Jocasta Deals with the Boys
Michael
The address: Tax records show that four other individuals live at 1031 West A and have their names on the property: all between the ages of 21 and 26, all male, all also have paychecks (most of them much less handsomely compensated than Miss Fry's) from Agrigenics. Jo's instincts, before she even looks up these other individuals, is that these five kids are the core of "Beale Farms," such as it was before it was obtained by Agrigenics. And as she uses Social Security numbers to track down draft and educational records for these other four tenants of Bernadette's house, she finds William Andrews, 26, a marketing graduate from UC Davis; Thaddeus Markham, 23, an agricultural sciences graduate from UC Davis; Ross Evert, 22, a chemistry major from UC Berkeley; and Stephen Chun, 21, a biological sciences major from UC Davis. Again, no legal problems, no protest records, all duly registered with Selective Service. William Andrews also has a law degree from USF and has passed the California bar.
The incorporation records for Beale Farms also finally came back from Sacramento: they date back to spring of '72 and have everyone but Chun's names on them. Beale Farms became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Agrigenics in November of 1972.
Bill
Wait: she suborned a lawyer? Of course, have someone draw up all that incorporation stuff in house. He may have seen some interesting stuff.
Leonard
Before the interrogation of the Beale Boys starts, I want to put a few things out there.
I think Jocasta can get whatever we need out of them. If we need to have someone with stronger Interrogation or Intimidation skills in there to juice things, that's fine with her, but she's got a plan, and these guys don't seem like they're the most powerful minds on the planet. But just to avoid wasting time, we should figure out what we want to know from them before we go in.
Jocasta will once again reiterate that the longer we wait, the more we risk. So whatever we do with Bernadette, we do it fast. If we think we've got a better chance of talking to her ghost, then it is both humane and in our best interests to hasten her demise; if we think a Mind Probe is better, which Jocasta does, let's do it sooner than later. Jocasta is willing to do it herself despite the potential trauma (and she's got to do it while tripping, too!); but, again, we need to figure out what we're going to ask her first.
Michael
Yeah, the crafting of that Mind Probe question definitely deserves an in-character colloquium. And Charley's Post-Mortem Electroencephalogy works best closest to the time of death, while the residual quantum effects are still echoing through the brain.
PME also doesn't work like Mind Probe; Charley's plumbing of Bernadette's mind doesn't guarantee truthful answers. "Note that this trait does not give you a reaction bonus with spirits, or any power to control their behavior."
(By the way, just as a bit of flavor, I like the idea of Jocasta, in the middle of gassing and toting the Beale Boys, has to pick up their phone to call Melanie and tell her that Charley is having a great time at the "planetarium sleepover" or whatever cover story we've concocted for Charley being out so late on a Tuesday night. )
Leonard
(By the way, just as a bit of flavor, I like the idea of Jocasta, in the middle of gassing and toting the Beale Boys, has to pick up their phone to call Melanie and tell her that Charley is having a great time at the "planetarium sleepover" or whatever cover story we've concocted for Charley being out so late on a Tuesday night. )
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Ransom! Charlie? Oh, she’s fine — she’s great, even! Tonight she dumped a load of Halothane on some guys without being spotted. I didn’t even have to shoot anyone! And now she’s going to talk to a … hold on a minute, Archie is making some kind of gesture at me.”
Brant
Marshall shakes his hand and reaches into his med bag for an ice pack. He wraps it around his hand. Looking at Jocasta, he says: “Apologies, Jo. That … well, I spent a long time out there, watching people try to salvage ops gone bad and,” here he glances at the sleeping Roger, “sometimes you want to take a breather, you know? Reset the board. But I guess,” he chuckles, “that’s the whole war over there, isn’t it. Us — the US — trying to salvage an op gone bad.” He places his good hand on her shoulder if she’ll let him. “Namaste and peace.”
He backs up and sits. “Here is what I propose. I think it is a good plan. Jo, you stay here and talk with the boys. Mitch, you take Roger back to his apartment and make sure he’s all set for the night. Leave him these, or give them to him if you spend the night.” He hands Mitch a bottle of pills. “Archie, Charley and I take Bernadette to the Mission. I have the facility — the CCRME — to house her. But I will need medical supplies and equipment. Archie, you must arrange that for me. I will write you a list on the drive into Sonoma. Some of these things — fluids especially — I will need tonight so you must do whatever you can to get them. Charley and I will install Bernadette in the CCRME — I will need her technical know-how to set up all the shit I’ll need, and if Bernadette … doesn’t make it, she’ll at least be on site to speak with her on the,” he sighs heavily, “other side. Jesus Christ this is fucked up. Anyway, she can be like a stopgap. I can keep Bernadette alive, hopefully, this way until we can resolve if Mitch has it in him to … heal her? I guess? And then we can take a crack at her. In the meantime: we need the seeding of memetics here, but I don’t know how or why. The vibe out in Dixon and Vacaville is getting fucked and we need to get ahead of that, narrative wise.”
(OOC: I have a few admin questions. 1. what time of night is it in-game? i have to imagine around 8 or 9 pm at this point? no? 2. where are we? did we go to the rooster house? or did we just step outside the barn and talk under the open night sky? 3. what did we do with Bernadette’s car? is it safely stashed somewhere? did jocasta wipe it down? do we need to retrieve it?)
Bill
(As far as I recall, the car is still sitting there, door open, massive bloody stain and char pattern in two separate areas outside. Kinda a meme challenge: cattle mutilation and spontaneous human combustion?)
Brant
(we can certainly use the burn marks to our advantage, memetics op wise — as you say, cows exploding??)
Leonard
[We need to get it — you sent Dave to pick it up, I believe. Once it's back here it's easy enough to clean up or scrap. Dan's car is parked in a secure garage at Livermore awaiting disposition. I agree — I Leonard, not I Jocasta, who's got other things on her mind — that we should get a memetic campaign brewed up to get ahead of things, but around what? If we were put on to Agrigenics, should we be trying to...well, not help them, they're obviously horrible, but … slow down the bullet heading towards them? Like, should we publicize that they're being targeted? or suppress it? Jo can always float a rumor to Padden and Hall, unless we want it quieter than louder. This is why we have to figure out what our goal is ASAP.]
Brant
(I don’t think we can know our goals until we get more information from either Bernie or Butler — maybe we’ll get lucky with the boys and that’ll give us just enough to clarify a goal? but once we know what we want to do, I think we will be able to come up with a good memetic campaign)
Leonard
Jocasta lights a cigarette, her body language buzzing with tension. "No apologies necessary, Doctor," she replies. "We're all hurting right now. Some more than others," she adds, glancing at Roger uneasily.
"I'll take care of Bernadette's boys. Don't worry about it. If there's anything specific you want out of them, I'll get it," she says icily. "Once I do, we can wipe them or bury them. Makes no difference to me."
She grabs a small kit bag and starts filling it with a few things: notepad, paper, a tape recording rig, and a new Polaroid SX-70. She looks down at Bernie, lost in a haze of painkillers, on the kluged-together gurney. Lifting the Land camera, she takes a shot of her blistered, ruined face; the mechanical click of the camera and the whir of the rolling mechanism sound harsh and eerie in the silence.
