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So we arrived at the cave, which had a shimmering wall on the inside. Than gagged when he went in the cave so he sat outside while we flung ourselves against the wall and did all sorts of weird, crazy stuff trying to figure out how to gain entrance to the overworld.

After while we wandered off to investigate some machining sounds in the distance as we had run out of ideas anyway. We discovered a mining camp of sorts that had torn apart a nearby hillock. Gail inspected the area for a while and seemed confused as to what this operation was digging out of the ground. I sat on a rock in the treeline waiting for people to figure out what the deal was, thinking about the cave and what to try next.

Eventually Gail came back and declared in an extremely confident manner that she was now really, very sure they were mining iron. Weird, I have never seen her not know something so I wasn't sure what to think about this over-confidence she was displaying. Perhaps she was trying to cover up being confused earlier by asserting something that was a total guess on her part?

Anyway, we headed back to the cave to think some more. I tried moving the car and all modern stuff back away from the cave, stripping down, and approaching the wall. Nothing. I redonned my clothes and we tried taking Than in again. Same gagging reaction. We tried taking the scroll in, and nothing. We tried a few other things with the scroll of Calliope, and nothing nothing nothing.

While we grumbled about the situation, Gail's ghost dude possessed Than and tried to walk his body in and the reaction was still the same, with the violent gagging. We then sat down outside of the cave and discussed frustratedly the situation some more. Eventually we decided to take Than in and up to the wall, regardless of his gagging. Hopefully he wouldn't die from the short couple of seconds in which Jack was going to rush him in. If he did… oh well, I didn't much care at this point. He was the only thing reacting oddly to the cave, and thus somehow he must be the key.

We all stood inside the cave at the wall, while Jack stayed outside with Than, while Gail's ghost wore his body like a shirt. Jack signaled us, picked Than up bodily, and rushed him inside as fast as his speedy legs could carry him. We all stood there and watched in horrified silence as Than vomited up black goo onto the floor of the cave as Jack rushed toward us. In one final heave, Than barfed out the rest onto the floor and and then began to breath as normal, if raggedly. Jack sat him down on the floor and we all stared at the goo as it coalesced into an…. anthropomorphic elephant dude. Who seemed thoroughly confused. He indicated in broken speech that we should go disable the nearby mining camp to help him form a coherent thought so that he could converse with us.

So we waited as Jack ran up to the nearby mining camp and blew through it, cutting fuel lines, disassembling machines, and building mechas that waved to anyone approaching the camp. About an hour later he returned, and the elephant dude looked slightly more relieved. He still looked like hell. His tusks were broken, his ears were torn. His body looked beaten and bloodied still, but he seemed to be in a calmer mood.

He told his his name was Padah-lin, and that Than was his son. He had been in hiding, asleep for the past 18 years (inside of his son) because someone was hunting him, but that he had not meant to sleep so long. He was the last of his pantheon, the gods of the native people of the land before the Chinese came in and wiped them out. He is glad we had awoken him, but is unfortunately unable to help us in his present state. He indicated that we needed to put a stop to the mining operations in the area. The land in this region, for 100 sq miles, was him, his spirit, his body. And the mining was like being stabbed into the gut repeatedly, and it was weakening his godly powers. Once he regained his lost power, only then could he let us into the overworld to speak to Calliope. And, while shutting down the mines in the area would be technically sufficient for him to access the overworld, he explained that in order for him (to be willing to) help us, we must find a more permanent solution to stopping the mining.

So, Jack went around searching the area and found that all the mining camps were owned by a Chinese company called Sino Mining Resource Corporation. We then called up George and got him looking into that for us.

George eventually called back saying that it was a company owned by a chick named Nadine Wong. And that the company was worth too much for us to buy it outright. The best we could do was pool our monetary resources and purcahse a seat on the director's board. Gail's CIA contacts meanwhile indicated that Nadine was “special” in that Scion sorta way, and that she had a bodyguard dude who was also “special”. Meanwhile, the CIA peeps said that the company's operation in Burma was the only non-local (non-chinese-region) operation they had going, and that their public books said that the Burma operation was losing money.

However, they apparently had some non-public books that indicated that the Burman operation was producing sub-standard iron ore, but that some unknown individual was paying a curious premium for it.

