PREVIOUS UNIVERSES.

[powersthatbe]

PREVIOUS UNIVERSES This is where all information and story summaries for previous jaunt destinations and story events will be listed, summarized, and archived. At the start of the game, of course, there hadn't really been any previous universes, but because we're allowing characters to come in as Veteran Travelers with established CR, we're providing a basic overview of the last few destinations anyway, so that you can handwave what happened there. Beneath those, we've listed the destinations players have been to since the game opened. Backstory Universes: Belljar Island | Moebius | Spark In-Game Universes: Ace of Spades | Cursed Kingdom | Ivory Tower | Labyrinthine Shoal | Last of Us | Solstice Masquerade | Harrowing of Harrogate | Doki Doki no Gakuen | Digital Frontier | Marches of Purgatory | Questing Country | Lightning Age | Children of the Night | Escape from Junkworld | Code of Dishonor | Roman Holiday | Villains & Vigilantes | Lightside/Darkside | The Haunted Isle | Pogemon | Olympus Upended | Showtime | The Unquiet Dead | Night Falls on Yensid | Ouroboros Retrograde | Triad Creation Tourney | Digital Frontier: Legacy Mode | Red Dirt | Elsewhere University | Dawnbreak Boulevard | Market of the Vanities | The Question of Albion | Beastfolk: A Pastoral | Paramo Riconquista Not Quite Either: Welcome to the World Series Backstory Universes BELLJAR ISLAND, the last stop in the game's backstory, was a classic jamjar/slice-of-life setting. The arrival of a group of travelers who firmly believed in and could demonstrate their ability to escape this setting caused widespread civil unrest, leading to the decision, after six weeks of failed attempts to escape or complete their investigation, for a majority consensus of Travelers to admit failure. It's still unclear whether that admission in fact completed the investigation, or if something else happened - but every Traveler who agreed with the consensus did not make the next jaunt, leading to one of the biggest and most complete changeovers in Traveler roster that any traveler can remember, and temporarily stranding everyone in Liminal Space. Before Belljar Island came THE SPARK, a massive space station in a technologically incomprehensible future where what remained of humanity had little to do but entertain themselves in virtual-reality playscapes, edit their own identities, or immerse themselves in history. The investigation was completed when the Travelers aided a group of anti-technology radicals in crashing the Spark on a half-terraformed planetary surface, allegedly re-invigorating their society and giving meaning to their lives. It was a controversial decision, and one still widely argued about. Before the Spark came MOEBIUS, a twisted survival-horror Groundhog's Day time loop, in which Travelers woke up every morning with amnesia and fresh scars, and then had twenty-four hours to complete their investigation before everything reset and the hellish roller coaster wiped their progress. Few if any Travelers remember much of Moebius, and those who do don't like to discuss it. No-one can admit to remembering how the investigation was completed, and many veteran Travelers also lost their memory of every universe they'd jaunted to before Moebius. In-Game Universes 1930 Brooklyn/The Ace of Spades: When the scions of the two gangs wrestling for control of the bootleg liquor trade in Brooklyn begun a secret affair, it invited all kinds of trouble, and the head of one family put out a hit on the heir of the other. As the gang war escalated and a quiet federal investigation heated up, more assassins and gunmen showed up on scene, and in the midst of it all, the Travelers were mistaken for out-of-town muscle. Torn on whether to support one side or the other, whether the Arcana wanted them to stop the assassination or carry it out, they participated in a bullet-ridden showdown on both sides while a small group snuck the two mob heirs out of town. The initial plotting post is here, and the wrap-up post is here. Dolorosa, The Cursed Kingdom: When the benevolent Queen mysteriously disappeared along with her throne eight years ago, the kingdom of Dolorosa fell into chaos. But the barons, who decided to cease their infighting over the crown and Throneless Keep to attempt to locate the Queen, chose to organize a tournament and draw all the land into their search. The Travelers, easily lost in the crowds, turned to their investigation and soon found the Illuminated mages and the valiant Gryphon Knights also renewing their search for the Queen. To further complicate matters, a treacherous baron slaughtered dozens at a supposed peace summit. This culminated in a full-out war between two barons and the leader of the bandits, who tried overthrowing the corrupt barons with talk of revolution. But when dragons began attacking the land at large, the war was put aside to deal with the far more dangerous threat. It was then the Travelers realized that the presence of the Illuminated was what was causing Dolorosa to fall into chaos, their presence triggering the wild surges of magic which caused the dragons to mutate and the horrible curses to appear. The Queen was found to be the bandit leader, her amnesiac curse broken when she came into contact with the Throne, which was the source of one Illuminated's power. Now armed with half the power of a powerful mage, she quickly chose to rid the kingdom of the rest of the Illuminated. The Illuminated were quickly scattered, some choosing to fight and die, and some forced into exile. The initial plotting post is here, a mid-jaunt recap is here, the final plotting post is here and the wrap-up post is here. La Tour Ivoire Academe/The Ivory Tower: March 8th, 2039, in a land once called France. The Travelers found themselves in a post-apocalyptic land that had been ruined by nuclear and chemical warfare. The shining beacon in this was a shining white tower, an academy in which its students were encouraged to better the ruined world outside through the yearly grant. Each department - Technical Systems and Salvage, Ecological Sciences, and