Tunnel Team

Michael

Okay, so here are the rolls to see how much Fatigue Jo, Roger, and Charley lose on the trip down the mountain to the Entrance. I've given everybody a net +1 to their effective skill thanks to Charley's Geography (Mount Shasta) roll and maps.

• Jocasta: HT-12 (taking into account Fit)

• Roger: Climbing-14

• Charley: Climbing-17

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 3

Mel

>>>> SUCCESS by 8

Bill

>>>> CRITICAL FAILURE

UGH

Michael

Oh dear.

Okay, so the way I'm going to handle this is say that while in the process of climbing down to the entrance to the mountain, Roger slips on some unstable ground. The fall is about a 10 foot tumble down rough mountainside, but there are ways to mitigate the damage. The first will be to see if the quick action of your companions can prevent the fall. I'm going to rule that given characters' ST ratings, Jocasta is really the only one who can even hope to save Roger from this slip and fall. Jocasta: give me a Judo-14 roll and then we'll see if you can grab onto Roger's arm and help lift him back up to the path.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 5

Heeeey

Michael

Jocasta grabs onto Roger before he takes a tumble down a steep decline. Now, to get him back up on the path quickly without losing Fatigue will require a Will minus 2 check for Extra Effort, so Jo can roll Will-14. If she makes it, no extra Fatigue will be lost. If she fails the roll, she loses 2 FP.

And of course Roger escapes regardless without having taken a possibly injurious fall.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 4

Michael

Jo, with Charley's ST-8 help, lifts Roger back onto the trail. The 1 FP Jo loses from the Extra Effort comes back as we take a breather before attempting the final descent. The Downhill Gang reaches the spot that Mitch and Charley identified as the Way Into The Mountain at around 8:30 pm. The party takes some time to drink some water, eat some C-rations, and recover all their lost FP from the general effort of the descent and are ready to enter the mountain by 9 pm.

Bill

And smoke the hell out of some cigarettes, thin air and fatigue be damned! (Also gotta pay the addiction price.)

Michael

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Charley confirms the coordinates that Mitch zoned in on this afternoon. And what lies before the three members of URIEL down here is a cave. A crack in the side of the mountain that from this distance in the waning forested twilight doesn't look like it gets very deep into the mountain face. As Jo, Roger, and Charley approach with flashlights they tentatively step into the cavern and find it goes in a fair bit deeper than it seemed from the outside. The tunnel that leads deeper into the mountain looks to Roger's Renshaw-geologist eyes like a lava tube; the walls are crumbly but the tunnel is big enough to let the three party members penetrate the mountain, single-file.

Bill

As much as we'd probably like to stealth in, I think headlamps are required at this point. Plus, we're still going on the idea that we're invited.

Michael

Yeah, I figure we have the illumination equipment we need... remember, glow sticks are recently-developed by the military if we want to go that route.

But headlamps, flashlights, and rifle-mounted flashlights are all possible too.

Bill

Rifle-mounted flashlights have the advantage of distance for aim and also intimidation/blinding, while also being comforting and normal. But Roger could be convinced to go all glowy if it helps ninja-girl.

Sorry, ninja-woman.

Mel

What Charley would like to do is to say a word or two to Maman Brigette. Asking for her protection and guidance for her Roger and Jo before entering the cave.

Michael

Perfect. That Danger Sense is now active as Maman Brigitte's blessing settles in on all three members of the party.

Combine that with Jo's Combat Reflexes and the Downhill party is now ready for anything.

As the three of you go deeper into the mountain—100, 150 feet further in from the exterior cavern now—the flashlights soon become superfluous. Charley, Jo, and Roger can see the soft glow of a golden light coming from the far end of the lava tunnel. The lava rock on the floor gives way to what looks like a solid gold floor. The lava tunnel terminates at the beginning of a golden hallway: floor, ceiling, walls all coated in what appears to be actual gold, gold that is softly glowing thanks to some unknown phenomenon, an eerie low-level golden phosphorescence that suffuses every surface of these golden hallways. Charley senses danger ahead in the golden hallways of Mount Shasta, but isn't certain of the nature or precise location of the danger.

Mel

Charley tugs at Rogers and Jo jackets and signs that, "Maman is letting her know there is danger ahead but she's not sure what or where. And that it's so pretty in here."

How does the Wild Talent work? If she focused on her past lives can Mr. Parsons the Chemist give her a sense of what the material is?

Michael

Yeah, absolutely! You get one use of Wild Talent per game session—this "session" would be this Intersession 3 right now—and you get to roll one skill at your base IQ (15). And Chemistry would be the right skill to start with when trying to figure out how there is this much gold on the corridors of the mountain and what is causing the glow.

So yeah, Chemistry-15 if you'd like to tap into Jack Parsons on this.

Mel

>>>> SUCCESS by 2

Michael

Charley intentionally sends herself back to her fragmentary memories of life as Jack Parsons, keeping at the forefront of her mind the idea of "gold, glowing gold, more gold than could ever be found on earth, so much it's coating the walls." Jack considers this, and flings Charley back to Jack's memories of his studies of Western alchemy, when he was trying to square the circle between modern early-20th century industrial chemistry and the secrets of the medieval and Renaissance alchemists. Finding a philosopher's stone that would turn base metals into gold... was it a metaphor for spiritual self-improvement? Of course it was. But alchemy also held the promise of changing the molecular structure of common elements and compounds using esoteric methods lost to time, methods famed for having been developed in Atlantis, or Lemuria, or ancient Babylon. Methods that allowed the alchemist to perform great feats of transmutation. Gold was crucial in these ancient societies, whether legendary or historical, for its ability to conduct holy energy and attract the gods: the gold was not just an offering of riches to the gods of heaven but a lightning rod, an antenna, a circuit that could give the god or gods an anchor on this planet. The Mattock of Enlil and the holy throne on the roof of the St. Francis: both made of gold, both of them channeled and focused belief energy. The Comte's crown that Mitch melted last visit to Mount Shasta: gold. The part of Charley that is Jack takes in this data and analyzes it, thinking out loud in Charley's mind.

What if gold, so infused with extra-worldly energy, is changed? Changed so it does not obey the ordinary laws of nature. An internally-generated phosphorescence could indicate a lingering energy, the gold vibrating at a higher energy level, perhaps focusing or bestowing potential energy to whatever entity or entities had thus infused it. There have always been tales of strange isotopes and varieties of gold created by spiritual alchemy: monatomic gold, orichalcum, heavy gold, Solomonic gold, what have you. These walls could have once been made out of some other base substance, but the proximity to History B infused them, changed them, turned them into a suitable antenna for things to manifest from the other side.

Charley's quick consultation with Parsons is speculative, but does seem to indicate that the danger Charley sensed from the golden halls is not imminent but is a danger of potential. The mountain is honeycombed with golden wires that seem to act, basically, as a giant circuit board. To what purpose Charley still doesn't know. But these corridors are definitely not made of any ordinary gold. They have been Changed.

Leonard

"I hope we don't have to blow this place up," Jocasta says, the sharp lines of her face obliterated by the bright, harsh glow of a helmet with a headlamp. "With this much gold I could put together a real estate portfolio better than old Pat Price's."

Michael

(You all just let me know if/when you're leaving the lava tube and entering the Golden Halls. I have one more bit of my spiel to paste in when you do.)

Leonard

[I'm not sure what the appropriate skill would be, but as we go through the mountain, Jocasta is going to consult with Roger about the appropriate places to put C4 in case we need to bring down a room or seal off a passage. She's also going to keep an eye out for any noticeable occult symbolism, decoration, or the like.]

Michael

(That skill would definitely be Explosives (Demolition), which Roger has at a 13.)

Bill

Roger is also, at least for the more natural bits, trying to determine if the mountain around here is like igneous granite or fluffy pumice, to understand collapse possibilities.

Michael

Probably more on the fluffier side but between rolls of Explosives and Geology, as we go Roger should be able to keep an eye on where we are and what kind of explosives are needed. I'm assuming you all are going to enter the golden halls, and will put the next bit of the journey in here:

Charley, Roger, and Jo emerge into the Golden Halls of Mount Shasta. The hallways are wide enough after emerging from the lava tube that the three of them can walk side-by-side; the ceilings are about the same height as the hallways are wide, leading you all to assume that the corridors are essentially square. Branching intersections confront the group only about 60 feet into these halls, with a cross-corridor leading off to the left and right at right angles and the corridor continuing straight into the mountain. So far, these corridors seem far less organic—they're not following the paths that lava tubes would, Geologist Roger notes—they're unmistakably (at least) designed and constructed by an intelligent hand. As the three of you stand at that first intersection trying to decide what to do, the brightness of the golden walls suddenly flares. Patterns—golden runes of light limned in electric blue that remind you all of the retinal after-images of a bright moving light or a flashbulb—dance before your eyes before you can close them. All three of you begin to feel a profound sense of ontological disorientation as the light from the walls becomes blinding, a sensation that in your recent memory can only be compared to the evening URIEL spent prowling the top floors of the St. Francis Hotel back in late June. I need the three members of Team Downhill to make Will vs. Annunaki Programming rolls: Charley: Will-20 Jocasta: Will-21 Roger: Will-20

Mel

>>>> SUCCESS by 4

Michael

Symbol Drawing (Anunnaki)-20

>>>> SUCCESS by 11

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 15

Michael

Symbol Drawing (Anunnaki)-20

>>>> SUCCESS by 6

Michael

Leonard, feel free to give me a Hidden Lore (History B)-18 roll whenever you like.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 14

Michael

Jesus!

Fucking Jocasta is taking no prisoners here inside the mountain!

Leonard

In the ZOOOOOOONE

Michael

Okay, just gotta wait for Roger's Will roll.

Leonard

Will critical fail the first time someone tries to kill me

Bill

>>>> SUCCESS by 8

Michael

Symbol Drawing (Anunnaki)-20

>>>> SUCCESS by 8

Iiiiiinteresting. Ties go to the defender, though, who is Roger.

Bill

Skin of my (mind’s) teeth

Michael

Okay, here's what happens, and it all happens fast after those light codes flash before all your eyes. Jocasta shuts her eyes as soon as the glyph flashes before her eyes, but before she does, she realizes what the glyph is: it's been generated, holographically, by the energy/light surge that went through the golden surfaces of the halls. The light glyph is UR.IDIM, "Mad Dog." These hallways are full of surfaces that, when energized, can activate holographic light codes that can turn mortal witnesses insane. That explains all the ordinary people who've come in here over the years and met Lemurians and seen vast cities full of crystal towers. Roger is momentarily stunned after the light codes hit his retinas, but he manages to shake off the disorienting, insanity-triggering effect of the glyph. Both Jo and Roger still have their eyes shut. But then they hear Charley. Charley is screaming, her voice receding rapidly down the right cross-hallway. Both Jo and Roger can hear her little body repeatedly hitting the soft ductile golden walls of that hallway. Jo, Roger … what will you do?

↪ Charley Dreams of Granite Peak

Bill

If he can hear her, Roger will walk to her, eyes shut, arms out. When he makes contact (the halls were empty of anything but us, yes?), he’ll try to restraint her, hug it out.

