Notes Taken by Samantha and Alastair Beadle.
Arun (in camouflaged dragon form) flies through shadow after the airships, which are flying in an arrowhead formation:
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Caitlin sits on the mountain watching the camp. Gil completes Trump cards of Etienne, Jihx, Arun and Caitlin (in addition to one of Lillian) which he gives to them to deal out as they wish. Jihx and Arun give theirs to Etienne.
Back in Amber, Etienne, Jihx and Dolf discuss what to do. Etienne thinks the attacks in the Golden Circle are a side issue and the airships are the main problem. She suggests that capturing Lillian would be good. Dolf agrees if he can look after her (this is said with much leering). Jihx thinks that we should wait until they reach their destination before doing anything, so may as well attack the base while we are waiting. This is agreed. Etienne will go and look into the tunnel while the others attack the camp. Etienne goes through the Trump of Caitlin to sit at the mountain top until the others attack the base and provide a distraction for her, so she doesn't get shot at.
Caitlin is given a stack of weapons to defend Etienne (and herself) from attack from the base. Jihx and Dolf go through to Vitesse to meet up with Gil. Gil uses the Trump sketch of the point near to the camp which has been used before to transport the three of them.
As Arun continues through shadow following the airships he gets a Trump call. It is Finndo. He offers Arun the final chance to join him/the winning side, and be honoured in his sight; otherwise the next time they meet it will be as enemies. Arun refuses. Finndo becomes angry and cuts off the call.
Jihx and Dolf launch the attack on the base with plasma bolts and a huge crossbow respectively. Dolf hits a few soldiers; Jihx destroys one of the airship masts which slowly falls over. The machine gun towers at the base fence open up on the three of them. Dolf shoots the machine guns, knocking out several. Jihx shoots at (and blows up) two armoured cars which were heading out from cover; other armoured cars retreat into cover again.
Caitlin warns Jihx via Trump that the some (about a thousand) of the soldiers have left the camp from two gates and are moving to get behind them. After a while the base seems sufficiently distracted, and Caitlin gives Etienne the word. Etienne launches off the top of the mountain and plummets down the nearly sheer face, before at the last moment flying Electra into the tunnel (which is roughly 100m in diameter).
Jihx destroys a second mast, when he gets a Trump call from Finndo. Jihx tries to aim his sword at him but Finndo somehow paralyses him with the power of his mind, so that he is unable to do so. Finndo says he has lost the chance to join him and breaks the contact. Caitlin watches the camp and sees the soldiers setting up some large weapons (mortars), behind cover where Jihx and co. cannot see them. She tells Gil, then tries various crossbows on the men manning the mortars (more than two miles away, with the aid of Etienne's magical telescope-ring); a huge crossbow like Dolfs seems the most effective (though she can't reload it anywhere near as fast as Godofos can), and several men are killed by her. Machine guns start to fire up at Caitlin, but she easily dodges their fire.
One of the mortars fires and hits close to Dolf, throwing him through the air and into some rocks. He gets up, but is staggering and looks dazed.
Other mortar shells start to fall close by. Gil gets Dolf and Jihx together and Trumps them through the sketch of the conference room he had made previously.
Arun follows the airships onto a shadow of rolling silvery-yellow sand dunes by a blue-black sea, under a pale pink sky. The airships approach what seems to be a city built into and around a collection of what seems to be huge sharp curved teeth protruding from the sand by the shore. What looks like a large military camp is nearby; the airships hover briefly over the camp, then proceed to move slowly over the nearby city (which the army seems to be blockading). They start to fire machine guns at parts of the city on the 'teeth'.
Arun contacts Gerard (who is very surprised to be Trumped by a dragon, and more than a little suspicious when Arun changes his shape back into his human form) and asks him which shadow this is. Gerard tells him it is a place called Diega. Arun asks what to do; Gerard says it is up to Arun to do what he thinks is best (defend the city or wait for the others).
