The Venetian Chronicles: Arkham

The Venetian Chronicles: Arkham
Yuuko: (fumbling with the camera before mounting it on a tripod. Before adjusting the focus on the camera and Clearing her throat) this is Council envoy Yuuko Shirakawa, agent of the dragon, and historian for the archives in Dublin Ireland. As part of the Chronicles initiative, I am interviewing active agents from the 21st century so that future generations may better understand the context in which events are taking place. This session is being recorded on 11/16/2019 in Greenfield Ireland, at the Green residence.
Yuuko: Could you please state your full name, date of birth, affiliation and rank.
Arkham: *Taking a drink of tea* “Arkham Middle name variable Blackwell. I change it often but the fact is my entire name is a fiction for this identity. One way to pronounce my original name would be Arrakem or Arukam.  Blackwell was a noble title I purchased years ago in the days of the court systems from the Magyar Court. Originally to write my name, I placed my hand into black charcoal from a fire and put it on a wall and that was how you knew who you were, and who had come before.
 My Affiliation is with the illuminati first and foremost although I decided to go freelance recently but I will work with almost anyone who pays Ultimately my Affiliation is Leviathan and myself as it’s chief entity. My rank depends on who you ask and what faction. Some would be Lieutenant, Sovereign grand inspector general, Commandant in the legion. Honestly, going over titles with every group I affiliate with would be tedious because you have history, criminal groups, armies and governments all with affiliations. As for personal titles, I don’t care for them. Shiny medals don’t put food on the table or get the boxes where they need to be.
Yukko: Can you tell us about your family?
Arkham: I’ve had several but my direct parentage is this. My mother was a shaman in a tribe that roamed what would have been the pangea supercontinent moving from the northern waste to the vast plains, avoiding the stygian swamp people and the desert dwellers. My father was a hunter in the tribe, a trapsman you would consider. He taught me patience and that one could go out, expend energy and kill a small deer to eat, or one could spend the day setting traps and have half the work and twice the bounty. It’s a lesson I still keep to heart. My mother taught me healing roots and poultices, hexes, powerful things in the hands of an unlearned people She was a learned and strong woman and brooked no challenges to our stature in the clan.. I had siblings once long ago but the only way I know them now is memory which in the end, is all that we have to build shrines to those we love. Monuments in our minds. As for children and grandchildren I probably have spawned entire lineages of them over time, some of the secret world directly or indirectly related to me. If we ever did a genetics test I think some more of the infidelity prone grandmothers and mothers might have some explaining to do.
Yuuko: Where did you grow up?
Arkham: *He leans back for a minute and looks up thinking* Moving along the vast lands of the supercontinent some many many eons ago when the earth was young in the days of high adventure. Like most early cultures we were just learning our ways and still trying to eke out an existence. One could argue it was similar to the mongol herdsman or the prairie natives in some aspects. Traveling with the food, moving with the seasons and the cycles of nature. Great beasts and cataclysm at times. It was a harsh life at times. I still hold a grudge against entities like Gaia knowing it could have healed our sick, saved our wounded, given life to the crops we needed when lands went barren. What good is magic when your child dies of what could now be cured with simple bread mold. *Arkham can be seen with some irritation to his voice at this*
Yuuko: How would you describe your childhood?
Arkham: It was enjoyable, we played but we worked, we learned to hunt and we learned silence and stealth early. We learned to make ourselves invisible in front of your very faces if need be to make a kill or ward off an enemy. My brothers and sisters would stay up and sing songs or play campfire games or games of chance with long flat stones. At night you could look up and see the millions of stars in the sky with nothing obstructing them, great light showers across the belts. I know of constellations that no longer exist, I know songs that no other human being can sing and games no person has ever played in ages. I can still tell you what mammoth smells like, tastes like and the low growl of the saber toothed cat and  the hunting birds call who killed men with it’s razor beak *At this memory he can be seen thinking and he breathes heavily, a little sad eyed*
Yuuko: How were you first introduced to the secret world?