Michael

Charley's screaming voice is receding rapidly now, more rapidly than it possibly could if she were on foot. Roger makes his way rapidly down that hallway, forty feet, another forty, and more... and does not bump into her. Assuming Jo also still has her eyes closed.

Leonard

As soon as Jocasta hears Charley screaming, she'll open her eyes and bolt towards the sound, in hopes of holding her and doing a deep Empathy.

Michael

Jocasta runs past the stumbling Roger, and towards the receding sound of Charley's voice. With her eyes open, Jocasta faces yet another flare of light from the golden halls. More light codes of UR.IDIM dance before her eyes. Will-21 again please.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 13

Michael

Symbol Drawing (Anunnaki)-20

>>>> SUCCESS by 13

Another tie, it goes to the defender yet again. That time, Jocasta didn't resist as perfectly as she did during the first flare of light but she manages to keep herself safely sane as she goes further down the hallway. But Charley is nowhere to be seen, and the hallway down here branches yet again to the left and right while also continuing forward. Another flare looks like it's powering up now, does Jo want to keep her eyes closed as it approaches? Right now she's about 100 feet or so further down the right hallway from Roger and about 140 feet from the junction that leads back to the lava tube.

Leonard

She'll clench her eyes closed and hunker down in place. She'll also yell loudly back to Roger: "It's a hologram, it's powering a glyph! Keep your eyes close and follow my voice!" She'll keep talking and if he seems to be following, she'll explain in a little more detail and say we have to keep our eyes shut and figure out a way to break or cover the hallway surfaces.

Bill

“Yeah, I got it, but how do we shut it off? “ Roger will banter back and forth so they can hear each other as Jo explains.

But Roger keeps his eyes shut.

“It was everywhere, all the walls. Or was it?”

Leonard

"Maybe cover them...if we have spray paint? Or, hell, take a hammer and just smash those walls. They're like circuits...as long as they have energy coming in, they'll generate those codes."

Bill

“There’s too much wall, yards and yards. If it’s some kind of circuit, we could break the circuit, but where’s the wire? And where’s Charley?” Roger will try pulling his wool cap down over his eyes, and cracking his eyes. He should only barely see light through the material, no shapes. He’s thinking he could use it to tell when the flares are up, and look just after.

Michael

Roger can indeed approximate vision enough to see the walls and turns in the corridors through the mesh of his wool hat, and sees no other shapes except Jocasta. The walls are remaining the calm, muted, golden glow; no flares seem to be spinning up. But there is no sign of Charley down any of the adjoining corridors and given the sheer size of the mountain, Roger wonders how he and Jo are ever going to navigate, especially if Charley has been "taken" somewhere else, which it's now looking like.

Leonard

"I wish I knew. Maybe the gold of the walls itself is a conductor — it's possible we could disrupt the circuit by taking out just one panel. Breaking the circuit, I guess. Christ, I don't know. Sorry, Roger. All I can think is blow out one panel of the wall — we have plenty of C-4 and willie pete."

Jocasta takes a moment to root in her pack and tie a bandana loosely around her eyes in imitation of Roger's idea with his watch cap. Then: "We have to try something. Then priority one is finding Charley. Nothing else until that. I have an idea, but I might need you to look after me if it goes south. Ready to calm me down, have the medikit ready with some red and blues." She quickly removes the shooting gloves she was wearing, and looks around for any portion of the wall she thinks Charley might have touched. Her plan is to touch such a portion and try to do a Psychometry read in hopes of 'seeing' what might have happened to her, since it was pretty recent. We should have known something like this would happen, she thinks, her training the only thing keeping panic at bay. Then, self-correcting: We did know. God damn us.

Michael

Psychometry roll at IQ, 15. Will you use any Corruption?

Leonard

Yeah, finding Charley is too important. Let's add 5 corruption to push it.

Michael

Effective IQ 20.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 5

ooooof

Michael

Hey, it's a success by 5, and would have been just barely one without Corruption, so hey.

Jocasta touches the wall with her bare hand and the first thing she sees is the entire complex. A mental map, a branching series of circuit-corridors, mostly at right angles, burrowed throughout the mountain. A round room at the center. But that chamber, the domed room that holds the round table of the Ascended Masters (according to Mitch's visions), is unreachable physically from any of these corridors. It's a mug's game. This mountain is a big old roach motel, a trap. Jocasta was right.

But Jocasta is specifically concentrating on where Charley is, and that's where things get far more interesting. The walls are designed to display Anunnaki glyphs made of light meant to induce visions and, yes, insanity. But there's more to the walls than that. The golden halls can physically shift, move, and most importantly transport human beings within the complex instantaneously, but only if they submit to the UR.IDIM glyph. The method of physically progressing through these halls... is submitting oneself to madness. Jocasta can see Charley vaguely in her mind's eye right now, walking and miming at climbing, doing fine motor manipulation to the wall, like she was... unscrewing something? She's off in some kind of fantasia, an imagined scenario that has her hooked. And the corridor she is in is locked off from the rest of the mountain physically now. Jocasta couldn't reach her if she wanted to.

But there's more. That physical uncertainty inherent in the golden circuit board of Mount Shasta also contains elements of temporal, causal, and ontological uncertainty. In other words the engineering the Anunnaki did here with their giant glyph made of gold integrates the giant subduction zone that (pre-?)existed the golden halls. These UR.IDIM-triggered fantasias can literally tap into individual human subjects' pasts... or futures.

Jocasta now realizes what Mount Shasta is. It's a giant testing center, a place for mystical ordeals. It's the Anunnaki's way of making their esteemed human subjects worthy of reaching the chamber at the center. Charley is already undergoing her trial. And Jo and Roger won't be able to move on into the mountain unless they undergo theirs too.

Leonard

"Shit," Jocasta hisses, suddenly dry-mouthed and tense all over. "This whole place, Roger, it's a habitat. A rat maze. That chamber that Mitch saw, it's just an observation area for the Red Kings. They've made this whole thing a way to...to test anyone who enters. Just like the old legends." She determinedly puts her gloves back on. "It's already got Charley, and we can't help her. I think all we can do is let it take us too, and whatever test it's going to give us, hope that we aren't found wanting." Quietly and suddenly, she drops to her knees and folds her legs into a lotus. "Meditate with me, Roger. Or pray. Do whatever it is you need to do to center yourself. This is going to be...rough."

Bill

"A maze? I really hate that shit. You tell me there's walls, and I want to break through 'em; hard enough playing whitey's games. But I'll go with it for now, if you think we must. But as soon as I can break a new path, I'm going for it."

Roger gets close to Jocasta's form and sits down. He pulls some chalk out of his belt, draws a protective vever pattern on the floor, then starts praying. Without further instruction from Jo, he's not going to go into a trance, but he's definitely praying.

Michael

Okay you two. Meditation-15 for Jocasta, Religious Ritual (Voudon)-12 for Roger. And then I'll narrate what happens at the next light code flare.

Bill

>>>> SUCCESS by 1

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 5

Michael

Jocasta and Roger calm their hearts, focus their souls, and meditate/pray in their respective ways. Roger has by now shoved his wool cap up back onto his head and pretty soon, another wave of golden light overwhelms both Jocasta and Roger. The same UR.IDIM light glyphs flash before their eyes but this time, Roger and Jocasta allow themselves to see them. Out of instinct and reflex, Jo reaches out to Roger just as he (and she!) begin to sense themselves shrinking and whirling at unearthly high speeds away from each other down a now-colossal golden hallway, experiencing the same dysmetropsic, Todd's Syndrome sensory confusion as Charley a few minutes ago.

When Jocasta comes to her senses, Roger is, indeed, gone. And she is alone in a 500-foot golden hallway. She is frightened, alone, and feels like a rat in a maze, an ant in ant farm, a bee in a manmade hive, but her meditation keeps her nerves steely and cool. Fright Check-rule of 14 (succeed on 13 or less). But nearby, just a couple of hundred feet down the hallway, is a blemish on the otherwise featureless golden halls. A door. An ordinary-looking, if a bit fancy, pale blue door with a filigreed archway. Like the kind of detail work you'd see on a fancy triple-decker in the more upscale parts of the City.

Roger comes to and sees himself in the same state: overwhelmed by the immense inconceivable change in scale, finding it hard to pick out details in the far distance thanks to the uniformity of the golden halls, and without his comrade-in-arms. His prayers to San Petro, to all the saints and servants of God, have held him in good stead for this experience, but he still needs to make a Fright Check at Rule of 14 (succeed on a 13 or less). As Roger turns around, he does see one feature in the distance that doesn't conform to the golden halls. As he gets closer and his vision can focus on it, it looks like... the interior hatch of an Army Huey. The window is blacked out and the inside is painted black as well but the interior door handle, the sliding mechanism attached to the golden walls... that's definitely the side hatch of a Vietnam War-era helicopter.

Bill

>>>> SUCCESS by 5

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 3

Michael

Both Roger and Jo are relatively unbothered by their sudden change in physical perspective.

Leonard

Jocasta takes a moment, having steeled herself through meditation, to dig into her bag and find her sketchbook. She quickly draws a pencil map of the vision she had of the interior of the mountain, hoping that she isn't just sketching out the interior of her grave. Approaching the door, she feels almost overcome. But the old rituals kick in before her conscious fear can: she reaches around her neck, past all the straps and gear, and absently touches a pendant of the winged ox, St. John the Divine. Her mind focuses to the head of a pin as she reaches to open the filigreed door, and without any thought for how the universe might carry the message beyond her own thoughts, she repeats to herself, over and over: Charley. Be brave. We are coming. She reaches her palm out towards the door.

↪ Jocasta’s Still With Her

Bill

Roger thinks about what Jo said, that a test is coming. Putting himself back in a Huey — the assholes running this maze sure know how to pick 'em. His VA shrink warned Roger repeatedly he might not be up to such a physical experience, it'd set off his flashbacks. ¡maldición! "No way but through I guess."

Roger draws a quick vever on the floor outside the hatch, this one Papa Legba's. He finds himself instinctively giving a quick prayer to Sancta Maria, feeling it more in Spanish. His dad flashes into his mind, the soldier that didn't return. So he continues with a prayer to San Pedro in his abuela's Spanish, rather than the usual Creole. Rezo, por favor, ten piedad de mi, mantener la puetra abierta para regresar, para volver. Then he reaches out to take the handle of the door, and slides it open.

↪ Two Men in a Boat

---

some amount of time later …

---

Michael

Roger is with Charley, conscious and aware, and before both of them is Jocasta, who is seated on the golden floor, catatonic, eyes closed.

Bill

"Charley, close your eyes, and keep them shut! The light in the walls will take us otherwise."

Michael

"You did so well, lass. So brave... and inquisitive!" Foe says in Charley's head. Fi chimes in, "We'll introduce ourselves properly to you in good time, now that you know we're more than imaginary friends? We have so much to teach you."

(two more past lives unlocked ding!)

(Also, reposting Mel’s final move from Wonderland here) Charley catches her breath and looks at Roger grinning until she sees Jo. She quickly moves to her side and shakes her. “Jo! Jo! Wake up!” Jo motionless Charley starts speaking more then singing the words of “This Little Light of Mine” but her voice quickly gives out and cries replace the words.

