# Savannah Knights (mild update 06-10-05)



## RangerWickett (Jan 15, 2002)

*An Introduction to the World of High Fantasy* 

I played in the Savannah Knights campaign in the summer of 2000, using rules gleaned from Eric's news and rumors site before 3e had even come out.  The setting for the game was certainly unusual--imagine modern day Savannah, Georgia, mixed with the Faerie Realm a la _Mists of Avalon_, and add a healthy helping of _Men in Black_.  I posted this series originally back in the fall of 2000, but to commemmorate the birth of the new boards, I will be reposting one chapter each night, for seventeen nights.

I play Jenny Windgrave in Savannah Knights, a Native American Christian Paladin who is bonded to the ghost of her ancestor Pataman, a shaman from the Powhatan tribe.  Oh, and by the way, if you like this story, you might also want to check out _Tides of Homeland_ as well.

And now I present to you the first chapter of High Fantasy: Savannah Knights.

See the High Fantasy website for more information. 



*Prologue*

"This is the world you know. You are born. You  learn at school. You get a job, breed, and die. At times you may wonder about some of the more bizarre happenings in the world; you might be religious, or superstitious, but you know what the real world is.

"This is the world that really exists. Races  and beings far older than humankind submit to the necessity of hiding their true nature, living obscure and concealed lives amid the throngs of ever-more-powerful humanity. The magi, creatures of magic and superstition, live beside you, perhaps fearful of discovery. What you saw today is only a taste of the unlimited power of the magi. 

"I am among the magic races. I am an Illithid, a telepath. Other magi include the Elves, the faeries, the Dragons.

"You can perform magic now as well. When a human dies, they do not always 'cross-over' to whatever afterlife you believe in. Some stay behind, lost souls left to wander the Earth. They search for meaning, for vengeance, for a cause perhaps only they can understand, and they look to the living to find it. They bond with a human, granting them the power humans can only find in the spirit world. Magic. Those of you now bonded with the dead can perform magic. The spirits have their own motives, their own needs, and they intend you to help them satisfy them.

"We in this organization try to perpetuate that myth that seeing is believing. Most magi prefer to live out their lives without threat, and most humans prefer to live out their own without incident. The Bureau is here to make sure it remains that way. The way you knew the world before you stepped in this room is gone for you, but it is the way a vast majority of humanity would prefer to keep it. 

"Now you will help keep it so."

--J'Qwuan, Head Telepath, Bureau for the Management of Magi



*Chapter One:  Introduction*

Savannah, a city of great history, peculiarity, and mystery.  Half the dorms of SCAD are haunted, if you believe the myths, and there always seems to be something unnatural going on among the elite of Savannah’s society.

The night of May 26th, 2000 SCAD put on a small concert as the final event before the summer break.  A rare event to bring together students of dozens of artistic disciplines--photography, acting, computer design, comic books, and more traditional forms.

At the fringe of the concert crowd, a young man walks un-noticed between his classmates.   They ignore the average-build, modest-faced, drably-dressed man, paying no attention to this self-made chameleon.   He’s never had an interest in art, and the computer files of SCAD list him only as a modest-grade, full-scholarshipped computer graphicist named “Chuck Tagin-eve.”

A camera flashes as Madeline West, slender photo-journalist student, finishes her roll of film on the concert.   She starts to settle down to enjoy the concert, but then something tickles her ear, reminding her she needs to get another roll of film for her camera.

Near the stage, something cuts through the noise of the music—a voice only one woman hears.   Jenny Windgrave looks up at the sound of her name, a clear voice in the crowd.   She doesn’t see the man who had called her, but her eyes level on a scene a the edge of the crowd.

Tagin-Eve looks up as a woman stops next to him.   A Goth chick, complete with torn fishnet stockings, an inverted crucifix around her neck, black hair, and sunken, stoned eyes.   

“Hey. . .  ,” she strays off for a moment, and Tagin begins to breathe through his mouth to avoid the smell of the weed she’s been smoking.   “You’re Chuck, right? You wanna come see somethin’?”

Tagin’s more frustrated than interested, but despite himself he follows her to the doorway of the nearest dorm, Oglethorp house.   Behind him, Madeline is on her way to get more film, and Jenny is calmly pushing her way through the crowd.   Something about the woman makes her uneasy.

Tagin and the Goth stop next to the steps of O-house, and the woman lays an arm on Tagin’s shoulder.   “I forgot how stoned I could get . . . heh.  You remember me, right?”

Tagin nods, nervous.  He’s too far from the crowd, out in the open.  “Yeah.  Chastity, from art history.”

Chastity smiles, revealing those ivory vampire teeth only the most over-the-top Goths purchase.   “You’re good. . . . . . . . and cute.  Too cute to let it all go to waste, right? All flesh just rots away, y’know?”

Two joggers are running on the street nearby.  One slows, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.  The larger of the two looks at him in frustration, then follows his albino brother’s gaze to the steps of the nearby building.

Chastity puts her other arm on Tagin’s other shoulder, and then grins, her eyes slits that begin to seep red light.  “Man . . . I always get so hungry when I’m high.  I just want a little drink.”

She bares her teeth again, and Tagin tries to pull away, but Chastity holds him strongly as she bends her head to line up her fangs with his neck.  “You’re cute. . . . I want you to stay that way forever.”

From a few dozen feet away, Jenny shouts, “Stop!” Chastity and Tagin both look to see the Native American woman standing unarmed, but resolute, staring wrathfully at the vampire.  A few feet away from the steps, Madeline finally looks up at the shout and sees the pale, glowing-eyed vampiress holding a freshman in a death’s embrace.

Chastity sighs.  “Aw damn, girl.  I just want a bite to eat.” 

Madeline backs away while Jenny advances.  

Chastity shrugs, “But I’m not picky,” and then shoves Tagin ten feet into Madeline, knocking her down.  As Madeline tries to get to her feet, Chastity leaps through the air toward Jenny.

Jenny scambles back, but the vampiress grabs her by her hair and shirt and pulls her forward, staring her in the eyes intently.  Jenny begins to feel sickly, but she grimaces and shoves at her attacker, driving her back.  Sneering, Chastity punches Jenny in the face and drops her to the ground.

The vampiress turns as Madeline runs up and swings her camera by its strap, barely hitting Chastity on the arm.  The vampiress grabs Madeline and flings her to the ground atop Jenny, sneering.

Then from the shadows nearby comes a shout.  “Vile child of Satan! Your bloodlust ends tonight.”

Out from the edge of the building steps a tall man in a trenchcoat, white light flooding from the wall of the building.  The wind blows his trenchcoat open, revealing a crucifix around his neck.  As he stares down Chastity, he draws a wooden stake.

Chastity stares at him blankly.  “You’re ****tin’ me right? You think you’re some kinda effin’ Van Helsing? Gah.”

The vampire hunter smiles knowingly, then hurls the stake twenty feet toward the Goth chick.  Chastity is shocked, but dodges the stake, then leaps at her opponent.

By the time everyone gets to their feet, the vampire hunter hangs limply in Chastity’s arms as she suckles at his throat.

Jenny looks to Madeline, then sprints toward the vampire. Madeline hears a voice whispering in her ear, and a chill runs through her as she repeats the droning words.  Chastity stops sucking the blood from the vampire hunter for a moment to look at Madeline, and then her eyes widen as a bolt of energy strikes her in the chest.

Tagin and Jenny look at Madeline warily, but she’s as confused as they are.  Chastity sneers, then grabs her prey and levitates slowly upward.  As she moves out of range, Tagin leaps up and slashes at her with a butterfly knife.

Jenny grabs and hurls a small potted plant at the vampire, to no effect.  

As the pot crashes against the ground, a deep shout comes from nearby: “What in the seven ****s of hell?”

And then a sharper voice: “That levitating Goth chick is giving the FBI guy a hickey!”

Jenny looks over to see a pair of men in jogging outfits—looking related except that one’s an albino—jogging up to the scene.  She points to Chastity and shouts, “She’s a vampire!  She’s killing him!”

Without missing a step in his jogging, the larger of the brothers breaks into a sprint, pulling a sword out of his jogging bag.  Judging the woman too high to jump at, he leaps up at the wall of O-house, then springs diagonally off it higher into the air, slashing across the woman’s legs.  With his spare hand, he grabs onto her foot.

With a jerk and shout from Chastity, the three fall to the ground.

“Cai, get outta the way,” shouts the albino to his brother, and as soon as Cai jumps away, the ground shudders and vines spring forth, entwining Chastity, the vampire hunter, and Jenny.  Tagin leaps clear and jumps over Chastity to land beside the vampire hunter.

Another bolt flashes out of Madeline’s hands, striking Chastity in the back of the head.  The vampiress swears indignantly, then begins to tear at the vines entangling her.

At the edge of the circle of vines, Cai stands calmly and looks at his younger brother.  “Iscalio, what the hell did you just do?”

The albino Iscalio shrugs, then turns to watch the battle.

Madeline runs to help Jenny free her legs from the vines while Tagin rips open the vampire hunter’s trenchcoat and pulls out two stakes.  Jenny, finally free, kneels beside the wounded man and puts a hand to his throat to check for a pulse.  She feels dizzy suddenly as her hand tingles, and the man beneath her starts to stir.

“Hey, look out!” shouts Iscalio, pointing at Chastity.  “She’s moving again.”

As Chastity begins to finally stand, a ghostly fox appears beside her and leaps at her chest, biting at her.  Meanwhile Tagin and Jenny help the vampire hunter to his feet, and he staggers a bit before leaping at the child of Satan, Tagin and Jenny following, just wanting to stop the woman.

Chastity knocks the ghostly fox away (it vanishes), then looks up in time to be tackled.  As the three attackers land on her, Chastity rolls back and flings Jenny off, then punches Tagin back.  She struggles with the vampire hunter, eventually grabbing one of the stakes inside his coat and smashing him across the face with it.  She mutters a curse, then stands to look for her next opponent.

As she stands, she turns and steps directly into Tagin’s stake.  The wood pierces her chest, and she sags, falling into Tagin’s arms.  

Tagin sinks to the ground with Chastity as the red seeps out of her eyes, and color briefly returns to her strangely calm face.  She looks at him gently and whispers with a smile, “Thank you.”

Tagin looks down at Chastity, shocked.  Then a shadow falls over him as the vampire hunter steps up beside him.  Tagin steps away, and the man efficiently, without pleasure, draws the hilt of a sword from his coat.  A glowing blade of white energy springs out from the hilt, then coalesces into a solid metal blade.  Closing his eyes and touching his cross, he prepares himself, then grimly beheads the vampire, putting her to rest.  Her mortal remains settle to dust and scatter in the summer wind.

In the distance, the concert proceeds as normal, heedless.  The vampire hunter sighs sadly, then looks around the group.  “It’s not safe here.  Come with me if you want to live.”

Tagin, Madeline, Jenny, Cai, and Iscalio slowly walk forward as the tall man’s sword blade turns into light again, then vanishes, leaving only the hilt.  The vampire hunter places the hilt in his caot and draws something else in its place.  He holds it forward, and a square section of the side of Oglethorpe House glows with white light.  

“Through the doorway.  C’mon now.  I don’t have endless patience.”

Cai fingers his katana as he walks toward the wall.  He looks at the man before walking through the wall.  “You’d better not be ****in’ with us.  C’mon Iscalio.”

One by one the group enters, Tagin last, so inconspicuous that the vampire hunter almost leaves him.  As they all step through the white doorway, emerging in the clean hallways of some unknown building, Jenny looks at their rescuer for an explanation.

“Where are we? I mean, I can guess what just happened, even though it’s supposed to be impossible, but where are we now?”

Iscalio chimes in: “And who are you?”

“I’m Balthazar Mordred,” he says calmly, starting down the hallway as he tucks what appears to be a key back into his coat.  “And you’re in the Faerie World.  You’re gonna have some decisions coming up, and let me tell you, there is some wild stuff up ahead.”


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## RangerWickett (Jan 20, 2002)

The reposting begins tonight, January 20th, 2002, and will continue each night with another chapter until February 5th.


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## Jarval (Jan 20, 2002)

It's a great start.  Always liked the opening!


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## Ancalagon (Jan 20, 2002)

I've read this story the first time around and believe me, it is worth following!

Lots of intrigue and very original.

Ancalagon


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## RangerWickett (Jan 21, 2002)

As part of an ongoing supplement to this storyhour, I'll be presenting some rules information with every chapter of the storyhour, ranging from the world's rules for character creation to stat blocks, magical items, spells, and possibly even prestige classes.

*High Fantasy Campaign Setting*

The High Fantasy Campaign Setting details the same world that we all live in, Earth, but includes information on the world of magic that coexists with us, unseen by most.  Known as Gaia (as opposed to the mundane world of Terra), the Faerie Realm can be accessed easily by those who accept its existence, but others are sometimes drawn into this world by sheer happenstance, or by the maliciousness of its inhabitants.


*Races:*
The following races are available for player characters.  Note that in _Savannah Knights_, all PCs were initially restricted to humans because they did not yet know about the Bureau or the Faerie World.  Races marked with an asterisk (*) have high Equivalent Character Levels, and thus are limited to more high-level games.

Humans.
Elves.  Elves are considered Middle Fey.  Though they have access to magical powers without the aid of spirits, they are still considered Humanoids for the sake of spells and such.  Their favored class is Sorcerer or Ranger.
Svart Alves.  These are the 'dark Elves' of Northern European folklore, typically with dark skin and hair, glowing eyes, and a disturbing aura around them.  They receive +2 Dex, -2 Con, and -2 Cha.   They have Darkvision 60 ft and vibration-based Blindsight 5 ft.  They also gain a +2 racial bonus to Climb, Listen, and Spot checks.  Their creature type is Humanoid.  Their favored class is Sorcerer or Ranger.
Orcs.  Orcs are Low Fey, the most mundane of the inhabitants in Gaia.  They are statistically identical to the Orcs listed in the Monster Manual, and are considered Humanoids.  Their favored class is Berserker or Fighter.
Ogres.* 
Trolls.*
Dwarves.  Dwarves are also Low Fey, but they are considered Humanoids.  They are a very secluded people, but not necessarily unimposing.  Thus, they get +2 Con, -2 Dex instead of +2 Con, -2 Cha.  Their favored class is Fighter or Wizard.
Goblins.  Goblins are considered Middle Unseelie Fey, but are still Humanoids, and are identical to Monster Manual Goblins.  Their favored class is Rogue or Fighter.
Hobgoblins.  Hobgoblins differ from their traditional Dungeons & Dragons presentation.  These creatures are the more historical ‘house goblins’ of Europe.  They are small Fey.
Pixies.
Brownies.  Brownies resemble halflings in size and appearance (and stats), but have even more playful demeanors.  They are considered Middle Fey, and thus have the creature type Humanoid.
Satyrs.
Centaurs.*
Additionally, the following templates are available, but only to higher level characters.

Blood of the High Fey.  A template for characters with blood of the true, High Fey.  Characters of this variety tend to have wings and a powerful presence, but suffer some of the vulnerabilites of the High Fey (such as to cold iron).
Ghost.  Also available is the Spirit template, which is a less vicious version of the Ghost template.  Spirits are bonded ghosts, and so don't have much use as PCs on their own, but they _are_ available.
Half-Dragon.
Lycanthrope.
Seelie Beast.  This template is similar to the celestial template.
Unseelie Beast.  This template is similar to the infernal template.
Vampire.  Not all vampires are evil.  Some are just victims of foul circumstance.


*Jenny Windgrave:*  Female human Pal1; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 1d10; hp 10; Init –1; Spd 30 ft.; AC 9 (Dex); Atk shortspear +1 melee (1d8/crit x3) or rapier +1 melee (1d6/crit 18) or automatic pistol +0 ranged (1d10/crit x3); SQ detect evil, divine grace, lay on hands (3 hp), divine health, ghostbond; SV Fort +6, Ref +2, Will +8; Str 11, Dex 8, Con 10, Int 13, Wis 14, Cha 17.

_Skills and Feats:_ Diplomacy +5, Knowledge (Native American history) +3, Knowledge (Christianity) +3, Perform +9, Sense Motive +5, Speak Language (French), Spot +3; Artist (+2 to Perform and Craft (costumes)), Iron Will.
Note: All Knowledge skills, Perform, and Speak Language are class skills for Jenny because of her Performing Arts education.  Sense Motive and Spot are her floating class skills.

_Ghostbond Abilities:_ Alertness, Locative Bond, See Spirit, Share Spells, Speak with Spirit, Spirit Manifestation, Turn Resistance, +1 to Will and Fortitude saves, and a +2 bonus to resist level drains and death effects.


_Background:_
Jenny’s family has never lived on a reservation, but in a small community in Virginia that consisted singly of the ancestors of the Powhatan and Algonquin Indians as well as several other neighboring tribes that were displaced by English settlers to Jamestown.  She managed to nab a scholarship for her acting talent (and only partially for her race) to the Savannah College of Art & Design.  

Her parents (and most of her home community) were Christian, but she only remained at the private Catholic high school her parents sent her to for a few weeks.  She quit and returned to public school when several classmates mocked her as “Pocahontas.”  In the years since she’s taken the name as a frustrating nickname, but admits that at least the girls got the right tribe.  She is directly descended from Pataman, a shaman a year too young to have known the famous Pocahontas before she left for England.  

At the public school she attended, she received somewhat less attention for her race, and actually had a few Native American friends.  Her interest kindled in her culture, she rediscovered all the things her parents had taught her that she had ignored.  At first it was merely a diversion, but she discovered half-way through high school that most of her friends did not share her Christian faith, and for almost a year she took refuge in her ancestry (even at one point trying to gain acceptance by using her “Native American” status to garner herself some peyote online; peyote was never used by Powhatan Indians).  

Her church restored her faith when she was invited to play Mary Magdalen in a Passion Play.  She won the audition and was able to form closer ties to others who shared her faith.  She credits God primarily with letting her win the role; it was certainly a miracle that acting as bad as hers was at the time was allowed in a semi-professional play.  

With renewed vigor she began to speak to her friends from high school about her faith.  Though she did not achieve anything like a conversion, she realized that most of her friends did not condemn her for her beliefs, any more than they feared she would scalp them because she was an Indian.  She continued to pursue acting, and actually became good enough that her audition tape landed her in the first class to be offered a major in theatre arts at the Savannah College of Art & Design.

_Jenny’s Ghost:_
Pataman lived to the age of thirty-seven, and was killed by an armed group of Christian settlers.  The settlers had attempted to clear a swath of forest that had been the chief’s favored hunting grounds.  Nothing religious, but the Christians assumed the Indians were refusing because of their ‘primitive and uncivilized’ religion.  Pataman led three fellow priests to explain the conflict; words flew (only half-understood by either side), tempers flared, and Pataman stated he and his priests would attack any settler who crossed into the forest.  

As they turned to leave, one of the settlers lowered his pants and began to piss at their feet.   Appalled at the insult, Pataman tried to punch the settler.  Fearing the savages would kill their friend, the settlers jumped into the battle, so Pataman's fellow priests joined the fight as well--four Indians against a half-dozen settlers.  Pataman found himself fighting for his life against the settler he’d first attacked, and in defense he wrenched the man’s gun away and shot him.  As the settler fell to the ground, another Englishman shot Pataman.  Both sides broke away to tend to their wounded, and neither Pataman nor his victim survived.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 21, 2002)

*Chapter Two:  Faerie World*

As Balthazar leads the 5 confused young men and women through the hallways, he seems to grow nervous as they approach the noise of a crowded room.  Though they’ve been following blankly until this point, when the group enters the room they all stop in shock for a moment and look around.

“This is straight out of Men in Black,” Iscalio says as they watch an argument between a burly, green-skinned humanoid and a pair of finely-dressed men in black suits.  Sitting at desks, a few normal workers in white-collar shirts are answering the grievances of the various bizarre creatures.

Interspersed between the modernly-dressed humans is a vast array of other creatures—Elves, Orcs, a few ghoulish looking things (red eyes, pale skin, look a lot like Iscalio the albino), and a nice variety of short little people.  Here and there, a handful of winged sprites flit around in curiosity to look at everyone, then fly on when they lose interest.  A few of the humans have get-ups similar to Balthazar’s, but none look quite as ready to go out and kill something.  Well, maybe the Orcs.

The only real argument seems to be between a finely-dressed but otherwise plain-looking Asian woman and several of the black-suited agents, all of them shouting in Chinese.  Even though it’s obvious the Asian woman she hasn’t even seen the newcomers, it feels as if she’s glaring at each and every one of them, making them nervous with her overpowering presence.  

Balthazar grumbles something about the damned annoying Dragon, and then says things will be explained to them in a moment.  They move through the large room and enter a narrower corridor, with its lights dimmed.  A man with dark grey skin and white hair, wearing sunglasses, walks by, throwing them a sneer.  

“More?  Aren’t you knights supposed to be a select group? There’s too many of you already.”

Balthazar ignores him stoically, then guides the group into a conference room with a full business-style table in the center.  He says 'the chief' will be there any minute.  Then he smiles wryly and walks out the door, claiming he has paperwork to file.

Tagin sits quietly, inconspicuously.  Cai sits down also, looking around the room cautiously, then calls for his brother Iscalio to sit down next to him and stop trying to force the door open.  Madeline tries to keep busy by checking her camera for damage as she takes a seat down also.  Finally Jenny pulls out a chair, looking at everyone and asking how they feel, and what they think is going on.

The group talks for a while, and of course they’re surprised at what has happened, but they’re taking it well enough.  Everyone offers their names and tells a little about themselves.



*Jenny Windgrave:*  Native American theatre student at SCAD (the Savannah College of Art & Design), descended from the Powhatan tribe (the tribe Pocahontas came from), which has not existed as an actual tribe for a long time.  She wears a plain ivory cross around her neck on a short necklace.

*Madeline West:*  Caucasian photography student, also at SCAD.  She’s a little interested in what’s going on, since she tried once unsuccessfully to become a goth, studying all kinds of wicca, witchcraft, and magic.  She could never build up enough focused cynicism to become a real goth, but she is still interested in witchcraft and the occult. 

*Cai Maxwell:*  Tall, mid-20s, of mixed Asian and Italian descent, runs a small martial arts school.  And yes, he does always carry a katana around while jogging (in his jogging bag; it’s just one of those cheap, mail-order katanas though).

*Iscalio Maxwell:*  Cai’s younger brother, early 20s, albino, scrawny but tough (his brother forces him to jog morning and night).  He cracks a few anti-Christian jokes at Jenny’s expense.



Finally (and they would’ve missed him if they hadn’t been going down the line), Chuck Tagin-Eve.  

“What kind of name is that?” Iscalio asks.

“Chuck’s a cute name,” Madeline replies, trying to make Tagin calm.

Tagin just says a few things about himself, that he’s a computer graphics student.  They know he says more, but it wasn’t memorable enough for them to remember.  

On cue, after they finish introducing themselves, the door opens and in steps a middle-aged man who bears a striking resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones.  He doesn’t give a name, saying that if they ever see him again they can just call him “Chief.” 

The Chief says they weren’t prepared for such a large group to show up, so it’ll be a few minutes before the person they really need to talk to will arrive.  In the meanwhile, he introduces them to the Bureau for the Management of Magi, and gives them the quick run down of how magical creatures have been living discreet lives among humans from the beginning of time, crossing over from their own world of Gaia, which is similar but separate to Terra, the world we all consider to be Earth.  In 542 AD, at the battle of Camlann, the final battle between Arthur and Mordred, the battle between Terra and Gaia ended with an agreement for the races of Gaia to remain separate from Terra.  However, not all of the Gaian peoples followed this agreement, and for centuries, human warriors continued the tradition of the Knights of the Round, seeking out and killing magi who invaded Terra.

Finally, in the early 1900s, the Bureau was founded in order to stop the escalating tensions between humans and magi.  Now, travel between Terra and Gaia is more closely regulated and monitored, making it easier for the well-meaning to conduct their business, and more difficult for trouble-makers to get away with crimes that might break the ancient Treaty of Camlann. 

The Chief offers them the opportunity to join the Bureau.  He says the reasons for Jenny, Madeline, and Iscalio are obvious, though the three of them don't seem to find it so clear.  As for Cai, he’s shown himself a capable warrior, and it’d be too difficult to keep the secret if only one brother knew about it.  The Chief refrains from saying why they want Tagin.

Chuckling softly, he goes on to say that, unlike the movie Men in Black, they won’t have to worry about leaving their families behind.  The Bureau will pay them for their utilities, taxes, and housing if they want to keep a semblance of their normal life.  After all, the Bureau’s main reason for existence is to let magic exist under the veil of the mundane world, so the Chief encourages them not to just drop their original lifestyle.

The lights grow suddenly much dimmer, and the Chief says the ‘man’ they’ve been waiting for has arrived.  The door opens, and a voice slides into their minds, criticizing the Chief for not having the lights dimmed in the first place.

In the limited light they can barely make out a humanoid shape coming through the doorway.  It strides forward, its long robes sliding across the floor, and stops beside the Chief’s seat.  The Chief and the new arrival exchange some friendly banter, and they realize that the person isn’t actually _talking_.  As their eyes adjust to the gloom, they can make out a large, bald head with pupil-less white eyes.  Where its mouth and nose should be, instead several long tentacles slither about.

The Mind Flayer mentions casually that they’re uneasy, but then after a moment all their anxiety at seeing this bizarre person fade away, leaving them peculiarly relaxed.  He introduces himself as Yondo J’Qwuan, and says plainly that if they do not want to join the Bureau, they can return to their normal lives with their memories erased.  

After some discussion and rabid questioning (Chad, Tagin’s player, really hates Illithids, and so he pinned J’Qwuan as a bad guy from the start), they agree to join the Bureau.  Well, all of them except Tagin, who just seems to go along with the show.  J’Qwuan goes out of his way to inform the Chief to not forget about the scrawny-little hacker sitting discreetly at the edge of the table.

Jenny says that knowledge of magic like this is something she never believed in, and as pious as she is, she is not one to go on blind faith if she is offered the chance to learn the true nature of the world.

Iscalio seems to think that the Bureau is opposed to the US government, and that it proves that the established society has been lying to the world.  J'Qwuan reads his mind and explains that, no, he would not be allowed to share the secret of the Bureau to the rest of the world.  Regardless, Iscalio refuses to let the wool be pulled over his eyes.  When Cai hears that, he nods and says he also doesn't mind knowing about all this stuff, so he might as well stay and protect his brother.

Madeline smiles at the offer, obviously amazed by the magic she has already seen.  She jumps at the chance to learn more, even though the Chief tells her that she will be questioned periodically to make sure she hasn't tried to spread photos of magical races or creatures.

Finally, everyone looks at Tagin, remembering that apparently he is someone important.  J’Qwuan asks Tagin directly if he wants to join, or to just go back to a normal life.  The Chief suggests it’s a bad idea to recruit Tagin, since after all, the man has no real assets to give to the Bureau.  

Tagin looks around the group defiantly.  Since he doesn't want to get his memories erased (and since Chad doesn't want to have to roll up a new character), he finally speaks up and says that he’s a hacker.  A very good one.

They decide to check into it, and J’Qwuan says there’s one final thing they have to do before they’ll let them into the Bureau.  One by one, the Mind Flayer sinks deeply into their minds and scans their thoughts, looking for their loyalty.  He tells the Chief all’s well, and that Tagin is indeed telling the truth.  Even though some of the people in the group would like to share the truth, they understand that if they did so, they'd not only be expelled from the Bureau and have their memories erased, but would also be considered lunatics.  They can be trusted to keep the secret.

And yes, Tagin is a hacker.  A very good one.

(We ran this game back in early summer, back when Eric Noah’s Unofficial D&D 3E Site said Skill Focus gives a +10 bonus to a skill, not +2.  As a human rogue, Tagin had taken Skill Focus (hacking) twice, for a +20 bonus to his hacking checks; .  .  .  um, once we read the official rules, we decided he’s just got the magic touch, rules be damned.)

 * * *

Over the next few weeks, since school’s out for the summer anyway, the group goes through training in basic Gaian history, weapons usage, procedures and sources of aid if they get into trouble.  They also learn that three of them have ghosts that are trying to bond with them, long-dead spirits that have chosen to follow them for whatever reason.

With the aid of a sorcerer, Jenny, Iscalio, and Madeline contact the spirit world to speak with their ghosts.  While magical races can use magic freely (and usually become sorcerers), humans are not innately connected to the world of magic.  They can become wizards or psions through very hard study, or they can bond with a ghost, drawing energy from the spirit world, using the ghost as their conduit.

When the sorcerer connects them closely with their spirit, they’re now able to fully see and speak with their ghosts.  Before, the ghosts could only briefly speak with them, and only in periods of great danger (like vampire attacks).

Madeline’s ghost is Catherine, a young woman who was hung in the Salem witch trial.  Her cat was hung too, so Madeline can now see her ghost and her ghost’s cat.  Catherine was not actually a witch, and she’s a bit wary of sorcery, so her spells don’t always function properly.

Iscalio sees his spirit: a small, ghostly-white fox.  He communicates empathically with the creature, and begins to call it his totem animal.  When the sorcerer who contacted the spirit world for him asks what he’s talking about, Iscalio says he has the ghost of a fox for his spirit.

The sorcerer who let them speak to their spirits laughs at Iscalio's New Age spirit-bonding.  Snorting and snickering, the sorcerer explains that the fox isn’t a fox at all.  It’s actually Mr.  Lancaster Cornwall, died c. 1840 after a long period of insanity where he believed he was a fox.  While some of his friends were out hunting, Mr.  Cornwall leapt to save the foxes from the hounds, and was accidentally shot.

Iscalio says indignantly that the ghost is a fox, and that’s that.  (Jessie, the DM, had a slight difference of opinion with Iscalio’s player.  Jessie says even if animals do have spirits, they don’t think the same way humans do, and so can’t bond with them; this raised the question if foxes could have fox ghosts, but still didn't allow Iscalio to bond with an actual fox).

Finally, Jenny’s ghost is Pataman, one of her ancestors from her tribe.  Pataman was a young shaman, and was killed in a relatively minor squabble with a Christian settler.  He disapproves of Jenny’s religion, but shares her general outlook on morality.

The group goes through training in procedures, combat, and magic, and how to recognize magical creatures disguised as humans.  After a few weeks of training, the Chief gives them their first assignment, a simple clean-up.  

And to make sure they’ve learned everything effectively, they’ll be working with Keira McCormick, Quarter-Elvish sorceress.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 21, 2002)

*Madeline West:*  Female human Sor1; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 1d4+2; hp 6; Init +1; Spd 30 ft.; AC 11 (Dex); Atk blunt object +1 melee (1d4+1) or taser +1 ranged (2d10 subdual/crit x3); SQ ghostbond; SV Fort +2, Ref +1, Will +4; Str 12, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 14, Cha 14.

_Skills and Feats:_ Computer Use +2, Controlled Driving +4, Gather Information +2, Intimidate +1, Intuit Direction +4, Knowledge (photography) +3, Profession (photojournalist) +4, Speak Language (Spanish), Swim +1; Clotheshift, Silent Spell.
Note: All Knowledge skills, Speak Language, and Spot are class skills for Madeline because of her Graphic Arts education.  Computer Use and Controlled Driving are her floating class skills.

_Spells Per Day:_ 5 / 4 — dancing lights, daze, light, detect magic / change self, magic missile.

_Ghostbond Abilities:_ Alertness, Locative Bond, See Spirit, Share Spells, Speak with Spirit, Spirit Manifestation, Turn Resistance, Wild Spellcaster Template, +1 bonus to all saves to resist magic.


_Background:_
Madeline has been pursuing a career in journalism since high school, and is attending the Savannah College of Art & Design for a major in photography, taking side classes in actual journalism at the local Savannah State College.  

Madeline has always had a good sense of direction, and usually spends up to an hour memorizing a street map of any new city she’ll be traveling to before she leaves.  Because of several defensive driving courses in high school, she is quite comfortable navigating even the most treacherous driving conditions, though in her opinion, Savannah’s streets are rather boringly designed (historically, Savannah was one of the first cities designed on a grid plan).

_Madeline’s Ghost:_
Catherine had only one piece of evidence that supported the charge against her, her cat.  The townspeople of Salem saw the cat as proof that Catherine was one of the witches, even though she attended church every day and was friends with all the young women in town.  But her friends abandoned her and invented maladies they suffered because of her, and the witch hunt moved quickly to end her life.

When they brought her to be hung, her cat followed in distress, and Catherine had almost cursed at the cat then, believing that it _was_ an evil creature that had brought this suffering upon her.  But just as they reached the noose, her cat jumped up into her arms and wailed pitifully, seemingly understanding her plight.  It looked into her eyes as if to say it would miss her, and Catherine immediately forgave the small cat, knowing they were both just the victims of everyone’s fears.

However, to her dismay, her cat was torn from her arms.  One of the men present jokingly tied a second, smaller noose with twine, which others agreed to use with morbid chuckles.  Catherine and her cat were hung together, before the eyes of her friends and family.

*Classes:*
All the standard classes are available, though we prefer to call them Berserkers, not Barbarians.  Some class skills are not the same, but extra class skills can be acquired depending on your background.  Also, though the rules for magic remain the same, the explanation behind magic is quite different.  Here follows a summary of changes.

General:  All characters choose a background, which grants certain extra class skills or other benefits.  Sample backgrounds are found in Chapter Two: Races and Cultures.  Additionally, all characters are proficient in every simple weapon (including handguns).
Barbarian:  This class’s name is changed to berserker.  Literacy is automatic.
Bard:  This class is restricted to races of Gaia.  Humans can only take levels in this class if they have a bonded spirit.
Cleric:  Characters choose their domains as they believe their faith guides them.  Gods do not walk Terra or Gaia, so characters have to decide what exactly their religion advocates.  
This class is restricted to races of Gaia.  Humans can only take levels in this class if they have a bonded spirit.
Druid:  This is the name for any type of nature priest; a prestige class details members of the Ancient Druid Orders.  The weapon list varies from group to group, and represents not a restricted list, but rather a list of weapons they are proficient in.  Druids may use any weapon without fearing loss of their powers, though they are only proficient in limited ones.
This class is restricted to races of Gaia.  Humans can only take levels in this class if they have a bonded spirit.  
Fighter:  This class is unchanged.  It’s a well-designed class, and I won’t fiddle with it.
Monk:  This class no longer restricts members from multiclassing.
Paladin:  This class is restricted to races of Gaia.  Humans can only take levels in this class if they have a bonded spirit.
Psion:  Use the changes presented in Malhavoc Press’s If Thoughts Could Kill.
Psychic Warrior:  Use the changes presented in Malhavoc Press’s If Thoughts Could Kill.
Ranger:  This class is restricted to races of Gaia.  Humans cannot progress beyond 3rd level in this class unless they have a bonded spirit.  However, there is a variant ranger class that has no magical abilities, which can be taken freely.
Rogue:  Like the fighter, this class is perfect.
Sorcerer:  If a sorcerer also has a bonded spirit, he can choose to have his spirit occupy the body of a small creature, making it effectively a standard familiar.  Use the familiar progression of powers instead of the Ghostbond progression, except that the sorcerer retains the Speak with Spirit and See Spirit ability, and the familiar is still restricted by the Locative Bond.  If he does not have a bonded spirit, he can gain a familiar as normal.
This class is restricted to races of Gaia.  Humans can only take levels in this class if they have a bonded spirit.
Wizard:  If a wizard also has a bonded spirit, he can choose to have his spirit occupy the body of a small creature, making it effectively a standard familiar.  Use the familiar progression of powers instead of the Ghostbond progression, except that the wizard retains the Speak with Spirit and See Spirit ability, and the familiar is still restricted by the Locative Bond.  If he does not have a bonded spirit, he can gain a familiar as normal.

*Ghostbond: (Su)*  Ghostbond is a racial ability possessed by humans, allowing them to be contacted by spirits that have not yet passed on.  Though all sentient beings have souls, only human souls are apt to linger after death, and only humans are innately attuned to the powers of spirits.  Humans have no natural magical powers, so when a spirit bonds with a human, it metaphorically fills in the emptiness from the lack of magic, granting the human access to magical abilities.

The Fey have their own magical power, and thus have no place for spirits to bond to.  Dwarves and Orcs can bond with spirits, but since most Dwarves and Orcs live in the Faerie Realm of Gaia, they are already saturated with magic and less able to bond.  Orcs and Dwarves may gain the Ghostbond ability with a feat.

Simply having the Ghostbond ability does not assure that a spirit will willingly bond with a character, but spells do exist to force bonding.  However, unless such a spell is utilized, both the character with the Ghostbond ability and the spirit must be willing for the bond to take place.  Bonding with a ghost grants certain benefits of power, but forever ties the living person and the spirit together, a proximity which can become frustrating and grating if one’s spiritual bond is chosen poorly.

_Ghostbond Basics:_  The spirit has the spirit template applied to its original stats that it had before death, but then make these changes.

_Hit Dice:_  Treat as the bonded person’s character level.
_Hit Points:_  One-half the bonded person’s total, rounded down.
_Attacks:_  Use the bonded person’s base attack bonus, and the spirit’s Dexterity bonus.  Note, however, that spirits cannot affect the material world except in limited ways.
_Saving Throws:_  Use the bonded person’s base saving throw bonuses.
_Skills:_  Use the spirit’s original skill ranks or the bonded person’s, whichever is better.

_Ghostbond Powers:_  The Ghostbond ability grants the following powers to the character who chooses to bond with a spirit.
Bonding Powers:  Each spirit grants some type of power to whomever it bonds with.  Similar to the benefit a familiar grants its master, the particular power varies from spirit to spirit, usually based on how that spirit died, or what it’s personality was like.  Choose one of the following powers.  Once a power has been chosen, it cannot be changed.  If the bond is severed or the spirit destroyed, this benefit disappears.
—Living person gains +2 to one ability score.
—Living person gains +2 to two related skills.
—Living person gains +2 bonus to Fortitude, Reflex, or Will saves.
—The spirit defends the living person’s soul.  She gains +1 to Will and Fortitude saves, and a +2 bonus to resist level drains and death effects.
—The spirits own reluctance to use magic grants the living person the Wild Spellcaster Template, but also provides a +1 bonus to all saving throws to resist spells, supernatural abilities, and spell-like effects.
—Once per day, if the spirit is within five feet of the bonded person, the spirit can choose to redirect any mind-affecting or charm spell or effect targeting the living person to himself instead.  The living person makes her saving throw as normal.  If she fails, her bonded spirit is stunned for one minute per level of the spell.  If she succeeds, the spell has no effect on either her or her ghost.
—The spirit grants the bonded person the Sixth Sense feat, allowing her to see, speak with, and hear any spirit.
Alertness (Ex):  The spirit’s sense of perception aids the bonded person in noticing things.  If the spirit is within 5 feet, the bonded person gains the benefits of the Alertness feat.
Locative Bond:  Once it bonds with a living person, the spirit cannot stray far.  The maximum distance of separation is 100 feet per level of the living person.  The spirit cannot willingly pass beyond this range, and if is unavoidably separated by more than this distance, he must proceed at full speed back to within range.
See Spirit (Su):  The person can see her spirit clearly, just as if he was solid and tangible.  Though exact appearances vary from spirit to spirit, typically a spirit appearances wispy and slightly transparent, with a soft glow surrounding his or her body.
Share Spells (Su):  At the bonded person’s option, she may have any spell she casts on herself also affect her spirit.  The spirit must be within 5 feet at the time of casting, and if the spell has a duration other than instantaneous, the spell stops affecting the spirit if he moves beyond 5 feet.  The spell’s effect will be restored even if the spirit returns before the duration would otherwise have ended.  

Additionally, the bonded person may cast a spell with the target of “You” on her spirit (as a Touch range spell) instead of on herself.  The bonded pair can share spells even if the spell does not normally affect the spirit’s type (undead).
Speak with Spirit (Su):  Likewise, the person and the spirit can communicate freely as if they were two normal, living people.  This ability allows them to understand each other clearly, even if they do not otherwise share a common language.  The person with Ghostbond is only able to hear his bonded spirit, even if other spirits are present.  (It is an ability of spirits to see both denizens of the spirit world and the real world).
Spiritual Manifestation (Sp):  The spirit is able to manifest slightly into the material world, and can use mage hand (5-pound telekinesis) at will.  Also, once per day, it can use ghost sound as a 4th-level sorcerer.
Turn Resistance (Ex):  A bonded spirit gains +4 turn resistance.
Empathic Link (Su):  If the bonded person is 3rd level or higher, she can communicate with her spirit empathically, even if the spirit is out of range of hearing.  This allows the two to converse as if they were right next to each other.  Establishing the link is a standard action which requires concentration to maintain.
Touch (Su):  If the bonded person is 5th level or higher, the spirit can deliver any touch spells the bonded person casts.  When she casts a touch spell, she can designate her spirit as the “toucher” if the spirit is within 5 feet of her.  The spirit can then deliver the touch spell just as the bonded person could, with the additional benefit that the spirit can touch both corporeal creatures and ethereal creatures (like other spirits).  As normal, if the bonded person casts another spell, the touch spell dissipates.
Manifestation (Su):  The spirit gains this ability if the bonded person is 9th level or higher.  This ability functions as the Ghost template ability of the same name, except that the spirit can only manifest for a total of one minute per day per level of the bonded person.

_Magical Font:_  Finally, bonding with a ghost grants a character the ability to use certain types of magic otherwise unavailable to her.  Normally, the only magic-using classes humans can take levels in are wizard, monk, psion, and psychic warrior.  Wizardry relies on study to tap magic from Gaia, while monks and psions draw power from within themselves.

For other spellcasting classes, like bard, cleric, druid, paladin, ranger, and sorcerer, only creatures with innate magic can directly tap the world’s magic.  Elves, Brownies, and even Dwarves and Orcs have natural connections to the magic of Gaia, but humans need an intermediary.  A spirit fulfills that role, allowing a human to take levels in these otherwise restricted classes.  However, if the bond is severed or the spirit is destroyed, the bonded person loses access to all spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural powers gained from these levels.

As one final warning, the spirit may not always agree with the behavior of the person with whom he bonded.  If the bonded person attempts to use magic granted from this ability for a purpose that clearly conflicts with the alignment of the spirit, the spirit and bonded person make opposed Will saves.  If the spirit wins this contest, the bonded person fails in casting the spell, just as if it were disrupted.

_Losing Your Bonded Spirit:_  The rules for losing a bonded spirit are the same as for losing a familiar.


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## Dawn (Jan 21, 2002)

Yea!  I have followed this story from the beginning.  Loved every minute of it!  Now maybe some of the new followers of the boards can see a masterpiece.

Keep it up Ranger!


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## RangerWickett (Jan 22, 2002)

*Chapter Three:  Clean-Up Job*

The Chief assigns the group to travel to Atlanta to do a clean-up job.

Businessman Harry Felton died recently, at the ripe age of 43.  He apparently was a collector of many things—exotic drinks, Greek statues, and information.  His still growing internet company now dangles from the hands of his employees, but his business means next to nothing to the BMM.  They are more concerned with the artifacts and information he kept.  While he was not magi, and his business was not magi, he loved learning about magi, and had apparently run into trouble with the Bureau several times before.  His collection grew to a nice size, perhaps more than anyone expected.  Now the Knights must clean up the estate before anyone can tell about his hobbies.

The group plans to enter between guard shifts.  Once they make entry to the warehouse where he kept his collection, they’ll have probably 30 minutes to clean out the most obviously magical items, copy then delete his files on magi, and sneak out.

Their companion on this mission is Keira McCormick, quarter-Elvish sorceress (3/4 African American).  She’s the leader on the mission, and so she carries the ‘key.’ 

Bureau keys are enchanted crystals from the Faerie World of Gaia, set into metal rods crafted on Terra.  These enchanted keys open doorways between the worlds.  There are only certain places in the world where doorways can be opened, including one by Oglethorpe House at the Savannah College of Art & Design, one in a downtown Atlanta alley, etc.  Apparently there are dozens in New Orleans, and a portal can be found nearby nearly every major religious landmark around the world, from Stonehenge and the Giza pyramids to Notre Dame and the Vatican.  Most keys simply go between the Faerie World and Earth, but some powerful keys can jump between doorways on Earth without having to make a stop-off in the Faerie World.  Keira has one of the more common keys.

* * *

Quick recap so you can learn the characters.  Jessie, our DM, decided that the Bureau would train us to 2nd level, just so we’d have some good abilities.



*Madeline West:*  Human sorcerer 2 (uses the Wild Spellcaster Template rules for potential spell failure, since her ghost, Catherine, is nervous about casting magic since she was hung for being a witch).  Madeline is a student of photography at SCAD.  Caucasian, brown hair and eyes, slender.

*Jenny Windgrave:*  Human paladin 2.  Native American, descended from the Powhatan Indians.  Her ghost, Pataman, was born two years after the famous Pocahontas left for England.  Pataman was killed by white Christian settlers, and now his ghost disapproves of Jenny being a devout Christian.  Jenny is at SCAD to earn a theater arts degree.

*Chuck Tagin-Eve (we don’t know what his real name is):*  Human rogue 2.  Due to a fubar on Eric’s listing of feats back in June last year, Tagin took skill focus twice and got a +20 to his hacking skill.  Even despite this mistake, Tagin’s has a +14 bonus to his Computer Use skill checks, (5 skill ranks, +1 Intelligence bonus, +3 from Skill Emphasis, +2 synergy bonus from Knowledge (computers), +2 synergy bonus from Disable Device, plus software that grants a +1 masterwork bonus).  He attends SCAD for free, having hacked himself into the school with a full scholarship and a free meal plan.  A skinny white guy who dresses unimposingly, blending into pretty much any crowd he’s in.

*Iscalio Maxwell:*  Human Druid 2.  He’s an albino, and has a bitter streak against most traditional establishments.  His ghost is Lancaster Cornwall, who died a lunatic, thinking he was a fox.  Iscalio refuses to believe he’s bonded with a lunatic, and instead considers the ‘fox’ his totem animal.

*Cai Maxwell:*  Human fighter 2.  Iscalio’s brother.  He owns a martial arts studio and forces his brother to exercise rigorously.  Cai is fairly quiet, and only takes action when he sees a need to.  Both Cai and Iscalio are of Italian descent.

*Keira McCormick:*  Quarter-Elvish sorceress 6.  She carries a gun with enchanted bullets, “And no, you can’t borrow it, Iscalio.”

* * *

Keira leads the group out of the BMM headquarters in the Faerie World, using the key to open a door to Atlanta.

The party walks through the streets, catching a taxi to the outskirts of town where the warehouse is.  They wait for the guards to call it a night, then casually walk up to the thirty-foot tall warehouse’s door.  

The door has a state of the art electronic lock.  Beside the door is a numeric keypad with a small computer screen above it, and buttons for “open” and “close.” Jenny shrugs and pushes the open button to see if that will work.  

The screen comes to life, displaying a message in three languages.  It looks like Greek, heiroglyphs, and some other script that looks like Arabic.  No one can translate it, but Keira claims she can cast a translation spell to see what it says.  While she prepares to cast the spell, Tagin simply walks up, somehow gets the computer screen to show the programming code, and he reprograms the door so it’ll open.  

Everyone stands mouth agape as the door slides open.  They’d pretty much forgotten Tagin was there.  As they head inside, Keira says that the three pieces of text were the same riddle in three different languages.  But they didn’t have to bother answering the riddle, so all’s well.

Inside the warehouse are dozens of crates; it looks like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, if on a smaller scale.  A catwalk circles the room about fifteen feet up, and a skylight illuminates the room dimly.  

Keira dispatches Tagin to begin hacking a computer station in the corner, which holds a record of what’s in the warehouse.  As Tagin heads over there, Keira, Madeline, Iscalio, and Jenny climb onto the catwalk to survey the room in general.  Cai stays on the ground level to look for loose objects between the crates.

Madeline casts a _detect magic_ spell and cringes.  Almost all the crates have magic in them, way more than they planned to carry out.  They decide to take what they can, and then come back later if possible.  As long as Tagin takes care of the files, no one will notice that anything’s missing.

Madeline directs Cai to open a particular crate, walking along the catwalk to stand above it.  Keira follows, leaving a gap of about 20 feet between Madeline/Keira and Jenny/Iscalio.  

Right as Cai pries off the top of the first crate, a dark shape falls from the ceiling onto the catwalk, silently.  It’s the size of a large lion, with wings on its back.  

Iscalio calls for everyone to look out, getting his scythe ready.  From the tip of the druid’s metal staff, a flash of green light emerges, solidifying into a scythe blade.  Likewise, Jenny activates her weapon, and a wooden shaft materializes from a wide spear-head she was carrying.

The sphinx on the catwalk turns and looks at them, then looks back to Madeline.  It has a woman’s face, with wide eyes and a confused expression on it’s face.  Staring at Madeline and Keira it riddles: 

_“Voiceless it cries,
Wingless it flutters,
Toothless bites,
Mouthless mutters.”_

Since none of the Knights have ever read The Hobbit, they are out of luck.  Madeline shrugs and guesses, “An old guy with no teeth?”

The sphinx shakes her head, and growls.  “You cannot destroy my master’s work.”

Keira and Madeline back off, and just as the Sphinx is about to pounce at them, Jenny stabs it in the flank with her spear.  The sphinx turns and bats at her with a claw.  Jenny falls back into the railing of the catwalk, but Iscalio slashes at the lion paw with his scythe.  

The sphinx crouches to spring on him, when a gunshot fires out.  Keira’s magic bullet strikes the sphinx and explodes in a small fireball, knocking the creature forward.  Confused at the attacks from both sides, it flaps into the air to escape, then drops onto Keira, flattening her.

Tagin, tapping idly at the keyboard glances over his shoulder and shakes his head, grimacing at the disturbance.  He draws his gun and fires a shot blindly over his shoulder.  The bullet hits the sphinx in the side, causing the creature to give out a howl of pain.

Jenny tries to reason with the creature, saying that it’s master is dead, and that they’ll bring her to someplace safe.  The sphinx refuses to accept that her master is dead—she’s gone a bit nuts, just waiting in this quiet, lonely warehouse—and so, enraged, she charges at Jenny.  Jenny leaps sideways over the railing, trying to snag a grip on the ladder on her way down, but instead she misses and crashes into one of the crates.

Cai, armed with a shotgun and a katana, is too far away to use his sword, and afraid that the scatter of the shotgun will hit his brother if he tries to shoot.  Instead, Cai begins tearing through one of the crates to try to find something to use against the sphinx.  

Madeline yells for Iscalio to run, and she shoots a crackling bolt of magic at the sphinx.  Ignoring the minor wound, the sphinx leaps off the catwalk to follow Iscalio as he clambers down the ladder.  In mid-air, the sphinx drops past Iscalio and slashes across his back, knocking him off the ladder to land in a crate beside Jenny.

As the sphinx lands, Cai holds forth an amulet, commanding the sphinx to stop and obey him.  When the sphinx ignores him, he shrugs and drops the amulet, then lays out a blast from his double-barrel sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun.  Unfortunately, the blast mostly misses the sphinx, and instead shatters a crate.  The sphinx, about to disembowel Jenny, turns and growls at Cai, shouting that no one can destroy the master’s treasure.  It pounces upon Cai, knocking him to the floor.

Keira shoots another fireball bullet, but misses, the explosion destroying a large pile of crates.  Meanwhile, Iscalio is slashing at the sphinx, trying to avoid it’s backward kicking, and Jenny is trying to shout for the sphinx to stop, believing it’s simply confused, not evil.  

Sighing, Tagin finishes copying the files, and with a few keystrokes he formats the hard drive, then gets out of his chair to walk up to the sphinx.

