Note: This is the season I took over as Director of Walking In Shadow. Anything you didn't like about Seasons 1-3 I SWEAR are not my fault. Anything you don't like about Seasons 4 and 5... uhhh.... *hides*
Episode One - Picking Up The Pieces
The season opens with Alex just kind of staring aghast at the young woman, Arianna. She explains her mother was Raven, a "fellow student" of his back in Grizzly Peak almost 2 decades ago. Apparently the two were involved and she was the result. Alex is shocked, having no clue that this had happened. Raven had been a totem warrior of the very animal she took her name from. She died back in 1986, and apparently Arianna was raised by her grandparents. The gang tries to cover their tracks, but Arianna is another intrepid reporter who rapidly figures out that Dear Ole Dad looks way too good for his age. That and his official files look too neat to be believed.
Eventually the gang comes clean on their true nature and swear her to secrecy regarding it. In return for her silence, they'll let her have an exclusive on it should things keep going the way they are. First Gnarley's rampage, then the First's schemes have brought the supernatural to the public's eye for the first time. The government has finally run out of excuses and it seems like OSI may finally be brought to light, as will the Stargate program, but it will take time.
Matt comes out of his coma violently, and heals Tamara of her coma as well. Lexa informs her of Dahlia's passing, and the older woman takes an extended leave of absence in the wake of this news. Afterwards, Lexa takes out everyone, including Ari to lunch at the best restaurant in Seattle. While there, Matt and Arianna begin flirting with each other. He brushes her hand and gets a flash of her dead, strung up on an inverted cross, the same manner in which he found Marie-Christine, his first wife, a French Slayer who died at the hands of Ezrebet Bathory. Furiuos and scared, he goes back into the bathroom and proceeds to tear it apart. Dante calms him down, and the psychic admits he's tired of seeing everyone he knows die horribly. He's determined to not let this vision come to pass.
Also, their waitress that day, a young woman named Jenny, is a dead-ringer for Jessica McCormick, Lexa and Alex's former girlfriend. She doesn't seem to recognize them, but that doesn't mean anything. Lexa buys the restaurant to keep them from calling the cops on Matt, and she keeps a discreet eye on the young woman. This soon reveals that she lives with another college-age girl named, Mary who's another doppelganger, this time for Marie-Christine, an 18th century Slayer and former wife of Matt. She died brutally at the hands of the infamous Ezsrebet "Elizabeth" Bathory, which led Matt and Alex to end the vampiress over a century ago. Suffice to say, everyone smells a trap. Saying to hell with it all for the moment, Lexa and Dante take little Jessica and take a much-needed vacation out to Vegas to catch back up.
Episode Two – Guess Who’s Back
Lexa and Dante return from Vegas to find that Alex and Matt have taken two young women named Kelly and Blair, a Slayer and junior Witch, under their wings. A series of flashbacks gives quick highlights of what Alex and Matt have been dealing with, including the discovery of another of Alex’s progeny. After returning, Lexa helps Alex train the new Slayer, who nurses a crush on our Sentinel. Ari has trouble handling the weird relationship dynamic of the group and she and Matt fight. Kei has returned from tour, and she and Dante take some time to get to know each other again.
Episode Three – Death By Fire
We jump ahead two months. An alien armada approaches Earth. Jack, Jr., absent since Season Two, stumbles through the gate much older than when he left and collapses. Before anything can be done, a Prior comes through the Stargate and brings the word of the Ori to the UN and all of Earth. Earth’s military mobilizes. Matt gets a vision of Nyralathotep’s avatar, the Black Man, traveling the Earth, looking for other splintered avatars and destroying them, absorbing their power into himself, slowly growing more powerful. The vision then directs them to NYC to look for apparently the last remaining avatar, some kind of mad scientist working for NYU name Dr. Ramses. The gang confronts him when he tries to attack them on sight. They subdue him and he confesses he thought they were sent by his other self to stop him. You see, he had developed a device that would allow him to transfer the energy from one avatar to the other, thereby allowing him to not only defeat the Black Man, but take his place.
Episode Four – In Strange Eons…
Nyarlathotep arrives too late to stop the gang from killing Dr. Ramses. With the last fragment of his lost power denied him, Gnarley plunges his hand into Dawn, speaks some terrible spell and the Emerald Sorceress discorporates into a cloud of green energy. All over the world, Hellmouths, old portals, and places where the walls are weak are suddenly and violently torn open. The gang battles Gnarley, who are soon joined by Illyria’s Hound, a creation of hers from eons past. When the two beings finally come together, much to Gnarley’s surprise, the two merge, and Illyria rips her way out of Nyarlathotep’s form, apparently returned to her full power. Behaving differently than when she was last seen, she actually closes all the gateways and reforms Dawn, before leaving this plane entirely.
