to the job.
The Meet
With the crew finally collected, Alexander-James Brodrick Johnson III better known as Brodie J explains he needs a book, and that people seem to not want him to have it. The book is called Lost and Obscure Rituals of Theoretical Magical Applications, which contains a ritual he needs to do. He further explains that off the coast of Egypt, towards the Mediterranean, both Celedyr and Masaru are building another library of Alexandria. With a 10k advance and a plane ready, the crew is off.
The Run
Catharsis and Fennec dive into the matrix, and surface with the following: The New Great library of Alexandria, is placed in Egypt because of an ancient decree that dragons cannot set foot in Egypt, funded by NeoNet before the lockdown. Masaru seems to be taking point, but the island includes housing for notable scholars and services. The book is written by a Hermetic who paradigm shifted to an unknown tradition who has gone missing or died. It has magic that is very hard to replicate practically, with it effectively being a piece for magical scholars. Once a spell has been cast from this book, it is rumored to disappear. This is where the party runs into the first speed bump: women aren't exactly as equal as men as the party is used to in Seattle. Upon landing, the group settles into hotels before Brokkr sends a drone out to the island to take a look at the library itself on the meat. Finding that the vents may be able to fit a pelican, Gomorrah continues on the astral to speak with the spirits who access the library.
With the help of some spells, and a machine sprite, Catharsis makes her way into the destination host with the intent to enter the industrial host. There's inner turmoil, the decker wanting to remain on Marsaru's good side, before deciding to brave into the industrial host and find out what the profiles for library's guests contain so Babylon can enter into the library proper. With security files in hand and what they need for Babylon's profile in hand, calls go out to Melia Blake for a letter of recommendation, who in turn asks for 'The Complete Oral History of the Elven People' and a call goes out to Marie-Claire d'Orléans, who in exchange for a chip from both Fennec and Babylon receives a second prestigious letter of recommendation by the end of the day. After regrouping and exchanging information, Catharsis heads towards the library to see about gaining access legitimately via Loyell. Gaining access and Loyell his own library card, the spirit looks into the Dragon Civil War, specifically in Amazonia, and several areas that are still recovering (one of those areas including Loyell's spirit formula). Catharsis relays this experience to Babylon, who enters on her time to compare the experience. Letting Gomorrah explore, the spirit finds a secret passage behind a bookshelf, the passage leads to an open doorway blocked by an alarm ward.
Fennec, thinking upon it deeply, realizes that Alexandria is a subscriber, and a perfect option for a distraction to sneak a drone in while the spiders are busy. Fennec is able to convince Alexandria to enter the host of Alexandria and cause some chaos. After some back and forth and meeting with the group, the mutual relationship with Katherine Tyler. There's the explicit mention from Catharsis that this situation cannot be mentioned to Kate. Borrowing Catharsis' deck, Brokkr settles in to hide in plain sight, darting through the vents to map out the fourth floor and find the books, the drone able to open the secret door, but unable to close it. Finding each dragon has their own side, it takes winding up to the seventh floor before Brokkr finds the text that is potentially the book they're looking for as their primary objective, Lost and Obscure Rituals of Theoretical Magical Applications with Melia's book on the floor below. It's during this sweep, it's noted that there's a potential for drakes hanging out in the fifth or sixth floor. Realizing that 'The Complete Oral History of the Elven People' is a whopping 1000 pages to Lost and Obscure Rituals of Theoretical Magical Applications' mere 500. A second pelican drone is ordered promptly to address this issue, and the group prepares to strike.
The plan is: Take Arti in via the vents in a pelican. Arti, as a rat, makes their way to the books. With her enchanting gloves, she will grab the books, put one in each pelican, then climb back inside with the smaller book, she can sail out via the vents. As they are preparing, Catharsis spies a green eyeball like drone. Successfully marking it, and chasing it across the data trails she finds Relay's Helper spying on them after Jack's summoning, and the robot observed the summoning of Baphomet. Confused and concerned, she sits there trying to process as the job begins.
Arti zooms up to the secret passage on Massaru's side, and finds the passage closed, after the drone left it open. Swapping sides, Arti opens the passage and begins to dual natured defender through the wards. While there are no spirits on her side, there are Force 9 guardian spirits roaming the opposite side, and Arti has to slip past them stealthily as she moves upwards. Stumbling across a first edition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Arti snatches it up before continuing, heading for the 6th floor, in which she hears heavy breathing and claws against stone. "I can smell you...." Rings out, and Arti drops her cleansing, the bookshelf her only cover as she attempts to juke the creature. Arti in an attempt calm herself nearly cracks the spine. The bronze with green tinged scaled creature is juked, and Arti continues to collect the 6th floor book. Turning into a harpy eagle, she flies across and collects the final book as the spirits begin to spread out. As she grabs the book, she realizes she can't remove the one less Dragon prep, and left with two options: Purposefully set it off inside a mana barrier, or drop the book through the unwarded section to Gomorrah. Mana Static is cast to artificially raise the background to fizzle out the prep. In doing so, she brings Camelot to the library, inside of the castle. She eventually finds the round table, the room filled with meta humanity, with a man similar to Hyden Jones touches her shoulder, calling her Elyan the White. Claiming that today is the day the Queen Guinevere and Lancelot return, and they are celebrating. A lance descends from the sky light, shattering the round table in two, returning Arti to reality with a wild flower behind her ear.
