Notes Taken by Samantha and Alastair Beadle.
We worry that God might have got hold of Connor and Nemain's Trump decks and if so might use them to attack us. However, Arun says the burned remains of their Trumps were found in the ashes of their bodies. Godofos' Trump deck remains unaccounted for, however.
We brainstorm a variety of practical or otherwise plans on how to get rid of God:
Hmmm...
Having heard about the invasion of the Fourteen Empires, Jihx Trumps off to Ahnel to ensure that something similar has not happened to it. He arrives as a battle is taking place. Red-coated Victorian-era type soldiers are coming through the portal from Derris. Jihx's Ahnelian army are giving the invaders a hard time, though, probably due to all that practise fighting off the Derrisian hordes.
He goes into the main castle and obtains a report on the battle situation from his generals. He tells them he will go and investigate Derris and they should continue to resist all attacks from the religious group that are attacking.
Jihx gets his hawk, which flies down out of the sky and grows to man-carrying size, flies off and starts to attack the army, toasting things left and right with blasts from his sword.
Having decimated the attack through the gate, Jihx Trumps Caitlin.
Elsewhere, Caitlin is leading her power-armoured army through shadow towards Derris. She feels a Trump call coming on and resists it for a while, but eventually answers. She and Jihx talk. Caitlin explains about the situation on Derris. Jihx comes through to her and joins the army.
In the fast Enchanted Earth, Arun finishes recreating Lillian's body. This was much faster and easier than Nemain's was as there were still lots of intact parts. As is now usual the new body has the trade mark signed ovaries and is super-fertile.
Lillian is put back into her body from Etienne's spirit-holding bottle. At first she seems to think it is a trick, but is quickly reassured that she is really out of Hell. She is quickly brought up to date. Etienne explains the concept of God, and Lillian is told why we cannot get Gerard back at the moment. Nemain complains that he is not now creating a body for Connor as an exhausted Arun goes off to sleep.
Elsewhere, Skyrie continues to trawl his way through shadow to find reincarnating psychic battery people.
Caitlin and Jihx and Caitlin's army continue to travel through shadow. A few hours pass, over the course of which it becomes much more humid and hot, closer and closer to the Derrisian environment until they eventually reach Derris itself.
Caitlin lays down her battle plans to the army - wipe out everything of the invaders, but without the use of nuclear weapons. Take their commander prisoner. Do not go through the gate as Jihx has left word to kill anything that comes through it. The powered-armour troops disperse off through the jungle to take up positions and get ready to attack.
Caitlin is unconcerned that lots of the Derrissians working in the invaders camp will be killed off too.
Jihx experiments with his hawk.
And before long the power-armoured army set about the Victorian-era army. Strangely enough the battle is rather one-sided so that after an hour the gate area is cleared and Jihx goes through to tell his troops in Ahnel that all is well and to clear up.
Within another hour the invading forces have been utterly destroyed. There are some prisoners, but Caitlin has them all killed bar one, their leader, who is instead dragged before her for questioning.
Caitlin asks him where they came from.
As Skyrie travels through shadow in SkyDoom, his slightly pink high-speed flying castle dark clouds begin to gather in the sky. He starts to shift shadow away from them, but notices that he is being followed by a flock of several hundred golden angels, flying at least as fast as SkyDoom. As they come closer he can see that they are armed with flaming swords, and are gaining.
Skyrie makes a Trump sketch of a nearby feature so he can return here later. At his order the siege weapons on the castle to fire on the angels (under the control of the castle itself, which is slightly sentient), but they seem faster than the castle and simply dodge.
SkyDoom returns to its alternative form - a bracelet - and Skyrie starts to plummet to the ground. He casts a spell - '' - and a living lighting bolt appears and catches him in mid air before flying away at high speed.
The lighting bolt fires lightning bolts, under the control of Skyrie, back at the angels. One is hit and explodes in blast of golden light and disappears. He fires on a couple more, destroying them too, but the angels are fast and are regrouping to surround him. He allows this to happen and before too long is indeed surrounded. He continues to burn them, then the lightning bolt teleports with him out of the group and he toasts some more of them. Then he Trumps Caitlin.
In the fast Enchanted Earth, Arun awakes. He is very hungry, so absorbs a table, chair and other inanimate objects.
Having thus breakfasted, he goes downstairs and starts to recreate Connor in the same way as he did Nemain, growing a baby from Connor's DNA in a tank formed from himself. Nemain kisses him on the cheek.
Lillian and Etienne seem to have gone.
