Project MONUMENT 072: 17-23 October 2010, Paris, Belgrade
INTERNAL MESSAGING - LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE REQUIRED - EYES ONLY
To: O5-3/780
From: SCP-780
After resolving the issue of Roland's insanity, the subjects took about a week of time apart to heal, recuperate, rest, and catch up on their personal projects. In general, Aðalsteinn and Bo would pursue the gold that the torch was pointing to, Robert would attend to mage-related matters, and Roland and Souna would continue to be involved with issues in the changeling Court (with Roland also taking some time to continue to track down leads on hunter business).
Aðalsteinn and Bo arranged to borrow "Sputnik Three," loaded it with their gear, and set out south-southeast in the direction that the torch pointed them. After more than a day of driving, they found themselves approaching the Serbian border. They were nervous as they crossed it knowing they had stepped into a potentially hazardous area, and only got more nervous when the torch directed them to the capital city of Belgrade. They checked into a cheap hotel and followed the torch around until it pointed them to a state museum near the center of the city. After stashing the torch back at the hotel, they entered the museum, noting that to do so they had to pass through a metal detector and by many guards with automatic weapons. Aðalsteinn and Bo checked the entire museum, and soon fixated on an exhibit about the Balkan states' involvement in World War II that contained a variety of gold-plated and gold-embossed Nazi items, with a placard explaining how the precious metals used in items like this had often been stolen from the Nazis' victims.
Though this instance of "Nazi gold" was fortunately more portable than the dome of the Kremlin had been, getting it out of the museum posed a challenge for Aðalsteinn and Bo (which they needed to do in order to build the hoard to attract the second torch). Stealing it seemed too hazardous, and since Aðalsteinn no longer had any connection to an academic institution he was not going to be able to arrange to borrow it legitimately. Aðalsteinn and Bo called Roland back in Paris to get his input, and between the three of them they decided that bribery was their best option. Aðalsteinn knew a local anthropologist with whom he had worked on a dig in South America once, and decided to approach this man with some unneeded artifacts from his personal collection and offer them (along with some cash given to them by SCP a while back) as a swap for the Nazi items. This plan had the disadvantage of making Aðalsteinn look a little like a Nazi sympathizer due to the Nazi items being so far outside his usual research interests, but he decided he had no shame about this.
Aðalsteinn and Bo arranged a meeting with Aðalsteinn's contact, who agreed to make the swap, though he insisted on more money than Aðalsteinn and Bo had on hand. Fortunately, Roland had enough in his savings to wire them the difference at the same time that he mailed Aðalsteinn's artifacts to Serbia. The exchange itself went off without a hitch, and Aðalsteinn then used the torch to confirm that the Nazi items were what he had expected them to be. He and Bo then began their long drive back to Paris.
At the same time, Robert was mostly focused on mage matters. October 17 was the monthly meeting of the Free Council, which he attended hoping to get a better idea of mage politics in the city. At the meeting, he was gratified to notice that opinions toward him seemed to be softening a little. The meeting mainly concerned the Free Council's planned approach to a likely upcoming meeting of the whole Paris Consilium, at which the Silver Ladder would probably petition the Hierarch for increased access to the Free Council's disproportionate number of Hallows. The Free Council controlled many Hallows (including one of the most powerful in Western Europe) owing to their historical position as the most prominent Order in Paris, but since their numbers had dwindled and the Silver Ladder's had grown, the Silver Ladder was now arguing that some of the Hallows should be granted to their Order since they did more to protect the interests of all mages in Paris and needed more mana to do it better.
When Robert learned of this, he suggested that since the Free Council was not using all the mana the Hallows produced anyway, perhaps a compromise could be reached in which the Free Council retained control of the Hallows but appointed a custodian to ensure that the mana produced was distributed more equitably. (This would leave the door open for the Free Council to reclaim the mana later if needed.) Robert insinuated that he would make a good custodian, and a few of the other mages (Tarzan and John Paul/Bruno in particular) supported him. Ultimately, a vote was called, and by a margin of 5-4 the Free Council agreed to propose Robert's plan with him as custodian at the Consilium when it was called.
