Pray for for us, who once, too, thought we could fly.

Writing/Worldbuilding Sideblog. New post every Saturday. Comments and asks earn my undying love.

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Tag Guide

Genres:

Fantasy Science Fiction Urban Fantasy/Horror

Settings

Abhari - Flintlock Fantasy cold war between three great powers Sethennai - A rich and precarious colonial city-state in Abhari, falling into chaos after the disappearance of its prince. Stuff from a dead game I ran, so some details may differ.

Whalefall - a very provisional name for a space opera idea I have yet to actually write anything for The Iron Gods - a galactic power from Whalefall, spun off into something I can use for a game. Pulpy silver age space opera villains, planet-sized god machines who consider it the destiny of every organic civilization to be consumed in a singularity that gives birth to another of their pantheon.

Shadows in the Cave - a very provisional name (until I can think of a better Plato and/or gnostisism reference) for a, uh, heavily Lovecraft-inspired but not actually Lovecraftian urban fantasy/horror/consppiracy-thriller setting.

Idle Thought - just a thing, unconnected to any wider project

Types of Post

Fiction - Prose. Mostly not very good. More often than not written for a game and posted without context.

Worldbuilding - I read too many rpg supplements as a kid, okay? So this one has subcatagories

Bestiary - Metaphysics and ecologies and definitions for different types of thing your D&D character would stab Gods and Demons - also other things you probably can’t stab with special effort Dramatis Personae - OC don’t steal Atlas - Location, location, location The Social Question - one of these is literally ‘marriage and inheritance laws’ for a country. You’ve been warned. Uncut Ideology - In character ranting, propaganda, polemic, etc. Histories - like writing a story but without the hard bit Cults and Conspiracies - and other non-territorial, illegitimate, generally suspect groups.

Elevator pitch - for a setting or concept or whatever. I thing I should write for more than one of these

Q&A - asks. Please send asks. I will love you forever if you send asks.

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Abhari - The Choirs of the Fallen - On the Ifrit and Their Kin

Of the three Choirs of Fallen Angels, the Ifrit (as well as their close relations which are instead called djinn, mariads, and other similar things) are the most wholly distant from humanity and its concerns. They have to their names more ruined lands and buried cities than either cousin Choir, but only on the rarest occasions did they spare a thought for the hundreds and thousands dying by their hands. Among the Fallen, they are the most rarely dealt with and the most often bound, and in this even the warlocks and pagans of the most savage lands show they are blessed with a modicum of sense. 

An Angel falls for the love of the world, fascination and obsession with some aspect or medium of the Gods’ creation growing until it wholly consumes them, their pure and numinous being becoming enmired in and inextricable from the object of their preoccupation. Thus the Titan who consumes a kingdom for the bulk required by the grand and awe-some body of mortal flesh and scale which best expresses her vanity. Thus the Faerie, shattering his Soul into masks which so perfectly suit each actor in the intrigues which so compelled him. Thus, though simpler and in a sense more virtuous, the Ifrit, so wholly struck by the beauty of the wildfire that it kindles his own Heart in turn. 

An Ifrit (meant in the broader sense) is the union of the Exalted and the Base, the numinous essence of the Angel taking the coarse stuff of which Creation was sculpted into himself, until rushing water and rough sand have worn away all that was transcendent in them. Each has their heart consumed with some Element in particular, and in turn takes it in its most apocalyptic guise as their Mantle. An Ifrit may be sandstorm or inferno, but never crackling hearth or nurturing sun; they are Sublime things, but not Beautiful ones. 

Within the wildfire, hurricane, blizzard, or other particular Mantle an Ifrit might wear there does hide something akin to a body, but it is both fragile and diffuse. Even should a mortal knight brave the Mantle and face an Ifrit directly, he would find lead and steel equally impotent without some Blessing or Enchantment to bolster them. That the Ifrit would be equally incapable of striking him is little consolation, when directing and focusing the fury of their Mantle is the Choir’s simplest and most trivial Miracle. 

An Ifrit may gather themselves into a more coherent form, just as they may by expression of Will subdue and divert the fury of their Mantle, but only the rarest few can make themselves truly solid, or assume even the pretence of a mortal seeming. Will, for that matter, is a thing in short supply for any member of the Choir, for the violence of their Fall does great damage to it, leaving them creatures of sudden impulse and violent passion. 

It is little surprise, then, that in ancient days and savage lands they were reckoned as great and violent gods, with remote shrines maintained for great bribes and sacrifices to be left, should they then be satisfied and return the way they came. Such pagan rites persist even among Her Celestial Majesty’s subjects, in those wild places where Ifrit were oft-encountered within the span of memory. Most infamously, it is a truth acknowledged by even the most indulgent censor that every merchant crew, and no few of those ostensibly sworn to fight for Her Celestial Majesty’s glory, has at least one occasion filled a boat with food and treasure to push toward some especially storm-wracked horizon. Dark tales of crewmen picked by lot or passengers seized and bound to include among such offerings are denied most strenuously by Lord Admiral and merchant prince alike, and all inquiries into the matter most violently stymied. 

It is upon the Seas, most often the Boreal within the Inner World, and upon at least a half-dozen of the Outer Seas, that Imperial Subjects are most likely to encounter an Ifrit, for they tolerate the solid, the stable and the Sacred most poorly. The great exceptions are among the Southern Marches, where some number of the Angelic host once invoked in the Third Crusade to scour the Lich-Kings and Reapers of Old Abhari from Creation grew too fond as the wind and fire which were their blades. A scattered few have caused great upset on occasion in those haunted lands, and it is thought that at least one yet remains among its further wastelands. 

Wastelands are where an Ifrit might generally be found, whether sought out or simply forming around them. In the Piper’s Wake of Dread Balam, an Ifrit who retains a semblance of virtue scours the land as dancing pillars of endless flame, his violent curiosity spent naming all the ways goblins and demonspawn might burn. In the endless, glacial desolation beyond the Stedry, the Western Wind carves endless palaces of ice and stone, populated in turns by the dead preserved by driest air and those sealed within sculpted tombs of ice. In the endless and nigh-lifeless steppe between Soyai and Esheri, there is an eternal storm of choking dust which the pagans thereof say has the seeming of stampeding horses on the grandest scale, thunder their hoofbeats and lightning their breath. A past Hierarch, wishing to enumerate and name every Angel to descend from on High, had archives emptied and histories compared, and announced that one hundred and three Ifrit had Fallen unto the Inner World since the Creation. That number has grown by some number in the centuries since, but it has been reduced by far more. In these later days, at most a dozen remain. 

