Vendetta

Meanwhile...

Sigin

It was a Darkness Device....

To say that I am impressed is....an understatement!

Needing more information (for I know I and the others may perhaps desperately need it, I stay close enough to overhear enough...though it is chilling in it's cold bloodedness, when you get down to it.

In other times, I may have rather enjoyed the show of Mobius being "shut down" in his mad ranting and threats by the calm, cold blooded Asian man before him. However....

However, I almost have to feel....pity for that psychotic High Lord when he is basically driven away down his old Malestorm bridge, blaster bolts practically licking at his heels to encourage him to faster speeds! Knowing all the long that this whole thing is about a vendetta on him and his "friends" for past insults (real or imagined)....

What I have heard is enough, however. Being that this monster before me is still rather too well guarded (and I am too under par) for anything like a direct, one dragon assault even in full dragon form (those weapons they have would cut me to ribbons), I instead leave.

Just as well. Somehow, Betty and some rather odd chap (Stark I take) have managed to have the incredible luck of managing to take a wrong turn and head down towards the very chamber I was leaving! Managing to get them away to safety and not attract unwanted attention is difficult, but we manage it well enough.

Stark, having been quiet (relatively) during this whole trip, gives an eerie counterpoint to my "report" as I and the others soon find a safe enough spot to contact the others and tell them what I've found.

At first Betty, not knowing what I've discovered, laughs a delighted but surprised laugh at Stark's antics....but soon enough is just staring first at me and then at Stark.....a bit wide eyed after I finish. I, not knowing if ordinary means of communication (Star Trek combadge or such) are being monitored by those Company men (always a possibility, given everything today) I resort to an old standby. I use telepathy (which causes a surprised Stark to involuntarily whisper along, echoing the silent conversations).

Rather powerful talent this Stark has, I see. Also see he's been rather...er....abused by this Scorpius fellow and almost wish I could be around to see his face after he stumbles over what is left of his precious Aurora chair (compliments of Inquirer).

I finish, and then listen in on the results....a bit spent from the effort of sending.

Oh, good god, Ragan shivers, Scorpius and Mobius in the same story? That's just... frightening!

My brain kind of hurts now, Betty sighs, I mean, man, every time I think I'm starting to get a handle on things, something throws in another massive crossover plot twist and shake everything up again.

So the Pharoh's Darnkess Device got broken?! Ragan gags, shuddering, I'm impressed. I mean, those things are pretty much literally indestructible. (I'm also a little unsure what it was doing there, anyway. I mean, that thing's pretty big. It usually sits at home in his palace.) I'm also really wondering what they're doing there (in person, no less!), but I'm almost afraid to ask...

Well, I....have to agree, Inquirer puts in, still a bit taken aback by this turn of events, After everything that has happened up until now you'd think nothing could possibly surprise us any more!

Note: Information about Torg can be found here:

http://www .aoc.nrao.edu /~jogle/TORG /faq-a.html

She then gathers herself (after a few mentally "whispered" words from the Doctor) and basically sums up what I have told and seen (and shared). Fact, as it turns out from what she can see....it appears that the very CEO of the Company itself....from her own reality!.....is actually not FROM there. Rather, he is a native from Marketplace.....a reality that mirrors nothing less than one of the "cosms" found in our favorite role-playing game! He is a....er....relative of that cosm's High Lord. Or rather is a clone decoy of that High Lord (and had not known it until it was revealed to him). It happened to play out that way whilst this decoy had been attending a promising, but rather unorthodox scientific endeavor of one of his company's R&D branches. It had discovered a strange Cosm that at first to be none other than what I and the others know as Core Earth! The work had much promise in that it looked like a Malestorm bridge could be inserted in such a way, invading, without the risk of the sudden "backwash" of possibility energy destroying the invader. In other words, a lone High Lord could just walk in and "take over" without his peers being the wiser. Before, if such an attempt was even seriously to be contemplated, the Dark Lord would need a bit of...er...aid in his invasion. Indeed, something like a grand total of six or seven Cosms needed to invade what would turn out to be the "real" Core Earth (home of the highest single source of possiblity energy). That aside, as it turns out, it was none other than one of the researchers had been turned by an operative under the pay of Modius himself (tricky chap) allowed a hit team to storm the laboratory in an attempt to either sabotage it or capture it. But something went wrong and disaster (as it is in it's habit) struck unexpectedly. See, the Earth they saw in the scanners or whatever wasn't Core Earth. Rather, it had the same level of possibilities as what one would find there but things worked....differently there from anything that those poor researchers and that decoy were familiar with. See......

Sigh.

Bottom line is a "Torg" invader would be both disappointed in any quests for sucking up any possibility energy....because such energy does NOT exist there. No axiom....nothing like that at all. The entire basis of reality works in a foreign way, contrary to "known" and "accepted" cosm theory. What happened was that the place got sucked in through the malestorm bridge. All but one person appeared to have died in the disaster and the experiment was pretty much written off as a total "flop". However, whilst it appeared that there had been only one, there were two. The decoy had survived! Survived and got marooned on an Earth that would become known as Home #3 (Inquirer's place of birth as an AI....as it were).

Having learned too much for comfort and ego, the displaced (and marooned) clone swore vengeance on not only Mobius, but on his "father" as well. And this mania (though well hidden) grew to include any High Lord he could get his hands on!

Decades away from what would become known as the Night of Blood (the beginning of the Enemy/Alliance war), he set about in setting up...slowly but surely, a Company that would rival...and then eclipse his "fathers" corporation. Through means that I hadn't been privy to during my spying session (but Inquirer conjectured from this and...other data she'd come across over the years in her ...er...line of work), he was able to obtain through industrial espionage the technology being salvaged and studied from an alien crash sight in a nice little place called "Area 51". Using that, he soon was able to set up business in 13 nearby parallel worlds....eventually forming the Company Inquirer and the Military had grown to know....and hate.

Plans of vengeance delayed first by unexpected aliens, war, and such.....this clone decoy (still alive and healthy due to some longevity treatments garnered from some of the darker tech of the Area 51 spaceship) was finally getting around to the business of vengeance. It was all made possible by this strange....entity in a bottle....who had this thing about....chess.....

The decoy, being rather immune to manipulation through...whatever technology that had made him (something in the vat....I guess), was still able to work out an....agreement of sorts. Using advice and insights, this bottle became something akin to a Darkness Device, I see.

In the end the entity would get what it wanted and so would the decoy.

The entity had predicted that a scientist from this reality would be using an old “friends” technology to create something like a malestorm bridge....and would also use it in the exact time and place where other factions from other realities (like the now defunct Kane of the “Command and Conquer” universe and the High Lords of the Torg universe). What the result was....was utter disaster for those High Lords, it was.

Once put down, the Bridges can’t be ever disengaged. The Nile Empire cosm is being flooded, as it were, with the reality of the Farscape universe. It was....choking and replacing the axioms of that reality with Farscape’s physics (which in turn mirrored Dr. Who’s reality and Star Trek’s universe). Oh, it wouldn’t change the mentality and such of the human beings there. Weird tech and all that would still work and the constant action and adventure...the pulp fiction reality would be as it was....but that would be more due to human culture and mindset than due to axiom.

Ah, don’t ask. I am just too tired right now to explain more in detail if you still do not grasp it. Maybe later, but not now.

Another little side effect of this flooding was that it was hazardous to a Darkness Device’s existence. So hazardous, in fact that.....a mere touch of this “flood water” as you might call it.....was lethal. So when the decoy (in a sense of “turnabout” justice) had one of his Nile Empire operatives (a Gadgeteer of sorts) use a Weird Science raygun to shrink (then steal) Mobius’ Device....and thus now the crumbled remains.

Later, we shall be rather....surprise and chagrined to find out that the Nile Empire Cosm has invaded “Core Earth”. Might even laugh a little bit when a joke later on about Rifts Earth having been a better target, perhaps, for the High Lords with all those Ley Line and magic . . . . and the resulting HUGE explosion that would happen if an invasion had happened there instead of “Core Earth”.

That and up until that point things there reflect how things were going in OUR game. . . .

.....

Pardon, mind kind of wandered there for a second. Tired. Thank God that at least Inquirer and Ace were able to complete her mission earlier here and blow all the Timelord tech in storage around here to Blazes.

She always did say that enough high explosives would solve any problem.....

Hrmph....

Well, that invasion means that soon as the flooding is done with the Nile Empire (week, tops) it will spill over into Core Earth more fully and into those other Cosms of the High Lords as well! Already, enough “flood water” as spilled into Core Earth (pardon the crude analogy...but it’s the best I can manage right now)....lapping waves of what will be the forerunning of the tidal wave to come.....and jamming those other Malestorm bridges so they can’t be....retracted. Soon, that flood will come into those other Cosms and transform them as well.

Urgh, head hurts.

.....

Now, what has that to do with this mess? Well, a bit, actually. Through some kind of twist of fate, one...er...power I guess....from the doomed Darkness Devices has lodged themselves in either the associated High Lord (or if not available due to being already defunct...a surviving High Lord lieutenant) that the decoy wants for some reason (nature unknown).

Whatever the power is will prove to be the key to fixing this mess! See, according to Ace (who’s visions have become clearer of all of the sudden), if we extract that power from those High Lords....we can prevent the run away effect that Scorpius’ device (“still ticking despite a licking”, Critchon mutters) from creating worm hole after wormhole that it would soon become a navigation hazard for this section of the universe! And perhaps even a hazard to life...she goes on before the vision....clouds again.....

But not before saying something about that blue plant woman having, in a trance still, having gone down to the moon’s surface (below sensor detection, thank goodness)....and was in the thralls of something to due with.....solar flares or something?

Must ask why Betty and Ragan gave off a nervous chuckle on that one....

Oh, and I was also able to find out the reason why this decoy was here, on this world. He wanted none other than John Critchon! Or rather what’s in the chap’s brain.

That is correct! Like Scorpius (for we shall find out he‘d been able to tap into a com panel or some such and overhear that part of the conversation), this decoy wanted the wormhole data hidden within Critchon’s mind. How that and the other things all fit together, exactly, is unknown to me and the others. However, we do know what that decoy wants with it, I’m sure.

Hey, he might be a clone of a High Lord....but that aside it still means he wants to be Torg. That of course means that in order to be that (a living god...as it were) . . . . everything . . . . . must . . . . . . die.

He won’t succeed (the Celestrials would....er...object to such plans working), but I rather imagine there would be a lot of collateral damage before it is all said and done.

Kind of behooves us to put a stop to it, eh? Oh, we don’t have a total plan yet, but . . . . we’ll make it up as we go along.

Oh, but later we shall be getting some help from our....uh....Torg characters (one who has this robot dog).......

Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself!

We Champions still must find those others of Critchon’s group, though..... That and get that blasted tissue sample! The Doctor is on that particular one with the Brigadier and Critchon...

1. So, meanwhile a PK tech and a “grey girl” are arguing over where to look for their friend.....

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