They get together in a bar. Weird people come in. Dimensional Shambler arrives. Big Fight.
Henry Holmes, a roving freelance hacker, is in New York on a consulting job at a large Manhattan software company; Macrowares Inc. Holmes travels across America (no fixed address) on his motorbike. A while back, his experiments in combining the occult with modern technology allowed him to "hack reality", so that he now has "magical" powers of flight, super-strength, and a peculiar force field. Strange, but true.
On the day in question, a bum wakes up in a Manhattan subway station, in a corner mostly used by drunks to urinate. He is a thin, non-decrepit man with short dark brown hair, wearing a tall long coat and shabby sneakers, and with 3$ and 76 cents in his pocket.
The bum has no recollection of who he is or how he got to the station. He has a single thought on his mind: he needs a gun.
They get together in a bar. Weird people come in. Dimensional Shambler arrives. Big Fight.
They get together in a bar. Weird people come in. Dimensional Shambler arrives. Big Fight.
Henry Holmes, a roving freelance hacker, is in New York on a consulting job at a large Manhattan software company; Macrowares Inc. Holmes travels across America (no fixed address) on his motorbike. A while back, his experiments in combining the occult with modern technology allowed him to "hack reality", so that he now has "magical" powers of flight, super-strength, and a peculiar force field. Strange, but true.
On the day in question, a bum wakes up in a Manhattan subway station, in a corner mostly used by drunks to urinate. He is a thin, non-decrepit man with short dark brown hair, wearing a tall long coat and shabby sneakers, and with 3$ and 76 cents in his pocket.
The bum has no recollection of who he is or how he got to the station. He has a single thought on his mind: he needs a gun.
They get together in a bar. Weird people come in. Dimensional Shambler arrives. Big Fight.
They talk and eat. They go down to a subway station where Jones first woke up and following the tracks, come out of a tunnel in Nova Africa. They visit a catfish farm, and Holmes teaches a young boy some programming at the crossroads.
They wake up in the small town of Harper's ferry and wander about. A sniper in an airship-refueling tower draws them towards an encounter with 4 Russian visitors from another time. Holmes flies the top of the tower into a cornfield, and they take the Russians back into the train tunnel, from which they emerge in New York, 1924.
Jones goes to buy some clothes and meets Lois Lumley. PC John Humphries investigates a possible break-in at the Lumley house. Jones meets one of the russians, Boris, who is bringing books to Mr. Lumley.
Jones and Humphries go to get a drink in a bar, but because it's prohibition (1924), they can't. So they go and smoke a joint in a Jazz joint instead.
Jones, Holmes and Butch meet Butch's grandfather, a bootlegger. They help him with deliveries, protect him from some thugs, and get involved with the illegal boxing matches. Jones and Butch bet all the money they can find (Jones gets a rich woman to pitch in) on Holmes, and make a bundle, which Holmes plans to invest. Back at Papa Sunday's, there is a break-in, and Jones is shot. While Papa Sunday cures him, he has a vision of being in a burning German fighter plane during WWI. They take a tram and then a bus back home, where they end up rich.
Our heros return from the past and find their funds managed by the Sunday Foundation (managed by Tobias Sunday? Sam Saunders). They acquire a four story HQ, safehouses, a tinkerer, Blackhawk Helicopter, a Ferrari F40, and a secret safehouse populated by the toughest hackers known to man: The Hacker Mujahedeen (headed by Kareem?)
Owen Rollins is murdered horribly in a satanic ritual, nailed to the wall. Elliot arrives (in his battered Chevy Nova) on the scene (at the docks, in an alley between two warehouses) and investigates, seeing a vision of Owen's last night (he met a group of Satanist and was killed by their leader, a dark figure).
Meanwhile, "Jones" meets Friday (a dog), who leads him to Gerry, Owen's current girlfriend and his Ex. He takes them both to a restaurant.
