Cypher System Fantasy - A Shark at the Finish Line

A Shark at the Finish Line

This is it, the end of the road for this Cypher System Fantasy meets The Strange campaign.  This whole thing started off last summer as a way to test-drive the new Cypher System Rulebook, and get an idea of how it handles traditional fantasy.  Of course I had to go and break that "test-drive" and completely "jump the shark" a few months later after revealing that everything had been part of The Strange all along.  

I'm going to toot my own horn a little, as I think the big plot twist was a success.  With the exception of Frank, the only other player who was "in" on the twist, everyone seemed surprised when their Ardeyn characters ended up on Earth.  This all happened at the end of a climactic scene on a ziggurat located at the heart of a Starless Sea.  One minute the player characters and battling evil, and the next they are checking into a Hampton Inn.  Since I knew this was coming, I essentially built the entire campaign up for this single moment.

In hindsight I wish that I had been better prepared for everything that came after this game master jumped the shark.  

"My life was perfectly fine until Sister Sariety dragged my ass over here!" - Shenuesh.  

The first ten adventures of the campaign were certainly lighthearted, especially when it came to "player character-to-player character" interaction.  Zamani was needled constantly about whether or not he was a wizard, and for some reason Sister Sariety had terrible luck when it came to wells.  But most of this originated at the game table, and not in the campaign setting itself.  The players made the jokes, but the campaign was relatively sincere when it came to the story.  Up until the end of Sailors on the Starless Sea (session 10), we were enjoying the typical fantasy campaign.

At one point I made a comparison about how our transition to The Strange was inspired by "Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time".  Little did I know that the analogy was spot on, even before I experienced the campy mess that I created post-session 10.  The last three adventures of this campaign were straight out of a terrible late '80's, early 90's B-movie.  Let's review some of the scenes:

• Fantasy characters trashed a Hampton Inn hotel room.
• Zamani experienced bacon for the first time, and became an addict.
• The entire party played D&D "in game" with two local, truck-driving, hunters.  
• The super secret evil organization owned a golf course.
• The PC's infiltrated the aforementioned golf course, and did battle with golf-club cyphers.  
• The entire final scene...

While I'm being critical of myself, I should also note that I'm a little torn on how I ended the campaign.  I don't think I did a very good job as game master and storyteller.  What seemed to be a fairly fun inter-party dilemma could've been executed in a much better fashion.  You'll see soon enough, but Marc really put this in perspective when he said this:

"That was easily the strangest ending to any adventure I've ever been in." 

Perhaps I'm being overly critical, as it seemed like everyone had a good time.  But I think I learned some valuable lessons running this campaign, and I'll carry them through as I move forward to the next.

I need to spend more time listening to what the players want from their characters.  Looking back, there were so many opportunities to explore Shenuesh's backstory, and while I touched on them a few times, I never went deeper.  I should have, and regret not doing so.  The same goes for the potential relationship between Verrenn and his grandson Yaren.  

I also turned the bad guys into idiots.  Seriously, I had the Bradley Cooperative running a golf course.  Why?  At this point I had gone so far off the rails, that I was delving into "gonzo nuts", DCCRPG Crawling Under a Broken Moon style antics.  

So that's it.  That's my rant.  Lessons learned, and at least my players stuck with me through the end.  I think they may even be staying through for the next campaign!

Living 4 Crits Presents

A Cypher System Fantasy/The Strange Campaign

Gabriella Winter and the Dragon Curse of Ardeyn

Cast

• Zamani, a Spiritual (Ugallu*) Explorer (Magic) who Masters Foot and Fist**, played by Andy
• Shenuesh, a Rugged Adept (Combat) who Wields Two Weapons at Once, played by Jeremy
• Yaren, a Foolish Warrior who Stands Like a Bastion, played by Craig
• Verrenn, a Spectral*** Adept who Casts Spells, played by Marc
• Gabriella****, a Charming Spinner who Works the System, played by Frank

* Ugallu is a race option from Broken Immersion by Ryan Chaddock Games
** Masters Foot and Fist is from Worlds Numberless and Strange by Monte Cook Games
*** Spectral is a new and original focus written by Marc Plourde and featured on his blog, Inspiration Strikes
**** Formerly a Charming Speaker who Works Miracles on Ardeyn

