[Mage: The Slenderman Plot] Zero-X (Part II)

Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler

Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

Zero-X: A Story About the Dead (Part II)

by Chimera (Hannah Nyland), Azazel & Eos (Jerad Sayler)

What follows is the next transcript of the debriefing led by neophyte Chimera, Sleepwalker Agent Eos, and Chimera’s fetch Azazel on the Slenderman incident in North Dakota in 2014.  Out of Character, the entire plot took place over the course of the entire week of Halloween in 2014 and over 60 hours of game play.

Story Parts:
1. Part I
2. Part II
3. Part III
4. Part IV
5. Part V: The Monster

May 4th, 2014 

Chimera: Casstiel was slated to introduce Kairos and I to the Fargo Concilium; a necessity with both of us moving to the area in the near future. North Dakota is largely considered an untamed backwater by the mage community. The supernatural residents and phenomenon of the state aren’t what you’d call well charted out, meaning that there’s effectively several hundred miles of "paranormal wilderness" between Fargo and the next nearest Concilium in Minneapolis and from the western side of North Dakota all the way into Montana. The Concillium of the Red River Valley (also more commonly referred to as the Fargo Concillium) included half a dozen Awakened spread across the eastern side of the state with splits in influence between the Silver Ladder and Free Council. It encompasses only a small number of mages overall. 

Chimera: None of this seemed of much importance to me at the time, because I was too busy worrying. Trying not to offend is one thing when the person you’re speaking with is a "muggle," and quite another when they’re capable of lighting you on fire just by thinking about it. Casstiel has told me that the Cabal of the Five Horsemen has traditionally been distrusted by the Powers That Be - some Orders even consider them terrorists or Banishers – but they’re slowly trying to change that. Making a good first impression to the concilium here is one small step down that road. 

Azazel: Having Awakened away from a concillium with no one but themselves and Gabrielle to mentor them it is really not surprising that when they found out about the Pentacle Orders they were distrustful and uninterested in joining. After all, all the Orders expect to get something out their investments in new mages, things they were unwilling to grovel for. This combined with their rapidly growing powers and incidents involving powerful workings of magic greatly concerned the Fargo Concillium as they watched their neighbors swear allegiances to no-one but their own moral code. I also don’t blame the concillium for their distrust. Some years back they did distribute a Charter that included and reiterated the basic premises of the Great Rights and the Lex Magica to show that the Horsemen did largely follow the rules of a more conventional and Order-aligned Cabal. The introduction of Chimera and Kairos was a great first step in attempting to play nice and take some of the long shadows into the light.

Chimera: The Hierarch wasn’t in attendance, but three members are: Panoptes, Black Moon, and Spooky. I’ve never met any of them before, although Kairos seems to have a history with the former Black Moon and Panoptes. And he can’t help but cheerfully note that Spooky is also the name of his cat. The woman isn’t particularly amused by this. After a bit of spirited sniping back and forth, the introductions are made. We exchange contact information, then leave. It was very awkward. 

Azazel: Kairos knew them because Panoptes and Black Moon came to the rescue of Indra’s family when her cousin David was abducted by a hobgoblin and dragged into the Hedge on Thanksgiving 2013. They helped manage the fallout and since these events took place in Lakota, North Dakota, they were considered in the fringe of the Fargo Concillium territory. Kairos, Indra, Nergal and a mage named Witness were involved in the incident and would have more information on what actually occurred. STARK has a section in the audio-archives recorded during the event that can be reviewed as well.

Chimera: Later I received a warning from Casstiel to be on alert for Prodigy, a message that’s exceedingly sparse on the details – the sort of thing that gets a young apprentice’s teeth gnashing. It’s also around this time that I learned, through experience, that STARK can be persuaded to go behind his creator’s back. Seems that STARK is a little more human-like in reasoning than I think it (he?) was ever intended to be. You should probably look into that, Cass.

Azazel: Unless of course he had previously authorized the Virtual Intelligence (VI) to provide information pertinent enough to help… but probably not really the case here.

Chimera: In the weeks that follow the murder, Seraph works through his contacts in the Adamantine Arrow in the mid-west, informing them that the group intends to hunt down a rogue Cabal member. Additionally, he acts on a suspicion of his. He recalls seeing Prodigy’s warped familiar referenced somewhere, in a book on Abyssal threats. Using his connections in the Arrow, he’s able to obtain access to a several century old, sanitized tome about such creatures.
Chimera: In this tome, Prodigy’s familiar is named as Gnomon; meaning "He who discerns" or "One who reveals", as well as the piece on a sundial that measures time by the position of its shadow. Illustrations depict a pieced-together abomination of human flesh; the head of an ancient woman and a young boy sewn onto a bloated, hovering body and lolling grotesquely. Two chubby baby feet hang from the swollen mass of skin and stitches, and a tangle of spiderlike limbs are attached to the creature’s back – some ending in surgical tools, others in blades and syringes filled with colored chemicals.

It’s said that Gnomon was created in the 1700s by a mage named Galen Mire. For weeks he worked tirelessly in a dark, hidden Sanctum in the London Royal Hospital to create a being that could bring him to the height of his magical potential in an instant. It’s also said that he succeeded; Galen’s understanding of magic skyrocketed literally overnight. For a moment, the secrets of the universe were in his grasp – and then it was too much, and his overburdened mind snapped like taffy.

Insanity is always a risk for mages. When the very threads of the universe are at your whim, when your enemies range from the murderous to the outright hellish, there are all too many incentives to simply let go. In fact, I’m of the opinion that no mage is truly sane, at least not in the way Sleepers would define it.

But Galen went beyond that, plunging into horrific, irreparable madness. He went on a killing spree, murdering dozens of innocent civilians before deciding to off himself. Gnomon however, lived on. Every few years after that fateful day, it would appear to a new mage, offering its services and the innermost secrets of magic - each time mistaking the person for his original master. And every single time, this new "master" gained enormous supernal power almost instantly - and then fell into a violent madness from which there was no return. Though many have searched, the room that Galen constructed Gnomon in the hospital has never been found.

There are other rumors as well- that Gnomon can return from the dead through the hidden room in the London Royal Hotel, that it made an old woman young again and erased her memories, that it at once sees into the past and the future but never the present. And that it’s capable of jumping a day backwards ahead or behind in time, taking a passenger with it.

Prodigy’s changes are starting to make a lot more sense.

