So, The session suffered with the absence of the troll's player. It was decided by the group that the troll spends his time brooding. It began with everyone taking a 30 minute break from each other, since they all had personal shit they discovered that they wanted to deal with. All the private stuff was done one on one and nobody else was privy to what happened.
Claymore went on a walk, traveling far away before calling Daria. She answers, and they begin a conversation where Claymore ends up telling her everything that's happened. Daria is concerned, repeatedly asks for her location, saying she only wants to help her and insists she can't trust anyone she's with, especially not J. She tells Claymore that he's an Ares agent and that she was sent there to either convince him to join their cause or to kill him, and she thinks she has been captured by him. Claymore isn't convinced and tries to get more information on why she had to kill J, but Daria won't tell her. Eventually Claymore gives her the address to her safehouse in aspen and asks to meet her there astrally.
Claymore sits under a tree and projects, meeting Daria at her warded apartment. Daria notes that Claymore has changed the passway to enter her wards. Claymore remembers it reflexively and they both enter. Once inside, Claymore tries to get more information, but Daria is distracted by looking around the apartment. Claymore took the time to set up a Force 10 Magical Lodge, which she thinks is strange for a short mission. She also sees a holo projector pointed at a blank wall, and has to ask Daria what it is. Daria tells her, and notes its something she doesn't think Claymore would ever use. She also points to a pile of gear in the corner, and remarks that it doesn't look like it belongs to her either. She floats over to a rifle among said gear, and pays a lot of attention to the ares logo embossed on it. Claymore attempts to identify the logo but fails, but is becoming more unnerved by Daria's behavior. She suggests that perhaps she convinced J to join them after all, and that's why they're traveling together. Daria then looks at the queen sized bed, and her aura fills with sorrow and she appears to be weeping. Unbeknownst to Claymore, Daria knows Psychometry, and is actively witnessing the powerful emotions that Claymore and J had in that bed, and realizes in that moment that Claymore has betrayed the coven. Claymore becomes more unnerved and asks if everything is okay, and Daria says she's fine, and she just wants to help her and that's what she plans to do. She then tells Claymore that she should probably return, to not make anyone suspicious. Both then depart and return to their bodies.
Claymore then rolls a memory test, and remembers that she, J and E all lived in that apartment, and remembers them working together toward some goal. She remembers that J and E were both important to her somehow, and that there was something they needed to do. The player is also pretty sure at this point that Claymore just convinced Daria that she needs to be killed, and goes into full paranoia mode, returning to her body with the intent to tell everybody they need to get to that apartment ASAP and either collect everything or destroy it.
MEANWHILE, Jack also goes astral, and communes with his mentor spirit, Dragonslayer. He tells him that his aura appears damaged, like something has wiped his spirit away, made him raw. Jack asks him to help him remember what he was, and Dragonslayer spars with him awhile and instructs him again, causing him to remember his entire spell list as well as Astral Combat, Conjuring and so on. He then asks Dragonslayer about the obelisk, who says that it is a blight on the world, shunned by spirits, and that nothing good could ever come of it.
MEANWHILE, Champ slots his unlabeled chip, and wakes up some time later proclaiming to have just witnessed the greatest action movie of all time, and wants everybody to see it cause he's the star. But he also feels a sudden intense sadness, and becomes protective of Crumpled Man's arm, realizing that a very good friend of his is now dead.
MEANWHILE, E goes VR and starts to investigate herself. Suspecting she's a college student majoring in anthropology due to data she founded on a chip in her possession, she hacks into the university of denver looking for a student list, finding herself under the name Susan Elizabeth Landon (her fake SIN), enrolled as a major in Matrix Technology with a minor in Resonance theory, and that she's even a member of a sorority. Confused, she checks all the anthropology students to see if she moonlighted under a different name, but fails to get any matches. She then concludes that the data on aspen's historical cultures and such is actually relevant to the run, and that she began doing legwork months ago. She tries to search for recent archaeological digs but comes up empty, and then considers doing a search on the man she shacked up with in Aspen for a month, but decides to put it off until after she sleeps off her wound penalties, since she doesn't want to hack Neonet with a bunch of negatives. Instead, she calls one of her contacts who is a Safehouse master, asking for a safehouse on the edge of aspen. He replies with an address, which she checks to see it's a storage facility.
