Crowley Glimpses

**Crowley** · May 24th, 2014 02:08 AM

Crowley awoke to cramp and the distinct impression his mouth was a sewer. The air was close in the Combi Van, stale and turning to stink. For many long, drawn out moment, he simply lay were he was and stared at the roof as he tried to knit his memories back together again. He could, he was certain, throw out a working... spell... techne... mumbo jumbo... whatever... and see for himself just what he had done to lace his mind with such a hung-over fog.

But that would require Mana. And he was an empty tank. Not even a hint of fume in him.

Which made him sad for some reason that he could not explain. An ache that gnawed at him as surely as the cramp screaming from his back and the urgent desire to scrape his mouth. In the end, they won out and he struggled up (took longer than he anticipated) and scrambled out into the light. The clean air slapped him and the bright sun seared him, burning out the haze of alcohol and other drugs he had no doubt taken.

Yes - over indulged. One last huzzah before the serious Work began. One last trip through the liminal fringe of society and simply being. One last mind warping burst of self destruction to clear the cobwebs and cleanse himself of the last dregs of his many journeys. Alpha and Omega. The Serpent ate its own tail in one glorious bite! The circle had turned and a new age had begun.

He was home! Remade. Renewed. Reborn with the veil torn from his eyes.

"Hey, bud? Are you okay?"

The gruff voice bought the Acanthus down to earth. He found that he was standing outside of his vehicle with an almost prayerful attitude on his face and in his posture. The sun shone brightly down on him. A flock of birds flew in formation overhead, their destination Sacramento's downtown. They pointed the way.

"Yes. Yes, I am, thanks man," He smiled unapologetically and dropped his hands. "I"m home. Always good to be home. Say... does this place have a rest room? I need to freshen up."

**Crowley** · May 30th, 2014 10:43 PM

Crowley was enjoying an afternoon of freedom when the urge struck.

He was in Discovery Park, overlooking the curving expanse of the American River, screened from view by clustered ranks of trees. He had been enjoying a quiet lunch, with the trees and his guitar and a notepad for company. Jamming, really - stretching long neglected muscles and trying something a little new. Trying to process some of his experiences and the working out the influences they had laid upon his course. He was finding it exciting stuff: sitting in silence, idly strumming chords and experimenting with riffs with new ideas swilling formatively out of his head and onto the page before him.

And then - POW! The itch! The need! The urgency! Sunlight gleamed through the lattice work of branches above him; the breezed picked up, ruffling his hair, whispering to him. He knew the Call when it came.

Fumbling madly, he dashed to his van and returned to his chosen spot with a Tarot deck in hand: crisp and new, he had to fight to get the damned box open while the moment held. Light dappled through the trees. Motes danced in the air around him like fireflies.

Time seemed to gel into a solid mass when he laid out his spread. He slid to his haunches, poring over his cards as if in a trance, hands moving rhythmically to lay out the cards. It was only a simple spread; he didn't have much time to lay out anything complex. The moment held - a miniature eternity - until he placed the last card, and then the stolen, frozen moments tumbled over themselves in a rush to catch-up with the ever flowing stream.

He gasped; sighed. The card's read easily and the answer wasn't that hard to decipher. In fact, it served to underly what he had left undone. Rocking back on his heels, he looked out over to the opposite, tree lined bank, where the low-rise rectangles of light industry stood like sentinel, guarding his view of the city proper.

He had work to do.

**Crowley** · Sep 13th, 2014 04:40 AM

There was a reason why Crowley enjoyed his privacy and was not overfond of "shared houses". It had nothing to do with paranoia or suspicion at opening himself up to the scrutiny of others; nor did it lie in an aversion to being part of a group. It was indeed true that he missed the rough and tumble relationships of a band on tour, just as it was true that since his Awakening he had largely moved away from that path.

No. The real reason for his desire to live alone was this: when studying the Arcanum of Space, one actually needed space to practice in. And Crowley's interest, in particular, could not be confined to a limited area. Not when one was interested in the magic of Circles and wards. Magic circles were cumbersome, time consuming to construct and were generally left in situ, as the best ones were made from durable materials.

The Enchanter had two running tonight, set up in spare rooms on the upper floor of his house. Sourcing materials had been the hard part, as had deciphering the hoary old grimoire he had come across. The battered book, all yellowed pages and tattered leather cover, clash ruined beyond repair, lay in a corner where he had thrown it. It was just too damned hard to read and the old style of English had him in fits of giggles. He had finished the circles with information ripped from a paperback he had found in the Spiritual/New Age section, figuring it would be just as useful.

