The Sixth Man
Brant
Marshall arrives around 9:40. “Got your message. I only have until noon — workshops all afternoon.” He looks at his Rolex.
Rob
(I'll assume Mitch and Roger are there for now — pipe in as available.)
"Thanks for coming in." Archie ushers the three into his office and closes the door. "There's a lot to talk about. Jocasta's meme unlocked some things for me." His demeanor is calm but serious. "We might need to stroll over to the Rooster House - but first, take a look at this:" The corkboard is on the wall, with photos of all the members of URIEL, 1966-1973. All the current PCs are on the board too, though without "% OZYMANDIAS" estimations. They're arranged in chronological order, Bedra through Abeille, with the timing and overlaps indicated somehow. Maybe colored string? Maybe just a chart drawn on paper that looks like the timeline Mike made. The Sixth Man isn't there. There's no card that says "Sixth Man," just a blank spot where they ought to be. So anybody who does remember the Sixth Man should look at the board and immediately think "hey, you forgot [name]." And anybody who doesn't should wonder "who's supposed to go there?"
"I was going back over URIEL history, wondering who among us might have been reporting to, ah, the King of Kings. Now. Can any of you tell me who I'm missing?"
Michael
So first things first: Roger, Marshall, Mitch: give me 3d6 rolls. Not gonna tell you roll low or high, not gonna tell you how it's modified. Once we have each of those I can see what if anything gets jogged loose.
Brant
>>>> 3d6 … 15
Jeff
>>>> 3d6 … 12
Bill
>>>> 3d6 … 10
Michael
Marshall, Mitch, and Roger look at the timeline, the dossier photos, and each have the same nagging suspicion that Archie did late yesterday afternoon... there was another member of URIEL throughout most of 1972 and as each of the three of them try to recover their memories of this Sixth Man (and it is definitely a man) who worked alongside Archie, Roger, Marshall, Sophie, and Mitch for that year; they cannot for the life of them bring his name or face or specialty to mind, but there was... someone. As each of the three of them try to think harder about this, the figure just gets more elusive. It's an unnerving sensation and if people wanted to give me Fright Checks, 13 or less to pass, I would not say no to that.
Brant
>>>> 3d6 … 9
Jeff
>>>> 3d6 … 6
>>>> 3d6 … 6
(The second roll was the Uncontrolled pyro check, mandatory with every Fright check)
"Hold on," Mitch says without preamble, "I want to try something." He closes his eyes as he stands and spins in place, once, twice, three times, more. Then he lurches, dizzy, out of Archie's office and into the main URIEL area. Then he falls down. As he falls, his hands reach out instinctively to try to catch himself. He hits...something. One of the bookshelves? A few books are knocked to the floor and the space behind them on the shelf exposed.
"Did it work?" Mitch asks from where he lies on the floor. "Is there a clue?"
Bill
>>>> 3d6 … 12
Michael
"Did it work?" Mitch asks from where he lies on the floor. "Is there a clue?"
In the space behind the books that tumbled off the shelves—Soviet and Eastern bloc military manuals from the 1950s and '60s—there is a tiny, tiny scratching in blue pen, no more than a half-inch wide, a tracing of what looks to Mitch's eye like a... half-formed Anunnaki glyph. It's got no potency, its lines don't quite meet where they're supposed to in order to have the ability to short-circuit the human brain. But with a Hidden Lore (History B) roll, Mitch can figure out what glyph this was supposed to be. Unless of course he's averting his gaze after he figures out what this is. If Marshall, Archie, and Roger follow him out there to the library, they can obviously get a peek at this as well.
Bill
Since Roger isn’t stunned by finding another gap in his memories (I mean, if he isn’t used to it by now…), he’ll follow out in Mitch’s wake. At a safe distance, that is.
Rob
Archie comes out at least as far as his office door. "Mitch, are you okay?"