Azazel: The entity must have shown up right when Prodigy hung behind at the site of the breaking of the final seal of the Hellmenth, promising to fly back so the Horsemen could venture to the Underworld to stop the Denarians on Dec 27, 2012. It offered him the power to fight and win against the Order of Judas and he took him up on that deal. I wonder if Prodigy’s willful tampering with Abyssal corruptions of magic may have called to Gnomon.

Chimera: Everyone starts making plans; more research, training, divination. I continue to spy on their efforts; I mean was curious, and more than a little alarmed.

Eos: In all fairness, it’s pretty easy to spy on them when you have STARK and Azazel on your team.

Azazel: I don’t consider providing safety information to young mages spying. Also, I must point out, that access to the logs and records of the Cabals’ venture were conveniently left open for your use…

Eos: Wait, so your saying Casstiel left the back door open for us to do this? He wanted us to do what we did? Putting us closer to that thing… on purpose?

Azazel: I do not know Eos, my former master’s understanding of cause and effect is not linear. Perhaps we needed to do something in order for the events to occur as they did.

Eos:… asshole. I’m not a pawn… fuck him. That better not be the case, we need to do something about him.

Chimera: Anyways… while they made plans, the image of Orion, that mage’s broken corpse keeps making its way into my mind, unbidden. Which is worse, I wonder. To have that inflicted on you? Or to be depraved enough to inflict it? The idea of either sends chills rolling down my spine.

More ominous signs: we start to hear reports of unusual weather patterns moving over the state; great rolling masses of heat and light. Local leylines are suddenly sporadic and infrequent; as though they’ve seen what’s coming and decided to run the hell away from it. 


May 24th, 2014

Chimera: STARK catches wind of something over police channels and passes it along; the murder of twenty-seven year old Jay Bolton in Cavalier, North Dakota. It isn’t the victim that makes this case stand out, though. It’s the killer.

His name was Alex Kralie; an employee of Cavalier’s one and only CENEX. When interviewed by police, his employers had nothing but good things to say about him. By all accounts, he was a model employee until he murdered Bolton in cold blood late one night. The only one on shift at the time, Kralie then closed up the store, drove himself home, and phoned the police to confess to his crime.

And when they arrived a few minutes later, he was dead.

Chimera: Suicide? Sure, if Kralie was somehow capable of disemboweling himself, removing his own internal organs and then making them disappear. Heart, liver, stomach – gone. The wounds that killed him are too precise, and entirely too clean. Meanwhile, Bolton is reported to have only suffered defensive wounds, and they’re about as messy as you’d expect.

Cavalier is an itty-bitty little town in the middle of nowhere where the only causes of death are old age and boredom. Such a murder is practically unheard of there. The two bodies have been transferred to the Pembina County Memorial Hospital morgue; neither flagged for autopsy yet. The CENEX is vacated and taped off; scrying reveals no police presence and no security.

It’s as good a time as any to portal in and have a look around, and after the usual draw of the Tarot by the resident cartomancer, Casstiel, that’s exactly what our powerful friends decide to do.

Tarot Draw: Five of Pentacles Reversed

Spiritual poverty, loneliness and isolation

Chimera: CENEX first. The place has clearly been cleaned up by local law enforcement since the murder happened; no blood, brains or other unseemly body parts lying around on the floor, which immediately puts it a few steps above the last crime scene they visited. Unfortunately, it also means that there’s no mundane evidence here to pour over. But supernatural evidence is a different story. 

First off, the post-cog. A stocky young man in a CENEX uniform, brown hair, a full goatee, and vaguely Native American features stands behind the counter of the convenience store. His eyes are dull and sunken back in his skull, but he’s frustrated, angry, almost feverish under Life sight; he taps his fingers on the counter in a frantic beat as his other hand scrolls through text messages on a nearby smartphone. It’s late, nearly closing time when the Jay Bolton walks in. 

Bolton is an unremarkable man, the sort that would never stand out in a crowd; the sort that there’s not much to like about on first meeting, but not much to find fault in either. Nergal’s sights peg him as someone accustomed to working with his hand, a welder or mechanic, and that he often stops by at the end of his shifts to grab a snack and energy drink. He smiles at the Alex and opens his mouth, no doubt about to indulge in that brand of banal, harmless brand of friendliness native to the Midwest.

Alex’s eyes snap up from his phone, and he locks onto Bolton with a look than can only be described as utter hatred. He leaps over the counter and tackles the man to the floor as a crazed, feral scream tears out from his throat.

For the first few seconds, Bolton is too stunned to react as Alex rips into him with animalistic rage, landing blow after vicious blow and tearing at his exposed face and neck with his teeth. In response to this onslaught, all the man can offer are a few whimpered protests ("What the hell man? What-"). He flails out at Kralie with his arms, trying to push him off, to little effect; Alex doesn’t even seem to register his struggles.

He keeps hitting Bolton long after he’s stopped moving; the man is a limp, mangled corpse on before Kralie pushes himself away and staggers to his feet. He looks dazed, as though just awakened from a particularly vivid dream. And then he looks down, and sees it. The blood on his hands. The body on the floor.

You can see the moment the realization hits him; Alex sways, barely managing to stay on his feet as a single syllable escapes from his lips.

"No . . ."

The vision ends.

Casstiel detects no supernal magic around the site, and Eris senses no spirits around now or back when the murder occurred; furthermore, as far as she can tell, she two men barely knew each other. So what the hell was with Kralie’s reaction to Bolton? It looks more like a crime of passion than anything else, but the motive just isn’t there.

A quick trip to the Pembina County morgue fills in a few details, but also raises new questions. The two men are kept in body bags in an empty room. Not much in the way of mortuary services yet; it’s like no one quite knows what to do about them yet, these murders that shouldn’t have happened.

The body of Jay Bolton reveals nothing remarkable; only fear, defensive wounds and the kind of fractured bone and pulped muscle that seems impossible to inflict by bare hands. He was simply beaten to death by someone more physically powerful or more committed; it’s downright mundane. However, Alex’s contains a number of oddities, not the least of which is the slick, glossy membrane covering the gaping hole that is his abdominal cavity. Under Matter sight, it has roughly the texture of flimsy saran wrap. The wound – stretching all the way up to the Solar Plexus - is horrific but cut with surgical precision. Nergal determines that the organs of his abdomen and torso were carefully removed before being reinserted with a few missing – his heart, liver and stomach, as we have already established. Minor hemorrhaging of his capillaries. His eyes are closed, and blood is dried around his nose and ears; a detail more significant than it at first seems.

