[07:42am] Quaker: -
[07:42am] Quaker: -
[07:42am] Quaker: -
[07:42am] Quaker: -
[07:42am] Quaker: -
[07:42am] Quaker: -
[07:42am] Quaker: -
[07:43am] Quaker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zlh1gi6Ubm8
[07:46am] Quaker: The Princess and Elena see the three barons to the train station, where the Pacific Surfliner waits hissing and steaming. Is there anything they’d like to ask before they leave for home?
[07:46am] Quaker: The Princess and Eva*
[07:47am] Quaker: The drive back was quiet. The retainers spent the time quietly taking off their armor.
[07:48am] VoxPVoxD: San Diego makes Wilson miss LA.
[07:50am] Crion: When Cav met back up with them, he was shirtless, having discarded the bloodsoaked piece of clothing. He still had the breastplate; he either handed it off or put it in the trunk.
[07:53am] Crion: To Winston: "How did it go with our understudies?"
[07:53am] Crion: *To Wilson: "How did it go with our understudies?"
[07:55am] VoxPVoxD: Wilson looks tired, but his face stuck like that when he died. "The Prince of Tijuana's a prick and the ballroom looked like something from a Rob Zombie movie. Understudies did fine though."
[07:56am] banana: KJ's visibly on edge, both excited and depressed. Nobody will suspect you're a spy if they can read you like a book!
[07:56am] Crion: Cav nods. "They had kine guards upstairs."
[07:56am] banana: "He's so awful."
[07:57am] VoxPVoxD: Wilson: "What's the damage?"
[07:57am] Crion: "Four dead."
[07:57am] Crion: "We snuck past the rest."
[07:58am] banana: KJ: "Don't forget the screaming skull."
[07:58am] banana: "But I think it was already dead?"
[07:58am] VoxPVoxD: "Feel free to forget the skull."
[07:58am] trenchfoot_ left the chat room. (Ping timeout: 121 seconds)
[07:58am] Crion: Cav nods again. "Their security system involved the bodies of people they'd flayed alive, and then trapped in their corpses."
[07:59am] banana: To Wilson: "I probably primed Gordon to hate you, so you have my apologies. He called me a 'swarthy ape' so they aren't very sincere."
[07:59am] Crion: "So I didn't show restraint."
[07:59am] Crion: He closes his eyes and leans back in his seat. "They went quick and clean, which is more than I can say for their victims."
[07:59am] VoxPVoxD: "We shoulda burned this place to the ground last winter."
[08:00am] Crion: "Yep."
[08:01am] banana: KJ: "Eh."
[08:01am] Crion: "We freed some kinda spirit, too."
[08:01am] Crion: "Big bird."
[08:02am] banana: KJ: "The bird was weird. Maybe weirder than the bottomless pit."
[08:03am] VoxPVoxD: The more they talk, the gladder Wilson is he didn't go.
[08:05am] Crion: To the Princess: "Did you get everything you need?"
[08:08am] Quaker: The Princess looks up from examining the documents. “They’re genuine. You all did a fine job. After you leave, we’ll begin.”
[08:09am] Crion: Cav: "Sounds good."
[08:11am] VoxPVoxD: Wilson: "Good luck."
[08:11am] Quaker: KJ’s phone buzzes. It’s from Jessie: a .gif of a cat trying to run across a fence, and falling into a garbage can.
[08:13am] Quaker: Later, at the train station, the Princess watches them board. As Wilson passes, she puts a sealed manila folder in his hand.
[08:14am] VoxPVoxD: He was kind of hoping she'd forgotten about that, but he takes it without a word.
[08:15am] Quaker: To the rest of them: “You have done me a great favor. You should consider my family indebted to you. I’m sure you will find their favor useful in your own Court.”
[08:16am] Crion: That's the plan. Out loud, Cav says: "Of course. Thank you again for your hospitality."
[08:20am] Quaker: The train ride back is unremarkable. No one bothers them; when they arrive back at the San Juan Capistrano station, no one greets them. It’ll be dawn soon.
[08:20am] hrolf joined the chat room.
[08:21am] Crion: "Well. I wish I could say it was fun." Cav grimaces. "Let's all agree to never do that again."
[08:21am] VoxPVoxD: Wilson: "Yeah."
[08:22am] banana: KJ: "Unless the circumstances arise again. But I won't be visiting those circumstances on purpose."
[08:22am] banana: "Check out this gif, though." Hard G.
[08:23am] hrolfie left the chat room. (Ping timeout: 121 seconds)
[08:23am] Crion: "Ouch."
[08:23am] Quaker: The three of them notice, maybe not immediately, that an email has appeared in whatever secure account they’ve registered with downtown. “Thank you for your service,” it says. “The Ambassador reports that you were a credit to the Court. Please let us know when you would like to claim your reward of visiting the Ventura facilities.”
