Confronting Carl
Mitch and Roger have just found the old URIEL bivouac suite with some remnants of hotel furniture and URIEL equipment but most of it has decayed/collapsed due to colliding with History B. Carl, who was secured to a hotel chair, is missing, presumed fled once his bonds decayed to the point he could get free.
Jeff
It's not immediately obvious to me what our agenda here should be. Does Archie need to convince Anna and the others that this is somehow consistent with The Meme as presented? Should we be fanning out to search the floor for Carl?
Rob
The presence of mundane hotel stuff in the bivouac suite could be reassuring to Anna or anyone else who might be freaking out — reassurance that all this MARPA vs. Atlantis stuff is just a game? I was also thinking that if Anna is freaking, Mitch is probably the best person to reassure her, both because they're friends and because he can just "be Mitch" without dropping out of character. So maybe Archie puts the two of them next to each other, ASLing for Mitch to talk to her. But then, yeah, I think our agenda is to sweep the 12th floor, looking for Carl and any other inhabitants (human or otherwise).
Michael
Archie's advice seems solid. Roger can stay on point, Archie keeping Clint and Hilda close by, while Mitch takes a few moments with Anna in the bivouac suite. Anna is wide-eyed as she takes a cigarette out of her purse and offers one to Mitch. "I was trying to quit. What's happening here, Matt … Mitch? Ever since we came up here I've felt like I was tripping, and now … " she stops mid-sentence. "Now I'm definitely hearing things."
Jeff
Mitch is checking her aura as she’s speaking. I dunno if there’s a visible flare or something if/when she activates a psi power. “Listen to your buddy Mitch,” he says. “There’s good guys and bad guys, and the bad guys ain’t Atlantean.” He doesn’t quite waggle his eyebrows, nothing so overt, but his expression indicates he’s deliberately speaking in some kind of code, riddles he thinks Anna can decipher.
Michael
There's an ambient low-level sense of psychic potential around Anna's indigo aura right now. Nothing overt, nothing activated. Maybe a passive power? "No, I … I get that. I just didn't think it would … well, happen to me, you know? Like I've always felt there's Something More to this universe, I have absolutely since I was first aware of the occult thought that it was a matter of time before I'd have some kind of serious Experience, but you just figure ultimately that when it's all said and done, you're fated to be someone on the sidelines, a silent character in the background of the movie, you know?"
Jeff
“Not really. I mean, you’re always the star of your own story, right? Be kind of shitty to just exist to support another character’s emotional arc, provide them with a sounding board, tell them about the local fandom scene so they know if they want to go to this con … ” Mitch shrugs. He’s probably making a joke.
Michael
(God, every time, I love this.)
Anna laughs. "What are we doing here really? Who's the third side? The game wants us to work with Atlantis, not against them, obviously. So who's the actual bad guy?"
Jeff
Hmm. Mitch's briefing on the "inner game" meme suggests he could bring up the KGB at this point, but he's not going to try that. "Demons from a different universe, invading this reality," he says, after confirming that Clint/John and Hilda/Alisa at least are out of earshot. "I thought that was pretty clear from the sacrifice scene downstairs. Those were the bones of a bull demon. They want … honestly, I don't know what they want at this point. Whatever it is, it isn't what we want. You grok?"
Michael
"I grok." Anna looks back out to the hallway. "And in the game … my powers are kinda useless, huh? I mean, there's not a lot of TVs up here for me to use for subliminal propaganda or hypnotic art purposes. I guess I'll just keep an eye out. Or an ear." Anna pauses for a good long while, fixing Mitch with a deadly serious gaze. "I feel like there is a very badly crazy man on this floor, Matthew … shit, sorry, Mitch. I … I swear I can hear his thoughts. Angry and bitter and hateful and murderous. And his mind is full of … patterns. Visual patterns. Dozens of them."
Jeff
Mitch nods, thoughtfully, like what Anna is telling him is something he'd known at one point but forgotten. "Well, that doesn't seem good. MARPA should probably collar him. You have any sense of where he is, more specific?" He sighs. "I'd advise against looking too closely at the patterns. But what do I know?"
