[Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen] Pylon: Votaries of the Throne

Out of Character (OOC):
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Story: A Nightmare on Hill Manor
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

Pylon: The Votaries of the Throne

Sources: As scene in the Keys to the Supernal Tarot sourcebook for Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition and adapted for use in our chronicle.

The following is a dossier on a well known Seer Pylon in Colorado Springs, a town under the control of the Throne.  Persephone, Nanashi, Casstiel, Witness and Jack Bismuth have all had dealings with them in the past as far back as 2011.  The in-character knowledge is very limited however.  This is a bit more of a peek but still holds back much.  The vast majority of this info is OOC without ST approval.  I have withheld secrets that will make future plots interesting. 

Seers of the Throne are usually zealous, no matter what their specific code of beliefs encompasses. The Votaries of the Throne, however, regard themselves as “orthodox Seers,” refusing to dress their faith up with anything other than the purest observance to the Exarchs. They proselytize to other Seers, and even to mages of the Pentacle, when they can manage it, but those who will not be converted are the worst form of refuse to them. The Votaries seldom kill, however. A mage that won’t see the truth is, in essence, a Sleeper — and Sleepers are useful.

Philosophy and Beliefs

The Votaries do not believe the Exarchs are omnipotent. If they were, They would simply remake the Fallen World in Their image, and all would be right and good. The Exarchs are as gods to those in the Fallen World, but they are not, in fact, gods. The Votaries feel that belief systems that demand worship due to the omnipotence of the deity are flawed — why would an all-powerful god need worship? No, the Votaries pledge their undying loyalty because they know in their hearts that the Exarchs are the best thing for the Fallen World.

By the same token, the Votaries do not believe in predestination. They find any philosophy in which the end is foretold to be fatalistic in the extreme. The Votaries believe that, with the Seers working toward the proper ends, the Exarchs can prevail over the Oracles and their pawns, but it’s not a foregone conclusion.

This injects both hope and a bit of desperation into the cabal’s dealings. They won’t fight to the death unless there is no other alternative. Instead, they enter conflicts knowing that their masters want them to live, and so take precautions to make sure their enemies die first (if death, in fact, is the goal).

Orthodoxy

The Votaries do not see messages from the Exarchs everywhere, the way some Seers do. They feel that the Exarchs do not wish to deceive them, and thus aren’t going to waste time implanting the cracks in the sidewalk with hidden, heavily coded messages when other options exist. To wit, the Votaries only take their cues from their dreams and from visions achieved using the Vestments (see below). Once they have a goal from the Exarchs, they work to achieve it within any parameters set in place by the vision or dream. If no specific parameters seem to be in place, they use whatever methods are most expedient and efficient. Anything not explicitly forbidden, they feel, is permitted. This, to the Votaries, is the height of Seer Orthodoxy. The Throne is not subservient to the laws of mankind, nor even of human decency.

The Votaries recognize that murder and mind control rob their victims of life and free will, and that doing this makes them monsters. But they also know that failing to take necessary action in service to the Exarchs might set the Exarchs’ plans back, and that would allow the Votaries’ accomplices to damage all of creation. The Votaries, obviously, can’t have that, even if their souls are put at risk.

This means that the Pylon isn't openly hostile to non-Seers mages. They tend to cooperate with cabals of Apostates as far as mutual trust can develop. The also tend to avoid contact with verified Pentacle mages, especially if they are known members of the Five Peaks concilium (Denver). They have developed a few personal and professional relationships with members of certain orders and other Pylons in town.

They know of Jack Bismuth and tend to stay out of his way.  He is an x-factor to Colorado Springs and comes and goes as he pleases.  He also has long-cultivated rapport with the storm spirits of the area which represent a powerful influence on the area.  Gentleman sometimes meets in secret in a public place with Witness and they exchange information that is beneficial to both parties.  There is some mutual respect among fellow spies there and Gentleman and the Votaires have no intention of trying hostilities against the Suspector now Magister.

Finally, the Votaries feel the Awakened are the chosen people, quite literally. Every Awakening is the result of deliberate intervention by either the Exarchs or the Oracles, but there is no way to know which. Meaning that Sleepwalkers and Proximi are slightly stratified above vanilla Sleepers.

Furthermore, it doesn’t matter. The Votaries don’t care who Awakened a mage, they care about what he does with his power now that he is Awakened. Likewise, until a person Awakens, he is not a true person to the Votaries. He is nothing but a tool, to be used, abused, manipulated or even killed as necessary to further the goals of the Exarchs.

History of the Cabal 

The cabal’s formation was nothing short of miraculous. The original three of them represented three opposing Awakened factions: Gentleman was already a Seer, a member of a pylon working to improve the Throne’s corporate dealings in the city; Prism was a Guardian of the Veil, a solitary agent with multiple identities; And Buzzard was a Tremere Lich, waiting until the dust had cleared to drink his fill of the souls of the dying. The three of them met up one night, quite by accident, and engaged in a battle in the middle of a crowd of Sleepers.

Gentleman used his command of Mind to nudge Sleepers toward the other two, while Prism shifted her image from place to place by manipulating light, trying to reach her enemies. Buzzard had aid from the unquiet dead, of course. As the three mages circled each other, they all saw a blast of light, and suddenly all of the Sleepers were transfixed, staring helplessly at the sky.

They were the only three that could move. They looked at the sky, and saw something move in the light. “You,” it said, “I choose to Awaken anew. Too long you have slept, playing at children’s games, blinded by the Lie. But I shall lead you to the Vestments of the Throne, and I shall lead you to two more, to whom I shall also show the truth. And you shall keep my ways.”

With that, the light faded, and the three mages, enemies to the core, sat down together and discussed what they had seen. Despite their differences, they couldn’t ignore what had happened. They left their respective factions and boarded a plane to flee the state. As their plane neared its destination, however, the engines failed and it crashed into a forest. The mages were the only three to survive.

As they wandered from the wreckage, they found a wooden crate, long buried but now unearthed by the impact. Opening it, they found a circlet, a pair of gloves, a belt, a stole and a robe. Analysis showed that these items were, in fact, Artifacts, and the mages decided they were the Vestments to which the voice had referred. They took the items and moved into the nearest city, awaiting their next members. They weren’t long in waiting.

While setting up their sanctum, Buzzard was shot in the back. He fell, calling up spells to defend himself, when his assailant appeared — a man holding a pair of pistols. Buzzard looked at him and saw a light appear around the man, and gasped the word, “lantern.”

The man stopped, and lowered his guns. He had long thought of himself as a “lantern,” of sorts — could this unclean creature possibly recognize that? The rest of the cabal assembled, and agreed to allow this new mage to see the Vestments. Lantern did so, and put them on in the proper order. This, the Seers realized, was their new member. Within a few weeks, the four mages all eceived the same dream, in which the original three bowed down before a glowing, golden lantern. Their newest member, once a Banisher, had been named their leader. Under Lantern’s leadership, they began using their skills to fortify their sanctum, building a base from which to conduct their operations. None of them knew, yet, what those operations would entail, but that wasn’t important, Lantern reminded them.

Their masters would tell them when it was time to take action. For now, they needed to concentrate on their own security and on finding their fifth member. Their fifth member, as it happened, came to them, in part because of their security. A recently Awakened Acanthus working for an alarm company was in the habit of robbing the company’s customers, using her knowledge of the security systems to beat them quickly. She never took much, and never bothered stealing from people who didn’t keep cash or easily fenced goods around. She broke into the sanctum one morning, and was surprised by the reception she received — three men and a woman all facing her down, all armed, and all Awakened.

The Acanthus, whom the others called “Mole” after learning her situation, agreed to join them, despite never having seen a vision. Part of this willingness, of course, was because she was quite aware that these people could kill her and no one would ever know. But another part of it is that Mole wants to believe as they do, wants to experience a dream or a vision, and wants her terrifying Awakening to make some sense. Thus far, nothing she has seen has convinced her, and the Votaries’ methods are unsettling. But they are adamant that she is their fifth, and since she never had contact with other mages, she has nowhere to turn for help, even if she wanted to leave.

Tactics and Activities

Now that the cabal was assembled, work could begin on the Exarchs’ goals. The Votaries receive visions infrequently, instructing them in what the Exarchs want done and how they want it done. Sometimes, the goal is the assassination of a mage in another city. Sometimes, the goal is more altruistic — one vision even required that the Votaries save the lives of a group of Sleepers trapped in a burning building. Sometimes, the goal is purely temporal: take control of a corporation and sell it off; help a young thief establish himself; or bring a serial killer to justice. Very rarely do the Exarchs’ goals involve supernatural beings other than mages, although the Votaries have occasionally run afoul of these creatures while pursuing other goals.

The Votaries employ whatever tactics they feel they must to accomplish their ends, though their tendency is toward using pawns. One of the Vestments, after all, is a Profane Urim, and Gentleman is a Master of Mind, meaning that Sleeper pawns are in great supply. But beyond that, Lantern is adamant that any activity they undertake be untraceable, and so they meticulously scour the scenes of their crimes for physical and, especially, supernatural evidence. Prism removes evidence of magic, Mole blocks the area from Time magic, Buzzard destroys or subjugates any ghosts, and Lantern makes sure that spirits say what he wants them to say. Gentleman, of course, destroys sympathetic connections.

Above all else, Lantern insists that a rational explanation be in place for whatever the Votaries do. In the past, he has set other Banishers up to take the fall after killing mages, and the cabal has been known to make contact with other Seer cabals and send them after their targets. As long as the will of the Exarchs is served, the methods don’t matter.

What this means for Pentacle mages is that an investigating cabal of mages needs to work much harder than usual to find these Seers. They cover their tracks exceedingly well, and their sanctum is heavily fortified and warded. Unlike other Seers, though, the Votaries don’t tend to use the same catspaws for very long or more than once, meaning that trails that might otherwise lead to them stop with secondary pawns. The Votaries would make nasty long-term adversaries, since they can be involved with just about anything in Colorado Springs.

If they have any common thread its that they have hooks and sleeper agents in all major and minor media outlets in Colorado Springs, meaning that they are ideally situated for covering up supernatural events and collateral damage. Most of this effort is on auto-pilot, the agents automatically and unconsciously hide evidence of the supernatural when it comes across their desk.

The Votaries’ Sanctum

The Votaries purchased a building that was once used as the headquarters of a small newspaper. They constructed a wall bisecting the first floor. The back half of the building contains the mages’ living quarters, but the only way to access this area is to walk through the wall. A certain section of the wall is imbued. Beyond is the main part of their Sanctum.

Pylon Member

Lantern

Thyrsus, Pylon Augury

Lantern & Mol

Lantern is muscular and steady, the result of several years of hard labor on a boat. He shaves his head, but wears a full beard to keep his face warm. He has a warm smile and an infectious laugh, but he very rarely has occasion to use either. He usually wears overalls or carpenter pants, and since he spends his days working in the cabal’s shop, he’s usually stained with grease.

Lantern’s Nimbus, predictably, frames him in bright, white light. Powerful magic warps the light, as though the viewer were seeing him through deep water.

Unlike the other members of the cabal, he seems to like Sleepers, and feels genuine regret when he must kill them. He is more beholden to his loyalty to the Exarchs and his fear of his own destiny than to any moral or humanistic concern, however, and so this regret is generally reduced to reading the Sleeper’s obituary and shaking his head sadly. Lantern still thinks of other mages as targets, and so when the cabal involves the Awakened in their schemes, he sometimes goes out of his way to make the plans against them violent.

Mole

The Thief

Acanthus

Mole is in her early 20s. She is of mixed heritage (her mother was Black, her father was White), and she has smooth, light brown skin and braided black hair. She maintains her job at the security agency, and thus dresses professionally most of the time. Her rarely seen Nimbus induces a feeling of being chased. Exits seem far away, the shadows writhe with half-seen monsters.

