So, as a catch-up note, I guess I should mention that the Morrigan also put us in charge of sealing up Balor's Eye. By "put us in charge" I mean that she bound us to the task through magic. It's not like we wouldn't have done it anyways. Still, I nearly had to beat up a customs agent to get the damn three hundred pound rock from Ireland to the states.
In any case though, three of us, Jack, Laurel, and I, were high-tailing it back to my home-town of Chicago to rescue my mom from Victor. The other three, Nate, Brendan, and Camilla, were heading to Berkeley to find out what was wrong with the kids that have been crashing at Laurel's house--which includes her half-sister and her adopted son among others.
I havn't heard from those that headed to California yet, but I'm hoping they found things in good order. We certainly didn't here in Chicago.
When I landed I tried to give Victor a call to make sure he didn't start doing anything particularly stupid, but he didn't pick up. So I left him a voicemail. When I got on to my mom's street I tried calling him again. Nothing. When I opened up the front door of her house I found out one reason he might not be picking up the phone. My mom was right inside, bound and gagged on a chair, each leg of which was sitting on the activation pin for a different military-grade land mine. My mom, of course, starts trying to yell something through her gag. "It's a trap" I imagine her saying, so I don't bother ungagging her immediately. We knew it was a trap. First Jack checked the house, but no one else was there. So I ungagged her.
"I'm not your mother!" I hear a slimy bastard in the form of my mother say. That slimy bastard is Sylvester, or Sly. He's Loki's kid. I don't trust him as far as I can throw him. ...Okay that's a poor expression to use because he's pretty light and I've got a good arm, but the idea's there.
"Where's my mother?"
"I don't know. Victor kidnapped her, then he beat me up, tied me to this chair, made me look like your mom, then set me up on some landmines."
Laurel used some powers she has to ensure that if the mines went off Sly and I would be a bit less likely to be blown completely to kingdom-come.
"Alright, Sly, I'm going to try to defuse the mines." Jack and Laurel waited outside--Laurel very reluctantly. Jack actually let me wear the Armor of Achilles while I was at it, too. Every once in a while he does things that actually make him seem less like an asshole.
I nearly botched the first mine, but turns out it really is the red wire. I did the other three the same way, and we were free to breath again. So then we started looking around the house for clues about where my mom had been taken. The place was a mess--signs of struggle everywhere like a path of destruction from the kitchen to the front door. I couldn't get where they'd gone once they were out of the house though. Luckily Nevermore could. He tracked them straight across the street to a neighbor's house.
Like I said, Victor's pretty fucking dumb.
So I decide to knock on the neighbor's door. I can hear voices inside, but can't tell what they're saying. I knock some more, and still hear talking. I knock more, still no one opens the door. So I open the door. And what I found really pissed me off.
First thing I notice is the dozen corpses. At first they looked like homeless people, but then I realized that was just the clothes. These were werewolves. In their midst was Victor. His arms were missing. So were his possessions. And in his chest there was a big I carved. Yeah. Carved.
Sitting in the middle of this room on four chairs were my mom and three Dwarves. I'm not talking mini-me type of dwarves, I'm talking about the kind of Dwarves that can drink you under the table, beat up your dad, and then personally forge an axe to finish you off with if they really want to. They're on our side though. Always good to know.
The four of them were hostages, so we went to untie them. My mother, of course, exploded in tears and Spanish. She had no idea what was going on, she was scared, she had been trapped in this room with a trio of very intimidating fellow hostages surrounded by corpses for three days... she was beyond my ability to help. I was going to appeal to Laurel when Jack stepped in and went super-powered school counselor on us. He took her to the kitchen and within the minute I could hear her talking to him calmly. Freaking amazing. Anyways, I asked the Dwarves what really happened. They told me that a guy wearing a coat made of human flesh and followed by a group of mechanical wolves busted in here not long after Victor set up his little trap, and they killed him and his werewolf lackeys. Then the guy looted him, carved the I in his chest, and just ripped his arms off with a comment like "I can't wait do add these."
Wonderful. We're pretty sure this is probably the same person who has been responsible for the MENSA murders, and for the hacking of Watson, the computer A.I. in California. We don't know what's going on with this guy, but we know it's gotta be bad. Laurel has a theory involving golems. I don't really like the sound of that, myself.
