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View Full Version : The Ocean is Hungry for the Shore [nWoD Mage Campaign Journal]



potatocubed
2012-03-21, 06:11 AM
On Monday I started playing in a game of Mage. Today, I start telling you lot all about it.

The Ocean is Hungry for the Shore
Our past is an ocean, dark and deep. Whole civilizations have been swallowed by its depths, their secrets lost to the ages. Most of us are happy to rake the shore for crumbs of wisdom, but there’s caches of hidden wisdom waiting for those willing to take the risks. This world is far stranger than you could ever imagine, full of danger and wonder in equal measure. Let’s go diving.

Magic is a mystery; it surrounds us but it’s almost impossible to see. It behaves like it has laws and rules, but those can be upended in a moment. Like Icarus, we gain powers beyond any Sleeper but risk being immolated in the fires of our ambition. Answers can be found in the wisdom of the ancestors, the ruins of ancient civilisations, the things that lurk in shadows and in the soul of humanity. Seek the secrets of the world, the truths of ancient magic, the abyss lurking beneath the everyday world and the secret heart of magic itself, and find the truth for yourself.

The Cabal
The as-yet-unnamed cabal live - as of maybe two days before the chronicle's start - in a tall, narrow house in Soho, in central London. Because most of them haven't even finished moving in yet, wizardly matters like the Great Rights and the cabal's sigil remain undecided. The house comes complete with a rooftop garden, which is also a hallow attuned to accelerated city life.

Takeshi is a Mastigos Silver Ladder, played by yours truly. He's a Mancunian just arrived in London, a computer geek (but not a sedentary one - he goes running several times a week and is no stranger to the gym), an advocate of the open source movement, and a transhumanist. Although it's not clear to him right now, he's joined the wrong order: although he agrees with some of the Ladder philosophy, his methods are much closer to the Free Council.

Nobel is a Moros Free Councillor and disgraced academic in the mould of a Victorian alchemist. He does science to things. He and Takeshi share a similar sort of merging-of-science-and-magic approach, although they come at it from different angles.

Aura is an Obrimos Adamantine Arrow, a magical prodigy discovered at a young age in India and raised by a family of proximi in full knowledge of her magical nature. She's the only member of the cabal who's even remotely handy in a fight, but is a bit socially awkward.

Indra, a Thyrsus Free Councillor, is also from India. She came over with her family and studied hard to be a doctor, before abandoning medicine for club DJing. Since discovering her magical powers she's become something of a modern shaman.

Korrigan is an Acanthus Mystagogue who seems like a cross between Indiana Jones and Dirk Gently. He reads a lot of books and hunts for ancient secrets using synchronicity and happenstance.

--

1.1: Clocking On
It is late morning in London. In the narrow house in Soho, the cabal are occupying themselves with morning things: Takeshi is in the living room playing Final Fantasy XIII on his Xbox. Aura and Korrigan are in their rooms. Nobel is in his attic laboratory making new and unnecessary materials. Indra is 'about'. The phone in the hall rings.

...the phone continues to ring.

Eventually Nobel, the person furthest away from the phone, comes downstairs to answer it. On the other end is Adler, one of London's heralds. Turns out she was getting the train out of Waterloo and, upon using a minor bit of magic to tell if it was on time or not, got nothing. Since she is engaged in the business of catching said train, she delegates investigating the matter to the cabal. A chance to 'prove themselves' to the London Consilium.

Nobel calls a meeting in the living room. Indra hunts down Korrigan (who has to be pried away from his book) and Aura (who is upside-down on her bed, also reading) while Takeshi hunts down a save point. Once they're all together there is a brief discussion of how to get to Waterloo station and a hunt for a spare Oyster card, since Aura doesn't have one. The two cabal members who are most skilled at Time magic - Takeshi and Korrigan - make some practice divinations, establishing a) that auguring the future in general works just fine and b) that it will rain later. Umbrellas are procured.

Continuing their practice divinations, the cabal set off for Waterloo on the tube. It's at the underground station of Embankment that predicting the future ceases to function - whether or not eating at the Burger King in Waterloo station will give you food poisoning remains uncertain. The cabal do the rest of the journey - which is basically just crossing the Thames on one of the many convenient bridges - on foot, examining their surroundings with a variety of mage sight spells active. Aura and Korrigan pick up the giant 'shielding bubble' over the area around Waterloo; it's about 2 km across, covering a decent chunk of the local area. Further examination reveals it to be a massive version of the well-known Shield of Chronos spell, which blocks temporal scrying on a location. The implication is that somebody's up to something here that they don't want anyone knowing about later.

