Session 14: The Killing Fields

The session opens with everyone in the tether. Dana goes downstairs to talk to Daimon, but she hands over a copy of the Seraphim Council Transcript to Jered, first. She goes downstairs, first making sure there are no sounds of moaning or sex or anything like that. Everyone seems decent, or at least clothed. She talks to Star for a bit about what she saw in heaven, and lets slip about the imprisoned Creationers. It becomes clear that Dana is trying to get Star to believe that, no no, she really doesn' t want to accompany her up to heaven even though Star wants to be a revolutionary, yes it would be a bad plan. About this time, Dana probably wished she was a Balseraph, because her life would have been easier. Dana spoke to Daimon about the jailbreaks, getting the normal Lilim line about how he will owe her something, and how there is no such thing as a free lunch. Before the argument about payment got out of hand, Daimon steered the conversation toward, oddly enough, the offensive use of fish ties as a weapon in combat, because it was much safer to be funny then it was to contemplate the fact that you've driven your friend to become Outcast.

Dana walks upstairs, and stops to talk to Jered. Jered wants to know all the details about talking to Archangel Michael - what should he ask, what message should he convey, what is Michael's reasoning for his actions, the whole bit. Dana admits that she 's thinking of leaving Dominic - she doesn't come right out and say 'Outcast', though. Jered suggests that he ask Michael about some neutral ground where everyone's differences can be worked out.

Star and Daimon talk downstairs, mostly about how bad things are. And, um, where is Maxwell? Anyone seen him? They actually get up to go poking through some of the stores nearby to look for him, in case he had gotten up to stretch or something. Daimon does successfully convince Star that going shopping would be a _bad_ thing. He whips out his secret weapon, logic, used for the first time in this game, and applies it. She buckles before its might.

People spend some quality time sitting around, when Rigziel pulls up in his 4x4. It is decided by the GM on a whim that driving anything less then a vehicle with 4-wheel drive is dissonant for Michaelites. Rigziel, a little less full of himself, walks i nto the tether and says Archangel Michael can make about fifteen minutes for them to state their business, so who's going? This is momentarily debated, and it is decided that Jered and Blitzen are the absolute best people to go. Rigziel figures that, wh ile they're in a tether they might as well make use of a tether, so the three ascends up to the Laurentine side of the Spires, where it is absolute chaos.

About 25 minutes after the three leave to Heaven, a car comes squealing into the parking lot. Three beings jump out - two very large bodyguard types and one skinny guy with immaculatly good hair standing on the hood of the newly acquired Mercedes, waving a white handkerchief. Dana stops Fox, the Seneschal, from walking out the door and doing the honorable thing with his sword. She explains all sorts of things to him, and you'd think she was talking Balseraph lessons. Dana goes out to talk to Terry, a dangerous task as there ever was one, and he cons her rather successfully that his previous actions were just a mistake, really, no harm done, and she really needs to take this video tape he has and watch it. The commotion draws Star and Daimon from thei r search for Maxwell. Dana takes the video tape, and the three of them go downstairs into the living area to watch. The video shows about 7 and a half minutes of black and white survelance footage from apparently an upper corner of the room. The three watch in horror as Maxwell is taken into some sort of bondage dungeon by a group of probable demons. Dana goes back out to confront Terry. He doesn't say where he got the tape from, but he does point out that yes, he's seen it, and yes, he's going after Maxwell. He likes the kid, and besides, he can probably get in and out with a minimum of fuss. Does Dana want to come? No, Dana can't come. She has something she 'needs' to do. Terry negotiates for the interview rights if she's going to do something really wacky, and asks if he can take the Lilim. Dana tells him no, multiple times, and gets him and his submachine gun toting friends to go away. (The best line of this entire sequence came from Star, who when asked if they should be concerned for Da na's safety, she answered: "She's still saying 'no no no'. It's when she says, 'Sure, that sounds reasonable' we should go rescue her.) After Terry leaves, Fox disappears into the Tether to report everything to his Superior... who he really needs to ta lk to. Now.

