Sunday, September 30th, 2018

Strefburg Recycling Center

The Cabal are in a sticky situation entirely of Graham’s making. John wants answers, and they really don’t want him drawing his gun. Graham, thinking on his feet, claims he’s with the “Bureau of Disposal" burying biohazards, and claims that they should have gotten a fax with the details. He demands to go to the guard house to check (along with Anthony, who claims to be an intern with the bureau.) Meanwhile, Levi helps talk down Stiff from a total emotional shutdown by reminding him that the dogs would want him to be present in this moment.

When at the guard house, Anthony looks around for any evidence that they had something to do with what they found in The Rat’s Nest. But the main vibe he gets from them is “disorganized” – this place is certainly not the main base of a conspiracy. Presumably Rat just managed to build the nest without them noticing. He quietly intimates to Graham that this is probably the kind of place where a lot of papers get lost, and Graham turns the screws accordingly, saying that John will be in serious trouble for misplacing the form. A tearful John actually bribes Graham to cover up his “misdeed”, and they make it out scot-free. (Hopefully John never thinks to Google “Bureau of Disposal”.)

Liz offers Stiff to come hang out with some alive dogs, but he demurs, saying that he thinks his place is here, to look for Red and keep an eye on the Nest. He does ask that the Cabal return with any news about what happened to Rat, which they agree to.

Monday, October 1st, 2018

The next day, Levi decides to just drive for himself, instead of ride-sharing. He needs some time to think over what exactly happened. Before heading out, he does decide to post his photo-of-a-photo of the weird documents they found in the Rat’s Nest to It’s A Living. Taking a break at a gas station after a 100 mile stretch, he sees a few replies to his question:

Sydney Taylor Uh oh, Levi…have you fallen in with a Dr. Frankenstein type? (Or, wait, you’re a millennial – maybe I should say Shou Tucker? :) ) Anyway, that’s an emotive field diagram. Somewhere encoded in all of those numbers and lines is a way to bind some specific magick effect to that individual dog. I have no idea how people manage to compress magick into just numbers, and frankly it spooks me. Presumably a biohacker could reverse engineer what this emotive field diagram was derived to do…but honestly, without knowing your details, I’d just say get out. Someone who would do this to a dog would do it to a human. Mick Cavverae Also worth noting that biohackers tend to be waaaaaay on the down low, so it’s not like it’d be easy to find one even if you wanted to. That’s like, exactly the kind of magick that gets you torches and pitchforks. Futaba Sakura Yeah. To ID a biohacker on sight, they’d need to have the face of a cat or something ;D Mick Cavverae Lucky that sort of thing is totally impossible, then… >_>

Graham is prevented from any sort of investigation by a prior engagement with Felicity. He’s been invited to the technical dress rehearsal of “Mecha-Romeo vs. Juilet 2.0”, a local play that Felicity ensures him is absolute dog shit but features her best designed sets yet. After suffering through 90 excruciating minutes, it turns out that the climax involves some audience participation. Felicity, knowing this, decided to surreptitiously indicate to the players to choose Graham – but Graham, one step ahead, was already hiding in his chair, so they end up just picking Felicity, misinterpreting her pointing as volunteering. The job of the “volunteer” is to join Mecha-Romeo in his prop battle suit while he says some frankly uncomfortable things about the power of “having them inside him”. Gross! Felicity tells him afterwards that her attack was unsporting and his deflection was fair, and also that as punishment for Mecha-Romeo’s indiscretion she fucked with his suit and he’s probably still stuck in it. Then they get gelato.

As for Anthony, having seen that symbol pop up again, and knowing it’s connected to shadows, decides to see if Billy the shadow-haunted antiquarian knows anything about it. He brings a sketch of it to I Don’t Know Bar and gets a strong, frightful reaction out of both Billy AND Brock. Billy mutters that he doesn’t want to think about it until “his book arrives”. When pressed, he says that it’s a “Book of Ma’at”, and that the shipment (which was due two months ago) was held up by Manningvoy and Charcleau due to an unrelated problem with a mummy that he did not order. At this point Brock strongly intimates that Anthony should leave without outright saying it, as though he’s scared to directly escalate the situation but more scared to have Anthony keep asking questions. Anthony takes the hint and heads out.

