"This is the story..."

"Of seven strangers..."

"Picked to live in a house..."

Sorry. Wrong show.

However, this is the story of seven people who were chosen. Alexis Taylor, a potential slayer. She was trained to fight demons, but the slayer torch was never passed to her. Iain Short, a vampire. Due to the foresight of his stepmother, and some magical tattoos she placed on him, Iain never lost his soul. Iona McLean, a research scientist who hid the fact that she was half-demon. Johnny B. Hope, a med student and a gambler. Raven Cantrell, an archaeologist, and her partner Dren Telarwin. He was the muscle to her brains. Together they made a living recovering rare artifacts. And finally, Pieran Swift, who carried inside of him the souls of a dozen champions.

Each of these people were snatched from their realities moments before they would've met untimely deaths. They were brought to a dimension, only slightly different from their own, and tasked with the job of thwarting the forces of evil. In St. Louis, Missouri, they live and work as a team at a plush estate provided by mysterious employers.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:01, Wed 18 Mar 2009.

A man who appeared to be in his sixties stepped into view. He was impeccably dressed in a suit, and spoke with a British accent. "I am the liaison between this group of people and their employers. You may call me Hornsby." He pressed a button on a small remote he held in his hand, and turned on a viewing screen behind him. "Let's look at some of the highlights of their adventure's so far, shall we?"

Episode 1.01:  Gateway to Hell

After each of them was saved from death by being pulled into a mysterious vortex-like portal, this group of seven strangers found themselves thrown together in an odd land. Raven speculated that they were in "one of several possible Hell Dimensions.”

They met an unusual fellow, called Matt Gardiano, who looked a little less than human. They might have called him a man, if it weren’t for his long nose and the pointed tips of his ears that peaked out of the shoulder length hair. Although he appeared to be very old, he was not frail. He told them:



The Lord Guardian Gatekeeper sent them on a quest to free another Guardian, named Orean.



They were sent to a world where the population had been wiped out by vampires. Large numbers of vampires roamed the countryside. The area was in a constant state of cloudiness that allowed the creatures to move about freely, day or night. The seven came across a building that had been a place of worship.


This message was last edited by the GM at 13:46, Thu 02 Apr 2009.

"While they explored the abandoned church, Iain shared his story."
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:25, Tue 17 Mar 2009.

"It's kind of a long story, so you may want to sit down..."

As he talked, he started pacing, focusing his ideas.

"First, to answer Johnny's question, I'm not really that old. I've only been a vampire for the last five years, so I might recall a few episodes of Star Trek I'm not supposed to, but none of the TV sets I remember was black and white. That said, let's start from the beginning."

"I have already told you about my stepmother... Her name was Aiko Murakami, and she was a very knowledgeable woman, especially when it came to occult lore. I'm not exactly clear on all the details either, 'cause most of the stuff she did was way over my head, but she had this idea... Guess you could call a premonition now... "

"Since I was a child, she told me about all the things that are not really supposed to exist: vampires, demons, the whole lot. Mostly, she concentrated on vampires: how they are not the people whose body they take, how they don't have a soul and therefore cannot take moral decisions. As you can guess, as a child I really was really upset at the idea that something could just steal my body and walk around looking just like me, fooling everyone, even the people I loved the most..."

"That's when we cast the first spell. Well, she cast it, I mostly held the candles and repeated. Anyway, this spell was supposed to reinforce my personality somehow... I don't know exactly if it worked: I was six at the time, and we cast a lot of spells since. Growing up, I wasn't really all that interested in keeping my soul in case I'd been turned into a vampire: mostly, I just enjoyed the time spent with her. And the spells were kinda cool as well."

"On my sixteenth birthday, we began casting a new spell, a very unusual one. I would have had three tattoos, each of them an ideogram representing a virtue: Balance, Harmony, Clarity."

He showed the tattoos, explaining the meaning of each.

"I'm not exactly clear on the spell's details, I just know that it took three years to be completed, with a new tattoo on each birthday, and that it was supposed to keep my soul in place after my death. Had my body been destroyed, as they usually are after the owner is dead, lengthy as that process may be, the soul would have been released. On the other hand, had I been turned, the tattoos would kept the soul inside my body, and the other spells would have ensured that I was in total control of any and all of my actions."

"As I said, my first encounter with vampires didn't go too well: I staked one of them, and their leader decided I would have replaced him. Things didn't go exactly like he had planned... I still remember the look of disbelief on his face as I dusted him."

"Unfortunately, there are very few things that can turn a vampire back into a human being... So far, I haven't found any."

He paused for an instant.

"That's the story... Have I bored you to death already?"



Iain tilts his head from side to side in a yes-no-not-exactly gesture: "A small damage should not affect the spell... And there are other layers of protection, preventing the vampire from getting all moody and homicidal, even without the tattoos. But on one thing you are right: if one of the seals is destroyed, my soul will be free."
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:36, Wed 18 Mar 2009.

Perhaps being in a church put people into a confessional kind of mood, because Raven and Alex both decided to share some of their own secrets.




This message was last edited by the GM at 15:02, Wed 18 Mar 2009.

