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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Golden Bee" data-source="post: 9636772" data-attributes="member: 7041055">Emperor of Tomorrow(Baron Korga created by Michael B. Lee. Opening influenced by Paul W-W Williams's The Muramasa Curse.)From far and wide and light years away/The one force of nature they call by name/I came from tomorrow to take back today/I am the future.Winter. A cave in the Changbai Mountains. The adventurers had dealt with traps, puzzles and literal pitfalls, all to get the Disc of Sacred Memory. Four inches wide, trapped in the mouth of a carved stone dragon.Luckily, Thaza O'Rourke was there. The expert cat burglar, along with her smuggler pal Ivo Kochev, replaced the disc with a bent shovelhead covered in wax paper. The acid spray was neutralized, at least temporarily, and detective JP Diamond was able to lift the portcullis. Freedom! For at least a few feet. Waiting on a ledge outside was Lieutenant General Tanaka and 25 of his best soldiers.Chinese supremacist Xiao Yun embodied 4000 years of history. There was no way she was going to give the artifact to a Japanese officer. While she locked blades in furious anger, the rest of the group was more practical. Especially Ivo, who upon seeing the duel was at a standstill, snuck above and started an avalanche.The group made their way down the mountain, some more gracefully than others. At the water’s edge was their old buddy “Typhoon” Mike McGinnity! The captain of the Salamander, wary of side effects of the memory stone, reminded them of their mission: as a symbol of cooperation between the Chinese Communists and the Russian ones, they had promised to liberate the artifact and bring it to Science City Four. (He noted that it had a reputation of being gorgeous, with a great dining scene, but was a holding ground for scientific kooks.)At Nukeograd &#1095;&#1077;&#1090;&#1099;&#1088;&#1077;, the group ran into their fellow Ziegler Security specialist Clara, and their liaison, Dr. Stern. Stern was a war veteran, and she had a theory: with the help of relived memories, Communism could learn from its greatest warriors and instructors at any time. And since the group was there, it would be her honor to show them her memories of the Russian Civil War. (The machine had a nasal uplink, because scent is so deeply tied to memory.)The Battle of Kazan started normally. But none of the Russians knew that JP Diamond’s trips beyond the vale of tears had made him particularly potent against futuristic technology. The battlefield wasn't just Dr. Stern's memory; it soon became Verd&#363;n.The group fought to reenact the battle(s), struggling but eventually succeeding. But instead of going back to reality, the group found itself on the island of Borneo, which was half Appalachia. Clara and Thaza were subconsciously battling for control!Xiao, whose mind was like a still pond, found herself on the deck of a tramp steamer. Nearby were Ivo and Naomi O'Rourke. Originally there to smuggle great apes, they saw a human woman on the skyline, and O'Rourke wanted her.Elsewhere/nearby, JP followed Clara as she reenacted her harsh and hungry past. Unable to make tree bark stew, she turned to JP, desperate.On the boat, Xiao used her focus to rewrite collective memory, helping Thaza and Ivo remember how they met. Memory successful.JP, unable to calm down Clara, ordered his parrot to tear off her nose-connector. Clara pulled the plug: Experiment over.Breathing hard, JP thought back to the memory. He recognized someone familiar in Kazan, who was nearly blown up but actually evacuated from the battle. Someone very close to him, indirectly… His fiancée's first love, Ulyana Demedov. If Stern's memory was accurate, she was alive!The group politely snuck out of the city, and begin tracking down leads. The investigation was tough, because they only had a face and a military patch to go off of. The library wouldn’t help: It was time for a trip to the underworld.***Their first contact was Csaba the Smiler, Kingpin of Sochi. He had some information, and he would gladly share it with his "friend" Ivo: all they had to do was silence his neighbor's annoying yappy dog.Although the group was split on how to do it (Ivo suggested “poison, dog flavored”), calmer heads prevailed.The group led the dog astray. According to Xiao's medical training, Pancake the Pekingese had strep throat. They gave the dog to Ivo, the only one with both ‘a working understanding of the local language’ and ‘any money’ . He bought the medicine fine, and was coming around the corner when he heard a pistol leave its holster.Turns out being a smuggler wasn't all fun and games. Especially not to Maja Ma&#322;gorzo, Inspector of the League of Nations police force!Ivo put the dog down… and sprinted in the other direction! The inspector fired, which alerted the rest of the team, who effected a rescue, tripping up the detective with debris before pulling Ivo onto a nearby rooftop.Pancake was fine.***The case continued across the Black Sea, eventually leading to Istanbul, and former ZSS member Prof. Hemet Hazoul. He pointed the players towards the malefactor behind everything, the urbane and charming Baron Korga! Not a charming aristocrat, he was actually a Hungarian mercenary who had profiteered off the Russian Civil War.The group used that fact to their advantage, drawing his remaining soldiers off his private island and into a red Russian ambush.The players faked their way onto the island and into Castle Korga. The trick nearly worked, until Ulyana got involved. Decades in Korga’s employ had divided her loyalties. She might’ve been convinced to leave peacefully, until she found out not only was her girlfriend alive… JP intended to marry her!(Korga, ever a gentleman, had the servants move the table aside before engaging in gunplay.)This battle did not go our heroes’ way. Ulyana, filled with rage, pinned JP to the floor. The Baron, strolling to cover, slashed a massive hole in Ivo. Thaza was busy with Korga’s second in command, and Xiao Yun was outnumbered by the Baron’s deathless automatons. It was time to retreat!The group barely escaped with their lives, closing the portcullis, finding an old goat trail, and taking it down to the sea. Choking on gas, they had barely laid a scratch on their opponents. Who knew their identities.Then again, any ambush on a remote island in the Aegean you can walk away from…</blockquote>

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