Ashes to Ashes - Remembering Krem (Part 2/6)

Retold by LoreKeeper Casstiel of the Bridge of Souls on 27 December 2013
Regarding the events on 26 July 2008

As much as I don’t wish to take credit for getting my friends in that mess, it was me encouraging a drunken trip into the dark and gravel of North Dakota off-roading.  That’s right, the same stupid shit that killed one senior in one of the sister high schools every single year.  Brilliant.  Andrew (Nergal) was the least drunk, in fact he and Andrew (Loudon) seemed completely immune to the effects of alcohol, so he drove.  We piled into his sedan after grabbing some supplies from our cars.  I still had my Red Cavalier (this was before I started flying in and using Mom’s green Bravada… that we blew up…) and I searched around in the trunk.

Another disclaimer here.  We were always an odd bunch.  I mean, trench coat mafia running around with display Katanas kind of weird.  Whenever we snuck out after curfew (11:00pm for kids under 18) we were clad in black ninja/matrix apparel and armed with all the knives and swords we owned.  Nergal and Kairos actually had a few guns, a .22 and a 9mm handgun if memory serves.  We transferred them into Nergal’s eclectic trunk of wonders and proceeded on with non-alcoholic high-caffeination doses in hand.

From the lake we took a quick right onto 1604 and then left down highway 49.  49 ran North and South, the lake to the south and the main interstate through the middle of the state about 30 miles North of Beulah.  Before we got to Beulah we reached the first crossroads and took a left down highway 200.  It was the back road of the state.  I commonly took my Cavalier down this scary back road all the way to College in Grand Forks, 350 miles to the East.  We have all seen shit on 200, dense fog, black ice, tons of migrating deer, a stray elk, a pack of coyotes running down the middle of the road.  The road lead through the heart of Hazen, the sister town of Beulah, both born of Krem… the town no one knows about.”

We took a left down a paved country road which winding up at the Garrison Dam, Pick City and Underwood beyond but took another left onto gravel, drawing close to the Neuberger farm.  Most people don’t appreciate light like a drive in the desolate back country.  Nighttime is truly dark outside the towns and their streetlights.  Here was a blackness so thick that the meager beams of our headlights only seemed to reach out thirty feet in front of us.  Later on it was a blessing the moon came out.

We tracked through and then backtracked, trying this bumpy road or that.  We listened to loud metal and managed a haphazard search of the roads right around the spaces the rumors spoke about.  Supposedly you could get to Krem by means of a deep rutted road that reached back to 200 after passing a few dead ends.  Truthfully I have never been a good navigator.  Even now with my understanding of distance and location I can still be overwhelmed by the calculation and motion of a relative position and velocity.  After some time we got pretty lost, well I was lost, we never said we were but we tried to find familiar landmarks to get us back to civilization.  We weren’t scared, not in each other’s company with the lights of the paved roads somewhere to the north and west of us.

We past under a large tree after picking up speed from a shallow hill, getting ready to turn around and head back to the trailer.  At the very bottom of the hill the headlights revealed deep trenches in the road filled with dark water and mud.  The car jounced hard as we bottomed-out and I might have hit my head on the ceiling if not for the yanking restraints of my seat belt. 

That caused us to slow down and when we did we saw something that we might have missed if we would have just blown by at top speed.  It was a barbed wire fence blocking another dirt road, slacked by weather and age.  It was easy to move the flimsy old gate of two strands of barbed wire aside and for us to drive the car through.

Another mile down the road we came up on a wind-belt and a grove of half-collapsed walls and sunken basements.  A crumbled church further down the road.  We didn’t need to discuss it, this was it.  This was the only place it could be and what did we expect it to look like?

We got out of the car and broke out the flashlights to begin our investigations.  We had sobered up nicely by this point, the cool summer air and the singing of the insects brought what was left of Krem into stark relief. 

It was a bit disappointing, truth be told.  Only a half-a-dozen buildings remained along the curve of the overgrown wind belt.  The best of the wood must have been cannibalized when the town reconsolidated, the heart of this supposedly cursed place existed in our town and Hazen now.  The scraps were left behind. Whose great idea was that?  Stoic farmers who refused to believe in the curse.  But this was all speculation, we had no evidence something bad even happened here.

Some of the walls had some old bottles or identifiable debris At least two of the buildings had fire damage, the walls blackened by an old blaze.  Maybe they were burned down these structures with town disappeared.  My imagination ran wild, in my mind’s eye I could see the center of town nestled along this tree row.  A general store, a sheriff’s office, and town hall… coyotes sang in the distance and they sounded very close.

