Dramatis Personae

• Jamie J. Billings (NPC): Nonverbal. Mathematics savant. Communicates via a PDA. Shy. Tagline: “I Can Show You The Math.”
• Lynne C. Duane (NPC): Holder of Bachler’s degree in neurobiology Daughter of a famed neurosurgeon. Athletically gifted. Arrogant and overconfident. Tagline: “Of course I’m right. I’m smarter than you.”
• Tabitha E. “Tabbs” de Orellana (NPC): Latina from the Bronx. Aptitudes for mechanical engineering, chemistry, and materials science. Speaks her mind. Bossy and cocky, but not arrogant. Tagline: “No me respondas.”
• Warren P. Clark (NPC): Computer and electronics nerd. Very tall for his age (almost 6′) and big. Tagline: “Oh. What does this button do?”

Previously . . .

The group has finished at the med lab doing their experiments and are then treated to another large dinner of soups and grilled cheeses. Then to the evening activities where there are tables a puzzle set up on it, one for each table where each table has been set up for each cabin. Winners will be ranked by how fast they’ve finished them and those that aren’t finished by the end of the week will lose points for the cabin. Once back in the cabin, Harvey spends his time trying to solve it and manages to open it up, revealing an even smaller box, but they call for lights out before they can investigate the smaller box even further.

How Puzzling

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Camp Mareki Cabin C
Monday June 19th, 2000, 1930 hours
1898 Montauk Hwy, Montauk, NY 11954

After enjoying a midnight snack, most get woken up by their substitute counselor in the morning. On the schedule for the day will be breakfast, classes, lunch, presentation by Benjamin, free time, dinner, then evening activities. There’s a lot of people watching Benjamin, just waiting for him to talk, he gets through it but it’s not pretty. The group makes a choice between solving the puzzle and visiting the cavern again. They decide to go through with solving the puzzle, working fast determining that the numbers carved in the box are a part of the answer, that it’s a Fibonacci sequence triggering more and more competition between Cabins C and B as the puzzles get smaller and smaller, the latest one needing small tools to trigger the switches. They play rock paper scissors to decide who’d do the last switches with Fiona winning. . . only to miss at the end whereupon Lynn pushes her out of the way and does it. Inside the final box, it ends up being an very tiny origami depiction of a black swan. Cabin B flags down a counselor at the same time so they end up tying for the grand prize.

With two hours left of free time, they want to head back towards the cavern with Benjamin making sure to grab all the tools needed. Warren is already messing with the Geiger Counter that Harvey modified, with Harvey explaining why and how. He seems to think that Harvey discovered a new way to detect energy. Harvey and Fiona still want to run tests on animals or other campers. Harlowe is not happy to agree with this insisting that it’s unethical when Fiona throws another pinecone at Harlowe insisting that the cave made him weird. The rest decide the best thing to do is throw things at Harlowe to see what activates it.

To the Cave of Wonders

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Cave Underneath a Casemate
Tuesday June 20th, 2000, 0900 hours
2000 Montauk Highway, Montauk, NY 11954

They get to the cave and with the use of the rock, the stairway appears into ground into the cavern again. There’s still animal bodies on the ground though the only thing different is that there’s a raven floating around the lights, bobbing around it like a moon orbiting a star. The group gets up close to the raven and uses his machine to start detecting the energy levels in the cavern, the whole place is saturated with ridiculous amounts of energy with the closer they get to the center, the more energy is detected. Walking around inside, the group feels pretty good, even better when walking around barefoot and getting more and more body surface area touching the rocks. The bird is emitting about the same amount of energy as the campers are. When they think about going up, stairs emerge from around the central pedestal in a spiral.

