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

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 IV)

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.

"Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen." – Peter chapter 4, verses 10-11 

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

June 24th, 2014 

Chimera: About a week later, Casstiel hears of a death at the Grand Forks Air Force Base through his contacts in the military. Arriving at the base disguised as officers (except for Cass who actually is an Air Force Captain), the five mages are allowed to pass through security. Something is clearly wrong in the place, even setting aside the obvious Slenderman murder; the lights in a large section of the base are completely burnt out, and the creepy orange graffiti makes a return on portions of the walls and floor.

"He is coming."

"No eyes, still watching."

"He sees."

Two men stand outside the office of the victim, identifying themselves as special agents with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (or AFOSI). They’re not mages, but they’ve had magic used on them recently . . .

From them, the group learns a few details about the deceased. Master Sargent Karrin Booker had worked at the base for years, performing aircraft maintenance on KC-135 refuelers and then later middle management on the Global Hawk drones. Earlier that day, screams were heard coming from her office, but by the time help arrived (which couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds later) she was already dead. An investigation is ongoing; by now, the body will have been taken to base casualty collection point at the clinic.

With obvious reluctance, the two men allow them to enter Karrin’s office. Inside is none other than Black Moon, the Sentinel for the Red River Valley Concillium homed out of Fargo. Black Moon informs them that the local concilium has taken note of the recent string of unusual deaths and is in a heightened state of alert. Their own investigation in Cavalier turned up evidence of the Cabal’s presence, and they’re willing to give them a chance to resolve the issue. She then leaves to allow them to look around. 

The office was obviously fighting a losing battle with chaos even before the murder. Whatever else you can say about her, Karrin Booker was not a tidy person. The garbage bin is filled with crumpled up pieces of paper and tissues that overflow onto the floor. Several bookshelves are mounted to the wall; the organization of their contents could be charitably described as "creative". Her wooden desk, positioned facing the door, is engulfed by a tide of sticky notes and loose paperwork. A worn bible (dog-earred to Peter chapter 4, verses 10-11), a box of tissues, and bottles of assorted painkillers take up a small space in one corner. It is evident that Booker’s desk once housed a computer and telephone before they were reduced to husks of slagged plastic and silicon. Shards of broken glass litter the floor, and the spots of the desk not covered by debris are blackened and scorched. Similarly to other areas of the base, the light bulbs in the office are all blown out – though exploded might be a better word. After clearing off some of the mess, they find drawings of bony figures scrawled into the bare surface of the desk and a single world, repeated. The letters grow deeper and more frantic the closer to the present they were carved.

"No no no no no no no no. . ."

There’s also several patches of carpeting that are covered in blood, a stroke of luck (You really don’t get to say that sentence very often). With it, Nergal is able to analyze the circumstances of Karrin’s death without the body being physically present.

This time, the Slenderman took the heart, lungs and uterus. Booker was a tall woman with short brown hair, and she died in uniform, a cross necklace tucked underneath her shirt. She was ill before her death, but the nature of it is bizarrely difficult to determine, the physical effects not matching up perfectly with any documented diseases. Both of her arms are marred by electrical burns, and the left one has a deep, self-inflicted wound on the forearm. Cause of death is blood loss from the bigger cuts on her chest and abdomen, and the body is bleeding from the ears and nose; pretty much what they’ve come to expect by this point.

But the cuts themselves are different. Uglier. No tidy extraction this time, no surgical precision. A quick search by Eris turns up a bloodied utility knife nearby, and a d20 rolled under the desk. Death, Fate, and the Underworld – the die resonates all three. It reminds Casstiel a little of Persephone, but it’s also heavily stamped with Karrin’s identity and power. I suppose the closest mage equivalent would be a soul stone, but according to Cass, this was subtly but tangibly different. He called it a Keystone.

Immediately upon being handed the d20 for inspection, Nergal senses the presence of a being of twilight; the die appears to be its anchor. What resembles a plain teenage girl hovers just above his shoulder, wearing a blood soaked yellow sundress, her limbs broken at impossible angles and face perfectly emotionless. The presence is tied strongly to Fate, but not justice or karma. She’s bad things happening to people, deserving and undeserving both – freak, uncaring turns of chance. Events that can’t be made sense of, but simply are.

