on last night's dreams

[kadrin]

Okay, so apparently my Avenging Acid not working on the giant rats at the audition - even though I'd previously used it to instakill the dragon the Master Seeker sent me after - was just luck, and using the Fly spell to improve my power-position and slaughter the other candidates was a perfectly canonical way to continue the story. And I definitely buy the bit about being told that the other candidates have also been promised the Master Seeker position, earned a Seeker's Staff, learned Avenging Acid and slain a dragon as their test - that was an awesome twist, nearly drove my character mad. I've still got some questions, though, and if you've played through this story at another con, maybe you can help me with them.

• Okay, obviously, we have to start with the epilogue. My epilogue was, I had an apartment in the city after the final duels, and the Master Seeker showed up to test me and, ostensibly, pass on the position. So we had the epilogue duel (I ended up creating and Dominating a dragon once Avenging Acid stopped doing the trick), he invited me behind the curtain of reality, we sat on the rug together, and then I'm talking to the game runners and being told that I very nearly won, but then I exploded. I wouldn't put it past the Master Seeker to be that kind of a jerk, but was there a way around it? Were the runners just jerking me around? I got this impression that maybe he'd pulled my mind into his body to replace/merge with his, and disposed of the leftovers, but is that just wishful thinking?
  
• Speaking of the Master Seeker, I picked up a few assumptions: he was immortal, due to his position, and wanted a replacement because he was tired of life; his name was Medraut and all the candidates at the final level also took the name Medraut (which led me to an interesting kerfuffle when I sent my Dominated dragon to "hunt and kill Medraut", and since the Master Seeker had already gone behind the curtain of reality, the only Medraut he could find was... me, that was an interesting few combat rounds); he wasn't faking his irascible jerkiness to hide a heart of gold - the irascible jerk you saw was the irascible jerk you got - but he did have a certain fondness for every candidate who'd earned a Seeker's Staff, which wouldn't stop him murdering them in the epilogue duel if they didn't shape up. Is any of that false?
  
• When I was going to what I thought was a duel against the false Seeker candidate, the Master Seeker said a few foreshadowy things to me. I can't remember most of them, but one of them was "remember how the next Master Seeker is chosen", or something like that. At that point I didn't know how the next Master Seeker was chosen. Was that a hint that everything wasn't as it seemed? (For the record, that was when you go to the movie theatre for the audition and the duel, and find out that twist I listed above: that there are a LOT of Seeker candidates, all with the same valid reasons to think they're the One Candidate as you have.) For that matter, is Avenging Acid the only ultimate spell the Seeker candidates get taught, or is it determined somehow which one you're gonna get? I never saw a candidate use anything but Avenging Acid, but I did kill them all pretty fast.
  
• Was there ever really going to be a movie that the final Seeker candidates had to show up to be in, or was that just a lure to get them all in one place for the audition and, presumably, to fight it out?
  
• On the sages' organisation - this one will probably be best answered by anyone who actually played the sages' story. Was the organisation really called Absolute Evil? Was it absolute evil? Why the all-concealing sentai-style armour? After I killed the Seeker who was working for the Sages, two Sages came in to get rid of his body (I hid in the lighting rig in the ceiling), and when one refused to take his Seeker's Staff, the other mocked him; she said "it's just as good as our best weapon, you just can't learn some stupid tricks from other sages to use with it". What's the Sages' final weapon? What are the tricks they learn with it? It seemed like the Sages didn't have a leader, was that true? Is there always a Seeker whose ulterior motive is working for the Sages, or was that just one of the players in my group? Do the Sages and the Seekers have a rivalry, or did it just look like that from the Seekers' end?
  
• What were the other organisations' stories like? I mean, I only played as a Seeker, with a little overlap with the Sage story - I honestly can't remember what the other organisations were.
  
• I was lucky enough to have an old friend from Adelaide who drove me from place to place. What happens if you don't have transport? Is something arranged, or are you out of luck?
  
• Was the whole thing really based on a Stephen King story? I read somewhere that it was, and that the street-rat player Seeker character (the one I was) was his usual writing-himself moment, and that the bit about becoming the Seeker candidate and overcoming the Master Seeker was an analogy for his becoming famous and not liking it very much, but is that all bullshit? It kinda sounds like bullshit. It's really not a very Stephen Kingish story.

That's about all, really - any answers you've got would be appreciated, though I totally reserve the right to decide completely unilaterally that something you say isn't part of the canon story, just the way they play it in whatever crazy-ass cons you go to. Ha! Bow before my retconning power, Internet!

(No, this didn't really happen, it wasn't really a game, if you check the subject line again, it's just what happened in a dream I had last night. Still, if you want to say what happened when you totally played in it which you did because it's totally real, I'd be down for that.)