Mitch Meets Armando

Mission One

Jun 25

Leonard

Jo made her Stealth roll by quite a bit (she rolled a 6). She's going to hang loose near the side of the house with at least a handgun in case anything goes awry.

Michael

Cool beans.

Leonard

Also, I'm sure this won't be necessary, but paranoia breeds caution, so if Jo is close enough and can get his attention, she's going to use ASL to communicate to Roger that there's someone inside and that he should be ready to drive the Librarian to safety if any shit goes down.

Michael

I know one thing we do need to do right now to kick things off, though, Jeff. As Mitch sees that reflection in the mirror on top of the mantel — the elder Mr. DiGiuseppe's head being seen in the mirror quite clearly as a bleached-white human skull — Mitch needs to give me a Fright check at Will-3. As Mitch processes the uncanny sight, Mr. DiGiuseppe, still hunched and still seemingly pained, takes his gnarled hand from the oxygen cart and offers it to Mitch while saying, "Where are my manners. Armando. Nice to meet you, Mitch. Do you want to come in and give Frankie a call in the City?"

While we're at it, given Jo's positioning and acting as a relay between what's happening in the house and Roger and the Librarian in the car, Leonard can you give me a Tactics roll for Jocasta. For the record from her present position Jocasta can only see Armando vaguely through the old-fashioned curtains and only hear the muffled sounds of an elderly creaky voice speaking to Mitch at the front door.

Bill: Roger, sitting in the car I'm picturing maybe a half a block down a perpendicular cross street, parked unobtrusively with the front door in your sights, needs to give me a Vision check.

Bill

>> SUCCESS by 2

Made it by 2.

Jeff

>> SUCCESS by 6

Woo-hoo!

Of course any time Mitch needs to make a Fright Check he also needs to roll for his Uncontrollable pyrokinesis, 14- to keep it from going off, right? But this doesn't seem like an emergency

So it's a risk of pyrokinesis 1, not pyrokinesis 7

Leonard

>> SUCCESS by 5

Success by 5.

Jeff

Hoping for 14 or less to avoid a pyrokinesis incident

>> SUCCESS by 2

Incident avoided!

Michael

Jeff, give me your final Uncontrollable roll, that for Detect History B.

(And you are correct, there is no Emergency yet.)

Jeff

>> FAILURE by 1

Of course that one's Unconscious Only so I could plausibly activate it anyway, that one's the GM's call if I understand correctly

Michael

Ah, okay, good point. See, this is why I wanted that extra time to consider all the options and die rolls! Why don't you go ahead and give me an Unreliable Activation roll for Detect History B at 14 or less.

Jeff

>> FAILURE by 3

Argh!

Didn't that happen last time, or do I misremember?

Michael

I think in session 1 you activated fine but missed out on the IQ roll to interpret. Regardless, Mitch's unreliable History B Spidey Sense does not go off as Armando invites him in to use the phone.

You've always got Aura Reading!

(Reading on Psionic Powers, p. 6, apparently you get a +3 to activate and use Aura Reading if you are in willing skin-to-skin contact with the person you're scanning.)

Jeff

Mitch is like, uh, yeah, okay, that'd be great, yeah, thanks. He takes the old man's hand and stumbles into the house. His current plan: get to the phone and dial a random series of numbers. So yeah let's make the aura reading happen — c'mon, activation roll!

Looking for a 14- on the activation roll, I think? If I'm reading p6 right I could get +2 for shaking his hand but that's to the interpretation/skill roll which is separate from the activation roll …

>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS by 2

Now I roll my actual Aura Reading skill, which is 13, +2 from the contact, so effectively 15

>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS by 3

Mitch is also eying that oxygen tank and thinking that he needs to keep it together, which is neither here nor there but the man is distracted, that is what I am saying

Michael

Italian fishermen gathered on Fisherman's Wharf, on December 8th, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. San Francisco, California (1941). From @USHistoryPhotos.

All right. So as Mitch's hand grasps Armando's bony, papery handshake, a torrent of information appears before his eyes. Armando's aura is a deep, rich purple: the sign of a man who was once vital and robust and vigorous and generous and outgoing. But spiderwebbed throughout this purple are darker veins of blue-purple ranging into the near-black: a sure sign of system-wide disease. The elder Mr. DiGiuseppe is most assuredly suffering from is cancer, cancer that started in his lungs and has spread throughout his entire body. Mitch is no doctor, of course, but if he had to lay money he'd say that Armando has a couple of months left to live. But that's not the most important piece of information to come from this Aura Reading.