Fiona asks what the group thinks would happen if she pokes the energy again with a flashlight while Harvey suggests just poking it with her hand and Benjamin suggests throwing a pinecone. Tabitha says that Fiona is going to kill them all before she throws the pinecone but it passes through harmlessly. She then jumps towards the orb but doesn’t get that close before she rebounds and passes out. Benjamin moves to pull Fiona gently away from the energy source so they don’t spend that much time as close to the energy source as they need to. The bird disappears from sight as Harvey starts collecting blood samples from the corpses around. Harlowe seems to hear a voice in his head saying that it’s wondering what is going to happen next and feels a weight on his shoulder. Harlowe assumes that it’s a camper screwing with him again and checks for pinecones around him, only for him to feel blocked on the left shoulder, hearing that he’s sitting there and doesn’t want to be knocked off. Assuming that it’s got to be the air down in the cavern, he tells the rest that he was going to head up and get some fresh air and to call if they need help dragging Fiona out.

Benjamin wants to figure out the rules of the orb as the pinecone was unaffected while Fiona was affected. Throwing a dead bird at the orb, it stops it dead in its track. Fiona wakes up and seeing Benjamin throwing things at the orb immediately suggests throwing her flashlight at it. As they speak, water starts creeping through the stairway hole in the ceiling and swirls around in a spiral as Harlowe gets to witness it coming through the hole. The voice from his shoulder says that’s weird. Fiona stands there watching the water with great interest as it forms a mobile that she can recall from being an infant and then pokes it to see if it will run along her fingertips. Benjamin has given up warning people against poking weird things. Harvey, having been taking energy measurements all the time, now gets weird measurements off of Fiona whenever she touches it or it swirls around. Fiona, curious, attempts to shape the water into the form of Ben’s face, creating an approximation of Ben out of the water which impresses him.

With Harlowe gone, Fiona lobs water at Harvey who complains about the machine getting wet and quickly wipes it down before chastising Fiona. She keeps messing around, seeing what she can do with water, including pulling it from Harvey’s shirt claiming that it’s like silly putty. The water itself is emitting a very slight amount of energy, especially when compared to the campers. Fiona suggests throwing a pinecone at her and tries to defend against it only for the water to come in a moment too late. Harvey keeps investigating things while Fiona plays around, at least until Harvey asks if anyone has thrown one of the stone balls at the orb which Fiona encourages.

Benjamin moves to throw a normal rock at the orb to see what happens, and it stops short unlike the pinecone. He moves back and throws one of the stone balls at it, missing the first throw but the second one makes it, the strange rock slows down and then slowly starts to become one with it like melting into warm water and becoming one with it, what’s left falls below the orb into a silvery substance that looks almost like mercury and a powdery residue which they suggest that Ben take a look at. It’s the same sort of material that one would find in bedrock and a few other bits and pieces that the combination of would be weird. It and the metal material seems like it would end up being the primary amount while the silvery metal is starting to congeal even though they can’t feel any heat from it. Ben plans on taking it with him after it had completely and totally cooled down.

They wonder where Harlowe had gone until they realize that Jamie is also gone, deciding that’s fine they go back to investigating the animal corpses, finding that the bodies are still warm and that the blood hasn’t coagulated yet. Harvey isn’t sure, but it seems like they might be in a coma which makes Ben feel a bit bad about the one that he threw at the energy orb. They slowly carry the animals out in waves using their backpacks, taking multiple trips out and gently placing them on the ground outside the bunker. Harlowe hears the voice again, saying that it’s weird that they’re hauling out the stuff and asking if Harlowe can hear it. Feeling a scratch against his cheek he slaps at his cheek causing something to hit the ground. Looking at it, he sees a small black kitten rolling around complaining about a lack of wings. . . and a tail. . . and that it seems to remember claws like those going after them before it disappears again and he feels a weight in his pocket calling it comfortable there. Looking to Jamie to confirm that he’s not crazy, Jamie is asking what’s in his pocket which Harlowe can only shrug about.

