Where Mortal Men Do Fear To Tread

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

It took a little convincing that the fate of the world was on the line, but Julian eventually consents to waking up his father for us. We still have to wait for half an hour to go talk to him, but it is a fruitful discussion. He greets us politely and asks our names, figuring out who we are quite quickly from our past with the Magia. Remy starts explaining all our efforts to protect the city, but Klyce cuts him off to say he has something we need to wake up Porter. For some reason, Klyce has decided it’s a drug. I think it’s something to do with that business in Italy. Turns out we’re both wrong.

Once he finds out that Porter is in trouble, he is much more forthcoming. Klyce asks what he needs from us in exchange. He mentions that his family is in the mana trade and they’ve heard about these Machines… All our hackles raise, but then he goes on to say he wants us to ensure they never go into production, nor ever made legal. We are More than happy to do just that. We don’t have a lot of political power, but what we do, we will bring full force against these Machines. Deal? Deal.

Then we head downstairs and he takes a look at Porter. He pulls a serpent ring off his finger and puts it on Porter’s hand. It shrinks down to fit, and in short order, Porter awakes, albeit still in some pain. Excellent! Now we have to figure out how to find Grandfather. Porter can’t track them wherever they are with the magic he was using for the sacrifices. But maybe we can track their teleports, now that we know which teleports to track. This time, instead of Porter’s people, we can track the demons who attacked my house, and stole my brother.

I ask about my sling, that I stole from Porter’s hideout. Apparently it does extra damage to demons. Remy starts talking about Phil, in vague terms, and I’m surprised at Klyce’s restraint, when he simply says that man is not available for this mission because he says so. Klyce leads us all to the one succubus that teleported away from Phil in the mad chase from my house. We get a direction from there. Then we head back to my house, and up to my brother’s room, and the room where everyone’s staying.

I get that feeling again. I know what I did wrong the first time. I was trying to go two places at once. I can do it now. I ask if everyone is ready, and count heads to make sure I’ve got enough power. Philomena agrees to come with us this time, since we’re down Marybeth and Dalish. Everyone grabs hands, and I teleport us. Into an empty stone room, without mishap.

There’s a hallway behind us with stairs up to the street. Nat finds an instability in the center of the room. Remy looks closely and can just see the entrance to a Magnificent Mansion. Except, this one’s a little different. It seems to not really be here, on our plane, more like it goes into the void a bit. How do we get inside? What happens if we dispell it? It could eject them, or, if there’s another entrance, we would just be barred from getting in, or it could kill them all, my brother included. Remy and Gerhardt look a bit closer at the magic while Klyce skitters off to make sure we’re alone.

Gerhardt decides that if he overcharges, he can get the door open for us. It’ll take a ritual, so while he’s at it, Nat rituals up a telepathic bond, as well. It works! We step through the door into one of the most disgusting places we’ve ever been. It reminds me of the dead king’s body. Only, these fleshy walls have faces moving through them, and they’re all screaming and wailing. There are twenty small demons waiting for us in this foyer of the damned. but they fall quite quickly to the simplest spells and we move on. The next room has a fountain of blood and buffet tables of body parts in various stages of rot. There are stairs going up, doors to either side, and a hallway under the stairs. Remy and Porter run forward super fast to scout, but Porter finds something first.

There’s someone hiding in the study. Klyce skitters forward and can sense three beings in there. Remy comes back down and Gerhardt goes up to look as well. Remy sees one hiding by the liquor cabinet and calls out to him. He threatens to shoot him if he doesn’t show himself, so a slightly larger than the entryway demons comes out to talk. Remy asks where the prisoners are? Down the hall, there’s only one left. Who else in our way? Bull demons, Galabrazu, and a large fear shadow fire demon. A what now? Nevermind, how do we get in without passing all these demons? No way he knows around them. How do we stop the ritual? Kill the two masters. Grandfather must have more puppets or clones. Then it tries to get Remy to take it on as a familiar and Ceres is not amused. What help can you be so we don’t just kill you? Don’t go in the succubus room upstairs, never there. Maybe the demons have weapons you could use against the master? He doesn’t like being stabbed. The shadow, fire, fear monster though, he has no weaknesses. Not even magic. Okay, if we have to leave, what’s the password to get back into this mansion? He tells us, but I wouldn’t even begin to know how to spell the infernal word.

