opus auxiliumRULES (Full credit to Kai via Damon as always):
1. There is no post order, but please only post once for each post I make unless I say otherwise.
2. Please try to be timely on posts: in other words, 10 minutes or less to post and if there is combat, declare/roll in 2 minutes or less. I will give a polite warning if we start getting too late with these.
3. You are free to multi-task, so long as you can abide by the above strictures.
4. This scene may (key word: MAY) involve combat taking place and as such, there is potential risk to your PCs in various types. If you decide you want to bow out based on that I am completely fine.
5. Please PM or IM me with anything you want to be off-limits; phobias, triggers, themes, etc. Also PM with any relevant Merits or Flaws (Nightmares, Phobias, etc.) or any active magical effects (wards, Life enhancement, et. al) your Mage has going on your person. If you need to roll those, or Nightmares or the like, do so now. If none of these apply, no need to PM me with “None”
7. Please keep track of your own health, Quintessence, WP, etc.
8. This scene sets itself in the vicinity of Washington Park at twilight. The park is sparsely populated tonight. Description post incoming!
Kalen Holliday[How awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )
SerafíneApplicable merits: oracular ability. Applicable flaws: hospital phobia, amnesia.
opus auxiliumWashington Park has to be lovely this time of year. And it is. It's the period before autumn starts to turn the leaves green, but it's cooled off from the hot summer months and that makes it much more tolerable. The sun is setting, casting the sky in brilliant reds, oranges and purples above the greenery.
You would think that this would be a perfect time for people to be out and about, but it's also a new school year and people are busy with other things. That makes tonight relatively sparse in terms of population. There are a couple people here or there, but most of them are on their way out. There's a guy who been laying on a blanket on the grass reading, but he's since fallen asleep. Anyone within sight of this particular vicinity--the path that circles around Smith Lake, within view of the elegant boat house--are a ways away and dealing with their own things.
Sitting near the edge of the lake is a particular sight that some of the Awakened may find familiar. Interestingly enough, it was pretty sparsely populated then too on that Sunday morning half a year earlier. A scarecrow stands on a post about eight feet tall, dressed in a dark trenchcoat and a black stovetop hat, with velvety dark pants and a dress shirt under the coat. Just hanging out there, out of nowhere.
Kalen HollidayKalen has been a frequent visitor to Washington Park for the last six months. He's come to the same spot overlooking the edge of the lake and stayed there, quietly. Sometimes he prays there, because the place you meet something like The Message is probably as sacred as a sanctuary. Not an Angel, The Message; but, at least to Kalen, angelic.
It has been half a year, but time...time is a fluid thing. Particularly where The Message is. So, despite the weeks stretching into months, Kalen didn't give up. It has been long enough, with enough things that are not angelic or good, that Kalen is a little surprised to see a scarecrow at the edge of the lake again.
His approach is smoother this time. With less limping and a touch less caution. A touch. There could be more things here than just The Message. It could be, somehow, another Sending. Perhaps all Sendings manifest as scarecrows. Perhaps they all manifest as scarecrows here.
[Awareness!!!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Gwendolyn BishopIt wasn't parent/teacher conferences and, for that, Gwendolyn was thankful. The first place she had been in the city was a museum, a place to see the planes and to be intrigued by the history of flight. The second place that Gwendolyn went, of course, was a bookstore. And a month did pass, and the Etherite spent her time making a circuit from home to work to the grocery store back to her Summer Home. The place she took with her, that felt warm when it was warm and cool when it was cool and whatever mindscape Gwendolyn had created was set aside in favor of being at the park.
Summer Home could wait.
It would all still be there when she went to sleep.
Gwendolyn was making her way through the park, because it was a lovely enough day and Washington Park was the kind of place that she enjoyed being. She was a solitary craeture, clad in a pair of yoga pants and a tee shirt from some concert she had been to a few years back. She didn't seem like she would be old enough to be a fan of Prince, but the Musicology tour had been pretty spectacular. Her sunglasses were perched on top of her head, and over one shoulder there was a messenger bag instead of a purse. She turned heads when she walked. She turned heads when she did a lot of things, but what turned her head was
"A scarecrow?"
Gwendolyn fished through her bag for a tablet. Thin and bleeding edge (but not foldable, not yet, she was still working on that). She tapped on the screen idly as she prepared to run a certain diagnostic scan for fluctuations in the area's magnetic field.
[awareness seems like a good idea right now]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
AlexanderThe evening is slowly drawing in, and the sky is beautiful. The weather is warm, the city – this part of it, at least – is at peace. It’s the perfect evening for a walk through the park, really.
It’s been a few days since the events at the Black Orchid and Alexander is still wearing the dark bruises of that night. His shift had finished a couple of hours ago, but he hadn’t felt like going straight home. So? He’s been walking the city with no real direction in mind. Not consciously, at least. He’s been happy to drift, following crowds, taking random turnings and alleyways. His meandering had brought him to the edge of Washington Park and, just on the off-chance, he thought he’d check again for a certain Message. It’s been how many months with no sign of him reappearing? Six, maybe?
Those first couple of months, he’d been here pretty frequently to look. There hadn’t been and sign of him reappearing – either in this world or over the Gauntlet. The visits had become less frequent until they came about once or twice a month. With time, who knows – maybe they would die out altogether. Who knows where he could be or what he’s getting up to.
So he walks through the park, around the lake. And sees a familiar figure. Two, actually. A rather mundane-looking – if out of place – scarecrow. And Kalen. Seeing them there, he picks up his pace and jogs towards the lake near the two of them.
