Interrogating Carl
Jeff
Mitch sits there in the hotel room for a moment before sighing and doing the thing.
Michael
Yeah, smoke 'em if you got 'em. I'm making the rolls.
What's Mitch's brand?
Jeff
Winston.
Michael
Mitch turns on the bedside lamp here in the suite and takes out a pack of Winstons and lights up. Instead of taking a drag and exhaling forcefully, he lets the smoke slowly float out of his nose and mouth, letting it get caught in the heat shed by the lamp's incandescent bulb. In the wisps and vortices and tendrils of smoke, Mitch sees a sign. Two strong threads of tobacco smoke float high into the convection current. And nearer to the lamp, clustered around the opening of the lampshade, are five more distinct threads of smoke lazily snaking around the lampshade. Two high. Five low. The baddies are wreathed in smoke, but they could very easily turn to smoke if this whole thing is managed right. But until then, two live in the sky, five lair like serpents, low down in the tower. (Actually Jeff, I kind of like the idea of Mitch laying the Tower card on the lamp, to keep at least some aspect of the usual Oracle paradigm here.) Also low down on these room lamps on their base there's, like, a braid of brass, and Mitch sees the shiny brass visibly twinkle through the haze and halo of smoke. Even if there is danger low down on the Tower, there's also gold.
By the time Mitch is finished spacing out to the patterns of smoke and considering what they mean, Mitch hears a voice from the corner of the room croak out, "W … water. Please, God."
Looks like Carl has come 'round.
Jeff
Mitch has a glass of water ready. He puts it up to Carl's mouth, as Carl is bound in a sitting position with his hands secured.
"Here you go."
Michael
Carl gulps greedily, his lips cracked and his voice rasping. "What … it didn't work, did it? You stole Krane from us."
Jeff
Aura sight and a second glass of water.
>>>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS
>>>> DETECT … SUCCESS
>>>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS
MoS of 1 on analysis, good enough I guess.
Michael
His aura is weak, but it's also at its core home to a little glowing kernel of rage. Like a red ember. It's at the very center of his being. No supernatural whammies, no health problems other than the single FP and heatstroke recovery.
Jeff
"Who's us, Carl?"
Michael
"Me and Rich."
Jeff
Mitch shakes his head. "Richie told me there was more."
Michael
Detect Lies + Aura Sight seems to indicate he's not telling you everything, and on hearing Rich blabbed Mitch sees the kernel of rage glows a little hotter.
Jeff
Yeah, I guessed.
Mitch isn't much of an interrogator — I would argue that he is perhaps the single PC least equipped, in fact, given that Charley has Renshaw slots.
Michael
"Why do you want to stop us, anyway. Who's Krane to you and why do you care if we use him to get the hell out of here."
"We want out."
Jeff
"Yeah, but who's we?" Mitch asks again. "Richie got turned into a zombie before he could explain, which, that wasn't my idea."
Michael
"A what?"
Jeff
"Idea," Mitch repeats. "When you think of something."
Michael
"What do you mean, a zombie? You mean he got hit by the MARPA Memory Gun? He'll be fine in a few minutes. I knew he'd end up pointing it the wrong way, moron."
Jeff
Mitch makes a noise midway between a scoff and a chuckle. "What makes you think that?"
Michael
"Rich thinks it's some badass achievement to be on the Mariner team working on an atmospheric sensor array or something. Hah," Carl says, but without real deep malice in his aura. He doesn't have the energy to scoff at Rich at the moment. "Best and most important thing he ever did was try to snatch Krane with me."
Jeff
"What, you mean he lied to me?" Mitch affects surprise and disappointment. "You two aren't the advance team for a whole Atlantean cell?"
Michael
"Atlanteans?" Carl curls his mouth in disgust. "What on earth are you talking about?"
Jeff
"What're you talking about?" Mitch is aghast, as if he is thinking is it possible that Carl and I are on the same side after all?
Michael
"We hate Atlantis. Despise it. We want to leave this world so we can help RFK and MARPA destroy it. Maybe with the Bomb, maybe with an anti-mana device, but mostly we think we can help Kennedy and the Boys from Dulce make it so the timeline that manifested Atlantis in the Caribbean in 1968 never existed there." Carl looks at Mitch a little more intently. "You … you are the agent Rich met at breakfast this morning, right?"
