A slight aside as Medea watches from afar...

Fred

“Well your majesty,” I begin, really wishing that it was NOT my time to do the explaining of things to the curious folk (especially the curious and angry about that business where we’d had with stopping Medea with Absyrtus.”

YES! Yes, you’ve guess it. We’ve really stepped in it right now and gone and interrupted something from Greek Mythology. I and the others (I will let you know for free) worried in the course of STOPPING Medea from murdering her brother if we’d be incurring Somebody’s (or several Somebodies’) attention for daring do that!

Believe it or not we could practically SMELL the stench of “mind control” coming off of Medea from where we materialized earlier, thank you.

Don’t ask me how that works. Never really experienced being able to smell magicks before, but maybe it’s this place/reality, as “cartoon-like” as it appears to us all right now…

We interrupted the part of the myth

Naturally, something or some “entity” out there just HAD to come on over to interrupt things and delay things for me. It’s just the way things seem to be working.

Well, at least it answered by questions about the nature of the puppet master who’d been pulling Medea’s strings as she had been attempting to murder her own brother for Jason (the bastard)…..

Oh? You do know about this little part of the myth of Jason and the Agronauts, right? Well, if not I would suggest . . . a short trip to the public library OR perhaps a lookup on the Internet. Whatever the case if you know or not about this myth, THIS part we interceded? It is the part where after Jason, with the aid of what we KNEW from the get go (though at the time weren’t totally sure about the specifics and the dramatic persona of the tale at the time) had been in the process of “obtaining and removing” a mystical piece of property from Medea’s father’s procession: the Golden Fleece. The King and his forces had been looking high and low for the two. Somewhere along the lines Medea had come across and waylaid her dear brother and still under the strong influence of blind love from the of Aphrodite and was going to murder him and cut the body into pieces to use as a distraction to keep her father, who’d been searching for her and Jason over the theft, to escape in by sea with the Agronauts.

That act would have been the FIRST step in a long series of foul deeds in Medea becoming a witch. I should add.

Pawn of the Greek gods and goddesses, Medea the Witch (some would call her THE Witch of Betrayal) did a LOT of deeds, some rather dark, in her blind induced love for Jason. Jason in near the end of the myth said he would marry Medea. Even makes mention of Medea having children by Jason, only to have him dump her and those children to instead take the hand in marriage of some other princess of another kingdom.

After all she’d done for him. After all the things she’d given up for him (albeit under the influence of another)…

Well, it did not usually excuse the actions afterward taken by Medea, but then again the young woman’s mind had been destroyed by everything so insanity could be a good defense in a court of law up in “modern” times.

We learned some OTHER interesting things about our accidental arrival here to Medea’s place: while accidental the Higher Ups had been planning on . . .introducing some “changes” to the way things are being done here by the “place holders” (or whatever the Hell is going on here) with the Greek Pantheon whilst they’re away taking care of some rather VITAL affairs.

. . .

Affairs that relate to…..those eldritch abominations beyond the dark who’ve been trying to bring about the destruction of the Dark Tower. The Higher Ups go off to take care of things to avoid this reality getting pasted, leaving there oh so trusty and worthy avatars to fill in in their stead . . .and the Power Trips the avatars got went and pretty much mucked up a lot of loyal and powerful worshipers.

Medea’s ruin of her life can be traced to trying to cheat on a bet, of all things! THAT really got Medea (and her family) more than a bit fired up there, rightfully so I might add.

So…when the Higher Up shows up and remediated the guilty avatar to the king here for crimes against his daughter (and such). . . do not expect much in the way of mercy for that avatar, who’d been stripped of all power (and glamour . . .ugly crone looking creature now when the “divine” charms cannot undo the excesses she’d gone and done). There’s not going to be any for her and frankly . . .knowing what I and the others know (if Bulfinch’s mythology is anything to go by), there is not much meriting mercy and pity here.

Sigh, okay. Long short, seems that somehow we particular set of Champions here had NOT been the intended Champions the Greek “gods”/”higher ups” had been looking to herald changes into their world. After all the “adventure” (read near disasters in such places as Warhammer 40K and such), the last Rule we’d chatted with said that we had earned something of a break from the higher stressed Quests for a while… That and the wins we’d managed to pull off had earned us a break of which we were ALL extremely grateful of, even IF our last Quest had been completed in record time (done all by what could be termed as a “dungeon bypass”). More on that in a moment…

. . .

No, let’s actually go into it now. Basically, if you’re familiar with the video game “Bioshock” we all appeared at the Lighthouse, the very start of the game. That had been just like the video game EXCEPT for the fact that there had been no flaming oil from the crashed plane which the protagonist had survived due in large part that the lighthouse here was floating in the AIR, and not an ocean of water. The fact that it was broad daylight here instead of night (like in the video game) was beside the point.

Fred

Looking back, probably we should have expect something to go awry… Rei something on her mind, something that wasn’t what was expected by most who’d be faced with our Task.

Silently and with a rather unreadable expression on her face Rei had looked around at all the other flying edifices, the combine landscape/airscape that had become the mashup of both Columbia and Rapture. Then turning without a word, she gestured for us all to follow her up the stairs and into the lighthouse proper

However, the transmat beam accidentally got tangled with some kind of Servant Summoning spell (whatever that exactly entails and bloody happens to be). When that happened, we just happened to be the nearest available Champions available for an upcoming Quest that the Higher Up here (aka the rather incensed Greek “goddess” who’d dragged her avatar here for judgment by Medea’s father, the king, for crimes against both her and his son). That should not have made a difference BUT there was a problem, the Rule and Agent of this reality (an anime appearing place for some God forsaken reason I don’t know of right now) seemed to not only NOT have gotten the memo or what not, but was one of the Drone versions of what we Champions are used to here.

Basically, the Rule and Agent had NO compunction and no capacity to take into account how much we’d been used and wrung out by various Quests BACK to BACK to back. Drones are NOT known for kindness and anything approaching human empathy, nor CARE about what kind of Merry Hell just plucking a Champion out of the ether without even a forewarning about a Quest does to us-- they just do their job and do it without concern or care about anything else BUT that, so therefore WE got roped into this and WE are here and doing this now, despite kind offers to have . . .

NO, we’ll get back to that.

Anyway, my wife was looking around rather disgruntled at the large, proud bust of the founder of the city of Rapture, Andrew Ryan. That and then at the red banner flying underneath said bust: “No Gods or Kings. Only Man.” and gave what could only be a derisive snort.

”What the Hell?” muttered John Conner, not at all familiar with some of the more . . .interesting aspects of the video game called Bioshock.

”Ah Ryan, so much the hypocrisy filled idiot,” Rei chuckled without mirth. “Enjoy the ruins of your ‘paradise’ and I can only hope you are alive right now and live just long enough to drown in your tainted . . .”

No, Rei is NOT a fan of Andrew Ryan at all. He went too far and compromised too much on his “ideals” to be even admired for his beliefs, even IF Rei didn’t agree with them and leave at that but with this note.

”People like you give atheists a bad name,” Rei muttered to herself before turning back to the group.

”Originally, the plan had been to take as many shortcuts we could through the gauntlet below our feet through this lighthouse. But even though it is rather nippy and windy than what we’d rather usually like, I think that between our wings and the rather new and improved magic carpentry my husband has gotten his hands upon somewhere whilst I had . . . been away . . .

“We’re just going to FLY directly to where our Quest’s objective is and blast anything and EVERYTHING that gets in our way,” Rei finally ends in a low, angry voice. “I do NOT want to stay in this God forsaken place than I need to stomach, thank YOU!”

Unnoticed by me at the time as I recalled this stood a rather bewildered female Magus with elfish features, wondering just HOW in the Hades she’d gotten here…

1. Though she really wasn’t exactly here in a sense . . .

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