“Small world. Is that who I think it is?” He calls out so Kalen can hear him before turning to the lake and peering down into his reflection. Excited, curious, he wants to make sure that this is more than someone’s frat joke.
[Spirit sight, are you there? TN4]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (2) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Alexander[Also: Awareness]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
SerafíneSerafíne does not stake out the park as Kalen does, but she is here often nevertheless. The neighborhood is close to her own; there's good shopping, there are little retro-hipster bars and cafés not far from here. She's always meeting someone or doing something, has some reason to be in the vicinity. Tonight, a small bag in her left hand as she walks back toward the park from Devil's Food, where she left some friends behind, perhaps because she wanted to smoke some pot and watch the sunset. Maybe she's supposed to meet Dan here later. Maybe she had a whim to go boating after dark, to feel the world moving around her and under her, water.
--
There. Clove cigarette in one hand, take-out bag in the other, hair loose and golden and curling where it is not shaved. A small plaid bustier and a tiny leather skirt that barely covers her ass. Fishnets and combat boots and a battered leather jacket with god-knows-what lurking in the pockets.
High maybe. Possibly.
Enough that she half-wonders, you know, if she hasn't somehow stumbled backward six months or so, watched the sun move the wrong direction.
But no -
no -
SerafíneAwareness.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
opus auxiliumThey all pick up on it...that feeling that Alexander, Kalen and Serafine have felt before. It's a shimmering, ethereal feel and that's what Alexander and Kalen pick up on. Gwendolyn has a sense of age and yet, oddly, youth as well. Something that is relatively new to the universe and also carries the echo of something much older. Sera...well, she may or may not remember this feeling depending on how good her memory is. It's the primal essence, falling off like flakes of dust. Like looking through a window that you can't see what's on the other side.
Alexander gets a bit of magic off, letting him look across to the Spirit world. Unless Sendings all look identical, this is the very one they rememer. The Message stands there where his physical manifestation lays, the tall and angelic creature with the androgynous features and giant owl wings.
Gwendolyn is going for her tablet to do some scans, and the scarecrow does something that may take her attention away from the device. It...moves. The head lifts, revealing the blank, vaguely misshapenly-carved block of wood that makes up its face. The raising of its head causes a slow, almost ominous creaking sound as that featureless wood turns to each of them, regarding them in turn.
"I remember you," it says to Sera, Kalen and Alex, and Alexander sees it smiling in a very faint manner. "You are off the Traditions. You received the message before." It looks at Gwendolyn then, the head tilting right with a creak into a curious cant.
"I do not know you. Are you of the Traditions as well?"
AlexanderAlexander looks at the lake, at his reflection. Through the reflection and out the other side. The magic isn’t strong, barely holding itself together, but it does hold long enough for him to turn and see the scarecrow properly.
“It’s him! It’s really him!” He’s smiling widely as he says it, walking over to join Kalen. Maybe this is the sense of wonder that the others have been talking about. He’d seen the birth of this creature come from the death of another, and then see it become more than the relatively mindless creation that it was to the aware being that now stands (flies!) in front of them.
“How have you been, Message? What have you been doing since we last saw you?” He holds out a hand in greeting, if the Message decides to take it.
Alexander only notices Gwendolyn when the Message turns to look at her, and suddenly the smile fades as he turns to face her. On guard. Here is someone Awakened and unknown. Is she of the Traditions? Or Union?
Kalen Holliday"Yes," Kalen says, his shoulders relaxing a little as the feeling of The Message washes against his skin like light. He reaches out once to touch Alexander's shoulder. It is hardly as though there is time for all the usual greeting things people do. How are you. How about that weather. Has our team of choice scored more points than average or less this term of play. Fuck all that. The Message is here.
Granted, Kalen can only so often be bothered with normal greetings anyway.
He smiles at the statement that The Message remembers. Nods. Only that The Message is so close to the water prevents Kalen from running up to embrace a scarecrow, Instead, he holds one arm out for Sera. It isn't as though she needs help to balance off the path in those heels, and he knows that, but he offers anyway. Because more complicated things prevent him from running up to embrace Sera.
Only then does he turn his eyes, so pale in the dusk that their color is impossible to determine beyond extremely pale, on Gwendolyn. Steady. Expectant. She is the only being here he does not know. Does not trust. So he watches her carefully as she responds to The Message.
Gwendolyn BishopWas she of the traditions as well?
Well, one doesn't argue with a moving scarecrow. The Scientist pulled her tablet close to her rather impressive chest and the lady made a small eep noice. Clearly, the woman wasn't expecting to be addressed by a scarecrow, but she striaghtens up and smoothed out her shirt and she had to be a representative. A symbol. If she was going to be a respectable and non-embarrassing Etherite (not Son of Ether, she wasn't a Son of anything) she didn't need to seem so openly surprised when randomly placed scarecrows started moving.
But then there were people looking and she was suddenly wishing she wasn't wearing workout clothes and, instead the woman took a second, inhaled deeply, and introduced herself.
Introductions were easy enough, but she wasn't twelve anymore. she wasn't pale. No, her hair was dark, her yes were dark and her skin was tan- be that from spending time outdoors or a natural predisposition to a darker complection was hard to tell. Her lips were full, her eyes were bright, and she could fake enough confidence to get through an introduction.
"I am of the traditions. Doctor Gwendolyn Wade-Bishop, son of Ether," okay, so maybe she wasn't that good at introductions. Straight and to the point that one.