Azazel: In Colorado Springs, Persephone, Jack, Nergal, and Indra all had run-ins with an entity calling itself Mr. Monster. This spirit/ghost being was very similar to this being and was anchored to a Bulldog revolver used to commit the heinous serial murders of the Son of Sam killer.

In a measured, almost melodic voice, she identifies herself as The Girl in Red. She cared about Karrin only to the extent that one cares about a favorite toy, and now hers is broken. After Nergal presses her for what happened to her . . . host? plaything? . . . The Girl shunts a vision directly into his head. 

Eos: Yay more psychic trauma.

Azazel: With its face missing its debilitating effects were significantly reduced. Still, to date this is still the worst entity the Cabals have ever faced. I would hate to see it topped because topping it would mean an Abyssal Intruder of the caliber akin to an elder god or greater incarnea.

Chimera: It’s 4:30 pm and Karrin Booker sits at her desk, awaiting the end of the workday. Her eyes are dull, her complexion pallid, and her throat swollen. She shuffles idly through her paperwork, the girl in the yellow sundress hovering at her back. Save for the rustling of paper, the office is quiet.

The clock hits 5 pm, and silence is broken by the piercing, otherworldly scream of The Girl as Slenderman pops into existence directly in front of them, with only a flimsy wooden desk standing in his way. All that’s left of his face is a gaping, oozing hole from where Seraph tore it off. 

Karrin screams too. It’s a scream from the gut and from the soul; an animal sound of rage. The d20 appears in her right palm; she slams it down onto the desk as Slenderman drifts closer and all the technology in the room is annihilated in a burst of white-hot energy. Hundreds of broken shards of glass and silicon tear into her skin and fly at the anti-reality creature. The later doesn’t even slow down. 

She backs up, pulling out a knife in her free hand. Without hesitation, she makes a straight cut into her right arm. By now, she’s bleeding freely from most of her exposed skin and burned in places, but her face is a frozen mask of fury and concentration. Raw emotion courses through the room, rage being etched on bone and blood. The girl-ghost screamed the entire time, empowering what Karrin was attempting to do. No effect.

By now, there’s nowhere else for her to go. She’s backed into the corner of the office, Slenderman looming over her, impossibly slow of movement. Booker keeps fighting to the inevitable end, but it’s over in a matter of seconds. He’s hasty this time, his movements abrupt and almost . . . hungry. The remaining organs aren’t put neatly back into their places, but simply left piled on top of the body. Slenderman vanishes as quickly as he appeared, leaving the gruesome scene behind. A moment later, the door to the office flies open, and a man’s voice cries out in shock. 

I should mention that The Girl was screaming her lungs out during the recounting of this vision. As it ends, her face flickers and snaps back to perfect, unsettling calm. She eyes Nergal with detached interest and asks if he’s going to bring Karrin back to her, but he explains that it’s beyond his capabilities. The Girl considers that for a moment, then calmly requests that they take the keystone with them. She’s going to need a new toy.

Nergal informs the others of what he’s learned. Deciding that they’ve seen as much as they need to, they leave the office, taking the d20 with them. 

Tarot Draw: Page of Swords
Idealism, energy, a person with many plans for the future. (Karrin?)

Outside, someone is arguing with the two agents, insisting to be let into the office. He’s a short, dark haired man wearing a pair of sharp edged rectangular glasses. His voice is clipped and monotone. Most notably, his resonance has the same feel to it as Karrin’s did – but flavored with a gnawing, persistent apathy mixed with strong death resonance. Another twilight being hovers over his shoulder, best described as a gaping hole of emptiness. As the mages exit the room, his eyes snap to them and he takes a step back, sizing them up. 