Bill

Roger pulls down his wool cap, after putting a hand on Charley's shoulder. "We need to prepare, so we go where Jo is dreaming, to help her." Roger pauses for a second. "Or, well, to be sure you go. I heard that Jo is dreaming, or in, well, she's in San Francisco, in the year two thousand and sixteen." Roger says it awkwardly, like it's totally science fiction to him. "I know the limits of the Ways that are Open here mean we have to have physically been in the place, or... will be in the place. I could visit you because I was in Granite Peak two years ago. But... I'm not sure I'm in 2016. But I think you would be."

"To get there, you need to think you're there, to know you're there. I hypnotized myself back to you, with Marshall's help remembering Granite Peak. We both need to try to do the same thing, picturing the future, before the walls flash again."

"At least, that's what I can think to do. You remember the future, right? From GRAIL TABLE. You were the guide. I was one of them. Try to remember that, and that it's 2016, San Francisco, and we're with Jocasta Menos. Once we've got it, we'll let the flash take us."

(I figure with her Eidetic Memory (and Autohypnosis!), Charley's fine on getting there. Guessing Roger will try bring up 'memories of Days of Future Past' by trying to channel Joshua again.)

Michael

Okay, yeah, Mel, it's Autohypnosis-13 for you to try to join Jocasta in the future. And, uh, Bill, give me a Theology (Voudun)-12 roll please.

Bill

>>>> SUCCESS by 4

Michael

Roger wonders what will happen if he tries to join Jocasta and there's... well, no body for him to be inside. Will Roger end up somehow as a loa? An ancestor spirit? Or will he... lose his way in the web of souls and get trapped, unable to return? If Roger really thinks he won't make 71 years old, well, this whole thing could be pretty risky. Same for Charley, if she doesn't make 50!

Bill

Roger wrestles with self-doubt, about how good the rest of his life will be, will it be short, .. and starts quickly getting overwhelmed by doubt. But he hears his grand-mère, chiding him, telling him, that won't do. "On fait ce qu'il faut". He tries to concentrate on Charley: surely she would make it to the future, she was prepared for it. And the web is thick around her and Jo. "Charley, think about the future, and Jo, then open your eyes, and watch for the flash. And... if I'm not there... pass on the word to Jo, like I did to you, and come back and wake me."

Roger marshals his faith: he will put himself into the hands of fate. Hell, Zeb made it far... maybe the spirits aid him, maybe God is kind. Or maybe he'll just be a spirit... but he knows what spirits can do.

Mel

>>>> SUCCESS by 2

↪ Charley Angel

Michael

Okay. Roger, want to give me the Autohypnosis roll as well?

Bill

>>>> SUCCESS by 11

Michael

Oh hey, that's a crit, isn't it.

↪ The Void

Bill

Fright Check-13

>>>> SUCCESS by 4

Yesterday upon the stair / I met a man who wasn't there! / He wasn't there again today / Oh how I wish he'd go away!

Roger may need a minute.

Michael

Jocasta might too

I guess she's nominally fine from the revelation!

As soon as Jocasta comes through the experience, a golden panel opens up on a nearby wall (making Charley shiver remembering the automatic doors at Granite Peak). Behind the door is a short golden corridor that leads into a larger chamber. Charley, Jo, and Roger can see a grand marble table and a couple of gem-studded chairs from this angle.

Leonard

Jocasta, after bolting upright as if from a deep nightmare, grabs charley and hugs her tight.

After releasing her, she lets out a deep cleansing sigh. "Guys," she says, "the future is bullshit."

Do the golden hypnogogic panels persist into the throne room?

Michael

Yes, but there haven't been any flashes since you've come back to consciousness.

Leonard

"Charley, Roger...thank you. I thought I'd punched my ticket for sure." She looks around, and looks at her teammates to see if they show any signs of injury or trauma. "Everyone okay? What's the play here — compare notes? Press forward? I'm honestly at a loss."

Bill

Roger keeps falling into a kind of 40 foot stare, semi-blank look. He seems more lost than he did last time Charley saw him. But he's shaking it off, if slowly.

"The mission parameters... reconnaissance."

Mel

Charley returns Jocasta's hug and says , "I'm OK." Then looks at Roger and senses that he's shaken. "But Roger, where were you? We went to get Jo together, but you weren't there. You should have seen me, Roger. I was so tall!"

Bill

“I wasn’t. Anywhere.” But looking at the light in Charley, he snaps a bit more to. “But we’re here again. Alive. And we have got to get out of this maze!”

Leonard

"Looks like there's only one way, and that's in and through," Jocasta says. "It's okay to take a minute, though. If what you both went through was anything like what I went through...well, I hope it wasn't."

Bill

“Who knows if the door will close again suddenly? Hoof it while we can!”

Leonard

Jocasta puts on her watch cap and breathes out, sinking down into her dantian. "Heard and understood, soldier." She strides purposefully into the throne room.

Mel

Charley imagines herself big again and follows Jo and Roger through the door.

Michael

Upon entering the domed throne room, the three members of URIEL are faced with the grand table set for the seven chohans of the Ascended Masters. As soon as they cross the threshold, a violin begins playing solo.

As Charley, Jo, and Roger can now see the entire throne room, they can see to the group's right is the Comte de Saint-Germain. He is wearing 18th century court attire, done up all in purple, pearlescent whites, and diamond-studded blacks. Immediately to his right is the horribly-burned kulullû known to everyone at Berkeley's Physics department from Ernest O. Lawrence himself to Carl Fletcher and Rich Talbot as "the Old Man." The frog-demon is staring through giant limpid adoring blue eyes up at the Comte playing his ancient-looking violin. The Comte plays another measure and then lets a final note hang in the air, and says, "Greetings, pilgrims! Heroes, even! Your shriving and ordeal has earned you a reward beyond gold, beyond jewels! You have proved yourselves worthy of being received into the presence of the lathe of heaven, the keystone of Lemuria, the siege perilous, the company of the Ascended Masters, the circle of the Illuminated!"

Bill

Roger looks the stereotype of angry Black man, but he’s working to keep his cool, at least for a hot second. But plenty of sarcasm leaks out. “Your rats have faithfully made it through your maze, Monsieur le Comte. We humbly beseech you to grace us with your next advised maneuver.”

Mel

Charley would be intensely observing looking for danger, for weakness, for the logic in this Hatter’s tea party.

Michael

Charley would be intensely observing looking for danger, for weakness, for the logic in this Hatter’s tea party.

The surroundings are still a little too surreal to be believed. A round chamber at the heart of Mount Shasta? Covered in gold? A giant marble table, its design looking just like the marble and gold Lemurian columns on the covers of those Ascended Master books? It all just seems a little too perfect to Charley, especially after she figured out that she got hit with a UR.IDIM glyph that made her feel like she was shrinking. They can change human beings' consciousnesses down here in the mountain, even trained Sandmen like us! This puts Charley's hyper-awareness up, and Maman Brigitte surfaces in Charley's mind to concur. "They cloud the mind down here, chérie, to lead men astray," Maman Brigitte says in Charley's mind. "It's all for show. You won't fall for it, I know. You know better than anyone how to avert your eyes from le spectacle. Just make sure you're careful where you step. There are holes that go deeper here."

(I will give Charley a chance to do anything before I do the next bit of the Comte's monologuing and then Jocasta's, er, declared action. )

Roger looks the stereotype of angry Black man, but he’s working to keep his cool, at least for a hot second. But plenty of sarcasm leaks out. “Your rats have faithfully made it through your maze, Monsieur le Comte. We humbly beseech you to grace us with your next advised maneuver.”

"'Rats in a maze,' oh dear," the Comte says mostly to himself, petting the kulullû on the head as he walks a little bit closer to Roger, Charley, and the seemingly-incapacitated Jo. "We only sought to provide you all with... an opportunity for improvement, for development, for personal growth. And a clue about where to begin with your erstwhile accelerationist comrades, of course. Strange how all three of your lives all intersected with Reinhardt's, isn't it? I wonder what else he's been up to." The Comte's unsettling smile ratchets up at the corners of his mouth. He looks down beneficently at Charley, then back over to Roger, who he is at least used to conversing with from their hotel-top meeting. "I assume you've collectively decided not to take up my offer to uncreate OZYMANDIAS? Too attached to 'Andy 'n' Viv,' hein? Such a shame."

Bill

(Does Roger hear the name Reinhardt now, or is it still "redacted"? Like, is the name block still there?)

Michael

(Roger definitely hears the name Reinhardt.)

Bill

"Yes, Monsieur, your little lessons did provide some help." Roger bows, takes off and tips his wool cap, and rolls his other outstretched hand on its wrist with a ridiculous flourish. "You sucha good boss man. But you've taught your humble servants nothing to show us that this uncreation wouldn't do the world terrible ill. Your deepest pardon, but we don't get it. So what now, Monsieur?"

Mel

Charley smiles at the spectacle under the mountain. The Comte, the giant frog, the fools gold, the mix suddenly seems pretty silly to her. But the Comte petting the kulullû is too much. A stifled giggle escapes Charley as Roger is speaking, and by the time he is finished, Charley is laughing uncontrollably. Struggling for some composure, she looks up at the Comte; her words fly out at him like sparks of light. "Oh no!? You're not! Hahaha! You're not; you're not! Haahahaha, sorry. Sorry. Sorry but. Hahaha, oh, the frog. Oh! Sorry, sorry. Um, what are you doing?" You don't know, do you? You're just trapped! And really, what are you doing? It's so funny and sad. Don't you know how to be better?"

Michael

The Comte does a double-take at this, turns from Roger and Jocasta to Charley. "I may be trapped, young lady," he says, quite gravely, with all the jolliness now absent from his manner, "but at least I can see the strings. And as far as 'being better' is concerned, I think it's obvious that I am far, far better and far more capable than any of you," he says, still ignoring Jo and Roger, "thanks to They Who Provide." (@Leonard, I don't know what you think but this seems like a good moment for Jo.)

Leonard

"He's right, Charley," Jocasta says, her voice saturated in mourning and self-pity, so deep and thick that it catches those who know her by surprise. "We have failed. All our efforts, all our stumbling around, all of the pain and fear and uncertainty...for what? To turn away from those who love us? To ruin our own lives by fighting a history we don't even know? To...to give up on the one chance at happiness we have in this tainted world? We made a mistake. We have to stop. If we ask them..." With an audible crack, she falls suddenly to her knees on the cold, hard floor of the chamber, letting her gloved hands drop open before her in a gesture of supplication.

"...then maybe they will forgive us. They are kind, but their patience is not infinite."

With that, her eyes tear up and her hair falls in front of her face.

If the Comte comes close to her, she will quickly draw the pistol from the small of her back and shoot him in the face.

If not, she will wait until he turns away and do the same.

Michael

If the Comte comes close to her, she will quickly draw the pistol from the small of her back and shoot him in the face.

I would like a Fast-Talk-14 roll.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 7

Michael

The Comte, perhaps thrown off his game a little bit by Charley's mockery, furrows his brow as he sees and hears Jocasta. He looks to Roger and Charley while Jo is speaking, for their reactions to her apparent apostasy; the Comte gets nothing from them. "You. I never would have expected it would be you," he says, getting closer to her. "It was that future, wasn't it? Too grim, too awful to bear thinking about. We can change it," he says, with pity and condescension dripping from his now-quiet voice. "It doesn't need to come to pass." BANG.