SerafíneSerafíne is a disciple of Life and Mind and Time. She remembers everything, except her own history - which must be a choice, conscious or unconscious, decided or decidedly undecided. A path she has taken as her own and for her own.
For the nonce.
And she isn't thinking about The Sending at all, just the way the light bleeds over the horizon and the way it makes her lungs feel, sometimes, as if they were aflame, the way she swallows the air, the way the evening hums, cool, the darkness closer, the lights in the windows of the houses lining the streets so precise and so discrete and so immediate that they seem full of secrets, the lovely, sliding sort of secrets that always belong to the strangers locked behind those stranger's doors.
She is holding: the sun in her throat and the moon on her tongue, the sweet smoke and the ground beneath her feet, the remnants of whatever-that-was in the bag swinging from her right hand and -
- oh. oh. oh.
She feels everything. Alexander's chill and Kalen's storm, like a front on the horizon. Something else - tenacious - beneath her skin. Hanging on, you see.
Hanging on.
And: shimmering, rising, which makes her lungs want to expand as if she could leave the ground. (You must understand that she already knows what it means to rise.)
Kalen offers her an arm and Sera glances up at his profile. It might seem to be the first time she has noticed him. She smells like cloves and burnt sugar and tobacco and rhum and she takes his arm, easy as you please, stepping carefully from the path on to the grass. A glance at Gwendolyn, banked and lambent.
Oh she is lovely.
And Sera, tightening her grip on Kalen's arm, bites the inside of her cheek, hard enough that she breaks the skin. That she bleeds. The spike of pain pushes her out of her skin, focuses her senses as she, looks and Looks.
[Prime 1: Watch the Weaving. Difficulty 5. -1 (practiced) -1 (focus)).
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
opus auxiliumSera expands her vision to catch manifestations of Prime, and she picks up on the coalescing Quintessential energy around Alex's eyes. There is also the vague sense of something floating around the scarecrow, of course; the Message was created by those shards of Avatars created by the Avatar Storm, after all. It's not quite an active Effect obviously, but it's close.
"Ether. Yes, of course." The blank face doesn't smile--features are generally required for that--but there is a sense of satisfaction. The scarecrow looks from her to Alexander. It doesn't reach out and take his hand on this side of the Gauntlet; that hand is still bound to the cross-pole, after all. But there is a sense of acknowledgement, and in the Umbra where it can't touch him the Message bows its head which makes the scarecrow do the same.
"I need your help. Someone needs your help. There is something on the other side that is harming us, and we need assistance from those who have the capacity to do so. Will you help us?"
The question seems posed to all four of them.
SerafíneSera focuses her vision primarily on Gwendolyn, the stranger whom she does-not-precisely-know as Gwendolyn introduces herself. She can see the energy around Alexander's gaze - a slanting glance, all sidelong, and something about her is satisfied that the apprentice is imposing his will on the world. Perhaps Alexander will feel the dark smear of her gaze on his countenance, in the twilit park, perhaps he is too focused on the Message to sense her attention.
Regardless, her attention slides back to the Message, and Sera offers a neat little shrug.
"'Course. Who's we?"
Kalen Holliday"Doctor Gwendolyn Wade-Bishop," Kalen says quietly, mimicking her inflection not because there is any mockery but because Names have power. "Welcome to Denver."
And then he turns back to The Message. Not because he is finished his evaluation of Gwen but because The Message is here and Alexander is here and Sera is here. The last Mage he met under these circumstances, he invited into his cabal. Of course, Alexander had known Sera. That may have smoothed over a bit of the normal reluctance to trust.
There is no hint of reluctance in his answer to The Message. "I will help you." He does not speak for the others, but he expects that Alexander and Serafine will come. He expects Gwen will come too. She is, after all, here. Friend or enemy...her presence is almost certainly fate. One does not argue with fate. Coax, barter, influence...perhaps. But argue, no.
So he stays there, near Alexander, Serafine on his arm, watching The Message. He smiles a little at Sera's answer, leans sideways a little to touch his temple to hers. She's close enough to his height in heels.
AlexanderLowering his hand, Alexander returns the bow of the head. The last time he’d seen it, it had been fully capable of movement. So easy to forget that was in another world…
Alexander eyes Gwendolyn warily as she introduces herself to the Message, and to the others. But it’s one thing to say you’re a Son (Daughter?) of Ether. It’s another to have some kind of confirmation or proof that that’s the case. At least when he’d been introduced to the others he’d so far met in the city, there had always been someone there to vouch for them. Even Alicia was known to Kalen, and Alexander? Trusted Kalen, Sera, Grace… Gwendolyn, not so much.
So he touches Kalen’s arm without looking at him – doing well, great weather, didn’t watch the game, we must get together some time – and moves, turns, to where he can look up at the Message while keeping Gwendolyn in sight.
Sera, though. Sera gets a warmer glance, a smile, a bowed head of her own. It’s not exactly the hug from that evening in the Chantry, but then this isn’t exactly the Chantry kitchen with cooling tea in the pot.
Alexander looks back up at the Message when it explains why it’s here and a few emotions pass over his face. Curiosity that there might be more Messages out there. Concern that they were threatened. Dread at what was shortly going to follow, even if he had been relatively spared compared to the others – especially to Sera. She gets another glance, worried for her.
“Yes. What is it that’s hurting you?”
