Con Spells Cloaked
Supreme Aug:Pre+3 Man+2 dur 12hrs;Skill Mastery Socialize+2 Persuasion+4 dur 12 hrs
Scudding clouds frame a partial moon as the car rolls to a stop. The district is now rank upon rank of warehouses, silent and sealed beyond battered gates and fences. The shadows are deep and the lights are few; the sense of isolation enhanced not only by the quiet, but by the blocks of empty parking lots from some box stores barely a block away.
Apart from their car, the street is empty.
Abacus can see the line of Fate, of Connection, terminating within an ugly looking warehouse to the mage's left. Pixel can sense the spot with his still active Finder spell.
The warehouse is ugly and squat: one storey of concrete and corrugated iron. It has a pair of big doors (shut) and small windows sitting just under the roof. The roof is shaped like a series of jagged teeth. The warehouse sits on a much scarred concrete lot; the wire mesh fence is old and worn, bent and buckled. Large industrial sized bins line two sides of the building.
A single security camera is angled to watch the gate and entrance of the lot in which the warehouse sits.
This scene Continues from where the other left off. Remember to note mana expenditures as there will have been no time to refresh.
ANIMA: Organic Resilience (Potency 3) - Spirit Sight (Potency 4)
- 'Bag of oddities' and an EMF Reader
WINTER: Supernal Vision (Potency 2) - Unseen Shield (Potency 2) - Gain Skill: Occult (Potency 1)
- Wedding Band, moleskin notebook with pencils, black stones catholic rosary, kevlar vest (thin), wallet and phone, muscle car
ABACUS: Sybils Sight (Potency 4) - One Mind, Two Thoughts (Potency 4) - Temporal Dodge (1 Potency) - Interconnection (Potency 3)
- cell phone, rubix cube, Messenger Bag including lap top
PIXEL: Untouchable (Potency 2) - Dark Matter (Potency 2) - Finder (Potency 1)
- Messenger Bag with sketch pad and coloured pencils
Xander Vincent Mark Hiver
The first thing he notices as he exits the car parked just around the block, is the security camera. Whoever was bottled inside the warehouse, which from the sturdy doors and the wire had all the looks of a fortification, was now fully aware of their presence. The warehouse was in a barren corner of the block, safely tucked or perhaps actively scaring away whoever dared to come closer.
"This is the place", he says. His sixth sense peruses the walls, trying to dig out whichever small detail was hidden beneath the overbearing feeling of dread and hopelessness the building projected. Claustrophobic was the word, odd given it was an open space.
It was an hostile ground, one they had to tread carefully. He thinks as he studies the layout of the building.
3 successes3 Mana, 4WP remaining
-1 mana from previous scene, bookkeeping in sig
The shaman, puffs out his cheeks for a moment, releasing the air noisily between pursed lips. He pulls out his EMF reader and examines the thickness of the gauntlet here, before attempting to peer across. One hand not he reader, one hand flipping through a mudra subconsciously an imago flashes. Spell cast, he gets out of the protection of the backseat and takes a look, he is examining the building in the Shadow, looking for defenses and protectors.
"Depending on the individuals' grasp of the Upside Down, hehe, we might be able to avoid their cameras and alarms by entering through a different doorway. I could make us one pretty easily."
3 successes
2 successes
Pixel watches as they approach, and peaks around Winter's shoulders from behind him once they're out of the car.
"Yep." Was his one word answer for Winter before turning to Anima. "Or I could just portal through a window. I doubt that's necessary though."
Also? Probably not enough time for a ritual right now.
"So I can go incognito and case the building. Or we could just sneak around and look for a hole in the raddy fencing right now. Camera looks like it's just on the entrance to the lot, not the building, so that's a plus."
-2 mana -1 WP
The last to exit the car, Abacus considers casting his net again. He could have more luck now that he was closer to the crux of the issue.There were other options he had at his disposals. He could dip into Stygia and skulk around. He was no sneak-thief, but he could be discrete. The camera probably let whoever was inside know of their presence. He didn't see a point in stealth.
