For Future Reference

Though the CoM games have ended over a year ago, I felt the need to record the last remaining six games, if only to have it on file here on our blog. In my experience we often think back of our RPG campaigns and try to collect pieces of information from our memory. So here is a basic layout of how City of Myst has built up and eventually resolved its first (and to this date only) season.

Enter, Pyroclast.

In 'Production Line' the heroes infiltrate a CoT spirits facility and save the girl missing from the first issue and David, Soildream's romantic rival. But now events from the 'Disembarkment' saga catch up with them, as the Truth send an assassin to take out Solidream and his untold powers which break the balance. But upon discovering that the assassin is Brittle Silence, Solidream avoids a fight and convinces her to listen. But Brittle Silence is bound by a magical contract to the Truth, a contract that, when broken, calls upon the Truth most lethal servant - Pyroclast. Essentially a walking volcano, Pyroclast steals the contract and then clashes with the characters in a music concert, after they deal with Simon Crey's army of native-American undead (which claims he never summoned; this was later called the Megadeath concert). Arriving at a stalemate - no one can defeat the other side - Mr. Burns appears and decides to allow Brittle Silence to live if Solidream puts on a bracelet which will subdue his powers.
Solidream accepts.


The Gambit

After the Megadeath concert the city is in turmoil over the astounding mystical powers which were brought to the lime light. In a big city hall emergency tribunal the heroes are requested to describe to the public what they know about what's happening to the city. For this DeLight chooses Richard Hughes, who produces a striking speech bringing the impending Riot to the public awareness and causing a great stir.
The heroes also meet up for a Thanksgiving dinner and later get involved in some romantic affairs as a wave of unchecked repressed sexual desire takes over the city.
At this point Armand, the all-powerful occultist, has had enough with DeLight and his crew and he brews a terrible trap for them. The heroes are alerted by a phone call to come to DeLight's loft - where Fran Drake, DeLight's genius partner, is shattered after discovering his son has been kidnapped. Armand sends out a ransom demand asking that the Tome will be brought to him in exchange of the child.

Without The Light

The team plans a daring rescue attempt, enrolling for the task the assistance of Brittle Silence and Fire Salamander, who can get them in through the city waterworks. Unfortunately, Armand's mansion is guarded by not only his vile Undying Marshals, but also his vicious Disciples and a host of horrifying creatures summoned especially to deal with each one of the heroes.
At the critical moment in the battle the Tome is thrown out of a large electric gate and onto the ramp leading outside. As DeLight leaps over to get it, he is suddenly hit by a multitude of energy beams from every direction. His innate light bursts forth and protects him, but the beams hold him in place from every direction... unable to control the Light, he is essentially trapped in a frame of energy beams, boxed. A VTOL chopper then arrives to collect the helpless DeLight, while the team fights off the remaining Armand forces. But when the Watcher attempts to free DeLight someone unexpected emerges from the chopper - Mr. Burns. Now the team understand the scale of betrayal, but it is too late. Mr. Burns, who was a suspected teleporter but was never seen actually doing it before, grabs the DeLight 'crate' and vanishes with it into thin air.


The Only Thing Better Than Perfect...

With DeLight gone the team has to deal with the city's mystical threats on their own. On this issue Simon Crey returns with a horrifying new construct - a walking graveyard. More and more signs of the Riot appear, the most prominent one being the Harbinger - one of the Truth's mystic who tried to peer into the Riot using the probe the team helped place on 'Production Line'. He has gone completely mad and is now on the run. During all this the heroes attempt to locate DeLight but can only figure out he is buried deep deep within the ground. Tezcatlipoca, the useless Aztec god of wrath makes another pathetic appearance. But worst of all - someone kidnaps Tal - Solidream's love interests. As the party delves into the matter they discover David is missing. And indeed it seems a special CoT spirit has chosen David's body and mind for a home - the spirit of Perfection. Caught in a battle that trashed the city Aquarium and moved on the streets, Perfection is only defeated at last by one power alone - Solidream's broken heart.