[08:24am] Quaker: Jessie texts: “Hows San Diego”, with a barfing emoji.
[08:24am] VoxPVoxD: Ventura can't be worse than San Diego, right? Please don't let it be worse than San Diego.
[08:25am] Crion: The Ventura facilities.
[08:26am] Crion: LA doesn't go in for the whole ominously-antiseptic naming routine all that often.
[08:29am] banana: KJ: <It's the garbage can.>
[08:30am] banana: "So how did you arrange that, Cav? This is your pet project, right. Find out what's going in in Ventura."
[08:30am] Crion: Cav: "I didn't."
[08:30am] Crion: "That concerns me."
[08:31am] Crion: He forces a smile on his face. "The way things go in this court, I'm sure we'll find out it's a day spa or something."
[08:32am] Crion: He mainly sounds like he's trying to convince himself.
[08:32am] VoxPVoxD: Wilson: "A day spa that spits out a hundred liters of blood a week."
[08:33am] Crion: "Ethically sourced."
[08:37am] trenchfoot_ joined the chat room.
[08:37am] banana: "Vat-grown blood. Disrupting the vein market."
[08:45am] Quaker: The quiet follows them home. There aren’t any emergencies waiting for them once they open the door, no unexpected guests or strange messages. All is as they left it.
[08:45am] Crion: Cav texts Kayleigh, who is undoubtedly asleep at this hour, and says hi to Shots and Honey.
[08:46am] Quaker: Wilson can hear the sound of a television coming from the guest room Cosmo Morgan is staying in. Everywhere else is quiet in the house.
[08:46am] Quaker: Kayleigh doesn’t text back. The cougars wake up and nuzzle his hands.
[08:47am] VoxPVoxD: Wilson leaves his armor in the front hallway and goes straight to bed. It was a long night, and he had the easy job.
[08:53am] Quaker: He only remembers one dream: In the woods. Three people gather near a spring, hidden from the world, in a place of night that never ends. One sits with her feet in the stream and doesn’t know where she is. One stands on the bank in ancient clothes and thinks about the past. One sits on a stone and looks at his burned body. The silence is broken when an enormous black bird descends gently into the little clearing, and the three turn to look.
[08:54am] Crion: Well, shit.
[08:55am] Quaker: Above everything is an endless column of black smoke, made of a hundred million screams of rage. Eyes of burning gold blink, unseeing, in the swirling clouds above.
[08:56am] Quaker: Cav’s dreams are easier and totally unremarkable. When he wakes, though, he feels a momentary tightness in his chest and a slight ache in his body wherever he carried that seed the crow gave him.
[08:57am] Crion: That's probably fine.
[08:57am] Crion: He's put the acorn in a box on the desk in his study.
[08:58am] Crion: He has some research to do.
[08:58am] Quaker: Where does he start?
[08:59am] Crion: Ideally, he'd start with the acolytes in the woods.
[08:59am] Crion: But treating with them is all various sorts of illegal.
[09:00am] Crion: So instead, he'll start with the books he has here.
[09:05am] Crion: He spends the next four hours in the study. Cav's collection of occult works is small, but focused, and it's growing.
[09:05am] Crion: He also has an internet connection.
[09:10am] Quaker: Cav’s library points him in the right directions. From it, he can read about the most general forms of blood magic and Theban sorcery. The latter doesn’t seem to use much plant material in its rituals, and he can’t find any mention of acorns or seeds used as reagents anywhere.
[09:13am] Quaker: When he starts reading about blood magic, his books confirm that seeds are used as powerful symbols of growth and change. Whether the growth is benign or malevolent depends on the type of seed and how it’s been handled: its power in spells and rituals can be amplified in combination with other symbols of things holy to Cruac: moonlight, silver, the spirits of nature, and the physical substance of blood.
[09:16am] Crion: This is promising.
[09:16am] Crion: He just needs to figure out how to reverse-engineer it, then. Determine the nature of the growth, preferably before it's done growing.
[09:18am] Quaker: The only reference to any mention of moonlit acorns or California that he can find is a brief mention of a rumor from the 18th century. A traveling Spanish chronicler interviewed a local Native tribe who lived in the foothills of the coastal ranges northwest of Los Angeles. The tribespeople regarded the forest as a holy place that humans were forbidden to enter. If they did, the spirits who lived inside might harm them, or possess them by making them swallow an acorn from the oak tree at the heart of the forest, where only the moon reigns.
[09:19am] Crion: Hmm. No eating the acorn, then.
[09:24am] Quaker: The story is from a nearly modern survey titled The Cruac in North America: Rituals and Theology, with a footnote linking the excerpt to an older book: Blood Of The American West, by Virginia Howard, written in 1902. He’s never heard of the latter. An internet search in the stranger parts of search engines turns up that it’s a general history of kindred west of the Mississippi in the 19th century, but he can’t find any copies for sale or pdf scans.
