Scion - Petro Campaign - Session 123
I don't even know where to begin with this one. Well, actually, I know where to begin, I just don't know where to go with it. Things have gotten…surreal, but I think the worst is over, and maybe, just maybe, we're about to help organize some real changes in Tien. Let's hope so.
Anyway, first things first. I left off last time with the group in the chaos factory killing titanspawn. Well, there was more of that, only this time, since I wasn't keeping the reinforcements at bay, wiping out the puzzle demons was much easier. After a point I could just incinerate them with my blazing sunlight. Of course, the others still had to beat them up enough for them to become vulnerable to that, but that was a cinch. The hard part was dealing with the two-faced demon thing that was leading the operation, but Charles and Sonny teamed up to weaken it and Elisa finished it off. In the process of all the fighting, Tabby and Sophie helped against the puzzle demons, but Tabby got mobbed and torn up pretty badly, but that just gave me an excuse to give her a nice healing kiss. Yum. (^_^).
After that, we set about trying to get rid of the chaos goop, and Charles and Sonny creatively turned the chemical vats and their contents into other less harmful things in order to render them inert. I was concerned that it wouldn't work, but the Chinese gods can perform miracles with their Taiyi, and pretty soon we had a factory full of Jell-0, pudding, and all manner of other things. Problem solved. (^_^).
Then the wall of the factory exploded and four figures burst in: Susano-oh, Kali, Indra, and Raiden. It was a relief to see allies instead of enemies, though that particular group is a bit too chaotic and destructive for my tastes. Don't get me wrong, I love my half-brother Susano-oh, but he's a handful. At least Indra is pretty mellow. In fact, I managed to convince him to share a little of his jealously guarded wine with us. Good stuff. He liked what Sonny had to offer from his flask of god wine too. (^_^). Of course, things didn't exactly go smoothly with the Four Stooges around.. Raiden was openly lusting after Kali, who had little patience for it. And Susano-oh didn't seem to realize that I can co-locate, because he seemed shocked that I was there instead of in Takamagaghara "seducing his sister" (his words). I told him I was, and then the me in Takamagahara made sure I wasn't lying about that. (_>) I'm a bad girl. (^_^)
Anyway, it turns out the four of them had come to slay a mighty dragon that was growing deep in the earth beneath the factory, fed on the chaos stuff. We're not sure if that's where ALL the chaos goop was going…but the dragon was certainly eating quite a bit of it. So we decided to help out, and after Raiden found the gateway to the void-space in which the dragon was lurking and growing, we dove in and fought like hellions against a titanic Chinese dragon that may once have been made of starlight and radiance, but was now made of simmering chaos and radiation. The fight was dramatic, if a bit absurd at times, but what do you expect with gods like Susano-oh, Raiden, T-Bone, and Sonny on board? Among other things, T-Bone unloaded his Bag of Baka down the beasts nose, and Sonny used Taiyi to tear Kali's clothes off and fling then with debilitating force at the dragon. The fact that Kali's clothes consisted of a few grenades, one of which had earlier been shoved in Raiden's mouth to make a point, only made things weirder.
See what I mean about surreal? Well, since I couldn't do much to the dragon, I hung back as the cheerleader, literally, so I guess can't really throw stones.
Then, with the dragon's leviathan body floating dead in the void-space where we fought it, Charles informed us that the beast we'd just killed had at one time been Len Chou, the son of General Chou. Since we were planning to go discuss peace talks with General Chou next, this made things more than a little awkward, and raised questions about whether General Chou or his son were working with the titans, or whether Len Chou had simply been an unwilling victim of a titanic plot.
But apparently that wasn't awkward enough for some people, because while we were trying to discuss the gravity of what we'd just learned, Kali came on to Elisa strong. I mean, she basically started making out with Elisa right there, with no preamble. And when I say making out, I mean going all the way. Elisa didn't seem to know how to respond at first, but then sorta got into it, and when Pierre admitted that he didn't have a problem with it as long as he could join in, Elisa seemed cool with having sex with Kali right then and there in front of all of us. But you know, this is Kali, who made it very clear that she was likely kill Elisa in the process of their lovemaking, but that she'd bring her right back. I don't even know if that's possible without going full avatar…which is a little scary, but hey, whatever.