Jeff
Does the phone in here have a speaker mode?
Michael
No, sadly, but you could grab one from the surveillance suite!
Jeff
"Hold on, I'ma go do a thing. Back in a jiffy." Mitch abruptly walks out of the suite, taking care to leave DO NOT DISTURB hanging on the door. He scoots over to the surveillance suite and grabs the speaker phone there, brings it back to Carl.
Is Carl still there?
Michael
Hold on a second.
That "scooting." It will be interrupted.
Jeff
OK.
Michael
Observation roll please.
>>>> SUCCESS
On his way across the 12th floor to the surveillance suite, Mitch hears something behind the door of room 1219. There's a soft, nearly inaudible (through the door and wall, which means the voice must be pretty loud in the room) woman's voice, saying, "Oh no. Oh no, oh God no." And then suddenly in response to that, Mitch can hear a deep booming voice saying, "I am to. Sacrifice you. To bring. The circle. Complete." And then a rattling, nearly-bestial inhalation. Jeff, Fright check (rule of 14).
>>>> FAILURE
That's a failure spot on. 13 or less.
Jeff
Is it? I thought I needed a 14- not a 13-
Michael
The rule of 14 is named as logically and clearly as everything in GURPS, which is to say, no, not at all.
Jeff
Ok, you're right.
Michael
So roll 3d6+1 for the result on the old table.
>>> 3d6+1 …. 11
Jeff
Also pyro check:
>>>> SUCCESS
Michael
Anyway, no pyro, 2d6 seconds of freezing at the door, listening to what comes next.
>>> 2d6 … 6
Bestial voice: "The plan. Has been. Completed. You and she. Shall be taken." Mitch, roll Will-1.
>>>> SUCCESS
Spot on. Mitch snaps out of his reverie.
Jeff
Ok so the Rule of 14 is still a Fright Check thing not a Will-in-general thing BUT the Uncontrollable limitation has its own separate Rule of 14 rule.
Great.
Glad that's cleared up.
Michael
SAYIN'.
Jeff
Mitch tries the door. I assume it's locked?
Michael
Yep.
Jeff
Mitch pounds on the door. "Shelly! Shelly, you in there? I got the speakerphone!"
Michael
Mitch hears a snort, and suddenly the door comes exploding off its hinges, knocking him back. Mitch, the door will act paradoxically as a Block maneuver for you, which you can roll at Block+3, or 9.
>>>> FAILURE
Jeff
Fuck
Michael
Mitch tumbles to the ground, protected by the door although it does batter and splinter him a bit (no damage, but some Knockback, I rolled a 16 to Gore you). And out of Room 1219 comes charging a kusarikku, hitting the wall opposite the now-destroyed door, reorienting itself, and then suddenly loping off down the hallway in the direction of the main bank of elevators and the surveillance suite.
Inside Room 1219 is a young woman lying in bed, eyes wide and pupils pinholes, sitting in a state of extreme mental breakdown after what she's seen and experienced. (If you're good leaving off here tonight, Jeff, I think that's a good place to stop.)
You saved a life but now there's an alien in the ducts.
(Also you prevented blood from being spilled, which we know is a Bad Thing to have happen in a subduction zone.)
Jeff
Sorry, I'm confused. There was an attack that did enough base damage to cause knockback, but the door absorbed that base damage leaving Mitch unhurt, and then the demon straight-up failed its attack roll as it moved past Mitch down the hall and didn't bother to turn around and kill him, presumably because it has bigger fish to fry? Is that correct?
Mitch had a plan that involved calling Livermore and getting Marshall to interrogate Carl over the phone after filling Marshall in in Danbe on what Mitch has and hasn't told Carl, but seems like that is not likely to happen now.
Michael
The failed attack was the key component. It wasn't going to miss hitting the door obviously so I had to narrate the missed attack roll somehow. This is where my eyeballing GURPS may end up working against me but the upshot is that I wanted there to be a dramatic door explosion the kusarikku could automatically cause but the failed attack roll against Mitch needs explaining somehow. As a dodge or the door absorbing the attack (even though your Block roll was a failure too.)
