High Fantasy Modern Storyhour - The Long Road (updated December 7)

October 30, 2005
4:00pm

(This entry will be a little briefer than usual, to help speed things along).

Raine contacts the group and tells them that she has gotten a little information. The man Robert killed is a British mercenary, known to be employed with a group of militant Canadian survivalists. U.S. Customs reports that they crossed into the states a few days ago. On a hunch, she checked Alaska’s border too, and found that a member of the same group was in Alaska in the right window to have shot Terry’s girlfriend. She doesn’t have any way to track them beyond that, though, but she suspects several more assassins may be in New Orleans.

Annoyed at hiding, John says he’s heading out. Robert tells him to be careful, but Nathan sees no immediate danger.

John goes to a business in the French Quarter, a small restaurant with a book store in back. A little over a month ago he received a letter, unsigned, saying he should come to this store in New Orleans for answers. The letter contained enough knowledge of the faint memories and fractured dreams John has been having for as long as he can remember that John is worried. Either the guy will tell him some secret about himself, or John will beat out of him an answer for how he knows so much. He finds it no coincidence that he has stumbled upon magic just as he was on his way here.

Unfortunately, for some reason John cannot enter the book store. A sign next to the door says, “Only those who are full will be allowed to shop. Please give your patronage to Parish’s Grill before coming in.”

Fullness is not something John is familiar with. He has never enjoyed the taste of food – it tastes like ashes to him, and while he knows that’s not how food is supposed to taste, he doesn’t understand how he knows. Try as he might, he cannot force himself to walk through the doorway into the bookstore. Irritated, he sits down in the restaurant, orders a large meal, and eats. The waitress senses something odd about him, and keeps offering him new dishes. He keeps eating until he starts to feel physically ill, then he pays and tries to go into the bookstore again.

He still can’t.

Finally he calls the others and tells them to come with him. They too have trouble getting in at first, except Terry, who had eaten his fill of Nana’s shrimp po-boys. Terry confirms that there is some defensive magic on the threshold. The rest of the group eats at the restaurant, and with John standing in the middle of them they’re able to press into the bookstore.

The young lady manning the desk tells them that the barrier’s meant to keep out vampires, since vampires are eternally hungry. This causes Nathan to jokingly say that John must be a vampire, not an angel.

At that, the woman manning the store realizes who John is, and she gets nervous and apologetic. She’s vaguely familiar with the whole Terra/Gaia thing, and she says that the store owner went to Gaia a little over a week ago to get a book for when John came, but he never came back. John is irritable, because he just wanted to find out what was up, not have to go track down a guy trapped on Gaia just to get some answers.

The rest of the group, however, is enthralled, since the store actually sells spellbooks, in addition to all manner of obscure and rare works of fiction.

“Is it legal to sell these?” Robert asks.

The shopkeeper looks at the stack of spellbooks Robert has picked up, which cover pretty much every major tradition of magic. “No one’s stopped us so far. You realize this one’s written in Arabic, right?”

Robert shrugs. “It looked important. How much will it be?”

The shopkeeper rings up the books. “$1,344.76.”

“Jesus,” Terry says. “Are you planning on learning magic now or something?”

Robert shakes his head. “What? No. Magic isn’t real. What are you talking about?”

John smokes while the rest of them shop, and feels hungry.


After the sun sets, Nathan drives the group to the St. Louis cemetery, home of the crypt of Marie LaVeau, voodoo queen of New Orleans. Balthazaar and Scarpedin have gone off to the Audubon Zoo, and the group gets intermittent phone calls from Scarpedin. Time passes slowly, with the group hanging out near Marie LaVeau’s tomb as tour group after tour group goes by. From the look of things, they’ll be here all night.

Then, at 1 in the morning at the zoo, Balthazaar gives them a call. A group of Frenchmen and a group of local Rastafarians met at the jaguar enclosure, and their deal went sour. Guns blazed, one Rasta man fell into the jaguar enclosure, and the jaguars pounced on him. Balthazaar and Scarpedin took one of the French men prisoner and found out that they were trying to buy a key to LaVeau’s tomb from the Rastafarians, but the key was on the guy who is now being eaten by jaguars.

