Scotoma, Or, *Annie-Kate's Magic Flying Ark*

The Division of Astrogation is being run by Antikythera's deputy and assumed Dean of Astrogation, Annie-Kate Orey, a literal cartoon character come to life as a result of, as with nearly everything unexplained aboard the ark, the 𝓥𝓸𝓲𝓭.

Yes, she's basically Miss Frizzle. A voidling adopted the persona of the in-universe equivalent of Miss Frizzle. The Magic Stagecoach, it turns out, was quite popular among the Astrogation staff that a Voidling disassembled after entering Astrogation via the instrumentation active during the 𝓥𝓸𝓲𝓭 dive, so it was only natural that it would latch onto that character.

With the crew gone and Antikythera—a being of pure knowledge and reason, the Astral Seeker warlock patron and outside entity, or "pillar" empowering the Ephemeris Engine (navigation computer)—shellshocked by the pure incomprehensible unreality of the 𝓥𝓸𝓲𝓭, Annie the Voidling, awakening alone and confused, set about putting together the pieces with the help of the Sleepers.

My runs this year were about clearing out monsters from the Astrogation facilities, repairing machinery, and, finally, putting back together Annie-Kate's shattered mind. As it turns out, trying to be a functional normal person while actually being a creature of pure unreality antithetical to this plane of existence is difficult.

The title, by the way, refers to Annie's one blind spot: her own nature.

Runs:

  1. Alone and Blue (aka A Blind Awakening)
  2. Fill Up My Senses
  3. Smooth Criminal
  4. Diamond Waves
  5. The Answer is 'No'

Run 1: Alone And Blue (aka A Blind Awakening) #

(Friday evening)

Sleepers: #

Where did you go? Who did you meet? What did you do? What did you learn? #

The group woke up in a cave, blindfolded and bound by magic bandages. [The petrified sleepers were packaged for transport.] Some initial communication challenges, but left the cave room. Walking through the cave hallways, appeared to be an old mine.

What's next? #

https://youtu.be/0hdQi2_HzAc

Run 2: Fill Up My Senses #

(Friday late evening to Saturday early morning)

Sleepers: #

Where did you go? Who did you meet? What did you do? What did you learn? #

On this run, the mission was to repair lightpipes (via a puzzle involving a strange number encoding system), refocus images (via a Star Battle puzzle), and clear out/realign an interferometer complex by fighting back Corrupted Continual Flames and Corrupted Mirrors and aligning the mirrors to funnel the light together.

Meanwhile, Annie-Kate was quite tired but very driven to get Astrogation's systems working again. During the mission briefing, she unconsciously warped reality into a scene resembling a Magic Stagecoach episode in order to explain the wave nature of light, but she snapped back when she realized she was supposed to be a real person.

What's next? #

[No run report was written after this late Friday run. The players were very tired.]

https://youtu.be/RNOTF-znQyw

Run 3: Smooth Criminal #

(Saturday morning to afternoon)

Sleepers: #

Where did you go? Who did you meet? What did you do? What did you learn? #

We first went to the Astrogation Department to help Annie-Kate Orey and Dalkan clear out voidlings from the Wisp hangar/probe array. We escorted Dalkan there & cleared out engineers and mannequin-like constructs. After doing so, we went down to the very lowest lens of the shaft to the Reliquary of Iniki (see GM Tim). Our mission from ANNIE was to find and return the M.A.G.P.I.E.S. that two cloven [Peri and Riggs, friends of Cloven Seedling explorer Isaac (see GM Alex Reutter), seen in Astrogation] steered astray. Down there, we found many paths that led to orbs of pure Void being held in a stable state. We pressed on through passageways of organic material and encountered a void seeder that stuck Aurum with a void seed. We took the magma tubes to the reliquary of Iniki, a miles-wide sanctuary with a central lake surrounded by catfolk settlements (~500 catfolk), @ south end: temple, where the cloven was being cared for. We got there whole and flew the MAGPIES up through the central shaft, outside the Ark, and into the probe hold of Astrogation.

What's next? #

https://youtu.be/h_D3VFfhvs4

[Note: During this run, the DArk became increasingly visible behind the Ark, much to Annie's consternation. She and Dalkan scrambled to restart the probe-launching facilities, including the PhASER (Phased Array Starwisp Ejection Runes), requiring the Sleepers to provide a flash of light as a calibration pulse for the array of runes.

During brief emergency MicroVoidDives, the MAGPIES space telescope/probe, which also functioned as a barely-flyable shuttlecraft, unintentionally exposed its riders to the 𝓥𝓸𝓲𝓭, leading to disintegration and corruption of their personalities, some aspects permanently.

