Player Characters

Kamare, Rielle, Regan, Freya, Larkin

DM Characters

Lucky, Landon, Ratatoskr, Keeper, Calamity

Section 1

Session 1: A Worst Case Scenario

Opening: Terrible Dream

Opening Track:The Requiem by Linkin Park

You all have the same dream. It is much less of a dream and more like a feeling that something is very wrong somewhere. The sound of something cracking and breaking, muffled screams that sound like they could be an SOS from a vessel of some kind. Luminous bands of blue spread out like spider legs that are so terrible they nearly shake you awake. “The space port! Hurry!” They are the only clear words you hear, and you can see where they come from. A massive being of light with vast wings floating across the dreamscape. You have all seen Bertha and Trouble’s dream forms, and it is now, in the early hours of the morning, that Bertha is making a desperate attempt to summon aid.

Rielle, Kamare, and Regan all woke in the early morning hours before sunrise and arrived at the spaceport shortly after
Regan was left with the extra dread of feeling something had happened to Ratatoskr
Trouble had already taken off with Nate's ghost piloting
Bertha needed a crew to take off as she can assist a crew but can't run herself
- Kamare took weapons control should it be needed
- Regan took the comms position
- Rielle served as the ship's pilot
Once manned, the bomber took off at full speed, several times greater than what its specifications would indicate

Sighting Lucky

Lucinda Gabrielle earned the name Lucky for her steady diet of negative randons which causeds there to be a higher percentage of positive randons around her that made others nearby lucky. The negative randons were stored in her long wing blades much like a poison dart frog concentrates toxins in its skin. As you catch up with Trouble, you can see Lucky’s ethereal wing blades, something that should not appear outside of the dream realms. They appear to have been cut off close to the base, and the loose fragments are bleeding negative randons everywhere. The luck is so bad that it is acting like an acid eating through metal, and like a drop of acid blood in the Alien movie eating through deck after deck, the bleeding wings are causing the annihilation of the borders between dimensions resulting in a breach. Even worse, this breach is directly in the path of Spindizzy.

The Ragnarok, the ship Lucky lives on along with Landon, has lost lost its wings and two engines as if they had been sliced off. It is venting drive plasma and atmosphere from cracks in the hull. Their communications system may also be damaged. To complicate the situation further, there is a massive, somewhat squid like entity with its tentacles wrapped around the ship and the severed wing fragments. It is not clear what it is doing, but Bertha can quickly identify it as some kind of darkness.

A damaged ship, a crew in danger, an unidentified creature, and a fracture in spacetime. All in a day’s work for you all.

Rough sketch the scenario:

Approach Track: Dark Ages by Two Steps From Hell
Encounter Track: The Radiance by Linkin Park

Not sure if they should be ready to open fire, Kamare had the weapons at the ready which caused the squid creature to move in between Bertha and the Ragnarok in a defensive position. Disabling weapons caused it to stay where it was.
Regan tried to get communications through.
- Transmissions of a mayday signal were coming from the Ragnarok, but massive interference from the rift they were causing made them hard to hear or reply to
- The squid responded to light flashes and radio. It returned signals in the microwave range around the same frequency of the cosmic background radiation but at much higher power. Unfortunately, no one knew how to read the signal

Given the potential of a non-hostile darkness entity, the group changed up positions to try other routes of contact

Kamare took over piloting and helped knock Regan out so she could try the dream approach

Rielle discorporated in order to approach the space squid directly and try communication by light flashes. It responded to her with some sort of telepathy like ability
- THe squid is intelligent. However, it appears to have about the same wisdom as a child of five or six years.
- The squid was trying to put Lucky's severed wings back on, but they wouldn't attach. It was unable to comprehend anything beyond that, and it just kept trying.
- The squid indicated that 'The Older Ones' were the ones that did this, and she had stolen what she could of the ship to save Lucky from them.

Regan approached the problem from the dreamscape
- The squid and the ship appeared in roughly the same place in dreamspace
- Regan was able to see into the ship. Landon was critically injured. Lucky's wings were cut off. Ratatoskr was not directly visible because a Darkness, Keeper, one of the beings that created Ratatoskr's species, was protecting her from further harm. Keeper was also badly injured, but it was able to speak with Regan.
- Keeper revealed that a dreamcatcher had been deployed to attack the ship. There was no warning for the ship, and both espers and Landon suffered extensive injuries form the impact that sheared the wings and two engines clean off as well as causing stress damage to the hull.
- Keeper relayed that the remains of the ship needed to get back to Spindizzy soon before conditions got any worse.
- Keeper identified the squid as Calida, or Calamity, depending on who you asked. She is a young and unique Darkness distorted by contact with Lucky.