Cultures and Humanities - had their own unique approaches. The Travelers were sorted into departments and asked by each to assist in their grant proposal project, to hopefully win the money. Technical Systems created an aircraft for scouting and further salvage missions, Ecological Sciences developed plant mutations that absorbed radiation, and Humanities chose to translate and reprint philosophical and political texts for the establishment of orderly societies. After much deliberation, the grant money was given to the Ecological Sciences. The initial plotting post is here, and the grant voting is here. The Labyrinthine Shoal: The Travelers found themselves in the middle of the open ocean in the Circle of the World, and were soon rescued by three ships hailing from different lands: the Damsel of Distress from Blackbanner Port, the Harbinger from Paramo, and the Panlong from En Zhenming, all being chased by a ship from the Paramoese navy called the Lictor, intent on capturing or sinking them all. They were led through the shoals by a school of mermaids from Thalassia, fleeing their tyrannical queen and her dreaded pet, a giant tentacled beast rumored to cause madness and boil the sea. To further complicate things, some mermaids were Stricken, with a horrible disease that turned them carnivorous and, in some cases, cannibalistic. The ragtag group quickly collected the Travelers and hurried along through the shoals. After picking up a strange traveler, the ships went head to head against the Kraken itself, eventually defeating it in a heated and bloody battle. With the Lictor still on their tails, the Sirens from the mermaid school chose to lure the Lictor into some rocks and sink it. With the queen and the Paramoese Navy thwarted, the ships made it safely to an island lagoon, which the mermaids chose to make their new home. The initial plotting post is here, the kraken battle plotting is here, and the wrap-up post is here. The Last Of Us: Austin, Texas, in September of 2013. Initially thought to be a more light-hearted journey than most, the Travelers were treated to exploration of the modern-day city and all the accommodations their four-star hotel could provide. But when violent patients from a local hospital infected with Cordyceps began to spread over the city, the Travelers were quickly thrown into a city-wide panic: those who stayed outside had to face an onslaught of frightened civilians and murderous, mindless "zombies" threatening to overtake the whole city, and those who stayed in the hotel were greeted with armed agents and put on strict lockdown. The Jaunt suddenly shifted forward several years, and the Travelers found themselves in Boston in a walled-off section of the city heavily patrolled by FEDRA and always under threat of attack by Fireflies and the Infected alike. However, the Jaunt suddenly cut itself short and the Travelers were sent back to Liminal Space. The initial plotting post is here. Solstice Masquerade: The Orrery was where the Travelers found themselves next, a splendid clockpunk building set against a vast desert, created by beings called the Starmovers. The planet they found themselves on was plagued by an all-too-close sun making the planet too hot to sustain many crops and causing tension among many nations. The Orrery was used to usher forth the coming of the blessed winter - or perhaps, the only way to make winter come, depending on who you spoke to - via a ritualistic dance in which everyone wore anonymizing masks. Thankfully, the dances were completed without a hitch, and winter came - but not without attracting the attention of the Travelers to two individuals in particular, two peculiar dancers who spoke of claiming Travelers for themselves. It was later determined upon returning to Liminal Space that they were Arcana, the Sun and the Moon, and had marked some Travelers with their symbol. The initial plotting post is here. The Harrowing of Harrogate: May 10th, 1897, in the town of Harrogate. The Queen's Diamond Jubilee was to be celebrated with much pomp and circumstance. The Mayor had a special play translated from German for the event, which was secretly a catalyst for a summoning ritual which would summon Hastur, the King in Yellow, to infect the minds of the visiting dignitaries and peasants alike with madness which they would then spread all over the world. Meanwhile, the town doctor was using his knowledge of the Old Ones to experiment with creating Eldritch horrors, one of which succeeded and attacked lone Travelers at night. After a troubling corpse was found outside the inn, a seance was performed; there, a connection was found between the mysterious happenings of the town and the play that was to be performed. As the practice for the play continued, the actors became slowly consumed by their character roles and the dead from the moors began to walk again. While the cultists did their best to let the show go on, and the mayor did his best to keep the visitors to his town happy while not revealing his plans, the Travelers managed to break the spell at the last moment. A riot started, thus making the ritual fail, providing the Travelers with a very narrow success. The initial plotting post is here, the play auditions are here, and the second plotting post is here. Doki Doki no Gakuen/Heartbeat Academy: Heartbeat Academy was the next stop for the Travelers, a prestigious romance-themed high school, where some were Audiocaudal Syndrome (becoming part animal) and Ganymede Syndrome (constantly appearing teen-aged) sufferers, in both the student body and in some cases the staff. Heartbeat Academy was also renowned for its promotion and cultivation of Social Techniques/S. Tech, or the anime-inspired abilities of any number of shoujo heroes/heroines. When the love confessions meant for Valentine's were suddenly scattered in what came to be known as the "Valentine's Day Massacre", the fragile emotions of the student body fell into despair as their letters were delivered to the wrong people, or in some cases not delivered at all. To further compound the problem, someone had purposefully done it, and