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.

The Path to Eden, episode 11: A Puzzling End

Venno's audience were buzzing.  The level of concern for the team members was obvious, especially among fans of Katin and Silas.  Venno smiled as he prepared to begin.  He could already imagine the coming reactions.

"Back at the Ark, they barely had time to deliver the collection of magazines and other valuable documents to the dawn vault before they found themselves dragged into an assembly.  Puzzle Paul was once again pushing the museum, taking advantage of Silas's crushed face preventing him engaging in any coherent argument.  Ultimately the Ark decided that they had quite enough projects on the go and didn't need any more right now.

Katin went straight back to her den for some sleep, while Silas attempted to use the first aid kit he'd found to fix his face - with a bit of help from Lenny.  He ended up using most of the contents of the box, but got the job done.

That night, Katin had a strange dream.  She was outside, surrounded by green grass, with a gentle sun shining down on healthy trees.  Flowers were all around her, but somehow when she tried to sniff them, she couldn't make out a scent.  Looking around, she saw the elf from the tunnel.  Trying to talk to her wasn't helpful, but she was pointing at a wall where there was some writing.  Katin couldn't read it.  The letters wouldn't come into focus.  But there was a picture.  A tower with a clock on it.  And then a loud bang woke her up, and she was back in her den.

The next morning, everyone felt rather better and got to work.  Zippo began working on making some armour for Lenny.  Silas went scouting for building the defenses.  Quin attempted to work on the pigsty, but lacking the proper tools for digging post holes, she strained her back.  Clearly more time reading the Health and Safety manual was required.

Lenny spotted Silas struggling at the defences and went to help, but distracted by worry for both Silas and Katin he managed to injure himself.  Meanwhile, Katin decided to try another attempt at training the hunting party in archery, this time using a regular jury rigged bow which they were more familiar with.  One brilliant archery training session later, they were ready to go.

As the sacred text said, 'Meat's back on the menu, boys!'

The next day, Katin sought out the others at the Prancing Pony, and told them about her dream.  Silas took extensive notes.  Clearly she needed to ask the elf about it.  But before she could find her, a scream echoed across the Ark.

At the site of the museum, they found the body of Puzzle Paul under some bricks, with his head bashed in with one of the bricks.  Gripped in his hands was one of the anti-museum posters Silas had been putting up.  Accusing eyes turned on Silas.  Paul's face had been crushed - just like Silas's was.

The team rapidly leapt to Silas's defence, by pointing out that he was so hopeless in a fight there was absolutely no way he could have killed anyone, because Puzzle Paul would have kicked his arse.  Silas was a coward who once left Lenny to die, not a competent killer.  There's no way he could have snuck up on someone because they'd seen Silas try to sneak and he was really conspicuous.  A reasonably compelling argument, and enough to buy them some time to investigate what really happened.

Lenny promised to keep an eye on Silas, reminding everyone that he was no Boromir or Saruman.  Quin had a look at Puzzle Paul's body to see if she could find something to get a scent from.  The murder weapon looked like a good candidate, and with some assistance from Katin, Ork was soon on the trail.  Noses to the ground, the two of them tracked down the real culprit.

The young man's name was Archie, and he'd never been known to cause trouble in the Ark before.  He was sitting in the ticket office, covered in blood, and repeating the words, 'the voices made me do it'.

Katin went to get the others, while Quin stayed with Archie.  He didn't seem to have even noticed her presence.  She did her best to get through to him, but it seemed he was too far gone.  Zippo's attempt to slap some sense into him when he arrived didn't even register with him.  Finally Lenny's imposing presence got him to talk - although he was still talking mostly about the voice in his head.  He'd been hearing it for two months, every day, telling him to kill Puzzle Paul.  And with that he retreated into himself again.

He obviously needed some help, and the Seven Sisters seemed like the best option.  Silas hung back, not wanting to get thrown under the replacement bus service.  Zippo explained things to Briktoria.  She agreed to look after Archie, on the condition that they were paid for their services.  After some further persuasion and bribery, she was convinced to go out and tell everyone that Silas was not the killer, cementing the work the team had already done.  Silas was off the hook - even though the nickname 'Staircase Silas' seemed to have stuck.