"Later in their journey, Pieran talked about his past."
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:21, Tue 17 Mar 2009.

"My grandmother was a Bruja –a witch. Like Iain, I too have been the recipient of “parental care” in extremis. She cast upon me a spell with the intent of making me a Champion of men, imbuing me with the qualities and knowledge of a dozen or more of history’s finest men and women -warriors, priests, wizards, scholars.

“She was a crazy, beautiful, failing woman and her spell took an unexpected turn. Not the qualities of past champions and heroes, but their very souls, rising from their realms, came together to dwell in one man, this man, only a boy of twelve, then.

“These eighteen years I have played the bottle to over a dozen, powerful djinni, if you allow me the metaphor. The Champions dwell within me, their stories coursing a span of time reaching back more than three thousand years. Each one of them long to return to the center of the world’s eye to play their part in an authentic way toward the sublimation and transfiguration of evil. In the main, I govern this tongue and these arms yet from time to time their majestic force of wills overcome my own and they jump forth, speaking through me; speaking, dressing, fighting, and even loving, tasting through me once more the fruit –and the dross- they knew as mortals. I am their hands and feet, their eyes and ears and other senses. And I am their beleaguered and impoverished keeper.

“And so you see, I am fully in control of what I say and do, but I am at odds with how I say or do them. I am not mad, as some –perhaps all- of you believe. Nor am I possessed. I am occupied. And so, without a magik to release these souls, or another to suppress them, I seek yet a third spell: to make a symbiosis of the many into one."
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:37, Wed 18 Mar 2009.

"This prompted Alex to tell her own story."

"My parents...  A loving couple, my father is a GP, a family doctor, my mother a housewife.  I have a younger brother and sister, Toby and Jessica."  She sounds almost reluctant to share this information, and looked a little pained by it.  "The last time I saw my parents, I was five years old, and I've never met my younger brother or sister.  I used to wonder if my parents even told them about me."

She shoved her hands into her pockets, her attention drawn away from her surroundings now, instead focused on the ground in front of her.  "You see, when I was five, my mother introduced me to a man called Edward.  He told me that there were all kinds of monsters in the world, who lived to cause people pain.  As you can probably imagine, this sort of thing tends to upset five-year-old girls.  So there I was, crying my eyes out at the thought, when he then told me that there were special people..."  She paused for a second, unsure as to whether she should tell the whole story.  A quick glance around the group decided it for her.  Most people had shared their past, it was only fair for her to return the favour.

"...Special girls who could fight the monsters, and keep people safe."  Again she paused.  It was quite obvious that this was not a story Alex was used to sharing.  "I think a couple of you have probably already guessed where this is going, but he took me away, and trained me to be the Slayer.  As you've probably noticed, I was never chosen.  That...  honour went to Buffy, then Faith.  So when I turned eighteen, I was tossed out on my ear, and the rest is a story for another time."

She smiled faintly at the party.  "So there you go, a brief history of Alex."
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:38, Wed 18 Mar 2009.

Of course, the seven eventually succeeded in their quest. It wouldn't be a very good story if they hadn't. Allow me to sum up. The dimension our group of heroes found themselves in had once been populated by a peaceful people.



A female priestess, named Ninti, tried to warn the villagers of their impending doom, but nobody believed her. She was branded a heretic and confined to the Cave of Regret. It was supposed to be a thirty day sentence. At some point after her banishment the population was wiped out by dozens of vampires. There was one vampire among them that was different -- larger, stronger. He’s the one that carved the C-shaped symbol on the alter before he toppled it over. Ninti managed to survive in the cave for decades until she was freed by our band of seven. She had aged, but other than that she and her pet bird were fine. Unfortunately, shortly after they freed Ninti, the group was attacked by a marauding bunch of vampires. A female vampire, named Sheena, killed the priestess. Dren took out his frustrations by beating one of Sheena's minions to a pulp before dusting him, and tortured Sheena with a little holy water before she too was dusted.

Iona had revealed to the group that she was both a telekinetic and a telepath. Before Sheena was killed, the scientist probed the vampire's mind to learn what she could. Sheena's mate, Rex, was the leader of the vampires and it was he that had carved the symbol on the alter. The vampire's were not indigenous to this dimension.



It turned out that Ninti's pet bird was actually the Guardian Orean that they had been sent here to rescue. She had been trapped in the cave all these years with the priestess.



With Orean's help, they were able to repair the corrupted magic that protected that dimension. The vampires were all destroyed. Time itself seemed to reverse, and it appeared that the Solrites were saved. Perhaps even the priestess Ninti lived, but our heroes would never know for sure. They were immediately transported from that dimension, but not back to the Lord Guardian Gatekeeper, as they had expected.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:13, Wed 18 Mar 2009.

Hornsby stood outside, in front of a large three-story mansion. It was constructed of brick and cut stone, old in design, circa late 1800’s, but in very good condition. "They were delivered here, to Cornerstone. A lavish estate and mansion located in St. Louis, Missouri. Come in, and I'll explain further." He opened one of the double doors, and stepped inside.