H...hello?
April 16, 1974 | Tuesday
Michael
Poking around Roger's.
(Seems to make sense that Jo would have a set of keys and thus not need to pick or break in, so we'll just elide that whole set of obstacles.)
Jo first notices that Roger's Chevelle is not outside his Richland Avenue apartment at around 5:30 on Tuesday. Jo hasn't seen Roger since she'd moved in large part down to LA; their last chat was likely in February during a break in Roger's work with the chevals at Granite Peak. They compared notes on the Spirit Work they'd been doing, on when to approach Leonard Crow Dog and his people again, etc. Roger seemed fine, but then he called into URIEL in late February saying he was going to be traveling doing some "field work"; officially he was on the hook for advanced deep cheval training in the field, but nobody at URIEL HQ has heard from him in six weeks. Something at the back of Jo's head has been nagging at her to at least check in, see what he's been up to.
Jo heads up to Roger's apartment. Unlocking the door, she finds herself inside Roger's place; it looks pretty much the same as every time she's been over here. Nothing looks disturbed or otherwise out of place. The scent of aromatics (rum, incense, tobacco) from over at Roger's altar are strong, and Jo can tell that while the air is stuffy in here, there's been a cigar smoked somewhat recently, which seems to indicate that Roger's been here recently. Quick check of the fridge shows there's not a lot of fresh food in there. Jo's casing of the apartment allows her to estimate that he's been in but not much and not often.
Over at the altar, Jo sees the bifurcated Papa Legda/Maître Carrefour motif that's been central to the altar since Jo's known Roger, along with the little liminal Agent 00 zone with its spent stogie that got created last July.
On the floor near the altar is what looks like a page torn out of the Yellow Pages. Jo picks it up (gloved), turns it over, and sees the familiar Saul Bass-designed modernist Bell logo from the Pacific Bell Yellow Pages' frontispiece, but sketched onto it, in black marker, are two stylized pairs of angelic wings: one pair outstretched behind the logo as on the MARPA logo's Eye of Providence, another pair partially wrapped around the Bell and circle, as if slyly hiding it.
Leonard
Hmm. That feels like something Jo should be able to figure out immediately but either her head is too foggy from her recent street nights or the person playing her is too dumb to understand the reference. She'll give it a quick once-over, searching her memory for any mystical triggers in the symbolism (Occult roll).
After that's done, she'll remove her gloves, and in one hand, she'll hold the Yellow Pages scrap; in the other, she'll take the most recently smoked cigar. It's Psychometry time.
Michael
Let's start with the Occultism-19 roll. Then I can work through the Psychometry implications.
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 4
Leonard
So tired
Michael
The two pairs of wings are indicative, at least from the point of view of Christian iconography, of the class of angels known as the cherubim; this wing configuration appears in a bunch of medieval and Renaissance art before cherubs became conflated with putti. Often times the cherubim have four faces too: the man, the bull, the lion, and the eagle. That's about all Jo gets from the Bell logo cherub iconography.
Now for the Psychometry. This will be at IQ minus 1 for Jo or Psychometry-15; Jo can definitely get the vibe, even before her bare finger touches thin Yellow pages paper/cigar butt that these objects have been recently handled by Roger. As usual, of course, Corruption is available to open up things further.
Leonard
No Corruption in a friend's house, so rude.
>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
There's a complex combination of emotions attached to the torn-out bit from the Yellow Pages: confusion, curiosity, fear (with a concomitant rush of adrenaline), pride in competence, accomplishment and discovery, and most strongly, an impulse towards secrecy or hiding something important. Like whoever held this scrap of Yellow Pages most recently (and drew the angel wings on; and just look at those two wings covering up the face of the "angel," like it has something to hide!) had just had some kind of an unexpected, yet positive, breakthrough or discovery, all while under stressful mental duress, and the suddenness of the discovery meant he did not have time to fully work through what to do with this discovery. There is a sense of love and focus upon the image of the Bell cherub, and all of a sudden Jocasta realizes that this little sketch is a rudimentary vever that Roger must have used. For summoning precisely which loa, she has no idea whatsoever.