"I'm going to talk to them now. Keep in touch, and if you need me to pick up Butler, just say the word. And Roger — rest up. I'll be over to look in on you first thing tomorrow. Make me a shopping list. You're my detail until you're in fighting trim again." She crushes out the cigarette and heads towards the barn's tool room.
Michael
OOC: I have a few admin questions. 1. what time of night is it in-game? i have to imagine around 8 or 9 pm at this point? no? 2. where are we? did we go to the rooster house? or did we just step outside the barn and talk under the open night sky? 3. what did we do with Bernadette’s car? is it safely stashed somewhere? did jocasta wipe it down? do we need to retrieve it?
You're correct on the time; it's only around 8:30 right now, and I figure for secure conversations, yes, if you don't trust the Barn, you can go out into the fields surrounding but between Mitch's passive countersurveillance skills and Charley you could do a thorough successful bug sweep of the Barn in less than a half-hour.
Love the plan to have Jocasta on interrogating the Boys, Marshall and Charley on interrogating Bernadette, and Mitch taking Roger home during/after his weird Red Devil trip (hah).
Was this intentional, Brant? Either way it's pretty awesome.
Brant
god i wish i had such an extensive knowledge of ‘70s drug culture! haha.
Michael
Leonard, who are you gonna wake up and speak with first?
Leonard
Jocasta will pop a mod, making sure she's completely alert, and keep an eye on all four Beale Boys until late. When they start to nod off, or otherwise lose their sharpness, she dons a black ski mask, hitches up her kit bag, and walks into the part of the Barn where they're being held. She'll slam the heavy bag onto the table and even give them a slight kick to wake them if they've already begun to doze.
"Heads up, boys, could be a long night ahead. That's up to you," she barks, in her steeliest voice. Whether they say anything or not, she ignores them — for now — while slowly unpacking the kit bag. One by one, she lays out most of its contents on the rickety wooden table: first, a coil of rope. A few old rags and a bottle of chloroform. A couple of utility knives, their razors sharpened to a deadly edge. A pair of pliers, a hammer, and a hacksaw. A lighter and a small but powerful blowtorch. An Army-issue wooden baton. A truck battery and a loop of cable. And, finally, the tape recorder and the mic. All the dark tools of 20th-century sorcery, as deployed in a thousand hidden chambers. She makes sure they get a good look at all of them.
"You knew today was coming, didn't you? You knew this was going to end with all of you in a place like this. You know you fucked up. If you didn't, you're stupider than you look." She attaches the cable to the battery and strikes it with the shaft of the hammer, causing it to throw out a menacing shower of sparks, before setting up the mic and the tape machine. "So here's what's going to happen. You're going to tell me your fucking life stories from the second you met Bernadette Fry. What she's doing, why she's doing it, what your role is, what it has to do with Agrigenics. You tell me everything."
She pauses for a moment and re-opens the bag. "I won't tell you not to lie; I know you will. Doesn't matter to me. I'll find the truth. All that matters is you can lie and die, or tell the truth and live. You'll make the right choice eventually." She takes her compact semi-automatic, kitted out with a silencer, out of the bag and sets it on the table next to the rest of the tools. "And I don't imagine that any one of you is any smarter than the others, so really, I only need one of you."
She fixes them all with a direct look, one by one. "One last thing." She reaches into her pocket and takes out the photo of Bernadette she took with the Land camera. "Your boss isn't coming to save you. She's not going anywhere, ever." She shows them the photo — passes it in front of them, left to right, right to left again. "We've got her now, and you can see what we've done with her. But she's not dead, and she won't be until she talks. So it's your decision: you can leave here and live the rest of your lives, or you can leave here in a garbage bag, looking like her."
"Now," she says, "let's talk."
Michael
(Gotta do some math/assessment of bonuses and penalties here, Leonard, and then it looks like with Interrogation I'm supposed to roll for you so I'll have something for you in a bit.)
(Might as well do the math here, actually)
Leonard
[To be clear, I'm not sure if this actually changes the rolls or anything, but while she's trying to Intimidate them, certainly, she's also not bluffing. She will hurt them if they don't talk. I know everything's governed by the dice here, but this isn't an act.]
Michael
Interrogation defaults to IQ minus 5 or Psychology minus 4: either way that's a 10.
+3 situational bonus for the lengthy surveillance and understanding of Bernadette and the Boys' psychodynamics URIEL has already done
+3 bonus from Empathy, as Jo puts the threats and words on the table, she can read all of them for their immediate reaction
+3 bonus for "Extreme Threats" as detailed in the entry for Interrogation, B202 minus "something" for loyalty to their leader: again, from Interrogation's description, typically this is a -5, but I won't be detailing how much of an impact this is going to have for any or all of the Boys, but there's definitely something substantial to be overcome there
-1 penalty for them outnumbering Jo: going into the room alone is badass, of course, but they do have the superiority of numbers
So at VERY best Jo's going to have an 18 here but of course, I have to ask … will Jo juice this with Corruption? Interrogation is one of those special "as unto Them" skills.
Leonard
Nope, no Corruption. Jo is currently in a mindset where she feels like she's been screwing with that stuff too much and is ready for a return to some good old-fashioned intelligence community brutality. If she goes to Hell, she'll go to her own Hell, not Theirs. She's even got a plan for if they bristle up or talk back. She's feeling very confident, as people about to do something awful often do.
Michael
"Who the fuck are you? Where are we?" William Andrews, Esquire fairly screams at the balaclava'd Jocasta. "Once people know we're missing, you're going to be in a lot of fucking trouble, missy. You don't know who we are and who we know." At this, Ross and Thad look cowed. Jocasta gets a flash look in their eyes; the two of them are taking their cues from William but deep down Jocasta can see the fear in their hearts. It's just been overridden by William's immediate and bold stand.
But at the back corner of the room, Stephen Chun, the same kid that Roger ran into on his way to the sub shop last week to get "cheat foods" for the Beale Boys, raises his hand. "I'll talk."
"Chun, you little fucking runt, don't you fucking dare listen to this... this thug," William says to Stephen in the same strident tone of voice he used on Jo. It's funny; Jo's Empathy lets her know in a vague way that William is trying to ferret out who Bernadette's enemies might be and it seems he can't seem to decide on a political orientation. Left? Right? Anti-progress? He honestly doesn't know, and Jo being a woman has complicated this even further. William had to settle on "thug" and Jo can tell he's not happy with it. Jo is shaking William, at least on some level, maybe a political one. But Stephen seems to be running on a completely different set of life-or-death concerns right now.
William: "You don't know what this is going to mean for you. She'll cast you out! We'll fucking end you." Thad and Ross seem largely unconvinced by William's outburst (Empathy again), but they're still shooting daggers at Stephen right now, in the manner of cultists since time immemorial.
"Bill..." Stephen says, his voice cracked from halothane inhalation, "Just for once in your life, shut up."
Leonard
Jocasta walks slowly over to the group, then settles in front of Andrews. "You're Billy," she says. "The businessman."
She rears back a foot and kicks him dead center in the chest.