Nobel stands in a lab with a young man in a lab coat. From their demeanour it is obvious that the traditional roles of teacher and student are reversed.

"The thing to remember," the young man says, "is to always armour up before going into a dangerous situation." He produces a long knife from inside his lab coat and grins like a shark. "Ready?"

Nobel reminds the cabal to raise mage armours before pushing on, so they take some time on the steps of the station to do so.

Thus protected, they cross the threshold. It's simple for Aura to track the emanation of the bubble to its source - the other side of a door marked 'staff only', on a busy concourse. Takeshi takes a seat at a nearby coffee shop and conjures a "minimap" spell - a conjunctional Mind and Space effect which allows him to get a perfect overview of his surroundings and track all the thinking beings moving within it. After filtering out all the rats and pigeons he finds another way into the staff area in a quieter section of the station. After leading the others there he tries to magically read the keycode from the lock but can't hold the spell in his mind correctly; Aura uses a more direct approach and just scrambles the electricity inside the lock, making it pop open.

Side Note: Reading the keycode and glitching the lock are both effects in the same arcanum (Forces) at the same level. The different approaches Tak and Aura take to the door says something about their characters.

A bit of poking around in the staff area uncovers a store room which has been cleared so that a ritual diagram can be sketched on the floor in charcoal. In the centre of the diagram is a broken clock. Nobel videos the whole thing on his phone and sends the video to Adler. Then he calls her. Meanwhile Takeshi uses a combination of Space magic and his eidetic memory to make sure he can reproduce the diagram if called for, then Indra and Aura clean up. Takeshi pockets a piece of the broken clock before they do.

Adler and Nobel have something of a fruitless conversation. It turns out that the ritual circle has served its purpose and the shield is now anchored by runes at its periphery that match those of the ritual diagram. Having cleaned up the mess the cabal scoot off - guided by Takeshi's Space magic - to start de-anchoring the shield. The first periphery rune is charcoaled in along with the graffiti behind Temple station to the north, and easily wiped off by Aura.

"Wait. Are you sure it's not going to explode or anything?" - Nobel
"Divination isn't normally explosive. It depends on which kind of entrails you use." - Aura

There is a brief pause while the cabal thinks about that, then decides as one to let it pass unremarked.

The second periphery rune is trickier - it's on a boat on the river, connected to the shore by a locked gangplank. While Takeshi, Indra and Nobel discuss subtle ways of getting to the rune; Korrigan and Aura stroll down the gangplank, climb the gate, and start searching the ship. Nobel ponders the practicalities of walking on water, Tak and Indra discuss clubbing and music - Indra has a gig that evening - and Korrigan finds the rune carved into the side of the boat just above the waterline. Aura makes short work of it with the knife which she always carries.

The gang reconvene on a nearby bridge, only to be alerted to a new problem. Now the shield is failing, the crime against reality that it was erected to cover becomes obvious to their magical senses: something bad is happening near the London Eye (not far from Waterloo) and making a clear-to-wizard-ears sound like Big Ben's evil twin. The cabal rush back across the Thames, heading for the eye. Takeshi falls slightly behind while he casts his senses over to the Eye: he sees a small black clock at its base - with every tick it unmakes more of the surrounding area, vanishing litter and small unattended items, and making the Eye itself groan with sudden material stresses. He shouts this to the others, and everybody sprints for the Eye.

Aura picks out a short woman in a pinstripe suit sitting calmly nearby while the London Eye staff start evacuation procedures. Mage sight reveals that she's got the sparkly aura of a mage. Aura changes course to confront her, Nobel scurries over to the Eye and starts using Matter magic to shore up its crumbling superstucture, and the other three hang back and try to think of ways to make themselves useful.

Aura and Pinstripe have a brief chat, Pinstripe establishing herself as being extremely impatient to do something but not really willing to explain what it is. Aura refuses to let her near the little black clock, so Pinstripe whips out her pocketwatch and casts a spell that accelerates her movements - vulgar magic, in public. Only the distraction of the creaking London Eye prevents the tourists all around from crushing her under the weight of their disbelief. Aura whips a truncheon out from somewhere but can't land a decent hit past Pinstripe's layered Time defences. She is joined moments later by Korrigan, flailing wildly at the time mage with a bag of books, and a pair of aggressive seagulls called by Indra.