All of this crap frustrated me enough that I went on and shot Victor in the head after all. Such massive incompetence should really be punishable by death. ...Come to think of it, I guess it is.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Mag Mel
So I jumped off the cliff.
Seemed like a good idea at the time. At least, it seemed like a perfectly unreasonable, but very satisfying, idea at the time--and that was good enough for me. I could hear Laurel yelling at me as I started falling, but after a moment that stopped. I wasn't in Ireland anymore. I had fallen into some field with lush greenery and five menacing, spear-wielding horsemen. Before I could really explain anything a woman showed up on a unicorn too. Yeah. That's right. A unicorn. And unicorn-lady, Cordelia, demanded to know what I was doing here. So I told her.
"I'm Gunnar, son of Heimdall, and I have come here to warn Manannan Mac'Lir that there will be another assault by the Fomorians within the week."
Then I mentioned something about Balor's Eye and everyone freaked out. Well, they backed up a fair bit. I was wondering what was taking the others so long right about the time that they finally fell out of mid-air next to me. Apparently an old acquaintance had shown up to tell Nate that he had told her to tell him to "Protect the Last Strand." Nate didn't remember this. We presume he will learn to time-travel eventually. That or the poor girl's insane. Either way, it's what had taken them so long.
So Cordelia decided to take the strange group of scions to her father, Manannan Mac'Lir, to deal with all these claims we were making. The whole of Mag Mel was gorgeous too. Beautiful plants, beautiful city, beautiful castle-thing. Well, okay, there was the southern 4/5ths of the place which we later discovered looked a bit like an over-grown cesspool, but the bit we were seeing then was nice and pretty. When we got to the castle though, Cordelia told us only one of us could talk to her dad. So we sent Nate. He's kind of a diplomat in that he's more talkative than Brendan and Camilla, more stately than Jack and Laurel, and a fair bit less of a confrontational bastard than I am sometimes.
Okay, most of the time.
Nate comes back out a few minutes later without the dreaded eye. Apparently Mac'Lir wasn't too happy to find out that it was out in the open and activated. In any case, most of us figured he was a better protector of it than we were. Apparently his recent battles had injured his eyes a bit, but I'm sure he would still be pretty effective at guarding it. Besides which, we were left to help the citizens of Mag Mel prepare for the coming battle ourselves. So we met with their leaders.
After a lot of discussion we decided to fight on two fronts. It was a mistake for Napoleon, it was a mistake for the Prussians, and it was a mistake for Hitler. But it was fucking brilliant for us.
The first front was a bridge between the part of the island that the Fomorians had taken over, and the "Last Strand" which is apparently the only thing keeping Mag Mel from floating off into darkness, forever lost to the void. Cheerful, huh?
The second front was a mountainous pass between the enemy and the city.
Then we came up with a pair of great plans. First of all, we started making preparations to light the bridge on fire during the battle. It would force the Fomorians to march through the fire, and with some careful tactics, to fight in it for some time. I wasn't on that battlefield during the battle, but I hear it helped a fair bit. Still, the plan for the pass did a lot more damage to our enemies. Laurel and I actually spent days setting it up, and then just before the battle Jack, Nevermore--Laurel's British raven (don't ask)--and I had to set the thing off and high-tail it back to our positions.
It was a landslide. Two actually. One on each side of the pass. I took out at least half of the enemy forces going into the pass. I mean, it's a terrible thing to see people's houses broken apart or torn away by avalanches, but seeing a thousand or so hulking, murderous, boil-skinned monsters torn asunder is wonderful.
The battle went the way battles go. Armies advance, archers fire, armies clash, archers fire, armies are routed, archers fire, armies rally, archers fire, and somewhere amidst all of this a small group of cavalry, led by a woman on a unicorn, is completely ineffectual. I can't actually say much better for myself. I may have killed four or five Fomorians in the course of the battle. The bows they provided were not very powerful, and this magical realm made guns inoperable. Luckily, Jack took care of the actual winning part. I'm fairly sure that I saw him personally kill over two dozen Fomorians in a single minute at one point. He is a sight to behold sometimes.
