Issue #4: Disembarkment

The Watcher's step-dad packs-up and leaves the house, leaving them pennyless; Richard Hughes gets a call from daddy in London saying the Gatekeepers are going to arrive in VB the next night; while patrolling Soildream sees Fire Salamander taking runic firepower from Armand's people and saves him with a fiery dragon; together they take out the team which was hiding something on containers in the docks; they take their captives to Hughes House (middle of the night) where they subject them to one of Solidream fantasies and reveal they were hiding crystals; at night Hughes House is under a terrible attack by undead Devourers (clearly Simon Crey's work) and just barely escapes; Solidream has a dream about a ship docking in the harbour and a host of ferocious warriors of pure light disembarking and butchering everyone; Black Bill and the Watcher investigate desecrated graves and discover a ritual has taken place; soon they are alerted by the Watcher's sister, May, who has gone to get a job in the shopping centre, that the place is under attack by a great glowing red giant; the four (inc. DeLight) arrive at the scene where everyone who's touched by the giant is infected with unstoppable rage granting them superhuman strength; May gets hit and begins to wreak havoc, hating the Watcher for leaving her behind (becoming a ghost); DeLight's protection fails and he goes berserk; finally they discover there is a person inside the giant and manage to reach him; the person is a bank clerk who got fired and dumped by his gf; Solidream shows him a way to make his dreams come true; back in the church they confirm that it is Simon Crey's base; the minister, who seems to be in Crey's service, has disappeared; Fran places surveillance on the all-too-active dock 21; DeLight seems wrecked and asks to meet Hughes for a pint; he doesn't show up and Hughes is harassed by an old Irishman called Patrick, who tells him 'don't believe the truth' and gives him another peanut before he leaves; Mr. Burns tips off the heroes about the ship arriving in dock 21 at midnight (although Hughes knows Haloween starts at dusk); a group of Armand's people sets up more crystals to trap the Gatekeepers, but the heroes lock them up in a container; Solidream sits on the crane and watches; fire swirls underwater, then Fire Salamander emerges horrified, followed by a mob of undead led by Simon Crey; Crey and Hughes battle, the others try to curb the Devourers and deadly Spider Souls; Solidream cannonballs into one; at last the majestic ship appears and everyone stares at awe; but when the passengers disembark they are the same beings of light which Solidream dreamed of and they start butchering everyone; eventually Solidream begins to understand this is one of his fantasies and makes the entire ship and crew disappear; during the battle Hughes sees Patrick waving at him, slipping into a smaller, shaggy boat and sails into the night; DeLight thinks this was a decoy for the real Gatekeepers visit; everybody is worried about Solidream's display of powers; Hughes finds a special gem inside the peanut Patrick gave him.

The Antagonists: Armand's Operation

[Pictures Soon]
At this point the heroes have already been acquainted with Armand's forces and a general outline of his organization is beginning to emerge: a specialised team for acquiring information about supernatural occurances, sometimes through force, and using this knowledge to 'harverst' whatever spiritual force is hidden behind the case.
Armand's Petty Thugs are his street-level handlers. They break into apartments, intimidate defenseless citizens who may have information, and do most of the errands and the bullying. They look just line any other mafia's thugs; however, Armand has them equiped with lesser wards of protection, pouches of fire spells, and specially-inscribed bullets with magic runes on them, to give them an extra bit over the 'mundane' gangsters.
The Scribes are the nerds who sit at the desk all day and decypher, translate, and cross-reference the information about the target artefact or spirit. Using hi-tech computer systems (for hacking into databanks) and the good old whiteboard with markers, their job is to research for any information which might better guide the rest of the team. They are weaklings but know a spell or two for their own and their work's protection, since they are in fact people who aspire to become Armand's desciples.
The intelligent and ambitious enough of these become Investigators. These 'detectives' serve as operation leaders most of the time, and spend their time giving orders to the units and organising them. They are also responsible for the more delicate situations such as extracting information from people who might resist or who they shouldn't be alerted (like the Forget Me spell used in the Sixth Chakra). Their spectrum of spells also coveres basic confrontation with spirits.
Topping it all off are the Undying Marshals. It isn't quite clear what these things are; are they undead bodies or living men with extremely supernatual powers? Some say they are the product of a ritual performed by Armand, given as a promotion to excelled thugs or not so excelled Investigators (who normally aspire to be Disciples). At any rate, these are Armand's strongest troops, armed with Staves of Blasting and almost impervious to damage. They never show their face or skin, wearing a swat team night gear at all times, blinking with their goggles' green light.
We'll leave the discussion about the Disciples and Armand's other forces for another time. Of course, there is also Armand himself...