Thankfully for them, Scarpedin has a sword. Balthazaar says they have the key in their possession.

The rest of the group continue to wait at the cemetery, with Robert reading the books he bought while Terry gives John a basic lesson on how healing magic works. To Terry’s surprise, John seems to have a knack for it, which should not be possible since he doesn’t have a ghost. Nathan, of course, insists that he has seen John’s aura, and that John is either an angel or a vampire, so it’s natural he’d be good at healing.

It’s nearly 4 in the morning, and they send John off to get coffee for the group. When he returns, he says that there was a group of cops looking at Nathan’s BMW, talking on walkie-talkies. Nathan is about to go see what the problem is, when the group as a whole suddenly decides they should move away from the tomb. Terry and John are the first to break out of it, recognizing that someone was charming them. They alert the others and Terry dispels the charm, and then they hurry back to the tomb, just in time to see two guys with a cutting torch, trying to cut their way inside.

October 31, 2005
Halloween
4:13 am

Shotguns blast, magical fire sears the air, tomb-robbers are hurled telekinetically into the sides of tombs, and in the end, a pair of Frenchmen are carted off by some very suspicious cops.

"I have permits for all of these," Nathan says, opening his duffle bag.

He pulls out his own pistol, his back-up pistol, the shotgun, and, most important, his bounty hunter's license.

"I'd like to turn these men over for attempting to deface a New Orleans monument," Nathan adds.

There's something incongruous about a British bounty hunter in a New Orleans cemetery that makes the cops laugh. Their good spirits, combined with Robert's excellent fast talking, keeps them from realizing John has been carrying a pair of illegal silenced pistols, taken from two separate dead people.

There is, of course, the matter of Nathan's car. The cops apologize since he's being so polite, but the car was reported in a hit-and-run earlier that day. Nathan shows them that, clearly, his car is completely undamaged. He invites them to inspect it as closely as they want, and he even volunteers to go with them down to the station to figure out what caused the mix-up.

As for the rest of the group, they only had a little while to talk to the prisoners before the cops showed up, but they found out a lot through a little magical reading, a bit of compulsion, and a bit of strong-arming. The men were Knights of the Round, a kin that Terry equates to the Klu Klux Klan, only they hate non-humans, rather than non-white non-Christian people. Some are more or less violent in their hatred, and these two seemed generally unwilling to kill anyone.

They said they were contacted by a group of Canadians who wanted something from the tomb of Marie LaVeau, though the Knights of the Round didn't know what. The Rastafarians, members of a local neo-Voodoo cult, had offered to sell the key to the old witch's tomb, but the deal went south, so the Knights had decided to just force their way into the tomb.

Every one in the group decides to leave well enough alone and not try to see what the Canadians wanted. Even when Scarpedin and Balthazaar show up with the key, they only briefly look inside. Terry senses no magic items, no secret panels, and anything that might have been there has long since already been looted, even Marie's body. After all, the tomb has been the focus of reverence for over a century.

The group goes back to Belladonna's house and tries to get some sleep, so they can be ready for when they head over to Gaia the next morning. When they wake, Nathan is back, and he's nervous. He's fairly confident he was followed on the way back from the police station the night before, though he has not yet had a premonition to warn him of danger. Belladonna reminds him that she had Nana put a spell on the house to protect them from harm, though Terry seems dismissive of the old woman's possible magical abilities.

Just then, they see an armored van parked across the street. The driver is watching the house through binoculars, and as soon he sees them looking back, he drives off.

Balthazaar calls, and tells them they should try to be ready by noon. The last thing they want is to get stuck on Gaia in New Orleans, on Halloween, after night fall.

Everyone says they're ready, except for a disbelieving Scarpedin.

"Are you kidding?" he says. "There are going to be vampires over there. You can't be too prepared. We need holy water, and crosses . . . the older the better. I saw a church in the French Quarter. Had a big cross on top."

"The one in Jackson Square?" Belladonna asks. "The St. Louis Cathedral?"

"Yeah. We need to get that cross off. Do you think we can rent a cutting torch from Home Depot? Dammit, you should have taken the French guys' one last night."

The group is at a loss for words.

Ten minutes later, they're in Nathan's car, on the way to Home Depot.


End of Fourth Session

Great This is a fun read.

