(Flare) Beacon Unwelcome

[Yumyumcrow]

One by one the mages gather in front of the barn. It is a rather quaint building that has been painted in cheery, now peeling, colours. As they gather, they also note that there are four vehicles clustered by the farm house: 3 cars and an SUV.

The barn doors are not locked but they are shut. There is a scent of incense seeping out from within the barn.

Winter weaves his protective magic.

Juris thrusts his senses across the Gauntlet. The veil is only of moderate strength her on the rural fringe and he finds the effort much easier than he expected. The Shadow realm is remarkably peaceful: a golden hued impression of the farm; no spirits though; a blizzard of weak little motes - gestating spirit energies and fragments but what they could potentially be will require more study from the Shaman.

Shodan is unable to think of anything that could create an effect like he is witnessing. Angel lore and that kind of detailed knowledge of the Aether is currently beyond the Libertine.

The Libertine moves toward the door and pushes it open. The interior is all pleasant shadow and dappled light. The scent of incense is much stronger, as is the smell of hay and ozone. But the serenity of the scene has definitely been broken...

In the middle of the space is a decent sized tripod, on which sits a complicated looking metal sphere. The sphere is glowing bright with arcane energies - energies that under the Sight glow white and crimson with an occasional flash of cyan. Juris feels the metaphoric weight of the spot with his Third Eye open: determination, joy, confusion, all melded together as one. Nor can he escape the indelible sense of an end that was both sudden and violent. Those with Supernal Vision can also see the powerful eddies and warps created as powerful magic seeps into the ground: there will be a Hallow here soon; the area has already gained the indelible stamp of the Aether. This place is a Demesne.

Arranged around the tripod are five figures seated in lotus positions. They face inward toward the tripod. They are unmoving. They are covered in a thick crust of crystals imbued with Supernal energy - Tass. And the figures (two men, three women) are quite dead. Indeed, they smoke gently, eye sockets garish to look upon as all the moisture has burned out of them. None of the figures appear in pain or horror; they are all serene and calm.

Some book keeping:

  

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2019-04-13 00:44:24		Extra dice for Juris rolls 1 to Peer Across Gauntlet (10 Again)		8		1 success

FYI: Gauntlet Strength is 3

[Winter]

The Guardian looks around, scanning for threats and for exits. He can't see any trap, but he doesn't let his guard down.
It was a Demesne, no doubt about it, the Guardian thought as he approached the middle of the barn, taking the sweet smell of incense deep into his lungs. Ozone too, like the smell of fresh air right after a lightening has stuck; the Obrimos' eyes instantly run over the sphere in the middle, and then wander off to the charred bodies. Five he counts, one for each Supernal realm, the five vertices of the pentacle. Tassified was a new word, one that quite aptly described their condition. Did they set up a ritual, and whatever they were praying to had decided to turn against them? Or had it been their plan from the very beginning, the gestalt of sacrifice of a summoning ritual.
Prime and mind patterns pulsate vigorously under his sight, cackling and radiating from the sphere, falling - after each beat - again into their matrix of cyan.
Turning back, he takes off a piece from one of the bodies, a small sample of one of the girls' hair, then, he moves back to the tripod, to focus on the sphere, in the middle. Could it be a Soul Stone or was it just an accident of a summoning gone awry? He had a very valid method to check. Unweaving the mind and prime glyphs in his pattern, the Obrimos prepares a spell, but first... "Watch my back", he asks Juris and Shodan, as he begins to break the small pieces of tass in his balled up fist into a reticle of dust. High speech flows off his mouth like the winds of Arcadia. The Guardian wants to be there, in this barn when all of this started, even if only for an instant, just to witness the miracle.

