The pair set to work. The shed is only so big, with only so many shelves and cupboards.
Emrys can make [Wits + Investigation. Extended, TN 5]
Striker can make [Wits + Crafts. Extended, TN 5]
This is for adding a Search Category to the thread.
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The pair set to work. The shed is only so big, with only so many shelves and cupboards.
Emrys can make [Wits + Investigation. Extended, TN 5]
Striker can make [Wits + Crafts. Extended, TN 5]
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Emrys
The shed may be small but the Enchanter has to go through nearly all the shelves and cabinets to find what he seeks. He finds what passes for the radio mast's blue prints folded neatly at the back of a shelf. He finds old style printer paper, with its spooling perforations intact, detailing the curve of a frequency and some literature discussing the finer points of such things - evidently Smith was researching the thing to the best of his ability.
And not just him, from the fading notebooks he finds - his father too.
Emrys finds what he seeks in the last cupboard: a pile of notebooks. The most recent are filled with disturbing equations and thick with heavy notation in a none too stable hand; they all end in the telling refrain:
Rum Ane Rum Ane Haw Haw
Older books show the same hand in a much firmer state of mind (and at that point more focussed on radio building). The eldest notebooks are crumbling and stained with time. They are in another's hand and wrapped within their pages is yet another book - this one in Japanese. This early author dedicated most of their efforts to translating the Japanese and trying out the experiments they found.
Crumbling old photographs from the pacific war scatter as the documents are disturbed.
Striker
The Shaman has an exciting time examining what is ostensibly a vintage radio from the 1930s with a whole heap of attachments. The radio has been added to, improved, stripped down and rebuilt again a number of times and each instance has left its mark. That is before he figures how to safely crack the casing and uncovers the electronic motherboards, hand crafted in eerie Supernal patterns, fused with vacuum tube technology.
It is a steam punk dream. And it works.
The strength and clarity of the signal he picks up through his active spell and the sight of the expertly crafted, home-brew technology, strongly indicate that radio itself might be the source of the transmission. He'd need to see the plans for the mast to confirm the hypothesis, of course, but there is no denying the power of the technology that is revealed.
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"Jeez Louise. Would ya look at that. Hey mate check out these circuit boards ay. No sleeper made those without a bit of inspiration from somewhere ay." the Australian said to the other mage. "You find something useful?" He asked as he looked around for the obvious way to turn the thing off - the power cable - and what it was connected to inside the box.
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Emrys only spared the Shaman a quick glance for the circuit boards. He knew very little about the world of electronics, so he didn't dwell on subjects he couldn't comprehend very well. As he finally found the journals he was searching for he started pulling them out of the cupboard.
"Yep, found the Abyssal journals." Now just came the minor issue of how to extricate them. "How long is Smith out for? Some of it is in Japanese, and while it looks like there are translations I'd like to try and take them with us to get them away from Sleeper hands. I'm thinking I'll grab my car, load up the journals, call nine one one to report Mr Smith's sudden shift in health, you drive away and dismiss the spell. Then I'll convince him you tried to catch him as he started to collapse and he should talk to the EMT's about his health and bolt. We rendezvous down the street and I'll start looking through the journals."
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Striker can tell that the radio is run through a mix of batteries and plugs connecting to a spidery web of wires that lead to an overworked power board.
Of course, given the electronic innards of the thing so eerily mirror Supernal symbols, it is quite possible that turning off the power might not be enough.
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Striker looked at Smith, then back at Emrys. "Dunno mate. I just put him to sleep, he's doin' the rest. Heh. Doin' the rest." he laughed at his unintentional pun.
"Anyway, I'm no Guardian, but yeah this stuff is too dangerous for sleepers to be messin' around with ay. If you just wanna cart 'em off then I'm not gonna stop you. How much you wanna take? Would it fit in a bag you reckon? I dunno if tryna convince him is gonna be any use. He din' even seem to remember me from earlier. Maybe whatever this is, is messin' with his head like that. Damn. Japanese. I wish Jono-kun was still around now ay." he said looking at what Emrys had found and focusing on the blueprint. Diagrams, pictures. They were easy to follow. Did they shed any light on whether or not this was where the signal was coming from? It was almost a sure thing now, but confirmation would be reassuring.
He turned his attention back to the conglomeration of technology and the supernal. "Now as for shuttin' this thing down... I'm just gonna try an have a closer look before I switch anythin'. There's so much goin' on in there I'd hate to turn off the only thing that's holdin' back the abyss ay. Heh." he said with time for just a short laugh before his expression went serious.
Supernal Vision: 1 success
Supernal Vision. Scrutinising the radio.
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Acidic burn.
Its the first thing that comes to mind when Striker opens hiseyessoul to the Supernal. And the smell hanging thick between the interstices hits him between the proverbial eyes.
Reality shines as a shimmering interplay of auric fields and patterns, pulsating with power and meaning. He can hear the chime of those patterns as they pulse in time with each other: a harmony that uplifts the Shaman with its wholesome rightness.
The radio is just wrong. Its like staring at pretty squishy rash, all hot and pustulant from a constant scratch or irritating sore on the surface of reality itself; as though many jagged edges are scraping away at the spot from the other side. The sigils on the electronics burn black like skin taut skin of a gangrenous abscess. The Shaman, filled with the Power of Life and Spirit, can feel the heat emanating from the wound easily.
And whatever jagged thing is scraping away at the fabric of the Lie is almost through. The radio's pattern is buckled and warped like a thin rag covering a pile of glass filaments.
What is Emrys doing for the fifteen minutes Striker stares intently at the radio? Xander
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Eyes rolled in mild amusement at the pun, but nothing was said on it.
"Might just want to break it then if you can't find a way to shut it down." Emrys answers the Shaman. He wasn't fond of that method, but if it was picking up Abyssal signals and would keep doing so? Shut that shit down.
While Striker stared Emrys piled the books up and started carting them back to his car. Those definitely weren't sticking around.
Emrys is carting books off. Worth noting though is that Scrutiny is a single turn per roll, not 5 minutes. The wiki and Corebook clearly say it's 3 seconds per roll.
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