Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 64
This account was originally found on Livejournal, I am not the original author—I am just a fan of the journal and have found reading it on livejournal clunky to navigate and rife with errors/instability (such as having to refresh multiple times due to the page in questions becoming unavailable often requiring multiple refreshes. The original post can be found here, published by DJ-Yomi, and was published on Nov 28th 2009
So we’ve gone from Chongqing to Tien, the Celestial Bureacracy’s overworld. Right now, the titan Surtr is invading the place with an army of titanspawn, and Guan Yu is preparing to ride out and meet him in combat with his son, Charles Wei, at his side. Meanwhile, the rest of us are going to flank the enemy and hit their supply lines. If we can do that, then they won’t be able to keep their hulking tanks operational, which will turn things in our favor. Pretty exciting, huh? I just hope we can come through this okay. And I hope Charles stays safe when he rides out with his father.
Anyway, I’m sure you’re loads of curious as to how we ended up here, so I’ll explain. ^_^
First off, we rendezvoused with our followers at the hotel to rest up. After all, we’d taken care of most of our mission, so we deserved a bit of a break. I was quite charmed when to see Sera emerge from her hotel room in this incredibly hot, slinky red cheogsam, urged on by Audrey, Kimiyo and Ophelia. She timidly approached Charles and asked it he’d like to go out for a drink, and he quickly agreed with a charming smile that I’m sure made Sera’s heart melt. Way to go, Charles! If this keeps up, I won’t have to do much to sabotage Natalia’s advances on him.
Before the two of them could leave, though, the hotel fell into chaos as the last few Qing Shi bullied their way in, supported by a small crowd of Jiang Shi and a few gun-toting mortals. We withdrew into a series of rooms to ambush them. As they emerged from the stairs onto our floor, I stepped out with Miko safely hidden behind me, and with her assistance shone with the light of Amaterasu’s sun, obliterating all of the Jiang Shi. The Qing Shi didn’t last long against Elisa, Adam, and Charles’ combined gunplay, and T-Bone even finished off one or two of the mortals.
My shikome deserved a treat, so I gave them the go ahead to feast on the dead mortals (getting rid of the bones and blood later was a bit of a chore, but worth it. Those girls are ravenous! Wish I had them here with me. Most of the titanspawn we’re likely to face are way too powerful for them, but they’d probably be more than willing to help clean out some of the lesser foot-troops. At least Tabby’s here. Anyway, after the shikome had dragged the bodies back to their room, T-Bone and I settled things with the authorities, and Charles finally left for his date with Sera. I think they had a pretty good time!
We hung around until about noon, giving me enough time to sunbathe and recharge a bit,and by that time, Charles got another missive from the Bureacracy. They wanted him to travel to Penglai a city that opens onto a terra incognita (also called Penglai) that connects directly to Tien via a huge mountain. The place was held by the Amatsukami during WWII, so I was cautioned against bringing any of my obviously Japanese followers. As a result, I left Miko and Kimiyo behind to look after the shikome, and brought Sera, Quinn, Dahlia, and Tabby along. Mercy wanted to go see Chiaki, so she headed out to Japan. Chiaki asked for me to help her find someone to love, and after some discussion, I managed to set up a date between Mercy and Chiaki. They have a lot in common, and Mercy’s pretty enthusiastic about it, so I hope things work out between them, or that they at least have fun ^_^.
Penglai turned out to be a beautiful overworld, though a bit gaudy, if you ask me. There were sparkling beaches of gemstones and a radiant sun, but we didn’t have time to really enjoy it, because we were summoned to speak to Ti Fang, a huge celestial dragon whose coils were almost hypnotic in their austere beauty. He was quite gracious and gentle, though, and explained that he had a mission he wanted Charles’ new band of scions (that’s us) to complete. A suspicious group had moved into Penglai and appeared to be excavating something near one of the beaches. The operation had already made substantial progress, and the mysterious interlopers refused to discuss their presence with the messengers Ti Fang had already sent.
So we headed to the beach only to discover a workforce of small, nondescript, bald men conducting what I guess you’d call a minor strip mining operation, supervised by four taller (but also bald and nondescript) overseers. Charles, T-Bone, and I stepped forward to speak to the chief overseer while Adam sized the trespassers up and discovered that the tall ones, at least, were fairly powerful. A bit later, he informed us telepathically that they were titnaspawn, probably angels of Aten. Being close to Amaterasu like I am, I can’t help but find Aten kinda icky. >_< I mean, he’d as bad as Mikaboshi, just leaning in the opposite direction, light instead of darkness. It’s like he’s muscling in on Amaterasu’s territory and defiling the whole concept. >_<
Despite my charms, Charles’ authority, and T-Bone’s quick wit, the lead overseer refused to answer our questions with anything but lies. I could tell that violence was on the horizon, so I tried to find a more subtle and careful approach, when suddenly T-Bone just shrugged and used a twist of words to force the overseer to blurt out the truth: they were looking for Feng Tan, one of the suns shot down by the celestial archer Hou Yi. I’m not sure exactly what value something like that would have for Aten, but it can’t be good. Still, I would have liked to avoid a straight-up fight…
Which wasn’t really possible after T-Bone forced the chief angel of Aten to spill the truth. The angels wasted no time shedding their disguises and revealed their radiant majesty, while their workers, a type of weak but surprisingly dangerous titanspawn called rasaps, swarmed from the pits they’d dug to assist their masters in attacking us.
