In case you were thinking that the whole "devouring dragon" aspect being a heavy handed way of bringing the party together through circumstance (which I eschew elsewhere on the site), I did use the idea I recommend of round table character formation with connections to other characters established before the first dot is put down. Nonetheless, it's a motley bunch:

Grady Leach "Adrian"- Hollow One with high religious ideals-- uses drugs and God to fill the Hollow One void. He awakened very early, using childish Effects from a very young age. Jimmy Hall, the son of Glass Walker caern head Dean Hall, brought his friend Adrian home to play, and when Dean heard of some of the odd occurrences around Adrian, he brought the child to Sasha Tivorsak. Unlike the others, who had to abandon their lives when they were taken to the Minaret Walker, Adrian pretty much Awakened as an after school activity. He would say he was going to play with Jimmy, and he would train under the close supervision of Sasha Tivorsak. In all the time he was at the chantry, he never made a choice to join any particular tradition, and no tradition felt nagged to take him. In recent times, he has essentially become a Hollow One because he loosely identifies with the need to fill the void. He often works with Jerry and other characters around the chantry for sentinel duty and other work details, and he witnesses as many of his friends or acquaintances Awaken. It be odd.

William Fisher "Gerry"- Pumonca Bastet who works for the Minaret Walker chantry in Tampa. He was on an airboat trip in the Everglades with his dad when the motor cut out and they were stranded in deep swamp with a flare gun, a map, and some brewskies. (Jerry was 13 at the time.) When night came, some thing came, capsized the airboat and killed his dad. Horrified and scared, Jerry looked down through the darkness, which was as bright as day in the fingernail moon, and saw his hand, now a paw, stretched tight with anger. He chased through the deep swamp after the thing, which had taken a good look at him and gone away. He tore it to shreds and stood there, still stuck in the damned swamp. He went back to the disaster area to get the laminated map from the boat and muddled back to shore in full Bastet battle regalia. He was greeted by a man standing at the car where he and his father unloaded the boat. The man introduced himself as Sir Thomas and informed the Bastet that he was in a world of hurt if he didn't do exactly as instructed. For the next few months, Sir Thomas trained Jerry in his den-realm, teaching the legacies of the War of Rage and the Bastet guardianship of secrets, of Cahlash and Gaia, and, of course, of combat. Eventually, after a (Bastet word for "moot" here), Thomas explained that his next duty as a Pumonca was to venture to the Minaret Walker and learn from them the secrets that he could. It would be his first true learning experience, he said, and it would also give him time with the dogs, which every Bastet needs. Jerry has been at the chantry for several years, which he has taken a liking to, working in a sentinel capacity and as an escort when needed, receiving the gift of knowledge in return. 

Christian Spainhaur "Jason"- Euthanatos who Awakened in a flurry of violence but with no impetus other than time. He had bad dreams and spontaneously fell asleep several times and awakened in different places than he had begun-- behind alleys, on top of buildings, whatever. Then he Awakened. He appeared to be destroying horrible machines with raw power in a dream, and when he awoke from sleep, he was standing, covered in blood, in a room in an office building spattered with the remnants of violence... read: kibble o' person. His avatar told him to clean up the mess and help was soon on its way. He was taken by Tregarde to the Minaret Walker chantry and instructed by in the teachings of the Euthanatos. One little Good Death later, and he was a card-carrying psycho death mage... er... Euthantos.  

Matt Charles "Herron"- Traditional Akashic who Awakened in his dojo. He had had a very, very tense day which culminated with his... volunteer work, assisting Master Dharma at the Silver Oneness dojo in North Tampa. When sparring with Dharma as an example to the rest of the students, he was sloppy, and nearly killed a student with a stray kick. A cracking sound ripped through the student's body as Herron released a wave of hostile, untamed Life magic. Dharma, who was an Akashic waiting for Herron to Awaken, remedied the student's body as coincidentally as he could with Life magic, but he was still rendered quadriplegic. Dharma took him aside. His master, Master Dharma, took him aside and explained the basics of what was happening. Herron accompanied his master to the Minaret Walker chantry where Sasha Tivorsak, the Celestial Chorus chantry head, was waiting with other members of the chantry to receive the newly Awakened Akashic. He trained for two years there, in the end of which, he was taken into the Umbra to enter the Akashic record. There he met Wu. Or did he? In the end, all he remembered was that he was in the Brotherhood and he had been to the Umbra. Dharma offered no assistance. 

