S5: Project Morpheus

Summary

Armed with the knowledge that dataDyne is kidnapping potential descendants of Isis for something called Project Morpheus The Pack raid the facility in order to unite her soul with the destined physical body.

Key Outcomes

  • Rescue the young girl destined to receive the soul of Isis so she can begin her next life and The Pack can understand the last time the Shadow of Apophis arrived.

The Big Plot Facts

  • Project Morpheus was run at a dataDyne facility on an island in Lake Erie.
  • Project Morpheus was set-up to interrogate and breakdown people in their dreams to learn their inner-most secrets, even ones their subconscious may not have acknowledged.
  • The Pack enter the dream and face-off against the malevolent program Dreamweaver-915 while trying to persuade Isis of who she is.
  • Dreamweaver-915 took on the form of Osiris, who was raised from the dead via a failed Spell of Life, in the dream.
  • In the dream Dreamweaver-915 also attached the psychology of The Pack:-
    • Redclaw: The darkness he wrestles with will consume him
    • Midnight Fury: He will fail his heritage
    • Silent Claw: Justice will fail.
  • During the raid on Project Morpheus, Silent Claw obtained information on Pentex projects in Africa.
  • In order to rescue all descendants of Isis The Pack brought in the Black Furries who took the girls away to be returned to their families.
  • Red Claw raised a storm around the Project Morpheus facility.
  • Isis is dying due to rapid ageing, she went from someone in her late teens to early thirties, when she dies she will die for good. The spell of life has been broke (a conflict failure in The Sixth Maelstrom). The Glass Walkers planned to put her in spiritual stasis.
  • Isis had found where Set was sleeping 200 years ago but was killed before she could act on it. The pack are sent to the remains of a giant malfean, which has formed a mountain range, to kill Set in torpor.
  • The Pack face Set who is awake due to the destruction of the Underworld and they are forced to retreat.
  • Isis informs The Pack of the four Klaives of the Undying used to kill Osiris, who she raised from the dead, they may be the only way of breaking the Spell of Life on the ancient Antediluvian.
  • The Glass Walkers have a caern in Manhattan in an extensive skyscraper. The caern being in the quadrangle atrium at the centre which holds a garden.

Dramatis Personae

  • Dreamweaver-915, the spiritual representation of Dreamweaver-915. A program to psychologically break down people in the their dream. Destroyed.
  • Isis, the wife of Osiris, the only recipient of a successful Spell of Life and a once immortal Mummy. On her last life. Currently in stasis.

Metagame Observations

  • If I was honest, this is the one I felt didn’t fully work. It got all the information out that was needed but it didn’t feel organic and could have been more dramatically powerful. Possibly players had a different take. It felt too much like an info dump to me. I have high expectations.
  • In order to get everything in, I played with the chronological order of events. I think it worked to some degree but not others. It worked as a puzzle but lacked some dramatic heft.
  • I quite liked the set-up of the characters having to have Isis realise who she truly was and accept it over a series of encounters – I still need to find a way to make social encounters as exciting as physical ones, which isn’t really the case at the moment (or I don’t think so).
  • The set-up of the pack facing Set in a battle they were destined to lose came from a number of sources:
    • I wanted to introduce Set before the end
    • I wanted Isis to have critical, immediately useable information
    • I wanted the ‘failure’ Dakota had when freeing Isis from the relic nuclear bomb at the Maw of Oblivion to have a consequence (Set is awake early / Isis is dying)
    • The MCU, the Avengers and Thanos what can I say
  • The face-off against Set and the ‘failure consequence’ that incurred it brings up an interesting discussion around illusion in an RPG. Is it an illusion of consequence? Frankly, I don’t care as what did happen was this (of off a dice roll): the way the main protagonists relate to Isis is changed because she is dying, an awesome idea of setting up a win (that yeah the players new wasn’t going to be that easy) that was a loss is cool narratively. And yes, everyone probably knew that if they had succeeded in the roll to release Isis from the relic nuclear bomb the story would have been different and they’d not have been presented with the ‘kill him in torpor option’. To some this means the presented story is weak – I say bollocks.