Meanwhile, on the Ori front, a concerted effort from the SGC, Earth’s allies, and a little unsuspecting assistance from a certain Kryptonian fortress in the Arctic defeat the Prior fleet. When the Head Prior is killed, an Ori manifests on Earth. Before it can act, it is confronted by Oma DeSala and Anubis, who have apparently declared a temporary truce, and a possessed Dawn. The Ori is destroyed, and across the Earth holy and mystical sites project streams of power that flow over the world into Colorado where the Stargate activates. Before relinquishing her body, the entity inside Dawn informs the gang that by finally coming here, the Ori have made it possible for a retaliatory strike, and with the aid of the Powers that Be and other forces, the war will go to the Ori who will be shown no mercy for their actions.
Episode Five – Atlantis Falling
Jack finally wakes up and informs the SGC that Atlantis has been taken by the Wraith. He calls up the old gang, and the crew travels there via the Daedelus. The plan is to use a specially modified puddlejumper being kept in cold storage at Area 51 to infiltrate the city's submerged areas and liberate the city, if possible. If not, they're to set the self-destruct and get the hell out of there. They manage to pull off a rescue, but not before Lexa goes wonky on them. Apparently the alien device that affected her last year has made her somewhat resemble a Wraith Queen to the wraith telepathic network and she falls under its spell as the drones do hers. Dante and Alex manage to make use of this to clear a path to the chair platform, where they unleash the city's weapon system on the unsuspecting Wraith armada in orbit who had assembled, waiting access to Earth. This wipes out the vast majority of Wraith in the Pegasus galaxy and makes it a much safer place to live
Episode Six – The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be
The gang returns to Earth on the puddle-jumper via the Stargate and flies the ship back to Area-51. En router, its cloak fails mysteriously, and they soon find themselves taking fire from a couple of USAF jets. One stray missile hit makes the jumper surge forward and then crash. When they manage to extract themselves from the crash site, they are picked up by USAF personnel and locked up. Colonel Samanth Carter shows up to interrogate them, wanting to know how they got their hands on the time-machine, which is news to the cast. It doesn't take long for everyone to figure out they're in an alternate timeline, in this case a future timeline. Here, Lex Luthor is President of the United States and Lexa is First Lady.
Mr. and Mrs. President paint a pretty picture of an idyllic world where things are getting better at a rapid pace. Though, apparently the cost was that a large number of their group had died over the years, a subject that greatly upsets AltLexa. Unwilling to believe such a sweet story, Matt goes digging into what really happened. He finds AltKei alive, in an insane asylum, missing an arm. She's not very communicative so Matt touches her and learns the truth. AltLexa and AltDante got into an fight over something she was planning and she killed him accidentally. AltKei and the others came in and tried to restrain her, and she managed to kill or cripple most of them.
Matt gets the gang quietly out of dodge, where they finally manage to track down a very bitter, angry AltMatt in Japan, who in turn leads them to AtlJesse, an adult and angry version of Lexa's daughter in this world. Once there, AltMatt explains that the tragedies in her life led AltLexa to believe she could find a way to Ascend and "fix" things. This desire become a full-born psychosis after she accidentally killed her own husband and was forced to fight and kill her own friends. She seduced and married Lex. Then turning his resources combined with hers, she began buying up casinos, porn studio, adult entertainment facilities; her plan was to use humanity's vices to fund medical and humanitarian research, and damned if it didn't work.
Under this plan, LexCorp cured AIDS, cancer, and other diseases in short order. Lex won the presidency and soon began to put pressure on the world to unite under superior technology and medical science. Meanwhile other funds were being redirected to her real goal: researching the notes from the SGC and Atlantis regarding physical means of artifically Ascending. She was combining this method with generating large amounts of public adoration and worship as a celebrity and humanitarian, using her gift to gather and store the positve emotional energy. Once she had enough, she'd Ascend and use the power gathered on this plane to push her way past the Non-Interference Ancients to go even higher in the cosmic scale, until she could remake the world as she saw fit, doing away with pain, injustice, and suffering.