Issue #3: Shield of Raman

Tom (Solidream) almost attacks CoT in university when David, the fiance of the girl he loves, steps in and beats the cultists; Richard Hughes is attcked by nemesis Simon Crey's phantom hog in his house; the Watcher's abusive step-dad (also Tom) brings his sister breakfast in bed, scared after the 'Brotherhood' case was blown open; the heroes meet in a burger joint in Blackman's Square and DeLight explains about Armand's operation for finding mystical artefacts; he asks them to help him retrieve an artefact called the Shield of Raman; the Compass, a small item which points the way to the Shield is already in the hands of Armand's people; a scream - and suddenly the sqare starts filling in some acidic matter, spewing from a central spout; the heroes remove all civilians from harm's way; the Watcher and Soildream dive in but find nothing but broken barrels of toxic waste; in a formiddable feat Hughes summons an Earth spirit which binds the spout with two great stone hands, finally containing it; in the aftermath they see another hero, Fire Salamander, and Joshua Clay, the blind sax player, tells them they "better find out [what caused the toxic burst] before the riot..."; Going back to DeLight's place he decides to show them the reason why the Shield bothers him and lets them into the secret base, despite Fran's bitter disapproval, to show them the Tome, saying the Shield might enable Armand to walk into the plasma that protects the Tome; back upstairs Mr. Burns awaits and presents himself as the spokesman of an organisation called The Truth, concerend with the city's mystical equilibrium; the heroes check in the Sixth Chakra about the Shield but the books about it are missing; turns out the lady who took them made the owner of the shop forget her somehow; the Watcher locates Armand's people in a flat coverted to a scribes' lab and base of operation; the heroes attack only to be overwhelmed by the Undying Marshals, supernatural troops in Armand's service; one of the Marshals flees with the Compass but the Watcher snatches it out of his hands and soars away; from the books in the lab they gather that the shield is actually a lantern; the Compass leads them to a small pawn shop where they fight the Undying Marshals over the Shield of Raman and invoke its powerful magic to defeat them altogether; the Shield is sent to be hidden in the Hughes' Mansion in London.

NPC: Declan DeLight

This is the first of a line of posts about NPC, allowing players to comment about these characters and helping readers make sense of the story. Naturally enough, I picked DeLight to start with.
Originally, City of Myst was designed as a setting to play DeLight in and when I became the Storyteller I decided to keep him as a guide\mentor who would usher the players' characters into the mystical happenings in the city.
Declan DeLight is an Irishman in his early thirities who has been studying and working in Vibora Bay as an archaeologist, a curator, and antique dealer for over a decade. He became involved in the mystical world after an incident while on a dig in Ireland. He discovered an old hidden chamber, touched the door, and woke up from a coma eight-months later covered in strange celtic tattoos. When he eventually made it back to that chamber he managed to unlock the door and found an ancient book inside, which he called 'the Tome'. Since then he's been hunted by his university chum, Armand, who wants the secrets in the book, though none of them knows where it came from or how to read it.
Since the incident DeLight discovered he is protected by a greenish aura whenever he is in danger. However, he had no control over this force and at times it would fail to protect him. DeLight then began to think there is a purpose or a directing force behind his powers, as he noticed that every time the green light failed to show the consequences had taken him on a new direction. He paired with Fran Drake, a technological genious who provided him with specialised firearms, hardenning foam bullets, and other gadgets and started confronting mystical forces threatening the city, using his massive connections and his antique-dealing business as a front. They built their base in the basement of a Midtown building next to an industrial plasma incinerator, in which the Tome, also protected in the same invincible green light, floats silently.

Issue #2: The Watcher vs. The Exorcist

Solidream and the Watcher track down Daina, one of the adults behind the Shanty House connected to Jericho Jackson; DeLight tells the heroes about Armand, his his arch-nemesis, an expert in the lore of spirit-binding and alchemy; Black Bill is tipped off by a young gangster about a meeting place of the Brotherhood; withe the Watcher they enter the warehouse only to find out it was a trap set by the Brotherhood, who hired an Exorcist from out of town to get rid of the 'ghost'; the Watcher is locked in a circle of runes and separated from Black Bill who gets beaten severely by a crowd of Brotherhood cops; the Exorcist attacks the Watcher with a sledgehammer charmed especially against astral beings; somehow the Watcher manages to ring Solidream who alerts the rest; he uses a Brotherhood cop as a puppet to fight back the Exorcist; the others arrive and confront the corrupt cops, Hughes eventually encasing them in a dome of ice; they leave the cops with other cops and later find out they were released and have gone underground; the Shanty House stands empty during the day; in the evening Melody Paine rushes in saying that Jericho Jackson is about to sacrifice the most couragous kid in the test to the Spirits!; the team arrives at the Shanty House, now protected by an impenetrable bubble erected by Jericho's powers; Hughes manages to punch through with his magic and they battle the cultists and stop the ritual; Jericho explodes in a blue light and the Shanty House is disbanded; Erica, the missing girl from issue #1, has been sent to another CoT facility, called 'the Factory'; they reaveal that Jericho wanted to kill the boy, allowing a primal spirit to enter his body and that there are many who's soul has been replaced; Rebecca Casey, VB Observer reporter, arrives to cover the story; Solidream changes into a cop and tells the camera about the Brotherhood, but it is unclear whether he can alter the film in the camera or that his power is only an illusion...