Project MONUMENT 063: 26-30 September 2010, Toledo, Paris, Gothenburg
INTERNAL MESSAGING - LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE REQUIRED - EYES ONLY
To: O5-3/780
From: SCP-780
...
After leaving the Alcazar, the subjects spent the night at their hotel in Toledo before beginning the 18-hour drive back to Paris. Most of the subjects felt regretful about what had happened with the mages, particularly Bo, who was especially bothered by the fact that one of the mages had attacked her mind and that Robert had also communicated mentally with her on several occasions. While thinking about how much she hated people reading her mind, she received a text message from an unknown number that said, "i can't help it jsyk" which did not help her mood.
During the night, Aðalsteinn had an encounter in his sleep with a young man who claimed to be Daniel, the soul residing within the torch. Through mind-to-mind communication (necessary since Aðalsteinn and Daniel did not share anything remotely like a common language), Daniel told Aðalsteinn that the curse on him was now lifted and that he was grateful. He then said that if Aðalsteinn was to continue to seek the gold, Daniel did not need any more to be content. Instead, he wanted Aðalsteinn to use any other gold he found to help his loved on, the soul imprisoned in the second torch. This soul apparently was under a similar curse to the one Daniel had been under, and could also come into its own power if that curse were lifted. Now that Daniel had more control over his powers, he would help by continuing to heal the subjects as needed and point the way to gold. He would then wait to show the way to more gold until the subjects had gathered it in a safe place until such time as they could retrieve the other torch. Daniel was unfortunately unable to give more detail than that due to the language barrier.
The next day, the subjects had many things to discuss on the drive back to Paris. Aðalsteinn told everyone about his encounter with Daniel, while Robert focused on reading the journal that he had taken out of the mages' lair. The subjects were interested in retrieving the second torch and lifting its curse, particularly if Michael Martucci currently controlled it (as they still assumed). So the subjects began to hatch a plan which clearly took inspiration from the mages they had just defeated, in which they would gather enough gold to form a substantial hoard and use it to lure Martucci there with the torch. They would then defeat (probably kill) Martucci, take the torch, and use the gold they had gathered to lift its curse. Obviously, this plan required a number of things that the subjects did not currently have, such as a way to interfere with blood sorcery and/or with the portals that Martucci used to travel, since if he was able to escape through a portal easily it would defeat the entire purpose. Robert would also probably have to find some magical way of amplifying the "signal" put out by the gold, since the other subjects did not know how much they would be able to collect in a reasonable amount of time. The subjects agreed to look into people or items that could help him to do this.
The subjects then became curious about what Robert was reading in the journal. He said that a lot of it was confusing to him because of the damage and missing pages, but that it seemed as though the mages had been betrayed from within by someone or something called a Logophage. Common sense and language knowledge suggested that this might mean "an eater of knowledge." This reminded Bo of the Pandoran creatures the subjects had encountered in Germany, which had modified or destroyed information around them. In turn, this led Robert to realize that the creature that had come out of a corner and killed many of the mages was probably Gorgon, the Promethean who the subjects had fought in Dresden and who they had last seen being dragged into a portal by what looked like "a Nazi zombie."
For the first time, the subjects began to wonder if there was a connection between all of their enemies. Michael Martucci had been accompanied by a group of skinheads and had vanished through an evil-seeming portal. Gorgon had done the same. There had been a Nazi flag and World War II-era bunkers mysteriously present in the Hedge. Hans Kuhn had claimed to be working for a larger force that he would not name, and had also created and passed through an evil portal. Now there was another connection in the form of the destruction and corruption of knowledge. Roland cautioned that despite the subjects' dislike for Michael Martucci, it was unlikely that he was the person in charge of all these forces even if he did have the torch, since he did not seem like a powerful enough leader to command so many. The subjects worried that the entity in charge might be the Gardener, but had no way to know right now.
