Two years ago, shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I applied to join the Royal Navy, but was not accepted. On the night I received my rejection, my life changed. I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday the feeling as I fought those muggers, sweat drenching my skin as I tried to save that poor woman. My mind shrank away to a more focused place where the only thing that mattered was the fight. I felt my body more clearly than ever before, perceived the flow of time and the forces of blows as though they were being drawn in front of me. Then it was over. I later discovered that I had Awakened that night, that I was now a mage.
Taken in by the Hollow Ones, I was taught of the world I now inhabited. The Traditions, old masters of wizardry who fought for the old ways and for freedom, and the Technocracy, new geniuses of science who fought for clarity, logic and a well-behaved world. I learnt to summon and control powerful magicks, by many methods. I learnt to use pentagrams, the tarot, simple tricks of luck and even to manipulate biology at an advanced level. I was a goth for a while, then a neo-pagan wizard dressed in stereotype and cliche. After a night spent watching MTV I became a New Romantic, with daubed face and frilly clothes. Finally, at the last New Year, I found my true calling. It came to me in a dream, that ripped my skin from my body to reveal the true self beneath.
When I threw aside my old identity to become Daniel White-Heart, Swashbuckler Extrordinaire, my unhindered sight gave me greater insight into my magicks as well. I realised the need to be in contact with water for all my magics, either in its purest form or as part of shed blood or sweat. I also realised the gift I had for the magic of Life, which I had previously ignored. Finally, I heard on the Hollow Railroad that help was needed in Glasgow.
((This is the point at which Daniel joined the campaign. The above was his abridged background, paired with a slight explanation of his world. As a point of clarity the Dreamspeaker (shaman) is called Ivanku, but Daniel can't remember this foreign name.))
When I arrived in the foulest corner of fair Caledonia, I immediately found myself set upon. Waking up groggily I realised I was no longer on the coach I had been riding, but rather in some sort of dark cell. Nearby was a giant of a man, name of something like Ivan or Vanku or such. Russian I think, clearly a shaman of some kind judging by the bones and drums and skins. Having challenged each other and come to the realisation that neither of us was to blame for the other's incarceration, we began looking for a way out, whereupon we were verbally abused by some Technocrat who took "samples" from our very flesh.
It was quite a bit later when we heard footsteps above, and then were released by a group of mages from the Traditions. There was a silent man I later found to be called John Preston, an assassin with a hi-tech pistol from the stuffy Hermetic Order. Also from the Order, specifically the House of... Solifcatty I think? Anyway, the more obviously wizardish lady who carried a book with all her spells in was called Persephone. They had a Virtual Adept with them, a hacker and computer whiz by the name of Kase, which I am led to believe is short for Kassandra. Finally, there was a quiet padre called Julius, no doubt from the priestly order of mages called the Celestial Chorus. Introductions were made and they helped me find my effects, which had been hidden from me by the foul Technocrat.
Shortly afterward, we found this same evil scientist in his lair, where he attacked us with some sort of debilitating virus and grenades. We pushed the attack, but he seemed to be able to ignore even the most grievous of blows, including both my own special attack Lightning Strike and a crushing slam from Ivenco. Just as all seem lost though, the roof burst open and an angel sent from Heaven appeared to blow us all away. I will confess I lost consciousness at this point, but I am told - and have no reason to doubt - that the angel eviscerated the Scientist and then disappeared, as directed by a powerful mage who appeared. The man was clearly deranged, as he woke me from my injury but then went on to talk about how he was simultaneously, here, several other major cities and - and he seemed to place stress on this - in Seattle.
After he had left, we quickly made our way back to our new friends' Chantry (a sort of secret base for mages) in a car driven by a rather inept man who clearly had found no better job than as a chauffeur despite a lack of talent. On the way, we were all visited by the same vision of an instant's flash of skyscrapers among the Glaswegian warehouses. Once we got there I found my fellow Hollower Darius, along with his teammates: A Euthanatos death-dealer called Matthias, a mad physicist and engineer called Christine who identified herself as a Son of Ether, and a pagan priestess called Serena who I took to be a Verbena. I was informed of the situation as the seneschal Gordons took my trunk to a spare room. Apparently the crazy man who saved us had been the master of this Chantry, but now had gone crazy, falling into a state we call "Marauder", wherein he is so insane that the very world dares not contradict him, rather taking out its frustration upon others nearby. A most dangerous man indeed this Archimorus, and it was up to us to get rid of the threat he posed. However, taking on a Master of Space, Forces and perhaps the Spirits would be no mean task, and so we retired to prepare.
Kase took me to her room, where I aided her in scrying an event she had learnt of that happened a few days past. After setting up the ritual to include her holographic projectors and ability to see through space, I learnt that the local Police Chief had been caught by MI5 fraternising with a well-known cyber-terrorist, as well as having child pornography on his personal computer. The Officers from MI5, after tearing a confession from him, proceeded to brutalise the man, screwing his dignity away before hanging him in his own office. A sad sight indeed, but after ensuring these agents were not Technocrats, Kase assured me that she posed no danger to the chantry. In return for my acceptance of this, she offered me a spare computer that I might browse some files she had on the basics of Spacial Magicks.
The next day, we discussed the previous day's vision of skyscrapers, and concluded that Archimorus must have somehow brought Seattle to Glasgow for a moment. Matthias also showed us an album of photographs showing a younger Archimorus with his college friends and some of his wizarding colleagues. This provided some small insight, and it was decided that we six junior mages would go through the Spiritual Umbra to the heavenly Chantry called Horizon, while the other five pursued more mundane investigation. Uranka instructed us on basic spiritual etiquette - which I felt seemed to consist of an unfair amount of specifically my being silent - and as I loaded my pistol in preparation, he took us through the Gauntlet into the world beyond.
The Umbra is a strange land. Even underground as we were, the Sun's pale yellow light suffused the area, and around us in the distance we could see, clear yet unfocused, massive spiders' webs of grey dust silk. Among this webbing crawled spiders of regular form, and we were informed that these were manifestations of Static magicks or energies. Obongo summoned a bear that he said was his totem, and it informed him in a language we did not understand that we must leave Glasgow before we could journey through the more abstract parts of the Umbra to Horizon. After Ilanki fed a rabbit some vodka, we set off, and I instructed him to play us a marching tune on his tribal drums that would gift us all with prodigious speed. Unfortunately this drew the attention of the "Pattern Spiders", who apparently don't like magic, and eventually an even greater, more irritable threat: A man-sized ball of twelve sides, coloured blue and demanding in a robotic voice that we stop being "deviant". Used to hearing this sort of language from Technocrats and thus expecting no quarter, we lept to battle!
...To be continued
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Yeah, ended on a cliffhanger there. Ooooh etc. I may have got some character names wrong (spelling being rather hard to pick up on in a verbal game) and will change them if I'm corrected - Except Ivanku of course, those were on purpose. Here's hoping we survive, and Daniel lives to see another day!
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