Holmes sits in a coffeeshop, and reads about a nasty child abuse case, where a couple ritually mutilated their baby. He recognizes the tattoo etched on the child's skin as a sigil, a curse of blasting, which was posted 3 years ago on Satan-L, a satanist-occultist mailing list he read.
Jones, who learns that his real name is Michael Caine McMananman, goes to visit his old workplace, the LIP (Lumley Institute of [Para]Psychology) corporation. He learns he was on a "special projects" team that was disbanded 6 months ago. The team was headed by someone called Patrick Donovan, who has been reassigned to the Paris office. It also included a woman called Susan Wilson, who has left the company.
Holmes is approached by a woman in the Coffeeshop who he noticed reading a Peter Carroll book. She introduces herself as Pauline Clarke, and they start talking, learn that they knew each other vaguely on usenet.
Later they get together. Going over MCM's stuff (an old Photo Album, notebook, bank notices and bills - stuff he found still at Gerry's)
Club, Meet Rolf, Michael Does Pauline.
They hack Pauline's Mac, MCM notices the Gorilla.
They piece the hyper sigil together.
Elliot is hired by the Sunday foundation.
Elliot goes to lunch with Ethel.
They figure out the missing piece of the hyper sigil
Go to the 64th floor of the Empire State Building.
Find an old LIP office
Meet Lois Lumley. Elliot senses she's dead(?)
Are surprised by Pauline, Rolf and two goons (Mexican and Russian).
Big Fight, Pauline displays powers like Holmes.
MCM shoots Rolf,
Elliot threatens Lois and they both fall comatose.
Elliot has a vision of a man dumping Lois in the East River. He awakes on the shores of the Styx, sees Lois in the water, glowing. He has a conversation with a woman in the darkness who gives him a pair of scissors, and then meets Charon and Rolf. He boards Charon's boat and escorts Rolf to the gates of Hell. Rolf gives him a phone number in return. Elliot returns to the far shore, where Charon helps him lift Lois out of the water and onto shore.
Elliot awakes in the office. They find occult books in Lois' office, which they take. They bind Lois in duct tape and call up the number Elliot received from Rolf in Hell.
Egg Fu answers. Rolf gave him a disk once.
They meet Egg in the Green Lotus restaurant.
They notice Pauline. Henry hits her (hard).
Chinese patrons at the next table pull guns on them. MCM shoots out the lights. Egg pokes one of them in the ear with a Chopstick.
MCM enters the kitchen in search of Pauline, gets squashed by her with a freezer door.
Henry pursues Pauline out the kitchen and into the back alley. Pauline takes to the air. Henry chases her, throws her into an abandoned office building, smashed a Photocopier on her, and knocks her down 4 floors into the cellar. Then he drags her to a safehouse for questioning.
They question Pauline.
She uses a power word (the Lord's prayer backwards) to neutrilize Hank's powers. She throws him across the room, bends McManaman's wounded arm, and rushes Egg. She grabs Egg and flies out of the window.
HH & MCM travel first to Paris and then to Fiji & then to Relyah. They take on Cthulhu, and find the Pattern under his throne. They walk the Pattern and reach Castle Amber.
Not much doing in Amber, since Oberon & the rest are out. So they head to NY to meet Lois.
Fu tracks down Pauline to a dance club, where she talks to the technician. He asks her to mentor him. She agrees, takes him out, and throws him through the air, teaching him to fly.
Elliot does Ethel (she helps him through the stressful period of being questioned by the police, and having his buddies missing).
Elliot mediates to meet Charon and emerges in the Styx. Charon gives him scissors to cut Lois' bonds to life. He takes a trip and ends up in the toilet of Lois's house.
Pauline is spooked, says a Chinese word to Egg and flies away. He flies after her, but is attacked by a wall. He finds himself on Lois' carpet.
Henry and Mki (formerly MCM) ask Lois to take them all to the pattern. They get in their car and drive around, coming back to the house. She leads them down to the cellar, where they see the pattern. Everyone walks the pattern.
