Dramatis Personae

• Chessur (NPC): It’s a cat! It’s a bird! It’s a Catbirb!. Powers: Unknown. Tagline: “Chirp?”
• Jewel C. Collins aka “GigaJewel” (NPC): “Reformed” Criminal. Science Experiment. Bit scatterbrained . Power: Electrokinesis. Tagline: “I’m just wild about his crazy clothes.”

Previously . . .

They’re current in Manhattan attempting to determine where they’re supposed to be going to get to this magical library. There’s several locations that have been marked on the map as it seems to be that it shifts locations. For some strange reason, Harlowe’s harmonica is now vibrating with no discerning airflow occurring. As they walk towards Central Park, the people they pass on the street seem to stop and sing A Whiter Shade of Pale for some undiscernible reason.

There’s an oddness in the air that feels static-y to their brains like a mental white noise. Like fingertips are itching like they’re about to step through a window or door. Flit can’t be sure, but it feels like everything is now some kind of spatial anomaly, or they’re in the middle of one like the entire city is an anomaly. Now that Flit has noticed it, she can determine that it’s just building on itself, noting that it’s in the tune of G, the note that tends to affect extra-dimensional beings. She’s also hearing a C and a G and a third harmonic underneath that. Harlowe can pick up on the C-note from his harmonica, a G-note from the surroundings, and a deeper note from elsewhere pulsing rapidly. The harmonica is still emitting the note, though not as insistent.

Central Park

Flit, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Corner of 13th Avenue and 71st Street
Sunday, May 17th, 2020, 1200 hours (EST) 
Central Park, Manhatten, NY

Flit is pretty sure this is the precursor of something coming and wants to open a window to see what it is. Reaching out with her ability, creating a hole in the local time-space and increases it slowly. She starts getting flashes of other places and things, rapidly going through like someone is changing the television channel every second and it’s hurting her eyes, ears, sense of smell and taste are off and she can feel a different vibrational note coming from it like she just messed up something that someone else is attempting. She asks, bleeding from several orifices, if she should continue only for Fiona to tell her to stop. Fiona, instead, reaches out for the water in the vicinity to feel for vibrations around them to find the center of it. She’s able to feel the vibration of water all vibrating to a bass note. A few seconds of Fiona reaching out towards it and something emerges from below the park, permeating the ground, looking like an egg-shaped pod that’s over twenty feet long.

The Library Lost

Flit, Fiona, Harlowe, and Harvey
Abandoned Atlantean Library
Sunday, May 17th, 2020, 1230 hours (EST) 
Unknown

Fiona places a hand on it causing a doorway to appear in the side, everything in pure white. There’s some discussion before everyone steps into the pod. They find themselves in a torus shaped room with a glowing liquid silver orb in the center. The with the harmonica and Chessur starts vibrating harder as they approach the core. Stairs appearing as Fiona thinks about them with Flit trying to convince her to think about the weird stairs optical illusion. The closer they get, the more pronounced the vibrations are, though background noises, including their footsteps, are diminished. Fiona leans in close and sings a nursery rhyme. Fiona’s face emerges from the sphere and starts singing as well. When asked for a dewy decimal code for alien invasions, it responds it doesn’t understand.

A few questions more and it’s determined that it’s the interface for the Library. When Fiona asks where Atlantis’s largest military encampment is at the moment and a silvery tendril extends from the orb showing Fiona that Atlantis slipped away from the current dimension tens of thousands of years ago. She asks what caused the Trans-Atlantic Pulse only for it to have no data. She asks about Atlantean structures in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and gets several back that are deeply covered. When asking when the most recent accesses to the library occurred, the information was deemed to be recent but anything further is removed, something that only a high lord could do. When Fiona asks if she would be able to do it, a pillar appears with a hole in it that she sticks her hand down into, feeling something sharp jab her in the palm, something feels hot and cold and then it releases her arm.