Cai, at the edge of unconsciousness, tries to blast the sphinx with his shotgun, but she knocks his weapon away and the blast goes wide.  As scythe slashes wear at the creature, and a few small darts from Madeline’s hand crossbow pepper the sphinx, Keira tries to reload with normal ammo so she won’t incinerate Cai with a successful shot.

Tagin walks up and fires two rounds into the sphinx’s shoulder and forehead.  The creature slumps to the ground.  Tagin tells Cai to get up, and then the hacker pulls out a switchblade knife to slit the creature’s throat and end it’s suffering.  

Jenny tries to stop him, saying she can heal the creature enough for it to survive for a little while, but Keira waves her off, saying they’d have no way to get the sphinx discreetly back to the Faerie World.  Tagin kills the sphinx with a quick and quiet apology to Jenny.

Everyone gets a little angry with Jenny that she was going to save the life of a creature that had attacked them.  When trying to explain herself fails, she instead simply heals Cai’s wounds as best she can.  

Keira tells them to get whatever magic they can carry, quickly.  If someone finds the sphinx’s body and all this mess in here, they’ll want to know what’s up and they’ll check out the crates.  Keira decides to torch all the crates, including the sphinx’s body.

They get all they can carry, a few items apiece (to bring back to the Bureau, not to loot), but when Cai tries to open the door again, it won’t budge.  Tagin shrugs, sheepishly explaining that he had only programmed it to open from the outside, forgetting that they’d need to get out again once they closed the door.  And he can’t rehack the system, since the keyboard is on the outside.  

Keira orders Tagin to go out through the skylight and open the door from the outside, but just then one of the smoldering crates catches fire.  The smoke sets off the sprinklers, drenching the room.  They guess correctly that the fire department will arrive soon, so they all head out through the skylight.  They manually (using a katana) cut the water line so things will burn better, and on their way out Keira fires off three more fireball bullets to set the place ablaze.

As the fire trucks appear, the Knights slip away into the streets of Atlanta, to return to the Bureau.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 23, 2002)

*Cai Maxwell:*  Male human Ftr1; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 1d10+4; hp 14; Init +3; Spd 30 ft.; AC 13 (Dex); Atk masterwork katana +5 melee (1d10+3/crit 19/x2), or unarmed +4 melee (1d3+3), or sawed-off double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun +4 ranged (varies*/crit x3); SV Fort +6, Ref +3, Will +3; Str 16, Dex 16, Con 18, Int 13, Wis 13, Cha 14.

_Skills and Feats:_ Climb +4, Jump +7, Knowledge (Japanese culture and etiquette) +3, Listen +2, Profession (cook) +3, Profession (martial arts instructor) +4, Tumble +5; Exotic Weapon Proficiency (katana), Improved Unarmed Strike, Iron Will.
Note:  Knowledge (Japanese culture and etiquette) and Tumble are Cai’s floating class skills.

*Shotguns deal damage based on range.  They deal 3d6 to a target within 10 feet, 2d6 to a target within 20 feet, and 1d6 damage to any target in a 5-foot wide path out to maximum range.  However, sawed-off shotguns fire in a cone, dealing 3d6 to a target within 5 feet, and 2d6 to a target within 10 feet, and 1d6 damage to any target within the cone, up to 30 feet away.


_Background:_
Cai’s mother is Japanese, his father Italian.  He grew up in California, keeping track of his younger brother Iscalio.  Where Cai was resilient and strong, Iscalio was albino and prone to illness.  Cai’s good work ethic and emphasis on self-control clashed with Iscalio’s free-spiritedness and roustabout attitude.  Cai, five years older than his brother, had worked hard enough and earned enough money that when his younger brother dropped out of school, he was able to do his parents a favor and take the weak-willed kid off their hands.  He moved as far away as possible, Savannah, Georgia, and found work for he and his brother, first at an Italian restaurant, and later at a Sushi bar.

While they worked together, Cai strong-armed Iscalio into joining a martial arts studio with him, hoping that the training would help build inner strength in the weak-willed youth.  Quite the contrary, though, it simply strengthened Iscalio’s physical strength, making him better at getting out of whatever trouble he lands himself in.  Even though the training didn’t have its desired effect, Iscalio remains with Cai, and they share an apartment.  Recently, Cai took over some of the duties of training at the dojo, and has intensified his own training to over four hours a day.

Cai defines himself by how well he can guide his own choices, and he gives himself no leeway to choose the weak path.  He rigorously schedules his life, and though it has strengthened his ability to accomplish his goals, it robs most of his actions of fun.  Still, he feels that he needs to be stoic to support his brother.  He never noticed any of the magic in the world around him, which frustrates him, since it seems so obvious now.  He knows that somehow his brother will abuse his new powers, and he’s just waiting for when he’ll be needed.



*Sample New Feats:*
Some of the following feats are generic feats that come in handy in a world where magi and humans mingle, while others are cultural feats, meant to represent the background of the character.  These cultural feats can only be taken if the character is from that culture, or if he has at least 5 ranks of Knowledge of the appropriate culture.

*Ancient Arcanopolis:* [Cultural]
You are from a land with a deep history of magic.
Regions: China, Egypt, any Gaia.
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft checks.


*Bond Sense:* [General]
You can tell whether spirits are bonded, and to whom.
Prerequisite: Sixth Sense, Wisdom 13+.
Benefit: For any ghost you see, you can tell immediately whether that ghost is bonded.  If you can see both the ghost and the living partner in that bond, you immediately know that they are bonded.


*City Denizen:* [Cultural]
You have learned how to avoid being a victim of urban crime.
Regions: Any city of more than 500,000 people.
Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus to Hide, Intimidate, and Spot checks.  Additionally, you may choose to have the reaction of any stranger you meet be shifted one step closer to ‘indifferent.’


*Clotheshift:* [General]
You can alter the form of your clothing, allowing you to easily blend in or disguise yourself.
Prerequisite: Ability to cast at least one Transmutation spell.
Benefit:  As a full-round action, you can alter the shape and substance of whatever clothes you are wearing, like a limited version of _polymorph any object_.  You can create any type of worn apparel, from cloaks to swimsuits, suits, hats, jewelry, or even armor.  However, you cannot add articles of clothing, so if you are not wearing a hat, you could not create a helmet, but you could gain a hood, or even turn a hairpin into a helmet.  You could likewise turn a piece of twine into an ornate gold necklace.

The maximum value of any clothes you can emulate in this way is 100 gp per caster level, including the value of any jewelry or ornamentation you include.  However, any form of immediately harmful substance cannot be created, so you could not, for instance, have a suit of armor covered in poison or acid.  In order to create a particular type of clothing or accessory, you must either own an exact duplicate of that object, or succeed an appropriate Craft check (DC 10 for average clothes, DC 15 for a fine dress or suit, and DC 20 for exotic costumes, jewelry, or lavish kimonos).  You can continue to retry, each time as a full-round action.

Once you set the appearance of your garb, it remains in that form (aside from normal wear and tear) until you choose a new appearance, or until you take the clothes off.  If you remove an article of clothing in this way, it immediately reverts to normal, so even if you turn toothpicks into arrows, they will be ineffectual weapons.


*Magic Touch* [General]
Your intuition guides you when you try to use unfamiliar devices.
Benefit:  If you are unfamiliar with a particular electronic or mechanical device, you gain a +4 luck bonus to any skill checks involved with your first attempt to use that device.  You can also still use your normal bonuses for that skill.

For example, if Tagin tries to disable an unfamiliar electronic lock (Computer Use DC 30), he gains a +4 luck bonus in addition to his normal skill modifiers.  His normal bonus of +14 increases to +18, making it relatively easy for him to override the system.  However, if his first attempt fails, he no longer gains this bonus, since he is no longer working on intuition, but instead experience.


*Oppressed Militiaman:* [Cultural]
Your upbringing emphasized training to defend against outside threats.
Regions: Middle-East, United States South.
Benefit: You gain proficiency in all martial ballistic and heavy weapons (rifles, portable missile launchers, gatling guns), and gain a +2 bonus to Hide checks.


*Sense of Honor:* [Cultural]
Traditionally, the chiefest virtue of your culture has been honor and alleigiance.
Regions: Japan, various primitive tribes.
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to Will saves against compulsion effects, and a +2 bonus to Sense Motive checks.


*Sixth Sense:* [General]
You are able to see and hear the dead.
Prerequisite: Wisdom 13+.
Benefit: You can see and hear ghosts and spirits just as if they were normal people.
Normal: Ghosts and spirits are incorporeal, invisible, and inaudible.  Some ghosts can choose to be seen or heard, but otherwise they are undetectable by normal senses.


*Unfazeable:* [Cultural]
Your homeland is bizarre enough that you don’t frighten easily.
Regions: Any European, Midwestern US.
Benefit: You gain a +4 bonus to Will saves against fear effects.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 23, 2002)

*Chapter Four:  Things to Possess*

The group arrives back at the Bureau, and give their reports.  Keira writes a favorable report of the new recruits, and they’re called in to talk with the Chief, apparently so he can congratulate them for their official entry into the Bureau.

They go into a room that the Chief’s in (the Chief doesn’t actually have an office, but instead just seems to roam the compound and picks rooms at random to do work in), and he’s reviewing the report.  The group sits down in chairs in front of the desk, and wait, Keira standing in a corner of the room to oversee the meeting.  Finally, the chief nods, lowers the papers, and looks up with a smile.

“I would like to-”

The door opens, and a tall man with long blonde hair walks in, wearing a long white trenchcoat.  He bends over to the Chief’s ear and says quietly, “There was a murder.  A .  .  .  um, a lizard was involved.”

The smile on the Chief’s face fades, and instead he grimaces as he asks, “Who’d the Dragon kill?”

The blonde man glances nervously at the group of new recruits, then clears his throat.  “The Dragon was the, um, victim, sir.”

The Chief swears under his breath, then nods to the knight.  “Alright Michael.  I’ll be with you in a moment.”

As Michael leaves, Cai, Iscalio, Tagin, Jenny, and Madeline can all see worry on his face, though he does smile briefly at Keira before closing the door behind himself.

Despite the obviously disturbing news, when they look back at the Chief, he seems fully composed.  He shuffles the papers and sets them down, leaning back with a soft nod to them.

“Good job, ladies and gentlemen.  You’ve proven yourselves in a crunch situation.  And . . . until further notice, since things were relatively quiet until just now, you all have leave for at least a week or two.  We’ll call you if anything comes up.  Now if you’ll excuse me.”

And he leaves.  Keira waits until he’s gone, then sighs.  “This is going to be wretched.  My parents were in the Bureau before me, and while they worked here—over 50 years—there hasn’t been a single Dragon-slaying.”  She drums her fingers on the Chief’s recently vacated desk.  “I hope they don’t call me in on this.  At least you don’t have to worry.”

Iscalio smirks.  “Yeah, we’re too novice to put on something like this, right?”

“Exactly.”  Keira nods, then smiles.  “But if we’re lucky, we might hear about what exactly’s going on.  Cleaning out warehouses and tracking down petty thieves gets boring after a while.  This should be interesting.”

“Who’s the guy?” Madeline asks, a slight grin on her face.

Keira lowers her face in modest embarrassment.  “That’s Michael, my boyfriend.  We’ve been together for three years now.”

“Very cute,” Jenny compliments.  

Beside her, Iscalio groans. “Is there anything else?  Or do we have to stay here and listen to you women gossip?”

Keira frowns at him, then shrugs.  “Actually, you should probably all get cleaned up and rest.  I was thinking we could all go out to eat tomorrow night.  I’ve got a key, so we can go anywhere in the southern US, but we should probably stick near Savannah or Atlanta.”

Iscalio insists that they go to a Chinese/Japanese restaurant in Savannah so he can have sushi, and they eventually all agree.  They take the generic gate back to Oglethorpe House (where they first met Balthazar, two weeks ago), and go take a break after their first real mission.

[meta: In this next adventure, we had to add in a new player, and make room for a visiting player.  Chris came in full time to play Finagle P. Luckshore, while Trey was visiting and wanted to game, so he got to play Keira for a day.  I have to commend them for both being really cool with how they handled their characters.]

* * *

The next night, rain pours upon the city of Savannah, thunder filling the air.  In a store near the riverfront, a shopkeeper watches glumly as his sole customer this evening refuses to leave.  By this time of night, about 10:30, almost every store in this district is closed, but the shopkeeper’s too polite to force the young man out into the storm.

His customer looks too young to be out of high school.  A scrawny kid with bright blue eyes and dirty blonde hair, he can’t seem to get enough of peering at all the old computer parts this store has in stock.  It almost lets the boy ignore the headache he’s been having for the past few weeks.  Anyway, after the freak accident that caused his computer to explode, Finagle P. Luckshore hopes that he might be able to build a new computer more cheaply than ordering something from a company.

The storekeeper tries to discreetly indicate it’s past closing time.  He walks around the store, turning off all the television sets in the windows.  Finagle glances over and does a doubletake, thinking he saw a face peering through the window, but doesn’t notice the shopkeeper’s subtlety.  Shaking his head, he turns back to examine the stripped motherboard of an oh-so-lovely-looking 286 com-

A loud crash fills the air, and shards of glass fly through the store.

The shopkeeper screams in terror as two large forms land amid the shattered glass of the main window, through which the storm pours rain.  The creatures are hunched over, man-sized, but with claws, pale, scaly skin, dull yellow eyes, and crocodilian tails.  Hissing, one knocks down the shopkeeper and then turns to stare at one of the few TVs still on, mezmerized by the moving pictures.  After a moment it reaches out and grabs the TV, yanking the cord out of the wall socket.  The image on the screen goes blank, and the creature snarls.

Finagle stares open-mouthed for a few moments, then jumps over the storekeeper’s counter and tries to hide.  Glancing meekly over the edge of the counter, he sees the large creature with the TV snarl at the shopkeeper and throw the no-longer-shiny box at the man.  The impact of the TV knocks the shopkeeper unconscious, and the two lizardmen bend over to pick him up.  

Then the second one stops and sniffs the air, turning its face to look at the counter.  Finagle ducks, but then a moment later the counter he’s hiding behind collapses under the weight of a pouncing lizardman.  The young man screams as he’s carted out of the store (along with the glowing portable TV that has pretty pictures on it).

* * *

Sharing a few stories with each other over dinner, the group of recently recruited knights celebrates their first victory.  Though the rain outside easily mutes the cries of panic from a nearby store, all the magic-users in the party suddenly become on edge.  While trying to use chopsticks to eat rice, Iscalio stops and cocks his head, while Jenny, just on the way back from asking for a tea refill, starts to gaze into the distance for a moment, sensing something amiss.

Iscalio mutters in frustration, and then Jenny begins to run for the door of the restaurant, shouting back, “Someone’s in danger outside!”

Iscalio curses, not wanting to disrupt his dinner, and only when Madeline admits her ghost told her the same thing as Jenny’s does everyone get up.  Cai has to drag his brother from the food, but within a few moments they’re all out the door into the storm, except for Tagin, who’s in the bathroom.

Jenny bursts out the door, staring down the street in the direction of the screams.  The streets are fairly empty at this time of night, so she can see clearly two large figures dragging a kicking and screaming person down the street.  She pulls out the wide stone spearhead of her weapon and activates it.  A shaft of arcane energy extends outward, materializing into a wooden spear’s haft.  Then, just as everyone else finally makes it out of the resturaunt, she rushes down the street, shouting for the creatures to stop.  Behind her, everyone starts to run after, lightswords and scythes giving off brilliant glows in the dark night streets as the blades flare outward, then materialize into solid metal.

Tagin steps out of the restroom, seeing the store owner swearing at the patrons who just skipped out on the bill.  The hacker shrugs and casually walks past the man, picking up an umbrella in the umbrella stand as he slips out the door.


Outside, half a block away, Jenny closes to within thirty feet of the creatures, which she can barely make out in the rain.

“Stop and let him go!” she demands in a shout.  The two monsters stop and look at her momentarily, then break into a run toward one of the squares, moving quickly despite what they’re carrying.

[meta: Quick note on Savannah, GA street layout.  Savannah was one of the earliest cities to have its streets planned before construction.  In many of the older areas in Savannah you can find park squares, sections where cross-streets detour around a square patch of woodlands.  Parks dot Savannah all over the place.]

The reptilian humanoids scramble toward the nearest square, finally knocking Finagle unconscious to stop his screaming.  The monster with Finagle slowly begins to lag behind the monster just carrying the portable TV, so when the TV-bearing monster reaches the wooded square, he has time to yank off a manhole cover to open a path to the city sewers.  The monster with Finagle starts to go in first, but Jenny hurls her spear and catches the monster square in the back.  It topples forward and drops Finagle, trying briefly to pull the spear out of its back before it dies.

Growling at Jenny, the second monster grabs the manhole cover and flings it at her like a frizbee.  Gasping in surprise, Jenny tries to flatten herself to the ground to let the huge metal object fly over her.  Of course, even a massively strong monster can’t throw a 50 pound manhole cover too far, and it falls at just the right rate to hit Jenny in the chest as she drops to the ground.  Jenny rolls back, too stunned to push the metal disk off her.  

Snarling contentedly, the second monster grabs its human meal and drops into the sewer.

Cai and Keira run up next, and while Keira helps Jenny to her feet, Cai jumps and executes a wonderful aerial somersault to descend with ease through the hole down into the sewer below.  Madeline and Iscalio follow next, but an inhuman shriek of pain echoes from the sewer, and they hear Cai shout that all is clear.

“What the heck are those things?” Jenny and Madeline both ask, looking to Keira.

“They’re a unique type of gremlin,” she replies.  “We call them sewer demons.  Every major city gets them from time to time, though the Bureau tries to clean them out wherever they go.  Just think of them as really big rats.”

Iscalio and Madeline warily begin head down into the tunnel, and Jenny asks why the sewer demons would come out and rob a store.  Keira answers that they like shiny things, and they have a special taste for magical items and people.  More than likely, she suggests, the hostage has some magic on him.  Keira pulls out her cel and puts in a call for a clean-up crew.

Iscalio reaches the bottom of the sewer first, followed by Madeline.  A ten-foot wide path of urine and fecal matter fills the center, but narrow walkways line either side.  A disemboweled sewer demon lays in the slush, and an unconscious (and slightly slimy) young man lies at Cai’s feet.  Cai says that he saw a few other sewer demons in the shadows, but they ran off when he killed the first one.

Iscalio casts a healing spell on the young man, then slaps him to wake him up.  Madeline makes it down next, followed by Jenny, Keira, and Tagin.  The frightened young man (he’s 16) blabbers out what just happened, and the ghosts of the Knights confirm that young Finagle does have a ghost of his own.

Keira, since she is the ranking Knight in the group, orders Jenny and Tagin to keep Finagle calm while they wait for the clean-up crew to arrive, then orders Madeline, Cai, and Iscalio to come with her and track down the remaining sewer demons, before they can get out too far out of sight.

Keira, Iscalio, Cai, and Madeline head down the sewer tunnel in the direction of some faint hissing and growling, Madeline lighting the way with a cantrip.  [meta:  Remember that this game was back at the beginning of 3rd edition.  It was at this point that I realized how cool cantrips were.]

As the others head off, Jenny tries to engage Finagle in conversation to keep him calm.  Finagle, for good reason, doesn’t want to be anywhere near these people, so he keeps trying to climb his way out of the sewer, while Tagin keeps pulling him down.  Finally, a shotgun blast echoes down the tunnel from the distance, and when Tagin and Jenny glance to see what’s going on, Finagle makes his move.

[meta:  This is the out of character discussion that took place.

*Chris, Finagle’s player:*  “I’m gonna give Jenny a wedgie then run!”

Everyone else except me (I played Jenny) laughs, and then Jessie, our DM, tells him to roll.

* .  .  .  rattle rattle .  .  .  20!* 

*Nic, Cai’s player:*  “Critical wedgie!”

As you might guess, I was the butt of many jokes later because of this.]


Finagle grabs Jenny’s pants and yanks them up while she’s distracted, and manage to catch her so off guard that she staggers forward and trips.  Then Finagle leaps out into the sludge of the sewer, using the sewer demon corpse as a stepping stone to get to the walkway on the opposite side.  Then he bolts, hoping to find the nearest exit.

Tagin glances down at Jenny, smirks, then draws his gun and runs after Finagle.  Finagle Tagin quickly get lost in the nearly pitch-black sewer, and eventually resort to just trying to find the sources of the gunshots in the distance.

* * *

Several hundred feet down the tunnels, Keira and company had walked into an ambush, with a half-dozen sewer demons bursting from the sludge between the walkways, dropping from the ceiling above, and stepping out of side tunnels.  Cai had blasted away one of the demons, and Madeline and Iscalio took down another one with spells, clearing a path that they could flee down.  

Now they flee from the overwhelming numbers of sewer demons, realizing they’re lost but more concerned in keeping from being flanked.  They run for a minute or so, then get to an area where the sewer demons can only come from one direction.  Keira states that they’ll make their stand here, and she casually replaces her clip of fireball bullets with standard ones, to avoid incinerating them all.

The sewer demons manage to sneak within ten feet before Cai spots them swimming through the sludge, and shots ring out, echoing cacophonously through the tunnels as the sewer demons burst forth to attack, now with reinforcements, totalling nearly a dozen.

Five already lay dead when Tagin reaches the battle, having guessed the right direction toward the gunshots.  He begins to run forward to help, but then he hears the sound of a manhole cover being moved behind him.  He turns and looks up to see in faint light Finagle, hanging onto a ladder leading out of the sewer.  Ignoring the battle, Tagin levels the gun at Finagle.

“Put the manhole back in place and come down, or I’ll shoot.”

Finagle blanches, then sees a sewer demon swinging down from the ceiling to attack Tagin.  “Look out behind you!” he shouts, pointing.  

Rolling his eyes at the ‘obvious’ bluff, Tagin keeps staring at Finagle, but fires a blind shot off behind his shoulder and then returns the gun to cover Finagle.  A spurt of demon brains peppers him, but he doesn’t flinch.

Keira and the others begin to force their way through the demons to get to Tagin, and just then Jenny shows up, having been slowed down by the need to adjust her underpants.  She covers Tagin’s back from demons while the hacker talks Finagle off the ladder, which basically consists of continuing to threaten to shoot the kid if he doesn’t obey.

Keira switches clips to lightning bullets, and tells Cai and Iscalio to drive the demons into the sludge.  They proceed to do so, but just when Keira’s about to fire a demon swings from pipes running above, kicking her and knocking her in after them.  She splashes into the slime, then stands up, holding her gun in one hand and drawing a comb in the other to get her hair out of her eyes.  

Jenny spears the demon hanging onto the pipes and flings it into the slime beside Keira, and Keira casually pistolwhips the thing as she climbs back out of the sludge.  As Cai, Iscalio, and Jenny use their weapons to keep the sewer demons in the canal, Keira prepares to fire again, but Finagle again makes a break for it, trying to jump again to the opposite side of the walkway.  Instead he ungracefully falls into the muck just as Keira shoots.  Keira jerks to try to not hit, and the bullet imbeds itself into the concrete right beside the young man.  A burst of electricity shatters the walkway and part of the wall, and Finagle begins to twitch in fear.

He begins to gibber, and just as a sewer demon is about to rip his throat out, Finagle screams at the top of his lungs in pure frustration, fear, and anger.  Sparks burst from his body and fill the air, and electricity courses through the sludge, frying all the remaining demons.  Finagle stops sparking, and he looks around with a whimper, totally confused.  Cai leaps to his side and drags him out of the water, leaving only Madeline and Iscalio undrenched in sewer slime (Finagle, Tagin, and Jenny all stumbled in a couple times while trying to find their way in the dark).

Keira climbs topside and figures out where they ended up, about five blocks from where they had gone in.  She tells everyone to scout around real quick while she calls for a pick-up.

They find the warren of the sewer demons, which is abandoned except for a few eggs and various “shiny things” they had pilfered over the past few years.  Tellingly there’s a small black leather jacket, magical, implying that at least one magi has fallen to these creatures.  

When the clean-up crew arrives, they give Madeline and Iscalio a ride back to the restaurant to pay the bill and get their cars, while everyone else has to hike a few miles across town to the doorway to the Bureau.  None of the clean-up crew wants to get their vehicles all smelly, and even Iscalio and Madeline are pushing it for just having been down there.

Mildly frustrated, Keira, Cai, Jenny, and Tagin walk toward Oglethorpe House where the gate is, dragging a jittery Finagle along with them.  Jenny, though normally diplomatic and caring, is too frustrated and disturbed that Finagle grabbed her underwear to try to calm him down, so they walk in uncomfortable silence for nearly a mile, through the rain. They’re still far from Oglethorpe House when a bright flash of lightning illuminates the late night road, revealing a man staggering out onto the street from an alley near an expensive house.  Everyone stares at him.

He’s haggard, his well-tailored clothes soaked with rain but even more deeply stained with dark blood.  He leans against the wall of the house, then spots the party staring at him.  He crouches backward and looks around nervously, then screams at them, “Don’t look at me! I didn’t do it!”

After a moment of surprise at the man’s sudden appearance, Jenny calls out to ask if he needs help, but the man’s face suddenly twists to an expression of anger.  He shouts in rage, thrusting out his hands palm first, and a sudden gust of wind knocks Jenny backward into a parked car.  The man bolts across the street, nearly getting hit by a truck in the process.  

Cai swears that they will have to deal with another crazy tonight, but he leads the way on a chase after him.  Tagin follows, but as Keira helps Jenny get her feet, Finagle shoves her and yanks her gun out of her shoulder holster (apparently he has no qualms about touching women in personal places).

Finagle runs after Tagin and Cai, and then Keira and Jenny run after them.  (Finagle later claimed that he wanted to help, but everyone’s pretty sure he actually planned to vent his frustrations on Tagin; there are no hard feelings now)

The man they’re chasing stops for a moment to shoot a small sphere of flame at Cai and Tagin, which they dodge.  The ball of flame rolls over a parked car and sets it afire, but the rain sizzles it out before the car can explode.  Apparently tireless, the fleeing magic-user leads them on a chase through the city for almost five minutes, but he’s heading toward the river, which will cut off his escape.

He leads them into Bonaventure cemetery, a wooded cemetery overlooking the river, with hundreds of expensive tombstones and obelisk-like gravemarkers.  Finally, Cai gets fed up with running, and he burst into one final sprint to catch up with the man for just a moment.

Cai closes to within 15 feet, and then when the man next approaches one of the tall stone obelisk gravemarkers, Cai fires off a blast of his shotgun, cracking the base of the obelisk.  The 20-foot tall stone pillar topples onto the fleeing man, dropping him to the ground with a scream.

Cai and Jenny run up (Tagin was too tired to keep running, and fell behind a few minutes ago), and see the man crawling out from under the obelisk.  Another figure is running in their direction from across the cemetery, but they’re more concerned about the one who has been firing spells at them.

He cowers as Cai and Jenny advance, appearing frightened again instead of angry.  Jenny asks him to just surrender and go along quietly, but he tries to scramble free from the obelisk, and both Cai and Jenny lunge for him.  She tries to pin him with the haft of her spear over his throat, but he ducks out of the way and throws out his hands at the sandy ground of the graveyard.  A tiny bead glowing incandescent red drops at their feet, then explodes in a massive ball of flames.  The fire scorches nearby tombstones and knocks Jenny away from the man, but Cai, ignoring the fact that he’s on fire, stabs out with his katana and drives it through the man’s chest.  

The man slumps to the ground, gasping, and just then Finagle, Tagin, and Keira run up.  Finagle stares wide-eyed at the magical flames, and then wildly shoots at the already-dying man, hitting him in the leg with an explosive lightning bullet.  Tagin and Keira tackle him to stop him from firing any more of the magical bullets, and Jenny blanches.  She had been about to try to heal him enough so he wouldn’t die, but the explosion from the bullet mangled his leg and seared his body beyond repair.

The figure who had been running toward them from deeper in the cemetery arrives.  It’s Michael, the tall blonde Knight who had informed the Chief about the murder of a Dragon.  He carries a glowing white scimitar, which illuminates the bloody scene.  At the sight of the unconscious and dying man on the ground, he winces.

“Keira,” he asks, seeing her among the part, “what’s going on?”

Keira shakes her head, not knowing herself.  Michael glares accusingly at the rest of the Knights, then grimaces at the gasps of pain coming from the dying man.  Gritting his teeth, Michael quickly slashes off the man’s head to end his suffering.

Confused, everyone mutters questions, wondering what the man had done that had made him flee.  Then, seemingly sick from the sight at his feet, Michael passes out, falling beside the murdered man in the rain-soaked grass.

Keira crouches next to Michael in concern, then pulls out her cel phone and hands it to Jenny.

* * *

That night everyone sleeps uneasily.  Though they eventually calmed Finagle down enough to explain to him what had happened, and though no Knights died, the mystery of the fleeing man gnaws at them.  They’re not sure what happened, even whether they killed an innocent man, but one thing worries them the most.  That night they learn that a second Dragon was killed, this one in Savannah, right before they ran into the fugitive.  No Dragon has been slain in over fifty years, and now two have been killed in less than a week.

* * *

When he collects himself enough to understand what has happened to him, Finagle P.  Luckshore decides to join the Bureau, effectively running away from home.  He plans to return home occasionally, but he’s already graduated high school, so his parents probably won’t mind much anyway.  Finagle’s ghost is his late uncle, an inventor who electrocuted himself.  Most of Finagle’s magic involves technology and a more deliberate form of casting, so though the ghost inspires his more basic powers, he actually starts studying magic to learn how to do it himself.  He becomes a wizard, not a sorcerer, even though he could’ve been a sorcerer since he bonded with a ghost.  Instead, he keeps all his spells written down in .pdf format in a palm-top computer.  

When Tagin gets a chance, he apologizes to Finagle for not believing him when he said the sewer demon was going to attack.  He agrees to trust the kid more in the future.

Michael Dunne, a fairly experienced Knight, works the graveyard shift, literally.  He’s a paladin, primarily involved in dealing with uneasy spirits.  Savannah has a lot of ghosts, and he tends to spend time between Savannah and New Orleans, making sure the dead don’t make life difficult for the living.  After passing out, he woke up soon after they all got back to the Bureau, claiming he didn’t remember anything beyond hearing the sound of Cai’s shotgun blast.  The Chief ordered him to see Autumn Yeiotana, one of the top-ranked telepaths in the Bureau, to make sure he hadn’t been affected by some kind of memory-erasing magic or psionic ability.  

Autumn, an Elvish telepath (and, at least according to the picture Jessie drew of her, very hot), scans Michael, then scans all the other knights in the group to make sure none of them were affected either.  Jenny inquires about how Michael’s doing, and Autumn smiles.  

“He’s doing fine.  Better than usual, actually.”  Then she shushes Jenny and scans her, shrugging.  “And you’re doing fine too. . . .  Except it looks like you’re a bit angry at your new associate Finagle?”

Jenny grimaces at her.  “I don’t appreciate you digging into my thoughts.  Aren’t you just supposed to look for magic on me?”

Autumn shrugs, smiling with a near-smirk.  “Sorry, I usually try not to pry.  It is pretty funny, though.  A wedgie and all.”

Jenny grimaces again and leaves as soon as she can.


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## Horacio (Jan 23, 2002)

When I started to read the stoy hour forum, this story had already many posts, so I didn't begun it. Now I have the chance of reading it, and I must say I love it. It reminds me a Dark*Matter game, and for me that's cool.


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## Acquana (Jan 23, 2002)

It's amazing how many people followed this story hour on the last message boards.  Again, thank you so much for writing our game up, Wickett.  You rule.

 And it is only a matter of time before I write up some stuff for the game I'm currently running in Savannah.  I think I owe it to everyone who keeps coming back.


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## Jarval (Jan 23, 2002)

*The rules info is very cool*

The addition of the rules info is very interesting.  Looking forwards to getting all the characters stats up.

Great work Ranger, keep it up


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## RangerWickett (Jan 24, 2002)

*Iscalio Maxwell:*  Male human Drd1; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 1d8+2; hp 10; Init +4; Spd 30 ft.; AC 14 (Dex); Atk masterwork scythe +3 melee (2d4+3/crit x4), or unarmed +2 melee (1d6+2 subdual), or automatic pistol +4 ranged (1d10/crit x3); SQ animal companion, nature sense, ghostbond; SV Fort +4, Ref +4, Will +4; Str 14, Dex 18, Con 15, Int 14, Wis 15, Cha 12.

_Skills and Feats:_ Animal Empathy +6, Concentration +6, Disguise +4, Escape Artist +8, Knowledge (nature) +5, Profession (cook) +3, Spot +6, Wilderness Lore +6; Combat Casting, Improved Unarmed Strike.
Note:  Escape Artist and Spot are Iscalio’s floating class skills.

_Spells per Day:_  3 / 2.  Typically prepared — Detect Magic, Flare, Light / Cure Light Wounds, Obscuring Mist.

_Ghostbond Abilities:_ Alertness, Locative Bond, See Spirit, Share Spells, Speak with Spirit, Spectral Blow, Spirit Manifestation, Turn Resistance.

_Background:_
Growing up in the shadow of his always-successful brother Cai, Iscalio ever tried to carve his own path in life.  Though his brother believes that Iscalio has not learned from all the lessons of self-control, Iscalio has actually built much of his own personality around the tenets his brother espouses, though with a different direction to their application.

To Iscalio, the greatest type of self control is to reject everything you don’t consider morally correct.  Because of this, Iscalio prefers to spend time among nature rather than people, if for no other reason than that a tree cannot be a hypocrite.  On those rare occasions that he meets someone with genuine believes, he typically judges by others with similar believes, and so almost never gives new acquaintances a fair chance to prove themselves ‘worthy’ of him.

_Iscalio’s Ghost:_
A fine and upstanding country gentleman from England, Lancaster Cornwall had a mental breakdown in the mid-1800’s over a century before they became popular.  Though usually he was quite normal and cheerful, in the years after his wife died, he became increasingly unable to tend for his young son.  Over time, he began to find his son’s pet dog far easier to take care of, and eventually he began calling the animal by his son’s name.  He developed an animal persona of his own, a fox, and neighbors found great humor in watching Lancaster and his son’s pet dog loping through the backwoods together.

Because his neighbors didn’t guess the true depths of his mental confusion, Lancaster managed to still work through life amiably enough, until some of his friends invited him on a fox hunt.  In the middle of the chase, somehow Lancaster equated the foxes with his son’s dog, and when his friends tried to shoot ‘his son,’ Lancaster jumped to their aid and took the gunshot for them.

How Lancaster’s ghost made it to America is unknown, but in death he has slipped fully into his fox persona, enough to the point that most magi or spirits who could see him would see him as a fox.



*Magic Items:*
The Bureau makes use of an array of enchanted items in their activities.  Most of these items are enchanted by humans, as fey magic is rarely so utilitarian.  The average high-ranking Bureau agent will typically have at least a key, and usually also an arcane blade of some sort.  Most prefer to maintain a low-tech feel, and thus eschew guns, but enchanted firearms are quite common for emergencies when force is valued over style.

*Arcane Blades:* Arcane blades are weapons formed primarily of magical force.  A typical arcane blade normally appears as just a sword’s hilt and crossguard, with the blade missing.  When a mental command is given, magical force extends outward to form the rest of the weapon.  For hafted weapons, the haft usually grows the arcane blade, though sometimes a normal stone or metal spear- or axe-head is carried, from which the arcane force forms the rest of the weapon.

An arcane blade’s appearance varies by the design of its crafter.  For some, the arcane force flares with light briefly as the weapon is activated, then fades to take on the appearance of a normal sword blade or spear haft.  In others, the arcane energy continues to glow, and though this is intimidating, it has no mechanical benefits.  Finally, some rare arcane blades leave the arcane force invisible, though this requires extra magic to mask the normal soft glow of arcane energy.

All arcane blades act as masterwork weapons when activated.  Activating an arcane blade is a free action, but the arcane form can only come into existence if no solid matter is in its way.  Thus, a sword could not be activated in order to pierce a wall in this way.  Attempting to do so simply causes the activation to delay until there is room.

_Caster level:_ 1st; _Prerequisites:_ Craft Magical Arms & Armor, Magic Weapon; _Market Price:_ +1,000 gp; _Cost to Create:_ +500 gp and +40 XP.  If a weapon is simply an arcane blade, it costs only 1,000 gp, plus the cost of a normal masterwork weapon of that type.  The arcane blade ability can be added to any normally enchanted weapon.


*Enchanted Bullets:*  Like any missile weapon, bullets can be enchanted to contain spells that activate when the bullet strikes its target.  Popular spells for this type of enchantment are Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Ice Storm, and Stinking Cloud.

_Caster Level:_ Varies; _Prerequisites:_ Craft Magic Arms & Armor, appropriate spell; _Market Price:_ Spell level x caster level x 750 gp for 50 bullets.  For example, a pack of 50 Fireball bullets that explode in 5d6 fireballs when they strike, would cost 11,250 gp.

_Gate Keys:_  These objects are a mixture of the fey and the human, with a shard of crystal implanted into a short shaft of worked metal.  Most such keys allow their bearers to create a brief gate between Terra and Gaia, but only at limited locations they are attuned to.  Other keys, known as _greater gate keys_ allow travel between any loci where the barrier between Terra and Gaia is weak.

_Lesser gate keys_ are each attuned to one location on Terra and one on Gaia, and the component pieces of the key must be each be built at these locations, then united to complete the item.  As a standard action, a key bearer who is within 10 feet of the attuned location can create a Gate (as the spell), generally with dimensions four feet by eight feet.  This gate lasts for as long as the bearer concentrates to keep it open, and for one round thereafter.  Any creature can freely pass through the gate, and is in no way beholden to the gate’s opener.  The bearer of the key automatically senses the general direction to the attuned locus.

_Caster Level:_ 5th; _Prerequisites:_ Craft Wondrous Item, must fulfill the above requirement of construction; _Market Price:_ 2,000 gp.

_Greater gate keys_ are far more versatile, able to open gates at any weak locus between the two realms.  They are created in powerful ley line conjunctions, and function just as _lesser gate keys_, only with greater scope.  These keys let the bearer sense the general direction of whatever weak locus is closest.

_Caster Level:_ 9th; _Prerequisites:_ Craft Wondrous Item, Plane Shift, must fulfill the above requirement of construction; _Market Price:_ 90,000 gp.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 24, 2002)

*Chapter Five:  The Ferret Hidey-Hole*

_The following game session took place over internet chat software.  The DM was generous and forward-thinking enough to save a copy of it for everyone to read.  Chris is Finagle’s player, and Jessie is the DM._

*Chris (Finagle):*	 Hiya Boss! 
*DM:*	 Hey   :>  Well, I think I’m ready, how about you? 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Sure! 
*DM:*	 I’m gonna mail you a pic first, so just hold on, then we’ll start, ok? 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 K 
*DM:*	 It’s coming to you. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 got it! 

 (You can find this picture at http://www.geocities.com/rangerwickett/SK_Images/Brian1.jpg  You have to copy/paste the link, because of the way geocities deals with exterior links.)

*DM:*	 Excellent.  That means we can get started. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 K’ 
*DM:*	 This rather overweight, nerdy, straight-out-of-the-70’s fellow before you is your neighbor, Brian Greenman. 
*DM:*	 You both live on the single’s floor of the living complex of the Bureau for the Management of Magicks’ headquarters. 
*DM:*	 Your home is a nice apartment for one person:  not too cramped, and has a convenient kitchen-nook.  Boxes take up most of your room right now, but your uncle is helping you figure out where stuff will go. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Ok the particle accelerator goes in the NW corner... 
*DM:*	 When did your uncle die, anyway?  I know he’s 20-something, but what year? 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 I don’t know...  No one talks about him, I guess around 25 years ago or so... 
*DM:*	 Seventies is cool.  Anyhoo, while you’re looking through your stuff, there’s a knock on the door. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Oooooh!!!  Answer! Answer! 
*DM:*	 The guy on the other side of the door is Brian, and he greets you with a wide smile not unlike the one in the pic. 
*DM:*	 “Howdy neighbor.  You’re new, right?” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Yep, How long have you lived here?” 
*DM:*	 “Jeez, lemme think . . . Uh, probably about five years or so.  Funny thing that, I was like researching for my AD&D game--seeing how these ‘witches’ acted--and they summoned an imp right there!  Man, scared the  out of me.  Then these like orcish Knights came and kicked the crap out of it and brought me here.” 
*DM:*	 “Cool, huh?  You?” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 *grin*  I was poking around a computer store when some sewer demons broke in and did bad things.  Then this group of really odd Knights showed up and started threatening to break my legs if I ran away...  Now I work with them.   Got any sugar?  Mines all packed...” 
*DM:*	 “Crap, I was gonna ask you if you had any beer, but you look a little young for that.


    “You don’t, do you?  I think I might have some little sugar packets in my apartment.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Could I snag three or so?” 
*DM:*	 “Sure, not a problem.” 
*DM:*	 He leads you to his apartment, the door next to yours. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 #? 
*DM:*	 Uh . . .  You’re on the 100’s floor, the first floor.   Yours is 119, his is 117. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Juss checking... 
*DM:*	 And his place is a huge mess.  Papers lay all over the floor, his computer desk is cluttered, a shelf on the back wall is filled with AD&D resource books. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 What’s in the computer area? 
*DM:*	 He apparently is a bit of a hacker, lots of different drives, “doctored” phones, and enough surge protectors to plug in a small town.

Moving aside a coffee pot that hasn’t been cleaned in ages, he hunts over the counter for sugar packets. 
*DM:*	 “Damn sweet-n-low . . . Ah, here we go.  Honest to God sugar.” 
*DM:*	 “Which of these isn’t open . . ?” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Wheee!  Thanks, It’s hard to get real sugar from people these days, health nutz being what they are...” 
*DM:*	 “Damn straight.  Me?  To hell with it, might as well die happy, right?” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Yeah, say do you know anyone else around here?  Since I just moved in I’m kinda anxiouse to meet everyone, Also, are there are any wing restrictions?” *(ex: loud music not after 4:00AM)* 
*DM:*	 “Wish there were, but not too many.  Just as long as you don’t run around naked in the halls or something.”

   He notices he left his door open and moves to close it.  When he steps in the doorway he stops and looks in the hall.
  “Um, is there a problem?” he asks to someone in the hall. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 I peak over his shoulder... 
*DM:*	 There’s a woman kneeling on the floor, trying to look under the crack of your door.
  When she hears Brian she lifts her head, she looks Elven, dark hair and bright, green eyes. 
*DM:*	 Sheepishly she stands and straightens her clothes. 
*DM:*	 “I’m sorry, Rikki-Tikki ran off again.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Rikki-Tikki?” 
*DM:*	 “Again?” Brian asks, laughing softly and folding his arms.   “You oughta buy a bell for that ferret.” 
*DM:*	 “We did,” she replies.  “He slipped out of it.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Does he escape a lot?” 
*DM:*	 “Rikki-Tikki is my ferret, and a little smarter than he should be,” she explains for you.  “My husband and I have been hunting for the little guy, but he’s really found a good place to hide.
*Chris (Finagle):*  *Swallow one sugar package*  “He’s got his own magic?   I thought that couldn’t happen....”  
*DM:*	 Smiling broadly, Brian steps forward with a bit of a swager.  “You know, Cindy, if you really need help, you could just let me and the new guy here handle this.” 
*DM:*	 “Could you?”  she asks.  “But really it’s a bother.” 
*DM:*	 “Nah, not a bother,” he replies.  “This guy wanted to see around anyway.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “If your  checking rooms, I was planning to meet everyone anyway...” 
*DM:*	 “There, see?” Brian says. 
*DM:*	 Cindy smiles and thanks you and Brian.  “But if you can’t find him, just go ahead and let us handle it.  You really are saving me such a hassle by doing this.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Where does he usually hide?” 
*DM:*	 “Well . . . “  Cindy pauses, biting her lip.  “It seems to change every time I turn around.  I have no idea what new place he’s found.” 
*DM:*	 “Maybe we should start at your place,” Brian offers to Cindy, and she nods in agreement. 
*DM:*	 Cindy gets on the elevators at the end of the hall, escorting you and Brian to the 3rd floor. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Weee!  Height!” 
*DM:*	 She leads you down the hall, stopping at 332.  She and her husband’s apartment is neat, filled with Elvish decorations and furniture. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Is her husband there? 
*DM:*	 She sighs and says he’s looking for Rikki on another floor.

She shows you the room where Rikki-Tikki normally sleeps. 
*DM:*	 *Brian rolls a d20*

   Brian stops and looks toward a bookcase at the other side of the room. 
*DM:*	 “Do you think he could get up there?” he asks. 
*DM:*	 “Sure,” Cindy replies. 
*DM:*	 “Well, the air duct thingy is open,” he points out. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Finagle scrambles up the side and peeks over the top... 
*DM:*	 You see that yes indeed the air duct, far too small for any person to crawl in, is open. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Any signs of a ferret? 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 (Fur stuck in a hinge say?) 
*DM:*	 “Oh, no!” Cindy sighs heavily.   
*DM:*	 Roll a d20, do you have spot or search as skills? 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Yeah....  Search +4... 
*DM:*	 Good.  Difficulty class 15, roll. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 15 w/ bonus 
*DM:*	 You don’t see a ferret--it’s a bit dark--but you do recognize the rather distinct smell one gives off. 
*DM:*	 “How far down do you think he might’ve gone?” Brian asks both you and Cindy 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Can I reach in and try to get it’s attention? (assuming he’s still in da vents) 
*DM:*	 You reach in, then you hear a soft giggling sound. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Where? 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 in the vent? 
*DM:*	 It’s coming from the vent.

   “Fingers!  hee hee hee!” 
*DM:*	 “Catch me if you can!  Whee!” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Slowly withdraw them, wiggling them all the time... 
*DM:*	 “Do you hear him?” Cindy asks. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “He’s right here.”

“He’s teasing me...” 
*DM:*	 “Rikki!” she calls, trying to climb up beside you.  “Rikki, get over here, now!” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 *Get out of her way...’* 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 *Down another sugar package, in preperation* 
*DM:*	 The laughing is stonger, yet begins to fade away as a scampering noise scratches further down the ducts. 
*DM:*	 “No!  No, come back!” Cindy snaps. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Which way does vent go? 
*DM:*	 Cindy thinks for a moment, then says it more than likely heads toward the kitchens of the living complex.  In the other direction it would head toward the labs, which are between the business end of the Bureau and the enforcement end. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Ok, you get the kitchens, I’ll go get the labs...” 
*DM:*	 Cindy nods in agreement, then climbs down. 
*DM:*	 Brian will go with you. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 K, Go go speed racer! 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 (Joke...) 
*DM:*	 The two of you run to the glass walkways that seperate the living complex and the other complex.  Above you is the vent, below you are the crowds doing business in the main hall of the Bureau. 
*DM:*	 Brian leads you toward the labs, and the two of you are stopped by a security guard. 
*DM:*	 An orc, not very intelligent looking, but rather large and quite intimidating in a uniform. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 How bigisshe? 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 oh, sorry... 
*DM:*	 “What’s this then?” he asks. 
*DM:*	 “Uh . . .” Brian begins to fumble through his pockets to find his ID 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Ummm, a neighbors ferret got loose in the air vents, we’re trying to hunt it down, sir” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Could we please check the airvents inside?” 
*DM:*	 Surprised by the excuse, the orc scratches his temple. 
*DM:*	 “I have ID, I work in this section,” Brian swears, finally finding his wallet. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Yeah, that too!” 
*DM:*	 “A ferret, yasay?” the guard asks, not sure of how to respond to the two of you now. 
*DM:*	 “Ah, ha!” Brian says triumpantly, holding up his ID. 
*DM:*	 (It’s a horrible picture, but reads that he is a techno-expert with a high-level clearance.) 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 He’s not that big, but he is smart and fast, so we need to work quickly!” 
*DM:*	 “Well . . . “  He rubs his chin.  ‘“Cain’t argue with the ID.  Go on.” 
*DM:*	 Brian, quite smug with himself, leads you on. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “You’re in R&D?” 
*DM:*	 “Huh?” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “you’re card said techno-expert, what’s your specialty?”  *said while checking vents and sneaking looks at labs* 
*DM:*	 “Oh, okay.  Hacking.  That’s me.”  He puffs with a bit of pride.  “I’m one of the best.  Systems bow before me and computers tremble at my might.”   
*DM:*	 “I handle lots of files around here.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Like inventory!?!” 
*DM:*	 “Well, not per se,” he shrugs.  “On missions I do a little work, and around the Bureau I mostly do financial, and lots of detective work.” 
*DM:*	 “Decode files, translate recordings, find this guy, do that, you know how it is.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Oh, You translate?  I’ll remember that.” 
*DM:*	 The both of you reach the labs, and Brian swipes his ID through a slot on the side of the door. 
*DM:*	 The room is quite large, and the room Brian’s taken you in appears to mostly be for studying specimens, ranging from racks of microscope slides to cages with odd-looking creatures in them. 
*DM:*	 A man sits at a set of cages near the back, then stands when he sees the two of you. 
*DM:*	 He is black, with large eyes and greying hair. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Hello, just checking your vents for mammals!” 

   “Mammals?”  he asks.  “You mean rats?” 
*DM:*	 “Rats nummy!” voices chant from the cage behind him 
*DM:*	 “Mammals yummy!” they add. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “No a ferret escaped, and were trying to...  *runs down...* 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Wha?...” 
*DM:*	 When you near the cage you can see it’s an extremely large cage, a room more or less, with several dozen gremlins inside.  They look like the ones from the movies, and all of them smile at you with toothy grins when you step next to the scientist. 
*DM:*	 “See?” one says.  “Mammal!”

   “Yummy!” the others chant. 
*DM:*	 “And I just got them to shut up,” the scientist sighs. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Hi, could you do me a favor?”  *to gremlins* 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “I’ll reward you of course...” 
*DM:*	 “Favors!”
“Party favors!”
“Yummy!” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Do ya’ll have any favorite foods?” 
*DM:*	 “Meat.”
“Meat.”
“Meat. 
“Meat.” 
“Meat.” 
“Meat.”
“Quiche.”  (He gets weird stares from the others, the overall census seems to be “meat.”) 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Ok, I’ll bring down some steaks tomorrow if you will promise not to eat a small bony, hairy, scrawney ferret for me...  Deal?  I’ll even through in a quiche...” 
*DM:*	 “Meat!”  they all begin jumping up and down excitedly. 
*DM:*	 “Oh, no,” the scientist groans.  “Now they’ll take forever to quiet down!” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Is it a deal?  All you have to do is give the ferret, if it shows up, to, uh, your boss here...” 
*DM:*	 “Deal!  Deal!”
“Yummy!” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Thanks a lot guys!”  *Turning to scientist*  “Uh, I’m sorry I didn’t get your name...” 
*DM:*	 “Malcom.  Kenneth Malcom.”  Then he kneels toward the cage and clears his throat.  He begins singing:  “Imagine me and you, I do, I think about you day and night--” 
*DM:*	 The gremlins stop.  They listen a moment, then join in.

  “So happy together!” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 *Grin*  *join in next chorus* 
*DM:*	 “This’ll take a while.  Once they get started they’re hard to stop,” Malcom says to you as they sing.  “Just go ahead and I’ll keep an eye open for you ferret.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Thanks a lot, If I can ever do you a favor...  Just holler” 
*DM:*	 Brian laughs and leads you out.  As you leave you can hear 

  “--No matter how they tossed the dice, it had to be.  The only one for me is you, and you for me, So Happy Together!” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 ( I like them, Gremlins are cute) 
*DM:*	 Brian is still snickering when you go back in the hall, but as he stops, you can still hear a giggling from above you. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 What’s the ceiling like here? 
*DM:*	 It’s not too high, and the air vent is directly above you. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 *Finagle jumps up and grags the vent* 
*DM:*	 It groans a little under your weight and you hear a tiny shriek.   Brian grabs your waist to hold you up

  “Get ‘im!  Grab ‘im!” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 *Reach in an snag the little bugger, or at least chase him back to the lab...* 
*DM:*	 “Eek!  Meanie, meanie!  Stop!”