We head down the hallway, wondering if we should have just killed those demons, too, but we need all our magic for what comes next. We make plans about what spells to use, and how to use our Iron Bands on Grandfather’s duplicates. We push through the first set of doors to find an ante chamber full of smoke and darkness at the far end. The Balor peers out at us from the smoke.

Then it grabs Gerhardt with it’s whip and drags him across the room to stab him a couple times. I storm up and spells start flying. It pulls me in next, but manages to somehow not drop me in one round. We mange to keep running away from him, and Gerhardt heals me enough that we put him down without dying ourselves, but as he falls, things go a little sideways. You’re too late! I have slowed you down enough! DIE! Then he explodes and I wake up to Gerhardt treating some pretty nasty burns on my arms.

We head forward again, and open them on the massive fleshy ritual chamber. In the center, Gerald is chained down with a succubus keeping him occupied. Cultists dance around in a circle. Two images of Marybeth, Grandfather’s work, are on the far end of the room, incanting the ritual. And I will fall over again if a soft breeze touches me.

Right Where We Started, Almost

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

The fight breaks loose almost immediately. Remy rushed forward and dimension doored Porter out of Grandfather’s grasp to the top of the stairs. I try to slow the demons, but only manage to catch one of the froggy ones. Marybeth tosses a fireball down into the mix, and then there’s lightning, and sunbeams, and necrotic spells flying everywhere. One of Porter’s boys pushes up past us and disappears with Porter, another pops out, as well. The demons are slaughtering the rest, as we try to take down Grandfather. He puts on a silence collar, just as Remy blows his head off. It takes a bunch more spells to get rid of the demons, but when the dust clears, it turns out that Grandfather was just made of ice and snow. The demons have made off with several more prisoners, but Remy’s father is still here. Small victories.

One of Porter’s team remains, and he tries to explain that they were just trying to stop the old man. They had to kill those carrying the Dawnmother’s blood before he could get to them for his ritual. He’s the one trying to unseal a banished monster with her descendants. When we ask where Porter went, he doesn’t know, but suggest the fishery up above us and then who knows where. I can’t take us straight up, though, I don’t actually know what’s there. So, I take us all back to my house.

Remy puts Franklin in with the other families, and I stop to pray for the Dawnmother’s healing for everyone. Maribeth, Klyce, and Remy talk to their parents while the rest of us try to figure out this whole Dawnmother’s blood thing. We don’t have enough information though, we have to find Porter. I try to send a message to Porter, but he doesn’t reply. Nat sits down and scries on the man who teleported out with him, Julian Kosta. He finds Julian performing surgery on a nebulous form. The room is decorated with family portraits and paintings, it’s probably his house. They don’t live far from here, so we decide to go. Nervous, Maribeth casts non-detection on herself before we leave the house.

Arriving with a knock on the front door, we are greeted by a butler. He tell him that we’re here to help the man bleeding in his dining room. He shuts the door gently, and when he returns, politely escorts us to Porter and Julian. Remy and Gerhardt immediately step forward to look him over and get to work, and I sit down to start praying. Julian steps back to let us work, wincing every time I invoke the Dawnmother’s name.

Maribeth pulled him aside to get him talking about what they’ve been doing. I was concentrating on my prayers, but in between, I caught some of the conversation. Six months ago, Porter heard about what Grandfather was doing, so they had to get back here to stop him. Wiest was just a means to that end. Porter didn’t talk about the contracts much, but he did know, somehow, when Grandfather followed Maribeth back from death. Julian says he loves Porter, he’s a good man, and saved his life. He had explained to them a bit about the devils and demons and corrupted fae. They tried for months to find Grandfather, but eventually, had to settle for hunting his prey instead.

