Actually, much like humans, the cats are split between two sides in the Ascension Claw. Ceres is actually a member in good standing of the Technocatic Union, the fact which believes they need to conceal their powers from humans and keep human society structured to benefit them. They're split up into five Conventions.
One of the elements of Cat that @EarthScorpion may or may not have been aware of when he wrote this was that you get 7 points of Reputations at chargen (you can't have any single Reputation above 3), which function sort of like specialties that add dice to relevant rolls. I was having trouble deciding on the last two, but I can now happily share with you all that Ceres's Reputations are:
Super-Smart Sera-Kitty (3)
Knower of Secrets (2)
Loyal Technocat (2)
Just in time for...
Ceres Sneakily Seeks Escape
Part 2: Escape From The Box
You look left. You look right. You check behind you. All the Big Things seem distracted with whatever it is they're doing and wherever it is they're going. Nobody is looking at you directly.
Excellent.
You stretch with feigned casualness and wait for a Big Thing to get between you and the Watching Thing on the ceiling that can see you. Not even most Other Cats know about the Watching Things! Their existence is a Secret Thing you found out all by yourself, through intensive study of Big Things and their Big Thing tool-magic! And a rather harrowing adventure, though that's a story for another time. Watching Things are what Big Things use to see you even when they aren't there. You can't sneakily sneak food out of the fridge without them finding out if there's a Watching Thing watching it! And if you claw up one of the Big Things they sit on, they'll know it was you, even if you frame an Other Cat for it!
Truly, the tool-magics of the Big Things are terrible and sly.
That said, they're not very clever sometimes. One of them dropped a squeaky Little Thing into your box during your imprisonment, which you chased around for a little bit, then flopped over in pretend-exhaustion and let it think it had won and was safe, and then pounced on it and broke its neck. Now, you pick its body up and lay it before the invisible wall to invoke the Doorslip Trick. Timing it perfectly, you sneak past the solid barrier, and proudly pad out onto the open, free counter. Haha! Take that, Big Things! Nothing can keep you imprisoned for long!
... well, not for very long. Well, not forever. Anyway, you could have escaped anytime after they dropped the Squeaky Thing in with you. You were just biding your time so as not to let them know you could. It's better when you allow them to think they're in charge.
The Other Thing is still trapped in its own invisible prison. You eye it for a moment, debating the merits of taunting it with your freedom, but decide you can probably get more gloating in if it's not stuck where it can't see you being obviously and clearly superior. Besides, the Big Things are going to notice you're free at some point, and having two things to chase will mean only half as many will be trying to pick you up and put you back in the invisible prison of boredom. You drop off the table quietly, pick your way through the moving forest of legs, jump up onto its shelf and consider things.
It's in an invisible box. You're pretty sure it's not an Other Cat, and it doesn't have any dead things in there with it, so it couldn't Doorslip even if it was. The box does not appear to have any lids or doors that you can see.
... it is rather close to the edge of the table, though.
... oh well. You communicate to it that it should curl up and brace itself, and it continues staring at you with its beady little eyes. Shrugging, you lower your head to the cold hard flatness of the outside, brace your back legs, and push. With dreadful slowness, you force the box over to the edge of the table, and off it. It falls to the floor and shatters.
You, uh. Weren't expecting it to be quite so loud. A lot of Big Things turn to look at you.
Time to flee! But how?
(Pick two)
[ ] Stay low and keep your distance from them. If they pick you up, you won't be able to get free.
[ ] Just leg it as quickly as you can. You can't sneak well without magic, so don't bother trying.
[ ] Find small places where nothing can sneak up on you. You're not confident of detecting trouble.
[ ] Flee from anything that looks threatening. You're a thinker, not a fighter - scraps are bad news.
[ ] Lose your pursuit as quickly as possible. There's no way you can outpace them, you're too slow.
Oh, that stupid Other Thing. Look at it! It's just standing there blinking in confusion at its sudden freedom!
[ ] Abandon it to its fate and flee in the chaos.
[ ] Bravely draw the Big Things away from it.
Thank You, Rose Ashford, for your Snuggle Synths Order. Your Receipt Is Below:
Date: May 8, 2015
Order:
1 CK-7FS Smart Kitten
Delivery Option:
[-] Mat-Trans (insufficient priority)
[-] Sub-Orbital (for combat homonculi and militarized pets only)
[X] Standard
Confirmation: 58KL10QI96PWR
***
The CK-7FS Smart Kitten: The Classic Technocat!
There are many pets in the Snuggle Synth catalogue, but none of them have gotten close to the popularity and cost of the CK-7FS smart kitten since its debut in the 1960s. Originally an experiment in mammalian life extension techniques, the CK-7FS was an instrumental stepping-stone in the development of current retroviral life extension methods. Engineered for neoteny, this smart kitten will never outgrow you, as you control its maturation. Without purchase of the CK-7FS growth accelerator, it will stay a kitten indefinitely until its death from old age. The CK-7FS has an average lifespan of over 70 years, allowing it to stay a companion from childhood to adulthood, and its reduced aggression[1] and lowered sensory sensitivity[2] make it a docile and easily handled pet in a Technocratic Construct, allowing you to take your kitten to the lab or the firing range without fear of it ruining any of your work when you lack the time to pay it your full attention. Enhanced intelligence and sociability mean that the CK-7FS is guaranteed to be a friendly addition to your home and work environment, while an enhanced digestive system means that you can just feed it normal food, without any need to worry about its diet. A modified instinct package includes vacuum survival instincts, which when combined with the Kitten Vacuum Survival Suit (additional cost required) allows the CK-7FS to be safely brought onto a Voidship or space station. Finally, genetic modifications ensure that the CK-7FS has non-allergenic fur, making it a loving companion even to enhanciles who suffer from animal allergies.
The CK-7FS can be ordered in any color, gender, or breed. Exotic custom orders will take one to two weeks to complete.
Disclaimers:
The CK-7FS is intended solely for entertainment use and is not engineered for remote oversight and command. The CK-7FS does not include any espionage equipment or instincts. NWO agents seeking an intelligence gathering method should requisition the Acoustic Kitty from the Q Division Catalogue. The CK-7FS is not combat effective.
[1] [X] Flee from anything that looks threatening. You're a thinker, not a fighter - scraps are bad news. [2] [X] Find small places where nothing can sneak up on you. You're not confident of detecting trouble.
Part 3: Path to Victory
You gave the Other Thing a chance at freedom. Now it's up to it to survive and use it. It's up to you to handle the sudden swerve in your plans with the grace, dignity and inherent poise held by all true- oh no! That Big Thing has a leash! Run for it! Flee!
You bolt off the table, avoid two pairs of Big Thing hands, ignore a scream from somewhere behind you, vanish under a raised cabinet and, after disdainfully ignoring the hand someone sticks under the heavy furniture to try and pull you back out instead of scratching it to kingdom come, bolt for the door the next time it opens.
You make sure to tangle around the legs of the Big Thing walking through it out of sheer vindictiveness, sending it crashing to the floor with an alarmed squawk. Flat White Things go everywhere, and you bolt for the nearest turn-off from the big, wide-open corridor. This is not good territory for you. There's nowhere to hide, and while you're only ankle-height to the Big Things milling around and they don't look down much, there are still far too many of them for comfort.
Happily, one of them is pushing a table thing on round bits, which is loaded down with boring things and - crucially - has a low shelf at the bottom with a bit of space between it and the floor. You slip up behind it and dart underneath, into the raised space between the wheels. You have to duck your head a little bit to fit, and you can't see very far ahead, but you're perfectly hidden. All you have to do is trot smartly to keep up.
Modesty forbids you to gloat at the shouting Big Things that come running down the corridor shouting and looking for you. Much. You hear your First Name; the one that your personal Big Thing calls you, and a lot of questions, but the Big Thing pushing the trolley didn't see you sneak under it, and nobody thinks to look underneath. Eventually, they give up and leave.
... okay, there's actually quite a lot of gloating. Though you'd be able to do even more if you weren't having to keep trotting along at the pace of your mobile hiding place. It was a very clever idea at first, but now it's starting to get a bit tiring. Actually no, it's getting a lot tiring. Time to switch to a more stationary one. Which is warmer. And doesn't threaten to run over your tail. You wait until you pass a promising-looking hiding place and dart out, squeezing into the gap between two vending machines and then clawing your way up the side of one to curl up on top. From your new, warm, stationary vantage points above the heads of the Big Things, you look around and survey your new domain.
After a few seconds of surveying, you come to the conclusion that the rest of the world has been very stupid and got itself hopelessly and completely lost. Honestly. How are you meant to know where you are if Everywhere Else goes and wanders off somewhere without asking you? Is it really too much to ask that places you recognise stay where you can see them?