Michael
(omg, poor Archie thought he'd sent Mitch into a literal mental tailspin)
Jeff
"I'm fine." Mitch hasn't gotten up. "I thought maybe I could find something he touched. I could have just said that. Probably didn't need to be so dramatic. Hijacked the meeting, sorry about that, man. Is there anything?"
Michael
Anyone who generally looks at the wall space on the shelves where the books came from will be able to see the unfinished glyph and pretty quickly recognize what it is, but further identification will depend on a Hidden Lore roll.
Brant
>>>> SUCCESS by 8
Rob
>>>> SUCCESS by 8
Bill
Roger just goes over to Mitch to hold out a hand to help him up.
Jeff
>>>> SUCCESS by 3
"Thanks, man."
Bill
“Not a move to try on the dance floor.”
Michael
As Archie and Marshall peer into the void left by the Soviet military manuals, they see the aforementioned unfinished glyph. And both of them can very easily see that if you extended one line here and made a cross there you'd end up with a fairly baroque version of the already pretty complicated multi-syllabic GESHTUG.ULU glyph. "FORGET THIS."
Again, it has no ability to affect any of you who've looked it. It's defused, it's unfinished, like someone was... practicing the strokes of a character from an ideographic language and stopped at step 3 of 10.
Brant
And to clarify: the glyph is located like, ON the bookshelf wall, BEHIND some books that Mitch pulled off?
Michael
Yes. On the white wall, in blue pen.
Rob
"Geshtug … " Archie reads, or says, under his breath. Then, to the three (though I guess Viv and Jo are there too now): "So, I gather none of you remember our absent colleague?"
Bill
Roger shakes his head.
Brant
Marshall rubs his forehead. " … no, I don't … I don't think I do … "
"The glyph is … concerning. I don't think I mentioned this but I, ah, I visited Sophie's apartment a little while ago, just to see — well. Just to see. Anyway. From my investigation — Menos assisted me with this — I think Sophie was struggling with glyph-addiction."
Bill
“Wait? You think she wiped us about the guy? Forgetting this bad — I’d have done assumed GP did it.”
Michael
"More powerful versions known only to irruptors can wipe hours, days, or even years of memories, or erase skills down to muscle memory."
Brant
"No, no — I don't think she did anything about this … sixth man. I'm just saying, that glyph. I don't know if it's related, but one possible explanation for it is that Sophie drew it."
Rob
"It would have to be an extremely powerful glyph. Or more than that. For our team to have another member — a colleague, maybe a friend — less than one year ago — who none of us can remember?"
Bill
“But GP would know; they’d remember. Reports and check-ins and audits exist to stop the Enemy doing this to a group. Standard SecOps. Making a gap this big… if it wasn’t GP, that’d be really scary.”
Jeff
"If they can do it then so can the Enemy."
Rob
"Well, yes. But this is just part of what I wanted to talk about." Archie looks to Jo. "You might as well join us too, Jocasta. Or maybe we should visit the Rooster House?" He looks to Marshall to get his read on the security question. "I'm worried we're going to be spending all our time there."
Brant
Marshall will cock his head in the direction of the Rooster House.
Once there, he says in response to Archie's last statement: "You'll get used to it. Anyway. My gut says this is related to the Project. It could be a glyphic. But it could also be hypnotic. I — uh, they, we — we can do a lot with deep regression hypnosis. It could also be ... well, I mean, I feel like we'd know if Gunn had gotten his hands on us but, ah ... "
When he says that last part, Marshall runs his hand through his hair a bit more thoroughly than normal.
Michael
There are some rolls y'all can make here. I figure Brainwashing or Brain Hacking is applicable, as is Hypnotism and Hidden Lore (History B). But choose just one for your character if you have the skill, and I'll dispense the theorizing accordingly once the rolls are done.
Bill
(Roger's got crap for those kind of rolls. But he does have experience.)
"Yeah, I'm with Marshall. This feels like a fuck-up GP cleaned up with head work, instead of wet work. Feeling glad we were useful enough to not get the GRAIL TABLE treatment."