We also saw signs that confused us.  Plastic food wrappers, muddy footprints that didn’t look old, empty Miller light bottles and a plastic bottle fill of tobacco water.  Repulsive gobs of chewing tobacco and sip stuck of the side of a rock pile could have been fresh.  It had been a wet summer with thunderstorms rolling in every couple days, hard to tell in this soggy meadow.

So someone already knew about this place and frequented.  Maybe the damage done to what was left of the town by looters was still ongoing.  Kairos, Nergal, and Loudon were both elated at our success and disappointed by the empty open fields surrounding the center of town.  Of most of the homestead there was no sign.  It was so plain and anti-climactic we decided to do a quick search of the buildings and surrounding fields in the dead of night.  Maybe we would find something that could lend credence to the urban legends.

Ashes to Ashes - Remembering Krem (Part 1/6)

Retold by LoreKeeper Casstiel of the Bridge of Souls on 27 December 2013
Regarding the events on 26 July 2008

Casstiel takes his time, get another drink and swirl it around, watching the scotch roll over the ice cubes creating distortions in the fluid as the alcohol mixes with a tiny bit of melting water.  “This was three years or so before we all Awakened.  And even before we started taking up hunting things.  We had no knowledge of the fallen world’s supernatural influences.  We were just young adults going to College and finding work.  The night that all changed was the night of my birthday, maybe the summer of 2008, might have been sooner.  We used to have a tradition among my high school friends that no matter where we moved and worked we would always make it home for a late July birthday out at Sacagawea Lake.  

So I just turned 22 that night so it’s already been at least 6 years since then.  The parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles had gone to sleep in the trailer.  We were sitting around playing liar’s dice on the enclosed deck and trying to decide what we wanted to do now.  We watched the thick clouds roll over the still waters of the bay. 

Now, I need to stick a disclaimer in here right away.  Since I was initiated into the Imperial Mysteries surrounding the events in which Loudon died, one year ago today, I touched the Supernal.  And when you touch the Supernal it touches you.  I am not sure if my past changed slightly or I moved to a parallel universe in which events went a little different.  So this version of our trip to Krem may be a little off from how things actually went down for you all.  But it still is a story about our departed friend and how I and his blood brothers overcame our first brush with death.

That first night it was Kairos, Nergal, myself and Loudon… our friend Andrew.  Prodigy came later and tried to bail us out.  We were pretty amped up on caffeine and a nice bit of alcohol… the stuff that makes every decision so much better.  The conversation started to get a little dark.  There is an old clay building a little ways down the road near the water front near the Bjerke trailer.  It is a historic state location but we liked to wander through during our childhood and think about the people who lived in it over a hundred years ago.  Weather and vandals had reduced the place to tall clay and sandstone walls and collapsed wooden supports that no doubt were once part of the straw roof.  We had just taken a walk through there that evening before the sun went down, a walk and BS session, carrying our wine coolers with us as we climbed over the flimsy barbed wire fences.  We returned, and after enjoying my grandpa’s outdoor fire barrel and his famous popcorn we started talking about ghost towns and other historic buildings.  Now we were left alone to our own devices the conversation returned to the spooky. 

You see, Hazen and Beulah North Dakota were products of the railroad.  Back then that is how it was, small towns were at the mercy of the railroad companies.  Where the railroad went towns sprung up and farm Co-ops could transport there produce.  That is why you see a large grain elevator in every small town on the northern plains.  When the railroads moved the towns would shrivel up and die.  We talked about historic buildings…and there were buildings in and around those towns and the surrounding countryside that weren’t originally from there.  They had been moved, migrated, and cannibalized from the ghost towns.  You would be driving down highway 200 or 49 and see a decrepit farmhouse falling into decay.  The one near the lake we passed often had a sign next to it reading “Krem Schoolhouse #4.”

There are urban legends about the ghost town of Krem.  Most respectable German and Norwegian farmers would say stoically that they didn’t know anything about the place.  Even my grandparents wouldn’t talk about it.  If I pressed the matter I might get them to say that Krem existed, somewhere between where Beulah and Hazen are now.  People would just change the subject as uncomfortably as possible.  And I wasn’t the only one asking, Kairos, you asked more than your fair share of people and didn’t get squat.  Stoic farmers just shrugged it off like we have seen so many times.  Nothing truly bad could ever happen in a quiet farming community.  I call it the Zone of Normalcy.  Sleepers unsee and their hearts reject the truth of the fallen world they live in.