   You can almost get a grip, but like a furry snake it wiggles out of your grasp. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Come back here, please!?” 
*DM:*	 “My hidey-hole!”  he snaps at you, then you hear him trying to scamper away again. 
*DM:*	 “Dammit!”  Brian groans, having a little trouble holding you. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 (130 lbs is a problem?) 
*DM:*	 For a long time, sure. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Ok, lemme down, he already went that way...”   *sigh* 
*DM:*	 Angrily Brian grumbles as he lets you down.  He looks down the hall and sighs.  “Wonder where the vents lead to . . .” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “One way to find out...” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “You met the gremlins before?” 
*DM:*	 “No, they must’ve been collected by some Knight on mission.  Gremlins are generally some nasty little buggers.  Did you see those teeth?!” 
*DM:*	 “I’ve heard of guys my size getting torn apart by a group of them that size.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Well, yeah, but they seemed nice enough...” 
*DM:*	 “Maybe,” he says uneasily. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Maybe I could vist them again...” 
*DM:*	 “Heh.  We could teach ‘em Broadway next time.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Or maybe they could teach me...”  *musing quitley...* 
*DM:*	 He laughs.  You both head down the hall, then notice where the vent splits off in a t-intersection.  One leading to a broom closet, the other direction to an office of some kind. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 Hey, Brian?  Ya wanna get the closset?” 
*DM:*	 “Closet’s cool, I guess.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “K, meetcha in the next lab...” 
*DM:*	 When you open the other door, you see it’s a tech lab, the lights are off, and  you hear soft whispering--but not Rikki’s.  It’s two people, a man and a woman. 
*DM:*	 “Who’s that?” the man asks.
“Finagle Luckshore,” the woman responds. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Ummm, Hello?” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 *reassuring swig of sugar* 
*DM:*	 The woman steps into the light and you see it’s Autumn Yieotana, the telepath.  “It’s tough to surprise a telepath, kid.  But you came close.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Oh, Hi Mrs. Yieotana, whatcha doing?” 
*DM:*	 “Just trying to finish up a little business.  And it’s Ms.  You can call me Autumn.” 
*DM:*	 The man you can only barely see, but you recoginze him.  He was there last night when you were “inducted” into the BMM:  Michael Dunne, the one who mercy-killed Jericho and then fell unconcious. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 *Edge away from psycho cop*   “Ok, Autumn, I’m just looking for a ferret that escaped into the air-vents... Do you mind if I check around here?” 
*DM:*	 “Hey, Finny!” you hear from across the hall. 
*DM:*	 “Brian Greenman is calling,” Autumn points out. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Ok, lemme go check with him...”  *exit, gracefully* 
*DM:*	 Brian is in the closet, shaking his head and laughing.
   The air vent opens into the room, and all around the dusty shelves are food, candy, small stuffed animals, shoes, Barbie-sized plastic furniture, and a rather sad-looking ferret. 
*DM:*	 He’s light brown with a dark little mask pattern on his face, dark paws, and large, brown eyes that look up at you pitifully. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “ummm, he got loose a lot, didn’t he?” 
*DM:*	 “You thieving little bastard,” Brian laughs.  “There’s my other sandle!” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “How long did it take you to get all this together?”  *to the ferret* 
*DM:*	 “I’m sorry,” he whimpers.  “I like to collect stuff.  This is my hidey-hole.  I found it a few months ago.” 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Well, It doesn’t look like you broke anything, and I’m sure you mean “borrow”...   Should we tell Cindy?” 
*DM:*	 Rikki-Tikki cries softly and Brian sighs.   “Man, don’t do that.”  He looks at you and shakes his head.  “Go ahead and keep my sandle, Rikki.  If you want the other I can get it for you.” 
*DM:*	 Rikki’s eyes brighten and he leaps onto the floor at your feet.  “Yay!  I think I wanna go home now.  I’m hungry.” 
*DM:*	 “You got enough food in here to feed an army,” Brian snickers 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Oh, all right...  Hey Rikki  if you can get me some parts I could build you a device to alert you when Cindy is gonna come into your room...  That way she wouldn’t be surprised by your absence.”
*DM:*	 ^_^   “Sure!” he chirps.

  “Just don’t get caught,” Brian adds. 
*DM:*	 “Never do,” Rikki replies. 
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “I’m sure you don’t, mean time, care to escort us home?” 
*DM:*	 “Let’s go,” Rikki says, trotting past you and skipping down the hall. 
*DM:*	 “You don’t think that orc’d ask for his ID, do you?”  Brian asks with a smirk.
*Chris (Finagle):*	 “Nah, nobody bothers a ferret with attitude!”


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## Acquana (Jan 24, 2002)

Eeeee!  Ferret Hidey Hole is still one of my favorites!

  You're doing such a good job.


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## Horacio (Jan 24, 2002)

I love this Stroy Hour!


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## RangerWickett (Jan 25, 2002)

*Finagle P. Luckshore:*  Male human Wiz1; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 1d4+2; hp 6; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 12 (Dex); Atk none yet; SQ ghostbond; SV Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +0; Str 9, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 19, Wis 7, Cha 12.

_Skills and Feats:_ Computer Use +8, Concentration +6, Hide +4, Listen +0, Knowledge (electronics) +8, Knowledge (mechanical engineering) +8, Spot +2; Run, Scribe Scroll, Spell Focus (evocation).
Note:  Computer Use and Spot are his floating class skills.

_Ghostbond Abilities:_ Alertness, Locative Bond, See Spirit, Share Spells, Speak with Spirit, Spirit Manifestation, Turn Resistance, +2 Intelligence.

_Spells per Day:_ 3 / 2.  Typically prepared—Arc of Lightning (as Ray of Frost), Flare, Mage Hand / Endure Elements, Shocking Grasp.

_Background:_
Finagle is a prodigy, taking after his late uncle by finishing school years ahead of schedule.  He is fascinated by electronic and mechanical devices, and spent much of his youth tinkering on various small inventions, again, just like his late uncle.

Soon after finishing high school by the age of 14, Finagle decided to take time off from his education to just goof around.  A technical school agreed to pay for his lodging and travel expenses for two years, until he reached the minimum enrollment age of 16, so for the past two years he has seen the world, ‘supervised’ by a lax chaperone.  Because of this, he is more world-conscious than most prodigies, but still lacks a good deal of common sense or willpower.  He blames this not on his own immaturity, but on the headaches he has experienced ever since he stopped going to school.

Though he was planning to start college in the fall, after discovering that his headaches had been caused by the guardian spirit of his late uncle (who had disapproved of Finagle postponing his education), Finagle eagerly decided to start learning about the world of magic.  In just the few short weeks before he is supposed to go to college (he had to sign a contract with the school), Finagle intends to figure out ways to better mix magic and technology, which he thinks right now are far too separate.

_Finagle’s Ghost:_
Uncle Cheston was an inventor who dabbled creating all manner of electronic and mechanical devices even before he graduated from college in 1968—at the age of 17.  Though he was a bit of a black sheep, the Luckshore family loved having him around for his sense of humor.  Sadly, he electrocuted himself while trying to solder a game of pong.  His desire, ultimately self-destructive, was to bond the pong game directly into a TV, so he could take the game and the screen together easily.  In his time as a spirit, he has had to keep Finagle from electrocuting himself once or twice.


*Fey Beast Templates:*
Terra is inhabited by a whole ecosphere of creatures, full of diversity, but out of which only a few demonstrate significant intelligence.  On Gaia, however, nearly all the creatures one encounters possess at least some small gleam of intelligence—a mysterious, magical awareness.  Such creatures come in two varieties.  The simplest differentiations would be ‘light and dark’ or ‘good and evil,’ but the demeanor of these creatures is far more subtle.  The terms “Seelie” and “Unseelie,” while historically localized to northern Europe, have been adopted by most English-speakers to discuss these fey creatures.  

Seelie creatures are characterized by light-heartedness and fickle benevolence, while Unseelie creatures are known for capriciousness.   Additionally, all creatures of Gaia, even animals, are possessed of a unique aura that lets anyone who sees the creature recognize it as foreign to Terra, as if something was not quite normal with the animal.  Though typically Seelie creatures are beautiful and Unseelie are ugly and twisted, sometimes appearances can mislead.  A shaggy, emaciated pony might be a Seelie creature whose appearance is a test for the kindness of travelers, while myths tell of Unseelie creatures that have unearthly beauty, they dark magnificence concealing their vicious natures.


*Creating an Unseelie Beast:*
Unseelie Beast is a template that can be applied to any animal with an intelligence of at least 1.  The creature’s type becomes “magical beast,” but it is also considered an “animal” for the sake of spells, effects, and skills.  It uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here.  
Hit Dice: Change to d6.
Speed: Same as the base creature.
AC: Same as the base creature, but it gains a deflection bonus equal to its Charisma bonus (if any).
Attacks and Damage: The same as the base creature.
Special Qualities:  An unseelie beast retains all the special qualities of the base creatures and also gains the following ones:
Darkvision with unlimited range.  
Light Blindness.  Abrupt exposure to bright light, such as sunlight or the Daylight spell, blinds the Unseelie Beast for 1 round.  In addition, it suffers a –1 penalty to all attack rolls, saves, and checks while operating in bright light.
Spell resistance equal to twice its hit dice (minimum 2).
Scare at will (DC 5).
Invisibility at will while in its natural terrain (whether on Gaia or Terra).  However, the creature cannot attack while invisible.  It can become visible as a standard action.
Saves: Same as the base creature.
Abilities: The same as the base creature, except that the unseelie beast’s intelligence raises to at least 3, and it gains a +4 bonus to Dexterity.
Skills:  Same as the base creature, plus it has Hide +6 and Move Silently +6.
Feats: Same as the base creature.
__________________________________________
Climate/Terrain:  Same as the base creature.
Organization: Same as the base creature.
Challenge Rating: Up to 3HD, as base creature.  4 HD or higher, as base creature +1.
Treasure: None.
Alignment: Usually Chaotic Neutral (Evil).
Advancement: Same as the base creature.


*Creating a Seelie Beast:*
Seelie Beast is a template that can be applied to any animal with an intelligence of at least 1.  The creature’s type becomes “magical beast,” but it is also considered an “animal” for the sake of spells, effects, and skills.  It uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here.  
Hit Dice: Change to d6.
Speed: Same as the base creature.
AC: Same as the base creature, but it gains a deflection bonus equal to its Charisma bonus (if any).
Attacks and Damage: The same as the base creature.
Special Qualities:  An unseelie beast retains all the special qualities of the base creatures and also gains the following ones:
Low-light vision.
Spell resistance equal to twice its hit dice (minimum 2).
Hypnotism at will (DC 5).
Invisibility at will while in its natural terrain (whether on Gaia or Terra).  However, the creature cannot attack while invisible.  It can become visible as a standard action.
Saves: Same as the base creature.
Abilities: The same as the base creature, except that the unseelie beast’s intelligence raises to at least 3, and it gains a +4 bonus to Dexterity.
Skills:  Same as the base creature, plus it has Hide +6 and Move Silently +6.
Feats: Same as the base creature.
__________________________________________
Climate/Terrain:  Same as the base creature.
Organization: Same as the base creature.
Challenge Rating: Up to 3HD, as base creature.  4 HD or higher, as base creature +1.
Treasure: None.
Alignment: Usually Chaotic Neutral (Evil).
Advancement: Same as the base creature.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 25, 2002)

*Chapter Six: Sir, a call for you*

Three nights ago, Flarinaman, a 450-year-old Dragon living in Atlanta, was murdered while vacationing in Savannah, caught by a fireball before he could finish polymorphing back to normal from his human form.  The death of a wealthy businessman . . . err, businessDragon, has greatly upset the Bureau, especially because Flarinaman made yearly financial ‘contributions’ to the Bureau to make sure they would not reveal his identity.  Now the Bureau has to dispose of a gargantuan reptilian body, provide a fake corpse for a fake funeral, and explain why a historical Savannah house seems to have exploded, the nasty side of effect of Flarinaman’s body reverting to its natural form at death.  A 450-year-old Dragon just doesn’t very easily into an old house.

As if this wasn’t enough to worry the Bureau, the night before Flarinaman’s death, another Dragon was murdered in Hong Kong.  Millionaire businesswoman Li Tsi Tong was assassinated in the 70th-floor penthouse of her skyscraper (thankfully, her penthouse is large enough to contain a 30-foot long gold Dragon), in what was apparently a vicious battle.  They’ve dispatched a team to handle the clean-up and redistribution of her assets, but in the meanwhile, knights around the world are having to work their li’l butts off to protect all the Dragons around the world, especially the high-profile ones.

The Bureau assigns the knights in Savannah (Iscalio, Cai, Jenny, Finagle, and Madeline, but not Tagin, who is on special assignment somewhere in China) to visit, question, and in general investigate Max Dorman, a Savannah local.  He’s from the prestigious Dorman line, an Old Money family that has existed on the Georgia coast for almost two centuries.  In truth, however, all the various Mr. Dorman’s through that time have been the same Dragon.  Assets have just been consistently willed to offspring, nephews, or younger brothers whenever a particular alias reached the credible limits of human lifespan.  Dornankanir, a bronze-scaled Dragon from Norse stock, took up the mantle of the Dorman family when it would have died out in 1812.  Not a millionaire, but quite rich by anyone’s measure, Dornankanir is not only a potential victim, but also a suspect.

The knights are sent to go because they were the ones who witnessed Jericho Wright’s behavior as he fled the scene of Flarinaman’s death.  As a precaution, to keep the old Dragon from acting rashly and attacking the newbie knights, the Chief sends along Michael Dunne, the paladin from the graveyard, and Galindrel White, an Elvish sorcerer who’s handy with both attack and escape magic (played by the same guy who played Keira in the last game).

The knights travel to the northern outskirts of Savannah, to the Dorman family’s old plantation house.  They travel in a van, a typical undercover cop-style van with radios and receivers and tape recorders galore, but which looks like a plumbing van from the outside.  Madeline drives, quite proud that she has memorized the street map of Savannah.

Madeline parks the van on the outskirts of the estate, and she, Cai, and Galindrel stay in the van, while Michael, Jenny, Iscalio, and Finagle walk through the well-tended gardens to the mansion’s front door.  Finagle and Jenny wear wires, so the knights in the van can hear what’s going on, and Finagle also jury-rigged a mini-cam to fit in his messy and unkempt hair.

Reaching the front door, Michael rings the doorbell, but no one answers for several moments.  Frustrated, complaining that Dornankanir was always a pain for the Bureau, he tries the knob and finds it unlocked, so they proceed inside.

Jenny is a bit nervous about this, and makes a point to say loudly enough for the recorders to pick it up that she thinks it’s a bad idea to barge into the man’s house.  Then, she reconsiders, saying it is a _very_ bad idea to barge into a Dragon’s house.  Michael shrugs and says that he’s fought Dragons before.

Uneager, Jenny wants to remain outside, but her ghost, Pataman, urges her to follow Michael.  He senses something odd about the man, but can say nothing more useful than that, “his voice is uneasy.”  Reluctantly, Jenny goes inside, warily watching Michael as the older and more experienced knight leads the way.

The main foyer is well-furnished and perfectly maintained, but still no one greets them.  Shrugging, Michael tells Finagle and Jenny to check up a flight of stairs while he and Iscalio work on the bottom floor.  Before the theatre student and the computer geek can even reach the second floor, though, Iscalio shouts for them to come back down, the sound of envy in his voice.

The knights have found, down a wide hallway, a set of double doors that lead into a huge, high-ceilinged chamber, filled with a full layer of coins an inch deep, with large mounds scattered about the room.  Michael shrugs as Iscalio furtively glances around at the glittering riches.  Through the radio receivers in their ears, they hear Cai warn his brother not to piss off the Dragon.  Iscalio frowns and mutters that he wasn’t planning to steal anything.

On edge from the silence of the house, Jenny tries to look around and admire the treasure to keep her mind off her fear.  The knights exchange glances, and they’re just about to leave to check out the rest of the mansion when someone clears his throat in the doorway.  Everyone turns to see a well-dressed man in his forties, with light brown hair and stern features, glaring at them disapprovingly, absently holding a martini in his right hand.  

“Please tell me you’re robbers and not the Bureau again.”

They wait for Michael to speak, since he’s the leader of this mission, but the blond paladin just stares at the polymorphed Dragon.  Nervously coughing, Jenny takes charge and informs Max Dorman, the current human form of Dornankanir, about the murders, and tells him they need to ask him a few questions.  In response, the Dragon complains that the knights broke into his home, and he demands they leave.  They can make an appointment with his secretary if they want to speak with him; that’s how most humans do business.  

Taking offense to the insulting tone that the Dragon used when saying “human,” Iscalio begins firing off a string of questions, trying to get the Dragon off balance.  Aside from saying that, yes, he often makes business trips, but no, he hasn’t been to China, Max Dorman refuses to answer to Iscalio’s interrogation.  

“Now, get out of my house,” Max Dorman says.  “I have a charity I plan to attend in Atlanta this weekend, and I have to finalize my plans.  It’s for an important cause.  Saving the environment from _human encroachment_.”

“Human encroachment my ass!” Iscalio shouts.  “Lay the  off the human insults, you-”

Jenny grabs Iscalio’s shoulder and tugs him back away from the businessman.  “Iscalio,” she reminds him, “you’re the one calling yourself a Druid, remember?  You’re supposed to be in favor of protecting the environment.”

Iscalio grumbles, and Max Dorman clears his throat again.  “I’ve had enough of this.  If you don’t want a lawsuit, you’ll get the hell off my proper-”

Michael cuts him off, speaking a guttural language, shouting something angrily at the Dragon.  Immediately, Jenny and Finagle’s ghosts warn that they see something odd that seems to be covering Michael’s body, and Iscalio’s fox ghost growls, bristling.

In the van, the knights listening on the radio shrug, not recognizing a word Michael just said.  Finagle makes sure to record the event with his camera, as Dornankanir shouts something back at Michael, again in what they assume must be Draconic.  Michael takes a step forward in reply, his hand going to the hilt of his light sword, and the blond man growls out another phrase in Draconic.  

Before any of the other knights can try to stop the situation, Max Dorman’s body contorts, and a bronze-scaled beast tears out of the guise of a human businessman.  Jenny has the presence of mind to shout, “He’s turning into a Dragon!” so the knights in the van will know what’s up, while Finagle had decided to run instead of watching the Dragon revert to his normal, fierce self.  Whether they are looking at Dornankanir or not, though, they feel a powerful thrum of energy pass through them.  For a moment, their contact with their ghost wavers, and then stabilizes, but everyone except Michael is too unsettled to move for a moment.  Michael stands almost completely still, and doesn’t even seem to see the twenty-foot long Dragon towering over him.

Growling at them in deep, hissing voice speaking English, Dornankanir tells them they made a mistake insulting him in his own home.  His massive bulk blocks the exit out of the hoard room, and he takes a deliberate step toward them.  Iscalio ignites the blade of his scythe and runs forward to attack, but Dornankanir simply lines his gaze up with the albino Druid, and Iscalio’s legs go weak.  He falls backward, dropping his scythe and staring up in momentary panic at the Dragon.

In the van, Madeline leaps into the driver’s seat at Cai’s urging and swerves the vehicle around, gunning the pedal to drive the car up the main paved walkway to Max Dorman’s house.  Galindrel conveniently cowers in the back of the van, saying quietly that they really shouldn’t just go-

And with a crash the van drives up the steps and smashes through the large front door of the mansion.  Moving too fast to stop, Madeline puts the van into a 180 degree spin, and, now moving in reverse, it skids down the hallway to the doorway of the horde room.  Cai throws open the back door of the van and yells for everyone to get in.

Jenny tries to shake Michael out of his fear, but then she sees his expression.  Unlike Iscalio, Michael isn’t afraid.  He looks more dazed, as if almost asleep.  She shouts for Finagle to help Iscalio and Michael, then tries to draw off Dornankanir’s attention.  

Activating her spear, she makes an ineffective slash at the Dragon’s hind leg, then breaks into a run, heading for an array of exquisite vases.  She stops long enough to see that the Dragon is raising a claw to crush Iscalio, and desperately she shouts, “Mr. Kanir!  Over here!”

The Dragon pauses for a moment to see her, then realizes what exactly a woman with a spear could do to Ming vases.  He begins to leap at her, and Jenny, though shuddering with fear, is relieved that in a moment the way will be clear for Iscalio, Finagle, and Michael.  Unfortunately, in mid-jump, Dornankanir is distracted again when Cai fires a blast of shotgun pellets into one wing.  The blast only stings the Dragon, but he turns to face the greater concentration of humans, taking Jenny down with a lash of his tail that catches her in the chest and knocks her away from the vases.  

Dornankanir’s eyes crackle with arcs of electricity, and his gaze levels upon Michael, who is only now dully moving toward the van, being ushered forward by Cai and Iscalio.  Finagle sees the lightning surging in the Dragon’s mouth, and with a shout, he leaps into the line of fire, catching the bolt in his back and protecting Michael.  The jolt of the electrical blast hurls him through the air to land in the back of the van, where Galindrel lies almost comatose for some unknown reason.

Struggling to her feet, Jenny gasps for breath, but steels herself for another attempt to get the Dragon away from her teammates, when suddenly a voice projects out over the clamor.  

“Sir, a call for you.”

Dornankanir turns his head to see his butler standing beside the van in the doorway, holding a portable phone.  Another shotgun blast and several pistol rounds pepper him, and he angrily waves a claw at the knights.  “Stop shooting.  I have to take this.”

Seeing that Dornankanir is distracted, holding a fragile little phone between his claws, Jenny staggers into the back of the van and focuses her energies to heal Finagle, only to find that he seems quite healthy, if woozy.  Finagle has always had an affinity for electronics, and apparently also for electricity, so the bolt barely hurt him.

Quickly pulling the door shut as the last of the knights gets into the van, Cai calls for Madeline to drive.  When Finagle realizes that they must have driven through the front door to rescue them, he says they should stop.  Madeline slows as the van begins to roll down the steps, but Cai stops Finagle before he can hop out of the back of the van.  

Through the open back door of the van, Finagle P. Luckshore points at the ruined oak door at the front of the mansion.  

“Look, the Dragon will be royally pissed if we leave his door that way, but I have a mending spell.  Give me a few hours and that door’ll be as good as plywood!”

A resounding ‘no’ from the van leaves Finagle pouting as Madeline provides their getaway.  As they head for a Bureau parking house, Iscalio, Cai, and Jenny try to question Michael, to see why the heck he shouted something in Dragonish at the man.  Unfortunately, Michael doesn’t even remember the exchange, and he claims that he doesn’t even know Draconic, so he couldn’t tell them what he’d said even if he knew he’d said it.

The only question that they haven’t addressed is Galindrel, but by now the Elvish sorcerer seems to be doing fine.  He explains that he really wasn’t supposed to go with them into the mansion, because of what just happened.  Dragons have powerful magical auras, strong enough to overpower people native to Gaia.  Spirits, which are slightly connected with Gaia, can be momentarily dazed by contact with a Dragon’s aura, which is why classically dragon-slayers were always warriors and not magi.  Everyone vaguely recalls having heard something about draconic auras in their initial training, but no one had reminded them before they went on this mission.

The short mission seems rather pointless, but then Cai sighs in acceptance.  He shrugs and pats the computer terminal that had been recording the signals from Jenny and Iscalio’s wires.  They can get it translated when they get back to headquarters.

Finagle’s sad mood perks up, and he mentions that the guy who lives next door to him is great with computers, and that he’s pretty sure his buddy Brian would gladly translate it for them.  From now on, though, Finagle tended to call Michael the “psycho cop” as often as he’d call him by his real name.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 26, 2002)

*Galindrel White:*  Male Elf Ftr1/Sor6; Medium-size Humanoid (Elf); HD 6d4 + 1d10; hp 29; Init +3; Spd 30 ft.; AC 17 (+3 Dex, +4 Elven Chain); Atk _+2 staff_ +8 melee (1d6+4), or _+1 bow_ +8 ranged (d8+1/crit x3); SQ Elven Traits; SV Fort +4, Ref +7, Will +5; Str 14, Dex 16, Con 11, Int 14, Wis 10, Cha 17.

_Skills and Feats:_  Climb +7, Concentration +10, Jump +7, Knowledge (arcana) +12, Spellcraft +12; Craft Magic Arms & Armor, Expertise, Lightning Reflexes, Spell Focus (Enchantment).

_Spells Per Day:_ 6 / 7 / 6 / 4 — Dancing Lights, Daze, Detect Magic, Ghost Sound, Light, Prestidigitation, Resistance / Alarm Ward, Magic Missile, Magic Weapon, Sleep / Fey Web, Resist Elements  / Invisibility Sphere.  Arcane spell failure: 10%.

_Background:_
An Elf born on Earth, not the Faerie Realm, Galindrel was pushed by his family to join the Bureau at an early age. As a Bureau member, he could enjoy freedom on Earth or the Faerie Realm, without being as monitored by the Bureau as most magi on Earth are. He is mostly a relaxed agent, having worked with the Bureau for twenty years without actually advancing his status or skill.


*High Fantasy Taxonomy:*
For the past two centuries, humans aware of magi have labored to catalog the different types of magical creatures of the world, in effort to understand whether they are truly natural (in which case they do not fit with the current standing theory of evolution), or if they are the result of magic and do not fit into the normal ecosystem.  After much consideration, they have come to a general consensus that chooses not to make value judgments, and instead simply says that there is more than one type of life, though evidence suggests that magical life is not the product of Darwinian evolution.

Firstly, we can divide all creatures into Living and Non-living.  In the branch of living, we have MAGICAL LIFE and MUNDANE LIFE, and then among the non-living we have UNDEAD and ANIMATED creatures (things like golems).  There is speculation of whether to add a fifth distinction for creatures from other planes, such as demons and angels.  These OUTSIDERS, as they are called by some, are not known definitively to exist, and most scholars believe that entities historically believed to have been devils or angels were usually just Unseelie or Seelie fey, or any manner of magical beasts

*Magical Life*
Rather than define MAGICAL LIFE into Kingdoms, Phylums, Classes, etc., we have Elementals, Magical Creatures, Dragons, and Magi as the main sub-categories.  All magical creatures in these groups share major traits, regardless of their exact appearances.  

In game terms, all Magical Life has an additional type modifier of (magical), such as a fire elemental being a “Medium-Size Elemental (fire, magical)”.  This extra descriptor has major effects when 

*Dragons* are fairly self explanatory, but one misconception must be cleared up.  There can be only sentient Dragons (like most Oriental ones, plus a few Norse Dragons). Non-sentient creatures that we might call Dragons (like wyverns and Hungarian Razorbacks) are more properly categorized under Magical Creatures.  We make the differentiation because of the effect Dragons, and only Dragons, have on other magical creatures.  All Dragons have the creature type Dragon.

*Elementals* are almost mostly self explanatory, except that in addition to traditional ‘pure’ elementals, arabian genies also fill this category.  However, creatures like sylphs (air sprites) or nereids (water sprites) would fall under the category of Magi (Fey, in particular).  Elementals can be either sentient or non-sentient.  They are not quite living in the sense that animals or plants are, since they have non-standard anatomies, but they do heal and can grow, unlike UNDEAD or ANIMATED creatures.  All elementals have the creature type Elemental.

*Magical Creatures* include all types of non-sentient lifeforms that have innate magical abilities, or that are native uniquely to Gaia.  This includes things such as Hydrae, Shambling Mounds, Sea Serpents, Rocs, and Basilisks.  Plus it also covers all manner of seelie and unseelie beasts, like dark wolves or fey ponies.  Most creatures of this type have the Magical Beast creature type, but some are Aberrations, Beasts, Oozes, Plants, Shapechangers, or Vermin.

Note:  In this taxonomy, wyverns are non-sentient Beasts, not Dragons.

*Magi*.  Magi are any of the sentient magical creatures that have proper anatomies and are not Dragons.  Among Magi, there are numerous small sub-categories that are either so rare or so similar that it's not worth defining them (though a few examples are treants, giants, gorgons, naga, true lycanthropes, and illithids).  The only large subcategory is that of the Fey. 

Fey are the vaguely-humanoid magi that most of us are familiar with, but with a diversity ranging from Gremlins and Goblins or Ogres and Trolls, through standards like Elves and Brownies or exotics like the Skinwalker or Wendigo, all the way up to the High Fey (like the legendary Titania and Oberon).  All magi can be recognized as having vaguely human-like shapes, which leads most human scholars to arrogantly claim that humanity is the primary form of life, and magi mere imitations.  Most fey scholars would counter by saying that humans are weak amalgamations of the awesome diversity of fey, stripped of any true power. 

Among the fey, we have three primary groups, each defined by their natural magical ability and capability to bond with spirits.  These three groups—High Fey, Middle Fey, and Low Fey—contain most of the key players in the world's mythology.


_High Fey_ have diverse natural magical abilities that require no training to control or develop.  Though they can freely take levels in magical classes, most do not, simply because they find their natural powers enough.  High Fey are typically very malleable of shape, often able to change their appearance or disappear entirely.  These abilities are due to their powerful magical nature, which makes their body secondary to their magical spirits.  As such, High Fey cannot bond with ghosts.  High Fey might be immortal, though records to confirm or deny this theory are scant. 

Sample High Fey include the true Faeries, nymphs, dryads, the Yuki-on-na from Asia, and the wide variety of elemental sprites—pechs, salamanders, sylphs, and nereids.  All High Fey have the ‘Fey’ creature type.
_Middle Fey_ are the fey with which humans most commonly interact, at least in the Bureau.  They do not have innate magical powers of their own, but can take spellcasting classes freely.  However, because their nature is inherently magical, they cannot bond with spirits.  Middle Fey are characterized by a blending of the powers of magic and the powers of their physical forms. 

Sample Middle Fey include Elves, Goblins, Trolls, and Brownies.  Middle Fey have the creature type Humanoid.
_Low Fey_ typically fit the Scandinavian mental image of magical creatures.  Though they have access to powers unnatural to humans, they are not themselves inherently magical.  They can freely take levels in spellcasting classes, without needing to bond with a spirit.  However, they can bond with spirits if they wish.  Low Fey rely almost exclusively on their natural physical forms unless they go to the effort to learn magic. 

Sample Low Fey include Centaurs, Dwarves, Orcs, Ogres, and Gremlins.  Low Fey have the creature type Humanoid.
 

*MUNDANE LIFE*
Mundane life consists of the creatures native of Terra, none of which have natural magical powers.  They can only access their magical powers if they bond with a spirit, or if they study magic rigorously in order to change their body's connection with Gaia, and as far as we know, humans are the only mundane life capable of doing either.  All mundane life has the creature type of either Animal, Plant, Vermin, or Humanoid (human).  

Mundane creatures can be altered to have magic within them, such as being turned to vampires or lycanthropes.  In these cases, the soul of the individual remains the same, and it is only the body that changes.  Thus, it is possible to have goodly and moral vampires.  Their creature type changes from Humanoid (human) to the appropriate Undead or Shapechanger, but they do not gain the type modifier (magical).


*UNDEAD*
Undead are defined as any animate creature that is non-living (it has no functional anatomy), but was living at one time.  Within UNDEAD there are two main categories—corporeal and spiritual.  Corporeal undead include vampires, zombies, skeletons, and a few more bizarre types, while spiritual undead include Ghosts (sentient uneasy spirits), Spirits (sentient bonded spirits), and Wraiths and Poltergeists (sentient uneasy spirits that no longer remember who they are; poltergeists are simple apparitions, while wraiths prey upon the living).  All such creatures have the creature type Undead.


*ANIMATED*
Animated creatures are defined as any animate creature that has no functional anatomy and that never was living.  All such creatures have the creature type Construct, and the type modifier (magical).


*Changes to Creature Type From the Monster Manual*
The following creatures have had their creature type changed in a substantial way.  This list is not to be considered complete, as our understanding of the nature of life is ever-evolving.

Celestials, Demons, Devils, and other Outsiders do not exist.  Though it is well known that demonic entities exist, and that apparently divine miracles do occur, such entities remain an unknown.  Summoning spells either create an equivalent creature out of pure magical energy, or conjure a creature with the Seelie Beast or Unseelie Beast template from the Fey Realm.
Genies have the creature type Elemental instead of Outsider.
Ogres have the creature type Humanoid (ogre) instead of Giant.
Trolls have the creature type Humanoid (troll) instead of Giant.
Wyverns have the creature type Beast instead of Dragon.  They have a 2 Intelligence.
 

*Draconic Auras of Power:*
The ‘Dragonfear’ presented in standard D20 rules for Dragons is a misinterpretation of the true nature of Dragons.  Indeed, one rarely sees heroes in dragonslaying literature even sweat at the sight of a terrifying Dragon, let alone become shaken.  Instead, consider that in such stories, rarely does a magic-user confront the Dragon.  Rather, it is the warrior who lays upon the beast, defeating it in deadly physical combat.

All magical creatures—creatures with the type modifier (magical)—have innate auras of magic, tied to the magic of Gaia.  It is the unique property of Dragons that _their_ auras are expansive, extending far from their actual bodies.  Their auras can burst out from them like a dam breaking its walls, and the resulting flood of energy can metaphorically flood the auras of surrounding magical creatures.

Rather than having a Frightful Presence ability, Dragons have the Aura of Power ability.  Once per day per age category, they can unleash their auras, drowning out the auras of other magic-users around them.  This aura burst has the same area of effect and saving throw as Frightful Presence, but its effects are quite different.  Additionally, the effect this aura has differs between humans and other magic-using creatures.

_Humans and Draconic Auras:_  Human souls operate slightly differently from the souls of magical creatures, if for no other reason than that magic is not inherently in their veins.  Only humans who have magical abilities can be affected by the Draconic Aura of Power.  Any human with a magic-using class—Adept, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Psion, Psychic Warrior, Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard, and various prestige classes—that fails his Will save against the Aura of Power ability temporarily loses access to his magical abilities.  

For a wizard, monk, psion, or psychic warrior, or for a creature like a lycanthrope or undead, who only has a connection to the magic of Gaia, and is not inherently magical, the energy from Draconic Aura takes the place of their normal magic, much as an ocean tide can flow upstream and oversalinate riverwaters.  Since they cannot control the energy from the Draconic Aura, they cannot use any magic.  For characters who are bonded to spirits, it is actually the spirits who are affected, and if the spirit cannot access magic, it cannot pass it on to the person to whom it has bonded.  However, the spirit uses its bonded counterpart’s Will saving throw bonus to determine whether its magic is overridden.

This temporary disruption of magic lasts for one round per three age categories of the Dragon, during which time the magic-user (and his bonded spirit, if he has one) feels uncomfortable, as if a great weight were pressing down upon him.

_Magical Creatures and Draconic Auras:_  For all creatures with the type modifier (magical)—basically any creature that is native to Gaia or that was magically created.  If the magical creature fails its Will save, it is stunned for 4d6 rounds.

Note that Draconic Auras have no effect on any magic item unless specifically mentioned otherwise, as they are not creatures in any sense, and their magic is confined.  Some rare items, however, have been designed to absorb the power of a Draconic aura, and these are highly prized by human magic-users wishing to confront a Dragon in combat.


----------



## RangerWickett (Jan 26, 2002)

*Chapter Seven:  The Tower of the Dragon*

June 4, 2000

While the rest of the group investigates Max Dorman, aka Dornankanir, in Savannah, the Bureau assigns Tagin-Eve to a clean-up job abroad.  Hong Kong.

Two days ago, Giriuko, the Dragon publicly known as Hong Kong millionaire Li Tsi Tong, was assassinated in her private offices on the 70th floor of her Hong Kong corporate skyscraper.  The place was a wreck, charred by intense-heat burns in swaths across the walls and floor in addition to what appears to be frost damage on parts of the furniture.  The only bloodstains are Draconic in origin, and security cameras in the lobby outside her office do not show anyone entering or exiting, only odd flashes through the cracks in the door.  Obviously, anyone who was able to slaughter a Gold Dragon in her den without receiving any serious wounds is a serious threat not only to innocents, but also to the secrecy that keeps magi from the eyes of normals.  

Fortunately Tagin will not have to worry about the attacker.  With his mind-boggling hacking skills (a total bonus of +17 with unfamiliar systems: +5 skill ranks, +1 Intelligence, +3 Skill Emphasis, +2 synergy bonus from Disable Device, +2 synergy bonus from Knowledge (computers), +4 from Magic Touch feat), Tagin’s job is to liquidate Giriuko’s assets.  As the Chieft jokingly explains to Tagin, the Bureau needs to get its funding from some place, doesn’t it?  Her actual hoard has yet to be located, and that’s mostly what the Bureau is looking for, but if the ‘Clean-up and Redistribution’ team can send some actual cash at the Bureau, all the better.  It is a bit of a dirty practice in human eyes, but has become the standard for Bureau business.

Tagin-Eve will be working with two other Bureau agents, neither of them knights.  The term ‘Knight’ is used to denote someone who might be able to hold his or her own in combat against a magi, and neither of his co-workers meet this criterion.  The first is Brian Greenman, who upon meeting Tagin immediately mentions that he knows Tagin’s “buddy,” Finagle.

Tagin smiles sarcastically:  “Yeah, I’ve already held him at gunpoint once.  I hope you and I can be buddies too.”

The other agent who he’ll be working with is Dalavar Keneil, a half-Elf who’s been with the Bureau pretty much since birth.  He’s a telepath, trained by Autumn Yeiotana, though nowhere near her power.  Tagin asks Neil what they need a telepath for, and Dalavar nervously replies that he’ll make sure no one sees them as they sneak into the most secret locations of a high-security skyscraper.  

Then their fourth ‘teammate’ makes his appearance, commenting that if Tagin and Brian were foolish enough to think they’re just creep their way into a skyscraper owned by a paranoid dragon, then they should leave most of the thinking to Dalavar.  The insult doesn’t actually reach their ears, but instead creeps into their head like something wet and heavy.  They all turn to see the BMM’s head telepath Yondo J’Qwuan, who normally resembles something out of the Cthulhu mythos.  Much to their surprise, instead looking all purply-green and tentacley, he just looks like a severe-faced Chinese human, still dressed in a business-suit.

Again, J’Qwuan seems to telepathically mutter that they were stupid enough to think an Illithid would go out in public without a disguise . . . but they couldn’t hear exactly what he said, so the two humans let it pass.  

J’Qwuan will transport them to Hong Kong, then discreetly scan for any powerful magicks, and alert the rest of the group if anything approaches that might threaten them.  Additionally, J’Qwuan will alter the memories of Giriuko’s most highly-trusted business partners to make sure they don’t get the foolish notion that their CEO was a Gold Dragon.  Meanwhile, Dalavar and the two hackers—Brian and Tagin—will enter discreetly into the building and ascend to the 65th floor where the main business suites were.  Dalavar will use his mental powers to make sure no one sees them.  Once they’re inside the office, Tagin and Brian will hack into the system and get the job done.

‘Why two hackers with only one telepath watching their backs?’ Tagin wonders silently, to which J’Qwuan replies telepathically that he trusts any magi at least twice as much as he trusts any mundane.  To accentuate his point, he hands Dalavar a light sword, leaving the two hackers with only pistols (and Tagin’s switchblade).

One more admonishment before they leave.  J’Qwuan warns Dalavar not to go near the crime scene.  A powerful enough magical aura can shut down another magi’s powers, and even the residue of a Dragon’s aura can be dangerous.


[Meta:  This adventure resulted because Chad, Tagin’s player, missed the previous adventuring session.  I believe it turned out to be one of the coolest sessions we ever ran.  Jessie, our DM, had already introduced the hacker Brian to Finagle, so everything just clicked when she realized she had to run a solo adventure with Tagin-Eve.  For this adventure, I jumped into the side-seat and roleplayed Brian Greenman, while the player who normally portrayed Cai just sat in for the hell of it.  

Since we ran this game before we knew about the commoner and expert clases in the DM’s Guide, Brian happened to be a 0th level character.  Yay me.]


The party uses a key to get into Hong Kong, in an alley behind a Buddhist shrine in a shadier district of town.  Casually, arogantly, J’Qwuan leads them through the streets toward downtown.  Dalavar tries to get to know the two hackers by showing how he can make people stop looking at them.  He points to a couple of prostitutes on a corner looking at them, and then with a grin from Dalavar, the two oriental women just turn and look away.

Brian comments that it was probably just Neil’s smile that made them look away, but Tagin remains silent.  He’s used to people not looking at him, and he’s been able to pull it off without magic.  He remains silently unimpressed through the rest of the walk/ride (Brian whined that his feet hurt and asked if they could take a cab), until they reach the tower of Li Tsi Tong.  They walk through the doors as if invisible; everyone looking away at just the right moment to never see them.  Once inside, the three mammals and the squid-guy part ways, taking separate elevators.

They reach the 65th floor, and casually walk into a small archipelago of offices.  A discreet telepathic scan of a security guard reveals which room they want, and Dalavar leads them into a wide office stretching across one side of the building.  The blinds on the windows are parted enough to fill the room with dim light, revealing ornate decorations.  This is apparently Li Tsi Tong’s own office, and the walls are decorated with Chinese-character wall scrolls and Japanese paintings, a few ubiquitous potted plants in elaborate vases that sit in the corners, and a full set of Samurai armor that stands mounted slightly behind and to the side of the main computer terminal.  While Brian practically drools over the oriental artifacts in the room (“Whoa, look!  A rice-paper Chinese Zodiac!”), Tagin sits at the desk and examines the currently shut-off computer.  

It’s a Pentium III, high quality, hooked up via ethernet cable.  The keyboard is in Chinese, which he hadn’t considered ahead of time.  He plans to rely on handy Windows icons to help him locate a DOS shell, and he’ll work from there.  

The screen boots up to an “Enter password”-style window, only the text is in Chinese, and there appears to be a clock ticking backward, with about a minute left.  On either side of the screen, two gold Dragons stretch languidly in traditional Chinese style.  Certainly not something your typical “Enter Network Password.”

Brian briefly panics, but after a quick argument, Tagin’s cool head convinces them to not try to unplug it, so Dalavar runs over, memorizes the characters, runs to the door, and establishes a link with one of the guards, trying to use the guard’s knowledge of Chinese, and his own ability to translate thoughts, to figure out what the prompt is asking.  With about 15 seconds left, Dalavar shouts back to them that it says,

“Twelve arrive, twelve are blessed.  Enter the date.”

Tagin throws his hands up in the air.  “Great job.  Like I know what the hell _that_ means.”

With about five seconds left, Tagin types a few random keys on what would normally be the numeral line, then clicks what he guesses is ‘Enter.’

The screen flashes briefly and the two gold Dragons turn their gaze out at Tagin, through the screen.  Their eyes flare an angry red, and Tagin and Brian feel themselves perfectly caught up by that hypnotic gaze . . . when Dalavar shouts, “Look out!”

Snapping out of their momentary daze, Tagin and Brian see a shadow coming up from behind them, falling across the desk.  Twirling around, Tagin sees the suit of samurai armor drawing its katana.  The face of the helmet is covered with a fearsome mask, and after a moment of abject terror, Tagin is able to leap away just in time to avoid a downward slice from the katana.  The blade cuts straight through the modern plastic desk, and the unfazed samurai drops into a fighting stance, facing Tagin.

Tagin draws his pistol, but Dalavar says as loudly as he dares not to shoot, since he can’t block that much noise telepathically.  Cursing, Tagin-Eve takes a few steps back and draws his switchblade, trying to keep the desk between him and the samurai.

Meanwhile, Brian babbles incoherently for a few moments, saying they should have found out what the date was from the guards, and now Tagin’s gone and gotten them all killed and he’s never going to get to play D&D third edition when it really looked cool from what he saw online, and how he’s never going to ever want to play a game in an Oriental setting because he doesn’t understand what the heck these stupid squiggly lines on the keyboard mean.  

Tagin tumbles out of the way of a high cut, but a low slash catches him on the shoulder and digs deep.  He comes to his feet grimacing in pain, almost staggering into a glass display case as he tries to keep away from the armor.  He shouts for Brian to shut up and give him some help.

Dalavar, sifting from Brian’s incoherent ramblings a piece of actual advice, gets as far away from the samurai armor as possible, then closes his eyes, concentrating on the guards outside.  Brian, meanwhile, yanks a lamp off the desk and hurls it at the armor.  As the lamp was still plugged in, its flight is aborted as soon as its cord runs out.  

Tagin feints a leap backward, then tumbles to the armor’s side and around its back, then stabs his switchblade into where a kidney oughta be.  Not surprisingly, the armor doesn’t notice, and instead just backhands Tagin in the face, knocking him away.  

Dalavar’s eyes flutter open, and he inches around the samurai/hacker battle to get to the keyboard.  Brian’s about to throw the monitor at the suit of armor when Dalavar bends over the keyboard and types several keys, muttering “June 4th, 2000” under his breath.  Then he clicks enter.

The screen flashes again, but Dalavar averts his eyes.  Judging by the sound of Tagin scrambling across the carpet away from the still-active armor, Dalavar guesses that “June 4th, 2000,” is not the right answer.

Tagin moves backward toward the full-length window, making a few threats at the samurai armor in an attempt to goad it into charging him, but apparently the animated armor is wiser than Tagin, because it instead feints with a downward chop, then sweeps Tagin off his feet with a low kick.  Tagin is barely able to avoid getting his leg severed as he leaps away.  

“Dalavar, don’t you have a stupid sword?!  Kill this thing!”

“I’m busy,” the telepath replies cooly, again closing his eyes and focusing on the guards outside.

Finally getting his panic under control, Brian yanks the arcane blade’s hilt out of the half-Elf’s pocket and rushes at the armor, igniting the blade and filling the room with an emerald glow for a moment before the magic fades into the form of a broadsword.  Since the armor’s back is turned, Brian bravely swings to slash at it.  The weapon digs into the armor at the back, above the hips, cutting through and into the hollow interior.  With lightning reaction, the armor whirls around and bats the exposed end of the arcane sword’s hilt with the back of its katana, flipping around and slashing at Brian’s hand to cause him to lose control of the blade and drop it.  Cursing, Brian staggers away, biting his lip as he stares at the armor’s snarling mask.

The armor makes two quick slices, but Brian reveals that he is much faster than one would expect for such a pudgy guy.  So fast, in fact, that he staggers backward into the glass display case he’d been admiring earlier for its Zodiac wall scroll.  He lightly cracks the glass, but, still panicking, he turns and tries to keep running.  

“Dammit, Neil!” Tagin shouts as he leaps upon the armor’s back, tackling it.  He kicks it in the back of its knee, and the armor begins to fall, but as they go down, the samurai spins so Tagin lands on the bottom.  

“Neil!  Do something constructive, okay?!”

Breaking out of his concentration, apparently unsuccessful, Dalavar Kineil glances about, then grabs a vase and heaves it off the ground, trying to get close enough to smash the armor.  Meanwhile, the armor hits Tagin in the face with its elbow, then rolls over and pins the hacker at the legs and throat.  

Brian, who in his panic has been staring dead into a zodiac wall scroll for 10 seconds, gasps and then shouts, “I got it!”

Just as the armor is about to take a lengthwise slash across Tagin’s neck, Brian runs past it toward the desk, stumbling over one of the armor’s legs.  Brian keeps running, but in that moment, one of Tagin’s legs was free.  Hooking his leg up and around the armor’s back, he leverages sideways and flips them over to put the armor on the bottom of the pile.  Free from the armor’s pin, Tagin kicks away just as a katana slices through where his throat should have been.  The armor begins to get up, when a massive Chinese vase crashes atop its chest, knocking it to the floor.  

With a few moments’ respite, Tagin runs over to the arcane broadsword and grabs it, yelling at Brian to tell them what he’s doing.

“Enter the date, right?  Twelve arrive and bless?  It’s the zodiac!”

Tagin gives a shrugging nod in agreement as the samurai armor does a dramatic martial arts kick-flip to its feet.  As Tagin and the Samurai armor circle, swords pointed at each other, Tagin nervously asks, “Yeah?  And you’re going to start typing _when?_”

“Well, by the Chinese zodiac, it’s the year of the Dragon.”  Grinning at his own greatness, Brian sits down at the desk.  

Dalavar steps away and closes his eyes, saying, “I’ll find out what ‘Dragon’ is in Chinese.”

As Tagin shows his true colors by ducking when the Samurai swings at him, Brian shouts to Neil, “Nah, don’t bother.  I got it.  I have _more_ than enough Chinese Magic cards.”

With a few quick keystrokes, Brian types in “Dragon” in Chinese, then clicks enter.  The samurai, its sword raised to behead Tagin, stops.  It takes a step back, wipes the blood from its sword, and sheathes the weapon, then bows to Tagin.  

Tagin looks up sheepishly, watching as the animated warrior takes its place back at the stand.  A few breaths of relief pass, and then Tagin nods his thanks to Brian.  Brian grins back, and then turns his attention to the screen as Windows loads fully.  Before the fat, roleplaying hacker can get a chance, though, Tagin comes up beside him and ousts him from the chair, saying to let him handle this.  As Tagin hacks his way into the system and changes the language standard to English, downloading a translation program from the net, etc., he graciously thanks Dalavar for getting them into that mess.

For Dalavar, it’s all he can do to sweep up the dirt and plant pottings off the floor, hoping to leave little trace of their presence.  Brian gives the suggestion to dump the dust down the slit he cut in the armor’s back, so as Dalavar, Tagin, and Brian leave the office half an hour later, they leave the estate of Li Tsi Tong a few million dollars poorer, but with a lovely suit of samurai armor, filled with a fern.

The trio load into an elevator, and as the doors close Dalavar’s finger hovers over the button for the Lobby floor.  Then, looking upward at the ceiling as if in a daze, Dalavar presses button 70.

Brian coughs nervously, glancing at Dalavar.  “What are you doin’, man?”

Tagin says, “Neil, don’t screw something else up, okay?  Let’s just leave.”

Shaking his head, Dalavar gestures upward with a nod of his head.  “No, I just have this feeling.  I want to check it out.  It might be important.”

Brian, shaking his head vigorously, half-shouts, “No man.  This is like some kind of bad horror film.  Like, ‘Press 70 for DEATH!”  Think, man!  You’re freaked out.  We can’t trust you.”  He turns to Tagin. “You know we can’t trust him, don’t you?”

With a soft toll, the elevator doors open, and without further ado, the telepath—their shield—walks out into the 70th floor lobby.  With no other choice, the two hackers follow Neil to the doors of Giriuko’s private room.  Dalavar, again in a daze, reaches out and pulls open the door, but before they can reveal more than a peek of the room beyond, Dalavar’s eyes roll back into his head, and he crumples to the floor.

Tagin and Brian both try to get as small as possible, as quick as possible, but the various guards stationed on the floor spot them suddenly, and they don’t take kindly to intruders.  Leveling small arms at the two white men, they rush to surround them, barking orders in Chinese.  Guessing their intent, Tagin and Brian raise their hands in the air and try to look as innocent as possible, as quick as possible.  

Then, to their side they hear a door click at the edge of the lobby, and the guards suddenly shrug and turn to look away, going back to business as usual.  After a moment’s confusion, the two agents look at the fire stairs and see J’Qwuan walking into the room, his head raised haughtily above them.  He stops a few dozen feet away and telepathically asks them to shut the door to the Dragon’s room.  That done, the two hackers drag Neil to the fire stairs, and once away from the aura of the dead Dragon, Dalavar slowly recovers.  Afraid to let them take the elevator again, J’Qwuan orders them all to walk down the stairs, and so for 69 flights, Tagin shares every insult he can think of with Neil, until by about the 68th floor Brian has to tell Tagin to chill.