left the White Day Committee an anonymous note that if the confessions were not sorted properly, their White Day plans would be a disaster. The school's computer system PSYCHENet did offer strategic love advice when she could, but the rest was up to the Travelers to solve. After the Travelers managed to obtain and sort the confessions, and some couples who broke up over the incident talked over their issues and resolved to try again, White Day was a great success, and the Travelers were sent back to Liminal Space. It was confirmed in Liminal Space that "PSCHYE-chan" was truly The Lovers Arcanum, and had marked some Travelers. The sneak-preview is here, and the initial plotting post is here. Digital Frontier: After a longer and rather more populated Liminal Space than usual (in which the fact that four Arcana – Hierophant, Fortune, Temperance, and Star – are dead first came to light), the Travelers were whisked away to the Grid, a society inside a computer. It was controlled by the paranoid Defenders, explored by discontent Miners, terrorized by corrupt Automata, and the former home of the mysterious Cryptos, most of whom had been wiped out some time previously. The jaunt began with a handful of Cryptos being released from stasis; they largely kept to themselves and set out on a quest of their own across the digital wilderness… in the hopes of reviving their fallen User, SAGE. As the jaunt unfolded, the Miners uncovered a wealth of information about their surroundings, covert Automata pursued an agenda of their own, an unfolding rebellion graced the Grid with a brand-new faction – and ROSE, the Arcanum in disguise who spearheaded the jaunt, was revealed to have snuck the Travelers there out from under her colleagues’ noses, forcing the Devil to intervene in the name of maintaining zir old victory. In the end, SAGE (or Ix, or Hermit) was successfully revived and allowed to leave the Grid, resulting in a resounding victory for ROSE. After the jaunt, several Arcana were available for contact by phone. The confirmed Arcana which appeared this Jaunt were The Magician (ROSE), The Hermit (SAGE), The Devil, and The Lovers, with a guest appearance by The Moon. The initial plotting post is here. The sum-up post is here. Marches of Purgatory: Melasurei, next door to Hell and home to lost souls, immortals with nothing better to do, angels and demons trying to save or damn their neighbors, and the Sithen, celestial beings who refused to fight on either side during the Fall, found itself in the middle of an uproar when the Travelers arrived. What at first appeared to be a simple stoppage of the mail from Heaven turned out to be a much, much bigger issue: a piece of the Name of the Divine, capable of either producing a miracle or flattening the city akin to a nuclear blast, had been stolen from its rightful place in Heaven and brought to Melasurei. A chase to get the piece – either to return it to its rightful place or to use it for nefarious purposes – ensued, with the poor investigators often at a loss to figure out where to start looking. Ultimately, the Name was used to try to help Melasurei’s least fortunate better their lot (and to keep a demon from buggering off to Hell with it)… resulting in the Travelers’ first failed jaunt since Belljar. The initial plotting post is here. The summary is here. Questing Country: The Travelers next found themselves in Questing Country, a dream space where people of several species were given the power to fight back against nightmares. A Valence, capable of granting the rightful bearer’s deepest wish, had just appeared, and the race was on to prove worthy of it – but matters on jaunts are rarely that simple, and deeper mysteries soon presented themselves, including whether Valences were a resource to be used or a distraction from Questing Country’s main purpose. A missing spirit animal, a Gorgon accused of murder, and a young woman desperate to make her own Valence and stay with the person who meant the most to her all intersected, and in the end both Valences were used to make someone other than the wishers’ lives easier. The High Priestess was sponsoring the jaunt, and quite busy marking Travelers, but to this day most of the Travelers don’t know what guise she took in order to do so. (It was not, it’s worth noting, the friends we made along the way.) The very first larger-scale walkabout was a return to the world of the Solstice Masquerade. The group, entirely investigators, found themselves trapped in an underground facility by hostile locals, left with nothing to do but explore the abandoned Starmover technology there. The initial plotting post is here. The summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Lightning Age: Nova Venezia, 1314 (or 1896, to cryptocatholics and other folks more familiar with the Gregorian calendar). The Travelers arrived in the midst of a hunt for two dangerous fugitives – and at a slight disadvantage: The Arcana had sent people to this world before, so some of the locals remembered an odd incident with strange foreigners and were on the lookout, but this last jaunt was before Moebius, so not even the oldest veterans could give investigators any insight on the place, aside from periodic flashbacks. The investigators proceeded to make a right hash of things, arguing amongst themselves, disturbing the peace, and leaking information about their existence and purpose in the city, both intentionally and not. An infiltrator’s corpse being revived after her associated investigator had recovered in Liminal Space provided the Travelers with some interesting new information on the nature of infiltrating, especially when Traveler and former overlay met each other, and a pair of odd proxies were overseeing the whole affair. In the end, half the city burned down, neither fugitive was captured, and… the Travelers won, though they’re not really clear on how. After this jaunt, the King in Yellow’s sigil, which had been plaguing Liminal Space since Harrogate, was removed by the High Priestess; it hasn’t been seen since. Confirmed Arcana on this jaunt were Chariot and Hanged Man; there was