  1 success

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2019-04-15 05:47:10		Winter rolls 6 to Perception (10 Again)		6, 10, 5, 5, 4, 7, 3		1 success

  1 success

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2019-04-15 05:47:33		Winter rolls 5 to Occult (10 Again)		1, 8, 2, 3, 4		1 success

  2 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2019-04-15 05:51:07		Winter rolls 5 to Investigation (10 Again)		7, 8, 7, 3, 10, 3		2 successes

  2 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2019-04-15 06:35:34		Winter rolls 7 to Postcognition (10 Again, WillPower)		5, 2, 6, 9, 10, 3, 4, 4		2 successes

Stats

Inventory: lighter, cigarettes, torch, burner phone (silent) magic tool (rosary), wedding band, Kevlar Vest (thin), brass knuckles (1Blunt).
Defense: 3
Armor: 4 (Shield + vest)/5(Ballistic)
Health: 8
WP: 4
Mana: 5/7
Speed: 10
Spell Tolerance: = 3/3 Unseen Shield, Supernal Vision, Gain Skill (Occult)
Spell Control: 3/5
Spells: Unseen Shield [pot 4] - scene; Supernal Vision [pot 1] - scene, G.Sk (Occult) [pot 1]
Vulgars Casted in scene: 0

He's casting postcognition to view the moment of the ritual. I Applied a -2 dice penalty, because I didn't know whether it would be a sensory connection (since he's trying to see the past of a building he's in, right now) or intimate, for viewing the past. I wouldn't know whether the sphere and the tass would have a True name or not, so I applied no penalty on that account

[Yumyumcrow]

Winter pushes his understanding of Time to the limit, battling the constraints of the spell while he gropes for Truth. On his side, the sympathetic connections around him: the building, the untouched ritual space, the Tass and the hair. And on this occasion, the correspondences are enough.

Winter pushes the veil aside for a moment. They come in a flash of insight: the five, seated, chanting now at fever pitch; their crowning glory has come! The sphere chimes loudly with their combined resonance and flares into life. With a soundless scream the angel appears: an angel made of pure energy that swirls and swarms around the now glowing sphere. Babble in a million tongues fills the air and it asks a simple question in a voice that booms like thunder and runs like honey.

"Why?"

The shockwave of that voice disrupts his spell craft and his vision brutally, jarringly, ends.

The end of the event remains elusive but it is certain that the five crafted the ritual (he can tell by looking at the carefully prepared ground with its painted ritual lines and the robes the five were wearing) and perhaps had a hand in building the sphere (if they didn't then they either commissioned it or purloined it from other adepts - it is definitely a high quality ritual object). However, they may not have anticipated how their rite was to end.

Juris meanwhile focusses totally on exploring the sphere's flaming aura. Squinting as he mentally clears the press of thoughts and impressions circling the object, he searches for its Nature. The sphere is Alchemical yet it has been repurposed to an Angelic design - and even more curiously, the signature resonance does not correspond to the Aether. This is something else, something new, something that the Mastigos has not encountered before. The effect will have a Supernal end, however, for right now the sphere is drawing down Supernal energies into the surrounding area.

He can feel the love and attention that went into constructing the sphere. He can sense the thought behind its construction. This artefact - for an artefact it is! - was meant to be a beacon. He can see it in the artefact's own resonance, shining brilliantly still under the occluding mists of all the other thoughts and feelings the object accumulated in such a short span of time. The resonance of Summoning.

Shodan is taking an even closer look. Even without the Sight and his spells he can only marvel at the high quality craftsmanship of the sphere. It is a ritual object exquisitely hand crafted: polished metal alloy rings linked together to form a hollow sphere; on each ring are alchemical, astrological, and arcane symbols (no Atlantean glyphs here, this is all Fallen World lore). He doesn't need the Sight to tell him the expense in both time, skill, and treasure it took to make the sphere. Similarly, the tripod has been forged by hand with skill and reverence; it is the work of a master blacksmith. Given the occult nature of both objects, he can be almost assured that the tripod and the sphere were made by the same person (or persons); it would be the only way to assure the right kind of sympathy.