“C’mon man.  He’s a telepath.  Haven’t you ever seen Babylon 5?  You don’t mess with them.  Just lay off.  He knows he did wrong, but it’s cool now, right?”

The SCAD student remains silent and makes the rest of them ignore him for the rest of the trip back to the departure spot.  The mission was a success, if a bit of a fiasco, and things get even worse when they reach the alley to teleport back.  A group of local teenagers are hanging out in the alley, spraying it with graffiti.  There are too many for J'Qwuan to charm them all into leaving, so the Illithid has to find a payphone to call the Bureau.

Tagin grumbles and says that he’s going to get a cel phone first thing when they get back stateside.

While J’Qwuan makes the call, Tagin and Brian both notice that across the street is a high-tech, sort of technobrothel, the latest craze in techno-savvy Hong Kong.  A soft, sweet singing reaches their ears, and ignoring their commanding officer, the two weak-willed hackers stride through the doors into the club, followed a moment later by an alarmed Dalavar Kineil.

The singing guides the two Americans through the crowd until they reach an exotic dancer draped with a feathery shawl, dancing erotically around a pole while jarring techno beats fill the air.  Tagin and Brian stare at her beauty gape-jawed, until Dalavar comes up behind them and slaps them both across their heads.  

“Sure,” Dalavar says, “she’s sexy now, but how about when I dispel the charm she put over you?”

Annoyed that the half-Elf interrupted their viewing, Tagin and Brian look back up, but now see that the feather shawl is actually real feathers growing from the slightly-misshappen woman.  

Staring knowingly up at the woman, Dalavar remarks into the hackers’ ears, “A siren.  Good job guys.  You’re probably the first idiots since Odysseus to avoid getting eaten by one of them.”

The siren looks down at them, sneering at Dalavar.  She calls over to her boss in Chinese and then steps down off the dancing dais to stand beside the agents.  With a strange accent in her voice, she tells them she has something important to share about the killer they’re looking for.  

“Interests” perked, the agents follow the swaying hips of . . . err, follow the siren into her dressing room, where she locks the door for privacy.  Dalavar remains on guard, entirely certain she’s just trying to trick them again.

Her feathers ruffling softly over the distant noise of the techno music, the Siren says, “I’m not going to kill you.  I don’t need meat, do I?  Your agency so nicely gives me animal meat to dine on.  Frankly, I miss the old ways.  Days when Dragons weren’t dead.  Things were nicer then.”

They notice that she seems to stare off a bit into space when she talks, but she seems to speak English well enough, even though she’s not making much sense.  They prompt her to go on about the killer.

Siren:  “He came in here after he killed the lizard.  I think he wanted to kill me, but things were too public for his tastes.  I would have killed him, but he was already dead, and it wouldn’t have done any good.”

Confused looks pass among the agents.

The Siren sighs and walks out into the hallways, motioning for them to follow her as she heads toward an alley exit.  “He wants to be like a legend, but all the legends are dead.  He wants to be like the Archangel, battling his Dragon in the Apocalypse.”

Tagin frowns at the Christian symbolism.  “I thought Sirens were Greek.”

“My family converted a long time ago,” the Siren answers, actually lucid briefly.

Brian says, “Well, that explains you knowing Christian stuff, but what about you being here in China?”

The Siren growls in frustration.  “Your agency told me to get a job if I wanted to live on Terra.  Told me they’d keep an eye on me.  They keep an eye on every magi that walks your ‘Earth.’  But humans. . . .  Humans they don’t mind.  I don’t mind humans either.”

Brian smiles dumbly.

Siren:  “What I mind is the nasty fake meat you give me to eat.  My kind _do not_ eat animal flesh.  Our nature cannot be held back forever.  Your killer knows that, and that’s why he wanted to kill me.  Why he did kill the lizard.”

Tagin shrugs at Brian, still confused.  “So . . . you were saying that the killer is dead.  What do you mean, dead?”

Having reached the alleyway behind the club, they stop.  The siren points across the street, to where J’Qwuan, still disguised as a human, is making a phone call.

Chuckling, she points a feather-rimmed hand toward the Illithid.  “Must be hard to make a phone call without lips.  I imagine he just gurgles into it.”

Tagin snorts a little, and Brian laughs, pretending to be a phone operator:  “Oh, it’s J’Qwuan.  Hello sir.  Are you alright?  One blbopbpoblalp for yes.  Two blbopbpoblalps for no. . . .  Wait, was that two, or just one long blbopbpoblalp?”

The siren shakes her head and hums a little ditty, walking down the street toward the nearby river while Dalavar tries to make sure no one sees them.  They follow out of curiosity for nearly a minute, while all the siren does is hum softly as she strolls toward the bridge that spans the river.  This late at night there’s barely any car traffic, and so the Siren is able to stop in the middle of the road, on a part of the bridge where the shore is still beneath them, some thirty feet below.  She walks to the railing, glances down curiously, then leans her back on the railing.

Staring at them, she addresses Tagin.  “You know, skinny one, you’d taste good.  But I can’t do that.  That would hurt the humans.  Scare them.  Yes, your agency doesn’t mind the humans.  But they can’t hold back my nature forever.  The whole world is rebelling.”

Brian looks around in boredom.  “Yeah yeah.  So, . . . who’s the killer?  He talked to you?”

Siren:  “He’s dead.”

A pause, and then Tagin chuckles.  “Yeah, a _buddy_ of mine shot him as he ran away from another Dragon he killed.  But you said he was already dead.”

The Siren shrugs, her feathers rustling.  “I can’t live like this.  My kind have lived on your ‘Earth’ since the Greeks, but now we are forced to either go away, or live in the walls you make for us.  We are numbered, ordered, told what to do.  Our lives are owned by you.

“Ahh,” she pauses, eyes frighteningly wide as she lolls her head from side to side, “but _he_ was already dead, and he helped the lizard stop living this lie.  Stop living with hunger repressed, urges controlled.  I should have let him end this lie for me when I saw him.”

Brian realizes she’s about to jump just before she spins and vaults over the railing.  He grabs her foot, and Tagin grabs Brian around the waist, but then against his will, Brian feels his fingers opening, releasing his grip.  The Siren plummets to the rocks below and lands with a crack.  

Brian whirls around to Dalavar, then sees J’Qwuan coming up behind him, dark in the dim lights of the bridge.  J’Qwuan states that it was her wish to die, so he forced Brian to let go and grant her that desire.  Brian begins to shout at the Mind Flayer, but J’Qwuan ignores the complaint, saying that he was able to glean a few things from her mind before it died, while her defenses were down.

Brian gapes in disgust.  “You’re a monster!  You let her die just so you could. . . .  That’s revolting!”

J’Qwuan glares down at Brian.  “You’re just a desk worker.  Don’t talk up to me.”

Brian shakes his head, his expression livid.  “Oh, I’m not talking up to you.  I’m talking _down_ to you, because you’re just scum on the ground, you brain-sucking squid-faced Monster Manual reje-”

[Meta:  At this moment, Jessie, the DM, put a hand over my mouth to shut me up.  She then said, “When Brian wakes up a few seconds later, he pushes himself off the pavement, and J’Qwuan turns silently to head back to the gate back to the Bureau.”]

Apparently the Bureau’s chief telepath considers insubordination a pet peeve.  Sure, Brian has just received the worst ice cream head-ache of his life, but it felt dang good to get that off his chest.  He even caught Tagin smirking later in pride, so Brian took a liking to Tagin.  Tagin just said it was funny that Brian just passed out in mid-sentence.

Having Dalavar call this time, they get someone to come pick them up, and to recover the Siren’s body.  They make it back slightly after the knights in Savannah return from wrecking Dornankanir’s house, and are debriefed by the Chief, then scanned by Autumn Yeiotana to make sure they weren’t charmed.

As Brian and Tagin leave the examination room, waving goodbye to Autumn, J’Qwuan glides in, greeted by sneers from both hackers.



[Meta:  So, Tagin, for once, had to be heroic and take center stage.  Brian actually grew a backbone, much to my delight as his part-time player.  And both of them found a friend, though Tagin refused to admit it.  

In hindsight, that riddle’s answer should’ve been patently obvious (I even had a “Year of the Dragon” desktop wallpaper from WotC’s website), but it sure felt gratifying to get it right.

Oh yeah, and we were still confused as hell as to how the killer could have been dead, when we had just seen him all bright and chipper running away from a crime scene a few nights earlier.  Stay tuned.]


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## RangerWickett (Jan 26, 2002)

*Balthazar Mordred:*  Male human Ftr9; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 10d10+30; hp 94; Init +3; Spd 30 ft.; AC 17 (+3 Dex, +4 Defensive Cloak); Atk masterwork arcane longsword +13 melee (1d8+3/crit 19/x2), or masterwork silvered shortsword +13 (1d6+3/crit 19/x2), or stake +12 melee (1d3+3/crit x3), or stake +10 ranged (1d3+3/crit x3), or automatic pistol +10 ranged (1d10/crit x3), or throwing knives (5) +10 ranged (1d4+3/crit 19/x2); SV Fort +9, Ref +4, Will +7; Str 16, Dex 12, Con 17, Int 14, Wis 15, Cha 13.

_Skills and Feats:_ Climb +7, Intimidate +5, Jump +9, Knowledge (religion) +8, Listen +14, Search +8, Speak Language (Latin, German), Spot +14, Wilderness Lore +4; Deflect Mind, Dodge, Iron Will, Mobility, Point-blank Shot, Precise Shot, Ranged Disarm, Rapid Shot, Shot on the Run, Track.
Note:  All Knowledge skills and Speak Language are class skills for Balthazar because of his Classical Liberal Arts education.  Listen and Spot are Balthazar’s floating class skills.


_Background:_
Balthazar Mordred was attending a private school outside London the night of a vampire attack.  At a surprisingly young age, Balthazar saw a vampire for the first time, when it killed one of the headmasters of the school.  No one else saw what happened to the priest, and Balthazar’s accusations were little more than laughable, so he kept his knowledge secret for years.  He graduated in the middle of his class, not extrememly smart, but excellent in the outdoors activities.  Several days after graduation, a Knight arrived, there to reinvestigate the case.  Balthazar was among the curious who tried not to look like they were watching the man at work, but he was the only one to recognize some of the tools the Knight was carrying:  holy water, a variety of holy symbols, wooden stakes, and a hammer.  He knew then that he was right about that night almost five years before.

Balthazar kept his eyes on the Knight, and the Knight continued on with his business, neither of them expecting the murderer to return to the scene of the crime.  However, the vampire responsible for the murder was extremely old and canny, and it knew that the Knight returning to investigate meant attention might be drawn to him.  Late into the evening, as the Knight was sifting through the offices of the various professors, he was attacked.  Balthazar, who had been following out of sight, recognized the vampire as his Latin professor.  The knight was caught off guard, and he fell to the vampire’s attack.

Desperately, Balthazar grabbed a janitorial bucket of water and splashed it at the vampire’s feet.  Momentarily over running water—one of the weaknesses of vampires—it was vulnerable, and Balthazar wrestled the beast to the ground and impaled it in the heart with a wooden stake from the knight.  Then, disgusted at the deed he would have to perform, he broke into a fire alarm panel, took the axe, and beheaded the vampire.

When school officials arrived to the sounds of the fire alarm, they found two bodies and Balthazar, drenched in blood and rain from the sprinklers.  He ran, not knowing how to explain the scene, and he was rescued by a team of five other Knights who had not arrived in time to save their co-worker, but in ample time to clean the scene.  Impressed with the young man’s unrefined skill, the Knights offered Balthazar a place as a vampire-slayer, and though he had to give up his former life, he has been a Knight ever since.


*Blood of the High Fey Template:*
The magical nature of the High Fey allows them to crossbreed with virtually any humanoid creature. This occasionally occurs after a mortal has been enticed or charmed into the Faerie Realms, where he or she lives in timeless pleasure until the whim of the Fey determines it is time for the outsider to go back to Terra, though most often it is simply a High Fey bedding with a Middle or Low Fey.  Most half-fey children are born in the Faerie Realm to dryads, nymphs, or other feminine spirits, but sometimes women emerge from Gaia pregnant with half-Satyr children, or a nymph might remain on Terra long enough to bear the child of a handsome human lover.

Feyblood children always appear more exotic and magical than their mortal counterparts, occasionally more fragile, but charged with the enchanting power of their fey blood. Even people with a Fey ancestor retain the same otherworldly appearance.  Their appearance usually betrays their nature—flawless skin for nymph blood, shaggy legs and subtle horns for the son of a satyr, leaves constantly stuck in the hair of the daughter of a dryad, and almost always very vivid, piercing eyes.

*Creating a Blood of the High Fey character:*
“Blood of the High Fey” is a template that can be added to any Humanoid or Monstrous Humanoid (referred to hereafter as the “base creature”). The creature type changes to “Fey.”  It uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here. 

Special Attacks: A High Feyblood character retains all the special attacks of the base creature and also gains the following.
_Fey Influence (Sp):_ To reflect the various heritages of High Feyblood characters, choose two of the following spells. The High Feyblood can use his or her powers in an appropriate form to use either spell once per day as a spell-like ability. Possible spells: cause fear, change self, charm person, ghost sound, sleep, speak with animals, or speak with plants.  Others may be added at the GM’s approval.  This spell-like ability functions as though cast by a sorcerer of the character’s level, or of 10th level, whichever is lower.
Special Qualities: A Feyblood character retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following. 

Feysight.  If the character is descended from a Seelie Fey, she gains Low-light vision.  If she has Unseelie blood, she has Darkvision, but also suffers Light Blindness.  Abrupt exposure to bright light, such as sunlight or the Daylight spell, blinds the High Feyblood for 1 round.  In addition, she suffers a –1 penalty to all attack rolls, saves, and checks while operating in bright light.
Damage Reduction:  The Feyblood has DR 5/cold iron or wood.  The true High Fey can only be readily harmed by items native to the land of the Fey.  Magic affects them normally, but any manner of heat-forged weapon is part of humanity’s world, and thus not sympathetically aligned with the Fey.  Cold iron weapons, however, are forged without being fired, simply beaten into shape with pure strength or melded with magic.  Cold iron and wood can harm High Feyblood’s normally.
Vulnerability to Iron:  A Feyblood character takes 1 extra point of damage whenever she takes damage from a cold iron weapon.
Abilities: Increase from the base creature as follows: Str -2, Dex +2, Con +0, Int +0, Wis +0, Cha +4. 
Skills: As the base creature, plus a +2 racial bonus to Animal Empathy, Hide, and Move Silently checks. The High Feyblood also automatically can speak Sylvan.
Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature.
Equivalent Character Level: Same as the base creature +1.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 26, 2002)

*Chapter Eight: Dead Men Tell Tales*

The knights return to the Bureau from ‘interrogating’ Max Dorman, the human guise of the Dragon Dornankanir, and as they step through the doorway between the mundane world and the Faerie world they are greeted by the smirking face of Autumn Yeiotana, Elvish telepath.  She sarcastically congratulates them on a job well done, then tells them the Chief would like to speak to them.

Jenny and Cai tell Autumn very quickly about Michael’s apparent mental breakdown.  Autumn nods in feigned disinterest, her short auburn hair bobbing.  The Chief already heard about what happened, and he told Autumn to take Michael off and check out his mind to see what’s going on with him.  Michael nervously goes off with Autumn to an examination room, and the rest of the knights navigate the hallways of the Bureau for the Management of Magicks, crossing the vast complex to the administrative side of the facility.  Soon the knights will each get offices here, except for Finagle, who has already moved in full-time to the residential section of the BMM compound.

When they finally reach the Chief’s office, the Chief is waiting silently, his eyes coldly scrutinizing them as they enter and take seats in front of his desk.  After a few moments of letting them squirm, the Chief finally speaks, his tone serious.

“The wyrm is threatening to sue for the damages you caused, not to mention the invasion of his home.”

The PCs exchange sheepish glances, and then Jenny leans forward to try to explain.  The Chief cuts her off with an upraised hand, not even looking at her.  His gaze focuses on Iscalio Maxwell (who attacked the Dragon with a hail of gunfire) and  Madeline West (who, in an effort to rescue her teammates, drove their van into Dornankanir’s house, shattering his front door in the process).  Iscalio also receives a glare from his brother, Cai, who apparently feels free of guilt, even though he blasted the Dragon with a shotgun.  

The only person apparently not being grilled is Galindrel White, an Elvish sorcerer who stayed in the van the whole time.  Of course, that was because he was unconscious.

The Chief shakes his head.  “I cannot believe you people.  You’ve been with the Bureau for less than a month, and already you’ve gotten us in a lawsuit.”

But then the Chief cracks a slight smile.  “Hell, it took me over a year before I did that.”

Feeling the tension ease, the knights cough in relief.  The Chief explains that Dornankanir has been trying to sue the Bureau practically since it was founded around the turn of the century.  He asks for their reports, seeming most worried by Michael’s apparent mental breakdown.  It obviously isn’t just a coincidence that people have been acting mean to Dragons and then later claiming they didn’t do anything.  At least this time they didn’t kill the wyrm.

A few other small arguments arise, such as why the group didn’t let Finagle go back and use mending spells on the door, and why Iscalio’s pockets look slightly bulged (plus the Chief heard a jingle of change as the druid sat down).  All in all, though, the Chief gives them only a slight admonishment, then assures them that Michael will no longer be on this case (much to Finagle’s relief).

The Chief gives them on quick assignment to get in before the day closes, hopefully while the trail is still hot.  In Historic Savannah, the Owen-Thomas House, one of the haunted museum-houses (Savannah has a lot of haunted houses) is curated by a Ms. Gina Perez, who, though not herself bonded to a spirit, has the unique gift to communicate with ghosts.  She has occasionally been a help to the Bureau, since she hears many rumors about the magical events in Savannah.  Ghosts tell many tales.

The Chief dismisses them, but Finagle asks something.  The radio in the van recorded the words Michael said to Dornankanir in Draconic, and Finagle’s next door neighbor (Brian Greenman, see chapter 5) is apparently skilled in translation software.  The Chief agrees that they should give the tape to Brian, but right now Brian’s on assignment in Hong Kong (see chapter 7).  He should be back later that evening, the Chief states.

[Meta:  Yes, our PCs did in fact go to an actual historical house in Savannah.  The Owen-Thomas House is real, located off one of the squares on Abbercorn.  I’ve been there too, but of course the curators deny that any ghosts actually live there.  The evening ghost tours that ride through the city claim otherwise.]

As the knights leave the Chief’s office, Keira McCormick bumps into them, carrying a bundle of folders.  Keira has heard what happened to Michael, her boyfriend, and she asks them what’s going on.  They respond as best they can, saying that Michael just started acting odd, but that he seems fine now.  Jenny hazards a guess that someone might have charmed him somehow, though she doesn’t know much about that.

They also mention that they’re going to talk to Gina Perez, and so Keira suggests they leave their weapons behind, because it wouldn’t be polite to bring them along, and Ms. Perez is sincerely harmless.  Only Jenny listens to this advice.  

Keira has to leave quickly to go see Michael, but with an ironic tone she says that Dornankanir will be attending a conference in Atlanta in three days, and the Bureau plans to have knights present as bodyguards.  As she walks off, she shouts over her shoulder, “I’ll see you in Atlanta.”

Chewing on that little tidbit, the knights take a gate from the Faerie World to a BMM garage in Savannah.  From there they drive to the Owen-Thomas House and inquire about Gina Perez.  Gina Perez, a hispanic woman of about thirty, recognizes quickly by the tone of their voices that they’re knights, and she asks them to return after the museum closes, later that evening.

With nothing better to do, the knights, now free to be normal people for a change, go shopping.  First stop is a comic book store for Finagle, then another computer parts store.  They swing by Madeline’s dorm at Oglethorpe House at SCAD for she can get her camera and take a few shots of the museum at night, but refuse Jenny’s request to stop by at her church (she wanted to speak with her pastor about some personal issues, but the rest of the party could give a damn about her religion).  Instead, mostly Madeline drives them around aimlessly through Savannah for a few hours while the group tries to make small talk.  Jenny realizes she likes Cai much more than his brother, Iscalio, mainly because Cai doesn’t hate Christians on principle, and Madeline quietly ignores Iscalio’s come-ons to her.

Most entertaining is Galindrel, who shares stories from his family’s history.  As an Elf, he’s only two generations removed from the British colonialization of India, which was the reason his family moved to America.  (It was pretty cool that Galindrel’s player, Trey, just came up with these facts off the top of his head as if he’d rehearsed them with the DM, but she seemed as surprised as we were, and thanked Trey for contributing to her gameworld.)

Finagle, being only 16, doesn’t really say much because they wouldn’t listen to him anyway.

Finally, after sunset they return to the historic district and meet with Gina Perez again.  She brings them inside and offers some milk and cookies while Jenny and Iscalio explain what they’re interested in.  Jenny tries not to reveal too much about their case, but Iscalio tactlessly tells the museum curator that in a house only a few blocks away a Dragon was killed the other night, and they then pursued his murderer to Bonaventure cemetery and killed him.

Gina, in the process of dipping a cookie in her glass of milk, drops both cookie and milk in shock.  Finagle’s ghost uncle thankfully provides a little magic to catch the glass, and nothing stains.

Gina says that she doesn’t usually hear much about such ghastly affairs.  Usually she just hears about what ghosts are newly arrived in the city, or which ones pass over when they apparently fulfill whatever need kept them on this world.  She had gotten the impression from other knights that there was more going on than she knew, but she hadn’t even met an Elf until Galindrel just now.

A soft piano music begins to play from another room in the house, and all the knights get suddenly nervous.  Gina waves her hand in dismissal, saying it’s just Margaret Thomas, the owner of the house.  And yes, she confirms, Margaret Thomas died in 1929.  Catherine, Madeline’s ghost, wanders off to chat with the piano-player, then later returns and says that Mrs. Thomas has not seen anything either.  

To their surprise, Gina replies to Madeline’s ghost, admonishing the deceased woman for not just asking her.  The PCs are surprised, apparently having forgotten that Gina speaks to ghosts.  The knights sit dumbfounded for about a minute while Pataman, Catherine, Finagle’s uncle, and Gina all hold a conversation.  The knights, of course, can only hear their own ghost (if any) and Gina, but Gina seems to be having a stimulating conversation with them, sighing sadly whenever one of the ghosts complains about how poorly they’re treated by the people they’ve bonded with.  After thoroughly embarrassing Jenny, Madeline, and Finagle, Gina smiles and says that she promises to call if she hears anything, and that she hopes to get a chance to talk to them all again.  The PCs can tell that she is probably more interested in talking to the ghosts than to them.

Thanking Gina for her hospitality, the knights get up to leave.  Madeline asks Gina politely if she can take some pictures before they go, but Gina’s smile instantly shifts to the mask of an official museum curator.

“I’m sorry, no flash photography in the building.”

The knights leave, and the trip back to the Bureau is relatively silent.  Cai drives because Madeline is frustrated; she wanted the pictures for her portfolio.  Aside from the Maxwells, all the other PCs have to listen to their ghosts commenting how nice it was to talk to someone different for a change.  Jenny, for her part, promises to spend more time talking to Pataman and doing things for his sake.  Since the ghost can’t travel far from whomever it’s bonded to, Jenny says she’ll bring herself and Pataman to a movie some time.  The others laugh at this suggestion.

The knights get back to the Bureau, then make their own ways home for the night, Finagle staying up and trying to learn new spells off his palmtop.  He stays awake as well as he can, so he’ll be able to give Brian the recording of Michael’s draconic ramblings when his fellow hacker gets in.

[The game seemingly over, everyone gets up to leave, but then Jessie, our DM, speaks up loudly to draw our attention back in.]

That night, around 4 am, the Bureau calls all the knights to inform them that Gina Perez was murdered as she tried to leave the museum.  The door was left open, and apparently there was a pursuit through the house.  She evaded her attacker all the way to the second floor veranda before she was cut down by a slash across her chest.  The burns around the killing blow suggests that it was a Bureau-issued arcane blade.  The attacker apparently left after delivering one blow, because aside from the path of the chase, not a single item in the house was disturbed, except for the bench to the piano, which was knocked over.

Efforts to scry the house have been unsuccessful because of a powerful aura that disrupts other magic.  There are too many fingerprints for any of them to be useful.

They have only one other useful clue, and even it is vague.  Apparently before Gina died, the ghost of Margaret Thomas bonded with her long enough to scrawl a message on the wall in Gina’s own blood.

"It was Legion"


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## RangerWickett (Jan 27, 2002)

*Michael Dunne:*  Male human Pal6/Hunter of the Dead3; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 6d10+3d8+9; hp 90; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 19 (+2 Dex, +4 Defensive Cloak, +3 Divine); Atk +1 holy arcane scimitar +12 melee (1d6+3 +2d6 holy/crit 15/x2); SA Smite Evil (+3 to-hit, +6 damage), Smite Undead (+2 to-hit, +3 damage), Turn Undead 9/day; SQ Detect Evil, Detect Undead, Divine Defense Ghostbond, Lay Hands (18 hp), Divine Grace, Divine Health, Aura of Courage, Remove Disease 2/week, Spurn Death’s Touch; SV Fort +14, Ref +8, Will +8; Str 15, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 16.

_Skills and Feats:_ Concentration +7, Heal +6, Knowledge (religion) +6, Knowledge (undead) +8, Sense Motive +6, Spot +10; Blind-fight, Extra Turning, Improved Critical (scimitar), Spiritual Blow, Weapon Focus (scimitar).
Note:  All Knowledge skills and Speak Language are class skills for Michael because of his college education.  Sense Motive and Spot are Michael’s floating class skills.

_Paladin Spells per Day:_ 2.  Typically prepared—Divine Favor.

_Hunter of the Dead Spells per Day:_ 2 / 1.  Typically prepared—Invisibility to Undead, Magic Weapon; Bull’s Strength.

_Ghostbond Abilities:_ Alertness, Empathic Link, Locative Bond, Manifestation, See Spirit, Share Spells, Speak with Spirit, Spirit Manifestation, Touch, Turn Resistance, +2 Fortitude.


_Background:_
Details are limited.  Michael’s ghost’s name is Gerrard.  Both he and his ghost are Christian.  Michael was previously dating Autumn Yeiotana, but they broke up in 1996.  He has been romantically involved with Keira McCormick since 1998.



*Paladins and Alernatives to Special Mounts:* At 5th level, Paladins can choose to receive a special mount, or they can gain an alternative power from the following list.  Note, this list is tenative and has not been playtested.

Manifestation.  If the Paladin has a bonded spirit, that spirit can become manifest, as the Ghost template ability, for a number of hours per day equal to the Paladin's level.  This is in addition to normal manifestation time that would be gained at 9th level.  The manifested spirit gains some of the same abilities as a bonded mount.
Divine Defense.  The Paladin adds her Charisma bonus, if positive, to her Armor Class, even while flat footed.  Additionally, she may expend one of her turn undead usages for the day to instead gain damage reduction x/+3 (where x is her Charisma bonus) for one round per level.
Celestial speed.  At 5th level, the Paladin's movement speed increases by +10 feet.  It increases again at 10th level +20 feet, +30 feet at 15th level, and +40 feet at 20th level.
Hospitaler.  For the purposes of determining how much the Paladin can heal per day with her Lay Hands ability, treat her Charisma modifier as if it were increased by +2.  She may Lay Hands as a free action to any ally she can touch, but not to herself.
Favored Enemy.  This functions as the Ranger ability of the same name, but only functions for a single creature type ever.  This bonus is +1 at 5th level, +2 at 10th, +3 at 15th, and +4 at 20th.  Additionally, the Paladin's detect evil ability can function instead to detect cratures of this type.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 27, 2002)

Friday night, around 9 pm, Cai Maxwell picks up the phone, tightening his grip with a smile.  He can feel the plastic of the receiver crack slightly under the strength of his grasp.  Across the apartment, Iscalio is having an argument with his fox.  Cai grumbles and puts the phone to his ear.

“Yes?  Maxwell here. . . .  Who’s this?  . . .  Why’d you call me then?  You should be calling Finagle. . . .  Oh, well good.  I was wondering what the hell that psycho said to the Dragon. . . .  Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there in an hour.”

Cai hangs up, then shouts to Iscalio.  “Put your drugs away and get ready to go to work.”

*Chapter Nine: Haunted Past*

Everyone assembles at the Oglethorpe House entrance to the Faerie World, and Finagle (who lives in the Bureau) comes out through the gate to get them.  He says that his next-door neighbor, Brian Greenman, just finished translating the tape of Bureau Paladin Michael Dunne insulting wealthy Dragon businessman Dornankanir in Draconic, which occurred just yesterday, a few hours before Gina Perez was murdered by “Legion.”

When they get to Brian’s room, however, the fat gamer is clicking away with not a care in the world, browsing the internet (our DM didn’t say so, but I bet he was at Eric’s Message boards).  The party—Jenny, Tagin, Cai, Iscalio, Finagle, and Madeline—walk in and ask for the tape.  Brian seems not to know what they’re talking about, but after a little reminding, he remembers that he was supposed to give them the tape, but . . . he can’t remember where he put it.

The group searches around for a few minutes, then realize that there’s a strange smell in the air, like burnt plastic.  They track the smell to the bottom of Brian’s trashcan, where the tape sits melted in a pile of paper ashes.  Brian, of course, doesn’t recall anything happening.  A thorough search of the room for clues reveals nothing, especially not any more copies of the tape or the translation.  But Brian is most dismayed by the fact that the translation files on his computer were deleted.  Tagin makes a few jokes in poor taste at Brian’s expense, but stops when the rest of the group starts to give him suspicious stares.

They go to talk to the Chief, who is in his office conferring with Autumn Yeiotana about Michael’s mental health—which, for the record, is confused, but there is clearly no sign of current mind control.  The Chief is as irritated as they are about the destruction of evidence, but he says he’ll have desk workers handle that.  There’s another suspect they should check out, another Dragon, this one who lives in Atlanta.  Since they’re going to have another job in Atlanta in just two days, the Bureau is going to put them up for the weekend in a Hilton.  The Chief gives them the specifics of their mission today and sends them off, telling them Keira will contact them Saturday, tomorrow night.

The Knights head out, talking about their mission and what all went on in the past few days, especially since Tagin was on special assignment in Hong Kong with Brian.  Tagin admits that Brian’s got a few screws loose, but he doesn’t think the guy purposefully burned his own tape.

_Dramatis Personae et Recapis:_

Jenny Windgrave (21 year-old Native American theater arts student at SCAD and bonded with the ghost of her ancestor Pataman), played by me.  Paladin 2
Iscalio Maxwell (19 year-old albino Druid, bonded to Lancaster Cornwall, a man who died thinking he was a fox).  Druid 2
Cai Maxwell (25 year-old brother of Iscalio and owner of a small martial arts studio; he’s the party’s muscle).  Fighter 2
Madeline West (22 year-old photography major at SCAD, bonded with Salem witch trial victim Catherine).  Wild Sorceress 2
Chuck Tagin-Eve, real name unknown (21 year-old guy who hacked his way into SCAD so he could get free lodging, food, etc.).  Rogue 2, hacking skill +14
Finagle P. Luckshore (16 year-old kid genius [and you know how annoying they can be], bonded with the ghost of his inventor uncle).  Wizard 2

One day ago, Tagin went to Hong Kong and discovered that whoever’s been killing Dragons apparently talked to some Siren, and that the killer is already dead.  The party puzzles over whether that was metaphorical in that Dragons are being killed because of someone who has already died, or whether an actual dead thing has come back to kill Dragons, or whether it was just an outright lie.

Then, of course, there’s the clue they got from Gina Perez and the ghost Margaret Thomas.  When Gina Perez was killed (by a Bureau-style arcane blade, it looks like), the ghost in the house bonded with her long enough to scrawl in blood the name “Legion.”

And, of course, none of this seems to fit with the suspect they’re currently heading to Atlanta to interrogate, who neither dead nor a legion, nor who oughta be carrying a Bureau light weapon.



Sexton lives in a relatively abandoned church in a seldom-visited corner of Atlanta.  The Bureau gives the Dragon his privacy usually and makes sure no one bothers him because they like Sexton as he is now.  Sexton, or at least he claims, is not a Dragon.  He remains perpetually in human form, roaming his abandoned church and answering pretty much any question with “I’m not a Dragon.  I’m not . . . I’m not one of those demonic. . . .  I’m not a Demon!”

He’s generally a peaceful fellow, and has the form of a 98-pound weakling, balding, with the look of a Medieval monk to him.  The Bureau’s not sure where he came from or when he decided to stick to being a human, but he’s been in Atlanta for at least a few decades, since soon after the church was built in the 30s.  The only way they know he’s a Dragon is from scrying and by the power of his magical aura, though they cannot tell what type of Dragon he is.

The party takes a gate to Atlanta and checks into their hotel, then lounges about for a few hours, deciding to see Sexton in the early evening, because it’s best not to potentially provoke an obviously insane magical beast in broad daylight when thousands of Atlanta citizens would be able to witness the battle.  Still, they need to be back before 10, when Keira is scheduled to visit them.

They take two Bureau cars—a minivan (driven by Cai) and a Cadillac (driven by Madeline)—to the church grounds.  The church, which resembles a small stone cathedral, sits in a small wooded grove at least a mile from any residential area.  It all looks very gothic, with gargoyles on the roof leering down, and shadows all over the place.  No one, it seems, comes here on Sundays.

[Meta: At this point in the game, most of the party felt that they hadn’t been accomplishing much, meaning that they hadn’t been killing enough things.  Jessie decided to give us a gratuitous fight to keep the hack ‘n’ slashers happy, but it didn’t turn out too well.]

They park outside the grounds and begin to walk through the trees toward the church.  Iscalio makes some very crass jokes about Christian preachers and their gay love for choirboys upsetting (in character) Jenny and (out of character) the DM.  Then, as they near the church, a cry comes from atop the church, high pitched, eager, and nasal.  

“Smite the unbelievers!”

The knights look up to see a group of four tiny gargoyles, each maybe a foot or two long, diving from the top of the church.  Another cry comes from the far side of the church, and they guess that there are more gargoyles on the way.

Cai blasts one out of the sky with his shotgun, and Iscalio waits until the gargoyles get close enough for an entangle spell in the trees to trap them.  It gets the remaining three, and Finagle quickly runs toward them.  Jenny shouts for him to not kill them until they know why they attacked.  Finagle nods as he approaches the three little stone monsters dangling by Spanish moss from the trees.

The second swarm arrives from around the edge of the church, consisting of six more, these larger and fiercer.  Again comes, “Smite the unbelievers!” and again it is answered by a shotgun blast.  Tagin takes a potshot at one and misses, then takes cover by the entangled gargoyles, hoping to use them as hostages.  Madeline casts sleep on the swarm, and one gargoyle thuds to the ground with a cracking shatter, while the one next to it gently glides to the ground near Madeline, hitting the ground with only a snore.  

Jenny, short of ranged weapons, decides to try to talk to the gargoyles and find out why they attacked, but Finagle’s busy tranquilizing one with his dart gun (“I want a pet gargoyle if I can’t get a gremlin”), and Tagin is holding another at knife point, telling it to call off its friends.

The only two real combatants on the field, the brothers Maxwell, wait for the two remaining gargoyles to close.  They fly by and scratch the two of them with stony claws, and one lands on Iscalio to try to bite at his back.  The bat-winged beast (about two feet long, with a five foot wingspan) digs its claws into Iscalio’s shoulders and gnaws into his back with its teeth.  Iscalio tries to get it off, but his brother comes to the rescue and slashes off the creature’s wings with his katana.  The gargoyle falls away in agony and writhes on the ground.  

Madeline tries to shoot the gargoyle sleeping next to her with her wrist crossbow, but the tiny bolt just bounces off the skin (an odd mixture of leathery hide and stone).  Grumbling, she gets out her car keys, grabs the gargoyle’s limp arm, and drags it toward the Cadillac.

Back at the tree, Jenny shouts at the one Tagin’s holding at knifepoint, “Why are you attacking us?  We’re not unbelievers.  See,” she holds up the cross on her necklace, “I’m a Christian too.”

The gargoyle shakes it head and glares at her, gibbering in its high-pitched, squealy voice.  “No!  You’re trying to trick us!  You use magic!  Unbelievers!  We smite those who use magic!”

The one remaining flying gargoyle is too far away to be hurt by Cai’s shotgun blast, and it dives in while Cai tries to reload, smashing him in the face.  Iscalio command a nearby tree to catch the creature, but its branch doesn’t snake out fast enough, and the gargoyle swoops upward again.  

From the street, the ominous sound of a Cadillac’s engine starting echoes through the trees.  With a squeal of tires, the car lurches forward, then back, forward, then back, each time accompanied by the sound of rock crunching beneath tires.  Two rounds of forward-and-back running over of a gargoyle later, Madeline will emerge to admire her handiwork.

One of the entangled gargoyles in the tree escapes and starts to fly away, but Tagin tackles it before it can get far off the ground, and he holds a pistol to the back of its head.  In a fine Samuel L. Jackson impersonation, he says, “Try that again.”  Jenny, of course, has to make sure that he won’t shoot the creature, because it just looks like the gargoyles are misguided.  Tagin agrees not to kill the gargoyle, and with his bargaining position weakened a bit, he can no longer intimidate the gargoyle into sitting still.  It claws his hand and scrambles away, taking to the air.

It gets about ten feet up before Cai and Iscalio both shoot it down (Cai is adept at fighting with either shotgun or katana, keeping the inactive weapon tucked under his arm for easy reach).  The only remaining active gargoyle cries out in righteous indignation, “My brother!” and dive-bombs the brothers.  The two Maxwells dodge, and so the gargoyle flies for Jenny and Finagle.

Finagle is busy getting his new pet out of the tree, so Jenny tries to stop the attacker.  It hits her in the chest and knocks the wind out of her, making sure to stay close so no one will try to shoot it.

Everyone tries to run up to help the “stupid paladin” who “can’t even fight a stupid gargoyle on her own,” and who “wants everyone to play nice.”  (grumble grumblebloodthirstysavagesgrumble grumble)  Tagin ends up ripping the thing off her and driving his dagger into its back, and Iscalio shoots it before Jenny gets any notions of trying to heal the wounded creature.  Only later would Jenny see the crushed and shattered gargoyle laying under the tires of Madeline’s Cadillac, a sight which disturbed her far more than any of the actual combat.

Jenny chastises everyone for making a racket and shooting firearms in a residential area, but Cai shrugs it off and Finagle ignores her as he tends to his new pet, which he names “Herbie.”  Aside from Herbie, two gargoyles remain alive, one in a tree and one asleep.  Finagle charms the tree one to be a look out for them, and even though the gargoyle doesn’t like magic, it agrees to.

They finally get inside the church and find Sexton exactly as they expected him.  A thirty-something man with premature male pattern baldness, dressed as a priest, polishing a tall standing candelabra.  The church has two long rows of benches, with aisles in the middle and along either side.  The pulpit sits at the far end, across from the entry doors.  In cubbies behind and to the sides of the pulpit are stairs leading up to the 2nd floor balconies which overhang along each side.  The windows are tall and narrow glass, with only a little stained glass on the far wall behind the pulpit.  

Sexton is frustratingly unhelpful.  Despite numerous approaches, he says nothing of use.  They ask if he knows anything about Dragons, and he replies that he’s not a Dragon.  They reply that they know that he is a Dragon, and he gets agitated, shaking his head in denial, repeating that he’s not a Dragon.  He’s not a demon.  Jenny detects evil on him, but he’s not being evil right now, so nothing shows up.  

While the party continues to interrogate him, the knights’ ghosts check around, looking for other evidence.  There’s no treasure hoard, no stray Dragon scales lying around, nothing incriminating at all.  Also no food, which confuses the party, leading them to think perhaps he’s actually a zombie.  Much prodding, poking, and sniffing of this deluded man later, the DM finally admits that Dragons don’t have to eat if they don’t want to, especially if they’re not out pillaging much.  Oh.

But then Jenny asks if he knows anything about the name “Legion.”  This causes a big reaction out of the man, getting him to raise his voice and talk as if to someone else, maybe in a hallucination or a memory.  He looks down at his hands, shaking his head and then covering his eyes, saying loudly, “No, I’m not a demon!  Leave me alone.  I’m . . . I’m not!”

The party decides he’s a dead end, just an excuse for the DM to let us kill some gargoyles.  Just to be safe, after they leave, Tagin sneaks back in and stakes out the place for a few hours, getting the juicy news that Sexton made sure to clean every single candelabra in the joint.  Finally, disgusted, Tagin calls the hotel and asks for Madeline to pick him up, since he doesn’t want to walk through Atlanta at 1 in the morning.  

That evening, while Tagin is away, Keira McCormick shows up at the hotel the knights are staying at.  She has with her Dalavar Kineil, the half-Elf telepath Tagin worked with in Hong Kong (Dalavar’s actually from New Orleans).  Sunday afternoon, Maxmilian Dorman, known to them as the Dragon Dornankanir, will be at a fundraiser in Atlanta, and they’ll be working bodyguard duty.

Jessie ends the session then, letting us discuss our ideas.  She also has a unique request for the next game session.  She wants for us to bring all the Hot Wheels we still have from our youth.  


[Meta:  Though the story here didn’t quite reveal it, Iscalio’s player Blake did begin to get on Jessie’s nerves with his constant anti-Christian jokes.  Jessie is religious and sensitive when people insult her faith.  Worse yet, Blake didn’t seem to care that much, not understanding why she’d be offended.  Jessie just asked him to try to tone it down for the next session.

Between this game and the next, Jessie asked me as part as my duty as boyfriend and fellow DM to help her prepare.  We bought poster board, markers, a yardstick, and a bunch of Hotwheels.  She had trouble finding one particular one she needed, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was she needed, so I couldn’t help her.  Seems Hotwheels are more interested in making tanks and Indy 500 racers than actual cars.  Sure, we could have had lots of tractors and airplanes and construction cranes, but those just wouldn’t fit for a nice car chase through Atlanta traffic.  Heh heh heh.]


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## Horacio (Jan 28, 2002)

Wow, a weekend away and this story grows up quickly! 

Nice updates! I had never thought a modern D&D game could go so well and be so coherent. Maybe I should restart my Dark*Matter game woth D&D 3e rules...


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## RangerWickett (Jan 29, 2002)

Scroll up a few posts.  I filled in the blank spot where Michael's character stats should've been.

*Autumn Yeiotana:*  Female Elf Psn12; Medium-size Humanoid (Elf); HD 12d4-12; hp 26; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 21 (+2 Dex, +4 Inertial Armor, +5 Brassiere of Defense); Atk automatic pistol +8 melee (1d10/crit x3); SQ Elf Traits; SV Fort +3, Ref +6, Will +11; Str 8, Dex 14, Con 9, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 20.

_Skills and Feats:_ Bluff +15, Concentration +15, Diplomacy +7, Gather Information +8, Knowledge (psionics) +8, Psicraft +7, Sense Motive +15; Disarm Mind, Intertial Armor, Mental Adversary, Mind Trap, Psychic Bastion.

_Power Points Per Day:_ 90 — Burst, Catfall, Daze, Detect Psionics, Distract, Far Hand, Missive, Telempathic Projection; Attraction, Charm Person, Conceal Thoughts, Empathy; Aversion, Detect Thoughts, Inflict Pain, Suggestion; Mindlink, Negate Psionics, Schism; Inertial Barrier, Mindwipe, Crisis of Blood (stops victim’s heart); Mind Probe, Greater Domination; Mass Suggestion.


_Background:_
Autumn joined the Bureau at its founding, and for several decades served as a field agent, tracking down magi and reeducating them forcefully.  Recently she changed to desk work, prefering to get out of the line of fire and just deal with the problems other knights bring in.



*Prestige Classes*

Agent of the Fey Court** (modeled after Divine Agent)
Alienist (Cthulhu mythos spellcasters)*
Bondseeker** - Has lost his or her bonded spirit, and has defenses against other spiritual dangers.
Devoted Defender*
Duelist
Feyspeaker
High Sorcerer
Hunter of the Dead
Knight of the Chalice (Could be adapted to Knights of the Round to hunt magi instead of demons)*
Lasher
Ley Line Magus
Loremaster*
Order of the Bow Initiate*
Redcap**- A goblin prestige class.
Sacred Exorcist
Spymaster
Templar*
Thief-Acrobat
True Necromancer
Weapon Master
World Mage** - A powerful magus who knows a little of all the magic of the world.  They focus on the connection between Terra and Gaia, and draw strength from that.  Merlin is the most famous world mage.

*Need to add more world-specific flavor text.
**Not-yet written.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 29, 2002)

[Meta: Before the next game, our DM Jessica asked me, her boyfriend, to help her prepare for a scene in the next game.  I wasn’t sure exactly what it was going to be, but she had several sheets of posterboard, lots of markers, and a street map of Atlanta downloaded off Yahoo!’s website.  We set to work to making a path of posterboard roads that would follow a route between two locations on the map.]



Max Dorman, the wealthy Savannah financier and closet Dragon, asks for the Bureau’s protection.  He’s going to a business convention in Atlanta, and with the recent murders of Dragons, he doesn’t feel safe.  He makes a special request that Michael, the knight who insulted him in Draconic and later seemingly forgot that he’d said anything, not be allowed as a bodyguard.

In the convention hall of a large hotel slightly outside downtown Atlanta, Iscalio Maxwell mixes drinks behind the bar while Madeline West and Finagle P. Luckshore sit in the security office checking the cameras and chatting with security guards.  Jenny Windgrave, Tagin, and Cai Maxwell walk the floor of the convention hall, browsing among the various businessmen and women, waiters, and hotel security guards, on the lookout for suspicious characters.  Jenny usually stays close to Dornankanir (Max Dorman’s real name as a Dragon), because Jenny’s the only one with healing magic.  Even though Dragons are nightmarishly strong in their natural form, in human form they’re as weak as you or I, and can be killed by a simple gunshot.  

Outside the main convention area, Keira McCormick, the ranking Knight on this mission, sits in her car in the parking lot, using her sorcery to try to detect any incoming magi.  Atop the building, telepath Dalavar Kineil keeps an eye and his brain peeled, hoping to psionically hear any thoughts that might suggest someone’s trying to kill the Dragon.  Everyone is linked through those lovely earpiece-shoulder radio sets, except for Iscalio and Finagle, who don’t have the radio because they have the hardest time blending in already (one being an albino, the other being a 16 year old kid).

Things are going smoothly, with everyone communicating back and forth regularly, until Keira radios in.

“I sense something powerful coming in.  Can’t tell where it’s coming from, but . . . Ah!  What the hell?!”  Her voice gets distant; it’s still coming over the radio, but she’s obviously speaking to someone else, and not directly into the radio.  Her voice seems amused, though, not frightened.  “You scared me.  What are you doing here?  You’re not on this mission.”

There is a brief screech of some sort, and they can all make out the sound of a short, painful gasp.

Cai calls into the radio, “What’s going on, Keira?  Keira, who is it?  Keira?!”

Cai grabs Jenny and Iscalio and tells them to stay put; he’s going to check out what happened to Keira.  As soon as he runs off, however, Dalavar’s voice comes over the line.  “Oh no!  Keira!  I see someone down there.  North side of the building, in the parking lot.  Whoever it is heading in. . . .  Oh , he’s seen m-!  No!”

They hear Dalavar scream in agony, and everyone winces at the noise before the line suddenly goes silent.  A moment passes as everyone recovers from the surprise, but just before anyone starts to react, Dalavar’s voice returns over the line.

He’s laughing lightly and maniacally.  “Oh, we’re all stupid fools!  That lizard won’t see it coming!  But the angel of death has passed over _me_.”

Dalavar continues to ramble softly, apparently unhinged by whatever he saw, and the noise over the line makes their radios useless for communication.  Since Cai has run off toward the parking lot, Jenny calls to Tagin.  She grabs him and Iscalio, then tells Iscalio to stop bartending and stay right next to Dorman.  Tagin she wants to go get Finagle and see if they can see anything on the security cameras.  She’s going to the roof to check out Dalavar and try to help him.  The elevators are of course all being used by catering, so Jenny breaks into a run up six flights of stairs.

Cai reaches the parking lot and quickly sprints to Keira’s car.  He stops, speechless at the sight of Keira lying slumped out the driverside window.  A hole the width of a swordblade pierces the car door, lining up with Keira’s chest.  The woman’s blood drips out of the hole down the car door, forming a small pool on the concrete.  Cai grabs his own sword and ignites it warily, keeping it low to remain inconspicuous as he scans the parking lot for signs of danger.  

As Jenny nears the top of the staircase, she can make out Cai’s voice on the radio, now that Dalavar has finally gone silent.  “Keira’s dead.  Looks like a sword to the chest.”

Iscalio replies back, “You gotta hide the body.  She’s part Elvish.  We can’t risk her going to a morgue.”

Cai’s reply is the sound of a car door opening and something being dragged out and shoved under the car.  There aren’t that many places to hide a body in the middle of a parking lot.  Before he stashes her body under the car, though, he makes sure to take her enchanted bullet clips, even though her gun was missing.

Jenny hoarsely calls that she’s reaching the roof, and she flings open the door, squinting in the sudden sunlight.  She glances around, finding her bearings, and starts to head for the north side of the building (where Dalavar last was) when a cry of high-pitched, jeering voices comes from further down the roof.  

“MEAT!”

Jenny’s head swings to stare at a tiny horde of a dozen three-foot long Gremlins scrambling across the roof toward her.  She turns to try to run, when the door behind her clicks shut, locking her on the roof.  Looking up at the top of the door, she sees a half dozen more Gremlins leering at her, chuckling as they shove the door tightly shut.  Calling for help, Jenny activates her spear and sprints for the northern edge of the roof.  The Gremlins cheer and give chase.

Finagle, in the security room, hears that the Gremlins from the Bureau must somehow have gotten free and are attacking Jenny, so he and Tagin run to try to help her.  Madeline leaves with them.  They break through the main convention room, but as they’re heading past Dornankanir he stops them, grabbing Tagin by his arm.  The Dragon demands an explanation of what’s going on, but when Tagin can’t think of anything to say, Iscalio steps up.  

“Just stay near me.  The other knights are trying to stop the danger before it gets too close.”

Dorman nods and sighs, finishing off the rest of his drink.  “That’s good to know.  I have a very important business deal that I might be able to. . . .”

Finagle has already sprinted off, but Tagin, Madeline, and Iscalio look at Dorman in dismay as the man clutches his left arm and bends over in pain.  The crowd screams in panic as Max Dorman collapses to the ground with a heart attack.  

This is followed by the sound of a thousand cel phones dialing 911.







*Chapter Ten: Dornankanir Falls*

Cai gets back inside and up to Dorman where a few doctors in the crowd are trying to check his vital signs while they wait for paramedics to arrive.  Cai and Iscalio exchange knowing glances.  It would be bad enough if Keira, a quarter-Elf, ended up in a morgue.  It would be perfectly horribly bad if they let a Dragon end up in the public domain.  Madeline reminds them quietly that if Dorman dies, his body will go back to Dragon form.  Grimacing, Cai and Iscalio decide to try to load him in their own van and get him to the Bureau.  

Tagin:  “What about Jenny on the roof?”  

Iscalio: “Oh, she’ll handle herself.”

