Jocasta at Downer Ranch
Michael
Unincorporated Dixon and Vacaville, California. Tuesday. August 14, 1973.
Jocasta waits at the I-80 interchange to see where and when Bernadette gets to work. She drives by in her car around 7:50 or so, and gets onto I-80 South towards Vacaville. Jo trails her [car Shadowing roll done secretly] to Agrigenics, a 10, 15 minute commute all told. As Bernadette gets off in Vacaville, Jo goes to the nearby truck stop with the line-of-sight to the Cube and watches Bernadette park in the vast Agrigenics parking lot (about halfway from the building) and walk into the glass-windowed lobby. She goes to the bank of elevators going to the upper floors, not the basement.
(Jo can now sit and surveil for a bit, or go check out the old Downer Ranch, your call Leonard.)
Leonard
Jocasta will surveillance for a short while, making sure to get a (tactical, not psychic) read on Bernadette’s car and the Cube, and if nothing unusual happens, she’ll head to the ranch. (If URIEL has anything like an infrared scanner, she wants to see if she can get a temperature read/heat signature on the basement, but if that’s not something we have lying around, no big deal.)
Michael
(I could say Jocasta's got a piece of infrared scanning equipment but you'd need to roll Electronics Operation (Surveillance) to use it properly and that would default to IQ minus 5, which I will roll secretly.)
If I haven't already said so, and it looks like I never did, Bernadette drives a powder blue 1971 AMC Gremlin. Tactically, Jocasta feels confident that Agrigenics picked this particular spot to plunk down their terrifying headquarters for three reasons: proximity to the highway, beneficial zoning from a Vacaville that wants to encourage a corporate tax base on the outskirts of their town (Jo can see other lots being parceled out a little ways down the road from Agrigenics), and, since Jo knows there's sinister shit going on in there, so Agrigenics could have a clear view around for nearly a mile. It dominates the landscape. Of course they didn't count on that pre-existing interstate truck stop being a perfect spot for someone with high-powered binoculars to spy upon them.
While Jo is still close to the HQ, she deploys the infrared underground to see what she can see, but the results are inconclusive: a ton of heat is being generated down there, likely from the office building's heating and environmental and power plants, and it's preventing her from checking the nuances of what's down there.
Leonard
Jocasta's gonna do three things:
1. She's going to peer around to see if anything about the farm or the agricultural infrastructure — barn, fields, whatever — sets off any alarm bells as unnatural or worthy of notice using the Naturalist skill.
2. Ditto, but the buildings (house, barn, anyplace build by human hands) with the Occultism skill.
3. Finally, she'll grab two things -- one, the most recent-looking and resonant item in the campus area, and two, any kind of living cultivated natural object (grain, fruit, or anything that might be growing) — and do separate Psychometry reads on them. These might not go anywhere, since it's all so old and abandoned, but she wants to do due diligence.
Michael
Naturalism.
>>>> SUCCESS by 6
Occultism.
>>>> SUCCESS by 4
1. She's going to peer around to see if anything about the farm or the agricultural infrastructure -- barn, fields, whatever -- sets off any alarm bells as unnatural or worthy of notice using the Naturalist skill.
The soil quality still looks strong; if someone spent a season taking care of the land here, this could be a working farm or at the very least grazing land with very little problem. There doesn't seem to be any systematic poisoning of the land or ruinous changes to its ability to bear fruit. But Jo does notice, as she scans the area, a series of conspicuous depressions in a roughly grid pattern on the land: every 10 meters or so, a hemispherical hole about six inches in diameter can be seen, like they were made with some kind of scooping tool. The pattern appears concerted and systematic, and Jo wouldn't have noticed them if she hadn't been examining the soil quality.
2. Ditto, but the buildings (house, barn, anyplace build by human hands) with the Occultism skill.
Jo goes a little further into the ruined main farmhouse than Mitch and Marshall did, looking for any evidence of the Pruist cult. It looks like the place was stripped bare of ornament, down to the gas fixtures and even some of the molding around the hearths and doorframes. Jo wonders if they had Pruist motifs to them. Jo can see the telltale signs of a rural community's ruined farmhouse—the presence of teenagers using the place as a hangout, a collection of smashed brown glass beer bottles and cigarette butts in the back portion of the east wing. There's graffiti here of the "JL loves ES, JUL '65" type but nothing of an occult nature. The outbuilding-dormitories are built much more simply so there's less ornament to have been removed. They do feel like they were made cheaply and without much in the way of creature comforts. A couple of pieces of furniture—a chest of drawers here, an endtable or bed's headboard there—exist in some of the rooms, seemingly dating from the very early part of the century. The barn's exterior walls are free of, say, hex signs or other paint from the Pruist era. As mentioned, Marshall and Mitch saw a dangerous two-level building here and avoided going in but Jo... Jo catches a vibe and goes in a little ways looking for anything to satisfy her curiosity. She pokes around the stalls closest to the giant open barn entrance (the doors are long-since vanished). Hanging over the first stall is a handmade sign, faded from weather over the decades, that says, "I will gre... multiply thy sorrow... nception; in sorrow ...lt bring forth childr..." Genesis 3:16, the curse of Eve after the fall in Eden. Downright weird thing to put over where your cows and horses sleep.
(For 3, Leonard, after this deeper search of the grounds, let me know which man-made item seems like one to use the Psychometry on; I think one of the dead apple trees from the former Pruist orchard is the best "cultivated" option for Jo.)
Jocasta touches one of the gnarled dead apple trees, bracing herself for some kind of profound, powerful emotional resonance... and picks up nothing. Not just neglect or slow death: nothing. No history of who first cultivated these trees, nurturing them, or who eventually abandoned them. Jo realizes it might merely be that all the emotional power around these trees is too old to detect. She could try again later, maybe take Extra Time to concentrate, but now it's time to decide which manmade artifact she'll try to read: something from the main house, from one of the dormitories, or from the barn. (As far as the most intact, recent-looking manmade object, it's probably that placard in the barn with the quote from Genesis.)
Leonard
Yeah, she’ll pry the sign down and do a reading in the relative safety of the car. She’ll also make a note to, if she doesn’t know this already, check and see if anyone owns the property now, and if so, who, or if it’s in arrears or is public land or something.
Michael
Oh, Bernadette owns all of this. We found that out yesterday in-game.
Rolling now...
Again, Jocasta feels like the vibes on this object are much older and thus much more difficult for her to pinpoint without either Extra Time or pushing herself by taking on Corruption. There's a very faint sense, the slightest patina, of pride and excitement on this plaque but it feels more like something that brushed off on it more recently rather than penetrated into the very nature of the object.
(Of course Jo can try again on either of these with Extra Time and/or Corruption in 24 hours, your call. I'm going to assume both the apple tree cutting and the plaque are tagged and bagged for delivery back to Livermore as evidence.)
Leonard
Yeah, she'll bag it all and give it another try tomorrow. Jo's been off lately.
Michael
No worries! Jo's allowed an off day here and there
"Day off," "off day," same diff
Anything else Jo want to do in the Dixon-Vacaville area?
Leonard
Nothing I can think of, at least not until she talks to the rest of the boys about their surveillance of Bernadette. She will, however, take the sign fragment back home and try another read in the safety of her living room, boosted by additional time, a hit of acid, and maybe some Corruption if needed.