It acknowledges Fiona’s lineage and becomes more reactive as pieces and panels of the walls come around displaying things in weird symbols, Fiona asks if it can translate the information to modern-day English, at least most of it as several things are untranslatable and it’s unable to teach Fiona it without there being some major brain damage. The panels are showing real-time data and what looks like satellite imagery. Fiona learns that Atlanteans are subspecies of humans rather than the other way around. When asked why Atlanteans would attempt to conquer them, it’s revealed that they are seeking the Obelisk whose current whereabouts are unknown and the information on its last location and sighting are unknown, but it was last in the possession of Aule-Dar. It’s unable to answer more questions about finding more information on the Obelisk.

Fiona asks that they register her friends as “servitors” and the pedestal with a hole appears again, taking samples and registering it starting with Harvey, Flit, and then Gigajewel. Harlowe, on the other hand, keeps watching them. He’s determined the patterns on the surfaces of the orb as they go through the questions asked, the responses, figures that it takes a DNA sample and probably even a kyberic sample that’s backed up. Eventually placing his hand in the hole, it has to literally drill into his hand to get the sample, complete with friction and carbon burns when he withdraws it. Fiona asks for Atlantean High Court fashion only to show it from ten thousand years back when it suddenly alarms that there’s a dimensional breech.

A few requisitions later, they have satellite view of the harbour where they see the water churning and swirling upwards and downwards at the same time. Fiona requests off-site access to the library, getting a sphere that connects to her hand with little tendrils an inputs how it’s used directly into her brain. It’s a form of ansible that can connect to others. It also mentions it can connect to other locations to release them from the Library. While Fiona is asking them these questions, Harvey is asking for information on biology and genetic samples that it may have taken, but is denied the latter. Questioning how Kyberic Energy empowers a person with powers, it runs a large amount of data in front of him rather fast. Harlowe, meantime, determines that it can interface with his phone and on top of that he gets it to get him Atlantean laws, an operating manual, a compressed version of what’s in the Library onto his phone along with a keychain sized version of the ansible that allows them to get back to the Library. His phone flashes upgrade complete and then also flashes into another language and back to English repeatedly.

Aftermath

Stepping through the door, they look at the harbour with Fiona jumping in to see what’s happening with the water. It’s doing water things, almost like it’s tidally locked from beneath and above. While watching it, Flit suddenly feels sick before it stops and everything is still. A reverberating sound echoes from the center of the phenomenon and then a spherical construct appears out of nowhere, looking almost like the Library but far larger. At first, it was almost half a mile away from them, though it’s been slowly looming closer with no wake left behind it. Harvey, flying above, notes that it’s got a mild depression on top but otherwise smooth.

Questioning the Library, it notes that it’s an interdimensional transportation vessel. Library says it likely has some anti-personnel countermeasures and Harlowe or Fiona can get information on what its capabilities are. There’s some conversation about approaching it or flying over while it comes ashore, causing no real damage to the craft or the beach. Getting over to it on the Brooklyn side of the river, about two hundred yards away from the ocean. Some doors open and several bipeds emerge as the vessel itself goes completely invisible. Some of the bipeds press something on their waists and they’re dressed in American style clothing. The beings are radiating kyberic energy, though the ship is also kind of not-emitting it but possibly because it’s got some kind of stealth suite going on. The half-dozen of them are currently walking together with the team following them.

After Action Report (GM)

I was jazzed up to run today. We started at the normal time, but didn’t get really going till late. Everyone was catching up and I don’t put a stop to that – helps set the bonds of friendship for your players. The game was getting toward the end of the arc and I started the PCs in medias res (as I am want to do) and we got right to it. Had to do a bit of handholding as it’s been so damn long since we played, but got there and I got to introduce something I’ve been planning since 2016. Eight years. Eight damn years and I finally got to break it out where it could be seen by a player. OOF

The players spent forever doing what players do when they get a new toy in game: playing with it. And you gotta let ’em as the GM. It’s in the bylaws of Gaming. Still, toward the end it was good and we built up toward a finale two sessions hence.

Other Notes

None.

Soundtrack

“Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum
“Harbor Lights” by Boz Scaggs