While the cargo and bomb bays on the bombers is not large enough to get the ship remains in, Bertha noted the bombers have tractor beams.
The remains of the Ragnarok are needed to carry Lucky to safety.

Session 2

Continued chats between Wanderer and Regan

Newer Darkness that have some light aspect have been showing up in the last week or so, about the same time when the Ragnarok game back in pieces
Current Darkness around Wanderer are friendly and may even look like they are seeking shelter or kindred spirits

Keeper's Book
- Keepers don't normally have books. Instead they are the book
- The data density in the book is so great that it could feasibly contain all the quantum data or huge sections of the universe
- Only certain folk can read the books
  - Darkness
  - The Night Soldiers who are all extinct now aside from Fibi
  - A Darkness Muse of which only one exists: Abigail Normal
- If you can erase or destroy a book, you destroy the record of the past and bring it into uncertainty. In other words, if you erase the book, you erase history and anything in it from existsing

Migrant Darkness
- Wanderer implies that some of the Dasrkness are massive but also passive and laying low. This could include what physics things of as Dark Matter or Dark Energy.
- Veil is the only survivor of the trio that made the Keeth, and it has been around as well as others
- It sounds like Calamity made passing run as well

Esper Legends
- Wanderer admits that both he and Ratatoskr are incredibly young as espers, so they don't know a lot despite their relative power
- Two legendary Espers do exist according to what Wanderer has learned.
  - Star is older than anyone knows, and she is the only one that can exist in the land of the dead
  - Lucky is the legendary pathfinder that can gain access to almost any location in the universe
    - Lucky losing her wings means she can't use her power.
    - Lucky's power is to gain access to any location or at least know the way
    - Darkness has settled down now that Lucky lost her wings as if something is now safe from her getting to it. Lucky has gone missing.

Section 2: Into the Canvas

Away in a Coffee Shop

Having met Landon and his kin at the hospital, the group eventually gets Landon checked out and meets up at a local waffle house to get something to eat. Their service is a bit more than most would expect out of such a place as a pale blue skinned humanoid brings their orders even before they are put in.

Pete: Pete has many names including the Wanderer, The Traveler, Pilot, and a number of derogatory names depending on who he has meddled with. He is a Delsin, the last remaining of his kind, and he has a tendency to wander through time on a very large ship that bears no name. Pete is a meddler and a general pain in the side that Darkness as not been able to stomp out. He hails from several iterations of the universe ago back when his people used to attack and harvest lesser Darkness to use for ship hulls and other devices. Its not much of a wonder who erased them in the end.

Arrival in the coffee shop: Candied Coffee has never been a normal coffee shop. If one knew how to use them, its doorways bridge location spread far across space including Spindizzy, modern London, and even a path into Thomas's wonderland, Cheshire, itself. The main target of this meeting is Abigail Normal, a leftover muse from the beginning of time. However, fate has deemed fit to send a number of other souls to aid in a now emerging quest.

Abby's read of the book

The Book: The book itself is a simple black tome with no visible markings and difficult to discern pages. It is made up entirely of a from of dark matter, and the data density in it is so vast that it contain nearly all the historical data of seventeen full cycles of the universe. The book can only be read by beings of darkness or at least partial darkness which limits it to Abigail, Fibi, and some Keeth. What Abigail finds is disturbing

The Book as it relates to Abigail

Abby discovered that there were more of her kind, that is to say darkness writing muses. Like pages from a book, they have been torn out and erased until now only she remains.
Abigail is the only one able to fully read the book. Because of this, and having the book in her hands, Darkness will no doubt make a move to attack
Abigail knows how to get to a place even Darkness will not readily follow and where she and the book may be safe: The Core of Light otherwise known as The Fracture or The home of chaos
- Abigail will be safe among the Lord and Lady of Chaos

The Book's Data on the Espers

While there is a decent bit of data on Dreamworld beings including espers, the most pertinent sections surround a single esper that re-occurs each iteration after the 4th universe: Lucinda Gabriel aka Lucky

Lucky first appears as a lesser spirit during the 4th universe where Light begins to cause a rampant spread of new, creative life. This includes the creation of a whimsy after Darkness attempts to crush the muses that are just beginning to emerge. By the time the universe is crushed and expanded again, Lucky has gain a mysterious set of wings that begin consuming ill fortune. It is this ill fortune that keeps her appearing in later versions of the universe despite efforts to erase her.

Lucky has four sets of wings at present. Their ratios are 4:9:13:17 which are not innocent numbers. Though interpretations vary across the universe, the general ratios and pattern holding true as their tones played across quantum strings are sure to bring what all fear: death, death, extreme misfortune, and death respectively.
- Lucky is a form of Doomsday Clock. The more Darkness destroys, the more of the ill fortune that comes with it gets concentrated in her. No one is sure how much more she can handle.
- Lucky's wings, when cut, bled out enough misfortune in maybe an hour to cause a hole through multiple realities including dream, hell, heaven, and a few unnamed places as well. No one knows how much bad lucky she has in the core of her being.