The man’s name is Jacob Reighley, a friend of Karrin Booker, and he identifies himself as a member of "The Shepherds". Jacob has seen the strange symbols they’ve been encountering all over town, including around the house of another one of his friends – who has also noticed neighborhood children starring at her on several occasions. Upon being told that they intend to hunt down Karrin’s murderer, Jacob agrees to lend his assistance; he and his friends will map out the sites of the markings for the Cabal, and in return they will take vengeance. He seems distrustful and wary even then; he has the look of a man who wants very badly to believe what he’s being told, but is finding that his nature makes that impossible. As one last request for the dead, he asks that Karrin’s keystone be included as part of the deal, and they oblige. As security escorts him off the site, two twilight beings follow behind him. 

Before heading back to the Sanctum, the five mages decides to check out two strange markings they noticed. Combining their various mage sights, they determine that the first one (identified as the Observer Symbol) brings attention and death. It functions a bit like a sympathetic anchor, and is connected to the Dreaming. They recall it being present at the scene of Noah Maxwell’s murder – and Jacob will later inform them that it is the same symbol outside Erika’s house. 

Azazel: By our best estimates, the Observer Symbol acts as spot where the Slenderman can closely be draw or at least draw his attention. The esoteric meaning of the zero or eye with an ‘X’ through it can represent a null-space, the blinding of the all-seeing eye, the blind dead see or the blind faceless eyes of Slendy itself. The proxies were scouting viable organ donors and marking the nearby area with such symbols. As for the being mentioned by Noah Maxwell as The Observer, we do not yet know what part that being has.

Chimera: The second symbol (the Glyph of Severance) disrupts the sympathy of whatever is contained within. It’s effectively the opposite of the Observer Symbol, occluding its contents via fate and shifting attention away from the site.

Azazel: The Glyph of Severance appears as two eyes overlapping each other as opposite sides. While you might think that this would provide double clarity, somehow it actually cancels out the influences of the Slenderman. It is also the symbol that covered Eagle Butte and was solidified by whatever packs of the United Tribes that contained it there.

Chimera: By this point, it’s a safe bet that Slenderman is specifically targeting supernaturals, so their first step is to distribute the Glyph of Severance to as many of their supernatural contacts as they can, Jacob included – who in turn, upholds his end of the deal. To ensure the safety of Jacob and his friends, Seraph and Eris volunteer for body-guarding duty. 

There’s been enough death in the last few months. Now it’s time to plan, and act. They’re entering the endgame. 

June 25th, 2014  With little else I can do, I spend the day digging up information on Jacob Reighley. He’s an ER Physician who’s worked in the county for five years. Graduated from Mayo Medical School at the age of 28. Spotless reputation in his field, but regarded by co-workers as cold and aloof, even for someone in such a high-stress profession.

And he’s dead.

On June 4th, 1996 a teen suicide was reported in the small town of Dayton Tennessee. 17 year old Jacob Reighley was found dead in his parent’s bathroom, having slit both wrists and bled out. His parents refused to comment, but word around town was that Reighley suffered abuse from both his relatives and other kids at school. Shortly after being checked into the morgue, his body went missing. No explanation was put forth for this, nor were the remains ever recovered.

Nonetheless, there’s a Jacob Reighley of the same birth date and description practicing medicine in Grand Forks. Azazel has suggested the possibility that both Jacob and Karrin were Sin-Eaters, which is what you get when a ghost-spirit hybrid called a Geist forms a pact with a human straddling the line of life and death. The new symbiotic relationship gives the human influence over the dead and certain supernatural abilities, and the Geist gets to interact with the world of the living. Frankly, I’d never even heard of Sin-Eaters before, but it seems like a solid explanation for Karrin’s powers and her and Jacob’s twilight companions. 

Azazel: Very little concrete lore about Sin-Eaters exist that isn’t mixed in with spiritual mediums, ectoplasmic manifestations, and just people with a natural affinity for the dead. They are more commonly known to mages as Fog-men or Ghostwalkers.

Chimera: I also took the liberty of scrying and scrutinizing Jacob and his friends because frankly, Azazel made Sin-Eaters sound really freaking dangerous with fewer psychological hang-ups about killing than most. They are people sharing their heads with aspects of death, after all. I wanted numbers and general temperaments.

Jacob’s group, The Shepherds, appears to consist of three members after Karrin’s murder: Martin Wills, Erika Brandt, and Jacob Reighley.

