Gloria Mundi update
The characters were getting ready to crash for the night when a car pulled into the driveway and Winter got out, back from her theatrical tour with her mentor. More confident magically (now with Fate 3) but still unsure as to whether joining an order was a good step for her, she chatted with them about current events and then the four mages went to sleep. Morrigan, BTW, was extremely cold to the young Acanthus - she misses Jack.
The next morning, who should show up but Niamh and Jack, back from getting swallowed. Jack was taciturn and avoided the other mages, going straight to bed (long drive); Niamh followed suit soon after. Jack had revealed to Niamh that he wasn't staying long - he felt as though he was done in Boston, and needed to move on. He was thinking Michigan, after reading a new story about a rich artist named Krista King who was missing, presumed dead, from her Ann Arbor home ( hear that thickening sound?).
After everybody got home from work that night, the characters decided to go back to the scene of the crime and see if Jack's mighty Time prowess could show him anything. He saw basically what Avalon had described - Hangman defending himself against an unseen assailant (but one that he could see), dying, chest ripped open and organs removed. Jack saw the invisible person eat the organs (rather, he saw blood dripping in much the same way as a juicy peach might), and, not wanting to see that again, turned his attention instead to working out how the attack progressed. The assailant left footprints, so Jack tracked him from a nearby fire escape to the alley, and then from the alley to the Orange Line of the T.
During all of this, Tyrrhenus noticed a little black boy watching them from across the street. He turned invisible and started walking up to the kid, but the boy fled. Tyrrhenus chased him, and the boy rounded a corner and stopped next to three men smoking outside a bar. One of them men, apparently the boy's brother, gave him a housekey (admonishing him not to lose it), and the boy went into a nearby tenement. Tyrrhenus followed and called Winter, telling him what had happened, and proceeded to knock on the door. The boy opened it with the chain, but saw Tyrrhenus and immediately became suspicious. What he didn't do, though, was show any indication of ever having seen Tyrrhenus before. Tyrrhenus tried to bribe him, but the kid would have none of it.
Meanwhile, while Jack and Ogma continued to work on the crime scene, Morrigan, Niamh and Winter followed Tyrrhenus and saw the three dudes outside the bar. One of them got a phone call, and told the person on the other end to relax, he'd be right there. He hung up and told his friends that someone was hassling his little brother. Morrigan, putting two and two together, didn't want to have to fight these guys, so she turned some of the air around them to knockout gas and they passed out long enough for Tyrrhenus and company to leave the area.
Jack, meanwhile, had stopped focusing on the killer and started focussing on Hangman. Using Postcognition, he followed him back around the corner into a tenement near the Orange Line. The mages walked down a hall and found the door he'd come from, knocked, and were greeted by Vision (with a shotgun). Hangman, it seemed, had just come out of Shangri-La, the Company's sanctum.
Vision welcomed them in (once he saw Niamh, anyway), and the mages all met Avalon and Mercy. They talked about the killing, and Vision confirmed that "little black kids" would occasionally watch them. They had spells on them, but whenever a member of the Company tracked them down, they didn't remember anything and had no lingering magic. Ogma guessed that the kids were puppets, and Vision agreed, but had no idea who would care enough to watch his cabal.
The Company decided to skip town for a while. Vision asked Tyrrhenus to make the Company's Hallow go dormant for a while, and the two went downstairs. While there, Vision apologized for "getting up all in your face at the mall that one time" and the took made a wary peace.
Meantime, Avalon offered Morrigan a "hit." Morrigan, not really knowing what she was in for, agreed, and Avalon cooked her up a syringe of heroin. Morrigan took the hit and laid back to enjoy it. Niamh, sickened by this display (this is the girl that casts Cleanse the Body the way some people wash their hands), used Life magic to purge the drugs from Morrigan's body. The sudden come-down about made her sick, and Avalon gave her a couple of pills to easy the shock, and told her that if she wanted to do it again to come and find him.
