Sunday, July 22, 2012

The Rock Show, DRYH c3s4b

Erik ponders whether that person he met, Sandra, could help him and his father to make the necessary changes to the hotel lobby to keep unwanted people out or at least give a good warning. Erik's father is most worried about the more unruly elements of the city like drunken students while Erik feels that the police is a bigger problem. That Sandra worked with design as far as he understood it.

Yurev works until some time around midnight where he realise that he doesn't have that much stimulantia that he really feels safe from sleep. He avoids the culverts and walks across the area between the buildings of the university. The university has some kind of arts budget they have to spend every year wich renders some new more or less nice looking things in a park in the other end of the university. There's everything from a distorted girl to iron beams to a weird chtulhuiod yellow something. As Yurev walks over the edge of the slope from the lower end of the university to the upper end he suddenly, between A building and C building, sees that weird yellow statue. The first thought is of another stupid freshman prank but it moves and not like it it was sitting on some kind of cart but rather as if it was moving by itself in an as unearthly way as it's unearthly looks. As Yurev tries to understand what he sees it enters a door at approximately the same spot as where Yurev entered Mad City but it's not the same door. Yureev decides that he doesn't need his bike to get to town tonight and instead walks all the way down through the university area to a bus stop and takes one of the last night buses into town, to Travel Center close to Park Hotel where Erik works.

In the meantime Maurice has decided that he has to solve this door business on his own. When he arrives at the cathedral he takes three memorial candles and leave some money, fetches some matches and then he heads for the door and enters it.

Yurev crosses the road to Park Hotel and immediately finds Erik in the lobby. They greet each other and Yurev buys some speed. As they chit-chat Yurev warns Erik for the university area. It seems to have some connections to Mad City. They also mention Maurice and his door and agree that a plan is a good thing. Erik isn't that hot on returning to Mad City but Yurev is more neutral as he sees having monsters at the university area is a problem. Besides eating students or maybe non-students lured there by false university applications the monsters are slowly eating Fermat's Great Theorem. As Yurev mentions this Erik becomes slightly reserved though and they end their conversation. Yurev leaves a ticket to Late Summer-X for Erik and leaves. To Erik's surprise the main attraction at Late Summer-X is Vincent Warmer, one of his customers, the rock star. Erik then returns to watching the TV.

Yurev looks up where White is located and finds out that it's at Trädgårdstorget and that it's on the way to the bus that goes to his home in Ryd. He decides to pay her a visit. She seems to be the kind of person that works and stays up and probably is found at work when it's not later than some time after midnight.

Sandra has had several hours of work without being disturbed when the door bell rings a gain and she walks over to the office door to answer the intercom at the outer door at street level. Yurev answers with a straight on ''Hi, it's me Yurev. Do you want to go to a party tomorrow?''. Sandra asks him if he is sure that he has come to the right person. As he seems quite sure on that she asks him what party it is and then tells him that she already has a ticket to Late Sumer-X (after all, she is a student) and hangs up. ''See you there!'' Yurev says and leaves. Sandra returns to work. It seems like she actaully is gonna make it and mange to do all the design for the small part of the set Vincent Warmer is gonna use tomorrow night. It's gonna be way harder though to manage to finish the rest of the stage set before the tour starts after that mysterious file disappearance though. Later the next day she is finished. She feels like she has understood the rock star who ordered the whole thing and noone of her bosses will have the time to inspect or criticise her work. Something good in all the stress. Sandra sees to that the drawings and instructions are fetched by the rock star's people and then goes home to have a shower and food. She had decided to go to Late Summer-X already before Yurev came around and for amoment she thinks of relaxing a while until it's time to get to the university but instead she decides to go back to work for a few hours. Then she's definitely gonna see what the rock star's personel has done with her design.

During the day Erik has decided to go to Late Summer-X. The students are good customers for some stimulantia and it would be a good opportunity to uphold and broaden his network at the same time as there's a party to participate in. He's not gonna sell anything though, only work his network.

Yurev is going to Late Summer-X as well but he's there for the party. Out of a hunch he also checks Sandra's grades and finds out that they're good.

    It is only Sandra who actively watches the whole show and she finds out that they have almost to 100% followed her design. There are some slight changes made and something that couldn't be done the right way on short notice but still, it semms her design was appreciated. The show is centered around a young adult's room in his apartment. Vincent Warmer plays the role of the man through the songs and his actions on the stage. The stage show, which is a part of the coming full stage show, begins with a song about a boy or a man or a boy or a man or a lunatic. It seems that the man is longing back to some point in his youth where everything was simplier and also before some traumatic accident of some kind. The man is having terrifying nightmares, among other things there live monsters under his bed that apparently ate his cat (and only left an ear, a paw and a tail). It's almost like it could have been for real or maybe it's only the man's nightmares. It's hard to tell and kind of creepy. Erik can't avoid noticing that the phrase about the monsters eating the cat is the same phrase as Vincent were humming when he waited to buy some stuff the night when the police arrived and they both fled to Mad City. To Yurev it's kind of creepy that the monsters living under the bed are spider-like, maybe some kind of black widows bent on world dominion or the like. It do associate to the strange partly spider-like monsters Yurev met in the university culverts. The show ends with the man becoming crazy and placed in an old-fashioned asylum where the last song takes place. The song tells about how his parents don't want to take care of him, how the doctors wanna examine him, electro shocks and other things. The crazy young man sits in his cell with his favourite harmless toys (as a rubber bat and ball) and during night strange things come crawling under the door and the toys come alive. The whole concert ends with spooky ''I see them! Don't you see them?!? Hm, that's odd, d, d, d''. Sandra is satisfied that her work was used and that she als realises where the food for the latest bad trip came from. Apparently from working with this crazy stage show too much.