On the roof, Jenny is by the edge, out of room to run.  She bats away one Gremlin with the butt of her spear as it leaps at her, then stabs at another, missing the agile and tiny creature.  A dozen snarling mouths pounce upon her, clinging to her clothes and hair and, well, skin as they tear into her flesh.  Jenny flings one off the roof, and is contemplating jumping herself when the door to the roof bursts open, revealing Finagle.  A moment’s hesitation later, Finagle shouts, “Guys!  It’s me!  Remember?  Me and you?  And you and me?!”

The Gremlins stop tearing at Jenny and turn to look at Finagle, smiling and shouting, “So happy together!”

Deep down, even more than wanting to kill stuff, Gremlins love a good song.

The Gremlins jump off Jenny and begin to dance around Finagle gleefully.  Jenny slumps to the ground and tries to heal herself of the numerous tiny wounds across her body.

Back in the convention center, Iscalio and Cai’s attempts to drag Max Dorman’s body away are met with shock and refusal from the crowd of onlookers.  When Iscalio draws his gun and threatens everyone to let them take the guy or he’ll shoot, he gets a spray of mace in his eyes.  Hotel security chases after them, along with a small mob of business men and women as an ambulance siren approaches.  Cai and Iscalio take the next best approach and hop into the minivan in hopes of pursuing the ambulance.  Madeline and Tagin follow suit and run for the Cadillac.

Jenny radios and asks what’s going on.  Cai replies that they’re the lizard had a heart attack and that the paramedics are taking his body; they’re going to try to stop the ambulance.  Jenny asks them to wait for her, but Iscalio says, “Hell no.  No time to waste.”

I helped the DM build the car chase.  The hell if I’m not gonna get a chance to take part.  Jenny glances to make sure Finagle’s still doing good with the Gremlins, and then she runs for the fire escape.  She’s in a rush, so she jumps the last story and a half, falling on her side with a groan, but happy that she’ll be able to get to the rest of the party before they drive off.

Just then, they drive past her, zooming after an ambulance.  Groaning in pain, Jenny slams her fist on the pavement and unsteadily gets to her feet.  She runs to the nearest vehicle, a van reminiscent of the Mystery Mobile from Scooby Doo (i.e., Jessie picked a Hot Wheels car at random), knocks on the window, and commandeers the car for official . . . sorta police business.  Shouting a promise to bring it back in one piece, she jumps in the car (and gags on the cloying smell of marijuana) and drives off after the rest of the group.



Alright, here’s the set up:

Ambulance, carrying Dornankanir who’s dying of a heart attack, has a 1 block head start on us.

Car 1, Minivan driven by Cai, with Iscalio riding “shotgun.”

Car 2, Cadillac driven by Madeline, with Tagin in the passenger seat.  Madeline’s player asks if she can cast a siren spell, even though it’s not a normal cantrip.  The DM says ghost sound works fine.  Car 2 has a yowling siren to help keep cars out of their way.

Car 3, pot-mobile driven (perhaps in violation of that whole Lawful Good thing paladins are supposed to follow) by Jenny, 2 blocks behind the rest of the group due to her late start.  Jenny would much have preferred a motorcycle or something, but she got a nice puke green van.  Her rationale as to why it’s okay to steal a car and chase after an ambulance is because she’s an officer of a pseudo-government agency, and she’s well within her jurisdiction.

Jessie lays out on the ground the sheets of posterboard roads, three at a time, showing that the ambulance is ahead of the knights.  It’s just after five o’clock, so traffic is heavy (there are lots of other Hot Wheels on the board, going in either direction).  Driving past small blocks of stores and offices, the three bureau cars try to catch up with the ambulance and stop it before it can reach the hospital.  Whenever we try to pass a car, we have to make a Controlled Driving skill check (and Madeline is the only person who ever took a defensive driving course).  Also, if we want to try to speed up substantially, make a sharp turn, or swerve through an intersection and avoid cross traffic, Controlled Driving skill check.

We get our first big break when the ambulance driver fails his Driving check to get through an intersection, and has to wait for the cross traffic to dissipate.  In the opening he created, the minivan and the Cadillac close to within three or four car lengths.  Since most cars pull over to the side of the road when an ambulance tries to get by, Jenny has been able, through excessive speeding and divine bonuses to Reflex saves, to catch up to within one city block of the other cars.

The two pursuing knight cars are getting closer when the ambulance takes a sharp left turn at an intersection.  Not expecting to have to turn, the Knights almost get themselves killed.  Madeline is able to brake to a stop, but Cai skids out into the intersection and has to backtrack to get on the ambulance’s trail again.  Jenny’s able to catch up more here, because she saw her teammates nearly get killed, and adjusted accordingly.

Cai willingness to take risks and pass three cars at a time through oncoming traffic nets him the lead ahead of Madeline.  Only six car lengths behind the ambulance, the only real obstacle now are two more cars.  Though both moved to the side of the road to give the ambulance clearance, they’re moving back quickly now.

Iscalio shouts, “I’ll clear the way!” and begins to roll down his window.  He pops out the window and shoots at the rear tires of the car ahead of them.  The driver of the car fails his driving check and skids off the road to the side.  Cai shouts at his brother to stop shooting, but Iscalio fires at the next car.  The driver of this car rolls a 1 on her check, and in panic tries to get away from the maniac shooting at her.  Her car flips and begins to roll, but it slams against a light pole and stops suddenly. 

Jenny has realized that she can’t possibly catch up in time, so she follows as best as possible, shocked at Iscalio’s reckless endangerment of human life.

As Cai edges toward the ambulance, he warns his brother not to dare to shoot out the ambulance’s tires, or he’ll throw him out of the car.  They’re at a loss as to what to do, because the oncoming traffic’s too thick to try to get in front of the ambulance, and it’s one lane in each direction.

Then Madeline peeks to the side of the ambulance, driving in the middle of the road.  Oncoming cars swerve to avoid her, so she’s able to edge up beside the emergency vehicle and drive parallel to it.

Then Tagin decides to fulfill the requirements of a classic chase scene.  Yes, he opens his door and jumps onto the ambulance, holding his pistol in pants pocket.  Hanging onto the side-view mirror and standing on the running board, Tagin points a gun to the window and shouts for the ambulance to pull over.

The frightened driver swerves to his left, almost smashing Tagin between the ambulance and Madeline’s car.  Madeline steps on the gas and pulls ahead of the ambulance, while Cai bumps the fleeing vehicle from behind.  All of this makes it very difficult for Tagin to hold on, so he shoots the window out and hangs on despite the jagged shards of glass digging into his arm.

The chase comes to a Y-shaped split in the road, and the ambulance driver, panicking from having a maniac dangling onto the side of his car, swerves directly onto the grass and tips the car sideways.  The siren stops with a whimper as the ambulance plows across the ground, tossing Tagin away to land in a heap.

Madeline, Cai, and Jenny all pull up next to the overturned ambulance, as does a small crowd of onlookers.  Cai calls the Bureau for a clean-up crew while Iscalio tries to handle the cops and Jenny runs to the back of the ambulance.  As she reaches to pull the door open, the white metal bulges outward suddenly, and the vehicle begins to shriek as its frame is stretched from within.  Jenny takes a few steps back, about to run, but then remembers the ambulance drivers.  She runs for the cab of the ambulance, calling for Madeline just as the rear of the vehicle bursts to reveal a 20-foot long, scaled bronze Dragon, its eyes closed.

Madeline and Jenny pull the driver and the paramedic in the passenger seat free (sadly, the one in the back of the ambulance was crushed against the wall when Dornankanir reverted to his normal form), then Cai comes to help drag the two emergency workers away while Jenny runs to heal Tagin, who was knocked unconscious from the impact.  She gets him clear of the area, and a few moments later the sundered ambulance’s fuel tank explodes, engulfing most of the evidence.



Hours later, when the telepaths and mages finish cleaning up the area, wiping minds and deleting cameras of the event, and dragging away the charred corpse of a Dragon, it simply appears that the ambulance lost control, tipped, and exploded.  Thankfully, some pedestrians must have pulled the paramedics to safety.  The body of Max Dorman was so charred in the flames as to be unrecognizable.

Back at the convention center, Finagle was able to eventually sing the Gremlins to sleep so the Bureau could come pick them up.  Apparently someone freed them from their cages and transported them to Atlanta without anyone noticing.  The Chief has set people to scour the Bureau facility for clues.

Keira McCormick’s body was recovered without anyone finding her first.  The autopsy confirmed that it was a Bureau arcane blade that killed her.

Dalavar Kineil was not found.  The Bureau believes he was abducted or perhaps killed.

The autopsy of a dead Dragon is difficult, especially when the body is severely charred, and magical detection will not work because of the dead Dragon’s aura.  However, blood samples verify the presence of poison in the Dragon’s system.  Normally it wouldn’t even have harmed him in draconic form, but as a human, it was enough to induce a heart attack.

The knights return to the Bureau and heal up, and the Chief gives them their orders.  Except for Iscalio, they’re to return to Savannah immediately and find Michael.  He’s not answering his cel phone, and he was on patrol on the “graveyard shift.”  They ask if the Chief thinks Michael was involved, because of the incident earlier when he was seemingly controlled by an outside force, but the Chief shakes his head.

“Keira and Michael were a couple.”  He pauses, looking at them gravely.  “He deserves to be told as soon as possible.”

Iscalio wants to know why he won’t be with the rest of the party, and the Chief tells him he’s suspended temporarily for flagrant endangerment of civilian lives.  He wants Iscalio to write a report and give it to him before the night is over, but not to expect to be going back on field duty for a long time.  With that, the Chief sends them off.

As Iscalio and the group parts ways, they wonder what could be going on.  It seems obvious that someone in the Bureau is responsible for at least part of the problem, since the Gremlins were released, and the murderer used a Bureau sword.  They have a few suspects, Michael being on top of the list, but with no real evidence to back it up, just hunches.  

Jenny thinks it’s the church Dragon, Sexton, because of what Tagin told them about the Siren.  The Siren was talking about how they can’t fight their instincts, and obviously Sexton is fighting his instincts by denying that he’s a Dragon.  

Cai suspects the telepaths, though he can’t narrow it down to J’Qwuan, Autumn, or Neil (that’s what we all called Dalavar Kineil).  J’Qwuan’s just creepy, and he let the Siren jump to her death.  Autumn seems to taunt them a lot, but all she really does is hang around the Bureau.  Neil, though, disappeared suddenly, and might even have left the Gremlins as a trap for whoever tried to come after him.

Tagin thinks it’s a demon, since apparently he possessed Michael (to insult Dornankanir) and Brian (to destroy the evidence of the tape) and the first murderer Jericho Wright (to kill a Dragon).  But they have no clues to suggest a demon could even do that, so Tagin suggests that they do some research when they get back to the Bureau.

Iscalio leaves, and the party gears up to head to Bonaventure Cemetery in hopes of finding Michael.  As they near the gate out of the Faerie World, Cai asks, “What’s the common link between all these victims so far?  The Dragons, that tour guide, Keira, and Neil?  What’s the connection?”

Jenny replies dryly, “Us.”


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## Horacio (Jan 29, 2002)

A car chase with d20 rules!
More than a year before nobody tought about Spycraft d20 or Modern d20

Wow!


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## RangerWickett (Jan 30, 2002)

Yes, the D20 system is remarkably flexible.  Jessie basically just guestimated how hard a maneuver, then set a DC, without having to bother about accuracy.  It was fast and dramatic, even if the hot wheels kept rolling along the map on their own.

Quick question.  Who would be interested in seeing a setting akin to this?  I know Jessie wouldn't give up her baby, but Asgard magazine could in future issues include some Mythical Earth rules and roleplaying suggestions.  Would you be interested in that?



*J’Qwuan:*  Illithid Psn4; Medium-size Aberration; HD 8d8+4d4+12; hp 58; Init +6; Spd 30 ft.; AC 19 (+2 Dex, +4 Inertial Armor, +3 Natural); Atk 4 tentacles +10 melee (1d4+1); SA mind blast, psionics, improved grab, extract SQ SR 25, telepathy; SV Fort +4, Ref +5, Will +13; Str 12, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 20, Wis 17, Cha 17.

_Skills and Feats:_ Bluff +18, Concentration +12, Diplomacy +18, Hide +8, Intimidate +10, Knowledge (arcana) +10, Knowledge (psionics) +10, Listen +17, Move Silently +7, Psicraft +20, Spot +20.  Alertness, Combat Casting, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Psychic Inquisitor, Psychoanalyst, Weapon Finesse (tentacle).

_Power Points Per Day:_ 11 — Daze, Distract, Missive, Telempathic Projection; Disable, Empathy, Object Reading; Aversion.

_Powers at Will:_ Astral Projection, Charm Monster, Detect Thoughts, Levitate, Mind Blast, Plane Shift, Suggestion.


_Background:_
J’Qwuan’s arrival in the Bureau is mysterious.  The most anyone knows is that he worked with four generations of knights before the current Chief, and that he was confidante of all the Bureau commanders since the 1970s.  Though he once worked in the field as a scout or guardian, since 1983 he has held the office of Head Telepath.  His agenda is alien, but so far he has been loyal.


Would you believe I'm running out of material to write about?  We only had so much ahead of time.  But I'll come back when I have the time in future weeks and add extra information.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 30, 2002)

*Chapter Eleven: Uneasy Spirits*

It’s early June, 2000, a Sunday.  Earlier in the afternoon the Dragon Dornankanir was seemingly assassinated, since magical detection revealed a poison in his system that would induce a heart attack.  He was killed in human form, though, and discreetly.  The killer has kept a low profile as far as normal people are concerned; he could have easily just _fireballed_ the building (a _fireball_ was used to kill another Dragon, Flarinaman), but he opted to play along with the Bureau and not reveal the presence of magic to mundanes.

After the assassination, the Chief berated Iscalio Maxwell for endangering innocent bystanders with his violent gunfire.  The Chief took him off the case for now and told him to write a report explaining his actions.  Then, since another one of the knights, Michael Dunne, hadn’t reported in yet, the Chief sent off the rest of the group to Savannah to try to track down the paladin.  Michael’s girlfriend, Keira McCormick, was murdered at almost the same time, and the Chief wants Michael to be told.

The knights—Cai Maxwell, Jenny Windgrave, Madeline West, Tagin, and Finagle P. Luckshore, make it through the gate into Savannah near one of the dorms of the Savannah College of Art & Design.  They quickly pile into Madeline’s car and drive to Bonaventure Cemetery, where they first met Michael.  Michael often works the “graveyard shift,” cycling between graveyards in Savannah and New Orleans to make sure enthusiasts of the occult do not cause disturbances to the resting spirits.  Also, sometimes he is called upon to deal with the undead.

The knights reach the cemetery and park outside because the gates are locked at night.  By now it’s probably only 8 or 9 pm, so Savannah is still bustling outside the graveyard gates.  The group walks through the long lines of trees and tombstones, admiring in the dim light the elaborate craftsmanship on many of the stone obelisks and marble columns marking the final resting places of thousands of rich men and women from Savannah.  In the daytime you can drive through the cemetery along the dirt roads, but it is night now, and disturbingly dark because there are no electric lights for at least a mile leading off toward the river.  The group sticks to the dirt roads, a bit nervous to stray into the family plots in the middle of the night.  

As they walk, they can hear their footfalls crunching on bits of gravel in the road, the noise fading dully into the trees around them.  Cai coughs, drawing everyone’s nervous attention.  He mentions that now that it’s been an hour or two, he vaguely recalls seeing someone heading toward the convention center as he neared the car where Keira was killed.  The memory is fuzzy, and it seems to burn his eyes whenever he tries to picture it in his head.  He’s fairly certain he did see something, but that whoever it was must have blocked his memory.  Aside from the fact that he hates not being in control of himself, or his memories, he’s concerned that the only person there who could fiddle with memories was Dalavar.

Jenny’s about to question his logic when a footstep crunches in the road ahead of them.  They all look in a moment of panic, and Madeline conjures a cantrip of light to reveal Michael Dunne standing at the edge of the road, staring at them warily.

He asks them what they’re doing in his cemetery, and he starts to walk off toward the river, obviously expecting them to follow.  Jenny tells him the Chief wants him back at the Bureau.  There was another killing, and this time one knight was killed and another went missing.  Before they reached the cemetery, Jenny advised everyone to just not say anything about Keira, to let the Chief break the news.

Michael is distracted, and he points toward an elaborate gravesite near the edge of the river.  He says that ever since that night with Jericho Wright, he’s felt drawn to this particular grave, as if he expects something to happen here.  Michael and the party stop, and the paladin sighs, then turns to them, explaining that the huge marble structure in front of them is supposed to be the Gates of Heaven.  One rich Savannah resident commissioned it so everyone would know where _he_ was going when he died.  There’s even a life-size statue of St. Peter standing as if waiting for you to walk through the gates.

Jenny nods, admiring the craftsmanship if not the sentiment behind it.  She too feels something eerie here, and she tells the party.  Michael nods, then walks for the structure, asking as he approaches it who was killed.  Cai is just about to reply when Michael takes the first step onto the marble, ascending to the gates of heaven.

A dull groan fills the still air of the cemetery, and the ground around them seems to stir.

Michael draws his arcane blade and activates the curved blade, illuminating the scene in brilliant white as the top of a coffin rips through the earth inches from his feet, followed by a pair of dessicated hands clawing their way out of the ground.

Madeline begins to gather spell energy, and all the other knights ready their weapons.  Cai grips his sawed-off double barrel twelve-gauge shotgun, Jenny her spear, Tagin his pistol, and Finagle his jury-rigged gyroscopic compressed air rifle (he replaced the tranq darts with small explosives, akin to big firecrackers).  

All around them, corpses tear their way out of their graves, totally perhaps a score or more, and they begin to advance on the group.  They are all dressed in fine clothing, now rotting off.  Some even wear their wedding dresses or tuxedos, and as they shamble forward, their stench assaults the nostrils of those present who still have actual working organs.

Finagle pops off a shot at a zombie crawling out of its grave before it can get to its feet.  The shot lands flawlessly into the undead’s cranium, then explodes, knocking the zombie back into the dirt.  The explosion leaves a small hole in the corpse’s face, but only slows it down.  It seems unfazed by having half its head destroyed.

Cai blasts a second zombie with his sawed-off double barrel twelve-gauge shotgun, ripping off both its legs.  Michael slices off the head of the one nearest to him, and Madeline begins to cast a _magic nissile_ spell.  Her ghost, Catherine, is panicking because the zombies are around though, and her spell goes wild.  Madeline begins to panic herself when she begins to levitate over the field of combat, hovering 20 feet in the air with nothing to direct her movement.  She shouts for Catherine to calm down, but otherwise can’t do very much.

Tagin pops off a shot at one of the zombies and misses because it’s dark.  He frowns, then backs away, rummaging in his pocket for his penlight.  Then he shakes his head, realizing that he has no way to attach the two.  Shrugging, he pulls out the penlight, just to make himself feel useful.

Jenny runs forward, intending to do battle with the unearthly creatures.  Both she and her ghost Pataman give a war cry as Jenny charges toward the nearest zombies, but Jenny misses.  Zombie must’ve dodged or something.  *shrug*

Madeline calls desperately for someone to get her down, and though Finagle could probably pull it off, he’s too busy shooting things to bother being an actual wizard.  He shoots another zombie, this time in the thigh, ineffectually trying to blow out its kneecap. Meanwhile, Cai casually blasts any zombie that gets within 10 feet.  He calls out to Michael to ask why the dead decided to start walking all of a sudden.

Tagin sees a Zombie coming up from behind Michael, about to slam the paladin with his arms, so the hacker pops off a shot.  It flies over Michael’s shoulder and grazes the undead, but Michael is alerted to the danger and takes the Zombie down with a nice pair of slashes from his scimitar.  He then shouts to Cai that corpses never animate spontaneously.  Something must be causing it.

Madeline, trying to make the most of the situation, spends the round telling her ghost Catherine not to be scared, because the Zombies can’t hurt her.  Catherine replies that she can hear another ghost crying out in misery though, coming from somewhere nearby.  When Madeline relays that information, everyone gets a clue to who must be animating the zombies.

Jenny ducks a clumsy swipe from the Zombie she’s battling, but her own spear thrust misses wildly.  Sighing in frustration, she tells Pataman to go help Madeline’s ghost.

Cai kills another zombie, while Finagle finally succeeds in stopping one, hitting it in the throat, which then explodes in a gruesome decapitation.  One of them finally gets close enough to clobber Finagle on his head, nearly dropping the scrawny man to the ground in one hit.  Cai tucks his shotgun under his arm and draws his katana, intending to go rescue Finagle.  

Tagin shouts to see if Jenny needs help, but Jenny is resolute to take this thing out on her own, so Tagin shrugs and instead runs away from all the Zombies that were getting a little too close to him.  He gets near Michael, and uses the paladin as a shield from behind which he fires.  Michael, Tagin notices, seems to hestitate, as if he’s uncertain what to do.  Still, though, the man’s on top of his game, and is able to chop down the first Zombie that gets too close to him.  Another four Zombies try to surround him, but they’re so slow that Michael and Tagin just back up to avoid them.

Madeline fires a magic missile at the Zombie beating on Finagle, but doesn’t stop it.  She then shouts to Catherine to try to see what’s going on with the ghost that’s causing this trouble.

Meanwhile, Jenny tries to trip the Zombie with her spear, hoping it’ll be easier to deal with when it’s on the ground.  The Zombie, a finely dressed man with a decomposing beard and rotting eyeballs, somehow avoids her trip attempt, even though it’s not particularly fleet of foot.

Cai beheads the Zombie attacking Finagle, and Finagle, just to be safe, shoots said Zombie in the chest.  Since it’s only 5 feet away when it’s bursts outward in a tiny explosion, and Cai and Finagle are covered in Zombie bits.

“Next time rescue yourself,” Cai mutters, walking off to kill more Zombies.  He sees Jenny in trouble and walks toward her, but she waves him off, saying she can handle it.  Cai shrugs and gets out his shotgun again, deciding to give her a chance to prove herself.

Michael and Tagin are getting backed toward the Gates of Heaven sculpture, surrounded in a circle by Zombies.  Tagin calls for help and tries to shoot a Zombie in the crotch, but to no effect.  Michael and Tagin begin to climb the steps to the gate, and Michael slices down through one Zombie that gets too close.  

Catherine and Pataman, the two ghosts stand incoporeally nearby Tagin and Michael, staring at the sculpture, which is the source of the moaning only they can hear.  Catherine calls out, asking for the ghost to tell them who he is.

The statue of St. Peter reaches out past Tagin and touches Michael on his shoulder, saying in a voice filled with agony, “I’m . . . Gerrard.”

Tagin shrieks in panic and jumps away from the statue, landing in a pile of Zombies, but firing blindly into the statue.  His bullets chew through the statue’s face, but it still reaches out to Michael.  The blonde paladin gasps in surprise and barely restrains himself from hacking off the marble arm.  In his moment of fright he is torn at his back by the Zombies.  Tagin doesn’t fare too well either, as a trio of Zombie begin kicking him while he’s down.  

Good thing he is down, though, as Cai’s blast from his sawed-off double barrel twelve-gauge shotgun rips into and through three Zombie torsos.  Finagle covers himself with Mage Armor, because Cai has run off, leaving him alone to fend for himself.

Jenny, needing to finish off this Zombie fast and go help her friends, decides to try something new.  She waits for the Zombie to throw itself at her, and then she drops to the ground and holds her spear up to pierce the undead’s chest as it falls upon her.  The DM rules that the Zombie wasn’t actually trying to slam into Jenny, though, so Jenny is just lying on the ground where the Zombie can kick her.  In frustration, Jenny slams her spear into the thing’s chest, hitting for a full 8 damage.  Still, though, the Zombie doesn’t fall over.

Michael gets his wits about him and begins hacking at the Zombies that are trying to pull him to the ground, and Cai rushes in, sawed-off double barrel twelve-gauge shotgun a’blazing.  Tagin barely crawls away with his life intact, but between his pistol and Madeline’s _magic missile_, the Zombie that was trying to kill him goes down.

Jenny leaves the Zombie with a spear stuck in its chest and runs to help and heal Tagin.  Finagle asks her for help, but she thinks that he’s handling himself well enough on his own, so she runs past him toward the wounded hacker.  Finagle sees a Zombie with a spear in its chest lumbering toward him, and he blows its head off.

Catherine and Pataman, the ghosts, are trying to talk down the other ghost, Gerrard, which has possessed the statue.  Pataman figures that Gerrard must be responsible for the Zombies, and since they don’t know how to get him to stop, they just try to get him to calm down.

A frenetic hack fest takes place just outside the Gates of Heaven, and in a few more seconds the ground is littered with two dozen zombies in varying states of dismemberment.  Jenny helps Tagin to his feet, and Finagle _mage hands_ a rope up to Madeline so she can pull herself down.  In the distance they can hear more people (well, zombies actually) shambling toward them, and Madeline and Jenny’s ghosts tell them that Gerrard, the ghost in the statue, isn’t doing it on purpose, but that he can’t control his powers because he’s ‘lost.’

Jenny asks Michael if he can exorcise the ghost, but Michael says he can’t.  Jenny, suspicious, wonders why Michael didn’t use any magic against the Zombies when they attacked.  If this ghost Gerrard is ‘lost,’ that might mean he was forced out of whoever he was in before.  Just to be safe, she asks Michael to prove that he can still do magic.  Michael grumbles at her lack of trust and waves his hand to conjure a ball of light.  

“There, happy?”

Jenny is worried, but the rest of the group is too busy making fun of the fact that she couldn’t even kill a single Zombie for her to gather her thoughts.  Cai tells her to be careful in the future, and leave the Zombie fighting to him.  Then Cai pulls out his cel and tells the Bureau they’re on their way back, but that they need to send someone out to exorcise a ghost.  They want to get out of there before any more Zombies show up.

The group rushes out of the graveyard, Cai and Finagle blasting any Zombies that get within 10 feet.  As they get to Madeline’s car, the Bureau agents show up to exorcise the ghost.  The knights cram into Madeline’s car (Madeline threatening to hurt them if they get blood on her seats), and they head back to the gate to the Bureau.

Michael, now that the shock has worn off, asks again which knight was killed earlier that day.  Before Jenny can stop him, Cai replies that it was Keira, and Michael goes cold again.  He slumps against the window of the car and manages to hold back his emotions, but obviously he’s torn up inside.  Finagle tactlessly asks whether it was true that they were going out.

Finagle gets smacked on the head by Tagin for that one, and the rest of the car ride is in silence.


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## Horacio (Jan 31, 2002)

Hey, where is our daily update?


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## Acquana (Jan 31, 2002)

Fear not!  More posts are on the way, Wickett's just been really busy with finishing touches on Wild Spellcraft.     At least that's what he's been telling me so I hope I can believe him.  ^_-


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## RangerWickett (Jan 31, 2002)

There will indeed be an update later today.  I just had to spend all of yesterday proofreading the text and working on the banner ad.  And Morrus and I discussed an interesting product that I hope to be able to finish by August, which might intriguing for people who like this storyhour.

And Jessie, don't worry, I'm not selling out your world.


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## Horacio (Feb 1, 2002)

RangerWickett said:
			
		

> *There will indeed be an update later today.  I just had to spend all of yesterday proofreading the text and working on the banner ad.  And Morrus and I discussed an interesting product that I hope to be able to finish by August, which might intriguing for people who like this storyhour.*




O.K., if you were creating new wonderful stuff for us I will forgive you. But today you MUST update, O.K.?  



> *
> And Jessie, don't worry, I'm not selling out your world.   *




Why not? It would be wonderful! I would buy it even if it were a $30 softcover with an Avalanche-like cover of a certain Native American Paladin...


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## RangerWickett (Feb 1, 2002)

Horacio said:
			
		

> *
> 
> Why not? It would be wonderful! I would buy it even if it were a $30 softcover with an Avalanche-like cover of a certain Native American Paladin...
> *




  *Goes blind*


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## RangerWickett (Feb 2, 2002)

Sorry, the above suggestion just caught me so totally off guard.  Um . . . but hey, if you're interested, I'll tell Jessie.

And without further adieu, let us get back into the story with everyone's favorite NPC,

*Brian Greenman:*  Male human Com1; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 1d4-1; hp 3; Init +3; Spd 30 ft.; AC 10 (t-shirt); Atk unarmed +1 melee (1d3+1); SV Fort -1, Ref +0, Will -3; Str 13, Dex 10, Con 9, Int 16, Wis 5, Cha 12.

_Skills and Feats:_ Bluff +3, Computer Use +10, Disable Device +7, Forgery +5, Gather Information +5, Knowledge (gaming) +8; Skill Emphasis (Computer Use), Skill Emphasis (Knowledge (gaming)).
Note:  All Knowledge skills, Computer Use, and Speak Language are class skills for Brian because of his Computer Science education. Disable Device and Gather Information are Brian’s floating class skills.


_Background:_
Brian played AD&D all through high school and college, but when he graduated he was without a group for several months.  An attempt to spy on local witches to determine the accuracy of a particular article in Dragon magazine led to his recruitment in the Bureau when the witches actually summoned a small imp.  Knights from the Bureau rescued him and defeated the witches.  One of those knights actually used to run D&D games of his own, but they somehow lost the interest to roleplay anymore because of the adventurousness of their real lives.  Regardless, Brian is still interested in gaming, and eagerly awaits the release of 3rd Edition.



*Real Witchcraft and Wizardry in the world of High Fantasy*

Though many of the myths of the world are surprisingly accurate if one travels to Gaia and looks for parallels, few modern myths have any basis in fact.  One of the foremost of these concocted myths is the world of J.K. Rowling, and her Harry Potter books.  As much as readers love the setting, there are no schools for witchcraft and wizardry in the world.  Most magi develop the talents naturally, and if either humans or magi want to gain further magical power, they usually seek a tutor, or study on their own for many years.

However, it is interesting to note that in one way, life has imitated art.  Within the past three years, a surprising number of magic-users have attempted to simulate the game Quidditch (a complicated game with three balls, one flying gold hummingbird, and flying broomsticks for all the players).  Though the game is very silly when viewed objectively, enthusiasts of the books can be found in both Terra and Gaia (Gaian readers find it all rather quaint, actually).  Efforts to start official tournaments are having a hard time, but there are at least three fan-made teams in England alone.

There is also the question of D&D, Tolkien, and the whole trend of modern fantasy.  Who’s in the know, who’s just making stuff up?  Though nothing can confirm it, Brian’s research files into this very subject suggest that Gary Gygax may himself have been a magi, which explains his youthful giddiness despite his old age, much like Merlin.  Much as UFO conspiracy theorists think that shows like the X-Files are intended to acclimate humans to the idea of aliens being non-threatening, Brian and a handful of others believe that some of Tolkien’s good friends may have been Elves (yeah, like he really could make that language up all by himself!), and that Gygax was probably working for the Bureau when he released D&D back in the 70s.  And true to form, anything related to magic or the fey was attacked as being satanic.  Though recent incarnations have stemmed the tide of criticism, anyone who takes a look at the stuff WotC puts out for Magic: the Gathering can tell they have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.  Apparently Washington doesn’t have as many gates to Gaia as Wisconsin.

Monte Cook, though. . . .  He knows the real deal.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 2, 2002)

*Chapter Twelve: Fugitives*

Late one Sunday evening in June, 2000, a group of frustrated and weary knights walk enter the Bureau through a door between the real world and the Faerie World.

Aside from the standard guards, Autumn Yeiotana stands there, and with a  quick glance across them she surveys the situation.  Even without her telepathy, Autumn could have told from Michael’s expression that something is wrong.  The blonde paladin is torn up because he has just learned from the party that his girlfriend and fellow knight, Keira McCormick, was killed on a mission earlier in the day.

Autumn walks up and supports him, saying quietly to the group that she’ll handle Michael.  They need to report to the Chief.  As Autumn leads Michael off to console him on his loss, the party walks quietly to where the Chief is waiting.  They can all sense that Something Bad is about to happen.

They find the Chief amidst a group of desk workers and techies, all gathered in a room filled with computer terminals, plastic racks of divination scrolls, and various screens and scanners.  The Chief looks grave and tells them to make themselves comfortable; they’ll be here for a while.  Everyone leans against unused wallspace, except for Madeline and Finagle, who sit down wearily in the only available chairs.

The Chief hands out to them printed sheets of the details they know so far.  Even though he knows Michael is in a horrible position, he still hopes Michael will be able to make it, because they might need him to crack this case.  Still, Autumn said she wanted to talk to him, so he trusted her.

The facts are thus.  The killer of the first two Dragons—Flarinaman, who had been in Savannah to visit Dornankanir, and Giriuko, a Hong-Kong corporate president—was Jericho Wright.  Airline records confirm he was in both cities on the appropriate day.  Jericho’s wife and two children turned up as dead ends; they believed he was just on a business trip.  They have been told that Jericho Wright died in a mugging in Savannah.

Unfortunately, there are two problems.  First of all, someone else killed another Dragon—Dornankanir, from Savannah—after the presumed killer died.  Second of all, according to magical scans, Jericho Wright has no traces of spirit energy that should remain if he had bonded with a ghost.  Since he’s obviously not a wizard, and obviously a human, they can’t explain how he was able to wield the magic he used on the party, not to mention on the Dragons he killed.

One Knight has gone missing—half-Elf telepath Dalavar Keneil—though it is possible he was killed by Gremlins that somehow escaped the Bureau.  Another Knight has been killed—quarter-Elf Keira McCormick—and judging by her reaction right before her murder, she knew her killer.  Dalavar is their key suspect for the murder of Keira, and a manhunt is out for him even now.

The only leads they’ve had so far about who the killer is have died.  One—a Siren—killed herself after claiming that the killer is dead.  The other—Gina Perez, bonded with the spirit of Margaret Thomas—was murdered by someone with a Bureau-style arcane sword, but she managed to scrawl out “Legion” before dying.  Whether Legion is a name or a title or if it simply means that there were several attackers is unknown.

Cai mentions that he thinks his short term memory has been tampered with, since he can vaguely recall seeing someone running away from Keira’s murder scene, but trying to place the killer’s face just causes him headaches.  The Chief considers this and starts to call for J’Qwuan to help dredge Cai’s mind.  Cai, nervous that the Illithid might actually have been responsible for wiping his memory, asks to have at least two telepaths present.  The Chief grudgingly agrees and calls Autumn in also.

In the few minutes it takes the two telepaths to arrive, the group discusses their thoughts.  There is no consensus as to whether Legion is supposed to be a demon possessing people, or a telepath controlling people, or an organization of people working together to kill different natural magis.  Everyone has been so busy thinking about the dead Dragons that only Tagin reminds them that the killer apparently wanted to murder the Siren also, but wasn’t able to because they were in a public place.  It looks like the killer(s) have something in particular against Dragons, but is/are also eager to kill other magi.  Keira and Dalavar were both partially magi.  

As far as they can tell, that’s been the only connection in the murders, though it is possible that the killer is just traveling randomly, killing any magi he or she comes across along the way.  Giriuko, Dornankanir, and Flarinaman were fairly high profile for Dragons, so it would make sense for ‘Legion’ to go after them first, since they would be easiest to find.  Depressedly, they have to guess that the other magi were just collateral damage, and that the main goals were the Dragons.

The Illithid and the Elf telepaths arrive.  Autumn glances at the Chief, then at Cai, as if questioning the Chief’s decision on something.  The Chief shakes his head.

The group wonders if Autumn and the Chief are reacting poorly to Cai because of what his brother Iscalio did earlier, but before any of us can ask about Iscalio, the Chief speaks up.  He explains to Autumn that they need to check Cai’s mind for traces of a memory wipe, but he himself is interrupted by one of the techies who walks forward urgently.  The Chief turns to him, eager for news.

The technician says they’ve finished scanning through the surveillance tapes from the convention center where Dornankanir was murdered just hours ago.  They only found one person who stands out and looks out of place.  The techie hands over a printed black and white image from the surveillance camera in the kitchen.  The Chief looks at it in confusion, then hands it to the party, asking if any of them recognize him.  

[Copy and paste this link in a separate browser; you cannot just click straight through because geocities won’t let you:  http://www.geocities.com/rangerwickett/SK_Images/Brian2-no.JPG]



The paper is passed around until Tagin and Finagle see it, and both gasp in surprise.  Finagle breaths out in dismay.

“Brian, no.”

Guards are sent to bring in Brian Greenman, Finagle’s next door neighbor and recent teammate with Tagin on his mission in Hong Kong.  When he shows up, apparently he knows the jig is up.  He’s already blubbering, his clothes and hair a mess.  Before they can even ask any questions, he shouts, “They said they’d wipe my mind if I didn’t do it!”

The Chief stares at him coldly.  “Who?”

“ . . . I don’t know.”

“Who!”

J’Qwuan speaks into their minds, casually stating, He doesn’t know.

“Stay out of this!” the Chief snaps at his head telepath.

Glancing around in panic, Brian suddenly stops.  He shudders for a moment, and then his eyes roll back in his head and he falls dead to the floor.  Autumn gasps and runs off, saying she’ll get help.  Finagle almost begins to cry at the sight of his friend lying dead on the floor.  The whole room stands still in shock at the sudden death, with no sign as to what happened.

J’Qwuan’s telepathic voice says that he sensed a powerful force just now, and that only powerful magic or a powerful telepath could just kill someone so suddenly.  The Illithid kneels next to the body, running a hand over Brian’s face to close his eyes.

The Chief turns to the room and furiously shouts for them to alert the facility.  “I want to know that my agency isn’t going insane!”

The Illithid’s white eyes emotionlessly regard the gathered knights, and his thoughts reach them all with a trace of worry.  _I can give you every assurance that it is._

Without another word, the Mind Flayer stands and leaves the room.

Jenny tries to see if she could possibly heal Brian, but he is already long gone.  The Chief orders the Knights out of the room, and as they leave the Chief surpervises the techies as they begin to scan Brian’s still warm corpse.  A soft alert sounds through the whole facility, accompanied by a woman’s voice stating that everyone should be wary for magical forces.  When the party asks what they should do, the Chief glowers and tells them to just leave.  They have caused too much trouble already.

Finagle begins to cry, and Jenny tries to comfort him, leading him out of the room while glaring at the Chief as they leave.  Once outside the room, they look at each other, unsure what to do, until Jenny decides to go talk to Michael.  He seems to be the only one left who has been exposed to “Legion” and is still alive.  Only a few days earlier, Michael had insulted Dornankanir in Draconic.  Michael, however, doesn’t even know the language, and doesn’t remember the encounter.

Before they can get to Michael, however, a scream pierces their minds, Autumn’s voice crying out for help.  The knights run to help, following the scream as it continues and intensifies as they grow nearer.

They come quickly to Autumn’s office.  Cai kicks the door in, revealing Autumn and J’Qwuan staring at each other, sweat streaking their faces in a fierce battle of wills.  J’Qwuan is slowly inching closer, his four gray-green tentacles reaching for the Elvish woman’s vulnerable face.

Cai considers for a moment, but Finagle rushes past him into the room, firing his tranq rifle at the Illithid.  He shouts desperately, tears still streaming down his cheeks.  “I’ll save you, Autumn!”

A telekinetic shield deflects the dart, but then the two telepaths slump away from each other at the same time.  Cai yanks Finagle back, and the tall knight covers the room with his shotgun.  Finagle struggles, pointing at J’Qwuan and shouting that the Illithid killed Brian.  Cai shakes his head, confused, and he tells them all to wait.

The two telepaths stand in unison, their motions nearly exact mirrors.  Both draw pistols from their clothing, and hold them warily toward the party.  Autumn’s voice speaks at the same time that J’Qwuan’s mental voice seeps into their minds.

_“How do you know which one of us won?  How do you even know which one is the real threat?  Who won, do you think?  Plan to kill us both and hurt an innocent?”_

The office is large, so Tagin and Jenny squeeze in, but Madeline and Finagle are stuck outside.  Tagin decides to play it safe, and he fires a shot into the ceiling, hoping that the classic “drop ceiling on them” move will break the telepath’s concentration.  Unfortunately, the building is mostly plastic and metal, so the shot just disappears harmlessly.  However, at the shot, both telepaths cringe identically.

Cai drops his shotgun and draws his katana, while Jenny lunges in and stabs J’Qwuan in the thigh.  She notices that only J’Qwuan seems to feel the pain, not Autumn.  She is about to shout that Autumn’s in control, when a blast of mental energy stuns her, and she falls to the ground mutely.

Madeline fires her last pair of _magic missiles_, hitting both telepaths, which doesn’t help determine who’s who.  Finagle again opts to shoot his dart gun rather than cast a spell, and again the dart is telekinetically deflected.  He curses, screaming wildly.  From down the hallways, they can hear others shouting in confusion or curiosity.

Cai starts to swing at J’Qwuan, but to his anger he feels his limbs begin to move without his control.  Tagin fires a shot at Autumn, but the bullet is deflected mere inches from her face.  Cai moves to attack Tagin, but Tagin ducks and disappears from Cai’s sight, leaping around him and close to Autumn, whom he stabs with his switchblade.  Autumn falls away, but before Tagin can pin the woman the room falls into pitch blackness, and a blast of pain rocks through them all.  For a moment, all is silent, and then the air fills with the sound of Cai’s katana humming through the air, followed by the distinct noise of a fleshy body being cut open. 

The darkness fades away, and Finagle recovers just enough to recognize Autumn as she shoves him to the floor and rushes past him into the hallway.  He falls back and in shock watches her run off.

Back in the room, Jenny and Tagin overcome the mental blast and see Cai leaning into J’Qwuan, his sword dug deep into the Illithid’s gut.  Dark fluids course over his hands and onto the floor.  Cai staggers away, and J’Qwuan slumps to the ground, a wheeze escaping his mouth.  The Mind Flayer has been cut nearly in two, far too wounded for Jenny’s healing to save, but he still has the strength to send his thoughts to them.

He is at first angered that he is about to die, but he grows suddenly somber when a voice announces over the Bureau intercom that a fight has occurred in the office of Autumn Yeiotana, and that telepath J’Qwuan has been murdered.  All able-bodied knights are to apprehend the killers and bring them to the Chief.

As Illithid blood floods the floor, J’Qwuan begins to shudder, near death.  He tells them to run.  He suspected Autumn, and when he confronted her, she proved far more powerful than he had knew, and she must be manipulating the Chief.  They have to run if they want to survive.

J’Qwuan, with the last of his energy, dominates the nearest knight with a key and sends the party his way.  The Illithid collapses into his own blood.  Though it takes some prodding to get Jenny to flee the scene of the murder, they run and meet the knight, who blankly hands Tagin a key.  The party slips into an elevator just as two more knights round the corner, chasing after them.

The alert repeats, giving physical descriptions of the party.  As they exit the elevator near the room that holds the gates to the real world, Cai has to blast the guards in their legs with his shotgun so they can get access to the gates.  Tagin pushes the key into the doorway, and it activates in a brilliant wash of light.  With no time to think, they all leap through, leaving the Bureau behind.


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## Horacio (Feb 2, 2002)

Now the "knights" are fugitives! And they have killed the good guy... who has saved them.

What a wonderful story!


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## RangerWickett (Feb 3, 2002)

*Dalavar Kineil:*  Male half-Elf Psn7; Medium-size Humanoid (half-Elf); HD 7d4-7; hp 21; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 12 (+2 Dex); Atk automatic pistol +5 melee (1d10/crit x3); SQ half-Elf Traits; SV Fort +1, Ref +4, Will +6; Str 11, Dex 14, Con 9, Int 12, Wis 13, Cha 17.

_Skills and Feats:_ Bluff +15, Concentration +15, Diplomacy +7, Gather Information +8, Knowledge (psionics) +8, Psicraft +7, Sense Motive +15; Inner Strength, Talented, Trigger Power (False Sensory Input, DC 17).

_Power Points Per Day:_ 30 — Daze, Detect Psionics, Distract, Missive, Telempathic Projection; Charm Person, Conceal Thoughts, Combat Precognition, Lesser Mindlink; Detect Thoughts, Inflict Pain, Suggestion; False Sensory Input, Lesser Domination.


_Background:_
Dalavar was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to a family who had nothing to do with the Bureau.  However, when their half-Elven son demonstrated telepathic powers, the Bureau insisted on bringing Dalavar into the ministry of telepathy against his will.  This unhappiness was made even worse by Dalavar’s lack of friends in the Bureau.  Overall, Neil is a fairly unhappy and lonely person, always hoping to turn an acquaintance into an actual friend.  Sometimes he considers just using his telepathy to _make_ someone his friend, but he knows that would just make him even more unhappy.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 3, 2002)

Now I can show you what happened to Iscalio.  Out of game, his player left because Jessie was getting sick of his 'sense of humor.'  In game . . . well, he ran into trouble in a way only Iscalio can.  This story takes place almost simultaneously to the events in Chapter Eleven, while the rest of the party was at Bonaventure Cemetery with Michael.

If you don't want to read this whole, long thing, feel free not to.  It is not directly related to the main plot, but it helps tie up a loose end.



*Midsummer's Eve*
“Damned fluorescent lighting,” Iscalio muttered to the empty room loudly.  He threw up his hands in frustration, rustling the fronds of one of his many potted plants, now all dying in the air-conditioned, unnaturally-lit catacombs that the bureau referred to as his ‘office.’  His ghost fox growled behind his leg, unnerved along with Iscalio.  

To Iscalio’s eyes, the ghost was almost as white as he was.  He was always a bit nervous when going through the Bureau compound that some other knight would mistake his albino skin and red eyes for some type of ghoul or something.  Though he was pretty sure anyone would go pale if they stayed in this place long enough, with it’s fake lighting, no trees, no open spaces, no wild animals.  Iscalio and his fox growled again.

“What the hell do the _Elves_ do in this place?  God!”  

Iscalio sighed and slumped his shoulders, sitting down at his desk.  He had a report to write.  After nearly killing a couple of civilians in a failed attempt to save the poisoned Dragon businessman, Dornankanir, his superiors had decided that, unless he could explain himself, the Bureau would have to transfer him to the Monster Hunters’ Department.  Out of the general Agent Department he and his brother Cai had been collaborating in for the past month.  The Brothers Maxwell no more.

He opened up Microsoft Word, grumbling to himself.  Of course an all-encompassing organization intent on supressing the truth of magic from the rest of the ‘idiotic’ society _would_ use Windows.  The ‘Bureau for the Management of Magicks,’ his ass.  More like the ‘Big-brother Masterminding with Magic.’ 

His fox was hungry.  He could feel the ghost’s hunger in the pit of his own stomach, though he somehow knew it wasn’t Iscalio that was hungry, but that incoporeal Ranyard who never seemed to be able to give him the magic he needed. For a bonded spirit animal, Iscalio was left with the feeling that it ought to at least be able to heal his plants.

Several minutes of frustration passed as Iscalio related the reasons he had leaned out of the window of the car he and his brother had stolen and fired several shots into the tires of an adjacent car.  The car had been blocking their way, and he had only been following orders.  After Dornankanir had passed out from poisoning, his brother had taken command and ordered them all to stop the ambulance.  It would not have done for the doctors to have witnessed the Dragon reverting out of his assumed human form on the operating table.

He left out the part where his brother, usually the violent one, had tried to stop his crazed, gun-toting nature mage of a brother from shooting at a few extra cars along the way.

Iscalio was revising the description, adding on extra details about his diligence in trying to save the Dragon’s life, when a knock sounded from his door.  Iscalio looked up at the plastic-looking door, grumbling again that the whole complex looked like it was made from white, black, or grey plastic.  

He stood up from his ergonomic plastic chair and walked toward the door, sighing.  The headquarters of the BMM, secluded in the fairy world, a world of magic and mystery, looked like an iMac.  He made a note to requisition a wood finish for his entire room.  Then at least his dying plants would have friends.

He silently opened the door to the hallway outside and was greeted with a nervous face.  A man of about forty, short brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a labcoat, stared at Iscalio, then around his room.  

“You’re the druid, right?  Maxwell?”

Iscalio muttered.  At least the old man wasn’t calling him a hippy like that Indian chick. . . .  Though when Iscalio thought about it, the man in front of him might have been old enough to have actually _been_ a hippy.

“Druid works, yeah.  You’re who?”

“Kenneth Malcom,” the man said brusquely, glancing from side to side down the hallway.  “Can I come in?  I need to tell you about some of your coworkers who you shouldn’t be trusting.”

Iscalio shrugged and let the man in, then closed the door behind him, trying to thump it ominously, hoping to get a scare out of the man.  He didn’t flinch, though, and seemed intent on mumbling a song under his breath.

“Hey, that’s that Turtles song, right?  So Happy Together?”

Kenneth Malcom nodded, standing in the center of the cramped office, made even smaller by the dozens of long-leafed, wilting bushes and ferns.  The AC made the air too dry, especially when Iscalio had almost gotten used to the humidity in Savannah, where his brother operated his dojo.

The lab-coated man leaned against the wall and stopped mumbling his song.  “You’ve been working on the Dragon murders case, right?”

Iscalio harrumphed, glancing angrily at his computer.  The fox growled as well, silent and invisible to Iscalio’s guest.  “Yeah, that’s me.  Not really much of a case.  Somebody just has it out for a bunch of Dragons.  I’ve met two already, and I can see the logic behind killing ‘em off.  God!  What egos!”

Malcom frowned.  “I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about, but I do know that someone in the bureau’s involved somehow.  Some files I’ve been working on vanished suddenly earlier today.  Files pertaining to some close autopsy scannings of that body your brother drug in here about a week ago.”

Iscalio chuckled despite himself.  His brother Cai had shot out the base of a statue in one of Savannah’s cemeteries and let the thing collapse on top of some nut who’d attacked him and some of the other knights they worked with.  Iscalio hadn’t been present.

“What about him?” Iscalio asked, shaking his leg to keep his spectral fox from getting too close.

“Well. . . ,” he glanced around nervously, “as the preliminary autopsy report showed, there wasn’t any residual spirit energy left in him, so . . . so he _couldn’t_ have been using magic like your brother and his fellow knights claimed.”

Iscalio shrugged out of boredom.  “My ghost gets nervous around strangers.  Make it quick, okay?”

Malcom nodded, looking around as though he could see the ghost.  Without stopping his search of the room, the man continued.  “When I examined his um . . . his brain matter, thinking perhaps it had been telepathic intrusion, I found microscopic distortions.  It’s the physical remnant of . . . damn, sorry.  I’m just a little nervous.”

Iscalio shrugged helplessly.  “Sorry I can’t help you.  You can skip the science and just tell me the problem, though.  What’s got you spooked?”

Malcom buried his face in his hands and shuddered.  Then he looked up into Iscalio’s eyes.  “Normally a ghost leaves a spiritual imprint, along with a physical imprint.  Magic can detect one, science the other.  Well, this man your brother killed didn’t have any spiritual imprint, but he had the physical signs of a ghost.  Like . . . where the ghost moved around the furniture so it’d be at home in his head.”

Iscalio nervously ran a hand through his short white hair.  “So his ghost is gone?”

Malcom nodded.  “It . . . it left entirely, instead of dying with him.  The only thing that I can think of that can totally . . . totally _steal_ a spirit is a telepath, the same way one could switch minds with you.”

Iscalio’s eyes went wide.  He’d agreed to the occasional loyalty test mental scan by the Bureau, to make sure he wasn’t possessed by a demon or something, but he hadn’t been told the telepaths could suck his brains out.  “So someone stole the man’s ghost, then hacked into your computer and deleted your files?  Hunh.  It might’ve been Tagin.  He’s a hacker, and he’s got the hots for that telepath chick.  Of course, I think she’s hot too.  Hmm.”

Malcom shook his head.  “No, I forgot to tell you.  It couldn’t have been a hacker.  I was using my laptop.  It wasn’t connected to the Bureau server at the time.  Someone deleted it directly.”