I hear that the bridge fight was hardly so glamorous. They suffered some pretty heavy casualties, and weren't making much head-way. That is, apparently, until Manannan Mac'Lir turned into a giant octopus of water and simply hurled the bridge-full of Fomorians off into the void. Fuckers got what they deserved.
However, just before he did this the Fomorians had hurled out their insurance plan, it seems. An enormous carcass full of mind-controlling maggots. Laurel tells me that she barely shook off the spell they put her under, and she had to do everything in her power to help the others out.
I showed up--jumping over as fast as I could--just about the time that they were getting their heads back on straight. Also, just in time to see the weary and fatigued Manannan Mac'Lir pull himself up onto land only to be pierced through the chest by an arrow of Camilla's.
That's right. She just up and killed him. Right there in front of everyone. I'm not saying that I would have approved if she did it in secret, but I would have expected that she would do that sort of thing quietly, not in plain view of all of her supposed allies.
And I do mean supposed. I'm not sure I can trust someone who knocks people off just because someone told them to. Yeah, she was hired, basically. By her dad. Hades. But that bit comes later. At first it was just a matter of knocking unconscious all the poor mind-controlled soldiers.
Now, Nate had been consulting with Hachiman regarding trying to restore Mag Mel after the battle, and Hachiman and Mac'Lir had some meetings. But we really weren't sure what was going to be going on now. And we were especially confused since, just before the battle began, we spotted the Morrigan standing inside the city too. All I have to say about the Morrigan is that I don't trust people who are notoriously insane. So when we were getting back in the city, and saw Hachiman shaking hands with the Morrigan, I was not happy. Turns out they split the place in half.
Wonderful. I mean, I didn't like it, but what claim could I make to them doing otherwise? I'm just some kid. Hell, Hachiman told Hades, when he showed up to defend his daughter, that they would discuss further when they weren't in front of "the children." I understand that I'm no deity who has seen the passage of ages from Ulysses of Ithaca to Ulysses S. Grant, but I know an opportunist when I see one. I'm pretty well convinced that the Morrigan, and much more especially Hades, aren't in on this because they've got a soft spot in their hearts for helping the oppressed.
Anyway, there wasn't much we could do about it. Besides, we had a bit more on our minds. A couple of guys in the group had wards on Laurel's house in Berkeley that had started sounding alarms in their heads, and just before I'd come back in here for the last time Jack's half-brother Victor, a son of Ares, called me to tell me that he'd kidnapped my mother in order to get his armor back from Jack. Because that's the smart kind of guy Victor is. Jack had previously let Victor live after a confrontation in which Victor tried to kill all of us, including Jack. However, rather than just trying to appeal to his half-brother in some more intelligent way, Victor kidnapped MY mother as leverage.
I was going to put an end to him with a fifty-caliber slug in Victor's head if he hurt my mother. I was going to break his arm as a simple lesson if he hadn't. When I found him he was dead, and had no arms.
Sometimes life's a bitch.
Seemed like a good idea at the time. At least, it seemed like a perfectly unreasonable, but very satisfying, idea at the time--and that was good enough for me. I could hear Laurel yelling at me as I started falling, but after a moment that stopped. I wasn't in Ireland anymore. I had fallen into some field with lush greenery and five menacing, spear-wielding horsemen. Before I could really explain anything a woman showed up on a unicorn too. Yeah. That's right. A unicorn. And unicorn-lady, Cordelia, demanded to know what I was doing here. So I told her.
"I'm Gunnar, son of Heimdall, and I have come here to warn Manannan Mac'Lir that there will be another assault by the Fomorians within the week."
Then I mentioned something about Balor's Eye and everyone freaked out. Well, they backed up a fair bit. I was wondering what was taking the others so long right about the time that they finally fell out of mid-air next to me. Apparently an old acquaintance had shown up to tell Nate that he had told her to tell him to "Protect the Last Strand." Nate didn't remember this. We presume he will learn to time-travel eventually. That or the poor girl's insane. Either way, it's what had taken them so long.
