I carefully placed the wrapped sphere at my feet in the car and looked at over at Jamie, “So why would you agree to take me to Uncle’s if you can’t stand the White Council so much?”
A dark look entered Jamie’s eyes as he began to rant, “First off, the White Council is the one who has a problem with me. Every encounter I have ever had with the Council they have reminded me that I am not a member of their club; that I have no pedigree. I was taught by no master and they are just waiting for me to screw up. The one time a Warden came to town I had to risk my life and take on a cult just to prove I was innocent. All that aside I want to make sure this artifact is put in their hands and never sees the light of day again.”
Jamie then gave me a mischievous smile, “Plus I want to see your Uncle’s face when I walk in his store with this.”
I responded, “So you have a big chip on your shoulder, and you want to get a rise out of my Uncle ‘cause he does fit in with the White Council. I understand it is annoying; just don’t show them that you can be useful otherwise they will want you then…” then I lost my smile “trust me”.
This is another modified transcript, thus it will be quite, quite long. Again, forgive grammar, etc. I’m not a professional writer, heh. ~Jaelie
After a nice, relaxing time at the pub and enjoying small talk and a drink, Elena and Matthew arrive at Jaime’s house on Saturday evening. Shortly after they arrive, Ren and Jaime come back down the ornate, cast iron circular staircase. Elena assumes that they’ve finished whatever it is that people do in attics.
Jaime grimaces, and then explains what he discovered. “So, Malzen is a demon of cancer. They can sometimes inflict cancer by touch. So don’t touch it if you can avoid it.” He pauses and thinks a moment, then adds, “Some demon tricks: they’re stronger, faster, and tougher than regular humans. Demons come to the world in two ways. They possess someone or build themselves a body. Cancer demons always possess.”
Everyone is silent. “So, who wants a glass of whiskey?”
After a night of preparation, the heroes set out to assault the lair of a demon of the Nevernever (a cancer demon no less). The creature is nearly finished with a grand thaumaturgical ritual that will unlock the Shadesphere – an artifact of ancient and terrible power. Everything from the past week all comes down to this simple Sunday morning.
So, after a pancake breakfast that Jaime cooked; Elena and Conor both set out to provide recon and intel on the headquarters of the Steel Knight Motorcycle Club in Grapevine. Elena recons the physical world, Conor checks out the Nevernever. The backyard garage facility is a nightmare of wards and dark energy.
Conor assists the heroes through the Nevernever and into the house. Jaime, Elena, Matthew and Ren come along, ready for battle. While preparing to remove the sentry from the situation, they instead … well … have a chat. Conor and Matthew convinces the guys in the house that maybe now would be a good time to go and grab some sodas or something from the nearest convenience store… or maybe go to church. It is Sunday after all. They leave in a cloud of dust and exhaust… eager to get away from this house of wierd energy and “bad stuff.”
It was a somewhat quiet Saturday night in the Wardsman’s home – Jamie had put his son to bed, and the adults were in various states of preparation for the next day’s task – stopping a demon.
Knowing that your journey is going to lead you to this type of confrontation and actually staring it down are two totally different things.
“So… here I am,” Conor thought to himself as he took a seat on his nice, comfortable jail cell at the Collin County Sheriff’s Office Detention facility.
Actually it was quite comfortable and well lit all things considered. Conor wasn’t really sure what to expect, but it wasn’t a brightly lit building with trim paintwork and professionals as the guards.
He found himself in the “pokey” because, in the end, he was helping a damsel in distress. The McKinney city police officers that transferred him to the jail said that he’d probably be out in a few hours. They had indicated that they needed to go and talk to some folk …
Elena is still disgruntled as the three of them walk out to Jaime’s car. Movement to her left causes her to turn her head, and she sees two men with Steel Knight patches on their jackets “escorting” a woman who is clearly out of her senses and only semi-conscious. The man with the firmer hold on the woman is a scruffy looking slender man with a ratty mustache (Ratface!), about 5’10 and maybe 150. The other man is a larger-framed man standing about 6’2 with short brown hair.
She nudges Conor with her elbow. “Hey, Conor, those Steel Knight guys are about to put that lady in a van! They prolly roofied her, too!!”
