What Has Gone Before
The following is an abbreviated history of the last year of Clandestyne:
Whilst the supernatural population of Sydney was in Olympos, the realm
of the gods, a cabal of vampires (mostly Followers of Set) invaded the
city and took over most of the criminal underworld. When the former
masters of evil returned, there was a brief but bloody conflict between
the two groups, followed by an uneasy detente. Antony Di Rotorto became
Prince, as the former Prince Chant had started to mutate into a strange
new form - perhaps due to an encounter with Delirium.
Sometime after this, those who were close to the gods felt a sudden
emptyness as those gods vanished; worshippers of Gaia realised that she
had been wounded and lay in a coma. With great effort, Gaia was
reawakened, but as a changed being; the goddess seemed crueler, and
embraced all three of her aspects: maiden, Mother, and Crone. As this
was happening, an otherwordly entity named Hapexamendios opened a rift
between Earth and a dimension of nothingness called the In Ovo; only by
the sacrifice of the witch Morgana was the rift closed.
The fae duchess Nimue Clandestyne went into voluntary exile rather than
face an increasingly rebellious court. After she left, the anarchist
Joey Stardust stole the Balefire of the freehold, somehow bonding with
it; he went quickly insane, generating powerful creatures of nightmare
such as the Empress and the Corinthian, before burning himself to death
(with the assistance of the now Unseelie court). A new, republican
freehold was established on the ashes of Stardust, and the Speaking
Throne of the old freehold stolen. But it wasn't long before the throne
went missing again, removed by a dragon. A group of werewolves
eventually located and obtained the throne.
The mages of Agena finally succeeded in returning Master Phoenix to the
living, although he was much changed. Once a venerable Akashic master,
he now appeared to be a young Tibetan boy. Death appeared to Phoenix,
offering him some kind of deal, which he accepted.
It was discovered by the Daughters of Kali and the Orphic Circle that
the entity Hapexamendios had banished the gods to the In Ovo, where they
drifted in some kind of coma. Very few gods had escaped, among them
Gaia, Nemesis, and Odin (who had sold his divinity to a mortal). The
world was at the mercy of powerful beings like the Endless, vampiric
demigods like Dracula and Set, and strange alien beings.
During the middle of winter, a small number of supernatural beings
dreamt of an apocalyptic future, where magick had been destroyed by some
kind of Affliction, and aliens abducted psychic children. When they
woke, most passed it off as just a dream, but a few remembered that the
affliction was to start at the end of 1997. It was suspected that the
Shadow had something to do with it, or was that the Scourge?
Gaia gifted her chosen with the opportunity to build a Tower of their
own, using a shard of moonstone as the foundation. The werewolves
conducted the appropriate rituals to allow the Moonstone to grow into a
shining Tower in the umbra, but the final ritual was not completed as a
member of the seerkind refused to cooperate. The Tower remained
unfinished.
Shortly after this, part of a mystical Seerkind artifact, a carpet
called the Weave, started to unravel, and the landscape around the court
and the Tower of the Moon was transformed into a mysterious orchard.
Strange creatures roamed through the treetops, and the site became a
source of strage energies. The orchard continued to grow, albeit slowly.
The mages of the Tower of Agena were worried about strangers being able
to enter their Tower too easily, and were talking to some Alfar (Norse
spirits) about acting as guardians. Unbeknownst to the mages, the
Gatekeeper of the Tower, Mirov Balthazar, had made a deal with the
secretive Orphic Circle to gather more souls; he would allow anybody
into the Tower if they first signed his Book. But whoever signed the
Book unknowingly signed their souls to the Orphic Circle.
Upon learning that the mages were hiring new guards, Mirov locked
himself into the second level of the Tower and would not allow anyone
access until the Orphic Circle came to rescue him. The Tower was soon
filled with people, trying to get the Book, or trying to get Mirov, or
trying to get into the rest of the Tower. The Orphic Circle seemed to
have gained the ability to teleport, and were entering the Tower that
way; spirits of the dead also gained access unstopped. The mages were
quite upset, and sent a group of Alfar through another world to try and
reenter the Tower from above. They were successful in doing so, and
Mirov Balthazar revealed himself to be an alien monster before being
killed and the Book destroyed. When the Orphic Circle tried to escape,
they were unexpectedly teleported into an entirely different dimension.
The Orphic Circle returned from wherever it was that they had been, and
the evil vampiric crimelords attempted to collect the body parts of the
dead Nightbreed god Baphomet, so that they might return him to life.
This brought them into conflict with some of the werewolves, who
murdered a blood-slave of the elder vampire Malice; and with the mortal
Frank Black, whose family the vampires off-handedly slaughtered.
Jonathon Ripple, a mad vampire, also claimed to have fought off a
time-travelling alien invasion whilst no-one was looking.
Meanwhile, the magical orchard of the Weave grew even larger, and
strange gnome and nymph beings started warring within it. Most of the
Seerkind had vanished with a woman calling herself Jadis, the Empress,
and did not return. The cat goddess Harmony appeared, and gave birth to
cubs of possibly divine nature.
The Shadow, a spiritual entity of destruction, has been killing people
for over two years now. A group of technowizards called the Cognitive
Engineers discovered the truth about the Shadow, and tried to make a
deal with the occultist mages of the Tower of Agena; they wished to
combine forces and defeat this threat to the entire world. They also
proposed a One Reality Convention to be held in a year's time to sort
out their differences. But the mages were uneasy with that suggestion,
and decided to delay a decision. They put the Cognitive Engineers on
hold, while the mages searched through the recently rediscovered Library
of the Tower and tried to deal with their troublesome servants. By the
time that they returned, the Cognitive Engineers had hung up. The threat
of the Shadow had not been resolved...
Please note that this freeform will run sessions 7 and 8 only (Saturday night).