[What Jo wants to do here is a Karate attack — which should be aided by the fact that he's cuffed and generally movement-restricted — juiced by a Pressure Points roll. If it succeeds, "a hit to a torso pressure point interferes with the victim's breathing, resulting in suffocation (see Suffocation, p. 436); he may roll against HT every second to recover". If it works, she'll let him sit there like a fish on the dock for a few seconds; if he doesn't recover, she'll just let him pass out for now. If it doesn't, well, it's a free kick in the lungs and it'll make her feel better. Either way, she'll click on the tape recorder and turn to Stephen:]
"Now, you were saying?"
Michael
Okay, first of all, yeah, make a straight Karate-15 roll, that's an All-Out Attack with Determined (+4) to help offset the Pressure Points (-2) and Vitals (-3) penalties. Being cuffed to a radiator, William will only be able to use Block at a penalty to try and avoid the worst of the kick. If this succeeds and you do a single point of damage, then we figure out Pressure Points-16 vs. his HT.
Leonard
>>>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
1d6+1 crushing damage, then roll Pressure Points-16.
He could not effectively block Jocasta's kick.
Leonard
Doin’ damage.
>>>> 1d6+1 … 2
Pressure Points.
>>>> SUCCESS by 4
Michael
The blow lands right to the right of Andrews's sternum, striking him precisely in the heart and lung. He goes down to the ground, choking and thrashing. With this, Ross and Thad seem now completely cowed. Roll 5d6 for the number of seconds that William has to deal with not being able to breathe/rolling HT to get his breath back. Whatever the case, considering they all have very few Fatigue Points after the gassing, this might render William unconscious in a few seconds depending on his rolls. Also, does it seem advantageous to take Stephen from the holding cells to the interrogation chamber?
Leonard
First, nah, she wants to keep them together. Their only advantages in this situation is their cult fervor and their superior numbers, and she wants to break that in front of all of them to wear down their hope. She also wants to be able to keep an eye on the reaction of the others as Chun talks. If they get bold enough to shout him down or anything like that, she'll separate them, but otherwise she wants them together — hopefully they'll all talk eventually. She won't even move Andrews' body unless it looks like he might actually die. She's pegged him as the strongest, the leader, so humbling him in front of them should have some effect on their resistance. Speaking of which:
>>>> 5d6 … 20
Michael
Yeah, William passes out after 3 to 5 seconds of choking and struggling. He turned blue a little bit, but once he's unconscious again his breathing seems to normalize. He's just been through too much this evening to be able to stay conscious. No problem on doing the interrogation in here at all. I may need to take a break and uh actually do some work this afternoon, so Stephen's story will come either tonight or early tomorrow morning.
And by the way, I don't see any need for violence-derived Fright Checks after this scene... as you've said, this is all For Roger and part and parcel of just stopping Fucking Around with possible History B cultists/dupes. I mean, obviously we'll see how the scene goes but right now I see no need to call for one.
Stephen sits up on the cot, rubbing his handcuff-chafed hand absently. He coughs—more results of the halothane. "I can begin when I first was recruited by Bernadette and William on campus at Davis," he says with a glance to Bernadette's adjutant on the ground unconscious. "I was told this health food label with corporate backing was expanding operations, and would I be interested in helping shape the future of food. I hadn't considered such a career, but I liked to eat healthy and organic—I read Silent Spring in high school, it meant a lot to me—and so I went to the house in Dixon for, I guess, an interview. But it was less an interview and more a party."
"It was great, just a humming hive of activity. It was 'Labeling Day,' which was the day we'd run off and apply a bunch of Beale Farms labels to the food and get the boxes ready for shipping, and a whole bunch of Bernadette's friends were there to pitch in—some from Agrigenics, some from elsewhere. Pretty hippie girls." A thoughtful pause, accompanied by a few tears. "I met Thad and Ross that day, we talked shop. Asked me about my level of experience at the bench—you know, lab work—and what kind of microbiology I'd done. I seemed to pass the test because the next week Bernadette called me and asked if I'd like to join them working on a special nutrition project. She'd set up some lab space in the garage and said we'd have carte blanche and an unlimited budget, thanks to Agrigenics."
Thad wearily raises his head and says, "Don't tell her about the lab. Please, Stephen. You'll ruin all her work. They won't understand... or they'll try to steal it!"
Stephen pauses, looking at the sinister masked face of his captor. "There's stuff I don't want to talk about, it's embarrassing. Can I skip that and just go right to talking about the lab?"
Ross says, "'Embarrassing'? She gave you everything, you little worm, and this is how you repay her?" Ross and Thad are getting a little verbally rowdy, even with William sprawled out across the floor.
Leonard
Jocasta takes the baton and slams it loudly on the table. "Stephen, this is very helpful. Please continue." She walks over to Ross and slaps the fat end on her palm. Even with the gloves, it makes a meaty thud. "You two, it's rude to interrupt. Do it again, and you get this. After that it's the hammer. Then...well, we'll have to move on to things it's not so easy to get better from."
Michael
Stephen's face shifts into a rictus of fear at Jo threatening the other Beale Boys—he's truly intimidated both by Jo and his former housemates, it seems—but he takes a few seconds to collect himself and continues. "So after a while I moved into the house. And I started taking more regular shifts in the lab. Bernadette... Bernadette told me, told us, that something very special had happened on the grounds of the old Downer Ranch while Beale Downer was alive—possibly as part of his and the other senior Pruists' research—but that it was lost because the Pruists were so persecuted by their neighbors and the other churches back then. That the properties of the soil at the ranch could be the key to a few projects Agrigenics had been working on for creating a truly..." Stephen drifts off for a moment, trying to remember specifics under all this duress. "...She called it an 'apocalyptically-resilient regenerative terroir.' Like, if there was nuclear war, or some kind of climatic event, or a grain blight, that there was something, some quality of the soil, somewhere at Downer Ranch that would be able to create a new ecosystem from scratch, to rebuild the Earth's fecundity."
"I know this sounds crazy." Stephen says, almost shamefully.
Jo can hear Ross breathing very heavily, like his rage is growing too great for his heart and soul to hide it, but he's also trying to stay quiet so he doesn't get beaten to a pulp.
Leonard
Jocasta gets a paper cup and fills it with water, setting in front of Stephen. "Take a drink. Keep talking. Every detail. Tell me where Bernadette's funding came from, and the relationship with Agrigenics. She's not popular with everyone there, is she?"
Michael
Stephen responds immediately, "No. Most of the old guard there think she's crazy, endangering the bottom line with vanity projects like Beale Farms. But she said it's all necessary. The lab soil project here, Beale Farms showing companies how to feed the most people cheapest..."
"Enough!" Ross screams. "Don't say another word, Stephen. I swear, it's like you forget who and what we're involved with here!"
To Jo, Ross says, "You should just kill us all. We'll never give up her secrets. I'm not afraid to die for the future she's promised us."
At this, Thad looks a little bit greener around the gills than he has been, and he's looked pretty ill since coming around from the halothane; her Empathy is screaming at Jo that Thad's feelings right now are, "Uh, I didn't sign up to die for Bernadette, I don't think." Stephen is quiet again, though, after Ross's outburst. He seems a little spooked.