So in response to that, Elisa turns to me while I was standing there absolutely floored that she was being so bold, and said, "Hey Erika. You've died from sex before. what was it like?" Of course I had to admit that my first encounter with Persephone was some of the most amazing sex of my life. I mean, hello? That's why I died from it! Maybe I should have said something else, because that was all it took for Elisa to throw herself in the arms of Kali's lust.
But seriously? Sure, I flirt like crazy, and I even make out in public regularly. I will not deny that. But when it comes to full-on sex, I am always discreet, and always private, especially when it comes to death sex (except for that one time when I tried to get it on with Adam at Hisame Hall, and that's a shikome club so it doesn't count). It's better and a hell of a lot more tasteful that way. I mean, yeah, I get it. Kali's destructive urges are balanced by her creative lusts, so I wouldn't expect any better from her. And hell, it really doesn't surprise me that Pierre was into it. But Elisa? Seriously? WTF? Quinn's hearing about this. (>_<). And would you believe that Sonny and T-Bone just stayed there and watched? Pervs. (>_<)
So I blinked out. Seriously, I just couldn't handle it. Since we were ignoring the Len Chou issue anyway (>_<), I dismissed the me that was with everyone else and after praying briefly to see if Persephone was open to visitors, I manifested a new me in her overworld estate and then spent about an hour venting. She's such an awesome friend. She listened so patiently and so understandingly. And she totally agreed with where I was coming from. I felt a lot better afterward, and once I'd vented, we made out and disappeared into the TASTEFUL PRIVACY of her boudoir to enjoy some alone time with each other. (^_^).
*Sigh* Okay Erika, get a grip. Maybe that shouldn't have weirded me out like it did, but whatever. I think people assume I would be okay with a display like that because of how open I am about sex, but there's a line, and Kali, Elisa, and Pierre crossed it.
Well, eventually, while I was enjoying the afterglow in Persephone's arms, I got a prayer from Charles letting me know that the…uh…incident was over, and that we were planning to travel to the Imperial Mountains to search the caverns of the Lungs of the Earth Dragon for General Chou (and possibly the real Chu Jun, who you might recall was supposed to be there too). So I manifested a new me with the rest of the group, leaving one me with Persephone for the time being. And you know what the first thing Elisa said to me was? "Thanks for the advice." *Sigh* Somehow this is going to end up on me, isn't it? Like Jacob trying to compare the unfortunate and incestuous situation with Caleb and Hrimsa to me and Amaterasu (or so Carina told me, last we talked). (>_<)
Anyway, we prayed to Kuan Yin to see if she could help us out with Chou, since she's a universally respected mediator, and she met us at the entrance to the Lungs of the Earth Dragon. But she informed us that Nuwa and Da Ji had come out of their retreat and had joined the rebels. Which I thought was awesome, but perhaps not the most politically advantageous thing for us to deal with now. Still, it opened up a new opportunity. If we could get Nuwa to agree to peace talks, we wouldn't necessarily need General Chou. More importantly, General Chou almost certainly wouldn't agree to the talks without Nuwa's support. So we were faced with the daunting challenge of convincing Nuwa to meet with the rest of the bureaucracy to discuss terms to end the civil war.
It's damn good thing Charles and I are such amazing diplomats. (^_^) While we made our way into the Lungs of the Earth Dragon, he and I both manifested new duplicates at Nuwa's camp, and managed to arrange a meeting with Nuwa fairly easily (we are pretty tight with her now, which is awesome because she may be ancient beyond measure, but she still has a tender and vulnerable heart, and as the goth love goddess, I'm all over that!) (^_^)
We told Nuwa and Da Ji that we needed to arrange peace talks in order to draw out Abigail, but also to hopefully help the rebels obtain their goals in a peaceful fashion. Nuwa wasn't really happy about it. She's made the decision to fight against the Celestial oppression, after all. Apparently they're already working on fixing all of the "rehabilitated" shen, kami, and youkai the Bureaucracy has hidden away. But Nuwa is playing for keeps, and presented us with one demand. She would agree to the peace talks only if we could promise to negotiate her temporary ascension to Jade Empress so that she would have the authority to fix what needs fixing. That was a shocking proposition, but I was totally cool with it, and Charles seemed to be as well. In fact, he seems to think he can talk his father, Guan Yu, into stepping down temporarily to let Nuwa rule for a time. I get the impression that Guan Yu isn't too fond of being Emperor anyway. This won't go over well with the rest of the pantheon, but change can be uncomfortable, so they can deal with it.
