Venue: The Secret World
Created by: Funcom
Location: Campsite outside of Kingsmouth, Solomon Island, Maine
Created by: Funcom
Location: Campsite outside of Kingsmouth, Solomon Island, Maine
Interview with Jack Boone
1 November 2013
Immediately after the start of the Solomon Island blockade incident
Jack Boone has a campsite on the main road leading into Kingsmouth. He guards the area from zombies, and speaks with agents about studying how the zombies function and operate. Figuring them out, he believes, will bring him one step closer to being rid of them.
Me: Um, hi.
Jack: Don't worry, kid, you haven't gone back in time. I just happen to be the last of the cowboys. Got your Southern welcome right here. Mesquite beans, Texas style. Good oughta face evil on a full stomach.
Name's Boone. I'm a troubleshooter. You and I need to have a pow-wow before you go shooting for trouble. Illuminati may have legacy on Solomon Island, but you folks gave that up for the high life, and the low road. Sure you can be divided in purpose, but we gotta stand united against darkness. This ain't my first rodeo, I know we're gonna need all the unity we can get. Don't mean to say you've stepped into Hell, but when the wind blows west, you can just about smell the brimstone.
Me: What happened here?
Jack: All we know is death and fog came from the sea, or someone brought it back with them. If I was a gambling man, I'd put money on that someone still being around. Bunch of survivors holed up in Kingsmouth town. Follow that main road and the sound of gunfire, you'll come to the sheriff's office.
Kid, whatever your reasons for being here, find out what those people died for. And you bring a reckoning.
Me: So, what did you want to pow-wow with me about? (Beginning of Mission: For a Fistful of Zombies)
Jack: This forest crawls. Gets my fingers itching for two matters. One... The other, to figure out a way to keep 'em down. It ain't right the way the dead walk the earth. They deserve their six feet, same as everyone else. Now I'm sworn to keeping guard here and you've got places to be. Nothing's stopping you from culling the herd as you go... Hell, figure out what makes them tick and how to make that ticking stop and I'll buy you a beer at the Apocalypse So go on, kid, saddle up! The end of the world waits for no man.
Me: Alright, I'll finding out more about the zombies, what makes them tick, could go a long way towards solving this problem. But First I have a couple questions, could help me go into town with a little more intel.
Jack: *Jack makes a growling sound*
Me: Who's side are you on? What faction?
Jack: I come from the South…the real old South. My partner Wolf and I ride for a higher authority. When you need to know us, you’ll know us. You got a whole lot to learn about the secret world first, kid. And when you’re all learned up, then you gotta understand what you learned. Kinda like peeling the layers off an onion. Probably be as much weepin’ involved too, won’t lie to you. Won’t talk down to you neither. You and me, we’re the same, I’m just more experienced, is all. And experience don’t count for much these days. We’ve been stretched out thin as gauze, and we need all the cool heads and steady hands we can get. Thought I had a measure of the absolute darkness in this world. The darkness waiting its turn, patient as all hell, to come through. Turns out I was wrong. So, guess we both got some learning to do.
Me: What do you know about Solomon Island? Why here and now?
Jack: Too much going wrong for such a little island. But this is how it always starts, as I’ve born witness more times than I’d care to remember. Begins with a single act, usually someone being damn stupid, damn greedy or both – let me tell you, kid, that kid is the worst kind. Then…then it just piles on and piles on. Once that cellar door is open, ain’t no one wedging the damn thing shut again. You won’t find ordinary people in a place like Solomon Island. They’ve all been touched. Because, you see, here’s the thing about the secret world: it’s the kind of secret that spreads. The kind that sticks. Hell, that’s how myth and legend get going, on a whisper, passed door-to-door, gone viral. Mighty dangerous things to get into people’s heads. That’s why most myths are ninety-nine percent warning. Yeah, heh, about as effective as the ones they slap on a packet of smokes.
Me: You know the Illuminati, do you know what The Templars are?
Jack: It’s a big storm that can reach all the way from New England to the old one. Storm of the century. Gotta say it’s an impressive sight, the army of the Templars on the march. So’s a herd of buffalo, and you don’t want to find yourself standing in front of one of those. Or be riding with them when they go over a cliff, neither. It’s good work you do, and proud, but that can make for a blinkered combination. Can get you all tangled up in trying to prove you’re prouder and more good than the next guy. Think your bosses would have sent you special delivery if it didn’t kick dirt on the Illuminati’s shoes? Well, you listen kid, I ain’t here to pass no judgement. Find the measure of yourself, and if it should match up with the company you keep, well then, I tip my hat to you. Society is what keeps us apart from the dark.