Gwendolyn Bishop"Of course," she replied, but without any hesitation. Nothing that would indicate that she was anything other than capable. Anything other than ready because she had to be ready. Her attention stayed with the Message, though briefly it does wander to take in the other three people who were to be addressed. The technomancer stayed rather comfortably where she was, content to not meander over and invade the space of the other three, and she very carefully put her tablet back into her messenger bag.
opus auxilium[[Something something oogly boogly]]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
AlexanderThat feeling, of something building. It's familiar, and he knows what's coming. Alexander moves over to Sera, rests a hand on her shoulder and gets ready to support her. He gives Gwendolyn a glance. “This is going to hurt.” Then he closes his eyes.
opus auxilium"I am most apologetic, but as before, it will be easier to provide answers on the other side."
And in truth, he does seem to feel bad as the four mages feel their perceptions ripple and thickness surrounds them, like the air is congealing but less physical than that. That thickness slowly gives way and their vision goes blurry as they start to pass through the Gauntlet.
And then the pain. But of interesting note to the four (or three, plus Gwen if she has ever passed into the Umbra before)...it doesn't seem to hurt quite as much this time around. The sensation Alexander felt before, like a migraine that was spread through the whole of his being, feels more like a soreness after you wake up from a punishing workout. Kalen feels the migraine effect, suffusing his being, as does Gwendolyn. Sera might have been anticipating that horrendous pain flying through her synapses and connecting with her very soul, but it feels instead like a thousand little pinpricks, tingling and nipping. The sounds of screams, indistinct voices and mad babbling is fainter and fewer. The Avatar Storm does not feel as strong, particularly at this Shallowing.
When they come back to their senses, they find themselves in a graveyard. At least, that's what it feels like; there are no graves, no caerns and no monuments. It is a hallowed and yet desolate place of barren earth, devoid of life even here in the spirit world. A wide, black river sweeps along nearby, the water impenetrably dark. The mages get a shiver that runs up their spine...the cold void of death. Color is drab, except for them. They seem to stand out like a beacon...them and the Message. Kalen, Sera and Gwen can see it now, the tall being with the perfectly genderless human features and the graceful owl wings. It stands there and folds its hands in front of its chest, gives a polite half-bow.
"Thank you for coming. Since we first met, I have been travelling and establishing...alliances with other denizens of your realm and mine. These alliances have been very fruitful, and I find myself quite attached to them. Someone has been claiming them and taking them here. This person will not speak with me. I hope that they will speak to you, and you can argue for their release on my behalf."
SerafíneKalen touches his temple to her own and he has the impression of Sera's half-smile evident in his periphery. The curve of her cheek, the gleam of her shallowed gaze, the immediate awareness of her presence. A little nudge back with a hum, and they are remembering the pain of the Avatar Storm, Kalen and Alexander both, and Sera is not really remembering it in the same way they are; not anticipating it. Just holding some sharp knowledge inside herself and turning to glance at Alexander - a bit strangely, mind - as he rests his hand on her shoulder. Nothing objecting, there. Sera never objects to touching another creature, or being touched.
--
And then.
And now -
Her breathing is sharp and shallowed and there are tears in her eyes but she is not on the ground, Sera, not screaming, not keening, not anything except -
in pain, in passing pain, tears in her eyes, grinding her teeth, her mouth flat, pressed together as she works to bear it.
Graveyards: she shivers, Sera, visibly, physically, moistening her mouth and starting to hum again, beneath her throat. The notes are eerie, and have this sense about them as if they were both necessary and essential and forgotten or perhaps half-remembered, like a song written into the skin of your bones.
"Just, your friends?" Sera asks, quiet you see. "Or, everything the graveyard can hold?"
Kalen HollidayKalen does not close his eyes to prepare for shifting into the Umbra because he so very rarely sees the spirit world. One day, he will learn. But there are so many things to learn. And there may be moments when he speaks in that measured voice and he says that knowledge is power where it is possible to believe he would learn everything for that reason. Except there are moments like this, where his eyes are wide and full of wonder and it is so vividly clear that Kalen will learn everything he can because the cosmos is a vast, mysterious, wondrous place.
He wants to see everything.
But then there is pain, sharp and hot and spreading through him. He can taste it, thick and warm on the back of his tongue. And something like death. Different than the death last weekend. New weekend, new kind of death. That's how Denver rolls.
He starts to reach for Alexander, because the fucking world is spinning and there is red boiling in the space behind his eyes, but then he remembers Alexander is more than solid and cold, Alexander has Serafine. Instead he takes a breath and forces his eyes open and takes a step closer to The Message. But already the world is steady enough. The sense of something ephemeral and sacred shredding as the shards of other Avatars grated and brushed and raged against it is diminished, somehow. Still, the memory of them is cold. Always cold.
He is listening to The Message and he is getting his bearings and then his eyes linger warily on the river. "What do you know about this person?" He asks The Message without taking his eyes off the water.
SerafíneLife 1. (-1 Focus) / Mind 2
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 4, 4) ( success x 2 )
AlexanderThe feeling builds, reaches its crescendo. Alexander takes a deep breath, tensing for the inevitable…
He grunts as it hits, but more out of expectation than actual pain. He wonders for a moment whether something had gone wrong, if reality had chosen not to allow itself to be bent that way and pushed back against the Message. He opens his eyes again and looks up at the Message, smiling again as its true form shows clearly. Then he looks at Sera, remembering the effect of being pulled through the Gauntlet had on her the last time around. She seems… ok. Not great, by any means, but she’s still standing this time. As is Kalen. A glance at Gwendolyn again – to check that she’s still with them.
Now that the Message is fully free again, Alexander moves to its side while he looks around, releasing his light touch on Sera and touching the Message’s arm gently, momentarily, instead.