And of course, the other advantage to all of this is that if we get it to work, Nuwa will seriously owe us, which Charles and I can leverage into helping our respective pantheons make peace, finally. What with that and finally achieving an alliance with one of the Jiang Shi, this situation is turning out to be a godsend for my political agenda. Gods, I love this stuff. It's what I was made for! (^_^)
So in exchange for our promises, Nuwa gave us a writ for us to present to General Chou, stating her intention to join in peace talks with the Bureaucracy. Hopefully he'll take the bait…assuming he's still reasonable.
Oh, I should also mention that Nuwa's camp is full of reinforcements, mostly demons and yaoguai now, so she's all set to negotiate from a position of power. In fact, seeing all those demons there, I kinda thought Yi had managed to sneak the ones she was holding in reserve through to the rebels, but no, she hadn't done anything so decisive. I mean, one of my copies has been helping her fix things in Diyu during all of this, and I hadn't seen her approve any orders like that, but we haven't been side by side constantly. Didn't hurt to ask while I was giving her a neck rub. Hmmm. Maybe it was the excitement over the possibilities of the peace talks and Nuwa as Jade Empress, but I ended up changing into a sexy secretary getup to seduce Yi in her office, where of course we made sure we wouldn't be disturbed. (^_^).
I don't know if I can stay in Diyu much longer, though. My past with the place gets under my skin more and more the longer I'm there, and begins to taint my experience there, no matter how much I try to enjoy it with the woman I love. I think Yi could sense it as we made love…a hint of uncomfortable reservation in my passion for her. (T_T) But…she can be hard to read.
Anyway, while all of that was happening, the group of us (including Kuan Yin) trekked through the Lungs of the Earth Dragon, where we ran across a couple of Taoist immortals who challenged us with koans that we had to solve with a bit of creativity. It wasn't too bad, but then again, being gods, we can kinda cheat with our powers. Swimming across a river without getting wet isn't really too hard when you can burrow under the river or shadow-step to the other side. the real trick was that we each had to come up with a different solution. But in return, the sages gave us advice on finding General Chou, so we're well on our way toward locating him.
I just hope he isn't secretly working for Hundun, because if he is, his son isn't the only dragon we're likely to slay before this is all over.
Anyway, first things first. I left off last time with the group in the chaos factory killing titanspawn. Well, there was more of that, only this time, since I wasn't keeping the reinforcements at bay, wiping out the puzzle demons was much easier. After a point I could just incinerate them with my blazing sunlight. Of course, the others still had to beat them up enough for them to become vulnerable to that, but that was a cinch. The hard part was dealing with the two-faced demon thing that was leading the operation, but Charles and Sonny teamed up to weaken it and Elisa finished it off. In the process of all the fighting, Tabby and Sophie helped against the puzzle demons, but Tabby got mobbed and torn up pretty badly, but that just gave me an excuse to give her a nice healing kiss. Yum. (^_^).
After that, we set about trying to get rid of the chaos goop, and Charles and Sonny creatively turned the chemical vats and their contents into other less harmful things in order to render them inert. I was concerned that it wouldn't work, but the Chinese gods can perform miracles with their Taiyi, and pretty soon we had a factory full of Jell-0, pudding, and all manner of other things. Problem solved. (^_^).
Then the wall of the factory exploded and four figures burst in: Susano-oh, Kali, Indra, and Raiden. It was a relief to see allies instead of enemies, though that particular group is a bit too chaotic and destructive for my tastes. Don't get me wrong, I love my half-brother Susano-oh, but he's a handful. At least Indra is pretty mellow. In fact, I managed to convince him to share a little of his jealously guarded wine with us. Good stuff. He liked what Sonny had to offer from his flask of god wine too. (^_^). Of course, things didn't exactly go smoothly with the Four Stooges around.. Raiden was openly lusting after Kali, who had little patience for it. And Susano-oh didn't seem to realize that I can co-locate, because he seemed shocked that I was there instead of in Takamagaghara "seducing his sister" (his words). I told him I was, and then the me in Takamagahara made sure I wasn't lying about that. (_>) I'm a bad girl. (^_^)
Anyway, it turns out the four of them had come to slay a mighty dragon that was growing deep in the earth beneath the factory, fed on the chaos stuff. We're not sure if that's where ALL the chaos goop was going…but the dragon was certainly eating quite a bit of it. So we decided to help out, and after Raiden found the gateway to the void-space in which the dragon was lurking and growing, we dove in and fought like hellions against a titanic Chinese dragon that may once have been made of starlight and radiance, but was now made of simmering chaos and radiation. The fight was dramatic, if a bit absurd at times, but what do you expect with gods like Susano-oh, Raiden, T-Bone, and Sonny on board? Among other things, T-Bone unloaded his Bag of Baka down the beasts nose, and Sonny used Taiyi to tear Kali's clothes off and fling then with debilitating force at the dragon. The fact that Kali's clothes consisted of a few grenades, one of which had earlier been shoved in Raiden's mouth to make a point, only made things weirder.