Deciding that things will probably better after some sleep, you edge your way back near the wall and out of sight of the Big Things below you, curl up with your tail over your eyes, and go to sleep.
After a rather hazy amount of time spent napping (which is measurable only in being nowhere near long enough), you are rudely awoken! But what's causing this sudden Big Noise?
[ ] They're Dead Big Things! They smell a bit like your Big Thing, but they're not breathing and also smell a bit like Boggins - some kind of angry snarling Boggin you don't know.
[ ] Loud loud loud! It's a metal Big Thing! A metal Big Thing with a hurty-tool that's big and heavy and clanking and mean! And, uh. There's only one that you can see, but... it's scary!
[ ] They're... they're human-shaped. But they're not humans! They're Boggins in dead bodies! Horrible monster-Boggins, more powerful and scary than anything you've ever seen!
[ ] Oh, it's just some Big Things. Boring ones that are all wearing boring black and... moving like they're hunting. All as one. It's sort of creepy, and they don't smell right either.
[ ] You can't see whatever it is, but there are lots of Big Thing voices you sort of recognise, and they're coming this way quickly. Along with the smell of burning things. And loud bangs.
Looking around in confusion, outrage and fearentirely justifiable wariness, you happen to spot a moving spot of whiteness in the distance. Is... is that the Other Thing? Did it make it all the way down here? Or it maybe tried to follow you but lost your trail and now can't work out where your cunning hide-napping place is! Or maybe it's not the Other Thing at all, but is a different Other Thing entirely!
Part 4: Attack of the Big Things!
You mewl loudly, ordering the Other Thing to stop messing about getting lost and to follow you instead. It seems to ignore you - if it even is the Other Thing you think it is, and not just a Hoppy Thing that's running around this place for no good reason. The Big Things notice, though. Two of them snap around to face you, while the other three stay looking in all the other directions. You meep and cower, retreating to the back of the vending machine.
The Other Thing mewls as well.
It mewls like a Cat.
You shoot back to the front of the vending machine, outraged. Is it... it is! It's looking like an Other Cat! The... the sneak! It doesn't have the right to wear that shape! And how is it even doing that, anyway? You hiss angrily, warning it of the dire and offensive trespass it's committing upon Cattish sovereignity.
It does not seem unduly bothered by this, and merely trots closer, mewling again. The Big Things glance at it, back at you, then back to it, and appear to decide that they have better things to do.
The second they turn away, the Other Thing launches itself at the back of the closest one's head, and...
... oh You. You were taunting that? You scratched that on the nose? Eeep. Okay, perhaps you may have been... unwise, when you did that. Hasty, even. You can probably fix it. Later. Carefully. From a high vantage point.
You stay on your high perch, nestled between the vending machine and the ceiling, though you're no longer quite as sure that you're entirely safe there. It's still safer than you would be in the corridor, though. The Big Things are trying to fight back with their hurty things, but the Other Thing is very, very fast and as little as you are and can do quite amazingly horrible things to them when it connects. Two of them are already down and bleeding, and the others are starting to retreat.
You're still not entirely sure what it is, but you're starting to be convinced that it is in fact at least part Cat. Not only does it look li- okay, no, it's a slinky bitey thing again now, but it was looking like a proper Cat for a moment there - not only that, but it's also obvious just from how easily it's beating the Big Things up. The innate superiority of its Cat side must be in control at the moment.
But then, just as you start to lose interest in the foregone conclusion of the fight and begin planning how to recruit it as your personal bodyguard...
[ ] One of them pulls a tool out! It does not look like a friendly tool. It does not look like a friendly tool at all.
[ ] Something moves behind the Other Thing. A Big Big Thing, with light shining off metal where its face should be.
[ ] The Other Thing shifts again, but... it seems like it goes wrong. Stuck halfway between Cat and something else, it freezes.
[ ] Run towards. It'll protect you if it likes you!
[ ] Run away. It's scary and now it's in danger!
Part 5: Catastrophe Strikes Well. This has been fun! Aaaand now it isn't fun anymore. Because your bodyguard-to-be is losing. And there are scary Big Things that aren't dead yet. And the Other Thing isn't killing them anymore, because it's lying still on the floor and trembling.
You do note that the Big Things seem hesitant to approach it, and nod in approval. They're clever Big Things. It could be faking it; playing with them and waiting to pounce when they draw near.
... buuuut just in case it isn't, you think now would be a good time to leave anyway. Bye!
Darting down the side of the vending machine, you catch one of the Other Thing's eyes for the briefest of seconds, then make a swift about-face and engage in a brave and carefully considered strategic advance in a direction optimal to your goals. Which happens, by purest coincidence, to be in the exact opposite direction to the scary Big Things and the equally scary Other Thing. There are some noises behind you - maybe the Other Thing isn't all the way doomed after all - but you ignore them. You have committed to your course of action now. Like any good Cat, you understand the first principle of movement. Namely, that while you are moving, everything else can wait until you're finished.
Something dark and hard and Big looms up ahead of you, and you skid to a halt, fur standing on end and tail bottling out. It... it's another Big Thing! Another one of the creepy black-furred Big Things with scary tools! It must have been following the others - like a scout for a swarm of rats, but supporting from behind instead of venturing out ahead!
And it's looking right at you!
The tool - a horrible glinting thing that smells of fire and smoke and metal - swings down towards you, and you realise in horror that this Big Thing's swarm-mates have just died fighting...
... fighting a little furred thing. A little furred fast-moving thing. That looks like it's part Cat. And acted innocent and harmless at first, before suddenly attacking when it got close enough to them.
About as close as you are to it now.
No creature but a Cat would be able to react or process so quickly. It's only because you're a spectacularly clever Cat that even you are able to put the pieces together so fast. But you understand your situation with the kind of clarity that only comes at the jaws of death or the apex of dream. The Big Thing thinks you're a threat. It's going to attack you. You have one chance - one tiny, minuscule window - to make a choice and act before it does.
You make it, and move like your life depends on it.
Terribly sorry for the delay! Here, have the last part of...
Ceres Sneakily Seeks Escape
Part 6: Denouement
You run. Of course you run! You're not a fighter! You don't even like killing flies! No way are you risking yourself against a monster Big Thing with a scary bang-bang tool like this! You shoot forward at top speed, aiming just around its legs. Maybe if you're lucky it'll shoot itself in the foot instead of hitting you and then not be able to chase you down and kill you!
... you're probably not that lucky. Still, it's worth hoping. You pour on every ounce of speed you can, darting wildly left and right as a series of deafening bangs fills the confines of the corridor, and shoot past the Big Thing's feet in a blur of triumphant-
You hear one more deafening bang through the ringing in your ears, and some impossibly strong impact smashes into your back hip and flings you forward into a wall. For a second you lie there, so stunned that it doesn't even hurt very much.
Until you try to move.
You let out a high-pitched yowl of agony at the pain that shoots through your whole lower body, and turn around frantically to see what's wrong. It doesn't look good. There's... quite a lot of blood; matting your fur and pooling beneath you. Your leg and hip are at an angle that's wrong wrong wrong, and as you shift, you feel like there's gravel where your pelvis should be. Now that the initial shock is over, the pain is seeping back, too.
... there's a lot of pain. Too much to bear. Your breathing comes fast and shallow, and you find yourself keening involuntarily; a high-pitched whimpering noise that you can't seem to stop.
The Big Thing advances on you, expressionless. It levels the glinting loud metal tool.
And then something screams behind it. Even through the pain, all the fur along your back stands up and your tail bottles out. It's not a natural sound. It's not even an naturally-unnatural Boggin sound, and some of the sounds they make are really disturbing. It's something horrible and angry and not Cat or Big Thing or Little Thing or even Other Thing. Something Alien.
The Big Thing gets halfway through bringing its tool around, and then its head isn't there anymore. Nestled on the stump is a white monstrosity. Pincers and stingers and claws and teeth all cut through the air, and in between them are nestled dozens of beady black eyes, glittering with betrayal and rage and hatred and focused on you.
You'd quite like to say that no Cat worth her salt would be intimidated by anything that wasn't another Cat, and even then they wouldn't show it, but quite frankly Catkind as a whole can go shove its head in a dog kennel on that score right now. You freeze; too scared even to move. Not that you could.
Your only thought as it leaps for you is a somewhat melancholy realisation that you'll never get to see your Big Thing again. She always pampers you after she does something mean like putting you in an invisible box or feeding you yucky things. You'd have liked to be petted one more time before dying.
As last thoughts go, you suppose it's not a very good one.