Some number of them have been slain, their Mantles usurped by demon or Wyrm or their heart shattered or pierced by mortal heroism and wiles. As many or more have simply followed their own whims beyond the Inner World, for they are ever flighty and beguiled by novelties. Some small fraction also, it must be said, remain free and present but simply choose to pass the present age in slumber. Yet the greatest part of the reduction, and by no small margin, lies in the number of Ifrit now bound, Damned, or otherwise entrapped and entombed. 

Ifrit are mighty, but crudely and blatantly so, the greater number of them by far raging across the land without subtlety or artifice. That their violent passions do no true damage to Creation itself, that in fact they are in a spiritual sense the least dangerous Choir of their kin, has never been a great comfort to those mortal souls forced to suffer their careless depredations. Thus, wherever shamans and wisewomen have made themselves kings and queens, and among every race who have learned or stolen the Binding arts, it was for the pacifying of an Ifrit that these sorceries were first used. This is done most often through trickery and guile, for the great and simple passions of the Ifrit leave them nigh-helpless matching wits against the clever and the brave. Grand temples and forgotten ruins alike dot the Inner World, within them a chest, urn or sarcophagus which has for centuries contained a, by now surely mad, Ifrit who once menaced its builders. Some are instead bound to some trial or task that leaves them so lessened to be harmless, as the scouring, flesh-stripping gale which has raced for years beyond counting between seven bronze bells in the Joyri’s wooded vales, capable of naught else until he causes all seven to ring as one. Some, those most skillfully and greedily bound, are instead forced into their binder’s service, or else compelled to labor in some particular manner for whoever holds the talisman which binds them. This might be a blunt and dangerous thing, as with the Everstorm trapped within a bag of woven unicorn fur, free to give voice to her fury for a day and a night whenever she is loosed, or the Glassblower of the Topaz Sea, whose vengeance against the heirs and kin of the shamans who bound him is forever delayed, so long as there never passes a single breath not spent crafting some new bauble or wonder for them. 

The cleverest and most puissant binders instead break the Ifrit’s weathered Will entirely, subjecting them instead to their own disciplines. This is so rare among pagans that their number might be counted on one hand, and the King of Joyri’s witch-consort, by whose will his mountain-palace was built in a moon and a day, is the only to now walk the Inner World. Four in five, or more, of the Ifrit to ever be so thoroughly bound suffered so by the decree of Her Celestial Majesty’s august ancestors, Damned for their defiance of the Heavens and their trespasses and depredations against the Throne and its subjects. It cannot be known without doubt, but among the College of Binders it is generally held that in fact more (once-)Ifrit now writhe within the Sundry Hells than rage freely altogether, across both Inner World and Outer Seas. 

Should such a Devil be the issue which requires the Inspectorate’s attention, then know it is naught but a grand and mighty sword in the hand of its caller, who, whatever their other crimes, has trespassed against Her Celestial Majesty’s privileges and usurped a quantum of her authority over the Damned to so use them. Should it instead be a wholly wild Ifrit, then it may well know agents of the Throne by sigil and livery, and react with rage of surpassing violence or the spite born of fear to their presence. Thankfully, without special effort no mortal is likely to draw such close attention, and so it is best to ensure that both you and your surrounds are prepared for the reaction before you provoke it. 

-Inspector-General Lady Valeria St-Claire, ‘An Incomplete Bestiary of the Enemies of Heaven” 

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Abhari - The Choirs of the Fallen - On Titans and their Spawn

Of the Choirs of the Fallen Angels, those called Titans are oft-reckoned the most nearly human or, at least, the most readily comprehensible to flawed and mortal minds. This belief has the appearance of a certain sort of sense, for certainly a great many men have cracked and degraded their own souls pursuing temptations of the body, and imagine that a once-sublime soul that does the same is more akin to them than the endless deceptions of the Faerie or the alien passion of the Ifrit. This is a most dangerous species of folly, and persists only because past generations were so vigorous and diligent in hounding Titans and their spawn from all corners of the lands now under Her Celestial Majesty’s rule, and indeed so far as is presently known out of the Inner World entirely. Insofar as any pious and Orthodox soul is likely to encounter a Titan, it will either be as a missionary or pioneer on the frontier of some Outer Sea, or else under such dire circumstances that one of the Choir since bound and Damned has been called up to perform some service for Her Celestial Majesty and her subjects. In either case, the Titans will be of such antiquity as to be wholly novel to those encountering them; thus a thorough grounding in their Natures is a necessity to those sworn to the Silver Blade. 

An Angel is a numinous and sublime being, a pure and potent soul uncompromised by the foul stuff of Creation. A Titan was once the same, but grew fascinated by and covetous of the pleasures and trials of mortal life, of all the varieties of lives lived and all the sensations experienced by those who lived them. Some were vainglorious, wishing to shape and reign over kingdoms and races as the Gods Above did when they first ordered the Inner World. Others are purely decadent, clothing themselves in flesh to experience all the sins unique to it. Some fall between such extremes, and others fall for other reasons entirely. 

What defines and unites all Titans is the moment and manner of their Fall. Around and through their Angelic Soul, they weave and shape a body of carnal flesh. Thus embodied and incarnate, they become in a sense mortal, though only in a sense. They are not ageless and eternal like a god, but the mastery of life that is a Titan’s art and pride makes the rejuvenation and perfection of their own form a trivial effort. Born of that same fatal pride, and intended without subtlety or wisdom to house the sublime light of an Angelic soul, their forms are uniformly grandiose and tremendously powerful, intended to inspire the awe which they claim as their due. Beyond this, there is little to unite the Choir’s mortal forms; a Titan’s vanities and whims are as fickle as and more unique than any mortal man’s, and their body is the most perfect expression of them whose weight the skein of Creation will bear. 

