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diceforanaltmode · 5 years

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Team Fire: Session 3, Egg?!; Part 1: Reunions? Breakfast?

Team Fire has continued their adventuring and at last we can bring you more of their shenanigans! Thanks to Hawke for providing recordings for this session and for the rest of the party for taking so much of their time to help with the transcription of all ~3.5hours of it - now you have an even more detailed account of all the hijinks! The full summary came to 30pages/10k+words, so we’ve split it into four parts to make it a bit easier to read on tumblr - click through to Session 3 part 2 at the end to keep reading!

TEAM FIRE

Rodimus by Frosty (tiefling sorcerer) Drift by Space (earth genasi rogue) Ratchet by Hawke (firbolg cleric) Magnus | Minimus by Tuna (half-orc paladin | human/tethyrian wizard) Megatron by Briar (goliath paladin) Rewind by Robin (high elf wizard) (out for this week, but back soon) First Session | Second Session

We begin our adventure with the party asleep after their long day defeating Zeta. In the middle of the night, Rodimus wakes up in the room he shares with Drift, with the sudden sense that someone has gone, like that feeling when people say they know that a relative has died, but also a sense of relief, like it was a shitty relative. To help himself get back to sleep, Rodimus casts sleep on himself.

Ratchet passes out in bed asleep, just conks right out. He dreams of his memories of what happened to the hospital. What Megatron did. But still, Ratchet rises early and rolls out of bed. He’s getting ready for the day when there’s a knock at the door.

“Yes?”

Roller’s voice comes through the door. “Ratch, it’s me, can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure.” Ratchet opens the door.

“Ah, hey, you doing alright? You sleep okay?”

“Ah, yeah, yeah, Slept pretty well.”

“That’s good. Hey, uh, I got a message from Orion, asked if we could meet to catch up since we didn’t really get to yesterday.”

“Oh, did we now.” Ratchet says sarcastically. “Yeah, the little screaming match yesterday,” Ratchet coughs. “Anyways - yeah, did he want to meet with both of us, or?”

“Yeah. To, y’know, avoid any shouting matches again, there’s a cafe a couple streets down, if you wanted to walk over, they open pretty early, and the coffee’s better than what Swerve serves - but don’t tell him I said that.”

“I’ll always take a good coffee.”

“Alright,”

“I’ll be ready in ten,”

“Okay, I’ll meet you downstairs.”

Ratchet and Roller walk over in companionable silence. Ratchet’s still reflecting on the last day, after having spent the evening mostly drunk, and Roller doesn’t force any small talk.

As they walk into the shop, they see baskets of bread and bagels and rolls, rows of pastries in glass cases, and in a large, round case, a whole cake, decorated with frosting shaped like yellow flowers. There are a few others in the cafe eating breakfast or picking up a loaf of bread for the day, Rung and Nightbeat are finishing up their breakfast.

Orion is in a back corner, halfway through a mug of coffee and an apple turnover, and, talking to an Aarakocra woman, dressed in similar armor to Orion, who looks upset and angry. As Ratchet and Roller get closer, she stands up to leave, and they overhear Orion say, “Alright, I’ll ask him.” Orion looks up and acknowledges Roller and Ratchet.

Ratchet grabs a coffee and then joins Orion. There’s a bit of awkwardness because the last time they saw each other, Orion was screaming at the scourge of Kaon and they had just killed Zeta. Roller follows, getting a coffee and a bearclaw. Ratchet and Orion both sit with their backs to the wall, while Roller has his back to the room.

“Thank you for coming,” Orion says, “It’s good to see you again in better circumstances.”

Ratchet stares into his mug of coffee for a little bit, before taking a deep slurp. “So, Orion, how’s the mind control been?”

“Well, better now that you all got rid of Zeta. Things aren’t quite yet coming back, but I’ve been talking with the AVL folks and they’ve been filling me in on what’s happened, they’ve been filling in all the guards. That’s also - the woman who just left, she’s also in the guard, she had the mind control, and, well, we both had the same thing, but she had it worse because - well, we can’t remember, but her kid is gone, and from what we can piece together, she thinks Zeta ordered her to bring her kid to him and leave the kid.”

Ratchet makes a horrified face at the notion.

“I take it from your reaction that you didn’t see any sign of the kid when you made your way through the castle.”

“To be honest I was a bit preoccupied on our way out making sure you got out, so no. We might be able to go back, search the premises if it helps, if - I’m not sure.”

