Wednesday, March 13, 2024

DC Modern - Session 10 - 7/31/2023

Hello Gatewayers. Cat Grant here. Well it has been a wild November folks. Now that we are past Thanksgiving and the holidays season is in full swing maybe we can take time to slow down and enjoy this season of peace.   As always here is all the news you need to know in easily digestible bites. You can share these around the water cooler or cash bar at those obligatory work holiday parties. 

- In the month since the election there have been 2 recounts and both have shown Thorne the winner by a slim margin, less than a 50 votes.  There are rumors that the election is under federal investigation for tampering but Thorne has proceeded on with life as if he is Mayor elect.  He has announced several new projects and initiatives that he will pursue as soon as taking the oath of office Jan 2nd.  

- Gateway to host UN Intelligence and Security Summit this week and Gateway City has dove headfirst into celebrating spy culture.  With movie houses playing old spy thrillers, Bars holding "cosplay your favorite spy" contests all week, even the Gateway Museum is has a massive temporary exhibit on the "History of Spies and their tools of the trade, it seems the whole city has Bond crazy!  (Our apologies I just could not resist)

- With so many spooks in town it is not surprising that the number of calls to the City Police about people creeping around in the shadows has jumped.  911 calls have reported everything from shadowy ninjas on roof tops to robot Nazi's in the alleyways.  Police have found followed up but found little evidence of a nocturnal invasion.

And there you are.  Have fun celebrating SPY week.  

Cat Grant

Flamebird visits Achilles to say goodbye since she’s returning to her home dimension. She warns him about more rings likely to come, including a grey ring that feeds on despair and attaches itself to someone at their lowest, sucking joy out of others thereafter. Only a moment of pure joy can dispel it. She thinks Achilles is at risk, if such a ring exists in this universe. Other rings might be coming for other heroes. She suggests Orichalcum and Rachael might be at risk for red rings. She departs to her own dimension. (Thomas has also departed or is about to.)

Quantum has a meeting with Mark Shaw in a parking garage. He asks whether Rachael would be willing to have a meeting with him to talk about his concerns over the election. He wants to meet with her this evening to lay out his evidence. There’s an upcoming security conference that will be chaired by Alan Scott, with Mr. Bones also in attendance. Back at the embassy, Quantum tells Rachael about Shaw wanting to meet her alone. She goes to the meeting and reports to the group that she’ll be following up on things and will be gone for awhile.

Orichalcum is constructing a new body for Grandfather and trying to figure how to get him out of the diamonds while he wonders if Harmonia still loves him. She successfully creates a techno-golem that looks like Bruce Lee—but Chinese—and manages to transfer him into it. He wants to become a super-hero—but Chinese—and opts for the name Kui Lei (Chinese for “golem”). He goes off to fight crime in Chinatown.

Akasha searches online for more journals of his grandfather. He finds a number of them identified by different villainous names. 15 seem legitimate, including one in an auction being held in Gateway City’s Chinatown bookstore. He goes to the viewing of it and asks about it. It was recovered with a cache of items from the subbasement  of a building demolished in the Chinatown renovations. The items include a signet ring, a pocket watch that runs backward, a tie pin, a gold tooth, and a worn figurine of jade. He bids on it and wins the whole cache.

Orichalcum helps him examine them. The figurine, the tie pin, and the tooth all detect as magic and were made by the same person but at different levels of experience. The signet ring matches the identifying stamp in the journals. The figurine is of some indeterminate animal and is basically a figurine of wondrous power. The tie pin gives protection vs. magic. The tooth is a tooth of Vecna basically. The watch is superscience and can rewind the last 90 seconds. It was made in the 1830s in England for a noble family. Orichalcum cracks it open, and it’s bigger on the inside with all sorts of mysterious workings seemingly from the 30th century. Winding probably activates it. The heart of a diamond star powers it. There are 12 settings to it.

Akasha starts reading the journal, which covers 1932-1941. His grandfather first aids the Japanese, then fights against them. He secretly supports the British while publicly supporting Indian independence. He discusses the arrival of mystery men, the first of whom he thinks is an alien who arrives in 1938 [Superman 60 years early?]. The next arrived in 1939 and trained with him [Batman?]. And Alan Scott Green Lantern arrived in 1940. He finds another auction of a journal that begins in 1952 and seems to be the final volume.

Akasha talks to Achilles who searches the Orb. His grandfather was basically the Ra’s al Ghul of Earth 2, who disappeared in 1954. But Grandfather is from this Earth. Someone on this Earth tried to take control the League of Assassins in the 1950s and briefly changed its name to the League of Shadows, which was the Earth-2 designation for it. Much like Power Girl was not subsumed into this new Earth, neither was Akasha’s grandfather. Achilles did find his genealogy that led to Akasha on this Earth. His grandmother had a name that from Hindi translates to Harmony Lee. So both Akasha and Orichalcum seem to be descended from Harmonia Li. (We confirm that Quantum, Achilles, and Rachael are not descended from her as well.)

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