MEANWHILE, J gets out of the van and tries to remember protocol for contacting Rhodes. He rolls his security knowledge and realizes for an emergency he should use the comm in his head, and that there's probably a codeword he's supposed to use in an emergency to receive new orders. He rolls a memory test, gets an amazing number of hits, and successfully recalls the correct code word. He proceeds to call Rhodes, use the code word, and then brief him on the amnesia situation. Rhodes asks for the status of Agent Zero, and J says he doesn't know who that is because he can't access the data in his data lock. Rhodes tells him that he is the only one who would know the password to it, and that he can't recommend anyone try to hack it (because obviously), but is willing to tell him that Agent Zero is a female elf. J notes that E fits the description, and Rhodes tells him to confirm that she has his contact information in her comm, since she should if she is in fact Agent Zero. He then asks for who else is with him and the status of the artifact. J tells him everybody else, and says they have the artifact, and also that a group is after them and sent an attack helicopter. Rhodes informs him that Claymore is a known associate he discussed in his reports, but that the others are unknown factors, but possibly associates of E. He tells him to lay low for the night and bring the artifact to the extraction point tomorrow, while Rhodes secures discreet transport for it out of Aspen so as to not alert the forces that are after it.
After all this, 30 minutes has passed, and everyone looks to each other, ready to go. However, Claymore hasn't finished astrally projecting yet, having lost track of time with Daria and still being astral for another 5 minutes. J says he's going to go look for her, rolls Tracking, and manages to easily follow her footsteps in the snow. He finds her body, but reports she's not moving and non responsive. He feels for a pulse and can't find one. Jack astrally projects to assense her, says she's projecting, then returns to his body. J is still concerned about the 'no pulse' thing and sees if he can take off her mask. As he tries, a phrase in a language he doesn't understand comes to mind, and he tries speaking it. To his surprise, the mask opens, and he takes it off. To quote myself, "She is, far and away, bar none, by every stretch of the imagination and possibility of description, the most beautiful woman you have ever seen, or could imagine seeing."
Shortly after this, Claymore returns to her body to find J kneeling over her with her mask in hand. She snatches it back angrily and puts it back on, then sprints for the van. J follows, trying to apologize for upsetting her. She demands to know how he got it off and he says he knew the password. Claymore doesn't know how to respond to that, but they arrive back to the van and she angrily tries to get Champ to give her the driver's seat. Champ essentially laughs at her, so she climbs in and sits on his lap and tells Adam to drive to her apartment. The car starts to move, but champ turns off the wireless and tells her to chill, while Claymore can't figure out how to turn it back on.
Everyone asks Claymore for an explanation and she says that her apartment has their equipment in it and if they don't act fast it will be compromised. She specifically says that E has gear there to try to convince her its a good idea, as the player now suspects the holo projector belongs to her. They eventually agree in order to calm Claymore down, and begin to drive into Aspen. On the way there, the obelisk begins to change, and the writing on its surface disappears to be replaced by a single phrase. E, Boom and J are the only ones in the back to witness this, and say it's acting funny. They also note that even though the writing is illegible, they feel like they can read it. At which point, J's Common Sense quality starts tingling, and he goes 'fuck that, nobody is reading this.' and he throws the tarp over the obelisk. Everyone is getting the heebie jeebies about it and are starting to wonder if they shouldn't destroy it.
