Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 30

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 July 25th 2008

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So, it seems our quest to encourage the Tuatha to cooperate more with the rest of the pantheons has overlapped somewhat with Anna’s quest to kill the titanspawned hound her mother sent her after. You’d think I’d be able to remember the darn thing’s name as many times as I’ve heard it, but it still escapes me. Basically, it all boils down to tests. The Tuatha are really going out of their way to test us. It’s the way they work. Helping make sure the Mummer’s Dance went as smoothly as possible was a test to prove ourselves to the fae and to Lugh. Then Lugh set us on the quest to kill Anna’s hound to prove ourselves to the rest of the Tuatha.

Actually, it’s not really that bad. But let me back up. We had almost a full day off after the Mummer’s Dance, so we pretty much split up and did our own things. After calling Echo and hanging around with my girls for most of the day, I called up Claire and we met at a café. I was concerned for her and Alice and wanted to check up on them. Claire said she hadn’t really spoken to Alice yet. They’ve been more-or-less avoiding one another, which I guess is pretty natural. They may just need time. Or maybe Alice will never reconcile herself to her mother’s lifestyle. I guess showing her something overtly supernatural might help prove to her that what her mother does isn’t foolish or pointless, but then again, it might do more harm than good.

Anyway, Claire expressed a sincere interest in Tabby. Though amused by this, I asked her why she felt drawn to Tabby. She didn’t really know, of course. They just had a sort of chemistry, and my guess is that Claire is somehow drawn to the supernatural “danger” lurking within Tabby. Or something like that. ^_^ Anyway, she seemed interested in spending time with Tabby. Not necessarily in a romantic way…though I got the feeling it could become intimate (even though she’s old enough to be Tabby’s mother!). That would piss Alice off. Actually, I kinda got the feeling Claire wanted to piss Alice of by doing something like that. *frown*sigh* And of course, I knew that Tabby would waste no time in turning Claire since she knows I wouldn’t really disapprove.

I was sorely tempted to take Claire to Tabby and see what would happen. I’d really like to make Claire into an elite shikome. But I couldn’t. After all, I think people should do what’s right for them. That doesn’t mean that everyone has an excuse to act like they want to. But everyone has a duty to follow their own fate and their own code of ethics and morals. With all the various gods and pantheons out there, each with their own views of what’s virtuous and wrong, I don’t really see how anyone can claim that there are absolutes of right and wrong. The Aztlani views of right and wrong are pretty different from those of the Amatsukami, for example, but I don’t think they’re any less valid. How can they be when the gods are basically the origins of morality in the first place?

I’m not saying that there aren’t some absolutes of right and wrong. Pretty much all of the pantheons agree on some aspects of good and evil, even if individual gods choose to do evil. And of course I don’t think anyone can disagree that the absence of virtue—or rather the corruption of virtue—that the titans represent is evil.

So anyway, the point of all this is that even though I wanted to turn Claire into a shikome, I didn’t (and still don’t) think it’s right for her to become a shikome. I warned her that if she chose to pursue a friendship with Tabby, it would probably radically and irrevocably alter her life. I warned her that Tabby was extremely dangerous, and that the lure of that danger was not enough reason to give up on all the more important things Claire’s already doing. I encouraged Claire to continue doing what she’s been doing. By supporting the old ways of the Tuatha, by believing in the fae, and by helping to keep an awareness and reverence for those things alive in the world, she was doing far more good than she’d ever do as an elite shikome.

Ultimately, I left the choice up to her, but I think I convinced her to keep living her life as she has been. The Tuatha need people like her, and I think she’ll be happier and that her life will be more meaningful if she continues along the path she’s already chosen for herself.

And of course I’m not going to let Tabby know about this. I already know how badly she wants to turn Claire…

Once my meeting with Claire was over, I called up Ray to see if we couldn’t meet and chat for awhile. As I’ve made painfully clear in the last few journal entries, I had the feeling he was avoiding me. I was thrilled when he agreed to meet with me at a pub, just the two of us. ^_^

We talked for an hour or so, and it was really nice to just sit and spend time with him. He means a lot to me, so despite the tension that sometimes vibrates between us, I like being around him. And that’s one thing we talked about. I thanked him for helping to save my marriage to Echo, and for all the other things he’s done for me. We talked a little about Echo and the baby. And I asked why he was distancing himself from the group. I mean, sure, we all do our own thing when danger isn’t looming imminently on the horizon. So the fact that Ray goes off on his own a lot isn’t really a big deal. We all do that. But lately he’s been distancing himself even when we’re “on task,” like during the Mummer’s Dance, showing up only when we’re really in danger. When we’re actually working for our parents is one of the only times I really get to see Ray, so I miss having him around outside of combat, and I told him so.

He explained that he just has difficulty with the rest of the group. Our various views of morality are different from his. He has a very noble, pure view of right and wrong. The rest of us…well…we’re a bit more “open-minded” in our approach to virtue. I mean, T-Bone is incessantly using people, Elisa and Anna are kinda psychotic (though in different ways), Pierre is close to amoral, and Adam’s so analytical that morality sometimes takes a back seat to reason for him. And me…well, a lot of what I represent (and some of the mistakes I’ve made in the past) goes against Ray’s sense of virtue. But Ray says that he can understand and accept that. I think he understands what I was saying before about morality being kinda subjective. But understanding it and being comfortable with it are different, so he sometimes feels uncomfortable being with us.