Iscalio shrugged.  “No biggie.  I mean—”

“I never let the laptop out of my sight,” Malcom said bluntly.  “The only person who could’ve deleted it would’ve been me. . . .”

“Oh ****, man,” Iscalio exclaimed.  “They were talking about that whole Legion thing, with it possessing people and jumping from body to body.  Oh ****.  You mean somebody hopped into your head and-?”

Nervously twitching his fingers, Malcom nodded.  “I’ve been trying to keep whoever it is out of my head by doing the usual.  Singing songs, doing math, picturing lurid images to maybe disgust whoever’s trying to read my mind.”

The somberness of the problem helped Iscalio suppress his desire to laugh.  Solemnly he asked, “So, what now?”

Now Malcom shrugged, sighing.  “It looks like someone’s trying to steal magic.  Killing Dragons, stealing ghosts.  And it looks like it’s a telepath who’s doing it.”

“J’Qwuan?  The tentacle-guy?” Iscalio asked, nervously glancing at the door as he began to recite a Nine Inch Nails about animals in his head.  “Or Autumn?  I mean, how many telepaths do we have here?”

Malcom shook his head and fiddled with the dying fronds absently.  “I don’t know.  But there aren’t any that I know of who can create fireballs, which is how some of the Dragons were killed.  So it means a conspiracy.”

Iscalio coughed out a nervous chuckle.  “So where do we start?”

Malcom put up his hands, his attention back on Iscalio.  “I’m not getting involved anymore.  I just told you because you’re the only one from your group who’s still in the complex.  I’m going to file a report as soon as I get done here.  Hopefully,” he tapped the side of his head, “no one’s been listening in.”

Iscalio stood up straight.  “What do you mean, I’m the only one here?  Where’s everyone else?  They should be back by now.”

“I checked,” Malcom said, rubbing the sides of his arms to warm himself.  “Apparently they were sent to find another knight.  Michael Dunne, I think you know him.”

Iscalio crinkled his nose at the thought.  Smacking his lips, he walked over to his computer and sat down again.  “I’ll send an email to Cai and ev’rybody else, just in case.  Do you have any leads as to where we should start looking?”

Malcom walked over beside Iscalio and looked at the monitor.  “Once you finish the email, check on . . . um, check up on the statuses of the telepaths in the Bureau.  See if anyone’s missing.  Especially if several went missing at once.”

Iscalio nodded, but he was busying typing the letter to his brother.  “D’you mind hanging around for a few more minutes?  Just to be safe in case our telepath is still interested in you?”

“Sure,” Malcom said weakly.  “Where else do I have to go?”

Iscalio chuckled.  “And by the way, thanks for letting me in on this.  You just made my life so much easier.”


Half an hour later they hit upon a lead.  A high-ranking telepath and several knight bodyguards had been assigned to long term duty at a forest in England.  They weren’t reported as missing, but their last status report was from weeks ago.  It was their best lead, with the only close runner-up being a concern in New Orleans that earlier in the afternoon several Goblins had been speaking too-fluent English, and that it was the hometown of Dalavar Keneil, the half-Elf telepath who’d gone nuts during Iscalio’s last mission, then vanished mysteriously this same afternoon.  

“Neil was with us in Atlanta when the Dragon was poisoned,” Iscalio explained.  “It’s more likely that he was just a victim, though, and the Goblin thing’s just a coincidence.  Too bad for the guy, though.  It sounded like he went really bonkers.”

Malcom frowned in concern.  “Wait.  You were in Atlanta earlier today?”

Iscalio mumbled, “Yeah,” as he quickly checked his email.

“At the party where the Dragon was poisoned. . . .  That’s where they found my gremlins.  I thought they were caught before they could’ve done any damage.  Maybe they . . . maybe they ate him.”

“Man, you are not making my day any brighter,” Iscalio complained.  “You can borrow the computer to type your report as soon as I’m done telling my mom what I’m up to.  Let me just log out of Juno.”

A few moments later Kenneth Malcom was typing his reported with nervous bursts of speed punctuated by moments of brow-furrowing worry.  Iscalio’s fox was asleep, though, so the albino nature mage wasn’t afraid of any intruders.  Instead, anxious to get to work, he tapped Malcom on the shoulder.

“Hey, when you get a chance, could you tell me how to get to England?  Where would I get a key?  As soon as my brother gets back, we’re going to go hunting.”

“We have . . . there are some generic keys. . . ,” Malcom admitted, his typing pausing whenever he spoke, “keys that go to any door, not just one, but they’re mostly for higher-ranking knights.  Once we tell the chief he should be . . . be able to, well, help us out there.”

Iscalio felt reserved and nervous, and he ran through his concerns while the background noise of Malcom’s typing became droning.  Iscalio reasoned that the fewer people who knew about what he planned to do, the more minds a telepath would have to scan to find it out.  He was in no great rush, so the airport just might work.  

“Listen, Malcom, I think I’m just gonna do this the low-magic, high-tech way for a change and—”

His fox was growling, and the constant noise of keystrokes suddenly died.  He looked down and saw that Malcom had stopped typing, his fingers stopped mid-action.  A line of H’s were scrolling across the screen, the only movement in the room.  Malcom had even stopped twitching, stopping singing his songs.

Iscalio swore and shoved Malcom sideways, trying to knock the chair over.  Malcom snapped out of his trance and caught himself as he fell, giving Iscalio a chance to pull open his desk drawer and retrieve his cel phone and his gun.  

As the druid turned to look at Malcom, the scientist’s hand lashed out and punched Iscalio in the groin, grazing a sensitive area.  In his momentary shock he loosened his grip on his gun and cel phone, loose enough that Malcom’s chop to his hand knocked the gun to the floor.

Iscalio kicked at Malcom as the telepathically-controlled man went for the gun, but missed, and as a last defense Iscalio smacked his hand across Malcom’s temple to try to stun him, smashing his cel phone into the scientist’s face.  Malcom grimaced but picked up the gun regardless, firing off a shot before Iscalio could even consider surrendering.  

The bullet tore through his shirt at his shoulder, and Iscalio fell back, scrambling toward the door.  He lunged for his staff and toppled to the floor, ducking several more blasts of gunfire.  As Iscalio hit the floor, he felt a sting of pain in his belly, followed by the warm spread of blood.

With a quick mental command, the tip of Iscalio’s metallic staff lit up with an emerald glow and extended to a blade.  Rolling to his feet he leapt forward and slashed sideways as Malcom continued firing.  The shooting stopped in a spray of blood as Malcom fell forward, clutching his throat.  

Iscalio extinguished his scythe and staggered forward, grimacing at the pain in his stomach.  He dropped the staff and ran to the desk, where Malcom lay bent-over, face down.  He wasn’t moving.  

Iscalio cursed silently, hurt by the effort of breathing.  Unable to help Malcom (and wary of the idea of trying it), Iscalio looked down at his spirit fox.  The totem animal nodded warily, and slowly the pain eased in Iscalio’s abdomen, the wound now healed.  Iscalio paused, surprised.  He had never been shot before.

Sighing in frustration, Iscalio looked around the blood-spattered room.  His cel phone was broken, his gun empty of most of its bullets.  Fighting back mild disgust, he picked up the blood-dripping pistol and tucked it into his pocket.  

Another quick glamer hid his blood-stained clothes, changed his face, and dulled the smell around him, for a while at least.  Not waiting for others to come in and give the telepath more ammunition to try to kill him with, Iscalio slipped out the door and closed it behind himself.  In the hallway, quiet and disturbingly deserted, Iscalio listened to his own heart pumping, to the pitter patter of his fox’s paws.

And to a feminine voice singing in the distance.  As the words became clear, Iscalio grimaced in fear, turning to run the opposite direction.

“Imagine me and you, I do.  I think about you day and night, it’s only right.”


Iscalio ran down the halls, taking turns at random, hoping to lose his pursuer.  He was fairly certain he had recognized that voice.  Autumn.  He quickly nixed all affection and attraction he had held for her.  

Generic keys, Malcom had said.  He needed to get to England, and quickly.  If Autumn already knew, she’d be able to alert whoever else she was working with there, but if Iscalio could get a key to take him directly to England, he might be able to cut her off.  Who knew how far a telepath could send a message?

Generic keys.  Malcom had said the Chief had some.  Hopefully the Chief wouldn’t be home.

Iscalio was about to turn a corner to head try to find the Chief’s office when a calm feminine voice announced throughout the complex an alert for Iscalio Maxwell; his description followed:  “Albino human male, carrying a lightblade scythe.  He may be magically disguised.”

Cursing, Iscalio broke into a run and turned a corner, then stopped short at the sight of two knights only a dozen feet away.  

“God dammit,” Iscalio said loudly, realizing that the two had already recognized him.  The glamer had changed his features, but it couldn’t hide the large metal pole in his hands, and another magic-user would recognize that he was enchanted.  

The larger of the two, dressed in casual clothes, took a step back and began to concentrate.  Iscalio could feel the magical energy surging into him.

The shorter man, likewise casually-dressed, slipped a pair of daggers out from his long-sleeved shirt and advanced cautiously.

Iscalio smiled nervously.  “Listen, guys . . . I didn’t do anything wrong.  You don’t have to worry about me.”

The dagger-wielding knight nodded, stopping about five feet away.  “Alright then.  Put the weapon down and we’ll let you talk to the Chief.”

Iscalio’s natural reaction was to avoid dealing with authority, but he needed to find the Chief, and he was lost in this end of the Bureau.  Sighing sincerely, he shrugged and dropped the pole of his scythe to the floor, then kicked it over beside the knight.  

“This is all a mistake, you know,” Iscalio said, to which the two other knights exchanged glances.  The tall magic-user gestured for him to go in the lead, and, nervous under their gazes, the albino Maxwell obliged.  “You know I’m lost.  Just tell me where to turn.”

Several minutes later, after passing by a few dozen other knights and ending up with an entourage of four knights total, Iscalio was beginning to wonder what exactly his plan was.  His fox was being no help, despite being supposedly a ‘cunning’ beast.  Regardless, Iscalio kept the appearance of control.

“Take a left.  The Chief’s waiting for you.”

Iscalio looked at the inconspicuous door, then back to his escorts.  Matter-of-factly he said, “That’s not his office.  And I thought _I_ was lost.”

One of the knights sighed and opened the door, pointing inside.  “Chief doesn’t _have_ an office, but he’s waiting in there.”

Iscalio shrugged away his ignorance and walked into the room, smiling back at his escorts until he was inside.  Once he passed the doorway, he turned to face inward.  

The Chief sat behind a desk at the opposite end of the office, staring at him sternly.  Half-sitting on the edge of the desk, her legs crossed demurely, Autumn smiled mockingly back at Iscalio.  He felt a chill run down his back.

“Close the door, son,” the Chief said, but Iscalio could see Autumn’s smiling lips mouth the same words a moment before the Chief.  Shuddering, Iscalio nervously closed the door behind him, leaving him alone in the room with the telepath and her puppet.

The Chief continued speaking, this time without the Elvish telepath’s direction.  “It seems like we have nothing but problems with you, son.  We’ve had our eye on you from the beginning, but none of the insubordinations before ever amounted to anything.  I want to believe you have a good reason for this, so I’m going to give you a chance to explain yourself.”

Iscalio coughed into his hand, then looked down as he adjusted his clothes.  

“Well, you see,” still looking down, “a scientist, Malcom, came and—”

“Kenneth Malcom.  The scientist you ki—” 

At a sudden whim, Iscalio screamed and snapped up his pistol then fired at Autumn.  Though Iscalio hoped the attack had been sudden enough for the telepath not to see it coming, the bullet rang out, but then deflected away, inches from Autumn as she cringed to cover her face.  The Chief was stunned for only a moment, and then he shoved back from his chair and stood.  Iscalio hurled his gun at Autumn, then ran for the door.  To his surprise, though the bullet had been deflected, the gun itself hit her squarely in the chest.

Iscalio yanked the door open and leapt out, dodging between the four knights trying to stop him.  He staggered away, lashing out with his fists at the knight holding his staff, then kicked him in the groin as he yanked away his weapon.

As Iscalio sprinted away, he heard the Chief ordering them to stop him.  He rushed down the corridor, activating his scythe with a laugh of triumph.  He spun around a corner and sprinted away just as a lightning bolt slammed into the wall beside him and exploded the plastic and metal into a blinding cloud.  Coughing and staggering, Iscalio bent forward and ran on.

As he cleared the cloud of debris, he recognized a welcome scent.  Trees.  His fox guiding him, he sped down the hallways toward the smell, sucking in ragged breaths as he sprinted away from his pursuers.  

A more urgent alert reverberated through the halls, warranting use of deadly force if necessary.  Behind him, he could hear one set of footsteps getting closer, and with a glance back he saw the Chief running effortlessly after him.

A doorway blocked his way, but with one slice he tore through it.  Leaping through the mangled metal, he tumbled across the ground, rolling to his feet and standing to face the Chief.  He smiled as he quickly glanced around his surroundings.  An arboreum, in the middle of this facility of lifeless plastic and metal.  Apparently the Bureau _did_ keep a place for the Elves to go.

Iscalio took a few cautious steps backward into the large forest as the Chief reached the door.  Stridently stepping into the cultivated forest, the Chief shook his head and held out a hand.  

“I’ll give you one more chance to surrender.”

A few heads of fey forest creatures appeared at the edges of the trees, staring out at them, watching the confrontation with curious eyes.

Iscalio inched away slowly, nervously.  “You don’t happen to have any generic keys, do you?  I need to get to . . . New Orleans,” he lied.

The Chief broke into a quick run, leaping forward at Iscalio with an aerial kick.  Iscalio leapt away sideways, then flung out a hand at the ground as the Chief landed and spun around.  Roots snapped out of the ground, and grasses stretched upward to reach for the Chief’s legs, but the black-dressed man simply leapt over them and toward Iscalio.  He landed stradling Iscalio as the druid tried to stand back up, but with one swift punch to the back of Iscalio’s head, he slammed the druid back down.

Groaning, Iscalio tried to scramble away, but the Chief stepped sideways and said one word in the language of magic.  Iscalio felt his limbs begin to turn hard and rigid, but he felt his fox mentally blocking the magical binding.  Rolling away, Iscalio shook off the holding spell and kicked to his feet, snapping his scythe off the ground with his foot.  He caught his weapon and slashed at the Chief, but the off-balance attack only barely caught the chest of his suit.

But through the rip, Iscalio saw what he wanted.  A key, in the chief’s breast pocket.

The Chief rushed for him, and Iscalio switched the scythe into a parry, blade out.  With a leap, the Chief bounded sideways and kicked off a tree, then angled in from above and the side, around Iscalio’s parry.  His foot smashed into Iscalio’s chest, knocking him back and onto his side.  

As the Chief stalked forward, Iscalio slashed at his feet, then rolled away and shoved out with the end of his scythe.  The Chief stepped sideways and in closer, then reached out and chopped with his hand into Iscalio’s forearm.  Crying out in pain, Iscalio lost his grip and dropped the scythe, then punched out for the Chief’s chest.  

The older man caught Iscalio’s fist in his hand and twisted the druid’s arm behind his back, bending him over into a pin.  With a kick to the back of Iscalio’s legs, he forced him to the ground, then began to bend his arm farther than the joints were meant to go.

“You brought this on yourseld, son,” the Chief sighed, applying more pressure on the druid’s arm.

Iscalio gave a brief shriek, then turned his head and glared up at the Chief.  “Establishment bastard!”

With a scream of pain, Iscalio jerked his body around, dislocating his own shoulder and pulling out of the hold.  He lashed his legs into the Chief’s, tripping him, then stretched out and yanked the key free from the Chief’s jacket.  He kicked away to his feet, then thrashed out a foot, connecting with a face, a stomach.

Iscalio almost fell when the Chief tried to grab his leg, but he hopped away and growled in pain.  His fox channeled energy into the surroundings, and from the trees emerged dozens of squirrels, skittering toward the Chief as the man tried to stand.  They leapt upon him, scurrying up his sides and to his face, blinding him, if not actually hurting him.

Several shots rang out from the doorway to the forest, and Iscalio turned to see the other pursuing knights clearing the mangled door.  Gritting his teeth at the pain of his dangling dislocated arm, Iscalio ran for his scythe.  He tucked the key into his belt and snatched the scythe from the ground, then sped away into the forest, leaving the squirrel horde to keep them off his trail.  

He ran for less than a minute until he collapsed against a tree, out of breath.  He deactivated his weapon and laid it across his lap, then pulled the key out of his belt.  He could hear the shouts of the knights as they scoured the forest for him, like hounds for a fox.  

Looking at the key, Iscalio swore.  He hoped his brother could find him soon.

Concentrating on the key, he envisioned England, knowing there had to be a gate there someplace.  A door opened before him, brightly shining, but dark on the other side.  

With one quick look around, he stood and headed for the door.  As he passed through, he was bathed with chill, pre-dawn air.  The doorway snapped shut behind him, dropping the area into darkness again.

Iscalio looked around, in awe at the massive stone pillars forming a ring around him, pillars he had seen both in his dreams, and on the Discovery channel.  He turned, facing the whole structure, feeling the energy of the shrine to nature.  Stonehenge flooded him with warm, divine energy, sympathetic to his pain.  Smiling, Iscalio slumped against the central stones and let out a sigh.  The scattered patches of dewy grass were cool, and the pain in his arm was soothed by the aura of the Druid shrine.

He took in a full breath, smiling at the fading stars overhead

“Ah.  Home at last.”


Iscalio awoke with a start as his fox growled a warning.  In the early morning sun streaming between the pillars of Stonehenge, Iscalio could make out a humanoid shadow moving toward him, standing in the shadow of a tall stone at the edge of the ring.  Iscalio’s ghostly fox darted away, deeper into the megalithic structure, and Iscalio followed suit, slipping away to avoid being discovered.

He hid in the shadow of one of the tallest stone pillars, leaning against it for strength while he considered his options and his health.  His arm still hurt, but the brief rest in the aura of Stonehenge had fit it back into joint.  The bruises from the beating the Chief had given him were faint, but still stung enough to teach him a lesson about insubordination.  Next time he’d have to run faster.

Iscalio heard a car drive past on the road only a few hundred feet from the ancient shrine.  Suppressing an angered mutter about the lack of respect for nature, he tuned his hearing to try to discern the approach of the man he’d seen.  Then a voice sounded from the other side of the pillar, a husky British voice.

“He’s not ‘ere.  And I can’t scan for ‘im b’cause of the field aroun’ Stone’enge.  Don’t worry.  ‘E won’t be a threat to our project.  I’ll send out the rangers to find him.”

Iscalio pondered this, standing still, his albino knuckles turning whiter as he clenched the shaft of his unignited scythe.  After a few minutes of waiting, his ghost relaxed, and Iscalio peered around the edge of the megalith to see a clunky English car driving off.

Iscalio cursed.  He needed to follow that car, but he’d never be able to keep up, and he would have to risk being caught.  He turned to his fox, intending to ask for a healing spell to give him the stamina to chase a car, but the fox was standing curiously, its head raised as it looked about with wide eyes.  

“What’s up?”

The fox did a doubletake as it sniffed the air.  Iscalio could sense that the fox recognized this place.  He pondered that for a moment, then realized it made sense that the fox spirit of a Druid would come from England.  

At Iscalio’s feet, the fox looked up at him, emoting that he should follow.  Iscalio frowned, puzzled, but did follow when the fox bounded off across the grassy hills, heading for the nearest treeline.  He had no better leads, and his fox seemed to be onto something.  In fact, as Iscalio left the overwhelming field of magical energy that surrounded Stonehenge, he could sense another magical force in the direction the fox was leading him.  

They traveled for almost ten minutes before Iscalio began to grumble to himself.  They had passed through a few small groves of trees, but the fox did not seem keen on stopping soon.  So Iscalio stopped for them, knowing that the ghost could not move far from the one it had bonded to.

“Alright red, I know you’re dead and everything, but I still have to eat.  I’m not Scottish, so I don’t plan to eat grass, and I’m not Irish, so I don’t plan to eat dirt.”

The fox turned and growled at him, sneering its small mouth, revealing tiny sharp teeth.  Iscalio shrugged.

“Growl all you want; you’ll just make me like the British even less.  And dammit, I’m hungry, so use that nose of yours and point me to the nearest tavern.”

The fox stared at him bitterly, then turned and curled into a ball on the ground, as if to sleep.  Iscalio had the sudden urge to kick the small animal, but he knew he couldn’t touch it.  Instead, he shrugged and headed in the direction he guessed the road to be.  After a few dozen feet, he heard his unhappy spirit rouse it self off the ground and unwillingly follow.


It had taken Iscalio about half a minute to realize he didn’t like the English very much.  He had found a small town tavern, but they looked at him oddly and chuckled about his accent, and the ‘pub’ wasn’t anything like the stereotype he’d expected.  He’d wandered into a small town expecting an ale, but instead they offered him some damned blend of Starbucks coffee.  In Iscalio’s mind, nothing better represented the cultural-leeching of globalization than Starbucks.  Instead he had ordered a Coca-Cola.

Having wasted two hours sidetracking to find a town, when Iscalio let the fox again guide him, he was even angrier, though he could not decide what exactly he was angry at.  By the time the fox had led him back to where they had departed from the trail, the sun had nearly risen to noon.  The time difference was throwing him off, so he felt almost pleased that he had had to give up his watch to the bartender.  

Iscalio had forgotten that England doesn’t use dollars.

The trail continued for hours more, and Iscalio followed resolutely, only swearing occasionally whenever he began to get sore from walking.  He was bolstered by the fact that the faint feeling of magic was growing stronger the longer they tracked it, so he remained relatively quiet throughout the temperate afternoon.

Finally, about an hour before the sun would set, they came upon a fresh set of tire tracks cutting across a field, heading toward a nearby forest.  He and his fox followed the tracks, trying to stay low and use the hills as cover.  After several minutes of skulking forward, Iscalio spotted the car, the same one he had seen driving off earlier in the day.  It was parked amid the sparse trees at the edge of a large forest, easily hidden unless you were close enough.  

A cautious check for magical auras revealed the car unoccupied, but Iscalio could still feel a strong aura coming from the forest beyond the car.  His fox scampered forward, and Iscalio followed, letting the fox lead him into the woods.  They followed a light foot trail to a small river flowing through a shallow ravine.  Light from the late afternoon sun filtered through the canopy of leaves, concealing Iscalio’s movements, and the soft bubbling of the stream drowned out the noise of his steps.  He followed the fox spirit down into the streambed, letting the water cool his sore feet.  Crouching behind a bush, he whispered to his fox, “What now?  You recognize this place?”

The fox nodded, and Iscalio widened his eyes in surprise, not used to seeing such clear reactions from his ghost.  “You and I need to start talking more often.”

The itching feeling of magic in the air suddenly began to thrum, pulsing in the air, making it thick.  Several hundred feet ahead, the streambed curved and descended into a deeper ravine.  But an odd light seemed to glow there where shadows should have fallen.

The sun was setting, and Iscalio knew better than to let night fall, because that would be when the Bureau agents would be doing whatever it was they were doing.  Somehow, he hoped, this place had to have a connection to Legion, something linked with Autumn.

Iscalio ran forward, bent over to keep low, staying near the ravine wall for cover as he neared the strange glow.  Around him the forest seemed to grow quiet, with the steady hum of insects, birds, and small animals draining away the closer he came to the unnaturally bright bend in the river.

Then, noise blossomed again, several voices talking in a language he did not recognize, but that he guessed was Latin.  He could identify at least three different voices, all male, echoing through the ravine from about twenty feet away.  Iscalio fingered the metal shaft of his scythe nervously, steeling himself for combat.  Then suddenly his fox tensed beside him, and Iscalio followed its gaze upward in time to see two burly men leveling automatic pistols at him.

Iscalio lunged to the side to avoid the gunfire, and behind him he heard a spray of bullets tear open the riverbed.  Iscalio ignited his scythe and swung high, but his attackers were out of reach.  He could see that both of the dark-clothed men had swords at their hips, but they were not kind enough to get close enough to use them.

Unable to hit back, Iscalio broke into a run, heading further downstream toward the glow.  More bullets zinged past him, one flying within inches of his face before ricocheting off the glowing blade of his scythe.  

When he rounded the corner of the ravine, he saw the source of the light.  Bright halogen lamps had been set up to illuminate a dig site in the middle of the river, and the course of the stream had been deflected by a small levee.  Four men stood around the dig, the light from the lamps illuminating their combat-ready visages, and the sword hilts at their hips.

“Wait!” shouted the closest of the men, holding up his hands in warding.  He was unarmed, and Iscalio recognized his voice from earlier in the morning.  “Don’t shoot ‘im.  He’s the fugitive!”

Iscalio did not let their kindness distract him, and he kept running on, closing the gap quickly.  He swung his scythe at the unarmed man, but the instant before his attack would have struck, his target disappeared and reappeared a foot further away.  As Iscalio readied his scythe for another attack, a red hot pain seared into his mind, and he staggered back, momentarily stunned, hallucinating flames before his eyes.  When the flames cleared from his vision, Iscalio saw one of the knights rushing toward him, holding a long-bladed lightsword.

Iscalio feigned dizziness for a moment longer, sending a thought to his fox that he needed help.  Then, as the opposing knight leapt to tackle Iscalio, the druid simply hopped out of the way, surprising the knight that he was no longer stunned.  Iscalio dropped into a fighting stance, ready to face the knight, when the hair on the back of his neck began to tingle, and a thick mist rose up from the waters, filling the ravine and blocking vision.  The other knights and the two gun-toting guards behind him all began to shout in dismay, and a few fired stray shots into the mist.  Iscalio smiled, glad that his fox was holding up its end of the bargain.

He could only barely see the white gleam of his opponent’s light sword, but he used that as a target to aim his attack for.  He closed and slashed, seeing the vague silhouette of his opponent as the long scythe blade dug into the man’s body.  Over the din of the rest of the guards, the knight’s cry of pain sounded clearly.  

In the grey mist, Iscalio dueled quickly and recklessly with the knight, using the superior reach of his scythe to keep his opponent at bay.  As the sound of the guards grew closer, attracted by the noise of humming light blades, Iscalio attacked desperately, catching his opponent’s blade in the hook between the scythe and its shaft.  With a twist of the scythe’s shaft, Iscalio locked their weapons together.  The knight tried to pull his blade free, but Iscalio’s long scythe gave him better leverage, and he tore the lightsword out of the man’s grip.  

A gunshot rang out too close for Iscalio’s comfort, so before his opponent could recover, the druid lashed the blade of his scythe in front of the man’s eyes, blinding him for a moment.  In that moment, Iscalio slipped around him and pinned the man’s neck with his forearm.  With his spare hand, he pressed the blade of his scythe against the man’s gut, digging in slightly.

“None of you Latin-speaking cockswain idiots move,” Iscalio shouted, “or I kill him!”

With a mental command, the fog began to fade away in wisps, letting the bright halogen illumination fill the ravine again.  Before him, standing in the streambed, the Bureau men had fanned out to try to cut off his escape.  He counted two generic toughs, two more knights holding light blades, and the leader, a middle-aged man dressed casually.  Their leader fingered a small crystal prism in his hands as he stared at Iscalio with intimidating eyes.

The man spoke, his deep voice filling the ravine.  “It’s you, then?  Aye, ‘ey said you’d be here.  Been in the Bureau too long, boy?  Looks like ye could use some sun.  And it’s not Latin, it’s Gaelic.”

The other guards chuckled, but the man Iscalio had pinned gulped, his voice coming out nervously high-pitched.  “Um . . . don’t get him angry.  I know you aren’t the one with a bloody sword to your gut, but try to understand me situation.”

Iscalio tightened his pin against the man’s neck to shut him up.  “Alright, all of you be quiet.  I don’t know what you’re in on, but whatever you’re up to, it’s gonna come to an end.”

The leader frowned at him, smirking slightly.

Ignoring him, Iscalio continued.  “Alright.  Now first you’re gonna get your double-Y chromosome brutes there to back the hell off, and then you’re gonna tell me what you know about ‘Legion.’”  

A moment of hestitation later, the guards stepped back a few feet, but the two knights stayed close to their leader.  The taller of the two knights looked Pakistani, and the other was a short, slender Asian man.  Compared to the linebacker Iscalio had taken hostage, though, neither looked particularly threatening.

The leader of the group continued to stare at Iscalio, and again he felt the hair on his neck raising, but this time it disturbed him.  He could see his fox spirit circling the legs of the group’s leader.  The fox growled at him, but could do nothing.  

“Well, dammit,” Iscalio shouted nervously.  “Talk!  What the hell are you doing here, and what’s this Legion?”

The deep-voiced man chuckled.  “Such language.  But no, I canne tell ye about any ‘Legion,’ because I don’t know about it.  Now you’re going t’come with us, so we can clear away some of the delusions the Bureau’s been puttin’ in yer head.”

Iscalio grimaced and pressed his scythe slightly into his hostage’s stomach, sliding it slightly to cut a line across his flesh.  The man groaned in pain, and Iscalio warned, “You’ll back the **** away unless you want to be bringing along your friend in a pair of body bags.”

The hostage whimpered, but the leader calmly shrugged.  “He won’t do it.”

“You don’t _know_ me,” Iscalio replied.

The leader again smirked, tapping his own forehead with his pointer finger.  “Yeah I do.  I know ye won’t kill a man if ye can help it.”

“A telepath?” Iscalio groaned.  “Dammit, I hate you people.”

The telepath was about to speak again when the air began to thrum once more with magical energy.  The halogen lights dimmed briefly, and the telepath clutched his head and moaned in pain.  Seizing the opportunity, Iscalio shoved his hostage forward and into the telepath, knocking them both to the ground.

The air thrummed like it was filled with a heartbeat of magical energy, and the two other knights nervously stepped forward to flank Iscalio, holding their swords ready for combat.  Iscalio faced the short Asian one, feinted a slash, then lashed out backward with the butt of his scythe to catch the brown-skinned Pakistani in the stomach.  The Asian leapt forward, swinging his blade around Iscalio’s defense.  The knight’s sword slashed low along Iscalio’s thigh, and the man’s advance drove him backward.

Iscalio turned to run, slamming the shaft of his scythe into the Pakistani man’s face, then slashing him along the chest.  The tall man fell to the ground, clearing Iscalio’s path to run, but as he began to sprint away the Asian knight’s sword dug into his leg, and Iscalio nearly tripped.  Stumbling away, he concentrated on the magic flowing through the ravine, focusing it toward his attackers.

The ground burst open with roots and weeds leapt up to entangle the two knights, the telepath, and the generic guards.  The Asian knight slashed through the roots that tried to cling to his leg, and he advanced easily toward Iscalio.

The albino druid backed away, toward the dig site.  He held his scythe ready to parry, nervously trying to split his attention between the warrior at his front, and the pit he was quickly being forced into.  He felt the soothing cool of healing magic mending the tears in his legs as his fox channeled positive energy into him, but again, Iscalio feigned weakness.  When the knight attacked again, Iscalio parried slowly, trying to lull the man into making a mistake.  Iscalio was just about to begin his own attack when again fire filled his body and mind, and memories flooded his mind, recalling the agony of dislocating his shoulder and of being beaten up once when he was younger.

When Iscalio finally forced his mind through the telepathic attack, he found himself falling backward into the pit of the dig.  The knight, who had apparently shoved him in while he had been helpless, glared at him cooly as he fell away into the darkness.  

Iscalio hit bottom only fifteen feet down, but the floor was hard and rough, and he could barely see.  He realized to his dismay that he no longer held his scythe.

Looking for a way out, knowing that within moments the telepath would be free to fry his mind, Iscalio scanned the walls and floor.  The walls were plain dirt, supported by wooden pillars, but too loose and wet to climb.  The floor, however, was stone, and against one wall leaned a crumbling stone cross, three feet long.  Set in the middle of the floor, in the middle of a cross-shaped depression, was a black rock.  No, Iscalio realized after a moment’s longer glance.  Not a rock, but a crystal.  A crystal the size of his fist.

From the top of the pit came the telepath’s voice.  “I’ll give yer smeggin’ arse one more chance to surrender ‘fore we ‘ave to beat it int’ ye.”

Iscalio pressed his back against the wall, trying to concentrate on ways to escape.  He was willing to do anything if only to avoid being brought back to the Bureau.  

Iscalio almost choked for a moment, unable to breathe through the thickness in the air as a powerful surge of magical energy burst invisibly from the black crystal on the floor.  He stared down in shock at the darkly gleaming stone, and without hesitating he grasped it.

He whispered to it desperately, “Are _you_ Legion?”

A rush of voiceless words filled his head, drowning out the noise of the world around him.  _I am trapped.  Promise to free me, and I will grant your wish of safety._

Iscalio frowned at the object.  “First vampires and ghosts, and now a genie?  A genie in England?”

_Promise to free me, and I will reveal all._

Iscalio felt heat growing on his face, on the insides of his eyes, and he focused his willpower to keep the telepath’s attacks away.  Glancing up, he saw the telepath staring downward at him, blood running from the man’s nose.  The heat began to itch across all of Iscalio’s body, and he looked down at the dark crystal in his hands.

“Yes, I’ll free you!  Just get me out of here!”

Overhead, the knights gasped, and one shouted a warning.  Iscalio felt an intense burning on his hands, and he dropped the black gem in shock.  He ducked to try to catch it before it could shatter on the stone floor, but at that moment an incredible heat washed over him, and the dark pit filled with brilliant orange light from above.  The gem hit the ground and rolled safely without cracking, but Iscalio ignored it, cowering in the corner of the pit as screams sounded from above and outside the pit, accompanied with the hissing sound of boiling water.  

The screams soon abated, but the sound of roaring flames continued.  Iscalio meekly reached out to touch the black crystal, grasping it in his hands when he realized it was no longer hot.  

“What the hell did you do?!”

_You should know that there is no hell, Druid.  All that matters is that you are free.  And soon I will be too.  Quickly, climb.  Do not question your freedom._

Iscalio stared blankly at the stone for a moment, shocked, but then he turned to the nearest wall, ready to climb.  He hurled the crystal upward and out of the pit, then clawed his way up the crumbling dirt of the riverbed pit.  His fox snarled at the top of the pit, and roots tore through the dirt wall, providing handholds.  He frantically clambered to the top, pulling himself onto a dry, baking-hot streambed.  

Smoke filled the air, and Iscalio coughed, standing weakly and staring around in shock.  The woods were aflame all around him, burning blindingly bright.  He scoured the smoking streambed for the crystal, and saw it lying next to the charred body of the telepath.  Shuddering, Iscalio considered leaving the stone, but then he reached forward and pulled it off the ground.

He sputtered for words, his mind reeling at the death around him.  Finally he blankly shouted out, “All I wanted to know about was Legion!  What’s going on here?”

The stone replied without a moment’s hesitation.  _The ancient Legion of Rome fell centuries ago, but this new Legion likewise must be powerful for you to have such fear of it.  I sense in you thoughts, subtle and unrealized, of war between magi and man.  This war is inevitable, ordained from the time I was imprisoned, but you still have time to choose your side.  Take me with you, and you will have the freedom to choose.  Without me, you will be merely a pawn._

“What, you don’t know who Legion is?  Then what the **** is going on here?  Who were those guys?”

_Knights of the Round, descendants of Arthur’s warriors, and my enemies.  They killed the Knights of your Bureau who wished to free me.  If you sought this Legion, then you have followed the wrong trail, but that does not mean your quest is fruitless.  I can aid you._

Iscalio shook his head, not understanding, and too shocked by the flames searing the forest around him to think clearly.  He was only safe in the riverbed, but he wanted to be nowhere near this mad, murderous crystal.  Iscalio started to drop the crystal, but the words tried to force themselves into his mind.

_You cannot leave me.  Your Bureau wanted me, and I can help you._

“Dammit, get out of my head!  What the hell are you?”

_I am Halcyon, tranquil for centuries, but no more.  Now I am maccabre, alone, sought only for my power.  In the thousand years of separation, nothing has become tranquil.  The war is coming, and I can be your ally._

Iscalio felt his will failing, could not stop his body as his hand moved to drop the stone into his pocket.  Iscalio growled, but he could not fight the overpowering magic of the crystal.

A flaming tree at the edge of the ravine cracked, sundered from the heat.  Cascading downward, it fell into the streambed and smashed into Iscalio’s shoulder, forcing him to the ground.  The gem was knocked from his hand, and it skipped across the ground, falling back into the pit.

Iscalio lay under the flaming tree for a moment, unable to move, only feeling the heat searing his back.  Then the heat’s pain dulled, and Iscalio heard the low whimpering of his fox spirit.  He opened his eyes wearily, focusing on the spectral creature staring desperately at him.  He could feel it expending all its energy to keep him from passing out, and slowly, fighting against his body, Iscalio pulled himself out from under the fallen tree.

He lay on the dry streambed for perhaps a minute more, collecting his strength as the heat of the burning forest around him tried to tear his breath away.  He finally pushed himself to his feet, then walked purposefully to the edge of the pit and spat into it.  Even that little effort nearly sapped the strength from his legs, so he quickly found his scythe and used it as a walking staff to support himself.  The thundering of collapsing trees and heat-shattered rocks overcame his desire to check the bodies of the incinerated knights for some clue as to what he had stumbled into.  Instead, he desperately forced himself to hobble along the streambed toward safety.

As soon as he cleared the actual dig site, he turned to look back, feeling a tug, a pull from the crystal, offering him power and safety.  As he unwillingly listened to the call, his eyes scanned the burning forest, as if his vision was trying to tell him something through the steady cadence of the crystal’s tempting words.  Then he saw it, and the chill that shook his body forced away the crystal’s intrusions.

As the flaming trees fell away to ash, on the ridge above the pit in the ravine, a ring of heavy stone megaliths refused to fall, unaffected by the incredible heat of the fire.  The tall pillars of stone overlooked the ravine, surrounding the burial site of the ancient crystal and warning any who might dare to come near it.

As Iscalio turned and rushed away, he praised the wisdom of the Druids in trying to bury the infernal thing.


An hour later, Iscalio lay on the cold night grass, watching the still-burning forest through drowsy eyes.  The forest was so far from any settlement that probably it would be years until someone would notice it had burned down.  

“Okay red, the way I see it, that gem had nothing to do with me.  I mean, I’ve heard about ‘things man’s not meant to know,’ and I can accept that now, y’know?  There are supposed to be spirits in the earth here, so maybe that stone was just an evil spirit.  Either way, I’m sick and ****ing tired of people trying to tell me what to do.”

His fox looked at him, then glanced at the smoking remains of the burned-down forest.  Iscalio could feel its worry.

“Alright then, I’ll make you a deal.  I’m gonna come back here and bury that thing again if I have to.  It said it’d been here for a thousand years, so maybe that’s a clue.  I dunno.  You know anyone who was trapped in a piece of crystal?”

The fox lowered its head as if disappointed, and Iscalio groaned.

“Oh, c’mon.  I said I’d take care of it, but first. . . .  Cai’s probably in trouble.  I need to handle this first problem first.  Legion, whatever the hell that is.  This was a dead-end, so maybe something will turn up in New Orleans.  What day is it, June 19th?  A bit late for Mardi Gras.  Ah well.”

He sat for a moment longer, then sighed, unhappy.  “Knights of the Round.  I remember hearing about them, but they’re supposed to be against the Bureau.  I think I really ****ed up.

“Alright, I’m vowing now to find some way to make sure no one finds that damned Halcyon Maccabre crystal again.”

Iscalio slept through the night, warmed by the embers of the forest fire.  As he slept, his dreams were filled with the toneless, voiceless words of the crystal, warning him that he would regret his mistake.  Iscalio didn’t care.


Early the next day, Iscalio returned to Stonehenge, following his only remaining lead.  With his spirit fox at his side, he opened the gate.  He turned to look down at the fox, which appeared somehow burned despite its incoporeality.

“Last night,” he said quietly, letting his words echo through the Druid shrine, “I was really damn lucky that tree fell when and how it did.”

The fox stared at him, then winked.  Iscalio chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief.  “Alright, red.  I owe you.  I take back all the mean things I said about you . . . and the Irish . . . and the Scots.  You know, the British aren’t all that bad.”

Through the dimly glowing gate, Iscalio could see the darkness of late night New Orleans.  Smiling down at his fox, he stepped through, emerging into an alley illuminated by bright electric signs advertising beer, strippers, and music.  Iscalio winced at the brightness and sighed.  “Damned neon lighting.”


----------



## RangerWickett (Feb 3, 2002)

*Chapter Thirteen: A Moon Over Bourbon Street*

They have been on the run for three days, avoiding capture by the Bureau for the Management of Magicks.  Once knights, they are now rogues, hunted by other knights they would once have called allies.  The Bureau they once worked for holds them responsible for the murder of its head telepath, J’Qwuan, who was an old friend and companion of the Bureau’s Chief.  The Chief wants revenge, and judging by the hassle they’ve gone through lately, sooner or later he’s probably going to get it.  

Jenny Windgrave, the party’s paladin, first wanted to return to the Bureau and try to explain what happened, but the group quickly realized that by now the Chief has probably been telepathically charmed by Autumn Yeiotana, the Elvish telepath who really killed J’Qwuan.  If they went back, they’d have no chance.

Tagin, the party’s hacker, has been busy making sure they can survive while on the run.  If they use credit cards or cash cards, the Bureau will track the transaction and find them, so Tagin has been using his talents  to garner them free cash, free motel rooms, and most importantly, anonymity.  Jenny understands the necessity to do these illegal things, but she doesn’t like it.  Still, they’re surviving, with hopes that they’ll get a break and be able to do something to stop whatever is going on at the Bureau.

And speaking of the Bureau, Cai Maxwell, a martial artist with an intense sense of discipline, has had to revise his theory of Legion since the events three days earlier.  He knows Legion can’t be J’Qwuan, and even though they know Autumn’s involved somehow, he doesn’t think she’s solely responsible.  He can’t think of why Autumn would want to kill Dragons, though, and so he’s drawing a blank.

Madeline West, a sorceress bonded with the ghost of a woman hung in the Salem witch trials, has very little to contribute.  She feels pent up because, even though they’re in New Orleans, a wonderfully historical city, she can’t go outside because she could get caught.  Tagin has been the one to go out shopping, since he’s the most inconspicuous of the group.  In order to take out her frustration, Madeline has occasionally gotten into arguments with Jenny (her ghost, Catherine, was never too fond of “red-skinned savages” when she was alive, and she hasn’t grown to like Jenny too much in her death).

Finagle P. Luckshore has been taking things the hardest.  His first and only friend at the Bureau, Brian Greenman, was murdered right before they had to flee the Bureau.  Autumn Yeiotana telepathically stopped his heart.  And things weren’t made any better by the fact that Finagle had had a crush on Autumn before she revealed herself as a calculating murderess.  Mostly he spends the day playing solitaire or minesweeper on the laptop that doubles as his spellbook.

They’ve had a few close calls, with the main problem being the ghosts.  New Orleans is a city of many uneasy spirits, and so the trackers dispatched to find the party have used their ghosts as scouts.  A ghost can sense another ghost within a few hundred feet, even if in the real world walls would separate them.  In a normal city, the party’s ghosts could warn them if another ghost, like one bonded to a knight came near, but since there are so many ghosts in New Orleans, it’s just not possible.  

Once one tracker’s ghost sensed the party’s ghosts, so Finagle’s uncle (who is a ghost and is bonded with Finagle) quickly ran out at the and began performing the whole ‘crazy ghost’ routine, shouting that he’s lost and that he has to find his motorcycle.  The tracker’s ghost had apparently bought the performance, since he passed on to check other streets.  

On their second evening, another knight spotted Tagin while he was shopping for groceries, but Tagin, through quick thinking, pretended to be any other citizen, and just looked at the knight funny when the man stared at him.  Tagin doesn’t have a very distinctive face, or dress, so the knight didn’t attack Tagin immediately.  When the knight followed Tagin out of the story and through the streets, the hacker had just ditched the food and lost himself in the crowd on Bourbon Street.

Tagin has also noticed many small children that seem to follow him late the third night.  Most unusual was that they all wore concealing coats and hoods to hide their faces.  It unnerved him, and he spent several hours trying to lose them by wandering the shadier areas of the French Quarter, but they dogged him.  He overheard a pair of them once discussing his appearance, and whether it matched the description they wanted.  They sounded too articulate for children, so Tagin had to lose them by going into various bars where children weren’t allowed.  Sure, Tagin’s a year too young to buy alcohol, but that’s not what his ID says.  


After three nights in the same motel (five separate rooms), Tagin’s nervous that much longer would attract notice, so they decide to go to another.  An anonymous credit card pays for five rooms for three days at another motel a few blocks away, and they leave their original motel in the middle of their fourth evening, just abandoning the rooms.  They travel through the streets of New Orleans at night, staying within twenty feet of each other, but not in one group.  

Then Cai, at the front of the group, sees a man step out of a sidestreet directly in front of him.  Tall, with dark brown hair blowing in the street breeze.  His heavy trenchcoat flutters open, revealing a crucifix around his neck and a sword hilt at his hip.

Cai stops, tensing for a fight, when he recognizes the man.  So do Jenny, Madeline, and Tagin.  

“Quickly,” says Balthazaar Mordred, the vampire-hunting knight who first initiated them into the Bureau, “follow me.  They’re trying to close in on you, trap you.  One’s a block behind you, and they have an ambush set up at the motel you’re heading to.”

Cai fingers the hilt of his arcane blade, and Finagle shifts under his newly-bought trenchcoat as he gets a good hold of his compressed air rifle.  Jenny comes up, asking why they should trust him.  Balthazaar says that he’s been following what they’ve been up to ever since the first night, and he knows that they would never kill the illithid.  Also, the Chief has been acting oddly lately, and he doesn’t trust what’s going on.

Balthazaar points out the man who is supposedly following them.  He’s wearing a trenchcoat, and a quick detect magic spell reveals that he is packing a magical weapon.  The party quickly decides to follow Balthazaar, trusting that he’s sincere about not believing the Chief.

Balthazaar takes them to the backroom of a nearby bar.  When asked to explain how he found them, Balthazaar matter-of-factly states that he’s been a knight for sixteen years, and that he knows how to track vampires.  “And some of them fly, so don’t think that you were particularly much of a challenge.”

[Meta: The night we ran this game, a friend of ours who games in my campaign, but who had been mostly gone for the summer and unavailable for Savannah Knights, played Balthazaar.  Justin, our friend, is a very easy-going, fun guy, which didn’t quite fit with Balthazaar’s typically somber demeanor.]

Again, just to make sure that Balthazaar isn’t going to turn them in, the party grills him for a while.  He says that he went to the Chief in concern, not wanting to believe that the party was responsible for J’Qwuan.  The Chief had told him that he also believed the party had killed the Dragons.  Balthazaar almost laughed at that.  He knew the party got lucky to kill a vampiress, but one doesn’t ‘get lucky’ while trying to kill a Dragon.  

Oh, and the party asks if Autumn was with the Chief during this meeting.  Yes, she was, and in fact she’s been spending most of her time around him.  

At that moment, Tagin spots a small head peering through the window at them, and he tells the group.  Balthazaar doesn’t even hesitate.  He punches through the window with both hands and yanks up a short little green-faced . . . not a child, but a Goblin.  It’s dressed just like all the other ‘children’ had been that had followed Tagin the night before.  Balthazaar shakes the little Goblin, neverminding that his own hands are bleeding from punching through a window.  He orders the Goblin to tell them why it was following them, but the little green-skinned guy just stammers incomprehensibly.  

Balthazaar opens the back door to the bar and tosses the Goblin out, watching it as it scampers off.  Jenny starts to yell at Balthazaar for beating up something that looks like a child, until Balthazaar explains that Goblins never let themselves be seen.  They’re usually too smart to come out in the open.  If it had been a normal Goblin, they would have never seen it.

Balthazaar begins to run after the Goblin, and the party follows, Jenny reluctantly.  They nearly lose the Goblin when it weaves through the crowd in Bourbon street, but Madeline shouts, “Stop my child!  Please, he’s running away!  Where’s my son?!”

That gets some people in the crowd to at least slow the Goblin down, so the party can follow him through the crowd.  The Goblin runs down a side street, and they follow him for nearly ten minutes into an older, run-down part of the French Quarter.  Tagin tries to explain to Jenny that if Autumn made the Chief act ‘funny,’ then perhaps these Goblins acting ‘funny’ might have something to do with Autumn.

The Goblin runs through a break in a chain-link fence, into an abandoned house that looks like it once belonged on a plantation.  Cai and Balthazaar tear the fence open so the rest of them can go in, and a Detect Magic by Madeline reveals that something magical is inside the building, but she’s too far away to tell what.  The party gets their weapons ready and slowly sneak into the fenced-in field surrounding the plantation home.  

The house itself is three stories tall, quite large, but now quite dilapidated.  The party stops and crouches a few dozen feet away to let Tagin sneak up and scout it out, but when Tagin nears the door, they notice Cai suddenly go stiff, then stand up and walk after Tagin.  The hacker, too, is acting funny, as he keeps going and walks up the front steps, onto the porch, and in through the front door.

Madeline swears, and those remaining rush after them, reaching the house just as Cai walks inside.  Madeline’s light cantrip leads the way, but once inside they discover old oil lamps burning, filling the tall entry hall with dim light.  Doors lead off to both sides of the room, but they’re boh closed.  No, the focus of attention is the far end of the room.  A wide grand staircase leads up to the second floor, covered with molding red carpet.

A handful of Goblins sit leering at the party on various steps, and two tall humanoids, also green-skinned, stand at the top of the flight of stairs.  Between them, smiling at them from an armchair as though from a throne, sits the puppet master, Dalavar Kineil.  He smiles confidently down at Cai and Tagin, both of whom stand like zombies at the base of the staircase.  With a thought, Dalavar releases them from his grip, and Tagin immediately bursts into shouting.

“Neil?  Dammit, I told you to lay off or I was gonna show you not to mess with me.”

Dalavar blows air through his lips, flubbering them in mockery.  “Oh shut up.  You’re lucky that I even let you live, you puny man.”

Madeline glances around in confusion.  “Wait.  This guy’s Legion?”

Dalavar sneers at her.  “Hardly, miss.  I am not he, the son of man, who shall lead the war even after his death.  No, the true warriors are here, those who will fight in the apocalypse, but they must choose whether to fight for the Son of Man, or the Dragon.”


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## Horacio (Feb 3, 2002)

Oh oh oh... Things look bad for the former knights...

Great update!!! So goblins that look like children. I like a lot your hidden magic world, RangerWicket


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## RangerWickett (Feb 3, 2002)

Well, Goblins are short, and when they're wearing coats it's kind of hard to tell.  Of course, anyone wearing a heavy coat in New Orleans in the middle of the summer is suspicious enough.

But let it be made clear: I don't want to claim authorship for this story.  It was all Jessie's idea (she posts as Acquana), and I'm just the writer who had the free time to type it up.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 4, 2002)

*The Chief:*  Male Human Mnk10/Sor8; Medium-size Humanoid (Human); HD 10d8 + 8d4 ; hp 70; Init +1; Spd 60 ft.; AC 17 (+1 Dex, +4 Wisdom, +2 Monk); Atk unarmed +10 melee (1d10); SA Stunning Fist, Ki Strike +1; SQ Improved Evasion, Still Mind, Slow Fall (50 ft.), Purity of Body, Wholeness of Body, Leap of the Clouds; SV Fort +9, Ref +10, Will +17; Str 10, Dex 13, Con 10, Int 13, Wis 18, Cha 16.

_Skills and Feats:_ Climb +7, Concentration +10, Diplomacy +21, Jump +21, Knowledge (arcana) +10, Listen +7, Spellcraft +10, Tumble +21; Blind-Fight, Combat Casting, Dodge, Expertise, Improved Grapple, Improved Trip, Mobility, Spring Attack, Superior Expertise.