So Cordelia decided to take the strange group of scions to her father, Manannan Mac'Lir, to deal with all these claims we were making. The whole of Mag Mel was gorgeous too. Beautiful plants, beautiful city, beautiful castle-thing. Well, okay, there was the southern 4/5ths of the place which we later discovered looked a bit like an over-grown cesspool, but the bit we were seeing then was nice and pretty. When we got to the castle though, Cordelia told us only one of us could talk to her dad. So we sent Nate. He's kind of a diplomat in that he's more talkative than Brendan and Camilla, more stately than Jack and Laurel, and a fair bit less of a confrontational bastard than I am sometimes.
Okay, most of the time.
Nate comes back out a few minutes later without the dreaded eye. Apparently Mac'Lir wasn't too happy to find out that it was out in the open and activated. In any case, most of us figured he was a better protector of it than we were. Apparently his recent battles had injured his eyes a bit, but I'm sure he would still be pretty effective at guarding it. Besides which, we were left to help the citizens of Mag Mel prepare for the coming battle ourselves. So we met with their leaders.
After a lot of discussion we decided to fight on two fronts. It was a mistake for Napoleon, it was a mistake for the Prussians, and it was a mistake for Hitler. But it was fucking brilliant for us.
The first front was a bridge between the part of the island that the Fomorians had taken over, and the "Last Strand" which is apparently the only thing keeping Mag Mel from floating off into darkness, forever lost to the void. Cheerful, huh?
The second front was a mountainous pass between the enemy and the city.
Then we came up with a pair of great plans. First of all, we started making preparations to light the bridge on fire during the battle. It would force the Fomorians to march through the fire, and with some careful tactics, to fight in it for some time. I wasn't on that battlefield during the battle, but I hear it helped a fair bit. Still, the plan for the pass did a lot more damage to our enemies. Laurel and I actually spent days setting it up, and then just before the battle Jack, Nevermore--Laurel's British raven (don't ask)--and I had to set the thing off and high-tail it back to our positions.
It was a landslide. Two actually. One on each side of the pass. I took out at least half of the enemy forces going into the pass. I mean, it's a terrible thing to see people's houses broken apart or torn away by avalanches, but seeing a thousand or so hulking, murderous, boil-skinned monsters torn asunder is wonderful.
The battle went the way battles go. Armies advance, archers fire, armies clash, archers fire, armies are routed, archers fire, armies rally, archers fire, and somewhere amidst all of this a small group of cavalry, led by a woman on a unicorn, is completely ineffectual. I can't actually say much better for myself. I may have killed four or five Fomorians in the course of the battle. The bows they provided were not very powerful, and this magical realm made guns inoperable. Luckily, Jack took care of the actual winning part. I'm fairly sure that I saw him personally kill over two dozen Fomorians in a single minute at one point. He is a sight to behold sometimes.
I hear that the bridge fight was hardly so glamorous. They suffered some pretty heavy casualties, and weren't making much head-way. That is, apparently, until Manannan Mac'Lir turned into a giant octopus of water and simply hurled the bridge-full of Fomorians off into the void. Fuckers got what they deserved.
However, just before he did this the Fomorians had hurled out their insurance plan, it seems. An enormous carcass full of mind-controlling maggots. Laurel tells me that she barely shook off the spell they put her under, and she had to do everything in her power to help the others out.
I showed up--jumping over as fast as I could--just about the time that they were getting their heads back on straight. Also, just in time to see the weary and fatigued Manannan Mac'Lir pull himself up onto land only to be pierced through the chest by an arrow of Camilla's.
That's right. She just up and killed him. Right there in front of everyone. I'm not saying that I would have approved if she did it in secret, but I would have expected that she would do that sort of thing quietly, not in plain view of all of her supposed allies.
And I do mean supposed. I'm not sure I can trust someone who knocks people off just because someone told them to. Yeah, she was hired, basically. By her dad. Hades. But that bit comes later. At first it was just a matter of knocking unconscious all the poor mind-controlled soldiers.