But as it turns out, it's not your last, either. Mid-leap, the thrashing ball of pain and death just... comes apart. It doesn't even seem to realise it; the eyes still staring wildly at you as it goes from a single ball of finely focused murder into a dozen globs of half-formed... goo.
... of course, some of the goo-globs still have sharp bits, and they're all still coming toward you at speed, so maybe you were a bit early in thinking you were-
Blackness.
... light. Slow and grey, but there. You blink slowly and take stock.
You're still in the corridor - well, a corridor, lying against a wall in a little huddled heap. There's no sign of any Big Things, alive or dead. Nor is the Alien Thing in sight, save for a gooey dried residue in your fur. Eww! You'll have to clean that out. Though, uh. Possibly not with your tongue, in case it tries to kill you again.
On the unambiguously positive side, you don't hurt anymore! Well, no. You do; a sort of low-level achiness all through you. But your legs don't hurt. And... yes, you can stand! You examine the injury as best you can, and save for a thin white stripe of fur where the blood was coming from, it looks more or less normal. A few careful steps reveal slightly wobbly back legs, but no limp or jagged pain.
You trot off, calculating. You're not sure where you are, but you don't want to risk encountering any more Big Things like the one that hurt you. Or another Alien Thing. You hope that the first one is really properly dead. Yes, you think. You'll find some stairs and head downwards, find somewhere to curl up, and wait for your Big Thing to show up. She usually does, when she and the rest of your home get lost while you're exploring. Eventually.
After... um, quite a long time spent wandering, with several strategic naps, you eventually come across a big dark space full of the loud rumbly Big Things that Big Things ride around. One of these should be a good place to take another short nap - underneath it, since you can't get inside them. Though soon you're going to have to find something to eat. You're hungry.
Something trills behind you. You turn to see, and scream. It... it's the Alien Thing! It doesn't look as murderous anymore, appearing as a white Cat, but you're not going to hang around to wait for it. You bolt for the nearest Big Riding Thing and-
-sort of-
-flow.
You blink. You're inside the Big Riding Thing. You're... not sure how? You can't have Doorslipped in, you didn't have a sacrifice. And there were no holes big enough for you to squirm through. But you definitely remember sort of squirming in. Through a hole which, when you examine it, isn't even big enough for you to fit your paw through.
... that is very confusing. You decide to focus on the positives. There's no sign of the Alien Thing, at least! But... oh no! You're trapped again! Caught between indignation and fear, you make a thorough investigation of your surroundings for any way out.
Aha! There's a tool thing you recognise! You've seen a tool thing like this tool thing before! It is another of the Big Thing tool thing secrets you know. Your Big Thing uses a tool thing like this to make food happen! She just presses bits of it with her thumbs and then there's food!
Sadly, you don't have thumbs. You consider the tool thing carefully for a moment, and then experimentally walk over it.
Nothing happens. Your eyes narrow. You walk over it again in the other direction, mewl imperiously, and sit on the largest button.
It beeps, says something in Big Thingese, and the succulent aroma of meat fills the little space.
You nod happily, tuck in, and survey your new kingdom as you eat. It's still a little below your standards, but... you suppose this will do as a place to wait for your Big Thing. For now.
-----
Achievement: Ceres Survived! (Well done!) Achievement: Ceres Escaped! (Triumph!) Achievement: Ceres has gained new Tricks! Addition: ... as well as Fluffles-hallucinations. Addition: She is truly a proper SeraKitty now.
Missed Opportunity: Ceres did not gain a loyal Fluffles-bodyguard. Missed Opportunity: Ceres did not singlepawedly defeat a Big Thing. Missed Opportunity: Ceres did not gain a Legendary Trait or Reputation.
THE END
Side Story: At Civilisation's Door; Janice I: Unplugged
It's a cold January morning in New York. Slush from snow overnight has turned a dirty brown. The subways and the sewers are steaming. In Queens, a woman wearing dark glasses despite the dull overcast day gets off a bus, helped by another shorter woman. They take a circuitous route despite how the glasses-wearing woman has to pause for breath, and enter an alleyway, letting themselves in one of the side doors. Their path takes them downstairs, down into the basement of the apartment complex and then further down.
Down into a part of New York that the city has forgotten about. The buildings up above might have been built in the seventies, all blocky and grey and square, but they'd been built over a derelict art deco townhouse from the twenties.
In this basement under the basement, the overly large boiler room and utilities room of the townhouse has taken on new life. Literally. There are plants everywhere, being fed by sunlamps. Some of them are plants the cops would be quite interested to know about, but the people who are let in here aren't exactly the sort to be very friendly to institutional authority so it all works out.
Chris helps Janice to sit, fussing over her. She's a short Lebanese-American woman, with long glossy black hair. Her habitual long sleeves cover up the long self-inflicted scars on her arms, but once she removes her winter coat the tattoos which cover her torso can be seen poking out. "Maybe this was a bad idea," she worries out loud. "You shouldn't have been out and about. Not until you've built your strength up a bit more." She looks around. "Hey, Luke? Where's the coffee?"
A black man with long bleached-blonde dreadlocks pokes his head in the door. He's wearing lipstick and a satiny purple shirt. "They're over there in the corner," he says with a flap of his hand. "Trying something new and-" He trails away. "Oh! Janice!"
Weakly she lifts her left hand, and waves at him. "Hey, Luke."
He marches over, wrapping his big hands around her wrists. "You're… you're so thin," he says, before wrapping her up in a big, warm perfumed hug. "So glad to have you back."
"Yeah. I am." Janice removes her black glasses, to reveal bloodshot eyes. When she was a kid, everyone said that too much telly would make you go blind. Well, too long in VR certainly weakens the eyes. She's having problems with her pupils, which are too dilated and are letting in too much light. She gets splitting headaches outside.
"Well, we can't be having that," Luke says, marching over to some of the bushes. He plucks several herbs and fruit, and digs up some roots off a woody plant. Turning on the little electric cooker, he starts melting down a bar of dark chocolate, stirring the herbs into this. "We need to get some meat back on your bones."
"Not too fast," Janice says weakly. "I'm already pushing myself. Do it too much, and my body'll rebel."
"Don't you trust me?" Luke says, pouting. He grabs some juniper berries off a bush. "I'll fix you up good, trust me on that."
She smiles at him. Luke is a good friend. "Thanks."
"I'm so glad you're okay," he says, as he cooks up something which is half witch's brew and half hot chocolate with marshmallows. He doesn't believe that potions have to taste nasty. "We were so worried and then when Chris got the phone-call from your familiar… well. I feared the worst."
She slumps down. "It was too close," she says, admitting it for the first time. "Far too close."
Chris has plucked some of Luke's basement grown self-drying coffee, and has begun to grind it up with a mortar and pestle. She's not great with coffee, but he makes it easy with his special plants. "So," she says adding the water, then stripping off her hair ties to let out her hair. It moves on its own like living limbs, unless she keeps it bound down with rowan and silk ties, and sometimes tries to kill her if she doesn't use the special shampoo a friend of theirs brews up using chicken blood. It's the product of a curse from a Wu-Keng sorcerer who tried to sacrifice her to his demonic lords - an encounter which also left her with several of the self-inflicted scars on her arms as she spent her own lifeblood for power. "Where's the milk?"
She is directed to the milk.
"So," she says again, after adding milk and about four spoonfuls of sugar to her coffee. "Jan, you've been holding out on the full details. So what happened? Is the Digital Web falling apart or something? I mean, I don't use it as much as you, but still, I haven't touched it since you got trapped."
Luke glares at her. "Chris!"
"What! I want to know!" Chris flops down, curling up on a beanbag and letting her hair support the full weight of the mug. "Come on!"
"And do you want to know?" Janice asks Luke as he passes her the thing he's been preparing for her. She takes a sip. It's hot and bitter and rich, but her eyes do feel better now.
He flaps a hand at her. "Just glad to have you back."
"Liar," she says fondly.
"You know me too well, madame. Yeah, I'd like to know." He flops down, and lights up a hand-rolled cigarette. "And it'll do you good to get it off your shoulders. A burden shared is a burden lessened."
"Well." Janice sips again, and tries not to wince at the aftertaste.
"Too hot?"
"A bit hot," she says, trying not to hurt his feelings. She sighs. "Well, I guess… here goes."
She doesn't tell them everything. She doesn't lie, but she doesn't say everything. She doesn't mention the things she doesn't understand. She doesn't refer to the way she's feeling… a bit complicated about Donald, although she does call him a big huge fat jerk because he's all of those things - well, apart from fat. And there are some experiences she had in there which are too private, that no one who wasn't there would understand.