“Yeah, I - assumed if you’d seen someone you would have made sure they got out, but I promised Ekalu I’d ask, since you were in the castle.”

“Yeah, I - I could ask the others when I get back to the tavern…” Ratchet says, trailing off to mutter, “her fucking kid...”

“I appreciate that.” Orion says, to Ratchet’s offer.

“Her fucking kid.” Ratchet mutters again, shaking his head.

Orion looks very downcast. “Fortunately from what we can tell it seems her kid was only gone a few days at the most, maybe a week. So at least not the entire time Zeta has been here.”

“So - you want to stage a search and rescue?”

“I wouldn’t know where to start. There’s the map the AVL showed you, I wouldn’t know where else a kid would be,” he considers, “unless there’s some part of the castle that Zeta built recently, something the AVL wouldn’t know about.”

“Yeah, I have an idea.” Ratchet says, “and you can rule out the high-security dungeons, we combed through those.”

“I heard. I -” Orion pauses, frowning, “ - what happened in there? I - You don’t - you don’t have to give me all the details.”

“Ah, not much, freed a lot of men, stumbled across a repentant warlord. Ya know, everyday things.”

“So you really buy it?”

“Coming back to this city was a mistake. I - I’m,” Ratchet considers. “He didn’t try to murder us. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it. But - well, for now, he hasn’t tried any shady things, so - that’ll have to be enough for the moment. Drift - one of my companions on that job, Drift, seemed - rather opposed to taking Megatron down or securing him, or, or even just letting him say in the cell - you know, he was in a variable voltage harness, we didn’t have to let him go.” Ratchet sighs. “This whole thing’s been weird from start to finish.”

Orion sighs. “Well, for what it’s worth, seeing as you’re part of the reason I’m not under Zeta’s mind control anymore, I wouldn’t say coming here was a mistake,” he says. “How’ve you been? It’s been, what, fifteen, twenty years?”

“About. On the road, odd jobs. Trying my best. Trying, sometimes failing. Hmm,” he pauses, considers, “patching up people, the old wandering cleric life. I’ve - I’ve come here for First Aid originally, didn’t think I’d, you know, do the whole fighting a Vampyric overlord thing. I’ve been - y’know, I’ve been undercover.”

Orion nods. “Oh, First Aid’s here, that’s good,” he says, then adds. “They were debriefing all of the guards, they said they’re going to start up city council elections again, get things running back the way they were supposed to be.”

“Oh, well that’s good.” Ratchet considers his coffee. He’s not much of a morning conversationalist, not that he’s much of a conversationalist at any other time. Then, “I’m really glad you’re okay. I’m really fucking glad you’re okay.”

Orion smiles. “I’m glad you’re okay too.” He sighs. “After everything happened in Iacon - just - it’s been hard not to worry, these past few years. And, knowing what you were up against in there - I’m real glad you made it out of there okay.”

“Yeah, I got out, and I -” Ratchet huffs, “I might be so foolish to say I might have some opportunity here, which is - better than nothing. Better than nothing at all.”

“Well, that’ll be good to hear. I don’t know if I’m going to stay in the city.”

“Wait,” Roller interjects, “why - why wouldn’t you stay here?”

Ratchet leans in, skeptical. “Any plans, Pax?”

“Y’know, I - in Iacon, I tried to see what I could do working within the system, and in Kaon I tried to see what I could do outside the system. Then I tried looking for a reformer in Zeta and that obviously didn’t work out -”

Ratchet scoffs.

“- yes, I know, if you had been around you would probably have had more sense and talked me out of it, but - I don’t know what happens next. And I don’t know if there’s a place for me in rebuilding this city. I don’t know how many people recognize me only as someone who worked for Zeta.”

“That’s… if it’s any consolation, if the mind control thing gets out, we might be able to stir up some ruckus, get some new souls on the crew,” he says. “The mind control - it wasn’t you. It wasn’t your fault. I get not wanting to risk things. I get - having been forced to spend time as Zeta Prime’s mook, I get that.”

“Yeah.”

“So - what’s your plan? What’re you doing? Where’re you going?”

“I don’t know yet. I think I’ll have to see.”

“All right, well, hit me up when you’re going out into the world. I’ll prepare a big well-wishing speech, and maybe some flowers; hell, I could arrange a cake.”

Orion laughs. “If that’s true, you’ve changed more in the last twenty years than I could’ve imagined.”

Ratchet grins. “Hey, you never know how the times change, you never know where things go.” Ratchet looks at Orion’s plate. “Suppose you want to get proper breakfast food; you don’t look like you’ve eaten much.”