no associated walkabout. The initial plotting post is here. The summary is here. Children of the Night: Sarmatia, eastern Europe, 1998: The local Vampire Prince had just died, leading to the Sarmatian supernatural community’s very first democratic election. Competition between the old prince’s disgraced heir, a conservative vampire looking to keep things as they were, and a werewolf of a rather socialist mindset was stiff. Travelers posing as American election officials helped organize pre-voting events… but another Traveler’s inner conviction that vampires and werewolves are The Bad Guys led to a number of deaths, including the conservative candidate. To make matters worse, on voting night it was revealed that an influential member of the community had rigged a large number of voting machines, making an accurate count impossible. The two remaining candidates reached an agreement to share power, resulting in a successful jaunt. The walkabout during this jaunt was a visit to the Cursed Kingdom’s neighboring city of Misericordia, where our old friends nemeses the Illuminated rebanded and broke into Liminal Space. They were summarily kicked back out by the jaunt and walkabout’s sponsor Arcana, Emperor and Empress respectively, after which they headed out to check on the stability of the two excursions and each marked a couple Travelers. The initial plotting post is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Escape from Junkworld: The Travelers’ next stop began on Gehenna, a radioactive trash heap of a planet populated by scoundrels and castoffs of a number of species – some of which, as it happens, have access to Questing Country (in fact, a few infiltrators were reprising their roles, nearly a century later). Gehenna was about to get bombarded by a mysterious timey-wimey event known as a tachyon storm, necessitating the quick repair of a couple of scrapped ships just barely big enough to get a larger percentage of the planet’s current inhabitants off-planet; they were the only two ships available with hyperlight travel capabilities, necessary for any hope of outrunning the tachyons. After liftoff, one problem arose after another, portals into Liminal Space opened up for Travelers and infiltrators alike, and the tachyon storm, according to the person who knew the most about it, resolved into less of a ‘storm’ and more of a song. One ship became incapacitated, leaving the other traveling just too slowly to outrun the storm – but everything worked out in the end, thanks to some quick attempts to sing back to the entity behind the song (believed to be a baby Starmover; see Solstice Masquerade). The Walkabout this time was a return to the world of Doki Doki no Gakuen, where several S. Tech schools competed in a week-long talent showcase. This was a very quiet walkabout, with Doki ultimately claiming the competition’s top prize (again). The initial plotting post is here. The summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Code of Dishonor: The Travelers were next dropped into the beginnings of a civil war on the Bando Peninsula, home to the True-Named Empire’s political castoffs. (Interestingly, ‘True-Named Empire’ is a possible translation of En Zhenming, of Labyrinthine Shoals notoriety.) The Shogun, on behalf of the empire, had set the peninsula’s three provinces with a challenge: Determine which of them would send shock troops to the empire’s next conquest, and that group would return home with a sizeable reward. Matters were further complicated by a pair of Arcana (Tower and Judgement) hijacking the local shrines in order to ‘answer prayers’ and mark people, throwing the shrines’ rightful resident dragons out temporarily in the process; the local dragons were none too pleased by this, and unleashed a series of natural disasters on the area to show their wrath. As time went on, the provinces edged more toward uniting against the empire rather than slaughtering each other for fun and profit, and the Shogun ordered troops to carry out a series of attacks on provincial villages, culminating in a small army marching on the northern Sun Temple. The Travelers rallied to the temple’s cause, routing the army decisively inside of a day; the Shogun died at the hands of an infiltrator; and both Arcana sponsoring the jaunt seemed pleased with the outcome. This Jaunt also saw a guest appearance from the Empress, disguised as a midwife. The walkabout during this jaunt was a return to Brooklyn, this time two years before the original jaunt. A dispute over a gangster’s will was… largely ignored in favor of other shenanigans. The initial plotting post is here. The summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Roman Holiday: Evidently, even the Arcana were feeling the need for a vacation after all that, as the Travelers next found themselves in Stabiae, a resort town a stone’s throw from Pompeii, at the Roman Empire’s height. Despite some concern about Mount Vesuvius rumbling (even though the Travelers quickly established they were over a decade out from the eruption that would devastate the region) and a few in-group rumblings about the presence of slavery, the closest thing sussed out to a purpose for their being there proved to be matchmaking, of all things - seeing that a pair of struggling families were able to get their affairs in order, and a couple of star-crossed lovers had a chance to get those stars back into alignment. Those on walkabout were sent to Belljar Island, site of the group’s infamous failure by forfeit… which was long devoid of any human life. Exploration of the island at large and the city of Plathville mostly yielded more questions than it did answers, especially when they found a jury-rigged dimensional portal under the town hospital. Both jaunt and walkabout were brought to an abrupt end when one of the Travelers decided to poke the thing. The initial plotting post is here. The summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. A brief summary of what the Travelers uncovered is here. Villains & Vigilantes: Newport, Great Britain, 106 years after Halley’s Comet ripped open a path between the mundane