Bolton’s resonance is also too stained by the moment of his death to be a source of much information. Alex’s, though . . . there’s something a little odd about him; a part displaced, ethereal, more attuned with the spirit world than with this one. A legacy carried in his veins – an animal howling inside him that never quite managed to break free. Kralie was wolf-blooded. They wonder if he had family nearby – a pack of Uratha. 

Azazel: At least that was our best working theory. While all present have at least seen a werewolf once or twice, this would be the first time we’ve seen someone who isn’t one of the lycanthropes but carries a seeming of their aspect in his genetics and spiritual being.

Chimera: I actually did some poking around and was able to confirm this theory; I have Alex’s sister Julia to thank for most of the details. After I did some (what I thought was covert) snooping around the Kralie residence, she caught up to me, expressing an earnest desire to answer some of my questions and a politely phrased threat of ripping my lungs out if I ever screwed with her family. Delightful woman. Details of what I was able to glean recorded below in case they prove useful to someone later. 

STARK was also able to positively identity members of her pack.

The Kralie family. Images provided by STARK:

Julia "Ištu" Kralie

(Ištu means the part of the moon opposite the sun) 

Alex’s sister

Julia’s feelings on her family can best be summarized as love mixed with discontent. Chafed by what she perceives as hidebound dogma and an overly strict hierarchy, she spends more time scouting with the family’s assorted mutts than around her own kin. As we talked, the words came spilling out of her as though she’d been holding them back a long time. Even she seemed surprised at the amount she was willing to divulge to a total stranger. Maybe only to a total stranger. And still, they are family.

Malcolm Kralie

(now deceased)
Alex and Julia’s father

Malcolm was a Hunter; his wife Bethany an Uratha. Given that, the story of their courtship is likely very interesting and very violent. Regardless, the two ultimately ended up in a stable, loving marriage that was cut short when Malcolm died in a "hunting accident" a few years back; Julia declined to provide further details on the incident, but I got the feeling that she and her father were close. The rest of the family didn’t take a Hunter marrying-in so kindly; Joshua held a particular enmity for him. But while they may have found his presence disturbing, disgusting, and outright distasteful, Malcolm was always treated with at least a modicum of respect, a product of his refusal to ever use silver against their kind.

Bethany "Ice Wind" Kralie
Alex and Julia’s mother

I was a little startled to hear Julia describe her own mother as "cold"; she spoke of her with a great deal of respect, but little affection. From what I gathered, Bethany is an excellent scout, crafty and calculating, bordering on callous at times. She’s her father’s loyal right hand; her only real divergence from his will was her marriage to Malcolm Kralie.

Elijah "Wah-yah" Blackwell

(Wah-yah means wolf) 

Bethany and Joshua’s father 

The patriarch. Elijah is rigid, unforgiving, authoritarian, accustomed to barking out orders, and not at all fond of outsiders, but most of all, he cleaves to tradition. The family is culturally an even mixture of Mandan Catholic teachings; Elijah ensures that they’re very strict when it comes to accuracy and adherence, and they all speak fluent Latin. He’s a hard man on his family; even his daughter, who he’s got a soft spot for, falls under intense scrutiny.

Joshua "Hanhapi wi" Blackwell
(Hanhapi wi means the Storyteller)
Bethany’s half-brother, Elijah’s son, Christopher’s father

Joshua hates his son, minds his sister, and fears his father. He wears a mean, hard-edged smile and likes to throw his weight around. As the storyteller, he gives his time and attention to making sure his family remembers the old legends – one in particular. But we’ll get to that...

Christopher "Hushilu" Blackwell
(Hushilu means Spirit-talker)
Joshua’s son

A perpetual disappointment in his father’s eyes, Christopher always seems a shade off balance when dealing with people and his nervous mannerisms do him no favors in that regard. He has little skill when it comes to fighting either; his real talent lies in his exceptional ability for dealing with spirits. Christopher is the one who spends the most time interacting with the pack totem: a spirit of the Tongue River that’s grown ornery and resentful in the many years it’s been bound.

Kennedy "Red beard" McGrath
Family friend of Bethany and Joshua

Kennedy is what you’d call "chaotic neutral"; virtually the only thing about him that can be counted on to stay consistent is the fact that he’s not consistent. That said, he tends towards eccentricity. He’s perhaps the least cowed by Elijah’s authority, but is good at keeping his mouth shut.

Chimera: Julia speaks of her brother with regret. Alex was the sole mundane amongst a pack of werewolves, and thus the only one left out of the loop when it came to the supernatural world. For years his family scrutinized him, waiting for what they call the First Change that never came . . . as time rolled on, their interest twisted itself into disappointment and pity. Alex knew it and fumed. And still they told him nothing. He was the black sheep of the family, but never learned why. One day he simply left; having had more than his fill of cryptic statements, condescending looks, and occurrences that couldn’t be logically explained, he was determined to have nothing to do with any of them ever again.

They kept an eye on him, of course. He was family, and the Change might still come, unlikely as it might have been by that point. On some level, none of them could believe it; that their long, storied heritage had come to this – lowly Alex Kralie, human gas station clerk. Their ancestors lived free and proud. They walked with spirits. They bound a god, once.

And there’s the key. Long ago, a trickster god fell and the Abyss lapped him up. Iktomi the spider had many names; Ikto, Ictinike, Inktomi, Unktome, Unktomi. When the cold darkness swallowed him, he forgot them all. What emerged wasn’t a man, wasn’t a god, but a thing – spindly and many-limbed, as gorged on wrongness as the pit that spawned it.

Eos: Woah! Spoiler alert! We haven’t even got to that thing yet. Wait. So it was a creature from Native American legend? And this pack is related to the ones that put it into the butte?

Chimera: That’s the theory.

Azazel: Iktomi… that… makes perfect sense. Bravo boss! So like the Spearfinger and the Gentleman, there seems to be some precedence for tribal entities and Acamoth corruption in this state. This one just happened to be the overlap between the two…

Chimera: Ahem…the tribes felt the change, felt the wrongness. And when the deaths started coming, men, woman and children cut open and left to bleed out, they acted. The packs came together (they were greater in those days) and planned amongst themselves. Then came the hunt for the Thin Man, that thing that was once their god. They found it, they caught it, and they bound it, because for all their strength they could not kill it. The Thin Man slumbered in silence below Eagle Butte, and for years upon years, no power would wake it.