October 31, 2005
Halloween
Noon

“First,” Balthazaar says, “accept nothing offered by anyone over there.”

“Why?” Robert asks.

Terry answers, “Gifts on Gaia carry a special weight, a power. If you accept a gift, the giver has power over you, no matter how slight. A simple mage might just be able to charm you more easily. An actual fey could lure you off into the woods and keep you there for a few decades.”

“Alright,” Robert says, matter-of-factly. “No gifts.”


“I am the clown with the tear-away face,
“Here in a flash and gone without a trace.

“I am the ‘who’ when you call, ‘Who’s there?’
“I am the wind blowing through your hair.

“I am the shadow on the moon at night,
Filling your dreams to the brim with fright.”


They are gearing up, in Belladonna’s house, just outside the French Quarter. A super soaker filled with holy water, UV lamps, lunch boxes filled with emergency food and water, and a bevy of crosses are stacked on top of the table. Scarpedin is sulking that they ultimately decided against scaling the steeple of the St. Louis cathedral, and he is currently skimming a book on vampire lore, making occasional noises of revelation.

John is smoking, brooding. Belladonna is dressed in easy-going blouse and jeans, surprisingly beautiful even while dressing down. Robert can’t help but notice that Terry keeps stealing glances at her.

After a moment of thought, Robert asks, “Gifts: does that include food?”

“Especially food,” Balthazaar says.

Robert grumbles, remembering the turkey legs Wiji-wiji offered them back at the Renaissance Festival, and the gold Japanese coin he still has.

“What?” Terry says.

“Nothing,” Robert says. And when he says it, he’s convincing.

“If you must take something,” Balthazaar explains, “first offer something in return. The problem is, if they accept your offer, you may feel a compulsion to follow through, so you might want to have some pocket change at ready hand.

“Second,” Balthazaar continues, “do not stray out of the French Quarter. There at least you will find mostly humans. The swamps beyond are wild. Never be led astray by lights in the distance.

“Third, there are no clear, sunny days in New Orleans on Gaia. Even at noon, there is the chance we could encounter a vampire, though they and other creatures of the night seldom go out without good reason.”

“Bring ‘em on,” Scarpedin says.

Balthazaar scowls at the interruption.

“Also,” he says, “electronic devices won’t work unless they’ve been specially designed to keep magical energies from disrupting them. You may as well leave your cel phones here.”

Everyone declines, except John, who has no phone. This is the 21st century, after all.

“Anything else?” Robert asks.

“Yes.” Balthazaar grows very grave. “The lives of as many as twenty Bureau agents here in New Orleans are on the line. Please, if you are not willing to take this responsibility seriously, or if you aren’t willing to take a risk for others, I would prefer if you’d stay behind rather than become another liability. If you’re only coming along for curiosity, you can wait until the situation is less dangerous. We have no way of knowing what we’ll find over there.”

“We should be fine,” Nathan offers confidently. “I haven’t had a vision.”

Nathan then immediately reels and slumps face down. Belladonna catches him before his head smacks into the table. He pops back up almost instantaneously. Robert eyes him with doubt. While he has fully accepted that all he’s seeing is real, he wants the others to keep thinking he’s having a hard time adapting.

“You have ‘a vision?’” Robert asks.

Nathan nods. “Nothing major. We should just go outside before we hop to Gaia. This house is raised, and Scarpedin would have broken his leg from the fall if we’d just gone from the living room.”

“Would not,” Scarpedin says. “Hey, Robot, why are you coming along?”

“People are trying to kill me,” Robert says. He laughs. “I’m not leaving myself alone until I know I’m safe.”

Belladonna smiles and speaks up for the first time since she had earlier yelled at Scarpedin for wanting to vandalize her city. “I hate to say it, but Scarpedin is right, deary. You’ll be safe in my house, and we all know you’re not comfortable with this whole magic thing.”

Terry shakes his head. “Robert, you can come along. I think it’s better if we all stay together and, I dunno . . . I trust you. Balthazaar, if you’re trying to say you think Robert is a liability. . . .”

“No,” Balthazaar says. “He handled himself surprisingly well yesterday, both with the assassin and the tomb robbers, and he’s not afraid to kill if he has to.”

