Session 27

← Session 26 | Session 28 →

The party finishes committing terrorism, and watches an illegal television broadcast.

## Characters

* The Party
* Zaida Loch
* Legacy Byrnes
* Rain Caudell
* 0-771534
* Clovis Alcott
* Lyric Uaithne
* Giles Winsett

## Summary

#### **Panic! In the Elevator**

Nyx is dragged back to consciousness by the sound of frantic, soaring violin music, overlaid on the cacophony from below. The riot in and around the ΠTV2 atrium is still in full swing, with no heed given to the falling skywalks.

The party in the elevator terminal near ΠTV2 heads for the next closest elevator terminal, meeting Asa and Zaida on the way. After about five minutes of walking, the party has reached the last functional skybridge, which Asa runs, dropping it onto the already-rubble-covered skybridge below it. The party plans to return to the ΠTV2 elevator terminal and head to the ground floor, but the terminal is occupied by emergency personnel as well as a handful of guards. Said guards spot the party, and a brief firefight ensues, with Asa taking the brunt of their attention so everyone can get out. Asa gets hit and Sam has to drag him to the other elevator terminal, where he is healed by Colby.

#### **Blasting Off Agaaaaaain**

On street level not directly by ΠTV2 there is a section of calm, between the police barricade and the riot. This calm doesn't last long, however, as the party is spotted by two guards. They once again throw themselves into a fight, with Nyx plunging into the fray--and narrowly missing getting her brain splattered across the pavement for her trouble. More guards notice and head over, surrounding the party. Kuno, thinking quickly, unfurls a leftover bomb in the elevator and sets it off, giving the party a window to escape. They make it out, though Kuno and Sam are the last ones out, and get slightly caught in the acid.

The party is still running from the guards when Legacy's voice crackles over the comms, asking if they're on the ground floor. At the chorus of affirmatives, he rattles off a street address for the party to meet him and Rain at.

The party considers working their way through the press of rioters, but discard that idea in favor of going the long way through the City streets. There are guards and police swarming everywhere, and while Kuno throws a few flashbangs as distractions the party comes face-to-face with half the force on the streets. They turn to head back the way they came, only to find the second half of the force had flanked them, and they are now surrounded.

Asa goes to torch a section of the crowd cornering them, giving them a chance to escape, but instead unleashes a roiling wave of flame that suffuses the entire ring of police. This serves as enough of a distraction that the party manages to bolt through the flames unhindered, but the magic took a lot out of Asa and he has to be dragged a few blocks before he recovers.

#### **No Gain, No Pain**

At the specified street, the party finds Legacy and Rain, battered. Legacy looks particularly rough, and Colby heals him, which he is confused by but doesn't have time to process. He is also noticeably *pissed*, and explains the building was packed with guards and the square was surrounded even before any protesters showed up. The two got into the building, but didn't make it past the second floor before they had to get out.

Legacy leads the party to a cheap apartment in the bad part of the City, so they can lay low and figure out their next move. He starts thinking about what they could do next, mentioning he still supports going after ΠTV1, before finding out he doesn't have the drive with Ollie's virus. Rain has to physically restrain Legacy from going back out into the City and fighting the combined might of several corporate police forces for the drive, which he isn't happy about. Both Zaida and Kuno try to reassure Legacy, but Rain waves them off. She lets Legacy up eventually, and he rattles around the unfurnished apartment, still angry.

The party spends a tense 24 hours in the apartment, with Rain sleeping on the door to keep Legacy from leaving in the middle of the night. Kuno set up a game of cards, while Colby spends the time in a corner and Legacy continues to rattle around while trying not to break things.

#### **Babe, Wake Up! New Revolution Video Just Dropped**

##### **Thursday, March 25th, 543:**

The next day, without having been interrupted by police overnight, the party and co. head back to Ollie's apartment, leaving the extra bombs in the cheap apartment. Ollie welcomes them in, glad to see they're all alive, though the atmosphere in the apartment is not a good one, with the way the Paragon raid went. Rain immediately disappears into the rest of the apartment, while Ollie drags Legacy to a corner to try and talk him down. Eventually Ollie lets him go, and Legacy starts a sentence about Astra police academy before Ollie hauls him into the kitchen to watch something on a laptop.

Eventually, Rain and Lyric emerge from the depths of the apartment, and take up their customary corner position. Lyric, unusually, doesn't have a plant close to hand.

