Session 5. Into the Exile
Score: 633 | 8/10/19 |
422/2/8 Ttime. As Flavius, O, and Kojiro duelled with three interceptors that came out of literally nowhere, Lynx woke up and staggered onto the bridge in the middle of the fight, taking over missiles as Kojiro handled the guns and O provided sensor support with Flavius at the helm. As the last of the interceptors blew up, the Herald of Winds, a scout craft, joined them through the debris screen.
The pilot, Porcelain, brought his passenger, Mirroranda, to this place so she could try to find out what happened to her father, President Entropic, leader of the Dozen Eyes faction of the Gestalt Digital. This was the site of Iris Point. There was some flexing and growling and questioning of motives, but Kojiro noted that the sensor echo indicated there was an otherdimensional space; they flew the Witching Hour through it with the Herald of Winds right behind. They entered the Exile.
The Exile
Space was full of almost motionless ash, like a slow motion blizzard. They flew to Iris Point, listing and powerless except for a major energy signature at the crown of the station. There, a massive, airy, sleek proto-Egyptian throne pavilion was open to the void with atmosphere provided by unknown technology. They moved into the gravity column and descended the boarding beam into the open-air area, meeting with the shape-shifting energy being that was formerly President Entropic and now the Sphinx. He could create wings of light, a leonine body, and other features as desired.
He explained that the incident at Iris Point was, from his point of view, both the Ascension and the Descent as the mass of joined minds was torn into two factions. One centered on Iris Point in the Exile, the other was locked in the collapsed heart of the star they had tried to manipulate; he called that the Pit, and claimed that a rival, Sharkskin, led those who were trapped there. The Sphinx was determined to send an Exilic force out into realspace and prepare for Sharkskin's escape from his cosmic prison, or else everything would be corrupted and destroyed.
The Sphinx suggested he sent O and Kojiro out from this place to bring others here, and they had flashes of protomemory that maybe they had been here before and lost memory of that. Apparently everyone involved in the Ascension's code was damaged so they could not replicate using matter and energy control granted by the Exile, and the Sphinx planned to entomb each of them that volunteered so they could project out clones, each one an otherdimensional army, and working together they could centralize the necessary resources to prepare against the return of Sharkskin. He needed savvy neural adepts to become his Immortals.
The Herald is Born
Porcelain immediately volunteered to be first adopter, and the Sphinx revealed a chamber for him to enter. The chamber was stowed beneath the floor, and Porcelain was able to project a copy of himself, reweaving matter and energy with his concentration alone, creating a living clone. He then made more clones, and a squad of four clones in armor with energy weapons; he exulted in his new capacity and power. The Sphinx renamed his new Immortal the Herald, who would be tasked with first contact before the Exilic army would centralize control of a new population.
Dilemma and Experimentation
The Sphinx then turned his energy to persuading his daughter, Mirroranda, to join him as an Immortal. As that philosophical duel unfolded in the background, the spacers faced their own various choices. O experimented with his connection to the Exilic energy, concentrating to create an apple and succeeding so well his concepts of space, time, energy, matter, and sentience were rewritten in a few interconnected insights.
Emboldened, he worked with Lynx, who wanted to externalize the nightmare figures in his fugue. O shaped the energy of the Exile to create Lynx's mother, Mira, who wanted him to return to his flesh form, and Claude, the ultimate expression of a cybernetic war machine. Thrilling and uneasy with his power in this place, O also gave form to Vizor, creating a form so the ghost of his psychic mentor could live once more. O also gave form to Tasha, the spacer medic lost to the void and partially reanimated by Exilic energy, restoring her.
Lynx was shocked by Claude's casual indifference to life and contempt of flesh; when O tried to debate his philosophies, Claude casually irradiated him, so cancer bloomed throughout his body. Even though Lynx was uneasy that his mother appeared to be his age, and that she appeared to be a high priestess in the Sisters of the Void (complete with translucent black teeth with glittering glyphs embedded in them) her vision of restoring his flesh was looking better all the time as he never wanted to become so callous.
Fist of the Exile
Claude wasted little time evaluating the situation and choosing his place in it. He interrupted the Sphinx and volunteered to serve as the ultimate warrior for the Sphinx, who removed the neural pattern and fired it into real space. Claude was gifted with the ability to reshape matter and energy, so if he could access enough energy he could create anything he could imagine.
As the spacers watched Claude condensed into a golden ball and sent through the black pool overhead that was the doorway back to real space, the situation became more urgent. They saw the barge with cryo chambers, where the Sphinx's Immortals could be returned to real space to be conquerors, and they decided however they responded to the opportunity they would do it as a group. Together, they turned their backs on Immortality. What now?
Rebellion
Lynx attacked Claude's empty shell, unable to inflict harm on it even though it did not defend itself. Flavius took a more direct approach, hurling a belt of explosives at the Sphinx (who casually altered their reality to harmless sugary beverages.) Flavius punched the Sphinx, cracking the bones in his hand without fazing the flesh/energy hybrid space god.
Kojiro watched these tactics and considered how best to threaten the Sphinx, and he remembered that the Sphinx absorbed the power core of the station and all the leaders of the faction, and their followers; many minds were rigidly controlled within the Sphinx, and it took vast concentration to show off and appear godlike in this setting. He whispered to O, who used his telepathy to break through the Sphinx veneer and rile up the strong and unwilling consciousness gestalt that formed the Sphinx's very essence.
As some of those enslaved minds surged and rebelled, the Sphinx hardened into a statue as his attention was required to restore order. It was time to go, but they had unfinished business; O concentrated in this space, and restored his body, flushing out the cancers Claude seeded in him. Lynx, desperate, demanded O restore his flesh and erase his cybers. O gripped his shoulders, they locked eyes, and concentrated--and Lynx was rewoven right out of existence. O found himself staring into Mira's eyes where she stood behind where Lynx was, and he saw her exultation as her prophecy was fulfilled.
As the atmosphere got a bit twitchy without the Sphinx's micromanagement, the spacers knew this was their chance; the pool-like entry to real space was shrinking, but they leaped up to the Witching Hour (along with Mira and Vizor) and slid through the closing portal to re-enter real space.