When Arun asks, Nemain says she doesn't know where they are. He gets Nemain to try to Trump Etienne, but she does not answer.
Nemain then tries Lillian, and eventually gets through. Lillian is in Amber, in Vialle's office. Arun joins the Trump link and asks how she is after her visit to Hell. She is not best pleased, and says that they have not yet come up with any solution as to how to get Gerard out of Hell.
Lillian says that Etienne went to rest, and also mentions that she will have to walk the Pattern again as she has lost her Pattern imprint. She points out that Nemain and Connor will also have to walk the Pattern again.
Vialle joins Lillian in the link and asks if the Jewel of Judgement could help in getting rid of God. Arun does not know what that is, so Vialle explains that it is a red gem, part of the Royal Regalia of Amber, which could control the weather in Amber and which Oberon used to redraw the Primal Pattern. However, it went down to the Courts of Chaos once Oberon redrew the Pattern...
Vialle and Lillian also ask were God came from. Arun implicates Etienne as the prime suspect.
Further questions are asked about resurrecting people, so Arun shows off the gestation tank.
"Let's hope Nemain doesn't explode when she walks the Pattern," says Lillian cheerfully when the process is explained.
Nemain looks a little concerned at this.
Vialle sends a servant off to the library to research the Jewel and the Courts of Chaos.
Nemain is concerned about not being of the blood anymore. Arun tries to reassure by saying she should let Connor walk the Pattern first, then if he got it wrong he will go 'pop' not her. Nemain walks off in a huff.
In Derris, Caitlin's (last) prisoner doesn't seem to want to answer her first question so she kills him out of hand.
She starts to lead the army away in the direction that God's army came from (they are not hard to track). Jihx goes with her.
They go a little way and both she and Jihx notice that there appears to have been a shadow path coming into here which has since been removed.
At this point she gets a Trump call. She resists, and it goes away, then comes back, so she answers. It is Skyrie.
He explains that he is having some angel problems and asks if Caitlin and Jihx would be interested in joining the fight. They would indeed, but before they go through Caitlin uses the Pattern and finds a 'good' (i.e. challenging) army to take on the power-armoured army. The powered-armour forces are not too keen on this meaningless fight, but Caitlin promises them a pile of gold once the fighting is done so off they go.
Caitlin and Jihx (plus his hawk) go through the Trump to Skyrie, who is on the back of his lightning bolt in mid-air. The lightning bolt reconfigures itself into a magic carpet woven from tiny threads of lightning to provide enough room for all three people who are now riding it.
Caitlin is rather limited due to being unable to fly, so Skyrie lends Caitlin the Cloak of the Divine Shadow, his magical cloak which gives the wearer major stealth abilities and allows them to fly. He also casts a 'Cataclysm of Infernal AcidFire' spell on her, causing a glowing headband to appear about her head. This will allow her to fire globs and jets of hideously corrosive, hideously hot super-heated acid at targets, either under her control or autonomously. Caitlin turns invisible and flies off...
Jihx gets onto his hawk and also flies off.
Everyone attacks angels.
Unfortunately Jihx quickly gets into trouble - although he is a lot faster than the angels and can dodge their flaming swords, his hawk is not and it soon has its head cut off. Jihx falls. As he plummets he gets deeply cut across the back by a flaming sword. Jihx gets out his Trumps, but as he falls through the air most of them are blown away. However, he retains one of Arun that he starts to concentrate on, forcing the link so Arun will have no chance to resist. He is slashed many more times as he concentrates, but fortunately his armour is resisting much of the damage.
Skyrie and Caitlin continue to attack. Caitlin is blasting angels, then, as they begin to converge on her position (even though the cloak makes her invisible, the AcidFire jets are still entirely visible), stopping, flying off, then attacking again. Skyrie is zipping from place to place on his lightning-carpet, blasting angels with its lightning bolt. The angels are fast enough that, attacking together, Skyrie is being cut and damaged by their flaming swords.
Jihx finally manages to open the Trump link to Arun with extreme prejudice and piles through, landing on Arun.
Skyrie, thinking to rescue the plummeting Jihx, teleports into the area where he was a few seconds before to find him no longer there, but plenty of angels present. He gets slashed again. The lightning-carpet is becoming quite damaged by now. Skyrie thinks it will not last much longer, so uses it to teleport off. The carpet disappears and then a new lighting bolt appears as Skyrie casts another of the same spell.
Caitlin continues to kill in the same manner.
Skyrie shouts out to take one alive.
Caitlin doesn't answer - she doesn't want to give her position away.