There is a second aura present inside Mr. DiGiuseppe.

That second aura looks to Mitch's eyes like a stripe or a slim core that looks like a TV tuned to an empty channel: pure snow, black and white cascading dots and the slightest hint of white noise. (I'm going to rule that Mitch usually doesn't get non-"visual" information from Aura Reading; this is one of the only times he can remember "hearing" something from an aura.) The aura is alien: it's not a human soul or spirit or anything that Mitch can match up to anything he's ever seen in a human aura before. It's markedly distinct from Mr. DiGiuseppe but locked into his body and, apparently, taking over his soul from the inside.

As Mitch walks over to the phone sitting on a side table by the plastic-wrapped couch, he can see some of the photos on the walls: a few of a very young (presumably) Frank in what looks like the mid-to-late 1940s by the looks of the cars and clothes with both mother and father … and then a couple of older, adolescent Frank with just his dad. In one of the mid-'50s teenage photos, Frank appears to be wearing a Civil Air Patrol uniform.

Mitch picks up the phone and is a little unnerved to realize that as he bends down to stick his finger in the rotary dial that Armando is remaining at Mitch's six o'clock, out of sight.

Meanwhile, outside, Jocasta has managed to get to a spot without curtains intervening that allows her to see more clearly what's happening in the front room of the suburban ranch home. There's also a back screen door leading into the kitchen that seems like a logical entry point if shit goes down. (Yay, Tactics!)

Roger and Sophie are parked about a block away, and Sophie (whose distance eyesight is apparently not the greatest) is squinting, trying to figure out what's going on. She asks Roger, "Wait, is he going into the house?" And Roger can see that yes, Mitch has just shaken the old man's hand, and walked into the house. The old man shuts the front door behind them.

Jeff

A rotary phone? Ugh, Mitch hates rotary phones, he can't divine with them for shit. Touch-tone he can very occasionally feel like he's cluing into something. He'll dial some numbers at random, just in case the stars align, though.

Assuming he gets the three-tone signal for a misdial, he'll sigh and hang up and tell Mr. DiGiuseppe that he's sorry to trouble him, there's been some kind of mix-up, he'll talk to Frank about it, and then Mitch will try to get outside. This is his plan, anyway.

It may be due to failed activation rolls, but Mitch is feeling like there's no longer a reason for him to be inside the house, that there is no darker secret upstairs or downstairs to uncover. At least that's his sense as he's dialing.

Michael

The random number that Mitch dials rings five, six, seven times with no answer. I'm assuming that will lead him to hang up like a misdial would. As Mitch turns around and says, "I'm sorry to trouble you, there's been some kind of mix-up," Mitch sees Mr. DiGiuseppe standing up straight and tall, no longer clutching his oxygen cart to hold himself up. Mr. DiGiuseppe begins saying " … some kind of mix-up" and begins to say the words Mitch is saying at the exact same time as Mitch. "I'll talk to Frank about it," Mitch and Armando say in perfect unison. Mr. DiGiuseppe is also mirroring Mitch's body language and gestures precisely and at this point I need Mitch to give me a Will-2 roll please.

Jocasta, it's hard for you to hear what's going on in the house but you can definitely see this and I think a Body Control roll at a minus 2 would be a good ad hoc roll to see if you can detect this uncanny mirroring.

Jeff

Target number is 13, I think if this is a Fright Check I need to make another set of Uncontrollable activation rolls but I could be wrong about that it might be 1/scene

>> SUCCESS by 5

Mitch continues to want to get outside.

Michael

(First of all, not a Fright check. I will wait for Leonard to roll Jocasta's Body Control-2 roll though.)

Leonard

>> SUCCESS by 1

MoS of 1.

Bill

Given Jocasta’s better position and last signal, Roger figures he’s not backing her up with a gun. So he prepares a fast getaway, for 4 people in a 2 door. He turns to Sophie in the back and says: “So, you need to shift to sitting behind me. Good. And kick the passenger seat forward, like when you got in. And you want to put on your seatbelt. When I say, put your foot on the passenger seat; I’ll need you to hold it down. Now let’s just chill and be groovy for a bit.”