Julia’s recounting of the legend ends in a foregone conclusion: about a month ago, the Butte tore itself apart in a rain of fire and ash as the bindings came undone. The Thin Man walks the earth, and her brother is its first victim. She stops there, eyes wet, gives me a nod and some stock phrase or another, and turns to go. I’m left with fresh questions and an increasing sense of foreboding.

Chimera: Back to the morgue, because there’s still something they’ve yet to try. Nergal focuses on the corpse of Alex Kralie, and draws a translucent veil of ectoplasm out from his eyes. The substance writhes as it’s held suspended in the air, gradually forming itself into a coherent image. The last thing Alex ever witnessed is plain for all to see:

Chimera: Eris recognizes the blurry figure immediately. In 2009, one thread on the Something Awful forums hosted a competition that challenged users to edit photos to make them into something creepy and supernatural. The winner was Victor Surge, whose entry depicted a tall man with gangly limbs with no face, dressed in a dapper black suit and tie; the thread named him Slenderman, and he quickly became a pop culture phenomenon, being featured in video games, cosplay, fan art, creepypasta stories, and youtube videos. A search by STARK returns over a million results in the first 2.5 seconds; this is going to take some time to sort out. Knowing that the ambulance will be arriving soon to move the bodies to Grand Forks, the five decide to relocate to the Sanctum.

It was at this time that I received a phone call from Casstiel warning me of the second murder and try very hard to sound surprised; I’ve been keeping pretty close tabs on the situation via STARK and my own small investigations.

Cynead and I are instructed to spend the next few days researching organ theft. I, specifically, spend most of that time sweating. When you realize that you’re dealing with an ancient Native American god and deadly urban legend wrapped up in one, oh shit doesn’t even begin to cover it. But I keep my mouth shut. They’ve already got a pretty good idea of the danger they’re facing.

And I have the suspicion that what it was in the past matters a great deal less than what it is now when it comes to killing it. 

It’s a lot easier to find references to mundanely motivated organ theft than anything supernatural, a fact that shouldn’t surprise me by this point but still does; Sleepers are wide eyed with simultaneous cynicism and ignorance. The Chinese government supposedly extracting organs from prisoners on death row. Murdered refugees and a trail of missing body parts in their wake. Whispers of an American missionary to Nicaragua beaten into a coma when rumors of him harvesting the organs of local children spread. Believable enough. But start talking of monsters in the night, and to most people, you may as well be a madman. 

Still, a few especially unusual stories surface:

1. A South American creature called the Pishtaco, which despite its name’s striking similarity to the words "fish taco" causes very real problems. Supposedly, they’re man-like beasts that torture people and steal their body fat and organs for nefarious purposes. Namely, eating them. Rumors of the monster has caused some locals to reject aid from US Food for Peace program, on the suspicion that the organization is run by Pishtacos trying to fatten up their children for harvesting.

2. Reports of a murder that baffled a homicide detective with thirty years of experience. The body of a 60-year old homeless man found in an abandoned rowhouse in Philadelphia with a rope around his slit throat and a torso pitted with missing organs; heart, liver, kidney, esophagus. An occult specialist was eventually called in, but no satisfactory conclusion was ever reached.

3. Crime waves of genital theft in Africa. A nefarious crime supposedly performed through a simple handshake between perpetrator and victim. Modern medicine was reported to be of no help to the afflicted. The stolen organs were supposedly sold to faith healers and occultists for use in rituals. 

Odd cases, but none is quite what we’re looking for. I slip what I learned from Julia Kralie in the story into our report, and hand it over to the boss, with the mention that they’ll want to think on the motivation behind the theft; in two of the three strange cases Cynead and I found, the organs were needed as fuel to be consumed, a sort of power source. There’s a decent chance that is also the case here, further implied by the almost surgical precision of the removal; whatever this was didn’t want its prizes damaged.

Azazel: Ladies, it is also worth noting that while the investigation was gearing up with one mage causality directly attributed to Prodigy and one wolf-blooded sleeper attributed to some kind of internet meme/urban legend, during the weekend of 15th of May Casstiel and Seraph were called away to investigate an unrelated Abyssal entity plaguing contacts in Colorado Springs. Seraph was forced to deal with a very large swarm of Shard Crows, the same swarm that killed his wife. Witness was also sighted, much to Casstiel’s dislike. There is a separate log file in which Casstiel details this event called "One for Sorrow." This may have contributed to the slower reaction to the developing situation. They still had no evidence connecting the two events in any way, or connecting the Shard Crows to the Slenderman. It wasn’t determined until later that Prodigy killing Orion and the Slenderman’s predations were completely unrelated.

Eos: Jesus, so much Abyssal shit. Is this normal!?

Azazel: No. I’ve theorized that the upsurge in Abyssal manifestations may speak to the continuing decay or the Fallen World or speak to the Horsemen’s uncanny ability to attract or cause trouble.

Eos: Azzy, I’m not sure which I think is worse. Please don’t tell me anymore. I don’t think I should know anyway.

Azazel: I firmly embody the intellectual concept that ignorance is never bliss. Ignorance is stupidity, insane, and unforgivable. This is why you did not sign your name upon the Watchtower. This is the opposite of true wisdom.

Chimera: AZAZEL! Stop. Now. 

Eos: Ouch…

Chimera: And she really isn’t supposed to know unless it’s relevant and a secret that needs to be shared. Is it relevant to her now? 

Azazel: Yes boss, shutting up. No boss, not now.

Chimera: Eos… 

Eos: It’s fine. His lizard/bat brain was made using an imprint of Cass’s mind. So he is a jackass too. 

Chimera: ...Right. 

Eos: Moving on? 

Chimera: Okay, moving on to the trap they made. There’s more than one problem at play here after all. Seraph and Kairos dig out a maze in the Beulah cemetery, a trap for an old friend. Capturing Prodigy is going to be a complicated endeavor. Snaring a mage is hard enough when you don’t know, but when he he’s got the ability to jump forwards and backwards in time is going to require some prep work, to say the least.