“Actually,” Robert says, “I am. But, y’know, thanks for the creepy vote of confidence Terry. Alright, can we get going.”

“Outside,” Nathan reminds them.

This time, the trip to Gaia is controlled, safe. The backyard of Belladonna’s house is shrouded in mist for a moment, and when the mist fades, a lusher, thicker world surrounds them. The air presses in with thousands of enticing scents, and even the distant stench of dead fish somehow manages to make everything else seem more lavish. The sky is a thick gray overcast, an even this early in the day it sounds like a thousand parties are going on just a few hundred feet away in the French Quarter.

The ground at their feet is wild and marshy. Looking behind them, they see just a few hundred feet away from the French Quarter there is nothing but an endless swamp of cypress trees, hanging moss, and invisible creatures stirring the surface of thick waters.

Balthazaar leads the way, out of the soggy marsh and onto Fontaine Street. The architecture here is nearly identical to that on Terra, but the stones and stucco seem more tactile, and every direction is teeming with magic. A two-foot high cockroach appears from an alley and barks at them like a dog before scuttling away as Scarpedin looms after it. People roam the streets dressed in a strange mixture of the fashion of 1800s South and Harry Potter – robes layered over gentlemen’s suits and ladies’ corsets, staffs and wands alongside hip sabers and dueling pistols. A few normal-looking people are scattered here and there, including a boisterous trio of men smoking thick cigars and shouting insults at any fairy they see.

And there are many magical creatures. Tiny sprites with alligator heads scurry across roofs, and wretched beings that look like Gollum offer bits of worthless trash to street vendors, begging for meals. As the group turns toward Decatur Street, they are offered beads by a woman whose skin is gold, green, and purple, and whose breasts sway as expressively as her hands as she tries to convince them to accept her gift. Several of the roaming humans are accompanied by ghosts, the spectral companions who provide their magic, though the ghosts seem taken from every era of the city’s history, from Confederate soldiers to French trappers to modern street performers. At one store window, a shopkeeper tries to drive off a group of faintly-visible ghosts trying to see their reflection. Balthazaar tells them that, here in New Orleans on Gaia, mirrors are never sold.

Blues fills the air, seeming to intuitively fade out or swell at the dramatically appropriate moments. In the distance they can hear horns of great steamships plying the Mississippi, the cheers of blind men cheering nymph strippers on Bourbon street, the faint hints of pleased moans drifting down from second story windows.

At every storefront, on every corner, even in the streets, eerie hints of a Halloween on the way lurk in shadows, as if the city itself is transforming for the holiday, with no need for anyone to put up decorations or carve a pumpkin. Everyone they see seems anxious, both afraid and exhilarated about the party sure to happen that evening.

Three times people recognize Balthazaar and cross the street, looking for convenient doorways to slip into to avoid his gaze.

As they near Jackson Square – called Fleur Square on Gaia – a thick cloud passes overhead just as a horse-drawn cart carrying golden lanterns breaks a wheel behind them. The whole group turns at the sound, and then they hear a voice from an alley, whispering to them.

They look forward again, and Terry calls out, "Who's there?"

A hooded figure glides out from the shadows of the alley, blocking their path.

The entity is the size of a man, its long robes hovering a few inches off the ground, swaying in the limp wind, as if something was roiling beneath them. Its face is hidden in impossibly deep shadows under its hood. It holds a lantern in one hand, and extends its other hand, palm up and empty, offering.

“I have a message.”

Its voice is at once cracked and wet, like a man dying of thirst in a flood. And, hearing its offer, each of them knows that it possesses a great secret, and that all it wants in return is a part of their mind, a secret of their own.

Terry Abrams
Tough 1/Dedicated 3/Mage 2. Male human; CR 5; HD 5d6+1d10+12; hp 38; AC 13 (+3 Defense); Base Atk +3; Grapple +3; Atk +4 (d6 brawl); SA magic; SV Fort +4, Ref +1, Will +8; Str 10, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 14, Cha 12. Action Points 9. Dmg Threshold 17. Wealth +6.

Starting Occupation: Adept (class skill – Knowledge (popular culture)).