The mudra is a splaying of fingers wrought into a series of patterns that blend and bleed together, as if he were tying a knot with one hand. He reached out to that all too familiar light of an Arcadian twilight, splintering through cracks in a canopy, each beam a possible path.
Calculate the risk. Weigh the odds. Boon or bane.
Would the stealth approach win them even the smallest victory?
An inkling of revelation trickled down from the Supernal into his conscious understanding...maybe?
"I have a bad feeling about this." Which was to say, the Enchanter was uncertain. In his profession, that was on equal footing as bad vibes all the way down.
1 success
Winter and Anima take a few moments to orient themselves.
The area has an even more isolated feel than around the shop with thedesecrateddefunct Hallow. The warehouse / industrial lots on either side of the street follow the same theme: rusted fencing with a single checkpoint at the entrance; a large empty lot of variable size for parking; a metal or concrete building, low rise, for a warehouse.
The warehouse they need to enter is in the middle of the street. There are two similar lots on either side. As Pixel noted, it does appear that the single camera is purely focussed on the main entrance from the street.
When Anima finally succeeds in punching through the heavy Gauntlet (it is strong here, like hacking through a block of ice) he finds an even more bleak spirit landscape. In the Shadow Realm, these industrial lots barely register at all. The isolation manifests as a bleak, barren landscape of concrete and barbed wire. The shadows are more alive than anything else with essence motes dancing lazily in them like peculiar moths to an even stranger flame.
There are no spirit entities active in the area.
Abacus is working as well - running numbersvariablesin a decidedly Supernal fashion. And he gets an answer -
YES
To a man with a hammer, everything looked like a nail. But hammers were only as precise as the men wielding them, strike an inch too far on the left, and you nail your thumb.
He evaluates the options, "Stealth it is", he whispers. But the fact remains that it could be a trap, in that case they needed a plan B.
The camera could have been just the first line of defense, or a decoy, but what awaited unseen?
"Juice", he announces, pointing a finger upwards.
His will yearns for the Aether, at first the connection is tenuous and with a snap of his fingers the imago shatters in a myriad of sparks. The Obrimos relents, he closes his eyes, and with renewed focus he opens his sight to the truth.
The night wasn't as cold and empty as they originally thought, rather, it's host to a hundreds of ever shifting colors an energies dancing around the world.
It's only a matter of separating the signal from the noise. What awaited behind those walls?
failure2 successes
Unsure of how to help Anima decides his best option is to support Winter's play. In order to best do that he needs to clear the resonance surrounding him before it gets too noisy. He dismisses all his current spells, and forms a new imago in his mind.
With a whisper and a push of his will he wraps himself in Ephemeral Armor while seeing the Pulse of the Living World combining the two into one imago.
Next he clears his mind, and feels for the consciousness around him, another whisper and a much more subtle imago.
Finally the doctor whispers one last time and exerts complete control over his bodily functions so that he may react to whatever is about to happen in the situation they are walking into.
He gives Winter a nod.
Spells
Effects
Did Pixel say he could do a thing?
The golden glyph blooms into being, a sign of good luck before the task at hand. He fades from the active attention of the mages and slinks off into the shadows. While he was no master sneak, the combination of magic and skill would probably be enough to cover him as he began to make his sweep around the edge of the lot. Eyes watched for anything out of the ordinary and cameras to avoid, and had he been as proficient with Mind as he were Space, he might have been able to mix skill with the supernal and find something useful.
Incognito Presence (P2), Stealth 1 suxx, Perception fail
He took a last look at his surroundings before preparing himself.
Abacus was not as confident in his ability to sneak around. The mudra was simple, as was the Imago: shadows bulging from the dark like boiling tar. With its release, they would be amongst him, molded to him by the power of his Compelling.
1 success3 successes