Martin, whose surface is prickles and thorns. His resonance is worn, stretched thin between love, cynicism and compulsion. Above all, he seemed a tired old man. 

Erika is . . . volatile. Her aura is as varied as a kaleidoscope, flickering rapidly between colors and emotions. On the surface I saw a petite smiling blonde, and below that raw anger and hurt, her every action down to a dice roll.

But forget Erika - Jacob is the scary one. A man with an emptiness inside him, an apathy, a cold, uncaring practicality – a hollowed out soul. And buried somewhere within it? Grief an ocean deep.

They were painful people to study, honestly. As they gathered together in Jacob’s house to say their personal farewells to Karrin, I stopped looking. They deserved to grieve in peace.

Erika is . . . volatile. Her aura is as varied as a kaleidoscope, flickering rapidly between colors and emotions. On the surface I saw a petite smiling blonde, and below that raw anger and hurt, her every action down to a dice roll. 

But forget Erika - Jacob is the scary one. A man with an emptiness inside him, an apathy, a cold, uncaring practicality – a hollowed out soul. And buried somewhere within it? Grief an ocean deep.

They were painful people to study, honestly. As they gathered together in Jacob’s house to say their personal farewells to Karrin, I stopped looking. They deserved to grieve in peace. 

June 30th, 2014 
Eos, my newly christened Sleepwalker retainer, gets her first taste of the exciting mage lifestyle. That is to say, we both have a near-death experience. 

Eos: Go me. The retainer. Yay? Yeah, so through all this stuff going on Chimera took her field trip to go to German and managed to save my life by destroying a nightmare entity that was… feeding off of me.

Chimera: I’d intended it as a simple training session out in the country, an opportunity to gauge the limitations of her magical ability and give her a few pointers before introducing her to my master. If we had time, I’d planned to give her an overview of firearms and gun safety. 

Those plans come crashing to a halt when, at the wheel of my questionably-functional van and just out of Jamestown, I notice that we’re being followed. Four kids piled into a pickup truck, three in the cab and one riding in the back.

That’s how we made the acquaintance of the Jamestown Proxies. It might have been possible to write them off as simple thugs, even with the masks . . . if it weren’t for the delirious, almost hypnotic glow of their auras. Plus, when have things ever been that simple? 

I’ve brought my gun with, sure. But I really don’t want to use it on a couple of brainwashed kids; instead I put my foot to the accelerator. They return the favor by ramming us off the read.

I feel a sudden twist of magic in the air as they impact, a disruption of Fate. The strange thing is that it’s coming from Eos, who hasn’t learned a single thing about casting spells yet. 

The result is that they go careening off the road with us, leaving both of our vehicles trashed; the kid in the back of the pick-up goes flying on impact. Eos and I are fortunate to suffer only minor injuries, and beat a retreat on foot in the confusion. They pursue, but we’ve got enough of a head start to make it to town unscathed. My van isn’t so lucky; I find out afterwards that what’s left of it isn’t worth repairing. 

Eos: At one point the proxies show up again and we rabbit. They manage to start flanking us while I have Casstiel on speed dial and use Space magic to gain precious yards on our pursuers. Casstiel shows up and helps slow them down before portaling us out of harm’s away. Nicest thing the man has done for me so far, surprised he didn’t leave me behind to get stabbed.

Azazel: While mostly mundane, the proxies appear to increase the Quiescence, Disbelief and the ambient Paradox in the area. Further analysis suggests that the disruptive static produced by the Abyss’s hold on them may have allowed them to bypass shielding spells with mundane weapons.

Chimera: All in all, Eos took the whole thing surprisingly well, considering. I’m still struggling to find an explanation for the Fate magic she worked – it didn’t feel quite like conventional supernal magic, and when questioned about it she claimed she hadn’t done a thing.

Eos: We now know that what happened was the result of supernal energy infused into my family genetics. Most proximi families have some kind of magical curse, mine is bad luck, but to those around me instead of me specifically. It is like I am so lucky that I make everyone around me unlucky by contrast.