Michael
"He's on this floor. I'm sorry … that's all I'm able to tell. He's feeling trapped. And he believes very firmly, deep down in his gut … that he's got unfinished business." Anna shakes her head. "He was starting to draw a pattern, I couldn't get any closer. But he is definitely hiding."
Jeff
Okay, so. Number one, Mitch will do another active scan of Detect just to confirm an irruptor hasn't winked into existence in the last few minutes.
Number two, Mitch could maybe use Serendipity to lead the team directly to Carl's hiding place, but I'm honestly unsure whether that trick will work again. Partly I think it depends on meta factors that Mitch only vaguely perceives.
Number three, Mitch isn't aware that Carl arranged for human sacrifice but he can put one and one together and come up with a loose cultist and a hotel slipping sideways, and he's pissed at himself because he'd thought there wasn't more damage Carl could do, the poor dupe, and left him alone instead of doing any of a half-dozen different things that would have secured Carl more.
Number four, Mitch wants to reassure Anna because she's gotten exposed to Anunnaki glyphs secondhand and that's got to be disorienting.
Number five, he wants to pass this intel back to Roger and Archie.
Number six, it's become obvious to me what our agenda here should be, so that's good.
Michael
Yeah, go ahead and roll Detect whenever you're ready. I'll assess any penalties because of History B omnipresence from the measure of success.
>>>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS
>>>> DETECT … SUCCESS
>>>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS
Yeah, the History B energy here on the 12th floor is intense and thick, it's tough for Mitch to pinpoint specific areas that pool more History B energy than the ambient. He can't detect anything Irruptor-sized on 12, and he's pretty sure about that. But on the roof … there is absolutely definitely a reality shard, a powerful one up there, as well as some kind of constant flow of History B energy. Like … as if an earthquake had uncovered a previously-blocked up underground stream. The secondary temblor, the continuing shift that sent floors 10, 11, and 12 into History B? The one that Mitch doesn't know was caused by a human sacrifice but is beginning to suspect? It caused this constant flow of History B energy to appear. This might mean that the shifting might accelerate. The hotel is like a sinking ship that's suffered a secondary breach.
Jeff
Ok, so, our plan was we check 10, they check 11, we both check 12 and move on to the roof if we haven’t met back up then, right? Mitch will fill in the other PCs and express confusion as to whether it’d be better to skip the rest of 12 and move up to the roof before the sedu shows up, or if we should roll up Carl first.
Bill
Roger is for collaring Carl; we can’t afford him coming up on us from behind or any other mischief. He holsters the ikoter and pulls out his 38. He hopes to God Carl looks like a demon now, because otherwise putting him down is gonna be hard to stomach.
Michael
She says to MARPA-Mitch, "Agent, I … I have a hunch that the enemy are using hypnotic geometry to hoodwink anyone who comes up to these floors — Americans, Atlanteans, doesn't matter. After all of the sigilized subliminals I use in my media work at Dulce Base, well, you get to know the energy signatures. This floor of the hotel is lousy with them. All agents should keep their eyes down and be ready to avoid accidental exposure at all times."
Look at that, Anna has found a way to make her character's powers useful.
Rob
If Mitch reports all that about the reality shard on the roof and the shifting possibly accelerating, Archie's going to be more concerned about that than one sanity-blasted cultist. But the plan is still solid and Archie likes to stick to a plan, so he says: we do one sweep of the 12th floor, moving relatively quickly, looking for Carl and anyone else, then move to the roof. Archie/Stone tells the civilians to keep close together and keep their eyes down: "This place is lousy with black magic booby traps."
Archie, Roger, and Mitch probably can't keep their eyes down 100%, but they can rotate point so only one person at a time is designated to look around each corner / in any particular direction. Archie/Stone is looking to Anna/Suzanne and Mitch/Mitch to be our Carl-detectors here. Is Archie armed at this point? Pistol or ikoter? Is that up to me? It's also a good time to check in with Marshall and the 11th floor team, report what we've seen and done, get any news from them. A way to do that without breaking character would be to talk to Marshall, but on the same channel that Team Atlantis is using so they hear everything we say (and can do the same). I think Roger had the walkie-talkie, so Stone tells Agent Zero to report in to Opus Magisterium outside.
Michael
Is Archie armed at this point? Pistol or ikoter? Is that up to me?
Entirely up to you; both options are available (retroactively) from Jocasta's Big Duffel Bag of Tricks she brought into the hotel a few hours ago. In fact it wouldn't be a bad idea for everyone URIEL-MARPA to be dual-equipped with ikoter and firearm: even with LARP immersion, we're not giving either of these weapons to civilians. So, should we walkie-talkie with Marshall ("Opus Magisterium," love it) and the Atlanteans just before we commence the sweep or after?
Rob
Ok, let's say Archie has both weapons, but the ikoter is what's in his hand. IIRC, we are already on the 12th floor, in what was the URIEL suite. So I'd say we walkie-talkie in from here before sweeping the rest of the floor.
Michael
Cool. I think once we finish the past-life/necromancy shenanigans on 11 we should have a group walkie-talkie chat.
Or at the very least an info-share.
Jeff
Mitch closes his eyes, sighs heavily, and opens them again. "No need to sweep. We can beeline right to him, thanks to my, uh, Natural Guard psychic commando training."
Mitch isn't sitting on that info, sorry if I haven't been more explicit about sharing what Anna said.
Michael
All right, so Mitch is going to use Serendipity to find Carl's hiding place, with the three (armed) URIEL members of the MARPA team sweeping for glyphs and traps as they go?
Rob
If Mitch has still got the Serendipity uses. I don't know if we can also lean on Anna's nascent abilities, but Sebastian Stone would have no qualms about doing so.
Michael
I think Anna's likely to need a little prodding in that direction given the fact that Mitch has now (sagely!) warned her against letting her new-found ESP get her closer to any of those glyphs in Carl's mind. But I'm actually more than willing to either RP or skill-roll a resolution (Leadership, most likely) to that!
Mitch follows his usual sixth (seventh?) sense of Where He Needs To Be while thinking that where he needs to be is in the right place to find and confront Carl. The corridors and chambers here on 12 are grander than either 10 or 11; as if echoing the fact that this floor was full of double-sized suites in History A, or because we are near the top of the ziggurat now and the closeness to "the gods" demands a certain grandeur, Mitch is not certain nor am I sure he cares. But as Mitch/Mitch sniffs his way towards Carl, like the faithful SANDMAN/MARPA dog he is, with Roger/Agent 00 backing him up and Anna/Suzanne sensing as best she can with her newfound psychic powers (I'm going to assume that Archie/Sebastian is back a little further with Clint/John and Hilda/Alisa), it doesn't take long for Mitch to hone in on an archway that seems to hold beyond it a smaller chamber. And it also doesn't take long for Mitch and Roger to see taped up above the archway an Anunnaki glyph. To avert your gaze and avoid the need to make a Will check, Mitch can give me an Observation roll at a 17, and Roger an Observation roll at a 15. Your rolls will aid Anna depending on outcome.
Bill
>>>> SUCCESS
>>>> SUCCESS
Jeff
>>>> SUCCESS
>>>> FAILURE
Made the Will roll, rolled a 17 on a skill of 17 on the Observation, that's a failure but not a critical failure
Michael
That's fine, and in fact you didn't have to roll Will beforehand but since it worked out this way it kind of jibes with Mitch's Serendipity in a weird way as well so I'll roll with it. And I think I can safely narrate this before Roger rolls as well.
So Mitch knows, even before the scrap of St. Francis stationery hoves into view, that this is where Carl is holed up. It seems to correspond vaguely to the same spot in History A where the upstairs 12th floor conference room used to be. Mitch can't avert his gaze to avoid some exposure to the glyph, and it turns out it's a doozy: Mitch can feel the vague urge to KILL as he catches the edges of the contours of a GAZ glyph but his Will and SANDMAN training helps to tamp the murder-zombie urge down completely. And give me a Hidden Lore (History B) roll as well.
Jeff
>>>> SUCCESS
MoS 5.
Michael
DM coming.
Jeff
Mitch snatches up the paper, burns it to ash in his hands. "I don't like this. Too much bad magic. It's leaking out, telling him how to do things."
Michael
(Given we're outside the chamber Carl's hiding in, why don't Mitch and Roger give me Stealth rolls.)
Bill
>>>> FAILURE
Roger blew it. I don’t know what it is about sneaking up on Carl. Maybe it’s that he just needs to be punched.
Michael
Well at least Rog didn't catch a glimpse of GAZ before tripping over a loose ziggurat brick.
Before even that, I gotta make a couple of rolls. One for Anna reacting quickly enough to avert her own gaze from GAZ, and a Perception roll for Carl. He could crit fail as well.
Okay, I think this is the way it's gonna go down. When Roger catches a glimpse of the glyph paper, he gives Anna the high sign to avert her gaze; Roger does as well. But as a result, Roger makes a very loud noise, his feet scrabbling on the clay of the ziggurat's floor. Immediately from inside the room Mitch and Roger can hear what sounds like Carl's voice, crying out in Sumerian.
Bill
Roger’s new rule is, ikoter spray through the damn door first!
Michael
Well Carl was dumb (insane?) enough to let you know he was in there after hearing you, so I guess I should find out who's first in the initiative order, so to speak.
Roger, for certain. Now the inside of the room Carl's hiding in is dark, but as Roger is now near the doorway he can see more flickering torchlight. much like the flames that were set in the elevator shaft so we'd see the NAM.HILI glyph. That means by Roger's tactical analysis that Carl has likely set up one (or more) glyphs in this hole-up, which means going in on Carl means either firing the ikoter blind or taking your chances with SANDMAN resistance and going in with eyes wide open. Or you all could just stay out here and listen to him rant in Sumerian. Anyway, Roger is up.
Bill
Ok, so to dangerous to aim, huh? Well then, it’s beam weapon on spray, if such a thing exists. Point in general direction, fire, advancing slowly.
Roger will keep his eyes slitted. Any glimpse of tacked up paper will provoke a new action to reach and tear it down.
Michael
That's cool. Let's start with that. I will look up GURPS rules for firing sightless and check against the ikoter's particulars.
Bill
Roger figures, even if he doesn’t hit him, he might drown out the Sumerian chanting with the sonics.
Michael
So I'm going to spitball this at a -6: you're not going in completely blind but this kind of a wild shot where you're only getting glimpses of a darkened room seems like a -6 type situation. So that's a snapshot at a Beam Weapons-7.
Bill
Well, I didn’t botch it, but missed by one. Hopefully being under fire at least means he needs to work harder at whatever he’s doing.
Michael
Well, Mitch is up next so we'll see what he decides to do here. But now that Roger is in the room and has caught a few fleeting glimpses of things, he can definitely see at least one glyph taped to the far wall opposite the doorway in his quick visual spin around the roughly 10' x 15' chamber. Carl's standing near the glyph, with marker and paper in hand. The illumination is good enough in here that if Roger wants to dive for the glyph as previously announced he can do so next round. Roger will definitely be within arm's reach of Carl if he goes to do that.
Bill
Glyph is definitely his target next round!
Jeff
Where is the illumination coming from?
Michael
A combination of multiple Sumerian-style torches and the faint History A/B cityscape outside the glass hotel window uncomfortably nudged into the clay walls of the ziggurat. It's faint but easy to make out silhouettes for accurate aiming if you don't mind exposing yourself to at least one glyph right near Carl.
Jeff
Ok
Ima close to melee with him and if possible fire the ikoter directly on his head at point-blank range as in pressing the thing against skin, is my goal anyway.
I'm pissed at Carl and choose to believe he is going to be worse at hand to hand than me.