A Carnival Of Machines

With the signs of the city's impending doom everyone's attention is now aimed at the Riot. Armand sends a pack of Undying Marshals led by a Disciple to seize the Harbinger, the only one who knows anything about the Riot. This time they have a special toy - a Chinese dragon lantern which they threaten to unleash upon the city. But the real threat lies in where the Harbinger flees to - the city's new theme park. As they run around the park seeking the Harbinger, the heroes reveal a confoundedly genius plan to get rid of the city's mystics, themselves at the top of the list! The mastermind behind this plan, who calls himself the Mechanist, has prepared and army of robotic minions to tackle the group's powers, while implanting some of them with chips that make it hard for them to employ their mystic powers. Meanwhile, an undead assassin - Post Mortem - is sent by the Truth to slay the Harbinger. The group eventually flees the deadly carnival but is Brittle Silence eggs on to discover the identity of the the Mechanist - he is Fran Drake, DeLight's genius partner, gone mad with his plans to lock away every once of magic in CoM. But by that time the Harbinger makes it clear that DeLight's burial was the final straw. The Riot is here.

In the final instalment of the City of Myst series the impending threat that loomed over the city finally reveals itself. With a complete black-out all over the city all of its once buried fears, desires, emotions, and old hatred rises to the surface, driven by the personified power of all buried things - the Riot. As the dead swarm the city and massacre its frenzied citizens, the heroes have worse things to worry about. Tezcatlipoca, who was up until now a feeble excuse of a wrath god, has regained his full powers and is amassing followers in his now resurfaced Aztec pyramid temple at the centre of the city. Hardly impervious to buried emotion and desires, the heroes are washed by their own hatred, fear, anger, despair, frustration and sadness causing them to fight amongst them as they struggle to understand the Riot.
Finally as they begin to realize it is their own repressed baggage that powers it they each decide to let go of their most torturing and deeply-buried emotion. The three heroes who started it all combine their powers to set it all free and end the Riot - the Watcher as the all-pervading entity, Solidream as the cracked vessel and Richard Hughes as the master of the Myst. The Riot has come to its end, but the city is ruined.
Guided by a green light they find DeLight's cage wrecked where he was buried.

To be continued...?

The Soundtrack

From the first adventure to the last the City of Myst soundtrack has set the atmosphere. It was created when a friend of mine, Assaf Kaftory, a great appreciator of music, was instructed to fumble through his ipod and produce songs which were both rocky and with a sweeping, eerie feel to them. There's a list of the songs on the bottom as it appears on the back of the soundtrace CD. But most of all, the song that represents CoM and has ushered us every time back into the world of this languished mystic city is the Sea Song, by the Doves (which hopefully later you will be able to hear here on the website). Later we realised how appropriate the lyrics were:

The Sea Song \ The Doves
---------------------------

Drive with me
Do the things you wont believe
Drive with me
Past the city and down to sea

Crushing Dreams
Leave me be, I cannot sleep

Drown with me
Past the city, down to sea
Rush of dream
Leave in peace, let me be

oh, it's the pain
It's ingrained in me
oh, soothe my pain
It's ingrained in me

Drive with me

-----------------------------------------------
The Soundtrack:

Sea Song - Doves (Melodic\City Views) 6:12
Another Day - Sophya (80's\Mystic) 4:16
Biscuit - Portishead (Rundown\Mystic\Dark) 5:04
Blink - Infected Mushroom (Upbeat\Mystic) 5:32
In The Realm Of - Siam (80's\Mystic) 4:21
Someone - Hooverphonic (Melodic\City Views) 4:11
Happy Birthday - The Birthday Massacre (Upbeat\Freaky) 3:37
Elation Station - Infected Mushroom (Upbeat\Futuristic) 5:35
Ghosts Can't Run Away - Foreign Affair (80's\Lost\Chase) 4:06
Fugitive Motel - Elbow (Melodic\Personal) 5:51
Solarized - Ian Brown (Slow\Eerie) 3:47
Climbatize - Prodigy (Techno) 6:38
Underground 6 - Sneaker Pimps (Rundown\Mystic) 3:54
Utopia - Goldfrapp (Melodic\Dark)
Halo - Depeche Mode (80's\Mystic) 4:28
Return to Oz - Scissor Sisters (Melodic\City Views) 4:41

