Lady Alexandrine
Michael
Wednesday. October 10, 1973. Bill, if you just want to let me know how Roger's going to report in to Point 1 HQ, what he's going to tell them, etc., that would be great. Then we can figure out what y'all want to do next.
Bill
Roger will absolutely report in — he knows he'll be needing the good will of the brass on site if he's to do anything once the shit comes down. So he'll take extra time trying to translate his report into preferred boffin-speak, sprinkling it with key words he thinks they'll pick up on. He'll follow Jo's example and try to spend some time writing it up, even though he usually hates practicing writing. What kind of skill would help with preparing that?
I figure make a roll, see how well Roger does, then I'll try to find time to write it up to match.
Michael
I think Soldier-13 would allow Roger to report in a strategic update, even though the update material is intensely subjective and spiritual. (Informed of course by Tactics, Theology (Voudon), and Hidden Lore (History B).)
Bill
>> SUCCESS by 3
Michael
Sitrep composition successful.
Bill
SITREP RECONNAISANCE
ALLOCHTHON EYES ONLY
RECON START DATE: 1973-10-09 08:30
RECON PROX LOC: ALLOCHTHON POINT ONE
PROJECT DEATTACH: MARTIN, ROGER; ROBERTSON, JOE
REPORT:
Initial vehicular scouting of I-90 and environs produced no actionable intelligence. Recon agents both with prior subduction experience sensed no similar energies. An appropriate locus two miles off I-90 and LA/MI state line reconned and cleared for minimal local scrutiny and plausible cover. Agent MARTIN engaged cheval personality archetype “loa” LEGBA under Agent ROBERTSON’s supervision, lasting approx. twenty minutes. LEGBA sensory skill subroutine invoked. Mass emotional triggers for subduction exposed as based in intense personal fear. Mob fear/mass hysteria activates and deepens rift. LEGBA predictive scenario construction subroutine invoked. Typical locus sacrifice energies for irruptor penetration include death. In studied locus, death and disappearance has already happened in far past: likely indigenous era historical connection or retro-creation. Final closure of rift likely to require alignment of past personality wave forms to new memetic crystallization on justice concept. Predicted physical irruption includes attacks from above: extrapolation from metaphoric “like fishers of men” key memetic package vector. LEGBA archetype released, reconnaissance ends.
ACTIONABLE:
Agent MARTIN to invoke further ancient memetic pattern studies of death/justice in locus. All agents to be warned of potential attacks from above. Agent MARTIN request to connect Agent HELIX for wave form study consult.
Roger empties the wastepaper basket filled with failed phrasings, and turns in his typed report to Point 1 HQ.
"Joe, how 'bout a drink? Took a lot outta me to suck all the soul out of that. There is a commissary here for petty officers, right?"
Michael
Joe has taken in a lot over the past few hours, but he could use some down time. "Yeah, yeah, I think they got us billeted in a condemned motel or something. Maybe there's an empty swimming pool we can sit next to with a sixer of Schlitz."
Bill
“Sounds mighty fine. I tell you what, if they give us another free-rein recon assignment, we have got to take the opportunity to get us some good Gulf cookin’. You may have tasted what Saigon can do for shrimp fried rice, but you ain’t lived until you’ve had jambalaya down here.”
Michael
"If this assignment ends up being all driving and eating, I wouldn't complain."
Bill
“Your lips to God’s ears. Let’s get in some good livin’ now, because the shoe is gonna drop, real soon.”
Michael
Thursday. October 11, 1973. When Roger reads the morning briefing at Point 1 HQ (I think it makes sense to have that be on the grounds of Keesler AFB in Biloxi), I would imagine there's some small sense of satisfaction around his recommendations around mass fear being heeded. But there's no mention in the report at all about prehistoric mounds. One of two ain't bad, I guess. No word yet on whether he can connect with Agent Helix for a consult, but Roger can check in with the comms office after the morning briefing and breakfast.