Our Story So Far… 

• Episode 1:  Dream Patrol
• Episode 2:  Ribs
• Episode 3:  Skull
• Episode 4:  Glitch
• Episode 5:  Starfall in Ardeyn, Part One
• Episode 6:  Starfall in Ardeyn, Part Two
• Episode 7:  Starfall in Ardeyn, Part Three
• Episode 8:  Through the Night
• Episode 9:  Sailors on the Starless Sea, Part One
• Episode 10:  Sailors on the Starless Sea, Part Two
• Episode 11:  Welcome to The Strange
• Episode 12:  Dragon Hunt

Episode 12: Dragon Hunt, Part Two

Summary

The fantasy characters from Ardeyn, along with their handler from the Estate, fled the scene of the helicopter attack by hot wiring an RV.  Rather than fleeing town, the party figured that the Bradley Cooperative would never expect them to return.  So Gabriella drove the RV to a parking lot located a half mile away from the Bradley Cooperative's super-secret, golf course base of operations as part of a stakeout.  

While observing the Bradley Cooperative from a distance, the party heard something strange underneath the RV.  After investigating, they noticed a still-drunk woman exit the storage compartment, looking for "Steve."  The woman entered the RV, and Verrenn locked her in a stasis field.  Gabriella had the idea to use the drunk as a distraction.  Using her suggestion twist, Gabriella convinced the woman to crash the RV into the side of the golf course clubhouse.  Everyone climbed out of the RV for this scene, except for Yaren, who accidentally got left on board.  Fortunately he escaped before the crash.

While everyone at the Bradley Cooperative dealt with the RV crash, the party sneaked into the largest building on the complex.  From the outside, the building appeared to be a seventy foot wide storage shed, but once inside, the team found a feathered dragon monitoring an iMac.  

Verrenn was the first to the dragon, and let loose with an arcane flare against the dragon's Baezedaar Bracer.  Thee attack missed, as the dragon appeared to be a hologram.  After chiding the party for thinking a full-grown monster would be sitting in the middle of a storage locker, the dragon requested a parlay.  

The dragon wanted to make a deal.  It admitted that it needed the four visitors from Ardeyn to stay on Earth so that the combined power of the remaining bracers could finish summoning the World's Scale, a massive draconic planetovore.  Once the World's Scale arrived, it would devour Earth, freeing Ardeyn forever, and then the dragon would help the Ardynians return home.  The dragon believed that the people of Earth, especially the Estate, would eventually turn on Ardeyn, after raiding it for magic and resources over time.  The dragon also informed the Ardynians that they were all just "stories" and "NPC"s being used by The Estate.  Unlike Gabriella or even himself, the dragon told the four fantasy characters that they lacked the "spark", and should they take off the bracers, they would become mindless minions.  He said that Gabriella knew this, but was not sharing the information with her team.    

Given that the characters from Ardeyn were not happy to be on Earth, and Gabbie was looking to be somewhat dishonest, the deal was sounding pretty good.  

While searching the room, Zamani broke the hologram projector, causing the dragon's image to disappear.  Gabriella was able to detect the surface thoughts of the dragon, and noted to the party that it was less than fifty feet away.  Shenuesh's sharp perception led the werecreature to the corner of the room, in an area surrounded by boxes.  Using his shatter spell, Verrenn blasted the boxes away one by one, finally revealing a small drainpipe, where an eight inch tall dragon sat in front of an iPhone sized iMac.  

The dragon popped out of the drain and continued his plea to have the Ardynians help him in his cause, and for quite a long time the entire party was deadlocked.  The Ardynians didn't trust Gabriella and the Estate, and at least the dragon was from their home recursion.  It soon became apparent that half of the party might turn on the other half.  Out of nowhere, Zamani attacked Gabriella, just before Yaren attacked the dragon.  

Yaren used his powerful katana for a razor sharp slice against a tiny, thimble-sized Baezedaar bracer.  Once the blade connected, the bracer, exploded, and the dragon fell to the floor.  With the laws of magic no longer governing the dragon, the creature's shrunken lungs could not support it's mass.  Even though it looked small, it still weighed as much as a full sized dragon.  Eventually the poor creature died.  

The party left the golf course and returned to the Estate.  After a brief debriefing, the four Ardynians returned home.  Yaren, Zamani, and Shenuesh all destroyed their bracers, but Verrenn kept his.  Perhaps it would be the secret to returning the undead to life.  

Notable Moments

• I used an image of "Ke$ha for the drunken woman locked into the lower part of the RV.  When she tried climbing into the vehicle, Zamani, in all his furry glory, tried stopping her.  She just called him "Jeff" and pushed past, grabbing a cold baconator out of the fridge.  Zamani went nuts for the baconator, and there was much inner party conflict over the sandwich, especially when Verrenn locked it within the woman's stasis field.

• Most campaigns end with a "big bad", but I wanted this one to end differently... hence the tiny dragon.  The dragon became tiny through magic, so that it could stay hidden and out of sight.  The amount of effort spent on searching for the dragon and trying to ascertain the truth of the creature's "deal", was almost as much as the party could've sustained during a battle.  

• The scene where the party parlayed with a dragon took nearly an hour from start to finish.  The dragon pressed for the party (at least those of Ardeyn) to join his side, and there was a short time when I thought this would happen.  

• In the last moments before Yaren attacked the dragon's Baezedaar Bracer, everyone started powering up.  Spells were cast, cyphers used, and I really thought there was going to be a conflict, but wasn't sure who was going to be attacking who.  When Zamani punched Gabriella I thought the campaign had imploded.  I was close to being right.

• I big question throughout the end of the game was what would happen if one of the Ardynians took off their bracer?  Frank's character actually knew the truth: those from Ardeyn were lacked the "Spark", and would become mindless NPC's on Earth.  But originally, I was going to have the characters "translate" into the players.  Zamani would become Andrew Lyon, and Shenuesh would become Jeremy Land, and so on.  

Quotes

"I wanna get to Shop n'Save!" - Craig saw a grocery store on Google Maps, right near the Bradley Cooperative headquarters.

"Yeah sister!  How does this thing work?" - Zamani wanted to hot wire the RV.

"I look like a freakin' green ghost person... BOO!" - Marc describes his character for Ke$ha.

"I could cast ray of confusion, but I don't think it would do anything to her." - Marc, regarding Ke$ha.

"I don't care about the girl, I just want the Baconator!" - Zamani was really ticked off that Verrenn's stasis field kept his beloved Wendy's sandwich trapped in Ke$ha's hand.

"My life was perfectly fine until Sister Sariety dragged my ass over here!" - Shenuesh to the rest of the party.

"We got tons of experience points to use until someone rolls a nineteen or twenty." - Frank justifying one final attack against the level 9 bracer.

"The Schlieffen Plan!" - Jim exclaimed, as everyone powered up for combat.

"Who's attacking who?  Is it every many for himself?" - Craig started to panic.

Cypher System Fantasy - Dragon Hunt

Now With 50% Less Verbiage!

Regular readers of Living 4 Crits, especially those who have been following our Cypher System Fantasy campaign, take note.  

What you have before you is my "new and improved" session report blog format.  A few days ago I asked for, and received, some feedback from the community regarding my blog format.  While I enjoy going back to read my old adventure summaries and play reports, actually writing these documents became incredibly time consuming.  On a good day it would only take one hour of writing for every hour spent in game.  Often that ratio would balloon out of proportion.  

Skipping these recaps was not an option.  This blog started out as a home for my play reports, and it will remain as such... until the end of time.  

But I needed to do some trimming.  

I have adopted a format similar to what I've been using for my Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG World Tour 2016 events: some play notes and a bunch of interesting bullets.  In addition, and by popular request, I've kept the "Quotes" section, and expanded that content.  

So read on and let me know what you think.  