Monday, July 16, 2012

The door must be closed I say! DRYH c3s4a

Yurev stays at work to try to figure out some of the rest of Format's Great Theorem. Sandra works her ass off to finish the part of the stage set up that shall be used tomorrow (although her work for some weird reason has been set back several months by disappearing file data). Erik works or at least is at work at his father's hotel. Maurice on the other hand is drawing up plans for retrieving the key to the door in the cathedral and preparing himself by gathering a few tools beforehand. In his wardrobe he finds a jacket and trousers that might fit Sandra to make her fit better among the other people in Mad City. He completes the outfit with a hat. Maurice puts his tools for retrieving the key in a woven bag: flashlight (has been to use last time), hammer (always useful), small bottle of cognac (not full) i a plate package, 2 garlics (they were there in the kitchen and Maurice uses garlic most often, might come in handy), army water bottle (from the first big war), Mad City bond paper, bag of Mad City coins and the local telephone directory (Maurice don't trust those new things like cell phones or Internet). Then he heads for Trädgårdstorget and Whites. Since it's evening the gate is closed (going to apartments as well as White's office).

Maurice uses the intercom to call White's office. On the top floor Sandra annoyed walks to the intercom to answer, ''White''. ''Is it you? It's me, Maurice. Let me in.'' Sandra hangs up and returns to work. Maurice waits a little but the door doesn't unlock so he calls again ''There were an error, the door didn't unlock''. ''Who are you?'' Sandra asks harshly. ''It's me, Maurice'', Maurice declaration is met by a ''I don't know any Maurice''. ''No, of course we don't know each other, that takes a longer time but we have have met quite intensely lately'' Maurice answers and follows up with ''I have clothes for you as well''. Sandra tells him that she is busy and can't help him closes whatever door it is he's talking about. As she tries to get out of the conversation somebody calls her on videochat and she hangs up on Maurice once more.It's her boss that wants to check that everything is going OK and also has some useless tips and changes she shall use. Maurice gives up on Sandra and heads for Park hotel instead.

As Maurice arrives at the hotel he finds Erik as expected in the lobby although he think the hotels has become worse than when he was young. Erik greets him in a reserved way. He is a customer after all but still, those things that happened and that crazy french guy...

''We must do something about it!'' Maurice says. ''Do something about what?!?'' Erik asks him. ''The door'' Maurcie answers with his french accent ''The door in the cathedral is still open! Wide open!''. Erik looks at the strange man and ask him why he would be interested in a door in a cathedral. ''If we can go in there they can come out there and that's very bad'' Maurice answers without really answer anything. ''Don't you see that?!?''. Erik points out that there apparently goes a train between Mad City and Linköping so why can't they take the train? And if he's so eager to close the door, why don't he just go and close the door? Upset Maurice explains that the key to the door is on the inside and that he needs help to find the key. Erik don't want to go there again now that he escaped from there and firmly say ''no thanks''. Erik offers him ''goods'' if needs more of that otherwise he will have to find somebody else. Erik has him to leave. Maurice crosses the street to The Travel Center and takes a bus to the university.

After some confusement at the university involving Maurice, a few students and a collegue to Yurev Maurice manage to find Yurev at his office. Apparently the ''russian that deals with maths'' isn't a specific enough descirption to find Yurev spot on. Yurev invites him to his office and arranges for some tea for both of them. Maurice pours some cognac in their tea. Maurice explains that he's worried abut the open door and that he has to find the key to lock. Yurev suggests that he should contact a locks smith and have him to switch locks. If not possible he could remove the door and put a new door with a new look there. If he can't remove the door he can destroy it. A sledgehammer can solve a lot of problems. Yurev is a little reserved when he realises that Maurice isn't sure on where the key is except than it is in Mad City and don't really have a plan for finding it. Maurice is sure though that the corridor goes to the museum and The Curator seems to be communicatable man. Yurev says that he as well has a lot of work to do and can't really agree on that it went well the last time and thinks there's a need for a plan. Yurev uses his listening-to-complaining-students-face and retreats to other thoughts while Maurice go on about the importance of closing the door and how bad other maintanence staff do their work and other things. Yurev won't follow on any wild goose chase and tells Maurice to think it over again and come up with a plan. ''Besides that'' he says ''we need to rest a little. Here, have a ticket to Late Summer-X''. Yurev gives Maurice one of the tickets. Maurice leaves after having disconnected Yurev's telephone receiver, asked if he can borrow it and put it in his bag. Yurev helps him out from the offices and fetch a phone receiver from another office and connects it to his phone.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Phew, Linköping again, DRYH c3s3c

Suddenly the train blows the whistle and soon after starts to brake and slow down (making a lot of noise) and the train pulls in on a small almost never used station in southern Linköping near Tannefors. Hurrying they jump off the train before they miss the opportunity. As the train pulls away again they see that the train is made for older narrower rail sets. In some way the more modern wider rail sets at the station narrows where the train are and then widens again behind it. Once again, weird.

