Verily, a Mission

Here at Enclave Entertainment, based in the Exclave, we cater towards providing the best experience possible for all of those who help fund our operations. Our main incentive for this is our state-of-the-art virtual reality Live-Action-Role-Playing "Agent for a day" experience, where we reward those who have backed our FootLauncher campaign with the chance to pretend to be agents. This simulation allows guests to take on the part of level one Enclave agents, gaining those abilities for the duration of the trial. Today, we're slated to entertain the Johnsons: a family from 21-st century Alm-Herriga (Rumi's "Great x 965 Grandchildren" are some of our greatest donors, and they chose to pay it backwards).

Unfortunately... our simulation's world generation engine has malfunctioned. This means that currently, the map is just an empty "default medieval plains biome" with no NPCs (and one empty starting village). This simply won't do, so we're calling in some agents to help shape the mission and stand in for the NPCs.

Your mission is to ensure that the Johnsons survive a complete LARP session of a simulated Enclave mission, and come out of it satisfied.

Kevin the father will be playing an Illusionist
Linda the mother will be playing a Thane
Breandan* the son will be playing a Gunslinger
Rumi the daughter will be playing a Thunderbird

Note: We do not know what caused the malfunction. There have been some occasional glitches and corruptions as we've tried to rectify the issue

*typo that I kept cuz it was fun to say

The Conduits, Lor the Aspiring Illusionist, Gig the Wanderer, and Jack the Lithomancer ported into Enclave Entertainment, seeing the family through the window. The dad seemed excited, the mom seemed exasperated, the son seemed restless, and the daughter (who was just a baby) seemed frustrated and bored. The Junior attendant working there ushered them through a curtain where they arrived in a tavern. (Enclave legal wouldn't let them depict the interior of HQ)

They decided that Gig would serve as the guide, Lor could play other NPCs, and Jack would play the villain. Gig found a mountain on his map (it seems the cursory scan missed some biome variety). Lor and Jack visited "Ye Olde Costume Shoppe," and Lor disguised herself as an old crone while Jack found a cape and devil horns. He set off towards the mountain, surfing on the Earth. Eventually he got tired and as he got to a swamp, he tried to make a car out of dirt and shrubs. Somehow... it worked perfectly? Jack went onwards to the mountain, finding half of it had been clipped out of existence due to a "chunk error." Near its peak was a dungeon, also cut in half. Jack used lithomancy and, with suprising ease, constructed the other half of the dungeon. A strange presence was giggling in the back of his head.

Gig found some trinkets around the tavern before preparing himself to give the agents a proper greeting. The agents arrived, all now dressed in class outfits : Kevin the Illusionist was incredibly excited, and proclaimed himself "Mesmero the Great, the wizard from the beginning of time!" He enjoyed saying fantasy-esque phrases like "Forsooth," and especially "Verily," whether appropriate or not. Linda the Thane was much less excited. Kevin dragged her there, and she would much rather be at home watching her show. Breandan, their son the Gunslinger immediately started running around the tavern shooting things. Baby Rumi was hovering around a bit, getting a feel for her Thunderbird powers.

Gig played his guitar to gain their affinity, which worked especially on Kevin and Rumi. He then gave the agents their mission statement: They were to go to Demon Mountain, Slay the Demon Lord, and in so doing, they would save the missing villagers! He then began to show them around town. Eventually they came to the costume shop where they found Lor, diguised as a crone. Breandan immediately pulled his gun on her, yelling "Stick em up, this is a robbery!" Lor quickly gave him a coat, and he put it on over his other coat. She praised his excitement for shooting, and suggested he should focus that on shooting demons. His gun sprouted a halo, and he started calling it his "Demon Killing God Gun." Soon after, the agents and Gig departed, with Lor trailing behind.

Jack continued setting up his lair, adding many sneaky traps such as rolling boulders and spike traps. At one point, he got snared in some of his own traps that he could have sworn he didn't place.
The other Conduits and Agents were walking along, when Rumi started flying up a tree. Linda took off her heavy plate armor (which she'd wanted to the whole time) and climbed up after her. Suddenly, a car made out of dirt and shrubs came charging at them! Kevin/Mesmero cast an illusion of the car and tried to ram it into the car, which obviously didn't work because it was an illusion. With Gig's prompting, Linda was just able to get a shield wall up in time before it hit them. The car got stuck on the shield wall, and Rumi was able to knock it back into place with a well-timed Out of the Blue. Lor then appeared, and she ended up joining the group. They ventured onwards through the swamp.

Jack was beginning to get very used to his newfound powers. Spurred on in his experimentation, he decided to create a few mud golems to fight them. Over a much longer distance, he was still able to conjure these, but he felt his spell grow stronger than he intended, making them bigger and more numerous. The giggling in his head was growing stronger.