Living 4 Crits Presents

A Cypher System Fantasy/The Strange Campaign

Gabriella Winter and the Dragon Curse of Ardeyn

Cast

• Zamani, a Spiritual (Ugallu*) Explorer (Magic) who Masters Foot and Fist**, played by Andy
• Shenuesh, a Rugged Adept (Combat) who Wields Two Weapons at Once, played by Jeremy
• Yaren, a Foolish Warrior who Stands Like a Bastion, played by Craig
• Verrenn, a Spectral*** Adept who Casts Spells, played by Marc
• Gabriella****, a Charming Spinner who Works the System, played by Frank

* Ugallu is a race option from Broken Immersion by Ryan Chaddock Games
** Masters Foot and Fist is from Worlds Numberless and Strange by Monte Cook Games
*** Spectral is a new and original focus written by Marc Plourde and featured on his blog, Inspiration Strikes
**** Formerly a Charming Speaker who Works Miracles on Ardeyn

Our Story So Far… 

• Episode 1:  Dream Patrol
• Episode 2:  Ribs
• Episode 3:  Skull
• Episode 4:  Glitch
• Episode 5:  Starfall in Ardeyn, Part One
• Episode 6:  Starfall in Ardeyn, Part Two
• Episode 7:  Starfall in Ardeyn, Part Three
• Episode 8:  Through the Night
• Episode 9:  Sailors on the Starless Sea, Part One
• Episode 10:  Sailors on the Starless Sea, Part Two
• Episode 11:  Welcome to The Strange

Episode 12: Dragon Hunt

Summary

Gabriella Winter and her associates from the fantasy recursion of Ardeyn travel to Western Maryland to investigate the Bradley Cooperative.  Unable to truly integrate themselves into modern Earth society, the party has some strange interactions with the locals.  They even had the opportunity to participate in a fantasy roleplaying game in their hotel room with some country-folk.  After locating the Bradley Cooperative's headquarters at Wisp Golf Course, the party showed up looking to play a round of golf.  Verrenn used his ability to turn invisible to locate Verity Bradley's secret office.  

The Bradley Cooperative staff asked the party to leave, and ended up overhearing some of the comments between Zamani, Shenuesh, Yaren, and Gabriella.  The staff pulled their weapons, and a brutal combat opened up in the clubhouse.  At the end of the fight, four staff members were dead, as well as a Golf-Pro Ninja, and Verity Bradley.  Grabbing Verity's tablet computer, the party quickly fled the scene in a stolen SUV and were pursued by a Bradley Initiative helicopter.  Gabriella drove the vehicle into the garage of a rental property, and the party took refuge until Verrenn could use a paralysis ray cypher to incapacitate the helicopter pilot, causing him to crash.  

Notable Moments

• At the start of the adventure I asked all of the players to describe what their characters were wearing.  Andy noted that Zamani was dressed in an outfit resembling a burka that one could purchase at Hot Topic (my words, his description).  When the party arrived in Deep Creek, I brought out the GM Intrusion.  Zamani had become obsessed with the concept of "bacon" and wandered over to a nearby McDonalds, finding himself in line for a breakfast sandwich.  I didn't realize that Zamani's social skills were spectacular, as the cat-man talked his way out of the restaurant with a full belly.

• After getting his food, Zamani was accosted by a townie outside the McDonalds.  The guy mistook Zamani for a foreigner, and followed him back to the Motel 23.  Zamani told the rest of the party that he had been followed, and the townies eventually knocked up for the group.  Somehow the discussion of "dragon hunting" was mentioned, and I decided to make these townies a bit interesting.  The two guys talked their way into the party's hotel room, and started setting up for something involving dragons.  The exact term "chasing the dragon" kept coming up, and there was a briefcase involved, so the players thought this was going to be some kind of drug operation.  They were all surprised when the one townie (Jeff) started handing out character sheets for a pickup game of Dragonlance.  The characters played D&D into the early hours of the morning with these two guys, and then they left.  

• After a game of D&D, why not some golf?  When the characters learned that the Bradley Cooperative had a base of operations at a local golf course, there was a lot of debate on whether or not to lead a daylight assault or a night mission.  The group voted for a daylight reconnaissance, including at least one round of golf.  If we had more time I would've allowed this to be role-played, but I kept with my original adventure design that the golf course only appeared to be in operation, and wasn't actually a working business.  

• During the combat scene there were three types of combatants:
• Bradley Operatives Masquerading as Golfers:  Level 4
• Titleist Hat Wearing Pro-Golf Ninja:  Level 6, Katana (6 Damage), 18 Health, 2 Armor
• Verity Bradley:  Level 7, 25 Health, Crippling Wu Tang Strike (8 damage, reduces opponent movement by one level for next round)

• The image of a golf pro ninja guy in a sword fight against Zamani was pretty wicked!  I really wish I could've had that scene captured on video somehow... maybe get it animated.  Cat-Monk versus Golf Ninja!