One, the archetype for whom the Choir was named, appeared as a man built upon the scale of a mountain, with hair of woven serpents and the voice of a hecatomb. Another, which for centuries stalked the wasteland that divides the kingdoms of the Soyai from the Esheri Empire, was gargantuan, sable-furred and ivory-tusked beast, the fall of her dozen hooves so heavy as to shatter walls. A third, the great Kraken which held dominion over what is now the Sanguine Sea. A dozen more Titans have been identified and named, and their natures and lineages are compiled in accessories to this volume. Of the fifteen, five are dead, five Damned to sundry Hells, three unaccounted for (being known either only by their works or else having passed beyond the Atlas’ edge since the last recorded encounter), and two known to be among the living and laired in some particular locale (lest this incite panic, be assured that they are safely distant upon the Iron and Topaz Seas). 

The Nature of a Titan is fixed with their Fall, and with it the general plan of their mortal form. Yet they are vainglorious things, ever-unsatisfied with the grandeur they possess. Some few preserve themselves, undoing age or injury but otherwise mistaking their own stasis for perfection. Yet, in the main Titans are forever shedding, molting, maturing, regenerating and restitching themselves to best express their latest whims. A certain few of them make this their project entire, endlessly innovating upon the details of their own body, growing ever grander, ever more monstrous and, even measured against the rest of their Fallen kin, ever-closer to madness. 

No matter how vast a Titan’s form, mortal flesh is an ill-conceived vessel to contain an Angelic soul. Like the miasma of the dead, it flows out with every breath and from every pore. Those few mad Titans refuse this, and struggle endlessly to craft a container which can fully hold their essence. Most of the Choir is not so afflicted, and indeed most react to the discovery with great enthusiasm. From these come the most distinct and infamous mark any of the Choir leave upon the world.

The essence of a Titan’s fall is a usurpation of Life as the Celestial Divines intended it, and as soon as one of their number is momentarily content with their own body and begins to survey the world around them, the fires of their vanity and hubris will soon demand they fill the world with life more pleasing to and harmonious with their own Nature. The lesser and the most subtle, and woe betide whoever confuses the two, might shape a form pleasing to some variety of mortal eye as they Fall. These then bear or sire young in something like the natural way, though the Nature of children so born is writ entirely by the Titan’s whims. The most purely vain, and most often wholly malevolent, pull apart and shape their own miraculous flesh like clay. Whether plague vermin, band of warriors or monstrosities of a singular nature, the Titanspawn so crafted are inevitably set to the massacre of all other life wherever the Titan might claim as their own. The mightiest and most clever shape facsimiles of nectar and ambrosia from their own blood, then offer them to whatever race of man or beast by some whim earns their favor. Their blood thus imbibed, they usurp the flesh from within and might remake it entirely, or else lay down blessings and banes upon the bloodline to proclaim themselves in generations to come. In every case, the alterations mar and defile, and only the fragments of the Titan’s own soul which find a home in the body of their Spawn hold it in place and ward off the demonic corruption such blasphemy naturally invites. 

It is believed that it is from such Titanspawn that all legends and histories of monstrous kingdoms, of legions of iron-clad ogres and ziggurats raised by serpents in the guise of men, arise. It is known beyond doubt that the troglodytes who have so savagely stymied all exploration into the mainland of the Onyx Sea and the harpy tribes lately taken to piracy upon the Diamond are both Titans’ get, and it seems likely that the stone-skinned kings who forged an empire in the mountains of the Diamond Sea’s mainland were as well. 

In the latter cases, to be sure, there is no Titanic sire or dam to be found, and no sign of the miraculous power common to true Titanspawn. Perhaps the Titan in question grew bored and left for more exotic climes, or perhaps they were slain by a rival’s intrigues or some unforeseen catastrophe. Yet it is most likely that the sheer fecundity of their creations is responsible for their absence. A Titanic soul is unfathomably vast, but it is not infinite. The more, the more intricate, and the mightier Titanspawn it must ensoul as well, the greater the drain upon it. Some few Titans cultivate a nurtured retinue, precisely the number required to comfortably hold their soul entire; most are not so restrained, and as their children and pets found empires and raise cities in their name, they find their own miracles growing sluggish and incomplete, their own blood running thin. It has been known for one to go mad at this discovery, slaughtering and devouring their own lineage by the hundreds to reclaim their original might (on some occasions they succeed, on others they die by their own children’s hands). Others grow philosophical, dedicating themselves to securing a glorious legacy before they entirely fade away into the host of their own bloodline. Some, in fact most, are so consumed with vulgar pleasures and the rush of worship that they make no change at all, pretending at the might of past days and hoping they are never called upon to prove it. Whatever the course, the greater the host of Titanspawn, the lesser the share of Sublime might apportioned to each, the more steeply each generation will descend towards marred half-men or monstrous but purely animalistic beasts. 

Most dynasties and courts of Titanspawn begin at some point to marry and breed with true men and women, and in so doing provide for the possibility of their children’s salvation by dint of the whole and pure mortal soul that is then their birthright. Even such hybrids are more prone to corruption and sin than otherwise, as their bodies carry their Titanic ancestor’s taint in ways both subtle and gross and so their soul sits unsettled and easily bruised within their heart (it is well known that any passing interaction with one of the mentioned harpies will prove this). Those that fail to do so either learn to police their own numbers or else face some species of truest ruin, for when the Titanic soul is spread as thinly as can be sustained each new birth must be matched by an elder’s death. Clans surviving in this manner are the origin of superstitions of reincarnation common to many pagans. Those born in excess lack any facsimile of ensoulment and (if fortunate) become simple beasts, flesh without mind or essence, under the care of whichever local god minds nearby plants and animals. If not, they are born with body and mind but no soul and, inevitably, often quite quickly, become vessels for demonic corruption of a catastrophic degree. 

If encountering a Titan in the Outer Seas, search for its spawn and determine its Nature, do not be such a fool as to confront it directly without a great deal of preparation and support. If encountering a Devil who was once one before their Damnation, learn all you can regarding how they have been crippled and the details of their binding. Regardless, accept neither food nor water nor care from them, and put anything of themselves they might leave behind upon the earth to the pyre. On the Outer Seas in particular, trust neither meat nor fruit that is not well-attested to and proven to be natural. The lotus fruit of the Topaz Sea were discovered well before any sign of a Titan was discerned, and feasted upon without restraint by weak and foolish sailors. The Bright-Eyed horrors that yet crew their ships harass Her Celestial Majesty’s interests in the Sea to this day, skin and ship alike slick with red-gold honey. Failing to prevent such lapses is a disgrace our Order can only cleanse with blood. 

