Notes taken by Alastair and Samantha Beadle.
Session 5.15 Index Session 5.17
Back in Europe, Servo continues to repair the reversed Telluric Energy Projector (TEP) machine.
Meanwhile, in Boston, Blitz watches from a headland as the water-blob moves slowly across the harbour towards Boston as the remains of the battleship sink out of sight. It is drifting against the wind, but only at the speed of a hot-air balloon. It is also much taller and larger than any building in the city.
Blitz does not immediately go any closer, preferring to watch from here until the blob's intentions become clearer.
Void, Truth and Noesis, with Void complaining about all the effort that we are making him put into this, are gating back across the Atlantic Ocean to Boston.
Bethany is currently acting as a point of contact, transporting messages between the three groups.
Truth, Noesis and Void arrive in Boston. With help from Bethany, they are able to locate and join Blitz on his headland, bringing their dinghy with them.
We discuss what we are going to do. Do we actually want to save Boston from the water blob if it should prove to be hostile? It would, after all, do a lot of damage to the New Commonwealth to have its capital destroyed...
Bethany tells us that we should let it destroy Boston if it wants to.
We largely disagree, given the number of innocents in the city. However, there is also the slight problem that if we do want to stop it, can we actually do anything about it?
As we watch, the question of whether the water blob is hostile or not is rendered rather academic as the defences of Boston Harbour open fire on it. Patrolling airships fire smaller weapons at it, while the battleships in the harbour and the fortifications along its shores open up with much larger guns.
Explosions wrack the blob, but have little effect. Large blobs of water are blasted out of the main blob by the larger shells, causing it to shrink slightly, but it continues to drift towards Boston. As it goes a thick tendril of water rises up from the harbour and attaches to the blob. Water seems to flow into it until it is back to its original size. Damn.
As it floats onwards, the blob drifts over a battleship that is continuing to attack it. A thick tentacle of water strikes down from the blob onto the ship, smashing it into the water. The battleship sinks below the surface.
Void suggests that we try and make contact with the blob, to see if it is hostile, and to learn more about it.
We discuss this for a while, and come up with a plan. Void will open a gate to just by the blob. Blitz, carrying Bethany, will then reach through and touch the blob, allowing Bethany to see whether she can shift into it. If she can, she will, and then attempt to contact it.
Bethany still just wants to let it destroy Boston, though.
Truth speculates that if the TEP machine created the blob because we dumped large amounts of energy from the de-powering of people into Boston harbour, then perhaps we should worry about an equivalent 'earth blob' being produced in Europe, where we have been using the Machine there and dumping energy from the machine into the ground. If an earth blob was created then it and the water blob might conceivably go around and destroy the world. Hmm.
Void suggests discharging the energy to the Moon instead, although we have no idea how we might do so - his gate will not reach that far.
Truth suggests that transforming the Moon into a blob also capable of moving around under its own power would also be bad. Fair point.
We decide to try and communicate with the blob, and then go from there. We decide that, given his powers, Noesis is a better person to touch the blob than Blitz, so Bethany slides across into his mind instead.
With everybody ready, Void opens a gate to by the blob. Noesis shifts a cold, transparent salty tendril out of himself, so when he touches it he is as much like the sea water making it up as possible. Bethany is ready to move to communicate with it. Blitz is standing by to use his friction powers to increased the blob's viscosity and stop it striking through Void's gate if it tries anything. Truth watches.
As the gate opens, Noesis reaches through into the blob, which does just seem to be water. Bethany seems to consider the blob for a moment, then moves across into it.
The gate is closed.
The blob continues to move towards the city.
As its course takes it close to another battleship, another large water tentacle strikes down from the blob and smashes into the ship. It sinks.
The blob carries on in a straight line towards Boston.
We decide that if we do want to save their capital city, we would rather not have the force of the New Commonwealth shooting at us as we try to do so. That being so, we need to have a little chat with them. We consider where best to do this from. In the end, we decide that the best place is probably the radio room of Boston Castle.
Noesis knows where this is and directs Void, or at least his gate, there.
When he has the location down pat, Void opens a gate into the radio room. Through it, we see two operators tapping away at something like Morse Code, and two armed guards, who look rather bored. Void opens the gate wide and Truth steps through into the room. The guards begin to respond to this, but are far slower than she is, and are rendered unconscious before they can do anything.