Mole is lost, and is looking to the Exarchs for direction. Her faith is, in a way, more pure than that of her cabal-mates, because she hasn’t seen the Exarchs yet, and she never has prophetic dreams. She is the most vulnerable to “conversion” by other mages, and Gentleman is aware of this. He has asked Lantern on numerous occasions to allow him to mentally condition her to be loyal, but Lantern refuses. Mole, he says, will learn in time.

Gentleman

The Spy

Mastigos

Gentleman, Prism & Buzzard 

Gentleman is in his late 30s, and wears a stylish beard with his $300 haircut. His clothes are tailor-made, his shoes are custom designed to allow him to run without losing traction (but still look good), and he carries a specially designed sword-cane. Gentleman’s eyes are blue and cold, and he smiles a bored but polite smile.

Gentleman’s Nimbus makes anyone in his vicinity feel small, weak and insignificant. Gentleman and his compatriots seem to tower over other people, looking down on their lessors with disdain.

Gentleman is bitter that he isn’t in charge of the cabal. He, after all, is the only one of them with the good sense to start out following the Exarchs. Gentleman is, however, completely devoted to the Votaries’ cause, and so he keeps his feelings about Lantern (“lucky bastard”) and Buzzard (“monster”) under wraps. The Exarchs must know what they are doing. Slowly but surely, though, he is coming to feel that the Exarchs are just like his parents — stupid, remote and full of themselves. He desperately wants this not to be so, and so he searches and prays for a vision that will give him some true meaning, and, perhaps, a bit of validation.

Prism

Former Guardian of the Veil, Faceless

Obrimos, Subtle Ones

When she isn’t wearing a disguise, which is seldom, Prism is a plain-looking woman of about 21. Her natural hair color is light brown, and her eyes are actually green, but neither of these traits is usually evident. Prism disguises herself using makeup, clothing and subterfuge. She doesn’t bother with magic, reasoning that mages so rarely bother looking with their mundane eyes that it isn’t worth the effort.

When Prism’s Nimbus flares, the source of her Shadow Name becomes obvious. Light scatters in all directions, objects change color, but she herself turns jet black.

Prism, for her part, is finally happy. In subservience to a higher power, her mind is her own. She is given freedom to make up her own rules, even if she is still following orders. Prism found a cabal that respects her for her talents, rather than constantly mucking about in her mind. For her, being a Votary is the best thing that could have happened.

Prism maintains a deep-seated hatred for the Guardians of the Veil, but she also knows how the order works and so doesn’t go taking revenge on them thoughtlessly. She sometimes uses her Masques to impersonate a Guardian, and since the order maintains such a high degree of secrecy (and since her old masters never disavowed her formally), she is a danger to the Visus Draconis as a whole.

Buzzard

Former Adamantine Arrow

Moros, Tremere Lich

Buzzard is about 40. He is tall and muscular, with grizzled, weather-beaten skin and a toothy, unpleasant grin. He favors black, leather especially, and carries two silver orbs about the size of golf balls that he occasionally imbues with Death spells using the stole. Buzzard’s Nimbus makes him look like a walking skeleton. The flesh seems to shrivel on his bones, and his teeth, always prominent, turn his face into a leering skull.

Buzzard has always been at the mercy of his whims, and he became a lich so that he would have an excuse. His acceptance by the Exarchs just gives more weight to that excuse, allowing Buzzard to continue on, never claiming responsibility for his depravity. Of course, as a young lich, he has to steal souls only infrequently, but if he survives long enough he might find that even the Throne rejects him. This notion terrifies him, but whenever he thinks about it too long, he always returns to the same conclusion: the Exarchs accepted him as he is. Although Buzzard no longer gets the urge to eat or have sex with corpses, he still likes to kill. He follows Lantern’s directives (namely, don’t kill unless it’s necessary), but when it is necessary, he’s always the one with the best plans for murder. The death doesn’t have to be elaborate. It’s not the method, it’s the moment that life ends that excites Buzzard.

[Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen] A Nightmare at Hill Manor

Out of Character (OOC):
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Story: A Nightmare on Hill Manor
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

Story Recap: A Nightmare on Hill Manor

The following is a recap from the Story: A Nightmare on Hill Manor involving Persephone and Casstiel on March 2nd, 2014.

Sources: Excerpts and plot as seen in the World of Darkness (nWoD) Storytelling Adventure System (SAS) Story: A Nightmare at Hill Manor.  Adapted for Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition. 

Nova Doctrina 

(New Knowledge Article)

Hill Manor Abduction Incident

by LoreKeeper Casstiel

“If evil spirits could perceive that they were associated with man, and yet that they were spirits separate from him, and if they could flow in… into the things of his body, they would attempt by a thousand means to destroy him; for they hate man with a deadly hatred.”

– J. Sheridan Le Fanu “Green Tea”

Prelude:  

Somewhere in a pocket dimension just outside of normal reality sits the tops three floors of the Hill Manor apartment building.  It floats almost weightless in a night sky without stars, direction, or subjective time.  The only illumination on the outside is a coagulation of bruised thunder clouds endlessly swirling around the pyramid point of the building's penthouse. 

What happened back in the real world when these floors were pulled from their moorings into subspace?  Did the top floors just vanish?  Did they collapse or explode?  Did someone see the whole top of the building get pulled into darkness like a wormhole?  Maybe this is just a shadow version of the place you were compelled to.  Maybe the building looks the same back on Earth, a co-located with this dark one full of burning ghosts.

         

The door to the fifth floor maintenance closet is shut and bolted from the inside.  It may not prevent the wispy shades, half-translucent in the flickering light, from coming through but at least it will hold off more of the possessed tenants from bull rushing us.

Jerad pants, clutching his right hand still curled around his Gerber combat folder, the torn open knuckles no consequence compared to some of the other injuries we sustained in the last hour.  Father and son, the Olivas, lie crumbled on the ground... one of them with a pair of cooking tines shoved into the right eye socket.  It's enough to make your gorge rise.  You all see flashes of memory, playing those stupid Texas Hold'em games with these gentlemen... the easy laughs.  It's upsetting to see them like this, the friends you thought you had but never met before.  The worst was teleporting to the end of the hall, looking back and watching Janice burn to death. Where was her body when we came back down?

Moses makes a slow turn in the dark room, looking for more trouble.  The "spider-sense" that tells him when something bad is about to happen has gone off so many times in the last hour or so that it’s a constant prickle at the back of his neck, a buzz in his ears.  And all the times he felt that way he never suspected ghosts set of this form of 6th sense.

Lianna... you have never killed a man before.  You remember the way the hot blood splattered across your face.  Its playing over and over again as you fixate of the puncture face.  But you will do worse to get out of here, get your baby back, won't you.

Keri just stands still, eyes far away.  Perhaps communing with her remaining ghost dog familiars.  Jerad keeps joking she is a necromancer, perhaps she is seeing the ghost or soul of the dead maintenance worker being detached from the body.  Too much blood in the brain to survive...

March 2, 2014

Let all who read this knowledge article (or Nova Doctrina if you prefer…), heed that I, Casstiel,  Lorekeeper of the Bridge of Souls and the Five Horsemen and Initiate Neokoros of the Mysterium certify that all information is true and accurate to my understanding of events that occurred on the first of March, 2014.  I conducted a “hot wash” style debrief with the Sleepers Moses and Lianna and the company of my wife Persephone and added some eye-witness descriptions to add to this retelling of events in order to garner additional perspective.  I did not tamper with their memories, after this ordeal I think they deserve to retain them.  They are the reason we both got out alive and they have already been exposed to large amounts of Supernal magic and Paradox… I have kept them under distant observation to see if there have been any side-effects from their ordeal.  At the end of this recollection of the events at Hill Manor Apartments I provided a detailed report and analysis on what I discovered and theorized as having occurred.  Collected sources as follows: Narrative with Hot-wash quotes, analysis, and afteractions.

Relevant parties: LoreKeeper Casstiel, Hearthmaster Persephone, Moses Krebiel, & Lianna Krebiel

                         * Narrative with Interview Quotes by LoreKeeper Casstiel *

So, I was recently taught a very valuable lesson.  Yesterday I learned four things.  The first is that despite being a powerful Mage, an Archmaster even, I still can be taken out or manipulated in a flash.  There are bigger fish, and not even bigger but powerful where it counts.  I thought the Supernal Bulwark and the items that Seraph and I created left no chinks in my metaphysical armor.  I was dead wrong. 

The second thing is that certain supernatural creature that seems pretty straightforward can completely surprise you.  You figure, ghosts, okay yeah I’ve been dealing with those since before I Awakened.  If it’s not a Kerberous or other powerful undead from the Underworld then I’m usually fine.  But no, not even close.  Creatures like spirits and ghosts, things easily categorized by a Mage Cryptozoologist can always surprise you.  Even the tamest beings beyond the veil are truly occult beings.  Much of their metaphysical workings are still hidden from us.  I know what you are thinking, (I really do), you’re thinking “Okay Casstiel, we get it, this is obvious, you got taken out by a beat-stick powerful ghost.’  You are not telling me anything I don’t already know Cass…” You would be wrong.  I lost to a regular ghost at game of subtlety.  We are too dependent of Mage Sights to unveil the nature of things and not enough on intuition.  When I was a hunter I could extrapolate from incomplete data.  I don’t spend enough time asking “what does the data not tell me?”

Actually, the thing is, I am not really sure it was a ghost that pulled us in.  It could have been the ghost, and it was pretty strong, or the Mage, or an entity, or maybe a servant of Fate.  I just. don’t. know.  Fear of the unknown does not get better as you learn more and more about the hidden facets of the world, it gets worse.

The third thing is that you should never think you are even close to godlike.  You may wield some serious cosmic power but at the end of the day you are a very fallible and fragile receptacle for that power.  Suppress all the magically capability and you are back to being just a man.  Worse you could be just a man who is now handicapped by being unable to think around his lack of magic.

The fourth thing I learned is that the most normal people, sleepers living their normal lives, can be courageous.  Pop normal people into any shitty situation and you will see some fall, some rise, and others who truly shine with radiance greater than a Nimbus.  I learned all this yesterday.

Persephone and I were volunteering at Habitat for Humanity as part of an Air Force Group event.  We were hanging out with the Krehbiels, Moses and Lianna who are both Lieutenants.  The project went for about eight hours on a Saturday (1 March) and we started heading back at 4pm or so.  We never made it home; the powerful death curse of a Moros pulled us into the nightmare going on at the Hill Manor Apartment complex.

This complex was on the grounds of the old Josiah Hill estate but it burned to the ground in the 30s.  It was sold to a property firm and life returned to normal.  Of course that is not the whole story.  Josiah Hill was a man who traveled the world until someone put the evil eye on him.  He was being tormented by something; I have my suspicions on what it might have been.  So he found a Mage to help him, Sullivan Barnes.  From what I have been able to gather Barnes was a Necromancer but more of a book worm than a practical practitioner.  He might have seen a chance to practice his craft and to help people.  The road to hell is paved et cetera et cetera.

So he picked a location at a point of confluence, cluster of leyline nodes with the best Resonances and used Josiah Hill’s money to build a six floor mansion.  The place is pretty square, straight up and down with a pyramid shape on the top.  Unassuming but with plenty of occult geometry to work with.  Our initial route to the construction site did not take us near Hill Manor but I did think the building looked ‘neat.’  I didn’t get a supernatural ping off the place.

