Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 66
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 Dec 24th 2009
I’m so glad that’s over. We succeeded in our mission, and as I speak (or write, I guess), Surtr and Hun Dun’s armies are being driven back out of Tien by Guan Yu’s army, and we’re getting ready for Xi Wang Mu to send us to Szechuan with Charles to take care of yet more Bureaucracy business. I’ll be glad to get away from this place, though. Despite our victory, I’m still kinda shaken by what happened after we destroyed Surtr’s furnace…but I suppose I’ll get to that.
I think I left off after we escaped from the artillery base. Well, we crept ever closer to our objective, when suddenly, in a tempest of wind and hoof beats, Charles joined us, borne to our location at impossible speed on the back of Guan Yu’s steed, Red Hare. As Red Hare departed to return to his master, we paused long enough for Charles to brief us on what was going on at the front lines. When he’d left, Guan Yu was still fighting Surtr, but Chi You (the avatar of Hun Dun we’d seen earlier) had arrived and joined the battle. Guan Yu knew he would soon be overwhelmed >_<, so he sent Charles to help us destroy the furnace that was powering all of Surtr’s war machines, knowing that we were his only hope for victory.
We had to fulfill our mission quickly, so we wasted no time in finding the forge-borne furnace. Fortunately, it wasn’t far, though it was protected by a huge wall of blazing fire. The machinery to shut the wall down was pretty obvious, but it was defended by five fire giants (one of whom looked like a commander with a firebird), a couple of celestial dogs, and a couple of taotie masks (though the masks were hidden, so only Adam and Elisa noticed them). Fortunately for us, a graceful celestial dragon was fighting two of the fire giants, who were holding it at bay with their furnace-powered guns.
At first, we were simply going to deal with the guys the dragon wasn’t fighting, taking out the taotie masks first so that they couldn’t screw with our heads while we were trying to take out the giants (which isn’t easy, as we’ve discovered >_<). But I decided we couldn’t just let one of our allies fight alone, so I encouraged the others to help finish off the dragon’s opponents first so that he could them help us fight the rest of the enemy defenders. So after Adam and Elisa each blasted a taotie mask into oblivion, the rest of us turned our attention to the giants manning the guns, and finished them off in short order.
Once his opponents were dead, the dragon nodded his thanks, and I respectfully addressed him and asked for his assistance in vanquishing the rest of our foes and directed him toward the giant commander. He wound his way through the air to rain his caustic breath down on the giant, and by the time we’d finished off the rest of our foes, the dragon had taken out their commander.
Meanwhile, Pierre, who was really going all out with his connection to the spirit of the whippoorwill (something he acquired when we were in New Orleans, if IIRC), sprouted wings and whipped out a chainsaw (we all questioned where exactly he got that chainsaw, but he just shrugged and pointed a thumb at his large backpack). Cackling madly, he flew after the giant commander’s firebird, and the two of them engaged in a grueling, if one-sided, dogfight which ultimately ended with pieces of the firebird crashing to the ground in smoking heaps.
The rest of the fight was tough for us, but we came through it pretty well. Charles and Elisa took out the celestial dogs and then turned to help T-Bone and Adam defeat the two remaining fire giants. Adam took a crushing blow from one of the giants. I couldn’t heal him instantly again during the fight, but he managed to struggle to his feet and keep going until we’d finished off our foes, at which point I tenderly ministered to his wounds and used the more powerful effects of my mastery over life and health to heal him almost completely. It took a few kisses, but I don’t think he minded. ^_^. And once he was better, he and Charles made their way to the machinery that controlled the wall of fire and shut it down.
Meanwhile, I thanked the dragon for his help and introduced myself and the others. The dragon’s name was Wei Lung, and unfortunately he couldn’t accompany us to the furnace; he had to fly back to the front lines. But before he left, I instantly transformed into my goth cheerleader outfit, and with a wink and a blown kiss, I restored his will to fight. I also healed him a bit before he left, telling him to stay safe.
We then moved on to the main furnace area. It was incredibly hot there; only our divine stamina kept us from burning up almost instantly. The furnace itself was an immense machine full of blazing fire and metal, churning out the infernal heat that was running Surtr’s machines. Circling above it in a patrolling pattern was a really dangerous-looking fire giant officer mounted on a huge, fiery dragon. We assumed (correctly) that he was Burnheart, the giant we’d been warned would be guarding the furnace. A brutal lance was mounted on the dragon, and one look at the thing told us that getting hit by it was basically certain death.
We also saw signs that Natalia had been there, and in fact, while we were planning our approach, she showed herself. I took a moment before she arrived to ask Charles how things were going with Sera, because damned if I’m going to let this Russian spy girl muscle in on my friend’s man. Hopefully Charles took the hint. ^_^. Anyway, Natalia informed us that getting close to the furnace wasn’t possible as long as Burnheart was up there defending it; he could call down bursts of flame or something to blast those who approached, so we’d need to distract him so that Natalia and T-Bone could get close to the machine and destroy it using their mastery of industry and chaos to force the machine to malfunction.