Sandra desperately looks around her to find one of the newpaper stands that the local bus and train company pays for. She grabs one of the free papers and look at the date. It's the day after they ended up in Mad City, shortly after 8 AM, about the time they ought to be at work (for those who work at daytime). Yurev calls his mentor and tells him that he has had a rough night and needs to stay home and will be at his office tomorrow again.  Sandra says ''Hi'' and leaves to get to work as soon as possible. Maurice joins her since they are going approximately the same way. Yurev Leaves to get home and Erik is ambivalent, he ought to go to work tonight on the other the police might be watching the place and searching for him. Still he has his side business to think of and to meet those customers he need to be at the reception at his father's hotel.

Yurev takes a long walk homewards to clear his mind and gather his thoughts. Sandra and Maurice go separate ways in the inner city of Linköping. Maurice walks home and leaves the coin bags he has with him from Mad City and then walks to his work at the cathedral. Sandra goes directly to work. Erik decides to visit his father to check the state of the searching of the hotel and if they're looking for him.

At White there's some commotion. The first question Sandra gets when arriving is wether she were at the office anything this night.Apparently there were a breakin at the office this night. Sandra tries to play unknowing. Everybody thinks it's strange since it seems that noone has stolen anything, for example all the expensive computers are still at the office. The current theory is that the thieves heard the guard company arrive and fled before they arrived. The large open office space where there last night appearred the whole stage set that Sandra's working with is looking normal again. The only trace of anything happening is the kicked-in office door.

Sandra sits down to work since she has lots of work to do to finish the stage set before deadline and it's also her thesis work and the work that will bring her her first spotlight moment, a jumpstart for her career. As she opens the file it is empty although the file application showed a size of gigabytes as expected. Sandra looks at it in shock but with relief she realise that there's an automatic hourly back up. She retrieves the latest backed up version of the document. The computer works for a while and sadnra grabs a cup of coffee. When she gets back she has another file of several gigabytes that's empty. Sandra sighs and calls the ever-so-comptent-or-not IT firm they have a support contract with. They promise to come over and have a look at it. As he puts it ''It probably just has to be retrieved from the back up''. Since White is quite a big customer they're soon there (meanwhile Sandra is having some more coffee). A technician arrives and promptly sits down by her computer and retrieves the same back up as sandra already has retrieved earlier. ''That's it'' he says and stands up to leave. ''Sandra stops him ''Just wait a minute'' and opens the file - empty. ''That has no meaning to me'' the technician says in an attempt to get away. ''Means?!?'' Sandra says ''It's empty!''. ''You mean it's the wrong content?'' he asks. ''No. I mean that it's empty.'' Sandra tells him annoyed as she is. The technician doesn't understand what she means with empty. To him there seems to be a lot of loose phrases from obviously a lot fo places. ''You haven't happened to cut-and-paste a little wrongly?'' he suggests. As Sandra has him to read some of the phrases she realises that he sees something in the file while she doesn't and to him it's just loose meaningless phrases.

Sandra tells him that this is totally wrong. He tries to calm her by telling her that they wil just use the second newest version of the back up. Sandra has another cup of coffee meanwhile. ''Ok, now it's restored'' he says ''By the way, I fixed your mail as well''. Sandra stops him from leaving and looks at her mail and miss like the last three weeks of mail. She tells him that she miss mail and asks why he had to touch at all. ''But it didn't work as supposed anyway'' he answers. ''I want the mail I had. I need that for my work'' Sandra says and has a hard time to not yell at him. Ok I'll fix that. You go and have a cup of coffee in the meantime. When Sandra returns and once more stop him from quickly leaving there's more than three weeks of mail missing. The IT guy looks nervous and promises that a collegue of his that knows e-mail in and out shall be here before lunch. Sandra sighs but realises that this is as best as it gets right now and sits down to try to get something done. Before doing that she has to tell her mentor and boss how the IT guy not fixed averything and had to break her mail. 

Well before lunch the other IT guy arrives and ''just needs to borrow her computer for a few minutes to fix it''. After a while she hears a ''The mail's fixed'' followed by a clonk from the door. Sandra runs after but doesn't manage to catch him. She returns to her computer. The latest four to five weeks of mail is missing. Very upset Sandra calls the IT firm and have them to call the second IT guy and have him to return.

Maurice goes home and leave the coins and his bond paper. He also replaces his watch with his extra watch, not as good but still reliable. Then he goes to the cathedral and start working. While there he ofcourse checks the smal door under the preacher's pulpit. It's closed but unforutanately still unlocked. Maurice moves some stacks of chairs in front of the door. That way nobody, hopefully, notices the door and if somebody tries to enter the church again there will be noise. He has to find the key and lock the door for good. After that he starts to do the cleaning and meanwhile he carefully looks for eventually disappeared things. Later that day, coming for preparations for today's service, the bishop and two priests arrive. As they walk through the cathedral to the back room they finish a discussion on some rock star. One of the priests are very upset and almost go as far to say that it's The Devil's music while the bishop is quite calm and tells him to relax and that it's just a show. Kids always loves what their parents hate and thereby rock stars do what they do to appeal the kids. Nothing to worry about, just cool down.