See what I mean about surreal? Well, since I couldn't do much to the dragon, I hung back as the cheerleader, literally, so I guess can't really throw stones.
Then, with the dragon's leviathan body floating dead in the void-space where we fought it, Charles informed us that the beast we'd just killed had at one time been Len Chou, the son of General Chou. Since we were planning to go discuss peace talks with General Chou next, this made things more than a little awkward, and raised questions about whether General Chou or his son were working with the titans, or whether Len Chou had simply been an unwilling victim of a titanic plot.
But apparently that wasn't awkward enough for some people, because while we were trying to discuss the gravity of what we'd just learned, Kali came on to Elisa strong. I mean, she basically started making out with Elisa right there, with no preamble. And when I say making out, I mean going all the way. Elisa didn't seem to know how to respond at first, but then sorta got into it, and when Pierre admitted that he didn't have a problem with it as long as he could join in, Elisa seemed cool with having sex with Kali right then and there in front of all of us. But you know, this is Kali, who made it very clear that she was likely kill Elisa in the process of their lovemaking, but that she'd bring her right back. I don't even know if that's possible without going full avatar…which is a little scary, but hey, whatever.
So in response to that, Elisa turns to me while I was standing there absolutely floored that she was being so bold, and said, "Hey Erika. You've died from sex before. what was it like?" Of course I had to admit that my first encounter with Persephone was some of the most amazing sex of my life. I mean, hello? That's why I died from it! Maybe I should have said something else, because that was all it took for Elisa to throw herself in the arms of Kali's lust.
But seriously? Sure, I flirt like crazy, and I even make out in public regularly. I will not deny that. But when it comes to full-on sex, I am always discreet, and always private, especially when it comes to death sex (except for that one time when I tried to get it on with Adam at Hisame Hall, and that's a shikome club so it doesn't count). It's better and a hell of a lot more tasteful that way. I mean, yeah, I get it. Kali's destructive urges are balanced by her creative lusts, so I wouldn't expect any better from her. And hell, it really doesn't surprise me that Pierre was into it. But Elisa? Seriously? WTF? Quinn's hearing about this. (>_<). And would you believe that Sonny and T-Bone just stayed there and watched? Pervs. (>_<)
So I blinked out. Seriously, I just couldn't handle it. Since we were ignoring the Len Chou issue anyway (>_<), I dismissed the me that was with everyone else and after praying briefly to see if Persephone was open to visitors, I manifested a new me in her overworld estate and then spent about an hour venting. She's such an awesome friend. She listened so patiently and so understandingly. And she totally agreed with where I was coming from. I felt a lot better afterward, and once I'd vented, we made out and disappeared into the TASTEFUL PRIVACY of her boudoir to enjoy some alone time with each other. (^_^).
*Sigh* Okay Erika, get a grip. Maybe that shouldn't have weirded me out like it did, but whatever. I think people assume I would be okay with a display like that because of how open I am about sex, but there's a line, and Kali, Elisa, and Pierre crossed it.