-Inspector-General Lady Valeria St-Claire, ‘An Incomplete Bestiary of the Enemies of Heaven” 

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Abhari - The Choirs of the Fallen - The Courtly Fae

The Faerie (or Fae) are one of the three choirs a Fallen Angel might descend into, as distinct from Titans and Djinn (or Ifrit). Like their fellows, they can be found most often among the pagans and beastmen of the Outer Seas, where whole tribes and nations can easily be enthralled and entrapped within their Glamour. Unlike those other Choirs, they can also be found in some number in the civilized and godly lands of the Inner World, either wholly free or else only lightly and imperfectly bound. 

For while a Titan Falls for the love of flesh, to shape or to hold, and the Djinn for the elements themselves, forgetting the drowned for the glory of the flood, the Fae fell for sophistry and for Art. They are creatures of culture and of fancy, and so it is hardly shocking that some few among their number are by Nature well-equipped to seduce and beguile, to dwell within and between the lands of Man and win through fraud and wile what privileges and protections they might desire. Most are not so subtle, as any bestiary of the wilder Outer Seas with their hungry dreams and plagues of song can attest, but those clever few who have dwelled within the borders of the Empire since time immemorial have not done so by being the lesser examples of their Choir. 

We shall presently speak of those subtle and courtly Fae, and return to the matter of their wilder and more primal kind, found among the pagans of the Soyai Principalities as well as across a certain number of the more distant Outer Seas, in a later entry. While they share an origin and a Nature, the tools and practices required to deal with one type of the Choir is quite distinct from that required to bind or break the other. 

The Courtly Fae are so named on several accounts. Firstly, to distinguish them from their wild cousins for, whatever might be said of them, they are spirits of courtesy and grace, attentive to the honor and station of others and expecting all who deal with them to acknowledge and respect every title and honor they have invented for themselves or won from the Mortal world through finesse or fraud. 

Secondly, to note the structures and hierarchies through which they express themselves. A once-Angelic soul is a vast and porous thing, never more than loosely contained within a single form, and in any case the Fae are poorly suited to sculpting a vessel worthy of themselves. Courtly Fae are in a sense illusion layered upon illusion, anchored at their core to whatever body they might acquire. A Court might consist of a noble lord, his lady wife, a dozen knights in his retinue, and whatever other household roles might have seemed amusing masks to wear. That the lord was the day before a fox, his confessor a crow, and the knights a pack of starving wolves is but a trifle; it is the privilege and the sin of the Fae to lie so well as to steal the name of truth, and if a fae lord should think it right to ride a destrier and wield a lance in vulpine skin, the world will obligingly avert its eyes from the mechanics of joints and paws. 

These Faeries can be divided into their Courts as naturally as bees into hives, or wolves into packs. An Angelic Soul is a vast and potent thing, the same sins and vices which cause its Fall make it unable to contain and define itself; an Angel shatters as it Falls, and each piece is a Faerie, a mask which then begins to search for a head to wear it. Each Court has a common livery and bearing, no matter the guise its members might wear (though it can be as damnably subtle as any of their games). Each also has a Crown or a Heart, on occasion both and in rare and dire cases any number of Noble shards. These hold a sovereign grace over their Court and - like the lordly fox - rarely deign to hide their power.

The fox is not here named by chance, as one infamous Fae ‘gentleman’ has set his heart within a particular red fox for at least a century and raised no end of trouble wherever he might settle for a time. Yet Sir Reynard is unique, or at least near enough to, among his kin. Most Courtly Faerie find laying their heart and crown over a beast barely more palatable than living entirely within the constructs of snapped twigs and morning dew they use to anchor a glamor when no finer vessel presents itself. They instead prefer above all else to take the untainted bodies of mortal men and women for their own. Children and the Mad are preferred, for their dreams and fancies are rich delicacies, their souls unsettled and easily drowned by the Fae’s own. Away from hearth and altar and without vigilant protection, they can simply be whisked away and overwhelmed; for every antlered queen of stars and terrible lord of the hunt upon his wolf-mouthed stag there exists a changeling child, or else the artfully arranged illusion of fatal accident. 

Few such prizes wander blindly into the Fae’s grasp, and few Fae so brazen as to scour and hunt for them persist in Orthodox and rightly-governed lands. By their Nature superficial and flighty, their Glamor is far less potent when faced with strong and well-rooted souls, families, temples and towns. Thus, the final quality for which they are called Courtly: they court. They beguile, trick, gamble, offer and trade. By anchoring a Glamour in the soul of one whose behalf they weave it a Faerie can conjure any miracle or fortune desired of them, as real and enduring as the pact which birthed it. And by the same token, any so foolish as to invite a Faerie into their home or life, to trade or offer some property or quality of theirs, sets aside all wards and protections that might prevent it from taking what is given. Thus, apples of youth and vaults of faerie gold, paid for with the promise of one’s first- and seventhborn. Thus, the iron rods found in temples throughout the eastern Crownlands, which every young couple must hold and affirm their name and Nature before they are wed. Thus, most famously, the goblin markets of Lussello and Imir, where beneath the Flower and Hunter’s Moon the decadent and the desperate trade away all they are for the illusion of what they wish to be. 

Vain and shallow beings, stability and routine is anathema to the Fae, true stasis akin to death. Though a whole court or company hail from a single soul, each Faerie within it has a name and legend invented for and draped over them, and, without some greater cause to distract them, most will amuse themselves for years and decades with internal dramas that are by turn operatic and cannibalistic. It is for the same cause that Fae without exception hunger for any piece of mortal life, for mortal passions and memories are far richer soil in which to plant their fantasies than whatever they might conjure on their own. 

The greatest weakness of any Fae is, then, their addiction to such spectacle and drama. The particularities of their obsession may vary, but for every one there is some sort of wager, game or contest they are helpless to resist. They take heedless risks for the joy of it, and give those rightly helpless before them a true chance of escape purely so that they might indulge in hunting them. They are utterly incapable of breaking their word or the agreed-upon terms of such games, but should they triumph there is little upon the earth that might prevent them from taking what they are owed, be it time, love, life, legacy or even whatever patrimony one can freely dispose of. There exist scattered throughout the Empire, and to a far greater extent among the Soyai, households, estates and whole forests and dales that have passed into the hands of the Fae by pact or wager. May the Gods take pity upon those who trespass upon them without cause or right, for there are few under Heaven who can help them. 