I think this is a straight Guns (Pistol)-14 roll, right? No time to Aim, and we'll see if the semi-auto pistol hits with multiple shots when we see how well you succeed.

Leonard

Yeah, no aim or brace, but on the other hand, if he's surprised, he can't dodge or whatever. No idea if this is going to work but I had to (literally!) roll the dice.

Michael

I took care of the Surprise secretly. We'll see what happens.

Leonard

(If this hits, though, she's going to try to immediately unload the whole clip on him)

>>>> SUCCESS by 1

Michael

Well, it's only one round with a chance of hitting, even if you squeezed off three.

Now.

Power Dodge (Insubstantial)-16.

>>>> SUCCESS by 3

Leonard

I think she would have just tried for one at first, not that it really matters. Sigh of just-made-it relief pending the Comte putting on a display of godlike power.

D'oh

Michael

As the bullets spray into the Comte, he vanishes into thin air.

Leonard

"Fuck," hisses Jocasta under her breath. "Sorry, sorry," she says, quickly gathering her gear together. "I had to give it a try. I should have known better. The powers of the unseen world, without hope and without God," she says, half-remembering a Bible verse and a bit uncertain about whether it refers to the Comte or to URIEL.

Michael

The kulullû, seeing his patron disappear in a hail of bullets, bares its claws and leaps toward Charley. Now we need to roll initiative. One sec.

So Roger goes first, Bill.

Mel

Charley screams as the monster lunges towards her and says, "Careful where you step! There are deep pits that may be hard to see!"

Bill

Roger curses, pulls out his pistol, and takes a shot at the Old Man/Frog. He doesn’t have fast draw, so he may just be drawing this round.

Michael

Yeah, I think you're right. Charley next, then Jo, then the Old Man.

Mel

Charley runs away, back the way they came! She is sure she can spot any traps. “Jo! Roger! This way!”

Michael

Charley puts distance between herself and the kulullû. @Leonard, Jo is up and she has her weapon drawn and five rounds still in the clip.

Leonard

She'll squeeze a quick three rounds just to slow it down.

>>>> SUCCESS by 5

Michael

Succeeded by 5, Rcl on the Yugo pistol is 2. That's three hits and I have to try and Dodge.

>>>> SUCCESS by 2

The kulullû very narrowly wriggles away from the fusillade of fire from Jo's pistol, suddenly changing direction, avoiding Charley and sliding across the golden floor to what looks like a hidden sliding panel, which opens for him when he puts his scarred flipper to it. To give you a rough idea of where every one is located, the kulullû is currently about 8 feet from Charley, 12 or so from Roger, and 20 from Jocasta. He is definitely trying to retreat down into the hole next round but we're back to the top of the order and Roger.

Bill

Roger doesn’t have the time to aim, so he’ll try to lay down suppressing fire across the hole to force the kulullû to back off or get hit. And then hope Jo has a better shot. He’ll try to add to the confusion the Old Frog is feeling by shouting: “The master, Monsieur, he said you are to come with us, yes? Do not leave!”

Michael

Roger doesn’t have the time to aim, so he’ll try to lay down suppressing fire across the hole to force the kulullû to back off or get hit. And then hope Jo has a better shot. He’ll try to add to the confusion the Old Frog is feeling by shouting: “The master, Monsieur, he said you are to come with us, yes? Do not leave!”

Okay, the RoF is 13, the clip has 20+1. If you unload with 13 automatic rounds to prevent the kulullû from escaping, you will roll your Guns (Rifle)-15 (penalty for not having the Rifle specialty, bonus for rapid fire). A hit means you fill the zone with fire.

Bill

>>>> SUCCESS by 7

Michael

The kulullû clumsily scrambles back away from the open hatch as the deafening crack of automatic rifle fire fills the Chamber of the Seven Rays. He is now in the "hex" next to the hatch, trying desperately to scramble away from the three of you. @Raven_Hare, Charley is up.

Mel

Can Charley figure out how to operate the trap door from where she is?

Michael

Oh, interesting. Can you start with an Observation-16 roll? And then we'll see what's necessary from there.

Mel

>>>> SUCCESS by 7

Michael

Okay, so the kulullû operated it by touch and Charley noted carefully what part of the golden floor he did touch to get the panel to slide open. The actual mechanics of the thing are a little tougher to discern, whether it's as simple as pressure or something special about the kulullû's flipper that allowed it to open. She'd need to get closer and tinker with it to find out. But it does remind Charley of how mutable the environment is in these golden halls, and specifically the physical openings back in the golden halls that shifted and were created out of nowhere for each of URIEL's visions of the past/future. Despite the insanity glyph and the Alice in Wonderland syndrome, Charley remembers physically crawling into a duct opening that looked just like the ones in Granite Peak. The surfaces everywhere here in the halls of Mount Shasta seem to be... membranes that can be altered at a whim, but exactly how to control them? That's still a mystery. But hey, the Comte is gone now, and if he was in charge of the physical/mystical configuration of the golden halls before, that suggests that someone else could get control of it. The question is how and from where.

Mel

When it’s safe enough she will get closer to tinker with it.

Michael

Okay, let's have you hold that action (since the kulullû is still pretty close to the hole) and we'll have Jo go again when Leonard's ready.

Leonard

[This is partly metagaming and partly Jocasta just being disoriented, but are we trying to keep the kulullû alive for some reason, kill it but keep it out of that hole, or just kill it? Or has that not been decided on? If it hasn't been discussed, she won't waste any time talking it over, as she doesn't think there's any reason to leave anything alive down here. So, if the kulullû looks like it's far enough from the hole to not be able to make an easy escape in the time this will take, Jocasta will switch to the M-16 (she gets a +1 to Fast Draw from Combat Reflexes, but I'm not sure how that breaks down since she doesn't have the skill and there's no default) and open up on it with a blast. If it's too close for that, or if it can slither into the hole before she can switch weapons, she'll instead switch to an explosive grenade and just toss it in after the kulullû (assuming Charley's far enough away to not get any blowback damage). I know GURPS combat is a big ol' pain so if you need any help with the calculation, let me know.]

Michael

I would say given how quickly things went to combat, there's been no consensus between the three of you on what we're actually trying to accomplish with the kulullû but Roger has said a couple things to the effect of wanting to keep him alive, whether to trick the kulullû or not, Jo's not sure. And yeah, without Fast-Draw itself as a skill there's no way to get the weapon out and fire it in the same round. Drawing a weapon is a Ready maneuver.

You know what, though, Leonard? Since you're asking yourself the questions about whether this thing should live or not, give me a Hidden Lore (History B)-16 roll.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 3

Michael

Okay, so the idea behind the Comte saving this particular kulullû and presenting him to URIEL as, like, a gift, was that since he was the inspiration behind the cyclotron lo those many years ago for Ernest O. Lawrence, he was responsible for the creation of Andrew and Genevieve and specifically their "mutations" that allowed Andrew to write OZYMANDIAS into existence in our world. And the idea of bringing him down to this "control room" was that there he can be uncreated and the timeline would thus be changed.

If the kulullû is not alive to go down to the control room, no one can make that change anymore. Which means that these aspects of history: Andy's and Viv's existences, Andy's writing much of URIEL's reality into place including OZYMANDIAS—and for that matter Ernest O. Lawrence going on to help develop the nuclear bomb and the entire American 20th century military-industrial complex by extension—could never be changed. They'd be locked in. If and when Jocasta puts the final bullet in this thing, any chance of any of that cascade of events ever being changed in the "Control Room"... is gone forever. So in one sense killing this thing seals our history from that particular set of possible changes.

But as long as the "Old Man" lives, someone could conceivably take him down there and have the Controller erase him. Killing him puts an end to his timeline in History A forever, which means it's sealed off. One thing that this experience is teaching Jo is that with all this druggy/UR.IDIM-triggered trippy "time travel," we're all, Irruptors and humans all, only able to make significant changes to things that happened in our respective conscious timelines. Present-day Roger didn't show up in 2016 to save Jo, maybe because he had died. But 2016 Charley hadn't yet died. So she could transfer her consciousness there.

This is probably one of the reasons why mass deaths can trigger reality quakes.

Dozens of timelines shutting off all at once.

(Mid-combat metaphysics!)

Leonard

Jocasta turns these ideas over in her mind, ticking away precious time in the world outside while considering interior universes. Luckily the way drugs stretch and extend the sense of time has accustomed her to acting quickly in these situations. She hasn't wavered yet in thinking the power to alter time and change history is beyond what people like her should be able to exercise. The Red Kings and the men of OZYMANDIAS want to play those games, but without some way of knowing we're not just swapping one misery for another, it's a game we can't win. She believed that when reality was thinning at the hotel and she believes it now. If the kulullû is just a pawn, well, you can't win a game of chess if all your pawns are swept off the table. Breathing deeply and steadying her hand, she sends a thought into the universe to guide her arm to the proper direction. Her internal thoughts have given the kulullû time to slither back towards the hole; she remembers her teen years making mid-range jumpers and extends her slender, sinewy arm, elbow cocked like a spring, and tosses a grenade to follow him down.

Michael

(Leonard, I'm going to interpret this as a readied action to follow if the kulullû tries to head down into the hole. Because for his action, the kulullû is going to speak, staying well away from the hole and the possibility of being shot or blown up.) In a raspy, otherworldly voice, the frog-demon croaks. "You... do not belong here. If you remain here once the mul move out of alignment, you will remain here. You... need to... escape." Can each of you give me a pair of rolls (Detect Lies/Empathy rolls are penalized for the kulullû not being human):

Charley: Detect Lies-6, Hidden Lore (History B)-14

Jocasta: Empathy-9, Hidden Lore (History B)-16

Roger: Detect Lies-6, Hidden Lore (History B)-12

Leonard

>>>> FAILURE by 8

Pffft

>>>> SUCCESS by 3

Michael

(It's much tougher for URIEL to chat with Irruptors when they don't have Mitch around.)

Mel

>>>> FAILURE by 4

>>>> SUCCESS by 4

Bill

Knows Devils, has been empathic before.

>>>> FAILURE by 5

>>>> SUCCESS by 8

Michael

Oooh, nice. Okay.

Detect Lies/Empathy: It's impossible for Charley, Roger, or Jo to figure out if this kulullû is just attempting to just plain trick them into leaving the mountain or not; its body language and vocal intonations are impossible for the three of them to decipher in the ways they would usually for a human being; even Jo's Empathy runs up against this fundamental xenolinguistic and xenopsychological interpretive block. (Jo and Roger recall to themselves that Mitch didn't have this trouble with the St. Francis kusarikku.)

Hidden Lore (History B): But Jo and Charley can hear in the kulullû's physical mannerisms and its unearthly, sing-song voice some kind of innate NLP talent. It very uncannily reminds them both of the times they've seen Marshall (or Archie) use the source code, how Marshall or Archie will look at their audiences and try to match and mirror their linguistic rhythms and eye contact and body language back at them. It all of a sudden makes sense to Charley and Jo why these frog-demons have such expressive, eerily human infant-like eyes: it taps into primitive impulses, likely put there or amplified by the Kings, of our human-mammalian impulse to protect and "obey" our offspring.