Erik arrives to his father's place and his father is relieved to see that everything's OK with Erik although he asks where Erik was during the commotion and why it was possible for the drug dealer to try to pose as portier. The police has been silent regarding what exactly happened but they suspected that drug dealings were done in the lobby of the hotel and did a razzia. During this the drug dealer tried to pose as portier and the were some kind of commotion, maybe even a fight, and the pusher managed to get away and disappear among all the people going to and from the train station. Eriks agrees on that it is kind of messy and noisy around the hotel during certain nights. Erik tells his father that there had been surprisingly much commotion this night and that some joker had been banging on the windows and that he had run outside to try to catch the guy. Apparently this happened meanwhile. To his father Erik suggest that they get some camera outside and maybe a locked lobby or a gate at the border of the garden around the hotel. The police, according to Erik's father, will be continuing their hunt elsewhere as it seems very stupid if the pusher should reappear at the same place where he almost got arrested. When he leaves he tells his father to call him if the police wants to talk to him - so he can prepare himself and think of there's anything special he wants to tell them.

Yurev strolls around the city waiting for the shops to open. He's gonna search the pawn shops and antiquarians to find a mechanical watch as they seem more reliable when strange things happen. He finds and buy one but it do hurt a little. As Yurev passes by one of the rain water holes down to the gutters he hear a ''pftui'' as something big were spitting and a piece of a formula comes flying up and lands on the street and starts to roll down the quite steep main street. Yurev thinks it's part of Fermat's Great Theorem and starts to follow it to catch it before it falls into the stream at the end of the street. Luckily for Yurev the piece hits a tree at the end of the street, bounces of that to the side and stops against a building's wall. Yurev picks it up quickly and cleans it as a bypasser looks strangely at him. Yurev ignores her. She doesn't understands anyway. He then goes to the cathedral although he only has found one mechanical watch and gives it to Maurice as a replacement watch for the one Maurice sold to get them all money. Since he's there Maurice gets them some coffe and they sit down but don't really dare to talk about what has happened since other people arre around. Maurice has a theory that it's the germans. They have been trying to conquer France the whole last centuary and hasn't stopped. There were rumours about the nazis and occultism during the second big war. It must be them germans again. Yurev doesn't say anythng on this since he's less usre about why this is happening.

The second IT guy arrives at White and actually manage to fix Sandra's e-mail although for a while there is yet another week of mail gone. With the clarity of the one knowing better the other one he tells Sandra that she shall not configure her mail client for POP. Sandra almost explodes again and tells him that it's not she who has configured the damn thing. It's they who has done that. The computer has worked until the first guy arrived today and fucked it up. The second IT guy leaves and speaks to the office boss about something. Shortly Sandfra hears her boss' upset voice: ''Invoice!?! If I get an invoice for this I'm gonna personally return that to you administration department. You tell your chief that!''

Maurice has decided that he has to gather the others and try to get this door thing solved soon. After all they are the only ones understanding at least a few things about this. Yurev gets a new SIM card and a new smartphone but he has to get a slightly simpler one since he has spent some money lately.

Yurev takes the bus to campus and his work althoug he avoids the culverts, A building and the open space outside A building. At the university web site and posters at campus Yurev sees notices that there's still tickets left for Late Summer-X, a special extra Summer-X especially for the returning Vincent Warmer who will do part of his show as the main consert at the event. Vincent Warmer did study at the university shortly before switching to the rock star career. Yurev actually had him on a maths course, to Yurev he's known as ''The Drop-out'', noone has failed so completely ever at a maths course. Still, could be interesting to see. He do play some kind of hard rock although it is kind of whimpy hard rock according to Yurev. Vincent do some kind of horror show but Yurev can't really believe that that stoopid can perform something scary at all. Still, could be interesting, Yurev gets four tickets. Then Yurev goes to the department where the textile teachers reside to try to get one of them to make him a 1930's costume to better blend in when he continues his hunt for the rests of Fermat's Great Theorem and stop the monsters from destroying it. He actually manage to interest one of them to do, partly by giving her a ticket to Late Summer-X.

Yurev's player gathers his 3 Discipline dice and the game master rolls 1 Pain dice. Noone rolls any successes so Yurev wins and Discipline is dominating. Game master uses the two markers for Despair and removes Yurev's player's sixes and then it is an even cut between Pain and Discipline. The player and game master rolls a die each to solve wich should be dominating. After two rolls it is decided that Discipline is dominating. Yurev is in such good condition htat y
the player can't use any of the bonus when Discipline is dominating. The textile teacher is convinced.


Yurev thanks her and returns to get a new ticket to Late Summer-X. He then goes to his office to type the formula into his computer to get a back up copy of it. He also creates a copy on his USB disk and on his personal Google sites wiki page. As he sits there he hear a silent yelp from the cellar. The yelp is cut of with a silent thump againt the floor, the ceiling of the cellar. Yurev finishes it and leaves a soon as possible.

Erik returns to his job in good time to check that it seems OK and to be there when the rock star arrives to buy some ''stuff''. Vincent is soon there and the dealing is quickly done. As he hands over the ''stuff'' Erik asks Vincent what kind of place it was. Vincent looks perplex. Erik tries to explain and refers to when he SMS:ed Vincent. ''Aha'' Vincent says ''You mean when you had your bad trip the other night?'' Erik drops the matter and the rock star leaves.

Erik's player uses one marker of Hope to remove on check on Exhaustion and Maurice's player uses the other one to remove a check on Exhaustion as well.