But yes, there are also a few things she doesn't mention because she's a veteran. She's been a witch for over a decade. And one of the thing you learn is how to keep well clear of trouble and whatever the fuck happened in the Demise is full of trouble. It's the kind of trouble that has too much attention from the kind of seriousface Etherites who are a little too close to the Void Engineers and the kind of seriousface Euthanatoi who can just about be told apart from the NWO if you squint. The Technocrats in the Demise were calling it an alien - and while old school Verbena are meant to insist that there's no such thing as aliens, just spirits… fuck that, there's totally aliens out there.
No one says that aliens can't know the secrets of life and head forth from their homeworlds to do what they will, for good or ill.
And some of the things in there could definitely pass as aliens. Like those fucking mind-eating metal worms that fused with people and dragged them offline. She's almost certain they were taking people over. And she's willing to bet that the people they grabbed have either gone mysteriously missing or they've gone 'mysteriously missing', depending on whether demonhunters got to them before they could vanish.
A month ago, she'd have been protesting that there had to be a way to save them. She's not prepared to take that risk now. Not if more of those slithering metal worms that have joined her nightmares are out there.
That's not the kind of trouble she wants - not for her, not for her friends.
"... well, once we got through the moon-bridge, I could follow my lifeline back to my body," Janice concludes. "I kept well clear of the 'Crats and made sure they weren't following me." She swirls the dregs. "I hope that's enough. Sykes is working for Jamelia Belltower now, and that woman is dangerous."
Something about the idea of going near the Grey Woman terrifies her more than feels right for a rational fear of elite Operatives. It feels too... personal. Janice is not sure why, but she listens to her gut.
But she does feel better after getting most of it out. And drinking the brew, of course. Her eyes don't hurt from the light, and she can see that her wrists have regained some weight. It's the power of natural herbs and home medicine.
Luke exhales a blue cloud. "Shit," he says, taking another drag. "I was worried about you, yeah. And shit was even worse than I thought."
Getting up, Chris goes to make herself another coffee. The electric lighting hums. "What do you reckon it was?" she asks.
Janice shakes her head. "Some kind of spirit of computers, or maybe an alien AI," she says. "I'm keeping well away. I… I don't want it going after me again."
"Yeah. Yeah. I can see that."
"So," Janice says. "Enough about me. What've I missed?"
She listens to them, but she finds herself drifting. Thinking about other things. One thing in particular. Something Chris mentions sends her mind darting off down other paths.
Maybe she can't cope with the lack of stress, she thinks darkly. Nothing's tried to kill her for at least a day. That's weird. She's not used to it. Her legs are shaking and she has a nervous twitch that won't go away until she calls on Artemis to give her the peace of the hunter.
"Dollar for your thoughts?" asks Chris, eyes half-lidded. She's noticed that Janice's mind has wandered. She checks her purse. "Well, okay, uh… fifty one, two... fifty six cents? Okay, wow, think you're going to have to cover my bus ride back, yeah? But you're tense an' all distracted. What's bugging you?"
Yes. We're back to ES Side Quests. In the case of this one, it's here to give people some fun with non-ex-Technocratic non-sneaky-dressing-in-black Traditionalists.
The default setting? Wow very shocking much amazing.
And thus as part of the vote, I'm going to demonstrate that I have in fact learned from the early votes of Sera Super Special Seductive Sneaky Spoileriffic Side Story, and present a better-handled "Choose your path for this side story" vote that does not, in fact, merely rely on vague imagery.
(Of course, some of the clues may in fact be lies, but that's always a risk.)
What is Janice thinking of?
[ ] The nightmares and how they're getting worse
Linked Background: Past Lives
Potential Factors: Progenitors, the High Umbra, Under the Table Contacts, Drugs
[ ] How Luke said they haven't heard anything from Josh - and how he'd said he was having problems with Knight Industries
Linked Background: Chantry
Potential Factors: Syndic Interference (Possibly From Roth), Going Up Against Someone With Echoes (Batman) And Finding Yourself Cast As A Themed Supervillain By Reality Itself
[ ] She went to the Demise that fateful night to find someone who might know the.., the thing (possibly the Thing) down in the subway network. She didn't find out enough.
[ ] DNA worries her. As does the fact that Chris has an on-and-off thing with a werewolf. And the fact that both of them seem to be after a sacred place she controlled right until she went AWOL due to being in a coma.
Janice rolls her shoulders. A little bit of her is impressed at how fast Luke's brew has fixed her up. She feels brimming with energy, even if she's floaty and distractable. She'll probably crash tonight because her body's put a lot of work into getting better, but for now she's in a slightly altered state of consciousness that just allows her to think more clearly.
"I'm worried about what the reactionaries are going to make of me showing back up alive," she says bluntly, keeping an eye on Luke. He winces, which says enough. "What've you heard?"
Luke hunches his shoulders up, the mud-stained satin crumpling. "Not much good, darling," he says miserably. "I don't want to worry you about-"
"Worry me," she orders. "I'm not getting you in trouble just because I disappointed a bunch of arch-conservatives by not dying."
Chris takes a sip of her coffee, and winces. "Needs something sweeter," she says, getting up and going looking for the honey. "Okay, right-right, so I was doing stuff over near Boston with Selene and her lot had some people who were being well-smug about the way that so many tech-friendly Trads had clearly been taken down by a 'Crat betrayal and even though you got that message out and stuff they were calling it 'Crat lies. One of them even said you'd totally defected-slash-been brainwashed and any message from you couldn't be trusted."
"I see," Janice says thinly. She had worried about that. "And you're not afraid of that?"
"Nah," Chris says, flapping her hand. "I kept an eye on your aura as soon as your familiar told me. I'd have seen if they were doing things to your head! There would have been all kinds of murky and metally colours there! You were doing some really strange things - no wonder you got better with the Art! But no brainwashing! Luke can back me up too!"
"I looked at your hair, mixed it up with some things, and saw the patterns it made when I threw the mix in the fire," Luke agrees, leaning in to give her a hug. "You were very stressed, but your mind remained yours."
"Thank you," she says. She means it. She isn't sure how she'd cope with betrayal from her allies as well as the people who were already gunning for her going after her. "So. How bad do you think it is, Chris?"
"Not great," Chris says, stirring the honey in. She pokes one of the little fans that Luke uses to encourage his bonsai fruit trees to grow as if they were exposed to a great gale. "Like, you have to remember how it was for us lot. For the past month, a lot of moderates were missing, and guys like us were running around trying to save you. The people who aren't so fond of the sort of stuff that people who hang out in the Demise do? They've been around."
"And then there was the whole shitstorm in Mexico at Christmas," Luke adds.
"Wait, what?"
"You mean you… I guess you ain't caught up yet." Luke shakes his head. "Something big and weird happened in Mexico City on Christmas Day."
"What."
"Fuck knows. Freak snowstorms, the place got smashed up, and the 'Crats went into 'you're not cleared for that' mode. My guess is that whatever happened to Moscow? Nearly happened there, too - but this time the 'Crats did better." He shrugs. "I've been scrying the future to see if something big is going to NY, but I think we're clear - though it's a bit foggy. My guess is that everyone else is doing that and it's interfering with my spell."
Janice shakes her head. "Wow. 2015. Screw that year."
"I know, right?" Luke takes her empty mug. "I see that look in your eye which says you're getting all stubborn-like," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "Can you at least give me a day before you go throw yourself into something?"
Janice pulls herself to her feet. "It's not that easy," she says. "I need to make sure that the reactionaries don't start pushing their own version of ideological purity. Because," she shivers, and feels something grab her tongue, "purity of intent is our foe. The wolves in the darkness are pure and so they will destroy us if they can. To compromise is human. They cannot tolerate that." The prophecy leaves her tongue, and she sags down.
Chris leans forwards, eyes alert. "That wasn't you speaking, was it?" she asks rhetorically.
"No," Janice confirms. She can feel the tiredness creeping in, as if the force of prophecy used up her strength. She doesn't know where this curse - or possibly talent - came from, but she's been a seer ever since she learned to use magic. Sometime's it's useful. Most of the time it's annoying and uncontrollable and she has to drug herself up to record herself babbling and try to use it to pluck secrets out of the future.
"Wolves in the darkness? Could it be about the Shadow Lords?" Chris ponders out loud, running her hands through her hair.
Janice shakes her head helplessly. "I don't know," she says. "But… I think we should keep our eyes open. And," she sighs. "We three should pray first, and honour the gods and goddesses and any other spirits who are listening. We will need all the blessings we can get for what is to come. I'm going to have to 'prove' to the reactionaries that I'm not an enemy of Ascension - and that my prophecy warned about excess purity is…"
"Freaky," Luke says firmly.
