Emissary Lost, episode 6: Closing In

The group took some time for prayers, offering heartfelt requests for help and guidance in the journey ahead.  The Dancer was a particularly popular choice, even amongst those born under different icons.

It wasn't long before they encountered trouble, in the form of a drone with glowing red eyes and metal tentacles.  Firing on it wasn't enough to disable it before it grabbed hold of Razaq, and worse, Tahir's shot went wide and hit a nearby pressurised steam pipe, which went off like a grenade.  This did make the drone drop Razaq and fly off, although Sayah got scalded by steam.  Once she'd patched herself and everyone else up a bit, they continued on into a larger corridor.

Khalil was getting that familiar headache again, accompanied by the pattern of five notes.  And now there was a song too.

Tahir thought he heard a whispering behind him, and looking round he caught sight of the edge of a shadow melting into the wall.  He knew what that was.  Yal-Shir, the ensnarer.  He advised not getting ensnared.  The group formed a defensive circle around Awl as the creature appeared, scaring everyone except Razaq who'd already had his fill of horrific experiences for the day.  Tahir's instructions on what to do next were not particularly coherent.

The fight was brief and distinctly one-sided, with those shots that did connect with the creature doing almost nothing as they bounced off its armour.  Awl spotted a crawl space and dived into it, closely followed by Sayah who was also trying to take a communicator message from Akouba Kosha.

"Status update?"
"Pursued by a hideous monster!"
"Don't mess about."
"This is not a good time!  Got to go, dealing with a ripped off arm."

As Tahir was having his left arm ripped off, the mad poet Bathos showed up again, and somehow lured the creature away.  Everyone took the opportunity to get out of the way, following Awl down the crawlspace.  Sayah treated Tahir's damaged arm, but it was obvious he was in no condition to continue.  Sayah called Akouba back to request a medevac for him.

Finally they found themselves closing in on the Real Sanitorium.  But first there was a corridor full of cameras to get past.  Sayah djinned her way into them and had a look at the hangar on the other side, while setting a loop on the camera so that they wouldn't be detected.

Khalil found a small ventilation shaft that he was small enough to get into and went exploring.  He found a makeshift temple, containing spiked ribbons and whips, an icon figure of the Judge in the form of the Martyr, and some distinctly Zelosian prayer rugs.

Over the cameras, Sayah could see stasis pods being loaded into drop ships of some kind and sent off into space.  Was this what was happening to people at the Sanitorium?  She sent a message to Akouba about it.

They needed a plan.  The temple meant that at some point, most people would probably be praying.  A good time for acting undetected.

Emissary Lost, episode 5: Wheeling and Dealing

 The group continued their journey downwards, soon hearing voices again.  This time they managed to listen in without immediately being spotted.  Four hunters and their human prey.  Razaq was not going to allow that to continue.  One brief firefight later, they were collecting the hunters' carbines, pistols and tabulas - with the exception of one carbine, now in the hands of their would-be target.  He provided them with directions before running away.

Down a ladder, and into the Third Sphere, which they rapidly learned was in the hands of Queen Elmeda.  Her guards, dressed all in red, asked if they had any goods to trade, as that was a requirement for entering her domain.  Conveniently they had a bunch of pistols and carbines going spare.  Tahir, Khalil and Sayah, as the members of the group least likely to say something inappropriate in front of an authority figure, went in.

Not everyone down here was human.  Rat-like Skavara children asked Khalil for treats.  He offered some slightly squashed baklava, which was accepted enthusiastically.  The Queen herself was accompanied by both wolfish Nekatra guards, and a huge snake - almost certainly a construct.  Tahir did the talking, offering the weapons as a gift.  He explained why they were there.  The search, for both Noor and the Emissary.

The Queen mentioned that they were not the only newcomers to the Third Sphere.  Others had been there, transporting people, and taking them beyond the Labyrinth.  They would need a guide, if they intended to pass that way themselves.  She could provide one, for a price.  The price was removing a Skavara merchant by the name of Awl, who had started a rival market that was costing the Queen's own market a lot of profit.

They decided they would have to talk this over with the others.  Doing so alone was going to be difficult though, as they had been joined by Frax, one of the Queen's Nekatra guards.  Of course this was also an opportunity to find out more about the Queen.  They learned that she had powerful family back on Kua.  The Queen's subjects were not allowed to harm each other.  The Skavara was not a subject though, and was increasingly gathering support.

Arriving at the Skavara's market, it was clearly very different to the Queen's.  Much better stocked, and with significantly more food.  No wonder it was growing in popularity.  Nobody much liked the idea of taking Queen Elmeda's offer at this point - but of course they still needed to get through the Labyrinth somehow.