Monday, July 9, 2012

The train station, c3s3b

They arrive at the railway station or rather on the other side of the street. They can see a railway yard beyond the station house and lots of engine and wagon garages and warehouses. Sandra is already on the other side of the street when Erik's almost hit by a stage coach drawn by galopping horses. Yurev manage to pull him back so that Erik only gets hit by one of the lamps of the wagon. It doesn't hurt though and the wagon or the horses didn't make any noise either. Maurice stops his rant about looking before the crossing the street and that there's no need for specific crossings. It has only weakened the youth. He shouts at them to look out but too late. ''How iss itt?'' Yurev asks Erik. ''Cool'' Erik answers since the only sensation he had was that it was cool but no pain or noise. Maurice hurries forward to see how it went. All three of them hurry over to the other side while Maurice rants about how they drive like crazy here, not like when he was young. At that time there were regulations. Meanwhile Sandra has found that the station house is closed but that there are boards with times for arrivals, leaving and train set. They're all printed on a exotic kind of paper, almost as if it was made out of cloth rather than celloluse.

As the others arrive Sandra has found a train to Linköping at 05:42. Now there's just the problem of finding tickets for the train...

They have almost three hours 'til the train is expected to leave and decides to sit down and wait for the station house to open so they can buy tickets. While they wait they get the time to worry wether somebody will come and look for them when the train arrives and wether the train is a fake train just to get htem there and make it easy to catch them. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Sandra sit down and try to relax, takes off her shoes to rest her feet, especially the foot she hurt earlier at The Bizarre Bazar. Yurev on the other hand looks for some place to hide. As they hear a ringing sound in the rails he decides to take cover between the main building and a side building where there are more shadows. Sandra puts on her shoes and stand up to hide somewhere as well. Erik sits as before with his head in his hands and doesn't seem to even notice the train whistle. Yurev and Sandra hide between the houses. Maurice really, really whises that it was one of those cloudy foggy nights and quite unconsciously trigger his madness talent.

Maurice's player wants to hide them from whoever is looking for them and for them (needle nose) the game master rolls 5 Pain dice. As usual Maurice player starts with 3 Discipline dice and then adds 4 dice for Madness talent (weather changes). Minor use of Exhaustion talent gaurantees 4 successes (Maurice's exhaustion is 4). Maurice wins but Pain is dominating. Maurice suffers but succeeds in hiding them from the train and the other searchers.

Suddenly all clouds grows and gathers above, almost like in a horror B-movie. Following the clouds are a thick londonish fog that chills and covers everything. The slowly whirling fog reminds Maurice of gas attacks during the first big war and he immediately runs for a corner where he can be hidden and take cover from as much of the gas as possible assuming it's coming from the direction he saw the fog from first. Maurice runs to the front side of the staion building and crawls up in the corner of the big front stairs and the wall. Sandra is quite spooked by the suddenly appearing thick fog and Yurev doesn't like that the train coming in to the station suddenly surrounded itself in fog - very strange. Both Yurev and Sandra walks around another corner to the front side to hide from the train. Erik now realises that somethings happening and looks for his companions but can't see them.

A freight train thunders and storm through the fog and pass by the station. The wagons are marked ''MadEx''. Eriks calls for his companions and when the train has passed he walks over to the other platforms to look for the others. Even if they're not really friends, they're the closest he has here. As Sandra rounds the corner Maurices calls to her to duck down beside him by the stairs-wall corner. '''They're out to get us'' he says as he intensly looks into the fog. ''Who?'' Sandra wonders. ''The germans!'' Murice says and they both falls silent as a man in trenchcoat and fedora steps into the small puddle of light around the one gas light in front of the station. He has no head but the hat is floating above a pin. He stops in the light and very much but not at all looks like Humphrey Bogart or someone, pulls out a cigarette and and lights it and walks on. Thanks to the fog he doesn't notice the two croaching by the stairs. Yurev decided to not rund the corner to the front side after all and doesn't see the pin head that almost found them.

Erik doesn't find the others and his brain starts to try to find a reason for them to disappear. Could someone at the train have snatched them? But then, why not him? He works him self up as he continue looking for them, pending between worried something has happened and irritated that they left without telling him. Sandra leaves Maurice in his corner and tries to find someone of the other and walks toward where she and Yurev were earlier. They meet with suspicion between the houses. Sandra tells him that one of the pin heads passed by on the front side. Yurev and Sandra walks back to the platform side and discovers that Erik's no longer there. They calls for him but get no answer. Erik has heard them though and returns to the station house and still with great suspicion the three of them meet. They can't decide on what really happened with the fog and everything. It's clear that they almost got discovered though.

Yurev decides to walk around the station building again to find Maurice after Sandra's description. As he comes close to the main stairs somebody's hisses ''Watchword!'' towards him - with a clear french accent. Yurev walks on in the fog and suddenly Maurice hisses again ''Who are you?!?'' and as Yurev continue he finds Maurice ready to strike him down with the sweeper shaft wich Maurice holds like it were a bayonette equipped rifle. ''It's me!'' Yurev says ''How many russians with cargo pants have you seen in this town, eh?''. Maurice lowers the shaft and whispers to Yurev ''It should be over soon''. Yurev thinks he speaks of the train and tells him that it has passed. What Maurice is talking about is the gas attack he thinks is happening. The both of them return two the other side of the building. Maurice follows Yurev ready to strike him down, should he transform to a german soldier like the mechanic in the cellar earlier. They are quite suspicious about the fog though. Besides that it came very quickly it seemed to come with the train biut it didn't leave with the train. Maurice don't realise that it was he creating the fog.