Chapter One “Friends not Met” - Scene 1: “Dealing in”

Then the next thing I remember is sitting at a card table in a cruddy common room playing Texas Hold ‘em with the Kriebels, Seph, and this lady named Janice like it was the most normal thing in the world.  We lived here in this apartment.  When we arrived in San Antonio things had not panned out, we didn’t get our dream house and were in temporary lodging looking for a house.  Paying for an apartment, even one in this building was a drain on resources when you are trying to put down a deposit on a home.  There was no Bridge of Souls Cabal.  Just me and Seph and our friends.

“The table’s set up, and the chips were down. We were all a little late, thanks to road construction out front. Janice was even late, and she’s the one who kept everything organized and sets up the game. But there she was, in her green dealer’s visor, shuffling the deck. She smiled at each of you as we took our seats. “Sorry guys,” she said. “I didn’t have time to get the snacks together. I figured it’d be best if I got you set up and going before I run back down to grab them. Where’s Keenan?” I wish I had been able to save her… and him.”                                                                                                 

“The game was moving along, and Janice should have been back with the snacks at any time. Suddenly, from upstairs, I heard a POP! POP!, two gunshots. Then, after a few seconds, POP! a third shot went off. Almost immediately, there’s this tiny, almost imperceptible shudder in the building, a minor earthquake which shook the poker chips on the table”. –Casstiel recalls

Janice went out to get the snacks she had left in here room and then we heard the popping sounds of gunshots coming from the floors above.  There was a brief tremor and a wave of magic and we suddenly remember who we were and what we had been doing.  We had been implanted with false memories of our life in the Hill Manor estates, like a dream when it has ridiculous events that seem as nature as you please.  Moses and Lianna noticed it as well, things were not right… what were we doing here?  Why did we think we lived here?

Worse yet, all our magical items and daily spells were suppressed somehow.  My amulet did nothing.  I could feel it, feel the magic there, even draw on the Mana if I needed to.  But it was not infusing me with its protective powers and enhancements.  Then I tried to cast a spell, to bring up my sight.  In hindsight Magic was a mistake… but it is the “go to” for our kind.  We grow so dependent on our ability to know and understand the tapestry around us that we call upon sights almost without forethought.  Despite being the least intrusive spell know and taught by all the Orders it didn’t go down the way it was supposed to.  I have read that there are Scelesti and Seer techniques that can make all magic within a Demenses Vulgar, but this was a first for me… and it was terrible and the start of many costly uses of magic that would punctuate the evening.

My nimbus flared, my unshielded Archmaster Nimbus burned the retinas of the Krehbiels across the card table from me.  While my invisible spell which brought forth my Supernal Vision went off without a hitch I was started by suddenly having for grease the Supernal connection with a surge of mana.  I did the subtle Rote Mudras and even that wasn’t enough!  They saw me, they stared at my naked power and I felt the clutch of the taint in their souls, the quiescence in their eyes blinding them.  But even rationalization and the blurring effect of The Lie upon their hearts could not immediately mitigate the sacred energies that I had exposed.

It seemed to shock them into the dichotomy I felt within my always so orderly thoughts.  Two sets of memories, one set true and one set false but yet very rational and for a time I know both felt real.  That instantly gave all of us something akin to a headache.  Who were we?  You know in a dream the way your subconscious mind comes forward and your suppressed consciousness runs something akin to a defragmentation program?  As it re-orders the organization of neural passages, solidifying long term memory and processing all the days’ inputs, the neurons associated with the re-ordering will fire almost randomly.  The soul reaches and touches the Tenemos and there is a transaction with the universal subconscious.  That part is something I am still exploring.  The more mundane effects are the 3.5 hour cyles into Random Eye Movement (REM) sleep.  It’s a jumble of things but human minds are so creative and wondrous that they find a way to take this ebbing the flowing of memories, with no rational progression of events and only subjective time, and make it coalesce into something that makes perfect sense.  Dreams.  This is one of the reasons that I pursued some knowledge of Imperial Mysteries for a time before that fated night were I crossed the Abyss for the second time in my life.  Because even being a Master of Mind I couldn’t explain or understanding all of its intricacies.  The separation of the mind and soul and how both interact with Astral Space is one of those mysteries.  But I digress.

Do you remember a time when you were in a dream when you knew some fact to be utterly true and when you woke up your rational mind realized it was completely ridiculous?  In dreams the dream actors may even say something like “pizza floats because of the gases produced by the pepperoni when it gets hot are lighter than air” and you KNOW it.  It is a TRUTH.  And maybe in that dream it was a truth.  But when you wake you have to wonder what the heck that was about. We had that feeling.  But before that we experienced the in-between state that separates dreams and full wakefulness, where you think two different ideas are true.  It was extremely fascinating and terrifying which is why I go to such lengths to attempt to explain the phenomenon in detail.

After that the thing that really struck me was: what could have done this us?  What kind of power could blow through my boosted mental facilities and protective spells?  I took a few seconds to assess some mental intrusion detection systems, see if anyone broke the tape on my Onerous.  Nada.  So maybe not a mental reprogramming but an induction of those dream functions in the brain that fabricated a reason for us to live in the Hill Manor Apartments.  More like an external compelling than the utter horror of having an insanely powerful force reaching into my brain, despite my protections, and tweaking with my memories.  It is one of my worst nightmares, someone gets into my head and takes over and mentally disarms me before I can do anything.  Then they own me.  And I might never remember or realize it again.  They could squat like a toad in the back, planting subliminal commands for the rest of my life. 

This was close.  Same job, same career, same city of course, just living in a really shitty apartment building.  That was the part that made no sense and allowed us through some strange conversation to establish what was real and what was not.  Of course I had to explain some things first.  We told them that they were indeed experiencing false memories.  Once we got that out of the way, we simply convinced them that we were also experiencing hallucinations.  It was a simple logical jump with the help of the Lie within them.

Now external senses bolstered by the Supernal Sight I noted one indicator about our environment that was most telling… a Space spell was in place.  It was hidden under heavy masked Resonance but when you are swimming in it up to your magical eyeballs you notice if you keep digging.  I had gotten good at taking those first assessing minutes to really LOOK at shit and see what’s under all the layers of emotion and truth.  I scrutinized the spell, and saw enough to guess at its function.  Of course, a Space Ban.  So much for teleporting out of whatever the fuck would follow…

Following the normal sleeper responses a few of us checked our phones for help.  They flickered strangely but did not work, even STARK was affected and his local firmware didn’t respond.  And of course there was no signal, no GPS, no wifi, I didn’t dare throw up the sight of Reading Matrixes but I was pretty sure there was no electromagnetic or radio signals penetrating the building any more.  How had I missed the Space Ban?  That tremor didn’t activate it, oh of course, I had been “pushed” here, memories fucked with, and no time to scrutinize until now.

Chapter One “Friends not Met” - Scene 2:  “…And Cashing Out”

“Ok, look. I’m sure it’s my fault or maybe the elevator’s broken, but… I can’t get down to my apartment to grab the snacks. Could you come show me what I’m doing wrong?” Janice said.

Janice returned, a dear friend of the last year that I had never met, and she was disturbed.  She couldn’t take the elevator to the 4th floor where her apartment was.  We were most interested in LEAVING by the most direct route.  I exchanged eyes with my wife, we would play this out for a few more minutes and see where it led.  There was something at work here that we shouldn’t just smack with a magical hammer.

We followed Janice down the eerily silent halls.  It is common knowledge that you should never take an elevator in an emergency.  This was just asking for trouble.  But… we did it anyway.  I am a Mage, I’m mighty, I am not going to be scared of a fully functional elevator just because there was some serious magic flying around.  If they wanted to drop us down an elevator shaft to our deaths they should have started with that.  Or burst in the common room and shot us in the heads before we remembered who we were. 

The elevator seemed to work fine except that we could feel it going down but the flashing floor numbers kept going from 6 to 5 to 7 to 6 to 5 to 7 to 6…  I didn’t sense a spell but I didn’t dare call up my Space sight to verify what I suspected.  I could feel the pooled paradox from the common room as if we hadn’t left, shouldn’t the residual attention of the Abyss have dispersed by now?

“I don’t know what could be wrong. I mean… You’ll see,” Janice said pressing the button marked “3.” The elevator juddered and shook, under my feet, going down. I watched the indicator sweep past six, five, four, and come to a halt on three. But when Janice opened the gate, the wall on the outside said “5.” She pulled the gate closed and hit “3” again. Again, the elevator goes down, and again when the gate opened, it said “5.”

We got back out on the 6^th floor where we started and checked the window at the end of the hall.  Was it nighttime?  And where was the city?  We could see the exterior of the building slope downward and vanish into darkness after one story down.   And outward nothing but blackness.  I had a claustrophobic moment.  No wonder we couldn’t get down to ground floor or any floor beyond the 5^th for that matter… it didn’t look like it was there.

“The view through the window was black. There was nothing, no streetlights, no stars in the sky. It didn’t seem like they had gone out so much as vanished. There was no street below us, no sky above. The building seemed to just be hanging in a void.”- Moses recalls

We took the stairs next.  Moses and Lianna couldn’t remember where they had left their infant, Calvin.  Could be with a sitter we didn’t know, could be in their room, could be not here.  I could see they were getting panicky as we practically ran down those antiseptic white washed stairs.  Every floor looked the same except for the black painted numbers on the brick walls.  6. 5. 7…. We checked out, it was the 7^th floor outside the door.  Blackness on window panes in that brief glance.  The 7^th floor is the top, the penthouse floor.  I found I knew about the basic history of the building as well as the floor plans.  Maybe these false memories would come in handy after all.

Most of it had to do with the Josiah Hill “penny” profile in a bronze plaque on the front of the building from the National Historic Society.   I can remember its inscription perfectly:

Hill Manor Apartments

Registered Historical Landmark

This building stands on the grounds of the original Hill Manor, home of Josiah Hill and his family. The Hills were benefactors of our community in its earliest stages. Without their philanthropy and the jobs it provided, the city as we know it may not exist today. The original manor house was tragically destroyed in a fire. Construction of these

apartments was completed in 1929.

I knew that the building’s seventh floor was a central penthouse room with an upper level and that the entire outside hallway was fitted with panes of glass.  The peak of the building went to a pyramid shaped point all in fitted glass.  The hallway was pitched black, despite the false memories if it truly was night time then there was no accounting for all the time between midafternoon when we left the Habitat for Humanity build site and getting settled here.  And this very unsettling darkness on the other side of the aged glass was like no night I had ever seen.  Not liking the look of it we decided to regroup in the common room back on the 6^th floor where we started.

Once we handled the Krehbiel’s disbelief and worries, finding out the world is full of monsters and they were caught in the middle of something extremely bad.  Most of all they were worried about their unaccounted for baby.  I reasoned to them that if the last thing they remembered was leaving the Habitat for Humanity site alone then they must have already taking care of their baby and given Carlton over to a babysitter.  That settled we took stock of our environment.

We were indeed trapped in some kind of dimensional pocket which dropped upon us when that small earthquake occurred.  There was a Space ban in this pocket of nowhere making it very hard to teleport out of.  Doing so might have doomed any sleeper survivors that were still trapped in the top three floors of the building.  If we could find the source or cause of this anomaly we might be able to find a way to reverse it and free the building and its survivors. 

“Janice stopped on the way back to the common room, sobbing. She leaned against the wall and slid down slowly, unable to speak through her tears. I could feel the panic and fear rolling off of her. She started to hyperventilate.   She looked around desperately and asked, “Are we in hell?” It made my blood turn cold.”   -Lianna recalls, (note psychic level empathy implied.)