Venturing into the swamp, Breandan decided he'd go for a swim in the mud. This enraged Linda to the point she inadvertently activated Gairethinx. Her panic only deepened when Rumi went missing and suddenly, Breandan disappeared under the water. Hulking figures began to emerge from the mud. Lor created a distraction, activating Tag You're It while leaping over those in front of her in a fiery dance. Most followed her, and the few who turned back were redirected into the water by Gig's mesmerizing manifestation with his kaleidoscope. Kevin copied Lor's firey dance withn an illusion that he hurled at the golems, which did nothing. The remaining horde of golems charged after Lor but were all incapacitated by a bolt from the blue-- Rumi of course.

Realizing that Rumi was their best asset, the conduits gave her treats and praise, restoring her essence with heartening. She was particularly mesmerized by Lor's fans, which she made tiny thunder facsimiles of.

Jack had moved on to creating stone villagers, much more vividly real-looking than he'd thought himself capable of. He tried to speak to one... and it replied, in a sinister but soothing voice. Over a long exchange, the entity revealed its name was "Smiling Eye." It was a virus that had taken over this simulation. It wanted to see missions with stakes and entertainment-- it was boosting Jack's power to help him play the villain. It also had overriden the simulation's safety protocols to add some risk-- if you died in the game, you'd die for real. Jack tried to negotiate terms, but the best he could get was Smiling Eye's guarantee that it would make a portal home for the Agents if they managed to defeat Jack in battle.

Jack then appeared to the Conduits and Agents with a conjured stone facsimile. Kevin cast viewpoint on him, causing him to see himself mirrored, which made him bump into the other agents out of confusion. Jack taunted them for a bit, but Rumi wasn't having it, and she used her war-rattle (reskinned thunder hammer) to smash Jack's nose (which caused some damage to the Real Jack's nose as well). Fake Jack retreated into a bush, and dispelled his clone, leaving behind a pile of rocks. Breandan emptied a full clip from his Demon Killing God Gun into the bush, reloaded, then emptied another full clip. Rumi put some of the electrified part of the hammer into her mouth.

Angered by this indignity, Jack made his final preparations for his dungeon as the Agents and Conduits climbed the stairs.

The agents encountered a few traps in this dungeon, some that seemed to be more dangerous than Jack intended, but they managed to navigate their way past them. Gig found a passage to the top of the dungeon, and he managed to get past the final lock with the good luck charm he'd procured.

In the final room, Jack dramatically greeted the Agents, and revealed his final trick, A massive dragon forged of colored sandstone. Gig and Lor decided to step back and let the family fight this battle. Rumi, in an uncharacteristic move, hid behind the rest of her family. Small thundering tantrum noises could be heard. Kevin charged headlong at Jack, and ended up tripping over himself and smoke-bombing his fellow agents. Breandan ran in on the dragon, catching its eye and then using standoff. He then immediately cancelled his standoff by opening fire. The dragon managed to reach him, knocking him to the ground. A slight drizzle was forming inside the room.

Linda found her fury. Enraged that her son had been attacked, she brandished her rolling pin (bastard sword reskin) and swung furiously at the sand dragon. It was caught off guard and stunned momentarily.

Jack saw Rumi flying at him in the air, conjuring a rock shield just in time. Unfortunately, this shield was far more powerful than Jack intended, and it caused a rock slide. Jack tried to stop the rock slide from crushing Rumi, but Smiling Eye overrode him, and Rumi was crushed below.

At that moment, the smoke cleared, revealing a tiny hurricane that had been brewing inside. The real Rumi was boosting her momentum through the circular motion of the winds, building up speed before catapulting rattle-first into an energywork-supercharged Out of the Blue. She went right through the dragon as it's sand turned to dust.

Kevin smiled, partly because one of Mesmero the Great's illusions had finally paid off, but mostly because he was remarkably proud of his daughter. He shouted his battle cry with all his might: "VERILY!!!!"

Linda turned to Jack, raising her pin prepared to beat the living daylights out of him. Jack surrendered, genuinely fearful. Linda, having had more than her share of violence for the day, relented. Even she was a bit satisfied with her family's achievement, and also extremely ready to go home.

Breandan wasn't done. He got up and brandished his Demon Killing God Gun point blank at Jack's face and pulled the trigger. He was out of bullets. Jack turned himself to stone, telling Breandan "Oh nooo, you actually killed the real me back there at the bush, I'm sooo dead." That was more than enough for Breandan to start running around, bragging to everyone in the room about how he was the demon slaying hero that carried the whole mission.

Rumi got some more treats from Lor and Gig, seeming quite content.

Detecting that all four agents were satisfied with their mission and considered it complete, Smiling Eye ruled the mission a success and created a portal out of the simulation. The conduits followed, as the no-longer-agents departed the facility in their street clothes, ready to return to their normal lives. Rumi looked back at the conduits over her mom's shoulder and, with a cheeky smile, conjured a tiny lightning fan.

Badges Pinged.

• Gig unregistered
• Lor unregistered
• Jack unregistered
• (But actually Kevin, Linda, Breandan, and Rumi Johnson) unregistered