He tries – and fails – to suppress a shiver at the feel of the place. He crosses his arms across himself and rubs them as if for warmth. If it’s possible for such a thing to exist here. The Archmage’s final resting place may have been a cave in some nameless realm far from everything that would normally be called living. But it still had life. Unknown, wild, untameable life, maybe, but still life. Here?
Is this where spirits come when it’s time for them to move on? he wonders to himself. He turns on the spot, taking in the bare earth, the desolate stillness in the air. Sera and Kalen are getting information about why they’ve been requested. Alexander? Starts walking towards the black river while they talk, listening while he does. Curious creature.
Gwendolyn BishopHer head hurts. A terrible feeling that washes over her, that settles in a space behind her eyes and she closed them tightly. She was expecting the worst, but this? this didn't... quite feel the same. This didn't quite feel like what she was expecting. There was a feeling of coldness on her spine and the woman shuddered. Possibly from the cold. She's never passed into the umbra before, and instead she found herself transported to a different plane.
She quickly patted herself down to make sure she had all of her faculties in order, and that her sunglasses hadn't fallen off in transit. She ached, and she hurt in ways that she was not expecting to hurt, but there was death here. She lreached into her messenger bag again to take out her tablet. the young woman caught movement out of the corner of her eye and- "Hey, I don't think you should go there alone."
She followed along with Alexander, but Gwen stopped just long enough to try and get a feel for what precisely made up that black river. She typed along on the little metal device, scribbling some chemical equation on the screen and hoping to find some revelation in the work.
[Corr1/Matter1- What's the river made of? diff 4 + 1 (distracted) ]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (2, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
opus auxiliumSera realizes with a cold dread that, as she scans around, the only Life Patterns that she senses are the four of them, the Awakened. But it's more than just that. When you use Life magic to scan for Patterns, you often have to filter out simpler Patterns to narrow down to the complex ones. That isn't needed here. The dirt, the air, the water--especially the water, more than anything. Nothing here is alive, even remotely. No fish. No worms in the earth. No microbes, no bacteria. Technically they shouldn't be able to live like this, but this is the Umbra and luckily biological rules don't quite apply.
As such, obviously, there are no living minds outside of the four Mages to scan. She does get a vague sense of another intelligence, somewhat similar to way the Message's mind registers. A spirit's. But it's much more vast.
opus auxiliumSera immediately starts to reach out with her senses as she and the others asks for clarification, and she gets her answers. She also gets an answer from The Message, who spreads his hands.
"Those I know is what I seek. I do not presume to seek everything from this resting place...that is entirely too vast. And those who are laid here came here naturally. Those who were taken...they did not come here in a natural manner."
Onto Kalen then, who is on edge because of that pitch-black but free-flowing river. He's a wise Hermetic, but also one who has experience with fearing rivers. "They are a guardian here. Or was intended to be. The more they caretake, the more power they get. I believe they stumbled upon this fact and avarice, unfortunately, grew within them."
Alex goes over to investigate the river, and Gwen warns him about doing so alone. She may have a point; as he gets closer to the edge, that chill in his bones--a cold more penetrating than temperature--grows and expands. It would seem that the river itself is leeching his heat directly from him. As he gets closer, they all feel something around them...stirring. It isn't anything physical; no zombies coming from the ground or anything like that. More like a consciousness orienting its attention toward them.
Kalen Holliday[Intelligence+Cosmology D=8 WP]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
SerafíneSera crosses her arms all stark in front of her torso. She's wearing next to nothing and is a little bit stoned and still reeling from the pain (lessened, yes - but this is now and that was months ago) of the crossing, reaching out to find -
Nothing.
Nothing,
nothing.
"We're the only things close to alive here." She says, low-voiced, as she starts to move, picking her way through the graveyard without tombstones as if she had found herself in an abattoir, unwitting, careful of all the unseen stones. "But something's coming, something big."
Gwendolyn Bishop[int+occult, diff 8. C'mon Mom, please say I learned something at home]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Kalen HollidayMovement as Alexander and Gwen head off toward the river draws his attention. "Careful, Alce," he murmurs. He does not stop either of them, but his eyes are uneasy as he watches them head toward the river. He listens to The Message, but his eyes track Alexander and Gwen headed for the river.
"We will do what we can," he says to The Message. He manages to tear his eyes away from the river long enough to look back, reach out to clasp The Message's shoulder.
And then Sera is speaking and he takes a breath. "We should be with them, when it gets here." He sets his jaw and extends his arm to Sera again as they walk. Because who wouldn't offer an arm to a lady in a creepy spirit graveyard...? Because they are headed toward some kind of night-black river, like the icy water that nearly drowned him and the life-stealing shadows summoned from the place Thakinyan lived that nearly devoured his soul had somehow melded into a single, greater nightmare? Because both?
[Willpower because reasons.....]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
AlexanderIt’s cold. Cold. So damned cold. Not ice cold, not snow cold, not the wind either. Something less tangible but so much more penetrating. He hugs himself tighter as he approaches the river. He wasn’t dressed for the cold – it had been a warm evening before they came here – but even so… It wouldn’t help.
Alexander looks back at the others – Sera and Kalen, as they talk with the Message. He has been listening, calling back with, “Intended to be the caretaker? Intended by who? Or what?” But he turns back to the river.
He feels something waking. Something that’s not alive, as such. Not from their world? Something created? Does Sera sense the Message as alive? He doesn’t understand enough about her magic to know.
But he does know that there is something strange about the river. Something making him feel like he’s freezing, more than already frozen. That the sensation that usually lingers around him isn’t even the end point for how far it can go.
