Notes Taken by Samantha and Alastair Beadle.
Arun (flying invisibly off in the distance) is to give the signal to attack. He does so by firing a large plasma bolt along the length of one of the gondola of one of the airships. The siege-cannon and Jihx fire on two of the other airships; Jihx pierces the gas-bags of one, end to end; the siege cannon smashes open the side of another. Both are severely damaged.
Caitlin and Dolf start to fire grenades at the lead airship (the 'Nemesis'), blowing out windows and gun placements and scarring its skin, initially in the middle of the gondola, then towards the control room at the bow.
Etienne casts a spell, and lights up. She flies Electra over the city, towards one of the airships.
Gil leads the soldiers towards the enemy camp.
Jihx, Caitlin and Dolf move positions after each shot to avoid retaliation from the airships. The siege cannon manages a second shot on the same airship before it is blasted into pieces.
Arun teleports into the airship he damaged. The control room (at the front of the gondola) is burned and blasted, with a path of destruction leading back into the rest of the gondola. He heals the two surviving airshipmen on the bridge (who are very badly burnt) to try to convince them to show him how to fly the ship. The first one spits on him as a devil, and seems fanatically loyal to Finndo, refusing Arun's threats. So he throws him out the window and repeats his threats on the second one. He quickly joins his comrade in leaving via the window. Arun decides to pull the pipes out of the airships airbags to deflate it, instead, and to kill anyone he comes across.
The spell Etienne has cast gives her an awe-inspiring aura, making the enemy unable to fire at her. As she flies in on Electra, she brings forth columns of fire from the sky onto a couple of the airships over the city. Her magic renders the enemy forces too awe-struck to retaliate against her.
Dolf and Caitlin continue to fire grenades at the lead airship, breaking the windows of the bridge and then firing grenades in. It begins to drift, as if there is no-one in control. Lillian's voice comes down from a bridge window towards them, "Give up cousins, I have no wish to kill you," she booms, at the same time as the barrel of a large machine gun comes over the sill of the window. Caitlin and Dolf continue to fire in, and Lillian seems to duck back, then come out and fir. Dolf is injured by the machine gun fire, but Caitlin dodges, though some bullets come pretty close.
Arun kills many of the surviving crew of the airship he has crippled, and, after a bit of searching destroys the lifting gas regulation system of the airship he is in; the ship falls towards the ground more quickly. In the process he discovers the wrecked remains of the airships Trump power source.
Off in the desert, Jihx is caught by gunfire and he and Horse are knocked over, bruised and battered. They take cover behind a dune and Jihx tells Horse to stay put while he runs off to continue attacking.
Etienne uses an intimidating "magical voice" spell to tell the airships close to her to surrender. They don't, but they also still don't attack her.
Gil splits his forces into two, roughly eighty and twenty. The larger group first attack the base from one direction so that he and the second unit can breach the fence somewhere else, and blow things up inside. Gil and his forces creep along the bases defensive ditch (which has barbed wire and guard towers along it inner edge), helped by the sand blown up by the tempest.
Lillian's voice again comes form the airship as Caitlin and Dolf fill the bridge with grenades "Damn you, cousins!". Caitlin feels some kind of mental contact, and is hit by some sort of magic; she finds herself moving very slowly indeed. Caitlin tries bringing the Pattern to mind to escape the effect, but it's slow.
Arun leaves the now plummeting airship and heads for another one.
Jihx sees the first airship falling to the ground and runs towards it, intending to destroy the Trump-powered energy source in it.
Arun teleports into the airship that Etienne was trying to convince to surrender, and starts to disable it. Etienne decides it is doing what she has told them to, and flies off to see what else she can do.
Dolf is hit again by gunfire and finds one arm no longer works. Caitlin concentrates on the Pattern and feels the slowing effect begin to fade. Before it does so, Lillian appears out of nowhere next to her. Lillian handcuffs Caitlin's hands behind her back and holds her with one arm around Caitlin's neck; Caitlin is only being strangled a little at this point.
Jihx runs to the downed airship as it ploughs into the sand. Jihx deals with the remaining airshipmen on the bridge and goes into the gondola to locate the Trump box. However, there are other survivors who begin hunting him through the ship.
Gil leads his troops up from the ditch, with the intention of crawling under the barbed wire and in. However, they are spotted, and gunfire rains down; though Gil takes out the offending tower, an alarm is raised, and he orders a retreat. He uses the Pattern to raise the sand around him and the soldiers and they crawl along the ditch for a way before attacking the guard towers around the camp again. This time they breach the fence and make for the tents inside the camp. They kill a few troops, and blow up a small ammunitions dump, then flee before they are spotted. They continue to try and destroy as much as possible.