Nobel shores up the Eye some more with his magic, then decides to go after the doom clock - which by this point is eating history at a rate of one week per tick. Some covert matter magic renders it as fragile as an eggshell, and Takeshi's shoe finishes the job. Problem solved! Pinstripe, seeing the clock reduced to little bits and pieces whirls her pocketwatch over her head...

...time bends, jumping back just a few vital seconds...

...and just as Aura, Korrigan and seagulls converge on her position Pinstripe flickers over to the doom clock and sends it away with a fast spell. Instead of fighting, talk breaks out.

It turns out the woman's name is Horologia, and she couldn't allow "her handiwork" to be damaged. Since none of the cabal remember the aborted time stream where they stomped the clock, they have no idea what she's talking about. Nobel has another fruitless conversation with Adler, who seems quite blase about all the vulgar magic in public and the potential destruction of a major London landmark, not to mention the unravelling of time. Horologia, meanwhile, keeps talking and makes little more sense - she claims she has other places to be, and keeps looking at her watch. There's a sanctum below the Eye, apparently, that she wants to get into - she proposes that in exchange for the cabal helping her get into it, she'll take first pick of the stuff down there.

The doom clock was also part of this plan, but exactly how it helped I'm not sure.

The cabal decide this is not a good deal. On the other hand, since they're not willing to just start a wizard fight in broad daylight - at least, not without probable cause in the form of a doom clock to stop - they can't prevent her from going down there. So they decide to follow along anyway.

--

And that's the end of the session!

What lurks beneath the London Eye?
What does a clock-obsessed mage of questionable sanity want with it?
Can we produce any reaction from Adler beyond mild interest?

Tune in next time for the answers!

potatocubed
2012-03-31, 12:16 PM
1.2: Big Brother is Watching You
It's about midday in London - not that that matters, as the gang of neophyte wizards are following Horologia the Crazy Clock Lady down a ladder into the tunnels beneath the London Eye. At some point in his academic career Nobel took an elective course in the history of bricks, and identifies the bricks the ladder is set into as of 16th century manufacture, although remarkbly well-preserved. Time magic confirms that it's not preservation: to all intents and purposes, the ladder shaft is in the 1500s.

Elective courses in bricks are, it turns out, an Actual Thing in the Real World.

At the bottom of the ladder is a chamber and a large wooden door, inlaid with gold. The door is carved with a hunting scene - archers chasing a stag - but no keyhole or handle. Nobel suggests that he can turn the door into something more flimsy but Aura applies her cryptographic knowledge and discovers the catch that opens the door: the hunting scene illustrates a Zeno's paradox situation, with an arrow that never reaches the stag it was fired at but simply diminishes with time. Pushing the smallest arrow opens the door.

Beyond the door is a single huge room that was once a laboratory, but seems to have been less protected from the ravages of time than the owner's front door was. The cabal set to investigating: Korrigan goes for the ancient, mouldering books; Nobel goes for the old lab machinery; Aura fires up Prime-sight and looks for magical clues; Takeshi and Indra hang around at the back, keeping an eye on Horologia - who is conducting an investigation of her own, using her pocket watch as a sort of dowsing pendulum.

Korrigan finds out that the mage who owned this sanctum went by the name Magellan. He hung around with another mage called Dee - apparently 'the' John Dee, noted 16th-century scientist and occultist - but despite Korrigan knowing all about Dee from his Mysterium background, he recalls no mention of Magellan at all.

Aura finds a small globe on an elaborate stand, where it has rolled underneath a table. Magical examination reveals it to be an imbued item, all out of mana - when charged up it should function as a magical GPS device, pinpointing its location using two fine needles that track across the globe's surface.

Horologia is peering into a corner where she has detected a peculiar magical resonance. Engaged in conversation she reveals that this is just Magellan's minor sanctum - he had another, hidden away somewhere, but the key to that one is hidden somewhere in this one. She also, in between muttering about schedules and running out of time, confirms that the sanctum has been stuck in the 1540s for centuries and hints that something bad happened to Magellan.