The "real" Lexa was floored and horrified by what she'd gone to in this world. Matt suggested bringing AltJesse and confronting her with the vision of all her old friends, and try to reach her one last time. If that failed, maybe the array of power against her would be enough to stop her once and for all. Fortunately, the confrontation angle went well, and between Dante and AltJesse, AltLexa finally confronted her past actions and Matt forced her to come to terms with them. This done, the Puddlejumper was repaired and the gang returned home. The SGC took the ship back and sealed it back beneath Area 51, vowing to never let it be used again, for ANY reason.
Episode Seven – Coming Out
The gang continues on about their business. Lexa gets inspired by part of the Alternate Counterparts scheme and begins looking into acquiring adult businesses, to reorganize, clean up, and see if she could turn some of them "respectable." Given the events of the past few months, the supernatural is no longer able to stay hidden and DSA is called to testify before the Senate, including our gang. Arianna gets to publish her story at long last, and the gang is made famous. This also draws the attention of some very unhappy people, and an assassin takes a shot at them as they leave the Hil. Arianna takes a direct hit and is rushed to the hospital. Meanwhile, Alex finds the assassin casing the hospital and runs him to ground. Rather than surrender, the assassin kills himself, leaving more questions than answwers.
Episode Eight - Killing Time
The assassination attempts don't cease, and Lexa is taken out by a car bomb on her way to work that morning. To make matters worse, Arianna is abducted on her way home from work later that night.. The group is stunned at the suddenness of Lexa's death, but they don't have time to mourn; Ari needs saving. Alex and Dante track down the bomber, little more than a thug. After a very brutal torture session, he gives up the information on his contact, including how to arrange meetings. Alex impersonates the assassin, awaiting payment. They capture and "interrogate" the proper British gentleman who shows up, but he's nothing more than a middle man. He confirms that the person who arranged the contract was most definitely female. He also mentions he arranged for the receipt of some "package" from the States, which could only be Arianna. The gang stakes out the meeting place in a London cemetary, and ambushes a dark-robed sorcerer who delives Arianna all nice and gift-wrapped to a strange, African woman. They gang attacks and the demon teleports away without a fight. The woman shifts into some kind of giant spider and attacks, but the gang quickly defeates the were-spider. Matt and Alex's silent worry that Bathory is back increases, as spiders were Bathory's... pets. With Arianna rescued, the gang returns and holds a funeral for their friend.
Episode Nine - Can't Keep a Good Girl Buried
A week passes since Lexa's funeral, and the gang has gotten maudlin. No one had realized how much they had revolved around her, albeit quietly. Dawn steps up and pulls them together, but its hard. Then things get weird. Alexa and Matt start seeing flashes of Lexa at Trinity and out on the street. Then police reports come into the DSA reporting a superhumanly strong woman matching Lexa's description attacking thugs and low-lifes in the wharft district. Further investigation confirms the woman's appearance. Then reports come in of a an entire street gang (complete with vampire members) being taken apart by the same woman, only this time one of the gang-banger's video cameras recorded the slaughter. One of the images shows Lexa, clad in black leather, not only dismembering the gang single-handedly, but also sucking the life out of several members with a kiss, not too unlike a Wraith.
Eventually, the strange woman shows up at Trinity, where Alex and Dante try to confront her. Both instantly recognize her as some kind of undead, and yet she wasn't a vampire. Her scent is similar to that of Dahlia's before she finally passed on. She doesn't seem to recognize them, and she attacks them when they try to stop her. Eventually Dante drops out of the fight, unable to handle the concept of trying to destroy the image of his recently deceased wife. She escapes the club, but Alex pursues her across the city. Eventually she traps him and takes him captive. While stuck in her lair, hog-tied, he manages to get her to reveal that something called her forth from the grave and that the being he was speaking to was actually a personification of the First Slayer. She had come forth to stop some great evil that was coming, and that she was using this body as her vessel. Dante, Dawn, and the others catch up to her, and with a call to the necromancer, Julia Delaney, they manage to complete whatever spell had been worked to call her from the grave. Lexa is restored to life, and the gang rejoices.
Meanwhile, DSA's research into the middle-man from last week finally reveals a trace back to the Boyd-Townsend family. Apparently the current heads of that family, Patrick and Susan Townsend put out the hit on Lexa after seeing her on C-SPAN before the Senate. They blamed her for the family's misfortunes and sought to make her and her friends suffer. Lexa plays the ghost of Christmas Future and manages to ilicit a confession from a weak-willed Susan. They are placed under arrest, but confess they dont' know what called her from the grave. It hadn't been them. They just wanted her dead.