Michael

Okay, Jocasta: this old man is precisely copying every single motion of Mitch's, down to infinitesimal micro-movements in his fingers, around his eyes, in every muscle seemingly both autonomic and voluntary. Even their breathing is matching now, breath for breath, which shouldn't even be possible considering this guy is feeble and on oxygen. This is absolutely not normal.

Sophie steels herself, gulps down a nervous breath, and does precisely as Roger instructs, getting her right leg in position to allow for a quick push to get Mitch or Jocasta in the back seat.

So! Mitch! First things first. As the elder Mr. DiGiuseppe copies your actions and words you feel utterly drained. Your muscles weaken and get that achey lactic-acid feeling, like you've just run a sprint for a good distance. Your head aches, as it fills with random thoughts that rise to your consciousness unbidden. Mitch loses 3 Fatigue Points. Now given you've seen this … entity's true self, I'm not going to call for a second Fright Check in this scene due to this psychic assault. But other than the unnerving mimicry the old man … isn't really doing anything. He's not approaching, and as soon as you stopped speaking he did too. Mitch makes for the door and Mr. DiGiuseppe does nothing to stop him. Instead the two of you move in tandem, in the opposite direction from each other at the exact same speed and gait. The two of you pass each other in your mutual rush, and Mitch swears he can hear the old man run into the opposite wall of the front room as Mitch opens the front door and leaves the house.

Leonard: not sure if Jocasta is going to do anything in this heated rush but Mitch is very quickly making for the door.

(Basically the last round was this thing psychically assaulting Mitch and Jocasta realizing its movements are eerily supernatural. This round is Mitch leaving the house and Jocasta can act simultaneous to that, or delay.)

Jeff

Once I'm outside and staggering back towards the car I want to examine my own aura to see if I've been infect with white noise

It would be a few seconds before I was able to do that though

Michael

Fair enough. I will wait to see if Leonard wants Jocasta to do anything in that round and if it doesn't interfere with Mitch's action we can go ahead and try to reactivate Aura Reading.

Jeff

Yeah I don't mean to jump the gun

Leonard

Jo, pretty rattled by what's going on, is gonna try and keep her cool and edge along the side of the house in case Mitch is tailed, attacked, prevented from leaving, etc. But she's not otherwise gonna announce herself of make herself seen.

Michael

Jo watches Mitch make a clean getaway out of the house and make his speedy if stagger-y way back to Roger's car.

Leonard

She'll make her way back quickly as well, but with her back to the car so she can keep an eye on if anything comes out of the house or anything odd is happening inside itt.

Bill

Roger watches carefully, ready to peel out to her location. Mitch doesn’t get shotgun this time, unless he literally has one Roger doesn’t know about.

Jeff

I'm going to try Aura Reading, then. First I roll to make the power turn on, 14-

>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS by 6

And then my Aura Reading skill. If I've read the stuff on p 6 right I should be capable of getting the +2 for looking at my own aura, I think? +3 if I stop and stand still staring at my hands in front of my face for six seconds. I will not stand in the front yard for six seconds, though.

Assuming I'm getting the +2 my effective skill is 15

>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS by 6

I kind of want to check everybody's auras now, just make sure nobody among Roger, Jocasta, and Sophie are carrying white noise in their souls.

Bill

“It’s time to get in the car, Mitch.”

Jeff

If Mitch thinks his own aura is clean he'll climb into the back seat next to Sophie without complaint, and staring peering intently at her and Roger.

Bill

Roger sweats a bead that runs down his temple, thinking about Mitch concentrating that close to a gas tank — but just the one. Once the seat’s back in place, he starts the car.

Michael

Mitch peers deeply into his own soul, viewing the aura around his heart chakra (yeah, yeah) and it all seems his usual color in this agitated state (bright red-orange?). No fragments of whatever entity was in the old man seem to have lodged themselves in Mitch's soul.

Sophie's aura is a steel gray, no contamination but she definitely seems to be a little shut down from all the hubbub and fear and chaos.

Roger and Jo are also both clean but I'll let them describe their own auras if they want.