Michael
That realization could very easily fall under Roger's Hidden Lore (SANDMAN Legends) skill.
Bill
>>>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
Yep, Roger nailed it first time. If they wanted a team to not be offed because of their value, but to limit their exposure to something deemed... too hot, too secret for them to handle, the methodology would be to wipe out the memory of that mission, or teammate, or SANDMAN bolthole or what have you. But if the 1972 Crew's nagging intuitions are right, and the Sixth Man worked with them for a whole year, that is a hell of a lot of rooting around in people's heads. How much rooting, quantifiably, is more Marshall's bailiwick.
Brant
Marshal's Hypnotism is 18 but I think I'll roll Brainwashing (17) because this feels like a Brainwashing situation.
>>>> SUCCESS by 8
Michael
To remove all memories of a specific human being for a year from four (five! with Sophie) minds would be an undertaking of immense effort. The entire team would need to be taken to a location, exposed to hypnotism and brainwashing effects, given a new script to supersede the real memories... like what Marshall did with Zeb over a week or more at the Mission. It's certainly not outside the power of SANDMAN/Granite Peak to do it, but it would be a major effort. If it was indeed brainwashing, Marshall should be able to use this realization today to start picking away at it, carefully. But Marshall has a feeling it's not going to end up being brainwashing. And brain hacking physically, unless OZYMANDIAS's advanced tech has obviated the need for actually getting into the meat in URIEL's skulls and they can do it instead with, haha, targeted microwaves or infrasonics or supercomputers, would leave marks. Marshall is leaning glyphics or other History B-related methodologies.
In fact, let me lay out the three possible theories here that the five of you could come up with and their likelihoods with these rolls in the bank.
1. History B/Anunnaki-related targeted memory loss: most likely glyphic (considering the Serendipitous evidence Mitch uncovered) but also possibly could consist of psi abilities or source code use or memetics. These would be the cleanest as far as leaving behind evidence in the brain is concerned, but someone would still have to wipe the Sixth Man from all URIEL's records.
2. Neurophysically mundane (hypnotism, brainwashing or brain hacking): Again, could extend from the relatively light (hypno) to something a bit more time-consuming (brainwashing) or the old cranial saw (hacking). As mentioned above, seeming a little more unlikely by Marshall's estimation but still possible.
3. Retro(un-)creation. The Sixth Man was wiped out of existence and that's why none of us can remember him. Would explain the memory loss and the lack of physical evidence very neatly. Of course option 4, that the Sixth Man himself is a planted, shared delusion — in other words someone slipping "make the members of URIEL in '72 think they had a Sixth Man when they actually didn't" into '72 URIEL's brains — would be ridiculously easy to do memetically or hypnotically. What it accomplishes strategically for whomever planted it there... who can say.
Bill
(Much yuck, do not like, Happy Tuesday!)
Rob
"Well, I'm glad you're all taking this in stride," Archie says, a little sarcastically. "I'd like to think if I disappeared, one of you might remember me six months later."
"But it's not just the missing man we need to talk about."
Bill
Roger snorts at his own little joke: "But wait there's more..."
Rob
Archie will summarize his analysis from yesterday. In short:
the pattern Jocasta found is definitely a meme, juiced with Anunnaki source code (gold star for Hermione)
Archie is all but certain the meme came from Granite Peak (it's textbook GP, by which he means it's competent but uninspired
he's actually somewhat affronted that it's not more elegant)
the meme is not just about normalizing psychic powers, it's meant for recruitment
this would require a large contingent of watchers
we're the watchers
what URIEL has been doing for the past five years is, in large part, OZYMANDIAS' recruiting
we can only assume that members of our team and our direct supervisors have been active allies of the OZYMANDIAS faction
he doesn't yet get into specific analysis of ex-URIEL members.
Bill
"And the hits keep rolling..."