Skills, Feats, and Talents: Knowledge (popular culture) +7, Knowledge (arcane lore) +9, Read/Speak Languages (French, Gaelic, Old English), Spellcraft +4. Arcane Skills, Brawl, Movement Specialization (teleport), Improved Damage Threshold, Iron Will, Sixth Wind. Traditions – Christian Healer, Classical Fey. Skill Emphasis (Knowledge (arcane lore), Second Wind, Faith.

Magical Skills: Charm +4, Cure +8, Defend +5, Illusion +6, Move +9. Tradition specialization (Classical Fey).

Signature Spells:

• Feywalk – Move 10/Gen 2. Up to 12 creatures within 10-ft. of you travel to Gaia. This is an overpowered spell, so Terry usually spends an action point when casting it. Classical Fey tradition.
• Never Again – Cure 12/Gen 0. A creature you touch heals 2d6 points of damage. This is an overpowered spell, so Terry usually spends an action point when casting it. Christian Healer tradition.
• Merely a Flesh Wound – Cure 4/Gen 1. A creature within 30 ft. heals 1d4 points of damage, as if treated with the Treat Injury skill. Classical Fey tradition.
• Knight's Armor – Defend 5/Gen 0. A creature you touch gains a +4 enhancement bonus to AC for 1 minute.
• Be Cool – Charm 1/Gen 3. Creatures in a 10-ft. radius, up to 30 ft. away, must make a Will save or have their attitude shifted two steps more friendly for 10 minutes. Classical Fey tradition.
• Tap Tap – Move 4/Gen 0. For the next minute, the affected creature can teleport up to 10 ft. one time. Classical Fey tradition.

Tactics: Terry is not a combatant. In a fight, he'll either try to charm people to calm down, or will protect allies with magic. Ever since Lin died, he's been practicing his curative magic, never wanting again for someone he cares about to die next to him. In his youth, though, Terry was a bit of a rebel, so if he has to, he can brawl.

Trying again, this time smaller so as not to peeve people off.

Halloween


"Is it dangerous?" John asks.

Scarpedin follows up with, "Should I kill it?"

Balthazaar steps to the front of the group and gestures for the rest to keep back. He raises a defiant eye to the faceless creature.

"We want none of your tricks, fey. Step aside if you know what's good for you."

"I know many things."

Its right hand eerily rotates, independent of the rest of its arm, from palm up to palm down. It points to John.

"The message is for you," it says, "but you have refused it."

"What is it?" Nathan asks. "We can't very well pay for something if we don't know what it is."

Balthazaar huffs. "That's what it wants. It's a Secret-Keeper."

The fey cringes as Balthazaar names it. Despite being faceless, it looks almost chagrined. It shakes its head to Nathan and Scarpedin. The hood sways, and perhaps light hits something within its shadows, but none of them can see what it was.

Belladonna takes a cautious step behind Terry. "Should I start reciting Latin prayers? I hear the fey don't like that."

"Only in England," Balthazaar says, "where we hate the Catholics. Fey in New Orleans would probably give you a sermon. But this creature is not from here. Where are you from, fey?"

It bends at the waist in a strange bow, its lower robes actually floating higher off the ground. Hesitant, it withdraws its hand and tucks the lantern into its robes, then twists to gaze eyelessly at Terry and Robert.

"Balthazaar?" Terry says, his voice cracking.

"Ask it a question. Every fey has something that is anathema to it. This one peddles secrets and abhors questions."

"Alright," Terry says. "Um . . . how did you know to find us?"

Everyone turns to Robert, who looks like he's freaking out. "Why should I ask it a question? I don't understand what the-"

Then suddenly, while their gazes were turned away, the Secret-Keeper vanishes. After a shiver of concern passes through the group, Robert relaxes visibly. The cloud overhead passes, and they look around for signs of the fey.

John shakes his head. "Why can't I help think that we just screwed up?"

There is relatively little discussion as Balthazaar leads them on to the Bureau office. Fleur Square is eerily empty, a black blight, a muddy square patch of dirt surrounded by an iron fence here on Gaia, where the St. Louis cathedral dominates Jackson Square on Terra. Humans linger around it, but the magical races seem warded off by the iron.