Egg asks the pattern to take him to Pauline.
Elliot asks the pattern to take him to the place where he can cut a swirling knot of pattern threads he saw inside Lois.
Mki realizes that the pattern repeats like a fractal, and asks to get to the central, primary and primal pattern.
Henry just leaves through the door.
Elliot wakes up on the sidewalk with a slagged pair of scissors like a steel crucifix next to his hand.
Mki wakes up next to him.
They notice they're in the past (the 20's).
Hank plays with his PDA, downloading vapourware.
Egg finds himself on a rooftop with Pauline. She tells him about the Fragments of God, and how the Amber family memories are the attempts of a human mind to explain this fragmentogensis.
They get back to the past.
They prowl the waterfront.
They get attacked by Ninjas.
Henry gets poisoned during the attack, but doesn't quite realize that.
Elliot get's wounded, punctured lung. He also first manifests here red hair, a black suit, doctor's bag and a Kris knife.
They follow the ninjas to a warehouse in Chinatown.
They break in and beat people up.
Below the warehouse is the Sanctum of the Chinese Magician Yue Lao.
There are stairs leading down, a cavern, water, a bridge, and an elaborate Chinese palace.
They have tea. Lao cures Henry from poison (inflicted on him during the fight) and shows them the waterfront in his magical bowl.
They head for the Waterfront.
They try to confront Eric Lumley as he brings a stunned Lois to dump her in the East River. They find themselves unable to touch him – his car moves through them, and there's a repulsion force that prevents them from approaching him.
Patrick appears, attacks them, stuns Pauline and throws her in the water. Henry and Mki fight Patrick, who is both invisible and seems to have Henry's powers. Mki summons Jasmine's Dildo of Power to him, and blast Patrick with it, shredding his invisibility. Henry punches through Patrick's force field, apparently killing him.
Egg rescues Pauline, and Elliot tries to interfere with the ritual. Elliot throws his Kris at Eric Lumley, but it freezes in the air before hitting him. Eric then snatches it from the air and performs his vile ritual.
Lumley finished the ritual, and as dawn rises, Lois climbs out of the water, and drives them (her and Eric) back. The PCs rush to the Lumley house, enter and go to the cellar, they try and tamper with it (it houses Lumley's occult lab), they go through his books (including the ones brought by the Russians from the Nova Africa parallel). Then Elliot has an idea, he runs out into the garden and back into the house using the same route Lois Lumley used earlier. The others follow, and they find Lois Lumley in the cellar. Eric is on his knees before her, head thrown backwards, his chest cut open, and Lois is holding up his beating heart. A piercing beam from the heart in her hands is drawing the pattern.
The pattern completes and erupts outwards like unfolding complexity, filling the world. Lights out.
Around them, everything is dark, but slowly, details and light begin to appear: the stars light up in the sky, grass grows beneath their feet, and mountains rise in the distance. They begin to walk, and presently arrive at a castle, just before dawn.
They reach the castle, are greeted by Irene, who shows them their bedrooms. They sleep - but there's also the "Hot Chocolate" incident: Egg comes to wake Pauline and finds Mki in her room.
Henry meets young Henry and gives him a book on Hacking.
They discover a family tree in the library. The tree is star-shaped, and looks like this:
EL => Charon => Erasmus / Bridget
EL => Oberon => Henry / Pauline
EL => Elegba => Mki / Jasmine
EL => Yue Lao => Egg Fu / Pao Lin
EL => Luvah => William / Irene
Egg learns from Pao Lin how to contact Yue Lao, he contacts Yue Lao who warns him of great danger.
Egg takes a horse and rides off. At the edge of a marsh, he meets a flying oriental dragon, which eats his horse and flies him to Lao's city, beyond the mountains of the moon.
The others socialize and settle down for tea, when someone comes down the stairs.