Joe sidles up to Roger reading the report at the Point 1 HQ, one of Keesler's many classroom buildings that's been taken over by SANDMAN for logistics (Keesler is primarily a radar and missile command training center). Joe says, "Seems like a tall order, trying to keep 30% of the US population, in the heartland no less, from panicking about a war that the folks in my church said was inevitably coming now that the Jews had returned to Israel." Joe says this with irony, clearly saying he doesn't put much credence in the idea of Armageddon in 1973 … but Roger can tell, the millenarian meme is deep in his head or else he wouldn't have brought the war in the Middle East up.
At the Thursday morning briefing, Roger and Joe are expressly given orders to fly out of Keesler tonight at 2200. So one last day to cruise the coast and pick up on the vibes.
Bill
(Gonna ask for some retcons for Wednesday actions, since the player held his for potential conversations with other PCs. Since they didn’t happen, Roger would have spent some time Wednesday looking in LA phone books (and the Green Book) and calling around to various locals to try to find: 1) a good shrimp place, and 2) a good swamp witch/voodoo shack, both in driving distance. Neither in a city. If the latter wasn’t findable, that’s fine: skills, resources, and time didn’t permit. But surely the former is around.)
Michael
Awesome, I will try to get a little bit of this out tonight after work... will this jaunt if successful involve Joe or is it Roger solo?
Bill
Oh, he owes Joe a shrimp experience. And he still needs racial cover.
Michael
Roger scours his AAA maps, the last editions of The Green Book from the mid-'60s, local newspapers (once they've crossed into Louisiana from Mississippi), and the general grapevine for a good shrimp place near-ish to locations that seem familiar from his vision. There's a joint in Houma — a bigger city and parish seat but real Cajun country, about as deep into the bayou as you can go without a boat — called Judy's Shrimp Shack that's Green Book-listed and has decent notices in the more recent local guidebooks.
Houma is low-lying land; the standing water everywhere you go makes you sure that you're nothing but a few feet from the encroaching bayou. The town seems to revolve around two extractive industries: petroleum and crawfish. The population, just by eye and ear, is mixed: maybe a third white Anglo, a third authentically French-speaking Cajun, a third Black.
Judy's isn't the shack from his vision, but Roger feels like he's in throwing distance down here. The streets and roads look the same, the air smells the same. Houma's bigger than the one-stoplight town he was in at the vision, but Roger would guess that town is within 15 to 20 miles of here, definitely in Terrebonne Parish.
Judy's itself is on the southern outskirts of Houma, has a neat little gravel parking lot in front along with a few picnic tables. It's doing brisk late lunch business, and the menu has an array of crawfish boils, po'boys, gumbo and jambalaya, whole crab, bisque … the smell of the food is mouth-watering as soon as Joe and Roger exit the Chevelle.
Bill
Roger does a bit of subtle rearranging of his clothing before getting out of the car. He pulls the gris-gris around his neck out of his shirt, and lets his charm bracelet out from behind his cuff. On walking up to Judy’s, he gives both hellos and bonjours, and, no act needed, starts to chatter to everyone and no one: “That bisque smell? Wafting down the road like Maman callin’ us into to supper!”
Michael
(Are we gonna Carouse with rich Cajun/Creole food instead of booze, because it sounds like that's what we're gonna do)
(The roll is still the same, gotta see how your newly-raised HT will handle all this alimentary stimulation; we'll give you a +2 for cultural competency and a +1 for the RP: Carousing-15)
Bill
>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
I figure the gris-gris and associated charms will be a nice clear sign to a few of the Black and Creole folks at the seafood stand about Where Roger's At, white boy gamely tucking into some crawfish aside. Roger strikes up a conversation with a couple of Ladies of a Certain Age in Creole French, turning on the charm (but not, like Agent 00 levels of charm) to hear tell of an old fortune teller (well, "fortune teller" is the act she puts on for the tourists and les blancs, she's mainly been a wise woman and priestess to all the folks around here for two generations) who lives closer to the water, about 10 minutes drive into the bayou south of Houma. Her name is Lady Alexandrine.