Awl was soon located, and agreed to talk in exchange for a gift of technology.  Conveniently they had a bunch of tabulas going spare.  Awl knew the way through the Labyrinth.  Since the alternative was that we would have to kill him for the Queen, he wasn't too hard to persuade.  A deal was made though, to take him up to Ozone Plaza afterwards.  Awl's people caused a distraction to get Frax out of the way, and the group set out for the Labyrinth.

This was not a well maintained path.  Rickety bridges caused a nervous moment for Razaq, who almost fell, prompting Sayah to get out her hyper rope to get herself, Arin and Khalil across in relative safety.  Then there was a choice to be made.  Three paths lay ahead.  The safe path, slow but secure.  The cemetary path, faster, but not without its dangers.  Or the fastest route, that would take them close to the Beast.

For Tahir, there was only one choice.  The fast path, and never mind the danger.  And for once, Sayah backed him up.  Noor was in danger, and if that meant risking the fast path, then so be it.

At Awl's suggestion, they crept along in silence.  If they could avoid attracting the Beast's attention, they had a better chance of getting past it safely.  But after a while they heard a voice, singing a song about doors.  What did it mean?  They soon found the singer, who approached them and asked them if they were beings of darkness or light.  Beings of light, of course.  The group explained once more about their search for Noor and the Emissary.

The strange man knew the Emissary.  He had spoken to him.  He was a friend, but not as good at poetry.  He had passed through this way, accompanied by eight guards, who were holding his mouth, whatever that meant.  The strange man remembered one of the Emissary's poems.

When the unworthy speak without tongues
When sister betrays sister
When the light of peace nourishes the servants of darkness
When brother kills brother

Sayah immediately remembered the words from Ramas's data chip.  When he had asked Noor to explain herself, she had spoken words that seemed to echo the Emissary's poem.

"There will come a time when the darkness in invited in, when people speak without mouths, when sister betrays sister. Only they who live in the darkness will see the light."

Emissary Lost, episode 4: Going Down

Nobody had any intention of waiting until the requested meeting time to visit the Garden of Seekers.  Razaq and Sayah went for a scout around, with Razaq identifing a good spot for a sniper hide and making sure he was the one occupying it.  Khalil went to visit the artists' tent and chat to the jugglers there, where he discovered a complete lack of juggling ability, albeit with a will to improve.

When the time for the meeting arrived, only Sayah and Tahir waited at the meeting point, while the others looked on from their various vantage points.  Brother Ramas arrived a little late, and at the same time a number of suspicious characters appeared.  One of them pushed roughly past him on the bridge, and Tahir caught sight of a bright flash of light.  A few moments later, Ramas staggered and collapsed to the ground, reaching out to hand Tahir a data tag as he fell.

Tahir had his stun gun in hand in a moment, firing at the attacker while Sayah checked on the condition of Brother Ramas.  More new arrivals from the path above the artists' tent fired down at them, almost taking out Arin, who jumped into the lake to take cover under the bridge.  Khalil sheltered behind a tree.  Razaq fired from his hide, taking out another of the strangers.  Sayah joined Arin under the bridge, and once she'd confirmed he wasn't in need of urgent medical attention, borrowed his gun to fire back at his attackers.

It wasn't long before the shooting attracted the Coriolis station guards, at which point the attackers decided to make themselves scarce, the one Razaq had shot taking a moment to pick up his severed arm off the ground and take it with him.  Khalil scarpered in the confusion, and Razaq dropped a smoke bomb and vanished.

The other three were rounded up by the guards, where Sayah and Tahir were quick to explain how they were meeting their old friend from the Ghazali - an easy story to sell given Tahir's fame.  Tahir also told them about the weird behaviour of the attackers, specifically the bit where they picked up an arm.  After an uncomfortably long wait, word finally came through from the Judicator that they were to be released.

Khalil had an idea for how to track the attackers.  They'd all escaped - but one of them had escaped with one of his bullets inside them.  And he had a talent for finding things that had previously belonged to him.  He went into a trance and watched, seeing them regrouping in a building that looked like an abandoned hospital.

Once everyone was reunited, it was time to read the data tag that had cost Brother Ramas his life.  They began with the holo recording, where Ramas explained that a Martyr strike team from Zalos was operating on the station and attempting to wipe out new mystics.  They were being taken to the 'real sanitorium', somewhere down in the cellar.