(Mki's player was absent, and Mki only appeared in the first and last scene).
In a flashback, Butch was hired by someone (probably Patrick), He was given a big sword (in several pieces, in a case), took a bag of weapons and headed down a subway train (THE subway train) with the guy who hired him. Patrick got off in the 20's, and Butch gets off a station later, in an underground tunnel. He climbs upstairs and finds himself in the castle.
Butch comes down the stairs of the dining room and meets everyone. Much surprise. Henry decides to take Butch to show him the Pattern in the castle, and asks Irene to show him where it is. Mki and Pauline head back upstairs.
Gargoyle attack.
Showdown in Pattern room, Oberon arrives to kill everyone.
Henry & Mki go off for a taco.
Henry and Mki arrive in NY and learn about the events of September 11. They set up in a safe house and begin to investigate the terror attacks.
Egg finds himself in a bus, in the body of an Arab Physics student called Hamed.
Henry "trumps" Egg.
Egg gets drunk.
Egg flies to the moon and meets Yue Lao in Arab grab, with his daughter. They have tea.
Mki finds the black boxes of the aircraft that crashed into the twin towers. Henry & Mki analyze the flight recordings and hear some alien voices on the tape.
Elliot travels to Hell, gets past Cerberus, and makes his way to a white mansion on a hill. Hell is full of dead people, and no one seems to be in charge.
Elliot finds an iron crown in the mansion, which fits his head. He meets Bridget and figures out that the mansion and crown are his - he is the king of Hell. He starts bossing people around, Bridget vanishes, and he heads back, gets on his barge and finds himself on a garbage barge on the Hudson. Where Henry trumps him.
They go to a Mosque in Washington Heights, where after prayers are concluded, Mki picks a guy to tail at random.
The guy gets into a rental car and drives into Manhattan.
He arrives at Greenwich Village and goes up to an apartment where he meets Sarah from LIP and some guy. He is sick. They lean on Sarah and the guy and make off with a bunch of CDs.
The CDs contain a bootable program ("Bin Laden OS"), which they load. It shows them suspicious messages and sends out distress calls from the PC. Henry's PDA acts funny.
A shadow creature and some Gargoyles come calling.
They "shadow walk" after the shadow creature. Meanwhile, Elliot went down to the subway, and was snatched by that same Shadow creature. In the shadowlands beside Hell, Elliot talks to the creature and (when the others show up) convinces them to let him find out who sent it.
Apparently, it was ordered to bring the Gargoyles to them when it sensed the activation of the software program. Elliot learns that someone very familiar sent the shadow creature...
They argue about who sent the Shadow Creature. The Shadow Creature escapes. Mki and Egg try to pursue it, but lose it.
Henry and Elliot sail to Hell. After they Enter, Elliot asks several people to find Ali, Gassan El Massri's slain brother. Henry summons his PDA to him (he shatters a Doric column and finds it embedded inside) and uses it to trump Mki & Egg, who have already crossed the river in flight.
BTW, it is established here that Hell looks a lot like Tuscany.
They go to the Mansion and in Elliot's throne room, talk to Ali.
Mki calls an Elevator and takes them to the Hospital where Gassan is quarantined. They question him. He tells him that someone from the Black Army called Louis, not his regular contact man (Alain), was pressing him to hand over the discs. He thinks this has something to do with Ali being killed.
They go back to their safehouse. Not that one, another safehouse. Putting their heads together, they decide to find Pauline. They head to the club where she hangs out, which is empty except for the barman and soundman (who looks like Alain, with sunglasses and a hat).
Mki smells a hint of Pauline. He heads to the bathroom.
Holmes has a shot of Wild Turkey, Elliot goes over the fragments of paper his minions in Hell collected from around his mansion. Egg knocks the soundman out cold.
Mki starts knocking open the stalls in the Ladies' room. Pauline burst out the wall and tries to grab him, they tussle, he tries to chop at her, she blocks, Egg arrives, Pauline hurtles through the walls, out the Kitchen and into the street. Mki manages to stab her in the thigh as she escapes. Egg follows swiftly.