Bill
Roger gives his full smile to those ladies, and gives them all the proper sharing of where “his people” are from, what California is like (“no good seafood, for sure”), and promises to tell his grand-mére how the food in Huoma is nearly as good as she makes (wink). He takes his time seeing if that’s actually true, and having fun with Joe’s reaction to it.
Then he’ll take Joe out, get the right directions, and drive up to find Lady Alexandrine.
Michael
I was going to say, I bet the ladies at Judy's would be interested in asking after the family history of Roger's mother's people and their migration out to California, to see if there's any relations locally, but I would imagine there's little chance of that. And given the overall joyous vibes here (maybe, like, the polar opposite of Cairo a few hundred miles north on the river), I think by the end of it all, some crawfish, jambalaya, and a tall cold bottle of Coke, Joe might be able to enjoy the vibes at lunch as well.
Bill
(You can exchange basic information (“up round Lafayette”) and still meet comme il faut — there’s always a short(er) form for these things.)
Michael
So, Lady Alexandrine does indeed live on the borderlands between earth and water; it's most definitely a shack but it looks like it got electrified and hooked up to running water under Huey and FDR. Chicken coops — so many chicken coops — populate the yard on its drier leeward side. Lots of the little devils running around too. There's an old one-eyed cat sleeping on the porch, a matted, striped lynx-like thing, too old to hassle the poultry. There's no sign outside the shack saying, "Fortunes told here" — apparently Lady A isn't that openly solicitous of curious patrons — but Roger can see there is a vever for Lady Erzulie Dantor carved into one of the porch's support beams. The mother of Ti Jean Petro, the Black Madonna who inspired the Haitian Revolution. Protection, vengeance: this is no sweet maiden Erzulie that Alexandrine serves.
Bill
Roger tells Joe he might want to sit this one out in the car. Then he gets out, makes like to doff the hat he isn’t wearing, and bows to the threshold. In his (accented) Creole: “Sunshine and the Serpent’s blessings on this house. I ask hospitality for a wayfarer.”
Michael
Lady Alexandrine, 5 feet tall if she's an inch: stooped, medium-skinned, smoking an old worn pipe in her toothless mouth, and wearing a stained old lace apron over her homespun, edges to the screen door, looking at Roger humbly seeking shelter. "The wind told me a son of Petro would be comin'," she says in accented English, then, in French, "Come on in, then; there's no storm now but Dieu is there one coming in on your heels." She looks past Roger at Joe in the car with interest, then shuts screen and front door behind the two of them.
The interior is classic shotgun shack: the front room, while redolent of herbs, a stinging undercurrent of alcohol, and the thick humidity of the swamp, is cozy, with all kinds of tapestries, both abstract and religious, covering the walls. The furniture is a mix of salvaged antiques and hand-made pillows thrown on all the chairs and settees. Lady Alexandrine's chair is an old rocking wicker number, with blankets and a back-supporting pillow; she returns to it immediately. "This old body," she says, wincing. "I offer you my hospitality, son of Petro, but tell me … what is the storm that washes you up on my shore? The saints are wary; my Lady of Setting Right the Wrongs tells me, all week, to prepare for a harvest."
Bill
"I thank you, grand-mére, and accept. A hurricane of bad juju, bien sûr oui. But no wind blows only ill. We hope the Father puts the cure next to the poison." At the words "the cure," he points his two hands face up, and waves them back and forth between himself and Lady A. "This storm is stirring up the souls under the water, I think. What else has listening on the wind told you?"
Keeping with the forms, he crosses her palm with a ten dollar note, Hamilton face up, of course.
Michael
Alexandrine assents to Roger's diagnosis with a clucking disapproval and a shake of the head. "When haven't the dead under the waters been restless? But oui, someone is snatching them away a second time, fuel for their fires. Old magic takes power and the best, most lasting power is that of the dead." She takes the Hamilton sawbuck from Roger, tucks it into her apron pocket, but before she does she seems to... savor the emotional bouquet that Roger has most recently laid upon the bill. "You crossed the Gede? Oh, child, naturellement, they sent you here. To avenge those dead, to right those wrongs. As penance. You may have thought they were done with you, but … you're on gravedigger duty a little while longer, I fear. At least you know that you owe the dead, unlike so many young people out there."