Suspiciously, jumping at every sound or shadow, they wait for the train to Linköping to arrive. Minute by minute crawls by, slowly. After a while Maurice starts to patrol the platform.

A while after the dawn the station house opens and they go inside to buy tickets. A man in a uniform behind the ticket desk sells four tickets to Linköping to Maurice, 666 coins each. Maurice gets exchange for one of his 4 000 coins bond papers (in coins). They also, since it's still a while until the train arrives, buys some breakfast in the restaurant. Maurice and Sandra get a regular ''french breakfast'' and the other chooses the ''english breakfast''. The only two kinds there are. Sandra aren't really satisfied with any of the choices though but Maurice is happy for a real french breakfast. The breakfast sost 42 coins each, Maurice pays again (with tip) and they hurry to the platform for their train.

An old steam train pulls up to the platform and they enter the wagon printed on their tickets. They sit down and as the train pulls out they start to realx a little but they're not in Linköping yet. Maurice entertains them with stories about steam trains and the The Orient Express and other train realated stories. A waitress offers them tea and cookies. Almost they can relax but only almost.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Finding the railway station, c3s3a

As they discuss what the next step is Sandra is getting more and more frustrated since she needs to get back and work on her design work at White wich is both her thesis and the work that will be her break on the way to famousness. Erik on the other hand don't know if the police is looking for him regarding the drug dealings so he's in no hurry at all. In the end they decide that taking the train is the best option. One small problem is that the directions they got is passing by Crazy News that's probaly burning wildly and surrounded by firemen and policemen. Still they should be able to shortly divert from the directions and take a detour around the area around Crazy News. Arriving near Crazy News they see that there's lots of people and they start to walk around the area slightly afraid to get lost in the small streets and alleys. Erik is kind of  leading the group and since they're quite sure the pin men and needle noses are around Erik once more stirs up the flies inside him and sends them out to scout the area. As they walk around Crazy News and the people there they even see one of the pin men with a needle nose. Sandra looks around extra carefully since Erik's kind of distracted when taking in all the flies' preceptions. Yurev is good at geometry and doesn't let them go astray or to close.

GM's rolling 5 Pain dice for the needle nose. Erik's player gathers 3 Discipline dice, 1 Exhaustion die (increasing Exhaustion with 1), 2 Exhaustion dice from Exhaustion talent (read people, see who's looking for them and to be avoided, +1 Exhaustion), 4 Madness talent dice (large area to get a notice of people to avoid soon enough). Sandra adds her 3 Dicipline dice (looking around) and Yurev his 3 Discipline dice (good at math, complex systems). Erik rolls and wins, Pain is dominating. Since Pain is dominating one marker per involved player (3) goes to Bowl of Despair. Erik is suffering although he succeeds.

As Erik takes in the surroundings and tell them where to go to avoid the needle noses he also realises what it is he actually are doing when he get this information. It is really coming flies out of him and then he communicates with them. That's not possible but yet worse - how gross and unnatural. What kind of abomination is he becoming? They do manage to avoid the needle noses and get around the area of the Crazy News building but then Erik has to collapse for a while after the flies has returned and crept into him. There's no longer any way to blame this on a bad trip. What Erik also noticed via the flies is that the building in itself isn't badly harmed and there's pin heads searching for someone. Erik also see a police chief talking to the Tacks Man and behind the Tacks Man stands a few pin heads and one of them is holding the leashes of a few needle noses. They walk on and finally arrives at the railway station.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Stopping the news presses, c3s2b

As they enter the corridor they feel the scent of dressing rooms. They carefully examine the slightly lit up corridors and rooms and find - dressing rooms. Sandra finds a short corridor and in the other end another door. Behind it she hears the sound of machines reminding her of a story about a mangle by Stephen King. In the dark corridor they're very grateful for Maurice's flashlight. They start to think about finding the fuse box and sabotage that for knocking out the lights to be able to more permanently sabotage the printing machines. Sabotageing the printing machines could be hard though because either it's dark and easy to approach them or there's power and easy to sabotage them by dropping stuff into them but hard to apporach them. Instead they decide to destroy the fuse box and switch boards more permanently to stop the printing machines long enough for new news to pop up. The fuse box and switch boards probably aren't sorrounded by people wich makes everything easier. Probably they find these in the basement.

They continue to senak around in the end of the building and find a stairwell with stairs upwards as well as downwards. For a moment they ponder about splitting up but then they remember all scary movies where people split up and get killed of one by one. Erik do for a short insit on this being real life and not a scary movie and that that doesn't apply here. Then he realises what has been going on the last hours and falls silent. They decide to stick together and examine what they expect to be the cellar.

The stairs extend down to a cellar with a big storage area full, a maze of stacked storage cases. There's an electric switch that when switched brings some light and makes the room barely navigatable. As they they look around somebody suddenly calls them and ask who they are and what they're doing. Maurice walks forward and lifts his sweeper and says that he's just there for the cleaning. The voice tells him that that isn't necessary down here and Maurice makes excuses about being new at the job and asks where he is. The other three sneaks back slowly sliently while Maurice approach the other man. The other man looks at him and irritated expalins that he's in the storage area and switchboards and calls him names for having walked down in the cellar when searching for the rooms to clean. An argument sails up as the experienced and older maurice is treated like an unemployed kid by the not even middle aged mechanic. Maurice doesn't take that and hits him with the sweeper and tries to push him to the ground.