"Balthazaar, Terry," Scarpedin asks, "tell me what it is with fey and iron. They seem to have some sort of aversion to heavy metals. Do you think we should get some titanium? Tungsten?"

"Ah, probably not," Terry says.

"Quiet," Balthazaar says. "We're being followed."

"Oh, right," Robert says. "Because the best thing to do when people are following you is to suddenly get quiet and nervous. That'll never tip them off. Seriously, you do this for a living?"

John laughs. "He's right, though. They backed off when the fey showed up, but there are two guys skirting the edge of the square, watching us. Don't look, Terry."

"Sorry," Terry says. "I'll act casual."

He is not good at acting casual.

"Wait a minute," Nathan says. "Who are these guys? How come people already want to kill us over 'ere?"

Balthazaar says nothing.

John says, "They want to kill Balthazaar, not us."

Robert sucks his teeth and winces. "Best news I've heard all day."

The building that houses the Bureau office is the same on Gaia as on Terra -- a bar on the outside, with offices within -- but here it's abandoned. Balthazaar checks the door with some sort of amulet to see if it's warded, and then he opens it. The group presses past him, slipping inside the darkened bar from the relative brightness of Decatur Street. A few passers-by watch them for a moment, then hurry away, not wanting to get involved in Bureau business.

Robert looks for a light switch, but finds nothing. He pulls a window curtain open, but the window itself is painted black.

Balthazaar lights an electric lamp and holds it up. There are candle mounts on the walls, unlit hanging oil lanterns scattered around the room, and heavy curtains over the blackened windows. The others turn on flashlights, but some of the lights don't work on the first attempt. Terry comments that he feels like he's in a horror movie.

Balthazaar shushes him, then points past the bar to the dark passage to the next room. Shadows cling physically to the walls of the room despite their flashlights, and there is definite magic about.

"The stairs are in the next room," Balthazaar says. "Keep close. John, keep an eye on the front door."

They take five steps inward, and are just passing a table with the chairs on top of it, when Balthazaar casually reaches up and catches the vampire that was leaping at him. No one else had even spotted it, but before it can even swipe at him, Balthazaar swings the creature to the floor and plants a foot on its chest, then draws a wooden stake and drives it into the vampire's heart. The undead screams and flails, lashing up with its hand, clawing Balthazaar on his cheek before falling still.

"Is that a real vampire?" Robert says. "Sh*t, you just killed a man."

"No." Balthazaar shakes his head. "This is just spawn. Undead, but a thrall to a true vampire."

"Are there any more?" John asks.

"Uh," Terry says, nervous, "I sense something."

Belladonna holds a cross and vials of holy water, looking around nervously. Nathan has a shotgun and flashlight and is sweeping the room methodically. John grabs the supersoaker full of holy water from Terry and quickly strafes one wall with a thin stream. Halfway through his shot, there is a sizzle and a hiss. The shadows on the walls peel away and another vampire spawn scrambles out of the path of the holy water. John sprays again, but the spawn leaps into the air and lands on the ceiling. It hisses at them and vanishes.

They all look around, but lose sight of it in the magical shadows.

"Screw this," Robert says. "Terry, can't you do something?"

"Light," Terry says.

He concentrates and whispers in Gaelic, and flames flicker to life in the candles and lanterns around the room, and the windows shatter, letting in light from outside. The magical shadows are burned away like webs, and the entire bar lights up like an old fashioned feast hall. A pair of vampire spawn cling the ceiling, one lurks behind the bar with a meathook, and in the next room are a trio of spawn, standing guard in front of a pale man dressed in frilly black.

"I was wondering when the Bureau would get its sh*t together and send someone," the vampire says. He glances to his spawn, then nods in the group's direction. "Tear them apart, but leave Balthazaar alive."

The vampire spawn begin to close in, reaching out hungrily with claws, blades, or clubs. The group is evenly matched in numbers, and they are surrounded.

Then the door from the street opens, and two more vampires come in, carrying pistols.

Scarpedin smiles. "Damn. It feels like home."


Outside the bar that is the front for the Bureau office, a few passers-by watch through shattered glass as gunshots ring out, a shotgun blasts through the rotting flesh of vampire spawn, holy water is hurled and sprayed, and a crazed man with a longsword hacks limbs from the undead, even though he knows it won't kill them.