I suppose the Knockback happened to the door. And Mitch just took whatever kinetic energy was left.
It could as easily be explained as Mitch doing an inadvertent bullfighting move with the door and dodging out of the way. But the kusarikku definitely seems to have bigger fish to fry.
Jeff
This the second time Mitch has inexplicably survived being in melee range of a kusarikku. His theory that they're deliberately keeping him alive either in service of or to mess with his elderly evil twin has just been bolstered.
Michael
What's Mitch's next move after this horrifying encounter, the door to suite 1219 in splinters in front of him?
Jeff
Remind me how the Serendipity refreshes work. Do I have any uses now? If I do and I use them will I have any uses next face-to-face session?
Michael
We've been doing two uses per live session, and two uses per "inter-session" over chat. So yes, if you were to use two right now they would refresh for Wednesday night's live session.
Jeff
Ok.
Mitch follows the demon down the hotel passage, trying to ascertain whether it is headed towards the graduate student or towards something else.
Inside him are two wolves, by which I mean two timers, one for how long he's left him unattended ("him" being Carl the grad student who conjured up the demons) and one for how long she's been left alone ("she" being the insensate woman the demon was victimizing).
But, you know: demon. That seems like a priority override.
Bee tea dubs, would it be one or both uses of Serendipity for Mitch to happen across someone he can reliably dispatch to assist her? I guess, maybe the con has some volunteer with first aid training and a big badge saying WESTERCON EMERGENCY MEDICAL TEAM?
Michael
I would say that a single use of Serendipity would have one of the very same medic team that Chelsea Q.Y. was looking for downstairs happening to be returning to his room on 12 to get his first aid equipment as Mitch tracks the kusarikku.
Jeff
Ok I’m not using it just quite yet, there’s a good chance that I’ll be able to turn around in under a minute right now
Michael
Okay, so given that the main hotel hallway has some twists and turns here and given the kusarikku's speed Mitch will lose sight of the Irruptor fairly quickly but I can tell you two things:
it's headed away from the room in which you're holding Carl and headed towards the other end of the hotel, and
even though there's a lot of History B to Detect around Mitch right now, Irruptors should light up like a Christmas tree with Detect.
Jeff
Ok
Mitch pauses to bury his face in his hands and scream into his palms for a half second or so then turns back to 1219, almost walking into the aforementioned medic I guess? "What happened? Is Shelly okay?"
Michael
The medic is standing in the smashed doorway of 1219. "Astrid, is everything all right? What happened?" On the bed is a young woman, early 20s, dressed to the nines in a sort of retro '20s/'30s pastiche: bold. Her face is streaked with tears and her eyes and cheeks red. "I don't know, Bill." She gulps audibly, sniffs, and gets off the bed, looking at Bill in the doorway and then Mitch behind him. "I was … I was so scared. There was a man, in my room. A big fat man. And he was … ah, goddamn it, I can't even think about it." She pauses with great hesitation. "His eyes … were on fire." She covers her eyes again. "I felt like I'd been here before, like this had happened to me before, a long time ago." Bill is keeping his distance; Astrid looks physically unhurt but emotionally quite dire. Mitch can give me a Detect Lies (sort of a general emotional analysis) roll but he's also of course welcome to try to analyze Astrid's aura as well and then add that bonus to the DL roll.
Jeff
Yeah let's scan that aura.
>>>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS
>>>> DETECT … SUCCESS
>>>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS
MoS of 3. Detect Lies.
>>>> SUCCESS
Michael
All right. So the first thing Mitch sees in Astrid's aura is fear; a deep wellspring of ice-cold dread that has colored every part of her aura. Whatever she saw just a couple of minutes ago in this room has left her absolutely petrified. But it's also apparent that the memories of the kusarikku's true identity are beginning to fade a little bit, being covered over by this image of a fat man with fire in his eyes. While Mitch did not see a glyph on the kusarikku as it bowled him over, it's not beyond the realm of possibility it was wearing one … or this could just be an example of the human brain trying to explain away perceiving History B. But the aura contains one more very salient bit of visual information, one that Mitch has only ever encountered with one other human subject. Astrid's aura contains the faint silvery flicker of the hall of mirrors Mitch has seen in Charley. But just the barest flicker. Instead of an endless corridor of recursive reflections, it's just the shimmering of a single past-life soul flaring up in her aura right now.