Bill
"Does your Lady have news of how to protect these dead, or avenge them?"
Michael
Lady Alexandrine raises an eyebrow at this. "It would be very easy to say that they merely need to be remembered properly, to be given the dignity they are due in death they never received in life. But those are children's stories, meant to give false hope." She takes a few thoughtful puffs on her pipe, reaches down to under the blanket draped over her rocking chair, pulls out an unmarked small bottle (full of klerin from the scent), unstops it, and takes a good healthy 2 pm swallow of high-test. "Help me over to the altar, child. She needs to speak to you."
Lady A's altar is tucked away in the kitchen, near the stove: a little set of shelves painted bright blue, red, and green, gorgeous bejeweled rings are set around the head and feet of a cheap praying Madonna; a chocolate bar, half-nibbled, next to a tiny marble font with a pool of water in it. The vever of Erzulie Dantor surmounts the entire altar, and Lady Alexandrine focuses on it. Her transformation is sudden; the kitchen, which only faintly smelled of long-gone chicken blood before, now reeks of it. Roger's head spins.
"Do you truly want vengeance, little servant of the Opener of the Ways?" Lady Alexandrine/Erzulie's voice is deeper, less cracked. "Do you really desire it, a true vengeance against the men who made you into what you are? Or is all that mess above you and your … higher pursuits?"
Bill
Roger makes obeisance before the Madonna, bowing and kissing his hands. He glances to the image of the heart on her altar. "Blessed Madonna, I will not lie: I know you see to the anger I hide in my heart." Caught up in her energy, his face turns hard for a second. "I do crave their overthrow — their faces in the dust." But then he breathes out, remembers the things that she to whom he talks can do. "But I have seen what only acting in anger does to the people. And their protection is my mess, my pursuit. Gracious Lady, I pray for your mercy, your protection for those who are trodden down when these giants go to war above them. Help me be the instrument of those souls."
Michael
This next bit entirely in Creole.
"Protection, then. Protection of the innocent," Erzulie says. "In the days to come, many innocents will see behind the curtain to things they should not, things they are not prepared for. The sight will be a curse upon them and a curse upon the land. Your job," she points one of Alexandrine's bony arthritic fingers at Roger, "will be to close those doors again, and bar them fast. You should also be careful of what you gaze upon in pursuit of these innocents. The storm you and the old lady just talked about will buffet you and your friends. And you should not trust what you see only through a glass darkly once the storm has touched down to ground."
"All that aside, it is clear to me that bad men, mortal men, devils in the shape of men, seek to profit from this chaos. Wholly separately from Those Who Brought the Storm. But of course, when haven't these men sought to inflict misery when it is to their advantage and they have the opportunity?"
Bill
"Such men it is meet and right to pour out wrath upon: it is protection by vengeance." Roger spits. "If I meet them, Lady, may you help guide my hand to strike!"
"And what of the souls of the dead? Do only the living require protection, or is my duty to return them to peace as well? Or is that more a question for your cousins?" (Roger's code-switched to Creole since she switched.)
Michael
"And what of the souls of the dead? Do only the living require protection, or is my duty to return them to peace as well? Or is that more a question for your cousins?"
"I hold out very little hope for them. To snatch them away from the Gede in the first place must have taken tremendous power, long stored-up. Can a mortal bring them back himself? It would require a houngan of great power. They chained up and killed us, denied us our burial rites, and now we hope to have the power and knowledge to know where to go to find the ones lost under the waves? If there is justice, they will be found and laid to rest. But I don't see justice coming quite yet. But I do say this: if you see this houngan, you will know them. And you will be the one to open the way for them."
Bill
Roger pauses to let it sink in, then nods: “As is the duty of a son of Pedro. Lady, your mercy is great indeed.” He falls silent, wondering.
“My people, our people, were not the first victims in this land. And we won’t be the last. Many have perished, lost. Maybe… maybe we have other allies to seek, other ways that could be opened. I will seek them out. So I am bidden, so let it be done. Amen.”