David Womack "Dex"- Cultist who Awakened in a club that he owns with Adrian. He was just a normal guy who liked life and got a little more out of weed than your average guy, when he was approached by a sinister looking man with a gun in his club in Ybor city. Adrian and Sasha were watching from the shadows as the sinister man led Dex to an alley in the back of the club. Dex swatted at the gun and, in a burst of Life and Entropy smacked the man's hand clear off, revealing a bloody mess of black gore. Repulsed by the strange occurrence, Dex backed away and consumed the fucker in a stream of raw, vulgar Prime. Freaked out and scared of his own drugs, Dex was met by Sasha Tivorsak and Adrian, who took him to the Minaret Walker and introduced him to the Cultists, who had laid a sort of claim on him. The training lasted two years and culminated in the, ahem, traditional style of the Cult of Ecstasy.

Bill Ware "Robert"- Bill is making an Etherite transfixed with the notion of building a bottomless box of pizza. Other than that, we have not worked on his character much.

The Actual Chronicle

10/26/99- 10/27/99-- About a month and a half after initiation into their various Traditions, the party members were living in and out of the chantry when they were called to Sasha Tivorsak's chambers via a business card sized message on each of their pillows. (Mind you, not everyone was still living in the chantry.) They met at the chantry and when they were entering, they encountered a Virtual Adept named Kyle Mendoza whom they met previously during their extremely long tenures at the chantry... when they met everyone in the chantry. He invited the cabal to a party that evening for the new initiates, an effort to show that not all the Traditions were like Sasha, with anality and being up-tight on the mind 24/7. 

Then they proceeded to Sasha's chambers, (well, all except the Bastet, who was, as usual, assigned to sentinel duty.) where they were greeted by a stately, tall, slightly odd-looking, slightly sinister-seeming Asian man who introduced himself as Samuel Wu. Wu explained to them how odd it was that they all knew each other, and how doubly odd it was that, on the day of each of their Awakenings, they all had the same dream, (each party member watched as the entire world was consumed by an ancient Oriental dragon which then turned to the correspondant party member and consumed him, at which point the party member was the dragon. Then they woke up.) with the exception of Adrian, who had a similar dream nonetheless. (an ancient Oriental dragon consumed the entire world, finishing with the cabal, none of whom he knew at the time; it is worth noting for his hopeful embarrassment that for reasons that shall not be explained here, Grady did not recall this particular point in his Prelude...) 

Wu indicated, "And so it was not a great stretch for us to urge your placement together in a cabal; in addition, and normally we would not take such drastic measures, we decided that the Bastet Gerry ought to accompany you for protective purposes. Something has a destiny in store for you, and until we find out what it is, we would not like to see it cut down by those who would halt it. Now, as it is the Tradition, your cabal ought to have a name..." and so on. Oh, they decided on the "Cabal of the Devouring Dragon," in case you were wondering.

And after a few words about how a destiny does not save them from their mortality, as time flows like a river (fluid and altered by circumstance), he dismissed them. Sasha never said a word. When the cabal left, they remembered seeing Sasha and knowing what Wu told them, but they couldn't recall who had told it to them, and they couldn't remember a thing about any certain stately Asian man.

Eventually they ended up at the party, where they met Kyle Mendoza and two other people, who were introduced as Percy and Spike. After a bit of bullshit, Percy got down to business, explaining that he was planning a bit of information exchange, espionage style, on the Tampa based headquarters of a charity called the TearAway Foundation. TearAway, he explained, is a coming together of several very large corporations in order to raise money for up and coming charities in third world companies. What no one knows, what Percy explained, is that as soon as TearAway gives them money, the charities dissolve, never to be heard from again. And the final caps of oddity were the primary corporate constituents of TearAway: Autumn Health Care, Magadon Inc., and, for spice, Herculean Firearms. Those of you who have made the connections can be quiet, thank you.  :-)

The characters partied into the night when Jason made his Perception + Awareness roll. There was a strange man outside who fed white noise on a mental scan, and who, through a Prime/ Life scan, was shown to be definitely not human. The characters rushed outside and saw the man standing there, but it turns out that it was not the same man, but as they found out through forty-five minutes of real time gaming and running around Tampa, it was a clone, which is weird anyway.  