Noesis, in the form of a guard, also steps through into the radio room. He approaches the operators, both of whom have noticed our entrance, and who are now tapping away frantically at their telegraph keys, and stops them from sending anything more,
He tells them that we are Blessed from the Octuple Alliance, and would like to join forces with the New Commonwealth to attack the demonic blob that is currently attacking Boston. He asks them to send a message to military headquarters along these lines.
The telegraph operators nod, look at one another, and one of them starts tapping away. "We're contacting the office of General Fairfax," he says.
Blitz tries to use a sheet of the code they are using that is hung on the wall to monitor and check what they are sending, but they are just tapping away too fast, and he has no idea what is being sent.
While they do this, Noesis uses his powers to seals the door into the room.
Just as he completes this, someone outside tries to open the door...
Void opens a small gate into the corridor outside, and sees that there is a group of soldiers there, with more approaching. Speaking through the gate, he tells them that we are talking to their senior staff, General Fairfax's office in fact, so could they not try and break the door down for now. Thank you.
While the telegraph operator taps away, Noesis uses the telephone and, via the operator, contacts the commander of Boston Castle.
While he does this, Void opens a gate into the air above the harbour so that we can see that is going on with the blob. The New Commonwealth forces attacking it now include Spitfire-type aircraft, which are dropping small bombs on it. None of the attacks are having a great effect.
Quite quickly, Noesis is put through to the Boston Castle garrison commander.
"What do you want and what are you doing, terrorists?" asks the commander.
"We are negotiating to try to assist you," Noesis tells him. "We would appreciate not being attacked while fighting the blob, as we may have to kill some of them to save your city."
The commander considers this. "If my commanders decide that that is the way to proceed, then so be it," he tells Noesis. Hmm.
We decide to go back to the headland to keep watch on the blob while the New Commonwealth decides whether to let us help without being attacked or not.
Void gates us through and then rests. After having gated back and forth across the Atlantic some five times in the last day he is now very tired.
In the distance, the blob continues to drift towards Boston. The attacking aircraft still seem to be having no effect.
The blob approaches the shoreline, lined, at this point, with docks, warehouses and moored cargo ships. Watery tentacles strike down and smash some of the cargo ships closest to it. We have no idea whether it is doing this because it is hostile, or because, to it, they look the same as the battleships that have been firing on it.
At this point, Noesis feels Bethany slide back into his mind.
Through him, Bethany tells us that although the blob has a mind, it is not a human mind. It seems to be the mind of a mass of fish inside the blob, some sort of group mind, or grouper mind, even... She cannot talk to it as it doesn't speak English, but it does seem to be intelligent to the level of a human being. She can tell that it is hungry and annoyed. Hmm.
We cannot help thinking that these fish must be much tougher than normal fish or by now they would have been blown apart by the many underwater explosions they have already been exposed to.
As we consider this, off in the distance we see the aircraft and airship that have been harassing the blob apparently give up and fly away.
By now it has moved over the waterfront and the warehouses beyond it. There are people and vehicles in the streets below it.
As we watch, it begins to extend down thin (as in only person-sized, rather than large enough to smash a battleship) tendrils of water into the city. We see it begin to suck up what appear to be people into the main body of the blob. It seems to be eating the people of the city of Boston. Not good.
We decide that, with this incentive to spur them on, the New Commonwealth authorities might be more inclined to consider our request to not be shot at as we help them. And hopefully, as it is now no longer above the water, the blob will be unable to replenish itself from the harbour now, and so be easier to stop.
Blitz suggests that we could use Void's gate to fire into the heart of the blob rather than chipping away at its edges. No-one else really agrees with this idea.
That being so, via Void's gate, Blitz (still appearing to be Matthew Cromwell) returns to the radio room to see if we have an agreement.
The rest of us consider how to stop the blob. At present, using Void's gate to suck the blob's water out into space might be the best idea. Noesis shifts himself into a mesh net that will go over the mouth of Void's gate to catch any people there and avoid them being sucked up into space with it.
Void speaks to the telegraph operators and the base commander. He is told that General Fairfax has agreed to the truce. While the creature is menacing the city, at least.
Via one of Servo's walkie-talkies Blitz relays this information to the rest of us.
And we leap into action.
Void opens a gate just inside the top edge of the blob, and the Noesis-net goes through and arranges himself in rigid form across the end of the gate, protruding beyond it on all sides. He puts the other end of the gate twenty miles up, above most of the atmosphere. The difference in pressure between the two gates begins to suck water out of the blob and high into the sky. Noesis, although he cannot hold the edge of the gate as such is now resting on it, held there by the force of the water going through and propulsion provided by fins attached to the mesh.
