Family man

ARTIFICIAL HEART // THIRD, known by the episode title "family man", is the fifth episode of ARTIFICIAL HEART, covering the aftermath of the heist and the beginning of a mass revolt that completely shut down the city of Empyrea.

### Time (IC)

00:14 to 14:16 (5th of Neverwinter, 2466)

### The Battle Continues

The session opens with the party of Wastehunters, joined by Candlewax and Azat Bosko, locking in battle with three mysterious Drow, led by an older Drow man with an odd snake scar engraved on the side of his face. This mysterious Drow leader has the strange ability to create clones of himself, and while his allies are mooks, this man is much harder to defeat. Carrying a sword of an unrecognizable design and casting devastating offensive spells, he continues to attack the party, and before long almost everyone is injured by him. Stroke, acting quickly, grabs the amulet that he was attempting to take, and Ringer shoots his mooks killing them, leaving the drow leader to be the last enemy. Auntie, confronting him in melee combat, takes three massive hits with the sword he carries, and Diamant attempts to cast a spell but loses it to a Wild Magic Surge,  before Candlewax casts a spell that begins to choke out the Drow and Azat uploads five rounds into him. The mysterious robed drow teleports away before he is killed.

Taking a moment to breathe, the party attempts to find some items that may be of use in the room they are left standing in before properly addressing Director Silvers, who still lies unconscious in the neighboring room. Stitches finds a backpack and blood bag containing O- blood that can be transferred to anyone in need of it. Ringer finds a flash drive on Silvers that she can take, and Auntie picks up one of the drow swords. Stroke is momentarily interested by a radio, having never seen one before, and after Azat tells her it is basically useless, she puts it back down a little disappointed. After everyone was content with their findings, the group turns to look at Silvers, who needs to be taken out of the room to find some help, or he will slowly die from his injuries. Stitches makes a makeshift stretcher for him and Auntie carries him up the ladder and out of the room.

### Finding Help

Candlewax tells the group that the amulet is damaged, and if it isn’t fixed by a powerful mage soon, it will fade, losing all of its magical abilities and becoming functionally useless. Stroke offers to take the amulet to AM who may be able to help using his powerful magic and Candlewax, proposing no better ideas, agrees to try. The party begin to load Silvers into the limousine that Azat had brought with him but Stitches decides to stay behind for a few minutes to look over the bodies of the E-SEC officers that were found earlier. Ringer and Stroke decide to come with her just in case she may need help, and Stitches is able to deduce that these people were all killed by fatal wounds dealt by a sword, making it very likely that the drow were the ones responsible for these deaths. She also notices that a woman's fingers were all broken in an odd way before she died, and Stitches voices no ideas as to why this may be the case before stating that she’s found everything she needed to, and leaves.

With everyone getting into the car, Azat begins to drive, taking directions from Stroke to the Tartarus Arena. It doesn’t take long before the party notices that the roads are eerily quiet, and when Azat arrives at the first E-SEC checkpoint the whole group is confused to find it completely empty. Diamant tells Azat to just continue to drive and the whole party stays alert for any more danger. It’s not long before Azat drives into yet another E-SEC outpost, and just as the previous one was, this too is abandoned, but, unlike the last stop, there are now crashed E-SEC vehicles nearby, and a few corpses of fallen security workers. Right before Azat can continue to drive, the limousine is ambushed by a small group of drow, all wearing gas masks, and carrying guns that are fired at the retreating vehicle. Luckily enough, Azat manages to get the car and the group out of danger before the bullets fired find any purchase. Now thoroughly frightened the party begins to try to piece together what may have happened, and it is at this point that Ringer realizes that the Matrix, the core to all her abilities, is offline, and no one in the city has the ability to message anyone. Azat then begins to speak up, telling the relatively young group of riots about the times before the city's creation.

### The HELL District

Before the city came to its full power, back when Azat was just as young as Diamant, some events took place that no one is supposed to remember or talk about. The government would draft young and able bodied Wastehunters like Azat, to protect the city against violent attacks that threatened the safety of the city. These attacks were always done by drow, and eventually, an incident happened that destroyed the  old council government and everything it had started to create. People suspected that this incident was done by mercs accompanied by drow, but no one is really certain what really happened. In retaliation to this attack, the people who still held power in the city hired various kinds of muscle that could secretly gather up all the drow in the city, and force them into an underground district. This new district was where the drow were held captive and punished for various crimes that most of them did not commit. This district was named HELL, and using the slave labor that the drow provide, HELL runs everything that the city relies on.

Azat tells the now silent party that since the attacks that they have seen so far have been done by drow, he suspects that the slaves of HELL have escaped, and are now enacting their revenge on the city. He can see that they’ve already shut down the matrix and every group of E-SEC operatives the party can see, and this leads him to suspect that the drow have already started going after innocent civilians as well. The group travels mostly in silence, Diamant speaking up one time to declare that if Azat is right, she no longer blames the drow for attacking them back at the Autodock site. While traveling the party comes across multiple abandoned E-SEC outposts, all bearing the same signs of destroyed vehicles and corpses of operatives. Azat only needs to pull over one time when a small group of E-SEC officers ask Diamant where she’s headed and both Diamant and the officers exchange quick questions about their situation, but neither get the answers they are looking for. At this point, Stitches takes the opportunity to look over Silvers to see how his condition is holding up, and deduces that if he is left untended to for the next two hours or so, he will quickly die, either from sepsis or internal bleeding.