Then Julian went on about some thirteen towers of ruin with these big bad demons sealed away by the gods, to keep them from the human world. The lesser ones still can, but the seals hold the real evil at bay. He said that Grandfather wants to open one of them, and catch the whole world on fire. Since Grandfather can’t go after the Dawnmother herself to unseal the tower, he’s been after her descendants instead. Porter figured out a way to track bloodlines through a ritual, so they’ve been able to find their targets. They had killed eight so far, with five more in the cells. The demons took four of those, so with my brother, Grandfather is right on track to finish his ritual.

Eventually, Porter is stabalized. I send to Philomena to tell her we’re spending the night, and we all bed down around the bloody table to sleep.

In the morning, Maribeth tells us that Grandfather has moved up the negotiations with his Demon Prince threats. They’re coming to take her to Hell and she needs us to find and stop him while she’s gone. If he wins, he gets all the mana he could want, and other powers he could use and abuse. She wants one of us to go with her, to help, and eventually, we settle on Dalish, as the most knowledgable of the group. Then there’s a strange digression about Orrin and who is actually in control of him, but I don’t think it matters so much right now.

We try to wake up Porter, but he’s still to injured, so Remy suggests a Mind Palace, and Nat oblidges, leaving Remy and Klyce outside to guard us all. It works! Maribeth takes charge of the meeting and explain to Porter what is going on. She offers her conversations with him before the war as proof that she’s really herself. She explains what she tried to do with the contract, and says that she has to go to Hell soon for the renegotiation. He tries to interrupt, but she shouts him down. He has to stay here, he has to help us find Grandfather and stop his ritual so that he doesn’t get the contract back. They go back and forth for a bit, he doesn’t want her to go to hell, but she insists that it is necessary. She even tells him to listen to Klyce, and to stop murdering innocent people. He finally agrees to listen to us, but we have to get Julian to help him. The Magia have something that could help him, and Julian has to get it from them.

Maribeth steps back and now it’s our turn for questions. Nat asks if she can look into his brain when this is done, for clues he may have missed, and he agrees. We ask how many more Grandfather needs. Just the four he took. How do we stop the ritual? Kill the sacrifices, kill his followers, disrupt the ritual. Then we ask what he knows of Hell. When the separating of the worlds happened, fae were trapped on earth, starving. They require magic to live, like an addiction. Thirteen very powerful fae, in attempting to get home, achieved communion with the void in between. The void changed them and they began to feed on souls, and created Hell between the worlds. The Dawnmother imprisoned them in the towers there. There is then a short tangent into demon and devil procreation, but we don’t have time for that. We say goodbye and wake up.

Maribeth asks me to make sure Julian gets what is needed, and to keep Rictus from Porter, at least until the matter is settled. She wants us to fill Rictus in, but I’m not so sure about that. With Dalish gone to Hell, I will have to ask the others. There is a knock on the door, Maribeth and Dalish go to answer. We follow from a distance to see them off, Two thin, lithe lawyery gentlement escort them out the door, and through a portal to Hell.

Into The Nest

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

Brack fell to the ground, blood gushing from his neck, and I ran up to Spare him from Dying. Remy starts shooting at something above my head and I duck to cover Brack’s body. Next thing I know, I’m getting stabbed, too, and there are crossbow bolts coming out of windows around us. Klyce runs up beside me and chokes out a guy that I didn’t even see, and Remy keeps shooting. Glancing up, I see a ghostly shadow leaving the body in front of me, and I scramble back, but it flees. I join the fray, Catapulting some rocks up at the men in the windows, but every time one falls, a grey shadow flees the scene. Nat manages to get a Mindspike on one before it gets too far, just as the battle ends.

Gerhardt patches me up, and then wakes Brack up. He has had enough of our dangerous life, and heads back to his shadowy one. Nat quickly searches the dead, they still look slippery, like all those years ago in the Bronx sewers. They have no identifying features, no prints, no blemishes, nothing, except a brand at the base of their neck from the Mageocracy. Assassins! What? Why? I, self-consciously, check the back of my neck, but there’s no sudden appearance of a brand there, thank the Dawnmother.

We chase after the spiked shadow demon, all the way down to Little Italy. It is about 150 feet below us, so we head back into the familiar sewers of New Gnosis. This is nowhere near the location of the Nest, but we have to check it out. When we finally get close, it appears to be a Magia hideout. No! Nonono! We do not have time for That entanglement. So, we head back up and out. Once outside, Nat does sit down to take a look inside, but only finds an old dusty room.