Hunting Fae is delicate and exacting work, for any to have long dwelt within Her Celestial Majesty’s empire has doubtless done so by buying or winning whatever privileges they require to do so from whatever lords and spirits could be made to grant it, pacts that have almost always passed beyond all record or memory by the present day. They can, if required, be fought with cold iron and sacred fire, warred upon like any overmighty god or haughty prince. But this is a costly affair, and even victory exposes those involved to all the banes and curses a wronged and vengeful Faerie might devise. It is better, and far less of an expense, to learn all one can of the Faerie and the pacts and patterns which bind it, and then confront it upon its own terms and compel it live up to the strictures of its own word. 

Above all, mind your words and its both, and neither offer nor swear upon anything you cannot afford to lose. On the wilder and more desolate roads of the eastern Crownlands there rides to this day a vision of Ruin in the livery and wielding the silver sabre of a Knight-Inspector, the only legacy of a proud man who swore carelessly upon his own chivalry and honor. The Empire does not suffer for his uniqueness. 

-Inspector-General Lady Valeria St-Claire, ‘An Incomplete Bestiary of the Enemies of Heaven” 

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Shadows in the Cave - Overview and Directory

Humanity has always been keenly aware that there is a world beyond what our senses can perceive, that invisible powers shape and shatter the course of our lives. Every culture has its own pantheons and demonologies, giving faces and names to the monsters which fill its dreams. None are true, but all are attempts - some more honest than others - to grapple with the Truth.

The Truth is, the history of humanity is one of truly cosmic good fortune. We have evolved in the shallows of creation, a warm and plentiful hollow only barely connected to the awful radiance and glorious abyss beyond. We - we the species, we the ecosystem, we the planet - have had unaccounted millennia to develop and grow in a metaphysical cradle. 

Now the walls are beginning to crack, and the awful light of Truth has begun to shine through. Humanity as we know it will not survive the weight of revelation - let alone the predators already adapted to it. The apocalypse is not an if, but a when. 

A small, select fraction of humanity understands what’s coming (or thinks it does). There are at least three groups working in the shadows, desperately preparing for the end of days. At least two of them will doom us all. 

Shadows in the Cave is a (mostly) cosmic and conspiracy horror setting, utterly and shamelessly inspired by Call of Cthulhu (the Delta Green subsetting, especially), Control, the works of Jeff Vandermeer, (by osmosis) the SCP Foundation and probably literally hundreds of bits and pieces stolen as I went. It’s a setting of pre-millennial anxiety and dread, the horror of seeing things begin to break apart and grow ever-stranger and knowing that they are the first cracks in a damn about to burst. It is, especially, how proactive, forward thinking, practical and visionary people react to that weight pressing down on their conscience, and how their impeccably reasoned and justified plans are at least as horrifying as what they’re trying to stop.

General Information

Shadows in the Cave: A (somewhat) longer and more detailed basic introduction to/pitch for the setting.

Cursing the Darkness: An overview of the PATRIOT network, the self-appointed conspiracy of monster- and cult-hunters spending life and limb (their own and everyone else’s) to burn out every trace of ‘FOREIGN’ influence they can reach and so delay the apocalypse by one more day. 

Civilization Without Humanity: An overview of the Prometheans - the sprawling network under the control of the ‘Extraordinary Committee on Continuity of Civilization’. Having discarded any hope for the human species, they put those vast resources to the task of finding or creating a successor who can preserve what was valuable of our inheritance into the new age to come.

Humanity’s Euthenasia:  An overview of the Conciliators, a mystery cult among mystery cults. True sorcerers and mystics, they have made their peace with the end of reason, civilization, and the delusion of humanity’s cosmic significance. They work to prepare humanity for the coming darkness, and save every life they can (though some might dispute whether the life they envision is worth living). 

Truth is a Bitter Freedom: An overview of the various major genuinely supernatural cults and organizations active in the continental United States and Canada that aren’t part of any of the previous three groups. Most especially about the Four Apostles, (somewhat) near-human eldritch entities who are each in their own way the most dangerous channels of hypergeomtric lore into the world today. 

Fiction

Various short stories set in the setting, mostly dedicated to exploring one major personality in it or another. This list will hopefully be expanding soon. 

The Four Apostles: A cycle of short stories, each showing off how each of the aforementioned human-ish eldritch entities interacts with the world. 

Preacher: After suffering a loss, a bereaved woman receives unexpected support. 

Teacher: An aspiring occultist discovers a patron. 

Merchant: Back against the wall, an indebted woman finds an opportunity. 

Muse: Faced with violent criticism, an artist regains his spark. 

The Pitch: Three short stories, each about someone getting recruited into each of the three major conspiracies. 

Prometheans: A (theoretically) in-progress series of four short stories, each about a different (variably transhuman, variably monstrous) member of the Prometheans’ Steering Committee 

Minos: An underrated problem of managing a sprawling occult conspiracy engineering the future of civilization is actually keeping all those sprawling tendrils and illegal experiments on-task and on-message. You really do have to grab at every source of reliable information about your own organization that you're able. Or; Ava Young receives a high-stakes chance to demonstrate the importance of maintaining a clear head in stressful situations.

Galatea: Clandestine experiments by occult conspiracies trying to find a future for civilization past the ever-looming apocalypse do not have a high success rate. The ones that ARE successful aren't necessarily well-suited to auditing and administering the next set, either. Or; an unscheduled site visit gets slightly out of control.

Notes on an Incursion

Examinations of various hypergeometric phenomena and life forms, told from three alternating perspectives (each associated with one of the main conspiracies one way or another, none wholly correct)

The Caldwell Tape: A dusty old VHS tape, dating from the late 1980s. When played, the drama and horror within seeps out, engulfing and incorporating the whole structure around it. 

The Crows: A flock of entropic scavengers, appearing in isolated and nearly-forgotten towns and helping them along the road to oblivion. 

Dream-Eaters: An astral parasite (or symbiote, depending on one’s perspective), sharing the bounty of its feasts with the anchor whose body and connections enable them. 

Summoned Horrors: The legendary and infamous demons that witches and warlocks have been hunted for summoning through all of human history. Or at least the warped reflections of such fears, which are usually real enough to get the job done. 

Tangled Space: Warped and bruised spacetime, labyrinths hidden within a single loop of a forest trail. They grow reliably stranger the deeper one goes in them, and inevitably lead to things fully capable of following the unwary back out.