Leonard
Jocasta turns her attention from Stephen. "Kill you all? That what you two want?" She picks up the Zastava and pulls back the slide, chambering a round as it thuds back into place with a metallic clank. "I guess we'll start with you, then, Ross, since you're not afraid to die." She puts the suppressor against his temple, and watches.
Michael
(Empathy, Psychology rolls made secretly)
As Jocasta brings the barrel of the suppressor up to Ross's head, Jo watches and Senses him. Carefully. He doesn't flinch, he doesn't shrink: he keeps his stare straight ahead; fury behind his eyes, certainly, but otherwise consigned to his fate. He is a True Believer. Whether that can be said for Thad, Jo's not sure; he seems more reasonable and fearful right now. But Ross will absolutely die for Bernadette. And Jo can tell it's because of some kind of programming. It doesn't feel like repeated NLP; that can make people love and fear and respect someone but not to the point of utter self-annihilation. No, this has to be from a bigger, more powerful whammy: direct repeated mind control from something at the glyphic level. Jo sees something in his eyes akin to the look of someone in the midst of a psychedelic or near-death experience; Jo doesn't let her sympathy for those experiencing such things overwhelm her, because Jo also knows that something in Ross, deep down, wanted this slavery, wanted this subjugation of his own will to the maniacal plans of someone he considers his hero(ine)-figure.
"God," Stephen says, "Please, please don't hurt him. Please." He begins weeping, loudly.
Leonard
Sell it. No weakness, not now, Jocasta tells herself. Her mind is starting to cloud with memories of a muggy African noon. But she knows true believers and she knows they’ll build a wall in a matter of seconds if they sense that she’s not serious.
She pulls back the hammer on the Zasteva for a silent eternity, keeping her eyes on Stephen and Thad, not Ross. Then she lifts it away quickly and gives him a short, sharp rap on the kneecap with the baton.
“I don’t think you boys understand that the situation has changed. Your grand design is ruined. Your plans will not unfold. Your leader is a ruined brain inside a dying body. It’s all over. Your only hope for any kind of future is giving me what I want.”
She steels her voice again and points to the door of the room with the Army billy club. “Here is what that future holds: cooperation gets you a drink of water or something to eat or a trip to the bathroom. Complete cooperation opens that door into the world. Resistance means the only world left to you is suffering and death. And you,” she says, speaking directly and firmly to Ross, “You will also tell me what I want to know. I think you can sense that it’s true. The only question is how much pain will come first, to you and your friends.” And to me too, she thinks, betraying no outward sign of the dread she has of dosing in this gruesome setting in order to make a Mind Probe work. I still have two others and he’s disposable, she thinks, half a cold analysis and half a hope.
“You two better start talking. He lives only as long as you cooperate, and his end won’t be as quick and painless as a bullet.” She puts down the baton and picks up the hammer, raising up Ross’ cuffed hands.
[You can have me roll for the baton strike if you think it’s worthwhile, but she’s not really trying to do real damage, just hurt Ross a little and get the others’ attention.]
Michael
Probably should roll merely because Ross and the others have so few FP right now and a successful blow could put Ross out just like William is.
Okay, so another Determined All-Out Attack will negate the -4 Default of Melee Weapon (Short Sword) to your DX. You can size Ross up for 3 seconds to get a +3 Evaluate bonus, so Jocasta will roll DX-15 for this attack to his center mass. Ross will get no effective Active Defense, though. A miss here just means a glancing blow, it's not like "a swing and a miss." Damage with a baton with a ST 11 is 1d6+1 crushing damage.
Leonard
>>>> FAILURE by 1
Bah
Well, I wasn't trying to hurt him
Michael
(So given Rob's incisive comment on what failure would mean to Jocasta, what I am gonna say is that the baton does land a solid blow and does some damage, but it's going to redouble Ross's resistance; he's made all his Will rolls so far, as he's made of marginally stronger stuff than Thad and Stephen, Jo can tell. But he's not going to crack as far as giving into Jo is concerned. At least not with mere baton sucker-punches.)
Stephen continues, stammering more frequently now. "Bernadette has one supporter at Agrigenics. Chris Butler. He's in charge of public relations. She and he are simpatico on everything she's trying to do. They have big plans... long-term plans." Stephen uses his free hand to wipe sweat off his forehead. "He gets us our budget, handles all the promotions for Beale Farms products, all of the distribution end."
Thad interrupts for the first time, tries to keep it all business by pivoting off the pre-interruption lab discussion. "You have to understand, she didn't tell us everything about what the two of them were doing. Just the barest outlines. She told us what markers to look out for in the soil samples. Fantastic growth. Beneficial mutation. Multi-generational improvement in vegetative growth and quality of nutrients."
Stephen, hearing this from Thad, is crying again, but he very quickly spits out, "She made us all believe! She wanted Beale Farms to be the method by which... the un-elect get fat and sick and compliant. She kept us on a real diet, one she said would allow us to live to be 120 years old and be part of the elect, with her!" More weeping; at Stephen's divulging more of the secret initiations of the Bernadette Catechism, Thad's turned positively white. He can't believe he's giving away the entire game.
Ross hisses with venom at Stephen. "Fuck you. You little fucking fink." Stephen is now crying to himself, mumbling about how sorry he is that he cheated on the diet, how it's his fault Bernadette is now scorched and dying. "I killed her," he wails. Pure magical thinking, Jocasta realizes. All these boys are in deep and are now breaking along their pre-existing fault lines.
Leonard
Jocasta pauses for a moment, letting them stew in their own perceptions of what's happening. After a few minutes, she goes back to the sink and pours another cup of water and sets it in front of Thad. She also fetches a few k-rations and puts a random item or two in front of him and Stephen.
Then, saying nothing, she secures Ross's bindings (maybe 'accidentally' banging into his knee once or twice, just to make him sweat) and drags him into the next room of the Barn. She comes back and does the same with William's unconscious body. Closing the door, she soaks a pair of rags in chloroform and stuffs them in their mouths, with the intent of both knocking them out and keeping them quiet. Once they're out, she comes back out, fetches her pistol, and unscrews the suppressor. She goes back to the adjacent room, closes the door, and then fires two shots in close succession, one after the other — into the wall. But she's close enough that the sound might at least temporarily deafen the two. She'll also break out the cabinet full of mopers, but she won't pick any out — yet.
She comes back to the room where Stephen and Thad are waiting. After taking a moment to gauge their reactions to the sound of their friends apparently getting whacked, she'll speak again. "All right. You two are the smart ones, that's clear. Let's continue this pleasant conversation, shall we? Hungry? Thirsty?"
[Basically, her plan is to keep interrogating them until she's reached the limit of what she thinks they know around three specific questions: what the precise nature and method of administering these food additives is, including a timeline for distribution (1); what they know about Butler and he and Bernadette's relationship with Agrigenics (2); and what, if anything, they know about the precise location of Beale Farms or its cult history, and how that ties into the program (3). She will also try and find out if they know anything about Dan or if there are any other big players in the project that haven't been mentioned yet, and — much more carefully, because she doesn't want to prompt them in any way if they seem to have any knowledge of History B or the Enemy. These latter two she will be much more cautious about, though, as she doesn't want to guide them or suggest anything to them; all the intel should come from them unprompted. She also won't at any point tip who she works for or why she cares about this.