While the cigar is not a vever per se, Jo knows that Roger smokes them when trying to reach out through Papa Legba to either Papa himself or his other loa, and it seems to her like there was an Opening of the Way involved here.
After Jo retreats from her emotional psychometric reverie, she realizes that she only really has the emotional information from whomever or whatever the entity was riding Roger at that moment.
Also, for some weird reason the image of a wishing well flashes in Jocasta's mind right when the psychometric cascade ends.
Leonard
Jocasta is going to meditate for a short while in front of the shrine with the scrap in her hands, and then she's going to try to Telesend to Roger.
Michael
You can give me a Meditation-18 roll and then a Telesend-16.
Leonard used
roll
Leonard
Meditation.
>> SUCCESS by 12
Swish
Michael
Yeah, that's a crit. I'll expand upon the results of that once the Telesend roll goes off.
Leonard
>> FAILURE by 1
Yikes
Michael
bahahahahaha what
Leonard
First the swish then the clank
This message is gonna end up going to Nipsey Russell
Michael
Well it's just a plain failure not a critical one, but the crit success on the Meditation still needs to resolve.
As Jocasta clears her head in Roger's stuffy apartment, she rids herself of the preoccupations of the day so far: the encounter with the SLA, the news from Shasta, and the larger dimensions of the discoveries she's made so far here on Richland Avenue. She gets into meditative headspace: briskly, with an open heart and a clear mind.
The Bell angel vever is in her hand as she zones out on it, trying to find Roger out there in the world, pondering the places where this new loa might take him. That persistent image of the wishing well flashes strongly in Jo's head once again too. For a moment Jo has the startling, clear-headed realization thanks to her meditative state that maybe Roger, during his time in the field, has established multiple boltholes for him and/or his cheval trainees to use while they go "native," but that he'd keep this place, his old, personal apartment, secret to everyone but the Club, to hide something very valuable. If he had a message or something he'd found in his last couple of months of deep field work, it might just be right here in the Mission District apartment. (Jo also remembers that Roger has amigos and amigas in his 'hood as well, and that her entrance tonight might have been noticed by one or more of them: more redundant security measures thanks to the houngan of the Opener of the Ways.)
As Jo's psychically projected consciousness tries to seek out and find one of those boltholes for Roger, her connection signal gets scrambled because suddenly she's not sure who she's looking for. Maybe if she knew this new loa, she could zone in them immediately... but now that she's failed to make that connection, she won't be able to try again for about a day. Dejected, Jocasta opens her eyes.
At that very moment, Roger's phone rings.
Leonard
Jocasta's first instinct is not to answer. She's trying to keep deep-cover protocols on the assumption that the SLA is watching her every move, and while she planned to search the place after her meditative realization that Roger might have secreted something important away here, that would be consistent with her current persona of a hard-living junkie. After all, it wouldn't be the first time she's actually broken into the house of someone she knows to steal something for money to cop, or just to survive. But answering the phone might be too familiar, too comfortable, too much of a tell for her watchers.
But then she has a change of heart. She has become deeply attuned to when the cosmos is trying to send you a message, and who knows? Sometimes the cosmos takes the direct approach. As for her observers (real or imagined), maybe they'd buy that she's just desperate and instinctive (or foolhardy) enough to just pick up automatically.
With a glove wrapped around her hand (but not on it), she quickly lifts the receiver.
Michael
The phone's ring itself, Jocasta realizes, is a little "off"; the timing of each of the rings is shorter and less uniform than one might usually expect. In the flurry of shock and sudden decision, Jo didn't really notice until she had her hand on the receiver.
Bill
There's a few more odd tones out of the phone speaker, then a voice comes on. "Whoa, lady! Stop trying to catch us on the flip side, you get me? You need to vay-cay the premeses, like, now." It takes a second, but Jo recognizes Roger's voice. But it is not Roger's voice: he never has this kind of SoCal accent, even when he's trying his hardest to flatten his Hispanic one.
Leonard
"H...hello? Roger, is that you?"
Bill
The voice turns a little mocking, "The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected."
"Hit the road, Jacqueline."
There are a few more decidedly odd tones played, then some squawks and high-pitch beeps.