Victims of the Art: The (quite intentionally) lost and scattered works of a true savant and visionary of his craft, painting which capture some aspect of a Truth so vividly that studying them begins to impose it upon reality. 

Seeing by Another’s Light: A strange and almost empty mirror world, its scattered inhabitants seemingly only able to interact with our own under rare circumstances and through certain reflections and recordings. This is a good thing. 

Ghost Hunters: An impressive, educated married couple of paranormal investigators, demonologists and exorcists. They’re supportive, affirming, happy to investigate curses and hauntings without payment. They tend to find them. 

Calamari: A masterpiece a decade in the making, a fully aware, sapient and hypergeomtrically adapted nonhuman intelligence. The security measures around it are of course wholly foolproof and up to the challenge. 

Threat Analysis

The same format, but instead applied to some cult, syndicate, corporation or other (mostly) human institution that definitely knows exactly what it’s doing and how to handle it. 

Adapa Inc: A cutting edge biotechnology company, burning venture capital funding as it experiments with and attempts to turn the wholly nonhuman and enticingly mutagenic organic  matter its founders discovered into the panacea it could be. 

The Walkers in Twilight: One of the west coast’s largest (and most profitable) new religious movements. Not least because its inner circle knows just enough magic to be dangerous and has the good sense not to go looking for any more. 

The Graveyard Boys: A PATRIOT asset, to the immense anger and frustration of their internal security officers when they found out. But having some friendly necromancers on-call is just really, really useful as long as everyone’s cool about it.

Civic Virtue: Humanity lived in villages for millennia before the first city, and bowed to sacred kings for uncounted generations before the idea of democracy appeared in some bright sophist’s head. With everything about to fall apart, why not fall back on what’s proven to work?

[brutish-impulse]

Do you have a suggested reading order? I've just picked up bits and pieces as it appears on my dash.

[some-small-mercy]

Hmm...not really, truthfully? There are a few recurring POVs or nods between pieces, but nothing was really written as a direct continuation or follow-up to anything else. The 'general information' pieces will make a lot of things clearer and easier to parse for basically any of the threat analysis and incursion entries, if you're the sort to find fairly clear and mostly-objective exposition to provide context helpful? Beyond that, they're really just ordered by theme and the order I wrote them in.

Oh, the story Muse and 'Victims of the Art' are fairly directly related to each other. Probably makes sense to do one than the other for them.

[some-small-mercy]

Shadows in the Cave - Overview and Directory

Humanity has always been keenly aware that there is a world beyond what our senses can perceive, that invisible powers shape and shatter the course of our lives. Every culture has its own pantheons and demonologies, giving faces and names to the monsters which fill its dreams. None are true, but all are attempts - some more honest than others - to grapple with the Truth.

The Truth is, the history of humanity is one of truly cosmic good fortune. We have evolved in the shallows of creation, a warm and plentiful hollow only barely connected to the awful radiance and glorious abyss beyond. We - we the species, we the ecosystem, we the planet - have had unaccounted millennia to develop and grow in a metaphysical cradle. 

Now the walls are beginning to crack, and the awful light of Truth has begun to shine through. Humanity as we know it will not survive the weight of revelation - let alone the predators already adapted to it. The apocalypse is not an if, but a when. 

A small, select fraction of humanity understands what’s coming (or thinks it does). There are at least three groups working in the shadows, desperately preparing for the end of days. At least two of them will doom us all. 

Shadows in the Cave is a (mostly) cosmic and conspiracy horror setting, utterly and shamelessly inspired by Call of Cthulhu (the Delta Green subsetting, especially), Control, the works of Jeff Vandermeer, (by osmosis) the SCP Foundation and probably literally hundreds of bits and pieces stolen as I went. It’s a setting of pre-millennial anxiety and dread, the horror of seeing things begin to break apart and grow ever-stranger and knowing that they are the first cracks in a damn about to burst. It is, especially, how proactive, forward thinking, practical and visionary people react to that weight pressing down on their conscience, and how their impeccably reasoned and justified plans are at least as horrifying as what they’re trying to stop.

General Information

Shadows in the Cave: A (somewhat) longer and more detailed basic introduction to/pitch for the setting.

Cursing the Darkness: An overview of the PATRIOT network, the self-appointed conspiracy of monster- and cult-hunters spending life and limb (their own and everyone else’s) to burn out every trace of ‘FOREIGN’ influence they can reach and so delay the apocalypse by one more day. 

Civilization Without Humanity: An overview of the Prometheans - the sprawling network under the control of the ‘Extraordinary Committee on Continuity of Civilization’. Having discarded any hope for the human species, they put those vast resources to the task of finding or creating a successor who can preserve what was valuable of our inheritance into the new age to come.

Humanity’s Euthenasia:  An overview of the Conciliators, a mystery cult among mystery cults. True sorcerers and mystics, they have made their peace with the end of reason, civilization, and the delusion of humanity’s cosmic significance. They work to prepare humanity for the coming darkness, and save every life they can (though some might dispute whether the life they envision is worth living). 

Truth is a Bitter Freedom: An overview of the various major genuinely supernatural cults and organizations active in the continental United States and Canada that aren’t part of any of the previous three groups. Most especially about the Four Apostles, (somewhat) near-human eldritch entities who are each in their own way the most dangerous channels of hypergeomtric lore into the world today. 

Fiction

Various short stories set in the setting, mostly dedicated to exploring one major personality in it or another. This list will hopefully be expanding soon. 

The Four Apostles: A cycle of short stories, each showing off how each of the aforementioned human-ish eldritch entities interacts with the world. 

Preacher: After suffering a loss, a bereaved woman receives unexpected support. 

Teacher: An aspiring occultist discovers a patron. 

Merchant: Back against the wall, an indebted woman finds an opportunity. 

Muse: Faced with violent criticism, an artist regains his spark. 

The Pitch: Three short stories, each about someone getting recruited into each of the three major conspiracies. 

Prometheans: A (theoretically) in-progress series of four short stories, each about a different (variably transhuman, variably monstrous) member of the Prometheans’ Steering Committee 

Minos: An underrated problem of managing a sprawling occult conspiracy engineering the future of civilization is actually keeping all those sprawling tendrils and illegal experiments on-task and on-message. You really do have to grab at every source of reliable information about your own organization that you're able. Or; Ava Young receives a high-stakes chance to demonstrate the importance of maintaining a clear head in stressful situations.