[She will let the two of them eat or drink under very controlled circumstances as long as they cooperate, but not go to the bathroom. If they resist or obviously lie, she'll escalate. She'll disappear occasionally to check on the two others, mainly to just ensure they're quiet and unconscious, but she's not very concerned about whether they live or die. Once she has what she wants, she'll inject them all with mopers, but I haven't decided what kind yet.
[If you want to RP all this out, I'm fine with it — I love playing bad-ass Jo, even though this is going to send her to a deep dark place — or if you just want to take it as read that this goes the way she intends, feel free to do an infodump and we can figure out how to close it out. Either way, she'll hang around until she hears from the rest of the team.]
Michael
Fright Check Thad-7.
>>>> FAILURE by 4
Fright Check Stephen-5.
>>>> FAILURE by 7
Fright Check Table result Thad.
>>>> 3d6+4 … 15 (4+6+1)+4 = 15
Fright Check Table result Stephen.
>>>> 3d6+7 … 16
1d6 Fatigue Points lost by Thad.
>>>> 1d6 … 5
1d6 Thad stunned for x secs.
>>>> 1d6 … 6
1d6 Stephen stunned for x secs.
>>>> 1d6 … 4
When Jo comes back to the room after the gunshots, Thad gets woozy upon seeing Jocasta returning and eventually passes out right in the middle of her little spiel about he and Stephen being "the smart ones." Meanwhile, Stephen is glassy-eyed, staring into the middle distance, and needs a little time to snap out of it. He's looking at Jocasta with abject fear and has wet himself.
(also quite interesting that the Dice made Stephen the last man standing, despite his weaker Will overall... if they'd gotten into the 20s on the Fright Check some real freaky shit might have happened...)
Basically, her plan is to keep interrogating them until she's reached the limit of what she thinks they know around three specific questions: what the precise nature and method of administering these food additives is, including a timeline for distribution (1); what they know about Butler and he and Bernadette's relationship with Agrigenics (2); and what, if anything, they know about the precise location of Beale Farms or its cult history, and how that ties into the program (3) She will also try and find out if they know anything about Dan or if there are any other big players in the project that haven't been mentioned yet, and — much more carefully, because she doesn't want to prompt them in any way — if they seem to have any knowledge of History B or the Enemy.
1 and 2. The "additives" aren't additives per se, Stephen says, splitting hairs: the corn byproduct is just very cheap, very sweet, and very addictive. In unguarded moments of what seems to Jocasta like indoctrination, Bernadette used to tell the Boys that "American slobs deserve to suffocate in fat, and we'll make sure of it. In 20 years everyone will be using Agrigenics' methods to make their food more addictive." More discerning global eaters, Bernadette would say, will remain healthy, obsessively so, thanks to the kind of "cultural programming" that will ensure—again, Stephen uses the very literal term "the elect"—that the elect live long, healthy, happy lives. "She was a big believer in the fact that only superior populations, receptive to this message of health and nutrition, should survive and thrive into the future she and Butler were planning." Agrigenics, it seems, was merely a vehicle for their ambitions but at the same time, I mean, what on-the-rise agricultural sciences corporation wouldn't end up wanting possession of a new industrial process that would ensure millions of happy, addicted customers for years and generations to come? The few times Stephen got to see or hear Bernadette talking about this side of things, it's clear she was playing a role: "kooky futurist hippie broad" so her long-term plan could come to fruition. With Butler on her side, though, Agrigenics would deploy any of those kooky futurist plans she wanted to unleash. Butler may not have been on the very highest level of the company but it's clear Bernadette had no fear of their plans being scuttled, ever.
3. Yes, Bernadette was quite open with the Boys about what Beale Downer and the Pruists were all about. His ranch and spa was a small-scale version of what Bernadette wants to do to the whole globe: find the people mentally- and spiritually-strong enough to be at the top of the heap and keep them preternaturally healthy while the rest toil in the fields, breed like livestock to provide dumb pliant workers for the elect, and the elect get to lounge around, feasting upon juicy giant fruits and crystal clear water, seemingly forever.
But talking of the Pruists is where Stephen starts to get a little... cagey. The "embarrassing" bits he referred to earlier very obliquely seem to be rising to the forefront of his mind. "Bernadette could get a little... well, weird when she'd talk about Beale. Like, he was still alive in some way, waiting for the world to be the Garden he always envisioned, that he'd come back, literally, and be the... what did she call him...." Stephen closes his eyes, and opens them with a sigh. "The 'Great Gardener.' That's what she said. She used to always talk about that stuff... in bed." Stephen shifts uncomfortably. "It was all such a whirl, I can't remember the specifics, just... just the barest outlines." Stephen's face sort of... contorts, twitches, a cold, nervous sneer playing across his lips.
(This is again setting off Jocasta's Weird feelers; the Pruists are at the locus of some deeply-seated, buried programming in Stephen's—and presumably the other Boys', hence their reactions to Stephen's giving away the Gospel—psyches. I figured this was a good place to pause because of your previous statement about treading lightly around Weird/History B stuff.)
(And I figured we'd wait on any mentions of Dan as well.)
Leonard
[Okay, cool. With all this stuff on tape, Jocasta is going to start by giving all four of them a strong sedative just to keep them knocked out for as long as possible — nothing severe like chloroform or Halothane, just the kind of stuff they'd put you under with in a hospital. She'll make sure they're securely bound and she'll keep them away from each other.
[I can't remember if there's a phone at the barn; if so, she'll call Marshall from there, and if not, she'll drive back to Livermore and call from a secure line. Either way, that should be a scene with Brant.]
Michael
(Cool. I would say we have a secure line at the Barn. Trying to think chronology-wise if it makes sense for this call to come in before the heli touches down at the Mission with all the medical supplies for Bernadette... honestly it probably does—if Jo didn't finish before 11 pm it would be right around then—so if you and Brant want to have an IC chat.)
(Also fyi Jo will need to be the one to bring Charley back home in the morning, again just for flavor but I like the idea of Charley and/or Jo pulling torture-related all-nighters then coming back over the Bay Bridge in the morning.)
Dialing the Mission … ring ring … ring ring …
Leonard
Jocasta quietly hangs up the phone and packs the gear back up. After checking to see if everyone is still under — especially Stephen — she lifts him up in a fireman's carry and sets him in the back of the van. She replaces the suppressor on the Zasteva, goes back to the side room, lays down a canvas tarp, rolls the three remaining Beale boys onto it, and puts two rounds into each of them: one in the center mass and one in the back of the head. Just like she was taught.
She finds a spot near the back of the barn, lights the bodies up with some kerosene, and puts the remains in an oil drum, which she seals and puts back in the barn for later disposal. After that, she sighs, smokes a cigarette, and gathers her camera, sketchbook, and tools, and starts the long drive back to Dixon. "Christ," she says to the wind whipping through the wing vent window. "What a night."
Michael
Fright Check-14 for Jo.