Hidden Lore (History B) critical: Roger also feels this chilling parallel to the Sandmen he's seen using NLP, but here's the important thing about this series of realization in Roger's mind: this kulullû could be using source code but he is definitely not. Now, whether this is because he is attempting to be "sincere" (or whatever passes for sincere in the mind of an Irruptor), because he knows it would be largely futile because he's dealing with trained Sandmen, or a combination—because he knows that using the source code would make the members of URIEL less likely to do what he wants—is an open question. But Roger now knows that this kulullû is, with the Comte gone, having to improvise and not automatically go to Subroutine A: "Trick Humans With Neurolinguistic Programming," which is a terribly difficult thing for an Irruptor to do. Roger also realizes that this mindless slave of the Red Kings is displaying something akin to a sense of self-preservation. Which of course is part of an Irruptor's programming, but usually only insofar as it furthers their service and duty to the Kings. Roger can't tell if this kulullû is doing that furthering of service, or if he is actually acting selfishly in trying not to get ridden with bullets.

Finally, if he is telling the truth about URIEL getting trapped in here if they remain much longer, he is indicating that he wants URIEL to live as well. This might ultimately be the most disturbing interpolation of them all; that he has Plans for you.

Bill

Roger tries to get this across to Jo as fast as he can. “Wait, maybe it isn’t lying, at least not right now, trying to save its hide. This place is a big trap. Unless you think you know how to get us out, Charley, maybe we need to cut a deal.”

In Danbe, he continues “Or until we know what it knows.”

He keeps his gun up and pointed to cover the hole, in any case.

Leonard

Jocasta walks over to the thing and raises the hot end of her M-16 right between its dewy, childlike eyes. “It can die now or it can die one second after it betrays us. Doesn’t matter to me.” She holds onto the grenade. “Better hop, frog.”

Mel

Charley looks at Roger and says, " I believe I can get us out. I believe it." (Whether or not this is over confidence has yet to be determined.)

Michael

The kulullû is watching Jocasta and Roger with equal concern, its eyes darting back and forth between the two of them, a mix of fear and piteousness in its eyes. "I will not betray you. If you do seek to leave now, you can be easily shown to the outside, before the shift occurs." But its eyes also dart meaningfully towards the open shaft, and the "piteousness" and "fear" in the kulullû's haunting eyes turn yet again into some other emotion—unnameable, unquantifiable, and alien to the humans who are in its presence.

Bill

Roger doesn’t turn away from covering the Old Man. “I believe you would take us out. You may be honorable, in your way. But you are the enemy. You are a plan we have to end. Charley, you’d better be right. Jo: take it out!” And he will open fire on it.

Michael

Okay Leonard, I'm going to have Jo shoot first, then Roger, since she was holding her gun right up to the kulullû's head. So the modifiers for a point blank shot with Guns (Rifle)-15 seem to be an effective maximum Aim, since we've been sitting here chatting for a while (+5 Acc and an additional +2 for maximum Aim). Throw in an All-Out Attack because why not and that's another +1. Maximum Rapid Fire is another +3. I reckon that makes Jo's effective Guns (Rifle) skill a 26 in this situation.

We could get into called head shots here too if you want.

A called face shot would be at a -5.

Which does not decrease your effective chances of critting, but would decrease your margin of success... and with Rapid Fire, that matters because you want to try to hit this thing with the most amount of rounds possible because of his Dodge.

The advantage of a face shot is maiming and a juicier Critical Hit table.

Leonard

Jocasta's ideal action-movie sequence here is blasting a cap in Michigan's dome, and then kicking his falling body into the hole, after which she will drop a grenade onto his slimy dead body. But let's see how it goes with the called face shot to start.

Michael

Guns (Rifle)-21 then!

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 13

Michael

ohohohoho

Okay, so success by 13. With Rapid Fire that means... you hit with seven rounds. Which means the Old Man can only COMPLETELY Dodge on a 3 or 4.

(He might dodge some of these rounds if he just plain succeeds on the Dodge-8 roll.)

(Sorry, Dodge-7, he's long-term handicapped DX-wise from the burns.)

>>>> SUCCESS by 0

Okay, so a simple success by zero means he dodges ONE of the seven rounds. That means Jo does six M16 rounds' worth of damage, which is 30pi

Kulullû have no DR.

(if we were at a gaming table, this would be when Leonard takes out the cube with the many very tiny d6s)

Also, the face shot means I have to make a Knockdown roll to avoid falling into the aforementioned shaft.

>>>> KNOCKDOWN (3d6) … 9

The kulullû's HP and death checks for our purposes: 10 0 -10 - 20 -30 -40 -50 (dead)

Leonard

>>>> A LOT OF DICE … 123

Michael

Six M16 rounds blow through the kulullû's squat frame, causing him to reel backwards; blood and guts and brains spray across the golden floors of Mount Shasta. The kulullu's body tumbles backwards into the square shaft he'd just recently opened and a couple of seconds after he disappears over the lip of the shaft, the sound of the kulullû's body thudding against a surface at the bottom of the shaft is heard. If one of you goes over to the shaft to take a look at the body, it is indeed crumpled dead in a pool of blood at the bottom of the shaft. The walls and floor of the shaft look to be... poured concrete, oddly enough, and there appears to be a chamber down there. Your flashlights only show a concrete floor, however.

There appears to be no movement down there.

Leonard

"Well, what's the move, team?" Jocasta asks Roger and Charley, shouldering the rifle. "Honestly, I'd just as soon get out of this place as quickly as possible. But if we want to look at the control chamber, or whatever it's meant to be, now's the time. I honestly would be happy just wiring and firing it; if it's as powerful as the frog and the aristocrat claim it is, it's too much for us to handle, and we shouldn't leave it around for anyone else to play with. But...what we know for sure couldn't fill up a paper cup. What do you think?"

Mel

Charley heads over to the control chamber. “I’d like to look around before we go.”

Bill

“One quick look, but if you look for anything, look for a way out!” Roger mutters a prayer to Papa Legba.

Michael

If Charley wants to head down into the shaft and look for the control room, I can absolutely run that.

Bill

Roger will prep a rope down. Charley can Climb, sure, but just in case we need other folks down there quickly.

Michael

Pointing the rifle flashlights down there reveals... the side of the shaft has a metal ladder? Between that and the poured concrete, this shaft beneath an otherworldly Lemurian temple is starting to feel all the more uncanny for its ordinariness.

Leonard

We definitely shouldn't split up. We'll all go down, we have rapelling gear.

Bill

“Did that have a ladder a second ago? Yeah, let’s all go, double time.”

Michael

"Be careful," Maman Brigitte warns Charley in her head. "What lies beneath exists in no world, neither yours nor mine."

"Papa Legba can open no doors there."

(Depending on how all this unfolds I may call for a Curious roll for Charley.)

And a rope can be easily secured to one of the giant marble thrones around the Round Table of the Seven Rays

Bill

Securing a rope as a ladder backup (and thread in the Labyrinth) seems like a great idea. Roger will tie it off to a throne, whichever catches his eye and looks sturdiest.

Michael

The Comte's, the one with the violet gem

Bill

Naturellement. Roger wipes a little grease from the descender pulley on an edge. If he had some gum, he’d stick in on the bottom edge. He does not do that with some C-4. “We might need these thrones some day, according to Uriel,” he says out loud. “I don’t know if we even could destroy them, or whether they’d just reform out of the firmament.”

“Hate to have a kid take point, but if we send Charley down first on a line, we can pull her weight up quick.”

Leonard

Jocasta will put on her night vision goggles and watch as Charley descends, hoping she can spot any trouble from up here. "You be very careful, Charley. This whole place is teeming with bad vibes."

Michael

Reminder of all the stuff Jo brought: we can assume we brought a representative sample of this stuff if Charley, Jo, or Roger want to bring any more than the standard weapons/lighting/low-light vision loadout.

Mel

"It's OK Jo. I'm not afraid."

Michael

I'm just gonna narrate what Charley sees upon being lowered down the shaft, we can say Charley took reasonable equipment with her if you want to use night-vision, take photos/film, etc etc.

At the bottom of the shaft, evading the pulped and smashed body of the kulullû, Charley looks out of a hole in the concrete wall and sees... well, this space is oddly reminiscent of a modern underground parking garage. There are no doors evident, no elevators, no parking space lines, and no sense of ramps that are meant to lead automobiles from level to level, but the space is big and swooping, almost Brutalist in style, with high concrete ceilings (about 20 feet high) held up by massive pillars. There are lights inset into the ceiling; peering upwards and extending her technopathic senses, Charley can see they are old-style incandescent light bulbs. Their power source is unknown—if Charley had to guess with her powers from this distance, she'd guess that they each are individually-powered with batteries or something; there's no electrical network to be sensed here. The surface here is also concrete, and the air is still and stale. There is an ever-so-slight slope downward to the right, where the wall curves around at 90 degrees in a vertiginous set of angles; Charley feels innately that she stands at the top of a massive helical spiral, leading straight down into the undermountain.

Mel

How big is the hole she is looking through?

Michael

The rough-hewn hole in the wall of the shaft into "the Garage" is a rough circle about six feet in diameter. Big enough for an adult to walk through.

Mel

Charley calls up, "It's huge! I think it goes deep into the mountain!!" She shifts her attention back to the "garage" and calls out. "Hello?!" And while she listens for any sign of a presence she considers the use of concrete. She wonders if it's use serves another purpose other then it's strength and affordability?

Michael

(One sec, Mel, I'm gonna see if any of Charley's skills have a good Architecture or Engineering default roll)

(Sadly, none of your skills do, but I wonder if this is the kind of thing you could use Charley's Wild Talent for. Like, I'm sure Jack Parsons had some general civic engineering or architecture knowledge that could be relevant. )

(Chemistry, materials science, it seems plausible to me.)

Also give me an Observation roll at 16.

Mel

Wild Talent.

>>>> SUCCESS by 6

Observation.

>>>> SUCCESS by 0

Michael

Cool. Charley feels herself delving beneath her own conscious's surface, like someone diving into a dark lake, as she looks at "the Garage" through Jack Marvel Whiteside Parsons's eyes instead.

"No one down here, as far as I can see or hear. Yawning surfaces—walls, ceilings, colums—with oddly disproportionate supporting materials that serve no engineering function I can see. Extraordinary," Charley says, loud enough that Roger and Jo can hear her slightly more oddly-accented voice. "This is a giant structure, an inverted spiral tower of some sort, made of more poured concrete. There are fixtures, light fixtures here from the 1920s. Running on some kinda batteries."

"I'm not sure what this all means. But it gets me thinking of old Richard Shaver's stories about Lemuria. Those old Amazing Stories yarns. The underground caverns of the dero. Some kind of advanced civilization lurking down in the dark, the real dark. Makes you wonder what the hollow earth really is." A pause as Jo and Roger can hear Charley tiptoe a bit further into "the Garage."

"The spiral. The spiral. Could this place itself be some kind of... three-dimensional magical sigil? And if that's true, should I walk it... and what would happen if I did?" At that declaration, Jack/Charley could swear she could hear the clanking of machinery in the deep distance, far far below.