Galatea: Clandestine experiments by occult conspiracies trying to find a future for civilization past the ever-looming apocalypse do not have a high success rate. The ones that ARE successful aren't necessarily well-suited to auditing and administering the next set, either. Or; an unscheduled site visit gets slightly out of control.

Notes on an Incursion

Examinations of various hypergeometric phenomena and life forms, told from three alternating perspectives (each associated with one of the main conspiracies one way or another, none wholly correct)

The Caldwell Tape: A dusty old VHS tape, dating from the late 1980s. When played, the drama and horror within seeps out, engulfing and incorporating the whole structure around it. 

The Crows: A flock of entropic scavengers, appearing in isolated and nearly-forgotten towns and helping them along the road to oblivion. 

Dream-Eaters: An astral parasite (or symbiote, depending on one’s perspective), sharing the bounty of its feasts with the anchor whose body and connections enable them. 

Summoned Horrors: The legendary and infamous demons that witches and warlocks have been hunted for summoning through all of human history. Or at least the warped reflections of such fears, which are usually real enough to get the job done. 

Tangled Space: Warped and bruised spacetime, labyrinths hidden within a single loop of a forest trail. They grow reliably stranger the deeper one goes in them, and inevitably lead to things fully capable of following the unwary back out.

Victims of the Art: The (quite intentionally) lost and scattered works of a true savant and visionary of his craft, painting which capture some aspect of a Truth so vividly that studying them begins to impose it upon reality. 

Seeing by Another’s Light: A strange and almost empty mirror world, its scattered inhabitants seemingly only able to interact with our own under rare circumstances and through certain reflections and recordings. This is a good thing. 

Ghost Hunters: An impressive, educated married couple of paranormal investigators, demonologists and exorcists. They’re supportive, affirming, happy to investigate curses and hauntings without payment. They tend to find them. 

Calamari: A masterpiece a decade in the making, a fully aware, sapient and hypergeomtrically adapted nonhuman intelligence. The security measures around it are of course wholly foolproof and up to the challenge. 

Threat Analysis

The same format, but instead applied to some cult, syndicate, corporation or other (mostly) human institution that definitely knows exactly what it’s doing and how to handle it. 

Adapa Inc: A cutting edge biotechnology company, burning venture capital funding as it experiments with and attempts to turn the wholly nonhuman and enticingly mutagenic organic  matter its founders discovered into the panacea it could be. 

The Walkers in Twilight: One of the west coast’s largest (and most profitable) new religious movements. Not least because its inner circle knows just enough magic to be dangerous and has the good sense not to go looking for any more. 

The Graveyard Boys: A PATRIOT asset, to the immense anger and frustration of their internal security officers when they found out. But having some friendly necromancers on-call is just really, really useful as long as everyone’s cool about it.

Civic Virtue: Humanity lived in villages for millennia before the first city, and bowed to sacred kings for uncounted generations before the idea of democracy appeared in some bright sophist’s head. With everything about to fall apart, why not fall back on what’s proven to work?

[some-small-mercy]

Shadows in the Cave - Notes on an Incursion - Calamari

The Echidna Group has a clear, simple goal - and yet achieving any real progress towards it has required more than a decade, billions of dollars, and sourcing promising technologies and discoveries from dozens of different organizations. It is with profound pleasure and satisfaction that we, the managers and primary investigators of the Nereus Project, can announce that the faith and funding extended to Echidna has now been thoroughly vindicated. 

To provide a high level overview: Echidna as a whole has remained agnostic about the most viable path to engineering a viable Successor. In recent years, that has meant that most funding and attention has been directed to digital-first projects or else humanity-plus augmentation and emulation efforts. Nereus predates a large majority of these efforts and, despite setbacks and delays caused by various resource reallocations, has retained enough of a budget to see it through to the successful conclusion of the first phase. 

The Successor-candidate - code-named Nereus unless and until it expresses a preference otherwise - is built on terrestrial but thoroughly nonhuman foundations. Octopodes - one of the most intelligent animals on earth and simultaneously one of the most alien to human evolution and cognition - were selected as the most promising base. Nereus has about as little in common with any cephalopod found in nature as a PHD candidate does with a macaque, of course, but it does still show an interest in and fondness for its roots. In addition to octopodes, Nereus has over the last several months incorporated clutches of European green crabs and several species of mussel and eel into its networked macrobiome. 

* * *

Agent LEANDER contacting E-CELL unprompted for once. Hopefully someone checks this even when they’re not expecting anything. Reporting repeated and potentially dangerous evidence of likely FOREIGN activity that L-CELL is currently unable to investigate. 

Activity first noted by local ocean science researchers LEANDER is affiliated with, since corroborated by social media posts and commentary from several nearby fishing and crabbing communities. LEANDER would investigate directly, but with the rest of L-CELL currently out of country for the remainder of a six-month deployment, doing so without support was judged too risky. 

After internal discussion through secure channels, L-CELL forwarding this information up the chain so it may be reassigned to a different Cell. 

The FOREIGN agent or phenomenon has not been identified, but is clearly located somewhere away from the shore but on the continental shelf. Unclear whether it has not yet reached the point of directly affecting humans, or evidence of those mutations and/or murders is just well hidden. 

Affected creatures are mostly green crabs. Fast breeding, adaptable, incredibly invasive. A half-dozen independent reports (attached) have testified to unnaturally large colonies of them engaged in large, coordinated actions. Majority report or record what looks like a dance or ritual, with dozens or hundreds moving in circles and spirals over cleared and leveled sand in complex patterns. Often accompanied by telltale signs of FOREIGN presence, including inexplicable lights and changes in temperature, sudden generation of matter (then quickly eaten by the massed crabs) or migraines and memory loss among witnesses. Remainder of recorded activity is more sinister. 

* * *

Mr. Harrow,

This is the final report on the tragedy that befell the Mars Lodge of the Hearthlight Haven Youth Retreat this past April. Given your deeply valued patronage and support for Hearthlight, everyone was happy to assist me in putting it together. However, much of what follows was told to me in confidence and with assurances it would not be shared to anyone but you. Given the importance of public trust in Hearthlight for its mission, I think you’ll agree discretion is key here. Hearthlight’s in-house legal counsel has been proactively cooperating with local law enforcement on the issue, and with your assistance smoothing over any issues with other donors I think the organization can weather the storm without disrupting the care and treatment of any of the other children entrusted to it. 