We head off to find a map and do some triangulation of all the abduction sites. They find a spot in Brooklyn, near some dockside warehouses, and about 200 feet downward. Okay, I can do this. I know where we’re going, I have some demon bones and the cultist’s necklace. I gather everyone around me, and close my eyes. Transportation magic hurts a heck of a lot more than I thought it would. Getting shot didn’t even hurt that much. I hold on tight to the lightning, and we make it through to the ritual room Nat has described to us several times.

There are footsteps in the hall outside, and the girls hide behind the altar, while the boys stand to meet whoever comes. Two robed figures carrying torches enter. Someone says, We just want to talk, but they start shouting instead. We’ve been found! To Arms! Bullets and spells begin flying, as they summon two bone devils to help. I manage to get a Storm Sphere off, thanks to some countering of a countr by Remy. The room fills with spells, bullets, claws, and lightning.

One of the men disappears, and Remy starts shooting down the hall. Dalish flies after the invisible man, but he gets attacked by a charging man in armor. Once the devils are down, we all move toward the hallway, and eventually take down the fake knight after Gerhardt dispells all his charms. Dalish captures his soul, while Maribeth defaces the symbols around the altar. A wall of fire erupts at the end of the hall, and Remy starts swatting at invisible things all around him.

We all retreat back to the room, while Dalish uses the captured soul to look ahead. There are six mages waiting for us in a room at the far end of the hall. Remy is trapped in a mental prison, and we have to wait a minute for him to be free. The mages do not advance during that minute, so we settle in for a ten minute Prayer of Healing to get people pumped back up a little bit. Dalish is watching them, so they send an Arcane Eye down to watch us, too. Nat puts up a Telepathic Bond so we can communicate more easily, and we make a plan. We’re going to go up to the turn in the hall. Gerhardt is going to cast his Sphere, and we’re going to use it as cover to attack the mages. Klyce will head in and take them on physically, while the rest of us stay back and lob spells.

When we’re all ready, Klyce, still in crocodile form, did I forget to mention that? He’s found a new favorite. Anyway, Klyce, carries Gerhardt and Nat down the hall, with the rest of us following behind. Dalish stays a ways back from the group because he’s keepig an eye on the room still. Before we can get there, they pop out and cast two fireballs on the whole group of us. I fall immediately.

I wake up in a different hallway, in Dalish’s arms. Unconscious girls can’t be choosers, I guess. The group is investigating a set of double doors at the far end of this hall. These doors lead into a mess hall. Remy and Nat head in to check the doors at the far end of this room, and find a kitchen, cold room, and bathroom. Doors on the right side of this room lead to an empty barracks, where we find a couple more phials of mana, as well as some magical items, which we promptly steal: A dagger, a sling, a ring, and a shield. Nat claims the dagger, I claim the sling, Klyce grabs the shield, and we put the ring away until we can identify it.

Heading through the doors on the left side of the mess hall, we find a training room, complete with straw dummies. As Nat and Dalish search around this room, four devils teleport in. Two covered in chains, and two armored females that remind me a little too much of the succcubi. The fight begins, and I pull up my Storm Sphere. One of the ladies doesn’t like this, and immediately puts me down. This time I wake up in the freezer with everyone sitting around identifying the magic items. Except mine. That’s okay though, it’s just a sling.

When we’re ready, we head back through the training room quickly, and Remy can see some extra layers of protect ahead. We pass through them, as though through a veil, and are confronted by ten more mages in the prison wing. Porter is there, and he calls out to Maribeth, as though she was her Grandfather, saying he won’t let him win. We shout back that she’s not Grandfather, we’re here because he’s been kidnapping and murdering people, including our family members. He says that’s Grandfather’s doing, and he can explain everything, but not down here. He’s trying to stop Grandfather summoning the horrible, huge, evil thing.

Then a sword appears through his chest, and Grandfather is standing right behind him, looking like Maribeth. He thanks us for finding this place for him, he was having all sorts of trouble with that. Then a bunch of demons teleport in among us all!