Apart from this, Robert continued to replenish his own depleted store of mana, and learned a variety of rotes from Damiane. He also checked the post office box for any response to his most recent report, only to find a response from "O5-11" saying that his help was appreciated but not presently needed. However, at the bottom of this letter, the words "DON'T BELIEVE THEIR LIES" had been neatly written in chocolate syrup.
At first, Roland kept his focus on hunter matters. He continued to solicit Tobias for potential jobs the subjects could take Brother Lazaro along on, but Tobias still did not have anything; apparently the recent drug-influenced time spent in the studio had reawakened Chrétien's creativity, and his focus was currently on music. He then called up Daphne Davis to look into collaborating with Network Zero. For some reason, Daphne seemed dubious about whether Network Zero would accept the subjects' help, but she finally told him about an area in which the subjects could meet up with some of the roving Network Zero hunters and accompany them on their work, "if you can keep up." Because Roland was not sure whether he could do so, he decided to wait until Aðalsteinn returned from Serbia to do this, since Aðalsteinn was the only one in the group with parkour skills comparable to Network Zero's.
Roland then began scouring the newspapers for unusual stories to follow up on, but came up empty. After a few days of this, Souna called Roland to invite him to attend a meeting of the changeling Courts that had just been called for Wednesday, October 20. When Roland and Souna arrived, they were disturbed to learn that the Court had been called on behalf of the three changelings the subjects had recently stolen drugs from, whose names were Hirondelle and Brass of the Spring Court, and Vlad of the Autumn Court. The motley told the Court about how their drug dealing operation, which had been legitimized and permitted by the Court, had apparently been broken up by ensorcelled mortals working for some changeling or another. (They believed this because the thieves had known how to enter their Hollow and had not been fazed by what they encountered there.) During all of this, both Roland and Souna kept very quiet and did not intervene in any way.
All of the monarchs seemed appalled at what had happened, particularly the Autumn Queen, Lenore; Souna realized that this was because the drug had likely produced fear in the general populace, and the Autumn Court had been able to harvest a lot of magical power from that emotion. Lenore denounced what she perceived as an attack on the well-being of her Court, and said that as reigning monarch, she would give the culprit(s) the chance to step forward and confess their guilt, for which she would deal with them more leniently. (Roland and Souna continued to keep their mouths shut, though Souna would later admit she had strongly considered speaking up.) When no one came forward, Lenore tasked Pythias, the Winter King, with putting together an investigative task force that would find those responsible. At Roland's wordless urging, Souna volunteered herself for the task force, and was accepted.
When Court concluded, Roland and Souna followed up on a few other things that had caught their interest during the proceedings. Roland spoke to a Summer Court changeling named McManus who had discussed his efforts to protect Paris from the incursions of hobgoblins that should not have been outside the Hedge, much as Chul-soo had done before being sent on his mission. Roland asked McManus if he could accompany him on a hobgoblin hunt sometime, and McManus welcomed Roland's help. Roland and Souna also saw that the "halflings" were present and that they looked rather beat up; when they approached the halflings, they said that they had tried ðto attack and subdue Bushr as they had planned, but that he had gotten the better of them. This touched off a discussion in which Souna wondered whether the halflings could be taught to use a changeling's Contracts, or whether they could swear pledges to each other, since either of those things might give them the edge on a better fighter. Later that week, Souna met with a few of the halflings and established that Muminah, at least, had enough connection the Wyrd to allow pledges to be crafted, and that probably she could learn some limited Contracts too. The others would probably have more difficulty, but for now, swearing a pledge to Muminah was exciting enough to them.
Roland and Souna agreed that they needed to tell the others about what had happened at Court, so they arranged a meeting in the catacombs after Aðalsteinn and Bo returned from Belgrade. While approaching the subjects' safehouse, Aðalsteinn heard footsteps in a nearby passageway and hid in the shadows to see who was approaching. He was surprised to see Brother Lazaro walking through one of the passageways that crossed the one the access to the subjects' safehouse was in, and accessing a hidden door to a safehouse of his own very nearby. Aðalsteinn immediately texted the other subjects to tell them about what he had seen, and they were less than pleased to discover they now had Lazaro as a neighbor.