Other files on the tag mentioned Noor.  She felt she'd been given her powers for some higher purpose, and the last time he'd seen her she was being escorted by the guard after being arrested in the Ozone Plaza.  She'd claimed to have a vision from the Emissary at Xene Station.  Ramas wasn't sure which Emissary she meant - the one on Coriolis or the heretical self-proclaimed 'Judge' from Xene.  She had a strange message for Ramas.  "There will come a time when the darkness in invited in, when people speak without mouths, when sister betrays sister. Only they who live in the darkness will see the light."  Not long after that she'd been taken down to the 'real sanitorium'.

They had to tell the Judicator everything, of course, and she was keen for them to get moving.  Chances are, this 'real sanitorium' in the Cellar was where the Emissary had been taken, and Sayah was equally keen to find Noor.  Should they take the route down through the Sanitorium, or use the guard elevator?  For speed, they went with the elevator.

Once suitably equipped with some armour loaned from the Judicator, plus some other equipment, they set off.  It wasn't long before they heard some people up ahead talking.  Razaq scared them off, and investigation showed they'd ripped out a nexus node, presumably to sell.  They found a screen, which rather unexpectedly was showing a news report from not long after the wreck of the Ghazali, specifically an interview with Tahir.  This couldn't be a coincidence.  Sayah djinned into the network, and confirmed it was being broadcast locally, not from the main station network.

Up ahead they could hear an oppressive thrumming noise, which when they got closer turned out to be huge ventilation fans.  Sayah spotted something stuck on the underside of one - a Vulcan carbine held aloft by the airflow.  Below them, on the hub of a fan, was a body.  He looked like a Coriolis guard, but with a shaved head and some increasingly familiar face tattoos.

Khalil was getting a headache, and not just from the fan noise.  He heard the crackle of a stun gun and smelled ozone.  Just like he had in the Emissary's residence.

Could they retrieve the carbine?  Tahir had a hyperrope, and felt quite confident in his ability to get hold of it if the others held onto the other end.  Khalil had a better idea though, using his mystic power to attempt to wind the end of the rope through the gun.  Instead the rope got caught around the fan and ripped out of his hands.  Good thing that wasn't Tahir.

Emissary Lost, episode 3: A Few Polite Conversations

Khalil had a vision.

He was standing in the room.  The room where the attack had taken place.  Five people were attacking him.  A wave of force burst out, deflecting the bullets.  And then came the knife in his chest, and the vision ended.

He made the decision to trust the others.  None of them seemed to have any prejudice against mystics, and the more informed they all were, the better.

Sayah, Razaq and Arin went to a weapon shop to investigate the silenced bullet they'd found, soon learning that such things were not sold on Coriolis - at least, not in respectable shops like this.  They were used by rebel groups down on Kua though, so could have made it onto the station if brought up by smugglers.  Sayah took a look at the knives, to see if there were any that resembled the one in Khalil's vision, but there were not.  She bought one anyway, to be polite.

Which turned out to be a good choice, as shortly after leaving the shop they were attacked by a group of stevedores.  They fought them off and made a hasty departure, but soon ran into Jeyla Kuhari, the reporter, once again, and had to avoid sharing the story with her.

Khalil and Tahir, being the more social and less paranoid part of the group, went to visit the ambassador.  Not to make any accusations, but because as the last person seen on the camera, he might have caught sight of something important without realising it.  His room was an imposing sight - a group of servants carried potted plants, which Khalil recognised as being a particularly poisonous variety with sharp leaves, where a single touch could prove deadly.

The ambassador spoke briefly.  He'd been given a tag to put into the emissary's music system, as somebody 'wanted him to hear a message'.  He'd since examined the tag, and to nobody's surprise found it infected with a data meme.

The local news was reporting more murders.  Sayah asked Judicator Akouba about them.  The one mentioned as happening at Wahib's was a woman called Kohmina.  Sayah remembered her well - the mad woman with the crystal ball that was really just a ball of sugar, who wanted to go down with the Ghazali because it was the will of the icons.  She'd been saved by Lila's intervention.  Sayah did not know what had happened between the two of them, and did not want to.

Once Khalil had complimented the ambassador on his taste in plants and Tahir had got his assistant's comm address, the two of them left to meet up with the others again to pay another visit to the sanitorium.  Tahir and Sayah went looking for their old friend from the Ghazali, Brother Ramos.  Instead they were introduced to Sister Robwah.  She confirmed that Ramos had met with Noor, and after some prodding, Ramos himself appeared.