world and the Spirit World (2016 by Gregorian standards): The British royal family was on the point of installing a Solomon Ring, a permanent gateway between the two worlds, when the Travelers arrived. Issue was almost immediately taken with the Manticore, a powerful spirit who supplanted the old royals after the comet came through, and the secret police force under his aegis; Travelers and locals alike had mixed feelings about the Ring itself, leading to any number of plots to disrupt its function; and one hapless Traveler stumbled into a side pocket of Liminal Space, uncovering some very interesting things about the Familiar Faces in the process. On top of that, the world of Newport turned out to be another pre-Moebius stop, leading to some confusion about ‘invading spirits’ among the Manticore Knights. Ultimately, the Ring’s function was altered to leave it permanently open, and the Manticore was killed, resulting in… well, enough of a victory for a peaceful Liminal Space. Confirmed Arcana on this jaunt were Empress, Emperor, and Strength; there was no associated walkabout. The initial plotting post is here. The summary is here. Lightside/Darkside: For the last of what the Arcana had been pitching as Phase Two of… whatever it is they’re doing, they sent the Travelers to January, an elven city whose society was split into two as a result of a long-ago plague. With most of the population completely blind in either daylight or darkness and a small but growing handful unaffected, it fell to the Travelers to unravel the reasons the circadian divide was put into place and whether it still needed to be there - something they accomplished in near-record time, and without any riots or explosions. Ultimately, the circadian divide, which turned out to be a relic of the plague quarantine, was left in the beginning stages of being dismantled, and some shady dealings made possible because of it came to light and were corrected. Confirmed Arcana on this jaunt were Death and Justice, with a surprise appearance by the Lovers thanks to a couple of Travelers having a wedding; there was no associated walkabout. The initial plotting post is here. The summary is here. Welcome to the World Series: After finishing up in January, the Arcana treated the Travelers to an extended stay in Liminal Space in order to ring in Phase Three properly - making this the longest continuous stay in Liminal Space on record since the gap between Belljar and Brooklyn. During this time, they split the remaining unmarked Travelers among themselves, as equally as they could manage, and pulled both their new choices and those they’d previously marked into side pockets of Liminal Space for private conversation. In the meantime, Liminal Space proper subjected the Travelers to a number of puzzles, illusions, and even reliving old overlays. Unfortunately, during these shenanigans, a pair of Travelers killed each other, marking the first deaths in Liminal Space since sometime before Moebius. A summary of what the Travelers learned in all of these side excursions, as well as The Exciting Adventure of Altair and Matthew in the Floor, can be found here. The Haunted Isle: The Arcana kicked off Phase Three of their game in the very spot that saw the beginning of Phase Two - inside the Labyrinthine Shoal, on the rechristened Crownbreaker Isle. The arrival of a ship carrying refugees (and hot cargo) from the Bando Peninsula and a mermaid school looking to find out what had become of the Thalassian rebels sparked a plan among the Crownbreaker residents to hide, convince these newcomers the island was haunted, and wait for them to go away. The plan fell apart in a matter of days, but another problem quickly became apparent: the mysterious Deepsong, which entranced Sirens every night and made mermaids and humans alike more susceptible to contracting the Stricken illness. As tensions mounted, so did distrust, not helped along when the newly-arrived mermaids discovered a traitor in their midst had led the Deepsinger to Crownbreaker Isle. Investigator collaboration produced an antibiotic regimen and a vaccine against the Stricken contagion, and several group investigations combined to neutralise the threat represented by the Deepsinger. In the end, though, the locals all decided to go their separate ways and never speak of this mess again. Competing Arcana on this jaunt were Lovers and Hermit, with Hermit claiming a handy victory. There was no corresponding walkabout. The plotting post can be found here. The summary can be found here. Pogemon: The Travelers next found themselves in Pogtopia City, a town straight out of a ‘90s monster-buddy anime, just in time for the annual Pogemon Slammer tournament. What had started as a simple children’s game then exploded, a couple of years prior to the Travelers’ arrival, into a very real connection to the Pogemon homeworld. As the tournament progressed, the Travelers uncovered more information about the mysterious Nevermore, a twice-defeated Pogemon intent on crushing both worlds under his… er, talons, and the human who was complicit in his scheming. The human partner evidently backed out of the arrangement, however, when Nevermore escalated his attacks and a bystander was killed. Friendship, teamwork, and a few good sealing pogs allowed Nevermore to be defeated a third time, and rather more soundly, restoring order to both worlds. Competing Arcana on this jaunt were Emperor and Hanged Man, with Emperor squeaking out a surprisingly narrow victory. Meanwhile, the first walkabout in a while sent a handful of Travelers back to Sarmatia, where an American film crew looking to make their own answer to The Blair Witch Project set up shop in Colchis for a month, poking about for supernatural activity much to the dismay of the actual supernatural community. The locals did their best to keep the humans from stumbling into any actual secrets, a matter complicated by one of the crew breaking into the Kurgan. The plotting post for the jaunt can be found here; the final summary is here. The plotting post for the walkabout can be found here, and a summary is here. Olympus