Characters in Attendance:
Lord Aaron/Gemmel [Andy]
Dalen/Kayla [Kath]
Ambassador Lentaro/Redmon [Jeremy Z.]
Rhyss/Mayda [Joanna]
Raphaela/Sara [Cort]

NPCs to Appear:
Beldane
Daryl

[Compiler's notes: Simone Cooper, best known by some for organizing AmberCon Northwest, came up from Portland to visit and shop. Her original plans to run something earlier in the weekend fell through due to lack of numbers, and so that Sunday she did a guerilla take over of Dreaming in the Real. This is a side story line that is part of our on-going campaign. Since this wasn't an "official" session, and Kath was hungover, Cort did not require our esteemed log-keeper to write up a log of this session. Jeremy Z. volunteered to do it instead.]

When last we saw our intrepid adventurers ...

The club house gang had just managed to rescue Dalen from the sinister clutches of Niro and the Bright Pattern, as well Dalen's foster family. Niro was quoted as saying, "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"

So, there we were, all in one place, the player characters deep in space, in a top secret space station orbiting around a top secret planet, working on a cure for the Oleai. Dalen was sharpening her sword, Lentaro was supervising the research team, Aaron was getting scanned, and Rhyss was enjoying the life of deep space. No one was certain where Maladin was. Likely trying to cajole carrots out of the cafeteria staff. ("No carrots for you! One year!") Raphaela was the noted exception, as she was at Flora's house, working on a commissioned sculpture.

And then, there was nothing. No sense of sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste. No sense of identity, or name, or form. Just nothing, which was gradually replaced by a painfully loud white noise sound.

[As identity is meaningless at this point, I shall refer to the characters simply as A., L., D., R1, and R2.]

And then, things faded in. The impression each person had was that they were strapped down, with a breathing apparatus down their throat. Visions of Matrix danced through their heads. The only variation to this was that one A. was pinned under an I-beam, with a piece of something lodged between a couple of ribs and pierce a lung. Nummy. The whole place looks trashed, and something smelled like it was burning.

Everyone slowly frees themselves (except for A.) and try to build up their strength. They all seem to be naked, shaven yet stubly, emaciated and feverish. L. is notably... human. Also, language is nearly impossible. No one can recall how to translate thoughts into words. R2 proves herself to be the master linguist, being the first one to use the word "Water".

R1 and R2 check out the door and find it hot to the touch, and discover an air duct big enough to climb through. While L. and D. set about fixing A.'s wound, R1 helps R2 up into the shaft. R2 crawls down it, and then drops out of the ceiling vent in a corridor. She manages to obtain clothes and a gun, as well as find a sign that reads "In case of emergency, please use stairs." She goes to try and get up to the vent, and realizes that it's a bit out of hand's reach. (We've lost R2!!)

R2 yells for everyone to come, using another new word, "Come!" Everyone squeezed into the shaft and joined R2 in the hallway. Along the way, R1 has a vision of a scary man with strange eyes. The fire sprinklers kicked in about that time, and everyone beat feet up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs can be seen warehouses and railroad tracks. A couple of firemen are arguing with a man in a suit on one side of the building, and on the other is a large man and a small man also having an argument. When the man in a suit turns to head for the stairs, one of the firemen tries to stop him. With a touch of his hand, the fireman spins around and flies back. His arm is apparently broken.

R2 trains a gun on the big man and the little man on the other side, and they put their hands up. The little man yells something about, "Some thanks we get!" while R2 is taking the big man's gun. R2 tries to pistol whip the big man, but gets nowhere with it. Instead, she engages in a knuckle tango with him. Meanwhile, L. is chasing down the little man.

The man in the suit is about to head towards the entrance to the stairs, when he takes a sniff, and turns towards where R1 is watching him, seeming to look straight at her with unnaturally pale blue eyes.

Everyone pelts off after the little man and L. Pelt, for those who were not present, was the word of the day for that session.

When L. catches up with the little man, the little man ducks for cover and tells L. to open a nearby door. L. notices that the door has heavy chains across it. With a mental "what the hell", L. pulls at the chains and feels them snap. Feeling bold, he kicks in the door, realizing afterwards that it's a pull door.

Everyone else catches up, and inside is found a lot of clothes and boxes of supplies. Grabbing some clothes, and shooting at the pursuing suit, the group then leaves and piles into a van, which is driven off and into a train car. After the doors are closed, the train rolls off and the group is on their way out of there.

The big man is Daryl and the little man is Beldane. After a good deal of smacking Beldane around and asking Daryl repeatedly, the group gets a bare idea of the story.

Basically, Beldane, Daryl, L., D., A., and the R's were all specially engineered creatures that had only limited ability to travel through shadow. The five from the lab, as well as five others that weren't rescued, were apparently used as bait to find out who was trying to kill them. It was believed that Elder Amberites were behind it, and had hired the "Blue Eyes" to try and kill them. It is noted that the trumps for A., D., L., and the Rs also don't work. It occurs that the wrong minds are currently in these bodies. The lights are home, but somebody else is home. The names of the bodies that are inhabited are:

A. = Gemmel
D. = Kayla
L. = Redmon
R1 = Mayda
R2 = Sara

As the train passes the group that's left the train, Beldane catches a burst of energy to his face, reducing his Buscemi-like features to ground chuck.

Kayla and Gemmel are left behind in the train car. As it slows to a stop, someone without blue eyes, but a swank pair of sunglasses comes in and kills Kayla with a burst of explosive force. Gemmel jumps from the train once it stops and joins the fleeing group.

Daryl starts running back to the train, hoping that there may be some way to get out of the shadow that way. Gemmel racks his brains trying to think of something to get them out of there, and suddenly remembers that he's Aaron, and catches a glimpse of Lentaro, Dalen, and Rhyss lying in a stupor in the Tellurian lab, before switching back to Gemmel's body. With his full abilities, Aaron/Gemmel tries to shift his way out of the shadow, pitting his will against that of the person keeping them captive.

The strain of the effort re-opens the wound on his back. Gemmel dies, and Aaron wakes up in the lab, with Chaos going on around him.

Sara is trying to think of something to help keep Beldane from dying. Suddenly, Sara gets a vision of herself as Raphaelal, and remembers that she's really Raphaella. Sara/Raphaella casts a spell to heal, then uses a spell to keep Mr. Shades (as I'm calling him for the purposes of this log) at bay.

The feeling of sorcery being used nearby stirs something buried within the minds of Redmon and Mayda. As they try to identify the source of that familiarity, they recall themselves as Lentaro and Rhyss, and gain a glimpse of the lab in Telluria, the find themselves back in the body of Redmon and Mayda. As Redmon/Lentaro comes back into focus, he looks up to see Mr. Shades standing right next to him. Shades raises a hand up, and Redmon/Lentaro tries to block it, and finds himself hit with a burst of energy that throws him back into a tree. Redmon dies, and Lentaro awakens in Telluria.

Mayda/Rhyss tries to trump out, and finds herself blocked. Mr. Shades takes out Mayda, and Rhyss wakes up.

Sara/Raphaella, while everyone is getting hosed, picks up Beldane, and teleports away with him.

Daryl, incidentally, gets killed along here somewhere, but the compiler doesn't quite recall when.

What could this mean for our daring adventurers? Will Lentaro be fuzzy again? How will he deal with having died twice? Can the world cope with two Raphaellas? Will Aaron get that cosmetic surgery he's always wanted? Will anyone ever learn anything about Rhyss? Will Dalen feel bitter about the one time she wasn't rescued? And could Maladin be secretly behind all this?

Find out January 2nd. Same Dreaming time. Same Dreaming channel.