groovygamers.com

Sylvia's work ethic, her determination not to shirk the duties with which she started the year--namely, de facto editor of the school paper--keeps her late in the news room at least a few evenings out of the week, and so Donnie, ever the dutiful boyfriend, winds up in there with her, helping with the layout and photo-editing software.  Usually one or two fellow reporters linger on the computers, sometimes working and sometimes just killing time in a safe place with Internet access, so it's a good time to relax and play at normal life, as if there's nothing more important than churning out a few hundred words of copy to pad Colin's pictures of fundraisers in progress and sports events in motion.

One of the kids who seems to be with them most nights is a boy named Bryce Atwood, who joined them at the beginning of the semester.  He's tall, pale, scrawny, and freckled, and he doesn't get most jokes.  He answers any of Donnie's pop-culture references with a blank look, and if he's ever asked how he could have failed to see, for instance, any Buffy reruns, he mutters embarrassedly about how his mother won't let him watch anything that doesn't glorify God.

So it's a curious thing:  one evening Donnie walks in after completing his nightly sortie for news-room rations, and he sees Bryce sitting at a machine in the corner, hunched over something that looks like a first-person shooter with killer graphics, mostly of jiggly, infernal babes in leather and victims trapped in medieval torture devices.  Bryce wears earphones, which might be why Sylvia hasn't noticed anything from her position at the editor's desk, and from time to time he types a line of text into his chat window, picking out the keys one at a time.  He has that glassy World-Of-Warcraft look on his face, as if all emotion has bypassed his flesh-and-blood face and become automatically transmuted into some kind of slash-emote.

Donnie has never seen this game before, and while he's been a little busier this year than he used to be, he's sure he couldn't have missed a new MMO on his forays into the local Best Buy.

Donnie dumps his foraging results on the table next to Sylvia and pops open her diet soda, all without taking his eyes away from the odd diorama in the corner. Sylvia, engrosed in adjusting a text box a few millimeters to the gutter, just so the last letter in the box won't get cut off in the printing process, takes the profferred can without glancing away.

Donnie opens a bag of pretzels and takes a handful, walking quietly up to Bryce, staying out of his pereipheral vsision and trying to see more of whatever he was utterly engrossed in.

Bryce taps in a scrap of text, something like:

wut do u want me 2 do?

And the lush, jiggly, rouge-skinned woman-demon thing on whom he has his mouselook trained replies.

You got blood on my boots.  I want you to clean it off.  With your tongue, krool.

/kowtow Bryce types, and his screen gets a sudden close-up of the demon woman's high-resolution stiletto boot.

Donnie's face suddenly thrusts next to Bryce's. "Dude, you are so gonna get us banned from the newsroom with shit like that."

Bryce screams in that hoarse, gargly, adolescent-male way and makes an effort to cover the screen with his hands.  The scowl he throws Donnie is more ferocious than any expression that's ever crossed his face in their presence before.  "What are you looking at?" he demands.  "Get away.  You're not supposed to look at this."

Sylvia's staring at them from her desk, eyes bright and alert like someone who wakes up every day expecting trouble.  Still, Donnie's right there, so she keeps her mouth shut for the moment, waiting for the air-conditioning to draw away what she deems must have been a tragic testosterone explosion.

Donnie shakes his head.

"Bryce, dude. Seriously, if the IT guy catches a whiff of this we are all going to get kicked out of the newsroom after school hours. What the heck was that anyway? Some new MMO or some wierd Japanes eroge? I haven't seen that before, and I'm usually up on most games. Tell me about it."

"I can't talk about it," Bryce says, avoiding Donnie's eyes.  He types a quick "g2g" and slash-quits.  The game kicks him to a login screen and then gives him a dialogue box:  Are you sure you want to quit Hell-Bent?

Donnie slides in front of Bryce, between him and the computer but still facing Bryce. "Why not? Is it a secret game? I love secret games.."

[This space intentionally left blank.]

"It's a beta," Bryce says sullenly.  "There's a non-disclosure agreement.  Let me shut it down, and you can have the damned computer."

That's the first time Bryce has sworn in their presence.  The most he'll usually say is 'Darn!' or 'Oh, gee!' like some kind of refugee from a 1950s sitcom.

Donnie claps his hands over his mouth in mock-shock. "Did you just say a bad word? This game is having a detrimental effect on you Bryce. I need to see what is so perilous to your soul. Like licking boots."