Silas headed for the Dawn Vault to look at the artefacts, where he was rather annoyed to discover that the other chroniclers were planning on naming the museum after Puzzle Paul.  Katin went looking for the elf, who was no longer staying at the Dawn Vault, but had integrated herself with the group from the Misty Mountains and was currently staying at the Prancing Pony.  Rather to her surprise, she found them reading a book.

The book was called Travels With Asterix, and unlike the Ark's sacred texts, it had pictures all the way through.  It was quite an effort to drag herself away from it, but she finally managed to talk to the elf - even if they were all a little confused about why they called her an elf.  Katin told her about the dream, and she did know about the tower with the clock.  It was called Old Ben, and she knew where to find it.  She drew it on Katin's map of the zone.  It was definitely the right place - it looked just like what Katin had seen in her dream.

It was going to be a long walk, into a far more dangerous part of the zone.  The elf didn't think they were ready to go yet, and Katin agreed.  She would have to scout out the first part of the path so they could get through them quickly when they made the push to the tower, and they definitely needed more food and water supplies.  Katin went on her way with the Asterix book on loan.

Katin knew Silas would appreciate the book, so went to visit him.  His eyes lit up at the sight of it.  She explained that she knew he'd had a rough day, and thought he might appreciate it.  Even with his access to the Dawn Vault he'd never seen anything like it.  They passed some time turning the pages.  Katin might not be the most empathic of people, but Silas was starting to feel better all the same."

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.

The Path to Eden, episode 10: Hospital

Venno's audience weren't quite as nervous as they had been last time, but the chatter suggested they were expecting to hear about a new journey into the zone.  He smiled.  They would not be disappointed.

"The biggest concern in the ark, with so many new people expected to arrive, was food supplies.  After consulting the sacred text, the Ministry of Food, a number of ideas were presented.  Scraggy Maggy suggested rounding up some pigs would allow them to have bacon, and Lenny thought a hunting party could also bring in some meat, both of which would allow them to make more of the recipes from the sacred text.  But there was also the critical matter of defence.  They didn't want to get over-committed.  While at some point they did need to think about a brewery, for now it was time to get to work.

But first, Quin had a gift for Zippo.  She'd found it in the BBC building.  She wasn't sure what it was, but she was sure he would like it, and he did.  While a first attempt to examine it resulted in him accidentally hitting himself over the head with it, he was soon sure it was a tool for repairing things, which was going to be his new best friend.

After some pointed non-discussion of museums, work began.  Quin got to work building the defences, getting a lot of building done but hurting herself in the process.  Silas tried to help, but found himself baffled by the napkin diagrams they were working from.

Zippo decided the hunting party could use some training in how to shoot things.  His first attempt didn't go so well, as they just weren't getting it, but a change of approach involving a lot of running around finally got through to them.

Lenny had a gift for Katin.  As the team's stalker, she was the person best able to make use of the thing for making far away things look close.  Having made Katin very happy, he headed off the the wrestling cage to demonstrate a few moves, and soon had the wrestling team up and running.

Delighted with her new gift, and wanting to support Lenny, Katin went to give the hunting party some training in archery, which had the significant benefit of not requiring any bullets.  Unfortunately, the fact she was using a crossbow and they all had regular bows made for an exhausting session in which nobody learned anything and several bits fell off the crossbow in the resulting argument.

Katin swallowed her pride, apologised to Zippo for blaming him for that time she nearly got blown up, and asked him if he could fix her crossbow.  He managed to stick most of it back together, and fixed the device for finding directions as well.

Everyone had a bit of a rest to recover from their exertions, and then prepared for another mission outside.  Now they knew where the hospital was, they needed to get there as soon as possible to be ready for the arrival of Eriel's hobbit.  Following Katin's lead they headed out through the marshes and turned to the south, and after a couple of hours, found themselves outside St Ann's Hospital.

They weren't alone.  While picking a low rot path into the hospital, Katin spotted a group of zone ghouls up ahead.  Remembering that historically, attempting to sneak past dangerous zone entities had not gone too well, they decided to attempt to surprise them instead.

Quin and Katin lead the charge, surprising the ghouls with rocks and arrows.  The others were...less of a surprise.  Nevertheless, after a brief but brutal fight that included one of the ghouls being dissolved by Lenny's acid spit, the ghouls were defeated and the team were all more or less intact.  They removed the helmet one of the ghouls had been wearing, realising that this was not just any helmet but an ancient artefact.