As the others pull out everything, with Lynn taking blood samples and Harvey taking energy samples, including of Harlowe’s pocket which is strange enough. Harvey asks what’s in there while Harlowe tells him he’s got no idea, if he wants to know then he can haul it out. Fiona attempts to direct some water into the pocket but misses, soaking the pocket causing whatever it is to stick its paw out and bat at things which cause the others to coo over the paw and attempt to coax whatever is in there out while Harvey repeatedly chastises Harlowe for finding a kitten and keeping it from them while Harlowe keeps telling them that if they want it then they’re free to dig it out of his pocket, but to be careful since he’s sure it’s also got paws. Fiona unleashes the fish from the cavern back into the ocean and then goes to take a swim out there much to Lynn’s displeasure while Fiona finds that the water is almost pushing her along at a speed that is near ridiculous.

While watching Fiona out in the ocean, Tabitha says that it’s pretty obvious by now that whatever happened to them in the cavern must have changed them completely, and no, not like puberty she tells Harlowe. Benjamin says it might not have changed all of them as he doesn’t feel any different. Tabitha points down at Ben’s feet where there’s small pebbles and a large rock floating around. Asking Fiona, as she’s back from her swim, how she does the water thing, he attempts it himself and ends up ripping a very large amount of rock out of the ground, almost 360lbs worth of it. He attempts to fiddle with it, stretching it around while Fiona insists that he try to make a sculpture of her now, he makes a bust of Fiona, rather well although it took him quite a bit more time by carving a chunk of granite with his bare hands.

Benjamin starts asking Harvey if he was able to build machines like that before the incident in the cavern which the says he wasn’t able to, definitely nothing like the Geiger Counter which came fully formed like a blueprint in his head, that had never happened before. Lynn starts screaming at the group to shut up since they’re all babbling, Benjamin diagnoses her with telepathy which Fiona immediately directs an insult at her mentally while Benjamin asks her mentally if she can hear things only for to realize that he isn’t speaking. She’s shocked at first before grinning evilly. Harvey asks if she can read the mind of whatever is in Harlowe’s pocket and she peers at the pocket, but she isn’t able to detect anything in the pocket mentally, it’s just like an empty space despite being able to get things from the animals that they carried out, the racoon being annoyed by the trout having gotten away. Tabitha and Warren haven’t shown any powers while Jamie says that he’s seeing numbers and asks if anyone else is, which is somewhat obvious that they aren’t.

Cabinbound

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Camp Mareki Cabin C
Tuesday June 20th, 2000, 0900 hours
1898 Montauk Hwy, Montauk, NY 11954

They head back to the cabin, and as Warren walks up the stairs gripping the rail, he ends up ripping it right out of the ground and falls over, the metal, the concrete and wood where upon Harvey asks Ben if he can fix it. It takes him a bit of time to blend the concrete and ground back together while Warren helps place it back into the ground. With everyone else busy elsewhere, it’s unlikely that other campers have seen it. The others start asking about what if the Counselor Steve also has powers.

Whatever is in Harlowe’s pocket starts vibrating and saying that it’s hungry and it starts making pitiful kitten noises which Harlowe would be more distressed by if it wasn’t for the fact that he can hear it talking about being lonely in an obvious attempt to manipulate him. He hangs his coat on the bunk and investigates the snack situation, debating that it he shouldn’t feed it tuna due to mercury and instead puts some jerky into a bowl with some water that draws it out of the pocket where it temporarily turns into a raven to fly over to the bowl and then mostly back into a kitten with feathers still sticking out. It enjoys the quick meal before somehow shifting back into Harlowe’s pocket, this time his pants pockets where it’s hanging out partially.

Eating Like A Moose

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Camp Mareki Mess Hall
Tuesday June 20th, 2000, 1830 hours
1898 Montauk Hwy, Montauk, NY 11954

At dinner, the catbird pops out of his pocket where the rest of the kids feed it bits of chicken and bread while Tabitha claims that it’s eating like a moose. Harvey has been keeping track of things and determines that their voracious appetite hasn’t been getting worse but they’re definitely eating at least twice as many calories as they really need.

After dinner they go to the evening announcement where they declare the winners, Cabins C and B were tied as winners where they split the points and came up with another prize along with a tie breaker round, or a puzzle-off. The prize is puzzles that have been machined from wood, resin, and metal that is mean to stimulate cognitive processes. They’ll hold the puzzle-off tomorrow so to bring their A-Games. To close out the night, they include a performance from some of the music kids which is quite nice.

