Don't even PRETEND this was part of the plan!

In a session where the players kept ehh doing things that the GM hadn't planned for ... like trying to communicate with the spirit/thing trapped inside the portal because rune magic. It's a Pandemonium devil, by the way, and it basically went "you what? LOL" at Gorbash and Alistair when they tried to find an alternative way to activate the gate which wouldn't include blood sacrifice.

Jayson hung out with his fellow Cyber-knights, who kept talking to him about keeping on the straight and narrow (Booker's reputation precedes him, shall we say?) so eventually he stood up and held a speech saying he's not turning to the Dark Side just yet, so chill, basically. One of them proceeded to try and recruit him on a so far unsanctioned battle in Tolkeen, which he wasn't too happy about and later raised with Joan.

Meanwhile, Booker tried to test the protection around the gate and voluntarily spent the night in the Cyber-knights' jail, where Sir Alan read the Codex at him for teh rest of the night. Apparently it was a good background noise to fall asleep to. In the morning Elyssia came along and insulted Hecate through Booker, causing a lightning bolt to blow her through a wall. They were asked to take their arguments outside of the city walls until they could calm down.

The way to activate the portal is through blood magic, i.e. someone needs to die, Booker was told by Hecate - she should know, it's her gate, after all. Booker informed Jayson of this and the two went around town looking to see exactly how bad it would be, sacrifice-wise. A cute 7-year-old girl with pigtails was the answer, which even Booker felt uneasy about, despite being a former assassin.

They consulted with Joan, who would rather the people who might or might not be alive in Nxla's realm stay there rather than sacrificing an innocent child. Gorbash came along and suggested maybe we could use Rakshasa instead, because they're evil anyway so doesn't matter. Joan still vetoed the use of blood magic, because she's not insane.

At this point in time it's starting to seem as if we're not going to Nxla's realm after all. 'Tis a silly place.

Whose side am I supposed to be on?

So what happened was ... Hecate showed up in Ulmolf's head and sang her siren song again. For character replacement purposes, Ulmolf said "alright then" and had Odin show up in town, asking him wtf he thinks he's doing. They both disappeared through a rift back to Asgard.

Ulmolf's replacement is a demigod by the name Elyssa. On the plus side, Elyssa is a good person, so maybe we can keep Gorbash on the straight and narrow for a while yet ...

In the warehouse where we found the necromancer last session, there was indeed a necromancer. She had a half-dead bloke tied to a wall and she was very pleased to see Booker.

Apparently it was all some sort of ritual to give Booker all the knowledge in order to fight what he needs to fight as the Chosen One, but we didn't really know this when we may or may not have conked her over the head and having her dying on us and completing the ritual.

A lot of people in town (whose HP were powering the spell) died in the process and because the spell sort of backfired because Booker was supposed to be the only one present in the building and not the entire party, Alistair let Gorbash and Jayson know they ended up with a soul each tied to them ...

We sent them there to die, not to win!

This weekend just gone meant ChimeraCon 5 - a 24 hour roleplaying event at Chimera in Beeston. These are the quotes from the first session's Eclipse Phase game (10 September 2011), which was a continuation of the story from ChimeraCon 4 in June. As a special treat, we have also included quotes from the fourth session's game of Exalted "Light" (11 September 2011), for your pleasure.

In Eclipse Phase, we went to Mars and encountered both flying piranhas and tweetfish. Do you know what happens when a whole tank full of tweetfish simultaneously panic and tweet that they want their water changed? Read and find out. Maybe.