The trap consists of the following elements:
a. Application of Prime that will negate Prodigy’s spellwork
b. Limiting the physical space he has to maneuver
c. Temporal Occlusion around the site d. A trigger that will put the spirit residing in his weapon to sleep
e. Spatial Oubliette, preventing his movement f. Destroying the trap on success or failure (as a method of preventing his temporal jumps)
g. Strengthening the Gauntlet around the site h. An application of Forces that will obscure his senses 

Azazel: The plan is to target Prodigy sympathetically and Teleport him into the trap. The trap swings shut they’d have him captured. The problem is that he is most likely spatially anchored or behind wards. They cannot risk building up a large and powerful working, no matter how veiled, without the risk of the action being detected and countered. Eris’s unique Legacy Attainments allowed them to reach him using her ability to bridge the gap between spatial sympathy to genetic or familial sympathy in order to reach him. This is an application of the Arcana that defies how Supernal magic should work in the Fallen World.

Chimera: So they’ll teleport one of Prodigy’s sisters in, and Eris will use her abilities to affect Prodigy through his family members, pulling him in as well. Since it’s so outside of what magic is supposed to behave, Prodigy is assumed to have no defense against it. 

Eos: Wait… so they kidnap his sister? That really crosses a line Chimera… that is just… wrong.

Azazel: She was magically sedated and teleported. She never knew she was gone from her bed.

Eos: Azzy… is that supposed to make me feel better?

Azazel: No. But it was deemed necessary. Though the act does seem to have a bit of symmetry. One of the Denarians once kidnapped his sisters and the Horsemen of War murdered him with excessive violence.

Eos: Great, way to make anyone murderously angry. And five on one… their fear seems a bit lopsided. 

Azazel: At the time the Cabals thought Prodigy had called up the Slenderman somehow, a Tulpa of popular nightmare. The connection to the explosion butte had not been established and Prodigy was known for his rapid degeneration and the knowledge to summon Abyssal entities. The bizarre Abyssal resonance or lack thereof (or being unwilling to befoul the senses with it) at the murder site (there had only been the one after all) obfuscated the direct similarity to resonances at the butte. Prodigy fueled by Gnomon’s gifts had become terrifyingly powerful, or at least perceived to be so. If he had succumbed like the others to accept Gnomon’s powers he was also a dangerously insane mult-master. And possibly one of the Mad, the boogeymen of Awakened society.

Chimera: Kairos goes to Casstiel with a request. Their planning would benefit greatly from some advanced Time Divination, which in turn would be benefitted by knowing Prodigy’s true name. Like any other imperfect, fallible human, a mage is always redefining themselves; if anything, magic only accelerates the potential for individual change. We can have a dozen different shifting identities, each with its own name. But by the laws of the Supernal, the name signed on our Watchtower is the only one that truly matters. In that sense, our souls remain constant. 

So Kairos’ plan is this: write down Prodigy’s possible true names on a slip of paper, then magically study each individual name until he finds the one that resonates. Because of the sympathetic connection between Prodigy and his names, there’s a good chance of him feeling a little psychic twinge as Kairos does it, so he needs an application of Prime to mask his scrutiny; a draw of his Tarot leads Casstiel to believe Seraph is the one who should be casting it.

Seraph requests that Kairos obtains a two way mirror (easy enough for a Matter master to procure) in order to help focus their spells. Most of the names written on the paper are purely mundane, but one stands out because of the sheer weirdness of the temporal distortion around it. He’s occluded it, but that in and of itself is a tell. Jonathan David Tally. They’ve got what they need, and as far as anyone can tell, avoided catching Prodigy’s notice, and their own occlusions will hopefully prevent him from catching wind of their plans. Casstiel’s next Tarot draw isn’t fortuitous.

Tarot Draw: Five of Cups reversed
Trouble in future endeavors, better to hold on to your current advantages

Chimera: Casstiel has made efforts at locating Prodigy in the past using Space, but the man is heavily, heavily occluded and uses Space magic to fix his location in space except under his own will, so Casstiel’s successes have been very limited. He uses Divination that even peripherally involves him will encounter the same difficulties. Thus Kairos, Casstiel, and Seraph all decide to pool their efforts, with Eris providing a Zone of Extremity around them.

Azazel: Prodigy also displayed the ability to erases the timeline in areas where he previously was and used many other methods to avoid tracking or detection. 

Chimera: Things go awry when Seraph accidently puts a knife through his arm, and both he and Eris drop out of the ritual. Luckily, the two remaining mages are able to complete it themselves. Kairos gets three questions, two of which he devotes to getting advice on perfecting the trap. The third answer he receives is the most hopeful; Prodigy can indeed be saved with the means the group has. Though Casstiel notes that because they didn’t clarify what "saved" meant, this information is of dubious value.

[Mage: The Slenderman Plot] Zero-X (Part I)

Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler

Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

Zero-X: A Story About the Dead (Part I)

by Chimera (Hannah Nyland), Azazel & Eos (Jerad Sayler)

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”– H.P. Lovecraft

Out of Character, the entire plot took place over the course of the entire week of Halloween in 2014 and over 60 hours of game play.

What follows is a transcript of the debriefing led by neophyte Chimera, Sleepwalker Agent Eos, and Chimera’s fetch Azazel created via memory transcript and telepathic transfer. It is not to be retained in physical or digital copy or media in any format. Those with a need to know must request the information retained herein and gain permission from neophyte Chimera before it is passed on in the same way it was recorded. This transcript in Classified: Top Secret\\Memetic Transcript Only. Prepare for telepathic transfer…

Story Parts:
1. Part I
2. Part II
3. Part III
4. Part IV
5. Part V: The Monster

Foreword:

This is a story about dead people.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. There are always the living, for better or worse, and you’re going to be hearing about plenty of them here. But sometimes, the dead are the ones who hold tightest to our thoughts. They were all someone to us, once; now they’re each just a handful of memories and a body, frozen in time at the moment the spirit departed. We think of those bodies and try not to ask too many questions, knowing that most of them can never be answered. To the human mind, the unknown is a festering pit of anxiety, and death is the final unknown.

This is a story about dead people and I’ve been asked to tell it. Using STARK’S records and accounts I’ve heard from those involved, I aim to piece the tale together. Casstiel, Kairos, Nergal, Seraph and Eris – those are our primary actors here. The five of them together pack a hell of lot of magical firepower.

