SESSION 5 - AMBER PREPARES
Session 4 | Log | Quotes | Session 6

Preparations to defend Fort Geb began in earnest.  Shu flew reconnaissance, and expanded his following in one of Assyria's cities.  Amun succeeded in assassinating a captain in the advancing Assyrian army, and brought the corpse to Weret.  He was injured during the attack, which he said was rushed because someone spotted him as an Amberite.

In the Land of the Dead, Khonsu and Unut, with Smenkharet in tow, arrived back in Amber.  They scouted everyone's temples in the Land of the Dead, noting that Sobek's and Keket's had dark shadows over them, Horus's looked unused, Bast's was more heavily ornamented than before, and Harmakhis's had dark feline forms prowling over and through it.  Unut returned to the real world, and was chastised by Min and Wadjet for missing Osiris's funeral.  Khonsu remained with Smenkharet, and worked on a way to pull her through to the real world.

Back in Amber, several cities were busy assimilating Israelite refugees from Assyria.  Wadjet was very busy, and asked Harmakhis to investigate the murder of a guard who patrolled the tomb of Ra.  Harmakhis brought in Unut to assist, and later Ptah and Keket.  They were able to determine that someone had pulled the guard off his feet, likely with a garrote, and then leaped away with the body.  After tracking the leaping attacker into Memphis, they found a maimed body whose hands, eyes, tongue, ears, and heart had been removed.  The attacker then traveled over rooftops and into the temple of Osiris, where the trail was lost.  Ptah confirmed that someone had penetrated the traps in Ra's tomb, and may have removed some treasure from the area, though most of it was intact.

Khonsu succeeded in pulling Smenkharet through to the real world, but ended up deep under the surface of the ocean.  They surfaced, and with no land in sight, started swimming south.  Smenkharet wouldn't speak, but would not release Khonsu's hand.  After a time Khonsu was trumped by Wadjet, who chastised him for missing the funeral and left him at sea.  Later, Khonsu was picked up by a passing Greek ship, bound for Amber.  They stayed aboard until someone trumped Khonsu and pulled both him and Smenkharet back to Amber.

Back in Assyria, Sobek and Unut plotted an ambush to test the Assyrian army.  They killed a small scout patrol, and then Unut joined the fleeing survivors to infiltrate the army.  There she saw Hauron, one of the more human Assyrian gods, planning with the human general.  A large response party was assembled to seek out the Amberite ambushers, and Hauron performed a ritual on the soldiers to protect them from swords and arrows.  Hauron himself did not join the patrol, however.  In the ensuing fight between Sobek's troops and the Assyrians, the Amberites found their weapons ineffective and were killed in large numbers.  Sobek and Unut (who began killing within the enemy's ranks) were not enough to even the odds, and they fled the scene.

Six days before Assyria's forces were to reach Fort Geb, Kali was executed in Memphis.  Many of the family members were present as Anubis beheaded the four-armed assassin.  He proceeded to carefully cut out her heart and give it to Horus, who presented it to Harmakhis as a gift.  Afterwards most of the pantheon returned to Fort Geb and plotted ways to remove Hauron's protections from the Assyrian troops.  Assassinating Hauron was eventually dismissed as too risky, and Ptah believed he could counteract the effects on Amber's swords (though not arrows) through sorcery of his own. 

Weret made preparations to protect Fort Geb and weaken the Assyrians magically, placing small obelisks around the perimeter of the structure and placing the captain's heart in a box, where a locust would eat its way out.  These two rituals were hoped to weaken the oncoming storm and make it difficult for Assyria's troops to eat.  She gave a great deal of her own blood in the rituals, and in her nearly-swooning state managed to seduce Harmakhis, who now wore the heart of his last lover in a case around his neck (did I mention this was the Valentine's Day session?).

Keket and Shu performed harrying attacks on the incoming Assyrian army - Shu attacking the supply lines, and Keket hassling the main force.  Shu was able to draw Baal to reinforce the rear lines for a while, and Keket found that the responses the Assyrians threw at her were less capable than she would have expected.

Wadjet and Khnemu worked on engraving a trump of Baal at Fort Geb, with the intent to attack him through it during the battle.  They had what they imagined to be a working trump on the day before the battle, but had no means to test it without alerting Baal to their plan.