• The Pro-Golfer's sword was a Hattori Hanzo blade (from Kill Bill, obviously):  Level 5 Artifact, Heavy Weapon, 7 damage instead of 6, 1d20 depletion (on the roll of a 1 the blade needs to be resharpened, a difficulty 7 task).   He also had a golf club cypher with an explosive blast (Level 7).

• That paralyzing ray emitter cypher used by Verrenn on the helicopter pilot?  It was a putter!  The party found it in the golf pro shop and put it to good use.

Quotes

"Wait, are there wizards in DC now?" - Andy wasn't sure if he would translate into a wizard should he take his bracer of.

"I do not understand this ride.  Why am I moist?" - Marc as if he were Verrenn in Disneyland... because the party discussed going to Disneyland.

"We're all in trench coats.  Trench coats and hats."  -  Craig's outfit description.

"I already look like the Big Lebowski anyway.  I'm walking around in an arcane bathrobe." - Marc had the perfect gear.

"I'm here for bacon... I'm gonna get some!" - Zamani.

"So Andy is playing Zamani who is playing a girl in a burka who is playing Tasslehoff Burrfoot?" - Frank had a pretty accurate understanding of where this game was going.

"Do we go back to the Estate now and report that we won?" - Zamani thought that the D&D game was the entire purpose of the mission.

"The problem is that every single person playing golf may be a member of the Bradley Cooperative." - Frank, in a phrase I've never imagined hearing uttered in a game.

"Yeah, let's go play golf, that would be awesome." - Gabriella

"I'm assuming I couldn't carry a sword into a golf course." - Craig

"What strange form the dragon has taken!" - Verrenn describes a helicopter.

"I would hope to god that the police have better than a one hour response time for a helicopter machine-gunning a house." - Jeremy, after someone in the group figured that the local police couldn't get to the scene any sooner than the Estate.

"I think we drive away with the exploding thing behind us." - Andy

Cypher System Fantasy - Welcome to The Strange

At Last

Tuesday's game was ten sessions in the making.  Way back in July, when I first started planning for this campaign, I knew that I wanted to run an Ardeyn native game of The Strange.  But I was also very excited for my new Cypher System Rulebook's immanent arrival.  Our Tuesday night crew had wrapped up a year long Numenera campaign, and I needed to cook up something big and spectacular.  

All of my players are veterans of The Strange, and several were part of the playtest with me before the game's release.  If we were to start a campaign on the Ardeyn recursion of The Strange, with characters native to the fantasy realm, the big reveal of other worlds' existence would be muted.  I wanted a big surprise twist, but since The Strange is essentially designed for those kinds of mash-ups, it was always going to be a challenge...

... but what if we didn't start with The Strange?

Using the Cypher System Rulebook, I came up with the idea of running an all Ardeyn fantasy campaign outside of The Strange.  Perhaps the players would suspect something at some point, but I didn't want to give any significant indications that we would ever travel to Earth or another recursion.  There would be no mention of Spinners or Vectors, Translation or Inapposite Gates.  All would be revealed at some point, when I'd find a way to get the fantasy characters over to Earth without translating.

Just like Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time.  

But I wanted one more hook, some kind of connection between the two worlds.  Frank wasn't sure of what character to create, so we got together and thought up the idea of Gabriella Winter: a college-aged hacker working for The Estate, posing as Sister Sariety on Ardeyn.  "Gabbie" was a character Frank returned to from time to time, always in a different campaign setting.  Gabriella existed in our Eberron campaign, our Dark Sun 4e campaign, and as "Gabriella the Teenage Lich" in Necessary Evil.  

Come to think of it, perhaps this has always been the same Gabriella... just traveling recursion to recursion as someone else.  That's the magic of The Strange as a campaign setting... anything is possible!

So there you have it, faithful readers!  If you've been with us all these months, interested in a Cypher System Fantasy campaign, you've actually been reading about The Strange all along...

Mwa, ha ha ha ha!