Pin him down for Roger maybe.
Anyway, up in his grill, that's where I'm headed.
Michael
Doable. Let me check on modifiers in this scenario.
Mitch has the rifle-style ikoter, correct?
Jeff
Yep.
Bill
(It probably doesn’t come in a sawed-off style, no.)
Michael
(Just checking some GURPS message board suggestions for muzzle-against-skin firearm attacks. A +4 to the attack for a telegraphed attack but then the defender gets a +2 to Dodge? That sounds fair-ish.)
So that means Mitch with his no Beam Weapons penalty of -4 is gonna roll straight Guns (Rifle) right now and I roll Dodge at a +2.
Jeff
Success.
Michael
Okay. I gotta roll my Dodge and Will save.
did not Dodge.
did not succeed on Will but is not knocked unconscious, he is Dazed.
Daze: You are conscious – if you are standing, you remain upright – but you can do nothing. If you are struck, slapped, or shaken, you recover on your next turn.
He's set up now for Hypnotism, a single bullet in the back of the head, what have you. And Roger is up.
Jeff
("Try shooting him, it's great. Well, great is too strong a word. Cathartic.")
Michael
Hidden Lore (History B), y'all
>>>> SUCCESS
>>>> SUCCESS
>>>> SUCCESS
I mean, if you kill him here and now, one of the biggest sources of History B belief will be snuffed out for good. However, more human-on-human blood will have been shed and that will likely have an accelerating effect on the temblor zone.
We can pause here. It seems a logical narrative moment to have a think about things since Carl's a zombie for at least a minute.
(I'm honestly kind of thrilled you all were able to zap Carl with no problems other than a couple of inconvenient-but-not-disastrous (crit) failures; he's had his moment in the sun, his supervillain speech, his triggering the ritual murder to get the hotel to slip. He's more History B than man, now, which he wasn't even a mere few hours ago. Anyway, like I said, SANDMAN protocol says that if someone isn't knocked unconscious by an ikoter they're usually in a suggestible state like this for 1-5 minutes so now Mitch, Roger, and Archie have to decide what they're going to do with him.)
Rob
My instinct is to arrest him, in character as MARPA agents, doing everything we can to convince him he is in the reality of Krane's books (but he betrayed the America he originally set out to aid). If he ends up permanently thinking he's in Reality Krane, well, he gets what he wanted in a way. Only thing I'm not sure about is how that interfaces with his History B belief - will convincing him he's in Bobby Kennedy's America reinforce History B or weaken it?
Michael
That's a fair question and one best answered by Archie giving me a snap Hidden Lore (History B) roll, I think.
Rob
Made it by 10!
Michael
So if anything, convincing Carl through a Hypnotism attempt that he's in History-Krane and under arrest for betraying the United States by engaging in demonic Babylon magic will enfold him as a participant into Memeplex A — the LARP — and thus take him out of action as a pawn of the Anunnaki. Archie knows that below whatever "conversion" has happened to make him into a glyph-writing machine, is that core belief in a square-jawed America doing right to fight Atlantis: if Sebastian Stone from the books slaps the cuffs on him, that's going to bring him right back down to "Earth" and make him pliable … more than pliable, a key narrative element in the very meme meant to help drag Westercon back across the precipice: just another ant on the blanket. The bad guy gets arrested by the good guys, and the good guys go onto the roof to face the final challenge. All that needs to happen is a successful Hypnotism attempt.
(Also, considering Carl's been laid low by a real-world ikoter and this whole thing was triggered by their ersatz History-Krane ikoters being used irresponsibly to trigger mass hysteria in hundreds of sci-fi fans... some nice symmetrical poetic justice there)
uhhhhhh why does Archie not have Hypnotism
laugh
Brant
(That’s why I just laughed emoji. None of the team does besides Marshall.)
Michael
But it's part of the SANDMAN package!
Rob
Damn it. What about Enthrallment? Or getting him on the phone to his friend Marshall?