However, despite water being sucked through, the blob continues to suck up people.
Void makes the gate as large as he can - some five square metres in size - but even so estimates that it will take at least a day to suck up all of the blob. Damn.
Nothing much seems to be being caught on Noesis' mesh. He relays this to the rest of us, via Bethany.
We concluded that the vital parts of the blob must be in the middle. That being so, Void begins to sweep his gate downwards through the blob to see if he can catch anything more vital in its centre.
Noesis spreads himself out as far as possible and changes his body into a finer mesh with weights at the edges. He drifts down through the water of the blob, pushed by Void's gate, and hoping to catch more as he descends...
In Boston Castle, Blitz, via the radio operators, has heard what is going on, and decides that he has to assist. Finding the door of the radio room still sealed, due to Noesis' efforts, he kicks it out, smashing it utterly.
There seem to be quite a lot of guards assembled outside, who swing their guns towards him.
Then they see that the person who has kicked out the door appears to be Matthew Cromwell, and hastily lower their guns and stand aside. They appear to be very surprised.
'Cromwell' strides out past them as if he owns the place. As, in a sense, he does...
He leaves the keep of Boston Castle and strides across the courtyard towards the main gate there. The guards there look confused as their leader strides towards them. "Open the gates," barks 'Cromwell'.
They hasten to obey, looking very confused!
Once outside Boston Castle, Blitz begins to run, and speeds off, using his friction-control powers to skate along at high speed towards where the blob is looming over the city in the distance. As he goes he considers how much good he is doing Cromwell's image, by racing around appearing to be him, but with super-powers...
The guards look very confused as he races off.
Seeing what is going in the distance, Truth also decides to assist. She also begins to run, leaping over cars and other obstacles, heading from the headland, where she is currently standing with Void, towards where the blob looms over the city. She thinks she will get there in a few minutes.
Pushed down through the blob by the movement of Void's gate, almost halfway down through it Noesis begins to catch things in his mesh. They are in the horizontal centre of the blob, as well as the vertical centre. He finds that they are a mix of human corpses and fish, quite large cod-like fish. The fish seem to be eating the corpses.
The fish are too big to fit through his mesh at its current size, so Noesis begins to push them downwards as he proceeds. They are swimming against Noesis, trying to maintain their position. Noesis can also feel that they are doing something. It feels rather like Bethany's communication with him.
The fish begin to nibble on Noesis, trying, so it seems, to bite through his mesh. He reinforces himself to stop this working.
Void continues to push his gate down through the blob.
Noesis now has bodies and fish caught in his mesh, and is continuing down through the blob.
Below the blob, Blitz and Truth arrive at about the same time. There is a great deal of confusion and panic in the streets as water tendrils continue, if at a lesser rate, to come down from the blob and suck people up.
The two of them begin acting to save people, snatching them out of the way of descending tendrils. Truth stops people being sucked up while Blitz stops the descending water tendrils.
As Void's gate emerges from the bottom of the blob, Noesis finds, rather oddly, that he is not falling. The fish he has caught seem to be supporting him and the rest of his catch. In fact, they are trying to push him, and themselves, back into the blob.
Truth and Blitz, working to save people below the blob, see this.
Noesis lets himself sag at the edges to drape his net form over the fish and catch them properly. As he does this, some of the fish slip out and fly back up into the water blob.
However, Noesis has now trapped the remainder of the fish, along with some corpses. He tries to squash them, but they seem to be too tough to squash right away. And they are gradually forcing him upwards, back towards the blob, and bottom of which is also extending down towards him.
Not wanting to be re-submerged in the descending blob, Noesis forms a rope with an anchor on the end out of himself and sends it down towards the ground.
Below, Truth sees this and moves to intercept it.
Seeing the effectiveness of Noesis' net, Void decides that more of the same would be a good idea. He has already noticed quite a large fleet of fishing boats moored at one part of the Boston docks. That being so, he gates himself over to them and begins gathering nets from them, with the intention of sweeping them down through the blob too, and hopefully extracting even more fish.
He calls in Blitz to assist with the assembly of the tons and tons of nets from the fishing boats. Together the begin to do this.
Elsewhere, Noesis' anchor hits the ground.
Truth grabs it, and starts reeling it in.