Chimera: We spend the next couple of days shut up in the Sanctum, lying low while the Cabals prepare to trap the monster that has been hunting us all for months. 

July 4th, 2014 
It’s the Fourth of July and instead of celebrating, the Cabal is finalizing their preparations to kill an Abyssal horror. The date was chosen deliberately; they’re making an effort to maintain the Veil with this plan. Over the last week, they’ve had time to refine it and do the setup necessary to spring their final trap.

It started with an idea put forth by Seraph. How do you fight a monster that walked straight out of a meme? You alter it at the source. You give it a weakness.

Part 1:

It’s decided that fire will be the Slenderman’s new vulnerability. And as mages at their level, they have the capacity to cast a spell that makes the entire world believe it. The details of the mythos change overnight. Eris’ husband Rusty provides suggestions on the supplies they’ll need to take advantage of this weakness.  

Azazel: This was a lot harder than it sounds. Not only did it take a long night of casting with multiple polymasters but a huge amount of discussion and effort was spent in making sure the spell could not be traced by other mages to them as the source. If it had backfired they may have come after the Horsemen, blaming them for the Slenderman’s existence rather than seeing it as an attempt to disrupt it.

Chimera: Guess the gambit payed off. Casstiel also asked through some of his contacts with other Awakened if anyone would object to them killing the creature. Predictably, no one cared.

Part 2:

Set the bait. Nergal purposely catches the attention of a few Proxies and sets up a routine of heading into the showroom of the old abandoned Chevy dealership just off of main street Beulah. The room has been prepped with fire Wards, and before long the Proxies have marked it up with Observer Symbols. 

Shortly afterwards, Slenderman makes his appearance. Nergal runs past him and into the showroom, where the others are waiting. Slenderman teleports into the room, poised to kill. Seraph and Nergal noted that he was bigger than before and physically stronger, as though consuming the organs had given him fresh power. 

Part 3:

This is elegant in its simplicity. They start the bastard on fire. 

Seraph intercepts as Slenderman strikes out at Nergal, taking the blow across the chest – it rips straight through his mage armor, but he’s still standing. Eris takes the chance to light the Glyph of Severance drawn in gasoline and Vaseline at his feet, burning the symbol into the ground. The rest of them are armed with a mixture of gasoline filled super soakers and flare-guns. He lights up like a torch.

Azazel: The real punch was in the home-made thermite mixed with the paint and coating every surface of the room. Once it got hot enough to ignite that the whole room because as hot as the sun, reducing anything to dust.

Chimera: Casstiel teleports them all back to the Crucible room as the room goes up in flames and they feel the warm, fuzzy satisfaction of a job well done and hope it is enough. 

There’s one last snag in the plan though. As Slenderman dies, a tremor runs through the nearby Proxies, and they sprint into the burning showroom before collapsing unconscious. Maybe it was his last command to them, or maybe it was just a reflection of the damage done to their minds – either way, they’re not going to make it out of there alive without interference. Thankfully, Casstiel quickly teleports them out of there – Seraph tosses a bag full of thermite on top of what little remains of Slenderman at this point and they retreat again as the plasma burns its way towards China.  
                  Tarot Draw: Two of Swords Reversed
An emotionally shattering experience, a loss of balance, release your fear of involvement

Eris heals the children of their injuries, and Seraph leaves them in a field surrounded by a Life Ban that will hold until they wake up. Their psyches have been damaged, but not beyond repair.

Overall, I’d call this plan a win. I’m sure there’s something to be said about the property damage to the dealership. 

Azazel: It’s okay, the owners have been trying to sell the place since 1985, no takers and the place has been abandoned that long.

Chimera: But hell, they got an awesome lightshow out of the deal. Happy Fourth of July indeed.

That night...

They sleep, and dream about the Slenderman one final time.

Kairos dreams of a pack of werewolves, feathers in their ears, laying down wards on a butte top. They are exhausted, but joyful – at long last, they’ve managed to imprison the Thin-Man, a task that cost them many of their people.