>>>> SUCCESS by 7
Where is Stephen? Still locked in his cell at the Barn, unconscious?
Leonard
Stephen is in the back of the van, trussed up like a Christmas turkey, gagged and blindfolded, and pumped full of sedatives. The plan was for Jocasta to just secure him there, go straight from the Barn to the Beale house, search it, and the book it straight to the Mission, arriving some time in the mid-morning, if nothing goes wrong HA HA HA. Ready when you are!
Michael
Cool. I'm still dissatisfied at the skill options for doing, like, a grid search and case the joint type analysis of an enemy lair (Search kind of covers it but so does Criminology and Forensics … GUUUUURPS) but I think I may do some combination of Search (Jo will Default on this skill) and Intelligence Analysis for this scene. Whatever the case, it looks like I roll in secret, so at this point tell me: priorities for this search. Mitch has already "seen" into and reported back on the layout of the carriage house biolab and Bernadette's bedroom and closet (refer to later portions of this scene) so what do you think are Jo's urgent needs and targets in the next 6-8 hours?
Leonard
The way I had it mapped in my mind was that Jocasta will arm up, stay in stealth gear (with a gas mask in case there's residual halothane), and enter the house for a rough search — nothing super intensive, as this is more damage control than anything. She basically just wants to clear out anything useful or incriminating. So the timeline is basically: We kayoed the Beale Boys around twilight/early evening, say 7 or 8. She dropped off Charley [I still want to do a scene with her, but I think the chaos of the moment prevented it from happening then] and waited until they started to recover, say around midnight to 1AM. Interrogation took an hour or so, then, uh, closing up shop was a few hours, most of it getting rid of the bodies. Then back to the farm around 5AM, search for a couple of hours, and then driving over to the Mission with Stephen and anything that turns up during the search. That should get her to Marshall around 10AM. She'll briefly meditate to clear her mind and make her as receptive as possible. Here's what she's going to specifically look for, more or less in order:
1. Anything that has an obvious History B taint to it — glyphs, images, anything with Sumerian language, or anything that gives off a clear Bad Vibe. Ditto for anything obviously occult, if not necessarily History B.
2. Notebooks, journals, records, logs, memos, experimental documents — basically any kind of written information about either their work or their personal history.
3. Anything portable that seems like a result of their research: vials, containers, fluids, anything really unfamiliar that can be analyzed later. Also, any keys, pass cards, or things that shout 'second location'.
4. Anything that might trigger an investigation by authorities beyond Bernie and the boys being missing: weapons, narcotics, anything creepy or strange, human remains, etc.
5. Finally, she'll try to grab something personal from Bernadette and the boys for a future psychometric read, preferably something with both emotional meaning and that was recently used. After that, she'll just replace the padlocks and get the hell out. If there's already cops, or really anyone at all, there already, she'll just leave without stopping.
[Oh — she'll also take a camera and photograph every room so that we can look back and analyze anything she might have missed.]
Michael
Cool. My vision of the overnight itinerary was slightly different but ultimately it's not a huge deal the order all that stuff gets done in as long as it all gets done (and it will). Jo's driveby confirms there's no police presence or other folks lying in wait from the outside of the house. Will make pertinent rolls now and report back with the broad sweep of Jo's search results.
What I think I'll do is explain the geography of the house, room-by-room, and then we can tackle the priorities in each room in your rough order. I will save Bernadette's bedroom and the carriage house for last; there are special preparations that should be adhered to in both situations given a) the History B presences in both spaces and b) the protective protocols for going into the carriage house. Think of this black-bag as an old text or point-and-click adventure and I'll try to let you "LOOK" in each space in detail.
GARDENS: Mitch and Roger sniffed these out from the street and there's not much more to be said than what they surveilled: chicken coops, really fantastic quality vegetables on trellises and in the ground, etc. Jo doesn't really bother with any of these except to keep a mental note of grabbing a veggie sample.
KITCHEN: Approaching via the back door with stealth under cover of darkness seems to make the most sense to Jo (Stealth roll made secretly). The back door opens effortlessly with William's keys, in his pocket when he was abducted. Jo, gas-mask'd, finds herself in a really quite delightful kitchen. The original late-Victorian features in the house have been retained—decorative moldings, cabinetry; there's even a wood-burning stove along with a more modern oven. Macrame'd herb pots hang everywhere, along with some old sepia tone photos of... well, yeah, above the breakfast nook and along near the sink, those are definitely what look like photos of the Downer Ranch in its heyday. Jo marks them for the black bag. The fridge and pantry is loaded with only very healthy food: apart from a couple of salmon filets in the fridge, there's no meat. And elsewhere it's all fruits, vegetables, and some dairy (but not a lot; some glass-bottle milk from a local dairy and some fancy cheese, probably purchased in Berkeley). Wheat germ, whole grains, brown rice, some baking goods (no refined sugar though), very good quality pots and pans, a lot of cast iron and copper in the cabinets and hanging over the oven; none of that ultramodern space age non-stick stuff. Absolutely no canned goods: a half-dozen different kinds of beans are dried and in bags. On the fridge is a chore rota schedule: Bernadette is on there, but not as much as she should be if she was going to do as much work as the boys. Jo marks the rota schedule for extraction too. Hiding places one would expect in a kitchen—fake lettuce in the fridge? coke in the sugar bowl?—come up with zip. It's pretty mundane all things considered.
Oh! Also. There's a dead dog in here, a giant Irish wolfhound lying peacefully on a big handmade quilted dog bed. The dog's dish is hand-painted with the words "UNCLE ALBERT" with wild psychedelic flourishes. The halothane must have caused old Albert and his giant purebred heart to give out. The bed is messed with urine and feces, expelled in Albert's final moments alive.
Exits are to the sunroom to the east (the sunroom's side door leads to the carriage house) and south to the front rooms of the house: the living room and the dining room.
(If there's more you want to do in the gardens or kitchen, let me know. I'm gonna take this whole scene kind of slow because I am bopping around today and also because I do want you to take your time. This is gonna be fun. Dead dog notwithstanding.)
Leonard, you ready for living room and dining room? Living room is gonna be kind of pro forma because the dining room is where a lot of the good shit is.
Leonard
Aside from the Beale Downer photos, Jocasta will take a random vegetable and a small soil sample to be tested. Otherwise she's ready to move on.
Michael
LIVING ROOM: Very notably, the Beale Farms House living room does not have a television set. Nor does the living room have the other characteristic markings of a young college-age people's post-hippie bedsit in 1973: no psychedelic posters (or otherwise any contemporary visual culture), no hi-fi and record collection... no bookshelves! There are some comfy-looking fabric beanbag chairs and, on the other side of the casual-formal spectrum, a couple of nicely-upholstered antique couches. Overall the living room comes off as rather fusty. Jocasta can almost see this room in her mind's eye being the place where Bernadette mustered the troops; no distractions, but a fairly comfortable atmosphere. Jocasta does a grid search under the Persian rug, inside the fireplace (hey, there's the halothane canister sitting amongst the cinders, pop that in the black bag), and under the upholstery: nothing of note.