Maurice's player gathers 3 Discipline dice and do a minor use of his Exhaustion talent (very quick). Since Maurice has 4 in Exhaustion that grants him 4 successes and a gauranteed win versus the game master's mechanics' 1 Pain die. Dice are rolled and Pain is dominating and a marker is put into The bowl of Despair.

As he hits the mechanic the war memories return and he sees the man as what he is: One of the germans who are behind most of the wrong and evil things in the world. ''German bastard!'' he shouts as he hits him again and again. As Erik comes running he hear Maurice scream ''Now you're going to die!''. Erik shouts for Maurice and finds him tring towards him with the sweeper held like a gun with bayonette. Erik backs a little and asks if Maurice is okey. ''Oh, well, I guess so he says'' and sits down. ''What happened?'' Erik asks. Maurice explains that it was a german - in uniform - and that he pullled forth something to hit Maurice. As they gather at some distance from Maurice they see the knocked out mechanic wich Maurice seems to refer to as ''the german''. Nobody really wants to be left behind watching the mechanic so Maurice ties up the german and puts some of his own jams eraser into his mouth to stop him from screaming and of they go - searching for the switch board.

As they look around realising how big the area is Erik again starts to spew out his flies and the others flee searching in other places.

Erik's player gathers his 3 Discipline dice and adds 2 Madness dice for minor use of his madness talent. The game master rolls 1 Pain dice. Erik wins and Madness is in dominating. The game master picks one marker from Bowl of Despair to remove the madness 6 and thereby tipping it over to Discipline being in dominance. The marker goes to Bowl of Hope where the palyers can use it. Erik's player also get to either remove a check mark on Exhaustion or Fight/Flight. He chooses to remove one at Fight/Flight.

Erik's flies finds the switch board for him while the others shrugs everytime they hear the buzzing. Following Erik's shouting where to go they find the switch board and soon Erik's there as well - giggling. As both power cords as well as fuse box are quite unshielded they decide to start a big fire that will break the cords and fuse box enough to stop the printing machines for a while. They gather paper, note books, parts from a case and a kerosene lamp. Maurice learned how to burn things down during the wars and starts quite a good fire as the others leave and carry away the mechanic. Since Maurice also is very quick he can stay a little longer by the fire and still leave safely.

Maurice wants to start a fire that stops the news about them from being printed, the game master rolls 10 Pain dice. Maurice's player gathers 3 Discipline dice, 1 Exhaustion die from straining himself (+1 Exhaustion, in total 5), 6 Madness die. He also gets minimum 5 successes from minor use of Exhaustion talent. He also uses a marker from Bowl of Hope to decrease his Exhaustion after the roll. Maurice's player wins and Discipline is dominating. Since Discipline is dominating Maurice's player decides to remove a Flight check mark.

Maurice starts up a good fire that destroys the switch board enough to stop the news from being printed. As the others try to hurry him he cooly feeds the fire and then swiftly comes walking telling them that they can leave now. When they pass by one of the dressing rooms they put down the mechanic. Maurice remove the gag to stop him from suffocating. ''What are you doing?!?'' the mechanic shouts. Maurice stuffs it back and hurries after the others. As they turns around the corner they hear someone raise one of the doors and shout if something happened and gets shouted back by the foreman, to return to the work. They hang around nearby to see that something actually happens and after a while they hear the bells from the fire carriages and before that the big sign on the front of the building has switched off and people start runninga round. They leave convinced that the fire is spreading. They return to the pub and order some beer, wine and food. After selling his clock to The Curator Maurice has a lot of money called Wax King coins.

They discuss what they're gonna do next. The Curator told them to ''take control'' to get out of the nightmare. Erik thinks that they need to blend in first. As they discuss they get to think of the man that followed Erik into this world and then directly disappeared by stepping to the side. The man was one of Erik's regular speed customers that were there when the police arrived and followed Erik. Yurev also saw him and knows him as a drop out from one of Yurev's courses in mathematics. He seems to know what this is all about. If he weren't he wouldn't have been able to make that split second decision and leave. Another person that comes up is The Curator since he seems to know a lot and don't seems totally against telling them things and he's neither pin heads or clockwork policemen. Yurev also brings up the strange animal that tipped them about stopping the printing machines but Sandra defintely aren't in the stage of trusting unknown animals in the gutters - not yet anyway. Normally (before they started to stay awake) they would have gone to bed a while ago and simply slept and let their unconciousnesses work the matter but as soon as sleep is mentioned they all get a creepy feeling and agree on that being a bad plan.


When Erik gets forth his smartphone to check the time (02:27) he sees that it is showing a notice about an unanswered call and a voice message, just like if it had or has contact with a cell phone network. That's strange, that it hasn't had before in Mad City. Warily Erik calls to check his message. He actually comes forward to the server that tells him that he has an unread message and he chooses to listen to it. It's his father that's wondering where he is. Apparently something happened at the hotel. There were some pusher that the police tried to catch while the pusher tried to get away by acting like he were the portier. There were some tumble and the pusher got away. His father were questioned shortly and his father also wonders where Erik is and if everything is alright. Erik tries to send his father an SMS to tell him that everything is OK and that he will get back in touch. The SMS leaves and appears to arrive. As there's some connection Erik hurries to send a SMS to his girlfriend as well. When he looks at the phone he notice that he has 10G coverage.