They arrive at the apartment some time later, and park out front. Claymore jumps out and heads up to her apartment while J performs a perception check, noticing that one of the cars in the lot doesn't have snow stacked on it, so it arrived recently. He gets suspicious and follows Claymore. E also goes after realizing that she has another drone inside that auto connects to her PAN, a small drone named 'Kitty' that appears to be in a closed closet. Claymore arrives at the front door and assenses everything, noting that her ward has been tampered with. She also notices that both E and J have something that looks like brain cancer to her, and that E is pregnant. '
J notes that the door has signs of forced entry, and Claymore readies one of her knives. Specifically, one she found on herself earlier that has an Ignite preparation on it. E rolls perception through her cat drone and can hear people moving around inside, four people in fact, and goes 'fuck that I'm a lover not a fighter' and returns to the van. While Claymore and J argue about whether or not its worthwhile to get into a 2v1 fight right now, the door opens and everyone rolls surprise tests and initiative.
Claymore goes first and instantly throws her knife at the target she identified as awakened, but doesn't have enhance strength on right now and it barely does damage. She activates the preparation anyway as her second action. J goes second and he activates his shocking hand and instantly drops the human who opened the door, who failed his surprise roll. After he goes down, an ork behind him rushes out and tries to grab him, But J chooses to block, and edges it when he gets a poor roll. He successfully avoids the attack and brings the ork out into the hall with him. After that, the last man inside draws a knife and lunches at Claymore, but she successfully dodges. The mage spends his turn removing the knife from his chest and discarding it on the floor, unaware of the manipulation spell counting down to ignition. E sends a command to her cat to open the door, which it critically glitches and face plants the wall.
Next pass, Claymore tries to mana bind the man with the knife, but fails. J goes to shock the ork, who rolls to block, only managing to get J to grab his forearm and flood him with electricity. He loses some initiative and takes a wound but is still in the fight. The man with the knife feels Claymore's spell fail and decides to just stab her, rolling 5 net hits despite Claymore's full defense. He sinks his knife in and she hisses in pain, almost dropped outright by the damage. The mage then steps out of the apartment and hits Claymore with a stunbolt, which adds more damage to her growing list of injuries.
At this point, E sends a second command to her cat to try and open the door, and it succeeds. Third pass, J now goes first due to initiative changes and he moves from the ork to the mage, hitting him with an obscene number of net hits as his shocking hand drops him like a brick. The ork lost all initiative to the electric damage and doesn't have another turn, and the human pulls his knife out of Claymore's abdomen, vaults the balcony and runs for it. Claymore, as a last injured act, hits him with another Mana Bind and reduces his Agility to 3.
Next combat turn, and E goes first in VR, and tells her cat to sneak up behind the ork. She noticed that the cat drone actually has a suppressed machine pistol built into it, and she tells it to try and blow out his kneecap. The ork fails to beat the cat's sneaking test, and the cat rolls a truly obscene 6 hits on 8 dice to shoot him in the leg. The machine pistol outright severs his leg, and the ork bleeds out in the hall. Claymore starts regenerating and almost fully recovers from the knife wound, but still fakes being injured, even casting Physical Mask to look injured while checking to make sure the mage stays down. J then vaults the balcony and easily catches up to the fleeing human. He is feeling irrational anger after seeing Claymore get stabbed, so he goes with his right hand instead of his left and shanks him in the back with his cyberspur, nearly killing him outright and certainly guaranteeing he'd bleed out soon. Combat effectively ends and J actually walks back to the apartment while leaving the guy shish-kabob'd on his cyberspur to ensure he wouldn't bleed into the snow, takes the bloody knife from him and then ends up dumping him in the bath tub to bleed out. E collects her cat and some gear from the closet that she recognizes as hers, while Champ comes up, disappointed that the fighting is already over, and tosses the ork and both unconscious men into the bathtub with the rapidly dying man before going through their pockets for valuables. J sees his gear in the corner and collects it, admiring the MP Lancer most of all.
