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
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 6th 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 5th 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 7th
floor outside the door. Blackness on
window panes in that brief glance. The 7th
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 6th 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 6th 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 6th 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
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