Rigziel, Jered, and Blitzen pass through the chaos up in heaven, and head straight for Gabriel's Volcano. The area is chaotic and thick with celestials around the spires, but it gets pretty thin a way out. Passing the Volcano on route to the Marches, th e three get buzzed by a group of enthusastic Ofanim of Fire, who want to congradulate their peer on getting his promotion and becoming an official 'big shot'. This irritates Rigziel, but he doesn't say anything other then when they get to the encampment, they have to walk. There is a no fly-over order in place, to keep the enemy from doing recon too easily. They get to the army, and Rigziel starts leading them through the encampment, nodding to people as they pass. They get about half way through when the alarm goes up. On the north side, between Gabriel's Volcano and the Army, there is an attack by a battalion of Dominicans, and from the looks of it, mostly Ofanim and Seraphim. Rigziel tells the two to 'stay here', pulls out his axe, and starts sho uting orders at the troops. Soon, Rigziel is seperated, and the two start looking for him. Before they find him, both characters look over their shoulders, and they notice that the black smudge on the horizon in the direction of Beleth's Tower is starti ng to look much... larger. Quickly. They locate Rigziel about the time they realize there are two seperate armies coming screaming at them through Beleth's side of the Marches. Rigziel gives Blitzen some sort of badge off his own uniform to get him thr ough the troops quickly to get back to Gabriel's Volcano. Blitzen takes off, and makes his Ofanite way through the fighting and the army to break through to get to the Volcano. He buzzes the groups of fellow Ofanim there, and picks up about twenty for a n attack on the back of the Dominican battalion, trying to force them off. They push the Dominicans apart, killing a bunch of them, and find themselves back into the back end of Michael's army, which is being hit by Saminga's troops coming out of the Mar ches. Blitzen kills a Shedite, chases some miscellanious demonlings off of some of the bodies, and comes to the horrifying sight of the Demons of Death scavanging the fallen bodies for parts. He kills a small minor Calabite who was playing with a head. Afterwards, he gets up over the battle and can see the hordes of demonic army. The colors are obvious - they were hit with Ba'al, who was taking on Michael's troops directly, and followed by Saminga, who was just relishing in the pieces.

Jered made his way out of the combat relatively unscathed, and stood on the side of the Volcano watching the carnage. As a student of Celestial politics, he could readily make out what was happening. He could pick out Baal's regiments, Saminga's hordes, the army of Michael, the Dominicans. The fact that no one wearing Beleth's colors were immediatly obvious. Not that they weren't there, they were just not readily seen. Jered makes tracks across Heaven, through the chaos to the spires, until he spots a Laurentine Mercurian. He yells at him to get a move on and report the attack _now_.

Dana had gotten the phone number for Minnie's pager from Daimon, so she used it. About five minutes later, Minnie called back to the store. After determining that Minnie was in Utah, and letting her scream at the local Lilim and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Minnie agrees to any wacky plans Dana has in mind, as long as it will bug the Dominicans, not hurt anyone, and stir up all sorts of fun chaos and change. Dana figures, yes, this will be the case, so everyone agrees. Minnie tells Dana she'll m eet her in Marc's Marketplace up in Heaven. Dana almost falls over Fox, who is still in the tether proper, but she uses it to ascend. It was just her luck that he was in direct communication with his superior at the time, because she gets a very close f irst hand look at Archangel Laurence when she runs into him... sort of literally. She says all the right things, does all the right polite handwavings, and moves her fanny out of there. She meets Minnie in the Marketplace, and Minnie gives Dana a blue P op-Ice. She gets Dana to go into a tent to cover herself in grey robes to 'disguise' herself, so she can get into the Groves, especially now that everything is on lock down alert. Dana asks why she has to get into this. "Is anyone going to suspect a Do minican of looking as lame as this?" Minnie asks. Dana figures... probably not. So she gets disguised, and Minnie leads her into the Groves, where she introduces her to Zebidiah, Seraph of the Wind, and Isaac, Malakite of the Wind. Both have agreed to go on any adventure as long as it stirs up chaos and causes all sorts of change. Dana tells her plan. (While getting a backrub from Isaac, and watching Minnie figure out if Zebidiah has a bottom. When discovering that Zebidiah doesn't really have one in a serpent form, Minnie is appaulled. "How do you _sit_? What if we need to moon people? This can be a real problem, you know.") Dana needs some spray paint, and the Windies assure her they can get her anything... anything at all. Really. Is this yo ur wallet? While the Windies go off to procure the paint, Dana flies up to the Spires to do the Breaking of the Heart thing. But she can't get into the room with the Hearts - it seems that now there is a metal door and a pair of cherubs defending it, an d she's just not as prepared as Keros down in Hell was. It wasn't like that a week ago, but War and all that, things change. Dissapointed she can't get in, she goes back to the meeting place, where they've tied Zebidiah to a pole so _someone_ would stic k around, while the other two chased each other around in the clouds,. They came down to regroup, and headed for the Spires. In the chaos, Dana had no problem getting them inside. She leads them down to the holding cells, and tells them to wait until s he gets inside to make a diversion. She goes downstairs, gets into the cells on her pass, and walks in with the spray can. She spots Jan'eth's cell, and he's suprised she came back. Then the diversion starts, mostly with much taunting and the removing of objects of authority. Minnie sneaks through, and walks up to Dana. She whips out the keys she took off the guard, and grins.