Jeff

Mitch isn't 100% mollified because one of the symptoms of being the host of some kind of astral parasite might well be not being able to perceive said parasite. But he is 85% mollified.

"I think that was a bad idea. It seemed like a good idea. You know how it is." He gestures back towards the house. Mitch is addressing Roger, specifically.

Bill

“Anyone with guns or worse coming for us right now, man?”

With Jocasta having her back to the car, Roger can’t signal, other than the starting the car and a revv or two. So it’s her move, next.

Michael

(Should also add from the Aura Reading that everyone is healthy physically as well as metaphysically but Mitch can diagnose himself with some kind of neurological hiccup that caused the sensation of exhaustion: whatever kind of attack that entity unleashed seems to have temporarily overloaded Mitch's central nervous system.)

Bill

I think Roger’s aura is fairly normal, except for a drum like pulse, and that it edges a little brighter and whiter towards the top of his head, and darker and with small snaking black bands around his throat.

But it looks like that usually.

Jeff

Mitch shakes his head. "I don't think so. It's the guy's father's house, he's dying of cancer but he's got something bad hitchhiking inside him, I dunno what, I don't think it was expecting me. Maybe it was as scared of me as I was of it. Probably not but you never know … Damn it, I shouldna gotten spooked, guy's childhood bedroom is in there somewhere."

Bill

“Something bad? Shotgun bad, or burn the house down bad?” Roger winces as he recalls a little too late Sophie is still in the car.

Michael

The Librarian is staring straight ahead at the DiGiuseppe house in the middle distance, perhaps searching for a sign of Jocasta.

Leonard

Jo will dart into the car and hiss "Burn it" as soon as she's sure nothing's coming out of the house. Her aura is a pale yellow bleeding into a cloudy blue.

Jeff

Mitch honestly doesn't know whether the thing in the cancer patient tried to whammy him and he only got a glancing blow, or if the hit to his CNS was an unavoidable side effect of proximity, or what.

All right. We get a good distance away from the DiGiuseppe family home and find a pay phone on the road to Livermore. First things first, yes, Mitch can make a Hidden Lore (History B) roll to examine his encounter in the context of what he knows about the Anunnaki. Sophie didn't really end up saying much more on the drive out of there.

Jocasta can give me an Occultism roll if she likes.

Jeff

>> SUCCESS by 0

A success assuming no modifiers

Michael

Cool. I'm sort of wondering how much detailed info on the specific "species" of Anunnaki comes up in SANDMAN "Basic Training" given so much of the Irruptors' presence ends up being zapped out of witnesses' memories (or, indeed, from history itself) but Mitch can vaguely remember something about a "living meme" being talked about, a being that can exist in the human mind as a "parasite," just as Mitch has been calling it. As the Librarian mentioned, it's called an êkimmu, which in Sumerian myth was more properly a restless ghost, usually caused by burial rites not being adhered to. They'd return from the underworld and find someone to "seize" (that's the etymology of the word êkimmu). They're also at the root of a lot of humanity's myths of vampires, as it usually lashes out by doing things like draining mental energy, or indeed the life force of a victim in the form of their neuro-electrical activity.

Now how do you defeat one of these things, that's probably the more germane question to ask one's long-dimmed memories of SANDMAN training. Well, killing the host will do it; if it doesn't have a chance to leap from the host before death, it dies along with the neurological activity of its host. But this being is also literally information. Unlike a regular Anunnaki meme, it can't splinter and multiply and infect like a disease. It's a single entity usually with a single purpose, programmed by the Red Kings. So if there was someway to "download" it from Armando's mind, to essentially exorcise it, one could conceivably remove it from the dying man before he himself dies of his (presumably êkimmu-derived) cancer.

(OOC, consider any excess of information that doesn't seem suitable for Mitch to have remembered from his SANDMAN training to come from Sophie, who's got a very decent Hidden Lore score)

(also OOC: Bill and Leonard, how much do you suppose that Jocasta with her decent training in Occultism, knows about Roger's skills and practices as a cheval? Just wanted to know this for future reference, given Jo's only been with URIEL for a few weeks.)