"... yeah," she agrees. "Maybe it's trying to warn me. But if we just let them turn on me… damn it. Rock and a hard place."
Chris manages a shuddery smile. "We haven't been able to do a proper ceremony with you gone," she agrees. "It doesn't feel right when we bring someone else in to replace you as the third. Hey, Luke, where's the candles?"
"Same place they always are," the man retorts, going to the rat-traps to pick out a sacrifice.
"Uh…"
"Probably in the cupboards over in the boiler room, unless you've moved them," Janice contributes. It's… it's good to be back among friends. There was nothing like this kind of homey comfort in the Demise. And with a chance to honour the spiritual, she'll be better placed and prepared to face what comes. It's hard being a witch on your own. It's easier with others around.
"No, no, they were somewhere else because I looked there last time I was around," Chris says over her thoughts, digging through a cupboard. "At least, I can swear they are. Oh, I hope some tricksy little goblin isn't stealing them..."
Janice needs to find some support from the hardliners who aren't naturally her friends, to solidify her position and prevent any awkward allegations being thrown around by reactionaries who don't like her. She needs allies - or at least acquaintances - who can't be dismissed as a bunch of techno-friendly liberals. Who's going to be the first group she's going to talk to?
Pick Your Poison
[ ] The Witch-Women of Massachusetts (x1.5)
When it comes down to it, Janice's group are wishy-washy modernist Verbenas. There are others. The nearest large Verbena coven's up in MA, and while they have a similar number of mages, their allies and consors are a much more tightknit group. This coven dates back to the days before the American Revolution, and the same matrilineal bloodline's been leading it all the time. The witch-hunts in the dark old days of the province? Yes, they were aimed at them.
Their leader, Selene, is a modernist by the standards of her family. Which is to say, she actually recruits people who get in via the crystals and herbs routes and has a telephone in the house. She does not have a television. She has hardly thrown any people into the creek near to their town as sacrifices to the bloody-handed spirits who have been here since before white men came to these lands. Another way that she's a dangerous liberal compared to her now-deceased mother is that she's not actively a member of the Rogue Council, mostly because she's too stiff and upright to get involved, but she has strong sympathies that way. In her perfect world, everyone would just leave her and her people alone. She hasn't spent much time around normal society - and it shows. She knows that Janice's lot are much better at acting in the world of the Sleepers - but her and Janice really don't get on well.
Oh, and she's one of Chris's girlfriends, an expert at magical tattoos and scarification, and despite the fact that she's a hidebound traditionalist who only grudgingly uses things invented in the last fifty years, people respect her in a way that they don't quite respect Janice. She might not approve of original and novel ways of practicing the Art, but she's thrown her life into trying to save and recover as much of what the Verbena lost in '99. She bleeds rather than compromise, accepting the lash of a hostile world rather than bow and abandon the Old Magics. Her tuition is the reason Chris is, at a technical level, a much better witch than Janice.
[ ] The Sons of Liberty
The Sons of Liberty are a quasi-public nativist non-profit organisation who have the stated aim of opposing Big Government, attempts to subvert the God-given rights of the Constitution and to preserve the American way of life against the subversive efforts of the ivory tower elite and the UN. This makes them an awkward ally of convenience for Janice, who disagrees with them on basically everything that isn't 'we don't like the Technocracy'. She suspects that the Technocracy leaves them alone because they drive off young cosmopolitan mages with their social reactionary causes: they probably consider her to parrot the Union's political correctness and assertive liberalism.
Yet in their own way, they're moderates when viewed from some angles in the Traditionalist frame. The armed American arcanists who make up their inner circle commonly make use of technomagic and a fair number of them have patched-together paradigms. They're a cross-Tradition group and they have a fair number of sorcerers and consors on-side. Because they consider the forces of Big Government to be the enemy, they're willing to hold their nose and associate with mages who they consider to be politically repulsive if they're fighting the Good Cause. They don't have much patience for in-Traditions political backstabbing. As far as they consider it, society can be won over from the Technocracy. They just need the right people to take charge, backed by the silent majority of the population who aren't comfortable with what the Technocracy is doing to the world. Which means she won't be put on kill lists just for associating with them - though she may feel like she needs to scrub herself down.
Oh, and avoid getting in IRL internet arguments with them.
[ ] The Illuminated Brethren (x1.2)
Sufficiently wealthy Hermetics are indistinguishable from Syndics. That might summarise Janice's opinion of the Illuminated Brethren, who rub her entirely the wrong way as a collection of freemason-like conspirators among the wealthy of New York. Bankers, socialites, debutantes - they all get together in secret places and dress up in ridiculous robes and carry out rituals for good luck and good health. And because they're so very wealthy and have such a long heritage in New York, they have a lot of influence among what's been rebuilt of the Traditionalist power structures. The lictor is one of them, and they certainly have enough Big Law partners to be able to effectively sway any special convocation should someone be accused of being an enemy of Ascension.
They're obsessed with standards and formalism. There is a proper way for things to be done, and they insist upon it should other mages approach them. They look down on… well, anyone who isn't a Hermetic, but they especially look down on people who don't put the effort in to approaching them. If she goes to them as a supplicant, they'll try to get as much use from her as they can - and probably act like she's a servant or something insulting. On the plus side, they're so stiff and formal they're unlikely to act against her without formal accusations and the like. Janice also knows for a fact that pretty much none of them can pull off a fast spell without a ritual taking several minutes - but the bastards are rich enough to acquire magical treasures and artefacts from other places, the older the better. And are always interested in acquiring more.
[ ] Disciples of Kaczynski (x0.8)
The Disciples of Kaczynski are a product of one of the Technocracy's bigger fuck-ups in the 1990s. The anarchoprimitivist Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber - and a product of MK ULTRA experimentation in his youth - published Industrial Society and its Future (commonly referred to as the Unabomber Manifesto), a sweeping condemnation of modernism and industrialism. He sent copies of the text to many major media organisations, offering to cease his bombing campaign.
The Watchers made the decision to allow the publishing of a censored version of the manifesto to aid in the search for him. Unfortunately, the expurgation did not manage to catch the subtle thread running through the text. No fewer than twenty people are known to have Awakened after reading this document - a genius-level Primer the man had been working on for almost thirty years - and most of them have assumed radical anti-modernist mindsets which seem to almost supplant their former selves.
Six of the original Disciples still survive, and others have been introduced to the surviving copies of the text to bulk out their numbers. The Disciples are a very dangerous actively anti-Technocracy group operating across the United States making use of a cell structure, deliberate isolation from the power structures of society and a savant-level understanding of the ways that the Union tries to hunt them. Janice considers them very, very dangerous - but their credentials in opposing the Technocracy are impeccable and they'll fight to protect anyone they consider a friend. She's had a few contacts with the leaders of the cell in New York - who live like wild men in abandoned basements in Brooklyn - and she thinks she'll be able to get a meeting.
[ ] The Club
Look, Janice kinda enjoyed Fight Club when she saw it. These guys? They take it way, way too far. And they're Ecstatics, too. The kind of Ecstatic who get their rush from adrenaline, and see through the lies and the deception of society by being powerless and poor and beating each other up in abandoned warehouses. She's seen some of them literally take an Akashic beating to the chest and laugh through the pain, then floor the kung fu monk. Weirdly enough, they've also picked up some young disaffected sorts who she'd usually expect to gravitate straight to the Virtual Adept Cyberpunks.
Somehow they mostly pass under the Technocracy's radar. Maybe it's because they keep their violence small scale and targeted. They're associated with the Rogue Council, but they're not the sorts to do big scale actions - not like the Monstermen who are utterly nuts Etherites who believe in breeding ecological predators to take down mankind. No, these weirdos will put time into beating up a single clerk at the DMV, or mugging an off-duty cop. That's just how they get their power, by acting against society without chaining themselves in its lies. And she can predict what they'd want her to do - stand against them in one of their pit fights. They probably wouldn't kill her. But there's a lot you can live through when people around know healing spells.
[ ] The Golden Chalice (x0.8)
Those Euthanatos snakes have a member in a cabal in New York. She could certainly talk to them and see what they could do about this problem. And they almost certainly won't kill her as she really isn't compromised by the Technocracy, and they'll probably be really helpful.
The problem will be the price. It always is with them. Always. "No such thing as a free lunch", that's a motto of the Syndicate and the Euthanatoi alike. She's heard of some of the things people who owe debts to the Golden Chalice dragged into. At least with Rogue Council sympathisers, she can back out if they ask for something she's not willing to pay.