The mages went home, and Avalon and Mercy headed out of town. Vision was going to the Brotherhood of the Ineffable Truth the next day to look through the library, and Niamh agreed to go with him (much to his delight). The Rogue Element went home, ostensibly to sleep...
...but they found a note on their door from Dr. Imes, of all people (the Moros Seer of the Throne they first met back in Finals Week in the demo). He told them that in late January, three Seers had been murdered on the Harvard campus and their hearts removed. He had disposed of the bodies and covered up the killings, but their investigations had come to nothing. Since the Pentacle seemed to have the same problem, Imes felt they should know.
Morrigan took this information and called Hades of the Gravediggers. He was critical of how she knew what the Seers were up to, and this cast a bit of suspiscion. Jack went upstairs and packed. Niamh gave him a key, just in case he wanted to come back. He also talked with Winter briefly about the Free Council and pointed her toward Davey Jones and the Dead Wrens if she wanted to know more.
Morrigan and Winter started looking through the blogosphere for any accounts of killing on the Harvard campus recently, something that the Seers might have missed. Morrigan got tired and gave up after a few hours, but Winter (better on computers anyway) kept looking and found a web site for a group called the Sons of Earth, a UFO-believers association. One post on their forum talked about seeing a fight between three people and a "man with no face" in which the three people died (shot and stabbed), but there was never any report. He assumed it was men in black fighting an alien, but the mages weren't so sure. Sometime during the night, Jack left, wandering on down the street, headed for Michigan.
In the morning, the cabal watched the news and saw something disturbing - a young MIT student named Norman French had been murdered in a computer lab the night before, and his heart cut out. Tempest called Tyrrhenus shortly thereafter. French had been a Free Council mage who used the Shadow Name "Babbage." He belonged to a cabal called Special Media Group or SMG, and they operated outside the Consilium, but went out of their way not to step on toes. As such, the Nemean probably wasn't going to treat this as a serious threat, since, y'know, Consilium mages weren't the ones who were dying. Tyrrhenus passed along what he knew about the Seers, and got much the same response, but pointed Tempest at the same website Winter had found.
The cabal went their ways for the day. Niamh is going with Vision to the Athaneum, and sometime soon I'm sure they'll go to MIT. (2/11/05)
The next morning, who should show up but Niamh and Jack, back from getting swallowed. Jack was taciturn and avoided the other mages, going straight to bed (long drive); Niamh followed suit soon after. Jack had revealed to Niamh that he wasn't staying long - he felt as though he was done in Boston, and needed to move on. He was thinking Michigan, after reading a new story about a rich artist named Krista King who was missing, presumed dead, from her Ann Arbor home ( hear that thickening sound?).
After everybody got home from work that night, the characters decided to go back to the scene of the crime and see if Jack's mighty Time prowess could show him anything. He saw basically what Avalon had described - Hangman defending himself against an unseen assailant (but one that he could see), dying, chest ripped open and organs removed. Jack saw the invisible person eat the organs (rather, he saw blood dripping in much the same way as a juicy peach might), and, not wanting to see that again, turned his attention instead to working out how the attack progressed. The assailant left footprints, so Jack tracked him from a nearby fire escape to the alley, and then from the alley to the Orange Line of the T.
During all of this, Tyrrhenus noticed a little black boy watching them from across the street. He turned invisible and started walking up to the kid, but the boy fled. Tyrrhenus chased him, and the boy rounded a corner and stopped next to three men smoking outside a bar. One of them men, apparently the boy's brother, gave him a housekey (admonishing him not to lose it), and the boy went into a nearby tenement. Tyrrhenus followed and called Winter, telling him what had happened, and proceeded to knock on the door. The boy opened it with the chain, but saw Tyrrhenus and immediately became suspicious. What he didn't do, though, was show any indication of ever having seen Tyrrhenus before. Tyrrhenus tried to bribe him, but the kid would have none of it.