Sounds of the fight draw a crowd, waiting anxiously as screams ring out. Heavy objects thump wetly to the ground. Wood snaps and pierces with deep crunches through bone. Glasses shatter. Creatures groan. A woman calls for help, and several gunshots and ancient arcane words shout out an answer.

The door to the bar is flung open and a one-armed vampire scrambles out in panic. He turns for one glance back, and a hurled wooden stake drives through his throat. Before the vampire even hits the ground, a shotgun shears away his face, holy water vials crack against his chest, and an oil lamp is tossed and shatters onto the walking corpse. The vampire tries to scream, but with the stake in its throat it can only gurgles as its black blood is consumed by the fire.

The bar is quiet, and only intermittent sounds come out, of people making sure their enemies stay down. The crowd watches as the vampire turns to ash, then wait for a moment longer, still uncertain.

Balthazaar strides out of the bar, his face bleeding, ash coating his hands. He almost smiles as he sweeps a look across the crowd.

"There's nothing to see here," he says with finality.

The crowd backs away, and quickly finds something else to do.

This is what the Bureau is to the people of Gaia. Frightfully efficient, brutally mysterious. For the past two weeks, the Bureau has been all but absent, and the gangs of thuggish undead had begun to gain power. But now the word will spread. The Bureau is back in control.

Balthazaar watches the crowd disperse, a trace of a smug smile on his bleeding face.

"Excuse me, Shawshank Redemption," Robert says. "Could you get back in here? Or did you forget we're here to save you guys' butts?"

Glowering, Balthazaar turns back into the bar and closes the door behind him. It's probably for the best that the common folk of Gaia do not know exactly how the Bureau deals with its enemies. The truth can be embarrassing.

Heh!

I love it when the Vamps get their Go-Downance!

Halloween



John and Scarpedin methodically stake, behead, and burn the bodies of the vampires and their spawn. Thankfully the corpses turn to ash quickly, and their stench, while intense, is not nauseating. Now that they have light to see by, the bloodstains of past fights are visible.

Robert says to Balthazaar, "Looks like your friends lost the last fight."

Balthazaar shakes his head. "The vampires wouldn't have stayed here if they had already killed everyone. They were waiting."

Balthazaar tells Terry to finish healing Belladonna, who was actually bitten. A minute later, Belladonna is able to stand, and they regroup at the base of the stairs that lead up to the Bureau office. At the top of the stairs, through the window, they can see light.

And they can hear zydeco music*.

With caution, the group goes to the door, talks to the people inside, and eventually walk in. They find a half dozen injured and exhausted Bureau agents in varying states of nudity, trying to dance despite their sleepless fatigue. An empty box of donuts, an empty pizza box, and the remnants of a months-old stale king cake lie on the floor, and an old-fashioned record player pumps out the spirited music. A few ghosts, bonded with agents, hang in the corners of the room, looking dazed.

Only one of the Bureau agents, an Asian woman named Yuko, is in a state coherent enough to talk. Balthazaar quickly tells her what he knows about the Terra-Gaia severance, and how Terry will be able to get them back. Then he brusquely tells her to tell her side of the story.

She tells them that, two weeks ago, they realized they were trapped on Gaia. A few days passed with them working to see if they could fix things, and they sent a messenger over land to the Bureau office in Savannah, but he might not even have reached Georgia yet, since the best transportation available was a horse. Meanwhile, the rest of the Bureau agents tried to keep the peace in New Orleans, but rumors spread that their numbers were depleted, and eventually they were attacked.

For nearly a decade now, a vampire crime syndicate has jockeyed for power in Gaian New Orleans, only really having gained any power in the last five years, since Balthazaar was sent to prison. It becomes clear to the group that, while Yuko resents Balthazaar, she respects his skill at dealing with the undead. When pressed, she tells them why Balthazaar went to prison:

In 2000, he killed an elfwoman ("F*cking elves," Scarpedin says), a former agent who had gone rogue. The Bureau had wanted to interrogate the woman for important information, but Balthazaar defied orders and had killed the woman, even though she had surrendered. In the investigation, it came out that Balthazaar had been working in concert with Knights of the Round, helping them hunt down and kill unsavory members of the magical races, while simultaneously keeping the Bureau off the trail.