Seeing that this is some effort for her, Noesis converts the anchor into a winch mechanism, with a big handle on the side. Truth cranks away and continues to pull him towards the ground.
The water from the blob continues descending to apparently try to recapture him and the fish.
As Noesis pulls the fish away from the blob, they suddenly seem to lose their power of flight. He and the fish begin to fall. Noesis tries to thicken his cable to the ground into a tree trunk-like thing to break his fall, but there is not enough time. Noesis hits the ground and bounces. Ouch.
Now that it has lost many of the fish supporting it, large amounts of water cascade from the blob and swirl through the streets.
Void and Blitz decide that the use of nets from the fishing boats is impractical. They are far too massive and unwieldy to be useful.
Instead, they decide that Blitz's original plan, of using Void's gate to deliver shells from the battleship guns into the core of the blob is probably the best way forward.
That being so, they need a battleship.
There are still various battleships in Boston harbour, though as the blob is over land in the warehouse district they are no longer firing at it.
That being so, Void scans his gate around and opens it onto the bridge of one battleship. Blitz steps through. The bridge crew are more than a little nonplussed to be receiving this impromptu visit from the Lord Protector, but leap to obey as 'Cromwell' orders them to aim their guns for the gate in space which will shortly be appearing close to them, out to sea (where any stray shots will do no harm).
Back in the warehouse district, the fish Noesis has captured seem to be succumbing to suffocation, although many of them are still moving. Noesis holds the fish in one place while Truth pulls out her guns and opens fire on those fish that are still moving. Not quite shooting fish in a barrel, but pretty close.
The fish are soon subdued in a permanent manner.
With Void's help, the dead fish are gated off to the conveniently disused fish warehouse that we know to still be full of ice, the one we had previously used as our corpse-storage facility.
With the loss of these fish, the size of the blob has been reduced by some ten percent.
Void opens his gate from an appropriate point in space out to sea, facing the battleship Blitz is on to the core of the blob.
The battleship's gun turrets swing round to bear on it.
Blitz moves out onto one of the wings of the bridge to watch.
The battleship opens fire with all its gun on the gate. Shot roars through it and into the centre of the blob, which is now still over the warehouse district.
The shells explode within the water blob. It shudders and ripples, then seems to lose all cohesion and falls from the sky. A fair amount of water comes through Void's gate, but most of it, which we estimate to be some few million tons of water, plummets down onto the warehouse district in a tidal wave.
Pretty much everything underneath it (fortunately this is mostly buildings, the people having run away) is smashed flat by the force of the falling water, and the broken remains washed into the harbour, along with various fish, corpses and so on.
"Well done," Blitz says to the Captain of the battleship.
Void opens a new gate, and 'Cromwell' steps off the bridge of the battleship.
It seems that the blob has been defeated. At least, it is, so far, showing no signs of reforming out of Boston harbour.
That being so, we meet back at the disused fish market, now full of dead fish. From there Void gates us on into the Boston Castle radio room.
Truth goes through first, to act as a force field for us all in case the New Commonwealth people there should be hostile. When we see that this is not so, Noesis also steps through.
"We are the Blessed of the Alliance and we have defeated the great evil that was menacing your city," Noesis says. "We would like to open negotiations with the New Commonwealth."
He has the telegraph operators pass this on to their commanding officers.
After a while a message is received that tells us that General Fairfax has agreed to talk to us.
He comes on over the radio.
"The creature was the work of the Devil," Noesis tells him. "We are not the bad guys. We would like to stop this 'beastly war'. We want to get the two continents to renounce the Devil's work and negotiate a cease-fire. We can assist in this. A cease-fire should come into force immediately and negotiations should take place between you and the Octuple Alliance," he concludes.
General Fairfax considers this. After a few moments he agrees to there being s cease-fire while the two sides negotiate.
Noesis tells them that we can transport a negotiator to the Octuple Alliance quickly if they want us to.
General Fairfax tells us that they will get back to us when they have made a decision.
That being so, Void really wants to rest and be ready for the long trip back to Europe.
Noesis merges into the floor of the radio room to wait for General Fairfax's response. Void opens a gate ready to go, and everyone else steps through it back to the disused fish market.
Void then gates himself to the hotel room Noesis still has at the St John's Hotel on Martyr Street and goes to sleep.
Blitz (still appearing to be Matthew Cromwell) and Truth leave the fish market and go for breakfast.
In the radio room, Noesis forms a loudspeaker out of the wall and through it tells the telegraph operators about the warehouse full of cod.