### Back to Tartarus

The E-SEC operatives let Diamant leave to the Tartarus club, and with Strokes guidance, the group quickly arrives. In the third district, it becomes clear that this place was not spared from the drow attacks. Many bodies lay scattered around. Some drow in gas masks, others humans or other third district civilians. When Stroke goes to knock on the Tartarus club door she is met with guns and defensive violence from her allies, but upon seeing that it’s just her, they quickly lower their weapons. Red is the first of the defenders to greet her, and they let her in without further question, locking the door after everyone is inside. Stitches asks Red to direct her to a room where she can perform emergency surgery on Director Silvers, and Red gladly leads both her and Auntie carrying Silvers on his makeshift stretcher to a room with a table they can use. Stitches, grabbing a few tools that can be used and sheets to keep everything sterile during the surgery. Using her O- blood bag, Stitches manages to save Anthony Silvers’ life after a 90 minute surgery.

Meanwhile, Stroke and the others go to meet up with AM to see if he can do anything for the dying amulet. AM, upon seeing Stroke alive, is relieved, and gives her a hug. Diamant gives AM the amulet and Candlewax explains that it needs to be taken care of before the magic fades entirely and the amulet becomes unusable. AM is silent for a moment before telling the group of them that there is something he can try, but he will need to be gone for two weeks starting in less than an hour. He tells Stroke that he won’t be able to help the people of the Tartarus club from where he would be, and that he needs to leave someone he can trust in charge of the place. He asks her if she would be willing to or able to handle the responsibility, and after some hesitation, Stroke agrees to the offer. AM turns to cast a spell but before he can fully cast it, Diamant speaks up, and asks him if he has ever heard of the “Project ETERNITY.” After a small moment of hesitation, AM tells her that the name is unrecognized to him. She then lets him resume his spell and once the spell is cast, both AM and the amulet have vanished, leaving the party and the newfound leader of the Tartarus club alone in his office.

### A Much Needed Rest

The party quickly realizes how late it is, and quickly starts making preparations to rest for the rest of the night. Stroke finds a room for Diamant and Ringer to rest in for the rest of the night, and Peppermint and Candlewax find a room they can share for meditation. While the siblings prepare for rest, Candlewax reminisces about his and Peppermint's childhood, and how simple things used to be. He recalls how he would do all of his chores before their mother came in to scold the two of them, just so he could tease Peppermint when she didn’t get it done in time, and it becomes clear to see just how much he cares for his sister. After they have a short conversation, the two elven siblings go to rest.

Meanwhile, Auntie, having been told previously to keep an eye on Silvers to make sure he remains stable, realizes that if she doesn’t get help for her wounds then they might become even worse, causing her to slowly bleed out. Exhausted, she goes out of the operating room to look for Stitches and finds her in the middle of the arena burning the sheets she used to sanitize Silvers during the surgery. Auntie asks Stitches for her help, and when Stitches sees how bad the wounds are she immediately sends Auntie back to the operating room, scolding her for not telling her about it sooner. While on their way, the two of them are met with 4va as she sets up her bar for tomorrow morning. She remarks on how the both of them look terrible and Stitches asks her for everclear she can use to clean Aunties wounds. 4va gladly hands her a bottle and the two party members leave. Shortly after Aunties wounds are cleanly stitched, and her bleeding has stopped Auntie thanks Stitches for all her help, and asks her how she’s been doing, admitting that she was worried for her when she went missing after the second explosion. Stitches admits that she’s alright and that she was just visiting some people that she cares about. Auntie then lets Stitches get some rest, but before going to find a room for herself she gives Stitches a quick hug. The two then leave each other to find a place to sleep for the remaining hours of the night.

While the party sleeps Ringer has an odd dream. In her dream she is at an oddly colored temple made out of weird geometric shapes, and she is met with Facsimile. Ringer and Facsimile have a conversation with no small amount of distrust on both ends, and Facsimile tells Ringer that she’s inside of a cyberdeck, which is how it got in contact with her through her dreams. Facsimile tells her that it has had a fun time watching her as a netrunner, and that she fascinates it. It asks her if it can trust Ringer and if Ringer can trust it, and Ringer tells it that it should not consider it an enemy or a threat. Facsimile finds this amusing, and seems to enjoy talking to Ringer, though it may not have Ringer's best interest in mind. Ringer asks Facsimile if it knows anything about Stroke and what happened to her on the night her team got attacked, and Facsimile provides her with no new answers. Facsimile wonders aloud how someone like Ringer, someone so ordinary, can do such interesting and effective things through the Matrix and Ringer tells her that she has a talent for these sorts of technology. Ringer then asks Facsimile if it will let her rest now, and it tells her that she has already rested, but that it will allow her to wake up now, and just as she went into the dream, Ringer wakes up and is met with the sound of gunfire outside.

The whole party regroups outside the building having rested some more, and sees that the Tartarus club is under attack by more drow in gas masks, and they alongside Red and Candlewax, proceed to protect the club with everything they have, making short work of their elven enemies. Once the drow begin to retreat, the group talks over what the next steps of the plan should be and Stitches points out that until Director Silvers wakes up from his coma, they can’t do anything with the information they have. Upon hearing this Red informs Stitches that her patient, Silvers, had woken up that morning, sooner than anyone had expected. Deciding that speaking with Silvers would be the perfect next step, the party makes their way to his makeshift room to get the information they need out of him.