They discussed the mystic's disease, and convinced Ramos to talk about Noor once they told him what had happened to Aram.  Noor believed that she was chosen by the icons to perform great deeds.  Specifically, she was chosen by the Martyr - the Zelosian name for the Judge, and according to their beliefs, the only icon.

Razaq had had enough.  Enraged by the constant claims that mystic powers were a disease in need of a cure, he stormed out.  The others followed, but Sayah had had a communicator pressed into her hand as she left, with just one message.  "Contact me."

A meeting was arranged.  That night, in the Garden of Seekers.

Emissary Lost, episode 2: Dinner and a Show

Sayah could only stare in horror at the bloody mess in front of her before the others hitting the deck prompted her to join them in taking cover.  But there were no further shots.  Clearly the killer had found their target.

While Sayah, Razaq and Khalil made themselves scarce, Arin distracted the reporter while Tahir made a quick search of Aram's body.  He found some gambling chips in his pocket, along with a communicator and a couple of thousand birr.  He talked to the authorities when they arrived, learning that they believed his death was due to gambling debts.  Aram's parents got the sad news.  He'd been keeping quiet about having the mystic's disease, out of fear that his parents would loose their bakery concession if it came out.

The group regathered for some tea and to eat the baklava they'd got from Aram's parents, which was really excellent.  As they were eating, Khalil suddenly heard a loud sound in his head.  Five notes.

Checking out the local news feeds, there was clearly a lot of discussion of the mystic's disease, and a lot of disagreement, which was sometimes spilling out into violence on the streets.  Then a news alert came up.  The emissary was missing, having failed to show up at the council meeting.  Crowds were forming in Spring Plaza, wanting to know what was going on.  There were claims that the emissary had been sighted, but could reports from down in the Cellar really be trusted?

But the group found themselves with more pressing things to worry about when they were hand delivered an invitation to dinner with a judge.  Sayah assured everyone she could help them find suitable clothing.  This wasn't the first time she'd had to dress people for dinner.  Razaq declined.  He had no intention of going anywhere near a judge.

Dinner was in the evening, and they had plenty of time before that for both shopping and trying to make sense of what had happened to Aram.  They had two leads - the gambling chips and the communicator.  The former were quickly identified as belonging to the Oporium.  The latter proved more enlightening - point to point encrypted, with the other end point being somewhere near the Sanitorium.

Sayah and Tahir went to follow up on the communicator.  While the Sanitorium was next to the library and the museum, it was in the entrance to the Sanitorium itself where they found their target.  Her name was Sanna Torm, and she was expecting to meet Aram.  She recognised Sayah, much to Sayah's alarm, although she relaxed on learning that Sanna had seen her in a vision.  They quietly told her about Aram's death, and advised her not to go into the Sanitorium, but to stay with her family (who were sufficiently rich and powerful for Sayah to recognise their name.)

While Sayah gathered anyone willing for a shopping trip, Razaq went in search of the street children again.  He asked them about the Cellar.  They hadn't been there, and claimed it was full of shambling jelly monsters.  However, they thought if he really wanted to visit, the stevedores might be able to help.

Minus Razaq, the group got dressed and went for dinner with Judge Nigelia.  It was obvious she'd done her research on everyone, as her veiled comments were enough to rattle at least some of them.  She had a job for them: look into the emissary's disappearance.

Once a suitable fee had been negotiated (9000 birr and a weapon license for everyone who didn't already have one) they all headed to the emissary's lakeside residence, accompanied by Judicator Akouba as the Judge required.

It was a strange sight.  Blood all over the living room and trails of it down the hallway to to door.  And yet the rest of the house was almost uncannily clean.  It was as if the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen had never been used.  The only item that seemed out of place was a hand fan by the bed, decorated with First Come religious iconography.

Sayah went straight for the data console, wanting to keep her mind off the blood for as long as possible.  She found it infected with data memes, and after a brief flashback to the horrible time when she'd had to do a system restore on Suleiman to remove an infection, she realised that the codebase was familiar.  The Order of the Pariah.  A group strongly opposed to the Icons - and presumably, by extension, to the emissary.

The security footage had cut out before anything particularly useful could be seen, but there was one familiar face that appeared before that.  Johar Quassar, the ambassador of the Hegemony.  The last thing to be visible before the footage cut out.

The group examined the sitting room.  Its walls were decorated with a mosaic, which had been seriously damaged.  Some examination revealed the cause to be a vulcan carbine on autofire.  On the floor was a Miran prayer rug, heavily stained with blood, much to Tahir and Sayah's distress.  It was a terrible thing to happen to any kind of soft furnishings.  There were books lying around with cut pages, looking like they'd been slashed with a dura knife.