Blitzen, while fighting the legions of Death, sees a crack regiment of Malakim of Fire wade into the battle, swords flying. This makes life easier, and it looks like they'll at least hold the demons at the volcano, without a doubt. Blitzen can have his regiment, or what is left of it, hold position and slay more demons of death. He fought for about 45 more minutes before the reinforcements showed up. A battalian of Laurentines, in some sort of bizarre body armor arrived out of heaven, joining Blitzen' s fire angels, and started cleaning house. He watched the battle start to turn to the side of heaven.

Jered followed the Mercurian to it's superior Seraph, who in turn took him up to the hub of things. He ends up going where he started - to the top of the Tether of the Sword, the heaven side. There is a whole gaggle of people there, centered around Laur ence and Jean. Jean is looking sort of vague, contemplating something or other. Jered yells at people to get moving, they're being attacked. He talks to an Elohite of Lightning, who is going on and on about field testing some sort of new armor, and wis hing he had more time for his team to debug them. But it looks like Jered isn't going to get much farther here, the place is chaotic. He heads toward the Library, to follow up on his own advice. The place is basically deserted, but Jered can find Yves sitting at a large desk, writing in an enormous book. "Old friend," Jered says. So Jered does the obvious thing. He asks about Dominic. Is Michael right? Yves tells him that his fears are true, Dominic seems to have gone the way of the Demon. How do es Yves know? It was written, it is destiny. It would not have come about if a certain party had kept their promise. And who is this party? Yves says it was Raphael. Justified and filled with the knowledge of Destiny, Jered leaves.

Star is still in the tether, sitting downstairs with Daimon, waiting for people to return. She hears voices in the tether, and walks upstairs. As she walks upstairs, she is passed by four big men wearing leather and toting swords. She figures out this is the Malakim Rescue Squad, off to go rescue Maxwell. They take Fox's pick up truck. Star goes into the chapel proper, where their are people. It seems to be Fox, another Laurentine Malakim, a Malakite of Novalis (a very rare sight), and apparently th e Laurentine's Superior himself. Laurence is discussing things with Fox (where he ended up when the fighting started), giving orders up the Tether, looking anxious to join the fighting elsewhere, and barely notices Star as she closes the door behind her. She talks to the Malakite of Novalis for a moment to find out what is up. The Malakite of Novalis's name is Requel, and she says they got stopped here. There is fighting breaking out in Heaven. Laurence had been more then interested in finding out if it was really true that one of the better known enemies of Heaven was really surrendering and redeeming, they had come down, and things just got screwed up. Requel assures Star that yes, your friend really was as bad as you heard... but Laurence no long er has time (like he did 30 seconds ago) to deal with this, and now they're going to send down a Redemption Squad for debriefing. Requel tells Star that, if she really likes this guy, that she might not want to watch the debriefing session. It's going t o get messy.

Suddenly, an alarm of 'we're getting attacked in Heaven' goes off in the Spires, providing adequate cover for letting a bunch of Creationers out of their cells. Minnie opens all the doors with the keys she swiped off the guard. Dana walks into Jan'eth's cell, and writes in big letters, "Injustice Everywhere is a Threat to Justice Anywhere." She attunes to Jan'eth, and sees that a single Malakite of Eli was imprisoned, among all the rest of the Creationers. And even through the tie dye, he's good looki ng with the black wings and all. He smiles at the Windies. He borrows the can of paint, and using the spray as a deadly weapon, starts to merrily start a riot. Injustice and Dishonor and all that. When Dana descends to Earth, she and Jan'eth split up. He has no intention of following her, even though she's a big hero to the Creationers now...

The fighting turns and begins to end when the rest of the regiments of the Laurentines arrive and start cleaning house. Blitzen watches with interest, and then locates Rigziel. Riggy tells him he is impressed, and is happy that they won this day. Blitz en sends an Ofanite of Fire to go track down Jered.