They used it.  - Chimera

Reviewing the transcript records behind Adept Chimera I shall be providing what insights I retain from my former Master, Casstiel, and from my own previous involvement with related events. Did that sound okay Boss? – Azazel

What am I supposed to even put for this? I’ll just chime is as needed okay? - Eos

April 10th, 2014

Chimera: Okay guys, this is what my old master would call a “hot wash.” We go over all of this so we can get it on record while it’s fresh. I’m… I’m hoping that putting it all together will make it easy… to deal with. So… with as much detail as possible…just talk it through from beginning to end. I’ll start.

Chimera: Nergal, Kairos and Casstiel are recovering from an eventful and harrowing journey into the Tenemos-

Azazel: And I don’t blame them. Ah, it seems I have the most background to provide here. Since 2011 Nergal has been tied to a powerful Acamoth, an Abyssal entity called The Darkness that Thirsts through a dark bargain. The bargain allowed the entity to take residence inside the Moros’s soulstone, a large coin made of gold and lead. The deal was struck to grant him the ability to wield the Acamoth’s substance as an ephemeral klaive he dubbed the Soul Reaver (great video game btw).

Azazel: I also do not blame Nergal for making this deal. We came toe-to-toe with a group of Scelesti nilists who were stubborn on wrecking the world and the Azazel: Horsemen had been hopelessly outgunned. In order to survive their next encounter Nergal reached for power and received it… for a price. Always a price.

Azazel: After the nilists were defeated and dear friends lost they were left to piece their lives back together. The Acamoth had been slowly seeping into the Tenemos through Nergal’s Onerios, the subconscious of his soul intrinsically connected to his soul stone…. And well, his soul.

Azazel: As you can imagine, despite best efforts to control and contain his passenger the Acamoth started to use Nergal’s soulstone to influence his soul proper and through him the Tenemos… and through that the Bakken oil being harvested throughout North Dakota. So the Five Horsemen and friends from the Bridge of Souls ventured into the Tenemos to call upon entities powerful enough to contain and control the creature.

Azazel: It… didn’t go exactly according to plan and in the end the mages had to penetrate the blackest part of the small Onerios realm within Nergal’s subconscious where the Acamoth was in residence and purge it into the waters of the Ocean Orouboros on the very edge of creation. Nergal was no free of nightmares and free of the infection, but there were consequences they didn’t know about yet.

Chimera: The three came out of the ordeal physically and spiritually drained, but then it seemed they’d have a little time to kick back and relax. All is well with the world.

Chimera: Ha. Right.

Chimera: Early that morning, Eagle Butte explodes. I’m told it made a very pretty light show, but between the chaos, fire and emergency responders, I doubt that was the foremost thought on anyone’s mind.

Chimera: Kairos’ subsequent post-cog reveals troubling things. The butte goes up in a blinding flash of light, raining sprays of flaming oil down on the valley below.

Azazel: Kairos’s understanding of the fundamental truth of absolute time also allowed him to note that the same time the Butte detonated due to some kind of volcanic or seismic activity was the same time they were in the Anima Mundi banishing the Darkness that Thirsts back into the Abyss.

Chimera: But, just before the butte erupts, a set of Native American symbols flare up for a split second. And the last one to appear is this:

Chimera: Nergal’s sights reveal death and abyssal resonance hanging thick in the smoke-clogged air, all charged with spiritual energy that buzzes like a live wire. Another thing: A veritable unkindness of white ravens perch on the Butte under mage sight, whispering to him: “The white king comes for thee.”

Something was bound here. Was.

Azazel: It is also worth noting that these same pale ravens, spirits of death and omen we determined, were sited around Beulah and outside the Horsemen Sanctum starting approximately around January 2013 until this time. If encountered again they appear as ravens the size of a small dog and pure white in feathers and beak with black shark-like eyes, black tribal markings on their feathers, and spider legs they flex through the air with like a vampire squid of tarantula. This was the last sighting of the ravens. During the incident at the Sanctum the Horsemen used the Crucible, a magical holographic radar and map of their territory allowed them to follow the first unkindess of ravens to Eagle Butte. During that encounter the ravens stated:

“sErVe We DeStInEy, YoU sHaLl SeE. fUtUrE cOmEs SoFtlY, tHe WhItE kInG cOmEs FoR tHeE – FoLlOw Me!” It seems now that the White King was a reference to the entity that was released.

The ravens also stated at a later sighting, more immediately before the Horsemen embarked on the attempt to get rid of the Darkness that Thirsts immediately preceding these events that: “Thirst in the ocean, a bridge unburned, one has departed, another returned.” In hindsight this most likely was a warning that destroying Nergal’s soul stone by throwing it in the Astral Ocean Orouboros and that in so doing the act would return the Acamoth to the Abyss and free the trapped entity it was incubating under Eagle Butte.

Chimera: It’s still early, hours before daylight. They make their way back to their car in the cold and the darkness, the things they’ve seen weighing heavy on their minds. The Acamoth is dead, but even in death some aspect of it is coming back to haunt them.

Azazel: That is not precisely correct boss. Abyssal entities are simulacrums of entities in the fallen world. They come from someplace outside reality and are forced to imitate and bind themselves to some sets of mad rules in order to exist as an intruder. They are anti-reality, anti-truth, and it is hard to kill something that may lack the concept as part of its composition. This may explain why some long-lived Abyssal manifestations are so virulent and hard to destroy. They can evolve and spread, not conforming to any magical or physical laws. In any case, the Acamoth was not destroyed but cast back into the Abyss. No doubt it could return if circumstances align but it is doubtful it would have the same influence and power it had before It most likely would be bound by a different set of rules relating to how it managed its incursion the next time.

Eos: I shudder to think. Thanks Azzy, I really needed more nightmare material.

Azazel: I do not recommend dreaming about entities that exist in the Astral. Made (or bound in this case) by the laws of ideas, being of “dream stuff” sometimes thinking about them, dreaming about them, could be enough to bring them back or create a copycat entity.

Eos: Wow… was that supposed to make me feel better. Sure thing, I’ll do my best not to have bad dreams. And if I do I will pray it’s not real-ish.

Chimera: In the week that follows, Nergal spent more time recovering; sleeping, relaxing and performing oblations to mend his damaged soul.