After all, it was his Will versus the Lie. He was doing the work of bringing the Supernal back to Earth, tearing down a small portion of the Lie to do it, not some arcane formulae in a really old book, written by pompous old men in the 17th century. He doubted they were even real wizards!

He was a real wizard. So he could do it! So he did.

Bringing up the Sight to better study each circles mana imbued lines was harder than expected. Clearly, the Acanthus reasoned, he needed more practice.

Smiling with a certainly malicious grin, Crowley spent the evening studying the lines of his circles, noting how their empowered limits interacted with the environment, what sigils and materials had the best effect, and other things that his "handlers" in Diamond had referred to as "theory".

Bugger theory. The only way to learn was to do it yourself. What had worked for 17th century wizard may or may not work for metal dude in the 21st century. And this was way more fun than working in a dull library.

For reference if required:

Circle 1

Circle 2

Space Sight attempt 1

Space Sight with High Speech

**Crowley** · Nov 2nd, 2014 12:05 AM

T'was the morning after Halloween and all was quiet in the house.

Crowley awoke suddenly, with his face down in a puffy pillow, one woman snuggled under his outstretched arm and with another's head placed in the small of his back, her long hair splayed out over his back and legs. A third was curled up on the floor where she had fallen, along with most of the bed linen.

It took him a while to pierce the listless gunge of his mind and figure out where he was. And why.

Lucy was a lawyer who believed she was a witch. Piercing the heavy veil of the previous night, he recalled that one of the women - Amanda - was a junior at her company and the third was from the same sorority. Or something. Didn't matter... they needed a fourth for the ritual (which hadn't worked - not that anyone minded by then due to the consumption of booze and drugs).

Man! That shit is still kicking me even now...

Disengaging from the tangle of arms and legs was... difficult. His head was pounding and his coordination slow. Feminine grumbles followed him as he slowly, painfully, drew off the bed and went rummaging for his clothes. Head spinning slowly on his neck, he gave up looking for the bathroom.

It didn't stop him dragging the Sight across his eyes, just in case he had caused something. The palpably loud sigh of relief that followed woke the Sorority from where she lay, cat-like, on the floor. Very carefully and artistically he raised a finger to his lips and sushed. She graced him with a smile full of wan love and snuggled back down among the cast of bed sheets.

Shit! She's got me shirt! The thought coalesced with sudden clarity.

Fortunately he managed to locate the rest of his clothes and sneak out the back. Finding his van was harder. Because keys. He gave up on the tortuously slow drive home and parked in a siding, where he slept for most of the morning. No one bothered him, but then he looked like shit and smelled of hormones and alcohol, rank with incense.

Excepting the friendly policeman.

**Crowley** · May 16th, 2015 10:07 PM

Back for a second pass, Crowley parked his van and dug out the sub and the warm beverage as he settled down to watch. No one could object, surely, to a guy parking so he could eat his lunch? He was already humming the Words as he opened his Sight and bought all his senses to bear on the building that he was Scrutinising. And as he did, not for the first time, he considered the utility - nay! The need! - to learn of the Arcanum of Prime.

Dammit! We're supposed to be looking out for the vacant High Places and I couldn't see one if it walked into the road and bitch slapped me with a wet fish!

He was staring at a nice little house with creamy white walls, blue slate roof complementing the blue shutters framing the windows, with leafy trees and a fence lending the place a quaint and calming kind of privacy. It lay just beyond the area Temoins du Sud laid claim to, in a tree lined street far removed from urban bustle of high density housing estates and commercial lots. It had caught his eye just enough on a few recent sweeps to warrant a second look.

And so, here he was, almost glaring over his sub and his steering wheel. The house posed an annoying mystery. Something was there, but for the most part it remained hidden from his Sight. Opening himself to the time stream didn't deliver the good either. Sure - the house did stick out like a stone in the river of time, altering the flow of the stream in its wake; but it was irritatingly small. It could be something Supernal or otherwise exciting, but it could also be a collection of mundane family heirlooms (very ancient heirlooms perhaps?) with sufficient weight to lag a little. And there was nothing in the fabric of the house to suggest a Working, either now or in the past or the future.