_Spells Per Day:_ 6 / 7 / 7 / 6 / 3 —Arcane Mark, Detect Magic, Detect Poison, Flare, Light, Mage Hand, Open/Close, Resistance / Comprehend Languages, Expeditious Retreat, Jump, Mage Armor, True Strike / Cat’s Grace, Endurance, Invisibility / Hold Person, Lightning Bolt / Stoneskin.

_Background:_
The Chiefs of the Bureau are always something of a mystery.  Some guess that whenever a new Chief takes command, the memories of all his old acquaintances are altered.  The Chief has little history, and only two people recall serving with him when he was an agent.  He must have a ghost because he is a human, but somehow the ghost can avoid being seen.  One of the most common theories is that the Chief is fey-touched, and that their powers alter the memories of those who knew him, and granted him his magical abilities.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 4, 2002)

*Chapter Fourteen: Revelation*

A handful of Goblins sit leering at the party on various steps, and two tall humanoids, also green-skinned, stand at the top of the flight of stairs.  Between them, smiling at them from an armchair as though from a throne, sits the puppet master, Dalavar Kineil.  He smiles confidently down at Cai and Tagin, both of whom stand like zombies at the base of the staircase.  With a thought, Dalavar releases them from his grip, and Tagin immediately bursts into shouting.

“Neil?  Dammit, I told you to lay off or I was gonna show you not to mess with me.”

Dalavar blows air through his lips, flubbering them in mockery.  “Oh shut up.  You’re lucky that I even let you live, you puny man.”

Madeline glances around in confusion.  “Wait.  This guy’s Legion?”

Dalavar sneers at her.  “Hardly, miss.  I am not he, the son of man, who shall lead the war even after his death.  No, the true warriors are here, those who will fight in the apocalypse, but they must choose whether to fight for the Son of Man, or for the Dragon.”

The two bodyguards flanking the half-Elf telepath—a lean, muscular half-Orc woman with shoulder pistol holsters; and a sturdy, stern male Orc fingering a steel great-axe—tense as if ready for battle.  Dalavar gently gestures to keep the warriors from attacking, then continues.

“But hey, where are my manners?  Please forgive the poor reception, but I’ve been lacking in amenities ever since I came back home.  I’d been hoping that you’d come to me, though.  There is a war brewing, and every man or woman makes our little brotherhood stronger.”

Madeline lucidly expresses the party’s thoughts:  “Huh?”

Dalavar frowns, then tries to explain himself, a mad zeal in his eyes.  “The Son of Man, Legion, will battle the Dragon and all the natural magi.  Elves, trolls, Dragons, Illithids.  And sirens.  They can’t hide their true natures forever like the Bureau wants them to, and the Son and his angels know this.  It’s exactly like the siren said.  We can’t hide in the shadows forever, me or you.  Ever since I was born, the Bureau tried to monitor everything I did, and they’ll do the same to you.  You’re not true magi, but the Son doesn’t care.  He’ll destroy you too.

“But then there’s also the Dragon of the apocalypse.  It may kill billions of you humans, but it’s been the Bureau trying to protect you rodents that _made_ Legion!  It was their attempt to make us all play nice and act like humans that will have caused this war!”

Tagin sighs, muttering that compared to Dalavar, the siren in Hong Kong seemed positively sane.

Jenny shakes her head at what Dalavar’s saying, finding it laughable that Legion is the second coming, and that he has it out for sirens and Dragons.  Cai’s just pissed that he was mind controlled, while Balthazaar is sizing up the opposition.  The Orc and half-Orc look like Knights, plus Dalavar and about a score of Goblins.  Madeline, a big one for magic and voodoo, seems most likely to agree with the half-Elf telepath.

Finagle, though, is still confused and grief stricken over the murder of his friend, Brian Greenman.  He shouts at Dalavar, “You killed Brian!  You’re working with Autumn, you murderer!”

Dalavar’s taken aback, shocked that Brian is dead.  He quickly regains his composure, though, and replies that he’s not actually working with the Whore of Babylon (apparently no one likes Autumn anymore) or with Legion.   Dalavar hopes to be able to ally with the Dragon.  

He extends a hand to the party, palm up and fingers open in an offer.  “Join with me.  You weren’t born magi, but you have power, and we can protect each other.”

Tagin notices that Dalavar seems to be ignoring him.  “Dalavar, you’re crazier than the siren.  It’s not like we’d join with the ‘Dragon’ or Legion anyway, and you suck as a recruiter.  Now if you just agree to help us out and not let things get too violent, we won’t have to cause any trouble.”

Dalavar grimaces.  “Tagin, I’m sorry.  You can’t use magic, and you certainly aren’t a wall of muscle,” he grins at the two beefy Knights flanking him, “and thus you’re not of any worth to me.  It’s nothing personal.”

Jenny steps up next to Tagin.  “Your threats mean nothing.  Tagin speaks for all of us.  We don’t intend to work for either Legion or whoever this ‘Dragon’ is.”

Dalavar narrows his eyes.  “The Bureau wants to kill you.  The Son of Man will kill you if you get in his way.  And now, you’ve angered _me_.”

The Goblins begin bounding down the stairs, drawing daggers and clubs with murderous glee.  The Orc beside Dalavar hefts his great-axe and charges, and Dalavar hands the half-Orc woman the hilt of an arcane blade, which she ignites into a white katana.

Dalavar shrugs apologetically to the party.  “I’m sorry it had to be this way.”

The charging Goblins and Orcs ignore Tagin and run around him since he’s only a minor threat.  Used to being overlooked, but unwilling to let Neil ignore him this time, Tagin begins to methodically climb the steps, staring Dalavar in the eyes the whole time.

At Balthazaar’s signal, Cai fires off two blasts into the crowd of Goblins, taking out a half dozen of the buggers.  The remaining ones pounce upon Balthazaar and nearly drag him to the ground as he begins hacking at them with a shortsword.

Finagle, still a little confused as to whether he oughta hate Neil or not, fires a compressed air tranq dart at the huge charging Orc.  It catches the Orc in the shoulder, but he doesn’t slow down as he begins an all-out, raging barbarian charge toward the weakling wizard.

Jenny and Madeline are about to go to Finagle’s aid when a door on the side of the entry hall swings open, and two figures step out.  The first, a Dark Elf sorceress clad in spiderwebs, levitates forward, shadowy magic surrounding her in a dark miasma.  The second figure is ghoulishly pale, holding a gleaming emerald lightblade scythe.  Jenny and Madeline gasp when they first see the familiar face of Iscalio, and Jenny almost gives a sigh of relief, but then the albino Druid leaps forward and lashes out with his scythe, slashing Jenny across the arm as she tries to parry.

From the top of the steps, Dalavar bursts into laughter as his puppets attack.  The telepath is about to shout more commands when he notices Tagin slowly climbing the steps toward him.  Dalavar frowns at the hacker, who seems to be taking his time.

Finagle is left to defend himself from the Orc barbarian as Jenny and Madeline square off against Iscalio and the dark Elf.  Balthazaar struggles with the Goblins, and Cai draws his katana in defense as the half-Orc woman leaps off the stairs at him in a flying slice.

Tagin continues to climb the stairs, unnerving Dalavar with his steady, piercing stare.

Balthazaar struggles to fling the grappling Goblins off, but despite the distractions he drops his guard and draws a wooden stake from his trenchcoat.  As the raging Orc barbarian raises his axe to cleave Finagle in two, Balthazaar the vampire hunter hurls the wooden stake ten feet into the Orc’s hand, forcing him to lose his grip on the weapon temporarily (point-blank shot, precise shot, and ranged disarm; hee hee).  With the moment of safety, Finagle fires another dart into the Orc’s face, catching the huge green-skinned grunt in his nose with a dose full of horse tranquilizer.  

Cai meets the leaping attack of the half-Orc woman, but he’s quickly driven back by her deft attacks.  Her eyes are wide and filled with fury, and she slashes faster and stronger than he’d expect from the way she looks.  She gets in a firm hit, seriously wounding Cai, and even though he sees his brother across the room being mind-controlled, Cai decides to draw the half-Orc woman away from the bulk of the fight where he won’t have to worry about Goblins.  Cai runs down the hallway that leads under the grand staircase, and the woman gives chase.

Madeline fires a pair of magic missile at the Dark Elf shadow mage, but the Drow totally ignores the attack.  She points at Madeline’s feet, and the woman’s shadow leaps up to attack her, clawing at her arms.   Meanwhile, Jenny tries to disarm Iscalio without harming him, but Iscalio doesn’t seem to appreciate her effort, and he continues to fight as per Dalavar’s last orders.

Attacks of opportunity save the day for Balthazaar as he slowly begins smashing the Goblins against walls, or staking them whenever he’s able to get ahold of one of his unending supply of the wooden shafts.  The pool of Goblins tackling him begins to dwindle, but he’s been severely drained by their assault, and is too weak to follow as the remaining Goblins leap off after Finagle, who is easier prey. 

And speaking of Finagle, the Orc recovers his grip on his weapon, and chops at the scrawny teenage wizard.  Finagle narrowly avoids losing an arm, and he fires another dart at the Orc, who just seeths with more berserker rage.  The Orc doesn’t even seem to feel the wooden stake impaling his hand.

Away from the bulk of the melee, Cai battles the half-Orc in a narrow hallway.  Her glowing katana tears through the wooden walls with ease, making the narrowness of the hallway barely a drawback.  Cai takes several small hits, but only barely starts to wound the woman.  

Tagin is now less than five feet from Dalavar Kineil.  The hacker stands with his hands at his sides, stopping within spitting distance of Neil.  Dalavar hesitates, waiting for Tagin to make a move.  The nervousness keeps him for splitting his attention elsewhere.

The shadow attacking Madeline hurts her so much that she begins to scream for help, and Finagle answers her call, turning away from the Orc long enough to cast Invisibility on the woman.  With no shadow anymore, she’s safe, but Finagle gets kicked in the knee by the Orc for lowering his guard (plus stabbed and clubbed by a handful of Goblins).

Madeline recovers after a moment, and since she can’t hurt the Drow with her magic, she fires magic missiles at two of the Goblins attacking Finagle, knocking them unconscious.  Madeline becomes visible again, but her shadow is no longer trying to kill her.  The Dark Elven shadow mage weaves her hands in the air and conjures a blade of shadows, which she brandishes toward Madeline.

Jenny finally relents and simply stabs at Iscalio, aiming for the man’s leg to take him out of the fight, but not kill him.  Iscalio grimaces at the wound, but it doesn’t stop him from slashing his lightblade scythe across Jenny’s forearm.  Jenny refuses to fall back, though, and instead presses forward, driving Iscalio back as they both move closer to the Dark Elf and Madeline.

Balthazaar staggers forward to rescue Finagle, and the scrawny mage runs away from the melee, taking another potshot at the Orc with his tranq gun.  The third dart catches the Orc in the thigh, but again he seems unfazed.  The Orc pulls a hand-axe from a hip-holster and hurls it across the room at the fleeing Finagle, catching him with the haft in his legs and nearly tripping him.  Balthazaar doesn’t actually hit the Orc, since all the Goblins are harrassing him, but a few seconds after Finagle leaves the Orc’s field of view, the huge berserker seems to shrink, his rage slacking off.  Before the Orc even actually gets properly wounded, he passes out and hits the floor like a rock from all the tranquilizer in his veins.

Cai throws his sword into the half-Orc woman’s face to distract her while he whips out his sawed-off double-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun.  He cocks it and squeezes the trigger.  Just as the gun fires, the half-Orc smacks down with the flat of her blade onto the shotgun’s barrel, deflecting the blast away from her torso.  Instead, she gets shot by a blast of pellets in her leg.  The injury enrages the woman more, and she slashes again at the gun, cutting cleanly through it.  Cai drops the gun in dismay, and the woman spits blood on it in contempt.  “Fight like a man!” she shouts.

Madeline ducks a slash from the Dark Elf’s shadow scimitar, but the Drow attacks with an off-hand dagger Madeline hadn’t even seen.  The dagger digs into her hip, and Madeline loses her concentration and can’t finish her own spell.  She desperately tries to reach for her taser.

Jenny has forced Iscalio back to within a few feet of the Drow.  The paladin bats aside Iscalio’s weapon for an instant, then charges in, knocking him back and into the Dark Elf.  All three of them fall to the floor in a heap, but Jenny shoves herself back to her feet as Iscalio does one of those nifty prone-flip-to-your-feet jumps you see in Hong Kong films.

Dalavar, weakened from having mentally dominated several people at once, can only mount a minor attack on Tagin.  A mental hand reaches out to paralyze Tagin’s brain, and Tagin squints to try to fight it off.  He’s about to lose, when he feels something bolster him, and he shakes off the telepathic attack.

“You never could do anything right, Neil,” Tagin laughs at him.  Then he raises his voice and shouts down to the battle below.  “JENNY, GIVE ME YOUR SWORD!”

(Tagin had been observing and studying Dalavar all the time he’d been climbing the stairs, looking for some kind of defense or weakness, wanting to be extra careful around a telepath.  Then he remembered how the Illithid had telekinetically blocked the bullets, but hadn’t been immune to melee attacks.  Tagin decided he needed a sword, and he remembered that Jenny just happened to have one, that she never actually used.)

Dalavar frowns at Tagin in confusion, but below in the fight, Jenny hears Tagin’s call.  As Iscalio leaps forward to slash at her, the paladin pulls the hilt of her sword out and flings it through the air, almost over Tagin’s head.  But Tagin leaps up and snaches it out of the air, twirls, and activates the blade while drawing his pistol with his free hand.  As he finishes his twirl, he prepares to slash at Dalavar.

Then he sees the sword he’s holding.  It’s a slender, elegant rapier.

Tagin stops and stands up straight, looking at the effeminate curls of the hilt and narrow blade of the sword in his hand.  He sighs in disbelief, tosses the sword over his shoulder, and nonchalantly blasts three bullets at Dalavar.  The bullets bounce off Dalavar’s shield, and Tagin begins to mutter under his breath in disgust at Jenny for having such a stupid wimpy sword, ruining his moment of glory.

An attack of opportunity from Jenny cuts down a Goblin, and Balthazaar’s hurled stakes drop two more before the little buggers can pounce upon a wounded Madeline.  Madeline, for her credit, ignores the burning in her hip from the dagger wound and leaps at the Drow with her taser.  Madeline and the Dark Elf sorceress struggle on the ground, Madeline trying to tase her, and the Drow trying to stab Madeline in the throat.

Jenny, having opened herself up by throwing her sword to Tagin, takes a slash across the chest from Iscalio’s scythe.  Doubling over in pain, Jenny falls backward onto the floor, struggling to concentrate to heal the hideous wound on her chest.

In the hallway, the half-Orc woman begins to slow down, her rage ending.  She still has more than enough strength to crush Cai, though, since Cai’s gun is demolished, and he had desperately tossed away his own katana the round before.  The woman draws back her lightblade katana to kill Cai when a ‘thoosh’ fills the air, and something digs into her shoulder.  She glances back for a moment to see the feathered tail of a tranq dart sticking out of her back.  She turns and grimaces at her ambusher, Finagle, who is slumped against the hallway wall a few dozen feet away.

The half-Orc begins to slump slightly, but she doesn’t go down.  Instead, she drops her sword and pulls a pair of pistols from her shoulder holsters.  As her knees begin to buckle, she fires off a half-dozen bullets at Finagle.  Magically, only one hits him.  Even more magically (evil DM vengeance magic, to be precise), four of the bullets rip his auto-site tranquilizing air rifle to bits, scattering shrapnel across the hallway.  Jessie always hated that damned thing.  Gyroscopic rifle with exploding darts my ass.

Um, anyway, Cai steps up behind her, grabs her shoulder to yank her around, then slams his fist into her face, knocking the woman unconscious onto the floor.  Once the threat is over, Cai nods in thanks to the normally annoying and whiny Finagle.

Back in the main room, Balthazaar keeps the Goblins busy so they can’t harrass the other party members.  It’s about 4 to 1 against Balthazaar, but a few seconds later, it’s 1 to 1.

Iscalio holds his scythe over Jenny threateningly, but instead of slashing her while she’s down, he concentrates, and suddenly the wooden boards beneath her warp and reach up to entangle her (wooden boards, plus vines and weeds under the house).  As Jenny struggles in the grip of the entangle spell, she shouts to her ghost, “Pataman, kick that stupid fox of his!”

Pataman does just that, and the one spirit slaps some sense into Iscalio’s bonded spirit, stunning Iscalio for a few seconds.  Long enough for Jenny to rip free and swing the haft of her spear into Iscalio’s legs, knocking the man off his feet.

The Drow stabs Madeline again, this time in the shoulder, and in desperation the human sorceress grabs at the Dark Elf’s long braid and yanks her around briefly.  With the braid in her hand, Madeline has better leverage, and she thrusts her taser into the Dark Elf’s cheek, stunning the Drow silly, but not dropping her.

Atop the stairs, Tagin reels in pain as a mental stab fills his mind with pain.  Dropping the gun, Tagin draws his switchblade and leaps forward, trying to circle around the telepath.  Dalavar slumps against the railing of the stairs, and then suddenly Tagin’s vision changes.  After a moment of disorientation, Dalavar is suddenly gone from his sight.  Tagin gets a feeling he’s being tricked, though, and he stabs out, feeling his attack connect.  Dalavar screams, and Tagin is able to shake off the false visual image Dalavar had tried to implant in his mind.  

And he sees that Dalavar is holding a pistol at his face.  Dalavar is no longer in any condition able to maintain the mental illusion, and Tagin realizes that all his shots hit home, that the telekinetic barrier had been an illusion too.

Cai and Finagle hobble back into the room, and Cai tries to run to his brother.  Finagle shoots an electric arrow at one Goblin that Balthazaar is fighting, and the jolt knocks the little green guy unconscious.  Jenny is slowly pushing herself to her feet, trying to get to Madeline.  Iscalio grabs her arm though, and as the druid draws back his scythe, Jenny slaps him in the face, trying to shake him out of it.  Iscalio calls her a bitchy whore and knees her in between the legs, which does hurt Jenny, but not as much as Iscalio had probably hoped.  Jenny shoves Iscalio backward into a wall and snaps her spear up to press the tip to his throat.

Unfortunately, during this exchange Madeline has been having to fend to herself.  The Drow stabs Madeline again and kicks away, slashing off her own braid so Madeline can’t keep yanking her hair.  As Madeline lays sprawled on the floor, her limbs going rigid from the venom on the dark Elf’s dagger, the dark Elf shadowmage casts darkness on the area around her, creating a blackness so deep even the glowing emerald of Iscalio’s lighscythe is hidden by it.  Balthazaar leaps into this darkness to try to stop the woman, but armed with a scimitar of shadows and a poisoned dagger, the Drow sorceress is only slightly concerned at the new attacker.

Cai comes up and also covers his brother, holding his katana to his brother’s throat.  Finagle just leans against the wall, too injured to be much of a help anymore.

Jenny turns to run help Tagin, and thus sees the exchange at the top of the stairs.

Tagin lowers his switchblade, staring down the barrel of a pistol to Neil, who has been grazed by three bullets and stabbed in the belly with a knife.  Tagin narrows his eyes, standing up to the telepath.  “You won’t shoot.  You’re too much of a weakling.”

Neil is breathing heavily.  “You don’t see, do you?  If I’m such a weakling, how can I see into your mind, see your memories, know who Legion is?  _You_ are the weakling.  _I_ see!  The war is coming, and after it, none of our sins will matter.”

Tagin leaps forward and shoves the gun upward just as Dalavar fires.  He shoves the telepath sideways and off-balance, knocking him backward and to the edge of the top of the stairs.  Tagin scrambles and grabs onto the bannister of the stairs, but Dalavar loses his balance and falls down the steps, rolling and bouncing.  He hits the floor with a room-filling ‘snap.’

After a moment of shock, Tagin and Jenny rush to Dalavar’s side.  Iscalio suddenly snaps out of the mind control, and he slumps forward into the arms of his brother.

Jenny and Tagin kneel beside Dalavar.  He’s still alive, barely, but Jenny can tell that the man’s neck is broken, and even with her healing, he would still die from the gunshot wounds.

Tagin bends close to Dalavar’s face, looking the dying man in his eyes.  “Neil!  I’m sorry.  I didn’t-. . . .”

Dalavar’s face spasms, and he stares off into space blankly as he quietly whispers.  “You- . . . you saw him . . . at the gates of heaven.  The Son of Man . . . and . . . his Archangel.”

Tagin’s head falls upon Dalavar’s chest.  He can’t think of anything to say, and after a few moments he moves away and sits blankly by the foot of the stairs.  Jenny closes Dalavar’s lifeless eyes, then stands and looks around.

The battle is over.  With Dalavar gone, the few Goblins who are disabled and not dead crawl away in fear, and everyone else comes free of his domination.  In the eventual aftermath, they learn that the Orc, the half-Orc, and the Drow were all knights, and had been dominated by Dalavar while looking for the party.  Iscalio tells them his story too, about how he ended up in New Orleans looking for clues about Dalavar, and made the mistake of actually finding the guy.

Iscalio grudgingly apologizes for nearly killing Jenny (a scythe deals a LOT of damage on a critical), then tells them what they already know.  Autumn is controlling the Chief, and that she’s for some reason working with Legion.

The three knights the party rescued agree that the Chief must be mistaken, and they promise to keep the party’s location a secret.  The half-Orc woman gives Cai the lightblade she had used, since it wasn’t hers in the first place.  In fact, this old house was once a base for the knights, and there’s a small cache of old supplies and equipment in the attic.  Among the items they find are two vitally important magical devices—universal keys, able to open any gate anywhere, either between the real world and the faerie world, or between two points on the real world.  There’s also a small pile of other loot, which I’ll detail in my next post.  

But the question is, where now?  They have the keys, and can go wherever they want, but where?  Iscalio’s heading to England for some unfinished business, but he doesn’t want them following him.  The other knights are heading back to the Bureau to try to talk some sense into their co-workers, and to find a way to stop Autumn.

The party sits down and thinks, trying to figure out what Dalavar was trying to say in his last moments.  And then they realize who Legion is.


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## Horacio (Feb 4, 2002)

RangerWickett said:
			
		

> *But let it be made clear: I don't want to claim authorship for this story.  It was all Jessie's idea (she posts as Acquana), and I'm just the writer who had the free time to type it up. *




O.K., it's my fault, I meant: "I love the hidden magic world you're showing us, RangerWicket". And I add, "please, tell Jessie/Acquana how much I love the setting" 



> *The party sits down and thinks, trying to figure out what Dalavar was trying to say in his last moments.  And then they realize who Legion is.*




So they're smarter than me, because I haven't realized yet... 
I guess I will have to wait until next post.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 5, 2002)

*Goghei:*  Male Lizard Man Mnk3; Medium-size Monstrous Humanoid; HD 3d8+3; hp 20; Init +4; Spd 30 ft.; AC 17 (+4 Dex, +3 Natural); Atk unarmed +6 melee (1d10); SA Stunning Fist; SQ Evasion, Still Mind; SV Fort +4, Ref +7, Will +2; Str 11, Dex 18, Con 13, Int 9, Wis 9, Cha 8.

_Skills and Feats:_ Balance +9, Diplomacy +3, Hide +8, Move Silently +8, Swim +5; Deflect Arrows, Dodge, Weapon Finesse (Unarmed).

_Racial Abilities:_ Dark Vision, +2 racial bonus to Climbing (claws), Listen and Spot checks (keen senses), and Jump, Balance, and Swim checks (tail); can sense magical auras (passive mode is constant, or can Detect Magic at will).

_Background:_
Something of a research subject, Goghei was the leader of a small tribe of sewer demos.  The Bureau captured him, intending to examine him and determine the source of his intelligence, which is fairly exceptional for the normally savage lizard folk.


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## NightOwl (Feb 5, 2002)

*High Fantasy Website*

Great Story Hour!  I've tried accessing the site with the link on the first page, but I keep getting a 'page not found' error.  Has the site moved?  I would really like to check it out!  

Thanks,
NightOwl


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## RangerWickett (Feb 5, 2002)

*Chapter Fifteen:  The Whore of Babylon*

The party mulls over the last words of Dalavar Kineil.  Balthazarr, Iscalio, and the other knights Dalavar had telepathically dominated have left, giving the group time to heal and rest in an old plantation house on the outskirts of New Orleans that once served as a base for the Bureau.  

In Neil’s last moments, he said that Tagin had already seen the ‘Son of Man’ and his Archangel.  It was pretty obvious that in Dalavar’s deluded mind he had matched Legion with the Son of Man (the second coming of Jesus for the apocalypse), and they could pin Autumn as the ‘Whore of Babylon.’  Jenny points out that since Autumn is apparently working with Legion, Dalavar didn’t quite get everything to fit properly, since in Revelation, the Whore of Babylon is on the side of the Dragon of the Apocalypse.  

Those are the two references the group can’t figure out right away.  The ‘Dragon,’ and Legion’s ‘Archangel.’  They guess that the Dragon is some magical creature Legion is trying to find or kill, since so far Legion has been killing off Dragons, driving half-Elf telepaths insane, and trying to kill a Siren.  

It all fits when they remember the fight with zombies in Bonaventure Cemetery, in Savannah.  Neil had mentioned that they’d seen Legion and his Archangel at the gates of heaven, and moments before the zombie attack, Michael had pointed out a monument over the grave of one wealthy Savannah redsident.  The sculpture was a huge marble arch meant to represent the gates of heaven, complete with a life-size St. Peter standing to usher people through.  

In Revelation, the Dragon fights with the Archangel Michael, and forces the Dragon to the earth.  Michael, the Archangel.

Cai asks, “What was the name of the ghost that was in the cemetery?”

Madeline answers, “Gerrard.  He said he was lost.”

Cai nods.  “How much do you want to bet that Gerrard is the name of the ghost who bonded to Michael?”

Finagle’s eyes widen.  “It was in that same cemetery where we chased . . . what’s his name?  Jericho.  The man who killed the first two Dragons.  Michael was there, and when he killed Jericho, he passed out.  And after that he started acting funny.  I . . . I saw him in the Bureau one day talking all secret-like with Autumn.  And he started swearing at the Dragon.”

It clicks, and everyone sits silently for a moment, considering the implications.  Legion possessed Michael somehow, and in the process forced out the ghost Michael had already bonded with.

“But,” Jenny points out, “Legion doesn’t have total control of Michael.  He was surprised when we told him about Keira’s death.  Legion’s working with Autumn, so if we can stop Legion, we can go back to the Bureau.”

Cai grumbles, not sure he would actually _want_ to go back to the Bureau.  Madeline and Finagle seem to agree with him.  They want to stay as far away from Autumn and Legion as possible.  Jenny nods in agreement, and they all look to Tagin for his opinion.

Tagin looks worried and starts to glance around nervously.  He feels something tingling on the back of his neck, sending a brief shiver down his spine.  And then a familiar but somehow hollow voice reaches his ears.  

“We gotta take ‘er down, Tagin.  Don’t worry.  Whatever happens, I got your back.”

Tagin groans in dismay as the ghostly image of Brian Greenman appears in his vision, still dressed in the same ‘Die Orcs!’ shirt he was wearing when Autumn shut off his heart and killed him.  

Everyone looks at Tagin in confusion, since no one else can see Brian’s ghost.  When the ghost of Finagle’s uncle relays to Finagle that Brian has come back and is bonding with Finagle, the 16-year-old kid genius begins to jump for joy.  His dear friend Brian is back, even he did decide to bond with Tagin.

Tagin asks Brian what he did to deserve this torture.  Tagin found Brian fairly annoying in life, and he certainly doesn’t want a ghost of the guy following around forever now that he’s dead.  Brian ignores the insults, too intent on getting revenge on the whore who killed him.

Brian describes his death, hoping to convince them that they need to kill Autumn in revenge.  

He says:  “It was awful.  I was sitting there, trying to remember so I could tell you all what happened, and then suddenly I felt something go wrong in my chest.  I concentrated, trying to force my heart to keep beating, y’know, making my saving throw and all that.  But then I felt a blast hit my mind, and I knew I was seeing the last 3d4 rounds of my life.”

Brian also explains that it was his intervention that kept Dalavar from mind blasting Tagin just a while back.  So he thinks he’s already proven that he can cover Tagin’s back.

Tagin fluctuates every minute or so between anger toward Brian and depression, but when the party begins to discuss their plans, he’s able to focus a little better.  They all realize that somehow they have to prove to the Bureau that they weren’t responsible for killing the Dragons or the illithid J’Qwuan, and that means breaking the Chief out of Autumn’s grip somehow.  Also, in a remarkable act of heroism, Tagin tells the rest of the group that they don’t have to come with him, but he is going to try to stop Legion.

He plans to find out where Legion will strike next, and Tagin will be there to stop him.



But before we get to the plan, let’s go over the characters again.

“Chuck” Tagin-Eve, 3rd/1st level rogue/sorcerer, bonded with the ghost of Brian Greenman (D&D player and fellow hacker).  Tagin still refuses to reveal his real name.  His most substantial ability is the +15 bonus he has to hacking.  Until now, Tagin has always been a skulker, not noticed by anyone, and glad because of it.  Now, however, he finds himself the center of attention.

Jenny Windgrave, 4th level paladin, bonded with the ghost of Pataman, her great, etc. grand-uncle from the Powhatan tribe of Indians in the 1630s.  Jenny is unnerved at all this talk of apocalyptic events.  Even though she doesn’t actually believe Dalavar’s insane ramblings, she won’t totally discount them.  She is a devout Christian, and in the past few weeks has seen that ghosts and goblins are real, so she is willing to suspend her disbelief some more.

Madeline West, 4th level wild sorceress, bonded with Catherine, the ghost of a woman hung in the Salem, Massachusettes witch trials centuries ago.  Madeline is sensitive to everyone’s worries, but she herself isn’t worrying too much.  She’s always been interested in the occult, and is more concerned with getting killed than about Legion stopping a war.  Unfortunately, Catherine is a bit sheepish.  She was killed falsely for witchcraft, afterall, and so she doesn’t enjoy using magic now.  Thus, every once in a while Madeline’s magic mishaps.

Finagle P. Luckshore, 4th level wizard (technomancer, he calls himself), bonded with the ghost of his uncle Cheston, an inventor.  Finagle fell into a slump when his friend Brian was killed, but now that Brian is back, Finagle is good to go.  Of course, now that his compressed air tranq rifle is broken, he’ll have to rely on magic for a change, instead of technology.  (One of Jessie’s biggest complaints was that Finagle never seemed to want to act like a mage, so Jessie took initiative and left the guy no other choice.)  Finagle also has a pet gargoyle named Herbie, who he had left behind in Balthazar’s room, since carrying around a gargoyle would attract attention, even in New Orleans.

Cai Maxwell, 4th level fighter, now the only member of the party not able to use magic.  His over-developed sense of justice is battling with his sense of prudence as he tries to decide whether he wants to take the fight to Autumn and Legion.  Cai is pretty sure that Legion is a demon, and so he plans to drag Jenny along just in case, since she’s the resident vessel of God (those come in handy when fighting demons).

And now that you know the party’s positions concerning the current events, here’s a quick rundown of the items the party finds in storage in the attic of the plantation house.  Since it was once a knight outpost, there are still a few useful items.  Of course, the most immediately useful item is Cai’s new katana.  To clarify, his old sword was a hilt that when activated created a normal metal katana blade.  This new weapon is an ivory-white lightblade, with magic runes that Finagle reads as “Wicked Wing.”


*Wicked Wing:*  A light sword; obsidian hilt with long, ivory-looking blade.  Its light blade emerges as a katana, and if the wielder is unwounded, he can hurl a blast of energy out to a range of thirty feet.  It sweeps out a 60-degree arc, like a trail of feathers from a long wing, reaching out to a range of twenty feet.  It deals 2d10 damage to anything in the path of the arc (Ref DC 14 for half damage).  Additionally, the wielder can Fly, as per the spell, for a total of 10 rounds per day.  Cai takes this.

*Ammunition:*  Two dozen +1 hand-crossbow bolts. Several react funny to wild magic, so roll a d6 whenever fired by Madeline’s wrist crossbow:
1-Random small animal flies out instead of the crossbow bolt.  On a successful hit it clings and deals 1d2 damage per round until the target spends a round picking it off.
2-No effect, attack is an illusion.
3-Normal damage
4-Deals +1d6 damage (roll 1d10: 1-2, fire; 3-4 acid; 5-6 sonic; 7-8, lightning, 9-10, cold)
5-Roll on the minor surge table
6-Double damage

*Spectacles of Truth:*  Bulky, thick, black-rimmed glasses that grant the wearer True Seeing once per day, cast at 12th level.  Finagle takes these.

*Marksman's Gloves:*  Empower the wearer to grant proficiency in any ranged weapon.  If she already has proficiency with a particular type of ranged weapon, she gains a +2 competence bonus to attack and a +1 competence bonus to damage with that weapon.  Tagin refuses them, so Jenny takes them.

*Overcoat of Armor:*  Provides +6 armor bonus to AC.  Additionally, it grants the wearer damage reduction 5/+1.  It's a gray trenchcoat, heavy and large, built for a large man, looking circa the thirties or forties.  Cai.

*Fethlefeira:*  Long, slender, polished wood; elven carvings; it is effectively a +1 Holy Shortbow, dealing to evil creatures an additional +2d6 damage.  Against undead, once per day it can fire a Turning Bolt.  An undead struck by this arrow is affected as though the bow wielder had tried to turn it, but at 4 levels higher.  Roll normally for turning, but it only affects the one creature struck.  Sadly, everyone made fun of this bow’s name, so Jenny took it, feeling a special kinship with the item.

*Gauntlet of Shielding:*  A black leather glove, left-handed.  It hold 4 charges.  Once per round, the wearer can expend a charge to create a brief force shield.  For the next round, the wearer is affected as by the shield spell, gaining +7 cover bonus to AC, immunity to magic missiles, and a +4 cover bonus to reflex saves.  This applies to attacks from one half of the wearer, chosen when the shield is created.  Charges refilled if gauntlet smeared with magi blood.  Madeline took this for self defense.

*Travel Keys:*  2 Keys, green.  Goes between any two doors, through the faerie world instead of to the Bureau.  

*Earrings of Wallspeak:* Wearer gains Clairaudience, 3/day, as the spell.  Madeline was the only one who wore earrings.

*7 Potions of Cure Moderate Wounds (2d8+5):*  Used immediately to heal the party.
 


And now, back to the plan.  After resting up and healing, they use the travel key to take a gate to Savannah.  They first check out the cemetery to see if Michael might be there, but apparently Legion’s puppet Archangel is no longer worried with keeping up appearances.  

Steeling themselves for disaster, they take the only course of action they have left:  Sneaking into the Bureau.  Despite almost everyone’s arguments against it, Tagin decides that going in alone, is his safest bet to avoid getting them all captured.

Everyone except for Tagin waits just outside the gate in Savannah, the gate to the Faerie World.  The party keeps one key, and promises Tagin they won’t come in after him, and that if he doesn’t return within an hour, that they’ll use the key and hide.  Tagin opens the gate, and takes a moment to adopt his disguise.

With a shimmer, Tagin’s appearance changes to that of Brian Greenman.  No one in the party actually has any illusion spells, so the best Tagin’s able to pull off is to allow Brian to create a visual apparition of himself, to cloak Tagin’s appearance.  They’re fairly certain that everyone would recognize any of them on sight as the fugitives, but they’re willing to risk that not everyone in the Bureau was familiar enough with Brian to recognize him as some obscure techie who got his brain fried a few days ago.

(Brian huffs at this, but Tagin warns him that unless he plays along, they’ll both die for good).

Tagin steps through the shining gate, and a moment later it snaps shut, dropping the parking lot of Oglethorpe dormitory into darkness.


Inside the Bureau, Tagin as Brian nods to the surprised but not violent guards who are stationed at the door to the gate room.  He walks into the Bureau, navigating quickly to Brian’s old office.  Tagin/Brian gets nervous whenever anyone walks by, but they only run into low-level desk-workers, and no actual knights.  When they reach Brian’s office, the door is locked and covered with a variety of “Do Not Cross, Crime Scene” tape.  Tagin picks the lock and they slip inside.

The room has been pillaged by knights who evidently were looking for leads to find Tagin and the others.  Thankfully the computer isn’t broken, so Tagin is able to . . . after making sure Brian stops looking over his shoulder . . . is able to hack into the Bureau’s systems and find out where Autumn and Michael are supposed to be.  Michael is on ‘special assignment’ out of the Bureau.  Records confirm that the same day that Brian died, Autumn used the gate to go to Atlanta, where she forced Brian to poison Dornankanir and then fiddled with Cai’s memories, but she has not left the Bureau since.  So Autumn is still nearby, but Michael is not.  An attempt to hack into Michael’s computer fails, so Tagin does the next best thing and finds out where Michael’s room is.

They leave Brian’s room and travel across the compound, up an elevator and then a little ways further to Michael’s office.  Tagin again picks the lock, then sneaks inside.  Brian activates an Alarm spell to warn them if anyone comes near.

Tagin flips on the lights of Michael’s room, and is shocked at the surroundings.  The wall is covered with tacked-up surveillance photos of normal-looking people, all labeled with Draconic names.  The computer is still on, it’s screen open to a file database of Dragons.  Tagin wonders why he couldn’t hack into the system, and then he sees that Michael had unplugged his computer’s ethernet cable.

Strewn across the desk are reams of papers listing names, statistics, and locations of hundreds of Dragons the Bureau keeps track of.  At the top of the pile are five stacks of stapled pages that have been covered in harsh red pen marks.  The names are too familiar.  Giriuko.  Flarinaman.  Dornankanir.  And the last two. . . .  These are covered with the most writing, which actually makes it hard for Tagin to read the main print.  

The two files read ‘Sexton,’ and ‘Sahkrekal.’  Tagin recognizes Sexton, the church Dragon in Atlanta who refused to admit that he actually was a Dragon.  Sexton had kept rambling that no, he wasn’t a demon, wasn’t a dragon, not a demon, not a demon.  As Tagin skims down the page, he sees that it’s an assessment of Sexton’s history and personality.  There’s no history except that rumors place him in England as early as the 1600s.  Nothing else of note, other than that he’s been at the same church for decades, and a psychological analysis done in 1982 states that Sexton is ‘entirely harmless, even in the most extreme cases of provocation.’  

The red pen marks surrounding this last comment are viciously scribed, digging gouges into the paper.  “Lies!  Murdering demon!  He’ll burn in hell.”  Across the surveillance picture of Sexton’s face, the word “Sahkrekal” has again been penned.  

Before reading over the other sheet, the one labeled Sahkrekal, Tagin skims through Michael’s computer, seeing that he’s collected the greatest information on wealthy Dragons involved in business, and primarily red Dragons, with a few Bronzes and Golds also thrown in, plus many Dragons listed as ‘unknown.’

Tagin closes the files on Dragons, but one file remains open, a document that catches his eye.

It starts off, “Let me tell you fools of this Knighthood about a small piece of history.  About Sahkrekal, and the Legion who will destory him and all those like him.  You’ll appreciate it, I’m sure, since it will put into perspective how your hopes and desyres to protect the demons of this world have failed.  I shall put the pieces of the puzzle together for you, and perhaps you will be smart enough not to fight against me.”

Tagin is stunned.  Apparently Legion left a note for the Bureau to find.  Wanting to get out of there, Tagin copies the file onto a floppy and stands up.

Brian suddenly gasps, and Tagins turns to look at him.  Even for a ghost, Brian looks pale.

“Oh my god.  She’s coming.  She’s . . . she’s on the other side of the door, listening to us.”

Tagin draws his guns, but as soon as he does he can hear the sound of high-heeled footsteps sprinting down the corridor.  Tagin shoves the floppy and the files on Sexton and Sahkrekal into his pocket, then kicks the door open and fires a shot at Autumn as he gives chase.  Since Tagin is moving so fast, Brian can’t stay close enough to hide Tagin’s appearance.

Tagin bursts into a run, and Brian casts light on Autumn, then conjures mist in the corridor, trying to foul Autumn up while still giving Tagin something to shoot at.  Brian shouts for Tagin to take the woman down, but Tagin just keeps running after her.

Down a hallway, a curve, then out of the mists.  A few dozen feet ahead, Autumn nears an elevator which suddenly opens to reveal three figures.  Autumn runs into the elevator as the figures emerge.  She shouts for them to stop the intruder while she gets reinforcements.  As the doors slide shut, Autumn turns to smirk at Tagin.

Tagin skids to a stop, sizing up the opponents.  An Orc, six feet tall, dressed in a loose black kung fu outfit.  A Dwarf, dressed in a black suit, his beard decorated with rings and braids.  And between them, its hands and feet chained together like a convict, stands a creature that looks like a surprisingly canny Sewer Demon (see Chapter Four), a reptillian humanoid with incredible strength.

The Dwarf groans.  “Dammit.  I’d hoped to be able to punch out early tonight.”

The Orc grins, cracking his knuckles and then dropping into a fighting stance.  “Don’t worry.  He doesn’t look like he’ll take too long.”

Brian whispers in Tagin’s ear that the knights are positively covered in magic.  (See, the DM thought we’d all be going into the Bureau, so she worked up a nifty battle with two powerful knights.  It’d be a shame to let the knights go to waste just because the party was foolish enough to send in only one guy.)

The Orc rushes forward as the Dwarf closes his eyes and hums a low chant.  Tagin fires two shots at the Orc, but with blinding speed the Orcish monk whips out his hands and knocks the bullets aside, deflecting one, but getting grazed by the other.  The Orc leaps upward in a flying kick, just as the Dwarf finishes his spell and drops the hallway into darkness (Orcs and Dwarves have Darkvision, and so they don’t mind).

Tagin gets a full kick to the face, and Brian begins to shout that the Dwarf’s got a gun!  A big-ass Dirty Harry hand-cannon!

Tagin scrambles blindly through the darkness, waiting for the Orc to punch him.  As soon as the Orc connects, Tagin guestimates where to fire and drives a bullet into the Orc’s arm.  In the background he can hear Brian futilely yelling at the lizard man prisoner to help them.  

The Dwarf shouts, “Get back,” and the Orc leaps away from Tagin.  Tagin ducks in panic, and the wall behind him caves in with the impact of a powerful blast.  Tagin continues to scramble desperately, and in the nick of time Brian casts a light cantrip to counter the darkness.  Tagin gets pounded again by the Orc, dropping him to about 3 hit points, vs. an Orcish monk that’s hitting for d8+6 damage per hit.

Suddenly, the lizard man bounds to behind the Orc and snaps out with a bite, nipping the huge monk, but distracting him long enough for Tagin to get off a wonderful double-sneak-attack pistol blast into the Orc’s knees.  The Orc falls to the ground in agony, and the lizard man tackles Tagin to the ground just in time to take a bullet for him.  The Dwarf’s huge pistol hits the lizard man in his arm, but he grits his sharp teeth and takes the pain.  

The lizard man thrusts out his chained-together wrists and feet and says, “Cut me loosssse.”

Tagin obliges, snapping the chains with a few rounds of gunfire.  Free to use his hands and feet, the lizard man monk(!) pounces upon the Dwarf and waylays him in a few seconds.

An alarm begins to fill the air, alerting that one of the rogue knights is in the Bureau.  Tagin runs to the elevator, shouting for the sewer demon monk to follow him.  They pile into the elevator, and Tagin takes  moment to override the Bureau’s electronic lockdown on the elevators.  In a moment, the elevator is zooming to the floor that the gate is on.

Tagin takes a moment to rest, eyeing the pale-scaled, golden-eyed reptile that saved his life.  When he asks how the lizard man knew to save him, the reptile replies that all his people—the Shan-toq, called ‘sewer demons’ by the knights—can sense magical auras, and he heard the ghost’s pleas for help.  (If you recall, sewer demons have a particular affinity to magic, an ability to sense it, because they really like how magic tastes).

The Shan-toq monk introduces himself as Goghei, and says that he was brought in by the knights so they could experiment on him (it’s rare to find such an intelligent sewer demon).  When Tagin asks if he’ll come with him, since they’re both trying to escape, Goghei replies, “Yesss.”

When the doors to the elevator open, they sprint through the hallway, heading toward the gate room.  Whenever anyone gets too close, Tagin lays down suppressing fire, but he soon runs out of bullets.  They reach the gate room without being caught, however, and Goghei leaps into the room, knocking down two guards with a flying spin kick/tail swipe.  Tagin presses a (bulletless) gun against the temple of the last guard, demanding to know whether Autumn came through.  The man shouts that she did, and without further ado, Tagin yells for Goghei and they leap through the gate, back to Savannah.

Tagin and Goghei (and Brian’s ghost) emerge right beside the rest of the party.  Tagin closes the gate behind them, then shouts that they have to go now.  Autumn’s getting away.  Tagin reopens the gate, this time leading to Atlanta, and they all leap through.

(Good deductive reasoning on Tagin’s player’s part, realizing that Autumn must have been running to warn Legion.  And Legion, of course, was in Atlanta, intending to kill Sexton.)

The gate in Atlanta opens nearby a Bureau garage.  Goghei’s feels the presence of powerful magic inside the building, so the party rushes in, hoping to stop Autumn before she can get a car.  They kick down the door and see Autumn kneeling over the body of an unconscious Bureau employee.  As soon as she sees them, she breaks off from scanning the man’s thoughts and kicks into a run, sprinting into the parking-lot-like garage, filled with cars.  

Jenny tries to get her new bow ready so she can shoot at Autumn, since, now that everyone’s used up all their bullets, she has the only real ranged weapon.  Autumn slinks out of sight before Jenny can fire, and the party rushes after her, breaking up to search as much of the garage as possible, because Autumn must be hiding behind the various vehicles.  A brief search follows, knights chasing glimpses of Autumn through aisles upon aisles of parked cars.  As they hunt for her, they can hear her voice laughing gently into their minds, taunting them.

Goghei sniffs her out quickly and charges toward her, bounding over car hoods toward the fleeing telepath.  Autumn mentally blasts the Shan-toq, knocking him off his feet for a moment.  As the rest of the party rushes toward her, Autumn opens the large door out of the garage, revealing the midnight streets of Atlanta beyond. 

Tagin helps Goghei to his feet while Cai and Jenny chase after Autumn, who can’t outrun them in her high heels and business attire.  Madeline stops Finagle for a moment, pointing to the car nearest to the door of the garage.  “Start this thing for me.”

As Jenny and Cai near Autumn, Cai holding Wicked Wing ready to strike, and Jenny keeping Autumn covered with Fethlefeira, Tagin and Goghei sprint out of the garage.  Autumn stands nervously, half-surrounded by Cai, Jenny, Tagin, and Goghei.

Smirking, Autumn cocks her head sideways at Jenny, and suddenly the paladin turns and fires her arrow at Cai, striking him in the arm.  Cai shouts in anger, then realizes that Autumn is dominating Jenny.  He tries to charge at Autumn, but the telepath doesn’t rest for a moment as she mind blasts the poor man.  Cai topples to the ground, stunned.

Goghei and Tagin rush out, and Goghei deflects the arrow Jenny fires at them.  Tagin sprints away from Jenny toward Autumn, drawing his switchblade.  The air ripples with Autumn’s mental power as first a blast of psionic energy snaps forward at Tagin, and then a stab at his brain causes his heart to flutter for a moment.  Brian absorbs the brunt of the two attacks though, and Tagin leaps through, slashing at Autumn with his knife.  The knife scitters across the woman’s vest, cutting the fabric, but not beneath, and Autumn just shakes her head.

An arrow flies in from behind, catching Tagin in the back of his knee, and as the hacker stumbles to the ground he sees both Jenny _and_ Goghei advancing upon him with malicious intent.  Autumn mocks him telepathically, then taunts him further by making Goghei suddenly pass out.  The lizard man hits the concrete hard.

Finagle, previously invisible, leaps from behind Autumn and actually grapples with her, screaming uncontrollably about how she killed Brian.  For a moment, Jenny regains her senses, and she tosses the bow so she won’t be tempted to use it if Autumn regains control.   A moment later, though, Autumn fills Finagle’s nerves with pain, and the teenager begins to spasm in agony.  She shoves Finagle to the ground telekinetically, then gestures for Jenny to attack Tagin again.

Jenny activates her spear and raises it to deliver a killing blow to Tagin.

But Autumn is too distracted to notice the inside of the garage.  A car horn sounds from the garage, and headlight fills the dark streets as Madeline tries to ram a car into Autumn.  Tagin leaps forward and knocks Jenny out of the way of the car, and Goghei instinctively tumbles out of the way.  Madeline lines up perfectly with Autumn, succeeds a driving check, and steps on the . . .

Brake.  She fails a Will save, and at the last moment swerves the car to stop it inches away from a cringing Autumn.  As everyone scrambles off the ground, Autumn mind blasts them all, then opens the passenger door of the car.

“Thank you,” she says to Madeline, then gets in and slams the door shut.  The car’s tires squeal, and it speeds off down the street, Madeline driving by Autumn’s dominating commands.

A few moments later, Jenny snaps free of the stunning attack, then Cai.  Jenny heals Tagin and Finagle quickly, helping them to their feet.  It takes a few rounds, but everyone gets up and piles into another car to try to give chase, with Finagle magically hotwiring this one just like he did with the last one.

As they speed down the road, they realize they have almost no idea which way Autumn has gone.  Tagin knows she’s heading toward Sexton’s church, but they want to stop her before she gets there.  Even Goghei can’t pinpoint her location accurately enough.  

Cai pulls out his cel phone and grabs Finagle by his shirt.  “Can you cast any spells over the phone?”



*ring*  . . . *ring* . . . and before Autumn can stop her, Madeline acts as she normally would, and answers her cel phone.  On the other end of the line, Finagle waits for Autumn’s command, “Hang up that phone,” hoping that Madeline won’t have the phone too close to her ears.  

As Madeline moves puppet-like to turn off the cel phone, a piercing sonic whine shrieks through it, growing louder, shaking through the car and finally exploding in a torrent of noise.  Madeline screams and slumps unconscious against the steering wheel, dropping the car into a spin which ends in it skidding to a stop in a hedgerow.

Goghei guides them, and in a few moments they come upon the crippled car.  Autumn seems to have escaped with relatively little harm, and thanks to an airbag, Madeline is just confused and stunned, not seriously hurt.  They know that Autumn on foot will take a while to reach the church, so they pull Madeline into the car, use their last healing potion on her, and speed through the streets of Atlanta, to a secluded old church that is home, supposedly, to a Dragon named Sahkrekal.



As the car speeds along, Tagin pops the floppy into Finagle’s laptop spellbook, opening up the file of Legion’s “manifesto.”  He begins reading out its contents to the rest of the group, since it’s about a fifteen minute drive to where they want to be.

According to Legion, the Dragon Sahkrekal was a native of England over 350 years ago.  Whoever Legion was, he met Sahkrekal, and the Dragon controlled him, eventually killing him after using him as a slave for years.  But Legion survived as a ghost, and found a host body in which he could carry on his vengeance.  However, his host was slain and his spirit was captured by another master, one who showed him how all magi need to be destroyed because they are a threat to Mankind.  Decades passed, and he moved from body to body, inhabiting an entire legion of hosts in his quest to make Sahkrekal pay.

And when Legion finally confronted Sahkrekal, Legion’s full might was so powerful it drove the Dragon mad.  Sahkrekal was in human form, and when his mind snapped he fled, insisting that he was not the demon Legion wanted to kill.  Before Legion could finish the job, though, his host was killed, and he lost track of Sahkrekal.  Now, centuries later, he was finally able to recognize Sahkrekal’s face as that of the ‘harmless’ Dragon Sexton.  When Sahkrekal went mad, he crawled into the persona of Sexton, and has been too afraid to come out, for fear that Legion would find him.