Jeff
Bill knows Astrid and Mitch has zilch he can accomplish here I think, so he looks nonplussed and mutters that he had the wrong room and scoots back to Carl.
Michael
"What the hell is going on out there?" Carl says as soon as Mitch gets back to the bivouac suite.
Jeff
"It's not great."
Michael
Carl looks even paler than he did before. "W-what do you mean?"
Jeff
"Hold up, we were talking about a thing. Your buddy, uh, Talbot? Talbot met an Atlantean agent? I'm getting confused here, man."
Michael
"He said someone tried to chase him off at breakfast. He told me about it in a panic and I said it wasn't going to stop us from doing what we need to do. I was assuming you're the guy who warned him off what we were planning to do."
Jeff
"Why would you assume that?"
Michael
"Because you're holding me captive in a hotel room."
Jeff
"Fair enough." Mitch looks expectant, also scans Carl's aura and local History B.
>>>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS
>>>> DETECT … SUCCESS
>>>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS
MoS of 1 on analysis.
>>>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS
>>>> DETECT … SUCCESS
>>>> ANALYZE … FAILURE
Failed detection at the analysis step. I'm not sure I've ever failed that at that particular point before
Michael
He's had a chance to get a bit of his wind back, but obviously Carl is still quite exhausted from getting hit with intense heatstroke. His aura is a little more at ease now than it was at the beginning of this conversation: the red kernel of rage is now glossed over with amber, a slick, weird sort of confidence.
Having a few minutes to get his thoughts together, while you were out saving members of the con committee from kusarikku, seems to have done him good. And yes, Detect (History B) still reveals to Mitch a general sort of weak "background radiation" of History B throughout the hotel. There don't appear to be any other surges or strong sources of History B energy within this room. I would say that Carl has a sort of … lingering patina of exposure to History B, but that could be just from exposure to the previous energy around Krane, or the ersatz ikoters, or any other number of History B sources he's been around in the last half hour or so, but without analysis success, Mitch can't really taste the flavor.
Jeff
"Richie, Talbot, he said a bunch of nonsense while you were out," Mitch says, shaking his head. "Restraining you seemed like the safest move, after what he did."
Michael
Might seem an unusual request, but I just feel like I need to see how this approach is hitting him: give me a Fast-Talk-17 roll (+3 from aura reading, +1 from having him over a barrel right now)
>>>> SUCCESS
Jeff
I've done worse.
Michael
"What did he do? This should be good." Carl sets a smug grin on his face; underneath it, Mitch can tell, from his aura going a little pale, that he's a tiny bit afraid to hear the answer.
Jeff
"Didn't I say? Zombie. He tried to leave the hotel. Listen, I wanna call Doc, you should talk to Doc, okay?"
Michael
"And I told you he'd be fine in a few minutes."
"Who's Doc?"
Jeff
Mitch still has the speakerphone, he's setting it up. His objective is to dial in to Livermore (and Marshall or Archie, both of whom might be as far as he knows patiently sitting by the telephone waiting for his call).
"I don't think so, man, I think you're operating on some bad information."
Michael
Carl narrows his eyes, "Well, you stopped us taking Krane. What are you going to do with us now?"
He seems pretty much almost completely uninterested in what happened to Rich.
Jeff
So yeah, Mitch is dialing up Livermore.
Michael
"Is this … the Doctor?" Carl looks up at Mitch with a shit-eating grin on his face. Again, Mitch's aura sight shows someone putting on a show of confidence with a gnawing core of self-doubt.
(So Brant, if you want to tell me what Marshall's general role will be here, I'll abstract it out with a roll or two and we can have Carl sort of react to whatever approach you use.)
Brant
"Mitch," he ignores Carl's question, "What are we dealing with here? Does he seem pliable?"
Jeff
Ok. Mitch will wince because he was trying to avoid letting Carl know his name as part of his general strategy of keeping Carl off-balance and unsure. "Uh, I guess, Doc," he says uncertainly. "You've been briefed, right?" Then he adds in Danbe: "I've been trying to keep him confused but I told him about his friend being alive-dead." (I assume Danbe doesn't have a word for 'zombie' that isn't an English loan-word Carl might recognize.)