Me: Ha, I'm not a Redcoat. What have you heard about The Dragon?
Jack: Sign of the times, to see your people back in circulation. The Dragon. He-he. You play your cards with one hell of a poker face, and then, then the casino goes up in smoke and you were never there. Hell of a coincidence. The other societies are pissing in their pants, you know that, don't you? Afraid of what you might mean. That all the empires they're been building up brick by brick for centuries gonna mean squat in the end. Could be you're right, but hell, I never wrapped my head around "chaos theory." Even if what happened here was because a butterfly flapped its wings or somesuch, I'd find it hard to begrudge the butterfly. Well, I heard you guys have whole orchards of the critters.
Me: Not a Lizard either. Have a good one!
Mission "For a Fistful of Zombies" Faction After Action Reports
FROM: The Dragon
TO: Dante Zelas (D17) of the Shadowfang
SUBJECT: For a Fistful of Zombies
TO: Dante Zelas (D17) of the Shadowfang
SUBJECT: For a Fistful of Zombies
Your report about the habits of the dead is interesting. It appears they can be lured like dogs, but unlike dogs, they show no signs of learning the lessons of the whip.
Use this to your advantage. If a tactic is effective, be merciless.
Their biology is curious: no heartbeat, no flow of blood, and no evidence of brain activity. So how will you know when the dead are really dead?
You will simply know.
The Labyrinth (The Illuminati)
TO: Casstiel (Mastigos) of the Five Horsemen
SUBJECT: For a Fistful of Zombies
TO: Casstiel (Mastigos) of the Five Horsemen
SUBJECT: For a Fistful of Zombies
Good job. Your findings fit with what we know about the reanimated dead: they're a total bitch, but you should have no trouble outwitting them tactically.
We're familiar with two types: the recent dead are quicker; the long buried show less spunk, but pose a more significant numbers problem.
The big breed - the corpse gorger - that's not an aberration we've seen before. Either that was the captain of the football team, or we're dealing with some form of mutation.
Ciao-ciao
FROM: Temple Hall
TO: Eos (M-Eos) of Malleus Maleficarum
SUBJECT: For a Fistful of Zombies
TO: Eos (M-Eos) of Malleus Maleficarum
SUBJECT: For a Fistful of Zombies
Good work on the report. The information regarding the reanimated dead is useful, though not particularly surprising.
Jack Boone - now there's a familiar name. He pops up in reports everywhere. The man travels far and wide, and always seems to be on-site before our agents. His factional allegiances are unknown, though he does not appear to be associated with either the Illuminati or the Dragon.
It would pay to keep an eye on him.
R. Sonnac
FROM THE BUZZING: (Lore: The Illuminati)
Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.
TRANSMIT - initiate pyramid signal - RECEIVE - initiate NOW frequency - DOWNLOAD - initiate Big Brother broadcast - NEW AND IMPROVED - initiate Sex, Drugs, & Rockefeller Prerogative - THAT'S THE WAY TO DO IT! - initiate the Crowley cadence - YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN - the blue spectrum - WITNESS - The Illuminati.
Entry 1 - Rockefeller is a famous millionaire
Entry 1 - Crowley is a famous occultist
Cue curtain. The Punch & Judy Show.
O child-wandering-in-the-dark, do you remember the puppet show? See Mr. Punch beat puppet after puppet with his stick. The lesson: we all fall down. See the puppet master manipulating the brutal slapstick and drinking from a hidden flask. Behold the conspiracy of conspiracies, the most secretest society.
Entry 2 and 15 - Punch and Judy is a puppet play where Punch would often beat the other
characters/puppets with a big stick, including his wife Judy, and even the devil.
They began in Egypt, during the Old Kingdom. We came to them on the tears of Ra. But that was not the first beginning. Sweetling, do you really think this in the first age? Ever dream of the Long Ago? Ever gasp awake, remembering beginnings birthed before the Below?
Cue curtain. A New Age.
Time moves not in lines, but in circles. Ancient ideals pass down the generations, transcend cataclysms. Old becomes new, different yet same. Powerful mystics take the stage, form a cabal, and call themselves the Enlightened Ones.
Initiate Latin translation: "Illuminati."
The children of Eye and Pyramid fertilise the Nile. Can you see them, sweetling, through the time refraction in our text? They pollinate the skulls of scribes, viziers, priests, and philosopher kings. Thoughts germiante and bloom. They vie to guide humanity towards an esoteric culture, influence the world through the houses of Pharaohs.