The Next Day

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Camp Mareki Cabin C
Wednesday June 21st, 2000, 0830 hours
1898 Montauk Hwy, Montauk, NY 11954

Before lights out in the cabin, Benjamin experiments with his abilities using normal rocks to judge the distances before using the spherical rocks from the cavern, judging he can easily control them out to twenty feet. He’s able to easily manipulate the normal rocks and then feels that the spherical ones are resisting him until he feels it go away and he can control it to the point of stretching it but he isn’t able to cause it to snap apart. Fiona tries to use her powers to brush her teeth but ends up splashing herself in the eye.

Harvey tries to think about how to make the device better, coming out with some plans to make it far more compact and better to which he speaks with Warren about if they can do it. Warren is utterly confused at the detector part, calling it garbage, but mostly because he cannot follow it. Fiona wonders if it’s Harvey that’s powering the machine or if it’s actually a working machine, a quick experiment shows that it’s a normal working machine. Warren says that he can probably find everything they need in the electronics lab which they should probably wait until a proper free period to scavenge things from instead of breaking into it.

Going to sleep, Harlowe feels something curl up on his neck and start purring. The next day they get woken by Margaret and some food. They’ve got a free period in the morning and classes in the afternoon. Warren and Harvey go off to the electronics lab for parts while Lynn and Fiona head to the science lab to run tests on the blood. Tabitha, dragging Harlowe along, goes to the mess hall to explain they need some extra food since Warren is going through some growth spurts. She convinces the chef to give them some of the fried chicken from the previous night as it tasted great and not at all like southern chicken.

Aftermath

Benjamin keeps working with things to try to identify the rock powder and the metal. The stone powder is a combination of multiple stones like granite, gneiss, and random other stones in microscopic amounts that were almost, for lack of better terms, forge welded together which lost the cohesion when it hit the orb in the cavern. The metal, on the other hand, is something that he has never seen before and never heard of anything like it, the crystalline structure is nothing like he’s ever seen before. Whatever it is made from is extremely densely packed to the point where it breaks any tools, he attempts to use to break off more samples beyond the tiny bead that hadn’t joined with the others. Testing his abilities, he pushes himself and causes a metal paperclip to bend and unbend indicating that his powers also work on metal with effort while attempting it on the weird metal makes it feel like something is going to give, it rocks slightly, and then nothing happens. He tries tapping the weird rock against the weird metal and both glow slightly, almost imperceptibly so, as though it’s in sync and then knocks the metal against a table which causes the metal to glow even more. He’s pretty sure by now, that whatever the rock is, it’s a type of ore for the weird metal.

Lynn constantly berates Fiona through the whole time that they’re running tests on the blood samples. All the blood tests they do all have the same mysterious element in them, the same protein and the minerals.

Harvey and Warren bring back all the parts they need and work on improving their machine. Putting together a device about the size of a Walkman that’s now water resistant. It doesn’t have as much operating duration as the previous Geiger Counter, but it’s much cleaner and the data feeds into a separate memory card they can look at later on a computer.

After Action Report (GM)

This was another (somehow) slow burn session and I did what I could to split time between exposition and letting the PCs decide where the session went. I *think* everyone had fun doing this sort of powers exploration and I hinted at some of the abilities the NPCs gained and in two cases downright exposed them. The addition of the catbird (craven? reline?) was me being at my most amusing as Chris D. has a character named Amos in another game that has a feline familiar named Hobbes, so his character in *this* game – Hobbs – has a animal friend named Amose (because he lost the E and the raven-thing picked it up).

Other than inside jokes there was lots of speculation about Atlantis, what the metal and metal ore was, powers, and much more. Lots of fun to be had there especially if I decide some of it is true.

Other Notes

None.

Soundtrack

“The Cave” by Mumford & Sons
“Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root
“As the Raven Flies” by Dan Fogelberg