There were also bowls on the floor.  One had contained water, one incense, which had burned a hole in the rug.  One contained couscous and one held candles.  All four were decorated with religious symbols, and their contents and design seemed to link them to Miran and Algolan representations of the four states of all things.

Closer examination of the floor found a series of hairline cracks, and looking at the walls again found a similar pattern.  It was like some kind of wave of force had hit the room, deflecting even bullets.  A single vulcan round was found embedded in the wall.  A noiseless vibro round, not the standard model.  Black market gear.

They questioned the Judicator about the blood.  Six individual sources had been identified, although the biocode analysis was not yet complete.  What they knew so far was that five of them were likely Zelosians.  The sixth had behaved oddly in analysis.

There was one last desecration of soft furnishings - or clue, to those of the group who weren't from the Aliya.  A bloody right hand print on the rug.

Emissary Lost, episode 1: Missed Meetings

 Neither Tahir nor Sayah were particularly keen to leave the Aliya, both being rather attached to it - if not for exactly the same reasons.  But sometimes you didn't get a choice about these things.

Sayah had no intention of hanging around on Coriolis for any longer than necessary, but Tahir knew people, especially pilots, and managed to find a ship willing to take them on.   But before they'd actually managed to ship out again, Sayah got an unexpected message.

Sayah had always got on well with her cousin Noor, who shared her rebellious streak, but had lost touch with her after leaving home.  So she certainly wasn't expecting to get a message from Noor, needing help and asking to meet up.  Not trusting anything family-related not to be a trap, she asked her new friends to go in first to check things out.  But arriving at the tea room, there was no sign of Noor.

What there was, once everyone was settled down drinking tea and eating dates, was a woman none of them recognised, pursued by what first appeared to be station guards - except unusually well armed.  She seemed to know who she was looking for, launching herself at them, sending candied dates flying in all directions.

While Tahir, Razaq and Khalil distracted the guards, Sayah, Arin and the strange woman slipped quietly away until they were able to vanish down a side passage and get some answers.  The strange woman's name was Althea and she was a friend of Noor.  Both of them had the 'mystic's disease', as she called it.  Noor had been in contact with another mystic, Aram Yafa, and had contacted Althea a week ago, wanting her to come and meet him.

But Althea hadn't found Noor.  All she had found was Noor's communicator, where she had seen the messages Noor had exchanged with Aram, and also the final message that she'd sent to Sayah.  And then the guards had found her, and she'd had to run, dropping the communicator in her flight.

The group met up again once the coast was clear, and headed for Noor's home.  The student apartment was tiny, with barely room for the five of them.  Searching wasn't going to take long.  They soon found a pamphlet from the Samaritan Sanitorium offering help for people with the mystic's disease.  General group consensus was that being a mystic wasn't a disease.  But still.

Sayah spotted a loose floor panel, and soon had it pulled up, revealing a transactor and of all things, a paper diary.  But before anyone could get a look at it, they were interrupted by the apartment building's senior studeont, Ekvias Memoxes, who had serious opinions on the subject of all these strange people being in Noor's apartment.  Khalil swung into action, with a torrent of fast talk that soon had Ekvias on the back foot, allowing Sayah to pocket the transactor and diary and put the floor panel back in place.

Arin went a couple of doors down the corridor to talk to another student.  The girl who opened the door wasn't entirely helpful, but had seen a mysterious tattooed man recently.  She couldn't say exactly what the tattoo was of, but her description did resonate with those of the group who'd had a good look at the guards at the tea house.  Facial tattoos were no more a common sight among the station guards than those carbines had been.

A second trip to Noor's neighbour and some rather circuitous discussion managed to extract Noor's communicator from her, at the cost of a rather extortionate 'reward'.  On it they found another message in addition to the ones Althea had had time to read - one from Aram telling her to show up an hour earlier than planned for the meeting with Althea.

Back down in the more concealed parts of the station, Sayah took the lead hacking into the station security cameras.  There they saw Noor arrive at the tea house, where she was grabbed by three guards, possibly using a stun pistol, then handcuffed and dragged away.  No sign of Aram, but some street children did see what happened.

After a chat with the street children (and a bit of shopping), they headed for an address where they had found the name Yafa, if not Aram.  There they found a bakery, and some headed inside for baklava and a chat.  Tahir, waiting outside, ran into a reporter, and managed to keep her occupied when Aram himself showed up.  Gathering outside, they had just enough time to ask Aram about what was going on and what happened to Noor, when they saw the red light of a laser sight, and a moment later Aram's head had turned to red mist.