Takeshi meanwhile shapes a handful of syllables in the High Speech and weaves himself an unveiling spell of Space and Time, examining the corner where Horologia was poking about. Turns out there's a potential portal there, which will open in t + a few seconds, where t is always the current time. Clever trick. Thus informed, Korrigan unravels the temporal trigger and a portal yawns open before them. Indra grabs him before he steps through, waiting just long enough to make sure the other side isn't some horrible pit of death. As the portal stabilises it turns out to be, in fact, an observatory. Unlike the sanctum, this one is preserved in a state of newness: brass machinery gleams, books line bookshelves around the walls, and so on. The cabal (and Horologia) enter and take stock of their new surroundings.

It's a round room, the walls lined with shelves. There are tables for working on and an elaborate winch mechanism connected to folding panels in the roof ("No Korrigan. Not until we know what it does." - Indra). There is also a large globe surrounded by lenses and reflective plates of various kinds - clearly some sort of arcane device. The place feels like a demesne with a focus on memory: remembering is easier here, memories more clear - except to Takeshi, whose memory is already eidetic. More weirdly, anything not being interacted with by a person 'pauses' in time - dropped or thrown items hang in the air mid-fall. To Takeshi's Space perceptions they are nowhere.

The cabal set to winching the winch and opening the shutters on the ceiling. Up above there is a starry sky, and a tower seems to leap upwards from the observatory in which they stand, impossibly tall. The tower is in the process of being destroyed, fragments of it hanging in space as it bursts apart. Hanging in the sky above is a gargantuan golden eye, four-pupilled, projecting a wash of golden energy that is responsible for the disintegration of the tower. The energy wave appears to have halted, everything frozen in time, but some intuition tells the cabal that things here aren't paused so much as slowed down to an imperceptible speed. The wave of destruction is still coming, just very very slowly.

After the initial shock of coming face-to-giant-eyeball with what they presume is the manifestation of an Exarch, Horologia gets chatty. Turns out that Magellan was wiped out by the Golden Eyeball - not just at the time of his existence but throughout history. (Takeshi's Space sight confirms that that's what the golden deathray does: it destroys all connections between things - physical, emotional, sympathetic - across all of time.) They're looking for a pendulum - a symbol of Magellan. Scouring the place with mage sights reveals that there's no shadow here, no twilight either. It's very much a non-place.

Horologia finds the pendulum. She explains that removing it will probably lead to the destruction of everything present, because it's Magellan's soul stone. While that sinks in, she offers up a quick apology then Time-skips her way to the portal the gang came in through. She does something to it, there is a brief flash of whirling clock parts of iron and lead and a room full of hooded figures, then the portal slams shut.

Oh, and time starts up again.

An assortment of detritus falls to the floor from where the cabal tossed it in the air to test the Time-field. The lights flicker to life. And very far away the burst of golden energy resumes its reduction of the tower to nothingness. The pupils of the eye swivel, catch sight of the cabal, and lock on. Lances of golden energy stab down -

And strikes Indra.

And she's on a train in India, the bustle of Delhi visible through the windows to her left and the wild jungle on the right. Everyone in the carriage is staring at her, although this seems normal. The scene has the hazy qualities of dream, but a massive pressure is building behind it. This is not an illusion or astral journey, however much it looks like one - this is an alternative past.

"Why are you throwing away everything our parents gave us?" - Indra's brother is in the seat next to her, staring out of the window in a manner that might be sullen or thoughtful depending on your point of view.

Indra defends her decision to do her own thing rather than bow to tradition. Meanwhile the rest of the cabal - who exist as phantasmal spirits here, unable to interact with anything - work out what the hell is going on. Aura and Korrigan go to explore the train (where everyone is staring in Indra's direction, even if they can't see her). Nobel and Takeshi keep watch on Indra, having surmised that the Golden Eyeball is doing something 'timey-wimey' and that we need to keep history on track.

The cabal also discover that while they can't do much to directly influence the course of events, they can still use magic. As Takeshi is the only one with a working knowledge of Mind he becomes designated telepath. Indra can hear his voice in her mind, telling her to stay strong, and although she doesn't recognise the voice she understands on some level that it's a friend.

With Mind 2, which is what Tak has, you can project a subtle emotion into someone's mind or one word of language per success on the spellcasting roll. Since Tak doesn't have it as a rote (although I think I'll try and fix that) it means his psychic messages tended to be brief and emotive.

It only occurs to me now, during write-up, that one word per success in Mandarin is probably way more efficient than one word per success in English. If only any of us spoke Mandarin.

A conductor arrives to check Indra's ticket. He wears mirrored sunglasses and carries with him a sense of wrongness.

