Day 10
Attending another meeting of the mages guild Alan manages to befriend a group of young mages planning a trip to the nearby nexus point for the summer solstice which is in four days time. This trip is half to use the power of the nexus to do some high level enchanting and half to drink beer and party (they're not exactly the smartest or most disciplined group of mages you ever met). Fortunately they are smart enough to have hired out some heavily armed mercenaries to escort them and if Alan picks up his fair share of the bill he's welcome to tag along. With a skip in his step Alan leaves the meeting but the motel is a bit too pricy for him on a regular basis so he moves to a rundown saloon on the other side of town.
Meanwhile Ian has spent the night quite happily in a holding cell at the sheriffs office and is due for processing this morning. They charge him with stealing the truck and attempting to kill Ramirez, Ian argues he only borrowed the truck and Ramirez was in the way of him returning it, and he sticks to that defence rigidly. If nothing else this confuses everyone else involved in the trial, but they take it as some sort of confession and put Ian in the prison whilst they decide on a sentence. David is in a coma in the prison hospital where he is being treated by a new player character, Matt.
Matt - a cyberdoc (doctor who specialises in cybernetics if that wasn't obvious from the name) who owned a shop in one of the southern towns of the county and is currently serving a three year sentence for, among other things, public nudity. He refuses to divulge any more information than that. With only one week left on his sentence and a long history of good behaviour he has been put to work in the prison hospital.
Unable to save David's crushed leg and with somewhat limited resources at the prison hospital Matt has little choice but to amputate David's left leg. With this done Matt's daily duties mostly consist of trying to maintain the poor quality equipment the hospital is supplied with, as well as assisting the rest of medical staff as necessary.
Outside of the prison Andy attends work at the bank as usual knowing that he must meet tonight with the gang who assaulted him. He goes to the bank, signs in and is put in the workshop with a variety of others to see what he can make out of the raw materials they have available for sale on their shop floor. He carries on as if nothing is out of the ordinary, finishes his first working day and proceeds to his meeting the trio who stabbed him the night before. His instructions were simply to go to a shack in the slums and when he arrives he sees it is a very unimpressive ten by ten structure with no windows.
Cautiously he pushes open the door and goes inside to find nothing but a chair sat in the middle of the room. He wanders round the interior of the shack but finding nothing of interest reluctantly decides to sit in the chair, at which point the door blows closed. After a few seconds he decides to get up and reopen it and in doing so discovers that the door now leads to a deep cavern where a variety of stone structures are built creating a small community where people wander around. This curious event draws Andy out of the shack, which has apparently been transported in it's entirety to this new location.
He watches the variety of people wander around this elaborate underground structure before he spots a recognisable face, the mountain giant who destroyed his makeshift workshop back at the mine, approaching him at speed. The mountain giant stands before him and instructs him into a temple like building at the far end of the cavern. Andy enters the temple to find the other three familiar members of the gang standing by whilst an elderly man floats in mid air on the other side of a large table. The man addresses him telepathically, Andy, however, is unimpressed by the elaborate arrangements of this meeting. The two of them enter an argument regarding the unfriendly way in which Andy has been treated thus far, with both sides seeming to think they deserve more respect from each other.
With the argument going nowhere the elderly man is suddenly ripped in half by an invisible assailant and moments later a giant green spider-like monster appears behind him, apparently having been invisible this entire time and using the man as a puppet. Andy seems unsure how to react to this latest bizarrely theatrical change to the meeting and as the giant spider asks "impressed yet?" Andy shrugs and says "I suppose". With the conversation making slow progress the mountain giant takes Andy from behind and stabs him in the neck. The giant spider informs him that they have just implanted a bomb into his spine and if he fails to cooperate with them they will detonate it. He is to draw them a detailed floor plan of the working area of the bank and report back to the shack the following night where he will receive further instructions.
Andy is promptly thrown out of the temple and presumably returns to the shack because the next thing he remembers is being inside and opening up the door to find himself back in the slums. With a sore neck and a throbbing headache Andy seems not one hundred percent sure that what he witnessed actually just happened so he returns to his motel room to sleep.
Day 11
Ian wakes up to his first day in prison and starting as he means to go on walks up to the first prison guard he sees and asks a series of innocuous questions about prison life. The guard answers happily enough and at the end of the questioning Ian says thank you and tells him his shoes are untied, which they aren't. The slightly confused guard then watches as Ian walks up to the next nearest prison guard and asks him the exact same questions again (yes, he really did) and ended that conversation by telling the guard his shoes are untied, which again they weren't. He proceeds to do this as many times as possible.
Meanwhile Matt continues to work off the last of his sentence as trouble free as possible and David remains in a coma. Alan continues his attempts to look for work and in a bid to get his hands on a dead body secures himself a custodians job at the hospital.
Andy on the hand goes in for his second day working at the bank. As he moves through the building he makes a rough sketch of the layout but decides to try and secure some help to get out from under the thumb of this gang. He goes about this in a slightly unusual way though and makes a gold statue of the giant spider-like d-bee he saw the previous night in the hope that somebody will recognise it. Nobody does, they just give him strange looks for his bizarre creation.