My ex-wife’s grandparents actually knew people that lived in the town a hundred years ago.  A Neuberger relative was from Krem, now dead.  I never did find any living person who lived in or visited the town.  It had grown as a fascination for me throughout my young life.  Now after several years I had grown even more curious.  Earlier in the summer I went to the Beulah City Library/Police Station and did some research.  There was very little to find, and all the old newspapers seemed to have gaps and missing articles around the time Krem became abandoned.  I did manage to discover that the town used to exist and became a ghost town when the railroad moved away by about six miles to the north.  As a result the buildings and materials of Krem were cannibalized or moved.  Those first buildings became the start of Beulah and Hazen, less than 10 miles to the Northeast and Northwest.

The rumors that had become legend painted a different story.”  Casstiel takes another sip of his scotch and takes a breath to collect his thoughts.  The scotch was Glenn Livet, aged 15 years, a wedding present from another Air Force Captain.  He could feel the warmth spreading from his innards to the tingling of his fingers and it was delightful.  Despite the constant grim topic, this forum was the one in which he felt completely safe… A circle of friends and loved ones that no darkness could penetrate.

“Now all these rumors are from different high school kids in the Beulah/Hazen area that I attended school with, along with various intramural events such as speech, track, or anything else I tried in those last four years before college.  When conversation went to the creepy and we began diving into urban legends and ghost stories Krem would always float to the surface, like a pocket of swamp gas from beneath torpid waters. 

The town had been cursed somehow, its luck ran out and horrible things began to happen.  Plague, Famine, Death, even War among family.  Bad luck, the fifth Horseman had ridden through too by the sound of it.  The usual stuff was mentioned.  Cows stopped producing; chickens stopped laying, drought, bad crops, the local mine was tapped out, and of course the railroad.

The source of the curse?  Demonic influence of course.  A farmer’s daughter got possessed, the local priest tried to exorcise her and failed, or the demon went into him and he raped her… or the preacher just raped the girl and she hung herself on the nearby bridge.  Or the priest failed and she died, the demon cursed the town.  Or the demonic priest was killed by his followers and the infernal creature placed a powerful curse on the town.  Something about a fire, had the town burned down? So many versions.  So many uncited sources… just a bunch of rumors that got more outlandish the more you heard.  Maybe that is why I really wanted to check out the place, sort out some truth from the slim truth pickings and exaggerated speculation of tweens.   

The big sticking point in all these stories that never seemed to change was that the preacher also committed suicide (or was so defiled), and the residents of Krem buried him outside the old German Lutheran cemetery, his headstone sitting by itself in the prairie field adjacent to the fenced in boneyard.

Regarding Infernals

NOTES ON INFERNAL BEINGS, prepared by Casstiel, Loremaster of the Horsemen
NOTES FROM: Various Fallen Rumors and Sources, prepared by Casstiel, Loremaster of the Horsemen Cabal

Alright demon research, and I'm gonna need some help with this because it seems like "demon" is everyone's favorite word. Every time someone runs into something malicious and inhuman they want to call it a fucking demon. Members of the Knights of the Blackened Denarius all have a coin with a supposed fallen angel in it. Based on the previous accounts we read over they all have specific names, no physical bodies, and are extremely evil and ancient. But what would Awakened knowledge say about these things and classify them? Here are some of my options for a direction, I need opinions on how to eliminate some of these options:

Evil Ghosts - The coins could be the anchors, this seems like a long shot.

Evil Spirits - possible but they usually have limited intelligence and assume the iden...

NOTES FROM: Directed research on Demons of Vice of the “Other” persuasion… True Demons

1. First off, there is tons of lore, rumors and heresay about demons. And unfortunatly there is no awakened information on this specific catagory I'm trying to focus on. This is closely guarded secret stuff. I only got what I did by picking through the bullshit of fallen world stuff and where it crosses with what we know and awakened rumors I have heard. Without gaining access to an Atheneum or checking out a book from the Scholomance I can't be sure if I am on the right track...

‎2. Fallen demons, True demons, Infernal demons, whatever you want to call them, seem to be spirits for the most part. Specifically, spirits of vice. All of these demons have this common factor: They have the essence of at least one vice at the core of their being. Every demon specializes in a particular vice with more powerful creatures associated with a cocktail of vices which for lack of better understanding I will just refer to as a Sin. All these demons of sin desire greater influence of their sin over the fallen world. That is there ultimate goal... to infect reality with corrupted vice - sin. Unlike the Abyss, they do not wish to destroy reality, they want to turn it into a horrible playground of derragnement and sin. I am making a lot of speculation and broad generalization on that last statement. Spirits tend to be what they are and want more of that stuff that they feed on and that which makes them, so a demon of greed and lust will want more of the same.