Lenny donned the helmet, and after some more arguing about the merits of museums, they moved on.  The hospital itself was a creepy sight, with dessicated corpses lying all around and the stench of death in the air.  Ork didn't want to go in, and Katin wasn't particularly keen either.

Leaving Ork outside, they began searching, and soon found a collapsed stairwell.  Zippo activated his mutant powers and used his insectoid limbs to scuttle up the wall, where he managed to locate a sign with directions to different departments.  With some help from Silas, who could remember some important lines from the sacred text, the Health and Safety Manual, he determined that they needed the maternity department on the third floor.

Zippo scuttled the rest of the way up, and found a hose, which he unrolled to allow the others to use it as a climbing rope.  It seemed his difficulty with stairs was not a problem when all the stairs had collapsed and he was soon at the top.

Zippo scuttled back down to give Katin a hand, but despite massive effort, she kept on sliding back down until she was completely exhausted and had to sit down for a rest.  Not wanting to leave her behind, Lenny scooped her up and carried her with him as he climbed.  Quin sensibly decided to stay downstairs and have a look round there instead.

Silas attempted to get Katin back on her feet, but failed to apply the appropriate drugs, leading to a serious case of self doubt.  Lenny stayed with her to look after her while Zippo and Silas searched, sharing his water with her.  The hospital did have some useful bits and pieces, including a box that Silas identified as a first aid kit, as documented in the Health and Safety Manual.  Zippo also found some jars of hobbit food.  Overall, they felt pretty confident they had what they needed.

The four of them descended the stairwell again, Lenny carrying Katin with him and Zippo deploying his insectoid limbs once more.  Silas attempted to follow, but instead the hose snapped and he plummeted down the stairwell.  With Lenny already tired from helping Katin down he couldn't help to break his fall, and Silas landed face down on the ground.

Quin came running at the sudden thud, and managed to put Silas's face back together while Zippo collected stray teeth.  They gathered their finds, and limped slowly back to the ark."

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.

Grogmeetish 2020

I've never been to Grogmeet before, although from what I could determine from last year's Twitter chatter, it seems to consist largely of people exchanging jam, with maybe some games in between.  Obviously in 2020 the jam exchanges aren't possible, but the games are.

Game 1

When in doubt, I find a modern day Call of Cthulhu game is a safe choice.  'Restitution' (coming soon to the Miskatonic Repository, I believe) is set in the Netherlands and based on current events, specifically the de-poldering of one of the polders.  Our group of entirely normal people (the mayor of the nearby city, a journalist and a PR specialist) went to do a press thing at an archaeological dig and things went downhill from there in true Call of Cthulhu style.

I really enjoyed this scenario.  Being a modern day scenario, it's entirely possible to jump into the location in Google Streeview and take a look around.  I wasn't sure what a polder or a dyke looked like, but now I've learned something.  Also the pacing is excellent, gradually ramping things up as the horror goes from more mundane fears to full on supernatural terrors.

Game 2

I skipped the middle session, as things were pretty booked up by the time I came to look at it and I figured a break would be good for me.  But in the evening it was time for another outing of Mother Said I Never Should.  While I wasn't initially planning to run anything, when the only Liminal game on the schedule booked up entirely from GMs before player bookings opened, I thought maybe they could use another game and took up Dirk the Dice's invitation.

A few hours before the game I lost two players, due to illness and getting the wrong time zone, but soon had replacements and we dived in.  Some enthusiasm for cricket lead to the group being called Edgbaston Investigations, and through stealth, charm, and creative use of pepper spray, they solved the case.

I've run this scenario enough times now that I barely look at my notes.  Since I'm planning to write it up for publication, I actually looked at it again properly, and was surprised to find various elements from the first time I ran it that I no longer use.  It's been interesting to compare what I run now with the original version and see how I've refined it.

Reflections

I know I'm going to want to attend the real life version of Grogmeet once that's a thing again, which is annoying, because it's a long way to Manchester.  The Dutch GM in my first game mentioned flying in for it, and so long as he's not far from the airport his journey's probably quicker than mine.

There was quite a lot of additional stuff going on that might make it worth a trip next time though, including a quiz on Thursday and a Mausritter tournament on Friday, neither of which I attended because I had other regular games happening, plus the RoomZoom of Roleplay Rambling on Sunday morning which I did get to.  So maybe it'll happen.  LARP permitting.  Otherwise I'll be looking out for Virtual Grogmeet next spring.