Well, eventually, while I was enjoying the afterglow in Persephone's arms, I got a prayer from Charles letting me know that the…uh…incident was over, and that we were planning to travel to the Imperial Mountains to search the caverns of the Lungs of the Earth Dragon for General Chou (and possibly the real Chu Jun, who you might recall was supposed to be there too). So I manifested a new me with the rest of the group, leaving one me with Persephone for the time being. And you know what the first thing Elisa said to me was? "Thanks for the advice." *Sigh* Somehow this is going to end up on me, isn't it? Like Jacob trying to compare the unfortunate and incestuous situation with Caleb and Hrimsa to me and Amaterasu (or so Carina told me, last we talked). (>_<)
Anyway, we prayed to Kuan Yin to see if she could help us out with Chou, since she's a universally respected mediator, and she met us at the entrance to the Lungs of the Earth Dragon. But she informed us that Nuwa and Da Ji had come out of their retreat and had joined the rebels. Which I thought was awesome, but perhaps not the most politically advantageous thing for us to deal with now. Still, it opened up a new opportunity. If we could get Nuwa to agree to peace talks, we wouldn't necessarily need General Chou. More importantly, General Chou almost certainly wouldn't agree to the talks without Nuwa's support. So we were faced with the daunting challenge of convincing Nuwa to meet with the rest of the bureaucracy to discuss terms to end the civil war.
It's damn good thing Charles and I are such amazing diplomats. (^_^) While we made our way into the Lungs of the Earth Dragon, he and I both manifested new duplicates at Nuwa's camp, and managed to arrange a meeting with Nuwa fairly easily (we are pretty tight with her now, which is awesome because she may be ancient beyond measure, but she still has a tender and vulnerable heart, and as the goth love goddess, I'm all over that!) (^_^)
We told Nuwa and Da Ji that we needed to arrange peace talks in order to draw out Abigail, but also to hopefully help the rebels obtain their goals in a peaceful fashion. Nuwa wasn't really happy about it. She's made the decision to fight against the Celestial oppression, after all. Apparently they're already working on fixing all of the "rehabilitated" shen, kami, and youkai the Bureaucracy has hidden away. But Nuwa is playing for keeps, and presented us with one demand. She would agree to the peace talks only if we could promise to negotiate her temporary ascension to Jade Empress so that she would have the authority to fix what needs fixing. That was a shocking proposition, but I was totally cool with it, and Charles seemed to be as well. In fact, he seems to think he can talk his father, Guan Yu, into stepping down temporarily to let Nuwa rule for a time. I get the impression that Guan Yu isn't too fond of being Emperor anyway. This won't go over well with the rest of the pantheon, but change can be uncomfortable, so they can deal with it.
And of course, the other advantage to all of this is that if we get it to work, Nuwa will seriously owe us, which Charles and I can leverage into helping our respective pantheons make peace, finally. What with that and finally achieving an alliance with one of the Jiang Shi, this situation is turning out to be a godsend for my political agenda. Gods, I love this stuff. It's what I was made for! (^_^)
So in exchange for our promises, Nuwa gave us a writ for us to present to General Chou, stating her intention to join in peace talks with the Bureaucracy. Hopefully he'll take the bait…assuming he's still reasonable.
Oh, I should also mention that Nuwa's camp is full of reinforcements, mostly demons and yaoguai now, so she's all set to negotiate from a position of power. In fact, seeing all those demons there, I kinda thought Yi had managed to sneak the ones she was holding in reserve through to the rebels, but no, she hadn't done anything so decisive. I mean, one of my copies has been helping her fix things in Diyu during all of this, and I hadn't seen her approve any orders like that, but we haven't been side by side constantly. Didn't hurt to ask while I was giving her a neck rub. Hmmm. Maybe it was the excitement over the possibilities of the peace talks and Nuwa as Jade Empress, but I ended up changing into a sexy secretary getup to seduce Yi in her office, where of course we made sure we wouldn't be disturbed. (^_^).
I don't know if I can stay in Diyu much longer, though. My past with the place gets under my skin more and more the longer I'm there, and begins to taint my experience there, no matter how much I try to enjoy it with the woman I love. I think Yi could sense it as we made love…a hint of uncomfortable reservation in my passion for her. (T_T) But…she can be hard to read.
Anyway, while all of that was happening, the group of us (including Kuan Yin) trekked through the Lungs of the Earth Dragon, where we ran across a couple of Taoist immortals who challenged us with koans that we had to solve with a bit of creativity. It wasn't too bad, but then again, being gods, we can kinda cheat with our powers. Swimming across a river without getting wet isn't really too hard when you can burrow under the river or shadow-step to the other side. the real trick was that we each had to come up with a different solution. But in return, the sages gave us advice on finding General Chou, so we're well on our way toward locating him.
I just hope he isn't secretly working for Hundun, because if he is, his son isn't the only dragon we're likely to slay before this is all over.