They all stare at the phone and erik tries to put through a call. He chooses Taxi Linköping but comes to Taxi Mad City. He tells them that he called the wrong number and hangs up. Now he starts to wonder who got his SMS:s. Now he has 666G coverage, that's less funny. Now erik comes to think of that he actually has a number to an unregistered number the rock star uses anomyously and sends him a SMS, something along the lines of ''Hi, WTF is going on, some help would fit nicely.''. Soon there's an answer from the rock star ''where are you? I need more, I have a show tomorrow night''. Erik stares at the phone.

Erik answers with another SMS ''In Mad City. How do I get away from here?''. Soon there's an answer again ''Wait slightly longer between trips? Take the train?''. They all stare at the message. What train?!? Erik turns to a local and asks if there's a railway station in town. The local looks at him as if he were from another dimension ''Yes..?'' Erik asks for directions to the station. Sandra produces a fountain pen and note book and the local puts down walk direction in list form. As Erik turns to his phone again to start the Google Maps app he notice that he has 42G connection. The maps don't load though.

Maurice looks for the owner to settle the tab and maybe get some change on his big bond paper on 10 000 Wax King coins. They go to the owner's office to not have to flash the bond paper's large sum. The owner substracts the amount for their drinks and food and writes a new bond paper on the rest of the sum. At Maurice's request the owner istead writes two bonds at 4 000 Wax King coins and hands over those together with a bag of slightly more than 1 000 Wax King coins. As Maurice prepares to receive a bag of like five kilos, maybe ten kilos of coins he gets something that weights about half a kilo. Suprised he returns to the others. For the moment they have no real plan besides waiting for the morning when the clothes shop opens, get some local clothes and take the train back to Linköping.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Finding Crazy News, c3s2a

They walk to the building where Crazy News resides but stop shortly before they walk up in front of the house. Across the street in a gate stands another of the pin men. Just hanging around but not fooling the characters. Sandra abruptly turns around to not show her face and bumps into the others and they all walks around the nearest corner. Sandra explains what she saw to the others. They discuss how to get into the news building and decides to try to find a door at the back side. The plan how to get Crazy News to not print the news about them is not clear yet. Should they stop the news about them or should they give them bigger news to print?

One idea is to burn down some building or a few to create some big news. ''You could of course sabotage the printing machines...'' somebody says almost among them. They fall silent and look around slightly startled. They hear something in water gutter along the roof ridge and see the tip of a slim furry tail disappear away as the owner of it runs away in the gutter. Now that's an idea. There's some worries that they will print the news about them as soon as the printing machines works again but they decide that by then there will probably be new interesting news to print. They walk around to the back side of Crazy News' building, carefully avoiding to show themselves to the pin man on the front street. As they walk away Yurev says a silent thank you towards the water gutter.

At the back side is a row of short bridges extending from the wall at old type steel roll-top doors, furtherst away there's also two regular doors. When the walk up to the doors they hear a slow thundering industrial sound from inside the building. They raise two of the doors slightly to look inside. Inside is people hastily walking around doing things and there's also a lot of machines that could be the printing machines. As Erik raises the second door he finds that the others has walked away looking at other things and noone is around to look into the door he lifts. Kind of instinctively, Erik hasn't exactly admitted he's powers yet, Erik stirs up the flies inside him and lets them out and sends them into the building to get an overview. Meanwhile Sandra examines the two regular doors and finds a corridor with doors inside both of them.

Sandra was going to notice Erik about the unlocked doors as well but when she sees him standing there with all the flies coming out of his mouth she hurryingly return to the others and tells them that he ''is vomiting flies''. Maurice interprets this as when he during the first war saw  people getting eggs laid in their wounds and having them hatch inside people and immediately counts him as ''soon dead''. They do walk over there to try to help him and it gets obvious that something else is going on. Erik isn't suceptable for talk and they stare at what's happening, Yurev tries to get another look into the printing hall though - keeping his distance to Erik and the flies.

Erik's player gathers his 3 Discipline dice, 1 Exhaustion die (and increases Exhaustion with 1), minor usage of Exhaustion talent (reading people) gives him 1 gaurenteed success, 3 Madness dice for Madness talent. The Game Master rolls 2 Pain dice for the difficulty to gather and process the information from the flies from the big hall. Erik suceeds and Madness dominates (Erik's player checks Flight).

Erik suddenly just lets the the door go and backs away and realises what is happening and vomits and coughs and just wants to disappear. Erik also almost goes mad as the flies returns into him and with all the input from the flies and the insight into what happens he starts to laugh madly and shout ''How Gross!'' and more falls down on his butt rather than sits down. The others back away as he sits there laughing, vomiting and goes on about how gross he is. After a while he slows down and start to put the pieces of what the flies noticed together and that it's clearly is a printing machine hall inside. There's a lot of younger workers in simple clothes and a few people looking like mechanics and one snooty elder guy that walks around behaving bossy. There's big rolls of paper and stacks of newpapers to be delivered. Everybody seems very stressed and busy. He gets the feeling that they are working against a deadline somewhere soon.

Giggingly Erik expalins to the others ''that it's alright'' and ''they're very busy inside there''. ''I have flies living inside me'' he continues as the others wonder wether he finally went mad. He manage to describe what he saw and smelled and felt inside via the flies. A final fly returns and creeps back into him via the nose. He tells them that he sort of  kinda did it conciously and that it's useful. Via the flies Erik saw that the papers being printed is the same edition as the one the paper boy were delivering so they have some respit but not for long it seems. Trying to forget what just happened they walk over towards the unlocked doors further away.