Janice had a minor break-down, which was understandable.  We were trapped like rats in a cage.  We succeed in calming her down and she started asking where everyone else was.  Good question, from our quick trip we saw no one.  I would expect people to be panicking and running down the halls, clumping together and such.  Strange, and we heard racket through the walls and ceiling… someone was banging about in their rooms. 

We combed through what we knew of the building and who we knew.  Janice kept asking about our 6^th member of our regular poker group Keegan.  Keegan never came back after meeting with Janice right before our game.  Perhaps he is involved, he knew the penthouse resident, an elderly man, and spent time visiting and helping him with groceries and such.  It also stood to reason that the event must have happened up there.

Interestingly enough, both Lianna and Moses Kriehbel displayed rudimentary psychic abilities during our ordeal.  Moses reacted to any ghostly activity occurring near him like a creeped-out canary in a mine shaft.  Lianna displayed the ability to read surface thoughts, send messages, and pinpoint the general direction and emotions of ephemeral beings if she focuses hard enough.  They assured me they had these abilities before this event but never really had confirmation that they actually did something.  I greatly worry about the long term effects of their exposure to the high amount of paradox that mounted throughout the night and the unbidden energies that pooled in this small pocket dimension.

Chapter One “Friends not Met” - Scene 3: “6F – Keenan’s Apartment”

“At the end of the hall, I saw someone working. A maid in an extremely old-fashioned uniform is dusting the frames of paintings hung from the wall. She seems to be ignoring us entirely as we tried to sneak to Keenan’s room. Then she turned and looked.  Upon closer inspection, the maid’s skin seemed to darken and wither into burned flesh as she stumbled toward us. As we watched, her uniform smoldered and started to smoke… The maid turned and looked, not at me, but through me… She seems to be pleading, begging for release and then she just burst into ash in a split second and was gone.  It was horrible and she was in so much pain.”  -Moses recalls

We resolved to carefully sneak up to the penthouse to take a look around after checking Keenan’s room on the on our current floor to see if he was there.  The buildings power was cut, of course, but the hallways were illuminated with auxiliary emergency battery lights that glowed red.  The closest stairwell from the common room was blocked by a swooning maid.  She was wearing period clothing and vanished.  (I later suspect this was a glimpse of the maid that burned down the original Hill Manor).  We decided to circle around to the other stairwell on the distance end of this mostly square hallway floor plan.  We were not accosted until we neared the far stairwell.  Members of our party (Myself, Pesephone, Jan, Moses, & Lianna) reported experiencing manifestations such as hot spots and Goosebumps.

“The door to Keenan’s room hung loose from its frame. It looks like a horror movie in here. The walls, furniture and ceiling were covered by the lunatic ravings of a broken mind. The spidery text appeared to have been written by a madman, but there is a common thread here. Nothing here seems to fit the tidy, friendly man I remembered knowing.”-Casstiel recalls

We reached Keenan’s room and saw it had been ransacked.  Frankly I just wanted to see if he was there to round up another survivor.  I would feel even safer with two mages, a tiny dragon they haven’t seen yet, three ghost dogs and four sleepers.  Now if we could just find a weapon.  I started scoping out the room’s strange writings.  I recognized that our friend had been recently very broken… but the timing of this didn’t match the shuddering of the building… no way he would write all this in black markers and pens in the time it took us to get up here.  There was conflict here, a persona of almost compulsory organization and part of him that had become all rage and chaos.  It matched the profit of one of the spirit-ridden.  Keenan had amassed here a sizable collection of books on every subject from automotive mechanics to criminal justice to mammals of North America to ghost hunting.  I could see how we might have been friends before he went nuts…

Moses and I pieced together some of the jumbled writings and only found some common threads. Still, in this chaos you could get the gist of it.  Everything legible was as follows; we made some assumptions which are included:

“We are trapped. We will be free. Barnes will pay with his life. THEY WILL PAY FOR THEIR LIVES.”  “The wizard’s trap closed on me with fire. I knew that he shouldn’t have been trusted, but I was so desperate for peace from that thing which stalked me. He bewitched me, he played me for a fool, and I gave him everything he needed to make his magic. I thought it was for my benefit, but with magic, you always pay a price. “He was patient. He waited for the toll to be worth his efforts, until my family had grown fat and complacent in his trap. Then he struck and we were burned and torn from our flesh. Our souls were trapped in the raging storm of his will. We may be trapped, but we will be free. The wizard who calls himself Barnes will pay with his life. ALL WHO LIVE ON MY LAND WILL PAY WITH THEIR LIVES.”

Very pleasant, but these scribbles made Keenan a definite key to the puzzle of what was going on here.  We might have a mage problem, a wizard who played with souls and tormented the dead.  It immediately made me worry about Left-handed Moros, or worse, Tremere.

Under the debris, Seph noticed the gleam of gold. When she cleared it away, she found what we didn’t know we were seeking— a gold pocket watch! The casing is adorned with the Hill family crest on the front and an engraved message on the back: “Tempus omnia sed memorias privat — S.B.” Together we figured out (since I was unable to cast ‘Universal Language’) the Latin translates to “Time takes all but Memory.”  Its hands still ticked, but they were ticking backwards. Fitted into the cover’s interior is a faded sepia photograph of two men we later identified as Josiah Hill and Sullivan Barnes standing side-by-side…” –Casstiel recalls

Lianna and Persephone managed to get some basic kitchen knives from this place which served as weapons.  I felt another twinge of helplessness… reduced to very poor quality fighting implements indeed.  Shifting through the books and half-eaten boxes of cereal and Ramen she found a golden pocket watch.  She sensed something about it and so did I.  Under Supernal Sight I could tell that it was tied to some Fate-driven spell effects.  There was a lot going on with this watch, the layers of Resonance revealed more and more ghostly spells and complex works of the Supernal along with some unquantifiable element.  Without Persphone risking Paradox by calling up the ‘Grim Sight’ we couldn’t verify this was a special item, such as a fetter or anchor.  We hung onto it and resolved to gather more information first.  We went back into the hallway and made our way further down, heading for the stairwell.

Chapter One “Friends not Met” - Scene 4: “The Sixth Floor”

“One of the portraits, the largest, depicted a pair of men: one seated, the other standing with his hands upon the chair’s back. Both men looked familiar, straight from the watch we found.” –Persephone recalls

Spooky feelings were still happening out there.  The hallway got very hot (about 110F from what I could tell from my deployment experience); the pictures on the wall were unfamiliar and dated… They pinged on our unseen senses, especially Seph and Moses.  The photos closest to us appeared to be ghost manifestations.  One pictured an elderly man, Mr. Sullivan, shaking hands the man whom the apartment complex is named after: Josiah Hill.  Young man, looked tired, haunted.  We recognized Mr. Brian Sullivan as the man who lived in the Penthouse but he looked old in the photo even though it must have been taken over a hundred years ago.  We assumed distant relative, but of course later we discovered that this was the mage Sullivan Barnes who assumed his false identify to cover up his unnaturally long life.

“The second portrait was that of a shattered man done in vibrant paint colors. He looked like patchwork, burned and withered flesh giving way to raw, bleeding muscle. His only covering looked like a smoldering gray rag draped over him. There was a distinct smell of charred flesh in the air. His teeth are black and appeared to be glowing, and his eyes are boiling in their sockets, the vitreous humor spilling out and scalding the flesh of his checks.  It looked so vivid, then I noticed The hair on his head was alight in a crackling, ever roaming smolder.  A real flame that seemed to come through. And the center of the portrait blacked and smoldered.  Then the other portraits also start to burn with unseen flame, the canvas stretching taut as it is consumed by the spectral heat and turned to ash, followed by the walls and ceiling a few steps behind us…” –Casstiel recalls

The other picture was of a man burned to a red and black cinder, hair aflame and flesh cracking, eyes boiling like runny eggs.  (This was our first look at the horrible ghost that Josiah Hill had become.)  The picture burst into spectral flames which quickly sprung up behind us.  We sprinted for the stairwell but the flames engulfed us.  I knew they were ephemeral, magical fire, but they would burn flesh nonetheless.  Burning, I felt we had no choice and I employed magic again.  I attempted to overcome the Space Ban enough o teleport us line-of-sight through the metal door (glass window to see) and into the safety of the stairwell.  I was marginally successful.  Burned, we all collapsed into the white sterile landing.  But it was hard, taxing upon me, and I messed up.  Jan had not been collected into the field I created.  We watched her burn to death in our wake.  Then the sprinklers kicked on and the flames dissipated leaving smoking carpet and a charred cinder of our new friend.

That hit me pretty hard.  I was supposed to help people and instead my failure caused the loss of a sleeper’s life.  Potential snuffed out, perhaps ghost trapped in whatever field I was sensing.  We walked down a hallway and all that happened… insanely powerful manifestations were at work.  Many ghosts nearby.  Persephone healed us from all but the damage of the paradox backlash upon me and proceeded up.

Chapter One “Friends not Met” - Scene 5:  “The Seventh Floor”

It was quiet up there—unnaturally so. Everything seemed muffled, the lightning, even your own footsteps sound somehow far away somehow. The walls and carpeting were untouched by fire or scribbles. Whatever commotion was going on downstairs left this area completely alone. And yet, you’d still feel like you’re being watched… Persephone’s ghosty-senses were tingling.

Once again the seventh floor was dark but for the purple storm brewing out the tall window panes in the blackness of the pocket realm.  I wasn’t sure what this storm was all about at the time but I greatly suspect now that it was a maelstrom of necromantic energy created by Josiah Hill and all the dead that were ever killed and drawn to the place.  Before the field pulled us outside this place had pulled in ghosts from all over the town and trapped them here.  Normally they were suppressed but they had found a way to break through, when that happened the safety protocols pulled the place into a place where the ghosts couldn’t rampage in the physical world.

“A man’s body was lying sprawled in the hallway, a knife still stuck in his chest. There was no blood on the floor, though the chest is abraded and slashed. The blood dripping from the body is dripping upward. A large pool of blood is spreading, staining the ceiling above the body.  With the lightning flashing it was the creepiest thing I had ever seen.  But I was taking that knife.” – Moses recalls

Moses went forward, somehow ignoring the anomaly of gravity that only seemed to be affecting the blood of this victim and pulled the knife out of his back.  It was a US Marines style K-Bar, a really good knife, my father gave me one that sits on the mantle at the Sanctum.  Blood dripped up off it and Moses held it out and let it do so until it stopped and all that remained was a thin red film on the weapon.  For a sleeper the guy had a lot of guts in the face of the unknown.  Maybe it was the fact that this was the only decent weapon we had found so far… besides the Gerber combat folder I keep on me at all times.  That one is one of my Athame.  We proceeded down the out ring of hallway, heading for the penthouse door which I was almost sure would take us up some stairs into the glass pyramid.

“That silence was broken by a gurgling scream. Ahead of us was a man engulfed in flames sprinting straight as us! There was no time to get out of his way! The burning man ran right through Jerad (Casstiel), but it seemed to leave him untouched. The burning ghost burst into a cloud of ash and greasy smoke. When he was bearing down on us I felt as if my exposed skin had a sunburn, and the heat baking off him left me feeling really dehydrated and thirsty. Then hallway is still again.” – Moses recalls

Something was going on up here.  Out of the darkness and lighting flashes this flaming spectral manifestation appeared and charged us.  We got into a fighting position but it just came on so fast, like Kairos when he uses Acceleration on us.  I tried to block Lianna and ‘Seph and it went right through me.  It hurt like the water when it’s too hot.  This place was doing something to us; it was suddenly so try that my lips cracked.  By the time we got to the double penthouse doors we were pretty dehydrated.  An influence had been placed up here and it was desiccating us alive.  If it looked like we would be here much longer Persphone and I were going to have to use magic to act against it somehow.  It also made us ravenously hungry, I would have killed someone for a bag of fritos.

