(Temple) Here Be Monsters

[Winter]

He follows behind, carefully looking around. It was a drug den alright, the earthy smell gives it away.
But there was something subtler, a hint of incense maybe. In Afghanistan it was replaced with sweet saffron. Here, it could be piss, or it's just his creativity working overtime. Then, the bell tolls.

  4 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-03-27 17:18:45		Winter rolls 6 to Perception (wits + comp) (10 Again)		1, 9, 4, 10, 10, 10, 3, 5, 7		4 successes

Spells: Supernal Vision Imp [pot 2], Unseen Shield Imp [pot 2]
Equipment:
Wedding band, moleskine notebook + pencils, magic tool, brass knuckles, Kevlar vest (thin 1/2), Muscle Car (2017 Mustang Shelby gt350r), wallet, Iphone, flashlight

[Briar Rose]

I did it again, gah!

Current Spells: Monthly Rits: 2E LifeShield Pot 3, Life Sight Pot 3, Sense Life pot1
Mana: 5 | Willpower: 3 (Half pool)

[Star]

Cloaked Spells

Unseen Aegis
Supernal Vision
Transform Aura (Sleepwalker)

What is it with these house and some good old fashioned Personal Hygiene? How come they were never spotless, smelling of lemon-fresh dusting spray and Spring clean laundry? A hand fans in useless wafting, protesting at the smell as Briar's glyph forms.

It's tempting to further -- case the exits, then head upstairs.

"HELLO?! CENSUS BUREAU!! MAKE SURE YOU'RE REPRESENTED!"

It's that time, right? Because why go to them when they might come to you?

[Yumyumcrow]

Three mages slip quietly into the desolate building. Shadows loom, predatory, in the shattered rooms. Feet scrape on naked concrete.

Winter expertly moves to one side and inspects the debris [/s]and detritus of human habitation[/s]

Winter finds bedding - perhaps enough for five individuals. Dumped clothing sufficient for three individuals.

And some pamphlets: cheaply printed and amateurish. The contents of the pamphlets was varied - some introductions to a particular style of tai chi or similar martial art; another about a social outreach and soup kitchen funded by the same dojo as the martial art program; several pamphlets of poetry with a cultic bent praising a 'magic bird' or 'Shrike'.

The bell tears Winter from his observations.

Star bursts up the stairs on long, awkward legs, his voice ringing out even as a second bell tinkles and tolls through the fabric of the building.

Briar Rose summons are quick spell Glyph. Perhaps too quick - the resulting Glyph is weak and doesn't provide the Thyrsus with anything beyond what she already knows.

Star reaches the next storey. On this level a cheap looking wall has been erected that cuts the building in two with the only way between the two sections being a narrow door shaped gap or appature. More murals cover this wall, rapidly turning from street art into something much more stylised and disturbing.

A lean and hollow eyed man is staggering out of the narrow gap, his face a mask of terror. He is waring a crude looking dark robe. He see's Star, bare feet snagging on the littered and dusty floor as he tries to arrest his momentum. An arm shoots up, either to beckon or warn away - the gesture is so frantic the intended meaning is lost...

... And then the top of head explodes in a shower of gore and bone.

[Winter]

"Fuck me", he mutters, his voice muffled by the bell.The fucking birds. And where the hell is Star?
He can't give out that he knows about them. Counter-sniping 101, really. But he looks at the girl, she's in danger.
Luckily, he got a few aces up his sleeve.

The howling winds of Pandemonium are soft as a whisper. A Sleight of hand across his face. Watch him, he's a street magician. Now he is, now he isn't. That's the trick when you deal with ambushes, lay low and hug the shadows. Unnoticed until you can deliver the blow behind the enemy's shoulders.
"Lay low", he whispers to the mane of pink hair. Stuck between being a Guardian shadow and the shadow of a Guardian.

  4 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-03-28 11:07:54		Winter rolls 8 to Incognito presence rote (wits + subt + spec + mind) (10 Again)		5, 2, 10, 6, 8, 8, 7, 5, 9		4 successes

  1 success

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-03-28 11:15:21		Winter rolls 5 to Stealth (dex + stealth) (10 Again)		8, 5, 7, 6, 3		1 success

Spells: Supernal Vision Imp [pot 2], Unseen Shield Imp [pot 2], Incognito Presence [pot 4]
Equipment:
Wedding band, moleskine notebook + pencils, magic tool, brass knuckles, Kevlar vest (thin 1/2), Muscle Car (2017 Mustang Shelby gt350r), wallet, Iphone, flashlight

[Briar Rose]

Star peels off, up the stairs, giving a yell, that sends her ears ringing more the bell, but he's going upstairs, which. Sure. Right off in the direction of the bell tinkling, which again.

Mmm. Yes, please.

Stupid mopheaded, danger seeking, badass, chinchilla looking motherfucker.

"What? Here, daddy?" slips from her mouth with out a thought, as her spell lets her know it's only the three of them human wise. She spies the golden spell work, but can't...seem...to...get..a...beat...on...Winter.

Ah. There he is. Whispering at her.

She feels a tingle, a zing of danger. She smiles.

  2 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-03-28 16:47:50		Briar Rose rolls 5 to Lay low (Dex 3 +Stealth 2) (10 Again)		8, 6, 7, 8, 3		2 successes

Current Spells: Monthly Rits: 2E LifeShield Pot 3, Life Sight Pot 3, Sense Life pot1
Mana: 5 | Willpower: 3 (Half pool)

[Star]

Spells

Unseen Aegis
Supernal Vision
Transform Aura (Sleepwalker)
Create Complex Phantasm

Guh-ross.