And now, Legion has.

Madeline tries to convince them that they have enough information now.  They can go back to the Bureau, and now that Autumn is gone, they can use the evidence to clear their names.  But Finagle has personal reasons for wanting to put an end to this, and the thought of letting a murderer of Legion kill in the name of humanity is repugnant to Jenny.  Tagin’s reasons are a bit more complex, but he won’t Legion win either.  And Cai, as I said, has an over-developed sense of justice.  Goghei just needs to hang around long enough for these knights to vouch for him, so the Bureau won’t try to dissect him.

After much worry and debate, they all agree to do whatever they can.  Very late into the evening, the car pulls up to the grassy lot surrounding Sexton’s church.  Over the distant drone of Atlanta’s nightlife, they can hear the lamentful calling of a lone gargoyle sitting watch atop the church, shouting that someone is already inside.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 5, 2002)

*Sahkrekal, Ancient Red Dragon:*
SZ G (Dragon [fire], 55’ long with tail, 120’ wingspan); HD 34d12+306; hp 718; Init: +6 (Dex, Improved Initiative); Spd 40, fly 200 (poor); AC 39 (-4 size, +33 natural); Atk: Bite +44 (4d6+14), 2 claws +39 (2d8+7), 2 wings +39 (2d6+7), and tail slap +39 (2d8+21), or crush +44 (4d6+21), or tail sweep (2d6+21, 30’ diameter semicircle); Face 20 ft. x 40 ft.; Reach 15 ft.; SQ Breath Weapon (60’ cone, 20d10, Ref DC 35 for half, usable once every 1d4 rounds), Fire (fire immunity, half/double cold damage on successful/failed save), Damage Reduction 15/+2; SV Fort +26, Ref +17, Will +24; Str 39, Dex 10, Con 29, Int 24, Wis 25, Cha 24; AL CE; CR 22.

Immunities:  Immune to sleep and paralysis effects; Spell Resistance 28

Special Attacks:  Draconic Aura (radius 300 feet), Will DC 34 to negate; Blindsight (300 feet); Keen Senses; Suggestion 3/day; Eyebite 1/day

Skills:  Bluff +29, Concentration +31, Diplomacy +37, Intimidate +32, Jump +36, Knowledge (arcana) +30, Knowledge (history) +20, Listen +32, Search +30, Spot +32.  

Feats: Cleave, Combat Reflexes, Flyby Attack, Greater Cleave, Hover, Power Attack, Quicken Spell-like Ability, Snatch, Sunder.

Spells/Day (cast at 15th level):  8 8 8 7 7 7 5; Spells Known:  Charm Person, Magic Missile, Protection from Good, Protection from Law, Silent Image // Darkness, Daylight, Detect Thoughts, Protection from Arrows, Resist Elements // Hold Person, Lightning Bolt, Nondetection(!), Suggestion, // Fire Shield, Ice Storm, Locate Creature, Stoneskin // Cloudkill, Dismissal, Dominate Person, Wall of Force // Acid Fog, Greater Dispelling, Mass Suggestion // Delayed-Blast Fireball, Vision


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## RangerWickett (Feb 5, 2002)

*Legion*
12th level Ghost Sorcerer

Hit Dice: 12d12 (78)
Initiative: +3
AC: 16
Attacks/Damage:  As host.
Saves: Fort n/a, Ref +7, Will +8
Feats: Silent Spell, Still Spell, Combat Casting, Extend Spell, Empower Spell, Maximize Spell 
Abilities: Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 16

Special Abilities:
Spellcasting (Sp): Legion casts spells as a 12th Level Sorcerer.  He has access to the following spells:
1st Level—Chill Touch, Comprehend Languages, Expeditious Retreat, Maxmilian’s Earthen Grasp, Shield
2nd Level—Detect Thoughts, Knock, Levitate, Minor Image, Protection from Arrows
3rd Level—Fireball, Gust of Wind, Haste, Lightning Bolt
4th Level—Phantasmal Killer, Shadow Conjuration, Shout 
5th Level—Magic Jar, Wall of Force
6th Level—Geas

_Incoporeal (Su):_ When in ghost form, Legion is incoporeal until he finds a new host.  He is harmed only by other incoporeal creatures and weapons of +1 or better enchantment, or magic, with a 50% chance to ignore any damage caused by a coporeal source.  Can pass through solid objects at will, and own attacks pass through armor.  Always moves silently.

_Malevolence (Sp):_  As magic jar.

_Ghostly Rejuvenation (Su):_ In most cases, it’s difficult to destroy a ghost through simple combat: The “destroyed” spirit will often restore itself in 2d4 days.  Even the most powerful spells are often only temporary solutions.  A ghost that would otherwise be destroyed returns to its old haunts with a successful level check (1d20 + ghost’s level) against DC 16.  As a rule, the only way to get rid of a ghost for sure is to determine the reason for its existence and set right whatever prevents it from resting in peace.  The exact means varies with each spirit and may require a good deal of research.

_Turn Resistance (Su):_ A ghost has a +4 turn resistance (counts as +4 HD for turning attempts; i.e., a 16 HD creature).

_Aura of Suffering (Sp):_  Legion’s most powerful attack is one created simply by his existence.  His power, from years of siphoning the power of Magi and from skipping from one host to the next, has enhanced his magical essence to dwarf that of even a dragon.  Only natural magi are affected by this aura.  Thus, while ghosts can sense his presence, natural magi can be driven insane.  Up to twelve times per day, Legion can unleash this attack, flooding the targeted magus with all the horrors the ghost has seen over a legion of lifetimes.  This attack affects one natural magus, which must succeed a Will save (DC 34) or be driven insane (as by the _insanity_ spell).  This effect ends if Legion is ever destroyed.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 5, 2002)

*Chapter Sixteen: Archangel*


Very late into the evening, the car pulls up to the grassy lot surrounding Sexton’s church.  Over the drone of Atlanta’s nightlife, they can hear the lamentful calling of a lone gargoyle sitting watch atop the church, shouting that someone is already inside.  Two shattered stone statues, once gargoyles, now lie lifeless in a charred patch of grass.

The Knights step out of the car, trying to spot anyone hiding in the dark scattered woods surrounding the old stone church.  Herbie, Finagle’s pet gargoyle, flies up to the top of the church and tells his fellow gargoyle that there will be a fight, but his friends need to be able to avoid being ambushed.  The crying gargoyle agrees to stay quiet, but makes Herbie promise that they will smite the one inside.  Herbie agrees and flies back.

The Knights prepare for battle.  

Madeline turns invisible and casts _spiderclimb_ on herself, climbing the outer walls of the church to one window that is broken.  This will be her ambush spot.  From it she can see the interior of the church, which has a main floor, with a clerestory (an overhanging balcony with more seating) on either side wall.  Candelabras in the nave of the church give off a faint glow, but it’s too dark to see anything right now.  Madeline readies a _magic missile_ for the right moment.

Jenny says a quick prayer, asking God for something that will let them stop Legion.  She realizes that if Legion can simply leap from body to body, then killing Michael will only result in Legion taking one of them as a host.  She feels the frustration from her ghost, Pataman, who barely tolerates Jenny’s beliefs.  She turns to him and quietly asks him to work with her without any arguments, despite their disagreements.  Their beliefs might be different, but right now they have the same goal.

Finagle listens to his late uncle’s ghost as the man gives him support, and as he relays a brief conversation between the technomage and Brian, the dead hacker.  Tagin, unwillingly bonded with Brian, checks his empty clips absently while watching the others.  Though he doesn’t want to be seen, everyone keeps glancing at him, as if he might have advice or an answer.  He has none.  He wishes he’d never heard of the Bureau, or at least, . . . he glances at those around him, . . . at least that he won’t have any blood on his conscience tonight.

Goghei’s scaled body stands stiffly, eyes closed, until Cai gives the signal to move.  Activating his lightblade katana, Cai waves for them to follow as he strides across the field toward the church doors.  Cai and Jenny take the front, with Tagin, Goghei, and Finagle following behind.  They reach the church doors, and Goghei tells them that he smells the woman from before, Autumn, but he can barely notice her between the powerful auras inside the building in front of them.  

Cai listens at the heavy oak doors, then pushes them open, letting a cool breeze blow in, gusting through the church across them.  Jenny brushes her hair out of her face and levels her spear forward warily.  She tries to detect evil, and though she can feel powerful evil nearby, something is blocking her from pinpointing it.  Still actively sensing the vast room, Jenny leads the way down the central aisle toward the nave at back, where several candelabras burn.  Tagin and Goghei walk down the right aisle, passing under the clerestory; and Finagle and Cai walk down the left aisle, passing under the other side.

Jenny reaches the nave and hears a soft voice coming from behind a cloth-covered pulpit.  She walks around it and sees Sexton cowering on the ground.  He still looks completely harmless, though even more paranoid than when they first met him.  Certainly he does not look like he was once a crimson-scaled Dragon legendary for his vile hatred of humanity.

Jenny calls the others over, and they hurriedly finish their searching, then gather around the whimpering man.  He is initially comforted by seeing the cross Jenny wears, but when he sees Goghei, scaly and reptilian, he shouts, “Demon!”

Jenny tries to find out if Autumn or Michael are in the church.  She purposefully avoids mentioning Legion so as to keep from provoking the man.  Finagle’s not as bright, though, and wonders aloud what in the world Legion could have done to a Dragon to make him snap like this.

Sexton pulls away and begins rubbing his forehead nervously, his fingers clenching the white cloth of the pulpit.  Jenny is about to reprimand Finagle when her ghost, all the ghosts in fact, shout a warning.  A tingling chill raises the hair on the back of everyone’s neck, and for an instant they hear a mental chuckle.

Enter Autumn.

She glides lazily down the center aisle, looking no worse for wear after the fight and car chase.  The party waits for her to make the first move, since only Jenny has any ranged firepower.  

Autumn stops twenty feet away, planting a hand on her hip.  She gestures toward Sexton with her free hand.  “Move aside, or I’ll _make_ you.”

Tagin tries to bluff, drawing his empty pistol and pointing it at Autumn.  “Back off.  I don’t know why you’re working with Legion, so unless you back off and explain yourself I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

Autumn laughs.  “You don’t have any bullets in there.”

Tagin grits his teeth and tries to close his mind.  “I reloaded after you smashed your little head into a light pole.”

Autumn shakes her head, smirking.  “Whatever, Sean.  You people are such a hassle to get rid of.  I’ve tried so hard, but you haven’t taken any hints.”

Finagle looks at Tagin.  “She called you ‘Sean.’  _Sean?_”

Tagin glances nervously at Finagle, then looks back to Autumn in anger.  Autumn laughs.

Jenny walks forward to within ten feet of Autumn, asking as she approaches, “So, are you going to tell us why you murdered Brian and J’Qwuan?  Why you helped Legion kill Keira and who knows who else?  Legion hates magi, so why did you do it?”

“Because he would have destroyed me otherwise.  Because when I touched Michael’s mind and found _him_, he showed me what place I would have in the world he wants.  I would be a slave.  Better to go willingly now, and maybe find something I can fight him with, than to be crushed into subservience later.”

Jenny looks at Autumn in dismay.  “Then don’t fight us.  We’re going to stop Legion, and we need your help.”

Autumn laughs coldly, dejectedly.  “Nothing can stop Legion.  You’re too weak, and you will only suffer more if you fight him.  Consider this mercy.”

Autumn closes her eyes and the air feels thick around them.  A mental blast thunders outward, crashing into their thoughts.  The knights cry out briefly in agony, and then Sexton’s voice rises loudly as he screams in mental pain, and for an instant his features contort into something hideous, reptillian, vengeful.  Stunned by Autumn’s telepathic attack, Sexton cannot continue to suppress the overwhelming magical aura of a centuries-old Dragon.  Just as with Dalavar in Hong Kong, the magical energies overwhelm natural magi, cancelling their powers.

All the knights except Cai groan in a moments pain as they feel the Dragon’s aura.  The ghosts scream in panic, the overwhelming energy briefly blocking their connection to the ones they had bonded to.  Goghei screams also, clutching his head.  Autumn staggers back, covering her face with her arms as the backlash of her mental attack stuns her.  In Hong Kong, the aura of a dead Dragon was enough to drive Dalavar into unconsciousness.  It’s amazing that Autumn is still standing.  In a second, it ends, and the knights recover.

But Autumn stands weakly in the center aisle, holding herself up on one of the benches.  She puts a hand to her forehead, her eyes wide.  “It’s so . . . quiet.  What did you do to me?!”

She turns to look at Sexton, who is gripping the cloth of the pulpit in both hands.  The man turns apologetic.  “You shouldn’t have done that.  It hurt me too.  I’m-, I’m sorry.”

Autumn wails in despair and turns to run, stumbling in her high heels.  

Brian, who was murdered by Autumn, yells at Tagin that she’s vulnerable for once, and they have to stop her before she gets away and recovers.  Tagin begins to run after her, and the others recover from the mental attack and begin to follow, when Sexton gasps.

“No.  He’s here.”

Tagin has already reached the door, but between him and the others, Michael leaps from the clerestory, his white coat fluttering as he lands easily in the central aisle.  He holds an ignited lightblade scimitar, and narrows his eyes angrily, staring past the knights, toward a cowering Sexton.

When Michael speaks, his voice carries a different timbre.  Something extra, archaic in his voice.  “I’ve tired of taunting the wyrm; he’ll provide no sport.  But you, you are traitors to your own people.”

Michael rushes forward, raising his scimitar to strike at Jenny.  Tagin begins to run after Michael, but Cai shouts at him, tossing something through the air toward him.  “Go stop Autumn!  Take that whore down!  We’ll handle this one!”

Tagin skids to a stop nervously and catches what Cai had thrown him.  A clip of bullets, humming with faint magical energy.  He looks on in dismay as Michael’s arcing slashes buffet Jenny’s defenses, but he forces himself to run after Autumn, snapping the clip of enchanted bullets—Keira’s clip—into his pistol.

He sprints out the front of the church, chasing after the fading noise of a staggering Elvish telepath.



Inside the church, those with ghosts can see the flaring red spectral image of Legion, the ghost bonded with and controlling Michael.  While Michael’s body spins his blade dramatically downward, viciously trying to chop through Jenny’s defenses, Legion hovers close to Michael, turning his magical might upon the only obvious magi in the room.

Goghei falls to the floor, hissing and snarling as images of murder, agony, and death burst through his mind.  Driven mad by Legion’s power, Goghei snaps, just like Sahkrekal did hundreds of years ago.  Well, perhaps not _quite_ like Sahkrekal did.

Goghei falls into a more bestial posture, snarling and swinging his head about, sniffing for the magic.  Then, with a gurgling hiss, he begins to run four-legged across the tops of the church pews toward Michael.  He pounces onto the man, clawing at his face and smashing him with the tip of his tail.  Jenny takes the moment’s respite to move away and give Cai room to try to fight.  Finagle fires a short arrow of electicity at Michael, and Herbie swoops in and buffets Michael on the head with his wings.

Madeline, standing invisible in the balcony above, creeps up and fires a pair of magic missiles at the possessed man.  Jenny, busy getting her bow ready, shouts that they need to knock him unconscious, but not kill him.  As far as they can tell, Legion can only jump when the original host is dead.

When Legion hears this he laughs, and with his off hand he fires a lightning bolt that skims across Cai’s torso and catches Jenny in the face, spinning her backward to the ground, where she struggles to remain conscious.  

Cai gets only a few small hits on Michael, but Goghei fares better, repeating his vaulting attack to wound the possessed paladin while in midair.  Herbie swoops in again and lands on Michael’s arm to bite him, but can’t get through the coat.  Finagle tends to Jenny, casting an endure elements spell on her as a mild precaution.  Madeline tries to fire a magical bolt from her wrist crossbow, but the wild magic reacts strangely and she ends up shooting a small sparrow at Michael, that begins to claw at him feebly.

Legion, frustrated at being nibbled at by puny creatures, has Michael wait to attack the lizard man when he gets close enough.  Legion himself, able to act separately of Michael’s body, channels magic onto his host, which Finagle’s uncle recognizes as almost the same magic Finagle had just used on Jenny.  But why would Legion be casting endure elements on himself?

Finagle shouts for everyone to get away from Michael, but Cai is too busy fighting to listen to the young kid, and continues trying to beat through the much more experienced warrior’s defenses.  When Goghei again tries his leaping claw attack, Michael raises his sword directly in the lizard man’s path and gashes deeply into Goghei’s chest.  Out of momentum, the monk falls to the ground, struggling to get back up and keep fighting.

Cai sees a sudden red flare in Michael’s left hand, shimmering an incandescent red.  Deciding too late to take Finagle’s advice, Cai tries to leap away but is caught by the blast of a concussive fireball.  The explosion slams Cai into one of the pews, singes away flesh and scales from Goghei, shatters the floor beneath Madeline, roasts the sparrow from her crossbow, and nearly kills Herbie, who weakly glides away to take cover under a pew.  Madeline leaps and uses spiderclimb to hold onto the edge of the balcony, but she decides to drop and help her friends as best she can.  

She lands heavily, too close to Michael (who was unharmed by the fireball), and gets slashed on her arm for her error.  She sprints away desperately, trying to fire more _magic missiles_ at Michael.   Finagle runs forward to help Cai off the ground, and Jenny pulls up her bow and beings firing at Michael to keep him back.  Michael dodges the arrows, trying to coup de grace Goghei, but he’s too busy avoiding missiles to get a good hit in, and Goghei rolls out of reach.

Michael takes cover behind a pew, and Jenny, too tired to run fast, stands still and waits for him to emerge.  Legion apparently realizes that Jenny’s in no condition to dodge, and as he stands his hand begins to crackle with electrical energy.  Finagle sees the attack a moment before it goes off, and he leaps into its path as a stroke of lightning crashes across the room toward Jenny.  Finagle takes it square in the chest, and lands heavily at Jenny’s feet.

Jenny hesitates, unsure whether to go to Finagle’s aid or fire another again at Michael.  Goghei solves this for Jenny when he furiously leaps up from the pew behind Michael and tries to pull the possessed knight into a headlock.

Jenny kneels quickly beside Finagle, taking a moment to throw a caustic glance at Sexton.  The man, if he really did hate Legion so much, could become a Dragon and save all their lives, but instead he cowers in fear, only shaking his head.

Sexton sees Jenny’s eyes and tries to say something to her, but Jenny ignores him, turning her attention back on Finagle.  Finagle, however, seems to have gotten away unscathed.  His own affinity to electricity has protected him, but his spellbook is fried, sputtering and unusable.

Jenny pulls Finagle to his feet while Madeline and Cai try to get close to Michael, who is being grappled by Goghei.  Just as they get near, Michael plants a palm onto Goghei’s cranium and _chill touches_ the lizard man to unconsciousness.

Michael glances at those still weakly standing, and he calmly holds his sword ready.



Outside, Tagin refuses Brian’s shouts to shoot at Autumn.  Though almost unable to see in the dark beneath the trees, Tagin can follow the moving silhouette of Autumn.  After half a minute of chasing, Autumn slows, seemingly to catch her breath against a tree, but as Tagin nears her he feels her trying to worm her way into his subconscious.  

Brian, by now having figured out how to link closely with Tagin, shifts the attack to himself, and the ghost begins to cry in remembered agony as Autumn sifts through his mind.  He hears the woman chuckle softly, but as he finally comes into her view she gasps in surprise, apparently thinking she had been psychically attacking Tagin.

The woman is still haggard and wide-eyed, but she does not give up.  She draws a pistol and fires at Tagin, but he ducks behind a tree.  He can hear Brian groaning in pain, sounding perfectly like a groaning spirit, and he realizes that Brian is no help.

“_His_ ghost bonded with _you_?” Autumn rasps quietly to Tagin.  “Even in death he could never do anything right.”

Tagin leaps and takes cover behind another tree, dodging another shot from Autumn.  She continues to mock him, her voice coming in exhausted gasps from the exertion of running.  “He did you a favor, Sean.  He gave you a chance to run.  I’ll give you that chance too.  Whatever that Dragon did to me is no longer a problem.”

Tagin pulls out his switchblade, turning on the safety of the pistol and tucking it into his pants.  He recognizes that she’s lying.  He hears the fear in her voice.

“I’ll even,” Autumn offers, “get rid of Brian for you.  I know how much you don’t want his depressing ego hanging around you for the rest of your life.”

Tagin feels the tree shudder beside him as Autumn fires a bullet into it.  Cringing, Tagin shouts into the trees, “Brian, get ahold of yourself.  You’re already dead, so stop whining!”

Autumn laughs, and Tagin hears her circle around the tree for a clear shot.  Oddly, her voice comes from the opposite side of the tree, some kind of psychic projection.  Tagin wavers, uncertain which way to move.  He sprints for another tree, staying on the move, even as Autumn follows him.

“Well, Sean?  Drop the gun, run away, and you’ll be able to go back to your meaningless life, free from the Bureau.  No one will ever notice you ever again.  You don’t want to be famous, or a hero.  You just want your life back.”

Tagin hears a pained groan in his head, Brian’s voice.  Autumn’s movement and voice, disparate, drown out what the ghost is trying to say.

“Your life alone,” Autumn continues, breathing more regularly now.  “This matter never concerned you in the first place.  It was _Brian_ that dragged you into this, making you a target for Legion.  If you leave now, I promise I’ll make sure Legion never finds.  He’ll never even care that you existed.”

From within the church a huge thunder reverberates, and a red glow briefly fills the darkness between the trees.  Tagin hears a scream, Madeline’s or Jenny’s, desperate, in pain.

“What about the others?” Tagin asks, feeling a cloying weight pressing in on his senses, cutting him off from what Brian’s trying to tell him.

“Oh, so you do speak?” Autumn laughs.  “Either way, I know you more deeply than you know yourself.  You don’t care about the others.  You need to go your own way.  Why don’t you leave?  I promise you, by tomorrow you’ll have forgotten this ever happened.”

Tagin glowers, eyes wide in disgust at the sound of Autumn’s voice.  But he doesn’t know where the voice is coming from.  He tries to fight her out of his head, and when her voice comes again, it sounds surprised.

“I don’t know why you’re fighting me.  I’ve never done anything to hurt you.”

A sudden mist fills the forest, and in surprise Autumn gasps and sounds like she’s stumbling away.  Both her voice and her movement now in the same place.  Tagin leaps from the cover of the tree and sprints through the mist toward the noise, jumping and tackling the slender silhouette before him.  

Tagin crashes into Autumn, shoves her to the ground.  Her eyes are wide with panic, and her face strained from trying to use her power but failing.  She stops struggling and stares into his eyes as Tagin draws the pistol and places it to her head.  

“You killed my friend,” Tagin shouts at her.  Brian shouts for him to kill her and Tagin’s finger twitches.

Then, in a shout of disgust, he slams the metal of the pistol into her temple and knocks the woman unconscious.  He hits her once again for good measure, and then without a word to Brian he speeds off toward the church.



Michael forces his way back into the relatively open area of the central aisle.  His flashing sword shoves Cai backward, and horrible nightmare images confront Finagle, trying to phantasmally kill him.  Madeline finally realizes that some spell Michael has is blocking her magic missiles, so she waits for an opening to taser the man.

Herbie’s high-pitched shouts of “smite the evil!” help Finagle overcome his fears of the illusionary monsters, and so he’s of right mind enough to see when Tagin reappears in the main doorway.  Of course, he’s not smart enough to keep quiet, so he shouts an encouraging, “Go Tagin!”

Michael glances back at the recently entered hacker and hurls a fireball toward the entry to the church.  It sets the door aflame, but being a 3rd level rogue with evasion saves Tagin as he ducks behind the cover of a pew.

Jenny, unable to get a clear shot at Michael because he’s shorter than Cai (and Cai is in the way), tries one last time to get Sexton to help.  She tells him how they’re all going to die, how the church will burn and Legion will kill millions if he gets free.  Sexton just whimpers, and Jenny starts to stalk off, giving up on him.  She readies her spear and steels herself for her final fight, when Sexton says something unexpected.

“You’re right.  He-, he must be stopped.”  

Jenny stops and turns, seeing him staring intently at the pew’s cloth, which he holds in his hands.  She rushes back to him to see if he will indeed help.

Unfortunately, in the meanwhile Cai is getting tired from the ongoing fight.  Michael has stopped attacking them directly, and simply parries all of Cai’s attacks, blocks all of Madeline or Finagle’s spells.

Michael begins to speak during the battle, his voice tinged with the spirit of Legion.  “You won’t get away, demon.  The first time you killed me I was helpless.”

Michael ducks one of Cai’s attacks, then disarms the man with his scimitar and shoves him to the ground with a gust of wind.

Tagin begins to run up behind Michael, gun and switchblade in hand.  Michael advances toward Sexton and Jenny.

“The second time you killed me, I was careless.”  At Legion’s command, a snaky arm of stone lashes out from the floor and wraps around Tagin’s leg, holding him fast.  Madeline tries to taser Michael, but the possessed knight simply bats her aside.  Only Jenny and Finagle stand between him and Sahkrekal.

“This time,” Legion states, “you will pay for all those who you murdered.”

Jenny helps Sexton to his feet, and the frightened man weakly says, “You are the murderer.”

Michael raises his sword to leap out and strike down Sexton, but Jenny throws out her hand, snapping her necklace as she thrusts out her cross.  Michael begins to shout in denial, but he suddenly goes weak, falling forward and collapsing to the floor.  Briefly, everyone in the room can see the spirit of Legion burst from Michael’s body, then hover for a moment before it vanishes.

The knights all exchange surprised glances at how it had worked.  Jenny turns to Sexton, amazed.  “That did it?  Legion is gone?”

Sexton shakes his head desperately.  “No.  No!  No!  He’ll just take someone else!  Please no!”

Though shakin his head in denial, Sexton staggers toward Michael’s fallen body, staring down at something only he can see.  His eyes close and his mouth tenses in fright, and then Sexton passes out, falling to the floor with a groan.

There is a general consensus of “what the hell?”s going around, and Jenny limps over to Sexton.  Finagle runs to try to break Tagin free of the stone arm holding him, and Madeline and Cai begin tying up Michael with his own coat.

Jenny is kneeling next to Sexton, about to put a hand to his face, when the man’s eyes snap open, crackling with flame.

As Sexton pushes himself off the ground, he lashes out with a hand and _claws_ Jenny across the chest, digging in only shallowly with nails turned to black claws.  Jenny shrieks in panic and leaps away, and everyone turns to Sexton in shock.

He begins to laugh, his voice tinged with the same odd timbre Michael had while possessed with Legion.  “Oh, God!  I never realized how powerful you bastards were.  You’ll help me destroy . . . dest-”

Sexton hunches over, his voice back to normal.  “No.  Please stop him before he-”

They hesitate momentarily, realizing that Sexton and Legion are vying for control of the Dragon’s body.  Jenny tries to again help Sexton, but this time she’s ready when Legion takes over again, and doesn’t get clawed.  The knights’ ghosts begin to shout in pain again, the same pain they felt from Sahkrekal’s draconic aura.  The aura of a centuries old Dragon crashes through the church, stunning everyone present.  Even Sexton falls to his knees, falling silent.

When Legion speaks again, his voice is panicked.  “What did you do?!  I can’t use any of my power.”

Sexton pushes himself to his feet, his body contorted as two souls struggle to command it.  One of Sexton’s hands lashes out toward Jenny, trying to fire another lightning bolt, but nothing happens, and Sexton laughs weakly.

Legion takes over again.  “Damn you!” he screams.  “I don’t need it.  Your body alone is powerful enough!”

Cai runs forward to try to tackle him, but the balding priest opens his mouth and spits a gout of flame, driving Cai back.  Legion, though unable to use any of his own magic because of the Dragon’s aura, is almost in control of Sahkrekal’s natural draconic powers.

The back of Sexton’s shirt begins to tear as small scaled wings stretch out from his flesh.  Jenny shouts at Sexton to try to get him to take control again, but at those instants Sexton does have control he just shouts that he’s not a Dragon, and that he never wants to be one.  Legion seems to be winning, just driving Sexton more and more mad as he loses control.

Legion in a draconic Sexton leaps forward and laughs in ecstasy at his power as he claws at Madeline, forcing her to run away.  Jenny grabs her spear and tries to hold the man at bay, but an incredibly strong swipe knocks the weapon from her grasp.  Legion is about to pounce upon her when he doubles over, clutching his stomach.

Sexton’s face turns up to Jenny, and with pleading eyes he says, “I don’t want to become a demon again.  Please . . . stop me.”

Legion takes control again, opens his mouth to incinerate Jenny.

“Jenny, duck!” Tagin shouts, and as she leaps away Tagin fires a shot from the pistol.  The enchanted bullet snaps into Sexton’s arm and knocks him back, then explodes into a crackling sphere of electricity.

Jenny clambers backward desperately, staying low as Legion tries to leap for her again.  Tagin fires another shot from the gun, hitting Legion in the chest and knocking him down.

Sexton’s misshappen body relaxes, and Sexton’s voice softly says to Tagin, “Thank you.”

Legion takes control for the last seconds of Sexton’s life, roaring in panic, flames licking across his body.  With the Dragon’s aura stopping his magic, he can’t escape his current host.  He chokes in pain and desperation, and gets out a pleased, “At least I took you with me, you murderer,” before he dies.

Cai remembers what happened the last time a Dragon died, and he shouts for everyone to run.  They grab the wounded—Michael, Goghei, and to a lesser extent Herbie—and sprint for the doors.  Behind them they hear pews being shoved against each other, shattering thunderously.  Glancing back, Tagin and Jenny see the quickly expanding body of a now dead and reverting ancient wyrm red Dragon bursting through the walls of the old church.  Stones and glass come falling down, and as the impact tears into Sahkrekal’s body, flames gout out, demolishing the church in an explosion that fills the night sky.   

Debris flies around them, knocking them to the ground.  When they get back to their feet, they find that what little of the church wasn’t destroyed by Sexton’s reversion to Dragon form is now being burnt to the ground.

Jenny says a prayer for Sexton, and Legion, and they tend to Michael and Goghei.  Tagin goes off to check on Autumn, and finds her with a terrible headache, but seemingly far less vicious now that Legion is no longer controlling her.  Cai can’t find his own cel phone, and everyone else’s was damaged in the explosion, so he ends up borrowing a cel phone from one of the Atlanta citizens who comes out to see what’s going on.  He makes a call to the ‘Fire Department,’ and tells them that there’s a major clean-up job they’ll want to take a look at.

Too tired to bother keeping onlookers away, the knights slump to the ground to wait for the Bureau to show up.  It takes over an hour, but when the Bureau finally does, the Chief sends a message that he knows something strange controlled him, and he’d like to talk to them as soon as possible to find out what.  Michael and Autumn are taken off for medical and psychiatric care.

And Goghei?

When they look for him, the only lead they get is that a man says he was mugged by a huge dark person with a strange lisp, who took his jacket and disappeared into the alleys.  The insanity, they hope, isn’t permanent.





To be concluded tomorrow.


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## Horacio (Feb 5, 2002)

Wonderful!
Epic!
I love it!

My only complaint is having to wait until tomorrow for the (I hope) happy end...


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## RangerWickett (Feb 5, 2002)

Night Owl, I almost missed your post, since you posted while I was updating.  *sheepish grin*

I realized that I'd left an important part out of the link.  It should've been www.geocities.com/rangerwickett/Savannah_Knights/Savannah_Knights.html

I've changed it on the first page too.  Bear in mind that the website hasn't been updated for a long time, though I intend to update it with all the rules information I've posted on this thread.  That might take until the end of the month, though.

Do you have any requests or questions?  Tonight will probably be the last time I update this thread, except to bump it maybe once a month, so if you have anything you want to know, you'd better ask it now.


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## Fade (Feb 6, 2002)

You might want to post the epilogue.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 6, 2002)

*Denoument*

The end of the story is in full prose format, and is too long to post on these boards.  I'll provide a link here.

http://www.geocities.com/rangerwickett/Savannah_Knights/Renewed_Spirits.doc

That's in .doc format.

And here is the .rtf format.

http://www.geocities.com/rangerwickett/Savannah_Knights/Renewed_Spirits.rtf

I gladly welcome comments.  I've tried very hard to update this storyhour regularly, and I want to know that shirking on my homework and sleep has not been in vain.  I'll post my closing thoughts tomorrow night, and then that'll be it for this storyhour.


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## Horacio (Feb 6, 2002)

I don't know very well what to say, RangerWicket. It has been really wonderful to read every morning your (well, Jessie's) wonderful story hour. I have really liked it, and it has also opened my mind about present time D&D games. It have given me wonderful images and lots of ideas that I will use in my future games. 

I think I've got semething to say at last...

Thanks!

Thanks for your story, thanks for updating it.

The last part was really good! I love the end.

The campaing ended like that? Did you never continue it? Why, if I can ask it?


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## Fade (Feb 6, 2002)

It's been fun, but I've read it through several times already, so it really doesn't have the same impact. You've had plenty of fanboys in the various incarnations of your story hour though! (Including me. I was hanging on your every post on the 2nd forums!)


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## Imhotepthewise (Feb 6, 2002)

Yes, I often do think of Dragons and Ghosts while eating Pop-Tarts.

Great Job, Ryan and Jessie.  I can see your hearts and souls in this story, which is what real roleplaying should bring out.  I eagerly anticipate reading Tides of Homeland.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 7, 2002)

Well, I posted earlier this morning, and the boards chewed it up, so by now I've calmed down enough to try again.

First of all, if you are interested in Tides of Homeland, here's a quick link to the storyhour thread on this messageboard:

http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=94

If you'd rather look at the website, which has pictures (and is updated biweekly), the address is:

http://www.geocities.com/rangerwickett/Tides_of_Homeland/Tides_of_Homeland.html

Now, let me get back into the mood for thanking you all for reading this.  You asked why the campaign ended here.  Well, aside from the emotional satisfaction of overcoming a threat that would be hard to top, the chiefest reason was we, the players and DM, were all going our separate ways after High School.  We almost didn't get a chance to finish it at all.

The summer of 2000, we all graduated from high school, and had chosen different colleges to go to thereafter.  We wanted to try to finish the game before the summer ended, but sadly, in the last session right before Madeline's player Courtney had to head off to college, we were just finishing the part of the game in New Orleans.  We had just figured out who Legion was, but we weren't going to be able to do anything about it.  We were all kinda miffed, but Jessie (in her typical way) thought that it was her fault, that we could've finished if she'd gone faster (as it was, we played about twice a week!).  I'm sorry, Jess, but you blame yourself way too often.

Anyway, it took some convincing to make her realize that we wanted to finish the game, and then that Christmas, when all of us went home for the semester break, we played through the end of the game.  After that, we realized it was too much of a hassle to keep trying to get together only once or twice a year.  Also, we had been looking forward to the last game as 'the end' for so long, that we were psychologically prepared to leave the characters behind.

At the end of the last game, everything was pretty cool and happy, but it is our gimmick to always write an ending to any campaign we finish, so we asked everyone what their characters were going to do.  We weren't quite sure if the PCs wanted to have anything to do with the Bureau anymore.

Cai said he'd track down his brother after he could get some sleep, and see if he'd go back to the Bureau.  Madeline and Finagle were going to stay in the Bureau, and Finagle wanted to hang out with Brian's ghost.  Chad, Tagin's player, realized that no one seemed to want to be with his character, only the ghost he was bonded with, so he decided that he wished he didn't have the ghost.  I, playing Jenny, said I'd stay with Tagin to try to help him through getting used to being with Brian.  Well . . . that sigh of frustration from Chad convinced us to make the ending more than just a happy sum-up.  We had to tie up the emotional loose end of Tagin and Brian, and a few more here and there.

Jessie and I shared the task of writing it, each of us throwing in a few twists (I made Balthazar a Knight of the Round), and in the end, we decided that the stories of the PCs were over for now.  If anything else happened to them, it would be far down the line, when we got around to writing them in comic book form.  Hopefully in three or four years, we'll actually get that chance.

I loved these characters, and I love the depth and possibility of the world, so I intend to keep writing with Jessie in it for a while.  She's running another game with her friends who are actually going to SCAD, and I'm sure she'll get around to posting that some day, but for now let's just remember the characters of this story.  I know who my favorite is, but hey, I'm biased.



*Savannah Knights*

*Finagle P. Luckshore:*  Male human Wiz5; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 5d4+10; hp 24; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 12 (Dex); Atk +1 gyroscopic compressed air rifle of shocking +5 ranged (dart + 1d6 electricity); SQ ghostbond; SV Fort +3, Ref +3, Will +2; Str 9, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 20, Wis 7, Cha 12.

_Skills and Feats:_ Computer Use +9, Concentration +10, Craft (gyroscopes) +9, Hide +4, Listen +0, Knowledge (arcana) +13, Knowledge (electronics) +9, Knowledge (mechanical engineering) +9, Spellcraft +13, Spot +6; Craft Magic Arms & Armor, Greater Spell Focus (Evocation), Run, Scribe Scroll, Spell Focus (evocation).
Note:  Computer Use and Spot are his floating class skills.

_Ghostbond Abilities:_ Alertness, Empathic Link, Locative Bond, See Spirit, Share Spells, Speak with Spirit, Spirit Manifestation, Touch, Turn Resistance, +2 Intelligence.

_Spells per Day:_ 4 / 5 / 3 / 2.  Typically prepared—Arc of Lightning (as Ray of Frost), Flare, Mage Hand, Mending / Endure Elements, Magic Missile x2, Shield, Shocking Grasp / Lightning Arrow (as Acid Arrow), Resist Elements, Shatter / Lightning Bolt, Protection from Elements.

_Items:_  +1 gyroscopic compressed air rifle of shocking.  Spectacles of Truth, true seeing once per day.



*Madeline West:*  Female human Sor5; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 5d4+10; hp 24; Init +1; Spd 30 ft.; AC 11 (Dex); Atk blunt object +3 melee (1d4+1), or taser +3 ranged (2d10 subdual/crit x3), or hand crossbow +3 ranged (1d3); SQ ghostbond; SV Fort +3, Ref +2, Will +6; Str 12, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 14, Cha 15.

_Skills and Feats:_ Computer Use +2, Controlled Driving +11, Gather Information +6, Intimidate +1, Intuit Direction +4, Knowledge (arcana) +2, Knowledge (photography) +3, Profession (photojournalist) +4, Scry +7, Speak Language (Spanish), Spellcraft +11, Swim +1; Clotheshift, Silent Spell, Skill Emphasis (controlled driving).
Note: All Knowledge skills, Speak Language, and Spot are class skills for Madeline because of her Performing Arts education.  Computer Use and Controlled Driving are her floating class skills.

_Spells Per Day:_ 6 / 7 / 5 — dancing lights, daze, detect magic, disrupt undead, light, detect magic / change self, magic missile, protection from evil, spiderclimb / alter self, invisibility.

_Ghostbond Abilities:_ Alertness, Empathic Bond, Locative Bond, See Spirit, Share Spells, Speak with Spirit, Spirit Manifestation, Touch, Turn Resistance, Wild Spellcaster Template, +1 bonus to all saves to resist magic.

_Items:_ Gauntlet of Shielding (4 charges; 1 charge casts shield); Earrings of Wallspeak (clairaudience at will).



*Cai Maxwell:*  Male human Ftr5; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 5d10+20; hp 47; Init +3; Spd 30 ft.; AC 19 (+3 Dex, +6 Overcoat of Armor); Atk masterwork arcane katana +9 melee (1d10+3/crit 19/x2), or unarmed +8 melee (1d3+3 subdual), or sawed-off double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun +8 ranged (varies*/crit x3); SV Fort +8, Ref +4, Will +4; Str 17, Dex 16, Con 18, Int 13, Wis 13, Cha 14.

_Skills and Feats:_ Climb +4, Jump +11, Knowledge (Japanese culture and etiquette) +9, Listen +2, Profession (cook) +3, Profession (martial arts instructor) +4, Tumble +11; Exotic Weapon Proficiency (katana), Expertise, Improved Unarmed Strike, Iron Will, Power Attack, Sense of Honor.
Note:  Knowledge (Japanese culture and etiquette) and Tumble are Cai’s floating class skills.

*Shotguns deal damage based on range.  They deal 3d6 to a target within 10 feet, 2d6 to a target within 20 feet, and 1d6 damage to any target in a 5-foot wide path out to maximum range.  However, sawed-off shotguns fire in a cone, dealing 3d6 to a target within 5 feet, and 2d6 to a target within 10 feet, and 1d6 damage to any target within the cone, up to 30 feet away.

_Items:_ Wicked Wing, +1 arcane lightblade katana, a wielder at full health can fire a 20-foot semi-circular wave of energy, dealing 2d10 points of damage; wielder can fly for a total of 10 rounds per day.  Overcoat of Armor, +6 AC, DR 5/+1 against bullets.



*Iscalio Maxwell:*  Male human Drd5; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 5d8+15; hp 37; Init +4; Spd 30 ft.; AC 14 (Dex); Atk masterwork arcane scythe +6 melee (2d4+3/crit x4), or unarmed +5 melee (1d3+2 subdual), or automatic pistol +7 ranged (1d10/crit x3); SQ spells, animal companion, nature sense, ghostbond, woodland stride, trackless step, resist nature’s lure, wildshape (1/day); SV Fort +7, Ref +5, Will +6; Str 14, Dex 18, Con 16, Int 14, Wis 15, Cha 12.

_Skills and Feats:_ Animal Empathy +10, Concentration +11, Disguise +8, Escape Artist +12, Knowledge (nature) +7, Profession (cook) +5, Spot +10, Wilderness Lore +10; Combat Casting, Endurance, Improved Unarmed Strike.
Note:  Escape Artist and Spot are Iscalio’s floating class skills.

_Spells per Day:_  5 / 4 / 3 / 1.  Typically prepared — Detect Magic, Flare, Know Direction, Light, Resistance / Cure Light Wounds, Entangle, Obscuring Mist, Summon Nature’s Ally I / Flame Blade, Resist Elements, Summon Swarm / Plant Growth.

_Ghostbond Abilities:_ Alertness, Empathic Link, Locative Bond, See Spirit, Share Spells, Speak with Spirit, Spectral Blow, Spirit Manifestation, Touch, Turn Resistance.



*Jenny Windgrave:*  Female human Pal5; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 5d10; hp 33; Init –1; Spd 30 ft.; AC 17 (-1 Dex, +4 Jacket of Armor, +4 Charisma); Atk shortspear +5 melee (1d8/crit x3), or _fethlefeira_, +1 holy shortbow +6 ranged (1d6+3/crit x3), or automatic pistol +5 ranged (1d10+2/crit x3); SA smite evil (+4 attack, +5 damage), turn undead (10/day); SQ detect evil, divine grace, lay on hands (20 hp), divine health, aura of courage, remove disease, ghostbond, divine defense (Cha bonus to AC, use a turn attempt to gain DR 4/+3 for 5 rounds); SV Fort +9, Ref +4, Will +10; Str 11, Dex 8, Con 10, Int 13, Wis 14, Cha 18.

_Skills and Feats:_ Diplomacy +10, Knowledge (Native American history) +5, Knowledge (Christianity) +5, Perform +14, Sense Motive +9, Speak Language (French), Spot +3; Artist (+2 to Perform and Craft (costumes)), Extra Turning, Iron Will.
Note: All Knowledge skills, Perform, and Speak Language are class skills for Jenny because of her Performing Arts education.  Sense Motive and Spot are her floating class skills.

_Ghostbond Abilities:_ Alertness, Empathic Link, Locative Bond, See Spirit, Share Spells, Speak with Spirit, Spirit Manifestation, Touch, Turn Resistance, +1 to Will and Fortitude saves, and a +2 bonus to resist level drains and death effects.

_Items:_  Fethlefeira, +1 holy shortbow of turning; once per day it can fire an turning bolt, which only affects the target struck, but turns it as though the wielder were 4 levels higher.  Marksman’s Gloves, +1 to hit and +2 damage with ranged weapons.  Jacket of Armor, +4 AC.



*Tagin-Eve:*  Male human Rog4/Sor1; Medium-size Humanoid (human); HD 4d6+1d4+5; hp 20; Init +3; Spd 30 ft.; AC 13 (Dex); Atk switchblade +1 melee (1d4-1/crit 19/x2), or automatic pistol +5 ranged (1d10/crit x3); SA sneak attack +2d6; SQ evasion, ghostbond, spells, uncanny dodge; SV Fort +3, Ref +7, Will +1; Str 8, Dex 16, Con 12, Int 14, Wis 7, Cha 11.

_Skills and Feats:_ Bluff +8, Climb +3, Computer Use +17, Disable Device +10,  Disguise +4, Escape Artist +7, Gather Information +4, Hide +11, Knowledge (arcana) +6 Knowledge (computers) +10, Listen +0, Move Silently +11, Open Locks +5, Pick Pockets +7; Improved Initiative, Magic Touch, Skill Emphasis (Computer Use).
Note:  Computer Use and Knowledge (computers) are Tagin’s floating class skills.

_Spells Per Day:_ 5 / 3 — detect magic, ghost sound, light, open/close / alarm, obscuring mist.

_Ghostbond Abilities:_ Alertness, Empathic Link, Locative Bond, See Spirit, Share Spells, Speak with Spirit, Spirit Manifestation, Spiritual Juxtaposition, Touch, Turn Resistance.


_Background:_
Tagin. . . . *sigh* Tagin.  What’s to say about Tagin?  Did you notice that I never posted his 1st level stats?  I was wondering if anyone would catch that little inside joke. . . .  I mean, for the first half of the story, he mostly just wanted to be ignored, to be unseen.  In a way, just as the Bureau wants to keep us from finding out about magi, Tagin wanted himself to be a secret, since he never valued his own self-worth.

His real name is Sean Charleson, from New Mexico, and he was the kind of person who always wanted others to make friends with him, even though he was never active enough to be friendly first.  He used to not like being noticed, and spent most of his time finding ways to avoid be seen or singled out for anything.

He still keeps in touch with his parents, who separated when he was in high school, but aside from them, he has tried to be an island unto himself, not upholding those few friendships he did have in his home town.  His initial interest in the Bureau, and in how he could free himself from having to rely on the real world, waned when we realized that the Bureau wanted to give him a purpose in life, something he had never before realized that he wanted to avoid.

In a bizarrely self-referential twist, he has ended up taking a liking to the Sci-fi show _The Invisible Man_ (a twist because the main character always comments about he himself doesn’t want to remain unseen and invisible), ever since he bonded with Brian.  Their relationship is strained to say the least, along the lines of The Odd Couple, only without the humor.  For now, though, Sean is willing to just live with it.  He holds to the belief that it is unnatural for Brian to have endured, and though he remains uncomfortable, he is slowly growing to accept Brian’s presence.  Brian has promised that if Sean ever gets married, he will exorcise _himself_, because he would want to give his friend the normal life he desires.  In a way, it is this desire for friendship that allows the two of them to co-exist, but it is Sean’s hope that he’ll be able to make real friends quickly.  It’s just weird being friends with a ghost.



Thank you for reading.  Give me your comments if you have any, and I'll answer questions if you have them, but unless that, I shall be going now, moving on to something new.  

P.S. Men In Black II is coming out this summer.  I'm gonna be first in line.


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## Imhotepthewise (Feb 7, 2002)

RW.  What are floating class skills.  Is this a house rule?


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## RangerWickett (Feb 7, 2002)

Floating class skills are sort of a house rule that we use to reflect modern society.  Anyone from an industrialized nation probably has more free time than would someone in a medieval setting, so each character gets to choose two skills to be considered class skills.  They can pick any skill other than exclusive skills, and, as long as they can provide a reason why their character would be able to study those things, they can always consider those skills to be class skills.  It varies from PC to PC, thus the term, 'floating class skills'.


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## RangerWickett (Jun 22, 2002)

I'm just posting a bump to renew a little interest before I submit this storyhour to be hosted on Russ's server.  So here's your last chance to comment on this thread.    Ah, nostalgia.


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## Knight Otu (Jun 24, 2002)

Ahh, Savannah Knights, the first Story Hour I ever read. 
I think I've read it when this place was still run by Eric Noah!  
A very good Story Hour! Too bad that it never even was allowed for WotC's Fantasy Setting Search, even if you decided not to take part (Too high tech ).


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## RangerWickett (Jun 24, 2002)

Well, we could've submitted it just the medieval-period, ignoring the modern stuff, but that ruins most of the fun.  But hey, I still get to use elements of it in Nat20's "Mythic Earth," which I'm writing for a December 2002 deadline.

And yeah, the nostalgia's great and all, but I do wish Jessie would run some more games.  Unfortunately, she'd rather be a player this summer, so she is roleplaying as a half-Minotaur berserker named Sabri Zeldathane.  I'll upload the picture some time.  If you compare it to some of the pics she did for Savannah Knights, you'll see she has improved greatly.  

Now, all that remains is to arrange this all pretty-like in a .doc file, and away she goes!


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## Jarval (Jun 24, 2002)

Knight Otu said:
			
		

> *Ahh, Savannah Knights, the first Story Hour I ever read.
> I think I've read it when this place was still run by Eric Noah!
> A very good Story Hour! Too bad that it never even was allowed for WotC's Fantasy Setting Search, even if you decided not to take part (Too high tech ). *




I was going to say all of that  ()  Great stuff Ranger, the first Story Hour I read, and still one of the best.

Edit:  It'd be great to see more of Jessie's art, so post that pic if you get the chance.


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## Knight Otu (Jun 24, 2002)

Hi, all! 



> Well, we could've submitted it just the medieval-period, ignoring the modern stuff, but that ruins most of the fun. But hey, I still get to use elements of it
> in Nat20's "Mythic Earth," which I'm writing for a December 2002 deadline.



Reminds me that I should ask my local retailer if they are going to get Mystic Eye products.



> Unfortunately, she'd rather be a player this summer, so she is
> roleplaying as a half-Minotaur berserker named Sabri Zeldathane. I'll upload the picture some time. If you compare it to some of the pics she did for
> Savannah Knights, you'll see she has improved greatly.



She was already very good at that time.  I'm looking forward to see her new pictures. 



> I was going to say all of that  () Great stuff Ranger, the first Story Hour I read, and still one of the best.



Look at it this way: I saved you from typing it  .


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## Horacio (Jun 25, 2002)

Horacio, from a lone and expensive internet cofee, bumping one of his most beloved story hours...


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## RangerWickett (Aug 10, 2003)

Well, we've started up a storyhour about the second campaign in this setting, of which my friend Jessica is the game master.  You can read the Route 66 story hour at the following link.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7353

Also, if you're interested in the setting and would like to help us perfect the rules for it (in hopes of a possible book about it in the next year), swing by this thread and help us with some ideas.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58826


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## RangerWickett (Nov 30, 2003)

Bump for old times sake.


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## RangerWickett (May 26, 2005)

I'm starting up a new campaign set in the same world, and I've begun a storyhour here and on my website (though the page isn't ready yet).

By the way, if anyone's interested, Jessie and I collaborated on a novella set in this world, at Gen Con.  It was originally intended to be a comic, but college got in the way. The text is a little rough, but I offer it if anyone wants to read it.


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## RangerWickett (Jun 10, 2005)

Wow, I've gotten a heck of a lot better at writing. I'm glad for that.

I've just finished the text for _Mythic Earth_, an Elements of Magic version designed to work with the d20 Modern rules. I drew my primary inspiration from this game and other games in the same campaign. For Horacio's sake, there's a Bureau office in Barcelona.

Look for the book some time toward the end of this month, hopefully, at RPGNow.com.


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