There’s nothing alive, but there is the dead. Resting or trapped, maybe. Maybe he can sense what the others can’t. He keeps on walking towards the river, but pushes his will against reality while he moves. Reaching out to sense the spirits that may be nearby but not visible to their normal, mundane senses. Maybe he can see if that thing that they're all feeling is in the river...
[Sense spirits, Diff 4, no focus handy so +3, burning the willpowers]
Dice: 1 d10 TN7 (10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Alexander[WP - ahh, crapsticks...]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Gwendolyn Bishop"There is nothing living in that river," she called out, as though this would be some kind of help. Gwendolyn tapped something on her tablet again, nodding and keeping her findings for the time being. She continued forward to try and catch up with Alexander, but she wasn't a fast creature. She wasn't an athletic creature, and the entirety of the feeling of death around her , "if this is what I think it is... we're at the river Styx. Which means..."
She called out to the man by the river, the one who had been headed tht way and Gwendolyn stopped in her tracks. she didn't run, she couldn't run, she would just get winded in a matter of moments. She did not feel ill at ease surrounded by all this death. only... out of place.
"Don't. Touch. It!"
opus auxiliumSera is right; there is a presence, something big. And then, in an instant, it isn't there. That instant sees a--yep, you guessed it--a gondola coming into view from the other side of the river. It's wide enough that you can't even see the other side, by the way, and thus perhaps not surprising that you didn't notice the boat on the other side.
The figure inside of it along on with a pole, but he is no ferryman. It is a man, in point of fact. Or looks like one. He is dressed in a black leather racing jacket, with neon green stripes down the arms long, platinum blonde hair. He looks to be in his mid-30s, perhaps. Riding leathers make up his full outfit, in fact, and he's looking at the four of them (five of them: The Message too) with a look of sly amusement.
"Well, well, well," he says as he pushes closer, stopping a few feet from the edge. He appears to be talking to The Message, who is no longer smiling. It is not scowling, but this one...he does not get a smile. "You brought some friends, I see."
Serafíne"He," Sera has taken Kalen's arm as they walked, but now she unwraps her arm from his and takes one careful step closer to the ferryman, to his gondola, to the black, black river. " - says that you have taken souls that do not belong here, souls or spirits or what the fuck ever.
"Why?"
AlexanderThe others may or may not sense the tingle as he pushes his will against reality again, but they will see him suddenly freeze. Hard to tell from the back, but he’s balanced on a hair’s breadth between freezing up completely and running away. He freezes and… backs away, very slowly. Even without Gwendolyn’s shouted warning, he has absolutely. No. Intention. Of touching that water.
He backs away, still looking at the surface of the water, getting faster as he builds up distance. He may be in control – just – but that river? Is not something he wants to look down into again.
Alexander starts to speak, but his voice catches in his throat. He clears it once, twice, before the words come. “They.” He turns his head to look at Kalen, Sera. Even Gwendolyn. And he’s white as a sheet, blood drained from his face. “This is a prison, and they can never… never be freed.”
He turns back to watch the boat arrive, still moving towards the others. He’s silent, though.
Gwendolyn Bishop[int+occult]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Kalen HollidayKalen's attention is mostly on the thing in the gondola and the water at first. On Sera, so alive she seems like she should burn this place, stepping forward to challenge it.
But then he does look toward Alexander, reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder once he is close enough. "Never is a rather absolute word. And, in a world such as this one, just as in ours, sometimes rules can be broken. Bent. Temporarily suspended. To most of our world, what we do is impossible." He manages to smile, even here, in a spirit graveyard next to a terrible spirit river, because this is what he was trained for. This is what he promised to do for the world, and he may have extended that promise to the whole of creation he can affect. Because you cannot just abandon your Calling because you're not standing on the same earth,
Moments like this are practically the only time he feels whole.
But how do do they break or suspend these rules? Most likely with the thing that just arrived. But how to make it cooperate....?
[Intelligence+Occult D=7 WP like candy]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Gwendolyn Bishop"Excuse me, I apologize, we haven't been properly introduced yet," one can tell she is a teacher. That she is a teacher of high school students because there was a line drawn where her infinite patience would prove itself not-so infinite. She did not know who this man was, and her suspicions were not confirmable due to the dissonance with the legend. She took a look at the man, and pondered. he tried to think of something her mother may have ranted about.
And my, didn't Pomegranate Deme rant about a number of things. But this is a river she knew as a child. this is a story that Gwendolyn knows because it was some part of her
"I'm Gwendolyn Wade-Bishop. These are my associates," whose names I do not know but you don't need to know that, "and if I am to understand correctly, there's something of a disagreement here? I'm sure there's an end we can all reach where everyone is satisfied, yes?"
She reached up to pluck the sunglasses off of her head, toying with the earpiece idly.
opus auxiliumThe man in the gondola leans on the pole, seemingly uncaring about the fact that it perches him precariously over the water a bit. Sera speaks up first, and he raises an eyebrow. "You," he says with a bit of a grin. "Are rude as fuck. You should learn to be more polite, especially if your friends are right and I have something you want. It's polite to say hello before you start making demands of people. Like this...'Hello.'"
He straightens from his lean on the pole, just so he can make a bit of a dramatic bow. Alexander's reaction catches his attention too, and his grin gets a little wider. "Breathtaking, isn't it? I sometimes like to stare into it and just imagine the vastness of it all. It's empowering."