At this point, Champ notices his pile of bodies mysteriously burst into flames, as everyone forgot about the Ignite preparation that Claymore had used. Everyone decides to run while the running is good. Champ actually noticed that the men had no commlinks or gear at all, but one of them had a fob for an old fashion car starter, which these days is handled by commlinks. He correctly assumes it starts the car they found, and he instructs its pilot to follow them as they drive to the safehouse E secured earlier.
They arrive, make arrangements for rooms, and also arrange for a Cleaner team to go back to Claymore's apartment and destroy all the evidence properly. They also strike up a deal with the proprietor to trade the rover for an LT-21 delivery van that's got some runner bonuses added to it, such as a morphing plate and chameleon coating. So everyone goes to sleep, except Claymore, who communes with Fire-bringer and asks for help regarding everything. She tells her that Claymore has always been a vampire for as long as she's know her, that the artifact is a blight on the world crafted by madmen in an age of monsters, and that it has only wrought evil. However, she warns her that destroying it would be a grave mistake, as the damage it could do is unknown to even her. Claymore also asks why she would betray her coven and Fire-bringer tells her that she has long suspected that Claymore would eventually part ways with the coven, but she suspects that her emotions for J expedited her decision. She also remarks that Claymore has seemingly forgotten her feelings, but feels that her memory loss seems temporary, merely a bruise rather than a serious wound.
Claymore rests off the damage she couldn't regenerate, and then spends the early morning making preparations for the coming day, suspecting she'll need them. She also casts Detect Enemies.
The next morning Claymore assenses everyone and sees the brain cancer again, and tells them about it. She also says congratulations to E, which at first elicits confusion and then groans of realization. Not everyone recovered fully from a night's sleep and Jack requests the aid of a street doc to patch him up. E also consults with him and confirms that yes, she is three weeks pregnant. She contemplates whether she is even capable of raising a child, and wonders if she knew who the father was before amnesia.
Jack and Champ both attempt assensing for over an hour, trying and failing to see the brain cancer Claymore spoke of. Around when Jack finally manages to get 5 hits on somebody, Champ has the brilliant idea to check the sim chip he had from the Crumpled Man's point of view, since much of it was filmed in X-ray vision, and at one point scanned Champs head. Sure enough, when he checks it more closely, he sees that the scanner is saying his brain is filled with nanites. Everyone starts going 'Oh fuck CFD' and making rolls to see if they know what that is. They now openly start discussing CFD, the nanites, the obelisk, and theories about their memory loss. They note that Claymore is the only one not infected with nanites, and this throws off some of their assumptions, unable to come to a consensus on what happened.
Jack bothers to check the headlines for the day and sees a report about a helicopter crash the night before, which is being written off as due to weather conditions by the press, as well as finding a missing person's report on Gloria Winters, which includes a plea for anyone that knows about her whereabouts, or the dwarf she was last seen with, to please call a hotline. Jack proceeds to go to the bathroom and shave off his beard to change his appearance as much as possible.
After talking in circles for awhile, J suggests taking the artifact to a lot outside aspen he found so that they could at least get away from the city and come up with a plan for what to do with it, and if they do decide to blow it up, it's a nice empty place for it. The group agrees, they get in the van, and start driving. Unbeknownst to them, the lot J directed them to is his Ares extraction point.
Claymore attempts to remember why she influenced Jack, and gets an amazing 8 hits. So I describe the scene to her in detail of her, J and her being threatened by the Troll, a captured E, and her influencing the Dwarf to have them taken away to be killed later, rather than right in front of the ruins.
After that they start driving to the lot, which I say takes them an hour. E starts a matrix search on a picture J took of the writing on the obelisk, hoping to find a translation. She also gets a call from Styles, her fixer, saying he found the thing she was looking for and asking if she was still in Aspen, and if she wanted to meet up later. She basically replied saying 'I HAVE NO IDEA WHO I AM. NOT A GOOD TIME, JOHN.' and agreed to call him later to explain what the fuck that means.
The session ends as they leave the main downtown area of Aspen, and champ notices they are being followed by two vans.