[09:25am] Crion: Now he's got a goal, at least.
[09:25am] Crion: And it doesn't involve tramping around the forest.
[09:26am] Crion: ...Yet.
[09:28am] Quaker: It doesn’t. What’s next?
[09:32am] Crion: Now it's time to figure out who in LA might have a copy of this book, or know where to find one. It's too bad he's not a member of a secret society of occult researchers obsessed with furthering their knowledge of the power of the blood.
[09:32am] Crion: Oh. Wait.
[09:35am] Quaker: He hasn’t talked to Leisurely since the debacle (?) of the Chrysalis. Or if he meant someone else…
[09:36am] Crion: Leisurely would be the person to go to, it seems. She should at least know who he should be asking.
[09:39am] Quaker: The house is dark when he arrives. He can see down into the harbor from her front porch. The Pilgrim’s berth is still empty, though it looks like the small fishing pier has been completely repaired.
[09:40am] Crion: He'll knock twice.
[09:41am] Quaker: There’s a soft thump somewhere in the house, and a minute later Leisurely opens the door, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
[09:41am] Quaker: She sees Cav, and then her eyes glance around uncomfortably. “Mm.”
[09:43am] Crion: "Evening."
[09:44am] Quaker: “…Hi.”
[09:45am] Quaker: Cav can read…guilt? And anxiety.
[09:45am] Crion: Hmmmm. "Had a question, so I thought I'd drop by. See how you're doing."
[09:46am] Crion: Conestoga reading any threats in the vicinity?
[09:46am] Crion: He should be able to feel it if they're not alone.
[09:47am] Quaker: He knows there’s only the people he expects to be in the area, and none of his flock are feeling threatened.
[09:48am] Crion: Well, that's comforting.
[09:49am] Quaker: “You’re not mad about how the Chrysalis turned out?”
[09:50am] Crion: Cav laughs. "No, I'm not mad."
[09:50am] Crion: "Unsettled, definitely. But not mad."
[09:51am] Quaker: Some of the anxiety settles itself. “Oh.”
[09:51am] Crion: "A bit unfortunate that Wilson had to come along for the ride, but then, he got to see me try to kill myself while trying to bring myself back to life."
[09:51am] Crion: "So at least he got to see something interesting."
[09:52am] Quaker: “I should apologize, though.” She grasps at the edges of her skirt. “I don’t think I told you enough about what to expect. And Wilson…”
[09:52am] Quaker: “I don’t think that’s…” She trails off. “Nevermind. We can talk about it later. How are you feeling?”
[09:53am] Crion: He grimaces. "Well, I just got back from San Diego last night."
[09:53am] Crion: "We attended one of their parties."
[09:53am] Crion: "You can imagine how that went."
[09:55am] Quaker: “I - what? San Diego? Why?”
[09:56am] Crion: "Court business," he says. The words sound like they leave a bad taste in his mouth. Is she gonna invite him in...?
[09:57am] Quaker: “What about?” She puts her hands in her pockets and walks into the kitchen. “Close the door behind you. Do you want coffee?”
[09:57am] Crion: "Yes, please."
[09:58am] Crion: After shutting the door: "You know, I'm not sure. I think we were meant to go down there as a show of force to back up the Ambassador, or something like that. It was pitched to us as a 'vacation.'"
[09:58am] Quaker: He can find her scooping coffee into a filter and filling the appliance with water.
[09:59am] Quaker: “You’d have to look pretty hard to find a place to relax down there.”
[09:59am] Crion: Cav: "Yes, well. Once we arrived we found ourselves involved in...local politics."
[10:00am] Crion: "Pretty much as soon as we stepped off the train."
[10:01am] Crion: "Believe it or not, however, I did not drop by just to bore you with my tedious vacation stories. I'm looking for a book..."
[10:01am] Quaker: “I’m sure Los Angeles’s seem less catastrophic, now. Which book?”
[10:02am] Crion: He checks his phone. "...'Blood of The American West,' by one Virginia Howard, published in 1902. I've found it briefly excerpted in places but can't locate the full work online."
[10:07am] Quaker: “Oh! Virginia Howard’s stuff, huh? I never knew you were interested in history. There’s the archive of her work in the Huntington Library…” She pours them both coffee. “Why the sudden interest?”
[10:08am] Crion: Cav: "I'm trying to broaden my horizons." Then he places a small box on the counter. "That, and a giant bird in San Diego gave me an acorn."
[10:11am] Quaker: She sits down across from him at the kitchen table with her coffee and takes the container with her. “A giant bird? Huh. Did you talk to it? Maybe-“ She casually opens the box.
[10:12am] Quaker: There’s a peal of breaking porcelain when Leisurely drops her mug onto the floor.
[10:13am] Crion: That bad, huh.
[10:13am] Quaker: NEXT WEEK: Shhh! This is a library.