Bill
Jo hears fingers snap, twice. The voice says "Whoa man, still rotary? A firm lack primo equipment-- fixin' that." Then the sound of rotary clicks comes across the phone, much faster than the normal rate. As the clicks sound, the wall phone starts to hum, like it's ringing, but far lower than classic Pacific Bell rings. Within a beat, sparks are flying out of the set onto the wall. The voice shouts through the speaker: "MOTOR, MABELLINE!"
Leonard
Jo leaves the phone dangling from the curly cord and runs like hell out the back door.
Michael
(I was gonna have you make a Fright Check actually... but even with penalties for it being Roger (and concomitant bonuses for understanding it's likely a new loa), it's still likely Fright Check-18. So I guess we should just see if you roll a 17/18.)
>> SUCCESS by 14
Leonard
Swish
Michael
Jo quickly gets out of Dodge and back out onto the streets, shaken but not chilled by her encounter with the phone. It's up to you whether she's headed back out onto the streets or not to maintain her cover.
Leonard
Yeah. As soon as she collects herself, she’ll head right back on the streets. If she doesn’t get contacted before evening, though, when she sneaks off to make her check-in call, she’ll call Sophie directly and recount what happened in Danbe, very strongly suggesting that Marshall or Archie do a wellness check on Roger ASAP.
Michael
(Perfect. Let's see how Piedmont plays off and this would be a perfect thing to open Monday night's session with. Get Archie and Marshall (at least) in on the Roger hunt on Wednesday morning.)
(I might need to make some kind of campaign map to keep track of where all URIEL's catspaws are at one time!)
(We have an unwholesome number of Retainers and Henchmen now)
Leonard
/pounding table HEX CRAWL! HEX CRAWL! HEX CRAWL!
Michael
Imagine, a tactical map of California at Livermore and Sophie pushing little figures with a giant billiard bridge, like she's a WAC at WWII headquarters
Leonard
God stop you’re gonna make me drool
Just completely turning this into deep grognard play at the last minute
Michael
Didn't canonically someone stop by a hex wargaming table at WesterCon?
I feel like it was Roger while he was trying to recruit nerds for MARPA
Iiiiinteresting
Leonard
Coulda been
Michael
Yeah, they all started following Agent Zero after he capped the parasite on Queen Minerva: mission-four-in-the-art-room
I think I generally mentioned that the MARPA recruits were grognard types, wargamers, real pocket protector and slide rule dudes
As we all know, we inadvertently performed a chemical wedding to tie together defense science nerds and artsy hippies to create the Role-Playing Game
In what other RPG campaign would you get to retrocreate the medium of role-playing itself, I ask you
(sorry, high)
Leonard
Once she's calmed down and strolled listlessly back towards the Haight, Jo walks up Geary to Mel's Drive-In. She spends thirty cents: one on a cup of black coffee, which she uses to wash down a mod; and two on calls at the pay phone outside. The first call will be to her monitoring station, just to see if there are any messages; the second will be to Sophie.
When she picks up, Jo will say in her smoke-ravaged voice: "Hey, sis, it's me. I went by to see Martin and he's not home -- there wasn't anyone at his house at all. I was trying to, you know, pick up a couple of bucks. I'm worried about him; he ususally doesn't act like this. Could you, maybe, let mom and dad know about it? Maybe [here she says, quietly, the Danbe words for 'play along', in an up-shifted tone like she's asking a question]? And," she says, swallowing hard, "Do you maybe got anything for me, sweetie? I'm really in trouble, [here she says "I'm fine, say no" in Danbe]."
Michael
Sophie slips into undercover mode at Jo's instruction to play along, even putting on a California accent for any wire rats who might be listening, "Sure, babe. It's funny: Mom and Dad called me earlier and said they're worried about Martin too. Don't worry, they're gonna go out looking for him tomorrow."
At Jo's frantic pleading for "drugs," Sophie says, "You know I can't do that, hon. You just take care of yourself, okay? Stay close to your friends, stay clean as you can, and call me again soon and I'll let you know what Mom and Dad say."
Leonard
“Okay, sis. Be safe,” she says, then hangs up and trudges back onto Geary down towards the Painted Ladies.