The Bureau, Yuko says, has been opposed to the Knights of the Round for a century, ever since the Bureau's founding. (This particular tidbit, that the Bureau is only 100 years old, surprises John, who assumed the Bureau had been around since the dawn of time or something). Where the Bureau tries to keep the peace and deal with criminals through the rule of law, Knights of the Round are vigilantes at best, racist terrorists at worst. They hunt down non-humans and viciously murder them. Balthazaar only managed to stay with the Bureau so long because his interests and the Bureau's need to kill clearly hazardous monsters overlapped.

The woman Balthazaar killed was an evil b*tch, Yuko admits, an elvish telepath named Autumn Yeiotana, who managed to dominate the Chief, head of the Bureau, and nearly destroy the Bureau from within. While Balthazaar's murdering of the woman might have been forgiven as aggravated or self defense, when the Bureau investigators unearthed Balthazaar's connections to the Knights of the Round, the various councils of the magical races had demanded the Bureau execute Balthazaar.

Yuko starts to go into the politics of the debate, but Balthazaar interrupts and asks to know about the more urgent problems, like what happened to all the agents here.

The first attack, Yuko says, came in the streets, when an agent was ambushed by members of the gang and slain. Those who tried to help the Bureau had been tormented and frightened magically, so Yuko, as ranking agent left in New Orleans, had ordered the remaining nineteen agents to stay in the Bureau office, only heading out in large groups, and only when necessary. After a week stuck on Gaia, though, their supplies were running low, and so she had sent out six agents to bring back food from trustworthy vendors. When the group was returning, however, they were attacked by a large force of vampires and vampire spawn. Yuko and the others went out to help, but ultimately they had to retreat into the second floor offices.

They lost ten agents in the fight, and the vampires still had enough forces left to blockade them. However, since the offices are not considered a public place, the vampires could not enter without an invitation. So they had turned from violence to deception, trying to trick the Bureau agents. Finally, three days ago, after their food had run out and they were starving, an agent had cracked and let in a nymph bearing food and music. The agent's will was broken down by the magic in the food, and he had let two vampires inside before the rest of the agents could react.

They lost another two agents that day, but they killed the vampires and drove off the nymph. Still, the record player had kept playing, possessing some magic that kept them from smashing it. It had worn down their will, and in a classically fey joke, eventually those who succumbed to its magic started partying, losing themselves to eating, drinking, and having sex.

Yuko says, "I remained happily immune."

Robert knows better, but is kind enough to spare the woman's pride.

Still, Yuko says, none of them had broken down enough to let the vampires back in. They've endured a two week ordeal of hunger, combat, and waiting, and now, finally, it looks like they'll be able to go back.

Despite the gravity of the situation, Scarpedin can't help but crack jokes at the agents. The rest of them try to ignore him, but he's saying pretty much what the rest of them are thinking: the Bureau is looking more and more incompetent by the minute.

Terry meditates, preparing for a more powerful plane shift than usual, so he can get all of them back to Terra at once. Nathan and Belladonna treat some of the injuries as best they can, and John offers Yuko a cigarette, since she's too nervous to actually eat any of their food. It takes longer than any of them are comfortable with for Terry to prepare his spell, so when they do finally go, tensions are high.

They all arrive in a similar office on Terra, where Raine is waiting anxiously. Raine, Balthazaar, and Yuko give them perfunctory thanks for their help, and start searching for supplies to help the survivors snap out of their charmed state. Raine recommends they go back to Belladonna's house and wait. She says they'll be contacted when their agents are in a state to offer actual assistance.

The group departs, unhappily, everyone grumbling about the Bureau's ingratitude of them risking their lives. It's barely one o'clock now, so Scarpedin says they should get some lunch and then go to a club. Bizarrely, the group agrees with Scarpedin. At least, Robert points out, if they're in a club they can pretend they're just living normal, everyday lives, and they can forget the stupid, irritating situation they've gotten themselves into.


*Zydeco is a jumpy variety of cajun/creole music, popular in and around Louisiana. If you're interested, there's some information here.

Bravo, Ranger Wickett. A great read.

I'll be more than happy to keep up with this one.

~Fune