Rob
He's genuinely angry about all this. "Maybe this doesn't seem like a revelation to all of you. You're going to say I was naive: Poor, gullible Archie, the scales finally fallen from his eyes! Of course Granite Peak has been pulling our strings, that's what they do. Recruitment of psychics, what have you, that's always been our remit."
"But it's more than that! It's everything we've done here for five years. It's all been in service to this... this ghastly vision, this lurid plot out of Andy Krane's novels. I do feel like a fool. I'd been wondering who in SANDMAN is part of this OZYMANDIAS group. But the question is: who isn't??"
Bill
Roger is studying his feet, fairly intently, unable to really raise his head and look at Archie. "Sorry, boss. Maybe too much whistling past the graveyard. Aiy, don't know what to say."
Brant
Marshall puts his hand on Archie's shoulder — perhaps the first time he's ever touched Archie, physically. "No one thinks you are naïve or gullible, Arch. You're not a fool. The game is ... the game is complicated, and hard to see. Even I didn't perceive it fully. Maybe I still don't."
Leonard
Jocasta, caught up on the general situation and convinced that the boys aren't just having a frat party in the Rooster House, sighs heavily. "What a mess," is all she comes up with. "There's a possibility — I could, under controlled circumstances, do a mind probe on you. Maybe you remember something deep inside that your conscious mind can't access. But for that to work, my power would have to be greater than whatever did this to you, and I don't think the odds are in my favor."
"And that's assuming," she adds, in the lowered voice that comes out when she's feeling especially paranoid, "that they haven't already done something to me similar to what they did to you."
Bill
Roger stops studying his shoes, and looks up at Jo. "Greater power? I may know one. My head may be swiss cheese, but I don't think the loa forget when someone cuts a new hole in here. If this guy existed, and we worked with him for a year, then the loa saw his face too."
Jeff
Mitch chuckles and nods. "I like that. I like that." He turns towards Jocasta. "But if they did scrub us all down with the Kings' secret cheat codes, if this problem is glyphic, then maybe there's records in places that aren't human hearts and minds. The walls, the furniture, the stones beneath us. I don't remember a big renovation at the end of last year. Most of the furniture was around. Maybe the man who...maybe he did something at some point that made an impression."
Leonard
"Ha, sure -- if we knew where his office was, I could just chew on one of his pencils," Jocasta jokes. "I suppose I could try a psychometric read on that glyph you found. It'd be a start, but it might also be a dead end."
Jeff
He's genuinely angry about all this. "Maybe this doesn't seem like a revelation to all of you. You're going to say I was naïve: Poor, gullible Archie, the scales finally fallen from his eyes! Of course Granite Peak has been pulling our strings, that's what they do. Recruitment of psychics, what have you, that's always been our remit."
"But it's more than that! It's everything we've done here for five years. It's all been in service to this... this ghastly vision, this lurid plot out of Andy Krane's novels. I do feel like a fool. I'd been wondering who in SANDMAN is part of this OZYMANDIAS group. But the question is: who isn't??"
"It's different for me, I guess. I always knew there was stuff I didn't know...I'm still reeling from what happened to Viv, man."
Rob
"That's good thinking, good thinking," Archie says to both Roger and Jo. He's calming down. "Hobo Stan remembered Emperor Norton before the rest of us."
Brant
"We're — all of us — clearly at an inflection point here. But we can't let ourselves get too overwhelmed chasing every thread all at once. We need to take some of this in stages ... "
Rob
"You're absolutely right, Marshall. And thank you." (referring back to what he said about not being naïve etc) Archie speaks to Marshall directly. "The first time I tried to talk to you about this OZYMANDIAS business, you didn't want to hear it. And I understand why. You could see, better than I did, where it could all lead, if we contemplate going against the organization."
Rob
"You say you're 'thinking differently' now. I am too, I believe. But there's different and then there's, ah, very different. Is going against OZYMANDIAS a conversation you're willing to have? How to fight them? How to beat them?"