Orion takes a couple more bites of his apple turnover, “Eh, I’ll be fine, I’ll - well, I suppose I’ll get something else.”

“Alright!”

Ratchet finishes the rest of his breakfast in the cafe as well - exactly three and a half peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fancy ones. The cafe staff are a little confused by the order, but they make it in good time, the bread is delicious, the peanut butter is good, and the jam is made in house, and it’s just prime.

As Ratchet sits back down to eat, Roller asks. “So - what about you, Ratch? What are you planning to do? I know you talked to First Aid about maybe setting something up here.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking of - looking around, looking for people who can help, Y’know, we’ll need a place, people to help, to spread the word. It’ll be good to have a place again, where people - where anyone can go to get themselves patched up. For now, I’m staying, helping Aid, so I suppose I’ll keep to the headquarters.”

“Yeah, that’ll be where most of the political decisions are getting made. I, uh, I don’t think Prowl’s slept all night. I saw him on the way out.”

“Oh boy.”

“So if you want to know where things are being decided about how to rebuild, how to get things back running again - I know back before Zeta, there was - I don’t know if it was quite what you were talking about, but there were some clinics, a couple of them, in this town. Might be getting those back up to what they used to be.”

“So I’ve got a point to start. That’s honestly more than I would have hoped for.”

“Glad to have you here, Ratch.”

Ratchet lets out a long sigh. “Same.”

Roller chuckles.

---

After waking up, Magnus goes downstairs to check in with Dominus, and Rewind steps out so they can talk. Magnus walks in and immediately Dominus tries to leap out of bed to hug her but falls instead. She catches him before he can hurt himself.

“Thank you, sister, I -” Dominus sighs, “I keep thinking that I should be feeling better but it’s - it’s still taking its toll.”

“You have - you need as much time as you can possibly get! Don’t worry about it.”

“Ah thank you, I’m terribly sorry.” Dominus lies back down, propping himself upright just enough to give Magnus a hug.

“I heard from Rewind that you and your friends were able to kill Zeta and free the city”

“Ah - I - yes.”

“That’s unbelievable, sister. And I -” Dominus looks at his sister, very sincere, “thank you for keeping yourself and my husband safe.”

“Of course! Of course.”

“How are you doing now? Are you alright?”

“I - I do not know. I’m here now, I saved you. It’s been a long road to here. It’s been three years and - and I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

Dominus reaches out and pats Magnus’ forearm before sighing. “I think everything will be alright. I think it will take some time but everything will be - will be alright now. Found a place that I think can be a safe home in a way that -” Dominus pauses. ”In a way that Iacon couldn't.”

“That’s good. That’s very good.“

“Maybe not,” Dominus says quietly before continuing. “Of course that’s - that’s because of you, because you freed the city, so thank you and thank you for coming to find me.”

Magnus is trying to hold back tears.

“I - thank you Dominus. I -” she trails off. Dominus hugs Magnus again, not wanting to let go.

After all the heavy talk Magnus tries to make small talk with Dominus.“So - uh, the hammer?!”

“It’s - it’s quite alright, I know you sister; you don’t need to try and make small talk. It’s quite alright.”

Magnus sighs. “True. Thank you. No - but seriously- why did you make the hammer?”

“Oh, I - Rewind said he gave it to you. Do you like it? Do you like it?!” Dominus asks excitedly.

“It’s absolutely fantastic!”

“I’m so glad! I thought you’d appreciate it. I certainly hope it was useful to you. I’m glad I was able to finish it before you came, although I would’ve liked to give it to you under better circumstances.”

“Heh - yeah it’s - hm,” Magnus considers. “I don’t know how else to describe it; it’s just- useful. Very nice. And you put so much detail on it, so it’s nice to see your work again.”

“From you sister, that’s the highest compliment.”

“Thank you.”

Seeing that Dominus can’t take much more conversation and needs to continue resting, Magnus says, “you need to rest more and knowing me I will pass out if I do not eat something in the next five minutes so - please do rest.”

“I will. Rewind brought me something to eat earlier but please make sure you get yourself something, many things.”

Magnus laughs a bit at the wording. “I intend!”

Dominus gives Magnus one last hug before leaning back on the pillows and closing his eyes. Magnus places a hand on Dominus’ forearm, kisses his head, and says, “Please sleep well brother, I love you.”

“I love you too, sister.” --- Continue to part 2!

#game recap #team fire

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