Mel

(Charley will move as far into the area as the rope will allow and will wait for Jo and Roger's response)

Leonard

"This information does nothing to change my mind that all we need to do to this place is drop as much C-4 in it as we have and run," Jocasta says to Roger.

Bill

“It sounds maybe too big for that C-4 to have any effect, unless we go down and place it well. Aiy… I guess, given there’s no enemy sighting, because of the entrance maze maybe, it’s back to the reconnaissance order. I just wish I knew how long we’ve got.”

“Let’s at least pop down and look for a good column to wire up to blow. You good with that?”

Leonard

"I'm good with that, partner."

Michael

Jo and Roger can indeed climb down to the bottom of the shaft and the top level of The Garage.

Leonard

Jo will deploy some more rappelling gear and start the climb down, making sure the other end is affixed so we can get out quickly if necessary. "In and out quick, though," she cautions. "If the frog was telling the truth, we're racing the clock." (Speaking of which, she takes a quick look at her watch — is it working?)

Michael

Jo's chronometer is working perfectly. It says 12:46 am.

Leonard

Witching hour, she thinks. I'd kill for a smoke.

Michael

When Jo and Roger get to the bottom of the shaft and emerge into the Garage, I would like Jo to give me an Observation-16 roll and Roger two rolls please: a Geology-13 roll and an Explosives-13 roll.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 10

Michael

That's a crit.

It's the oddity of those light bulbs that really irks Jo. They're the only incongruous bit of this whole environment, an artifact that marks and dates this place to a time and place. Looking more closely up at the distant ceiling with binocs, Jo can see the light bulb better; they glow gold instead of white, the glass is clear and not frosted, the filament thicker and more distinctly visible than a contemporary bulb. Old-fashioned, sure. The bulbs also are revealed to be clearly installed into recesses in the walls, recesses that are covered in a metal cage. To prevent curious seekers? Not like someone is getting up to that 20 foot high ceiling without a cherry-picker, a truly vertiginous ladder, or the ability to fly through the air. But Jo wonders what would happen if she laid a bare hand on that cage, or that bulb, to get a reading off it.

Leonard

Bulb doesn't have to stay in the wall for me to get my hands on it, she thinks, wondering how many tries it would take her to hit it with an unprimed grenade, or if Roger played baseball when he was a kid. But she holds her tongue until the others have had a chance to take a look around.

Bill

Geology.

>>>> SUCCESS by 2

Explosives.

>>>> SUCCESS by 2

Michael

So Roger racks his Renshawed brain to think about the engineering process that constructing this structure would require, and quite simply there is no way Roger can see this being in any way physically possible. There are no signs of where the construction actually began (unless there's a closed-off tunnel leading outside somewhere deeper in the structure), the architecture is a bit too fragile to support the space, and so on. Of course the three of you were just in another impossible space full of gilded hallways and shifting geometries so the pure impossibility of the construction of this Garage is not too surprising. But when it comes to how this place might be destroyed through demolitions, it would be important to know whether there actually are gigatons of Mount Shasta volcanic rock physically above this structure or not. If we're not actually physically under Mount Shasta, destroying this place will take a lot more C4. So Roger picks out and identifies a few key spots in the structure that will cause a collapse if there is a mountain above it. If this Garage is, like, floating in extra-dimensional space, the C4 we have will cause some damage, maybe cave in this top level, but not nearly enough to crush the entire spiral.

Mel

Unaware of Roger and Jo's intentions for this place Charley says, "I don't know how this is possible. It may just be another illusion. I think Dad and Mitch should see this place. Can we go get them?"

Michael

Unaware of Roger and Jo's intentions for this place Charley says, "I don't know how this is possible. It may just be another illusion. I think Dad and Mitch should see this place. Can we go get them?"

As Charley thinks about Dad, she tries to tune into his emotional frequency using the Empathy that's part of their Special Rapport. IQ-15 roll, please.

Mel

>>>> SUCCESS by 2

Bill

Roger, maybe not realizing what he might be interrupting, answers, “If it’s an illusion like the last stuff, it might be real enough to affect. Or it might be a part of a test to affect it, to make our statement. Wrapping some C-4 over there, maybe there, a few other places, and dropping the mountain on it? That’s the definition of solid!”

Michael

Through her Rapport with Archie, Charley can detect a steady level of worry, anxiety, fatherly concern. The emotional connection that Archie established with the tune of "This Little Light of Mine" comes into Charley's head, along with an image of the morning sun coming up over Ash Creek Butte, to the east of the main cone of Mount Shasta, as if Charley and Archie were watching the sunrise together from base camp. With her deep Renshawed knowledge of the mountain's geography, Charley knows this is the dawn sun. The dawn light. Dad's saying we've got until dawn.

Mel

“Jo, what time is it?”

Michael

(Probably about 12:55 by now)

Leonard

"What do you think? Roger, I might be able to get a read off of those lights if you can hit them with a good throw."

Mel

“Jo?! Roger!? Can you hear me?!”

Leonard

"Sorry, Charley. My head's in a bad place. It's close to 1AM, and honestly, I don't think it's a good idea to bring anyone else down here," Jocasta responds contritely. "We're running out of time, and I don't even want to think about what happens if we get trapped down here." She lets out an exhausted sigh. "I may not be thinking straight, though. The things I saw when I was lost to time..." She lets the sentence die, gazing forlornly at the spiral structure. "I usually have such a relaxing time on camping trips."

Bill

“You OK Charley? What’s the situation?”

Roger turns to Jo and mimes shooting down a light. “Can you do your thing on a fragment?”

Leonard

"Yeah, I think so. It's worked on pieces of things before, as long as they're emotionally resonant. Of course, if this is all a...dream? Illusion? Who knows what will happen. But I have a feeling, and in this job, you've got to trust your feelings, because everything else is lying to you."

Mel

Charley let’s out a sigh and rubs her eyes before saying anything. “Yes, I.. I’m ok. But we need to get back to Dad by sunrise.”

Leonard

"I'm sorry, honey," Jocasta says with real feeling. "This has been really hard on all of us. If there's something you think it really important for us to do, we'll listen. It's just...dangerous for everyone right now. So much confusion and chaos. Let's see what we can figure out, and head back out before our carriage turns into a pumpkin." She takes the semi-auto back out from her waistband and takes a careful bead at the base of one of the light-fixtures.

Michael

"I'm sorry, honey," Jocasta says with real feeling. "This has been really hard on all of us. If there's something you think it really important for us to do, we'll listen. It's just...dangerous for everyone right now. So much confusion and chaos. Let's see what we can figure out, and head back out before our carriage turns into a pumpkin." She takes the semi-auto back out from her waistband and takes a careful bead at the base of one of the light-fixtures.

Bracing (+1), aiming for max allowed time (Acc 5+2), All-Out Attack, Determined (+1): Guns (Pistol)-23.

Leonard

>>>> FAILURE … Rule of 17

Michael

Not a crit, anyway, you can shoot again.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 9

Michael

The first shot goes wide, hits the ceiling. The second shot ricochets off the metal cage protecting the light. Not a hit.

Leonard

"Shit. I keep this up I'm gonna catch a rebound." She steels herself and takes one more try.

>>>> SUCCESS by 13

Michael

A shattering of glass, a tiny explosion of light, and a shower of tiny shards of glass shower down from the ceiling. Very easy to find with a flashlight, and inevitably a couple of pieces big enough for Jo to safely use Psychometry on if she wishes.

Leonard

She'll find the biggest shard. "I'm going to try a read," she says. "I'm pretty on the edge right now, though, so please help me out if I have a bad reaction." She goes down on her haunches, takes off her shooting gloves, and rubs the glass like a lucky charm.

Michael

Okay. First question is are you gonna goose with Corruption before the roll?

Leonard

Hmmmm. Yeah, but just by one.

Michael

Okay, keeping in mind I'll be assessing penalties, the initial Psychometry roll is IQ-16.

Leonard

>>>> CRITICAL SUCCESS

Michael

CRIT AGAIN

What is the emotional history of a light bulb, Jo think to herself as she takes the fragment of glass in her hand, anticipating maybe getting the vaguest intimations of boredom as a memory of whomever screwed this bulb into place was doing so. But she doesn't get that. She doesn't get a flash of the factory the bulb was made in, the technician who maybe quality-tested the threading and filament. Jocasta instead gets a sense of this entire structure. The giant twisted spiral of this place, the lightbulb recesses with their odd little batteries placed at twenty-foot intervals, and the giant metal bulkhead door at the bottom of it all, as if this place is itself one object. And the emotion she gets from this little piece of glass is the pride experienced by whoever moved this giant structure into place and wrote it into existence, the entity who pulled this structure from a lost, dead history and into the no-space between histories that Jo, Charley, and Roger stand in right now. Jo tries to go deeper, to see the face of this person, or Anunnakku, or god, who stole this space, and is utterly stymied, but Jo can see that their power allows them to search the manifold threads of probability and find a timeline where something like this was built, steal it (this is the part that really makes Jocasta's teeth clench and eyes roll back in her head, two things both Roger and Charley can see happen to her), then set it adrift between histories. Why spend millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours digging through solid rock, pouring concrete, installing little light bulbs when someone out there in some obscure history—histories which you can breeze through like the pages of a book or the catalog in a library, Jocasta realizes with gut-dropping horror—has already/will have already built it for you? All you have to do is excise the structure temporo-spatially and clear room for it, then graft it in, set it growing from the seedling of the axis of worlds, where it will cease withering away from being disconnected from its timeline of origin and flourish and live again as an outgrowth of the axis mundorum. Even if it requires a fairly large amount of energy, granted, the process couldn't be simpler for us... Jocasta's nose begins to bleed and she begins to convulse. Fright Check, 10 or less to succeed.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 2

Michael

Jocasta bears down under the unearthly pressure of this vision and it finally passes from her. The convulsions and nose bleed are momentary. She gingerly removes the light bulb shard from her palm.

Leonard

“Oof,” Jo gasps, daubing away the blood and struggling woozily to her feet. “Roger, Charley…this place wasn’t built. Or, it was…but it wasn’t built here. Someone brought it here, from somewhere else — they pulled it out of some other reality and set it here to grow and build. It was like they…ordered it out of a catalogue of histories. I couldn’t see who it was, but it took…unimaginable power.” She pauses for a moment, seemingly spooked, before regaining her focus. “Anyway, this does nothing do dissuade me that we should get out of here as soon as possible and just blow this place to hell. Roger, I think you’re right that we can’t really take it down — and I’m even more sure that you’re right seeing what I just saw. But at the very least we should seal up the entrances until we can talk to Archie about a more long-term solution. This place is a machine of incredible power. We can’t have anyone else stumble on it — or be drawn to it.”

Mel

"Jocasta are you okay? Here have some water and I think I have some candy in my pack." As Charley searches her rations she adds, "Roger, we need to get out of here once Jo is ready."

Leonard

"Thanks, Charley," Jocasta says, taking a swig from the canteen and nibbling on a Rocky Road bar. "I'm plenty ready to get out of this hole."