Lillian puts a gun to Caitlin's head, and tells Dolf to give up. Lillian has some kind of transparent protective aura around her and as Caitlin focus on the Pattern this begins to flicker. Lillian pistol whips Caitlin across the back of the head, making her lose her concentration, but not before she feels the slowing spell Lillian cast on her fade away. Dolf stands up but cannot raise both hands because one is so badly damaged; his plate armour is badly torn up by gunfire at this point. Caitlin slowly frees one hand from the handcuffs. Dolf notices this. Caitlin uses her brooch/throwing knives to stab at Lillian's face and hack into the arm around her neck, which is now actively trying to strangle Caitlin, with a force Caitlin can't resist. At the same time, Dolf attacks with his sword and knocks the pistol out of Lillian's hand.
Jihx reaches the room on the airship housing the Trump power source. Because there are troops outside, he blasts it with his sword from close range (rather than the long range he would have preferred). There is a purple explosion, and he is knocked backwards as purple Trump energies swirl around him. He feels the Trump deck in his pocket go cold, his sword has developed a nearly blinding purple glow. Gil and Arun feel they are receiving a Trump call. Arun refuses it but Gil accepts the 'call' to him. As he takes the call he finds that there is no one there; he steps through the contact anyway (!). Instead of a person or place, there is a purple Trump-static-like space, with no sensory input, and only the feeling of Trump. He can feel that there is an easier and a harder direction of motion, and by concentrating seems to move along the easy direction, though with no sense of how, or how far. Nothing other than this happens for an undefined time. Eventually, Gil gets bored, and concentrates on the Pattern, trying to obtain a world which will be useful to our current quest. After a while he feels something, maybe ground under one foot. Then a 'tear' rips across the static; though it he can see a view of a world of black grass and grey rocks under a lurid yellow sky. Another 'tear' appears, showing a forest of golden trees under a blue sky. Other tears appear, faster and faster, showing other views - a landscape in flames; a rocky wasteland; a rolling silver sea under a swirling grey sky; many others.
Arun finishes unplugging the hoses of this airship, and teleports out. He flies to the next one to repeat the same procedure.
Lillian uses Caitlin as a shield against Dolf as Caitlin continues to hack Lillian's arm and throw her weapons at Lillian's face, cutting her. Lillian's face is quite slashed, and her arm is deeply cut as Caitlin hacks into it. With her free hand, Lillian reaches into a pocket in her belt and throws twelve Trump cards onto the floor in front of Dolf. They turn into twelve large grey wolves with the Roman numerals 1 to 12 in the fur on their foreheads. Which start to attack Dolf and Caitlin (8 on Dolf, 4 on Caitlin).
Dolf hacks at the wolves as does Caitlin with her free hand. Dolf kills one, but has one gripping his leg and digging its teeth in. He throws one of the wolves at Lillian, but she puts Caitlin in the way (despite Caitlin attempting to resist this) and Caitlin gets one arm mauled by the wolf before she kills it. Lillian then throws Caitlin at Dolf, but he catches her and they both turn on Lillian. Caitlin reaches down and after some digging about in the sand finds a sword. The wolves are then quickly dealt with, and Dolf and Caitlin follow Lillian as retreats off.
Etienne sees Lillian below and goes to assist Dolf and Caitlin. Lillian tries to raise the sand around herself with the Pattern, but Etienne feels her doing so, and stops it. Then Lillian gets another pistol from somewhere and starts to fire at the three of them. Caitlin avoids the bullets (as ever), but Dolf gets hit again. He is unwell at this point. Etienne's enchanted shield pulls the bullets onto itself, saving Etienne from being badly shot up as there is no other way she could have avoided Lillian's fire. Etienne uses the Pattern to change the shadow so Lillian's pistol doesn't work.
Gil decides to go through one of the 'tears', to the world with the golden forest under a blue sky. He falls from about fifteen feet up, as he appears in a purple rainbow, but lands nimbly. He then tries calling Dolf with a Trump call but Dolf resists (being in the middle of combat) so after a while Gil lets it go.
Jihx finds that his sword has changed; it is glowing a bright purple, and the blast from it is now more powerful and produces a wider beam of destruction. He manages to take down the remaining flying airships.