Upended: Next, the Travelers were dropped in Bronze Age Greece, in the middle of what turned out to be the prophesized last year of the Heroic Age. That something was Wrong with the Olympian gods was immediately apparent, between the sun and moon doing whatever the hell they wanted and a general lack of response from said gods, even after a band of mortals climbed Mount Olympus looking for answers; the cause of their failure to respond, as well as the reason for mortals suddenly taking on godly powers, was a bit less so, but ultimately revealed to be a Titan-driven conspiracy to bring down Olympian rule and start anew. Matters were further complicated among the Investigators by the fact that Liminal Space before the jaunt pretty unsubtly indicated the contest was between Chariot and Tower, heightening tensions even more as they considered how best to throw their weight into the situation, if at all. Ultimately and after some chaos, the Olympians, Titans, and new immortals sat down and hashed out a new path forward, resulting in a hard-fought win for Chariot. There was no associated walkabout. The plotting post can be found here. The summary is here. Showtime: Santa Carlita, California, 1989: The Travelers were dumped on the scene of a Fourth of July music festival swirling with secrets, ranging from the mysterious front man of one headliner act, the front man for the other headliner getting away with far more ridiculous shenanigans than were truly reasonable, a roadie who was not all that he seemed, a warm-up act that had completely vanished, and a shady government agency on the lookout for aliens. Over the whirlwind few days of the festival, the government agents kidnapped a number of Travelers, with the resulting breakout drawing their attention to the Travelers’ interdimensional nature; a handful of investigators put a band together to fill in for the missing act, who had been kidnapped by the government agents; and the mysterious front man, after his own kidnapping, revealed himself to be the band’s publicity-shy manager using a holographic disguise. Competing Arcana on the jaunt were Moon and Justice; despite Moon booting one of her own Travelers to the walkabout in an effort to keep him from sharing his secrets, Justice eked out a win thanks to the secrets that were revealed. The walkabout in question was a return to the Escape From Junkworld setting, as the Empress of Moths stopped at a trading post for repairs and retrofitting, and some opportunistic bounty hunters attempted to capture her passengers. The initial plotting post is here; the final summary is here. The plotting post for the walkabout can be found here. The Unquiet Dead: The Travelers were next returned to Harrogate in the year 2020, their first outing against the King in Yellow largely forgotten by the local residents. The funeral of a town celebrity alerted the living to trouble stirring in the afterlife - as did a number of investigating Travelers beginning the jaunt in the spirit realm. As the number of restless spirits multiplied and the living got less and less sleep, dreamlike visions, spotty communication between the living and the dead, and reckless Travelers were able to pinpoint the ghost behind the disturbances - but not before she herself was possessed by an elder god. The living and the dead rallied to free the ghosts from the god's influence and return the dead to their rightful rest. Competing Arcana on the jaunt were Strength and the Devil, with Strength claiming the win. The walkabout accompanying this jaunt was a visit to the desert planet of Jangwa, where Travelers assisted in the safe hatching of a number of baby dragons and helped to put a major dent in the local dragon-poacher population. The initial plotting post is here, and the final summary is here. The plotting post for the walkabout can be found here. Night Falls on Yensid: Next, the Travelers were sent to a city in the former kingdom of Yensid, a place where magic used to rule but was seemingly on the wane. It quickly transpired that this was not the group’s first visit - the previous one was before Moebius, and a thousand years ago by the local calendar, when pieces of an amulet meant to reunite the three local races and balance the kingdom’s magic were lost before the rejoining ceremony could be carried out. On their arrival this time, the lost pieces of the amulet had been rediscovered; it took a Traveler-arranged heist to get those pieces away from the industrialist who found them and back in the hands of those who could carry out the reunification ceremony, allowing the three races to re-integrate and magic to swell in the land once again. Luckily, the Travelers were not caught out for their involvement in the heist. Competing Arcana on the jaunt (there was no associated walkabout) were Death and Hermit; however, they both managed to see their victory conditions met, a move which triggered another extended Liminal Space break and returned the Lovers into competition. During the long break, a few Travelers mounted an expedition to Fortune’s dead Liminal pocket, uncovering a number of secrets about Synodiporia’s structure and the dead Arcana in the process. The initial plotting post is here; the final summary is here. Ouroboros Retrograde: The Travelers next returned to Questing Country - and, unusually, were greeted with a warm welcome, as the Oracles present for the Travelers’ previous visit had divined some details about the nature of that sudden influx and abrupt disappearance of new Dreamers. Questing Country itself was undergoing an Ouroboros Retrograde, a time in which the usual barriers between times were weakened. In addition to the ‘present’ generation the Travelers had previously interacted with, there were Dreamers from the distant past, grappling with Diabolin invasions in the waking world and new Adversaries in their sleep, and some from the time of Escape from Junkworld, faced with terrifying transformations to Questing Country and Dreamers alike. Some Travelers joined the past’s freedom fighters in a waking-world rebellion, bringing the timeline more in sync with