He turns around and clicks 'no' at the question prompt.

Initiative: 1d20+1=19 (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2157774/)

If Donnie weren't looking at the screen, he'd see Sylvia, wincing where she stands.  Bryce, incensed by this invasion of his privacy, tries to give Donnie a hard shove.  Fortunately there's a kind of predictable ritual to combat between teenage boys, especially a couple of geeks slap-fighting over a computer game.  Donnie almost has a kind of follow-cam on with which he can see Bryce gearing up for the charge.

---

Initiatives

• Donnie = 19
• Sylvia = 17
• Bryce = 13

Donnie clicks 'no' and spins around to fend off Bryce, a smile on his face.

Sylvia sounds like a school marm--

"Sit!"

--and Donnie's certain she must be putting some kind of whammy on Bryce.  But it seems not to affect him, and he tries to give Donnie a good hard shove into the machine behind him.  But it's a pathetic attempt.  It seems unlikely Bryce has ever really gotten the hang of playground fights, much less tangling with someone who's had some combat training as Donnie has.

Donnie holds up his hands after body-blocking the slender studen't atttempt to push him. "Bryce, settle down! That is some wierd nasty shit you're looking at. I just want to see!"

His eyes flick to Sylvia's in amusement.

Bryce looks furious.  His face is turning red.  But after another little, pathetic shove in defiance of the news-room pecking order, he grabs his bag and storms toward the door, flapping an arm as if he'd flip them off, if he knew how.

"What the heck was that about?" Sylvia says, following Bryce out with her eyes.  "He probably would have tried to stab you with a pair of scissors if we'd left any out."

Donnie sobers. "He had some really wierd game up on the computer here. Number one, if it's porn, he's totally screwing the newspaper staff over, risking getting us all locked out. But it looked very dark, like nasty dark. I saw something about licking blood off of a succubus' boots or something."

He turns around and looks at the screen.

A character-selection screen with a flaming background offers one choice and one choice only, a stereotypically tall, broad-shouldered, sword-wielding type with a mane of blond hair, wearing something like a furry loincloth.  "Hey, that kind of looks like you," Sylvia says, trying to look sincere.

Donnie purses his lips and gives Sylvia an ironic look. After writing down any company info on the log-in screen, he clicks the character selection and logs in, after looking around to make sure no other eyes were watching the duo hunched over the computer.

Let's see what Bryce is into here.

The game has music now that Bryce's earphones are no longer plugged into the audio jack.  A haunting loop of crackling flame, muted screams, and organ music à la Vincent Price plays as the environment rezzes in.  Donnie recognizes the game's elements:  a mouselook view, a chat window, a combat-status window, a few icons which he presumes must be buffs, and some action buttons.  The graphics have a slick, gruesome verisimilitude to them, and the victims in the medieval torture devices in the frame of his mouselook writhe and pulse in a way that almost tricks the eye with an illusion of irregularity.  It looks high-budget, glossy, and titillating.

Sylvia's eyes are wide.  She's not nearly as familiar with the iconography of computer games.  "Is she supposed to be naked?" she says, pointing at someone who's locked in a low cage.

Within seconds, Bryce's--or krool's--chat window receives a private message.

She-Ba:  You're back so soon.  I was afraid I'd have to play with myself all night.

Donnie looks wide eyed with a splash of disgust. He types in had a snoop looking over my shoulder. What were we doing?

He hesitates before hitting enter, looking at Sylvia with more than a tad bit of concern.

He presses the button.

She-Ba:  You were demonstrating your devotion, my dear boy.  Let me summon you so we can continue.

krool receives an invitation to join She-Ba at her location, somewhere with a name that Donnie remembers from some bit of reading he's done since freshman year started:  Lembula.

---

Just to give me further practice at GMing, make a Knowledge:  Arcane Lore roll for more details.

Arcane Lore: 1d20+12=29 (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2158279/)

"Hmmm. Seems I have heard that name before."

Donnie leans back, tapping his lips as he tries to recall the origin of the name.

It's an obscure reference.  They always are.  A fifteenth-century self-professed sorceror wrote a babbling, half-mad text, illuminated with Bosch-like pictures of demons and souls in torment, in which he described regions of hell hitherto unmentioned by scholars.  That it should show up in a computer game is weird, unless some student at Miskatonic decided to transfer from an arcane-studies major to computer science.