Moses got that “hairs standing on end’ feeling and I guessed we were about to have company, maybe another flamer.  We braced for a fight but none of us expected what happened next.

Doorway in sight suddenly Gracey manifested physically, materializing from collected essence into solid ectoplasm.  Persephone was unnerved because she had not told her Doberman Phychopomp to appear.  Her familiar attacked her.  Thankfully unboosted by their ephemeral collars they were somewhat manageable.  The other dogs (Rip & Nitro) appeared and tried to fight back.  Persephone tried to exert control and got Gracey back under heel just to have Nitro get compelled and he unleashed his “Banshee Wail” on us.

I hate it when that dog shrieks like that, it’s like a frigging flash-bang grenade, once again thankfully not augmented to its usual power.  Reeling from that Lianna reached out with her special ability and detected a being hiding in Twilight by the door.  Gracey freaked out again, biting Moses who slashed her through with his new K-Bar.  He hurt her enough that she discorporated but the other ghost hounds were still trouble.  Seph was being attacked by her babies, and our number one defenses in a fight… it forced her to use magic and Paradox mounted as a result. 

If I forget to mention it, most of the Paradox was caused by normally covert uses of “the Healing Heart” spell.  Persephone healed us plenty… and we needed it.  We took a lot of nasty injuries throughout the night and the toll on using magic kept getting worse.

I knew it had to be a ghost in the Twilight based on Lianna’s hunch and dared Paradox by casting a combined several spell effects which would allow me to simultaneously detect the creature with Fate and Death and then banish it by converting a Spirit spell into a version which affected ghosts and abjured them away.  I saw the burning spectral form of that horrible burnt critter with the flaming head.  I successfully ‘banished’ him, discorporating his Twilight form into particles which quickly vanished to reassemble near whatever its anchor to this world was…

After Persephone healed Moses who had a couple deep bite wounds and most likely a shattered Tibia, We reached the door… and of course it was locked.  More than that it was part of a powerful set of wards, another layer of spells that extended to cover the entire penthouse and top of the building.  It would take several hours to make a dent in this, better to try to find a key.  This confirmed my suspicions that we were dealing with a Mage, and a Master at that. We needed to get in.

 The answers and the escape had to be inside there but only a key with the correct correspondences would work.  I knew this mage, this enemy had a large amount of knowledge of the Death, Space, and Fate Arcana.  Nasty combinations which meant that only the right key, not just one created to fit with faked Resonance would work.  I would have to pierce this second layer of Span Bans in order to see and understand the Fate magic well enough to magically “fake” a key.  While I was tampering with his wards the mage might detect me doing so and any advantage of surprise would be gone.  Never fight a Mage on their terms, if we get a chance to prepare for something we can be unstoppable.  Plus spending time casting up either trying to overcome the ghostly Influence or dispel these inner wards would likely result in our deaths by burns or exposure.

We retreated back to the seventh floor stairwell, the door with the glass slit and the white-washed cinderblocks provided comfort in their normalcy.  We spent some time there before we developed a plausible plan to continue.

First I taught them the 101 to basic Abjuration by providing them with the basics of Catholic blessings and banishments used by exorcists.  While not the only solution, it was the easiest for me to learn with my western heritage and Christian background.  It usually made it easier for Americans to conceptualize based on that religious framework.  Anyone can abjure a ghost or spirit, it is a function of will and the essence people create for ephemeral beings.  Throughout the night they didn’t exactly figure it all out, no time for the dedicated study it would take to get the mindset perfect.  But at least for me it provided a nice alternative to trying to cast a spell of banishment and increase the paradox that had already built up in our tiny prison.  The education from being spurred on by the events at Krem, North Dakota (my first experience with the supernatural) still served me well.

We didn’t know where the key was, but we had been implanted with false memories and inexplicitly drawn here.  The memories were of living here, which also included knowledge about the building and where a maintenance master key would be held.  I calmed our sleeper compatriots and we participated in a practice in meditation while Persephone and her remaining hounds kept watch.  Throughout the night was leery of them turning again but also glad they were here.  With a spell I delved into these fabricated surface memories for specific information and found it:  A maintenance closet on the fifth floor should have a set of master keys.  Our mutual (false) friends the son and father Olivias worked in the building and used such a closet.

That is where we went next, and the place I was most reluctant to go, the place where all the racket was coming from.  Cries, screams, insane laughter, very sinister and somehow I doubted that the foes were completely incorporeal anymore…

Chapter Two “The Key” Scene 1: “The Fifth Floor”

“We stepped out into the Fifth Floor and immediately realized that the fifth floor was a horror show. Broken lights flickered and dark stains streaked the walls. You could hear cackles and growls off down the halls. Wandering here would be really… unsafe, seeing as how the tenants down there seem to have gone violently mad.” –Moses Recalls

  

We moved cautiously and deliberately on the quickest path we knew to the corner room where all the cleaning and maintenance supplies were kept.  It wasn’t long before we came up on another body; the Kriebels dealt with it. I wondered if they would ever sleep against after all this.

“My nose filled with this… sickly-sweet smell of blood… old blood? but you couldn’t find the source of the scent anywhere. The walls had scuffs and smudges on them, even a big hole in a wall but, there was no blood. The smell was enough to turn your stomach. As we went I felt something drip onto my upper lip. I reached up and felt my nose was bleeding.” –Lianna Recalls

Then we rounded the corner to the last stretch, away from the racket and ended up passing a body, the source of the smell.  At first I thought the timing didn’t line up at all; a body should not be as decomposed as it was.  This was a week old body in the least if I knew anything for it to bloat like that; it had only been a few hours, hadn’t it?  Gods I hoped that there was no time distortion to go along with all the crazy.  Most of the smell was coming from the fact that this person had had their lower digestive tract torn open.   The familiar smell of death: shit and blood.  It disgusted me and set my teeth on edge as we passed on.

“I smelled something utterly rank ahead. A bloated body was sprawled against the wall, its blood soaking into the crappy matted carpet. His stomach was torn across with some kind of sharp, ragged instrument. The intestines looped and coiled in his lap and spilled out onto the floor. They were blackening and viscous with congealing blood. His face was crushed into a pulp. The lower bowel was punctured, releasing the stench of partially digested excrement… reminded me of a deer I had to dress once that had been gut-shot a few times.  Ruined meat, if he had survived the stabbing to the stomach he would have been at risk for sepsis.  Perhaps mercifully, you couldn’t even try to identify him.  We were in deep shit if there was a mad man running around with a big knife somewhere, magic was becoming a very poor option, causing more harm to us than an attacker would.” –Casstiel Recalls

Upon closer inspection we found that a workman’s chisel was imbedded in his guts, maintenance tools… this weapon Moses did not retrieve.  We continued on and were assaulted by ghostly phenomena without a source to focus on.  The angry dead swirled around, just out of view, bombarding the hallway with malice and minor manifestations.  We endured it.

“At one point I am walking down the hallway and I suddenly feel as if I’d walked in front of an open furnace. I was worrying it was time to run again but no one else seemed to notice.  My skin felt tight, and sweat beaded up on my forehead.  As far as I could see, there’s was no physical source for the heat and none of those ghostly flames. A few steps forward and I immediately felt cooler, like when a fever has broken.” –Moses Recalls

“I was hearing whispers in my ears on that floor. I’d turn, and there’s nothing there. Keri, Persephone looked like she could see them but we couldn’t.  The others didn’t seem to hear the voices though, but the voice seems to be all around me. It was like my power but without turning it, and it wasn’t coming from living, thinking people.  I couldn’t make out the words; they sounded like nonsense. The first voice was joined by another, then another, and so on until there is a cacophony of whispers filling my head with a throbbing pain. I suddenly felt the urge to lash out, to rip and tear at the walls, at the others… that was the worst, being urged by dead thoughts.  I was so scared I would act it, I don’t think you would understand if I did.” – Lianna Recalls

Chapter Two “The Key” Scene 2: “5A – The Maintenance Closet”

We made it to the maintenance closet; the door was unlocked and partially ajar.  It was occupied, and we recognized from our false memories the faces of Brandon and Orlando Oliva… they weren’t right, my concerns were confirmed.  The ghosts were taking root in anyone taken to this black place and they had the strength to take control of them.  That means that most likely, more possessed residents were rampaging around the building killing each other or looking for those who clung to sanity.

“Brandon and Orlando, the two maintenance men who also had played in our poker games from time to time, were pushing and shoving at each other, fighting over a corpse slumped against the wall. They made angry growling noises and spoke in broken gibberish. The corpse’s clothes were torn and bloody, apparently he had been killed by a wound in his throat. One eye hung free from its socket. Brandon stopped fighting for the corpse and looked up, his eyes were cloudy and faded. He screeched and bounds over the table toward at us.”

We were locked in a brief struggle with Moses getting in the way of the two of them. They tore at him and were possessed with crazed drive.  Lianna stabbed Orlando in the eye with a cooking tines she took from Orlando’s apartment and he went down.   Brandon and Moses were going toe to toe and I clutched my Gerber folder in my right fist and punched him at the base of the neck where it met his shoulders.  The blow knocked him out cold.  Persephone watched a ghost break free from him and retreat.

Even for me this was a little horrifying, we still had some personal connection to these people, whether false or real.  Hurting people, with or without magic, knowing or not knowing them was just wrong.  Without my mental protections I felt this remorse keenly.

We stuck to our goal, escape, and found the maintenance key to the penthouse and were about to leave when we heard the scream of a sane man faced with death through the thin wall of the room.  Someone was screaming for help in the room next to the closet.

Chapter Two “The Key” Scene 3: “5B – Blood-splattered Ben”

There wasn’t much discussing this, we couldn’t just leave someone nearby to die.  Another survivor, our group might be growing and with little or no magic to call upon bodies really counted as a force multiplier.  The thought of using survivors as cannon fodder to escape a direct threat went through my mind, but no.  If we encountered something that the average joe would die in the face of, something a mage was meant to combat, I will move them aside and ensure that the threat was met with magic and the force of the wise.  We rushed next door.

“This apartment was wrecked. Cheap furniture was thrown in shambles, and blood was splattered on everything, not enough bodies. The carpet squelched under foot, totally soaked with it. The One remaining madmen has his back to us, scrabbling at the bedroom door, trying to get in. From the bedroom, we could hear a low moan. It sounded male, and in pain. “I’ve got a gun, you zombie fucks! Don’t you come in here, or I’ll blow your heads off!” The voice sounded pained. The madman stopped scrabbling and cocked his head to the side. He spun around at attacked us.”

This was becoming a routine, we worked together and surrounded this man.  Moses grabbed, I punched and the ladies used the blunt side of their instruments to take him down.  I called upon my knowledge and exerted my will in a flashing force of abjuration.  He fell.

Slowly the door opened, revealing who we later learned to be Ben Holt.  I hate urban hipsters and Chivers but a life is life.  He was crouched on the floor with a gun in hand, a blood from a side wound ruining the green shirt with the asinine words: “Keep Calm and Chive on…”  He came out during our struggle as we called to him that we were not crazy and wanted to help him.

“We knocked out the unfamiliar tenant, Cass tried some exorcist stuff.  All this to protect our gun-touting friend on the other side of the door.  After seeing this I was glad that for whatever reason Moses and Lianna hadn’t been turned into these blood thirsty berserker people; they didn’t have the protections we did.  He hit the ground.  The body of the madman shuddered, and his mouth fell open in a rasping howl. A very faint green mist issued forth, and swirled around the unconscious victim for a moment, before shooting into the man who we later found out to be Ben. Ben staggered backward, into the kitchen, and began coughing vehemently. When he looked up, his eyes were clouded cataracts. He screamed and launched himself toward us, but he slipped in the blood on the kitchen floor. Ben fell and cracked his head on the counter. He was unconscious. The green mist seeps out of his mouth and fades away. Possession, they were all getting possessed.”-Persephone Recalls

Turns out the Chiver was more heroic then I first assumed.  He wasn’t just hiding in his bedroom with the only gun in this universe.  He was protecting other survivors, their names I will cover later.  For whatever reason they were not susceptible to the possessions of this mad spirits, maybe they were just stronger in willpower and spirit, maybe it was just arbitrary.