DARKNESS FEARS LUCKY
- Darkness fears the chaos, but more importantly, it fears Lucky because she is the master pathfinder of the espers
- Pathfinders find ways to places and things. Lucky is the oldest living Pathfinder, and she can find routes to almost any object across both space and time without using anything more than her sense of direction
  - So far, Lucky found the way to the Heart of Darkness and allowed Landon and Ratatoskr to penetrate it.
  - Darkess was trying to kill Lucky so she couldn't find something

The Book's Data on Whimsies

The muses have always been a problem for Darkness because they spur creativity and, through the power of chaos, these imagined things gain life and infest their universe. Attacking muses is risky, but over time Darkness learned how to hunt muses and destroy them. For a few blessed generations, the universe fell back to something controlled, bland, and predictable. Then, on the fourth generation, something changed.

Having used the usual Nothings to eat completely the soul of creativity, there had been no muse to date that could survive being trapped by one of these monsters. Then, in the fourth iteration, a coyote was in the wrong place at the right time, and she stole ;a muse from a Nothing before it could be destroyed. The good fortune surrounded said coyote was enough to keep the muse alive in a somewhat broken state that eventually manifested in something new: a whimsy.

Whimsies: Whimsies are what happen when a muse survives a engagement with a Nothing or other creativity killing being. The muse always emerges from this somehow broken. They may have lost hearing or sight, their personality is almost always scrambled, but they always emerge with one important thing broken: the rules. Muses have rules. They exist to record their art in all forms, and they exist to pass down their art to others. In this way, all things a muse does is to inspire someone else. Through their magic, they can create things from nothing, but it must always be for someone else's inspiration. Whimsies ignore this last rules, and they can make for themselves however they like. That can turn a painter into a soldier of the sort Darkness dreads.

Darkness has a way of killing whimsies: they must trap the whimsy in the material of its origin and then bleed the energy from that object until they can erase it.

The whimsy of this universe they are so desperate to kill is the Spindizzy's painting muse: Candice

The Battle Plans

Group One: Bookwork

Abby will meet up with some allies including a dream called Reverie and two spirits, Mira and Luma aboard the White Raven to make it to the core of light. They will eventually meet up with Virgil Murphy, a young male seya and THE source of Murphy's Law, and Aina 13 Zoey, Lady Luck, with her gun that is always a lucky shot. They should be safe in the highest chaos region known with masses of wonderlands and dreams to keep them safe and the book out of hands until Abigail can do something sinister: make a copy.

Group Two: Whimsy Rescue

Pete will provide transportation to the End of All Time Plus Five Minutes. He knows Lucky is hiding there to heal her wounds
Pete will also have liberated the L-13 Liberator, a special ship that Landon has been designing that would be made on Spindizzy and St. Martin as a massive collaborative contract.Be sure to invest in aerospace in the next couple years.
- The GLF FX-13AR L-13 Liberator is a special ship engineered with an esper in mind. It also has countermeasures against some Darkness tricks that have come to pass.
Once the group has Lucky, they can pick the destination.

Beyond the Time's Reach

The expedition has finally begin in full beginning with Landon getting a shuttle craft to fly out to Pete's X-88, a massive, ancient ship built in part from the corpse of a Darkness from a time and even universe long past. The spidery black mass has the marks of what used to be massive weapon hard points that were used to decimate whole planets. Now they carry home brewed time travel equipment.

GLF FX-13AR L-13 Liberator Class Heavy Assault Craft

Sure enough, Pete managed to get to the right place in time to pick up the ship Landon designed. Of course, that did mean some folks had some fun messing with minor time loops to tweak the design by getting the ideas stuck in Landon's head. Two things are certain about this ship: she's military in style and has some serious teeth.

The Liberator, which is the first in its class, has the named L-13 in honor of Lucky. When Landon is at his best, he could fly it with just himself and Lucky. However, after the attack that put him in the hospital, he is down to piloting and some gunnery on his own, and so the ship needs a whole crew. The main bridge has all of these stations available from piloting, navigation, engineering, communications, sensors, and gunner's positions. The bunks are utilitarian but comfortable, and the ship could probably operate on two shifts at times. Landon will have to teach everyone how to fly it later.

The Liberator's multi-use bays that normally carry missile like systems have been replaced by a special device that will help the ship act as a key to unlock a gate that leads into the domain Candice is being held in. Unfortunately, the LIberator can't generate enough power for the key to activate, so Pete has plans to tell everyone how to manage that when the time is closer to being at hand. He did imply it involves getting someone angry enough for them to fire a high powered weapon ar the ship.