They take this on board, and pass the information on.
Truth and Blitz enter a coffee house, which is doing a roaring breakfast trade. Everyone stops what they are doing and turns around as the place turns silent upon the entrance of the 'Lord Protector'.
The two of them order breakfast.
Serving the Lord Protector seems to almost panic the coffee shop staff, but they serve the two of them breakfast anyway.
The coffee shop is very quiet as they eat and drink. The staff are very attentive.
Some people slip quietly out, and Truth and Blitz soon notice lots of people peering in through the windows.
Having breakfasted, they get up to go. The staff do not try and present them with a bill. Truth leaves a generous tip instead, and then they leave.
They wander off through the streets of Boston, followed by an increasingly large gawking crowd.
Wanting to lose this audience they leap up onto a rooftop away, distancing themselves from the crowd quite effectively.
From there they stealthily make their way back to the headland, where they proceed to sit and rest, with the trans-Atlantic dinghy.
As they do so, they see a smog begin to rise over the city.
Eventually, in the radio room of Boston Castle, General Fairfax gets back to us.
He tells Noesis that the New Commonwealth agree to send an ambassador to negotiate a cease-fire in the war. The negotiator - Vice minister of State Steven Hawke - will be at Boston Castle in an hour, from where he may be transported off to the negotiations. However, the New Commonwealth is not, it seems, willing to concede any of the territory it has taken in France. Oh.
Noesis passes this information on to Blitz and Truth by way of Bethany. There is some speculation that the only thing the cease-fire will do is give both sides a chance to dig in and reinforce their respective positions, but by now we don't really care, and also do not have any brilliant ideas about how to stop the war for good without lots of bloodshed.
He then re-materialises out of the radio room floor as a man in a suit and wanders off through the castle, spreading word of the possible stoppage of the war. Some people look disappointed at this, but most do not.
We all decide to meet at the castle. Truth and Blitz thus begin to make their way through the smoggy streets of Boston. This is quite difficult.
En route, they have Bethany contact Void, who is also told of the situation.
Void, posing as a hotel guest, has breakfast at the hotel while waiting for Mr Hawke to arrive at Boston Castle.
Wandering through the smog proves to be a difficult task, and after a while Truth and Blitz give up and find their way back to the headland and stay there with the boat.
After breakfast, Void gates himself off to Boston Castle.
Noesis sends Bethany on to pre-warn the Octuple Alliance of what we are doing and who we are bringing.
At Boston Castle and hour passes in the smog. Then more time. Ambassador Hawke is late.
Eventually there is a sound of engines from the street outside, and an official car drives in through the castle gate. The driver opens the door and out climbs a tall, very fat old man, apparently the New Commonwealth ambassador, Steven Hawke. He is carrying only a leather satchel over one shoulder.
He walks over to Noesis and Void and greets them. "I am ready to go," he tells them in a deep, slow, voice.
That being so, Void opens a gate to the headland, where the ambassador is introduced to Blitz and Truth. At Blitz's request, Noesis reshapes his face into that of someone who is not Matthew Cromwell. Brother Hawke seems strangely un-bothered by all of this.
Noesis will stay in Boston to act as a contact with the New Commonwealth there.
Everyone else climbs into the dinghy and Void opens the first gate to out in the Atlantic...
In the dinghy, Void rapidly gates us back across the Atlantic to France.
The question is, where? We decide that the best place to drop Brother Hawke off is with Baron Charles de Bourges, so we head for the last place we met with him.
Emerging from Void's gate we find the Baron and the others waiting. We tell the Baron what has happened and then introduce Brother Hawke to him. However, the Baron politely declines to negotiate with Brother Hawke. "I am, after all, only a humble member of His Majesty's Intelligence Service," he says.
Instead, he telephones the capital of the Octuple Alliance, in Strasbourg, and brings in an Alliance politician. With help from Void, the politician and a group of secretaries and other staff are quickly brought in, and the negotiations begin.
However, before they do, we make a quick side trip to near Lille, where Servo checks Brother Hawke on the Blessed Detector machine. He is not a Blessed. Servo also reports that there is still a much smaller but noticeable trace of 'blob' in the sea close to Boston. However, he has not, as yet, finished repairing the reversed TEP machine, although he says he is very close to finishing it, and so nothing can be done about it at present.
Brother Hawke is also searched for explosives and other such nasty surprises. He does not seem to be carrying any of them, either.
And so the negotiations begin...