Even so, I told him that I, for one, didn’t want him to become so distant from the rest of us. I’m afraid that he’s been isolating himself from us, and that’s not good. I like having him around, and I think the others do too. And it’s obvious now that we’re much stronger together as a group than as individuals. I mean, that’s the whole point of what we’re doing with the Tuatha, right? ^_^

Anyway, I think Ray might try to lighten up and stick with us a little more, at least when we’re “on task.” I’m not sure though. He’s so hard to read, and so noncommittal. You know Ray! ^_^

Anyway, Ray also told me that he’d been approached by Lugh, who wanted to meet all of us at the garden park to discuss the idea of the Tuatha becoming more involved with the other pantheons. We split up to get ready for the meeting and called everyone else so that they’d join us.

Lugh was…not what I expected, which I guess shows what I know about Celtic mythology. He was a friendly, easy-going young Irish man with bright red hair and beard. He had a good sense of humor, and seemed earnestly pleased to meet and work with us. When he asked what it was that we really wanted with the Tuatha, I began to explain, but then remembered that this is really Adam’s gig, so I forced myself to take a back seat this time. It’s hard for me to do that when it comes to talking to people, you know? ^_^

Anyway, Lugh was more than happy to help us out, and promised help us convince the rest of the Tuatha. However, in order to “impress” them he felt that we’d need to pass another test. He wasn’t very excited about the idea of coming up with some random new mission for us, so he asked if there was any “quest” we were already trying to accomplish. We told him about Anna’s mission to hunt the titanspawned hound, and that was perfect. Killing a badass titanspawn in Tuatha territory? You bet that’s right up their alley. So Lugh told us how to defeat the beast (which, incidentally, can’t be killed by conventional means, even by someone as brutal as Anna or Ray).

Basically, we had to go get some of the stagnant water from a pool deep in the caves in a place called Magh Slécht. Only weapons coated in the pool’s water have any chance of hurting the hound, so we needed the water before we could even think of hunting the hound. Magh Slécht itself is the area of standing stones Adam and Anna were looking for before. The place is…not good. In fact, it kinda runs into the body of the titan Crom Cruach himself…but fortunately we wouldn’t have to go in that deep. *whew* Even so, the caverns are full of formorians, so it’s not like it would be easy. At least Lugh gave us GPS coordinates so that the pool would be easier to find.

So, the first step was to get the water. After bidding Lugh goodbye, lost no time in getting ready and setting out for Magh Slécht, which was a few hours away. We arrived in the middle of the night, of course, since we didn’t set out until early evening. The standing stones were pretty busy, though. There were lots of cloaked figures moving around. Most seemed like mortal titan worshippers, but there were a few formorians in the mix as well. Fortunately, no one really seemed to pay us any mind as we drove to the gates of the castle that held the entrance to the caves. Then the formorian guards approached us, and before I knew it, Ray and everyone else attacked. Formorians are tough as hell and horribly disfigured, by the way. Definitely the ugliest giants out there. But they were no real challenge for people like Ray and Anna. I kinda just tried to stay out of the way and coordinate our tactics. There’s not a whole lot else I can do to help against giants (as I was reminded later in the caves…).

With the external guards dead, we descended into the caves to find the water. I left Tabby and Keiko at the entrance to keep an eye on things. They were given strict instructions to avoid fighting any giants, but to let us know if formorians reinforcements came in after us. And of course they can probably deal with any small groups of mortal guards who happen to wander in.

After making our way through the caves for awhile we stumbled into a room full of halberd wielding formorians conducting some sort of ritual. Well, I’m not actually sure what was going on, but they were busy mixing some sort of noxious witch’s brew in a gigantic cauldron. Sadly, they were ready for us when we wandered into the room. Umm…I think I kinda gave us away. I’m not really all that great at sneaking around (I’m much better at being seen). And, well, I was kinda listening to music on my headphones pretty loudly. You’d be amazed how cool Suicide Commando and Unter Null sound when you’re hiking through pitch dark caves. ^_^ But I guess in the quiet of the caves the sound overflow was a little obvious. I’ll have to be more careful about that in the future. *blush*

I don’t really think it mattered much anyway. As usual we pretty much rushed the enemy full force. It was a nasty little fight. Noxious vapors nearly incapacitated us, but all of us except T-Bone were able to shake off the nauseating fumes. Poor T-Bone. He just doesn’t have a very strong stomach for these things. I used my power over life to make him feel better as soon as I could. ^_^

Honestly, though, the combat was kind of a big blur to me. I remember some sort of horrible Lovecraftian creature emerging from the cauldron…but it didn’t last long against the others after I stunned it with a burst of sunlight. I tried to get the formorians too…but the blinding light didn’t bother them. It just made them mad at me. One of these days, I’ll learn that trying that trick on giants just doesn’t work. I thought my powers had increased enough to make it worthwhile, but apparently formorians are tougher than the giants we’ve fought in the past. >_< On the brighter side, one of the formorians attacked me, and I actually managed to dodge! Amazing, huh? I guess being in all these combats really is making a difference. ^_^

Anyway, we managed to slay the giants.  Then, hoping that the noise of the fight hadn’t alerted the caverns’ other residents, we moved on, deeper into the caves…

(to be continued)