Brant
Marshall smiles that weird smile. "Well, I mean, my warnings — I didn't think this is what we were dealing with. To be honest. I just … well, I mean, at the Company, even in 'Nam, you hear a lot of stories about unexpected suicides and men falling out hotel windows and I didn't want that to, uh, happen to you, Arch. With your family, and all. I mean, you didn't sign up for that." He clears his throat.
"The thing … the thing is — " He sighs. "I'm being melodramatic. Yes, we can have that conversation. I am still not convinced that the entire Project is rotten to the core. It could be a conspiracy. It could be just the leadership. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. I don't know anymore. But I will be fucked if I get played this way by assholes like Henry — some hack out of Chicago of all places. If life is a cosmic game, it is a game I intend to win. I didn't spend nine years in a goddamn jungle just to get played like some kid on his first assignment out of Camp Peary."
Bill
Roger laughs a little grimly at that. "Yeah, that's our advantage here, Archie. You got a lot of guys … folks, sorry … who've been in the jungle. We're not new to the game of giving the brass what it wants while you survive the war and try to do something right — while being ordered to do wrong. Hell! You said it yourself! We're their spotters on the ground? Do you know what kind of leverage that gives us? Marshall, you gotta remember the camp legend 'bout that lieutenant who'd call in airstrikes on places he didn't like. No one else could get air support to save their lives, but for some reason the brass listened to him. So this one time he calls in carpet bombing on a village where he lost a poker game, and gets away with it. Brass probably still think Charlie had tanks there."
"You get what I'm saying? You think air power a lot, but this is a ground war. And we're Johnny-on-the-spot."
"Goddamn, I thought I'd got to come back and work for some folks who really knew what was what-- leave the idiot brass behind me. But of course there's some elite assholes up there fucking up the biggest war just like they were fucking up the last one, and the one before that. I guess there always are. Goddamn! "Oh, sorry, Archie, pardon my mouth."
Rob
Archie grins at both Marshall's and Roger's comments, which were exactly what he needed to hear. "That's quite all right, Roger. I appreciate your enthusiasm."
(And while he has no beef with Chicago, he was thinking essentially the same thing about the boys in the Granite Peak bullpen and their off-the-rack memes.)
"Okay. Good. Good. Good." He claps his hands together. "Maybe that's it for now. Sorry to disrupt your morning, everyone. You can all get back to whatever you were doing. But if any of you do have ways of shedding light on our 'Sixth Man'--well, please do."
Then: "Marshall, I know you need to run, but could you hold on for just one moment? There's, ah, someone I'd like to introduce you to."
Brant
Marshall cocks his head and resumes his seat.
Michael
Jocasta takes a look at the Soviet and Eastern bloc manuals left on the floor after Mitch's tumble, then peers into the void on the bookshelf and the tiny unfinished GESTHUG.ULU glyph on the library wall.
(Before I set up the IQ roll, Leonard, do you want to use any Corruption before the die roll to boost your roll?)
Leonard
[Sure, let's do three.]
Michael
Okay. In that case roll IQ-16 with all modifiers assessed.
Leonard
>>>> CRITICAL SUCCESS
Michael
Already attuned to Sophie from the earlier reading off her pin, from the moment Jocasta puts her fingertip onto the unfinished glyph she can tell the emotional energy around this glyph is Sophie's. Jocasta goes exceptionally deep into the complex resonance and emotional bouquet of the glyph, and sees the events that led up to its being scribbled their with remarkable intensity and clarity.
Sophie is doing some reshelving in the URIEL library. The wall calendar says June 1973; after her return from the UK and before the end-of-the-month madness at the St. Francis. Her carrel has an assortment of random books that have needed shelving, including one of the aforementioned Warsaw Pact military documents. As Sophie picks it up to put it back on the shelf in the "foreign intel" section of the library, she has a nagging feeling. The emotions around the loss of GRAIL TABLE and losing David are running hot in Sophie's heart, the events of the irruption at Long Meg and Dufton, the... things that SANDMAN asks of all of us. And for some reason, this manual is triggering them too. Someone who used to work here who would look at Red Army discipline and the Warsaw Pact's psychotronic research and tell us that the Russians' paranormal research was gonna bury us, like Khrushchev promised. They'd have super-soldiers, and we'd be stuck with... strung-out white trash and ghetto rejects! she remembers this jingoistic, militaristic, blustery... Sixth Man saying to her. Her disdain at the memory of this man soon turns to panic as Sophie can't remember who this Sixth Man was.