The heroes find themselves at a Motorcycle Expo and are just getting ready to leave when they see a pair of bikers carrying a clearly intoxicated girl to the back of a van!
Earlier in the day (previous session) they had witnessed a biker dropping a rufie into a girl’s beer. Witnessing this, Elena “sics” Conor on them which he does. Two punches, two thugs dropped, and things get interesting from there.
Elena moves to deal with the biker goons in the front of the van via the judicious use of pepper-spray. That doesn’t go entirely to plan as one of them moves with suprising speed to avoid. He steps out with a tire iron and she brings them back around to Conor.
It was Friday afternoon, tomorrow they’d attend some kind of Motorcycle expo or something like that. However, at the moment they had some quiet time to prepare and reflect.
Conor knew he was becoming more and more comfortable with the various Trods that existed though Dallas’s Nevernever. A few months ago, had Elena called upon him in such dire straits as she just did, he would have had to call Jamie or get help from someone with a vehicle. Now, he simply goes where he wishes by finding a “weak spot” in the Nevernever and passing through. Quite often he was even able to shave minutes or even hours off the trip… so long as he didn’t run into a patch of altered time.
That had happened last week as he was experimenting with travelling around the Metroplex.
Disclaimer from Jaelie: I don’t pretend or aspire to be published author material, but this was fun and’ll be awesome to re-read a few years down the road. Some parts are much smoother to read than others. ;)
Be warned, this is LONG. Like 10,000 words long. :P
Also, please be aware there is some strong language.
She knows it is a dream as soon as she realizes she is flying. She sees that she is high above a man on a motorcycle and seems to be following him. She watches with detached surprise as he grabs a pretty, young Latina and takes her on a long, winding ride.
Her detached surprise turns first to horror, then to rage as Elena watches him do terrible things to the girl, and ultimately murder her. The glimpses she has of his face are fuzzy, but what she does catch is burned in her mind – he is Hispanic, has a mustache, and seems in his mid-thirties. Her dream cuts from the grisly murder to the monster rolling a metal barrel into a pond. Instinctively, Elena knows the remains of the poor girl are in that barrel. She has a clear view of the patch on his biker jacket as he walks away, but nothing specific about the bike. Suddenly, her gaze swings back to the pond and into the pond, where she can see many barrels, each painfully similar to the first….
She awakes with a start, so filled with rage that she doesn’t immediately realize that her feet are wet. That she is standing, in her pajamas, barefoot, on the muddy bank of a small pond. It takes her several minutes to fully adjust to the reality of her new surroundings. The dream hadn’t been a dream. It hadn’t merely been her subconscious re-imagining what had happened to her little sister. It had been a vision of something that actually happened, and somehow, here she is.
Where ‘here’ is, she isn’t yet sure, but she knows that she is not going to forget this place.
Elena awakens from a bad dream only to discover that it’s more real than she realizes! Her “waking dream” has followed a trail of death to Canton! After calling Conor to come and get her (which he does by virtue of being a World Walker) they head back to Dallas to plan and scheme.
They learn that the biker gang in question are The Mayas – a particularly nasty hispanic 1%er biker gang. Elena also finds a picture of the killer online as well as clues that lead to Pleasant Grove. The heroes (Conor and Elena) conduct a night-time “reconnaisance in force” of the neighborhood with the benefit of Conor’s fae glamours. Things don’t quite go to plan and they’re spotted… but not before Elena is able to get a bead on the killer.
Using her stealth… she puts a 45 caliber slug through the guy but he lives. How? The heroes beat feet and get the heck out of Da Grove.
I carefully placed the wrapped sphere at my feet in the car and looked at over at Jamie, “So why would you agree to take me to Uncle’s if you can’t stand the White Council so much?”
After a night of preparation, the heroes set out to assault the lair of a demon of the Nevernever (a cancer demon no less). The creature is nearly finished with a grand thaumaturgical ritual that will unlock the Shadesphere – an artifact of ancient and terrible power. Everything from the past week all comes down to this simple Sunday morning. 
She knows it is a dream as soon as she realizes she is flying. She sees that she is high above a man on a motorcycle and seems to be following him. She watches with detached surprise as he grabs a pretty, young Latina and takes her on a long, winding ride.
