Metaplanar Babel

A long time ago, in the very first RPG that I ever played in under Jon (or anyone, actually), our starting party was given a very dangerous (read: stupid) quest to explore this cave a little ways away from Bartertown in Throal. I can’t even remember now exactly why we went there, but, suffice to say, we did. Our party at the time included my elven elementalist/swordmaster Eirlys, a human swordmaster named Beric Ringweaver (”perhaps you’ve heard of me?”), a half-elven wizardmancer named Arrakis, and a human nethermancer named Deacon. We were all maybe 2nd circle, perhaps 3rd, but very low either way. We ventured into this cave, located a room full of treasure (actually a lady’s bedroom that happened to have some magic stuff in it), a room with a summoning circle and a small pyramid made of orrichalcum which seemed to be the key to it (Arrakis nearly opened a portal to the plane of Hot Wings - I mean Fire), and eventually a really nasty water elemental in the shape of an ice knight who quite thoroughly slayed Eirlys and Deacon, prompting the other two to flee (after looting poor Eirlys’ fallen body).

After rounding up a new band of companions, Arrakis and Beric returned to the cave, knowing that they had explored only a bare fraction of it. After various adventures, they reached a cave deep in the earth with some vast magic spell upon it, where they found Eirlys’s body suspended in a block of crystal that seemed to be connected in to the spell. In the process of studying the items taken the previous trip, the companions had learned that the caves were home to an ancient illusionist/nethermancer who apparently preserved her own immortality through switching bodies periodically. You guessed it, her next “home” was to be the body of my fallen elementalist.

Many great adventures occurred after that, but we always knew that Ixalia was lurking in the background. We further studied the items we’d stolen from her, gradually piecing together part of her story, wherein she aided a Scythan knight of old, eventually bringing about his downfall and trapping his spirit to relive his death over and over again throughout the centuries. We eventually freed him, only to discover that he had been marked by Raggok (the Passion of anger and revenge) and was being sought by Death because his spirit had never made the journey to the Death’s Sea. We had a few run-ins with Ixalia (mostly Arrakis, because he had the ability travel back to her ice-cave), but we were always left with the impression that she was very very evil.

**warp to present day**
As some of you may know, the Shadowrun universe that Jon and I run our little game in is the future of our old Earthdawn game. I have a young character, named Snow, who’s an albino orc with er.. issues. He’s almost your stereotypical problem child - his parents died when he was young, then he was moved around between a number of foster homes, where he was generally abused, ridiculed, and otherwise not taken seriously. He finally ran away and lived on the streets for several years with his only friend. However, his friend succumbed to despair and killed himself, leaving Snow completely alone. He wandered for a few months, before being approached by a scientist who was trying to develop a drug that would cause a magical “surge” in those who used it. The scientist was testing his various concoctions on the homeless of the city, getting away with it because the drug was untraceable by both technological and magical means. Most of the scientist’s test subjects died from the surge in their patterns. Snow, naturally, did not. The effect on his pattern caused him to be essentially undetectable by magic and unaffected by it.

Anyway, Snow has developed a lot over the time I’ve been playing him, and he seems to have a cursed existence, poor guy. Because his undetectable pattern gives him the potential to be an incredible thief or assassin, he was kidnapped and essentially tricked into believing that everyone he cared about had abandoned him or died, thus allowing the mage behind it all to have him trained as an assassin. He was ultimately rescued by his friends, and the mage was killed, but he was left with this enormous potential. Snow isn’t a very trusting individual, but he’s not innately evil, nor does he want to kill people for a living. He’d been mostly using his stealth abilities to steal things.

Now, to the really evil part. In the process of trying to stop a string of assassins from killing his girlfriend, Snow was approached by a very notorious mage with the information about who was behind the attacks. This mage set up a deal with Snow where the mage would give Snow the financial backing he needed to assassinate the nethermancer who was paying for the contract on Dawn. Snow thought for a long time about whether he could do it, given that he’d said many times that he didn’t want to kill anyone. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that getting rid of the nethermancer was the only way to keep Dawn safe (Dawn is another complicated story, but she’s Jon’s character, so I’ll leave her tale to him). So he took the job, made a bunch of preparations, and traveled out to one of the nethermancer’s places of residence to carry out the hit. Unfortunately, the information he was given about her was mostly incomplete, and he discovered as he was in the act of trying to kill her that her magic could actually affect him.

Bad news, right? She didn’t actually catch him in the act, but she found him very shortly after he retreated to try and figure out what was going on. What happened was that when he finally came within sight of her, he was struck with this paralyzing inability to cause her any harm. She sat him down and had this little chat with him, claiming that he’s been touched by the Passion Vestrial (deception) and that’s why he’s lived this cursed existence. Right in the middle of this chat, it struck me who she was. That’s right. Snow’s been ensnared by Ixalia. Of course, he doesn’t know everything *I* know, so he’ll probably be stupid and work with her. She claims she’s trying to give him a choice, that he can do whatever he likes doing for her and that she’ll protect him from others who would try to exploit what he is. Since he doesn’t tend to trust people, he keeps trying to look for a catch. Anyway, for the time being, she’s let him walk away, but I just know she’s got something up her sleeve. Ixalia has long been one of the NPCs from Jon’s games that we most feared..and now she’s meddling in Shadowrun too. I’m afraid..very afraid.

You’re evil, Jon. Sooo evil.