I guess I'd better learn to make jam.

The Path to Eden, episode 9: The Prophecy Fulfilled, Whatever It Was

Venno's audience looked worried today.  Unsurprisingly, given where he'd left things last time.  But they'd all come back.  It was time for the resolution.

"The nearby building with the strange metal rings on the roof looked like a good place for Zippo to find some scrap.  A sign on the front appeared to read 'BBn', but when the last letter was poked with a spear, they realised it said 'BBC'.  After some thought, Silas revealed that this symbol represented an ancient distributor of knowledge through radio broadcasts.  Lenny remembered that the symbol also appeared on the Gardener's World magazine in the Box of Lost Prophecies.  Could this place be a library?

Quin and Ork went in to investigate, and soon learned that they were not alone.  There were people talking there, on the floor above.  This was concerning.  Last time any of them had met other people, they had been cannibals who wanted to eat them.  She headed further in, followed by Silas, with floorboards creaking under her feet, until after a particularly loud creak, the talking stopped and a door slammed.

Quin indicated to Silas that he should keep quiet, and headed up the stairs.  Silas followed, missed a step, fell back down the stairs, cursing loudly and letting an arrow fly into the ceiling.

The noise didn't bring anyone out though, and Quin continued.  There were people there, behind a door, speaking in strange voices.  She kicked open the door, which bounced off something and shut again.  Despite some strange noises, they didn't seem entirely hostile.  After some tentative words, introductions were made.  There was something different about these people.  Rather like that elf they'd found.

They were looking for a new home, and once it was established that nobody wanted to hurt people on either side, and they didn't want to eat anyone, it seemed possible..  They came from a mountain range far away.  Was it the Misty Mountains?  It seemed like it was, although they seemed confused about what goblins were.  Perhaps they were dwarves?

As a sign of good faith, they handed over a weapon which they called a shotgun.  It was like Zippo's scrap rifle, but more powerful.  The group weren't convinced yet, but the strangers then offered to deal with the Nazgul.  The Ark did have a few vacancies after some of the recent deaths, and they claimed to know how to grow crops.  It seemed like a reasonable offer.

While the strangers went to deal with the Nazgul, a task that they insisted they had to do without the team there, they went for a look around the building to see if there was anything interesting.  Lenny found an interesting object.  If you looked in one end it made things look bigger, and if you looked in the other end, things looked smaller.  It gave Lenny an excellent view of the Nazgul.  And the others, an excellent view of what was left of it after the strangers completely obliterated it.

After a thorough search of the area, which turned up a reasonable amount of grub, water and bullets, they made their way back to the Ark, with their new friends in tow.  They had also seen a building with a big red cross on it, and knew where to find it.  It turned out to be only a short distance from the Seven Sisters Ark.  The name St Ann was written on it.  Rather than visit it straight away though, they decided to get everyone home so they could all have a rest.

Quin and Silas took the lead, to warn everyone about the new arrivals, since nobody had ever seen twelve new people at once before.  Lenny, Zippo and Katin showed them around the outside area, pointing out the croplands and the sundial.  Boss Elona came out to meet them, and they told her about the slaying of the Nazgul.

Inside the Ark, Silas and Quin headed for the Dawn Vault, where Silas was forced to have a conversation with Puzzle Paul, much to his disgust.  Puzzle Paul had found one of Silas's heretical posters and he and the other chroniclers had recognised his handwriting.  They argued for a while about the relative merits of museums, until they finally got onto the subject of the new arrivals and how Silas wanted to talk to the Elder.

After a second argument, Silas was finally allowed in.  He explained to the Elder about the new people, who somehow seemed more like the Elder than the people of the Ark, and how they had defeated the Nazgul.  His arguments proved convincing, and permission was granted.

Silas returned to the Dawn Vault, where he found Quin and Ork exactly where Puzzle Paul had told them to wait.  Together they returned to the surface to share the good news.  Lenny headed in to talk to Boss Marlotte, to sort out tickets, and got sent back to ask the important questions, like whether anyone needed a family ticket, and if anyone had an oyster card.  Once Boss Marlotte's spreadsheet was properly filled in, Lenny was sent back up to hand out tickets, blow the whistle and shout 'All aboard!'

And with a cheerful chorus of 'Mind The Gap' the new arrivals were welcomed in."