With Discern Composition the Libertine finds his understanding complete. Gold, silver, bronze. A core of iron to give the structure strength. A number of other alloys, all with occult correspondences, run through the object. Curiously, he finds a great deal of lead, relatively speaking, lending the core a ponderous weight. He can also tell that the object has absorbed a great deal of energy but so far it's integrity is holding; no doubt the sphere is relatively fragile right now - until it cools. When it cools...

@Woland - the Sphere has a Durability: 1 (its currently softer and more malleable than it would be normally), Structure 2, Size: 2 (its about the size of a basketball but the metallic nature of the object gives it mass)
Vincent - Postcog can be a really tricky spell and its requirements are horribly exacting. However, in this case, Winter is standing at the site of the Event, with Tass created by the Event, and holding personal artefacts of one of the participants. So I am ruling he has more than enough sympathy to step around all of the usual roadblocks and... the spell goes off!

[Winter]

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
The vision recedes and he's back inside the barn. "Idiots", he mutters, dust pouring from his hands, his cynical gaze washing heavy over the statues as he tucks the cigarette pack against the back of his hand, forking a cancerous cylinder between his lips. Soon those ash statues will be no more, their threads of mana dissolved under the corrosive effects of the Lie. The cars though, they'd need to get whatever information they could out of them before making them disappear.
"They summoned an Angel", he deadpans, "the creature blasted them into this", he says pointing at the statues with his palm.

Stats

Inventory: lighter, cigarettes, torch, burner phone (silent) magic tool (rosary), wedding band, Kevlar Vest (thin), brass knuckles (1Blunt).
Defense: 3
Armor: 4 (Shield + vest)/5(Ballistic)
Health: 8
WP: 4
Mana: 5/7
Speed: 10
Spell Tolerance: = 3/3 Unseen Shield, Supernal Vision, Gain Skill (Occult)
Spell Control: 3/5
Spells: Unseen Shield [pot 4] - scene; Supernal Vision [pot 1] - scene, G.Sk (Occult) [pot 1]
Vulgars Casted in scene: 0

[Winter]

The Guardian nods and listens, if he could sense its resonance, then Juris would be key in tracking whatever those fools had summoned.
"We have a problem, a very big one", the Guardian says, staring hardly at the statues, "tass doesn't last long, hopefully we'll find something inside the cars, but it's this that worries me the most", begrudgingly the Guardian points at the sphere, "There's nothing much we can do about the hallow, maybe keep the resonance clean and hope we can buy the plot to keep 'squatters" out. But the sphere...", the Guardian's eyes wander to the Libertine, before his focus is drawn by the sphere again, "the Demesne won't last long under the assault of the Sleepers, at the same time, there's a risk involved in moving it. Normally we'd want to lay it atop another hallow of equal strength, the only thing of that power that comes to mind is the heart in the clock room inside the Circle. It's a long ritual, we could really use the Hierarch's help. This thing is precious, delicate. We really need to be careful", he squats down to get a better view of the tripod. Caretaking Demesnes were the responsibility of the Sentinels of a Consilium.
"And if this Angel is still around, assuming this thing is kind of his soulstone, then by tampering with it, we're actively poking the hornet's nest. If it works anything similar, he'll feel it, and you can bet, he's gonna be pissed", the Guardian gets up.
"Any suggestions?", he asks his companions.

Stats

Inventory: lighter, cigarettes, torch, burner phone (silent) magic tool (rosary), wedding band, Kevlar Vest (thin), brass knuckles (1Blunt).
Defense: 3
Armor: 4 (Shield + vest)/5(Ballistic)
Health: 8
WP: 4
Mana: 5/7
Speed: 10
Spell Tolerance: = 3/3 Unseen Shield, Supernal Vision, Gain Skill (Occult)
Spell Control: 3/5
Spells: Unseen Shield [pot 4] - scene; Supernal Vision [pot 1] - scene, G.Sk (Occult) [pot 1]
Vulgars Casted in scene: 0