We worked with them to treat everyone’s wounds with a first aid kit in the apartment.  Chiver got cleaned up, checked out for a concussion.  We had minor wounds to take a moment to seal up and patch.  You take it where you can get it.  It wasn’t time yet for Persephone to risk healing.

What the mages missed Lianna didn’t.  Her sensitivity to the thoughts of those around her flagged an unlively bearded man in the corner with dreadlocks.  His thoughts were “dead.”  Her words. We turned and faced the man as a group, ready to fight or run.  The specter flew apart into nothing and didn’t confront us.  Persephone, like the others, let it flee when in another situation she could have brought them all to heel or eaten them.  I am sure it was infuriating for her.

There was food here and after our long evening and the seventh floor’s draining effects we quickly gobbled down junkfood from Ben’s pantry to put the hunger and thirst at bay.

We bedded the survivors down and redistributed weapons, the best with us and the extra for them, some good steak and butcher knives from this kitchen increased our stockpile of weaponry.  After some discussion it sounded like a group was going to stay behind while some would finally get into the penthouse and see if there was a way out of this place.  Persephone and I were moving on, of course we were.  This was a supernatural problem and it was our responsibility to stand between the night and the sleepers, it wasn’t just an Awakened, but this was the simple hunter creed, no one had to tell it to you when you learn that lesson.

We asked if anyone else would come and help us.  Lianna and Moses, our friends and Air Force officers, rallied wonderfully.  Ben Holt and the crazy scary Russian Nicky Sims said he would come with.  I’m glad he was on our side…  Then back into the hallway.

Chapter Three “The Burning” Scene 1: “Residents”

This is when our luck ran out.  The way back to the stairwell that was mostly clear of trouble the last time we passed was now filled with the clamor of running feet.  We were suddenly overwhelmed by a rush of a couple dozen people.  They used to be people. They were not right now.  There was no time for finesse, some of them were armed with blunt instruments, anything you could find in an average apartment: baseball bats, knives, heavy tools…

Collectively we took a lot of blows and returned them in kind.  We didn’t have time to knock out, abjure, beat down or anything so subtle.  We fought for our lives and some of the host most likely died of their wounds, waking after the ghosts left their bodies to die in this place alone.

No time for any of that, under my direction, we fought are way down the hallway and to the stairwell where nothing bad seems to happen.  We barricaded the door as best we could and waited for their attentions to abate.  It didn’t.  We jammed the door and headed upwards, we could hear them coming up the stairwell from below somewhere. 

We made it to the seventh floor again, barricading that door as best we could with some of our long pieces of wood some of the fallen zombie-types had dropped.  It was the best we could do and pressed on, almost at a run, ready to fight anything that came our way.  Persephone was forced to heal us all of our wounds as best she could and at the cost of backlash upon her pattern.

We were not assaulted as we ran down the hallway.  The desiccation, fatigue, and starvation hit us again but we ignored it.  I used the key upon the penthouse door and locked the sturdy door and the wards it was connected to at our back.  I doubted they could get through that, it was attuned to keep the immaterial out.

Chapter Three “The Burning” Scene 2: “The Penthouse”

“We walked into the penthouse. Our footsteps echoed off white tile floors polished to a reflective sheen. A pair of dark green double doors that led into the penthouse proper directly ahead. To the right of the doors was a hallway that leads around the apartment. Here, the void of the blacked space outside the widows is replaced by a violent storm. Bloody rain and bone hail clattered against the windows overhead which formed a huge pyramid shaped skylight. Lightning struck the lightning rod at the apex of this glass roof, creating a near-constant strobing and blinding light show straight above us… and a crackling, arrhythmic drumbeat... like a huge thunderous heartbeat. The penthouse suite was very different from the rest of the building. Where the floors throughout the rest of the place were tightly-woven carpeting, the floors there were of a deeply lustrous red wood. The foyer looked as if it once looked classically elegant, but years of neglect have covered everything but the floor in a thick layer of dust. The floor seems to be immaculate except for the body and the blood. Here lay Keenan’s corpse, slumped against the wall to our right has we entered the main foyer. Blood splattered on the wall and the gun on the floor near his hand told the story. Our neighbor took his own life. A trail of blood lead into the next room.”

“The trail of blood led to another body crumpled on the marble floor in what appeared to be a large personal library at the heart of the Penthouse and Hallow. The body lay on its side, and looked impossibly old. Hair so thin it’s almost spider silk obscured the ghastly wrinkled face. The hands were covered in an elaborate trace work of wrinkles, against his chest as part of the fetal position. The floor there was a vast series of concentric circles and lines, with arcane symbols running parallel to many of the patterns. Lightning continued to arc outside illuminating the room for an instant before darkness plunged in, followed by the constant rumble of heavy thunder. A languid swirl of greenish-white light began to rise from the corpse, and it incorporated into a translucent old man with bullet wounds in his chest. He stared at his body for a moment, as if lost. Then he looked directly at Persephone. “You must help me,” he said.”\

At great cost to herself in the mounting paradox, Persephone released a spell that would allow her to talk freely with this ghost.  Strangely, from what she said after the fact, she did not need to “quicken” the ghost; lending credence to some aspect of this pocket realm or that Sullivan had become a ghost mage.  She questioned him and relayed to us the conversation.  I recorded what I can recall, making a concerted effort without the benefit of magic to remember everything said exactly.

First she asked who he was.  He looked familiar, the old man in the photos with Josiah Hill, and most likely the person Keegan had ranted about all around his demolished apartment.  He answered:

“My name is—was—Sullivan Barnes, I am a necromancer.  I was trying to keep this from happening. (Gestured at the skylight) I seem to have failed. But I can tell you what needs to be done.”

Next Persephone asked what was happening here and the ghost continued:

“I’m sorry, but I’m just not sure of the specifics. As far as I can tell, the ghosts here found a way to penetrate my protections. The ghost of Josiah hill got through my Sanctum wards by hiding in the flesh of my friend Keenan.  As a last resort, my death triggered a spell I prepared to trap the ghosts in pocket dimension… but it seems that the spell took more than the ghosts… it was always a last resort. Before this I’d been trying to help from the wards I put up to protect you from them. I can feel them battering at the protections I’ve placed on these rooms, but you’re safe here for the time being.”

Then Persephone asked who and what he was:

“I am a man. I was a man, at any rate. A seeker of knowledge. If you are more comfortable calling me a wizard, then do so. I am more than that, but that’s the answer you’re looking for, isn’t it?”

That concerned me greatly.  I recognized the term seeker from a source I will not record here but did not know whether or not I could confirm that Sullivan was a seeker over a mere traveler.  Persephone asked why he said there was something he needed us to do and what that was:

“The dead man responsible for this was once a person I knew well. He came to be trapped here after death inside the very wards made to protect him, and he’s gone mad from the torment they instilled. Hill must be stopped. There’s only one sure way I know. There is an antique pocket watch that boy out there stole from me.” (He gestured to the foyer, where Keenan’s body was)  “It must be found. The watch once belonged to Joe. It was his most precious possession, and it is that which ties him to this world now. Get the watch.” 

At this point we drew out the golden pocket watch we found inside Keenan’s room and the ghost of Sullivan’s eyes flashed in recognition.  We already had the watch thing covered.  Persephone already knew this was an anchor for something but had not destroyed it in case the ghost attached would be valuable.  She tends to not want to banish ghosts to the Underworld out of hand.  She asked what Sullivan intended to do with this anchor:

“Yes…Ghosts need to be anchored to the physical world to exist here. They are kept here by unfinished business, by an inability to move on… But there is always something that represents that connection, a physical object that symbolizes their attachment to this world  you can find that object, and destroy it,” (He gestured to the watch held up in front of him)

Persephone said that this was no problem with some spared paradox, she could destroy Josiah “Joe” Hill’s anchor and be done with this business.

“It is not enough to simply destroy it.  Through Josiah Hill is the way the other specters and trapped dead of this place have been able to cross over.  If he and his anchor are destroyed utterly his death resonance can be used at the heart of the spell used to pull us into this place to unravel the spell and return you to reality... but it will release all the tortured dead to roam the city free…  But that doesn’t matter now… people have been trapped here and that was not my intent… hurry… The easiest way to do both these things would be to take the watch up to the roof and attach it to the lightning rod. The rod is the focal point for the dimensional pocket spell.  I designed it that way, for the watch I kept.  But I never wanted to destroy Joe, I wanted to save all of them…. I’m sorry… Let the angry heavens destroy that which anchors him to this realm and free you, and all of us.”

Moses asked Persephone to ask if all the people downstairs would be okay and she obliged him.  They were dealing with this encounter with another ghost much better than any of the others so far.  I suppose having a ghost that didn’t mindlessly attack immediately helped with that response:

“They are possessed by angry shades, shades empowered by the gateway Josiah has made for them.  I see it now.   If you destroy the watch and destroy Hill, those ghosts will be ripped from them and returned to the other side of the shroud, the Twilight... unable to have the strength to take their hosts.  There… in that chest over there, there are a few relics blessed by holy hands that will allow you to harm the ghosts, rather than their hosts. The innocents can be saved.”

Among the items in the chest was an odd assortment of objects that supposedly had the mystical properties associated with blessed objects.  It is a fallen truth that could be said to relate to the Supernal Aether but not one that can be easily quantified.  These objects are those that have large amounts of human faith and devotion placed upon them but not of a greedy nature.  An incredibly devote Catholic who kept a cross around her neck from age five to a hundred and five, that cross has a change to be instilled with that special something.  These objects must have gained these traits through similar means. 

However they got that way, blessed objects can repel the demonic and the ephemeral and can hurt their corpus when any mundane physical means fail.  I see the blessed property as another enigma between the nature of the Supernal and the rules of this broken reality. What we found in the chest was an assortment of accoutrements: A genuine hand of glory, a rabbit’s foot, a rook’s skull, a strange looking feather, a dream catcher, Buddhist prayer beads, and a rosary.

It was at this point both Nicky and Ben were unwilling to continue.  They blood and bone fragments cannonading across the glass covered rooftop was too much… or maybe it was the talking gentleman’s ghost.  The four of us, our dear friends looking for their baby and a way to get to him, pressed on.

Chapter Three “The Burning” Scene 3: “The Roof”

“A bloody rain whipped across the roof in torrential waves. There were no clouds above, only the same black void we saw through the windows downstairs. Lightning struck the rod almost constantly, accompanied by thunderclaps that rattled me to my very bones. Wind plucked at my clothes like an impatient lover. The bloody rain soaked my clothes instantly red as a hail of bone shards clattered on the rooftop incessisantly. In front of us, a…. thing… stood in the scarlet rain, its arms outstretched to the heavens. It might have been a man, once, but now it was a distorted, ragged thing, a patchwork of flesh and bare, bleeding muscle under a smoldering garment. His hair crackled and smoked in the rain, and the smell of burning hair and flesh filled my nostrils. He lowered his arms and turned to me. His face was a nightmare. The eyes boiled in their sockets, dripping and running like iridescent tears down his ravaged cheeks. He grinned, slowly, his teeth glowing like coal.”