"Look at that price. Are your parents paying for this? Have they not paid for everything you've ever done?" - Conductor

Indra feels the weight of obligation bear down on her, pushing her to do what is expected of her. Her parents have done a lot for her.

"But now it's time to stand on my own feet." - Indra

The conductor nods and vanishes between glances. Indra turns to her brother.

"You've had your choice. I've had six years of study, no choices, no options. I was never cut out to be a doctor." - Indra

The train stops and the passengers sweep off in a whirl of activity, carrying Indra and her phantasmal observers along. They find themselves part of a tour group on a path through the jungle. The path is neat, the jungle tame, but there's something interesting and dangerous a little way off the path. Indra goes for it, only to be stopped by a hand grasping her wrist. It's her father.

"Why don't you follow the path, Parvati?" - Father

Parvati being her real name.

"It's not my path. It's not that I don't appreciate everything but I'm not your little girl any more." - Indra

The tour guide harrumphs for attention. He has no face, just a single four-pupilled eye. Aura notices that this is a magical projection into... whatever this is, and starts using her Prime magic to unravel it.

"That is only ignorance. Come to the end of the path and you will see everything. Know everything." - Tour Guide

Leave the path. - Takeshi via telepathy

Indra takes the advice of the friendly voice in her head over the eyeball-faced tour guide and runs from the path, plunging into the jungle. She can hear the guide behind her, its voice fading as she runs:

"Next stop, omniscience. Know everything they want, and never let them down again..." - Tour Guide

Indra forces her way through the jungle, the moon large overhead and the jungle alive with animal sounds. There's no path and she doesn't know where she's going, but she forges on because it's what she has to do. The undergrowth thickens until she is forced to crawl. The trees sprout CCTV cameras, each with an eye instead of a lens. The eyes open wide and Indra is pinned in the glare of blinding spotlights.

Letting herself feel the life all around, Indra stops fighting the jungle and becomes one with it. The cameras lose her amid the sudden surge of animals and she sweeps through the jungle until she reaches a massive tree; high above the moon seems cradled in its branches.

Indra climbs. Upon reaching the crown of the tree she finds it covered in bloody handprints. Her own hands have been torn by the rough bark. Finding a space of just the right size, she plants her own handprint next to the others.

She wakes in a small hotel on the outskirts of Delhi. The fan is running, not loud enough to drown out her brother sobbing in the corner--

--and everyone is back in the observatory. Aura leaps to the winch and closes the shutters. She estimates that the cabal have about four hours before the unmaking wave hits them.

With doom descending from on high, the cabal get stuck into trying to find a way out of the sealed non-space. Takeshi examines the portal that Horologia mangled with Space magic and finds that its other end is flailing about in the Abyss - he backs away and lets everyone know not to interfere with it. Nobel uses a Matter spell to analyse the purpose of the big globe-and-lense device in the middle of the floor; the resulting braindump leaves him stunned for a moment before he relays it to everyone else: Magellan was trying to track a branching crack in space-time back to its single origin point by analysing the end-points of the crack and following them backwards.

The obvious theory is that the crack is the Abyss, originating with the fall of the Celestial Ladder. Magellan must have been trying to close or bridge the Abyss - the fact that he was doing something worthwhile is confirmed, as Takeshi notes, by the fact that an Exarch decided to blow it up.

Takeshi, Nobel, Korrigan and Indra hit the books all around the room, searching for clues Magellan might have left behind. Aura turns her attention to the globe both physically and magically. Korrigan has uncovered several sites that might be 'nodes' for the crack that Magellan was researching and Aura a couple more when the ceiling shutters rattle in their moorings and golden light bursts through--

And they're in the bright sunshine of the south of France, surrounded by the trenches and crouched figures of an archeological dig. Archeology students faff about, doing nothing much useful. Korrigan wanders here and there in his characteristic fashion, playing with his stylish hat.

The rest of the cabal explain to Indra, phantasmal like them this time, what's going on. A watch is set for the machinations of the Exarchs.

Following the sun shining through trees and the sound of birdsong, Korrigan meanders away from the dig and pushes through some brush to find himself in a tree-lined clearing. Underfoot is not brush but a lawn, neat and well-tended. In the middle of the lawn a staircase has been cut into the earth. Without a second thought, Korrigan strolls on down the stairs while the rest of the cabal roll their eyes and mutter about horror movie cliches. According to Indra, this kind of behaviour is not unusual.