Michael
Did we all opt out like we did with ikoter training?
Enthrallment will definitely work! It's just you get a bonus to Hypnotize with the after-effects of the ikoter.
In fact, Enthrallment will work really well because of the storytelling situational bonuses from Archie portraying Stone.
Rob
Plus, it's Anunnaki tainted. OK, give me a second to think of a good line of Sebastian Stone patter. Archie has never successfully used Enthrallment in game — how does taking Corruption to get a bonus on a roll work again?
Michael
Just using Enthrallment (I would say Suggest is the better option here: "give yourself up, son, and take yourself down to the lobby for extraction; MARPA's eyes are everywhere") is of course 1d6-2 Corruption. And then to improve your roll, it's a straight 1-to-1 Corruption for bonuses to your skill rating. You would start with a Public Speaking roll and then roll Suggest; you can boost either or both with Corruption.
Archie has never successfully used Enthrallment in game.
His heart just hasn't been in it up to this point; now he finally has a role to sink his teeth into.
Rob
Archie throws himself into the Stone persona. Strides into the room, grabs Carl by the shirt collar. "Give it up, Fletcher! It's all over." Stone shoves his MARPA badge, with the eye-in-pyramid symbol, in Carl's face. "You see that, you conniving punk? Magnus ab saeclorum nascitur ordo! This hotel is back in the U.S. of A., and your Babylonian puppet-masters have blown away like farts in the wind."
Stone keeps monologue-ing as Mitch and Roger presumably handcuff Carl, as roughly as they like. "Thought you were real smart, didn't you, Mr. Berkeley Astrophysics? Thought you were so much better than the common herd. So you sold out your country, and poor dumb Richie, and for what? Lies and carnie tricks. That's all they've got. That's all they are."
"Well, you'll have plenty of time to write a PhD on that in a concrete cell a half mile below New Mexico. At least Richie's room has padded walls."
(I'll take whatever Corruption is needed to bring both Public Speaking and Enthrallment (Persuade or Suggest?) to 17 - that would be 2 points for Public Speaking and 3 for Enthrallment (either), unless I also have any situational bonuses)
>>>> SUCCESS
>>>> SUCCESS
Rolled 9 on Public Speaking (so, MoS 8) and 12 on Enthrallment (MoS 5)
Michael
In a flash, Carl's eyes, dilated pupils and all, well up with tears. He's still silent, still zombie-like from the linguistic confusion of the ikoter, but deep inside, something is called back from behind both the ikoter effects and the deep immersion in Anunnaki carnie tricks. His voice, already croaky from an afternoon of heatstroke, interrogation, and isolation, murmurs out a few simple words. "Director Stone. I was … I was only trying to help MARPA. To … to defeat Atlantis," echoing the words on the mustard-yellow RFK '72 poster.
Rob
Stone spits on the ground in disgust, tells Mitch & 00 to get this dumb patsy out of his sight. (I guess we will have to stash him somewhere — quick run down to a lower floor a la Tom?)
Michael
Well, that is something I want to get an answer on. But first …
As Carl's will crumples, the MARPA team gets to see, for the first time, what it's like when a floor of the hotel reverts to History A. In a sweeping, stomach-dropping moment, the clay and stone walls of the ziggurat fade away, and the URIEL-MARPA team and Carl find themselves standing in the 12th floor's conference room. Everything is a little askew — decorative prints fallen off the walls, chairs pushed to all corners of the room, table chipped and broken at one end — but reality has reasserted itself. Blessed History A fluorescent lighting crackles into life, and the view outside is good old San Francisco, no blurs, no double exposures.
(The upshot of this is, we have both the bivouac suite and surveillance suite available to us again, and as Carl thinks he is now a prisoner of the real-deal actual History-Krane MARPA, he should not be trouble.)
Bill
Roger will have grabbed up the glyphs while Stone was making the perp wet his pants. Then he is ready with handcuffs to frog march Carl back to where they can just handcuff him to an object — a radiator this time. Then we gotta meet up and see what’s on the roof.