On his way out the door he bumps in to Liz, who’s taking Harvey Judson out for drinks here to chat about the “Erik” case. He quickly tells her that Billy and Brock are not in the mood to talk right now; and indeed, they both seem relieved when she takes Harvey to a booth instead of the bar. After a bit of small talk, she asks him if he knows anything about the Erik case, saying that she’s nervous because it happened on a regular dog-walking route she uses. Harvey says that the investigation has been taken over by Jinx, a cop who everyone agrees is a little unhinged, but produces results on the weird cases like this one. She’s calling in the forensic investigator Dr. Gregory Kimslep from out of state, and she’s promising that she’ll figure everything out as long as everyone else stays away and gives them space. It’s a typical Jinx demand and Harvey is more than happy to oblige, wanting nothing to do with this spooky shit.

Liz figures that’s as much as she can safely get out of Harvey without look too suspicious and backs off. She also notices Billy and Brock talking furtively, and pretending they weren’t doing that when Liz goes up to the bar to ask for another round. (They’re bad actors.)

The Cabal compares notes over text – no answers, but a lot of new questions. What kind of biohacking was Rat planning for Red and White/Spot, and how far did she get? What’s this Book of Ma’at, and how would it make Billy more comfortable to talk about that symbol? Is Jinx a member of the occult underground? It’s a lot to take in with no immediate path to defusing the whole Spot-could-kill-us-at-any-time problem.

And just when they thought they had enough mysteries, here’s one more. Graham is preparing to go to bed for the night when he suddenly gets light-headed and a strange empty feeling in his stomach. He barely manages to fall on his bed before blacking out. Before him is the image of a woman. “The image” – that’s important, because it doesn’t feel like he’s sitting there looking at her, but rather that he’s seeing a picture of her. It’s like she’s framed. She’s wearing a white dress and looking forward with a taciturn expression. But Graham can also see her aura. It’s a distressing mix of anxiety and resignation – “there is something I fear, but it is inevitable.”

Then he wakes up wondering what the hell happened. Can that hit him anytime? Is it even safe to drive anymore? And wait – even more bad news. Worse. Graham interrogates that empty feeling in his stomach a bit more, and realizes with a cold jolt that he’s missing a minor charge. A little bit of digested truth was stolen right out from inside him. Instead of going back to sleep, he photographs things around his apartment in a obsessive crusade to get that charge back. He’ll be a wreck the next morning, but he needed to do it.

Fortunately, he has a wedding to do. It may seem weird to call it fortunate, since his all-important reputation is on the line, but Graham can do Dingnaught weddings in his sleep and he gets by providing service that isn’t that much worse than usual. Levi is also getting that sweet cheddar – he stayed in an AirBnb the night before, figuring that he might want the significant charge in his back pocket the ways things are escalating, but that means he’s now more or less broke as a joke.

Is all of the Cabal just working boring day jobs and stalling the investigation? Nope; we have Liz and Anthony to the rescue. Liz is planning on walking Capone and his Gang on Bristlecone Lane, the street where Erik died, hoping to catch a glimpse of the investigation in progress. She brings Anthony along in case Harvey shows up and asks why she feels safe walking there when she said just yesterday she wouldn’t. He takes the chance to work on his longboarding some more while going alongside her.

When they get on the street, they see a curious sight – right next to the spot where Erik died, there are two women arguing. Apparently one of them, a buff woman with a pronounced Russian accent, is squatting where she doesn’t belong, ie on the lawn of the other woman, who appears to have noticed the interloper mid-gardening session. Both sides have some merit. As the bodybuilder mentions, she’s not technically on her lawn per se, but rather on the bit of grass on the sidewalk just ACROSS from her lawn. But it’s also true that she’s literally grilling hot dogs, which is a weird thing to do right next to someone else’s house. They also notice that her pickup (Utah plates, AY3-185) has one of those tents for the bed and by all indication it looks like she’s planning to camp out in the street here.