Etienne continues down the tunnel until it gets very dark (after about 200m), when she and Electra drop to the floor. She lights a torch and follows the tunnel. It soon becomes apparent that the tunnel is in fact a shadow path as she feels herself moving between worlds.
After a while Etienne has a sense of divergence, as though there is a branching in the shadow path. She can feel she is being directed down one path while another path seems to barred somehow barred. After a while the tunnel starts to get narrower. Then the path behind her drops away and a red glow appears ahead. Etienne tries to use of the Trump card of Caitlin to escape, but it does not work. She turns Electra around and flies over the newly formed chasm just as red-hot lava flows down the tunnel and disappears down the it.
She goes back to the place where she felt she was barred from another path and starts trying to force herself down the barred path, using the Pattern. She pushes herself to the limits and very slowly advances. Slowly she feels the barrier, whatever it is, fracturing under the sheer mental force of her assault. As she goes she gets the impression that with the right key it would be simple to go down this barred route.
On the top of the mountain Caitlin fells the earth shudder. Etienne continues to press on and eventually feels herself break through the barrier, which shatters violently, and can feel that the path ahead is now clear. The tunnel seems to have suddenly changed direction as the barred path opens up.
Jihx, Dolf and Gil arrive in the conference room in Lillian's mansion on the base. However, they soon find that the house is empty, and there are small discrepancies (gold braid on uniforms instead of the scarlet or blue of Finndo's forces). After searching the mansion, Jihx heads out, and quickly finds that he cannot hear the sounds of mortars or firing. In fact the whole shadow seems to be empty. As he rides off into the base Jihx finds that all roads lead back to the mansion (a trap of Finndo's is assumed) - he rides off, turns a corner, and there is the mansion again in front of him.
Jihx Trumps Arun and tells him what happened. Arun pulls him through to assist in attacking the airships.
Back in the mansion, Gil and Dolf decide to together use the Trump of Lillian to attack her. Together they make contact with her. Lillian is very surprised to see them, and is not happy when Dolf and Gil attack her with crossbows through the Trump link. One of the airships helmsmen is killed by a bolt from Dolfs huge crossbow as she dodges the first attack. She starts to concentrate on closing the Trump link, but this slows her down enough that Dolf shoots her in the shoulder with another huge bolt as she closes the Trump link.
Outside in the desert, Arun and Jihx watch the lead ship lose control slightly (as the helmsman is killed). They attack other airships and hole the gasbags of four in total, which start to slowly descend, and make for the army encampment outside the city.
Caitlin is still being fired at on the top of the mountain, to little effect, and has seen the area of Gils sketch pounded by mortar shells; now troops seem to be moving in to search the place.
As Etienne starts down the path she has opened she receives a Trump call from Dolf and Gil. They tell her what they did to Lillian. Etienne is worried that the same may be used against us, and pulls them both through to her. The three of them continue down the tunnel. However, a short while later they try to Trump Jihx and discover that the Trump cards don't work deep into the tunnel, at least to contact anyone outside. They return to the point where they did work (basically where Etienne Trumped them in).
From here they contact the others and everyone assembles in the tunnel (Arun and Jihx are pulled through from the middle of their fight against the airships).
Even when Etienne points it out, none of the others can sense the divergence in shadow she detected. Gil can sense some kind of faint Trump effect, though.
Gil tries to figure out why the Trumps aren't working, and eventually concludes that it is a natural feature of the shadow itself, and not something he can affect with his Trump power.
Gil suggests knocking the roof of the tunnel down to stop the soldiers from the base following us. Jihx tries to bring down the ceiling with plasma bolts from his sword, and after a slow start brings down enough to block the tunnel to about ten metres deep (not enough to stop an airship going through). Gil Trumps off to Vitesse and hires some navvies with explosives skills to knock things down. The navvies are not to happy at this strange Trumping thing, and say it's impossible when they see the tunnel. Gil sends them back after paying them for their gunpowder, which is used to blow up more of the tunnel, leaving just part of the tunnel blocked (still not enough to stop an airship going through).