Living 4 Crits Presents

A Cypher System Fantasy/The Strange Campaign

Gabriella Winter and the Dragon Curse of Ardeyn

Cast

• Zamani, a Spiritual (Ugallu*) Explorer (Magic) who Masters Foot and Fist**, played by Andy
• Shenuesh, a Rugged Adept (Combat) who Wields Two Weapons at Once, played by Jeremy
• Yaren, a Foolish Warrior who Stands Like a Bastion, played by Craig
• Verrenn, a Spectral*** Adept who Casts Spells, played by Marc
• Gabriella****, a Charming Spinner who Works the System, played by Frank

** Masters Foot and Fist is from Worlds Numberless and Strange by Monte Cook Games
*** Spectral is a new and original focus written by Marc Plourde and featured on his blog, Inspiration Strikes
**** Formerly a Charming Speaker who Works Miracles on Ardeyn

Our Story So Far… 

• Episode 1:  Dream Patrol
• Episode 2:  Ribs
• Episode 3:  Skull
• Episode 4:  Glitch
• Episode 5:  Starfall in Ardeyn, Part One
• Episode 6:  Starfall in Ardeyn, Part Two
• Episode 7:  Starfall in Ardeyn, Part Three
• Episode 8:  Through the Night
• Episode 9:  Sailors on the Starless Sea, Part One
• Episode 10:  Sailors on the Starless Sea, Part Two

Episode 11: Welcome to The Strange

[Note:  Nearly all of this dialogue was exclaimed by my players Tuesday evening during this amazing game.  I've done my best to capture all of it and put it right into the recap.]

"Gabriella!" Agent Calders screamed out just before taking another bullet.  "You're too late!  Run!"  Bullets few across the room, as the party emerged from a massive circular gate-like structure.  The entire wall and window assembly in front of everyone was completely torn asunder, with visible claw marks covering the floor and walls.    

The Focused Inapposite Transfer Device must have worked, Gabriella thought.  The Hofmann Institute device was designed to force entities traveling from Ardeyn via Inapposite Gate, to come through this transfer gate.  

Having just traveled from the fantasy realm of Ardeyn to the Hoffman Institute office in Alexandria, Virginia, everyone in the adventuring party was in a state of shock.  With her own Baezedaar Bracer destroyed, Gabriella translated back into her proper form.  But Charming Spinner's companions still carried with them their original, Ardeyn aspects.  Zamani was still an Ugallu, Verrenn undead, Shenuesh a lycanthrope, and Yaren an armor-clad knight.  As gunfire from four armor-clad mercenaries raked the party of adventurers again, their shock melted away and everyone sprang into action...

... everyone except Shenuesh, who was still enslaved by Gabriella's cypher.

Wanting to dish out a little pain of their own, Verrenn and Zamani started lashing out with their own powers.  The Adept blasted the mercenaries with Arcane Fire while Zamani summoned wind and lightning energy into fearsome bolts.  Gabriella called out to the group to follow her, as she retreated back to a nearby elevator door.  The entire team followed, with Yaren, shield raised, placing himself between the mercenaries and his fellow adventurers.  

Once everyone was in the elevator Verrenn looked around.

"Why have you brought us nto this small box room!" the Spectral Adept exclaimed.

Gabriella Winter had a lot of explaining to do.

When the elevator reached the first floor the Charming Spinner guided the team towards an emergency exit.  Once outside, the party noticed that several unmarked cars were parked just outside of the office building, but a sizable park awaited just across some train tracks to the north.  

Careful to be quiet, the fantasy adventurers followed Gabriella into the park, where they almost gave themselves away after bumping into a pair of homeless people.  

"Oh my God," one of the homeless screamed out.  "There's a werewolf, a ghost, and a giant walking cat coming after me!"  

Fortunately, Verrenn put an end to the woman's yelling with a simple Stasis spell, while Shenuesh knocked the other man out cold.  

Once at the park, Gabriella tried to calm down the very angry adventurers.  She explained that the world they all came from was actually a fantasy world, another land that was very different from Earth.  

"Which of the moons are we on?" Verrenn asked.

Looking up, Gabriella pointed to the Earth's one moon.  "We're not on a moon, we're on Earth.  That's our moon."

Zamani was horrified.  "There's only one of them?  How can you live like this?"  