Azazel: What attracted the Darkness that Thirsts to make contact with Nergal and offer its Faustian deals was due to Abyssal resonance he picked up from carrying some of the waters of the Ocean Orouboros (a Astral representation of the Abyss at the edge of the Anima Mundi) in his soul back in December 2011. He did so as a favor to the Temenic entity known as “Death,” one of the Endless, the first fundamental archtypes of the universal subconscious. She represents the personification of all mankind’s dreams, ideas and imaginations on an anthropomorphized death. Coming full circle, Death returned the favor during the events immediately preceding this incident when she fought the Acamoth alongside the Horsemen. It makes me wonder if she had been running a much longer game the whole time. After all, the Acamoth was exceedingly volatile and powerful. Its influences, especially through Nergal, were threatening the Tenemos by the end. But what if Death set it all up in order to position the Acamoth for banishment in the first place? Prior to early 2012 Nergal was no longer getting more than 3-4 hours of sleep a night as a result of the Acamoth calling to him and the residual effects of the waters. With the “daddy” of the entity in this incident destroyed, he pretty much did nothing but eat and sleep for a couple weeks.

Chimera: Kairos clued Casstiel in on what they discovered in the aftermath of the investigation, and the two head to the Bridge of Souls’ sanctum library in San Antonio to research Native American symbols and spiritual bindings. Their efforts catch the attention of Seraph and Eris, who quickly found themselves drawn into the investigation.

April 15th, 2014

Chimera: The first killing. Wanton Janus calls to inform Kairos of a body in Riverside Room 215B of the Commons Hotel – a shitty hotel if there ever was one - located in a subdivision of Minneapolis. No name given, no authorities on the scene, though the murder must’ve occurred sometime the previous night. All things considered, unusual circumstances.

Chimera: Another strange thing? Wanton Janus ends with something to the effect of: “The spirits have said the killer is something you’ve seen before,” Although the Horsemen are not exactly at a loss when it comes to enemies, the Denarians jump to Kairos’ mind as a distinct possibility.

The Cabal found their handiwork once; the diced up body of a priest. This sort of thing seems like their style based on what Wanton said about the state of the corpse being “cut up.”

Frankly, I think it would’ve been easier on everyone involved if he’d been right.

Azazel: Wanton Janus is a sleeper spiritualist with a gift with shamanism who travels around the western North Dakota region. He met the Horsemen back in July 2010 when he assisted them in dealing with another Native American entity called “Granny Death” or “Spearfinger” being summoned by another shaman. It is possible that this entity which escaped from the butte may have been a native American cryptid that was somehow trapped and corrupted by the Acamoth. In any case Wanton has been a helpful resource for the Cabal with his inside information on the rumblings of the supernatural community in the area. Another reason Kairos would be worried about Denarians again is simply that the last time Wanton Janus called them about a corpse it was the mutilated priest that put them in direct contact with the Knights of the Blackened Denarius.

Chimera: Kairos gets ahold of Casstiel and the five (Eris, Seraph, Cass, Nergal, and Kairos) meet up in the Horsemen Sanctum. He informs them of the phone call and his suspicions; all involved agree to give the body a look. They take the usual precautions; setting up a Save Point, a draw of the tarot, and scrying the hotel room before entry. Casstiel scrutinizes the local resonance and senses traces of supernal magic, but no active spells. Satisfied, he opens up a portal and the group walks through into a scene of utter carnage.

Azazel: I also suspect in hindsight, that the reason the hotel wasn’t crawling with police was because the mage’s directly involved with the victim were holding off all mention of the murder to the authorities and were preventing anyone from discovering the body. It’s possible the caucuses in Minneapolis knew the individual responsible for this murder and were ensuring the the Horsemen would clean their own house.

Chimera: I confirmed that with Witness actually. He was notified of the victim since he works sometimes in the region. The victim was a Famulus. A Guardian of the Veil Suspector who was tracking his killer (or running from him) and that is exactly what the Guardians in the local concillium were doing. Giving the Horsemen, whom they did not want to encounter directly, a chance to deal with its “internal business.”

Azazel: Ah, it all makes sense.

Tarot Draw: Six of Swords

A good time for travel, obstacles overcome, dealing with the baggage of the past.

Chimera: This is the part where I have to stop and think long and hard on how to describe what they saw next, because words don’t do the contents of that room justice. And I wasn’t even there – STARK later obtained images of it for me - and the thought of it still makes my stomach turn.

Eos: It was bad. He was just toyed with, torn apart slowly, and by someone sadistic who was really enjoying himself. I’ll never forget thinking I had no idea magic could do some much carnage.

Chimera: The hotel room is in shambles, and eerily silent. Furniture is scattered around haphazardly, most of it in pieces, and the patio window is shattered, decorating the room in broken shards of glass. Blood is everywhere; sprays on the walls from high speed impacts, a dark stain on the ceiling, and dried puddles on the ground. Joining the bloodstains on the walls are a series of tight burn marks. Abyssal resonance clogs the air, and Casstiel can already feel a migraine coming on. It’s strange – very strange – that the body is undisturbed and the place a crime scene, because the fight that caused this had to have made a lot of noise.

Oh yes, there’s also a decapitated body lying stomach-down on the floor.

What’s left of the man barely resembles a human being anymore. Nergal’s perceptions with The Grim Sight indicates the cause of his death was him having his head forcibly removed – no big shock there - but dear god, did he suffer before that happened.

Azazel: Nergal actually had trouble determining if the decapitation or the highly focused telekinetic strike to the brain finished him off. They were done near-simultaneously.

Chimera: The man is a patchwork quilt of lacerations, stab wounds, and third degree burns. Chunks of his skin have been torn off in bloody patterns, and his hands and knees sport ugly defensive wounds. The bone in his right arm juts out at a near right angle from his mutilated arm, his hand clenching futilely around a hand gun. Nergal scanned and listed less obvious injuries.

Shattered ribs. Clear blunt force trauma to the torso and legs. Multiple internal organs ripped apart and freaking crushed from the inside. I could go on...

Chimera: All that is bad enough. But what takes the scene to a whole new level of sickening is just how obvious it is that the killer toyed with his victim before finishing him off. The Abyss touches this place, but there’s also a great deal of lingering supernal energy; a telltale sign of conflict between two mages. The victim was healed with Life magic, but by his attacker… then tortured and healed again. This wasn’t a fair fight. This wasn’t even a slaughter. This was a game. Cat-and-mouse, and this is what happens when the cat finally gets bored and evaporates the mouse one nick at a time.