Grimacing, his manic eyes narrowing dangerously, he fumbled for the map he had been making up and stabbed a simple marking in pencil. He had been attempting to draw up a map of "hits" using his sight - places worth a second of third look when his Cabal found the time. The house with its blue roof made... a handful... of suspicious sites.

Damn... he really needed lessons in the application of Prime. He really did.

Not so much as giving up as being aware of the time he had lingered, he started up his van and drove. Just in case, he rolled through South Sacramento in a long loop that took him back home - back to the Sanctum.

Taking to account the penalties on scrutinising "Dense" materials, Crowley spends his Scrutiny mostly on Nature

**Crowley** · Oct 18th, 2015 02:12 AM

This used to be my playground.

Boots scuffed and clumped, echoing in the dusty, empty space. Cracked concrete lay all around him like a dilapidated cuboid womb. The wan light glimmered through the gaps in the walls: shafts of syrupy yellow illuminating the layer upon layer of graffiti that covered wall, floor and ceiling. The tags had changed a lot since he and his gang of brothers had last ventured down there, their marks now faded and obscured like ghosts.

They were ghosts.

The Four Horsemen were no more. John was a priest. Ian worked in a mainstream band on the East coast or so he'd heard. Austin was still bound in shackles and strapped to his bed, whimpering in fear of the night at the asylum. Only Saul Springfield remained, changed to Crowley the Enchanter. Who had not seen impending danger and had barely been able to push back the stream of time to find a solitary killer.

Crowley took a gulp of the rum, sweet and swirling in its chunky bottle.

He was a ghost himself. Saul had been a rebel. How long had it been since Crowley had rebelled against anything? Turning to stare down the cool and dim hallway, he could picture them: the Four Horsemen as angry teens, drinking beer, sharing smokes while they pounded up and down the ruins with their skate boards. Turning to the wall he reached out and brushed fingers across a faded tag John had scrawled - they had hammered out their first howls here.

Crowley smiled fondly. Times like this, he felt the burden of his gift. He could spend the dusk forcing back the veil of time and watch his old band play as they once did. But he didn't need to - the memory and the feeling was enough. A stab of nostalgia: pang of pain, dipped in sorrow - but at least it meant he could put off confronting his failings for a little longer.

They should have planned Einstein's investigation better. Rabbit (or whatever her name really was) would still be alive. Grimacing he pushed aside the little voice that counselled her death actually helped for the Sleeper knew too much - that she had the potential to be a danger to herself and others, such was the price of limited knowledge. They should be focussing on the Banishers and driving them out, but instead they squabbled amongst themselves over unwarranted fears - Veiled Threats were a large Cabal for sure but that didn't mean they were planning to usurp the Consilium by default. Avis... Harsh, abrasive, always screeching. Its hard to fight the system when you have someone like that to settle on.

Crowley finds himself leaning against the wall, the cold bottle pressed to his forehead. Saul Springfield didn't have these cares. He just wanted to summon a big ass Demon to see what one really looked like. How stupid.

Face contorting into a mask of rage he hurled the half full bottle to floor. Looking again at the faded tag he found himself musing that if he wasn't Saul Springfield, then who was Crowley? But the tag had no answers. Without context it was just some wavy lines almost completely lost beneath a fresher, bolder tag. But it was there. It was at that moment the fading light touched the tag, a seepage of light spreading ever so briefly as the sun slid from view in a brazen sky.

Crowley felt the stirrings of a Requiem dirge.

He smiled.

**Crowley** · Nov 14th, 2015 04:30 PM

No! No! No!

A wave of panic washed over the Enchanter when the threads wobbled, popped, and unwound around him. Frantic hands moved and he focussed his will. Too late - the warp and weft of the spell collapsed like so much rubble around him. The imago remained fixed in his mind, taunting him from behind a slick wall of glass: whole and idealised and totally beyond his grasp.

Another exasperated cry broke free of his lips, bounced around the room. The temptation to flip furniture was almost too strong. Breathing deeply, Crowley stalked away till he found himself at his favoured perch on the rooftop. There, he brooded.

He was at the limit of his powers. He had suspected it when he began this particular project but the fact was irrefutable and hammered home each time he struggled with the wards. Sure he had the principles down, mostly, but he lacked the depth of understanding to make a simple trick into something that one could truly call a ward. At best, his abjurations could cover a room - and that was pushing it, he had to admit; more credibly, he could create a ward capable of covering a portion of a room - and then the casting alone would take a better part of a morning. His wards failed within two days. If he focussed his efforts on longevity, then the area he could cover was reduced; if he focussed on the size of the ward, inevitably it would barely last a day. It was draining work and took too long for too little reward.