DINING ROOM: This is where the communal action of Beale Farms happened. A giant custom-built 6 foot x 6 foot dining room table with ten chairs around it holds a dozen or so boxes of Beale Farms-branded bags, labels, and other promotional materials. Binders and notebooks containing distribution lists for health food outlets that sell Beale Farms merchandise sit open on the table. Lots of office supplies—pens, pencils, paperclips, the like—and there are a couple of very small free-standing desks/chairs near the front windows overlooking A Street, where members of the household could do clerical work for Beale Farms. Three of the boxes appear to have bagged, labeled granola ready to go out to three different health food stores: two in California, one in Colorado.
In the corner of the room closest to the kitchen (and to the central hallway which contains the foyer, stairs upstairs, and downstairs bathroom) is a large work desk. It, as compared to the messier smaller desks and shipping table, is very well-organized. A couple of big accounting ledgers sit on a shelf on the desk, along with some dark red hardcover books (spines say they're on California corporation and business law), a series of Yellow Pages from all over Northern California and the Southland, some road maps and some notebooks with cryptic notes on Beale Farms product lines and sales figures. Also on the desk are an appointment book, a phone extension (a regular home Bell phone, not a fancy business model), and a Rolodex. Next to what is presumably William's desk is a metal, fireproof, three-deck filing cabinet. All three drawers are locked. Jocasta looks at her keychain purloined from the deceased William and sees keys that look like they'd match. Apparently William kept all the important stuff close to him at all times. Jo bets the business records (and maybe more) are in that cabinet.
(Again, Leonard, if anything warrants further detail or investigation here let me know but I'm assuming a reasonable bit of the William desk material will go in the bag and that once you've opened the filing cabinets and surveyed the material you'll take what seems germane. But if there's anything Jo wants to flip through in situ, let me know. You've got time and I would be happy to expand upon any of these.)
Leonard
Jocasta will take the halothane cannister, and cut a little piece of the beanbag. She'll get a box each of the bags, labels, and pamphlets, and all of the binders and notebooks, as long as there's not too many of them, as well as one container each of the bagged granola (she'll make a quick note of which is meant for where). All the ledgers, road maps, and notes.
Two things she'll take a look at before loading them in the van: first, the Rolodex — she won't dwell on it too much, but she wants to flip through it to see if there's any familiar names that leap out. She'll also see if there's a home address for Christopher Butler.
Second, the the file cabinet. She doesn't want to take all of them, but she's going to flip through them to see how they're generally organized. She will take anything financial, anything related to legal issues or to/from lawyers, any historical document tied to the old Beale cult, anything like personnel files, and of course, anything that seems immediately incriminating or egregiously History B. (This is also a pretty wild chance, but she's going to be on the alert in case something even remotely resembling a glyph or a Sumerian-language cuneiform.) She'll flip through the law books to see if there are any notes, but if not, she'll just leave them. She'll also check the cabinet and the old dest for false bottoms or hidden drawers.
[To be clear, she's gloved while doing all this, and will at best skim the material to sort out anything banal or useless — whatever piques her interest will just be glanced at long enough to examine somewhere safer and more secure.]
Michael
Rolodex: These look like business contacts, mostly: distributors, health food stores, tax consultants, a few names at Agrigenics with office numbers and work addresses only, including Butler. A few people whose names don't register with Jo but are obviously "civilians" in that there's no business name under their name and their addresses seem residential. Nothing really makes Jo really sit up and take notice but with further research... who knows.
File Cabinet: The first and second drawers are just as Jo predicted: legal files, incorporation records, tax and revenue records, the big important records of the last two-odd years of Beale Farms' existence as an operation. When Jo does some fast and loose forensic accounting to look for the big numbers, she sees that monthly profit was honestly pretty paltry—the low-to-mid four figures, maybe—until early 1973, when Beale Farms came under the Agrigenics umbrella and started using their distribution and contact networks. Now Beale Farms pulls down 10-20 thousand a month in profit. Not bad. Where is that money? Jocasta wonders. The one thing that's not here is a bank passbook for the corporate account, and Jo can tell there is one, at Wells Fargo, for the Beale Farms collective; their financials are kept separate from Agrigenics as a whole.
The third, bottom cabinet is not as full as the top two. It contains, as far as Jo can see, only material having to do with Bernadette Fry's (sole and individual!) ownership of the Beale Downer ranchland. She bought it for a song back in January '72 at an auction from its former owner, an elderly local farmer who died and throughout his life couldn't get anything to grow on the land. Bernadette (and William) put in an offer to divide the farmer's land and take the "contaminated" parcels and condemned buildings that were left standing off the hands of the farmer's next of kin for cheap, cash on the barrelhead. There are detailed grid maps of the land here, with a numbering system that seems to match what Mitch saw in his remote viewing of the soil samples and analysis going on in the lab.
Jo feels around for false compartments and sliding panels in the filing cabinet, spending—on a hunch—a little more time on the bottom drawer. Nothing, nothing, and then Jo feels a tiny, almost-imperceptible "give" through her gloved hand on a tiny portion at the very back of the top surface of the bottom drawer. With an audible "pop," she feels a satisfying click and shift as a sheet of metal slides towards her out of the filing cabinet, revealing a slim hidden space between drawers two and three. Out of the hidden space slips a small, cream-colored, greeting-card-sized, wax-sealed envelope. The wax over the envelope's flap is maroon-colored and stamped with a fancy magiscule "B."
(I promised upstairs right after this but this ended up being long and with a new clue you might want to investigate now, I figured I'd just pause.)
Leonard
This is exactly the kind of thing, she reasons, that she's looking for — but also the one that makes her suspicious, as if there's a glyph or a subconscious command or anything, it's likely to be in a damn wax-sealed envelope.
The financials, grid maps, and Rolodex go in the van. So does the envelope, which she'll wait to open until she's somewhere safer (presumably the Mission), although her curiosity is absolutely killing her. She will keep it up front in the passenger's seat, but resists the urge to open it...for now.
If there's nothing else compelling downstairs, she'll head on up.
Michael
THE BOYS' BEDROOMS: The Beale boys sleep two to a room, yes, even William: looks like he bunked with Ross; Jocasta reasons this is part and parcel of why William and Ross were the hard-asses in the interrogation and Thad and Stephen the sob sisters; it's hard to sleep in the same room as someone and not share vibes. The bedrooms are both small and relatively bare: a chest of drawers for each Boy, filled with middle-of-the-road early-20s men's clothes, not too hip, not too square, with a mix of casual and early-'70s "business casual": William's presumable closet has a few off-the-rack-looking business suits as well. Deep and well-hidden at the back of Stephen and Thad's closet, Jocasta finds a couple of Playboys from '72. Absolutely no personal items can be seen on the bureaus and side tables: no family photos, no photos of even Beale Farms's greatest moments. Like the downstairs living room with no books or record albums, this Spartan nature actually succeeds in creeping Jo out a little bit... let alone the fact she just killed three of these guys and now she's rooting through their underwear drawers. The bedrooms and the upstairs hall bathroom are devoid of anything else that strikes Jo as interesting per her aforementioned search criteria other than the fact the upstairs bathroom seems to be just for Bernadette: all the hygienic products are female-coded (and, of course, organic: no sprays or powders or anything else, just lots of patchouli oils in glass vials, glossy, colorless, lumpy looking soap and gritty homemade toothpaste in little jars).