Bill

Roger will give Jo a bit of first aid evaluation, too. While he does, he muses "Le Comte pushed and pushed to get us here, to take that frog down here, to meet someone. Now you're telling us that someone is even more powerful than we can imagine. Uriel said we could remake history, too, with this place. Other than going down and meeting that someone, and telling them no thanks, I can't think of anything that will really secure this place against le Comte or anyone else wandering in, that the place doesn't already have in its hideous maze."

"The place goes poof at dawn? Is that what is going on? If so, we'd just have to guard the entrance until then."

"Nobody else gets in, helps le Comte, until the gates close."

"So I think we'd be better off to save the C-4 for the real entrance we came in."

Once Jo looks less wobbly, Roger checks his pack straps, looks over Jo's, and says "Yeah. Company, move out! Let's climb!"

Michael

The three members of Team Downhill climb the rungs of the ladder in the shaft (leaving the pulped kulullû behind, I take it?) and head up back to the council room. When they get back up there, they see the kulullû's blood staining the golden floors, and the rope tied to the Throne of the Seventh Ray. The corridor exiting out to the golden hallways is still open and available. But upon getting back to the golden hallways, now we have to find our way out. The team's compasses are swinging wildly all over the place; they're useless for helping with this navigation. The squad knows they have to generally head southeast to reach the cavern entrance. The walls, after some blind testing, apparently aren't lighting up with light codes anymore; their ambient glow is restricted to enabling the three of you to make your way through the corridors. But Navigate the three of you will need to. So Navigation (Land) defaults to IQ-5, Cartography-4, or Mathematics (Surveying)-4.

• Charley's got Cartography, and of course has Renshawed Geography (Mount Shasta) so I'm inclined to let her roll straight Cartography-14.

• For Roger, it'll be IQ-8; the Renshawed Geology isn't much help in these halls.

• And for Jocasta, it'll be IQ-10; sadly Tracking is no good here as the halls have shifted considerably since the three of you were lost and hallucinating within them. I think it'll become clear pretty quickly that Charley is the best equipped to find our way out of this maze to the surface again, so if the two of you want to defer to her to avoid tripping us up and sending us in the wrong direction, we can let her roll first.

Bill

Definitely deferring to Charley with that IQ roll.

One thing, a little grizzly. The kulullû's head is pulped, yeah, but we don't know what kind of healing the forces here have. Roger is gonna have to scoop up some of the head to take with, so all the Kings' horses and all the King's men can't put him back together again.

He's got the big knife to separate it.

Feel free to ask for a Fright Check or Flashbacks. "When you put your hand, into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your best friend's face... you'll know what to do."

Michael

Hah, no, this to me is ultimately very clinical and even with the alienness and gross-out factor it's not worse than about a half-dozen other things that have happened in the past few hours.

Leonard

"I'm with you," she says to Roger. "I doubt we can do much to blow this place, or even if it's real enough to blow. But if that creep Elizabeth knows something and isn't just a crank, the door might open to something even worse in two years. If we seal the entrance on our way out, at least we can get SANDMAN to monitor it, maybe post a guard station, to make sure nobody else gets in and causes mischief. Buy ourselves a little time. I know I packed for a medium-sized coup, but from what I saw, there's just no way we're equipped to deal with whatever made this place. Not yet."

>>>> SUCCESS by 1

Mel

(Knowing she has to find the way out she'll add 3 Corruption to the roll. She also has second chance that she may use would the corruption be applied to those rolls too?)

Michael

I don't think Navigation is one of the skills you can Corrupt. But yes, you have a use of Second Chance available.

Mel

Cartography

>>>> FAILURE by 1

Michael

I guess we'll need to activate Second Chance!

Second Chance is 14, and this you can boost with Corruption.

Mel

Add 3

Michael

Go for it! Second Chance-17.

Mel

>>>> SUCCESS by 9

Michael

Beautiful. So now you roll Cartography-14 two more times and take the best of the three.

Mel

>>>> SUCCESS by 1

>>>> SUCCESS by 4

Michael

The labyrinth of the golden halls is the perfect place for Charley to implement her quantum vision. There are so many different ways that Charley and Jo and Roger could proceed through the mountain; this place really is like a huge circuit board! So Charley peers into a couple of adjacent split timelines and notices that there's no easy way out of here; given how much the surfaces were being moved while the Comte was in charge of the mountain testing the three of you, the position the hallways were left in when the Comte teleported/projected away left a lot of dead ends. Charley passes by a few junctions in the halls and projects herself into those alternate timelines where the party followed those paths. After peering down a couple of particularly time-consuming dead-end paths with Second Chance, Charley finds a reliable path out, although it is going to take Jo and Roger and Charley about an hour to get out (figure you three will find the outside at about 2:25 am). Charley and Jo take the lead on finding the way out through the mountainside cavern, and right before the three of you find yourselves smelling the fresh nighttime mountain air of the outside real world, Charley passes by one of the final dead-end routes she identified with Second Chance... and sees a flicker, just the briefest afterimage, of herself, and Jocasta, and Roger, headed into the mountain at the beginning of the evening.

Jo, Roger, and Charley find themselves looking up at the stars, the waxing half-moon, and the Milky Way from the southeast slope of Mount Shasta.

Mel

(Can I get a roll to see if Charley notices the phase of the moon is off?)

Michael

No need to roll; the moon was in waxing half-moon phase when you left, and a quick look at the stars make it clear that six or so hours have passed since you entered the mountain.

Constellations all look right.

Mel

Charley is dead tired and would love to drop right here under the Milky Way but is dad ok she wonders? And as she wonders, she reaches out with the force of her feelings to sense his.

Michael

I think what Charley would get off of him is his continuing intense worry and concern for Charley along with being cold on the summit of the mountain... until of course he senses that Charley and company have made it out.

Bill

Roger would like to close his eyes for a second as well. If Jo can take a watch, he'd like a break to shake off any brain-melting fatigue he can before he has to do this next bit: setting up explosives to close this entrance. He's definitely going to want to be careful there.

He will take a second to thank Charley, though. "Seems small to say, but it needs saying: good work there, agent. I don't know how you did it, but I'm so glad you did."

Michael

Want to give me another pair of Geology-13 and Explosives-13 rolls?

Bill

Geology-13

>>>> SUCCESS by 4

(Any other things to do to improve that Explosives roll? Or did you factor in extra time? Nervous!)

Michael

Yeah, we can do Extra Time for sure. Let me just look up how long it takes to wire up a cave entrance with explosives and we can see if the time works out okay.

Mel

Charley scoots over to Roger and rests up against him, then mumbles, "No problem." before drifting off.

Michael

"Time required varies – it takes only a cou- ple of seconds to set a prepared charge, but it might take hours to demolish a large bridge or a sky- scraper." So a cave entrance will require a few prepared charges, plus time to analyze the best places to wire it up. Let's say a standard skill roll to analyze, set, and blow will be about 15 minutes. So: half-hour: Explosives-15 (you got a +1 from the Geology roll) hour: Explosives-16 two hours: Explosives-17 just under four hours (just after dawn): Explosives-18

Bill

An hour seems like a good compromise. Dawn isn't acceptable, and le Comte, as far as we know, could be back and meddling any minute.

Michael

And with Agent Helix sleeping, I'm guessing that leaves a modafinil-juiced Agent Menos to watch the perimeter.

Bill

Yeah, too many hours and she might come down, and that's gonna be a crash.

Leonard

Jocasta is still wired. She'll be happy to keep watch or help with the explosives, but she wouldn't wanna push it too much either.

Bill

Yeah, no offense to Jo, but Jenny-Jitters isn't the girl you want helping with explosives. Plus these are surplus explosives: who knows what auras are on 'em.

>>>> SUCCESS by 7

Michael

I figure Jo will have night-vision goggles activated and rifle at the ready on the perimeter, so that's gonna be a Observation-15 roll (net minus-one from half-moon nighttime and night vision goggles).

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 6

Michael

(And Charley is only gonna get an hour-long nap max considering a bunch of C4 is gonna go off)

Bill

Right before the blow, we'll make sure to wake Charley, in case we need to really move.

Leonard

Also, Jocasta will try to use whatever combination of skills she has (and any Roger has) — thinking using Artist to make a map and then Naturalist? Observation? Tracking? to note exactly where this entrance is, so we can tell everyone else (Team Uphill and whatever SANDMAN agents might get the job of watching the portal) how to find it again.

Mel

(feel free to give Charley a dream if you want Mike)

Bill

I think Charley already did the map thing earlier, but surveying after the explosion is probably a good idea.

Michael

Also, Jocasta will try to use whatever combination of skills she has (and any Roger has) — thinking using Artist to make a map and then Naturalist? Observation? Tracking? to note exactly where this entrance is, so we can tell everyone else (Team Uphill and whatever SANDMAN agents might get the job of watching the portal) how to find it again.

Yeah, yeah, very good call

Bill

Actually, thinking about it, assuming copters don't swoop down, Roger has something he'd like to do.

Michael

(Yes, please, go ahead! Will save Jo's Observation result for a sec.)

Bill

He's gonna pick a tree within sight of the opening, but back a bit. Then he'll use his Bowie knife to carve two eyes in it, then put Papa Legba's vever around it like it was the pole. Then, thanking Papa for all his help, he'll do the ritual at the end of the ceremony, the Closing of the Way.

Mt. Shasta may have all the ways open, but this one at least Roger is declaring Closed.

Michael

At about T-minus eight minutes, Jo can clearly see and hear a single figure making their way up the mountainside toward the cavern. Jo gives Roger the high sign to take cover and Jo does as well, watching the figure get closer and more clearly defined in the lenses of the state-of-the-art SANDMAN night-vision goggles. At a distance of about 80 yards down the mountain, by the shape and height of the figure, its clothing, and eventually its facial features, Jo can clearly see... It's Elizabeth Clare Prophet. (I may slow things down here so Charley has time to have her dream with Uncle Mitch if you all are going to wake up Charley at this point. But I'm also fine with us having just Roger and Jo react for a few rounds or something while Charley slumbers.)

Bill

("react for a few rounds" — I think you meant "react with a few rounds")

Leonard

"Fuck, Roger — it's Elizabeth, that cult crank," Jo hisses. "I don't want her anywhere near here. Probably too much trouble to take her out, but maybe I should fire a few in the air close to her, try to scare her off?"

Bill

"Hell yeah. Does she have her goons with her?"

Michael

She is, as far as Jo can see, completely alone.

Bill

Roger thinks of something else. "Shit. Is she walking like she's in a trance?"

Michael

Jo: Empathy-13. And SANDMAN "standard" procedure would dictate an ikoter hit + hypnotism here.

Leonard

>>>> SUCCESS by 3

Michael

Come to think of it, as Elizabeth gets closer, she does look a little glassy-eyed. She's not walking in a trance because she needs to make her way among rock outcroppings and occasionally actively climb. But Jo's pretty sure from eyes and body language that she's... maybe sleepwalking? Her consciousness maybe isn't all there.

Bill

If Jo relays this, Roger curses. "What if it's Uriel? Shit. Well, we talked with him before. You want to cover me while I talk to her/him?"

Roger grabs an ikoter.

Leonard

"Your call, soldier. I'm still not sure it's really Uriel — I think she's the pawn of something worse. My instinct is just to zap her and tap her, but I got you covered either way."