the future; some helped reach out to the dreaming baby Starmovers that were causing a disruption in their desire for company; and still others confronted a number of the Arcana when it transpired they were up to something that may have been harming the fabric of Questing Country itself. Competing Arcana on the jaunt were Fool and Judgement, with Judgement claiming the victory (to many Travelers’ confusion). The walkabout accompanying this jaunt was set on Sunday Island, in the same world as the Lightside/Darkside jaunt; Travelers there were mistaken for the gods of the locals’ convoluted and restrictive religion, and attempted to mitigate the worst aspects of the religion’s damage to the people before they left. The initial plotting post can be found here. the final summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Triad Creation Tourney: Worcesterhamshire, England, 2007: The Triad Creation Tourney, an international competition to showcase the magical arts skills of students at three prestigious schools, was beginning at Her Majesty’s Royal Academy of the Arts. Of course, it wasn’t so simple as a mere competition; a saboteur wrought havoc on a number of performances, as well as interrupting a party with a crashed chandelier, and a sinister force was sheltering within Majesty’s with the aim of taking over Britain. After quite a bit of confusion, the would-be overlord was thwarted, and the saboteur fled the country. Competing Arcana on the jaunt were Sun and Priestess, with Sun claiming a fairly decisive victory. The accompanying walkabout was a return to the world of Newport, this time a prequel to the previous visits, in which a handful of Travelers were tasked with accompanying an iron casket across occupied Europe. The initial plotting post for the jaunt is here; the final summary can be found here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Digital Frontier: Legacy Mode: To end the first bracket of Phase Three, the Travelers were next returned to the world of the Grid, but not the Grid itself; they joined an expedition to uncover what happened to the ZODIAC system, which fell victim to a mysterious virus some time after the Grid was closed off. As exploration progressed, a mysterious Trojan code began to spread; that code was identified as the reason ZODIAC was closed off, and some Travelers wrote a patch for it, allowing the restoration of the Signifiers, the faction that called ZODIAC home. While one of the systems backing the expedition intended to determine ZODIAC’s fate, the Programs there were far more concerned with what the Signifiers wanted for themselves. Competing Arcana on the jaunt were Magician and Empress, with Magician snagging a last-minute victory. Those on walkabout went to a ski resort in Finland, thwarting shady government agents’ attempts to meddle with supernatural animal transformations. The initial plotting post for the jaunt is here; the final summary can be found here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Red Dirt: Mars, 2148: The Travelers arrived to a downtrodden space outpost, where corporate barons were holding access to food hostage to keep residents of the smaller towns in line. Not surprisingly, the locals were planning an audacious cattle heist, and several Travelers pitched in on this literal seizure of the means of production. With their help, the townsfolk learned that some of the cows they’d stolen were intended to be theirs in the first place, kept the vast majority of the herd out of corporate hands, and made sure Earthside authorities were aware of the depth of the situation on Mars. But that wasn’t all. The Arcana called on the fruits of their labor from Questing Country to not simply revisit the world of a prior jaunt, but the original jaunt itself - this particular cattle heist was at the center of a jaunt well before Moebius, and on the first attempt, it didn’t go nearly as smoothly. The changes wrought by revisiting the heist were enough for the Arcana to revive one of their own, returning Fortune to active play. Because of the time travel experiment, this jaunt was not part of the competition bracket. The walkabout accompanying this jaunt was an equally timey-wimey visit to the Pogemon world, in which an experiment accidentally drew a few humans into the Pogedimension. The Travelers there escorted the group to the summit of Great Pog Mountain, and a way back home. The initial plotting post for the jaunt can be found here; the final summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Elsewhere University: The Travelers’ next stop was a quaint university in the country of New England… that just so happened to share space with a faerie ring, greatly complicating day-to-day life on campus. When a new student and member of a foreign royal family was kidnapped by the Fae, it fell to Travelers and campus authorities alike to stage a rescue. Along the way, questions arose about the nature of a strange sculpture inhabiting the college metal shop, as well as the efficacy of the treaty allowing humans and Fae to coexist on campus. Competing Arcana on this jaunt were Sun and Magician, with Magician squeaking out a very narrow victory. The walkabout accompanying this jaunt was another return to the moon settled by the refugees from Gehenna, where Travelers assisted in exploring the group’s new digs, established contact with a local species, and helped give the moon and its gas giant more useful names. The initial plotting post for the jaunt is here; the final summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Dawnbreak Boulevard: Vineland, California, 195X: The fate of Transcendent Studios hangs on the successful completion of a movie adaptation of The Phantom Thief, a popular detective novel. The production was under more threat from executive meddling and the aggressive local rumor mill concerning its stars and staff - and a faded star desperate to regain his former notoriety - than anything the Travelers brought to the table. Travelers helped see the movie to completion, uncover its producer’s taste for embezzlement, and make sure the studio had more than one