Pauline and Egg clash in mid-air, and begin an aerial dogfight. Mki pursues over the rooftops.
Pauline ducks into the 4th story of an office building, and Egg follows rapidly. Mki swings off flags and ropes, approaching rapidly.
Meanwhile, Holmes realizes that something is happening and wanders out, trying to find where the others are heading.
Pauline hurtles down a stairwell and into the large lobby of the office building. There she stops and whirls. Mki swings in after her through a window in the stairwell, knocking the plate of glass off its hinges with a kick, scissoring over the hurtling Egg.
Mki stands in a dramatic pose, pulling a hood over his head, a baseball cap and a cape that extends from his coat. Under the cape he draws his sword.
Egg kicks at Pauline, aiming high. She ducks and slides along the floor, inches above the ground, and comes to rest beside a central support pillar. Then with a backhand blow she breaks through the marble facade, crushes her hand into the concrete and hooks her fingers on the steel girders running up the pillar. Plaster cracks in the ceiling.
Mki slides towards Pauline like an ice-hockey player on his invisible skates and lassoes Pauline's legs with a bungee cord that was once his sword. He yanks on it, but unfortunately Pauline is anchored much better than he. He whips around comically.
Egg takes advantage of Pauline's prone position to land a vicious kick on her face/neck area. Through gritted teeth, she warns them to back off or she'll yank the insides of the pillar and bring down the building.
They back off, just as Holmes arrives. Mki goes to get a taco. Egg flutters around the building, spots a police helicopter nearby, and tries to keep a low profile. Holmes sits on a car and watches the lobby as the building is evacuated.
Meanwhile, Elliot shows up behind Holmes, having stumbled in the club and taken a detour through Hell (where he shows up on his bed in the White Mansion) to a nearby alley.
Egg flies in craftily, but the building is empty - no Pauline.
Mki wanders down to the subway, where the trains have been stopped because of the feared terror attack. He wanders along the track, lights a cigarette, and generally walks and walks.
He takes s service lift down to another tunnel and walks some more.
Egg heads back to Hamed's apartment to crash. There are a lot of messages from Hamed's family and relatives waiting for him, which he ignores. He rests for a while.
Elliot goes back to his apartment, listens to his phone messages, calls people, tells them he was abroad. There's a message from his Ex, Emma Lionel Richards, and he calls her up and they have an awkward conversation. She's renovating their house, and a baby is crying in the background - it's the neighbor's kid, she tells him.
Elliot calls Ethel (his co-worker from LIP) and they decide to go out. He cleans the apartment, she shows up and they head to "Top of the Muffin" (?).
Meanwhile, Holmes is back in the safehouse (a different one?), and he receives e-mail from Pauline, telling him they should talk. He heads over to her apartment on a motorbike, calling Egg and telling him to meet him there.
Henry & Egg show up at Pauline's. She invites them in and offers them tea. Her face is still bruised and plastered from Egg's blow. Egg asks her some hard questions while Henry raids her fridge. Henry is horrified to find it contains mostly health food and organic stuff, and contents himself with fixing Egg some Bamboo shoot salad (with Tihini) and getting some scotch for himself.
Pauline says that she attacked them because they appeared aggressive, she'd just heard from Alain how they stormed into his place and pistol-whipped him, and the last time she'd met Mki, he'd tried to kill her. Egg asked why she'd slept with Mki. Pauline avoided the question and said that Mki is a psychopath and shot Rolf in the head. Egg was shocked and stunned to hear this. Henry said he remembered things differently.
They trumped Mki, asking him to come and join them in sorting things out with Pauline. Mki refused. He said they could trust him more than the duplicitous Pauline, and that he doesn't care about her. "And anyway, she doesn't blow", he said, signing off. Egg took comfort in that crude statement.