Even changing tactic and placing a few wards in key locations could not change the simple fact he lacked the raw power and understanding needed for such a complex operation.

A fist slammed on brick (how often had he done this lately?)

He needed to study. Honestly, he needed advice from a Warlock. He doubted he had the time. A month had passed since they pried the Deathless grimoire from the Banisher's grasp. The cell they had fought had withdrawn of their own violation, they had not been beaten back. To say he felt exposed was an understatement - and knowing that his friends and his house could be spied upon with impunity and served to fuel his fears.

Perhaps it was time to start thinking laterally and focus on things he could do, rather than those he could not. Yeah... That would be wise.

**Crowley** · Dec 25th, 2015 05:33 PM

Crowley sat hunched in his coat, watching the little cafe from the safety of his van. It appeared dull and average - just another eatery on the edge of town - perhaps with a few more vehicles than normal parked along the street out front. He didn't need the Sight to tell him that at least one of those vehicles belonged to old associates from L.A. The fact they had reached out to him after so long was curious but not a source of suspicion.

Still, the L.A. assembly was fractious and filled with poisonous relationships. The Acanthus had decided to play along and not use the Sight at this meeting. No Sight meant no subtle clues as to the connections between himself and the others, which meant there would be nothing to set off his curiosity, nothing to have him follow his gut with a working of Interconnections. The element of uncertainty gave him a thrill.

It didn't stop him drawing down the Supernal and opening his temporal senses.

He had been listening to Zimmerman's Intersellar suite, the music taking on new purpose as mind, body, and soul began to move perceptibly with the beat of the time piece. Tick Tock. He felt the passage of a large family SUV long before it rumbled quietly down the street, following a path through space-time long before mapped out. It reminded the Enchanter of a bowling ball rolling down an alley towards its fate.

Just like he felt the weight of his other workings before he drew them down. Their weight, cloying like incense, thickened and crystallised as their time grew closer. For a moment he reflected on that, on what it meant, even as their weight sang in urgency. Teasingly, he drew out the moment a little longer (smirking as the ripples of his action floated away into the future; somewhere in the cafe, he would just miss a snippet of something important, he could feel it.)

The Shielding spell was less of a protective bubble and more like a dam. He was still in Time but rather than being dragged along like a piece of flotsam in a rushing stream, he stood safely behind a wall, watching the cascade of moments crash over and around him. He couldn't affect anything but the momentum of anything meant to do him harm was broken and deflected in the flow. He would have sat marvelling at what he saw with a Sight beyond Sight but that feeling of urgency, reverberating from the rapidly solidifying future sang to him again.

This time he heeded the warning and shunted a little luck into his Pattern. It was a reversal of the Shielding spell as he dipped a portion of his metaphysical being into the latticework of fate, using it as a net to snag a few motes of random chance and probability for his own use. It wasn't enough to effect anything, and barely enough to impact on a single action he might have to take, but it was something.

He felt the full weight of his workings now, pressing on his Pattern like a slick oil sheath of the pound per inch pressure of concentrated gasses, squeezed to a point: a place in time and space occupied by him, himself, and I.

The urgent future chimed another warning as he crossed the street. Head bowed, shoulders hunched, he charged headlong through the flowing stream (or was it the door to the cafe?).

Two were waiting on him. One he would rather not see again. She smiled mischievously as the urgent future exploded upon him, as entangling as a squid or spider reaching for its prey.

He should have taken more notice of that future as it screamed towards him. Panic. Then a manic grin as he reached out to the rushing flow of second and leapt, salmon-like, backward toward the source.

He paused, caught in the liminal space between the interior of his van and the street, door swung wide. The urgent moment pulled to him from the cafe. Grinning like a fool, he hauled himself back into his van and keyed up the ignition.

**Crowley** · Jan 23rd, 2016 01:16 AM

You know what Fate based techne are really good for? Juggling heavy shopping bags while you scramble back into your van after a solid, unrewarding, morning at the shops. Thats what! When you can read the probabilities, you can plan ahead and keep your purchases from spilling at the wrong moment. Heck, if even that gets too much to handle, you can scoop up some luck and make sure you don't trip over your own feet. Or bump into someone. Or have the cheap paper of the bag's give way when your half way home...