On the way down the stairs Korrigan encounters frozen tableaux of historical scenes, getting older and less pleasant as he descends: riots, mobs, plague victims, crusaders... until he comes out of the staircase and finds himself in a landscape of rolling hills, liberally supplied with thistles. Improbably the sun is shining overhead. Pushing off across the landscape Korrigan finds himself confronted by four mirrors, which revolve until they box him in. In each mirror he sees himself as he could be: a respected academic, a shabby dropout, a successful novelist, and a happy father.

Choose something else. - Takeshi, via telepathy.

Korrigan closes his eyes so he can see no reflections and steps out of the box, rejecting the alternatives he has been offered. He sets out again across the moors, aiming for a village he can see not far off.

It's nice to know my cabalmates are so receptive to unknown voices in their heads...

Korrigan finds he can't get to the village, no matter how fast he travels. He closes his eyes again, asserts that he must be there by now, and by changing his perspective of time he arrives--

And Korrigan is 10 years old, on the playground, surrounded by a pack of bullies. One snatches his book away and mocks his choice of reading material - fairy stories are for girls, apparently. The lead bully attempts to tear pages out of the book but is thwarted by Nobel's magic reinforcements. Takeshi bolsters the young Korrigan with a telepathic broadcast of hope. Korrigan reaches forward to grab his book back, gets a hold of the cover. The book opens--

And Korrigan is in a tower of moonsilver and thorns, climbing ever upward. Looking out of the window he can see that great golden eye open over the horizon, lashing out with another destructive blast that tears its way across the landscape - until it reaches a young-old-middleaged woman sitting at her spinning wheel, throwing out silvery thread that catches and holds the unmaking ray. She looks at Korrigan and nods, then goes back to her spinning. More and more threads push the golden beam of destruction away, then two spare ones snatch Korrigan under the arms and hoist him to the top of the tower. The silver here is soft enough for him to sign his name with a silver thorn, and then--

Everyone is back in the observatory.

"Was that woman in your original awakening?" - Aura
"Were there any details unlike your original awakening?" - Nobel, expanding the theme
"Do you always just wander into strange holes in the ground?" - Takeshi, who thinks the theme can wait

Between the book-studiers and Aura's manipulation of the large globe, the cabal manage to light up sixteen points (which Takeshi commits to memory). By turning two large wheels near the globe, the whole contraption rotates and the lenses move, converging the lights onto five locations: London, Toulouse, Siberia, Peru, and the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula. It would seem that this was as far as Magellan got tracking the crack before he was erased. With the convergence of the globe, more portals around the boundary of the room shimmer to life - they will take the cabal to any of the locations indicated.

There is a brief discussion over what to do next. The cabal want to get out, save the books, and stop time within the non-space again, in approximately that order. They decide to open the portal to London and, while four of them unload the books, Korrigan will call his contacts in Oxford to try and find someone with enough skill in Time magic to preserve the sanctum.

The portal is opened. It emerges next to a run-down, abandoned block of houses. Unfortunately for the books, it's raining.

As we predicted - several times - during the first session. D'oh!

"Can anyone lend me a mobile phone?" - Korrigan
"He... he must memorise his phone numbers..." - Aura
"I know. Who does that?" - Indra

Well, Takeshi does, what with the eidetic memory and all - but that doesn't stop him from having an iPhone as well.

Korrigan, meanwhile, is navigating the bureaucracy of the London Athenaeum on Indra's phone. He finally gets put through to London’s Hierophant, an Acanthus named Magdalene. Korrigan briefly sums up the situation: ancient sanctum, deathray, valuable knowledge in danger of being lost, and the portal will close in an hour less the time he's been on hold with Mysterium flunkies.

"Help!" - Korrigan
"...what do you want me to do?" - Magdalene
"Hold back time." - Korrigan
"Oh, deary me. No, I can't do that." - Magdalene
"Who can?" - Korrigan
"In an hour? Nobody." - Magdalene

She does helpfully explain that the Golden Eyeball is "one of the masters of heaven" though, and that having the portal open when the deathray hits is capital-B Bad.

Meanwhile, it's just Takeshi and Nobel inside the observatory, stacking up piles of books to carry. A shaft of golden light punches through the roof shutters again and slices across the observatory, looking for a target. Takeshi dives clear but the older Nobel isn't so fast--

It is 'that day'. Nobel is in his lab, having just explained to his students the protocols for the refinement of TNT.