Bill

OOC: I think it will be fun for Jocasta to be introduced to it like an audience surrogate. Plus, Roger usually tries to do code-switching around the office, swapping out religious terms for scientific ones. (He’s bad at it though.) She’s going to pick up on it so fast it shouldn’t be any obstacle to team function. I’m sure Archie and Marshall are up to speed on it; they’ve witnessed him being ridden, possibly even in “controlled” laboratory experiments. Although how well they really know his other personalities is up for debate, esp. with Maître Carrefour being so duplicitous. Given how Mitch usually goes with the weirdness flow, I’m not sure he’s even really registered there’s something notable going on.

Michael

That all seems pretty good to me, I especially like the "audience surrogate" thing. And I'm sure with an Occultism of 16 that Jocasta is at least broadly familiar with the various branches of voodoo but I would imagine she's not actually seen Roger in action like the rest of the team has.

Bill

I’m still not sure if I should be playing Roger without an Occult skill — part of me wants him to remain a “natural,” not into the comparative stuff, unable to grok Occult stuff outside his specific religion. But eventually the game play is going to require him to do ritual stuff, or test his knowledge of Vodun, and he won’t have a skill to match.

Michael

I imagine a single point in Religious Ritual might not be a bad thing to take at some point.

Jeff

So the takeaway is that it's what it looks like, the thing in Frank Sr. Either it was trying some kind of protective mimicry thing where it mirrored Mitch in hopes of Mitch not seeing it as a threat, or the mirroring is a side-effect of it giving him the whammy, or the mirroring was a build-up to jumping from Frank Sr. to Mitch. Jumping, rather than laying eggs, which frankly Mitch is not sure he believes, this notion that this class of irruptor can't self-replicate. Sounds a bit like wishful thinking or Red King propaganda.

Leonard

Just in case:

>> SUCCESS by 4

I would imagine Jocasta doesn't know much about Roger's abilities, being new, unless there's a full-disclosure policy around team members. If she does, she will be highly curious from both a personal and academic standpoint but might be a little leery of talking about it for fear of making some racial misstep.

Michael

That Occultism roll will allow Jo to synthesize a lot of what's been discussed so far. I mean, could the êkimmu be somehow exorcised and/or then bound, trapped, and even interrogated somehow? The existence of the êkimmu would explain a good chunk of humanity's history of demonic and ghost possession folklore; if occultists of the past had found ways to either rid humans of êkimmu or hedge/trap them (summoning circles, apotropaic magic, etc.) it explains why so many of these old rituals revolve around writing, chanting, or inscribing. Maybe a properly-researched exorcism ritual with enough Anunnaki source code/neurolinguistic "oomph" behind it could do the same. But that's only if you want to try to save the life of an old man who's going to die of cancer anyway in the next couple of months.

(In the metaphysically-questing spirit of the Weird Seventies, the occult underground in this game will contain multitudes. Most if not all of which can somehow be tied into the pernicious influence of History B in human history, of course, but which also stand on their own historically and culturally. Remember, everything before 535 AD is a lie and that's the foundations of a LOT of Western occultism. But yeah, the classically '70s apophenic and paranoiac impulse of "everything is true" is probably going to be a rule of thumb in this campaign. It feels like every Madness Dossier character is probably intentionally designed thanks to their Kewl Powerz to look at History B phenomena through a unique phenomenological/paradigmatic lens. Which as an old hand at White Wolf Mage, I approve of.)

Bill

Since Rob said he’s out of town this weekend, I don’t think we’ll have him to take a call at Livermore and give us further direction. In the world before cellphones, it’s certainly possible to miss someone, and have to make your own decisions.

Jeff

Mitch is not excited about leaving Frank Sr. to die but given his frailty it seems like the odds of him surviving an exorcism aren't great even if Mitch was remotely confident in the team's ability to exorcise which he isn't. The parasite is either inflicted by or on Frank Jr. indirectly no doubt as a result of Frank Jr learning the obedience glyph and such. A symptom, rather than the disease we're tasked with arresting.

Michael

Since Rob said he’s out of town this weekend, I don’t think we’ll have him to take a call at Livermore and give us further direction. In the world before cellphones, it’s certainly possible to miss someone, and have to make your own decisions.

Yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't even considered that but now that the immediate scene is over yes, we can certainly say Archie is indisposed at the moment. If further immediate independent action is called for, that's great and I'll gladly run it, but I'm also totally down with us returning to Livermore and waiting until Rob's back/Friday to pursue our next steps. I was also thinking of seeing if Brant wanted over the next few days to flesh out Marshall's afternoon doing "field research"/following up leads on Frank D. in San Francisco now that we have a name and military dossier on our main suspect.

Leonard

Jo will chat further with the group, again focusing on trying to keep Mitch on an even keel, about what's happened and what the best threat response is given the situation.

(Deciding on whether to let an old, cancer-stricken man die in lonely confusion, to let him go through an extremely traumatic magickal ritual and THEN die in lonely confusion, or to just shoot him from a distance to get the whole thing over with is probably not the worst moral quandary she's faced, but it's the latest.)

Once she's not in a moving car, she also wants to make some sketches — mostly of the house, the old man, and what she saw when he was mirroring Mitch.

Jeff

Mitch is severely bummed to learn Jo saw the mirroring, in the moment he thought he was hallucinating

Leonard

"Well, I wouldn't completely discount the idea that we both hallucinated the same thing at the same time, but Occam's razor and all that … "

Bill

“Are there standing orders about these kind of things?” Yes, Roger still has hopes that somehow there’s still SOP to follow. “If not, we have to head back to Livermore. A 45 minute drive is still faster than waiting an hour for the next check-in time. Much as I could use a beer.”

Michael

(SOP would be to check back in with the rest of the team, of course. With Marshall and Archie both out of contact, the four of you have some autonomy. The team seems close to 100% sure that this entity inside Mr. DiGiuseppe is an irruptor. So the standing SANDMAN order would be of course to eliminate it and prevent it from doing any damage to civilian life, limb, property, and/or sense of reality. But at the same time it is an element — a seemingly important element — in an ongoing investigation. Finding out more about this specific entity could prove useful to finding Frank and answering questions about his knowledge and motivations. To use an anachronistic reference, you can either go Ash or Ripley on this alien. RIP Ian Holm. In all seriousness, you have a lot of latitude in the field, but either (or both!) resolution — study and/or destroy — is called for by SANDMAN training.)

Jeff

(My sense is that our sentient-meme-analysis boys are exactly the bright boys who didn't go to Pittsburg, so if we're going to take an immediate action it's going to be in the direction of burning Frank Sr. and his house down. Mitch does not feel good about murdering a dying man because of the parasite inside him and by his attitude and nonverbal cues makes it clear he would go along with such a plan only in the face of strong pressure from the other three people in the car. Mitch is halfway to convincing himself that he was "meant" to have a brief and nonlethal encounter with the parasite, that the team has already gotten whatever information there is to collect.)

Michael

The Librarian has shown extremes of both resolve and shakiness during this impromptu unwanted and unexpected field mission. She's quiet, but seems impatient and nervous underneath the conspicuous silence. All three of you can give me a Psychology roll.

Bill

>> SUCCESS by 4

Jeff

You might recall I said Mitch was lacking in calm-Sophie-down skills. Should I roll off my default of IQ-6? Which would be 7.

Michael

It's true. If we were at a bar like Roger/Bill was opining, you could actually use Carousing!

Unless Mitch has a flask.

Jeff

Fuck it, Mitch's next action is telling Roger to drive to the nearest bar.

Mitch doesn't carry a flask, flasks are too flammable. (This logic does not prevent him from going to bars.)

Leonard

Jo is going to want to make sure the Librarian gets back safely, and she's rulesey from the Army enough to know the importance of after-action reporting, so she'll tell everyone to hang loose if they want but she'll get a cab back to Livermore if she has to.

That said, she will definitely want to drink after that's done.

>> SUCCESS by 2

Also, got a 12 on my Psychology roll

Michael

Sent you a message, Leonard.

Bill

“Then let’s head to Livermore, check in, drop off who needs dropping, arm up, and come back and find out more. If it was going anywhere, it could have already left while we’ve been out of sight. Or Frank could come back. We come back, better prepped.”

Jeff

Mitch sighs, because he knows Roger is right, but says nothing.

Bill

Mission OneMitch HortJocasta MenosRoger MartinArmando DiGuiseppePittsburghIrruptors

Brant Casavant