The subjects then met and heard Souna's recap of what had happened at Court. They were alarmed to hear that the monarchs were planning an investigation into what they had done. A very long discussion ensued in which Souna argued that the subjects should turn themselves in and try to use their good relationship with Lenore to agitate for a lesser penalty, while the others believed that the secret should be kept at all costs and that Souna should use her position on the investigative committee to keep it from coming out if need be. It eventually became evident that Souna was very outvoted by the other subjects, and she deferred to their wishes in keeping it quiet, though she was clearly not happy to do so.
THE JOURNAL OF PEACH
23 OCTOBER 2010
I am getting really frustrated just waiting around in here! AGAIN! I know that Mal would tell me to be patient and not to cause any more problems for whatever her plan is. But sometimes it feels like I've been doing nothing but waiting for somebody else to tell me what to do and how and when to do it. I don't know how much longer I can take it without taking matters into my own hands!
I don't know how safe it is to be honest in this journal even. I know that the Founder can probably still read here but I think I trust that person maybe. Whoever they are. At least he seems like he is on the subjects side which is more than I can say for most people around here. Even so I don't think he knows that I texted the subjects again and told them not to worry about anybody from the Foundation looking too closely at whatever reports might get filed about the stuff the subjects are doing. There might have been other stuff like that that I left out too, just trying to protect them a little, you know? Well I guess that if he is still reading this now he knows about it, haha.
And of course I can still sense It. I still don't understand what It is or what It wants. But I know It's out there and Its existence means something. At least it does to Mal even if not to anybody else around here. I just wish I could figure out what...
This was another "downtime-y" kind of session that saw plots getting set up rather than wrapped up. A lot more time than the single paragraph given to it here represents was spent arguing about whether the PCs should turn themselves in to the changeling Courts or not - which was not really a subject that I thought would inspire such heated debate. It will be interesting to see what Souna actually ends up doing in her newfound position of power; I'm given to understand that some of the players think she should use (or perhaps abuse) her influence to try to turn the investigation toward the Spring and Winter Kings, of whom the PCs are still very suspicious, to say the least.
What is this?
This entry was originally posted at http://gamerchick.dreamwidth.org/600457.html. You can comment on either journal. Number of comments on Dreamwidth:
To: O5-3/780
From: SCP-780
After resolving the issue of Roland's insanity, the subjects took about a week of time apart to heal, recuperate, rest, and catch up on their personal projects. In general, Aðalsteinn and Bo would pursue the gold that the torch was pointing to, Robert would attend to mage-related matters, and Roland and Souna would continue to be involved with issues in the changeling Court (with Roland also taking some time to continue to track down leads on hunter business).
Aðalsteinn and Bo arranged to borrow "Sputnik Three," loaded it with their gear, and set out south-southeast in the direction that the torch pointed them. After more than a day of driving, they found themselves approaching the Serbian border. They were nervous as they crossed it knowing they had stepped into a potentially hazardous area, and only got more nervous when the torch directed them to the capital city of Belgrade. They checked into a cheap hotel and followed the torch around until it pointed them to a state museum near the center of the city. After stashing the torch back at the hotel, they entered the museum, noting that to do so they had to pass through a metal detector and by many guards with automatic weapons. Aðalsteinn and Bo checked the entire museum, and soon fixated on an exhibit about the Balkan states' involvement in World War II that contained a variety of gold-plated and gold-embossed Nazi items, with a placard explaining how the precious metals used in items like this had often been stolen from the Nazis' victims.
Though this instance of "Nazi gold" was fortunately more portable than the dome of the Kremlin had been, getting it out of the museum posed a challenge for Aðalsteinn and Bo (which they needed to do in order to build the hoard to attract the second torch). Stealing it seemed too hazardous, and since Aðalsteinn no longer had any connection to an academic institution he was not going to be able to arrange to borrow it legitimately. Aðalsteinn and Bo called Roland back in Paris to get his input, and between the three of them they decided that bribery was their best option. Aðalsteinn knew a local anthropologist with whom he had worked on a dig in South America once, and decided to approach this man with some unneeded artifacts from his personal collection and offer them (along with some cash given to them by SCP a while back) as a swap for the Nazi items. This plan had the disadvantage of making Aðalsteinn look a little like a Nazi sympathizer due to the Nazi items being so far outside his usual research interests, but he decided he had no shame about this.