Sylvia's still staring at the imagery in the game like she's neither seen nor imagined anything like it in all her fourteen years.  Another player character goes jogging past, and she points.  "Look!  That one dresses like Alicia."

Donnie looks over at Sylvia. "This is really odd. Lembula is refers to a deep hell some whacked fifteenth-century self-professed sorceror wrote about in a babbling, half-mad text, illuminated with Bosch-like pictures of demons and souls in torment. The fact that someone made a MMORPG of it is kind of disturbing. This is really obscure referencing, and my only guesses are that some student at Miskatonic switched from Occult Studies into video game design or the worse option, that this is some sort of shared-sado-masochist site used to generate negative energy by sucking out people's souls through the computer screen."

Donnie types in Yes Mistress

An animation of a swirling vortex of energy appears, and when krool can see again, he's in another section of the game, a stalactite- and stalagmite-studded cavern full of impaled, struggling corpses and a milling field of ghoul-like enemies at some distance.  When Donnie mouses over them, they con OMFG-purple.

Sylvia cringes.  "Okay.  I like horror.  I do.  Zombie movies, vampire stories, King and Barker--but this, this is just sick.  I'm so glad I can't see into any of the players' heads."  And yet, for all that, she can't seem to look away.

She-Ba is here, standing with a drawn weapon that looks a little like a surgical instrument for the remote extraction of eyeballs.

She-Ba:  I'm so glad you could make it.  Be careful of the Lembulites.  Not even I can fight them all off should they decide to attack.

Donnie pulls op the options menu and scans the keyboard controls. Pretty standard ASWD movenemtn, mouse targetting, special attack buttons, though the names were disturbing. "Some game, huh? This is like a playground for mass murderers and stuff, I guess."

Into the game he types Ill follow your lead

Donnie hovers his hand over the screen to see if there was any magical influence coming through the screen at him.

ooc: Magic Sense

She-Ba proceeds to cue krool through a dialogue that becomes increasingly, well, icky.  The dominatrix theme persists.  If Donnie continues to play along, there's a lot of slash-licking, slash-kneeling, and slash-lambada-ing.  All that and a ripe assortment of bad euphemisms for sexual anatomy and its associated fluids.


Yes, magic about as potent as the heat from a CPU radiates from the screen.  It's passive magic.  It's not doing anything to them, but it's there.

Donnie leans away from the screen. "Okay, shit. This is bad." He pops back onto the Main screen, writing down as much information as possible about the program's maker and notes any websites associated with it. He then logs into the mainframe for the computer network and logs the connecting IP address the current terminal is connected to. He then uses ARIN to locate the server location, and with a mad clackery of keyboard work and non-magical wizardly hackery, finds the physical location for the servers.

1d20+6=26 (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2158352/)

He reaches under the desk and flips off the power strip, killing the game.

He turns towards Sylvia. "Someone is generating magic like mad through the game. It was like putting my hand under a heating lamp. I managed to locate a bunch of information about this game and the physical location of the servers. This is above and beyond what I can do, I think, and we probably need to get some more potent people on this. You think I should write my contact at Miskatonic and see what he says, or find out which of his teachers he thinks are trustworthy?"

ooc: where are the servers located for this game, and who is behind it?

Sylvia shakes her head as if in a stupor and gives him the vacant look of someone wholly unqualified to speculate on the capabilities of people whom she's never met.  "Uh . . . you don't trust your contact?"


The servers happen to be located in Chicago, registered to Kryptic Games, Inc.  Since it's in beta, and since hacking the forums non-magically would take more than a few minutes no matter how strong Donnie's kung fu is, it's hard to get any further information.  A few MMO-oriented news sites mention that Kryptic is trying to draw on the popularity of games like Doom and Diablo, and that their ultimate intention is to depict some kind of heaven-versus-hell secret war.

"I trust him, but this might be beyond his capability to handle. He's only in his third year there."

Donnie goes over to another computer and logs onto the Miskatonic U intranet to see if his friend was online or not, perhaps in one of the many chatrooms.

ooc: nothing really has been established about him beyond what I've stated above. Check with Dman to make sure he didn't have any plans for him, but so far he's been a generic NPC for storytelling sake.