All of them did their respective things afterwards, and of special note is Dex's sojourn to the nightclub. (Adrian was there, but Grady wasn't... so Adrian was tending the bar.) Throughout the night, he noticed a very gothy character whom he had never seen before in the club and who was not dancing or talking or anything, just moping in that mope-in-the-corner-of-the-bar way. So Dex went over to the man and asked what was wrong; the man responded in typical bad guy fashion: rude. After some pithy barbs, he recanted and gave Dave his card; it had his name and his various numbers, and the name of his business. The man owned an occult bookstore. Oh, and since I patterned the character off someone in real life, I shall refer to him heretoaft as CG. When Dex went away, the creepy guy started staring at him all night, and when Dex went to ask him what his bag was, he (Dex) felt a wash of weak Entropy over himself. That didn't make him happy, and when Dex announced that he had noticed it, CG left in a huff saying, "My master sends his regards; your last meeting was something less than... fortuitous." And he left.

The next day, when everyone was getting ready for the TearAway raid, Dex, Adrian, and Gerry (the latter two's players were absent at this time) went to CG's bookstore, which turned out to be a two-story stucco building with that ugly, pseudo-pink biege exterior in the outskirts of Tampa, near Brandon. It was called, "Master CG's Occult Bookshop." Adrian and Gerry were hoping this would be quick, so they stayed in the car; Dex, of course, was going in. There was a sign saying they were closed for lunch, but "luckily" the door was unlocked. Dex went in and called out for Master CG, then saw a steel door at the end of the shop with no apparent way of opening or closing. Dex used his Correspondence magic and swept the grounds, finding a rather disturbing sight upstairs, one which it would be rude to repeat. Dex gave a play-by-play of what CG was doing in response to his (Dex's) inquiries. This, naturally, made the naked CG freak out, and made David (the player) very amused. Eventually, CG ended up nailing Dex with a curse (Dex felt it, and Jason identified it later on), and leaving to go do the little errand for Percy and Spike (read: I strongly encouraged him since I didn't want a major plot point to be uncovered and screwed by a single player.). And so he left.

The party met up with Spike and Percy, and they lotted out duties. Jason, who had computer knowledge, would be on the one head-set with Percy, who would be manning the security systems and Adrian scouted for Umbral problems at TearAway, and immediately something fishy: a Bane was huddled in the building's security guard, scuttling around like a crackhead. With short work from Herron and the Mind Sphere, the fomor was sent away, and they infiltrated. As promised, Percy took care of the security, which was indicated by the cameras facing away from the doors.

Got bored again. Have to finish later.

10/27/99- 11/1/99-- 

Experience Awards

Notice that I have instituted a new criterion for experience awards. If you e-mail me the reasons that your character deserves experience, you will receive an extra experience point. Yep. This is a compromise from what I had up here before, which if you recall, was a harsh system without much incentive. So this makes me nice ST. Yay. 
And don't give me that crap about not having time... unless you really don't. On Monday, I watched William play Lords of Magic for a few hours while Matt watched his navel hair grow as his computer was attempting to unfreeze. (after which time, he could begin playing Warcraft 2, again.)  

Character Portrayal; Effort
In Game Party Cohesion
Real Life Group Cohesion
Showing up
Story Segment Completion
Heroism, Western Ideal (Damn you, Matt.)

E-mail for Experience

Bonus Points

11/7/99- 11/8/99

• Grady/ Adrian- 1+1+0+1+1+1+0+0= 5

• William/ Gerry- 1+1+2+1+1+0+0+0= 6

• Christian/ Jason- 1+1+0+1+1+0+1+0= 5

• Matt/ Herron- 1+1+0+1+1+0+0+1= 5

• David/ Dex- 1+0+2+1+1+0+1+0= 6

• Bill/ Robert- 1+1+0+1+1+0+0+0= 4

I also want to give experience points to whomever it was who wanted to go pick up Polly. It was a noble thing to do, but I need you to be honest; I don't even want to hear about it. If you were one of the ones fighting to go and save her, then give yourself an XP (i.e. 1 point.)

Copy this line of text and send it to me. If I acknowledge receiving it, you get an experience point.