In the fast Enchanted Earth, Arun and Jihx disentangle themselves. Arun complains that Jihx could have endangered Connor's recovery by his actions. Jihx is not happy. Arun checks and finds that everything is still all right, but Jihx should not do that again anyway.
Jihx explains to Arun what is happening and that he is going back to assist Caitlin and Skyrie. He uses the Pattern and finds his Trump deck in a drawer, shuffling the Amber courtyard Trump to the top of his deck in case this situation happens again. Then he Trumps Skyrie.
Back at the battle, Caitlin and Skyrie continue to whittle down the mob of angels.
Skyrie receives a Trump call. He moves the lightning bolt far away from the angels to take the call without being attacked. It is from Jihx, who asks if help is needed.
Skyrie tells him that they are doing all right, but that he can join them if he wants. Jihx goes through onto the lightning bolt, which again transforms into a flying carpet made of lightning, with Skyrie and Jihx both firing away from on it.
In the fast Enchanted Earth, Arun continues his work on creating a new body for Connor.
Back at the battle, Caitlin wipes out all the angels around her, with no damage taken by herself. Jihx and Skyrie save one angel, for questioning.
Jihx wants to take the last one on single-handedly, so Skyrie manages to move the carpet near the angel to allow this. The angel flies up to attack, and Jihx takes the angel on. He tries to disarm it.
A few minutes of fencing and he does manage to do so, being both stronger and faster than the angel, but at a slight disadvantage due to his being on a flying carpet controlled by someone else while it can fly free. The angel's sword is flicked out of its hand and tumbles away - but then disappears and reappears in the angel's hand!
Jihx pauses for thought, then reengages with the angel, this time slashing at its sword arm.
The angel is wounded, leaking golden light, and drops its sword once more. Jihx points his sword at the angel's throat.
The sword disappears again as it tumbles towards the ground and appears in the hand of the angel's uninjured arm. The angel starts to fight again.
This time Jihx slashes at the angel's new sword arm and the sword flies away again. This time it does not return. Jihx returns his sword to the angel's throat.
The angel looks at them and the carpet. It bows in mid-air at Jihx, makes the sign of the cross on itself and disappears in a puff of golden light, as with the other angels when they were destroyed.
Skyrie cannot sense any Trump energy to indicate that that was the route the angel has followed, but does sense an amount of released magic. He concludes that the Angel has destroyed itself.
Caitlin, still invisible, asks where the angels came from. Skyrie tells her that they followed him as he shifted through shadow.
In Enchanted Earth, a number of hours have passed and Connor's body is ready.
Arun Trumps Jihx who joins him for the resurrection. Nemain, with the bottle of Connor, is not present, so Jihx Trumps her and brings her back.
Arun apologises to her for the, 'let Connor walk the Pattern first to see if he blows up,' comment he made earlier.
Nemain releases Connor's spirit from the bottle, and it flows into the new body, which after a moment takes a deep breath, reanimates and rises.
Connor and Nemain embrace and kiss. As they do so Jihx cannot help but notice that the hugging and kissing appears to be a lot more intimate than perhaps would be expected, even of twins...
He suddenly remembers the form of Hell that they where in - that of the 'Violent against nature'. Hmmmm.
Back in the shadow of the battle, Skyrie flies down to collect up Jihx's discarded Trumps, but finds that they have disappeared. The Armour of the Crimson Inquisitor is healing his wounds as he does this.
Caitlin offers the cloak back to Skyrie, but he allows her to borrow it for a while longer. She and Skyrie discuss his plans.
Skyrie explains his idea of finding a shadow suitable for use as a platform to open a gate to God's true location. Caitlin approves of the plan and offers her assistance. Skyrie accepts and makes a Trump sketch of himself to give to her. She plans to use her stronger Pattern powers to find the shadow for him. They also discuss the shadow path used by the invaders of Derris.
[NB: it is commented that people would describe Caitlin as a sociopath - if only they lived long enough to do so!]
Caitlin shifts off through shadow in search of Skyrie's ideal shadow. She quickly finds a horse (next to its recently dead owner who seems to have died of a heart attack - someone that she didn't kill for a change!) and gallops off. She rides the horse into the ground, then another is found and the process continues (with Caitlin occasionally eating the exhausted horse before proceeding). She is looking for a shadow that is, in order of importance:
Skyrie uses the Trump sketch of the landmark near the place he was in when the angels attacked, and goes there. He begins to re-rack some spells.
In the fast Enchanted Earth, Arun Trumps back to Amber in search of a sample of Godofos' DNA.