And then Gwen speaks and he turns his attention to her. "Ah, someone who can be polite. Nice to meet you Gwendolyn. I'm Zane. This is my boat, and this is my part of the river. If it falls into the river, it's mine. So I think it's less a disagreement than a case of possession being 9/10ths of the law. The law of the Universe, in this case."
He cocks his head. "What kind of agreement are you thinking of?"
Kalen Holliday"The whole of Creation has fewer laws and more truths." Kalen says quietly. "You found that the more beings you had stewardship of the more power you had. Some of those you have belong here, they came here because this is where they belong. The ones you took...possession may be a thing you can keep by force but for those beings...it is not yours by right.
"We seek the return of those who should not be here. To restore everything to the place in which it is intended to be." He steps up to Sera's side. There is a shudder as he glances at the water, but then he looks up from it and into Zane's eyes. "We can offer you power from a living source, which is a rare and precious thing here."
Gwendolyn BishopKalen gives them something to offer, power from a living source. Something that was rare indeed in a place like this. She nodded, content to back this stranger's play because, well, she can't say that they're a posse and not back his play. Whatever his name was.
SerafíneSera is humming beneath her breath, her arms still crossed, her body language turned inward. Her sense of What is Happening is approximate and tenuous. She understands that they are in a place of death and knows at least the name Charon, the myth, the gold coins for the eyes. The places the dead are meant to go, but beyond that her understanding about what and how and whom they might be bargaining for is virtually nil. Others like the message whom this creature has claimed, kept for himself, held back against the world. Whatever falls into the river is mine. And he wants to bargain and he chastises Sera for her rudeness and Sera doesn't have the energy to roll her eyes but -
- she starts to Work, humming beneath her skin, holding her energy inside, finding the beat on her tongue that matches the beating of her heart that -
(Mind 3: on the spirit thingy. If she can read his mind she is going to try. Necessary successes up to Sam.) Difficulty 6 -1 (focus) -1 (quint). + WP
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
AlexanderAlexander keep moving back, only really stopping once he’s back behind Sera and next to Kalen. He look around when he feels the hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t pull away or brush the hand off. This time, there’s comfort in the contact. Warmth. Knowledge that there is something good in the world. He looks Kalen in the eye, intent, intense. “No. Really. There’s no saving the ones that are meant to be there. Any of them. Ever.” He looks away again, back at the river. “So many of them…” He trails off, arms still wrapped around himself rubbing his arms for comfort more than for warmth.
It’s empowering. Alexander looks up at the thing calling itself Zane. He’s seen the wonder of spirits in the Message. The madness in the corrupted nature spirit by the reservoir. Now? He doesn’t even know what he’s looking at. Something that craves power. That likes to play. Something that he is, essentially, utterly powerless against. Poor little apprentice.
Kalen steps forward to stand with Sera, leaving him standing alone. He sighs, turns, walks back to the Message. To be close to something. And to ask quietly. “Who else controls the river? Can it be dammed? Diverted?” It may be naïve thinking this rivers works in the same way as one of water in their world but… you never know.
SerafíneWP
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (3, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
opus auxiliumHere's the good news: Sera gets through. She penetrates his mind, which is significant because it means that he's living. If he was a spirit, she wouldn't be able to do it because unlike a corporeal person who has three primary patterns (Living, Mind, Spirit), a spirit has just the one.
Here's the bad news: Sera gets through. Once she penetrates his mind, she realizes--too late--that he let her. He has a Mind shield up, but it's not designed to keep people out. It's designed to trick people in, and then not let them out until he desires it. It's a trap and it diverts Sera's attention to the darker portions of his mind. This is valuable information, but it's also distinctly, incredibly traumatizing information. Sera's never truly been in the mind of a Nephandus before. She's very, very lucky in the fact that he lets her out, but not before she has just the slightest hint of what it feels like to go through a Caul. Just the briefest instant. Even that is enough to nearly shatter her mind, but she holds herself together just enough that she doesn't completely lose her mind.
And then he lets go of her mind, and her consciousness slips back into her body.
Here's the other good news: she is still alive. And as an added bonus, she got just enough of his thoughts to realize that he's alive despite his proximity because of that boat and that pole. Somehow, this Nephandi managed to steal this ferry, or kill the ferryman. As long as he has the boat and rowing pole, he's safe from the river.
SerafíneWhat happens is a split-second of -
- a moment of -
something like suspension from Serafíne, with her arms wrapped around her body and a stillness that betrays absolute concentration, rapt, enraptured perhaps, and then, then a remarkable moment of decompensation where she looks like she is crumbling, like something essential in the center of her body is collapsing in upon itself, shivering as if clawed hand were stringing its way up her spinal column.
"Stop." This to Kalen, and Sera is wrenching the word out of her body. It is something close to a command. You understand the power because there is beneath everything about her a powerful will strangers and sometimes even Sera herself cannot recognize. "Give him nothing. He has stolen that boat and he has stolen that pole and that is what protects him. He's human. He's awake. He's Fallen.
And she's backing away, stumbling a bit, from the river's edge, shaking, with fear, revulsion, both immediate and (so well) remembered and (so wholly) forgotten and she is gathering the strands of her magic, too. Pulling them back into herself, trying desperately to -
opus auxilium"The river," The Message says to Alexander, "is controlled by the Ferrymen. Their job is to bring people across the river, from one side to the other. The river itself is..." He gives a little shake of his head, regretful. "It is too wide to be changed. Even for those such as you."
