GenCon 1993

Sunday

Octagon Champions (Final)

Sunday morning early I showed up to see if I could get in as alternate in Sue’s Octagon final; otherwise I would go over to watch the JI tournament (and maybe play a bit part in it). One finalist for Octagon didn’t show up, and there were two alternates present, but the one character that was missing from the mix was Nightstar, so I was selected. (Thanks, Sue!)

We had to deal with the death of our friend Quarterstaff and the certain disintegration of the Scarlet Ghost’s mind, when another character appeared to us, at Quarterstaff’s grave. Her name was Keleren de Teserek and she was sent by Gemstone’s father to search for an evil wizard who had been tracked to the Earth. She immediately identified Battler as a demon and assumed he was summoned by the wizard she was seeking: she asked us why we were defending him and I replied that he was my husband. We eventually convinced her that Battler had been around for longer than the wizard had been on Earth and so could not be a part of his plans. Keleren was also Gemstone’s cousin, fulfilling another of the psychic woman’s prophecies. She was dressed most inappropriately for the surroundings: chain mail and wearing a sword at each side. I created a cloak out of shadow to hide her armor and weapons until we left the open.

We had to spend most of the rest of the time searching for clues and for reasons; why was Quarterstaff killed? Why were the demons searching for and stealing mystical items from around the city? Where was the wizard?

We started getting the answers one by one. Quarterstaff was apparently killed to prevent her participation in a celestial event, where a mystic balance between Good and Evil is decided by selecting several mortal individuals; apparently Quarterstaff was to have been one of those people. We were told of the event by an expert on the occult who had been robbed of a scrying stone at the same time we were fighting the demons (and when Quarterstaff was killed.) The wizard was apparently going to replace her and thus gain power (and the domination of Evil over the world for a millenium) using the mystical items to give him power to make the replacement.

Many of the items were being stolen by minor demons summoned by low-grade magician in the wizard’s employ. We paid the magician a visit, impressing him with Battler’s true form (whom he thought to be another minion of the wizard.) I provided a watcher in the form of a shadow raptor (Battler ate the shadow raven I first created) and we sat down to wait for the last demon to make a pickup. That, of course, was the next day, so I spent the night awake maintaining the watcher; I put the image I was seeing into the mind link, and if it ever started getting blurry everyone else was supposed to keep me awake. Unfortunately the Scarlet Ghost was having trouble maintaining the mental link, so I got pinched and punched a lot; (“Marcus, I’m awake; Marcus, I said I’m awake.”) I also drank a lot of Earl Grey tea (hot).

Late the following afternoon the last demon did arrive. Gemstone teleported everyone into the magician’s room (having the coordinates from me from my watcher through the mind link: another grossity of the Cosmic Power Pool plus the Mind Link) and captured the demon. Keleren could ‘see’ the link from the demon to the wizard, so we followed it on a flying platform of shadow (with the figurehead of Quarterstaff in the front) to a castle in the swamps of southern New Jersey, where our final confrontation with the wizard took place.

Initially it was touch and go: the wizard was a lot faster than us, and he had a force wall erected before him, plus the demon who had killed Quarterstaff to defend him. I was the only person capable of attacking him behind the force wall, but he deflected my attack and almost knocked me out in return. Battler, upon seeing the demon as the murderer of Quarterstaff, went berserk, and was able to defeat the demon (in the same gory manner as it killed Quarterstaff); then, still berserk, attacked the wall. Everyone that could coördinated their attack with Battler and they broke through. Still, it was a close thing until a series of attacks defeated the wizard, the last of which was me skeet shooting the falling wizard into his fire pit, where he had been sacrificing the mystical items he had obtained.

Still, that left the spell ready, and the Scarlet Ghost still in distress. We asked Keleren to join us, to join the link and stabilize the Scarlet Ghost, as well as to help us complete the spell. None of us were as good (or as Good) as Quarterstaff, so we don’t know how the balance has shifted, but it did release Quarterstaff (as the Scarlet Ghost said, “I don’t feel her dying any more.”) So Octagon lost a member but gained another.

The scenario was angst-ridden and emotional. The roleplaying was excellent. Outlaw was played very nervously and very energetic (almost frentic); the Scarlet Ghost was very spooky and convincing. I didn’t do as good a job in the final, mainly because the player who did Battler and I didn’t have the same chemistry together. Still, it was a very fun four hours, and a warm-up for the Champions tournament final afterwards.

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