The Underwater Panther
Tuesday. October 9, 1973.
Leonard
Jocasta is gonna do two things:
She's going to write out as clear a list as she can, minimal bullet-point stuff, no extra verbiage, of what she and Charley have learned from the mounds: the absence of spirits in the burial sites, the setting up of the surveillance equipment, and the vision of the proto-SANDMEN blanking out the U of C researchers and taking the reality shard. She's then going to focus on the list and try to Telesend it to Marshall.
If there's still any free time, she'll also head into Cairo and start doing her 'historical researcher from the college' bit to gather some intel. She'll heavily lean on psychology and empathy (both the skill and the power) while speaking to people to try to suss out what's under the surface of what they're saying. She can do this with or without Charley depending on Mel's availability and preference. If there's not free time — if the SANDMAN brass give her any direct orders or mission goals — she'll put off #2 until there's time and just do what's asked of her. But she'll definitely try to Telesend the message.
Michael
She's going to write out as clear a list as she can, minimal bullet-point stuff, no extra verbiage, of what she and Charley have learned from the mounds: the absence of spirits in the burial sites, the setting up of the surveillance equipment, and the vision of the proto-SANDMEN blanking out the U of C researchers and taking the reality shard. She's then going to focus on the list and try to Telesend it to Marshall.
Awesome. For the purposes of not going too far into "temporal disturbance" territory, we'll say Jo tries the Telesend at around dinnertime, right when Archie and Marshall are taking stock of their Tuesday in Ohio. Let me look up the rules and refresh myself and I'll get you a roll.
Okay, the Long-Distance Modifier from Southern Illinois to Central Ohio is -7. Another -1 because you can't see Marshall but he is a "family, lover, or close friend" (ahem). So 15 minus 8 puts you at a roll of a 7. Extra Time can be taken, but you already spend 10 minutes, so spending 20 minutes will give you a +1, 40 minutes a +2, 80 minutes a +3. And of course there's Corruption.
Leonard
Jo doesn't sleep much, so she'll take the 80 minutes
>> FAILURE by 6
Pffff
I guess she'll go do stuff in town and try again later, then
Michael
If there's still any free time, she'll also head into Cairo and start doing her 'historical researcher from the college' bit to gather some intel. She'll heavily lean on psychology and empathy (both the skill and the power) while speaking to people to try to suss out what's under the surface of what they're saying. She can do this with or without Charley depending on Mel's availability and preference. If there's not free time — if the SANDMAN brass give her any direct orders or mission goals — she'll put off #2 until there's time and just do what's asked of her. But she'll definitely try to Telesend the message.
Yes, I think a Psychology-18 roll will work for this... bonuses are already baked in (+3 for Empathy, +1 from Charley's Renched Area Knowledge).
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 5
I guess she'll go do stuff in town and try again later, then
Michael
(Gonna say Jo did all this stuff in the afternoon before it got dark, then went back to the Holiday Inn in Cape Girardeau to try and contact Marshall; Charley's riding around on her bike will aid this gathering information roll.)
Cairo is one creepy town. Over half of the storefronts on the main drag are closed; Jocasta can see a barbershop, a laundromat, a dry goods store, two restaurants (one diner, one more of a dive bar), and a hardware store open and that's about it. On the "wrong side of the track," i.e., the former Black side of town, things are even more deserted. It's not a complete ghost town, but Cairo is occupied at well below its maximum occupancy.
The people Jo talks to — at a gas station, at the diner, etc. as she plays grad student — are intensely guarded; they are all to a man/woman powerfully suspicious of Jo. Their neuroses are plain as day, even without the Empathy; with it, it fairly screams at her. They don't trust outsiders and it's clear after short conversations it has to do with the past five years of conflict between the white and Black inhabitants of the town. A couple of the men Jo speaks to (hardware store and gas station) make explicit references to the FBI poking their noses in down here since '68 and the local white citizens' council not liking that one bit. Whether they actually suspect Jo is a fed or not, being a historian or anthropologist investigating dead Indians, even from the local university, is not winning Jo many fans either. Jo does her best to keep conversations business-like and perfunctory as she goes.