"He's as scared as you'd think," Mitch adds in Danbe, which is about as much codetalking as he intends to do in front of Carl.
Michael
Carl, still recovering from the heatstroke, does blink in an odd way through those couple of short sentences in Danbe, as if he's not sure if his brain is working quite right yet. Aura-wise, it threw him off-balance.
Brant
"Yes. I know the lay of the land. How are you today, Carl?"
Michael
Carl sighs, and says, "To be honest, 'Doc,' I'm a little overwhelmed and wondering what you're all gonna do with me most of all."
Brant
"Mitch, could you do me a favor? I need you to try to open one of the windows in the room you're in."
(Whether the windows actually open given the circumstances is another issue, but we'll see.)
Michael
The windows are absolutely open-able.
Brant
(Oh, perfect! Basically Marshall is going to direct Mitch to push Carl's chair up to a window and open it.)
Jeff
"Done." Mitch will also do an active-sonar History-B check which I delegate the rolling to Mike for simplicity's sake.
Brant
(Does Mitch push Carl's chair to the window, facing inward? And does anything happen when he opens the window? I just want to make sure we're all on the same page before proceeding.)
Michael
There's nothing odd or unusual visible to either Mitch or Carl when the window opens: no shimmering or visible barrier or anything of the sort. But Mitch's active use of Detect (History B) does indicate the presence of some sort of … severe shearing, a mega-subduction zone, if you will, surrounding the interior of the old tower of the St. Francis and separating the hotel building from the rest of … the real world out there. The best analogue I can draw here is probably Mitch's experience at the Stanley, when it was apparent from the physical interior of the building that something had "flipped"; the St. Francis hasn't flipped — yet — but it is slipping, and this ontological slippage is what's causing the barrier that sucked out poor Richie's soul. It's created by inter-historical friction, essentially: the fiction caused by a building slowly but inexorably sliding into History B. (Yes, what I've done is associate the temblor in thematic terms with any number of '70s disaster movies most notably Earthquake, Towering Inferno, and The Poseidon Adventure )
Mitch also notices, once he focuses his attention on Carl's aura, fear start to hit Carl as he is face to face (or just from the sheer proximity, if Carl's chair is facing inward) with the open window.
Jeff
Mitch is fine with scooting Carl's chair in the manner advised. He'd be less fine with kicking Carl out the window, but assumes Marshall realizes that.
Brant
"Can you hear me OK, Carl? How are you doing today?"
Michael
"I am … " An audible gulp. "I am disappointed that Rich, Krane and I won't be departing tonight. Very upset and disappointed."
Brant
“Yeah. Yeah I’m sure you are. Look, man, I normally don’t operate this way — I usually respect my suspects enough to handle things face to face. But I can’t be there right now, and that’s on you. You and your friend. So, we’re going to have to tackle this in a less professional way than I’d like.”
“Carl, your life as you knew it is over. Whatever you thought your life was — Berkeley, maybe a girlfriend, hell maybe a boyfriend — maybe Rich was your boyfriend, you fucking f****t — your parents, reading these cheap fucking space novels on the weekend, probably jerking it furiously to all the lurid prose about green women with three tits or blue dudes with huge prehensile cocks — that is OVER FOR YOU.” He screams the last three words.
“I’m going to be asking you some questions about this whole situation. What you and your boyfriend were doing with that proton beam at Berkeley. Who gave you the idea to build a closet to another dimension. How you got the idea and the blueprints for those guns you used downstairs. All of it. You’re going to be completely forthright with me, hold nothing back. OK?”
Mutants
Mitch sees Carl's aura go absolutely cold. No kernel of rage, no fear hidden by smug satisfaction, just a full-body chill, from toes to top of aura.
Interrogation-19 (+2 for using this particular strategy of intimidation), Brant.
>>>> SUCCESS
Jeff
Sorry, does Mitch recognize that as indicative of a fear response or is he now channeling Father Oannes?
Michael
That's just fear, but, like, the kind of fear that you feel from the back of your bile-filled throat to the bottom of your bowels. Physiologically, Mitch sees that Carl's barely holding his piss in.
Carl just barely murmurs assent.
His voice is choked in his throat.
Brant
“Now you’re saying to yourself, well, why should I tell you anything? What’re you gonna do, kill me? And the answer to that is maybe. We could kill you. I’ve killed so many people, Carl — or had people killed for me. So many! And you know what? I can do that and nothing will happen to me. Hell, I might even get a promotion. But maybe if you’re not forthright with me, Carl, I won’t even kill you. I’ll burn you. To the ground. You and your family. All your friends. Every person you’ve fucked or hugged, every living relative of yours, I will burn them all down. Destitute. Disgraced. Jailed. And you will watch it all happen! All of it. Maybe you’ll try to stop it. Call the press! Call your legislators! Oh there’s a psychopath ruining my life, you’ll say. And hahaha no one will believe you. I’ll keep you so hopped up on drugs you’ll think you’re going insane. Hell, you might GO insane. I can do that.”
“So your choices are: complete honesty and maybe you die cleanly, no pain, everyone else goes about their lives. Deceit or holding things back, and you will end your days locked in an asylum unable to hold a single coherent thought in your FUCKED UP NAIVE LITTLE BRAIN while EVERY PERSON YOU HAVE EVER LOVED IS SLOWLY TORTURED TO DEATH WITHOUT EVER KNOWING WHY.”
So at this point I just want all the information I can get about how he met Rich, how they got this idea, who taught them the glyphs and how to build the ikoters, what they thought they were doing, etc.
Michael
Mitch smells the characteristic scent of urine and the dripping sound of it hitting the hotel room carpet.
Silently, Carl just weeps and weeps.
(Crit failed the Will roll.)
Jeff
"That's a large and effective parcel," Mitch says in Danbe. It sounds better in Danbe.
Michael
Carl's former loquaciousness and playfulness is gone. As he speaks, it's like he's already been hypnotized; his statements (with a few exceptions) are telegraphic, direct, stripped of emotion. "I … I was studying cosmology. How the universe got started. Subatomic physics and the cosmic background radiation. I started reading about the Many-Worlds Theory, the possibility of being able to hop from timeline to timeline. I knew it was all theoretical but I … " [5 seconds of weeping] " … I didn't care. The idea of getting out of this worldline, this horrible, shitty, hippie-filled modern world, full of women who wouldn't say boo to me and bloodless academic supervisors forgetting what truly great things this country can do, like the A-bomb … this place is a shithole. But … but the USA of the Atlantis books … those men had backbone. They had character. They stood for something." [This is that part where emotion starts to creep in, but he tamps it down for the next bit.] Another gulp. "Rich liked the books too. But he thought that the future was in … unmanned probes to the planets, and not men pioneering the solar system like they were meant to do. But I was still able to convince him that one day … one day, maybe we could get out."
"Anyway, one day I was at LeConte Hall to fill out some bureaucratic red tape horseshit and I went exploring. I'd heard that they were moving some of Ernest O. Lawrence's original cyclotron equipment out of the basement and wanted to see the forebears of the old proton gun. I went down there alone and … everything went weird for a minute. Shimmering. Like this was the place, this grimy basement, that I'd been meant to arrive at for my whole life. And in that basement, I met the Old Man."
"We hit it off right away. He was kind, friendly, avuncular … he was a lab assistant who'd worked with Dr. Lawrence all the way back in the 1920s! He said he was there the day that Lawrence brought in the plans for the spiral structure of the cyclotron, the one he'd gotten inspired from Widerøe's paper in German. The Old Man joked around that he'd showed him the spiral, in a dream. I didn't know what that meant but I wanted to know more, so desperately. So began my tutelage."
"Can … can I have some water? It's tough to talk this much."
Brant
"What? Water? No. Fuck you. Keep talking."
