EyeOfChaos/ChapterOne

Chapter One [Awakenings]

Fri, Sep 20 2002

• The characters, enjoying a Friday night at the Owl's Nest, are individually approached by alumnus David Magus Knight; he gathers them together to take care of a bunch of "stoners" who are planning to "cause a ruckus" at Saturday's football game.
• The ambush of the stoners goes poorly, due to the unexpected influence of a strange, shadowy thingie with pseudopods and an imbued cat. Artifically-induced acid trips ensue. The gathering of potheads is disbanded, and Professor Amundsen takes custody of the cat, which has been shot--don't ask. The party disbands for the night, with the implication that Professor Amundsen will take the cat to a friend of hers to be resuscitated.

Sat, Sep 21 2002

• The football game goes beautifully (Athens wins), and PomonaSteve's character (whatever his name is) fixes the cat right up. The party meets at Magus' place to discuss what to do next, without much conclusion. The cat is handed over to Prof. Meredith. A large black dog is seen roaming the streets of Athens. Holy crap.

(Spring Break and Onward): Steph does individual role-playing jobbies with people. Post summaries here, or not.

• After being stalked (in some rather unsettling ways) by some wacko with red hair, Cylene decides that it'd just be easier to conclude that she's going crazy, rather than the rest of the world. So she does. It doesn't quite work. Maybe she should just give up on looking in mirrors from here on out...
• The Evans clinic appears to be rising in popularity; Dr. Evans has signed on two new patients, both fascinomas.
• Meredith recalls that scared college students behave rather differently from most of his associates and gives an impressive lecture, then pursues various lines of research with mixed success.

Fri, Sep 27 2002

• Coach Rett discovers that if it looks like heat stroke, smells like heat stroke, and quacks like heat stroke, it's probably a contagious form of flu. Or something. Wow, those hallucinations weren't fun.

Tue, Oct 1 2002

• Players express amazement that all seven of them are present in the same place at the same time; characters echo these sentiments. A college kid has a nervous breakdown and takes the rest of his room with him . . . in providing assistance, the party discovers that it has some internal issues to work out. How many campaigns have you been in where a PC threatens to press criminal charges against the entire party?
• Meanwhile, other people apparently decide that nervous breakdowns are fun and easy, all coincidentally within close proximity to the aforementioned college kid--people such as police officers and ambulance drivers. One tragic accident later, the kid is off to the hospital in a spare ambulance; but this does little to dispel the feeling of Impending Doom lurking over half the party.

Wed, Oct 2 2002

• Cylene begins sitting in on the classes of Amundsen and Meredith in a (decreasingly futile?) attempt to figure out Just What The Hell Is Going On.
• There was an earthquake, too. It made some impressive ruins out of a perfectly decent warehouse.

Thu, Oct 3 2002

• After receiving a midnight visitor, Coach Rett starts sleeping with a baseball bat. As it turns out, the police don't know quite what to do about 8' tall raccoon-fish men either. Damn shame.
• News of a devastating loss in the community shakes both Amundsen and Rett; after visiting the deceased, their unease only increases . . .
• Meredith convinces some guy in Alaska that he (M.) is slightly crazy. The campaign detours briefly into the variety of drinks available in Meredith's house.
• Coach Rett decides to cause trouble, and attempts to get arrested--a plan thwarted by the antics of psychotic road gophers. He then discovers just how complicated his life has become.

Fri, Oct 4 2002

• The Professors, Rett, and Reid meet in the Textiles lab at lunch to compare notes on their experiences to date. Topics of discussion include: Joseph's disappearance, Cylene's sudden interest in epistemology and textiles, ancient artifact weapons, portals to unspeakable evil and the distinct possibility of soul-sucking. Rett smiles and nods; everyone else is enlightened, to their emotional detriment.
• Late Friday evening, the lunch party decides it's time to do some on-site investigation. All that remains is to decide what site the party is willing to investigate. The Ruins of Unspeakable Soul-sucking ruled out, they retrace their steps and are drawn into a seductive moonlight encounter with Arachne's worse half. The first major combat of the campaign ensues.
• Dr. Evans gives Cylene an urgent late-night call (not like that, sicko). She returns with a file of (later found to be) redundant information on Nervous-Breakdown-Kid and a little more experience handling firearms. The good doctor skips town.

Sat, Oct 5 2002

• Meredith gives Cylene a now-infamous PowerPoint? presentation. Amundsen is traumatized in multiple ways. Cylene's grade in Epistemology is determined well in advance, in the space of 27 seconds. The three also learn a bit about the Korean War, Carl Jung, conspiracies, elves, rape prevention, and hiking. Everyone sucks at lighting candles; Amundsen and the saucer may not recover.
• After the copious application of Storyteller Cluebat, the party first reads over the disturbingly applicable lyrics from Magus' band's album, then heads over to the ruins to...confront the soul-sucking doom, I guess. Soul-sucking doom is then postponed by the appearance of an 8' tall raccoon-fish-Gollum-zombie-elf (really). Meanwhile, Tolkien turns over in his grave over what I did to Numenor. It has no shinies, but knows where they are (gasp!). Amundsen and Rett become much less interested in its survival after finding out whom it last ate. Rett pins it, Cylene interrogates it, and Amundsen kills it, while Reid and Meredith...look on approvingly. w00t.
• Descending into the ruins, the party makes its way through a vast, shattered city beneath a star-flooded midnight sky. Much birdseed is utilized. Reaching the shinies, the party finds itself unable to take just one (wait, so the shinies are like Pringles or the integers?), and snags a tableful of potentially earth-rending artifacts. The tension rises with the arrival of two confused sorcerors (they just don't get the birdseed thing), whose strength can be measured in the disturbingly small number of rounds each would need to obliterate the party. Cognizant of this fact, the party decides that it wants to be somewhere other than the Primal plane right now, and makes a beeline for the exit. The characters escape with their skins, if not their dignity. (What was down that staircase, anyway?) Oh, and they may have unwittingly caused a three-front interplanar war that will ultimately result in the destruction of Athens, if not the world, but otherwise everything's cool.

Continued in EyeOfChaos/ChapterTwo: Shadows Below