The subjects arrived in Paris late on Monday night. After sleeping, they began to execute the next steps in their plan. Robert finished the report to SCP that he had begun writing while traveling, then left it in the post office box. Roland received an invitation to the next opening of "Club Underground," the bar in the catacombs that he had recently found, which was to take place on the upcoming first Saturday in October. Aðalsteinn returned to the Aegis Kai Doru safehouse, where he wrote a report for his own group, then continued his research on vampires there. He still did not find much useful information on vampires in languages that he could read, but he did find a list of other Aegis Kai Doru hunters who focused on vampires and possessed relics that could be used to combat the undead. One of these hunters was based in Greece, another in Romania, and third in Lithuania. Aðalsteinn called Anaïs and asked her if any of these hunters spoke English and would be able and willing to help him; she suggested getting in touch with the hunter in Romania, a woman named Iulia, but cautioned that Iulia was very busy and would have little patience with anyone who she perceived as wasting her time.
Robert also performed research of his own after replenishing his stores of mana. He hoped to ask the Free Council about the Logophages, but since they met on the 17th of every month he had missed the most recent meeting and was not sure he wanted to wait nearly three weeks for the next meeting date. He also had some concerns, based on certain information in the journal, that some mages might be suspicious if he were to ask about Logophages. With nowhere else to turn, Robert reluctantly contacted Sloan, the mysterious mage who had spoken to him right after the group's return from the Hedge, and set up a meeting with him for that evening.
That evening, Aðalsteinn called a meeting in the catacombs. He shared what he had learned about Aegis Kai Doru and vampires, while Robert admitted that he had made little progress. The subjects were not sure how far more research would get them, so they decided to follow the torch to more gold instead. The torch was now pointing northeast toward something closer than Moscow, and the subjects wanted to try to retrieve it. They also wanted to try to go to Romania and speak to Iulia in person, if the geography worked out. Robert said that he could not make this trip because he had to work. He also advised that the other subjects not use his magic armor because it might offend members of Aegis Kai Doru if the subjects had to deal with them. The rest of the subjects set out in "Sputnik Three" that evening, heading northeast, after checking the post office box and finding a couple of documents that they decided they would read on the road in the morning.
While the other subjects traveled, Robert met Sloan for dinner. Sloan was a nondescript middle-aged man who spoke fluent French but with an American accent. Sloan spoke fairly frankly with Robert, telling him that even though he was not a member of the local Consilium, he did not mean harm to Robert or other mages and in fact wanted to help them reach their full potential in ways that were mutually beneficial to everyone. Sloan said that if mages had really been chosen to command occult forces that most people never knew existed, they should be able to grow and develop without arbitrary limitations being imposed upon those powers. For that reason, if Robert ever needed information or help that the Consilium was unable or unwilling to provide, Sloan wanted to help Robert by being a resource who could help him at those times. In exchange, he simply asked that Robert would be willing to help him in the same way.
Robert was still suspicious and seemed to think this offer was too good to be true. However, his interest continued to be piqued when Sloan off-handedly mentioned that he had skill in Prime, a type of magic that Robert would badly need help with in order to bait the trap for Michael Martucci by making the hoard of goal draw a torch's flame toward it. So to test the waters, Robert risked asking whether Sloan had ever heard the word "Logophage." Sloan said that he had, and that the Consilium would likely not want to tell Robert what that word meant - but that Sloan had no problem with doing so. In exchange, he would ask the same from Robert - Sloan was defining a word thoroughly, so later on Sloan would contact Robert and ask him for the same sort of definition. Robert agreed to this deal and permitted Sloan to use Mind magic to drop a large amount of information about the Logophages directly into his brain. The two men then parted ways.
The rest of the subjects were still on the road in "Sputnik Three." As Wednesday morning dawned, they realized that if they continued to follow the torch directly northeast, they would eventually end up in the North Sea. Looking at a map, the subjects noted that Sweden was the nearest major land mass and Gothenburg the nearest major city, so the subjects decided to take a ferry from the Netherlands to Sweden and pick up the trail there. At this time the subjects also looked at the documents they had taken from the PO box, which included another SCP report and a letter from Malus Sylvestris that caught the subjects' attention. Upon learning that Karel Jardine, a former associate of Michael Martucci, had been recently seen in Paris, the subjects considered turning around and abandoning the search for gold for now. However, the subjects realized that the immediate trail was cold for now and that there was no real rush since they were already halfway to Sweden.