It would be much less challenging to posit that this social contagion was the fault of the Kings or some rogue memeticist but Jocasta knows better; this is just what happens when racist white people collectively allow their id to commit a mini-pogrom on the Blacks they live near to. The most overt lynchings might have happened here a half-century ago but the Black rebellions of the past five years have allowed these people to finally "win" and achieve their goal; a practically all-white city. Of course this "cure" is clearly also causing the town to die. Once these people have no one around to persecute first-hand, the greater social matrix essentially falls apart (let alone the economic impact of nearly a quarter of the town "vanishing").
Leonard
Hmmm. Okay. Well, absent any obvious patterns emerging around recent triggering events or mass sensations of change or disruption, Jocasta's going to integrate this all into some fairly standard field observations, half anthropology and half psychology, for the brass to read tomorrow. She won't draw any specifics but the line will be, these are people in a region with a bloody, dark history of confrontation, disruption, violence, and disunity, and that has all been bubbling over organically. There seems to be no proximate cause, but that's not really necessary for the whole area to be primed for a violent spark that will give the enemy an opening. She won't mention anything at all about the mounds.
Beyond that, she'll make note of any interviewee who seemed especially primed to move in any direction — anyone, in other words, who seemed especially vexed by Jocasta's line of questioning and responded either very negatively or very positively. Her plan for tomorrow, unless Charley has something or the brass send her in another direction, is to revisit those people: observe them, learn their habits, maybe establish contact with them on a 'conspiratorial' level, tipping them that she isn't what she seems and she knows they aren't either. Anyone who seemed to have something particular to hide. Basic field humintel stuff.
Once she's back at the Holiday Inn, she's going to do two things: one, take her nightly dose, and just let the trip take her with no agenda. If it tells her something it tells her something, if it doesn't it doesn't. She's also going to try again to Telesend to Marshall and Archie. She'll do it after another 90 minutes of prep, after dosing, and she'll boost with 5 corruption (fuck it, stakes is high). I will make the roll in a minute and if it succeeds, I leave it to our talented GM to decide when it was sent for ideal narrative impact.
>> SUCCESS by 4
Michael
(I guess in the spirit of long-distance synchronicity, Jo can give me a HT-9 roll.)
Leonard
>> FAILURE by 5
Rob
everybody's in sync
Michael
amazing, like it was meant to be
Leonard
(I think that’s effectively a 10 because of Fit but yeah, synched up rolls, nice)
Michael
(Oh, I assessed Fit, it took HT minus 2 to HT minus 1, so perfectly synched)
Quite oddly for Jocasta — maybe it's how long the past three days have been, maybe it's the psychic exhaustion of the Psychometry and the shitty racist Cairoans — within about a half-hour of dropping the tab, Jocasta actually falls asleep. (We can say Charley's been in bed for a while already.) This sudden sleep begins with an episode of sleep paralysis, where at the foot of the Holiday Inn bed, Jocasta can see what looks like a broad-brim-hatted... scarecrow? A figure with long, drape-y limbs anyway, but soon after this unsettling five or ten seconds of facing this figure, Jo has translated into a kind of REM state. She feels herself sinking through the bright orange-and-mustard-yellow polyester bedspread in her Holiday Inn room and soon being absorbed further, her perceptions sinking her deep into the earth, among the roots of things. A live burial. Fright Check-13 please.
Leonard
>> FAILURE by 1
Nuts I got too clever with the hashtag
Michael
Want to roll 3d6+1 for the Fright Check results? I'll have a look at which Disadvantages might get triggered here. Ironic that Jo has worked through her claustrophobia just as she experiences a ritual reburial.
Leonard
>> 3d6+1 … 13
Michael
13 – Acquire a new mental quirk (see Quirks, p. 162). This is the only way to acquire more than five quirks.
Jo gets yet another Fright Check quirk to go with Synesthesia Under Duress and Always Wears Gloves When Handling Unfamiliar Objects. She loves that 13.