Chimera: They find the man’s severed head out on the patio; nose smashed in, half the skull caved in… imploded in on itself - and pulverized brain matter plainly visible through the gaping hole. His blue eyes are bloodshot and glazed over, his expression twisted into a nightmarish grimace of agony and sheer, determined rage. He fought. It didn’t matter.

Chimera: In life he was Orion, Guardian Suspector, though the five wouldn’t be finding that out for quite some time. The photo ID in a nearby duffel bag reads “Victor Asbury”. Kairos’ post-cognition spells pegs him as a plain looking man in casual clothes, sandy blond hair in a buzz cut, face freshly shaven, and eyes as alert as they are cold. Under various unveilings of mage sight, he resonates purpose and a chilling, single-minded certainty. The room is still relatively orderly at this point, cleansed of sympathy, and there’s concealment and a weak space ban over it - the sort you’d throw up on short notice and most likely done by Orion for his temporary lodgings. Eight or so minutes before his death, he’s sitting on one of the room’s two single beds, tracing a finger over an open Gideon Bible and muttering to himself as he eyes a few torn scraps of paper. Working through some sort of cipher in his head, presumably. The packed duffel bag is by his side. Though Orion seems calm and controlled, he’s clearly working in haste.

Chimera: Then the half slit door of the room’s closet opens, just a bit, and from it comes a soft mew. Orion jerks towards the sound, a grim look on his face and suddenly holding a pistol. Beady eyes stare out from the shadowy closet, as a little gray hand – a hand like an infant – reaches out at adult height and pushes the door just a tiny crack wider. Just like that it’s managed to rewind its personal timeline, gone through time; Kairos estimates about a day back, although the way it was done shouldn’t be possible even with even Mastery of the Time Arcanum.

Azazel: Yes, the best a Time Mastery could do is rewind time a few seconds or shunt himself a few seconds into the future. The only way it could be done conventionally would be with the Save Point spell that Kairos used earlier. But if the timeline rewinded then the caster could change course based on the foreknowledge and wouldn’t actually need to time travel to avoid the same situation they were rewinding time to avoid. Additionally, the Save Point can only be cast every twenty four hours, the rivers of time can only be bound that tightly together. Also what the entity did next was even more impossible with our current understanding of Supernal Magic…

Chimera: A split second later, the door explodes off its hinges. A new figure looms in the darkness, half lit up by a red blazing sword. He takes a step forward, nimbus flaring with frenetic light and black oily smoke. Orion jumps to his feet, and then – nothing.

Chimera: Nothing for seven straight minutes. Time covering that segment had been erased and Fate was occluded. Things still happened during that time, and we know how long the blank is, but someone did the Supernal Equivalent of blocking the recording of video and audio in this place and for that time. When the blank spot ends, the Suspector lies dead and broken on the ground, and the room looks like a war zone.

Chimera: The killer is gone. But his massive Dai Katana wreathed in the fires of hell, his resonance, his bizarre time-traveling familiar – it all adds up. This was the work of an old friend. Prodigy.

Chimera: It’s been two years since the Horsemen saw him last, though not for lack of trying; Prodigy seems to slip through every mundane and magical attempt to locate him, possibly a side effect of his new status as one of the Mad. It’s difficult to say what his capabilities are now, or how far gone he is, but even just judging by the intensity of his resonance, he’s a hell of a lot more powerful than he used to be.

Azazel: Prodigy was a former cabalmate too. Part of the Five Horsemen’s circle awakening. His tragic slip to being addicted to befouling his magic with the Abyss really started after he saw the leader of the Denarians, Nicodemus Archelone, manipulate paradox with ease. Since then he adopted the policy of learning to fight fire with fire and when the Denarians threatened the world he went full Darth Vader. December 27th, 2012, as the Horsemen along with Jack Bismuth and Seraph descended into the Underworld, Prodigy stayed behind to hunt the Denarians working for Nico’s wife Tessa. When he did he encounter the strange entity that he claimed as an ally or familiar. When we returned from our harrowing adventure to the bottom of the Underworld Prodigy had moved out of the Sanctum, had killed the remaining Denarians and went rogue with his new companion, hurling more power and control of paradox then we had ever seen. This was the first time that we were aware of that he stepped out of line and really started harming people with his fixation with Abyssal magic.

Azazel: As one of the Mad, Prodigy had been transformed through some strange alchemy, and became a boogeyman of the Awakened world. He had unbelievable power and far more understanding of the Ars Mysteries but his soul had been damaged and was leaking anomalous supernal energy into the world. He had lost his sanity for good. This combined with the loss of Loudon in the Underworld on that same trip was very hard on the Horsemen. Prodigy’s re-emergence as a stone cold killer was a sickening shock to his former cabalmates.

Chimera: The Horsemen wanted to first try to rehabilitate Prodigy somehow, save him if he can be saved. That would be contingent on if he could be captured to make the attempt. The scene in front of them didn’t bode well but the remaining Horsemen were unwilling to try to kill their former best friend out of hand. In this fight he’s used his sword - the Blood Fang – a Cabal weapon meant for the protection of friends and loved ones, to torture and murder. This is not a sin that can be ignored.

Azazel: Seeing one of the Horsemen’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (They referred to these highly powerful Imbued items as WMDs) turned to such a vile end goaded the Horsemen to action after all these years. All the WMDs are powerful items the Cabal made together and were considered Cabal assets that should not just be used for personal use but as a utilization of their Mantles. The Bloodfang was an Imbued Klaive of a Dai Katana and contained a significantly powerful spirit called the BloodFire. It also had a powerful jewel called the Blazing Diamond which they recovered from the shaman who summoned SpearFinger. The jewel displayed the ability to generate hellfire (destructive power said to only be available to Infernal Demons) and to take in blood to grant omens and prophesies. The BloodFire also desired to burn up and consume blood and it granted great control over the hellfire that the sword of commonly wreathed in. It is a terrible weapon, and not one that could be reproduced. A plan to neutralize Prodigy would need to consider the blade as part of the primary factors.

Chimera: The five (Seraph, Casstiel, Eris, Nergal and Kairos. Members of the Horsemen and Bridge of Soul’s Cabals) voted and were in unanimous agreement; it’s finally time to track Prodigy down, to whatever end. Seraph and Eris stayed to clean up the scene and contact the local concillium authorities. The rest headed out.

To be continued...