Arti manages to slink past her scaly 'friend' and back down to the vent, stuffing the books back into the pelicans and re-ratting before they break home free.
Aftermath
Books are shared on the flight, Catharsis looking further into her family history, with Babylon and Arti reading over the spell book itself and then sharing with the other, Babylon, Fennec and Gomorrah taking notes from the text. The contents of breaks the laws of magic, and crackpot theories. Fennec reports to Colonel Berger on the book and its contents. The Colonel obviously wants the book, demanding that Fennec turn it over. Fennec barely succeeds in convincing the Colonel that the book is being dead dropped, and that she doesn't know who it's going to, and that he'll need to just scrape the memories out. Babylon and Fennec work together to get Fennec out of this situation, trying to give enough to continue to view her as an asset, but enough removed to avoid the other runners being caught up.
Arti psychometrizes the history text, falling back into the ancient world of elves. Deep seeded superiority, even amongst dragons and magicians, wars fought, countries created and shattered, an island sinking below the surface of the water, and a deep seated hope of taking their rightful place.Then reads the entire book, finding something about Project Nephilim, the genetic creation of an elven gene stock who can generate a special gene and awaken it in other elves, with tiny clown drawings in the margins.
There's some brief discussion about Catharsis' new deck her need to make a new private persona as Jelly has become associated with crime, how you should avoid old tomes, and how to trying to fix problems sometimes makes things worse. Babylon also contacts Brodie J that powerful parties will be hunting the book down, and that he needs to secure it.
Upon getting back to Seattle, the book is handed off, and Arti is met by Julie waiting at her doorstep. Cathy defends Arti when Julie accuses her of poisoning her, and filming their duel. After some back and forth, Julie buys a book, and explains to Catharsis that she owes her a debt for helping her. The elf then leaves the two fencers to sort it out.
Rewards
30,000 Nuyen (15 RVP)
7 karma (7 RVP)
12 CDP (5 RVP)
Optional Contact: Alexandria (8/1 AI Archivist) (16 CDP or 8 RVP)
Optional Contact: Alexander-James Brodrick Johnson III (Corp Kid 4/2) (5 RVP or 10 CDP)
Artemisia:
+ 1 Public Awareness (Dueled a French Noble Woman, televised by Ace Powers)
+ 1 Street Cred ("won" a duel against a French Noble woman)
Optional Contact: Julie d'Aubigny (3/2 Noble Duelist) (4 RVP or 8 CDP)
Catharsis:
Critter armor (R24, Drag handle, electrochroomic Clothing, concealed pocket, Nonconductivity R6, Shock Weave, Insulation R6, Biofiber pocket, Radiation shielding) (2 RVP from run rewards)
Optional Contact: Julie d'Aubigny (3/2 Noble Duelist) (4 RVP or 8 CDP)
+1 Chip with Julie d'Aubigny
Babylon:
+1 Chip with Melia Black
-1 Chip with Marie-Claire d'Orleans
Fennec:
-1 Chip with Marie-Claire d'Orleans
-1 Chip with Pumpking Jack
+1 Chip DGSE (They're going to send her to try and steal the book)
May purchase Memory Palace at Chargen limits
Narrative Consequences:
Alexandria has an Anchor in the Foundation of the Library of Alexandria.
Melia Black has a first edition (read: super old) of "A complete oral history of the Elven people"
Brodie J has a book of theoretical and non-transferable spells and ritual.
Fennec has been roped into Pumpking Jack's plan to kidnap Santa Claus.
Tyranthoth's aura has been associated with the theft of two books from the Library of Alexandria
Artemisia stole a first edition "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Arti had another dream of Camelot.
DGSE knows about the book of ancient magic.
Charles (Babylon's parole officer) planted a bug on her car and knows she left the metroplex.
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Catharsis: This... This... Arti lost herself in the library, and nearly lost the job. I... Grow worried about her, but I can't do anything about it for now.
Artemisia: A first edition! This is a remarkably rare find! And the library! Oh the library, if only I were privileged enough, I would spend the rest of my days dancing between the shelves, humming in delight. Sneaking through the stacks while pursued by the spawn of great dragons is not quite as rewarding but it has its charms. I ... Fennec was ... no, let me focus on other things. I saw something when I laid my hand upon that book. A clue, I think, a very old clue. Perhaps a memory but ... it was as if it was my own. I will need to investigate further. I will need to follow the wildflowers.