film to fall back on before leaving. Competing Arcana in this jaunt were Lovers and Strength, with Lovers claiming the victory. The walkabout accompanying this jaunt dropped a handful of Travelers at an unnamed in in an unfamiliar world, where a body-hopping spirit was aggressively pursued by a hunter of the supernatural. Upon return from the jaunt and walkabout, Travelers learned that a few of their number had attacked Tower in its personal Liminal Space pocket before the jaunt - and were successful in causing Tower’s death, much to the Arcana’s chagrin. The initial plotting post for the jaunt is here; the final summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Market of the Vanities: The Travelers were next returned to Purgatory, where fallout from the end of their previous visit to Melasurei carried ripple effects throughout the realm and to the market at the center of the jaunt. With the Peregrines granted solidity by the use of the Name, decision-making power in the market needed to be rebalanced, and more than one faction sought to take advantage of new allies who could not be killed. The Peregrines were granted a more solid foundation on which to build their new fortunes, an illicit cease-fire in the war between Heaven and Hell was negotiated, and Heaven lost a number of angels to its own hubris and indifference. Competing Arcana on this jaunt were Justice and Fortune, with Justice claiming the victory. The walkabout accompanying this jaunt was a visit to a world occupied by sentient animals, who held a great number of feasts and stumbled across the bones of their home’s previous inhabitants - long-dead humans. Afterward, having failed to learn much of import from their Traveler detective squad, the Arcana imparted a punishment of sorts onto the Travelers at large: understanding of what it is Tower’s death costs the universe. The initial plotting post for the jaunt is here; the final summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. The Question of Albion: The Travelers next found themselves in Londinium, capital of a quasi-Elizabethan alternate England in which humans regularly seek magical assistance from beings called genii (genius, in the singular). The High King of Albion was due to abdicate the throne in favor of his nephew, the rightful matrilineal heir, though his daughter was considering making an argument for her own claim to rule. Before she really could, however, matters were complicated by members of a foreign magic circle attempting to summon the genius of the Atlantic Ocean - and partly succeeding, but leaving the genius possessing their leader. The ocean genius ultimately refused to interfere in the succession proto-crisis, and since concerns were raised about the readiness of both potential heirs, neither of them were crowned after all. Competing Arcana on this jaunt were Fool and Emperor, with Emperor claiming the victory. The walkabout accompanying this jaunt was a visit to a brand-new island resort theme park… that quickly went south when the wizard who’d been taking an extended nap on said island woke up to find it had been Meddled With. The initial plotting post for the jaunt is here; the final summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Beastfolk: A Pastoral: The barren waste of Home, populated by the half-human, half-animal Beastfolk, was the Travelers’ next destination - and it was apparent in very short order that all was not as it appeared on the surface. Plucky investigators quickly determined that the pesky ‘midges’ hanging around practically everywhere in the homestead were, in fact, miniature cameras, and everyone’s doings were being constantly recorded for the sake of a reality show used to distract the disaffected masses living off-planet. With the help of a few fed-up planted actors and a stray human who wandered in from the desert, the Travelers exposed a number of injustices, improved the terraforming equipment propping Home’s ecology up, and opened a path toward actually fixing a very, very broken system. (Several Travelers are not unconvinced this world isn’t the same one as Moebius took place in, if at a different time; management offers no comment.) Competing Arcana on the jaunt were Chariot and Hermit, with Chariot steamrolling to victory (and, for the third time running, barely anyone noticing Hermit’s presence). The walkabout accompanying this jaunt returned once again to Questing Country, where an ancient attempt at corralling a large amount of nightmares at once had corroded to the point where it needed dismantling. The initial plotting post for the jaunt is here; the final summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here. Paramo Riconquista: Next, the Travelers were sent to the seaside duchy of Paramo in the Circle of the World - just in time for familiar and new faces from Crownbreaker Isle and near the Bando Peninsula to make an appearance. Both groups were using the cover of a Paramoese naval festival to achieve their own objectives, with the Crownbreakers hoping to pass weapons to fellow mermaid rebels, and some Totally Normal Fireworks Merchants from En Zhenming planning to provoke Paramo into attacking the Bando, saving the Truenamed Emperor the trouble of quashing the rebellion there himself. Matters were complicated by their respective smuggled cargo shipments being misdelivered - and an upset Traveler toddler disappearing an infiltrator. Enough cargo was reunited with its intended recipients for the Crownbreakers to pass along their share of the loot; the provocateurs, on the other hand, couldn’t cause quite as much chaos as they’d intended, but still sank the flagship of the Paramoese navy and blamed the Bando for it. Competing Arcana on this jaunt were Death and Judgement, with Judgement - recently restored from a dangerously Reversed state by a handful of Travelers - claiming victory. The walkabout accompanying this jaunt returned to Her Majesty’s Royal Academy of the Arts for a session of summer classes. The initial plotting post for the jaunt is here; the final summary is here. The initial plotting post for the walkabout is here.