They began to talk with Pauline about what she wanted, what they wanted - mostly circling each other with questions. They brought her up to date on what happened at the Castle after she "left early". Pauline said that Lois Lumley - or rather Eric Lumley - is God, and controls the universe. Henry expressed skepticism and said that the world of the Castle was a bubble, created by Lumley but since then destroyed by Oberon.
Meanwhile, Elliot's date with Ethel was going on well, when he suddenly noticed Patrick sitting with a 16-year-old girl a few tables from where he was. He remembered that last time it took Holmes and Mki together to stop Patrick, and he steps out to alert Holmes, via "Trump".
Holmes and Egg decide to head over. Elliot says he'll meet them there once he gets Ethel safely out of the way. Pauline says she wants to come with them; she has a few things to talk over with Patrick after he threw her in the East River. She puts on her coat, her boots, contacts and shades, and they head out.
They tag Patrick in the restaurant, he ducks into the toilets and shadow-walks; They use Elliot's power to give chase.
They pound on Patrick, eventually Pauline calls them off.
Elliot brings Owen Rollins back from the dead for 10 hours in return for information; he tells them how to contact "Louis". Pauline and Patrick wander off.
They decide to ambush Louis.
They meet Jake Nemesis, who looks like the spitting image of Oberon, and orders them to investigate the Sunday foundation's possible involvement in funding Al Qaida.
They track Alain to the bus stop and replace him with a doppleganger from hell, bribed with a Taco.
The doppleganger gets yanked onto the bus on platform no. 8. They chase the bus, but find the doppleganger has been killed.
Elliot brings in Cerebrus in Golden Retreiver form. They track "Louis" through shadow and end up in a shadowy realm, where they pound on a giant manta.
They beat on the Manta and eventually surf it clear out of shadow and back into New York.
Meanwhile, Elliot goes with Cerebrus back to Hell (from the Manta's shadowy realm) and the dog charges at Alain. Alain ducks with the chain between Cerebrus' legs and wraps the chain around the dog's testicles, nearly castrating it.
Elliot ties up Alain next to a bonfire in Hell.
Egg/Hamed and Holmes go to the Sunday foundation and after a talk with Sam Saunders decide to follow a possible lead in the Sunday Foundation's Cameroon offices.
Elliot has a long talk with Bridget; He tells her he wants to abdicate being the lord of hell and passes his responsibility on to her.
Meanwhile, Mki resurfaces in an alternate Berlin, where he meets Jasmine and prevents two men with explosive sigil tattoos from destroying/stealing two of the three occult books the Russians brought Lumley way back when. He gets the two books.
Holmes and Hamed reconfigure the computer network in the Sunday foundation's Cameroon office.
In Cameroon, Holmes and Hamed discover that it was apparently Sam Saunders who ordered money transfers to pro-militant Islamic groups. They collect Elliot through a toilet bowl.
Egg punches Sam Saunders in the nose with is badge.
Mckee and Henry find a cogwheel hidden in a tiny globe on Sam's desk.
They confront Jake Nemesis, the Machine Between Worlds, Mki vanishes, darkness infiltrates the machine, Holmes hacks it, they get a bunch of dossiers from Jake Nemesis.
They head back to Hamed's apartment where they are contacted by Egg's "sister", Pao-Lin. They visit her apartment and travel to the space between worlds, where they converse with the outsiders, who tell them they are in contact with the rebel children of EL and with at least one woman who is "not of Lumley".
They go into the past to try and prevent the 9/11 from happening. They spook Ghasan, and prepare a public service broadcast about the coming terror act, which they broadcast on TV and in Times Square.
Egg and McKee (a Samoan lawyer) drive into Vegas, picking up a Horny Henry Holmes (keyword: Mujaheddettes). They stay at the Ritz?
Patrick discovers the Miranda has disappeared while cooking Breakfast. He shadowshifts to find the boys, whom he knows are responsible.