He goes to Godofos' rooms and searches around. After a bit he does indeed find some skin flakes, some hair on a hairbrush and a few tiny spots of blood around the sink (where Godofos was unfortunate enough to cut himself shaving - several times from the look of it!). He retrieves some suitable samples of DNA.
Having does so he attempts to Trump Etienne, but does not get any response.
He Trumps Jihx instead...
Meanwhile, Jihx is Trumping Moire. When he gets through, at Moire's request, 'Jihxth taketh the childwen thwough the Twump link' to Rebma.
The children embrace their mother. Moire wants to know what happened, but Jihx explains that there is more for him to do - they "must talk later."
Moire tells him that they shall, and she and the children head off towards the Rebman Pattern room so that the children can re-walk the Pattern.
Jihx is about to Trump Arun, but as he is about to do so he is Trumped by Arun instead. They exchange news and decide to join together to try and Trump Etienne. Jihx comes through to the fast Enchanted Earth and they do this thing...
Meanwhile Skyrie has finished re-racking some of his quicker-to-cast spells, so he Trumps Caitlin. He has to repeat the call before she answers, but she eventually does answer.
He goes through the Trump link and joins her. They continue their quest together, travelling in Skyrie's fast-flying castle, SkyDoom. SkyDoom is small (for a castle!), heavily armed with siege weaponry and made of slightly pink rock. It is also sentient, and says 'hello' to Caitlin when she boards it.
Arun and Jihx's attempt to Trump Etienne fails to get through.
They attempt to call Skyrie instead, to get reinforcements for a group Trump of Etienne. However, due to his various exertions Skyrie has fallen asleep and so no link is possible.
So they Trump Caitlin. At first they fail to get through, which causes them some concern, but on their second attempt they get through. They discuss matters over the link, then go through to her.
The three of them together attempt to open a Trump link to Etienne. As they do so they can tell that Caitlin is contributing the most to the call, Jihx a bit less, and Arun a lot less. After a while, they succeed in making contact, and the link opens up. Etienne looks a bit put out and a little apprehensive, but when asked says that she is fine. Jihx apologises for the interruption, but tells her we are ready to perform another rescue attempt to get Godofos out of Hell. Etienne comes through to them to assist in this.
Arun goes down to wake Skyrie after Etienne reminds the others that he is also important for the task.
He reaches the bedroom where Skyrie is sleeping, and stealthily approaches the bed. Skyrie does not wake up, so he puts a hand on his shoulder and, when he does not immediately wake, he makes Skyrie super-fertile and 'signs' him as he has done the others. Then he shakes Skyrie's shoulder to wake him properly.
Skyrie reluctantly gets up and follows Arun back to the others. He is still tired and has only had about 20 minutes sleep.
Etienne recommends that we once again use the slow Enchanted Earth as a suitable starting point from which to stage the rescue. The rest of us follow her there via Trump, except for Caitlin who remains on SkyDoom to continue the search for Skyrie's shadow.
Once we arrive in the Enchanted Earth, Etienne leads us off through her palace in Rome, through shadow, to the same broom cupboard we used for this before. Etienne casts her spell and opens up a gate to Hell.
Arun turns into a hamster and jumps through the gate into 'Good God Hell'. Nothing bad seems to happen.
Skyrie says that he assumes Etienne will not do a runner this time. She apologises for her behaviour last time and says she will try to resist this time.
We all go in through the gate to Hell and Etienne shifts us off, out of 'her' God's hell, through the intermediate God-less Hell, and on to the 'Mad' God's Hell.
We arrive on the third path through the dark, menacing woods. The inscribed archway is still there, but there is no sign whatsoever of the burning bush.
Arun gets his Trump of Godofos out and Trumps him. After quite a hard struggle the Trump link opens up. As before, Godofos appears to be being blown through the air by terrific winds. He complains bitterly about the delay. Arun tells the rest of us that contact has been made, so Skyrie joins the Trump link and with a great struggle opens it up into a physical Trump gate.
Etienne gets the latest spirit-holding bottle, and goes to the gate. Godofos 'swims' through the air to the gate and his spirit appears with us. It is quickly pulled into the bottle.
The presence of God is getting stronger around us. A brief discussion ensues, but no-one has any ideas on how free Gerard from the ice. As we talk lightning starts to flash across the sky.
Arun moves to flee but is called back by Etienne, and we all flee the area together.
We run through the dark woods and after a little while arrive back in the Hell of sane God. Once we get there we again discuss how to free Gerard. Skyrie says points out that he could not, at the moment, hold the Trump gate open for long as he is very tired.