Gabriella asked again that everyone just trust her, and that she would find a way to get them home, but first they had to get to somewhere safe.  Crossing the street into a nearby shopping plaza, the Charming Spinner hailed a taxi and convinced the driver that they were a troupe of actors just leaving a play.

"Yeah, that's fine.  I've seen weirder here in DC," the taxi driver stated matter-of-factly.  

Once in the taxi, Gabriella asked to be taken to her hotel, the Hampton Inn just south of Old Town.  

Along the way to the hotel, Verrenn decided to call out everything he saw outside the windows, as he was completely amazed by this futuristic evening.

After seeing a Target:  "That seems to be an extremely large place to buy bows and arrows."

After seeing a Dicks:  "No."

After seeing a Burger King:  "Who is this King of Burger?"

After seeing some cars on the Beltway:  "How could we all be moving this fast without horses!"

After seeing the Washington Monument in the distance:  "Surely that must be part of a Qephilim ruin!"  

"You're probably right," quipped Gabriella.

Eventually the taxi pulled up to the Hampton Inn and Gabriella led everyone into the back entrance, using her keycard to open the exterior door, and then the door to her hotel room on the second floor.

What played out next was absolute madness!  

"What is this black frame?  Do you worship darkness?" Zamani asked, poking and proding at the television.  Once the TV was on, Gabriella turned on Sponge Bob Square Pants for her teammates.  Shenuesh, still enslaved, watched calmly while Zamani kept clicking the channels, battling Verrenn for the remote.

"This is a magnificent scrying item!" Verrenn kept shouting at the TV.  The Spectral Adept eventually got ahold of the remote.  "A Magic Wand!"  

"Dibs!"  Zamani yelled at Verrenn, grabbing the remote and accidentally turning on a rather interestinig Pay-Per-View movie.  Everyone in the room started staring at the screen when the phone rang. 

"Hello?" Gabriella asked, picking up the phone.  It was the front desk, and they were concerned at the Pay-Per-View usage, as it wasn't approved by Gabriella's employer.  The Spinner agreed to go downstairs and handle the problem in person.

As Gabriella left the room, she could hear Verrenn yell at Zamani.  "Bring back the amusing sponge-form creature," the undead wizard demanded.

Once downstairs, Gabriella groaned.  Nick, the night auditor at the Hampton Inn, was an absolute jerk, and he was always trying to cozy up to the Spinner.  This time, he tried using her apparent questionable Pay-Per-Viewing to his advantage, insinuating that he'd let Gabriella's superiors at The Estate know about her usage.  Gabbie wasn't putting up with that crap, though.  She talked her way past Nick's antics, and went back upstairs...

... walking in to her room just in time to see Shenuesh (now un-enslaved) trying trying smash her laptop.

"Stop!  We need that!" Gabriella screamed.  

Figuring that this was the right time to let everyone in on the big secret, Gabriella had all o the adventurers sit down around her computer screen.  The Spinner carefully explained that Ardeyn was another world, much like Earth, but that it existed first as a "computer game."  Gabriella was a hacker of some renown, and had managed to acquire one of the few copies of "Ardeyn: Land of the Curse", the same game that Carter Strange used to upload into the Dark Energy Network (a.k.a. "The Strange") just a few years earlier.  In her time spent with the alpha version of the MMO, Gabriella learned all about the people and places of Ardeyn.

The Estate needed to send an expert to Ardeyn to locate the whereabouts of a potential threat to Earth, a dormant dragon named Rhilan and a set of bracers that could allow creatures to maintain their powers on other recursions.  The Hoffman Institute, an allied agency with the Estate, believed that a very rich and politically connected organization on Earth known as the Bradley Cooperative wanted to bring Rhilan to Earth with one of the Baezedaar Bracers.  Since the bracers most likely worked like constant inapposite gates, always "on" and always "pinging" potential planetovores in the Strange itself, the threat had to be dealt with.  Unfortunately, political pressure from two politicians in Washington shut down the Estate's operation.  

Something more covert would be needed.  

