The Cereal Box:Log/Session 46

Session 46

Thursday, May 27th

Nikolai broke the bad news to his Motley. A discussion of the tense differences between English and Russia resulted in the recitation of the pun "You cannot go running at a campground, you can only ran, because it's past-tents."

Sephie puts together a medical bag for the trip to arcadia including a lot of bandages, IVs of goblin fruit, etc. She also planned to bring one of her kitties with her. She took some time to train her cats, which were at that stage where they could be relied upon NOT to be detriment.

April and Alana were able to steal a durometer from the garage of a handyman running a garage sale. April created a mighty distraction while Alana plundered the garage. April's distraction was so good that stealing the money would probably be trivially simple.

Hestia went to WalMart to slap a woman, implying that she's having an affair. She does manage to collect a small amount of glamour from mostly bewildered people. She then did this again at Meijer, which worked as well.

Nikolai decided to go with Ernie to Sullivan's library to attempt to research the Chronophage. He found a leaflet written by an A. Francis Williams entitled "Time," which had a long list of things about the Chronophage. The author suggests:

• Time is linear. There are no other "timelines"
• The Chronophage can "create" alternate "timelines" and "extract" and "place" things in them, but they're ephemeral and cease to exist after he finishes with them
• The Chronophage does not know its own future and past, despite existing in them simultaneously; this confusion is not predictable
• The Chronophage chooses its changelings based on their ability to bring him more changelings

Other information:

• Saying it's "weak to life energy" isn't correct, but its ability to manipulate things is based on its life energy
• Things that are "permanent" are its weakness
• Fate is its weakness

Further details:

• The Chronophage has a compulsive need to correct the chronology of things as presented; e.g. lining up objects from oldest to newest

Nikolai reminisced about the order of his Keepers: Prince Kindhearted - Koscheii the Lich - the Collector - Baba Yaga - The Erlkoenig

Baba Yaga - Erlkoenig - Koscheii - Kindheart - Collector

At about 2 PM they fininshed their research; Nikolai resolved to call Firestarter about his sword, but decided, instead, to call Firestarter and just see if he knew where some platinum-iridium could be found. Firestarter said he could ask around, but he didn't know. Nikolai set up to go to the Autumn archives at 7 PM.

April needed plans for how to convince the durometer to measure the crunch factor. Alana promised to help her when she had a chance. She helped Smith train. April asked Ernie and he suggested "horses for horsepower" and "inchworms"; April accepted the plan to steal inchworms from the butterfly garden at the zoo. They left with a few inchworms in tow which they released near the bowl of cereal she was marinating the durometer in.

"Had anyone else defeated the Chronophage? If so how?" The magic 8-ball says, All Signs Point to No "This is frustrating" rolls over to a yes

Firestarter told him that Chalkos agreed to sell him platinum-iridium bullets and would meet with him at 3 AM.

"Will Nikolai be able to come back?" the pendulum rusts through and breaks

"Does anyone else in the freehold, other than Chalkos and Firestarter, have platinum-iridium?" The myth of Orpheus.

They exchanged the voodoo doll with Phlox for the metal and had a brief and, apparently, ugly discussion of what they could do power-wise. But eventually Nikolai felt badly for him.

Friday, May 28th

Ernie made the sphere into punch daggers. Nikolai meditated to prepare to enter Arcadia.

Regina explained that she was concerned that it would depress her to come close to Arcadia again, so she decided to stay home.

Saturday, May 29th

3:00 AM

The motley met with Jeremiah in the wee hours of the morning outside the Autumn meeting ground. They following him into a hedge path he opened along the Equinox Road to Arcadia. As they traveled, Jeremiah explained that he had made a deal with one of the Fae that would permit him to "get what he wanted most," but that now that he had Nikolai - who could leave Arcadia at will - it was no longer necessary for him to hand over a changeling to the Chronophage as payment.

They arrived at a gate to arcadia inside the pendulum door of a massive grandfather clock. Nikolai and Jeremiah entered the Chronophage's domain together and the Chronophage presents Jeremiah with the ragdoll woman Tasha and an infant. It explains that the child, whose name is Victoria, was taken from a timeline wherein Jeremiah and Tasha never were taken to Arcadia, but died in a horrific car accident on their way to a date night. Jeremiah took the child. The Chronophage demanded that Nikolai hand over his tongue, which he did after much shouting, demanding and coaxing from Jeremiah and the Chronophage. It took his tongue and ate it, and Nikolai realized he was no longer THE GENTRY'S GENTLEMAN. He attacked the Chronophage as Jeremiah had a brief meltdown over not getting his way, but then left Arcadia, hoisted his wife, and ran. Nikolai fought the Chronophage briefly, but did not take the opporutnity to leave Arcadia. He demanded his things back from the Chronophage, and it gave him *a* tongue, but not *his* tongue, obstentiously because it was sick of watching him try to talk without it.

Nikolai challenged the Chronophage to a duel, and it asked him when. He said, "Now, and in the hedge where you are limited." The Chronophage agreed. This did not seem like the best decision.

Episode End Credits