Nergal dreams of oil, and the heartbeat of a pulsing web of energy goes silent. It’s then that he realizes that this entire time, the Abyssal had been using the flow of American processed oil to spread his influence. Oil from the Bakken shale formation, now reachable through frakking and North Dakota’s new number 1 export. With the Acamoth gone and the Slenderman dead the growing influence of the spreading oil in North America finally withers and dies. 

Seraph dreams of a slagged hole where the Slenderman once stood, a Tarot card placed neatly among the ashes. XXIV "The Prisoner"; a dark skinned man draped in chains and metalwork. When Seraph re-examines the site the next day, the card is there, just as he saw it; he entrusts it to Kairos and Nergal for safe keeping. 

Eris dreams of a foreman working patience of a derrick on an oil pad after hours. Without warning, lightning strikes the site in a shower of white light, and every man present save the foreman collapses to the ground. He hears the groaning of metal, and the panel in front of him comes alive, wires wrapping around him like hands and pulling him in. The image of the man struggling, half-melded to the equipment panel is so vivid that at first, Eris isn’t completely sure she’s dreaming. 

I dream, blissfully, of nothing. This in itself is remarkable for me. But the next morning, Eos wakes up shaking and tells me of the things she saw. Children with the Observer Symbol branded onto their foreheads and dead eyes, and a young man watching over them. His features are obscured, but his mouth is set in a face-splitting grin. 

The weeks following...

It takes a while for it to truly be "over" of course, and even then there are a few loose ends left hanging. 

A few days after Slenderman’s death, police uncover twelve bodies out in the Black Hills, burned beyond all hope of identification. The Cabal is able to peg them as soulless Denarian squires. It’s Prodigy’s work, but the bodies are old; these murders had to have occurred before his death. 

One last ugly death emerges; Black Moon and Panoptes contact the Cabal, informing them that Vigil, the Guardian Emissary of Fargo, has been found murdered in his Sanctum. Vigil was by all accounts, a haunted and reclusive man, prone to sporadic human contact at best. As such, it took several weeks for anyone to investigate his disappearance and discover the body. His journals, erratic and rambling as they were, implies that he became aware of the presence of Slenderman long before anyone else, and that the Abyssal had been stalking him for nearly as long. There are signs that he’d taken the situation into his own hands, and had been looking for a means to summon and trap Slenderman as well as manipulate the Proxies. Evidentially, he didn’t succeed.

Then there’s the matter of Prodigy’s death curse, which has the potential to seriously screw things over. Was he too arrogant to realize his death was coming and too slow to react? Did he refrain as a rare act of mercy towards his former friends? Or has the Cabal yet to feel the effects? 

Gnomon is still missing, but quite possibly alive and looking for a new "master", especially when you consider the fact that no one in recorded history has been able to permanently kill it.

Kairos and Nergal use the Blood Fang, now in their keeping, to post-cog and track down Prodigy’s lair. They wouldn’t talk much about it, at least not to me, but they returned with another of the First Tarot, his blazing diamond, and a handful of photographs; they show Prodigy and the other Horsemen hanging out together, back before the world changed for them forever.  

The rest of July is, thankfully, uneventful. Everyone does pretty much as they please, relieved to be done with such morbid business. Persephone and Eris go backpacking. Seraph works on being human. Casstiel, Nergal and Kairos play board games. Everyone drinks – a lot. 

In short, they live.

Now let the dead have their due: Orion, Alex Kralie, Noah Maxwell, Karrin Booker, Vigil, and yes, Prodigy. 

May you be remembered.

About the Authors

Hannah Nyland is a full-time student majoring in News Media and Web Design in her last year at North Dakota State University. She graduated from High School in 2014 and placed second in the Ayn Rand essay contest for The Fountainhead in 2013. Her hobbies include reading, martial arts, writing fiction, gaming, playing Mage the Awakening and plotting to take over the world with an army of corgis.

Jerad Sayler is a Cyber Warfare Officer in the US Air Force of eight years. He graduated from the University of North Dakota with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science in 2009 and received his MBA in 2014. He has been Storytelling new World of Darkness games since 2005 and has be running his current Chronicle of Mage: The Awakening since 2010. He enjoys creative writing involving role playing and game mechanics.