Crowley wrestled effortlessly with his packages and the door of his black van. It was a dream of luck: an alignment of movements, force and momentum that had him sweeping the door aside and depositing his new stuff perfectly. The Enchanter even grinned: a triumphant half moon that tore through his glum and grim visage.

At least he could get one thing right.

The morning had not gone particularly well. Yes, he had wound up with quite a few nice props for his workings and rituals: some odds and ends that would work well with a ritual tool; some Sleeper literature on wands, the tarot, ritual spells and the like. There was scented candles; musical bits and bobs that had caught his eye; musical literature; some clothes. What he had scrounged together had taken solid hours of ground pounding and careful investigation; there had been nothing fun or spontaneous about it.

But what he really wanted was Books. Not the usual fare you could find in the Sleeper stores; not the type compromised by Sleeper fluff - those New Age shelves held few gobbets of real Lore. What Crowley wanted was the real deal and it was becoming harder and harder to source? Troubling thought: was the Banisher noose tightening? Had the Seers diverted anything of value to their own sources?

Clambering into the familiar driver seat and staring out across the grim sterility of the car park (multilevel with low ceiling, hollow echoes, feeling of weight and stained concrete) Crowley began to see just how valuable the Old Bookstore had been.

The loss of Written in Water had lessened their community. And the Wise had been too self absorbed to even see it.

**Crowley** · Apr 23rd, 2016 10:17 PM

Leeba Bachman
Animus
Falstaff

Ghosts haunted Crowley. Ghosts borne of self imposed guilt: the great warrior who had fallen so he could flee into the mists; the crazy Fool, grinning maddeningly, who had given his life so he could escape a fiendish trap; the Artist forever condemned to the dark of the Abyss.

Sometimes they caught up and he would turn to the bottle once again.

Not this time.

He was the calm in the centre of the storm right now. Standing in the heart of his ~~soon to be~~ establishment with workmen and technicians buzzing around him like plasma streams in a vortex. His vision was taking shape now - an intimate place like a cave or the comforting womb of the earth.

The ghosts were close, he could feel it. Feel them as they stood, motionless, with their accusing eyes. Eyes that accused him of failure, or not protecting his own kind, of not coming to another's assistance. Contemptuous eyes, pitilessly fixed on the coward who ran away, who closed the door, who willingly turned away and let wrathful flames burn away what limited potential remained in a broken life.

But today the workmen and the milling staff were his ward and his shield.

The ghosts of the dead stood on the threshold, lost and impotent as shadows. Today there was life. Today there was no need of the bottle or of pity.

Crowley was simply too busy. Maybe that was why he was smiling.

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2014-09-13 04:12:49		Crowley rolls 6 to Resolve + Occult + Space (10 Again)		9, 6, 2, 3, 9, 9		3 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2014-09-13 04:13:28		Crowley rolls 6 to Resolve + Occult + Space (10 Again)		3, 7, 3, 10, 8, 4, 6		2 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2014-09-13 04:21:54		Crowley rolls 4 to GNO 2 + Space 2 (10 Again)		1, 1, 4, 7		failure

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2014-09-13 04:22:40		Crowley rolls 5 to GNO 2 + Space 2 + 2 HS -1 (second attempt) (10 Again)		6, 10, 9, 7, 10, 6, 5		3 successes

Date	Action	Roll	Result
2015-05-16 21:31:12	[04] Crowley to Scrutinise rolls 4 to Intelligence + Occult (10 Again)	5, 3, 9, 6	1 success
2015-05-16 21:31:12	[03] Crowley to Scrutinise rolls 4 to Intelligence + Occult (10 Again)	10, 1, 2, 3, 9	2 successes
2015-05-16 21:31:12	[02] Crowley to Scrutinise rolls 4 to Intelligence + Occult (10 Again)	2, 7, 1, 6	failure
2015-05-16 21:31:12	[01] Crowley to Scrutinise rolls 4 to Intelligence + Occult (10 Again)	8, 8, 4, 5	2 successes
2015-05-16 21:28:25	Crowley casts Temporal Wrinkles rolls 7 to GNO + Time + HS (10 Again)	6, 10, 2, 7, 2, 6, 4, 2	1 success
2015-05-16 21:27:52	Crowley cast Temporal Eddies rolls 7 to GNO + Time + HS (10 Again)	6, 5, 3, 3, 8, 8, 3	2 successes

Crowley Glimpses

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