What can I really say about this showdown?  Lighting, blood, bony blasted away at us.  A few spells were cast.  I squared off against the wraith and we traded terrible blows.  Persephone healed me, tore away at his corpus and at one point was unable to control the paradox that mounted up and created a standing magical anomaly rather than what she intended… but there was no time to worry about the after effects of outcome… it was live or die.

I shielded Lianna and Moses, we kept Josiah and the vengeful dead backing him from the whirlwind on us while they climbed the blood-slicked glass pyramid and fixed the pocket watch up it.  The lightning rod on top was being struck every few seconds with terrifying force.  They struggled as magic and paradox flew, trying to get the timing right, trying not to slide back down to the base again.  In a moment of pure serendipity they secured the watch just as a fierce bolt of magical lightning lanced down from the heavens. 

“Lianna and Moses threw themselves away from the lightning rod as soon as they got the watch tied on. And just in time, too! Lightning coursed through the iron, and an ear-shattering clap of thunder knocked us all on our asses. Everything seemed to slowed to a crawl. I saw, quite clearly, the lightning spidering along the chain of the pocket watch, the metal bubbling and melting. The face exploded in tiny shards of glass. Gears rain from the watch, themselves bending and melting from the superheated force of the electricity tearing through them. All except one tiny golden gear the size of a dime that skips across the blood covered roof.  Josiah Hill’s fire flagged suddenly. The smoldering ruins of his body darkened, and he started to discorporate. His scream brought back the blue evening sky. We were back.  I watched the darkness around the rooftop fade back into the real.  I felt the top of the building ‘descend’ back into place with a shudder, a micro earthquake like what we felt when Sullivan was shot and his last ditch effort activated.”

We were back, covered in blood and gore from some spectral nightmare that no longer applied.  Over the side of the roof we could see news vehicles, police cars, ambulance, fire trucks, we were four for four.  Even without seeing what was trending on Facebook or Twitter it was easy to guess that the top floors of the building had actually vanished and then inexplicably returned in plain sight of these sleeper witnesses.  Cops would be mounting the stairs, the Concillium would know our involvement in this and perhaps blame the huge break in the veil on the isolated Cabal on the edge of town full of Apostates. 

This situation was getting bad to our sleeper covers and our standings in the city’s magical community.  It was time to bail and do some clean up.  We paradox dissipated. I had the Krehbiels close their eyes as I guided them to a portal back to the sleeper-side of our Sanctum.

Persephone and I also risked the time to throw all the books from Sullivan’s personal library through the portal using more complex spells of space and shadows to hurry the task.  Then I made a few seconds of an attempt at scrubbing our resonance before darting through.

Back in the Sanctum I scanned the four of us and severed all detectable sympathetic connections we had that tied back to the Hill Apartment complex…

As we shuffled the precious old books out of the way a card fell out from between one of the pages. I almost was not surprised to see another of the First Tarot here.  It seems they are turning up with every major event that happens in our lives.  The Horsemen keep finding them to and we still don’t know who is leaving these Atlantean Artifacts in our wake.  It could be my precious wheel of destiny at work once more or the encouragement of the Oracles or Exarchs, who can really say?

As was becoming custom, these cards I find I seem to do best giving them away.  So we lent the card to the Krebiels, hopefully it will shield them from any paranormal or magi-political backlash that may result from this harrowing adventure.

Strangely enough, the card was the Two of Cups.  That wasn’t the strangest thing though.  It was certainly the most modern of the cards we had found so far.  It almost appeared to be a playing card from the New York New York Casino in Los Vegas Nevada… except they don’t make tarot cards over playing cards to my knowledge.

Among the strange things we managed to scuffle off with in the confusion was the gear.  Persephone recovered it from the deep pools of blood on the rooftop.  Resonance-wise it is strange and pristine… I hazard to say it may be a Plutonic Exemplar but that remains to be seen.  It is special, and may have something to do with the power of this watch over Josiah, and the immense power he gathered as a tortured ghost.

Chapter Three “The Burning” Scene 4: “Getting Calvin”

Only one task remained, this entire time we were trapped in the pocket dimension we were missing someone.  Where was Lianna and Moses’s baby Calvin?  With some discussion we determined that they must have had a babysitter to watch Calvin while they were at Habitat for Humanity but it was well after the hours the Child Development Center (CDC) would be open on base.  Then it came to Moses.

Moses had tried to politely back down from volunteering to his squadron commander by saying they didn’t have a babysitter to cover the time.  She insisted and stated she would happily watch little Calvin while Lianna and he helped build homes for the unfortunate.  We changed clothing and got cleaned up, stopping by to retrieve ours and their car’s from the parking lot (right under any investigator’s noses with some clever use of thaumaturgy across those remaining sympathetic ties) and retrieved (aported) clean clothing for all of us.

It was an awkward visit to the Commander;s.  We had all, with the exception of Persephone, worked directly for this commander before and she could be very intense, especially towards females stepping up in the military to set the truth example of a leader-paragon.  When we were let in by her husband we over heard her talking to Calvin about his future objectivities of women in authority or something like that.

This visit might have been the hardest part about that day, but we got through it and secured their baby.  They have since returned to what passes for a normal life and I have kept tabs on them to ensure they didn’t show signs of long term magical or psychological damage from the events.  While it has changed them, I think at the core of it all they found courage in the most terrifying of circumstances.  They have gifts, fallen reflections of supernal ideals; perhaps someday their souls will blossom to the true source of all….  -end

**Nova Doctrina Analysis**

 ((Used Four Transhuman Intelligence dots to research and gain significant revelations and speculations))

When the city of San Antonio was younger, the land around where Hill Manor apartment’s sits belonged to Josiah Hill and his family. They lived in a sprawling mansion surrounded by vast stone walls bearing the legend, “Hill Manor.” A private family, the Hills hosted few guests and kept themselves to themselves. Their considerable impact on the burgeoning city was cut tragically short when a fire tore through the manor, leveling the building and leaving no survivors. 

The Hill Manor Apartment building was eventually built on the razed land. Here and there, the architect incorporated salvaged metalwork and tile taken from the gutted mansion, and the keystone of the building bears the original engraved Hill Manor sign.  But Hill’s story started long before the fire.

Before he was established, Josiah Hill fled here, stalked by a thing he didn’t understand—something that lived beyond the edge of vision, just out of reach of the keenest hearing. He did not see it, did not hear it, but he felt it. It stood at the bottom of the stairs in the crawling darkness, but it fled when he turned up the gas. It whispered while he slept, but went mute when he awoke. Driven to distraction, unable to sleep or concentrate, he traveled the world looking for somewhere he could find peace.

When he came upon the town he would settle in, he did not plan to stop. But a local named Sullivan Barnes (A Moros) saw, if not the stalking creature, the marks it left upon Hill. He offered the harried man a respite from the slinking thing. Hill began to build his Manor based on Barnes’ occult instruction. The land was turned and leveled, and a silver dust was mixed into the earth, creating a pattern of protection, a mystical ward against the thing that tortured Josiah Hill.

The land itself was taught to shun the malevolent creature by use of Spiritual wards and bans. Here, Hill was safe, so long as he didn’t leave the grounds of Hill Manor. Sullivan became his most trusted friend. He was given free rein over the manor, but he chose to live in a small cottage on the southern lawn.

The Ward created a barrier around the property lines infused with the silver dust and additional correspondences.  This barrier prevented ghosts and spirits from crossing it.  Inside the barrier, if something did manage to get in, the Bans would scour the entity, making the environment extremely hostile and painful to the creature.  Also the area had a strong suppression field, making ephemeral beings virtually unable to manifest or use their Influences or Numina.  Naturally the Gauntlet was also as thick as possible like so many other Sanctum procedures employed by modern mages to keep spirits out.

Despite my efforts, I have been unable to determine what sort of spirit was haunting Hill and where it went.  The fact Barnes pinged on it almost suggests something Supernal or Abyssal but maybe that is because those are the situations I usually get involved with.  Certain people attract spirits with their inner light and bleed off motes of a very desirable essence to things.   Perhaps Hill was special in this way and a very nasty thing tried to latch on for this special food.  Magoth?  Spirit of darkness or death?  Not enough information to know for sure.

 I am beginning to suspect that Barnes or Hill did not summon us to the Manor Apartments.  Maybe the entity that wanted Hill had us come in, pulled us and messed with our heads.  Maybe by bringing the wards down finally we gave the creature what it wanted: Hill’s soul.  I detected no traces but it is possible with everything going on including being trapped in a pocket dimension might have caused me to overlook the subtle.  It is also possible that this was part of a bigger game that pulled us in.  The Gear from Hill’s golden pocket watch, the First Tarot card artifact we found suggests that the Destiny surrounding me and mine is continuing to pull us along a path to consolidate the cards… even though almost every card we have received we have given away to protect someone.  This card went to the Krehbiels to keep agents of the Lie from finding them after this incident.

Local fringe lore paints Sullivan as some kind of warlock, leading a satanic cult of dissolute, jaded gentry in debauched rites while holding Hill under his thrall. But while he was Magus, the truth is that most wizards live relatively quiet, boring lives. The only way in which he took advantage of Hill’s gratitude was by using his considerable resources to gather a collection of obscure books.  Sullivan spent most of his prime “debauched rite” time reading and studying.

From some of the documents we uncovered he appears to be a member of the Mysterium.  From what I can glean from the upkeep of his archive he was a bit of a dreamer and idealist.  He spent too much time in the theory of magic and it’s amazing capabilities and less time on practical applications.  He was largely inexperienced but amassed a trove of knowledge to allow him to be deadly.  Based on everything we witnessed I believe he is a Moros, Master of Death, Adept of Matter and Space, Disciple of Spirit.  I still need to page through all those books… I will avoid any bound in human flesh.  Learned my lesson from last time.

Hill’s family orbited around him and eventually traveled behind him, growing and settling in Texas, a veritable soap opera of strife and backstabbing as they jockeyed to be named the patriarch’s heir. As the family, staff and assorted hangers-on grew, so too did the manor. The Hills annexed the lands around their estate, but Hill remained solely in the original, warded lands. Portions of his own house became a foreign land to him.  The threshold of the main house was compromised by extending over the properly lines during these annexations.  Either Barnes did not realize or did not know how to properly implement or accomplish the Wards and Bans to cover these extensions.  Perhaps the foundations were laid before the ground around the Manor could be toiled, maybe they were out of super-rare silver, perhaps gifted by a Lune?

Finally, the creature found a way to reach him indirectly.  One night, a maid (the one that manifested briefly on the 6^th floor Northwest hallway) in one of the annexed wings heard a whisper. She listened, straining to understand the words, and was caught. The thing moved through the annex clothed in the housekeeper’s flesh, but the ward was strong. It could not enter the core of the house. So it started a fire. The annex burnt, and tongues of flame paid the warded earth no heed. The entire house was destroyed. Only Sullivan Barnes survived, in his cottage separated from the house. At the reading of the will, it turned out that Hill had left everything to Sullivan. With no surviving relatives to contest the will, he took ownership of the razed land for a full month before he sold it to the company that would eventually build the Hill Manor Apartment building.

Trouble is… the core of the Wards were damaged through the purifying fire.  Perhaps the spirit did something to affect them while they were in flux.  Perhaps their deaths were combined with a sacrificial ritual.  Death resonance is very entropic and can sometimes neutralize or negate Resonance and spells.  As a result of this damage the portion of the Ban that was keeping ephemeral beings from manifesting began to break down.  Also, for whatever reason (and perhaps this has something to do with Hill being “special” or the nefarious goals of the entity) the wards began attracting ghosts.  Anything within an indeterminate radius was affected and anyone who died and produced a ghost was pulled into this magical conflagration. 