Okay, so Janice is heading up to New Salem. Chris is coming along with her, while Luke stays behind to hold down the fort in New York - and also because he's a much more ritual focussed mage who isn't so great when having to act on the fly.
So that means you get the basic paradigms of the group, so you can put some thought into non-Technocratic paradigms and how to cast with them.
Janice Moulin
Virtue&Vice: Explorer/Celebrant - Janice is curious, a born experimenter, and loves finding new things out. There's an edge of obsession under her curiosity, though, and a burning fire which means she throws herself into any cause she finds. She has a mind like a locomotive - powerful, but hard to divert.
The embarrassing thing, Janice knows, is that by most reckonings she's not a very good Verbena. She Awakened in 2003, and the entire teaching structure had basically collapsed in '99. Her first mentor was barely more experienced than she was, and they basically managed to kludge some magic together from leftover books and pop-culture rituals. She didn't have a real apprenticeship to a more experienced witch - she learned more from Hermetics, Ecstatics and applying her own training as a psychiatric nurse to magic as she did from any old crone. Her attempts to find a mentor in her past lives left her haunted with nightmares which still won't go away, a decade on.
Her paradigm is not very rigorous, and derives from 'things she has found to work'. The unifying element is not any core school or principle of thought - it is instead her iron-hard determination and certainty that the world must be made a better place. So she'll invoke Greek or Norse gods with equal equanimity, and pick from pantheons based on her needs. She doesn't believe that anyone has the right concept of the gods, and that everyone is just trying to name fundamental principles of the universe through their own limited insight. There is undoubtedly a sun-god, but Apollo and Ra are both names for lesser aspects of that principle of the universe - so by honouring one of them, one can shape the results. Sometimes one needs to invoke Artemis, and other times Astarte or Inanna would be more useful.
Before her Awakening, she was a trainee psychiatric nurse, and sometimes she wonders what things would have been like if the Progenitors had found her first. She dropped out, but she's carried on her study on her own and knows too well the power of words and prejudice that the Technocracy has ingrained in society. She'll mix conventional medicine and natural remedies - although she prefers using natural remedies on the grounds that she can't always trust drugs that the Technocracy might have tampered with. She's built up a wide array of 'things she knows that work', but when she has to improvise she tends to throw things together and hope for the best, and never gets around to cleaning up the spells she invents on the fly. She sometimes gets wild magic-like effects on spells she isn't using rotes for.
She's conversant with computers, statistics and modern technology (hence the WickedWitchOfTheWeb monicker) and knows very well how to play off expectations, prejudice and appearance to achieve her goals. She's dabbled in blood magic and Hermeticism alike, and has personally stripped several rituals down to their core elements through trial and error, removing all that junk that Hermetics put in to something she can pull off on the fly with cheap materials she has on hand. She's also an experienced astral voyager, and maps out those places in the High Umbra as a hobby. Her casting is frequently bastardised and post-modern, and when things go wrong the Paradox backlashes can be dangerously unpredictable.
The fact that she's now worryingly senior among the modern Traditions and - even more crucially - has respect as someone with contacts and hooks in the world of the Sleepers - well, some oldschool witches take it as an insult and consider her little more than an Orphan parading around with stolen magic. Usually she doesn't care. Bigotry and prejudice is the same everywhere, whether it's being maintained by the power structures of Sleeper society or by stuck-up witches who tell her she's wrong to manipulate people by picking out a business suit and being white and well-spoken. She's not going to bow to them and their preference that she'd dabble with pins and wax dolls. But sometimes it causes trouble.
Appearance-wise, while back in the day she was a too-thin neopagan with dyed green hair, these days she's a lot more superficially respectable. She's put on weight and dyes her hair to cover that she's going grey at the temples, and puts effort into dressing like a professional. The time in the Demise has left her with bags under her eyes and a nervous air that she tries to hide - she looks like she's tired and running on caffeine. Which admittedly helps the appearance of an urban professional in NY. She keeps prepared charms and material for workings hidden in her handbag and in her jacket, and a small icon of Mary in a locket that she uses for invoking the Mother Goddess.
Tradition: Verbena (post-modernist, technodigm-adapted, open paradigm) Avatar Essence: Questing (doesn't show itself, despite her best efforts) Arete: 4 Magic: Mind 4 (Social Justice), Forces 4 (Weather Control), Entropy 4 (Hex Girl), Spirit 3, Life 2, Correspondence 2, Prime 2, Time 1 (Time 2 as an uncontrolled Sphere) WP: 9 Notable other traits: Has a black cat (named Seth) as a witch's familiar. Bard's Tongue flaw - will sometimes blurt out unwanted truths. Haunted by nightmares of a past life where she was some kind of serial killer.
(Yes, she also went through the training-from-Hell of the Demise)
Christina Khoury
Virtue&Vice: Jester / Fanatic - Chris is light-hearted and whimsical, and likes people to get along. Janice has seen her darker side, though - and had to pin her down and force her to sleep when it was that or let her drag herself out of bed half-dead. The need for revenge gnaws away under her smiling surface.
Blood is power. Blood is life. A former blood doll and now-active vampire hunter, Christina (Chris to her friends) knows that all too well. All power truly springs from hot blood and its shedding, whether willing or not. And vampires are the worst parasites, who take everything from people and turn people into monsters like them.
Her childhood was a seemingly normal suburban childhood. Her Christian father left Lebanon in the aftermath of the civil war, migrating to the USA where he'd married her mother. It was only when her parents' marriage broke down that she found out from her mother that he had been a member of a Maronite militia heavily involved in the Karantina massacre. From thereon in, things just seemed to spiral down and she wound up running away from home when she was fifteen. And then things really took a turn for the worse. She wound up in bad company, and fairly soon she was getting her kicks from having the undead chewing on her neck. She Awoke on the edge of death in bloody circumstances invoking a sorcerer-ally of the vampires, and the next day she slipped out of the house, anaemic and sick and with a demon fighting for control of her body, following the trail of a great snake which led her to the Verbena.
Her time in New Salem helped her piece her life back together (and also get the demon under control). She was Selene's first student, and in time her lover, but the quiet and peace there wasn't for her - and the knowledge that the vampires were out there gnawed at her. Against her better judgement, Selene directed her to Janice, and for the past few years they've run together. She's surprisingly subtle when it suits her, and she trusts that Janice is with her against the vampires.
Despite appearances, Chris is in fact a much better Verbena at a technical level than Janice. She's been taught in a proper, formal style and knows a far more comprehensive set of invocations and evocations of the New England school of magic, which she uses to track and kill vampires. She is very much not a Wiccan - she's learned in the old bloody styles, worshipping gods that have names that very few Sleepers have ever heard of. Gods like Eligos, known only in obscure demonology texts as a prince of hell but who they know to be a god of knowledge who discovers hidden things and knows the future of wars and how soldiers should meet. She knows that the Romans lied and claimed that Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars were male to cover up the hidden female pantheon of the Old Faith before them. Despite that, she has learned some of Janice's more flexible tricks, even if she will prick her fingers to let out blood before she uses them.
She finds it hard to cast without rituals or preparation if she doesn't shed blood, hers or others. Her arms are covered in self-inflicted scars from such times. The tattoos that sprawl over her torso each have a specific function, and are made of a mix of her blood and exotic strange ingredients that let her call on powers. For example, the kraken that sprawls across the small of her back was made with box jellyfish venom, among other things, and so she can produce such venom in her body if she chooses. Most of her spontaneous effects only affect herself, because within her own body she can use the power of her blood to wonderful ends. And of course, she can burn vampires alive with the stolen power within their flesh.
Christina is in her early twenties, has olive skin and grey eyes, and dresses like she gets all her clothes from rummage shops. Because - excluding the nice business dress that Janice insisted she get - she does. Her hair is black and glossy and she pays attention to it in a way that she doesn't for the rest of her appearance, because she has to maintain the workings that keep the demon trapped in it. She lives off the grid, bouncing between floors to sleep on and a few place she's found in the city that no one remembers. She's not hiding from the Technocracy - she's hiding from the Camarilla. That it also protects her from the 'Crats is just an added bonus.
Tradition: Verbena (Traditional, blood-magic-centric) Avatar Essence: Primordial (appears as a great feathered serpent) Arete: 3 Magic: Entropy 3, Primal Vigour 3, Life 3, Forces 2, Death 1, Correspondence 1, Mind 1. Has a Life 4 Shapechange rote which lets her assume other shapes by inflicting at least one lethal health level on them and daubing herself in their blood. Notable other traits: Determined vampire hunter. Incredibly agile and skilled at parkour. Arcane 4 - lives off the grid, has abandoned her old life. Several on-off boyfriends/girlfriends (one is a werewolf, another is a faerie). Has a shadowy demon living in her hair - caused by a botched possession attempt - which can use spirit charms if she bargains with it, but must be fed on blood and will take hers if she doesn't provide it with prey. Paradox when using it as a focus risks it possessing her or otherwise affecting her mind.