Arun sees that the other airships are all now damaged and sinking fast. He sees Lillian and decides to join the others in attacking her. Lillian is firing at Etienne (who uses her shield against it, drawing in the bullets), Caitlin (who dodges the bullets) and Dolf (who gets hit again and again, but just keeps going). Etienne moves them to a shadow where guns don't work and Lillian throws the pistol away and draws another card from her belt. The card is thrown to the ground, and it expands into a metal hemisphere around Lillian. Dolf uses his sword to crowbar open a grille near the top of the dome; inside he sees Lillian; she seems to be concentrating on a Trump. Dolf puts a grenade through the grille, but of course Etienne has changed things so that it doesn't work in this shadow. Etienne shifts shadow again, this time to one where the hemisphere (or empowerment, at least) won't work. After a little while, the dome melts away, but Lillian has gone.
Etienne shifts to a shadow where her magic works, then uses a spell to heal Caitlin's wolf-bitten arm and Dolf's many wounds. Dolf still feels very rough but is no longer bleeding everywhere. His armour is tinfoil lace by now. We all go back to where Jihx is and see him destroy the last airship.
Gil finds a track though the forest; everything living is metallic golden coloured. He seeks a squire to assist him, and finds a farmhouse where an itinerant squire happens to be. The squire, and everyone else, upon seeing Gil hail him as a God, addressing him as "your divinity". According to the locals, his banner is a green leaf on a silver background. All the people here have metallic golden skins, metallic gold hair and mirrored golden pupils to their eyes.
Gil is surprised, but takes it in his stride. He recruits the squire, who leads him to the capital city, which is named Nineveh (the shadow is named Erech). By the time he reaches the city, some hours later, Gil has a group of fifty or so people following him.
The people of Nineveh also hail Gil as God, and he is soon ensconced in a luxurious temple/palace where he reviews his new followers. It turns out that they believe that Finndo is the devil. Convenient. They also seem to know about magic. Gil orders them to start recruiting armies, and considers some kind of Trump gate to get them to where they are wanted; he soon realises he no idea how to create something like that.
Etienne gets rid of the tempest and we go and finish off the enemy camp. We manage to recover twenty of the hundred soldiers Dolf recruited (the others have been killed; the survivors are not entirely impressed), two intact Trump power sources, six damaged Trump power sources (the four from the airships downed previously have been removed, and are no-where to be found), several hundred prisoners, and also a Trump of Lillian (in addition to the one Gil drew earlier). For the record, the twelve airships are named:
Etienne Trumps Lillian to talk to her, and worry her, as Etienne's mind seems considerably stronger than Lillian's. Jihx and Arun stand behind her in case Lillian attacks. Dolf Trumps Gil to see where he is.
Gil answers the Trump call. He is lying on golden cushions in luxury; two huge golden statues of himself are visible in the background. Beautiful scantily-clad golden-skinned women wait upon him. He explains that he has found a shadow where he is God. The others are all (lesser) deities too. He says he didn't go out looking for the shadow; he just kind of ended up there. He tells his followers that he will return and to continue the military build-up. Then he goes through the Trump to meet up with the others.
Lillian resists the Trump call but Etienne pushes then retreats then pushes again and eventually Lillian answers. She still has the transparent aura around her, a large bandage on her arm and some dressings on her face, and is holding a big machine gun. Etienne congratulates her for her escape and thanks her for not killing Caitlin and Dolf (Etienne can tell that she is angry and was obviously trying very hard to kill then both, and didn't let them go voluntarily), then says sorry for the previous attack via Trump and then bids her good-bye.
A deputation from the city arrives at the base used by Finndo's forces. They are the city elders and they thank us for defeating the army. Etienne talks to them using her enchanting voice, and they are swayed by her words.
Dolf takes the soldiers off into shadow, to the Paris they wanted. It is about five years later, and Paris is in ruins, but the war is over, and the soldiers are war heroes. Dolf gives them another large bag of gold and leaves.
After some consideration, Gil says they can transport the Trump power sources by Trump without damaging them. This is tested on one, which seems to lose power on going to Amber (enough to be useless there), then regain it on going back though to Diega. Jihx's sword behaves similarly - its glow fades almost to nothing, them goes back to its near-blinding level on return. Everyone goes back to Amber. The Trump power sources are put under guard.
It is noticed that there seem to be somewhat fewer troops than before about in the castle; apparently Gerard is assembling an army to set sail in a day or two to reclaim the "Golden Circle" shadows..
We speak to Gerard and Vialle in the same conference room as ever. We tell him about the army and about destroying the airships. Jihx shows his sword and the boxes.
We discuss what to do next:-
This last idea is suggested by Vialle. Gerard thinks it is the best plan. It is suggested that a cage in the Pattern room would be an ideal prison as it virtually impossible to Trump out of the Pattern room...