Meetings and Mistakes

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We head to Brooklyn, to meet the publisher of the penny dreadfuls that alerted us to the kidnappings of homeless throughout the city. There is a sign above a door in a narrow alley that simply reads: The Eager Eye. Remy offers to let me take lead on this one, so I knock. Repeatedly. And there is no answer. We head inside anyway, to find a dusty reception room with dead plants. A couple people say they can hear soft noises from deeper in, so we head down the hall to the next room.

The printing room is dark with tiny windows. The machine nearly fills the space with whirring and printing and paper, but even I can hear the muffled sounds of distress. So, we press in further and find a man buried under a fallen stack of papers. We dig him out and he introduces himself eagerly, thinking we are fans. Archibald Warren is a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and bright blue eyes.

I tell him we’re here because of his stories. They caught our interest, and we just had to come speak with him. He immediately grabs one up and signs it for me, very excited to meet us. Dalish pipes up helpfully, asking if we could perhaps get a preview of the next issue. He says that a ginger goes missing in Xingtown, but doesn’t give a lot of details. Obsessed with creating a narrative and using literary devices to get at the truth. Not to mention protecting his source. I try to press for more information, but he then takes off on a new story about a man raised on a deserted island.

I’m at a loss, he is not interested in spoiling the story. Remy then steps up to bat, asking how he writes the stories, physically. Archie says he uses a typewriter, and Remy begs to see his name typed by him. He makes us swear to keep his secrets, and we do. He takes off and we follow him back through the machinery, and Remy whispers that he has a magic item in his pocket as we follow.

Up a rickety old ladder to a tiny attic apartment that can barely fit us all. Marybeth asks him about the stories he wrote a few years ago, and he fondly remembers the Magia stories. Some heat come down on him, though, and he had to stop, but Truth has a voice of its own. Remy asks about his inspiration, and Archie says he is inspired on the streets, and with a passion for the pursuit of truth. He offers to use Remy’s name in his next story, and make him a hunter who comes to the island. Then he sits down and starts typing it up.

Remy starts motioning towards the pocket, so I message Nat to try and get the item so he can look at it with his magic eye. Only I don’t say that, I just ask her to get it. Nat then plays at her blindness, stumbling a bit, and pulls the object out, passing it off to me. I slip it into my pocket until I can figure out how to get it to Remy. Then someone, might have been Nat, I was too distracted at this point, asks again if he can give us more information about the abductions. So we can stop them happening.

This sets something off in his head. He realizes then, that we are detectives, and not fans. He is upset by this revelation, even as Remy tries to assure him that some of us, especially Dalish, have enjoyed his work very much. That his work has indeed saved lives by our reading them. Marybeth throws in about how his search for Truth has helped guide us. He insists again, that he cannot tell us more without revealing his sources. Remy mentions that his parents are among those who were taken, and we want to rescue them.

This pulls Archie out of the abstract, and he apologizes. He gets his information from the homeless on the streets and in kitches or shelters. Marybeth pushes for more, and he mentions that he has a tool that helps him find the truth. The object in my pocket, I realize, and try to pull them out, as though I found them dropped on the floor. Only, I trip, and fumble the glasses and they fall. Shattering on the floor.

I stare, stomach in my toes, heart clenched tight. The others are talking in an uproar. All I can hear is my father yelling at me for being clumsy. Archie is sobbing. I blink and stand up, mumbling apologies that don’t matter. I can’t stop staring at the floor. Archie is explaining that they let him see inside things, into people’s minds, and into the past. Dalish must have identified them because Klyce is asking about someone named Percival, and Archie says it was an old friend of his who willed him the glasses when he died. Dalish offers to figure out how to repair them after we stop the attacks and save New Gnosis.

Then we’re outside and Klyce is yelling. He’s right. Marybeth is chiding him for yelling. I can’t look at either of them. Klyce is right, it was all my fault. I ruined another life with my carelessness. Eventually everyone stops yelling and we head to the church of the One God.