The subjects did call Robert to let him know about the letter they had received. Robert did not seem to want to get too close to Karel Jardine without the others to back him up, and agreed that this search could probably wait until the others returned. He did let them know a little bit of what he had learned about the Logophages, including that they appeared to be a group of mages who used dark and hazardous magic to destroy knowledge for unknown reasons. This went a long way toward explaining the fragmented state of the archives in the mages' sanctum. Robert also mentioned that, by process of elimination, the Logophage in the cabal had likely been Antigone, the woman who had escaped via portal (though not an evil-seeming portal)from the caverns. Otherwise, Robert remained focused on his job and waited for the others to return.
Aðalsteinn, Bo, and Roland arrived in Gothenburg late on Wednesday night and decided to get a good night's sleep before continuing to follow the torch, since they could tell they were very close now. In the morning, they followed the torch's flame to a sheep farm to the north of the city. The flame specifically pointed at the farmhouse there. Around the lunch hour, the subjects saw an elderly woman leave the house in the company of some family members; after she left, the torch pointed not at the farmhouse but in the direction she had gone, suggesting that the gold was somewhere on her person. So the subjects decided to wait until evening, break into the farmhouse, and steal whatever she had then.
At nightfall, after all of the farm workers had left, Roland sneaked into the old woman's house while Aðalsteinn and Bo waited outside. Roland concealed himself in the woman's pantry until he heard her go to bed, then crept up the stairs. He noted that none of her jewelry was gold - but, to his horror, she had a gold cap on one of her rear molars. Roland used some chloroform that he had happened to bring along in his first aid kit to knock the woman unconscious for about the next hour, then went outside to tell the others the bad news. Everyone was reluctant to pull the old woman's tooth, but rationalized what they were doing by saying that Michael Martucci would probably come for her eventually and that he would likely not mind killing her to get the gold if they didn't.
The subjects searched the farmhouse for the necessary tools and discovered that, quite fortuitously, the old woman's late husband had been a dentist and his entire dentistry kit was still in the house. Roland easily pulled the old woman's tooth and made sure to stop her bleeding before he left. Bo even left a glass of water, some aspirin, and a note of apology on the old woman's bedside table. The subjects then returned to Gothenburg with the tooth, feeling somewhat foolish about what they had just done. They planned to head back to Paris in the morning since Romania was now too far away.
INTERNAL MESSAGING - LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE REQUIRED - EYES ONLY
To: SCP-780
From: O5-3/780
HEY STOP TALKING TO THEM. i don't care what you think you have to share, you're just digging the hole deeper. she's not going to talk to you again unless you prove that you can be trusted not to interfere.
THE JOURNAL OF PEACH
30 SEPTEMBER 2010
Okay, I will.
This session was a bit short but jam-packed with hilarity in the form of the PCs' late night stealth dentistry mission in Sweden. I'm pretty sure that humbleminion can be blamed for that particular idea, which came as part of a laundry list of potential gold locations that we came up with way back when. For this session I was glad that I remembered about that, since I was planning for the PCs to chase the vampire-related lead I'd provided them with in the post office box rather than dashing out of town before they even looked closely at it! Yet another one of those places where a little prior planning comes seriously in handy.
I was surprised and pleased that Robert finally decided to ask Sloan for help. I recognize that he's a pretty suspicious character so I understand why the PCs would want to avoid him, so I was never sure if I would get the opportunity to kick off the plot thread he's involved with in the way we had originally contented. It will be cool, I promise!
I'm also a big fan of the PCs' scheme to lure Michael Martucci in with a bunch of gold - and particularly a fan of the irony that they are now turning around and doing the exact same thing that they just killed a whole bunch of mages for doing. (c:
What is this?