Pluck the petals. The centuries tumble like she-loves-me-nots. The scenes change - Jericho, Damascus, Alexandria, Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome - but the plots and plays remain the same. Always, the Illuminati gather occult writings and treasures. They rise behind each new throne. And always, they encounter the Templars.
Entry 6 - Jericho, Damascus, Alexandria, Babylon, Jerusalem are all real-world cities in the middle-east and northern Africa
The secret society siblings snatch kings, generals, and great thinkers like coveted toys. The dolls break in the tug-of-war. The Illuminati grab guilds and banks. The Templars clutch the military. Vicious games of tag ensue. Sometimes one flees, sometimes the other - that familiar dance.
The Illuminati skip east, fostering high culture in Byzantium. In Asia, they meet the Dragon. Tag, you're it. They skip back west. Now three great factions dance.
These secret societies - these migratory birds flying from one kingdom to the next, according to geological seasons. Always there is the prize: the lands of milk and honey, the most powerful nations.
Entry 7 - Byzantium is a city in Turkey that that later became Constantinople and then Istanbul
Cue curtain. The New World.
A misstep in the dance. A sprang. The Illuminati limp west. On the new continent, away from their enemies, the children of Eye and Pyramid weave a new backdrop infrastructure so tightly that none of the other factions have been able to gain a foothold there since.
Cue psychic currency exchange. Cue the viral pyramid. The one dollar bill is always watching.
Defeats in Europe taught the Illuminati to play more subtly. Since then, they have been the most secretive of the three siblings.
Their clever fingers learnt to make shadow puppets. Decoy ciphers dance on the dank wall. While conspiracy theorists chase the echoes of Freemasons, Bilderbergs, and Bohemians, the true Illuminati have room to work.
Cue curtain. The dark days.
The Eye and Pyramid area a well-oiled machine, serrated cogs lubricated on aptitude, ambition, and ruthlessness. In this epoch of information and equality, the Illuminati is king. The ruled do not complain if they detect no ruler. The Illuminati spill seminal thoughts into the gravid heads of the masses, while the other factions flail to the old dance.
Cue the ritual chant: "Fuck or be fucked."
Conventional warfare is obsolete. Cue the paradigm war. The Illuminati strive to ascend as a pantheon of zeitgeists.
Beneath the Brooklyn streets, they experiment with thaumaturgy and technomancy. In their labs, demons shriek as they beat the walls of hard-drive purgatories, circuits soldered in patterns forming Enochian words. Old bleeds into new, the cutting edge fornicates with the antediluvian.
Entry 12 - Enochian is a supposed "Language of the Angels" written by occultist John Dee
The three siblings have a choice: battle the sleeping horrors ready to engulf the world or toil on in the struggle to define those who rule and those who are ruled. The children of the Eye and Pyramid so long to rein, and diabolic rumours follow them like a fouled cloak. Yet despite these ambitions, they have no intention of giving their planet to monsters. Perhaps they will fight back the darkness, and find a tidy profit in it.
And yet, you little termites war with each other over your little termite mounds, and somewhere in the Outer Dark, hungry mouths made of event horizons salivate and grin.
Dear sweetling, did you pay attention to that gruesome puppet show as a child? We hope so. The Illuminati is Mr Punch and hidden in that nonsense play is their plot. They have a big stick and conspire to bludgeon all competing puppets, and then the Devil himself. And if you get in their way...you will be another broken Judy, splayed on the floor.
Cue the shrill voice from the Outer Dark: "That's the way to do it!"
Cue curtains.
Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.
TRANSMIT - initiate pyramid signal - RECEIVE - initiate NOW frequency - DOWNLOAD - initiate Big Brother broadcast - NEW AND IMPROVED - initiate Sex, Drugs, & Rockefeller Prerogative - THAT'S THE WAY TO DO IT! - initiate the Crowley cadence - YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN - the blue spectrum - WITNESS - The Illuminati.
Entry 1 - Rockefeller is a famous millionaire
Entry 1 - Crowley is a famous occultist
Cue curtain. The Punch & Judy Show.
O child-wandering-in-the-dark, do you remember the puppet show? See Mr. Punch beat puppet after puppet with his stick. The lesson: we all fall down. See the puppet master manipulating the brutal slapstick and drinking from a hidden flask. Behold the conspiracy of conspiracies, the most secretest society.