Regular people don’t notice the conflux of magical energy there, hell I barely noticed, but any ghost pulled into the wards would be trapped inside, unable to cross the line a second time, and the Bans now tainted with the resonance of fire and death would scourge them.  This burning state of agony wouldn’t destroy the ghosts, only torture them in a hostile environment which they are unable to escape.  The result is the true horror of the Hill Manor apartments.  There are dozens and dozens of ghosts driven insane by spiritual agony, unable to act… until that fateful night.

Over time, the construction workers working on the high-rise apartment building reported a number of strange events. They saw things they couldn’t explain or forget. A number of employees died after falling from great heights while the building’s skeleton was being erected (Their ghosts were added to the maelstrom of burning imprisonment). Other accidents plagued the site, but in a time of lax safety regulations, the construction continued. Finally, the building was finished. Sullivan Barnes was the first paying tenant. 

Somehow the Moros had overseen the construction, despite not owning the building any longer, a confusing move but not impossible.  Understanding a little about what had happened Barnes attempted to repair aspects of the Bans by using parts of the old mansion as the cornerstones and support structures of the new building.

He took up residence in a penthouse apartment on the top floor and made it his Sanctum. Sullivan Barnes had discovered that his ward was too good. The ghosts of the Hill family, the servants, everyone who died on the property–in the blaze or afterward–were trapped in the ward. They could not move on. Moreover, it hurt. There was no respite for these shades. They went mad with pain, and began to take it out on the construction workers working on the building and then the new tenants.

When Barnes investigated, he saw echoes of people he had known in life, twisted in agony. He saw the crazed remnant of his friend, Josiah Hill. Hill was the worst, resplendent in flame and a powerful shade, exerting his lordship over the place he had once hid for protection.  And Barnes knew that this was his fault.

When the building was finished, he bought the top floor with the money he had made selling the land, and he moved in. He sought a way to free his old friend and the others, but until then Barnes created a ritual space in his new home, one that he could use to bind and suppress the ghosts haunting the warded site (an inner ring in the Penthouse that ghosts could not cross).  He attempted to repair the suppression aspects of the Bans to keep the insane dead from hurting the living.  After much research he tied a failsafe to his lifeline in case he failed and the suppression bans finally came crumbling down.

Though he lived an extraordinarily long, magically extended life, he only held the deranged spirits at bay. They are still trapped in the cage he unwittingly created in his hubris and desire to help a friend.  I don’t know how many things he tried or how successful he was.  A hundred and fifty year life, a good portion spent trying to free them while giving them peace.  The magical barriers and zones of power he created all those years ago were too powerful to break down.  And somehow the ghost of Josiah Hill was taking control of the flames that tormented them, and compelled the lost souls of the Manor to his biding.  A showdown between estranged friends was imminent.

Almost a year ago, one of “our” neighbors at the complex, a young man named Keenan, met Sullivan, now living under the assumed identity “Brian Sullivan.” The old man was trying to wrestle groceries into the elevator, and Keenan helped him out. Over time, the pair formed a friendship. Keenan visited Brian, and they played chess and talked. Sullivan was starved for companionship after focusing for so long on the magical problems before him. Keenan’s simple normalcy was a welcome respite from a search that had proved fruitless for almost a century. Sullivan also felt that his time was coming to an end. Though he was a mage, he did not have the power to extend his life indefinitely. He was becoming infirm, physically and mentally. As he weakened, so too did his protections. The firelight that kept the coyotes away flickered, and a malevolent, maddened ghost took notice.

Josiah Hill, once Sullivan Barnes’ friend, now viewed him as a captor. The burning agony of his death went on and on, turning fondness into seething hatred. And Hill saw a hole. Keenan, trusted by Sullivan, was the key. Subtly, Hill began to toy with the young man, compelling him, cajoling and tempting him. Every ghost has an anchor, a thing that symbolizes their connection to this world. Hill’s was the antique pocket watch that belonged to him in life, a family heirloom that had been passed down from father to son in the Hill family until the family line ended. The watch was passed on to Sullivan, who kept it in memory of his dead companion.

Sullivan’s end began with a small betrayal: Keenan started to covet the watch. He didn’t know why. It was beautiful, yes, but there was more to it than that. He needed that watch. The old man would never notice it was gone. Keenan gave in to Hill and stole the pocket watch.

As we got pulled into, Josiah Hill possessed Keenan for the final time. He knocks on Sullivan’s door and, clothed in the young man’s form (just like the maid and the fire), is welcomed. He takes out the gun that he compelled Keenan to buy, and he shoots his old friend twice in the chest.

You see when Sullivan took up shop on the Penthouse (with its mystically attuned pyramid shape) he set up another set of wards to keep ghosts out and keep them inside when he was experimenting on them.  This extra layer of protection kept Hill out until he hid in the flesh of a welcomed guest.  Otherwise Barnes might have been kept safe for a lot longer.  Friendship can be a weakness to exploit.

As “Brian Sullivan” aka the mage Sullivan Barnes dies, the pocket dimension so carefully prepared as a last resort kicks into effect.  Key’d to a time in which Barnes is killed and Hill finally being able to slip past the crumbling foundations of magic,  the powerful Space Spell pulls the The top three floors are pulled into the void in order to keep the rampaging dead from escaping and tormenting the living.  The bans remain, the ward keeping all the ghosts inside dropped.  This would let all the burning dead into San Antonio proper if not for the pocket dimension.  So well-crafted was this failsafe that it took all the ghosts to that other place as well as the living.  The watch must also have been tied to this because once Hill’s anchor was destroyed the building returned to reality.

I am not sure how he managed to localize all the burning dead to the top floors of the structure but I suspect it has something to do with the building’s mystical architecture (much easier to understand after studying the Little London Workings folio) and the silver dust in the ground and parts of the old mansion worked into the foundations of the structure.  It could also have something to do with that little gear we found inside the watch, something that made the watch too important or valuable to smash.

I feel bad for Barnes but I have to question his morals.  Was he intending to wait till he died of old age and then curse all the sleepers in those floors to slow death in torment in a void dimension?  I also have to question why he did not destroy the antique watch beforehand if he know it was Hill’s anchor.  Maybe it has something to do with the hubristic refusal to cut his losses and give up.  He wanted to find a way to cured the dead from their torment and then drop the barriers but as long as they were trapped in the Bans they were in torment.  A chicken or the egg scenario, and one that could have been avoided if he had not made these protections so potent, perpetual, and fool-proof that he could not bring them down or rebuild them once they began to crumble.  Back in the day maybe he was worried the entity could compel him into dropped the wards and giving the walking terror access to his friend.  He has been regretting that mistake ever since the fire.

What could inspire such fear? Sullivan Barnes thought he might have had it pinned down to a certain entity according to his journals.  They are called Walkers and they are the result of the corruption upon Shadow People.  Just like the mundane paranormal research calls them, Shadow People are living shadow entities, undead but not quite ghosts.  They are actually very fascinating and very little is known regarding how they are created outside of using the Death Arcanum.  Whether he realizes it or not Nergal’s shadow servants created by one of his Attainments, collectively called Kage, are shadow people.  Well there exist some bogeymen stories collected in the Barnes self-made library of Necromancy about Abyssal Shadow People called Walkers.  They haunt a target, gas lighting, and eventually devouring.  It seems to fit the profile, he certainly thought so.  One they have bounded to a person’s “soul,” “Ka” or their “shadow” it’s very hard to shake them off.

So we went up to the Penthouse and then secured the watch to the building’s lightning rod.  The storm of roiling clouds and lightening, raining blood and bone chips, and limited to the top floor appeared to be a manifestation of the spiritual scourging fire, the Ban itself, or even a perpetual energy machine that Barnes would use to keep the Wards powered.  At the time I couldn’t call up sights to study without risking enormous paradox.  I couldn’t it further so I can only speculate; I barely had time to look at it with Supernal Vision in the commotion.  Whatever it was the lightning from it was constantly striking the rod and it was sufficient to destroy the watch and banish Josiah Hill into The Great Below.  With the watch, the key to all this, destroyed, the top of the building was pulled back into the physical.  With the wards down either the ghosts were banished with the destruction of the lead specter, or if they fled the area, perhaps the only thing keeping them around and on this plane of existence was the wards.  Or we have any number of mad ghosts on the loose, shudder to think.

*** Loose Ends & After Actions ***

1    Survivors (5) of the Hill Manor Apartments may require follow-ups.  They may have already been sanitized by other mages or beings. ((NPCs))

2    Library: Necromancy 3 from books gathered from SB Sanctum and it is possible the ghost of Sullivan Barnes may still have an anchor in them ((Ghost Mage?))

3    Blessed Objects recovered/distributed by the group, all are +1 Blessed items: Hand of Glory, Rabbit’s Foot, Rook Skull, Strange Feather, Dream catcher, Buddhist Prayer Beads, and a Rosary.

       Building’s roof is a Stygian Hallow 2

          Building’s Penthouse has been cleaned out by authorities, up for sale soon

       When the top floors of the building went into the pocket dimension the top three floors actually vanished completely from existence.  This caused quite a stir in sleeper authorities as well as the Concillium.  Other than trace elements no one should know we were involved

      Persephone released a paradox in the final confrontation with Josiah Hill, as a result there is a strong permanent Stygian Anomaly tied to here.  It would be good to correct that. 

        Lianna & Moses were exposed to a high amount of magic and pooled paradox from Casstiel and Persephone.  There might be long term effects.  ((Justification for Moses’s Unseen Sense (Ghosts) to turn into a Moros (like Seph) and Lianna’s telepathy to develop her into a fully Awakened Mastigos (like Casstiel).

      Persephone found a strange metal Gear inside Hill’s Anchor, a golden pocket watch.

      Moses & Lianna Kriebiel were given one of the First Tarot cards, a supernal artifact.  These keep popping up in our path.  Some sort of Destiny that has been following us since we Awakened.

      The mystery of “The Walker,” the entity which tormented Josiah Hill before the fire and not seen afterwards, is most likely still at large.  What is it?  Where did it come from?  Where is it now?

      What about any number of the 50-60 residents who might have been on those floors when they left and returned?  Could some of them still be possessed?

      So now that Josiah Hill is banished to the Underworld the problem at Hill Manor is done right?  Not necessarily.  Ghosts from that place have either moved on or been let loose.  The ward keeping them inside the Manor is gone, the spells suppressing ghostly activity are gone, but that strange effect which pulls ghosts into the apartment building and the Ban which torments them may not be.  We must keep eyes out for the Burning Dead.  We must also keep an eye out for Hill.  He could always show up later on an Underworld expedition…

      The Concillium could use this cluster fuck as justification to banish the BoS Cabal, untrusted as we are.  It wouldn’t even matter if we were involved, mistrust and fear of the Left-Handed is sometimes all you need.  As powerful as we are, what we might represent for the cities politics it’s not outside of reason.

**** Persona non grata ((NPCs involved)) ****

Janice Poole “The Poker Queen” – burned to death

Brandon Oliva “Maintenance Son” – freed from possession, minor wounds

Orlando Oliva “Maintenance Father” – freed from possession, very hurt, blinded in one eye

Ben Holt “The Hipster Chiver” – survived, interacted with us

Sullivan Barnes “Brian Sullivan” – dead Moros, Ghost Mage?

Josiah Hill “Crazed Spector” – banished to Underworld

Keegan “Friend we never met” – shot himself in the head, dead

Thomas Booth “Rough Librarian” – survived, interacted with us

Nishan “Nicky Sims” Sadoyan – helped us reach penthouse, survived, interacted with us

Rachel O’Hara “Legacy Cop” - survived, interacted with us

Michael Nero “The Paramedic” - survived, interacted with us