This entry was originally posted at http://gamerchick.dreamwidth.org/594497.html. You can comment on either journal. Number of comments on Dreamwidth:
To: O5-3/780
From: SCP-780
...
After leaving the Alcazar, the subjects spent the night at their hotel in Toledo before beginning the 18-hour drive back to Paris. Most of the subjects felt regretful about what had happened with the mages, particularly Bo, who was especially bothered by the fact that one of the mages had attacked her mind and that Robert had also communicated mentally with her on several occasions. While thinking about how much she hated people reading her mind, she received a text message from an unknown number that said, "i can't help it jsyk" which did not help her mood.
During the night, Aðalsteinn had an encounter in his sleep with a young man who claimed to be Daniel, the soul residing within the torch. Through mind-to-mind communication (necessary since Aðalsteinn and Daniel did not share anything remotely like a common language), Daniel told Aðalsteinn that the curse on him was now lifted and that he was grateful. He then said that if Aðalsteinn was to continue to seek the gold, Daniel did not need any more to be content. Instead, he wanted Aðalsteinn to use any other gold he found to help his loved on, the soul imprisoned in the second torch. This soul apparently was under a similar curse to the one Daniel had been under, and could also come into its own power if that curse were lifted. Now that Daniel had more control over his powers, he would help by continuing to heal the subjects as needed and point the way to gold. He would then wait to show the way to more gold until the subjects had gathered it in a safe place until such time as they could retrieve the other torch. Daniel was unfortunately unable to give more detail than that due to the language barrier.
The next day, the subjects had many things to discuss on the drive back to Paris. Aðalsteinn told everyone about his encounter with Daniel, while Robert focused on reading the journal that he had taken out of the mages' lair. The subjects were interested in retrieving the second torch and lifting its curse, particularly if Michael Martucci currently controlled it (as they still assumed). So the subjects began to hatch a plan which clearly took inspiration from the mages they had just defeated, in which they would gather enough gold to form a substantial hoard and use it to lure Martucci there with the torch. They would then defeat (probably kill) Martucci, take the torch, and use the gold they had gathered to lift its curse. Obviously, this plan required a number of things that the subjects did not currently have, such as a way to interfere with blood sorcery and/or with the portals that Martucci used to travel, since if he was able to escape through a portal easily it would defeat the entire purpose. Robert would also probably have to find some magical way of amplifying the "signal" put out by the gold, since the other subjects did not know how much they would be able to collect in a reasonable amount of time. The subjects agreed to look into people or items that could help him to do this.
The subjects then became curious about what Robert was reading in the journal. He said that a lot of it was confusing to him because of the damage and missing pages, but that it seemed as though the mages had been betrayed from within by someone or something called a Logophage. Common sense and language knowledge suggested that this might mean "an eater of knowledge." This reminded Bo of the Pandoran creatures the subjects had encountered in Germany, which had modified or destroyed information around them. In turn, this led Robert to realize that the creature that had come out of a corner and killed many of the mages was probably Gorgon, the Promethean who the subjects had fought in Dresden and who they had last seen being dragged into a portal by what looked like "a Nazi zombie."
For the first time, the subjects began to wonder if there was a connection between all of their enemies. Michael Martucci had been accompanied by a group of skinheads and had vanished through an evil-seeming portal. Gorgon had done the same. There had been a Nazi flag and World War II-era bunkers mysteriously present in the Hedge. Hans Kuhn had claimed to be working for a larger force that he would not name, and had also created and passed through an evil portal. Now there was another connection in the form of the destruction and corruption of knowledge. Roland cautioned that despite the subjects' dislike for Michael Martucci, it was unlikely that he was the person in charge of all these forces even if he did have the torch, since he did not seem like a powerful enough leader to command so many. The subjects worried that the entity in charge might be the Gardener, but had no way to know right now.
The subjects arrived in Paris late on Monday night. After sleeping, they began to execute the next steps in their plan. Robert finished the report to SCP that he had begun writing while traveling, then left it in the post office box. Roland received an invitation to the next opening of "Club Underground," the bar in the catacombs that he had recently found, which was to take place on the upcoming first Saturday in October. Aðalsteinn returned to the Aegis Kai Doru safehouse, where he wrote a report for his own group, then continued his research on vampires there. He still did not find much useful information on vampires in languages that he could read, but he did find a list of other Aegis Kai Doru hunters who focused on vampires and possessed relics that could be used to combat the undead. One of these hunters was based in Greece, another in Romania, and third in Lithuania. Aðalsteinn called Anaïs and asked her if any of these hunters spoke English and would be able and willing to help him; she suggested getting in touch with the hunter in Romania, a woman named Iulia, but cautioned that Iulia was very busy and would have little patience with anyone who she perceived as wasting her time.
Robert also performed research of his own after replenishing his stores of mana. He hoped to ask the Free Council about the Logophages, but since they met on the 17th of every month he had missed the most recent meeting and was not sure he wanted to wait nearly three weeks for the next meeting date. He also had some concerns, based on certain information in the journal, that some mages might be suspicious if he were to ask about Logophages. With nowhere else to turn, Robert reluctantly contacted Sloan, the mysterious mage who had spoken to him right after the group's return from the Hedge, and set up a meeting with him for that evening.
That evening, Aðalsteinn called a meeting in the catacombs. He shared what he had learned about Aegis Kai Doru and vampires, while Robert admitted that he had made little progress. The subjects were not sure how far more research would get them, so they decided to follow the torch to more gold instead. The torch was now pointing northeast toward something closer than Moscow, and the subjects wanted to try to retrieve it. They also wanted to try to go to Romania and speak to Iulia in person, if the geography worked out. Robert said that he could not make this trip because he had to work. He also advised that the other subjects not use his magic armor because it might offend members of Aegis Kai Doru if the subjects had to deal with them. The rest of the subjects set out in "Sputnik Three" that evening, heading northeast, after checking the post office box and finding a couple of documents that they decided they would read on the road in the morning.
While the other subjects traveled, Robert met Sloan for dinner. Sloan was a nondescript middle-aged man who spoke fluent French but with an American accent. Sloan spoke fairly frankly with Robert, telling him that even though he was not a member of the local Consilium, he did not mean harm to Robert or other mages and in fact wanted to help them reach their full potential in ways that were mutually beneficial to everyone. Sloan said that if mages had really been chosen to command occult forces that most people never knew existed, they should be able to grow and develop without arbitrary limitations being imposed upon those powers. For that reason, if Robert ever needed information or help that the Consilium was unable or unwilling to provide, Sloan wanted to help Robert by being a resource who could help him at those times. In exchange, he simply asked that Robert would be willing to help him in the same way.
Robert was still suspicious and seemed to think this offer was too good to be true. However, his interest continued to be piqued when Sloan off-handedly mentioned that he had skill in Prime, a type of magic that Robert would badly need help with in order to bait the trap for Michael Martucci by making the hoard of goal draw a torch's flame toward it. So to test the waters, Robert risked asking whether Sloan had ever heard the word "Logophage." Sloan said that he had, and that the Consilium would likely not want to tell Robert what that word meant - but that Sloan had no problem with doing so. In exchange, he would ask the same from Robert - Sloan was defining a word thoroughly, so later on Sloan would contact Robert and ask him for the same sort of definition. Robert agreed to this deal and permitted Sloan to use Mind magic to drop a large amount of information about the Logophages directly into his brain. The two men then parted ways.
The rest of the subjects were still on the road in "Sputnik Three." As Wednesday morning dawned, they realized that if they continued to follow the torch directly northeast, they would eventually end up in the North Sea. Looking at a map, the subjects noted that Sweden was the nearest major land mass and Gothenburg the nearest major city, so the subjects decided to take a ferry from the Netherlands to Sweden and pick up the trail there. At this time the subjects also looked at the documents they had taken from the PO box, which included another SCP report and a letter from Malus Sylvestris that caught the subjects' attention. Upon learning that Karel Jardine, a former associate of Michael Martucci, had been recently seen in Paris, the subjects considered turning around and abandoning the search for gold for now. However, the subjects realized that the immediate trail was cold for now and that there was no real rush since they were already halfway to Sweden.