Issue #5: Production Line

Solidream tries to help a Japanese mother and her child from being evicted; The Watcher assists an abused woman by taking over her husband; Hughes visits DeLight who is nearly killed by Fran's android; DeLight comes out of training and assaults the crippled genius; they discuss Solidream's disturbing display of powers; Melody Paine runs in saying she found the Circle of Thorn's Factory; the heroes watch the place until a door opens in the air and the cultists supply team exits; they trap them and find out how they planned to re-enter the Factory; just then the Watcher is magically forced into the body of Harris, the wife-beater he curbed; turns out his wife borrowed a mysticism book and bound the Watcher to her husband using a scarab, which she proceeded ingest so it cannot be taken; reluctantly the Watcher walks around as Harris; they pop into the factory to find a maze of halls and corridors swarming with CoT teenage initiates preparing for their Ascension; the Reborn spirits find them, one called Futility stuns them and before they know it they are transported to a location 3 miles above the sea; they manage to survive - Solidream shapeshifts into a living parachute and Hughes calls his ocean ancestor to form a slide for them, then takes them all home with his waterwalking spell; Mr. Burns appears and offers to tell them the new location of the teleporting Factory if they do a service for him - they must break into the launch site of a digger probe and place a crystal orb in it, so that the Truth's seers can find out what is under the city (the Riot); the launch site is tight with security; they manage to slip through Code Indigo check point in Rebecca Casey's van which has a secret compartment; hardly managing in each in his own way Hughes and DeLight meet in the digger ("oh, fuck off!") and place the orb inside but see that another infiltrator, a ninja, is just leaving; Solidream chases the ninja, which turns invisible and eventually manages to lose him at the subway, at the cost of her camo-suit; they venture again into the Factory disguised as teenagers using Hughe's Myst powers, unable to use their powers for it will break the spell; inside they find a society of teenagers struggling to rate high in the Reborns' eyes; the Reborns are training the teenagers' bodies and minds in a Spartan manner, preparing them to be vessels for a new spirit; the heroes are lost in this maze of human production and are unsure how to proceed.

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...

When everything falls into place...

Lads,
This campaign has influenced every one of us in ways that are difficult to explain. I think for a lot of you your characters are in a way going through what you as individuals are going through in the outside world. I was chatting to Nurit today and realised that strangely, or maybe not so strangely, the case is the same with me.
Remember how bad DeLight felt before the raid on Armand's mansion? I was feeling the same way this week. Some of you noticed that DeLight was removed from the storyline just at the same time when Eli started the 'guidance' debate and we decided to 'reduce the degree of guidance'. No more guiding light.
The truth is I'm going through the same thing DeLight is going through. He has tapped into some force, something all-encompasing, and he gets visions of what's to come. He has a feeling about how things are going to come together in the end. But being the industrious person he is, he finds it hard to believe in the Light. He feels that he has to make his visions come true and he rarely trusts anyone or anything to do it for him. He doesn't trust the Light. Right now this has gotten him stuck firmly in the ground with no way out. All he can do is sit it out and think about it.
I'm much the same. I have visions of how the campaign would resolve, of how things come together in the end. I have certain insights about it I can't explain. But the problem so far was that like DeLight, I didn't trust anyone but myself to take us there. As this campaign became more and more important something in me began to fear the possibility it won't come out right and so I tried to do everything in my power to make it happen the way I've seen it in these visions.
Now I see I misinterpreted these visions. It's time for me, and DeLight, to start believing more deeply in this force that puts everything into place - and to trust you. I see now there is not one storyteller but four storytellers, four players, who are weaving this story. You play your characters; I play the World. But there is something greater than the sum of us four, some sort of synergy that is driving us forward, towards the unknown destiny that we see only in dreams.

- The Storyteller.