‎3. To add further confusion, there is one demonic host with many fallen guises. There is no 'real' objective heirachry but more like classes of evil spirits with different common characteristics. Spirits can be evil and not be demons, something tainted takes them from being a spirit of pride to a demon of pride. Ghosts can become demons, geotic demons in the mind and astral realms can both be a Geotic demon and also get that extra salt of "something" that makes them a true demon. Set apart and not playing by the rules..

‎4. This is normally where I would be running out of know how. But with some Mind Arcana and dipping slightly into the universal subconcious I found out perhaps the most important fact: The mortal world defines these demons. Demons need to be given a fallen-world shape in order to have existance. We shape them by defining them. Occult documents, objects, people, and locations all give demons power and existance because these things have defined them. Being bound to a coin DEFINES Lashiel as a fallen angel in a coin. Before that she was something else, another spirit, or just sat in Hell (that place we witness Nick go into) as some kind of amorphous thought or potential. These things, places, and people, bind a demon into reality, giving it much greater power of the world but also imposing limitations. Like, for example, a demon possessing a person is limited in scope by possessing them or needing to stay near a place or object, needing to have its worship, rituals, or blashemphous name in a book somewhere is giving it power and making it what it is.

Alright, thats all. Oh wait. I'm the fucking Loremaster of this little Cabal. So what have I pulled together through conclusions? (I'm rocking 3 my minds with Int 6 + 5 Occult, average of 6 successes an hour bitches)

5. Conclusion 1 - It is true that fallen sorcerers can summon and command demons. And that some Supernal Magic will affect them some of the time. This is the result of the spiritual condition binding them to reality also imposing rules on them. Therefore, with the correct rights, rituals, names, and spells it can be possible to compel a demon to obey. However, whether or not they are actually bound or PRETENDING to be bound for there own benefit and later betrayel is unknown. They seem to like to break the rules at the worst possible time and fuck over the summoner.

‎6. Conclusion 2 - If defined by mankind at some point, powerful and old demons ascribe to a heirarchies. This demon lords also have secret names. There may be multiple disjointed heirarchies, but the more powerful a demon gets the more restriction and definition it needs in the world. So an Archdemon would have dozens of names and influence a handful of culutures throughout their history. As a result, they are REALLY powerful but have a lot of rules restricting how they can act. That is why powerful demons aren't rampaging all of the Earth and, like the Seers of the Throne, or Archmasters, remain secretive and unseen. Playing out their chess games with lesser beings as pawns.

Conclusion 3 - With restrictions varying on a given demon. It is possible that there may be those "pure hearts" among us that are immune to demonic influence. However these stories of saints and messiahs may be exaggerate tales of Mages or other supernaturals fighting evil forces. It's possible that a demon may be unable to attack a man of faith or conviction and a different demon may ride him around like a sock puppet. There doesn't really seem to be a common factor on that one. Myths of saints could just be the use of Prime 2 "Armor of the Soul" for all I know.

‎8 - Conclusion 4 - These demons, this extra "evil salt" that is added to an already horrible thing that makes it the "real deal" makes it impossible to tell if what I am researching are actually fallen angels. When the Silver Ladder fell and the world was shattered a whole lot of Supernal beings were trapped on Earth. Some died out, some changed into something else. The Abyss and the fall also corrupted the normal cycles of existance, created horrible byproducts like ghosts and the Underworld. These creatures, whatever they are, like to play out whatever part man ascribes to them. So they say they are fallen angels, they also say they are dark parts of the mind like Goetics. They also say they are impowering rebels if that suits a teenage mind. They could be all of these things and none of them. They could be fallen things defined by vice in order to fit that model.

‎9 - Conclusion 5 - One thing is for sure. Demons are liars. They are skilled decievers that may be able to trick without actually lying at all. They may be able to twist whatever they have that passes for a mind to ascribe to whatever truth defines them. The touch of infernal, the "additive/salt" makes it so that no power can tell if they are lying or telling the truth. That may actually be the REAL key to defining if something is a true demon or just something evil. If you can't tell if it is lying or not with serious power, then odds are it is an Infernal demon.

‎10 - Conclusion 6 - The most vulgar ways that demons achieve PINNACLE influence over the fallen world is through possession. Throughout history there is documented lore of them possessing people, animals, undead, locations (elementals), objects, and possibly even GHOSTS AND SPIRITS. That "Infernal Salt" at work again, changing something that's bad into something at is truly infernal. Haven't tracted down what the turning point is...