In exchange for removing her extensive criminal record, Gabriella Winter would make several trips to Ardeyn via translation and become "Sister Sariety."  Once on Ardeyn, she would find native adventurers to go on a quest to destroy Rhilan and his following.  Should Rhilan's followers give him a Baezedaar Bracer, and send him back to Earth or any other recursion with all of the powers of Magic, Sister Sariety/Gabriella was to follow, along with her team of magic wielding adventurers.  

Gabriella showed the travelers from Ardeyn several scenes from their homeland on her computer as she spoke, trying to prove the truth.  

"My world is probably a video game to someone else, somewhere," Gabriella stated as she tried to offer some empathy.  She showed the Citadel Hazurrium, the dungeons below the Queensland, and even gave Zamani proof of the Shadow Realm that the monk had been seeking for so long.    

Once everyone agreed to to hear more from Gabbie's superiors, the Spinner turned on the news and saw that there were several dragon sightings over Washington DC.  She texted Assistant Director Conrad Merrick of the Estate, and agreed to meet up the following morning.  It was going to be a long week.

The next day, after a long shower, Gabriella went downstairs and retrieved food from the continental buffet for all of her fellow party members.  For most of them, this was their first taste of Earth food, including the hot beverage that Gabbie kept referring to as "coffee."

"Why does this smell so good, and yet tastes so bad?" Zamani wondered out loud.  

A little past nine o'clock Director Merrick called Gabbie and stated that a car would be there soon to pick everyone up.  They were to meet in Fairfax, Virginia, just west of downtown Washington DC.  As the party packed up their gear, Zamani noticed something strange about the device known as a "remote control."  

The simple piece of Earth technology had changed into an cypher that could bestow arcane armor.  Strange.

After an hour long drive through weekend traffic, the party arrived at a shopping complex in Fairfax.  The Estate office here was an abandoned space located above a Jersey Mike's sandwich store.  It was here that they met Conrad Merrick.

Conrad elaborated on some of the news that Gabriella had shared.  The Bradley Cooperative's well funded plan to bring Rhilan to Earth put everyone at risk, both those of this world, and those on Ardeyn.  Should any of the Baezedaar Bracers remain on Earth, a planetovore would surely arrive.  Conrad feared that it could already be too late, as agents operating in the Strange itself believed "something" was currently en route to Earth, and could be as few as six or seven days from making contact.

Conrad's tone was brisk, and his phrases laden with cursing.  "You speak a great deal of excrement," Verrenn remarked to the man.

The party seemed mostly against the idea of helping the Estate, as they all (with the exception of Gabriella) believed that they were putting far more into the deal than they would receive.  But with Conrad's insistance that Earth's destruction would lead to Ardeyn's, the adventurers reluctantly agreed to continue following Gabriella, so long as they could be returned home.  

Conrad believed that if the party could destroy Rhilan's Baezedaar Bracer, it would greatly reduce the dragon's power, turning him into something that could exist within the standard physics of Earth.  That said, he cautioned the party on removing their own bracers, as they could lose the assets that would help them track down and defeat Rhilan.  Once the dragon's bracer was destroyed or captured, they could return to the Estate, and travel back to Ardeyn...

... probably.  Conrad wasn't one-hundred percent sure how yet, but he was working on the problem.  

Reviewing their leads, the party decided that they had three possible options to start their investigation:

• They could track Rhilan's path over Washington DC, and see if they could hunt the dragon the old fashioned way.
• They could visit the politicians working with the Bradley Cooperative, and try to get information through intimidation or more.
• They could go directly to Deep Creek, Maryland, where the Bradley Cooperative was located.  

Choosing the third option, the party left Conrad and went with their driver to the van.  It was time to visit western Maryland.

Quotes

"His eyes are just taking a smoke break." - Marc after I described one of Zamani's targets having empty, smoking eye-sockets after a wicked attack.

"Cool, than I will get a cab." - Frank realizes Gabbie has money.

"Yeah, that's a good idea, just leave us standing out front." - Craig wasn't about to let the taxi driver drop everyone off at the front of the Hampton Inn.

"Tis the night of the Intrusion!" - Craig commenting at my massive amount of GM Intrusion dropping.

"You're lucky my Might pool is at zero or I'd be dropping 3 levels of effort to break the thing." - Jeremy expressing his character's frustration of being so far away from Ardeyn, and how he'd take it out on Gabriella's computer.