BERNADETTE'S BEDROOM: Before going in here, Jocasta steels herself. Mitch's report was detailed here: lots of History B energy, a likely glyph on the ceiling behind a zodiac tapestry and in the closet inside a safe a stack of three oak tag cards, each with a glyph. The room is more or less identical to when Mitch scried it:
The window shades are shut, sending an ambient yellow-brown illumination the tone of weak tea throughout the room (it's nighttime, of course, and the illumination from the street is very faint. Figure Jo's been using a penlight in her teeth this entire time). The walls and the ceiling are covered in dark, billowing tapestries; on the ceiling over the bed is a typically dorm-room-like zodiac-wheel tapestry, the constellations are picked out in silver thread. An old-fashioned vanity, seemingly a bit out of character for what URIEL knows of Bernadette, sits against the northwest wall. Instead of lots of makeup on the vanity, there are racks of necklaces, bracelets, rings, and other jewelry. Silver is preferred, it seems, with some necklaces made of fabric, macrame, crystals and the like. A close look at the jewelry reveals a good amount of them have vaguely "occult" motifs. A quick Occultism roll sees Mitch observing most of the stones and crystals have traditionally protective or grounding qualities: tiger's eye, a black gem that could be obsidian or black tourmaline or both, and citrine abound. A door to the northeast leads presumably to the upstairs hallway, a smaller door on the eastern wall feels like a likely closet. Both doors are closed. From the fine details of the Detect (History B) effort Mitch made earlier, three of the sources of History B energy are likely in or around the closet; the other was located somewhere near the center of the room. Under or around or otherwise close to (ABOVE) the bed.
On the hangers in the closet is a lot of hippie-wear of the type Mitch has already seen Bernadette wear to work at Agrigenics, but also some casual-tony stuff, like, Mitch has Fashion Sense now, he can tell, these are like designer golf and tennis outfits. Not at all hippie "crunchy," really. Bernadette even has a few business suits. A chameleon, this one. The closet is a semi-walk-in, in that there's a whole area to the right away from the clothes rail, dominated by a good-sized dresser. Where the mirror would be is an antique head and shoulders portrait of Beale Downer; from his age in the photo and having read the Downer hagiography, Mitch guesses it dates from the turn of the century when he was in middle-age and the Pruists were just beginning their slippage into decline. The glyphs are not in the dresser. The glyphs are in the small 2 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot cubic safe that's on the floor next to the dresser. On top of the safe is an antique oil lamp. Mitch guesses it's from the era of the photo, maybe a little older.
Leonard
Jocasta will toss some small item of clothing from each of the boys and some of Bernie's silver jewelry in a bag. As for the glyphs: 1. First, Jocasta will only do this if there is something around like a can of paint or (ideally) spray paint. Then, if it seems feasible, and if I'm correct that one needs to see a glyph in order to be effected by it, here's what she's going to try with the one on the ceiling. She'll close her eyes, pull down the tapestry, and then lay down underneath it, on her back, and still with her eyes closed, she'll take a photo of whatever the glyph is. Then she'll do her best, still eyes closed, to spray over it with paint. If there's not an opportunity to do this at all, or not without substantial risk as Jo herself judges, she'll leave it be. 2. Is the safe bolted to the floor? If not, and if it's light enough, it goes in the van — she won't attempt to open it here. If it is, she'll grab some tools from the van and try to unbolt or unscrew it and then load it in (again, assuming she can carry it). But she won't do this if it looks like it would take a lot of time or effort. If either of these things are possible (and assuming there's nothing more in the house worth investigating), she'll do them as fast as she can and then leave via the front door, jamming on over to the Mission ASAP. If they're not, Jocasta will take something — a chair, a broom, anything that works — and use it to block the door to Bernadette's bedroom, leaving via the window if possibly. Then she'll go back in the house, lock it from the inside, again leave via the window, and re-padlock the doors from the outside. Lots of balls in the air, here, I know, but this is her general plan — let me know any point at which there's something that can't happen.
[Basically, her plan is to deal with the glyphs without looking at them here, and if that fails, to just make sure the house is as hard for civilians to get into as possible until we can come back here with more people.]
Michael
Excellent set of plans. A can of spraypaint seems like, like, standard issue for SANDMAN field teams knowing they're dealing with glyphs, so your photo/spraypaint plan sounds excellent. And if you're willing to take the time, unbolting and removing the entire safe is also eminently doable.
(I'm assuming you'll take the old timey lamp and Beale Downer portrait as well.) Leaving via Bernie's window, also fine but I'll need to make some Stealth and Climbing checks for you. Padlocks also cool. Carriage house! Is Jo just gonna leave it for now, not knowing the lab protocols, and padlock it as well? It is, of course, multiply-secured with locks itself already.
Leonard
[Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, of course the Downer portrait and lamp go in the van. And of course, I assumed there'd be some checks, just let me know the outcome or if you need me to roll anything.
[Hmmm. The carriage house. I think that given (a) the elaborate work in the bedroom with taking down the tapestry and photographing the glyph, and (b) having to unbolt the whole safe, it's getting pretty late in the morning, and Jocasta doesn't want any more chance of exposure than necessary. Also, the van is getting full, and Jo simply doesn't have the training to know exactly what she's looking for in the lab. So I think she'll just leave it for now, throwing on a few extra padlocks in case anyone familiar with it comes by. We've got plenty to mull over right now and if it turns out we need to crack the lab immediately, Marshall or Archie can order up some goons to help out.]
Michael
Great. Jo does her final load-up of the van at around 4:00 am. The modafinil is running strong (along with her Natural Guard training to run on Less Sleep). Next stop is the Mission? In which case we will need to wait to see how Bernadette does with her HT rolls to see exactly when she wakes up.
(I shifted your timeline above because it's necessary for Jo to do all this as quietly as possible under cover of darkness.)
(There are neighbors, after all.)
Leonard
[Yeah, she's just going to head out to the Mission. If you want to create a new channel for her to debrief with Marshall, that's fine, otherwise, I'll just drop in to the existing one.]
[Also, did I use Google maps to figure out all the drive times for this running around? How big a nerd do you think I am, ha ha haha hahahahahahaha]
Michael
Oh, this may seem stupid but hey, Psychometry … did Jo take the Playboys? As one of the more anomalous presumably-hidden-from-Bernadette objects there? Also, does Jo want to do any Psychometry on anything from the black-bag while she's, like, waiting in the van? If so that could give us something to do while we wait for Mel's confirmation at the Mission room.
Leonard
[LOL it doesn't seem stupid — it's probably a missed opportunity, but Jocasta isn't in the right mindset to take the Playboys. She'll also wait until later, under more controlled circumstances to do a read on anything else. She might do it at the Mission, though. I don't mind waiting — Jo's had a big night.]
Michael
Excellent, thanks, that's a good piece of narrative there, I could see her overall sense of disgust with, well, everything hitting a final wall when she sees, like, a Playboy cover image featuring a hippie girl in a diaphanous kaftan lurking in the shadows of the Boys' closet.