But that meant distracting Burnheart.
And that’s what we did. Before we all headed down to fight, I gave each member of our party a pep talk to bolster them for the fight to come, and after that I kinda just held back until I saw an opening to help out. This sort of up-front clash of the titans is not what I’m good at, but fortunately the others had it well in hand. First off, Charles used the versatile powers of Taiyi to prevent Burnheart from bolstering his defenses, and used Taiyi again to telekinetically tear the lance from its mounting and fling it to the ground, denying Burnheart his most dangerous weapon. Way to go Charles!
The battle was still pretty rigorous, but I gotta tell ya, Elisa is badass. And scary when she fights. As Burnheart swept low on the dragon to take a swipe at us, Elisa leap onto the dragon and spent the rest of the fight acrobatically hanging on or leaping from one part of the massive beast to the next, popping off shots with her rifle whenever there was an opening. By the time T-Bone and Natalia made it to the furnace, the dragon was dead. And that’s when Elisa cut out its heart, sacrificed it to her father on the spot, and then became a raging Aztec berserker, her heart bursting into flames through her chest and the fury of war turning her into a demon on the battlefield. And that’s how she faced Burnheart, dropping her gun and taking up her mace to meet him in fierce combat.
Yeah, she totally kicked his ass. ^_^
Meanwhile, as T-Bone and Natalia approached the furnace, a couple of black calamities emerged from hiding to stop them, but they just dodged right past them. Even so, the last thing we needed was for the black calamities to start screwing with Natalia or T-Bone’s minds and derail them from their part in the battle, Adam, Pierre, and I did what we could to stop them. Adam destroyed one with a well-placed shot, while I shadow-stepped out of Natalia’s shadow right in from of the second black calamity and entranced it briefly, long enough to keep it at bay until Pierre arrived and cut it down with his chainsaw.
T-Bone and Natalia did their thing, and the furnace started to overload. We all fled the area as fast as we could and managed to make it before the massive explosion left a smoking crater in the mountains of Tien.
But the danger wasn’t over. As we crested a rise, Kagatsuchi stepped out of cover and confronted us. You know, the Kagatsuchi whose birth killed my mother, and who wants to burn me to death too? The Kagatsuchi whom I will destroy to recover Izanami’s divine spark? The instant I saw him, anger coursed through my soul, but it was tempered by fear. I will destroy him, someday, but I’m not ready yet. He’s still too powerful, and I realized that he could easily kill us all then and there.
The sadistic bastard offered us a deal. He’d been commanded to kill anyone who destroyed Surtr’s furnace, but he would let everyone else go free and unharmed if they turned me over to him. The time might come when I can use his psychotic desire to see me suffer to my advantage, but in that moment, I didn’t know what to do. I knew one thing, though. My friends would never betray me. And they didn’t. Elisa, Adam, Pierre, T-Bone, even Charles (though he hasn’t known me that long), stepped forward to defend me.
Kagatsuchi taunted me with the joy he felt as our mother died, but I answered his taunts with one of my own: “All fires must burn out.” His face remained impassive, but I know my words cut deeply. He knew we wouldn’t give in to his demands, and so he flung his bowl of searing water upon us. I’d seen what that boiling water had done to Raiden, and I knew we couldn’t survive it, but then T-Bone jumped in front of us all and presented a small, tarnished mirror. The mirror reflected Kagatsuchi’s attach back on him even as it shattered in T-Bone’s hand. Burned by his own water, Kagatsuchi disappeared, screaming. I somehow sensed that it was the first time he had ever been burned. Now, at least, he knows a measure of the pain he inflicted on our mother.
I owe T-Bone my life. I have no idea where he got that mirror; I guess from his father, but I don’t care. It saved me.
I collapsed to my knees, overwhelmed with relief. Elisa was at my side instantly. She’s a true friend. ^_^. I explained to the others what Kagatsuchi’s appearance meant to me, and how I intended to destroy him and reclaim my mother’s inner fire, if that’s possible. I know my friends will help me. ^_^ Good thing, too. I don’t think I could do it alone! >_<
Just after Kagatsuchi fled, Wei Lung returned with the celestial archer, Hou Yi, and they flew us back to Guan Yu’s camp. Guan Yu had been slain in the battle, but everyone knew that was inevitable. When we arrived, his ritualists, led by Xi Wang Mu, were resurrecting him, and he’s back on his feet now, albeit somewhat weaker.
Once Guan Yu was up and about again, Xi Wang Mu approached us and told us she was sending us to Szechuan to take care of some business there. I’m glad to get away from the battlefield, and I hope that whatever they want us to do in Szechuan is less violent than things have been for us so far. I’m also nursing hope that Yi got my message and that I’ll be able to see her there. After this thing with Kagatsuchi, I really need some TLC. But for now, I’m going to contact Echo to let her know I’m okay.