Interesting fact? It takes about 500lbs of pressure to crush a skull. Assume the reverse is true. Although curb-stomping is a lot easier than shoving some Sem-Tex up someone's nose. Fact. Really, don't ask. And in that moment of one wretched soul's life being extinguished?

There's opportunity.

For both of them. So many people die alone and meaninglessly. Their lives may have been well-spent but their deaths are the slow atrophy of existence until they tip over into the entropy waiting for the Wheel. They don't have a Guardian angel in that final moment, like this man, to give that death meaning.

Long fingers splay out to compose the music on the instrument they were meant to play. Pure white light blossoms into a sigil as a torrent of power flows through him; directed from his Tower by a conduit of Mana and silver-y lattice, gracing the Fallen World. It's woven into the man's dying light...

...and he is reborn.

A push of the sigil and splash of his Will remakes the dead man, terrified and staggering back from whence he came.

And how can man die better
than facing fearful odds
for the ashes of his fathers
and the temples of his Gods?

Star is casting Create Complex Phantasm to duplicate the man exactly and send him back through the gap, intending to use the Illusion as a distraction for him to follow.

  No Paradox

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-03-29 23:36:23		Star rolls 1 to Paradox (-Tool -Mana) (10 Again)		5		failure

  4 successes to Phantasm

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-03-29 23:39:07		Star rolls 14 to Create Complex Phantasm (10 Again)		5, 1, 8, 7, 6, 3, 1, 4, 8, 6, 5, 5, 9, 8		4 successes

[Yumyumcrow]

The illusion is perfect: a trembling, shaking, mass hidden in crude, cheap, robes. The manifestation of the Illusionist's Awakened Will has enough physical mass to bring up small puffs of dust - to endearingly trip of a lump of debris as it turns clumsily back around and clumsily shambles back through the narrow entry.
Star follows carefully behind.

Into baroque darkness the Guardian goes. The other side of the barrier has been cleared of rubble and the walls removed as much as possible to create a large (and mostly open space). The windows have been boarded up, bricked up, sealed and covered. The only light source comes from flickering candles and some guttering torches placed in rudimentary sconces. They glow brightly, strnaglely, as if the contrast is off and give out a little too much heat for their size.

Scent of dust and incense. Scent of oil - ghastly stuff, someone must have been experimenting with their own concoctions. The air is rendered stale, heavy, filled with static potential.

The Guardian's flesh pricks with goose pimples and he feels a frill of hair pop up on scalp.

The darkness is shaped by clustered light: creating the impression of a room or space to the left and right of the entry even though there is not exactly the space for either. One cluster has been highly disturbed and its amazing nothing has caught fire. Yet. In the other cluster sits a robed figure, coughing and gargling quietly - their head at an odd and acute angle. As Star emerges into the space, he hears a metallic thud as this seated figure convulses and drops a hand held bell.

At the far end of the space is another cluster of light. Looming above this circle of light, attached to a post (probably part of a wall at one point) is a beautiful icon of two birds. There is a third seated figure, also robed in the same cheap gear. They are starting to convulse, their body rocked by increasingly violent shakes. This figure is starting to break the silence - a whine of pain: less a scream and more the sound of a human form taken beyond its limits.

Star's illusion, his perfect decoy, lurches to a halt and waits for further orders.

Elsewhere in the building Winter and Briar Rose hide in the shattered rooms and shadows. They hear the second bell...

And then nothing.

[Winter]

He blinks, once, twice. Until he sees them, rows and columns of numbers, each compactly arrayed in a series of non-linear equations.
Dense neighbourhoods dancing asymptotically around a point. And (255,0,0) is the solution.
In the street of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.

  2 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-03-30 13:36:43		Winter rolls 4 to Read Matrices - Infrared (10 Again)		2, 6, 2, 10, 10, 5		2 successes

  2 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-03-30 13:44:51		Winter rolls 6 to Where are you? Perception (10 Again)		1, 7, 4, 5, 10, 8, 7		2 successes

Spells: Supernal Vision Imp [pot 2], Unseen Shield Imp [pot 2], Incognito Presence [pot 4], Read Matrices - Infrared [pot 2]
Equipment:
Wedding band, moleskine notebook + pencils, magic tool, brass knuckles, Kevlar vest (thin 1/2), Muscle Car (2017 Mustang Shelby gt350r), wallet, Iphone, flashlight

[Briar Rose]

Low as requested by the Guardian. She...well, not worries exactly, but worries.

Star had been yelling, then the bell and nothing. Just....another bell.

Briar Rose, easing her way to were they'd split from each other, and tries to find...him. Or something else. Anything really. She didn't....

She frowns, and keeps her steps light.

  3 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-03-30 14:15:10		Briar Rose rolls 5 to sneaky walk (Dex 3 +Stealth 2) (10 Again)		1, 9, 10, 6, 7, 10, 3		3 successes

  1 success

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-03-30 14:17:16		Briar Rose rolls 5 to Perception (Wits 2 + Comp 3) (10 Again)		7, 1, 8, 7, 2		1 success

Current Spells: Monthly Rits: 2E LifeShield Pot 3, Life Sight Pot 3, Sense Life pot1
Mana: 5 | Willpower: 3 (Half pool)