Entry 2 and 15 - Punch and Judy is a puppet play where Punch would often beat the other
characters/puppets with a big stick, including his wife Judy, and even the devil.
They began in Egypt, during the Old Kingdom. We came to them on the tears of Ra. But that was not the first beginning. Sweetling, do you really think this in the first age? Ever dream of the Long Ago? Ever gasp awake, remembering beginnings birthed before the Below?
Cue curtain. A New Age.
Time moves not in lines, but in circles. Ancient ideals pass down the generations, transcend cataclysms. Old becomes new, different yet same. Powerful mystics take the stage, form a cabal, and call themselves the Enlightened Ones.
Initiate Latin translation: "Illuminati."
The children of Eye and Pyramid fertilise the Nile. Can you see them, sweetling, through the time refraction in our text? They pollinate the skulls of scribes, viziers, priests, and philosopher kings. Thoughts germiante and bloom. They vie to guide humanity towards an esoteric culture, influence the world through the houses of Pharaohs.
Pluck the petals. The centuries tumble like she-loves-me-nots. The scenes change - Jericho, Damascus, Alexandria, Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome - but the plots and plays remain the same. Always, the Illuminati gather occult writings and treasures. They rise behind each new throne. And always, they encounter the Templars.
Entry 6 - Jericho, Damascus, Alexandria, Babylon, Jerusalem are all real-world cities in the middle-east and northern Africa
The secret society siblings snatch kings, generals, and great thinkers like coveted toys. The dolls break in the tug-of-war. The Illuminati grab guilds and banks. The Templars clutch the military. Vicious games of tag ensue. Sometimes one flees, sometimes the other - that familiar dance.
The Illuminati skip east, fostering high culture in Byzantium. In Asia, they meet the Dragon. Tag, you're it. They skip back west. Now three great factions dance.
These secret societies - these migratory birds flying from one kingdom to the next, according to geological seasons. Always there is the prize: the lands of milk and honey, the most powerful nations.
Entry 7 - Byzantium is a city in Turkey that that later became Constantinople and then Istanbul
Cue curtain. The New World.
A misstep in the dance. A sprang. The Illuminati limp west. On the new continent, away from their enemies, the children of Eye and Pyramid weave a new backdrop infrastructure so tightly that none of the other factions have been able to gain a foothold there since.
Cue psychic currency exchange. Cue the viral pyramid. The one dollar bill is always watching.
Defeats in Europe taught the Illuminati to play more subtly. Since then, they have been the most secretive of the three siblings.
Their clever fingers learnt to make shadow puppets. Decoy ciphers dance on the dank wall. While conspiracy theorists chase the echoes of Freemasons, Bilderbergs, and Bohemians, the true Illuminati have room to work.
Cue curtain. The dark days.
The Eye and Pyramid area a well-oiled machine, serrated cogs lubricated on aptitude, ambition, and ruthlessness. In this epoch of information and equality, the Illuminati is king. The ruled do not complain if they detect no ruler. The Illuminati spill seminal thoughts into the gravid heads of the masses, while the other factions flail to the old dance.
Cue the ritual chant: "Fuck or be fucked."
Conventional warfare is obsolete. Cue the paradigm war. The Illuminati strive to ascend as a pantheon of zeitgeists.
Beneath the Brooklyn streets, they experiment with thaumaturgy and technomancy. In their labs, demons shriek as they beat the walls of hard-drive purgatories, circuits soldered in patterns forming Enochian words. Old bleeds into new, the cutting edge fornicates with the antediluvian.
Entry 12 - Enochian is a supposed "Language of the Angels" written by occultist John Dee
The three siblings have a choice: battle the sleeping horrors ready to engulf the world or toil on in the struggle to define those who rule and those who are ruled. The children of the Eye and Pyramid so long to rein, and diabolic rumours follow them like a fouled cloak. Yet despite these ambitions, they have no intention of giving their planet to monsters. Perhaps they will fight back the darkness, and find a tidy profit in it.
And yet, you little termites war with each other over your little termite mounds, and somewhere in the Outer Dark, hungry mouths made of event horizons salivate and grin.
Dear sweetling, did you pay attention to that gruesome puppet show as a child? We hope so. The Illuminati is Mr Punch and hidden in that nonsense play is their plot. They have a big stick and conspire to bludgeon all competing puppets, and then the Devil himself. And if you get in their way...you will be another broken Judy, splayed on the floor.
Cue the shrill voice from the Outer Dark: "That's the way to do it!"
Cue curtains.
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