Which is apparently "safer than it sounds".

He retires to his office next door, confident that he'll hear if anything goes wrong. A man is there waiting for him, wearing a sharp suit and sunglasses.

I believe the original description was something like "You've never had a man there before and it feels wrong, but somehow also okay." There was a pause for people to take their slash goggles off and stop laughing.

"We represent a large industrial chemical firm. We think you could have a prodigious future with us..." - Man

Impressed, Nobel invites him to sit down. The man reaches for a business card but Aura's dispelling causes it to crumble. Takeshi shouts into Nobel's mind:

Nooooooo. - Takeshi, via telepathy

One word per success, mutter, grumble...

"We can offer you everything you ever want. Salary. Healthcare. You need never worry about the frailties of the flesh again." - Man

Nobel explains that that's not what concerns him. He enjoys the freedom academia offers to research whatever he likes.

"Give up this thing that you want and we will give you whatever you want." - Man

Aura's dispelling seems to be affecting his ability to frame a cogent argument, too. Moments later he crumples into his suit, leaving nothing but the clothes draped across Nobel's office chair.

"Well, that seems odd. ...mmm, coffee." - Nobel, following dream logic

A staff member comes in and asks to see Nobel's grant proposal. When Nobel shows it to him he seems disappointed.

"Oh, that won't do at all. We're diverting the budget to more useful courses in homeopathy and crystal healing." - Staffer

Nobel splutters at this outrage.

Go science! - Takeshi, via telepathy, as if Nobel needed the encouragement.

Meanwhile Aura has noticed the CCTV camera in the corner of the room. It has an eye where the lens should be, and is as spectral here as the other mages. Drawing her sword, she goes to cut it down. It looks at her, and she feels the weight of judgement hold her back, sucking the strength from her sword swing - but after a few moments her will prevails and the camera is sliced from the wall. It falls to the floor, shrivelled and bleeding.

Indra, in the belief that anything which bleeds must be alive after a fashion, picks up the severed camera. It gives confusing responses to her Life magic - it's age is 'never'.

Nobel is arguing with the staffer.

"Intangible comforts are what the public wants." - Staffer
"But it's not what they need. All the benefits of the modern world come from men of science." - Nobel

The Staffer backs down and the sense of wrongness fades. Nobel goes to check on his lab to see how the students are getting on.

It seems so obvious after the event. The girl's foot tangles in her bag just so, the beaker slipping from her grasp. Looking closer he can see the exothermic reactions in the beaker, pushing the glass outwards on a rippling wave of detonation. He can see the cellular reactions of the student, the physicality of the blast wave bursting cells and bringing the chemical functions of life to an abrupt stop. It's all just matter... and death.

And he's underwater. Heavy, dark water. He struggles to the surface of a river of lead in the middle of a grey landscape. A few hundred metres away is a molten, flowing edifice of lead with a coin at the top. As he hauls himself out of the river and sets off towards it he is aware of the girl keeping pace with him, watching his back.

Nobel reaches the shifting surface of the tower and forms it into handholds. Climbing up to the top, he sees the leaden coin at the top is slowly rotating, every face a different dead king lost to history. When the coin rotates to show him a blank surface he knows what to do; he pushes his own face into the coin, leaving an indelible impression.

For a moment he is back in the lab, flames, screaming--

And then back to the present day, the last of the books in his hands, the portal to London in front of him. He takes it, joining the cabal outside who are sheltering the books as best they can with their umbrellas, and Aura closes the portal behind them.

"Still coming out tonight?" - Indra, to Takeshi
"After all that?" - Nobel
"It's my job." - Indra

--

End of session!

That one was a lot of fun, actually, with all the flashbacks. It's interesting to see elements of the past of each character. Further interest is gained IC from the ability to see more than just your own watchtower, which isn't something mages get to do often.

Horologia's betrayal was painfully inevitable - I'm not sure how things would have gone if our varied counterspells had actually worked. (Aura and Tak both tried and failed - Aura just, Tak by a mile.) Still, I've got an object with sympathy to her and Space magic so revenge is only a matter of time.

The camera, incidentally, is now ensconced within Indra's mind. When she came back after the flashback it was still in her possession if not in her hands. I can't speak for the others, but I fully intend to go in there and exorcise it as soon as possible.