The gardening woman loudly demands Anthony and Liz join the conversation, assuming they’ll agree with her reasoning. Anthony diplomatically asks whether the hot dog grilling needs to happen here specifically, to which the buff woman responds that this is a sacred place (and here Liz worries: it really is more or less RIGHT where Erik died…) and that something important is going to happen here tomorrow at 10:13 PM (Liz worries more: that was WHEN Erik died, too). Anthony asks the natural follow up question of what that something important was, and she walked over, put her hands on his shoulders – Anthony uncomfortably cognizant she could snap him like a toothpick – and says “Ragnarök.”

It is here that Anthony makes a tactical misstep. He knows what Ragnarök means, and he’s seen enough weirdness that he’s really concerned about the possibility. And if that’s happening, surely everything needs to go on the back burner while we figure the end of the world out. So when she responds to that saying “Why does that mean you need to be on my lawn?”, Anthony’s concern, which could be roughly paraphrased as “My dear lady, perhaps a proper sense of scale is meritorious here; given the impending threat she is mentioning, we ought to consider it with appropriate gravitas before worrying about this as mundane as property boundaries”, is well-placed. Unfortunately, in his stressed and distracted state, he phrases it as “Calm down, bitch, the world’s ending tomorrow.” This convinces her that Anthony is in the buff woman’s death cult, and she calls the cops on both of them.

While they’re waiting for the cops, Anthony looks over the bodybuilder a little more. She could just be someone who’s out of her mind…but no. He can tell that she’s seen some unnatural stuff, more than he has. After what happened to Adam, he’s made sure to pick up the slightest indication of strangeness, and he can just feel it from her.

Soon enough, a police officer arrives – Officer Cotton, a woman with a few strands of blue hair visible under her cap. Accompanying her is a man who somehow manages to look 40 years old and like a small boy in an ill-fitting suit simultaneously. He’s clearly not a cop, but he’s standing right alongside Officer Cotton while she asks questions, neither introducing him nor telling him to move. The man is looking at Liz with a really intense, not-even-pretending-to-hide it kind of stare. She decides to play it by saying “Oh, are you a fan?” and take a selfie with the guy to have a record of his face, but she goes about it a little awkwardly and he deftly side-steps being photographed.

When Officer Cotton gets the basics, she makes a kind of strange decision – she and the man will talk to the older woman inside her house, while Anthony, Liz, and the buff woman are just told to wait outside. That doesn’t seem like how a cop is supposed to operate.

They just stand around for a few minutes trying to process what exactly is happening here. They’re interrupted by another person arriving on the scene – this time a preppy redhead teen, who seems nonplussed about the gathering on the lawn and cheerfully heads inside, saying she’s late for lunch with her grandmother. This seems to remind the buff woman about the general concept of hospitality, and she offers Liz and Anthony hotdogs with horseradish, “to make you strong”. Anthony demurs, but Liz decides to eat.

Looking around a little more, Anthony spots a sledgehammer in the bed of the pickup, with what appears to be blood on it. So the woman has experience with the unnatural AND is violent, lovely. The cop may have told them all to stay, but she never actually got their names or looked at their IDs, so actually they can just leave, and it’s starting to look like they should. As they say their goodbyes to the buff woman, she tells Liz that she’s part of this now, and must make sure to come back. Tomorrow. Ragnarök. 10:13 PM. And then, after a thoughtful pause: “Come early.”

Objective: Learn what it takes to be safe from Spot (local)

Progress: 18%

Experience Checks:

Content Creator (Liz): 57% → 59%

Unethical Photographer (Graham) 44% → 48%

Sharp-Eyed (Antony): 45% → 47%

Longboarder (Anthony, In Development): 5% → 10%