The fight was not fun. Elisa popped off a telling shot on the leader of the angels but drew his ire in return, and he swooped in and nearly decapitated her in one swing. She fell, unconscious, while the others opened up on the angels. All the while, the rasaps drew closer and prepared to fire arrows of searing light at us. I dashed over to where Elisa was, cradled her unconscious body and planted a deep kiss on her lips to heal her of the worst of her damage, then handed her off to Pierre, who was right there beside her. He repeated the kiss and finished healing Elisa, who woke up and without losing a beat grabbed her gun again. She didn’t attack the angel, though…she attacked an invisible chaos dog that she’d noticed hanging around and urging us to do terrible things just to enhance the chaos of the fight. It didn’t take her long to finish the beast off, and it’s good thing, too. I don’t know about the others, but I certainly felt some urges to do some bad things during that fight, and I can only imagine the damage that thing could have done if we hadn’t shaken off its wily influence.
After healing Elisa and soaking up a few nasty shots from the rasaps (damn, their arrows hurt!), I stood and revealed the full extent of my beauty, letting it shimmer off the sparkling gemstone sand of the place as I glowed with light to entrance the rasaps in my glory. With the rasaps incapacitated, we were able to focus on the angels, which Pierre, Adam, T-Bone, and Charles finished handily…though not without some difficulty. The worst part was when the angels, and then the rasaps, decided to sacrifice themselves in a blaze of glory, exploding in a brilliant burst of burning light.
I withdrew into the earth to avoid the worst of that. And most of the others were either absorbing light (T-Bone, Adam, Elisa) or had the fortitude to take it (Pierre), except for Charles. I’m not sure how he managed, but somehow he came through it all right. And with the bad guys taken care of, we headed back to report to Ti Fang. I thought about chiding T-Bone on his impetuous and belligerent approach to our negotiations with the angels of Aten, but decided against it. It is his nature, after all, and honestly, we probably couldn’t have avoided the fight anyway. >_< And I got a ho shein eye out of it (from the chaos dog). It’ll protect me from the influence of chaos for awhile at least. ^_^
Ti Fang was pleased. I suppose he’ll take care of checking out the dig site, though he probably wants Feng Tan , the fallen sun, to stay hidden where it is. But of course there’s no rest for the weary. And as soon as we returned, Ti Fang had another task for us, this one of utmost importance. This is when we found out about Surtr’s invasion of Tien (Ti Fang showed it to us on this big holographic illusion of the battlefield, like something out of a cool sci-fi movie! ^_^) I gotta tell ya, seeing the approaching forces was more than a little disheartening. It kinda made me wonder just how this war’s really going for us. It also strengthened my resolve to do my part for the home team…I must use Erebus to defeat Mikaboshi and thereby strike a devastating blow against the enemy.
Anyway, that’s an objective for another day. Ti Fang sent us to Tien on the backs of elegant kirin, and right now, we’re in the Celestial Bureaucracy’s camp, preparing ourselves to go to war. Like I said, we’re going to hit the enemy supply lines while Guan Yu challenges Surtr and keeps him distracted. And speaking of Guan Yu, it was a pleasure to meet him, and his beard really is HOT ♥. I can see where Charles gets his good looks. ^_^
Oh, I should also mention that Xi Wang Mu is here (you know, the slinky goddess of darkness and magic, with the panther that kept…stalking…T-Bone). It was nice to see her again, and she did me and T-Bone the incredible favor of restoring a bit of our divine energy…‛cause I gotta tell ya, the past couple of days have really drained me. We’re now making out final preparation, though there isn’t much for me to do, so I’m mostly sitting around chatting with Tabby and Sera (I sent Dahlia and Quinn back to handle the plane). I’m hoping Sera will get a chance to see Charles really shine, or at least will be waiting to receive him with a welcoming embrace and triumphant kisses when he returns to camp.
The only problem is that Natalia’s here…on the battlefield. Elisa spotted her in Ti Fang’s holographic projection. I’ll have to watch out for her…