Meanwhile, while Jack and Ogma continued to work on the crime scene, Morrigan, Niamh and Winter followed Tyrrhenus and saw the three dudes outside the bar. One of them got a phone call, and told the person on the other end to relax, he'd be right there. He hung up and told his friends that someone was hassling his little brother. Morrigan, putting two and two together, didn't want to have to fight these guys, so she turned some of the air around them to knockout gas and they passed out long enough for Tyrrhenus and company to leave the area.
Jack, meanwhile, had stopped focusing on the killer and started focussing on Hangman. Using Postcognition, he followed him back around the corner into a tenement near the Orange Line. The mages walked down a hall and found the door he'd come from, knocked, and were greeted by Vision (with a shotgun). Hangman, it seemed, had just come out of Shangri-La, the Company's sanctum.
Vision welcomed them in (once he saw Niamh, anyway), and the mages all met Avalon and Mercy. They talked about the killing, and Vision confirmed that "little black kids" would occasionally watch them. They had spells on them, but whenever a member of the Company tracked them down, they didn't remember anything and had no lingering magic. Ogma guessed that the kids were puppets, and Vision agreed, but had no idea who would care enough to watch his cabal.
The Company decided to skip town for a while. Vision asked Tyrrhenus to make the Company's Hallow go dormant for a while, and the two went downstairs. While there, Vision apologized for "getting up all in your face at the mall that one time" and the took made a wary peace.
Meantime, Avalon offered Morrigan a "hit." Morrigan, not really knowing what she was in for, agreed, and Avalon cooked her up a syringe of heroin. Morrigan took the hit and laid back to enjoy it. Niamh, sickened by this display (this is the girl that casts Cleanse the Body the way some people wash their hands), used Life magic to purge the drugs from Morrigan's body. The sudden come-down about made her sick, and Avalon gave her a couple of pills to easy the shock, and told her that if she wanted to do it again to come and find him.
The mages went home, and Avalon and Mercy headed out of town. Vision was going to the Brotherhood of the Ineffable Truth the next day to look through the library, and Niamh agreed to go with him (much to his delight). The Rogue Element went home, ostensibly to sleep...
...but they found a note on their door from Dr. Imes, of all people (the Moros Seer of the Throne they first met back in Finals Week in the demo). He told them that in late January, three Seers had been murdered on the Harvard campus and their hearts removed. He had disposed of the bodies and covered up the killings, but their investigations had come to nothing. Since the Pentacle seemed to have the same problem, Imes felt they should know.
Morrigan took this information and called Hades of the Gravediggers. He was critical of how she knew what the Seers were up to, and this cast a bit of suspiscion. Jack went upstairs and packed. Niamh gave him a key, just in case he wanted to come back. He also talked with Winter briefly about the Free Council and pointed her toward Davey Jones and the Dead Wrens if she wanted to know more.
Morrigan and Winter started looking through the blogosphere for any accounts of killing on the Harvard campus recently, something that the Seers might have missed. Morrigan got tired and gave up after a few hours, but Winter (better on computers anyway) kept looking and found a web site for a group called the Sons of Earth, a UFO-believers association. One post on their forum talked about seeing a fight between three people and a "man with no face" in which the three people died (shot and stabbed), but there was never any report. He assumed it was men in black fighting an alien, but the mages weren't so sure. Sometime during the night, Jack left, wandering on down the street, headed for Michigan.
In the morning, the cabal watched the news and saw something disturbing - a young MIT student named Norman French had been murdered in a computer lab the night before, and his heart cut out. Tempest called Tyrrhenus shortly thereafter. French had been a Free Council mage who used the Shadow Name "Babbage." He belonged to a cabal called Special Media Group or SMG, and they operated outside the Consilium, but went out of their way not to step on toes. As such, the Nemean probably wasn't going to treat this as a serious threat, since, y'know, Consilium mages weren't the ones who were dying. Tyrrhenus passed along what he knew about the Seers, and got much the same response, but pointed Tempest at the same website Winter had found.
The cabal went their ways for the day. Niamh is going with Vision to the Athaneum, and sometime soon I'm sure they'll go to MIT. (2/11/05)