Destination: The end of all time +5 minutes

Pete getting the X-88 in motion is like watching a mad clown dance around the massive bridge that probably held over 30 positions worth of people that he has not jury rigged into an intimidating mess that would have had its engineers crying and screaming. He also forgets to mention that the time travel system and the artificial gravity don't really jive well, so everyone gets some zero g training during a trip that takes about 20 minutes relative time.

The end of all time plus five minutes. No stars. No planets. No galaxies. Darkness has won and all that once was has been consumed and all light has been contained or purged. Darkness hides in its home peacefully, and without it to control the aspects of physics, the universe once again fades into something timeless, shapeless, and without definition where all physics is finally back to one uniform item. All but one place.

Apparently needing about five minutes external time to form, there is one massive white star left behind. Orbiting this star is a single super Earth like planet made up of all kinds of other realms patched together from other worlds like something out of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or perhaps Ratchet and Clank. Somewhere down there in the recreation of the Badlands of South Dakota among the painted canyons is the place Lucky goes when she is wounded physically or in spirit. She is not along though.

The massive bulk of Wanderer and the untold numbers of Keeth that call it home is in high orbit over the planet. In fact, there is one Keeth out front and center that those who know her have picked up on right away. The star is none other than Ratatoskr who has created and is sustaining Light using her power to mangle reality and meld it with Dream, and it is by this that she has created a safe pocked that is refuge to espers, dreams, and even nightmares that have humbly come to coexist with their dream kin in this one place where they are still safe.

Finding and old Friend

The super earth that everyone was brought to turned out to be made from many parts both real and dream. In this case, Landon flew the L-13 down into a region that looks like it was taken from South Dakota.The Badlands area and painted canyons retained their beauty, but the most likely place to find Lucky was not the best place to land a spacefighter.

Having set down on the surface, the group moved towards a large lake surrounded by dense trees. The most peculiar things about this place were twofold. The first was that while there was abundant and lush plant life, there was no other animal life in the area. The second was that the area was what could be called perfect. There was no sign of disease or natural mishap evident in any of the plant life. This was no doubt the side effect if being near Lucky, devourer of ill fortune.

Lucky eventually made herself known. She showed up as a very large non-anthro coyote. Her once severed wings were back and now once again filled with ill fortune, much of which was absorbed in helping Ratatoskr make the safe haven. Landon reuniting with Lucky was a little emotional, and the dasher darted forward to greet her and embrace as much of her as he could, which was mostly her face.

Lucky appeared to understand the gravity of the situation, and she also recognized Pete who she picked on a little for being the time traveler most likely to lose his car keys. What remains if to interface with the new ship, which Lucky recognized as having been customized to no small extent for her use.

Into the Void

With Lucky settled into the ship, the L-13 has a much different feel. It seems stronger somehow, and the navigation system has completely changed in that it can now display courses that seem impossible and yet are possible to fly. The ship also feels warmer in a way. It has a real life to it, and thankfully one that is very much interested in seeing this mission through.

Staying behind is Pete who will be flying interference for the group in his own ship, or at least that is the message that was passed along. Heading into space again was simple enough, but the further the ship gets from Ratatoskr, the more a sinister presence seems to be watching the ship and crew. It is a malevolence unlike any other in that the literal universe is out to erase this one small ship. Unfortunately, getting the engines powered and staying on the course Lucky provides means going around the Heart of Darkness, and that means being within reach of Darkness.

Gravity Assist

Something of light breaks through the darkness: eyes the size of white supergiant stars with black holes or pupils make up part of a Darkness that erupts from the Heart and causes massive gravity waves to impact the ship. They are the result of Gravitas an ancient Darkness and the vert first Darkness contaminated with Light. She is the source of the gravitational constant as well as an agent of Fate, and in this case she provides the ship with a massive gravity assist much like tossing a paper airplane. She states that she will hold back the others as long as she can. She is evidence that even now the fate of the universe is not settled, and even among Darkness, there are allies.

Sol

The L-13 successfully makes its first jump, but the events leading up to it have strained the engines. Freya is busy recalibrating the drive nacelles to ensure we will have enough power for the next part of the journey. Sitting out past the orbit of Pluto, the single ship is unlikely to be noticed on earth be it by MIB, Torchwood, or any other organization that is aware and dealing with life forms others than those native to Earth. The task ahead is not a trick one: aggravate Torchwood enough to have then fire one of their long range energy weapons at us without getting MIB's affiliates to send a ship to intercept. The plan so far: shoot u p some satellites and become a threat.

After that its easy: hit the gate a the speed of light with 5 meter clearance on either side of the ship.

Gateway

Getting enough power to activate the gate key was no small task. However, with aggressive communications provided by Regan, and equally aggressive attacks on Earth's spy sats and internet sats, the ship was finally hit with something powerful enough to charge the key: the Torchwood laser array. Five massive laser beams that coalesce into one shot up and hit the ship. Normally, that should have utterly vaporized the L-13, but instead it fed the key and caused Stonehenge to react to it.

Taking the ship in at full power and nearly the speed of light, those on Earth got quite the show as a 30 meter ship struck the planet at relativistic speed, but instead of crashing and causing massive damage, it shot through the center of Stonehenge and through into another world, leaving Earth with a stunning light show and questions sure to keep conspiracy theorists and conventional theorists busy for decades.

The Canvas

OOC Mechanics

The theme of this section is painting restoration. Many times when old master words are analyzed, it is found that there are many paintings beneath the visible painting. Entire branches of science are dedicated to extracting these older images without destroying it. Candice's painting likewise shows multiple scenes that have been recorded by observers. These known locations are:

Stonehenge Site of the gate but otherwise a puzzling place that seems out of theme
Cheshire The location of Thomas and Candice's home after they married
London WWII during the bombing
Germany WWII rural forested area in winter

These four places are what is known to be. There could be more location. Each location has something you need and may have to hunt for.

Lucky is the only one who can navigate the layers without aid. She will be your compass. Landon will hold down the Stonehenge site and repair the ship. He will also serve as the communications hub.

Each site has 1 important item. What they are and what they do is up to you.

Dream aspects in the canvas

This is not like a regular dreamworld. It is small and it is dying. Because of this, the power of dream is greatly diminished and limited mostly to your personal abilities. Even MOrticon's muse brush is falling apart and unusable here. You are more at the mercy of the canvas and the scene layer here at this time.

Stonehenge

The L-13 and crew emerged into the area around Stonehenge, but the skies here are dark and starless not because of clouds but because of a lack of stars. Much like the end of the time, Darkness has destroyed much of this realm. The L-13 is able to set down for repairs and allow the group to leave to explore the canvas.

This is a dying world. The horizon is just not right and consists of what looks like frayed fabric vanishing into black. For the time being, it seems distant enough not to worry about, but not so distant to go unnoticed. There are no signs of sentient life here, just plants and the henge. There is also no color here. Everything has faded to black and white EXCEPT the ship, the crew, and their gear.

Cheshire, England, 1840

Opting to check out the home of Thomas and Candice first, the group came across their home still intact in the Cheshire region of England. HIgh hedges riddled with white roses decorate the front yard, an the two-story brick building looks very well built, as one might expect when the architect of the house lives there. There are several things that stand out:

Where the Nothing was: this spot looks like a large scorch mark in the front yard where all is black. There is no sign of the Nothing, but the shattered chains remain. This is the location where the Nothing attacked Candice, took her sight from her, but Thomas rescued her before it could destroy her. In his shame, he took Candice to Safety, and for the longest time hid away form her in Cheshire Wonderland.

The House: Pretty much everything is grey scale like so much of these realms. The location appears to be day though with bright light from no particular source instead of the night that was around Stonehenge. A bedroom in the loft, a large living room with a fireplace, lovely kitchen and dining area, and a shared art area with Thomas's drafting table and some of Candice's easels.

All paintings done by Candice are fading, their edges are rotting away like dry rot, and the fringes are sooty black. It looks like many used to be portraits or fantastic creatures
All paintings by Thomas are still intact, show signs of color, mostly, and tend to be landscapes.
A single painting From Thomas shows a snowy landscape with rabbit prints and possibly some other kind of prints.

The Paint: Three paint pots, cyan, magenta, and yellow, are all intact and still have both color and are still fluid. The small tubes hold a finite amount of paint, but they have not lost their vitality. These have been collected by the group. They are the only colorful thing in the house.

Art materials: All other paint in the house is either black or white. All the brushes are decaying and useless. Thomas's desk has an inkwell which is dried out but otherwise mundane. His quill, taken by the group, is still perfectly intact. Blueprints of the house have also been collected.

Germany, Winter 1944

So far, the group has entered the canvas that Lucky warned leads to Germany in winter during WWII. There are three things everyone has seen so far: rabbit tracks, at least four sets of wolf tracks, and tracks from something else. The group can hear gunfire of some kind in the distance. We begin as the group begins to crest a hill and see what lies beyond.