We had a teammate? Last year? But no, that's impossible, all the records—payroll, personnel, materiel requests—show five members of URIEL for most of calendar 1972 after Mystic Kate left: Archie, Roger, Marshall, Sophie herself, and Mitch. We didn't have a military man in here. We didn't... and then Sophie's vision is overwhelmed. She spins and goes to the ground on one knee, her eyes full of undulating multi-colored lozenges, flashing lights into Sophie's eyes like the computer display in some scifi B-movie. She is remembering. Remembering the last day the Sixth Man was in the office.
Sophie had gone out for a smoke and coffee that winter morning in late '72. When she came back into the office, the Sixth Man was standing next to Marshall, who stood on shaky legs, his gaze unfocused, the Sixth Man's finger held in front of Marshall's eyes. Archie, Mitch, and Roger too stood insensate in the office, swaying occasionally like willows in the wind. The Sixth Man was wearing a... solid gold breastplate, laden with gems, and as the Sixth Man turned to Sophie, she was hit with the office's fluorescent light shining off the twelve multi-colored gems (four rows of three) on the breastplate but more importantly, the deeply-worn and notably extra-filigreed glyph inscribed on it. The Sixth Man, his face fading from Sophie's vision, smiles. "Ah, Miss Edelstein," the Sixth Man says, striding forward in this (un)holy vestment. He holds his finger up, a basic SANDMAN hypnotism focus, as he comes close enough for Sophie to smell his awful cologne, his body heavy and hot and unpleasantly musky. "Forget me," the Sixth Man says.
Sophie's past consciousness spins away and June 1973 Sophie nearly falls and cracks her head on a bookshelf. Sophie immediately tosses the books onto the floor and grabs the blue pen from behind her ear; with no one else in the office at this moment, she tries desperately to remember the shape of the glyph from her vague faint memory. It takes three strokes, the barest outline, for Sophie to analyze and realize that not only has she been hit with a GESHTUG.ULU glyph, it was one with true Irruptor power behind it, powerful enough to make her forget someone who she'd worked with, off and on, for an entire year.
This vestment was a god-thing. A reality shard. Sophie knows it of old. The חֹשֶׁן. The אוּרִים! Now she knows what it all means! Sophie's scholarly side screams out in mixed joy and horror.
It was on this day that Sophie first put together the inklings of her secret plan to find out what happened... what happened to David and GRAIL TABLE, what happened to Charley's mom, what happened to us, goddamn it! To URIEL! The task is overwhelming, frightening, near-impossible on her own. But she's not going to endanger any more of the people she loves and cares about. She can't tell anyone about this. Given she still can't fully remember The Sixth Man, she doesn't want to go poking and prodding at the glyph's neurological excision of her memories; knowing what she does about god-glyphs. It could cause... cascading degenerative memory loss. --- The memory loses its emotional intensity and fades for Jocasta. But she does need to give me a Fright Check, pass on 12 or less as that was a pretty intense one for poor Sophie in a month already full of intense revelations.
Leonard
>>>> FAILURE by 1
[Bah. Failed by 1.]
Michael
Okay, so it's a 3d6+1 on the Fright Check table. Higher is worse.
Leonard
[Rolled a 10.]
Michael
I'm just gonna give you the standard stunned for 1d6 seconds.
4 seconds of stun
Leonard
Jocasta will herself drop to one knee, her senses completely reeling, and spend the next few seconds in a stunned haze. After she recovers, though, she's going to immediately bolt out of the library and grab anyone who's in the office for an urgent debrief in the Rooster House.