Severe Flashbacks on a 6 or less.
>> SUCCESS by 1
In this place of burial, which acid-headed Jo feels is a ritual space of death and rebirth, Jo feels held rather than threatened, nurtured rather than trapped. It feels like a womb, the earth itself embracing her, its underground waters feeding her. Yes, on some level Jo knows she is still just lying on that Holiday Inn bed in Cape Girardeau but she also feels the earth around her.
Loping up casually to Jocasta's cozy little womb-home, phasing through the very earth itself, is a strange creature. It looks like a sleek russet-copper panther, or a bobcat, with wild spikes extruding from its back, knobbly antlers growing chaotically from its head, and iridescent feathers growing from where its legs meet its trunk. Its eyes glow with St.-Elmo's fire, a deep summer-lightning green. It moves sinuously, its pelt undulating like it's being seen through a glittering body of water. It silently looks at Jo. "Where are you trying to go, woman?"
Leonard
It's a spirit guide, Jo thinks with a sort of delight that transcends the wave of fear. So, let it guide you, Joey. "I want to go the heart of this land. I want to see who speaks to it."
Michael
"This you ask for, but what will you do for me?" the bobcat purrs. "You serve the Thunderbird, and I mislike his servants of air and fire."
Leonard
"But I am of the earth and sea. You can see that."
Michael
"Are you?" The lynx's eyes light up with delighted mischief and its mouth curls into an ironic grin. "You look to me like just another graverobber."
Leonard
"You are sly, cat. It is true that the places of the dead have been emptied here, and that is why I want to know who whispers to them. But if you look closer, you will see that I only fill graves."
Michael
"You sought to journey, or at least to shout, across the leagues earlier today and couldn't. So now you come to me, because I am Everywhere there is earth and water. You say that you send people to my realm, and I can see this stain upon you. And you are proud." A meaningful pause. "As you should be." The panther smiles again, and Jo can swear she can hear a hungry growl underneath this next bit: "I am forgotten but every time someone is drowned or buried, I am fed. And I live again."
"You ask what is buried in the land and who speaks to them. I can take you to where your friends are, to where you tried to reach today. It is well within my territory, and they may need your help. But are you ready for such a journey? Do you know, can you sense what you will owe me if you do come along?"
Leonard
"I do not know, but I can guess. I will owe you a meal. I have served you before, and I will not hesitate to serve you again." She pauses, breathing deeply to stay centered in the presence of this spirit. "There is no price I will not pay to help my friends. We are bound by covenants as sacred as yours."
Michael
"Hold onto my back." Jo looks at the spikes there with no little fear. "There will be pain, but I assure you, I can and will take you there. They will have the eyes to see you. They too are straddling both sides of the tapestry, as you are."
Leonard
Jocasta braces herself and climbs aboard.
Michael
Jo's hands bleed freely at the stigmata points as she grasps the Underwater Panther's copper spikes. Jo's blood and the metallic tang of the Panther's hide mix freely as she feels herself whooshing underground at an incredibly intense speed. When she emerges from underground, she finds herself on a paved moonlit road, a sort of loop, surrounding a green hill. On top of the hill she can see a subsidiary set of mounds, resembling an animal effigy. Jo realizes she's seeing this hill simultaneously from the base and from above somehow; she's realizing that she's seeing all this as a projection or a remote viewer or detached somehow from her body.
Jo can also sense the Underwater Panther is still right beside her. "I am Everywhere," he says, indicating the effigy hill. "Your companions are in the place where the Old Ones seek to supplant this world. You will go there now, but I cannot enter that place. I did not exist in the same world as Them. You must go the rest of the way: underground, alone. Just a little further."
(Here is where Jo's Telesend ability will allow her to communicate with Marshall, but given the acid-dipped synchronicity of Marshall, Archie, and Morris tripping as well, something special is going to happen here. Leonard, when you're ready, let's take Jo over to An Acid Trip to Nowhere.