Eventually we get bored and start to proceed down the tunnel.
As we go it feels like we are moving very rapidly through shadow. After half an hour or so the end of the tunnel become visible. It ends at a high barbed wire fence, with a large double gate leading onto a road zig-zagging down a steep slope very similar to that at the base. From the tunnel mouth we are overlooking a massive airship base going off a little way to the right, and miles to the left; it seems several miles deep and has masts at which are moored hundreds of huge airships. Beyond the base is a massive city of tall skyscrapers, under low cloud, with people and motor vehicles moving through the streets at their bases; the whole place has a 1930's, film noir kind of feel to it. It seems almost monochrome; sheets of rain are sweeping across the city.
Etienne and Arun can feel that Sorcery does not work here; Etienne feels that Empowerment does, though. All the shadow movement seems to have destroyed Gil's Trump sketch.
Caitlin uses the magnifying ring to view the city and sees a huge skyscraper complex in the centre of the city (like a huge version of the Empire State Building, with eight smaller similar buildings in a square around it, all linked by high arched bridges) with a huge statue of a predatory-looking black unicorn rampant upon its peak. As she scans the streets, Caitlin sees that many of the people walking there are uniformed in a similar style to the troops we have met previously. There are no trees or living things other than people.
She also sees occasional huge propaganda posters, of Finndo, in his black uniform with the red sash; across the bottom of the posters are a variety of slogans : 'Believe', 'Obey', 'Trust', 'Be Pure', 'The Theocrat is Watching'.
The emblems on the airships below are slightly different to the ones on the other airships we have been attacked by, as they have no white circle - they are just a black unicorn facing to the left on a scarlet ground. From observing several airships which arrive and depart as we watch, it seems like the ones below do not have the Trump energy engines of the others. We can also see there are other tunnels in the mountain range the same as the one we are in, so blocking this one would probably not have much effect.
We also conclude that Finndo has set things up here so that causing trouble for him at home will be very hard.
We discuss what to do. We decide that the best thing to do to start with is to destroy the twelve Trump energy powered airships and take or destroy the engines so they cannot put them into any of the hundreds of plain airships they have here.
Arun turns into dragon form again and flies out of the tunnel over the camp, following the path the airships took back to Diega again.
Once there he summons the rest of us (apart from Etienne) through using the Trumps, to a point in the desert some three miles from the encampment, where the four damaged airships seem to be moored.
We all assemble in the shadow of Diega.
Etienne goes to where she left the siege cannon, close to the airship base, and brings that to Diega also, through shadow. She then spends a couple of hours using her magic to create a powerful tempest. After a while sand whips around the desert, city and enemy camp. Clouds swirl overhead, centred roughly on the city.
While Etienne does this, Dolf has gone looking for some troops to help us. On a shadow which seems like the world war one trenches on a really bad day, he has found roughly one hundred soldiers, tired, dirty and bedraggled, armed with rifles and grenades. He manages to convince them to assist us with the aid of a large bag of gold, and a promise of taking them back to Paris afterwards.
After Dolf returns, Caitlin and Dolf take a number of the grenades and tie them to the bolts of their large crossbows, to use against the airships.
The cannon is set up behind one sand dune. Jihx behind another and Caitlin, Dolf and Gil behind another. Jihx and the siege cannon are roughly three miles from the enemy camp; Caitlin, Gil and Dolf, with the soldiers, have crept much closer. Etienne and Arun take to the air. Arun is invisible. Etienne stays low. Six airships are hovering over the city, firing very occasionally. The others are in the army camp, the damaged ones on the ground; the others in the air.
The cannon, Jihx and Arun all fire on separate targets and Etienne summons the magical powers she possesses as she barrels closer to the encampment...