I just follow Marybeth around as we search for the dark magic. When we head inside, the construction works are not happy to see us. Klyce stands toe to toe with them, by they do not want us messing with the stones to get below. We eventually decide on Arcane Eye from Nat, but that only gets us to what used to be the locker room, the door down is too solid and tight. So, we head off little ways and discuss next options.

I can Dimension Door myself and one other down, but then we’d be split up. Splitting up is bad. Nat offers to just look into the room instead with clairvoyance. Giving this a try gets strange results. She isn’t looking into the refinery, she’s looking into what looks like the Arch Deacon’s apartment. He notices her looking and waves away her spell. I wonder aloud if he’s the Red Knight, but get shot down. Apparently lots of people who aren’t official mages can do that.

It’s getting late, so we head home for our meeting with Rictus. Not knowing what else to do with myself, I make everyone dinner. I spent a lot of time with the cook, much to my mother’s chagrin, so it is at least a passable meal. I set a plate for Rictus, but he doesn’t show up for another couple hours after we’re all done. Out of Dalish’s shadow, because no one uses the door, apparently.

Dalish explains what we know and about Porter manipulating Wiest. Rictus asks for proof of such a big accusation, so Nat hands over the orb from the office. After he inspects it, he asks if there are more, and people just go ahead and tell him about the three from the mansion. He asks for one of those, as well, and Nat obliges. He agrees to cut off Porter’s supplies, but I wonder if it’s much too later for that. Remy draws the line between that to the cult activity and the demons.

Then brings up the conversation Wiest had with the Black Knight, and his sword. Rictus insists the royal knights are all dead. Remy explains more about their familiarity and how the Red Knight nullified his spell and how the Black Knight moved without being seen. Rictus asks if they are connected to the cult, and Remy spins a few threads together. Nat urges Rictus to have a care for himself if the knights are hunting those who were there at the death of the King, and warns of resentment fermenting in the populace, and the new deacon’s power to nullify magic, too. Rictus, however, is not worried about the common folk, only about a possible mage being behind it. Dalish asks for his advice, and he suggests simple triangulation from different abduction sites. He then leaves as abruptly as he arrived.

Nat wants to have some Tea dreams, so I make sure we’re all rooming together and the door is locked. Dalish gets us up early to go to the Hall of Records, but Nat refuses to rouse. Until an hour later, when she wakes in a panic.

It’s happening! Tonight!

She says Gerald and Marybeth will be the final sacrifices, she still can’t see where, but there were loads of demons there. I send to Brack to ask if there have been more abductions and ask for his necklace. He says there were two more last night and we should meet him in the same place. Remy tells us that he was able to send to his father, who wasn’t killed when he was taken. Wait? you could get through? Maybe we could scry? It would only be a dark room. We have to go!

We head up to the empty lot in the Bronx, and Brack leads us back down to the east side of Manhattan above Xingtown. There’s a small homeless camp in a back ally, and the shelters are torn up. He says he wasn’t here, but witnesses said the same thing. People came out of a wall, grabbed two specific people and then went back through. Dalish and Remy focus on finding the direction, while I ask Brack if I can borrow his necklace. He agrees. Nat asks about any anti-mage sentiment in the streets, but Brack says it’s just kids painting up walls. She asks about the church, and he says they seem pretty decent folk. They have a good soup kitchen and are getting a lot of new members.

After Dalish finds the direction the shadow teleport went, we ask if Brack knows of any other recent sites. He takes us all the way over to Queens for the next one. This one is in a park, near a retaining wall they used to teleport through. I pull a direction off this one to the south west. Now we just need a map to figure out where we’re going. He offers to keep helping us even as we offer to help him after this is all over.

Then a thin, red line appears across his through and he falls to the ground! NO!!!

New Friends?

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

In the morning, we gather for breakfast and planning. A quiet moment being a rarity. I wonder if they know we’ll come for them now, instead of throwing themselves at us. Klyce wants to trap one, if they do come after us again. It seems like not all of them can just teleport away. They ran from Philip instead of just disappearing. So maybe, we could snag one, and make it talk. We still have those iron bands from Italy, and Gerhard has his domes. This seems like a solid plan for now, but what do we do in the meantime.