Dana descends to where Daimon is. He looks very nervous, and its obvious he is thinking about being elsewhere right about now. Dana starts to talk about rescuing Jan'eth, when two forms materialize from Heaven. Both have this blazing, fanatically, and deeply insane look in their eyes. And from the look of them and the large weapons, it's clear they are both Malakim. Daimon, in a blazing resonance roll, explains the entire situation neatly by screaming, "Oh SHIT!", jumping off the couch and dragging Da na toward the patio window. Thank god that neither Daimon nor Dana had a point of essense between the two of them. The Malakite makes a point of making sure everyone knows it's a Dominican, when he points a finger at Dana and says, "HERETIC." Yeah, wel l. They both pull swords and come after Dana. Daimon is dragging her to the patiowindow. Dana avoids a few attacks while Daimon treats the patio window to a lamp, and it crashes in a million pieces. The Dominicans take another swipe as Daimon grabs Dan a and pushes her through the hole, screaming 'RUN!'. One of the Malakite takes another swing at Dana, and Daimon chooses to step in front of it to cover her, taking a hit in the side instead. Daimon grabs Dana's arm, and drags her running away from the tether anyway. Upstairs, Star hears the yelling, and comes running downstairs. Requel is right behind her. The other Malakite, not after Dana, spins, glares at the Malakite of Novalis, and screams to the air, "I CALL DOWN HEAVENLY JUDGMENT UPON THIS HE RETIC!" There was a voice, "Thou hast been found guilty" and the sword appears in the air. It came after Requel, even as Fox, and the Laurentine Malakite stumbled down the stairs. Star runs outside after the Dominican Malakite who is pursuing Dana and Daimon, and uses her Crown of Joy. It's effective, and she gets him to follow her back through the broken plate glass window. As she turns around, she gets splattered by it's blood and bits of flesh all over her face and front. Nothing like a Superior' s Sword, especially Archangel Laurence's, to kill some crazy twisted Malakim. Laurence takes a very long look at his sword, and then at the two soulkilled Malakim he was forced to destroy, and then just leaves. Probably to take this little piece of info rmation elsewhere. He's deeply disturbed. No talk with the redeeming enemy, no further briefing, no more questions will be answered this day.

The Ofanite returns to Blitzen, unsuccessful at locating Jered. Blitzen tracks down someone who has the Song of Tongues to send him a message. Message is sent, people wait, and Jered shows up. Jered tells Blitzen what he knows, that Michael is telling the truth, and that Michael isn't just hunting Dominic for sport. They locate Rigziel, who takes them to see Michael. Archangel Michael is coated from head to toe in gore. They talk to him about his proof, and he mentions all sorts of stuff - missing M alakim, people falling, Creationers disappearing... they're pretty convinced. Oh, and maybe Dana would make a good spy. Rigziel mentions a debriefing later, and the two leave. When Jered and Blitzen get to the spires, there is a full scale riot going o n, as the Creationers are trashing and vandalizing the place. Blitzen borrows a can of paint, and sprays his own slogan on the wall, and hands it back. On the way out, to the tether proper, they pass this guy, in the tie-dye, white jacket, khacki pants and the pony tail. He's just grinning at them as they leave. Jered does his Destiny thing, and knows this is Raphael. The conversation is alot like, "Aren't you dead?" He says, "I was." There's some mention of his promise, and Raph assures them, sure , I'm coming along with things. Jered's comment as they leave him is that he's awful flippant for an Archangel Superior. They descend, and see the bodies, the blood, the gore. And the Maxwell video tape. They get the low down on what happened while Fox deals with the ambulance and the cops.

Dana and Daimon are on the run, and he's bleeding from his side, and looking pale. In downtown Howell, Dana finds a public phone, and tries to call Terry. He answers, and yells into the phone, "Not NOW!" and hangs up. Dana figures he's in the middle of rescuing Maxwell, and to let it go. She calls a taxi from that phone, and then they hide in a nearby store, doing a little fast talk action to convince the store owner that it really is no big deal that they are here. Daimon suggests they hide in a Kob alite tether, just as a place to hide, forgetting that he's Renegade while in shock. Just as a place to hide, he explains. They luck out, and the Laurentine Malakite looking for them misses them completely. The cab shows up, and Daimon directs it to An n Arbor. He even fast talks the cabbie into ignoring the blood and says something that scores them a free ride. Aren't Lilim grand? They talk off and on en route, and he passes out when they get to Ann Arbor.

Star, Blitzen, and Jered discuss the war in heaven, the attack from hell, Dominic's fall, and all that other good stuff. Star ascends up the tether to heaven to locate Novalis, but like Laurence and Jean, she's extremely busy preaching in the Council at the moment, and cannot be located. She instead locates the person in charge of assembling and sending Redemption teams to Earth, who explains what the team does and what it entails. Star is all excited, because she believes she'll be seeing her Lilim in heaven very soon.

At this point the GM threw everyone out, because we'd been gaming for four and a half hours, and had just had about enough.

QUOTES:

"She blew off Laurence for a Pop-Ice." - Jason

"I hope you aren't planning on defiling someone else's property." -Jered, straight faced, to Blitzen who was about to paint a pro-Gabriel slogan on the Spire wall.



Flaming edge graphics from Our Domain Gallery of Graphics
The "In Nomine" and "flaming feather" graphics are
(C) 1997 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated.
Used with fnord.