Aðalsteinn and Bo arranged a meeting with Aðalsteinn's contact, who agreed to make the swap, though he insisted on more money than Aðalsteinn and Bo had on hand. Fortunately, Roland had enough in his savings to wire them the difference at the same time that he mailed Aðalsteinn's artifacts to Serbia. The exchange itself went off without a hitch, and Aðalsteinn then used the torch to confirm that the Nazi items were what he had expected them to be. He and Bo then began their long drive back to Paris.
At the same time, Robert was mostly focused on mage matters. October 17 was the monthly meeting of the Free Council, which he attended hoping to get a better idea of mage politics in the city. At the meeting, he was gratified to notice that opinions toward him seemed to be softening a little. The meeting mainly concerned the Free Council's planned approach to a likely upcoming meeting of the whole Paris Consilium, at which the Silver Ladder would probably petition the Hierarch for increased access to the Free Council's disproportionate number of Hallows. The Free Council controlled many Hallows (including one of the most powerful in Western Europe) owing to their historical position as the most prominent Order in Paris, but since their numbers had dwindled and the Silver Ladder's had grown, the Silver Ladder was now arguing that some of the Hallows should be granted to their Order since they did more to protect the interests of all mages in Paris and needed more mana to do it better.
When Robert learned of this, he suggested that since the Free Council was not using all the mana the Hallows produced anyway, perhaps a compromise could be reached in which the Free Council retained control of the Hallows but appointed a custodian to ensure that the mana produced was distributed more equitably. (This would leave the door open for the Free Council to reclaim the mana later if needed.) Robert insinuated that he would make a good custodian, and a few of the other mages (Tarzan and John Paul/Bruno in particular) supported him. Ultimately, a vote was called, and by a margin of 5-4 the Free Council agreed to propose Robert's plan with him as custodian at the Consilium when it was called.
Apart from this, Robert continued to replenish his own depleted store of mana, and learned a variety of rotes from Damiane. He also checked the post office box for any response to his most recent report, only to find a response from "O5-11" saying that his help was appreciated but not presently needed. However, at the bottom of this letter, the words "DON'T BELIEVE THEIR LIES" had been neatly written in chocolate syrup.
At first, Roland kept his focus on hunter matters. He continued to solicit Tobias for potential jobs the subjects could take Brother Lazaro along on, but Tobias still did not have anything; apparently the recent drug-influenced time spent in the studio had reawakened Chrétien's creativity, and his focus was currently on music. He then called up Daphne Davis to look into collaborating with Network Zero. For some reason, Daphne seemed dubious about whether Network Zero would accept the subjects' help, but she finally told him about an area in which the subjects could meet up with some of the roving Network Zero hunters and accompany them on their work, "if you can keep up." Because Roland was not sure whether he could do so, he decided to wait until Aðalsteinn returned from Serbia to do this, since Aðalsteinn was the only one in the group with parkour skills comparable to Network Zero's.
Roland then began scouring the newspapers for unusual stories to follow up on, but came up empty. After a few days of this, Souna called Roland to invite him to attend a meeting of the changeling Courts that had just been called for Wednesday, October 20. When Roland and Souna arrived, they were disturbed to learn that the Court had been called on behalf of the three changelings the subjects had recently stolen drugs from, whose names were Hirondelle and Brass of the Spring Court, and Vlad of the Autumn Court. The motley told the Court about how their drug dealing operation, which had been legitimized and permitted by the Court, had apparently been broken up by ensorcelled mortals working for some changeling or another. (They believed this because the thieves had known how to enter their Hollow and had not been fazed by what they encountered there.) During all of this, both Roland and Souna kept very quiet and did not intervene in any way.
All of the monarchs seemed appalled at what had happened, particularly the Autumn Queen, Lenore; Souna realized that this was because the drug had likely produced fear in the general populace, and the Autumn Court had been able to harvest a lot of magical power from that emotion. Lenore denounced what she perceived as an attack on the well-being of her Court, and said that as reigning monarch, she would give the culprit(s) the chance to step forward and confess their guilt, for which she would deal with them more leniently. (Roland and Souna continued to keep their mouths shut, though Souna would later admit she had strongly considered speaking up.) When no one came forward, Lenore tasked Pythias, the Winter King, with putting together an investigative task force that would find those responsible. At Roland's wordless urging, Souna volunteered herself for the task force, and was accepted.