We need to go visit the bar we told the homeless painters to report to. We need to go to the Petals to check some things at the Wiest’s office. And we figured on going to Brooklyn to see where the writer was getting his stories about the abductions. It’s going to be a lot of walking today. Philomena agrees to stay behind to help Orrin and Philip guard everyone.

We start by heading down south to the Xingtown bar. A man is waiting outside for us. He says Old Brack wants to talk to us, and takes us all the way back north to the Bronx. To an empty lot. Remy pays the man, which seems odd to me, when there’s no one here. But then a man appears out of the shadows saying that we’re drawing the symbol wrong.

Remy confirms this is Brack, and introduces himself, explaining why we were drawing the Dawnmother symbols around town. He says it’s the wrong symbol, and shows us a necklace with the inverted symbol on it. He got it two days before when another homeless couple were taken from right in front of him. Old Brack, it seems, has been on the streets a long time, and helps the newly homeless get settled and find places to sleep or find food. Two nights ago, he was doing just that, and a group jumped out of the shadows, abducted this couple and then disappeared again, through a wall. In the scuffle, they ignored Brack, and one dropped his necklace. Dalish is also a bit suspicious of Brack, and to be honest so am I, but in the moment, he’s telling us what we need to know, so I don’t care. We can come back and kill him later if we have to.


Remy tells him we’re trying to stop those people, and he leads us around a corner to show us where it happened. Remy asks who the couple were, and Brack unknowingly tells him they were his parents, the Renaud’s. The boys take a look with their magical eyes. There is definitely magical residue in this alley. Dalish says it’s some form of powerful conjuration. Shadow teleporting or something, like Rictus did the other night. I head up to the wall, and leaning my hands against it, concentrating on my desire to find my brother, I get a small sense of direction. They used this to go somewhere to the Southeast, mostly South. Maybe Brooklyn? Remy and Dalish get the same thing when they put their heads together, too.
Nat looks around and says it looks like there were eight people who came here through that wall. Eight people to abduct Remy’s parents. We have to figure out where they went. We have to save our families. Maybe they didn’t go very far? We start searching for that same signature of magic in the nearby streets, heading south and east. We get out to twice my current teleport spell’s range before we give it up. They could be anywhere if they aren’t close by. It’s time to move on to other things.

We head down to the Petals, starting with the Records Office. Dalish hands over the note from General Burns and we are taken into the hall. Most of Porter’s file is redacted, and his most recent orders is an empty folder. She gives us the list of his squad, and their current orders are also missing. They’re all slightly older than Porter, and include at least one member of the Magia families. We ask if someone has accessed these files, and perhaps taken their orders, and she takes us back to look at the logs. Five months ago, someone did look at their files, but she cannot tell us who. We’re going to have to find one of these mages, maybe one of them didn’t go along with Porter’s plan.

Heading up to Wiest’s office, we find it locked up tight. Klyce decides making a new doorway is probably safer than trying to unlock it, and opens the wall. Marybeth decides to maintain an illusion while we’re inside so no one notices a big hole in the wall. The office is nicely furnished, but fairly empty. Dalish does find a crystal ball in the wall, however. He doesn’t seem to use this office much at all, except when other people ask to see him. Fortunately, this one goes back six months, instead of just one. Two and a half months ago, Pyrus met with him to discuss the war and the mana deposits out west. Three months ago, Porter and two of his squad came for a visit.

Porter charmed Wiest at the beginning of the meeting. And I do mean Charmed, as in the spell, as in Illegal magic. On A Prime! He then assigns them to Black Ops inside New Gnosis. We have to back up the recording and reposition to see what orders he writes for them. He transfers them to be under his authority only, and out of the normal military chain of command. He also wrote them open orders for all the mana and supplies they want. There is no scope or end date to any of these orders. After they leave, he seems confused by what has happened, but they already have all the paperwork they need.

We decide that we have to get those orders rescinded. Surely, with Wiest dead, Rictus or someone can countermand the order? Maybe even tell us if they show up looking for supplies? This seems like a good first step in stopping at least one of our problems.