The subjects did call Robert to let him know about the letter they had received. Robert did not seem to want to get too close to Karel Jardine without the others to back him up, and agreed that this search could probably wait until the others returned. He did let them know a little bit of what he had learned about the Logophages, including that they appeared to be a group of mages who used dark and hazardous magic to destroy knowledge for unknown reasons. This went a long way toward explaining the fragmented state of the archives in the mages' sanctum. Robert also mentioned that, by process of elimination, the Logophage in the cabal had likely been Antigone, the woman who had escaped via portal (though not an evil-seeming portal)from the caverns. Otherwise, Robert remained focused on his job and waited for the others to return.
Aðalsteinn, Bo, and Roland arrived in Gothenburg late on Wednesday night and decided to get a good night's sleep before continuing to follow the torch, since they could tell they were very close now. In the morning, they followed the torch's flame to a sheep farm to the north of the city. The flame specifically pointed at the farmhouse there. Around the lunch hour, the subjects saw an elderly woman leave the house in the company of some family members; after she left, the torch pointed not at the farmhouse but in the direction she had gone, suggesting that the gold was somewhere on her person. So the subjects decided to wait until evening, break into the farmhouse, and steal whatever she had then.
At nightfall, after all of the farm workers had left, Roland sneaked into the old woman's house while Aðalsteinn and Bo waited outside. Roland concealed himself in the woman's pantry until he heard her go to bed, then crept up the stairs. He noted that none of her jewelry was gold - but, to his horror, she had a gold cap on one of her rear molars. Roland used some chloroform that he had happened to bring along in his first aid kit to knock the woman unconscious for about the next hour, then went outside to tell the others the bad news. Everyone was reluctant to pull the old woman's tooth, but rationalized what they were doing by saying that Michael Martucci would probably come for her eventually and that he would likely not mind killing her to get the gold if they didn't.
The subjects searched the farmhouse for the necessary tools and discovered that, quite fortuitously, the old woman's late husband had been a dentist and his entire dentistry kit was still in the house. Roland easily pulled the old woman's tooth and made sure to stop her bleeding before he left. Bo even left a glass of water, some aspirin, and a note of apology on the old woman's bedside table. The subjects then returned to Gothenburg with the tooth, feeling somewhat foolish about what they had just done. They planned to head back to Paris in the morning since Romania was now too far away.
INTERNAL MESSAGING - LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE REQUIRED - EYES ONLY
To: SCP-780
From: O5-3/780
HEY STOP TALKING TO THEM. i don't care what you think you have to share, you're just digging the hole deeper. she's not going to talk to you again unless you prove that you can be trusted not to interfere.
THE JOURNAL OF PEACH
30 SEPTEMBER 2010
Okay, I will.
This session was a bit short but jam-packed with hilarity in the form of the PCs' late night stealth dentistry mission in Sweden. I'm pretty sure that humbleminion can be blamed for that particular idea, which came as part of a laundry list of potential gold locations that we came up with way back when. For this session I was glad that I remembered about that, since I was planning for the PCs to chase the vampire-related lead I'd provided them with in the post office box rather than dashing out of town before they even looked closely at it! Yet another one of those places where a little prior planning comes seriously in handy.
I was surprised and pleased that Robert finally decided to ask Sloan for help. I recognize that he's a pretty suspicious character so I understand why the PCs would want to avoid him, so I was never sure if I would get the opportunity to kick off the plot thread he's involved with in the way we had originally contented. It will be cool, I promise!
I'm also a big fan of the PCs' scheme to lure Michael Martucci in with a bunch of gold - and particularly a fan of the irony that they are now turning around and doing the exact same thing that they just killed a whole bunch of mages for doing. (c:
What is this?
This entry was originally posted at http://gamerchick.dreamwidth.org/594497.html. You can comment on either journal. Number of comments on Dreamwidth: