Out of Character (OOC):
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
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
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…
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.
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.
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.
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
(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…
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:
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:
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
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.
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