Arkham: One could argue my mother showed me a very indirect way by her magic and doings. The gaians think their way is the only way, that only they can figure out how to walk on the road. It might take some doing but as others have learned, from the morning light and more there are other ways to get on that same road. I learned it as I died on an ice flow under the northern lights, my blood cold and frigid in the wastes, older, left with a wound from an animal now extinct to the earth. The sky broke and shining as a great meteor struck the water where I was and sizzled it, nearly throwing me. I heard a great voice not unlike what you hear of the buzzing, The voice of what I can only call the Leviathan,another long ago entity telling me to drink the water and be healed, drink where the meteor landed and wait. I was dying and so thirsty, what did I have to lose? It was days later when I awoke, stronger, faster and for the first time able to see things I could not before. I know it was not filth and it was not the buzzing of the gaians. It was something else. *Opening his shirt he shows a scar round in shape moving up his hip to his mid-section* That scar it gave me is still here though.
Yuuko: Did you have any contact (either directly or indirectly) with your society before your powers awakened?
Arkham: I was always around some of the early days. I saw the two brothers of the she-wolf fighting and left to go on my way, I did my best to avoid Rome and Egypt because eventually I might stick out. Live too long, look too healthy, know too much and for awhile you become valuable and then later, dangerous. I’ve been burned alive at the stake, been crucified more than once. I didn’t really think to deal much with any of them although at times as a paid soldier I would come into conflict with the Templar, as an ocean trader and pirate I came into frequent bouts or assistance with the phoenicians. When I gambled in the house of jade it was always the dragon who watched me. The illuminati came later but their forebears were always tolerable to me when I spent my time as a carpenter and craftsman. Unlike Templars who made their livings as soldiers and priests generally, these are men who would build for the common good and plied their living in trade and creation.  I didn’t come into my own with the illuminati until the middle ages and very sparsely. I then took my time to work more with them in the New World during the height of crime in prohibition.
Yuuko: Can you tell us what a typical day looks like for you?
Arkham: Well that’s a difficult question because I have two different typical days. One might be that I get up, check the news and markets, have breakfast of tea and a light meal. Then I go to the office, I might even do some of my own work at Blackwells itself behind the register. I keep an eye on the news both normal and abnormal. Lunch, maybe a meeting if need be although I pay enough people to keep the ship righted that I seldom need to do much.I might go out later for some gambling or blackjack or to the god for peach tea and dinner. Then home to read and relax with tea and bed. The other day goes much like this. I get a contract or a call, I get the information and begin setting up the proper people for said job. I take into account everything from the weather for that area for the day, wind, humidity, all of it. I find out what work might be going on, any construction. I bring my team in, sometimes under my own cover by covert means, other times on forged documents. Once in we generally have a safe house and a supply drop through one of the local arms dealers who I maintain positive rapport with. Once enough data and the teams have been assembled and briefed we generally decide wether we go in stealth or heavy. If all goes smoothly we meet at a second location known only by me right before we go into the job proper. We all meet and if we don’t, we disappear. Either way we change documents, information, leave the weapons to be handled by a scrapper and make our way to exfiltration. Anything I do relies on the idea we will have zero backup, zero support, be completely cut off from escape or assistance if things go wrong and then I work out the problems from there. Some days it’s as simple as putting on a mechanics jumpsuit, going into a bay and wiring a bomb to the speedometer of a competitors car. People are incredibly trusting to authority figures and those wearing the right uniform. Nobody questions the pizza guy at the door until you don't see the shotgun under the box.
Yuuko: Has your work for your society ever brought you into contact with anyone who would be considered historically significant (world leaders, celebrities, scientists and engineers.)