It's almost 9:00 on a weeknight in Arkham.  Donnie's pal, Ryan Coffee, is in a fringe chatroom devoted to the correspondence between modern iconography and the dark and ancient entities that are supposed to exist in a tangent dimension.  Tonight's topic:  the Pokemon pantheon and how it might be a cover for the cult of Nyarlathotep, he of many guises.

The colloquy goes something like:

nrodrigu:  All I'm saying is that it seems more likely that Hypno represents something about the Dream Cycle.  He makes you fall asleep.  So I'm not going to speak the dreaded name, even in the chat room, but you draw your own conclusions.

rycoffee:  And I'm telling you no one would assign Yog-freakin-Sothoth to a Pokemon who could be one-shot punked by a Pidgey.

rycoffee:  Oh, hey, Don.

nrodrigu:  Pidgeys?  Please!  My four-year-old daughter knows you can't punk nothin' with a Pidgey.

tappity-tappity-tap

DonDrgn: pikathulu! Ai! Ai! Ai!

Hey guys, any of you heard of MU students or faculty working at Kryptic Games?

rycoffee:  Kryptic Games?  What is that?  Or is that the joke?

nrodrigu:  There was this guy in one of my lectures, undergrad.  Couldn't wrap his head around magical ethics, but he liked to ask questions about the magical implications of legal documents.  Like, "Can you really sell your soul?"  He flunked.  I heard he was going into computers.

nrodrigu:  Um . . . Han-something.

rycoffee:  Solo!

nrodrigu:  No!  Hancock?  Hanover?  Something like that.

Donnie relays his findings to Sylvia, and turns to her, a gleam in his eye. "So, super-hero girlfriend. The servers and offices of Kryptic are here in Chicago, and evil is reaching it's claws through the computers. Should we check it out? You know, do our civic duty and such?"

DonDrgn: Hansen maybe? He's up to something..Thanks. gtg and look into Kryptic.

Sylvia says, "And by 'check it out,' you mean break in and engage in some property damage on behalf of the common good?  I don't want to discourage you.  I just want to call it what it is."


rycoffee:  Bye, Don.

Donnie logs off.

Grinning broadly, he replies "I call it saving Bryce's sanity and soul, not to mention the souls of other weak-willed sado-masochists across the globe!"

Donnie shoves his backpack into his locker and takes Sylvia's hand. "You know, it's likely there is some clause in the EULA about giving up rights and allowing magical influence or something. No one reads the EULAs anymore. SO people are unknowingly giving up their rights. I swear, I would not be surprised if some enterprising demon is behind this, getting people to sign away portions of their souls by signing up and playing this game. Hmm, maybe we should call Colin in on this, you think? He is like an anti-demon pill."

Sylvia seems happier the minute Donnie takes her hand, and it makes her amenable to all kinds of foolishness.  "Sure, if you want.  Let's keep this expedition to a small tactical unit instead of a small army, though.  If things look really rough at the site, we can call the others.  Otherwise it only increases our odds of getting caught."

[Cassie will lose her mind if this turns into a mob scene.]

Donnie nods, mind on what spells he might need as he and Sylvia exit the building. Sundown was not for a couple more hours, so Donnie and Sylvia head over to the Tasty Dog where he treats her to a milkshake and a plate of fries. They chitchat for a while, and when Sylvia pulls out her cell to call Mitzi and Caroline, Donnie pulls out his PDA phone and does some number crunching and spell memorization until they are ready to go.

As the sun begins its downward dance towards the horizon, The two teenagers walk hand in hand, swinging each other and laughing in the brisk evening air for all to see as carefree goofy teens. They swing down an alley and Donnie cuts open the air with a slow horizontal motion to retrieve his flight outfit and a dark jacket for Sylvia. There is a moment of silence as they dress, and then the two teens spiral upwards to be snatched from the air by a chatterbox cerulean drake, happy to talk colors and clothing with Sylvia as she wings then across the city.

[No Colin or Alicia, then?]

Sylvia chats idly with Althea as they head toward the outskirts of the city proper, where rents drop and the buildings start to look less glassy and more concrete-y.  At some point, as they fly, she leans her chin on Donnie's shoulder and asks, "Hey, what was that game about anyway?"

Donnie thumps Althea fondly on her heavily muscled shoulder as he gets to a standing position on the dragon's back. He takes Sylvia's hand as his magic begins to work again and she begis to feel lighter and lighter. Donnie ppulls her close as he steps off Althea's back and they slowly float towards the ground, wrapped in the heat coming off Donnie in waves.