Luke DeGrasse
Virtue&Vice: Chameleon/Penitent - Luke gets things done when he takes on different roles and faces. He's a good actor, and Janice isn't sure that the him he is around her is really who the real him is - or even if there is a real him. She knows there's something terrible in his past, though, which he tries to avoid.
Luke doesn't like to talk about his past. He's from somewhere in the Deep South, and as a queer African American who wears lipstick and spends some time living as a woman he's implied that he got away from home as soon as possible. Anyway, according to him - said with a smile and a small wave - he much prefers the weather up here, so why would he want to go home? He and Janice met at the chantry when she moved to NY, and theirs is a comfortable friendship where he's often the voice of reason, as an easy-going anarchist of the kind who doesn't really see the need larger power structures.
Magically speaking, he's not formally a member of any Tradition, but as far as Janice is concerned he's with the Verbena even if some of the old school sorts refuse to recognise him on the grounds that he's entirely self-taught and doesn't honour any gods. He doesn't seem to care about the Traditions as a group anyway - he cares about his friends and hangs with the Traditions on the grounds that the Technocracy would stop him doing what he wants to with his plants.
He's a herbologist and potion-maker, mostly. He's got a basement where he grows things. Ironically enough, most of the plants he does things with are perfectly legal, but he has to get equipment meant for drug dealers even if all he's growing are tiny bonsai apple trees or fresh rosemary or chilli. He runs the defences for the node, and the plants he grow gather the tass in highly potent forms. That means he's one of the main ways their group obtains money and favours, because several other groups in the NY area will pay well for tiny bonsai apples which heal wounds or coffee which speeds up your thoughts - even if they do taste quite bad. He says that's just the node, unfortunately.
Luke is a man of a little below average height, with long, bleached-blond dreadlocks. His age is hard to tell, because he shifts his features with the things he brews up, but Janice guesses he's in his forties or fifties. He has a burn mark on his right arm which doesn't change no matter what he does to his shape.
Tradition: Technically unaffiliated, de facto Verbena (self-taught, plants and potions-centric) Arete: 3 Avatar Essence: Static (He won't say how his Avatar appears) Magic: Life 3, Time 2 (Time 3 as ritual sphere), Mind 2, Matter 2, Primal Vigour 2, Primal Vigour 4 rote which lets him make living Talismans but only with plants, Correspondence 3 Warding rote which must be anchored in a prepared ritual space filled with living things (hiding in the life force of the planet) Notable other traits: Primarily ritual-focussed as a mage. Frequently changes his appearance and sometimes his sex. Refuses to talk about his past, but sometimes gets melancholy and refers darkly to the idea that he's somehow cursed or doomed.
Notes on Primal Vigour
Several (but not all) of the Verbena characters here have Primal Vigour in place of Prime. Primal Vigour is a closely related sphere more akin to Data in how much it differs from the default than DSci.
The major meaningful difference here is that the relative difficulty of doing Prime-y things to living things and inanimate things is flipped. Power lies in life and blood, not in cold inanimate things, and that means that - for example - it's Primal Vigour 4 to turn a living being into a living Talisman, but Primal Vigour 5 to make an inanimate Talisman. Common ways of enhancing a living being include ritual behaviour, scarification, tattooing, prohibitions and bans that must be obeyed, and suchlike.
Primal Vigour is far from ubiquitous among Verbena mages. It requires a strongly vitalist paradigm that considers it easier to imbue a living being with power than to - say - make a ritual sacrifice knife. Such mages will frequently use their own flesh as a source of quintessence, and are stereotypically rather more willing to practice living sacrifice.
The car is parked in a slushy lot outside the rest stop. They'd had to stop so Chris could go to the bathroom, and right now Janice is feeling ill at ease. Sure, she's borrowing a fifteen year old clunker just in case someone was following her and it had been making grinding noises, but… for the engine to cut out now didn't seem good. And it was meant to be easy! Just a four hour drive. She keeps her eyes on the police car parked on the other side of the road, even as she pops open the bonnet and takes a look inside.
Chris pokes her head out the engine. "Want me to try to start the engine again?"
"Yeah." The car revved again, but the engine didn't catch. "So it's not that the battery is flat," she says, thinking to herself out loud. "Tell you what. Go in to the gas stop and see if they have any… hmm. Mineral water, oil, and anti-freeze. We might as well try topping up the oil and checking that it's not freezing. And I'm thirsty."
"Aww. But it's cold."
"I'm going to keep on poking around and see if… I don't know, there's anything obviously broken."
"Urgh." The other woman clambers out of the car. "Fine."
She heads off, giving Janice time to think. They're heading north, up to the appropriately named town of New Salem. There's a decent-sized Verbena group there with impeccable Traditionalist credentials. They're a bunch of tech-unfriendly reactionaries, but Chris knows their leader - in the Biblical sense - and trained with them. So that's why they've got a gift in the back of the car for them, and the kind of formal dress robes that Janice hates wearing and only ever puts on when she's getting all formal in front of the Illuminated Brethren and other stuck up Traditionalist sorts who expect her to wear formal garments.
It's a bunch of rubbish, but it makes them happy. Now isn't the time for her to expand on her explanations for why society empowers certain modes of dress and setting up your own petty hierarchies based on your defiance of social norms is something you should be very careful about.
"Got them," Chris calls out as she picks her way across the slush. She's swaddled up in winter clothes and has a bright pink bobble hat which clashes with her green jacket and red skirt. Janice is fairly sure that Chris is probably colourblind, but she claims she isn't. It's possible that she just can't coordinate colours to save her life.
"Thanks," Janice says, taking the bottles from her. She pulls an incense stick from her handbag, lights it and places it on top of the engine block. She then pours the mineral water and a bit of antifreeze into the windscreen wiper tank, and carefully daubs the sign of Mercury on the inside of the bonnet, before topping up the oil. Crossing her hands, she calls briefly on Mercury - for travel - and Hephaestus - for craftsmanship - to aid the engine, and keep it working.
"Okay!" she calls to Chris. "Try it again."
This time the engine catches. "Just needed some more oil and antifreeze, I guess," Janice says out loud, snuffing out the incense and tossing it into the bin. "Come on. Let's go. We're behind time already."
"Yeah," Chris agrees, warming her hands on the hot coffee she bought for herself.
The heater in the car has also started working. Silently Janice thanks the gods for their generosity. Invoking them by their Greek names tends to work pretty well when machinery is involved. Probably linked to the way the Greeks laid the foundations for a lot of modern thought.
The rest of the drive passes smoothly. There's a tense bit where they pull into a layby and hide offroad to make sure that a police car that'd been following them for a few minutes didn't have Technocratic intentions, but it passes by just fine and after a suitable wait, they're off on the road again. The first sight of the Quabbin Reservoir is a sign that they're getting close.
The snow around here is still thick on the ground, and doesn't seem to be melting. The grey sky overhead merges into the land.
"I really hated the winter here when I was living in New Salem," Chris says miserably, rummaging in her bags on the backseat for another jumper. "I know the winter is when the world rests for the new life yet to come, but I wish I could just hibernate through this whole stupid cold season. Like a bear."
"Then get some bear blood," Janice says, pulling down a narrower road.
"Nah, I'd lose myself to the bear. I don't want to be a bear. I just don't want to have to live through winter."
Janice smiles. "Is this the address?"
"Yeah. Just take a right up there, towards the church. We'll check there first."
New Salem is ridiculously small in Janice's eyes. There's less than a thousand people in the town, and to the best of her knowledge nearly a fifth of them are involved in the Verbena group here to a lesser or greater extent. The local church is a front for the cult, with one set of ceremonies for the uninitiated and a second set for the inner circle.
Sighing, she parks where Chris tells her to, and lets the younger woman pick her way over the ground to approach one of the houses close to the white church. Her stomach is buzzing, but a quick self-calming meditation lets her keep it down. She hopes this will go well. It has to. Chris just has to explain things right so that they'll actually see her.
She'd go crazy if she had to live here. She's a city girl who's moved from coast to as needed. These kinds of small time places are… well, they're so static. It's the wrong part of the country for Deliverance-style duelling banjos, but if she wasn't a witch she'd be very, very reluctant to sleep in any local B&B for fear of someone trying to murder her in the night.
