Session 39: The Little Ice Age

   Like the Legend of the Five Rings log, the Champions log has gotten well behind – so here’s the first section of catch-up.

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   So: They had the undead warriors/soul-harvesters of an ancient death cult to deal with – a group of them and their leader, when one had nearly been sufficient to defeat two major superhero teams, the highly-experienced New York City police department, Mr Tanner, a set of high-grade professional security spells and systems, Kimai, some random independent heroes, and a detachment of the Producers movie-making forces. They were operating out of a dark dimension that vastly amplified their abilities and suppressed those of all other humans. They had wiped out all human life across North and South America a hundred thousand years ago, drew on the power of millions of imprisoned and tormented souls for power, and even the first White Necromancer had been unable to do more than trick them into thinking they had succeeded in wiping out humanity before he spent centuries weaving spells to keep them from seeing anyone else from their dark realm and to seal them there.

   Now they knew of the rest of the world and – thanks to modern modifications to the landscape – the White Necromancers ancient spells had been damaged by humanities ongoing changes to the land to the point where any concentrated effort would pierce them.

   Just wonderful.

   Unfortunately, by the time they got that much information together, they had an urgent call from Raven, in Alaska. A sizeable chunk of Anchorage had dissolved into a crater full of monsters, the rest of the city was under attack – and most of the west coast groups were already under attack or were out of contact.

   The Chauffeur swore to himself: why did everything have to happen at once? Wait: they never had figured out who’d been paying for the rest of those dinosaur-augmented psionic mercenaries. The cult head – he’d disappeared after they’d awakened him, and he’d only put in a few appearances since. All for silly things… Had that been a diversion while he’d been investigating, scheming, and gathering mercenaries?

   Anchorage was – at best – a draw. By the time they got there – probably by the time they’d been called – the Harvester had already come and gone. Anchorage had had few protective spells. The Harvester had simply visited the center of town, stolen all the souls within it’s range, transformed the soulless bodies into ravening monsters, and left them to finish the extermination. Individually the creatures were no match for a superhero – or even for a normal enhanced by Zachary – but there were thousands, what was left of the city was without power, and a storm was moving in. Raven had set up a safe zone, but in the end Yuki allowed the Spirit of the Ancient Winters – the Spirit of the Ice Age – to channel itself through her and enshroud the entire field of battle in glacial ice.

   It was not easy to stop it afterwards, and there was no immediate way to seal off the link that Yuki had opened at all.

   Well, even a new ice age would be better than the Harvesters, Bane Mummies, or whatever unpronounceable thing they called themselves.

   The Harvester had apparently attempted to find the Dragon Enclave next – but had eventually given it up and returned to the dark realms. The Dragons had been erecting confusion and concealment wards to keep the governments off their back for quite awhile now, and those had inadvertently served them well.

   They warned them anyway. Along the way, the White Necromancer borrowed Baen for the next few decades: he might be useful, it would be a waste to leave him in Chi’an’s stables – and it would have been awfully unkind to leave him there anyway. The boy had to be bored as hell.