Now, Nate had been consulting with Hachiman regarding trying to restore Mag Mel after the battle, and Hachiman and Mac'Lir had some meetings. But we really weren't sure what was going to be going on now. And we were especially confused since, just before the battle began, we spotted the Morrigan standing inside the city too. All I have to say about the Morrigan is that I don't trust people who are notoriously insane. So when we were getting back in the city, and saw Hachiman shaking hands with the Morrigan, I was not happy. Turns out they split the place in half.
Wonderful. I mean, I didn't like it, but what claim could I make to them doing otherwise? I'm just some kid. Hell, Hachiman told Hades, when he showed up to defend his daughter, that they would discuss further when they weren't in front of "the children." I understand that I'm no deity who has seen the passage of ages from Ulysses of Ithaca to Ulysses S. Grant, but I know an opportunist when I see one. I'm pretty well convinced that the Morrigan, and much more especially Hades, aren't in on this because they've got a soft spot in their hearts for helping the oppressed.
Anyway, there wasn't much we could do about it. Besides, we had a bit more on our minds. A couple of guys in the group had wards on Laurel's house in Berkeley that had started sounding alarms in their heads, and just before I'd come back in here for the last time Jack's half-brother Victor, a son of Ares, called me to tell me that he'd kidnapped my mother in order to get his armor back from Jack. Because that's the smart kind of guy Victor is. Jack had previously let Victor live after a confrontation in which Victor tried to kill all of us, including Jack. However, rather than just trying to appeal to his half-brother in some more intelligent way, Victor kidnapped MY mother as leverage.
I was going to put an end to him with a fifty-caliber slug in Victor's head if he hurt my mother. I was going to break his arm as a simple lesson if he hadn't. When I found him he was dead, and had no arms.
Sometimes life's a bitch.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Ireland
Yeah, so, my fiancee tells me that keeping a journal can help people keep their head on straight. Sounds like something worth giving a try, so here goes.
I arrived in Ireland six days ago.
Today I'm flying to Berkeley, California out of O'Hare.
In the time between those two I've set an ambush, helped kill a giant, rescued my mother from a kidnapping, consulted with Tolkien-esque dwarves, visited a world of undying people, helped them in their fight against an unending horde of titanic opponents, caused two avalanches, activated--then been made the personal guardian of--a ancient, magical weapon of mass destruction, witnessed the death of a god, and strong-armed a customs official.
Not in that order, mind you, but it's been a long fucking week.
Chronological order seems the most sensible, so that's how I'll go.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
So we came to Ireland--my group of god-sired world-saving compatriots and I--chasing this giant. Fomorian really. They're like Irish giants, and of a particularly disgusting kind. Anyways, so we're chasing this Fomorian named Caleb. We're trying to beat him to this lake where the Eye of Balor is supposedly being hidden. The Eye of Balor is the afore-mentioned weapon of mass destruction.
So we beat Caleb there and lay a trap for him, and when he shows up we spring it. The trap was pretty useless, but teamwork wasn't. Nate and I managed to keep him disarmed long enough for the big bruiser of our group, Jack, to get in close and start really messing Caleb up. He kept Caleb in place--which involved breaking his hands at one point--while the rest of us kept shooting the big prick. But we didn't do shit. All the real stopping power came from Jack. Our bullets just bounced off of him. I shot almost 30 rounds at this guy from an M16 at a distance of less than 10 yards, and not one of those rounds stayed in him.
Frustrating as hell.
Finally I got the bright idea to look Caleb's pockets while he was too busy to stop me, and made off with the magical key to the Eye of Balor as well as Caleb's journal. Turns out I probably didn't need to. They finished Caleb off before too much longer.
In any case, when I showed back up Brendan flipped through the journal really quick, and from its contents and just a bit of digging we found the entrance to what I've determined was supposed to be the tomb of the eye. I managed to convince them to help me open it--bad idea. Once it was open I decided to go inside--bad idea. And before I went inside I totally didn't hand the key off to someone else--stupid fucking mistake. So naturally, when I got inside, the key turned the damn thing on just because it was near-by. I mean, who does that? Makes a safety feature that can be disabled on accident by simply passing by the damn thing? Some asshole could have unwittingly put this key back together and turned it on while going for a swim for all I can tell.
Ugh.