Bill

Roger will wave the ikoter as a "yes", and head down to meet her.

Leonard

Jocasta will follow, Stealthing her way around their position so she can sneak up on them if anything goes awry.

Michael

As Roger emerges from the cavern area into Elizabeth's field of vision, she startles, surprised to see someone else here. "Oh! Oh, hello. Did... did he call to you as well? In your dreams?"

Made the roll secretly for Jo (aided by considerable darkness and your nighttime gear).

Bill

“Yes, I have heard a call, Elizabeth. Whose call did you hear? The angel or the count?”

Michael

She blinks in the moonlight looking up to Roger, and says, "It was the Comte himself. He told me something would happen here before dawn and I would need to bear witness. He told me to come alone, that the vision was for my eyes alone, among my Lighthouse."

Bill

Wrong answer. “Elizabeth, I have seen Monsieur le Comte, spoken to him, I tell you true. I have seen the thrones.” Roger puts on his most sincere face as he rights the ikoter in his hands to point at her. “There was a flash of light…” and Roger shoots.

Michael

No time to aim, of course, so a straight Beam Weapons (Rifle)-14.

Bill

>>>> SUCCESS by 0

Michael

The beam of linguistic white noise takes Elizabeth very clearly by surprise, and Roger sees her gaze go unfocused nearly instantaneously. She is dazed but not knocked unconscious; Roger feels like she's a fairly strong-willed person to have a little nascent cult complete with heavies all tucked away. But not strong-willed enough to resist the Comte's call... or the ikoter blast. In summary, Roger has no idea how long Elizabeth will be dazed for, but she's primed for hypnotic suggestion now.

Bill

Roger will try something quick to get her under, to get her in the trance. But he'll need help really laying down a command.

Michael

Yeah, Jo's a little more accomplished at Hypnotism than Roger skill-wise but yes, for Roger to get Elizabeth into trance all by himself is a Hypnotism-11 roll. This takes five seconds standard so Roger can take Extra Time again: 10 seconds is Hypnotism-12, 20 seconds is Hypnotism-13, 40 seconds is Hypnotism-14, etc. But the important thing is that a second attempt at Hypnotism will take five minutes rather than five seconds, and Roger knows that the ikoter's daze effect usually lasts a minimum of one minute (and of course can last longer depending on the subject's will to fight the daze). So you really have to get the trance bit right the first time.

Bill

Roger will go for it, as he's afraid anything else she remembers will break the illusion later. So he'll take 40 seconds. He's concentrating on getting her into the light, to relax in the light, not to be afraid, and to listen....

>>>> SUCCESS by 3

Michael

Very nice. Elizabeth is now under and can be given suggestions, post-hypnotic or otherwise, by any skilled hypnotist in the general area.

But obviously I'll be keeping an eye on the clock for the effects of the ikoter.

She'll remain in trance even after the ikoter effect runs out, it's just she gets a -2 to resist those suggestions while the daze is happening.

Bill

OK, first suggestion is to tell her that the light fills all her senses, and she senses nothing but the light and heavenly music until she hears me say the family name of Monsieur le Comte. If she seems to have taken that, Roger steps a bit away, and waves Jo over for a fast confab.

"Jo, I know the words to spin a vision for her to have seen instead of the explosion and entrance. It probably won't stand up to her masters probing; she'll be back all right. Can you think of anything more subtle that will help us in the future when she comes back?"

Roger nervously checks his watch for the countdown.

Michael

(Explosives-wise, btw, they're all wired except for one; my estimate of "t-minus eight minutes" was basically the time it would take to wire the last block and then set up the detonation.)

(So you can pick up where you left off when you're done with Elizabeth.)

Bill

(Cool; glad Roger plans less cinematically than me). Roger's hackles are definitely up: he feels the breath of le Comte on the back of his neck with this encounter.

Leonard

"I don't think we necessarily need to countermand anything she thinks she knows," Jocasta says, crouching over Elizabeth and ready to act if she stirs. "Maybe the move is to create seeds of doubt? Tell her there are other angels, other spirits, and to be open to the idea that she may receive future visions that lead her elsewhere. She's...well, like a lot of these people, she's very susceptible. Might be worth just making her be more open to other signals so she's not so dead set on this place."

Bill

(Yeah, let's have the voodoo guy who knows nothing of the Ascended Masters try to wing a vision of them. This'll be fun!)

"Yeah, OK, send her seeking elsewhere, finding a lot of other stuff before she should return."

Michael

If Jo wanted to assist your Hypnotism roll with an Occultism roll, btw, that works for me.

Leonard — 05/06/2022

hell yeah

>>>> SUCCESS by 0

Michael

I mean, it's a success but... listen, Jo has had a long day and asking her to come up with a new cult direction on the fly is a tall order.

In any event, Roger will have a +1 to his eventual Hypnotism roll.

Bill

Patting off his jeans, Roger paces a bit away, and then back. Then he starts, hitting the trigger word as naturally as he can. "Elizabeth, Monsieur le Comte de Saint-Germain has brought you to witness. I, the angel of this place, in shape familiar, put burning coals to your eyes. (Roger touches her eyes, drawing them shut.) See! This is the making of a new heaven, and a new earth, and the first heaven and the first earth are passing away. In the mountain, in a high golden hall, you see seven golden thrones around a round table. The masters are not yet in their thrones, but you see their colored gems sparkle in the backs of their chairs, and rays go forth to connect their souls to all the world. This hour you may see the thrones and their table beneath the mountain, as witness, but on the day of the return, it will be above, so that what is below may be as above. For the power of the masters of the thrones will be over all the earth, all places. See, before it is gone, the rays going forth; they go to places far from here, where the masters souls may be found. Tell me, Witness, to where do you see the rays go forth? Do you know the places of the masters?"

(Assuming Jo fed Roger a bit of the Ascended Master language, since he's got Revelations and he's seen the place, but not much else.)

Michael

"I... mine own journeys have taken me far and wide, angel. All over this globe. I yearn to find the Secret Masters as they walk unknown and undiscovered among us, the new ones, the ones born to this generation. Is this now my quest? My life's goal? To assemble the Seven under the Comte's ever-watching eye for the unveiling of the Age to Come?"

Bill

"Yes, you are the one to find and awake so they may assemble: your eyes have been given sight. You will be the beacon they will return to." (Roger wracks his brain for somewhere not by the mountain, opposite, so... the sea.) "You see, your spirit taking flight, flying from this mountain, a new place, where the waters rush up, where all the colors of the rays play in the waters, where the masters may be gathered and aligned before the terrible wars to come. But it is only a gathering place: you must travel the ways of the world, looking for them, in many places, in many peoples, in many forms strange to you. They will be under many names, angels, spirits: the peoples near them may even call them gods, misunderstanding. Bring them together, and the throne room will arise from the waters, and the new heaven and the new earth will be made."

"Look not to a cave in the mountain: like the apostles of Master Jesus, like Mary at the tomb, you are shown it empty now, so you may know they are arisen."

Michael

Tears begin to stream down Elizabeth's face in the moonlight, a look of profound gratitude in her eyes and beatific smile. "This message, O angel... I am seeing the waters off Malibu sparkling in iridescent blaze, the promise of the New Age rising from the Pacific like Lemuria... a covenant this messenger will keep with you and the One. This is the message I have awaited; our beacon has found its blessèd ship, the throne from upon high."

So, two things: I am assuming that given this patter that Roger (and Jo) have provided for Elizabeth, that Roger will keep her in trance for as long as it takes to give her the new scripture. So I will give you Extra Time bonuses along with situational and assistance bonuses from Jo; I'm just gonna look up what looks like a reasonable bonus (which you can then boost with Corruption since Hypnosis is an As-Unto-Them-friendly skill, if you wish). But before that I need an Autohypnosis-16 roll. Not that Roger is putting himself to sleep with his patter! But in the process of entrancing Elizabeth, Roger will likely inevitably look inward to his own susceptibility to hypnosis; he's not usually The Guy in URIEL who does stuff like this and this is kind of new for him.

Bill

>>>> SUCCESS by 5

Michael

In doing this to Elizabeth, and as she looks up to Roger in adoration, Roger could swear he hears the sly, admiring laughter of Mèt Kalfu in the back of his head.

>>>> 1d6 … 6

Okay, the final Hypnotism attempt can take as long as you like, but I think for practical purposes, repeating these goals into Elizabeth's receptive ears should take about an hour, which feels like a 15x/+4 Extra Time adjustment. Give you a +1 for Jocasta's assist, a +2 for the thematically-appropriate material, and that totals up to a Hypnotism-18 (before any Corruption).

Bill

It feels like, with Maitre Carrefour poking his head out, that Roger would push in some Corruption, seeking a crit. How much to push it to 21?

Michael

3 Corruption will do it.

Bill

Oh, yeah: Roger will put some signs by which she may know and trust the heavenly agents of Uriel, to help any other handlers. And then one last bit at the end. But I'll roll now.

>>>> SUCCESS by 11

Michael

The post-hypnotic suggestion feels good and solidly laid in by a little before 4 am. Plenty of time for Elizabeth to head back to her camp and for Roger to do the last 10 minutes of wiring before dawn.

Bill

Final word: "Go, you are blessed. And fear not, do not let not the thunder of the throne room passing turn you back. Go forward, seek, and serve the One!"

And then he will happily, tiredly, wire up the place. Hope Charley has been sleeping peacefully...

Michael

I assume we'll do Charley the courtesy of gently waking her up before the explosives go off. Besides, she'll want to see them.

Bill

Oh! After she's safely gone, Roger thinks to reach the summit team on the radio, since signal might be better out of the cave.

No long conversation, if he does get through — just an all-clear, and a heads up about the blast.

Full debrief to come, on meet-up, if he still believes it in daylight.

Michael

Perfect. I will be waking both Mitch and Charley up once they roll their Fright Check table results, and then we can sort out the cave-in and whatever follows (Team Downhill meeting up with Marshall and Dave at Panther Meadow, most likely, since it will take until late morning for Team Uphill to descend from the summit).

Just as Jocasta is going to wake up Charley, who has been sleeping fitfully, Charley wakes up, opens her eyes, and lies there frozen for a couple of seconds, her eyes wide.

Mel

Not fully awake, Charley says to Jo, “Mama?”

Leonard

Jocasta will step away, giving a safe distance and cover from the blast. Holding Charley tight, she whispers, "Charley, honey, it's me, Jo. Everything's fine. We have to seal up the passage into the mountain now. It's going to be loud, and I know things have been scary. But we're going to be okay, and we'll be back with your dad soon."

Michael

Roger's expert placement of the explosives, plus his Renshawed knowledge of Geology, ends in a textbook collapse of the cave entrance with minimal explosives used. The deafening crack of the series of detonations carries far and wide throughout the mountainside and adjacent valleys but, as said elsewhere, it's going to be hard for anyone—hiker, camper, climber—currently on the mountain to pinpoint exactly where this sound came from. It's almost like the "Ascended Masters" put this entrance to the golden halls here for its remoteness from the activities of the ants crawling around on their mountain's surface. As Jo, Charley, and Roger slog back to Panther Meadow, the sun comes clear up over the eastern crests of the buttes.

It looks like it's going to be a beautiful day.