Chris is headed back out, and from the expression on her face, it's good news. Wrapping her sensible coat tight around herself, Janice gets out of the car and makes sure she has her bag of magical tools - and yes, a pistol too - with her just in case. And the gift, of course.
"Good news?" she checks.
"Yeah," Chris says enthusiastically. "Well, I mean, she's about as willing to talk to you as normal."
"Good enough," Janice says, feeling glad that she cast a blessing on herself before this trip. She had been worried that the car engine failure was a sign that fate had decided to turn on her.
An olive-skinned man who looks in his sixties with iron-grey hair waits at the door for her. Janice widens her eyes. "Francesco bani Euthanatos," she says, inclining her head to him. What is a member of the Golden Chalice doing here?
"Janice bani Verbena," he says, neutrally, leaning on his cane. "Good day to you. I was just leaving anyway. Just a private meeting with the leader of this coven. No doubt you have things within your own Tradition to handle."
"It is an affair of the Verbena, yes," she says, picking her words with care.
He smiles. "I would have thought that the weather is a little cold for dancing skyclad," he says.
She rolls her eyes and gives a little huff. He knows very well her opinion of such things - namely, if that's how you get your kicks, then it's fine, but speaking practically it's a terrible idea to try to do it in Central Park. Admittedly, she did a few times, but that was ages ago and she's grown up - and sobered up - since then. And the energies of Central Park are totally wrong for most workings anyway. Being a witch in Manhattan requires a lot more savvy than being a witch in a rural area like this.
"Well, farewell," Francesco says, sticking his gloved hands in his pockets and putting his black hat on. He is, in fact, dressed all in black, broken only by his expensive golden wristwatch, the golden buttons on his coat and an alpha-shaped golden lapel pin. He pauses. "One thing. Some advice, so that you do not tarnish your karma. Beware the knight. Witches such as yourself have long had problems with men who would light the fire beneath the stake."
She pauses. Considers what he said. Considers what she blurted out to her coven. "So that we are even," she says carefully, not wanting to be in his debt even implicitly, "the day before yesterday, I had an unwanted prophecy. I don't know what it means. 'Purity of intent is our foe. The wolves in the darkness are pure and so they will destroy us if they can. To compromise is human. They cannot tolerate that'. If you can use that, do with it what you will."
He tips his hat to her. "I will remember this," he says, in a way which leaves her with a nasty feeling that he gave her a warning just so she'd pass that to him. "You have never been an enemy of ours."
Which is not the same as being a friend, she thinks as he heads down the path and climbs into his car. What's his game?
But she has other things to focus on right now. Because she's following Chris in, stamping the snow off her boots, and being shown into the dimly lit house. It's dim outside, but the inside is only lit with candles and oil lamps. While she notes the presence of some flashlights, there's no electric lights in here.
She takes a breath, and enters the sitting room. Candles are arranged over every surface, burning with a softly flickering light. The walls are covered in paintings and sketches - and there's a bit of Janice's head which considers this a fire risk. Mirrors have been arranged around the room to maximise the light. Some of the mirrors don't reflect the room as it is right now.
There's another woman here,
"Loremistress Selene Mason bani Verbena," Janice says, addressing her as a peer. Which they are within the eyes of their Tradition, as leaders of a coven. This kind of technical correctness rubs Janice the wrong way as it's really a Hermetic thing, but… well. She'll take what she can get.
"Seeker Janice Moullin bani Verbena," Selene says in response, with a carefully measured bow of her head.
Selene herself is young - perhaps in her mid-twenties - and notably pregnant. She dresses in simple undyed fabric, which mostly conceal the careful, thin tattoos and scarification on her limbs and torso. Her hair is silvery despite her youth, a mark of the family. They say that their ultimate mother was left on a doorstep during a blood-red lunar eclipse and certainly their magic seems bound to the moon. The same slight otherworldliness surrounds her - the air smells like dew and has an edge of chill to it even deeper than this winter. She's an icy beauty, and the world knows it.
She wouldn't be leading the sect at this age normally, but her mother handed over control to her five years ago and went off to fight the Technocracy. She died in a raid on a Progenitor laboratory facility, cut down by a freak in living armour who moved faster than even someone channeling the powers of the Mother Goddess. Damage Control does such terrible things to nature to further the Technocracy's genocidal goals.
"Blessings be upon you and upon this house," Janice says. She steps forwards and carefully places the gift in the centre of the room, in the centre of the candlelight. "With my compliments, I offer this gift to you."
There's a moment of choice here.
"I freely accept this gift," Selene says after enough of a pause that Janice was worrying. "Welcome to my household, sister. What brings you to this hallowed place, away from the noise and uncaring cruelty of New York?"
Janice notices just at the moment when she fractionally glances at Chris that Selene is doing the same. It makes her feel a little better. Neither of them want to upset their mutual friend, so they're going to play nicely. Or at the very least, keep an aggression down to stiffly polite passive-aggressiveness, which is… uh, not uncommon between two witches who dislike each other.
She inclines her head. "You may know that for the past month or so, I have been trapped in the digital space known as the Spy's Demise," she begins. "I managed to slip a few messages out, but it was a very close thing and I only escaped a few days ago, when the beast folk managed to open a moon gate into the space and allowed us to flee." True, but somewhat misleading. She's not mentioning that it was a Technocracy idea to bring the werewolves into it. She's not even sure what that means - save that perhaps they should be even more worried that the Syndicate and the more urbane tribes are getting too close. "I have seen things in there and experienced matters that I felt it would be wise to approach others who practice the Old Ways, to speak to them about this and seek guidance."
It's a conciliatory gesture from her - and plays into how she knows Selene views the world. The other woman seems to consider this for a moment. "Tomorrow," Selene says. "We have a ceremony at midnight tonight, and I will not taint my mind with thoughts which could distract from it. She-Who-Is-The-Earth must be fed while she sleeps, so that spring comes." She pauses. "As sister-witches, you two are of course welcome as my guests," she says reluctantly. She shoots a glance at Chris. "You know where the guest bedroom is. Bring your things in from the car."
The guest bedroom is a small, whitewashed room with two single beds in it and an oil lamp. It's also distinctly chilly. Chris gets to work preparing the fire, although she doesn't light it yet. "Well, that went well," she says cheerfully. She doesn't unpack her things, though.
"I know you won't be sleeping here," Janice says cattily, as she checks that her formal white robe with red embroidery isn't too crumpled.
Chris smirks. "Look, I get cold easily," she says. "And the only time you let me in your bed is when I'm hurt."
"And then you bleed all over it."
"Not my fault!" Chris sighs. "Look, just resist the urge to argue with her. I'm not stupid. I know you both rub each other the wrong way. I just… I just wish you got on better. You've got so much in common!"
Janice shoots a sceptical look at her.
"You really do!" Chris insists.
Looking out the window, Janice can only see a few lights. The night's sky seems darker than it should be, that there's somehow not enough light pollution. She checks her disposable pay-as-you-go phone which she has on her in case there's an emergency message from Luke, but there's nothing there. "What kind of ritual is this going to be?" she asks softly.
"A cold one," Chris says, hugging herself. "No human sacrifice, in case that's what you're wondering about. We go out in the snow and shed blood on the bare earth under the snow. Also, some animals die."
"You're not being very detailed."
"You're not initiated," Chris says. "I can't explain everything to you - you're just there as a guest. If you go… she'll probably push you. But if you don't, she'll judge you."
So, Janice managed to pretty functionally deflect her in the first meeting - enough that she's at least willing to talk.
Now she has to handle things properly.
What gift did they bring Selene?
[ ] Three ripe apples grown upon their node, imbued with a spell for good health (Healing Charms, uses up their week's Node quintessence production)
[ ] Some locks of her own hair bound up in a ribbon, as a mark of good faith (giving Selene a usable sympathetic connection)
[ ] A book from her own library (if selected, an Int + Occult roll will be required to evaluate how well she picked it out, and a poor roll may aggravate her. Write-ins as to the nature of the book can provide equipment bonuses/penalties)
[ ] Something else (write-in)
Does Janice attend the ritual?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
If yes, how does she involve herself?
[ ] Assertive - She's not going to let herself be pushed around. She is Selene's equal in the eyes of the Verbena, and even if the arch-conservative bitch tries to act otherwise, she has the full rights of a visiting Seeker accepted as a guest. (x0.8)
[ ] Participant - She's a visitor, and this isn't her sect. But she is a full member of the Verbena, and even if she isn't an initiate of this group, there is power in this ritual. She'll follow Selene's directions. (x0.9)
[ ] Observer - She's here to observe, not to take part. She's not going to get involved - merely witness it. (x1.1)