Episode Ten - Tangled Webs, Part One
Lexa gets a call from a frightened, scared Jenny, the waitress from the restaurant. She now claims to be Jessica McCormick, and she has no recollectin of how she came to be in the apartment she's currently living in. Lexa and Matt go over with a full security team and find not only her, but her roommate have both suddenly regained the identities of the people they resemble. Mary, now Marie-Christine, pleads to Matthew in French, being completely lost as to what is going on. Neither girl can remember the circumstances of their demise. They are taken back to DSA and given a full medical examination. They both seem comletely fine, except for some anomalies in their DNA. Further testing reveals it be some kind of inactive strands that bear a resemblance to spider DNA. Fearing that Bathory is making a move at last, the gang ships off Arianna and the kids to somewhere safe, with a little help from the SGC.
Then the answer jumps into the lap. Lexa receives an invitation to a gallery showing at the Seattle Museum of Fine Arts. The artist in question is none other than Bathory herself, though thats not the name she goes by. DSA sets up a surveillance of the function, and sure enough Bathory is in attendance with another gentleman, whom they identify as one Sergei Kolokov, former Russian KBG division head, and necromancer. The gang separates the two and attempts to interrogate Kolokov. He reveals himself to be a vampire of Dracula's breed, like Bathory herself. He dissolves into mist and escapes. DSA tracks Bathory from the museum to a spacious townhome in the suburbs of Seattle. The gang waits till morning and moves in. Inside they find Bathory and Kolokov gone, and Arianna strung up on an inverted cross, her throat slashed.
Episode Eleven - Tangled Webs, Part Two
The gang cuts her down, but its almost too late. She's rushed the hospital, but almost dies from blood loss. Dante feeds her some of his blood, hoping to encourage her to heal, but she dies on the table as they try and seal the throat wound back properly. Arianna revives later that day as a vampire. When interrogated, she insists that she's the real Arianna. The one they sent off world is arrested and brought back. A thorough medical examination confirms she has the same traces of spider DNA in her make-up, but the woman insists she's Arianna. Realizing Bathory has to have contacts in Seattle, DSA puts the pressure ont he supernatural community. Eventually, Bishop coughs up that he's been working, unwilingly of course, for her. In exchange for getting her off his back, he gives up her location at an abandoned missile silo about twenty miles outside Seattle.
The gang pulls out the last of their favors with the SGC and Jack, Jr. shows up with a puddle jumper and a few zats for a quick assist. Jack and the jumper hit the main silo, which turns out to be the place where Bathory's spider pets were making their lair. The gang then infiltrates the main facility and does a hard target search, room by room. Eventually, they find themselves trapped between emergency blast doors and gassed. Alex manages to hold out against the gas, but then finds himself up against a silent but no less deadly Lexa, who renders him unconscious the hard way. When the gang revives, Bathory does the Bond Villain Gloat Scene, where she reveals that her specially alchemically crafted were-spiders were able to lay eggs from which would hatch copies of any person they had tasted the blood of. Kolokov then used his sorcerous abilities to implant the copies with a partial copy of the originals memories at the time when it would do the most damage. Sergei hired a necromance to try and have Lexa' raised as a zombie to torment her friends, but something had interfered with that spell.
That isn't the worst surprise for Matt. Bathory reveals her favorite pet: the original Marie-Christine du Lac. She hadn't died back in the 1800s like he thought. She'd actually be turned into a vampire and risen just hours after he buried her and fled Europe. Since then, Bathory had kept her as a pet to avenge herself on, as Marie was favored of the two men who'd nearly killed her almost two centuries ago. The cowering vampire is battered, broken, and seems barely human. Kei, who had been wearing the Umbra Lucesco, activated the armor and blades which shattered her bonds. She freed Alex and the two went after Bathory. Kei fought Bathory to a stand-still and managed to slay her single-handedly, with a little help from a very pissed off Matt. Alex took out Sergei, and the remaining were-spiders.
Episode Twelve - Tangled Webs, Part Three
The gang returns to DSA headquarters to find Bathory left one final parting gift. Without her will to control them, the doppelgangers began to rapidly revert to their original were-spider states. Apparently, she wanted Matt and Alex to witness those they cared about to transform into her precious pets; her final vengeance, even if she were defeated. Dawn manages to find a spell that should be used to stabilize their forms and purge them of the spider-remnants with them, thus saving them. She and Alex work the ritual, and for a moment, seeing into a higher lane, he sees a glowing, almost feminine figure trying to disrupt the spell. The figure notices him and attempts to break his connection, which lets Dawn complete the ritual.
Matt goes and checks on the Maries. The vampire Marie basically begs to be released from the hell that has been her existence, and thanks him as he stakes her through the heart. Meanwhile, Alex handles the copied Marie. Everyone agrees that she should never know about the "original" Marie, and Alex convinces her that she was somehow brought back from the dead. She bonds with her old friend, and is confused to discover that Matt has moved on and remarried, and even has a child. Rough times are ahead for these three old friends.
Meanwhile, the two Arianna's are not getting along. Both want their old lives back. Eventually, VampAri admits she kinda likes the idea of being a vampire. She's now strong enough and fast enough to assist the gang in being "superheroes," and not just reporting from the sidelines. The two agree that the CloneAri can take over her old life, while VampAri joins DSA and gets some combat training for her new role in the group.
Jessica, alive again and no longer a vampire, simply wants to go home and see her family, who've thought her dead for almost 5 years. The gang arranges it, along with a suitable cover story, and send her home. Alex seems content to brood over the fact that he's loved her and lost her, twice now, until Jack slaps him upside the head and points out he needs to enjoy what he has, not moan over what he doesn't. Alex takes Jessica out and shows her one last good time before she goes home.
Episodes Thirteen - Dysfunction
Things slow down around the Pearce household for awhile. Marie-Christine tries to adapt to this new world and new lifestyle, but problems abound. Matt tries to give her some space, to let her adjust without any undue pressure from him. Alex on the other hand, is pursuing her slowly, but relentlessly. He also begins to complain about Matt and Lexa's lifestyle; mainly about how Matt seems to have a soul-mate in Dawn AND still seems to attract other romantic interests to boot. The gang gets sent on a few more ops, hunting down scum and villainy on behalf of the DSA. En route from one of those missions, Dante confronts Alex over his attitude of late, and the two come to blows. Lexa breaks them up, and Alex storms off. Arianna confronts Marie about her dependence on Alex for interacting with the world, and she too goes her own way for a while, not willing to deal with her father right now.
Episode Fourteen - The Rising Dawn
Finally, Alex approaches Dawn with an idea to find an anciet Egyptian tome he once had in his possession in the early 20th century, but then lost. The Book of the Dead, he believes, can be used to restore Dante and Arianna to life, but he doesn't know where it is. His research has uncovered a spell that should help them locate the book, but he can't do it without her. Reluctantly, Dawn agrees and the two cast Finding the Lost. Ultimately, Alex again feels the presence of that higher being and the spell surges and ultimately fizzles, or so they think. Meanwhile, in the bowels of New Canaan Technologies, Baal's personal Stargate activates unexpectedly, and Dawn steps through, only this woman has black eyes, darker hair, and a serious attitude. She deflects the Kull Warriors attempting to stop her and simply teleports away.
Note: The events described next are a callback to a D20 modern fantasy game I ran when the D20 Modern system was just a preliminary sketch in an issue of Dungeon many many moons ago.
Barachiel, the angel from the alternate world Lexa got displaced in pays them another visit. He explains that something went horribly awry and that the spell Alex and Dawn flubbed called forth a counterpart of her from across space and time. This Dawn is not Buffy Summer's sister, but Buffy Summer's daughter from a world where she never went to the town of Sunnydale, but instead thwarted events at a Hellmouth beneath the town of Blacksburg, Virginia and Virginia Tech University. She was sent to her by the same monks, who gave her the Key as a baby for her to protect. That Dawn was seized upon by the Fallen archangel Lucifer while still an infant, and was to be used to bring the barriers between worlds crashing down so he could storm the gates of Heaven with the legions of hell. Buffy and her Scoobies slew the powerful hell-lord, and his gateway collapsed in on him, and cast him out. Unfortunately the infant was also lost.
The infant was sucked into a hell dimension where she was found by a servant of the Demon Prince, Asmodeus, who brought the oddity to his master. Asmodeus knew what the child represented, but its abilities were not so useful in his dimension. In a moment of whimsy, he raised the child as his own daughter and taught her all the ancient demonic magicks, all the ancient secrets. Finally, she grew up and Asmodeus sent her back to the realm of her birth to unleash her madness on humanity, and she did just that. Barachiel explained that the universes had been fractured into 9 separate primary timelines that had been vying for dominance since Creation. The Demon-Dawn decided to avenger herself on the parents who abandoned her and got her Jet Li on, using the ninth chevron of the Stargate to hop between these nine earths, exterminating her parents: Buffy and an immortal named Soran.
Eventually the inhabitants of 3 of these earths came together and managed to stop her from finishing her fratricidal plan. Demon-Dawn was confronted in the National Catherdal in DC; the site where Lucifer was destroyed and she had been given to Hell itself. She died, but her blood hit the altar, which still bore the prepartory enchantments from all those years ago. The barriers between all dimensions collapsed for a moment, and though they resealed when Buffy poured her blood onto the altar as well, the damage was done. Lucifer hadn't been destroyed; he'd been ejected into the Outer Realms, where the Old Ones slumbered. Now he had returned, quite insane and filled with powers that had not been meant for this plane (think a Cthulhian Corrupted Archangel and you now have an idea of how BAD this was).
This "new and imrpoved" Lucifer began a quest to wipe out all Creation and allow the Old Ones to remake everything as it should have been. He did this by trying to recombine the 9 Earths in such a way that they would wipe each other out, along with everything else. Barachiel explained that he was stopped, and the 9 were recombined into one, and all history started anew, which is the world our gang currently resides in. The spell somehow pulled Demon-Dawnie from her world, a world that didnt' even EXIST anymore, from the moment before her death. Not only was she free on this world, if she wasn't returned soon, then all of space-time would come unravelled as the events that created their reality would never come to pass. With that little warning, the angel left, saying he'd try and hold things together as long as he could, but they needed to hurry. They also couldn't kil her, as that wouldn't solve anything. She HAD to be returned to the point in which she left.
Note: Yes, I read Crisis on Infinite Earths too many times as a kid. Sue me.
The gang managed to get ahold of Buffy and Angel, and advise them that they needed to haul ass to Seattle fast, and to ignore ANY calls or messages or visits from Dawn. They arrive, as does Spike and Faith to provide a little backup. Sure enough, Demon-Dawnie shows up and proceeds to decimate the cast as she makes a beeline for the two she came for. Faith and Spike drop lock rocks, and the all-too-human Buffy and Angel can't put up much of a fight. Dante and Lexa go down quickly, but Matt, Alex, and Kei manage to drive her off. Demon-Dawnie teleports back to NCT and with a gesture, opens a stargate and walks through it.
Episode Fifteen - The Falling Dawn
Demon-Dawn returns (next week, when else?), only this time she's got a few friends in tow. There may not be 9 earths anymore, but there are still a whole bunch of quantum variances and this time, she's brought back a very twisted and evil looking version of our gang, all vampires. Baal calls the gang and gives them a warning of whats coming. They trick Demon-Dawn into coming into the mansion, thinking they've gone running off to hunt them down. Once inside, they trap her there, and their vampire counterparts are unable to enter. Not feeling particularly loyal to the woman who forced them into this inter-dimensional jaunt, they leave her to her fate. Better prepared this time, Alex and Dawn manage to subdue her and render her unconscious. Given enough time, they are able to send her back to her proper place and the crisis is aborted. Well, this one at any rate.
Episode Sixteen - Two Too Many, Part One
The Vamp Gang makes their presence known by dethroning Bishop, butchering what remains of DeLaurentis' cult, and given the local lycans merry hell. They blow up Trinity, nearly killing Alex and Dante, then try to ambush Arianna. She manages to fight them off, but that turns out to be a decoy as they use rocket launchers and military hardware to try and hit them on their way back home. These vamps don't play by the normal rules. No one knows how to deal with them, until they get a call for Jack over at the SGC. A woman claiming to be Dahlia Townsend just came through the Stargate. The gang hotfoots it over to Cheyenne Mountain where they go to interrogate the woman. This Dahlia has to be restrained from attacking them all on sight, and is eventually persuaded to tell her story.
Dahlia explains that it is roughly fifty years in the future on her world. There, her daughter Lexa was turned into a vampire at age 16 during an attack on her school. As a minion of the vampire, Elizabeth York, Alex's old wife and long-time foe, she came to Grizzly Peak. Once there, she set Elizabeth up to get dusted, then turned Alex and then Dante into vampires. That Dawn tried to stop them but hadn't grown strong enough yet, and she made an excellent snack. Eventually, they turned Matt and the four of them became a nearly unstoppable force.
Lexa awakened to her tantric gift early in that one, and soon had to feed it the life energy of others as well as blood to survive. She discovered she could use this gift on other vampires to drain them of their power, and soon, she and the Vamp Gang went a merry spree, destroying other master vampires, letting her consume their power, growing ever stronger. Soon she became the undisputed ruler of the vampires, and began to unite them under a kind of coalition against humanity. Thats when Dahlia and the OSI moved into stop them.
To say they failed is an understatement. Upon learning her mother was alive, VampLexa went into a frenzy and managed to survive long enough to track down OSI headquarters in Seattle. There, they and their minions tore apart the office in a surprise attack. Lexa turned Tamara and Forelli into vampires, forcing Dahlia to kill them before they rose. Mother and daughter fought, and VampLexa whispered into her ear that everything she did would be a monument to her failure as a mother. Then she snapped her neck (not knowing that wouldn't kill her) and threw her out a tenth story window, leaving her for dead. Since then, Dahlia had dedicated her existence to stopping them and failed. She was spying on them when Demon-Dawn "recruited" them to help her. It took some time, but she managed to call in enough favors to get a spell cast that would allow her to follow them, and here she was.
Now with Dahlia on their side, all they have to do is find their counterparts. Bishop reveals that he's lost a goodly number of his minions to them; Victor confesses that many of his wolves have been unable to resist their call. They track down De Laurentis who's coven is destroyed, and he himself has been hiding in his crypt. He volunteers to join them, to avenge the loss of his followers. They finally catch a break when they manage to trace the military hardware used against them to a LexCorp subsidiary. A quick check on Lex reveals that he's in Seattle and apparently meeting with "Dorian Gray" at NCT. Figuring this to be a trap, Dante goes in first, feeling the most likely to survive, being undead.
Baal admits that he's been forced to aid the Vamp Gang and that he can direct our heroes to them. Dante reluctantly calls everyone in, and Baal has them ringed down to an underground complex beneath Seattle where his Stargate is hidden, along with his more... advanced research. Unfortunately, the group finds themselves surrounded on all sides by vampires, werewolves and a group of Kull Warriors.
Episode Seventeen - Two Too Many, Part Two
The gang readies themselves for what could possibly be their last battle, when the Kull Warriors turn on their "allies" and gun them down. The cast joins the fray and soon the grunts are dispatched. They proceed into the Stargate chamber, where they find the Vamp Gang waiting for them, complete with hostages. In the room they have Lex and Tamara. VampLexa also claims they have Kelly, Blaire, and Marie-Chrsitine being held by a handful of minions across the city who will kill them if they don't hear from her regularly. When asked what she wants, its simple: they want to go home. She knows that Dawn should be able to send them back via the Stargate, and if she does so, she'll text her minions the Stand Down code, freeing their friends. Reluctantly the gang agrees, and Dawn touches the DHD and fills it with her power. She begins to fade from existence, but the Stargate suddenly opens and after chucking a minion through to confirm that it was in fact home sweet home, the rest of the Vamp Gang walks through it. Before she leaves, VampLexa keeps her word and releases their prisoners. She retreats through the gate, blowing a kiss to her mom.
Dawn collapses and Dahlia is in a frenzy that VampLexa escaped her again. She and Alex want to pursue them, but Matt insists that one attempt nearly killed Dawn, they will not try another. Dahlia is stuck here, for the time being. Tamara regains consciousness and the two lost lovers meet. Awkwardness ensues but the two try to get reacquainted. The gang picks up their friends and soon every one goes back to the mansion to discuss WTF just happened. Lexa and Dahlia pointedly avoid each other.
Episode Eighteen - Luck O' the Irish
Having seen two versions of herself somehow enslaved to her tantric gift, Lexa goes to Japan with Kei, looking for a temple where Lexa can learn to control her inner emotions and try to overcome the impulses being fostered upon her by the incompatible combo of the Slayer power and the Tantric Focus gift. While there, Kei has another run-in with her family's old yakuza gangs and she decides to spend a little time dismantling them, once and for all, putting an end to her father's dark legacy.
Meanwhile. Alex has received word that Li Dei, who had made Interpol's wanted list for her little explosive entrances last year, had finally been tracked down and killed by an assassin known as Bullseye. Alex gets pissed and recruits Dante and Arianna to bring the Irish assassin to justice. They find him in a pub in London; Scotland Yard knows where he is, but all attempts to bring him in have met with high body counts. The gang goes in and after one helluva tussle, Alex avenges the Puma Totem Warrior's death. He returns to find Marie-Christine packing. She's decided her presence there is only causing problems. Mr. Giles has extended her an offer to train in England and she's going to take him up on it. She kisses Alex and Matt goodbye.