Arkham: I could tell you several but you won’t believe me because I mean, I’m me but I might have met someone very famous for being crucified on the cross in Golgotha. Remember there was a thief beside him on the side. Anyway Lawrence of Arabia was one helping him during the war as a guide to the area on loan. I met alot of famous crime figures during prohibition, Capone was and will always be an ass that gets far too much credit compared to men like Meyer Lansky. J.Edgar Hoover was always a mincing little asshole and I am glad he is dead. Nothing worse than a hypocrite like him, guy threw his own to the wolves all the time. Gay as a night in fire island and still helped blackmail and harm a generation of Americans. Meeting him and having him try to arrest me was an insufferable insult. On a better note  A little fun trick I pulled was getting as much funding as I could funnel by illegitimate means from Edison electric through Westinghouse to pay for Nikola Teslas work.Very eccentric but lovely man. I still probably have one of his notebooks somewhere in my things Far far ahead of his time, The world punishes people like him for being too brilliant, too kind. The thing is no matter how eternal you are, and how much access you have to Agartha the time still moves for everyone else. I totally missed out on the revolutionary and civil war for example because I was on the silk road. I didn’t make it back until just toward the end of the cowboy time.  During the second world war I met a few people both famous and infamous. Rommel was one on the other side I could respect and when we met it was always as professional adversary.. I spent alot of my time doing work for resistance fighters and the dirty tricks department of the war effort. I will say meeting both Will Roger and Fred Rogers was a treasure. I have always been a big pbs supporter.
Yuuko: Have you ever seen an event reported in the media and known that it was a lie and if so can you tell us what really happened?
Arkham: *He touches his finger to his lip thinking and then takes a sip of tea*Multiple things of course but some of the stand out ones were the fact that the dust bowl was done by a powerful entity released from it’s hibernation who consumed most of the plant life in an area before resuming its slumber. Another one was that John F.Kennedy didn’t die that day in Dallas, it was his doppleganger who had taken over his life who was shot and killed leaving John a way out with a name change and new identity.  The Dragon were behind the Arab Spring.
Yuuko: What was the last event you can remember that shook both the secret world and the mundane equally?
Arkham: 9/11 would be one. The damage done psychically created ripple waves along the ether. Those waves are still moving outward but even that stems from the Oklahoma city bombing and the tokyo subway attacks as well. It created waves after waves intersecting which we are still seeing in the mundane today. Our entire way of life changed, Everyone was under scrutiny. People gave up agreed freedoms for the illusion of security. In the secret world it starts with you being watched, then accused, then burned at the stake and make no mistake some folks definitely wanted us rounded up by hook or crook in various governments. One could argue the trauma also made it easier for cracks to open for the filth to get into in our world. One of the many reasons I like to work outside these groups or influence them in my way. I hate oversight and I want to be able to get out of the way when I see the boulder moving.
Yuuko: Have you ever participated in an event considered historically important to the mundane world and if so was it on behalf of your society
Arkham: *Taking a deep breath and rubbing a barely legible tattoo on his wrist* Again, several and it is sometimes hard to say because I have to think about those days when I do and it brings back thoughts and images..., but one of the more important to me was the liberation of the camps during the American leg of the operations in Europe. While I was technically doing war work with the Illuminati’s blessing this one was strictly for me. I worked a long time with resistance fighters to get prisoners out, forge documents for families, bring who I could through when I could. You have to remember that during those times any help for these people was illegal and would get you killed or put in and that the United States technically came in very late to the war, however it had people in much much earlier but didn’t bring it up because if anything happened it could be disavowed. Not everyone was ready to go to war yet, many actively against it. So of course who better to train and do illegal activities than a criminal who you could write off. There are alot of good men whose names won’t ever be known in ditches and fields who died silent doing the right thing. When they  liberated those camps it was a testament to every good man fighting, that the human spirit was stronger than the ideals of hate and seclusion. That the sacrifices had not been in vain.  Men who would only be known by their crimes or their mugshots would know that what they had done, mattered more in the end than a simple black and white view of the law.
Yuuko: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us agent Arkham.
Arkham: *Finishing his tea* Always a pleasure and if you have any other questions feel free to ask. I will tell you some truths, some lies and maybe some jokes. *He flashes a smile and walks out the door*
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