That night Andy returns to the shack in the slums and enters as before, but familiar with the set up he simply closes the door and opens it again. This time the door opens up onto a small desert island where the three gang members are lounging around in the tropical sun. Andy approaches and they give him a small device that they instruct he is to plug into the banks computer system so they can download the security schematic and access codes to all of the doors. They then shove Andy back into the shack and he finds himself back in the slums once more.
Day 12
At the prison Ian awakens to find himself being beckoned by a guy in an adjoining cell to join him for a private chat in a nearby supply closet. Without a thought in his head Ian follows him and the man introduces himself as Mouse. He goes on to explain that he represents somebody on the outside who is always looking to recruit new "help" and for prisoners he is the only outside contact they will have as he is the only psychic powerful enough to penetrate the protections that the psi-nullifiers and nega-psychics amongst the prison guard can offer. Mouse's boss can make prison life much more bearable for a few small favours. Ian hears him out, tells him his shoes are untied, picks up a mop from the cupboard and leaves, but before returning to his cell he jams the supply closet door closed using the mop, locking Mouse inside.
Andy awakens and comes to a decision he probably should have already come to and decides to actually seek help for his situation. He starts by going to the bank and talking to his would be boss. He takes out the giant spider-like d-bee model he made the previous day and puts it on the desk and tells the bank manager "that told me to rob the bank". The manager stares back at him in confusion and replies, "okay, is it telling you to do anything now?".
It's hard to express quite how poorly worded Andy's first attempt to explain his predicament was, you really had to be there, but eventually Andy manages to explain himself and presents his would-be boss with the device he was supposed to install into the banks computer system. The boss looks it over it, wraps his elongated fingers around it and snaps it in half. Andy explains he was hoping to use the device to trick the gang and at the very least it was evidence against them. The boss simply tells him that he should have explained that earlier. Unfortunately for Andy no sympathy is going to be found here and the boss calmly tell him that he can't risk the banks security, suggests Andy goes to the police and has him thrown out.
At the prison following his locking a fellow prisoner in a supply closet Ian is called in for psychological evaluation. He is requestioned regarding the truck incident but his story remains the same and with David in a coma it seems his version is what they are stuck with for now. However, several guards can attest to Ian's curious behaviour and they feel it is necessary to study his state of mind a little further. They begin with an inkblot test to which Ian gives the same response for every picture, a brief questionnaire follows to which Ian gives random and pointless answers to every question and the meeting ends, although as Ian leaves the room he makes sure to tell the psychiatrist that his shoes are untied, which they aren't.
Andy swings by the hospital on his way to the police station to look into getting the explosive removed from his spine, but a quick examination reveals that there is nothing there and only a flesh wound at the impact site. Andy runs to the police station and tells his tale to the man at the front desk who defers him to a deputy who takes him to a private room. The deputy asks Andy who it is that he is being forced to work for and Andy replies by showing him the spider-like d-bee statue and explains (exact wording) "when I first met him he was sucking all the juices from an old man" (I promise you, exact wording of what he told the deputy).
Fortunately rather than assuming he was a crazy person the deputy knew who Andy was talking about. The man in question is named Marvin and is not a giant spider, nor is he an old man, although he likes to appear as those two things. Truth is nobody has the slightest idea what he looks like as he is an extremely powerful psychic who only ever appears as visions or illusions to trick feeble minded individuals into doing his bidding. The four men Andy met are the only real members of his gang. He asks Andy if he knows a location of the gangs hideout. He doesn't. He asks if he knows anything about them, about their lives. He doesn't. He asks if he has any way of contacting them, of forcing them into a trap. He doesn't.
He asks Andy what exactly he's supposed to do about this. The sheriffs office is stretched pretty thin as it is, they aren't exactly in a position to put him into protective custody, the best they can offer is locking him up in the prison so they can keep an eye on him, an offer Andy refuses. On the plus side the gang have very high bounties on their heads so if Andy can help to trap them he could make some serious cash.
Disheartened Andy wanders the town making sure to stay to well lit crowded areas trying to find somewhere safe to spend the night. He ends up at 'The Truckers Saloon' a favoured dive of the various delivery, mercenary and general travelers that come through the town. The advantage here is that there are people coming and going all through he night so Andy finds himself a seat in the bar and settles in for the a night of drinking.
Coincidentally Alan has a room in this saloon but doesn't notice Andy as he returns from working in the hospital and goes up to bed. He enters his room and starts packing as tomorrow night he travels with his new mage friends to the mercenary town where they are to meet the group they will be flying out to the nexus point with. The nexus can be found in a dense patch of otherworldly jungle and during the solstice it's a dangerous place to be as a rift could open and anything could come through. Alan realises it's unfortunate he can't afford a gun, but figures he'll probably be okay.
Ian wanders back into the prison under the watchful eye of the guards who are now viewing him as some sort of special needs/straightjacket worthy case. Mouse also watches him return with disdain and immediately goes to contact his boss on the outside.
Matt wanders the hospital wing keeping an eye on his patients safe in the knowledge that he will be a free man in less than five days time. All he has to do is bide his time.
David wakes up.
More to come ... Session Six - Only The Good Die Young
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