We agree to leave the rescue of Gerard for later, and leave hell.
Skyrie Trumps Caitlin, who eventually answers. She has had lunch (horse meat is splattered all over the place), and at his request brings Skyrie through the SkyDoom. He goes off to sleep, this time posting his three Pokemon (hideous ravaging undead monstrosities, made up of parts from all sorts of creatures, some human, some animal, some unrecognisable, with a couple of dozen 'weapon appendages' each and which make a strange, continual chittering) as guards to ensure that he is not woken up this time.
In the fast Enchanted Earth, Arun starts to rebuild Godofos from the skin, hair and blood samples her found earlier. However, the samples must be of low quality or something, because the new body grows three arms and mutates in various other ways as it grows, and Arun has to struggle to correct these problems as he goes on.
As Arun struggles on, Jihx watches.
After a while Jihx gets bored and Trumps off to Rebma. Upon arrival, he goes down towards the Pattern room, hoping to meet Moire on the way.
At the bottom of the stairs he does indeed meet Moire, coming back from the Rebman Pattern. There is no sign of Connor and Nemain, who have presumably used the Pattern to teleport off somewhere to rest. She says that she is much happier now the children have re-walked the Pattern.
Jihx takes her aside and suggests that perhaps Connor and Nemain are a little too close, even for twins.
Moire considers this, and says she thinks that he may be right. She appears to be taking this news fairly well. At the moment. She says she will have to think about what to do about it, assuming it is true.
She and Jihx return upstairs to the main body of Castle Rebma...
While other things were going on and people were resting on the fast Enchanted Earth, Etienne tried to make her mind up as to whether to side with God, or with Amber and against God. She used her Advanced Pattern abilities to speed off into shadow to find out more. This she intended to do by examining Godly shadows, two dozen or so of them, places where God has been established for some time (places like shadow Telaram), and seeing what God has done there.
She got to these shadows quite quickly, and found all of them quite similar at an overall level, with a rural medieval-type society of small, neat, orderly villages of small, neat houses with neat gardens centred on a church, which is usually the largest building, and an inn. They usually have a set of stocks and a gibbet too. Technology and so on of a higher level seemed to have been removed and in many places towns and cities appear to have been demolished or removed to be replaced by villages. These shadows do still retain a good many of their cultural characteristics in terms of clothing, architecture, music, food and so on, but their rural medieval-type society is what God (and Etienne) considered the ideal way of life for people (as reflected in Heaven too). Many shadows had far fewer books then they did, with the Bible everywhere the most important. Angels were occasionally visible high up in the sky, flitting about on Godly business.
The shadows are run by a nobility who rule by Divine Right and a priesthood who provide spiritual guidance and through whom God works - he seems not not act against sinners by, for example, instantly annihilating them. The priesthood also sometimes provide more physical help in the form of miracles of healing, miracles of food multiplication and so on, but these are rare. Old people are quite few in number - they were usually ungodly, would not recant the errors of their ways and had to be taught their folly. Etienne discovered that people have the only real choice - worship God or burn in Hell forever.
As Etienne investigated this, an Angel came down to talk to her and attempt to convince her that God had not abandoned her, that she still had a chance to return to the path of righteousness, and that what God was doing was what is Right.
Etienne wanted to know if the Amberites who ended up in Hell were given a chance to convert before being condemned. The Angel tells her that they were, and that they refused that chance.
It also showed her enough evidence to prove that what had at that point become known as 'mad-God' is the original God that she created and caused to link up across shadow. It also told her that every sinner God sends to Hell causes Him pain (Etienne knew this, but the angel re-iterates it anyway).
As Etienne knows, in the original Enchanted Earth crusades and religious wars are usually quite civilised. Those blessed by their deities (such as Etienne) attempt to kill the leader or leaders of the other side, and eventually one or another sides ruler is indeed killed. This convinces the defeated people that the victors god is the True God, and they convert peacefully.
Unfortunately, the angel told Etienne, this is not the case in other shadows - there are lots of places, a majority in fact, where people are not so flexible in their faith - and this is why there have had to be so many religious wars and so on.
And God managed to convince Etienne that He is in the right and that she should support Him, but that she should not act against the other Amberites until the time is right. For example, when and if the group go down deep into Hell to rescue Gerard...
It is not, after all, as if most of the other Amberites are not horrendous sinners who in any case have had a chance to convert if they wanted to.
Session 3.6 Index Session 3.8
Skyrie's Diary for This Session