Episode Nineteen - Rockets Red Glare
Meanwhile, back in Seattle, a new threat pops up. Bishop gives them a tip that back in the 80s, he had acquired some nerve gas rockets when his boys hit a military convoy, looking for guns and the like. He wasn't stupid enough to use them and kept them locked up. But now, someone had gone and stolen them from him, which couldn't bode well. Using every available resource, the gang manages to locate the missiles at 5 separate sites, where they are being prepped to detonate, killing much of the Seattle populace. Splitting into teams, the gang defuses four of them. The fifth team is defeated, and Dawn teleports to their location, to find it guarded by a vampiress and her minions. She and the vampire engage in a sorcerous duel to which she only narrowly wins. The vampiress flees and Dawn teleports the missile into space, before it can detonate. Given the description of the woman, Alex theorizes it was one Brigette de Rais, a vampire he and his descendant, Lucy Hanover, tried to kill back in the Old West.
Episode Twenty - Old Flames
The duo return from Tokyo happy and more peaceful, only to find out that a little tryst of theirs got recorded and splashed all over the internet. Heh, oops. :) Alex and Dawn have been investigating the strange presence that's been screwing with their magic lately. Dawn finally admits she felt something trying to drain the power out of her beyond just what was required to open the gateway home for their doppelgangers. Given the chain of events of the last few months, they've come up with a plan to try and draw this being out. Under the manor's anti-scrying spells, Dawn reveals the scheme. Lexa and she had been researching a way to use Lexa as a focus to power a ritual that would restore Dahlia to life. If successful, it could also be used on Dante and Arianna, freeing them of their bloodlust. While doing this major undertaking, Alex can be preparing a side spell which should temporarily force any noncorporeal beings onto this plane of existence.
The plan seems sound, and Dahlia is willing to forego her supernatural powers for the chance to be normal. She's accepted she won't be going home, and now that she and Tamara have reconnected, she'd rather pursue a future with her than her revenge. So the gang gets the ritual going. Dante and Lexa get their juices going and Dawn calls upon that energy to cast the spell. Sure enough, Alex feels the presence return, and he fires off his spell. The Big Ritual is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a beautiful woman in a white robe who looks EXCEEDINGLY angry. Matt recognizes her but he can't place from where. She uses telekinesis to toss around the cast members who try to restrain her. She turns her fury towards Matt, but suddenly another glowing figure appears and the two seem to fight for a moment. The woman seems to win, but is looking at herself in disgust. She comments that she may be trapped in this body, but that won't thwart justice.
The woman flees, with the gang in pursuit. Alex reaches her first, but she enters his mind and informs him that she was responsible for his rebirth as a Sentinel and that if he didn't serve her, she would strip him of his power. He calls her bluff, and she follows through. Matt finally catches up to her, and they talk. Some of Matt's memories come back, and along with her exposition, he figures out that he was once an Ancient named Janos, who questioned the ways of the others and defied their leaders constantly. After they Ascended, he willing outcast himself to help guide the mortals of this world, and left her, Euthalia, his wife, behind. At first things were okay, but as she saw him gain more and more power on this plane, and when he found a soulmate to replace her, jealousy began to fester. She started surreptioustly trying to interfere with his life without the others noticing, but now that they were engaged with wiping out the Ori, she could act more openly. She basically takes responsibility for why his visions were rarely in time to be useful, as well as everythng that had happened this year.
Matt tries to reason with her, to explain why he did what he did, why he left her, and why these people, Dawn especially. He manages to touch something within her, and she seems to back down. Then the glowing figure returns and reveals herself as Oma DeSala. She explains to both of them that Euthalia had tried to fight Nyarlathotep when he first attacked them years ago, and a part of his madness had infected her after that battle. They purged the seed, but the psychological damage had to be worked out the only way possible. She sends Euthalia back to the higher planes for "counseling," then restores Alex's power. She thanks Matthew for everything he'd done, and wishes him well, before departing herself. Matt and Alex go back inside and finish the ritual to restore Dahlia to life.
Go to Season Five
Back to Season Three
Return to Main
Return to Barachiel's Aerie
Return to the RPG Section