Nat skims through the rest of the orb. Five months ago, Rictus met with Wiest. Wiest was asking pointed questions about us and our service. Rictus tells him flat out that we belong to him and are under his control. Wiest then says that situations can change and that some mages want us used differently. Rictus insists that as long as he is Prime, nothing will happen to us. Well, isn’t this charming. Thank the Dawnmother for that geas.

Next, we headed to Prime Atherion’s office. He died around the same time, though his body was not retrievable inside his collapsed Magnificent Mansion. His door is also locked up, so Klyce opens a wall again. Only, this time, there is literally nothing in the office. Someone realizes, he probably has an extra-dimensional office, and we’ll have to go through the door. So, Nat picks the lock and we all rush inside before someone notices. Then things got weird.

A voice asks for a Password, and when no one can give one, we appear in a steel cube of a room, about thirty feet to a side. Surrounded by flying snakes. It’s a bit terrifying, but one quick Storm Sphere and all but one of them collapse to the ground. Nat quickly zaps the last snake out of the air. Then the voice comes again.

You have reached the office of Prime Atherion. What business do you have?

Or something like that, I think there were more words, but the storm was still up for a few seconds, and I didn’t really hear.

We tell the voice that Atherion is dead and we’re trying to investigate.

Access is restricted to Prime Atherion and those he gave access to.

We explain again that he is dead. We ask if Prime Rictus had permission, but the voice says no. Then we have to have a conversation about what dead means. It went something like this…

He’s dead.

What does that mean?

He isn’t alive. Or at least he isn’t on this plane anymore.

He… isn’t?

He isn’t.

But where is he?

Collapsed inside his mansion.

Oh.

Do you know how to get him out?

No.

Can we go into his office to look for information?

Prime Atherion isn’t?

Yes.

Who are you?

Then we introduced ourselves… but it didn’t get better for a while…

And you Are. But he isn’t? But I am?

And this went back and forth for awhile, until the voice explained that he is a “Life Model Decoy” of Prime Atherion, with all his knowledge, up to the point of his creation. Then the voice decided that it Was Atherion now. Because it’s existance was based on Atherion. This is when Klyce got impatient, declared the voice to be Atherion, and asked its permission to enter the office.

You want to visit My Office?

Yes, there is likely information about… a dead body that we need.

I give myself and all of you permission to access My Office.

Then a door appeared in one of the walls, and we all head through, into a Magnificent Mansion about two or three times the size of the one we all had shared those years before. There’s an Infinity Pool, a Zen Garden, and all sorts of other random frivolity. The unseen servants in this mansion, however, are all shaped like the other Primes, in the most ridiculous way possible. Atherion voice now starts insisting that it wants a body, and Remy patiently tries to help.

I lead the way to find his office among all of the silliness, and we find it. Throne and all. Who was this guy? The documents are mostly boring. Shipping manifests, mana information. Incarceration and death rates for the mines. Information on new deposits out west. Discussion of teleportation or rail systems to get mana back east. We also find his spellbook, which peaks a lot of interest, especially as it has the spell to make these mansions. We decide to confiscate it as evidence for now, and turn it in when we are done. Klyce and Remy both wander off to look for more interesting things. Dalish checks for recording orbs here, but unsurprisingly, doesn’t find any. Eventually, Remy comes to tell us he found a spell component room, and we all head there to “borrow” supplies.

Atherion voice tells us that no one besides Atherion` ever came here, and no one else had gotten into the trap room like we did. We ask where Atherion` had his mansion, but Atherion voice says he carried them with him wherever he went. Them?  He had eight mansions on his person at all times. Well, that’s a lot. We have to get out of here and get moving, we have found some good resources, but no information on the matters at hand. It doesn’t want us to leave, but Remy convinces him that we have to go outside for a bit, if only to get what we need to come back and make him a body. He tells us the password to get back in is Alleria.

Once we’re outside, Remy lets us know that there was also a Machine inside, though he disabled it. We head to Rictus’ office, but he isn’t there. I send to him, instead, to say Porter mind-controlled Wiest for unlimited supplies and free reign in the city. Rictus says he’ll meet with us this evening. Nat leaves a not for Alleria, asking “Are they yours?” And we head to Brooklyn to do more investigation.