Conclusion 7 - (Last one I swear) evidence and lore pointed to demons being repeled by holy places and symbols is bound to how the demon is defined in reality. If the rules that give it form also give is a Ban (similar to a spirit) then it is possible that holy shit could affect it. It is also possible that willpower (like exorcisms and abjurations) will DEFINETLY work no matter what, because a demon in our world is a thing bound to the human condition, vice, and repelled by conviction and virtue (rather than faith and religious symbols directly).

John, I have figured out a way to test to see if she is a True Demon. If we cannot magically tell with Mind magic if she is lying or telling the truth with certainty then she's a true infernal demon. Based on what we have learned, she could have been a Aetherian angel that fell during the fall and went bad. The addition of the Infernal spark changed her into a true demon and she went into hell or was destoryed. The occult testiments and coin bound her back to the mortal world. We need to conduct this test.

(We preformed the test on the Demon Lashiel and determined that Mind Arcanum could not be used to detect a deliberate lie.  She is a True Demon which we refer to as Infernals)

NOTES FROM: The Codex of Lost Pages, prepared by Casstiel, Loremaster of the Horsemen Cabal

Infernal Research... unfortunately I had help from Lash on where to look... weird she would help us look up ways to destroy her...

I got this batch of Knowledge from a Mad who was consumed by this demon knowledge.. so I hope I will be okay. The fires of his "rebirth" consumed his library allowing me to eventually find pieces of it in the Codex...Here are the basics:

-Supposedly Hell is worse than the Abyss, how does one compare?

-Hell is where the Infernal comes from and infects the Fallen World, it is the Lowest place, beneath the Underworld and further down... a place refereed to Mages as the Lower Depths

-Like Loci, Verges, Hallows, and Nodes, places can be tainted, infected with the worse kind of Resonance, Sin and endless debauchery, not Vice, but the pure Evil acts of Sin (Vice to a level of excess and evil ends it contaminates the land) the places, like the Hellmouth are how Hell gains access to our world. Actual portal to Hell be opened with the rite profane rituals, we've seen it. These places are called Malus Loci.

-I have found the names of three books that reveal Infernal knowledge. They are very rare and hard to get, they are not in the Codex because they still exist and are not lost. The books are: The Beast Book, The Invisible Laceration, and the Book of St. Ezra. Maybe we can find these? We may have to use the Scholomance to get these books.. they are all bad mojo.

-The more powerful a demon wants to become, by gaining power in this world, the more ties and restrictions it must take on. Secret Names, Hierarchies, Mythologies, all tie the creatures to the world by giving fallen substance. The stuff we create about demons aren't necessarily true, the demon doesn't care. It conforms the laws laid down in order to gain more influence. It can give these up if it needs to. To become more than a whispering presence, more than an Infernally tainted Ghost or Spirit, it needs a Testament... a unholy book that lays out it's legacy. Destroy the book, or in this case the coin, and you cut off the power it draws from below. The Secret names aren't True names, but they are still powerful invocations to forge a connection or summon the demon. Secret names come in the forms of Unholy Seals, Signatures, and Spoken names.

-The age of the Testament gives us clues on how long a demon has been active in the world. They might crop up through the ages, Ancient, Generational, Established, or even brand new... the demon never gaining to influence over minds to have his Testament written down.

-Like Spirits, and Abyssal entities, True Demons have their own Language called Dragon's Tongue.

-They can infect the Shadow, The Astral, and Twilight planes as well

-All demons have a Malpraxis - Keys to their influences, such as Elemental Forces they have control over, Institutional Keys, Situational Keys, and Victims or Subjects

-They have Infernal Ranks of their power, 0-10, like Spirits. Archdemons are Rank 6... the baddest thing we ever fought was Daath at rank 8 but he fought with the power of a Rank 5... so fighting Lash's demon form would be worse than that.

-What demons want: Corruption, Desecration, Moral Degeneration, and Possession

-The Infernal wield powers called Dark Numina, and they grant Vestments to their possessed.

-The Infernal evolve and grow like Spirits, but different, the crossing point is the the creation of a Testament, that makes them the genuine Dominion

-The desecrated places can be repaired but it can take a lot of time and work. Usually, like Locis, you can help them but destroying a physical object at the center, or altering resonance of the place. Exorcisms may also be effective.

-Infernal Archdemons Demons - of course, a Mystery, Entities so wicked that all worlds but Hell itself Abhor them. They have acquired too much power as the True Lords of Hell to easily infiltrate the Mortal plane. Genuine rituals are rare but their secret names are Famous. According to this text, they can only exist physically a Malus Loci where a Hellgate has been opened... is that what the Denarians where trying to do? Based on this information I believe the Denarians are boosting and are actually Rank 5... An Infernal Noble who's possession of the coin and its bearer are the means in which it asserts influence over the world.