Anyways, once the thing was on I couldn't just LEAVE IT there, so we brought the weapon that is said to obliterate armies in a single attack with us. We took it to these cliffs on the western side of Ireland that, based on a map in Caleb's journal, looked like where he'd be headed next. It was a tourist site--the Cliffs of Moher. There was even a little staff of gruff Irish dudes to try to tell everyone off about how it was closing time. At least that's what I hear. All I know is that I was sitting in the car while the rest of the group was trying to talk to these guys. Finally Laurel--my fiancee--went over, and with little more than a few words got one of the guys to take her in.
A minute later he comes back out and tells the other guys off. Apparently he's a son of Lugh, and is charged with guarding this place because it's the entrance to Mag Mel--the aforementioned realm of undying people. We happen to have learned from Caleb's journal that there's going to be another attack by the Fomorians on Mag Mel within the week and convince this guy to tell us how to get in. It's simple, right? Just jump off the cliff.
So off I go.
I arrived in Ireland six days ago.
Today I'm flying to Berkeley, California out of O'Hare.
In the time between those two I've set an ambush, helped kill a giant, rescued my mother from a kidnapping, consulted with Tolkien-esque dwarves, visited a world of undying people, helped them in their fight against an unending horde of titanic opponents, caused two avalanches, activated--then been made the personal guardian of--a ancient, magical weapon of mass destruction, witnessed the death of a god, and strong-armed a customs official.
Not in that order, mind you, but it's been a long fucking week.
Chronological order seems the most sensible, so that's how I'll go.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
So we came to Ireland--my group of god-sired world-saving compatriots and I--chasing this giant. Fomorian really. They're like Irish giants, and of a particularly disgusting kind. Anyways, so we're chasing this Fomorian named Caleb. We're trying to beat him to this lake where the Eye of Balor is supposedly being hidden. The Eye of Balor is the afore-mentioned weapon of mass destruction.
So we beat Caleb there and lay a trap for him, and when he shows up we spring it. The trap was pretty useless, but teamwork wasn't. Nate and I managed to keep him disarmed long enough for the big bruiser of our group, Jack, to get in close and start really messing Caleb up. He kept Caleb in place--which involved breaking his hands at one point--while the rest of us kept shooting the big prick. But we didn't do shit. All the real stopping power came from Jack. Our bullets just bounced off of him. I shot almost 30 rounds at this guy from an M16 at a distance of less than 10 yards, and not one of those rounds stayed in him.
Frustrating as hell.
Finally I got the bright idea to look Caleb's pockets while he was too busy to stop me, and made off with the magical key to the Eye of Balor as well as Caleb's journal. Turns out I probably didn't need to. They finished Caleb off before too much longer.
In any case, when I showed back up Brendan flipped through the journal really quick, and from its contents and just a bit of digging we found the entrance to what I've determined was supposed to be the tomb of the eye. I managed to convince them to help me open it--bad idea. Once it was open I decided to go inside--bad idea. And before I went inside I totally didn't hand the key off to someone else--stupid fucking mistake. So naturally, when I got inside, the key turned the damn thing on just because it was near-by. I mean, who does that? Makes a safety feature that can be disabled on accident by simply passing by the damn thing? Some asshole could have unwittingly put this key back together and turned it on while going for a swim for all I can tell.
Ugh.
Anyways, once the thing was on I couldn't just LEAVE IT there, so we brought the weapon that is said to obliterate armies in a single attack with us. We took it to these cliffs on the western side of Ireland that, based on a map in Caleb's journal, looked like where he'd be headed next. It was a tourist site--the Cliffs of Moher. There was even a little staff of gruff Irish dudes to try to tell everyone off about how it was closing time. At least that's what I hear. All I know is that I was sitting in the car while the rest of the group was trying to talk to these guys. Finally Laurel--my fiancee--went over, and with little more than a few words got one of the guys to take her in.
A minute later he comes back out and tells the other guys off. Apparently he's a son of Lugh, and is charged with guarding this place because it's the entrance to Mag Mel--the aforementioned realm of undying people. We happen to have learned from Caleb's journal that there's going to be another attack by the Fomorians on Mag Mel within the week and convince this guy to tell us how to get in. It's simple, right? Just jump off the cliff.
So off I go.
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