After discussing it again for a while, we decided to go ahead and have George purchase the seat on the board of directors and have a preliminary meeting with Nadine while we looked into sabotaging the mining operations in the area.

While George was off doing that, we called up BOOBS to inform him of the happenings with Padah-lin. George called back a couple days later and said that he met with Nadine and she did not seem to know he was a scion, and that she seemed reasonable enough.

So, we decided to go to Hong Kong to meet with her.

Nico seemed horribly offended by this Tommy guy that was Nadine's bodyguard before we had even met him. And he got even more steamed when we showed up to meet with Nadine that Tommy was completely ignoring him in favor of Jack. Apparently they were both adrenaline junkies. *shrug*

Anyway, Nadine seemed perfectly reasonable, normal. We were able to deduce that she was the scion of Guan Yu and that Tommy was the scion of the monkey king. Not so unusual. But, what was unusual, was that she was apparently legend 5. Which meant she was demigod status. Which meant… she shouldn't be here. On earth, that is. Strange.

We talked to her, and Gail interrogated her about the Burmese operations. While she would not tell us who the faceless investor was, we did get some related information out of her about him.

We left the meeting, agreeing to meet again a couple of weeks later, and called up BOOBS. Two hours later, we sat in a noodle shop on the harbor of Hong Kong talking to BOOBS. We told him about Nadine, and he said that while the chinese pantheon tends to do their own thing, that generally they too are on the same page as all of our parents about not liking the Titans and their spawn. I asked him to find out for us if Nadine was known to be a rogue scion or if her father Guan Yu was approving of her actions. Also, we told him about the faceless investor. BOOBS took all this in and said he'd get back with us.

The next day BOOBS called and told us that Nadine was acting in accordance with her father's wishes, so she could be trusted to not be working on behalf of the titans at least. Well, that made things slightly easier for us, because at least we could at least consider the possibility of telling her what we were and what we knew. But the problem still remained; she shouldn't be here. And material wealth was hardly a concern for a demigod, so she probably knew what was going on in Burma to some degree, probably to full degree. Which meant that making her pull out of Burma may be a tad tough.

Argh.

But an hour later, Gail's CIA contacts reported back in to her. She informed us that the account paying for the Burmese substandard iron ore was a 75 year old account, and absolutely LOADED with money. But the name attached to the account was a garbage name, it was meaningless, belonging to no one. This was going to be tough.

So we sat and brainstormed a bit about how to put Nadine in a position where she had to stop the Burmese operations. If that was possible.

Jack presented a promising suggestion. He put forth that we needed to get Padah-lin inducted into another pantheon that still had some weight to throw around. If he was backed up by several other gods, then Guan Yu or whoever was harassing him would be forced to stop due to inter-god politics. And the Chinese pantheon seemed rather political. It might just work. But what would Padah-lin say? And who would take him in?

Also, we needed to have some idea of what we were going to do before we presented Nadine with an ultimatum: stop operations in Burma or… what? Or, we would stop them for you? She had seemed extremely (*extremely*) confident that she could handle _any_ problems that sprung up in the unstable Burmese region. And she was a demigod, who could surely wipe the floor with all four of us combined. So what would give her pause? Then again, Padah-lin was no slouch either. His legend score was only just shy of recovering his god status (read: Legend 8) according to Gail, and could probably throw down even better than she could. Unless her faceless investor was an even more powerful scion or demigod. Or god.

Too many unknowns.

We needed to find out who this unknown investor was. That was the bottom line. And we had two weeks to do it before our next meeting with her. Time to get a move on!

Thinking ahead a little, once we restore Padah-lin's power such that he is willing to allow us into his pantheon's overworld… what do we expect to do? To accomplish?

• Calliope is believed to be residing there
• We will at least be speaking to Calliope about a topic she may in fact find distasteful
• She is probably at least a demigod, if not a god-level scion, and as such, could wipe the floor with us without flinching
• Thus, we may need to also acquire Padah-lin's personal protection (while in his overworld, while speaking with Calliope)
• Also, going out on a limb: it may be the case that the Muses are being held hostage in some way where they are being forced to use their powers in ways they do not condone
  • Hey, it's possible
  • So while it is a reasonable assumption that we will be at odds with Calliope, we may want to approach the situation in such a way as to leave open the possibility that she is a victim here too (along with her sisters)