Over the top of the hill, two factions were at war. On one side in period German outfits are three werewolves in jet black and all claws, no guns. On the other is a crashed Beaufighter with the left wing snapped off just past the left engine. Using it for shelter, and somehow wielding a 20 mm machine canon by hand is a Bhyrbadydi. Lucky describes them as a specific faction of espers but doesn't have a lot of time to go into detail. The one thing she does as Morti and her lead the charge is call out "dee dee dee dee!" in the fashioned of a chickadee, the sound of which is answered in kind sounding surprised and thankful help is coming!

Between Kamare launching some lances and Morticon figuring out how to paint up silver bullets, the group is able to route the wolves for now and take stock of what is happening. Apparently the Deedee was intercepted by a bandersnatch dreamside and lobbed an object that happens to be and intact painter's brush which was even used to convert the landscape into a lush jungle for cover at the cost of causingh the dream energy and color to fade from the airplane

Looking under the remains of the plane is a hole where a wolf used to be and a rotted part of the canvas. Freya finds that these beings don't play sides. They are somehow tied to the dead of all things that is neither light or dark aspected but instead are something more like the inevitability of death or the end of creativity, things not so easily defeated with any weapon. There is some time to check the on plane which has forward landing gear and two engines Freya is able to help patch. Some of the jungle has to be sapped for energy when Reese, the Deedee, reveals he is injured. His wound is a gash that is turning sooty gray an, because he is a denizen of the dream realms, it is threatening to kill him with silence and lack of thought. Some painterly assistance stabilizes him for now.

The Hellhound

It might not be right to call it a hellhound, but it is the best word that can be tossed out there. Four massive wolves all melded together as if their non-anthropomorphic bodies had fused. Eyes smashed together unevenly form a circle of six dots from which three jagged muzzles protrude. One massive body hauls the rest while any extra limbs have been grossly stretched into the form of tentacles. It is FAST, more than most anyone could outrun.

Lucky inhabits the plane and sets both engines alight as everyone piles onto the plane. Cruising somewhere between 50-60 mph across the snow on a now converted power sled, the coyote esper is able to keep the beat just ahead of the hound! The very ground the hound runs across withers and frays as if it was rotting the canvas it was painted on. Can everyone escape to a new later before it catches up?

Escape!: Escape comes not so much from a resounding victory but good fortune, if it can be called such. Between cannon fire, silver bullets, magic lances and animated landscapes, it takes everyone doing their best just to slow down the monstrous hound only to have it belch up two black slugs! Tracking like missiles and hard to stop, quick thinking causes them to go wide, but then as they pass, they cross! The resulting tear in the canvas dumps the group into something new. As they call from the sky in a plane missing a wing, they come to crash land in London!

London

Song: PLain White T's 'Welcome to Mystery'

Having crash landed in a warehouse near the river, everyone is left intact and able to continue. Gathering up the espers, who are not in the best shape, the group heads out into London. Unlike all other places, this location is filled with shades. Shadows of people moving in the streets that fail to interact with anything around them. However, they also fit the location but not the time. It seems the shades are all from the mid 1800's but the city is from 1944.

A City Falling Apart: Unlike other location, London is in the worst shape. It isn't the leftovers of the bombings though that is worrisome. The horizon in all directions is dark, and buildings start to wobbles and collapse as if the very ground under them is being eaten away. Even Big Ben was toppled while the group was present to bear witness to it. There is a strong feeling that this place's time is limited.

Esper Poison: The most injured entities are Reese and Lucky, both of which are starting to turn a sickly gray. This dying landscape is more treacherous for the espers than anyone else as they have a similar link to the world around them as a muse does. The same energies that are sapping this canvas and turning the landscapes gray and bleak are starting to do the very same thing to the espers. Because they are beings of thought, forgetfulness and confusion can be poison to them, and the loss of knowing self is even worse.

The Origin of Candice: This time Morticon knows where he is going. Heading down into the commercial district after getting the impression the shades were going to see some new portrait to be unveiled, everyone arrives at a master painter's studio. Inside are a number of other paintings that seem to be fine if rather lackluster. However, where there should be a portrait of a female white rabbit was just a blank white canvas. The frame was losing its color and the canvas itself was dark on the edges. After much questioning of what to do and prodding of the canvas, it was discovered that it leads somewhere else.

The Gesso

Song: Marconi Union - Weightless

The very bottom layer of the canvas under which only lies raw fibers. This layer, a thick covering of white paint that fills the holes in the canvas to make it smooth is also how a new painting begins. Down here, the corruption of the Darkness can be seen. In the distance it manifests as a dark horizon, but the truth is that the munching sound coming from it is the rotting of the canvas on all layers and the eventual erasure of the canvas. Thankfully a muse's canvas is tougher than most, but it is losing this fight.

Above in the 'sky' as one might call it, all the other layers of the canvas can be seen as overlapping images. These show some, and implies many other, layers of memory and being that make Candice who she is. This area's important item is the gesso bucket which means that the group has, when combined properly with the brush and the paints, the means to remake a painting or fashion a new one.

Fun Fact: Traditional gesso as would have been used on Candice's canvas was made from rabbit skin collagen. Candice is a rabbit painted on rabbit skin!

Landon Calls In: Landon finally calls in with good news: the ship is back to operation status. However, he also reports something strange is going around. He found a small case near the landing gear that wasn't out there before. Inside of the case is half of a white rabbit's ear, but as real as it looks, the cross section doesn't look like it is made of flesh. To make it more confusing, it comes with a riddle!

"Give it to her, and all goes back the way it was, and we have nothing more to say.

Give it back to me, and and we'll see how far down the hole goes today"

Stonehenge: Come Full Circle

Returning from the Gesso back to upper layers proves a little difficult, but some sketching with a quill inked from black rabbit footprints leads the group back to the start. Landon has the ship prepped and ready to go, but there are two things out there, two rabbits.

White: The face and shape of the white rabbit is just as everyone remembers Candice. She is even missing half of her left ear, and her eyes are missing, a fact she hides by wearing a blindfold. This is all consistent with Candice as her exposure to a Nothing robbed her of her eyes, and she was rescued by Thomas before the rest of her could be consumed by a lethal dose of banality.

Black: Black has green eyes and nothing else. She is completely black but not the same shade as Darkness. She is also very active and apparently very strong because she can heft whole section of Stonehenge with one paw, and she used them to try and smash White. She starts off unable to speak because she has no mouth, so she uses sign language and writes in the dirt in an effort to communicate.

The severed ear: This appeared near the ship though no one is sure how or when it got there. Accompanied by a small note, it made the case that it must be given to one of the rabbits with different outcomes depending on what they do.

Discrimination Test: While there are thoughts that these rabbits represent different sides of the same muse, a test is proposed. The task it simple: create something for us. Black seems excited by this while White stands in quiet contemplation because it knows it has been caught. The ear goes to Black and White reveals her true identity. Black punts the ear off over the horizon in rejection of going back to earlier times or forgetting how life has marked her, thus establishing a point of no return and a drive forward.

SpiderWHite

In their desperation to destroy muses and espers, Darkness has finally fallen to the point of sacrificing their own in order to make weapons out of them that cannot be so easily diverted or destroyed. Spiderwhite is a polymorphic Darkness being that is infused with Light and poisoned with just enough Hate to use for motivation. Known to the Darkness as a Darkweaver, this is the entity that created the dreamcatcher that ripped the wings off Landon and Lucky's old ship and put Luck, Landon, and Ratatoskr in the hospital.

Spiderwhite does not appear to have a real name. It also knows that it is on a suicide mission, but it seems to take this pride, something unusual in Darkness.

Spiderwhite is capable of a number of things:

Light Resistance: Unlike the hounds what had less Light doping, the Darkweaver is much more resistant to light and madness though it is far from immune to it
Weaving: Darkweaver created strange of silk like material that can entangle and cut into dream beings and beings of thought. The former includes muses and espers, but they are also dangerous to psions like Landon
Polymophism: Darkweaver can take form. In this case, it wears Candice's old skin as a disguise and hide within it until this point

At this point, Spiderwhite is creating a large dreamcatcher web like it did once more, figuring it doesn't need a stand and fight scenario so long as it just keep you all here until all things are erased including itself.

FUN FACTS: While not intended as such, the loss of part of Candice's ear is often given as a reference to Van Gogh. However, Spider white wearing Candice's skin is a call back to the painter Michelangelo with regards the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel where it is believed he painted himself as the skin held in the hands of St. Bartholomew.

Section 3: Candice Restored

A New Canvas

Having uncovered the True Candice being the black, eyes-only rabbit that was damaged due to exposure that stole from her her color, identity, and most of her means to express herself, the application of the items and their importance came to bear. As the group did all they could to hold the Weaver at bay, Morticon was charged with painting Candice once more.

The Gesso was necessary in order to take the blackness of Candice's damage being and give it a new beginning just as one would do on a painting.
The Brush and Paints These are somewhat obvious, the tools needed to paint a new muse on a new canvas.
The Canvas: This is a trick as the old canvas is rotten and being erased while Candice herself is the new canvas

Escape!

Despite everyone's best efforts, which were enough to keep the Weaver from making a tight dreamcatcher and even managed to do some damage to its core and limbs, it became obvious that its tactic was not survival but delay. The true threat was the darkness racing in on the remaining area of the painting that, should it reach the group, would erase them from every being! Piling back into the L-13, it was time for a departure, something the Weaver laughed at only until it witnessed that the blue leading edges of the L-13 were all capable of cutting apart its strings. As Landon put it, "You don't get to fool me twice."