Michael
More weeping, this time for 10 or 15 seconds, but he clears his throat and moves on. "He said that certain people had been moved into place to make all this happen, since 1929. Lawrence of course. Robert Sproul, Berkeley president at the time. Even Widerøe over in Norway. Two children born in Berkeley that year, 'sprinkled with fairy dust,' the Old Man said. 'Hansel and Gretel. The first Children of the Atom.' And then, he said, me and Rich. And the clock. It was all meant to be. That Rich and I were the most important. He said I'd have to relearn geometry, that our human senses … why did he say 'human' senses?" Carl pauses and seems confused. "That our human senses couldn't see in the proper dimensions, but he'd teach us the way to craft our geometry beyond three dimensions. And the proton gun, of course. He showed me the error in my equations. He said we could pick any timeline we wanted … as long as we had someone along for the ride who was, 'Illuminated.' Until then, we'd have to be happy with inanimate objects from the world of Atlantis Risen."
"We got the MARPA memory guns in one of our first runs with the particle accelerator. We put the geometry into place, fired the accelerator, and the fucking guns just appeared. Out of nothing. We'd done it. We knew we were right. Rich was scared but I said this meant we had to get Krane. We had to."
"I met the Old Man again a couple of weeks ago. He said the convention was the place to do it. Every single thread would come together there. And he said we had to make a big scene, to leave the people in the hotel confused and frightened, because they deserved it. We could slip out of the hotel with Krane, dazed, in our grasp. We could leave as soon as we had him and his Illuminated brain. We could do it."
"And now we never will. The Old Man promised us … me, so much. I wish I could get my hands on him now."
Brant
I want to know everything he knows about the Old Man, what he looks like, what he sounds like, what Carl's impression of him was, etc.
Michael
"He always wore an old-timey lab assistant's outfit. Sometimes a lab coat. I never thought about how strange it was that this 70-year-old man was always in the same spot in the basement. I … I can't remember what he looks like. Why can't I remember what he looks like? The old cooling tanks in the basement for the old cyclotrons … did he live inside them?" Carl suddenly begins having a seizure.
Mitch?
Actually, before Mitch, please can both Jeff and Brant roll 3d6 for me.
>>>> 3d6 … 15
>>>> 3d6 … 8
There's a little static on the line/on the squawkbox as Carl begins to seize up.
Jeff
Mitch is still watching Carl's aura but does not have any sense of what to do if a dude has a seizure. Wallet over tongue?
Brant
"What's happening, Mitch?"
Jeff
Okay, so the Aura Sight is giving you the innate sense that Carl is having a grand mal seizure. (old terminology but period-accurate) The Detect (History B) is noting a surge of History B energy inside Carl's brain. First Aid defaults to IQ-4 or 9 if Mitch wants to try to help.
Oh yeah, there's also a flare of History B energy on the phone (not the squawkbox specifically).
Brant
(Would Marshall be able to give Mitch some direction with his Physician skill?)
Michael
Yes, good call. An aid roll from Marshall using Physician.
>>>> SUCCESS
Mitch will get a +1 to First Aid, or 10.
Jeff
Ok Mitch will describe what he sees and attempt to follow directions
>>>> SUCCESS
Michael
Again, 1973-specific medical care may not be correct for those having seizures but with instruction Mitch manages to prevent Carl from harming himself in the midst of the episode.
Jeff
Next time I get xp first aid I swear to god.
Michael
His pupils are pinholes post-seizure. He's muttering to himself, "I can see them. I can see them again! They're here. They're here in the building with us! The Old Ones!" He now begins screaming. "They're between the walls, they're ignoring our geometry! They feast! They feast!"
Brant
Mitch hears something get hurled against a wall or the floor on Marshall's end of the line, followed by, "FUCK!"
Marshall hops off the desk and picks up the line, rather than using the speaker. "Mitch, go find the others — we have a plan in the works and you will be needed by them. I have to get this information to Archie and Charley, and figure out next steps." He suddenly sounds very serious and genuine: "Mitch, MJ … please be careful. We cannot risk losing you. I mean it."
Jeff
"Yeah, okay."
I was going to ask if Mitch interpreted Marshall's concern as being for Mitch getting gored by a bull or shot by a cultist or something, or if he's worried Mitch will take what he just heard and be like, "fuck this timeline, I'm crawling in Cave 5 and let's see where I go it can't be worse." But given Marshall and Mitch's relative skill sets I'm sure Mitch interprets Marshall's concern however Marshall wants him to.