Annie's psychological disintegration continued. The Sleepers reassured her that despite Annie-Kate being a fictional character incarnated by a voidling, she was as real as anyone and as capable of doing good. It is unclear whether she felt much better because of it.]

Run 4: Diamond Waves #

(Saturday evening to early Sunday)

Sleepers: #

Where did you go? Who did you meet? What did you do? What did you learn? #

Talked to Annie-Kate, who is experiencing existential troubles regarding her ontology. [Continued from before, Annie was hiding in dread of herself before the Age of Myth trio triggered her into launching the whole group into a living episode of The Magic Stagecoach by asking about the nature of the cosmos.]
-> She said there are 20 OTHER ARCS FOLLOWING!!!

Attempted to repair the Ephemeris Engine:
-> Successfully restored power. [by fighting corrupted elementals of pure force, steam, and cold.]
-> Failed to fully decode engine schematics. [This puzzle, involving ternary encoding and the Danish number system, was incredibly difficult. Much thanks to all of the players for playing along! They did, however, restore several corrupted messages representing final thoughts from ANTIKYTHERA before IT fell unconscious.]

Met rune doll BABBLE. [The three Age of Myth characters, Lucius, Tofungus, and Xanthe, proceeded to declare BABBLE, confused and disconnected from Babel, a proper citizen, a title it accepted immediately.]

What's next? #

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5YTF26mkiU

Run 5: The Answer is 'No' #

(Finale, Sunday morning to afternoon)

Sleepers: #

Where did you go? Who did you meet? What did you do? What did you learn? #

Walking into Astrogation one fine morning, Sleepers found the offices abuzz with activity to calculate the trajectory in preparation for the final landing sequence on PC50, but the division chief was in bad sorts: Annie-Kate was hiding again under her desk from reality. After managing to get her out of her shell for a little bit of exposition via reality-warped Magic Stagecoach episode about the Ark's origin, and then a trip to the age of the dinosaurs triggered by Akykalos in order to avoid the party suffocating due to the loss of life support aboard the Ark (see Caduceus by GM Joshua), while debating what to do about Division of Astrogation and its Dean Annie...

A Carcosan emissary (see GM Michael Jay) arrived to beseech Annie's favor and delude her into joining the King in Yellow as a teacher-prophet of his void-originated greatness. The Sleepers saw through the emissary's illusory glamour and realized his nature as a construct animated by the King in Yellow, a voidling aspiring to become a new god by spreading his influence and worship around the Ark. Incensed, the emissary ordered his knights to remove the offenders, starting a fight in Annie's office.

By the time the emissary and his knights were disposed of, however, Annie had finally fully lost her grip on reality and her own personality. The very physical structure of the Ark in the Division of Astrogation disintegrated as well. However, the voidling's beliefs, each word separately and assemblable into statements, were instantiated here as physical objects.

The situation:
VOIDLING IS ME
VOIDLING IS DANGEROUS
VOID IS NOT REAL
VOID IS VOID
WORD IS FRAGILE
HEROES IS YOU

After puzzling through six separate rooms full of impossible challenges made solvable by rewriting reality via formation of various statements, the Sleepers reassembled (to the best of my recollection)...

ARK IS GUIDED
HULL IS SOLID AND GRAVITY
ANTIKYTHERA IS AWAKE
ASTROGATION IS WORK
TELESCOPE IS SEE
PROBE IS GO (though some facilities were still broken from Run 3)
ENGINE IS CALCULATE (though still partially broken from run 4)
VOID IS INCAPACITATED

ANNIE IS CREW
ANNIE IS REAL
ANNIE IS BRAVE
ANNIE IS FUN
ANNIE IS OPEN
ANNIE IS NAVIGATOR
ANNIE IS ME

This placed a version of Annie, inhabited again by the voidling, sans her fictional reality-warping powers, in charge of plotting the final course of the ship. Unfortunately, due to VOIDLING IS DANGEROUS, her very presence warped and corrupted the instruments, making the landing a risky proposition. She made her best attempt at it, and between a high roll, a bit of Flash of Genius from a visiting artificer, and her own skill,

The
Ark
was
guided.

(Safe landing credit also goes to players with GM Bianca, GM Hannah Greene, and GM Nathan, if I remember correctly.)

Because in the end, she might be a Voidling, but if anyone's licensed to drive a spaceship carved out of an entire mountain ripped from a dying planet, it's Miss Frizzle, who is definitely a Time Lord Annie-Kate Orey, Warlock of Antikythera, Dean of Astrogation, and (last but not least important) schoolteacher.

To all the players, from me and Liz: a shiny golden star. Thank you for coming with me on this journey. Even if it's all fictional, you made it all come to life, as Annie-Kate would agree.

Gallery: #

PrinceCon 49 Summaries & Run Recaps: #

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