Zane looks intrigued by Kalen's offer and he looks like he's about ready to respond. Then Sera enters his mind. The grin widens, getting a bit of a cruel twist to it as she gets inside and whatever happens in there sends her reeling. "You see what I said, chicky-poo? You're rude." He taps his temple, his tone taking on a vicious edge to the amused mocking. "Don't go places you aren't invited. That's called trespassing."
He turns his attention to Kalen, the nasty tone fading a bit. "So, this probably just got awkward. I'm still willing to deal though, if you want to give me power from a living source for your dead friends. Or I guess your...sentient spirit friend's dead friends? Whatever works. What are we talking about...a Node? A person? Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? I'm not too picky. Power is power."
AlexanderAlexander turns back to the others at Stop, listening to what Sera has to say. That this isn’t the ferryman. But that there are ferrymen. Others who control the river. Back to the Message. “These other ferrymen – can you bring them here? If this guy has taken down one of their own then they should be pissed enough to stop him. Right? Or whoever created the ferrymen and their tools?”
He might not be able to do much, but there’s usually someone bigger and badder lurking in the shadows who can.
Kalen HollidayKalen smiles, but his eyes are very, very cold. For the most part, Kalen fights because he chose to swear oaths and he adopted codes and he has this vision of Camelot. There are things that you do, and he does them with no particular anger. There are monsters and you kill them because you must. But monsters, in most of Kalen's experience, don't have choices about what they are.
The Fallen....
Alexander and Sera have both seen him fight. But they have not, until today, seen outright rage. Cold. Quiet. Consuming.
"No. I thought you were more proper ferryman. But the Fallen? You are not merely a creature that lusts for power, you are an abomination." He steps between the Thing and Sera.
He does not strike. Not yet. There is Sera to consider. Alexander. Protecting them is more important. Alexander has a plan. And Kalen knows this Thing will not let them walk away from a fight they are losing. The more time until reinforcements, if they can get them, the better.
SerafíneAnd she is reeling, still reeling, giving these strange little involuntary shudders and fighting down her gorge and finding somehow within her body all of that pain and all of that revulsion and all of that sickness of mind and body, infection of it, the grotesquerie and pulling it, and pulling it, and pulling it close, and close, and closer still into the core of her body, feeling the frame of her consciousness shudder with it, Working.
(Life 3 / Prime 2 if necessary. She is using that fear and sickness and revulsion and concentrating it and using it as a focus and a mirror and a magnifier and rebounding it on Zane, intending to incapacitate him / knock him unconscious. Will be holding the effect until she has the necessary successes.)
SerafíneThe Effect. Difficulty 5 per Sam, need four successes.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (6, 6, 7) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Gwendolyn BishopSome people are into power.
SOme people are into its pursuit and its ends. Some people like the things it can do and they like the strength it gives them. She doesn't know that Sera is going to be doing anything, but she does know that she needs to keep this guy here. Gwendolyn also knows that she is a very pretty woman and no matter what seduction sometimes does work in one's favor.
It's hard to project authority when one is trying to project adoration. Especially when one did not feel said adoration, but she looked at Zane with big brown eyes and Gwen shot him a wink before putting on her sunglasses. They're a masterwork. Just the right shape for her face, just the right proportions to highlight her features and cover her eyes. And... mirrored. Within a moment her eyes were gone and it was difficult fighting past that reaction mirrored sunglasses tended to provoke.
"Oh, that's a shame," she purred. It left a disgusting taste in her mouth.
[Mind 2- I'm totally flirting with you, Nephandi, you want to stay here. Project adoration. Diff 5 + 1 (EUGH) = 6, -1 quint -1 specialty foci = 4]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
opus auxiliumThe Message has not failed to pay attention to the information that Sera has provided, nor the suffering that she has incurred to gain that information. From the looks of his face--the way it twists into a look of rage, a look that the always polite Sending given sentience has never displayed to them before--it was definitely new information. He looks to the Orphan and nods, and just like that he takes flight.
It's amazing how quickly he can fly.
Sera, she is empowered by her pain. Any Cultist would be proud of that, the way she takes the extremes that her mind is pushed to and turns it into a strength. Even trees rent by lightning may grow new fruit, the Code of Ananda says. And rent though she may be at the moment, she unleashes some very like-minded fruit. It surprises the Nephandi; maybe he was just drunk on his own power, holding the stolen ferry of a powerful spirit that he managed to slay. There's a question of how that could have happened; maybe his Nephandic master aided him, or maybe he just got lucky. It's difficult to say.
Either way, his Qlippothic Mind magic is a nasty thing, but he never planned on someone coming here and actually projecting onto him. And so he leers at Gwendolyn (not like he wouldn't have anyway, but his attention goes straight to her, undivided. Even that look is enough to make Gwendolyn's skin crawl probably; in the moment, his friendly-yet-nasty guise is torn away and he's just straight twisted. But it does its job and he doesn't see or anticipate Sera's response. She's just a pretty girl who thinks she has power, he thinks, and she should be screaming right now. Maybe he'd notice she isn't if he wasn't using his imagination on Gwendolyn.
But he doesn't notice and it hits him like a ton of bricks. There's half an instant of surprise before the lights go out and he collapses. He was leaning forward just a little in his attention toward the Etherite, and that sends him topping over into the black waters lake.
They can hear laughter bubbling up from the water as he starts to sink, and they could swear that the water that he begins to submerge in take the form of hands, wrapping around him and pulling him under. He has a moment of regaining consciousness just before his head is submerged, and he opens his mouth to scream...but the water fills his throat and he sinks in, not even able to raise his hand in a silent call for help.
The black water ripples and then calms. It is like he was never there.