Leaving the Weaver behind, the group raced into a darkening sky until all they had was Lucky's sense of direction to go on. While Landon and Lucky tried desperately to find a way out, emergency medical procedures were in effect in the back to save Regan from having learned that Weaver's legs are quite sharp and pierce flesh easily. And whole chest cavities.

Candice, taking up her brush at last, simply painted one yellow dot out on the horizon, claiming she cold do so since depth is in illusion in painting anyhow. Most importantly, it gives the ship a vector and an exit.

Now out of the painting and back into real space near a yellow star, it seems everything is finally back to something more like normal only to have that peace ruined by the realization that they have a hitchhiker. The Weaver escape the painting by hiding on the ship in the blind spot near the forward cargo doors where no gunner could see it, and it is on a mission.

Fateful Choice

Weaver's Composition

Weaver is made from a mix of Darkness and Light. In physical terms, Weaver is made in part from the stuff between the stars: Dark Matter. Its lack of real interaction with most matter aside from gravity presents a huge problem in trying to cause lasting damage. Bolstering this is Light, not just energy that lead to other matter but the ability to improvise, imagine and create. Mixed together, you get a monstrous creature that can keep changing and mending itself. However, it still is a Darkness being at heart, and that makes it weak to Light if it is strong enough. The strongest physical light is that of a star.

The decision

Trying to take down Weaver proved to be very difficult. Battling it on the hull of the L-13 as it raced towards a local star, stopping its weaves and attempts to destroy the ship's engines succeeded, but nothing seemed strong enough to really stop Weaver despite how much damage it appeared to take. However, another choice was provided. Calidah (Calamity) another light poisoned assassin Darkness was called in by Lucky. Rather that destroy Weaver, the group opted to let Calidah ensnare it, and the space squid had all the power and proper matter type to trap the weaver.

All Good Things or There and Back Again

It is time to finally go home.

Candice's New Look

An English Spot comes fairly close to how Candice now appears. Once a purely white rabbit, her ears are marked by black fur and while she lacks the black circles around her eyes, her nose has a mottled touch of black. A line of inky black from between her ears runs down the back of her head and presumably all the way down her spine to her now black puff of a tail. She has speckled black along her flanks that, when examined carefully, proves to be black with splotches of random colors mixed in with them. While her feet are white, her paws seems to be permanently stained by a mix of colors that one might expect to appear from a splotch here or there during painting. Her choice in clothing is fairly simple and usually consists of some form of T-shirt, often paint stained, and some well broken in jeans, sometimes black, sometimes blue, and almost always speckled somewhere with a paint spot.

Candice has two characteristics that make identifying her almost instant: her ears and her eyes. The muse is missing half of her left ear which looks like it was cut off cleanly by something incredibly sharp. The other is her eyes. Her green eyes have a peculiar degree of opalescence to them, and depending on how the light strikes them, they can appear almost any other color other than green. Her eyes also show an incredible degree of life and intelligence, and she looks on the world as one who always sees opportunity and never defeat. In addition to her ear, she bears a scar that crosses over her shoulder and collar bone on the right side. However, unlike the usual appearance of a scar, the mark on Candice appears more like someone took a sharp tool and forcefully scratched the paint off a canvas. Even the faint texture of a raw canvas can be seen if one looks close. In fact, a closer examination would find two smaller parallel scars that run in parallel as if some form of claws had tore into the muse and left a lasting mark. Taken together it looks like she escaped a clawed hand that may have grabbed her shoulder, but who or what made it? Regardless, as they say, scars are souvenirs you never lose.

Kithia

Pete mentioned that his ship was made from the dead husk of an ancient Darkness that his kind had killed and used for their own purposes. The X-88, as it was called, remained a constant companion to Pete through time and space, and when the group left to handle the canvas, Pete and the X-88 went to distract the Elders and keep them away from the L-13 and her crew. According to X-88, Pete's last act was to restore the X-88 back to the being it once was. However, this did not eraser the bond to Pete, and X-88's first action was to record and assimilate Pete into herself so that he would not be lost to time and space. The result was a new being made from an ancient being and a time traveler. Given the name Kithi from Kamare and modified slightly to Kithia, she exists as a darkness with a single white eye offset in its humanoid like skull.

Kithia describes herself as a Keeper class Darkness that once spent her time carefully directing whole galaxies in splendid dances of light and dark. She was always on the side of Gravitas, and when the Delsin attacked and condensed her massive body, she went into a form of stasis. Now restores, she is on the side of Light and once again acting as a Keeper along with Abby, muse of Gravitas and Writing.

Worst Case Scenario