When Court concluded, Roland and Souna followed up on a few other things that had caught their interest during the proceedings. Roland spoke to a Summer Court changeling named McManus who had discussed his efforts to protect Paris from the incursions of hobgoblins that should not have been outside the Hedge, much as Chul-soo had done before being sent on his mission. Roland asked McManus if he could accompany him on a hobgoblin hunt sometime, and McManus welcomed Roland's help. Roland and Souna also saw that the "halflings" were present and that they looked rather beat up; when they approached the halflings, they said that they had tried ðto attack and subdue Bushr as they had planned, but that he had gotten the better of them. This touched off a discussion in which Souna wondered whether the halflings could be taught to use a changeling's Contracts, or whether they could swear pledges to each other, since either of those things might give them the edge on a better fighter. Later that week, Souna met with a few of the halflings and established that Muminah, at least, had enough connection the Wyrd to allow pledges to be crafted, and that probably she could learn some limited Contracts too. The others would probably have more difficulty, but for now, swearing a pledge to Muminah was exciting enough to them.
Roland and Souna agreed that they needed to tell the others about what had happened at Court, so they arranged a meeting in the catacombs after Aðalsteinn and Bo returned from Belgrade. While approaching the subjects' safehouse, Aðalsteinn heard footsteps in a nearby passageway and hid in the shadows to see who was approaching. He was surprised to see Brother Lazaro walking through one of the passageways that crossed the one the access to the subjects' safehouse was in, and accessing a hidden door to a safehouse of his own very nearby. Aðalsteinn immediately texted the other subjects to tell them about what he had seen, and they were less than pleased to discover they now had Lazaro as a neighbor.
The subjects then met and heard Souna's recap of what had happened at Court. They were alarmed to hear that the monarchs were planning an investigation into what they had done. A very long discussion ensued in which Souna argued that the subjects should turn themselves in and try to use their good relationship with Lenore to agitate for a lesser penalty, while the others believed that the secret should be kept at all costs and that Souna should use her position on the investigative committee to keep it from coming out if need be. It eventually became evident that Souna was very outvoted by the other subjects, and she deferred to their wishes in keeping it quiet, though she was clearly not happy to do so.
THE JOURNAL OF PEACH
23 OCTOBER 2010
I am getting really frustrated just waiting around in here! AGAIN! I know that Mal would tell me to be patient and not to cause any more problems for whatever her plan is. But sometimes it feels like I've been doing nothing but waiting for somebody else to tell me what to do and how and when to do it. I don't know how much longer I can take it without taking matters into my own hands!
I don't know how safe it is to be honest in this journal even. I know that the Founder can probably still read here but I think I trust that person maybe. Whoever they are. At least he seems like he is on the subjects side which is more than I can say for most people around here. Even so I don't think he knows that I texted the subjects again and told them not to worry about anybody from the Foundation looking too closely at whatever reports might get filed about the stuff the subjects are doing. There might have been other stuff like that that I left out too, just trying to protect them a little, you know? Well I guess that if he is still reading this now he knows about it, haha.
And of course I can still sense It. I still don't understand what It is or what It wants. But I know It's out there and Its existence means something. At least it does to Mal even if not to anybody else around here. I just wish I could figure out what...
This was another "downtime-y" kind of session that saw plots getting set up rather than wrapped up. A lot more time than the single paragraph given to it here represents was spent arguing about whether the PCs should turn themselves in to the changeling Courts or not - which was not really a subject that I thought would inspire such heated debate. It will be interesting to see what Souna actually ends up doing in her newfound position of power; I'm given to understand that some of the players think she should use (or perhaps abuse) her influence to try to turn the investigation toward the Spring and Winter Kings, of whom the PCs are still very suspicious, to say the least.
What is this?
This entry was originally posted at http://gamerchick.dreamwidth.org/600457.html. You can comment on either journal. Number of comments on Dreamwidth: