Chadius: TOA Summary 4/30/09

• Group goes to Mark's Bookstore
  • Tara has a vision of men dancing and singing in a green field
  • Tara closes the front door
  • Mark was on shift when Henry visited, topics range about prediction and unicorns
  • Tara looks up rituals to see what Mark saw
  • Diiman and Lily leave and notice a man outside

• Henry Marshalls is a rare ingredient hunter looking for unicorn essence
  • Was told Tara was a contact who would know more info
  • Sorry to disturb her, Tara & Marshalls trade contacts

• A spell to view the past!
  • Henry Marshalls looked up the plane of Elysia and its temples
  • Was looking for a Unicorn Essence alternative
  • Tara thinks he's going to invade and steal a unicorn.

• Tara calls Lucy and asks to warp over there
  • It's restricted access so they need to ask for permission.
  • Elysia has Elves (very seclusive) and Unicorns (very endangered)

• Next morning, Tara asks Zii for permission to head to Elysia
  • Zii eventually OKs it
  • To Elysia!

• Surrounded by prancing, singing, tighty pants Elves!
  • They've been invaded and their Eternal Unicorn artifact has been stolen!
  • Looks like Henry Marshalls is considered a hero of some kind
  • Wants TOA to help make a distraction while he grabs the orb

• Retzel is the correspondent; he doesn't sing
  • Orcs invaded and knew how to bypass their defenses
  • Orc chief probably has orb
  • Elves will distract the army when party sneaks in

• Party attacks the orc chief
  • Dogpiles him dead
  • Li lifts the body to demoralize the orcs; they scatter
  • Recovered the Eternal Unicorn Orb!

• Li heads back to TOA
  • Lily has a few phone messages from team members telling her stuff is ready

• Henry Marshalls gets a shard
  • Promises to tell TOA about the drop off point

• Time for a plan to approach Arvel's island
  • Fly in and land low far off; sneak around and get information

Brain Dump: Ceelie

Well after we were done looking into the stuff with Tarxius in the medical wing, we headed out to Mark's Bookstore to investigate the Henry who showed up there to research fateweaving and unicorns. Ominous! (Creepy music starts playing.)

Then a funny thing happened. Right as we were getting there, when Tara opened the door, suddenly the world halfway faded and everything was overlaid with green. There was the bookstore, but there was an open field -- a few trees in the back of the store, a little brook running just along the sidewalk there, then here turning into the street and flowing back out of sight. And through the middle of the store, a group of tall, slender men were dancing and singing, looping and weaving between each other, disappearing and reappearing as they danced through the bookshelves. It was there and gone again before I realized it was coming from Tara. She stood completely still, blinking for a moment, then came into the store and closed the door.

"Guys, I just had a vision!" she said. She explained a little to us about what she saw, and then Mark came over and we started talking to him. Apparently, he was there the day Henry visited, and says he looked up all sorts of stuff about unicorns and predictions both. Boy that big meanie head sure keeps busy, doesn't he? Stupid stinky loser breath. Tara started looking in to rituals we could use to sort of "rewind" and watch what happened the day Henry came in. You know, see through Mark's eyes and such. I helped!

Meanwhile, D and Lily noticed some guy outside. So they talked to him, and it turns out his name is...Henry! Except, he has a last name too: Marshalls. And it turns out he hunts for rare stuff and is looking for unicorn essence! Insert Big Red Flag here. Not good. And, additionally, "someone" specifically told him Tara would have info. Tara was a little freaked out, understandably, and as always Li was very quietly intimidating and supportive. I am very glad he is here to make us feel more secure. He is a good friend.

Tara talked to this new Henry a little bit and they traded some contact info, since it seemed like there might be some kind of grand scheme going on. Of course, we all began discussing the fact that obviously Henry the Bad Henry had hired this guy, and we needed to find out how and why and all that stuff.

Anyway, Henry M. had left at this point, so we finished prepping our ritual and doing all that fun business. We were able to use the ritual to scan back and see Henry M. coming to the store in the past. He came in, and looked up stuff about Unicorn Essence, and also did some research on the plane of Elysia and the temples there. It turns out there is a whole plain for elves and unicorns. Doesn't that sound like just a perfect place for Tara to go visit? It sounds like the kind of lovely place I would never ever want Henry-the-bad-Henry to even know about! He better not hurt it. Tara was afraid he planned to get this Henry M. guy to steal a unicorn for him.

So then Tara called up Lucy, to see if we could get a portal to Elysia so we could get to the heart of all this dual-Henry stuff. It was all very confusing, and then it turned out that Elysia is restricted access! The elves prefer to keep to themselves, and the unicorns are terribly endangered. So we needed extra clearance to go there.

We got an appointment with Zii the next morning, so we could ask for special permission to go to Elysia. We had to do an awful lot of explaining and stuff, about how much more dangerous it was for the Henrys to get ahold of whatever they want with no competition, and we promised to be very careful. Still, I was a little worried. But it sounds like such a nice place, I just don't want anything bad to happen there. So we had to go save it. Finally Zii said we could go. We made an executive decision not to wake Lily up early just to drag her to a land of elves and unicorns. I don't really think it would've been her kind of place, and she does really like to get her extra sleep in the morning when possible.

Anyway, we went to the place they sent us, and walked into the portal they told us to, and BAM! There we were, in a green field, with the trees, and the little brook, and a bunch of elves dancing and singing. I could almost see the bookstore overlaid on the scene for a moment. Tara really does have an incredible gift. It makes me ever more mad about Evil McHenry every time I see how wonderful her abilities are. Stealing is bad -- but stealing money or someone's car is so different from stealing a deep and personal piece of who you are. No one can return what was taken away. But I didn't have time to be sad and angry, because the elves had quite obviously noticed us.

They were singing to us, the elves, about how they had been invaded and their Eternal Unicorn had been stolen. We tried to explain that we had come to help them, but they were busy singing. Finally D and I started singing back to them, that we were here to help them get their orb back. They immediately sang that we must be more Heroes, to join the Hero who was already here. They brought us back to a camp, and there was Henry M. Not to anyone's surprise, at this point, he was there to get a chip of the Eternal Unicorn. It's an orb the elves have that exudes some kind of unicorn essence. It will regenerate, apparently, if a small chip is removed, but it cannot withstand being shattered. Henry M. had made a deal with the elves that if he recovered the orb, they would let him take home a chip of it. Well, there's your unicorn essence, Henry McJerk. Would you like fries with that?

The elves had taken an instant liking to Tara, of course, and they led her off to another tent -- she was in her full-on unicorny form -- to groom her and beautify her. She actually had a very wonderful and relaxing spa visit, full of scrubbing and cleaning and brushing and braiding and generally being made lovely and relaxed. I am glad. She has been under a lot of stress and I think she needed some people paying attention to her and helping her to relax and be comfortable for a while. She was very happy after they were done.

The rest of us were left with Henry M. for a while to talk, and they brought us dinner. I ate all of mine, but I was still hungry, so I ate Henry M's too. It was delicious. That's also when Henry M. filled us in on the situation. The orb had been stolen by orcs who were holed up in some fortress not too far away. They probably planned to destroy it or something...the orcs knew how to get through the elven defenses, so something weird must have been going on, but we didn't really have the time to do a full investigation. The org chief in the fortress almost certainly had the orb, so that was our target. Henry M. was a little apprehensive though. He didn't think he could pull this off himself. Luckily, we were there to help! He wondered exactly what price we'd want though. We told him we wanted all the info he had on who hired him, plus when and where the drop-off was going to happen. Either he thought it was fair or he was just desperate enough to take whatever he could get, because he agreed.

So I planned us out an attack with most of the usual elements, taking cues from the info provided by Henry M. and by Retzel, the only non-singing elf we met. He acted as our liason to the rest of the elves, and gave us as much info as they could about how the orcs stole the orb in the first place, and what the lay of the land is around where they holed up afterwards. We worked out a good plan to have the elven army distract the orcs with a frontal assault, to keep the orc army occupied. In the meantime, the team plus Henry M. would sneak in the back and take out the chief (or at least snatch the orb.)

Everything went off without a hitch. We slipped right in the back, identified the chief, and totally decimated him. Even though D didn't bring the big guns, we still did fine. Then Li picked up the chief's corpse like a trophy and flew straight up to show all the orcs that their leader had been defeated. It really looked like it should've been a deleted scene from a Lord of the Rings movie.

We brought the orb back to the elves and embarked on an afternoon of partying. Li had to go -- I think it was related to his date -- so he skipped out on that part to head back to TOA and get ready. Lily of course had to check in on her phone messages. I guess a bunch of stuff from our other team members was ready or something. I was busy checking out the banquet. There was all sorts of fresh and tasty food and drinks, and of course tons of singing and dancing. At some point, also, they very ceremoniously chipped off a tiny piece of the orb and gave it to Henry M. I think Tara's heart skipped a beat, but sure enough, the orb slowly just sort of grew back where the chip was missing. It was amazing. And when Henry M. got the chip, he confirmed that he'd tell TOA once he had information about the drop-off. I am not sure yet exactly what we're going to do with that info, but I guess we will have to figure it out very soon. We have a lot of difficult decisions to make, and not a lot of time to make them.

After a good amount of partying, we said our farewells and packed up to go. I told Retzel he should come visit us at TOA some time. I promised if he comes to see us, we won't sing. He doesn't seem to enjoy the constant singing too much. I hope he will take a break to come and see us.

When we got back to TOA, it was time to start planning our amazing island adventure. Guess who does that? Yeah, so if we're done here, I'm going to get started on that one. There are a lot of variables, and we really don't want to get caught until we're ready for people to know we're there. Yeah, I know the reports are important, but so's the next phase of the mission. Yeah. I know! I just...it's going to be a weird one, I want a few contingencies. We've got a lot of people to coordinate now and some conflicting goals on this one. Off I go.