"Umm, standard point click-kill massively multiplayer online role playing game. Except this seems to attract the sado-masochist crowd. Twisted stuff, honey, and stuff that seems to be powered by or utilizing magic to influence people through their computer screens."

"So Bryce is only behaving that way because he's under some kind of spell?  You think we'll find something to break, where we're going, that'll free him?"

Donnie shrugs. "It's a start. Maybe I can find a way to diffuse the spell and destroy the servers, people will be freed from the compulsion to play. But the fact he seems to be into S&M is a little scary."

"Destroy the--"  Sylvia begins to look concerned.  "How much do these things cost?"

Donnie grins maliciously. "Thousands of rupees, my dear.."

"I'm no good with surveillance cameras," she warns him.  "I hope you have a plan."

Althea begins to circle over the building they want, an unimaginative two-story concrete block painted urine yellow, surrounded by a mostly empty parking lot lit by tall orange lamps.  It has sliding glass windows, double doors on the front entrance, and a few steel fire exits, placed according to building code.  Althea might--might--be able to land on the roof without raising any alarms.  That depends on the nature of the security system.

As they were floating down, wrapped in Donnie's heat and weighing very little thanks to his (anti)gravity spell, Althea would need only land if things go seriously wrong. Donnie brightens at her question and says "Of course!" He pulls her close and wriggles his fingers of his free hand into sparkling motes. He kisses Sylvia gently, nibbling on her lower lip as the magic slithers up his arm, leaving nothingness in it's wake. It's odd for Sylvia to see Donnie fading from her view inch by inch as she kisses him, but the magic leaps across their lips and she too disappears from view.

Still holding onto each other's hands, palms a little clammy from the excitement of their adventure, the two teens land gently on the gravel covered roof.

"Okay, baby. Gravity, invisibility and server-eating spells are all I have today. Let's put your lessons with Rob to the test, shall we?"

He looks around for roof access.

The roof entrance must correspond in location to one of the emergency stairwells at the short end of the building.  It protrudes from the roof like a little garden shed with a steel door, and Sylvia gives the lock a worried look before she pulls a pair of lockpicks from her bag.  She works for ten minutes, trying to push back the lock's tumblers in the right sequence, but she's had only a few weeks of practice.  It ain't happening.

She utters a few choice bits of profanity.  "We should have picked up Colin."

Then she jams the lockpicks back into her bag and runs to the edge of the building.  "That spell you have--can you hover me in front of the second-story windows?"

Donnie waits patiently for Sylvia to pick the lock, maintaining physical contact. After her frustrating failure, Donnie says "No worries."

Pip appears and lands on the door frame, needle-like claws digging in. He burbles at Donnie and sticks his tongue out at Sylvi, chirruping happily.

He reaches down and begins gnawing at the door lock. Within moments it's in shreds and Pip is chewing contently.

Sylvia subjects Donnie to the proper amount of girlfriend pique.  "Pff.  You could have stopped me five minutes ago."

The door opens onto a stairwell lit in cool bluish fluorescents.  On each of the two floors a door opens onto a hallway decorated in mustard-brown industrial carpet and beige paint.  On the floor below, the basement, the door is locked again.  Donnie can feel magic there, pulsing through the door like the heat from an Easy-Bake oven.

Donnie smiles indulgently. "Hey, you want to practice your lock-picking skill, who am i to dissuade you? Sure as hell beats eating the door handle. Less questions afterward."

The second floor contains mostly empty and dusty offices along with the detrius of many take out orders. The pervading smell of rotten food curls both their lips in disgust. Pip, curled around Donnie's neck like a reptilian scarf, tastes the air approvingly with his slender purple tongue. The first floor has a number of locked doors, the hum of computer fans discernable beyond, but the lure of the magic takes them deeper into the building.

As they come to the short stairwell to the lowest level, Donnie's face becomes more serious as he feels the pulse of the magic below. When they come to the basement door, Donnie's hands hover above the door and his eyes close as he tastes the magic beyond. Now it is he scenting the air, as if trying to get a whiff of some faint perfume hidden below the lingering stink of poor hygened programmers and stale pizza crusts.

He again offers the lock to Sylvia. His eyes are green, matching the molten orbs of the dragonette upon his shoulder.
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