After some time, Legacy swears from the kitchen, and Ollie goes to once again talk him down. It's obvious, from snatches the party overhears, that something has just gotten worse. Ollie brings the laptop out of the kitchen and hands it to Rain, who watches whatever Ollie had queued up, and starts crying. She turns to Lyric, signing the contents to him, and Lyric takes it badly.

The party leaves at about this point, all heading back to their respective residences. Colby's church isn't pleased with his absence, but this is nothing new.

A quick search of the news finds what Ollie showed Rain and Legacy: the broadcast that played a day ago on ΠTV2.

The first half of the broadcast is a well-polished presentation of what the revolutionaries have been doing, as well as everything they learned in Ollie's hack on K&T. Legacy narrates over video of the protests, their raids on food shipments, and Montcroix's death at the Gala, with statistics and sources. He urges everyone listening to do what they can to help, and not just sit by as K&T covers this up and people starve. This segment is what gets played on the news, and the anchors try to play it off as a group of terrorists and upstarts trying to excuse their behavior.

#### **The Real Treasure was the Friends we Lost Along the Way**

The second half of the broadcast on ΠTV2 is harder to find, but everyone knows it exists, since it reached most every screen in the city. These twenty minutes of unedited audio mark the end of Giles Winsett's life, recorded from a locked broadcast room as he bled out. In true Giles fashion, it isn't particularly organized, but he does work his way through farewells to his fellow revolutionaries.

>
> *Legacy, you dumbass.*
>
> ...
>
> *Well take notes on this next bit, ‘cause I’m being dead serious. Heh. Dead. Anyways, pal, I’m gonna need you to make me a fuckin’ promise.*
>
> ...
>
> *Legacy, I need you to promise me that all the showy bloodshed stops here. No assassinations. No revenge. No martyrism. Rebuild. Fix things. Help people. Don’t throw your life away like a moron. Promise me.*
>
>
>
>

> *Fuck. What are some cool last words? Umm. . . shit I dunno.* Veritas numquam perit*. I’ll tell the devil you all say hi.*
>
>

Since the first half of the broadcast is what is getting coverage, it's what public sentiment reacts to. No one really knows what to think, though the consensus seems to be relatively in favor of the revolutionaries. It's a lot of information to take in, but not impossible to believe, and would explain things.

Kuno's response is to make a lot of food and deliver it to the revolutionaries, which is appreciated, even if they're not doing well at all.

#### **Save Your Questions 'Til He's Dead, Please**

##### **Saturday, March 27th, 543:**

A few days later, Sam calls Zaida to ask how she's doing. She's been staying with Ollie, where it's been rough. Rain and Lyric have been in and out, and Legacy hasn't taken this well at all. This isn't Zaida's first loss, so she has been trying to help Legacy through it, which isn't helped by the fact he actively wants her dead. She lost her younger brother a few years ago. Sam offers anything he can do to help, but she says the best thing they can have is time, and that she'll let him know if she thinks of anything else. Sam asks what was up with her and Giles, and she is surprised to hear he's never heard of Giles. According to Zaida, Giles Winsett did revolutionary work on extraplanar physics, which was mostly theoretical but still had a big effect on that corner of the academic community.

With this information from Zaida, Sam looks around online, and finds Giles's reputation is more than just academic. In 514, he was part of a team of researchers presenting at the 32nd annual Future Prospects Conference, an event in the science subsection of the Toska District to help find research grants. He and his team were there to debut a project, but Winsett bombed the event. Winsett was caught and jailed, but broke out, and dropped off the grid after that.

Sam sends his findings to the group chat, which mostly consists of a few links to information available online. Nyx digs deeper, but isn't able to find any record of the project they were working on, which is odd--everything else lost at the conference is well-documented. She does find recordings of Winsett's trial, in which he insists he blew up the conference because he couldn't let the project go live, even though it probably wouldn't work anyway.

## Quotes

**Kellen:** “Nyx welcome back to the land of the living. Also, violin music.”

**Kellen:** “You could slurp any of them down right now.”

**Parker:** “Glad to know Colby’s a snack.”

**Ezra:** “Let’s tempt fate one more time, shall we.”

**Kellen:** “Nature magic’s fucking expensive when there’s no goddamn nature.”

**Parker:** “You really did massacre your Vegas husband.”

**Kellen:** “Giles Winsett did 9/11.”

← Session 26 | Session 28 →