Mars Lodge was (obviously) an all-boys group, all 15-17 and a mix of advanced and struggling. As a final trip before the end of the term, their lodge father took them on a two-week wilderness excursion to northern Montana. Between him, the nine boys and the two assistant councilors, a dozen men and plenty of supplies were dropped off for the excursion. When pickup arrived 14 days later, no one was waiting for them. 

An urgent two day search followed. It discovered a ransacked campsite, four corpses, worrying physical evidence, and one half-dead and deeply traumatized assistant councilor. Of the remaining seven teens entrusted to Hearthlight’s care, there is no sign to be found. 

* * *

Nereus does not bear much resemblance to any naturally existing life, and would die almost instantly without constant support and medical monitoring. Its core or central body was grown as a result of animal intelligence theories regarding octopodes and their arms. In the relevant species, intelligence is to some degree distributed, with arms moving themselves based on independent sense-perception and cognition with only limited input from the central brain. 

What is networked is scalable, and the spacious, intensely monitored aquarium at the heart of the Nereus Project is the beloved home of the first of a whole new form of life. Each node in the network is very similar to a Pacific Giant Octopus (though one that has been exposed to careful doses of hypergeometric energy since conception). However, instead of ending in prehensile limbs, the vast majority of Nereus’ arms instead connect two different nodes. The overall structure has a passing resemblance to a human brain. 

Kept in a sufficiently nutrient-rich and energy-infused environment, Nereus is quite content, its only complaint being an insatiable curiosity. It took two days from the point of developing complex, networked neural activity for it to discover how to perceive the environment around its tank, and just over a week after that for it to understand the English language. These facts only became clear three months afterward, when project security discovered it had learned how to influence the perception and thought processes of humans in its immediate vicinity. 

The resulting crisis almost saw the entire project flushed. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed. Security measures were increased several degrees, and both network isolation and regular off-site psych testing is now strictly enforced. While perhaps prudent, this also proved unnecessary - Project leadership threw itself into achieving true communication with Nereus above all other priorities. Basic concepts (‘don’t touch human minds or Project computers’ from one end, requests for games and puzzles, along with environmental adjustments in various small degrees, from the other) came quickly. 

This note is being written and sent directly to Director Galatea because, in the last week, Project staff have reached consensus that we have bridged the rest of the gap. Over six hours of real time, natural language, friendly and constructive conversations have occurred with Nerus as of time of writing. With its consent - curiosity and neophilia are dominant elements of its emotional makeup - the Project has begun several experiments to test responsiveness and sensitivity to several controlled and understood hypergeometric phenomena. Early results for the vast majority are very, very positive. 

* * *

L-CELL has verified two recordings of the FOREIGN-affected green crabs efficiently and meticulously butchering human corpses. Videos are in both cases by bystanders who stumbled across the event in progress, which limits their utility for determining causes and context, and raises the real (likely) possibility that more cases have simply occurred unrecorded. 

In both cases, recordings show the human remains (in one case one, in the other a pair) having been dragged above the waterline on a beach. Poor video quality and the state of the corpses make determining the cause of death impossible. In both cases, all clothing, jewelry and (in one case) skin covered by tattoos had been carefully cut and peeled off of the bodies, then discarded in a neat pile. The bodies themselves were then carefully butchered, with separate piles for skin, hair and nails, organs and bones. Close viewing of the video evidence suggests bodies that were relatively fresh, but chilled and waterlogged. Both videos ended when the civilians recording them fled the scene, and further investigation revealed nothing but bloodstains and the ‘waste’ pile. 

These actions are not part of natural green crab behavior. AGENT LEANDER acted on his own initiative, renting a boat and spending several days in the waters near where the videos were recorded. He caught over a dozen crabs with varying degrees of clearly-FOREIGN mutations. Most common were dangerously sharp or oversized claws, odd hairlike growths on the shell, and prehensile, finger-like appendages hidden within one (but not both) claws. All also possessed significantly altered internal organs, including what seems superficially similar to human brain matter. 

After these discoveries were cataloged, L-CELL came to the unanimous decision that the clear FOREIGN THREAT should be investigated by a full cell, and that all information should be passed up the chain of command. 

* * *

Hearthlight Haven requires a degree of discretion and benign neglect from civil authorities to function. They work with troubled, dangerous young men and women who have proven themselves unreachable and irredeemable by all normal means. Thankfully, there are many jurisdictions whose sheriffs have a healthy respect for delegated parental authority, and up to this point no lodge has been more than inconvenienced following any tragic accidents. Montana, in this case, is full of good, reasonable men. Even if they don’t appreciate how literal Hearthlight staff are when they explain the importance of confronting troubled souls with the reality of Satan and the wages he pays.  

Following a conclusive interview with the surviving staff member, I believe this to be the root of the tragedy. 

The lodge father was not a forthcoming man with his plans, neither was he an easy one to question. It is the survivor’s belief that when his fellow assistant councilor took the boys on a hike to the nearby river to catch their own suppers, he initially believed the strange eels they encountered were a pre-arranged trial. In the event, confronting them seems to have been precisely the wrong choice. 

It was past midnight when the boys reappeared at the campsite, all undressed save for the glowing, lamprey-mouthed eels wrapped around, adhering and latched on to their bodies. The survivor’s testimony is very vivid; the boys had clearly been possessed or had their perception altered in some way, as every one of them was ‘hellishly gleeful’, laughing and joking very uncharacteristically as they attacked the camp and the counselors. The boys gorged themselves on the counselors’ food supplies, blasphemously defaced several installations they had put up over the previous days, and brutally attacked both Hearthlight staff members. The surviving assistant counselor escaped with only a brutal beating and several broken ribs. The lodge father was not so lucky. The survivor was reluctant to go into detail on the details of his death, and grew nauseous when pressed. The only thing I can say confidently is that it culminated in one of the eels chewing through his stomach and bursting out from beneath the skin. 

At present, all of this is the unreliable testimony of one unwell and psychologically damaged man, and clearly should not be taken too seriously. I have taken the precaution of directing a search team of reliable project staff to scan the indicated river for supporting evidence. At present, the only remaining urgently necessary action is informing the parents. I have taken the liberty of examining the psych profiles of Mars Lodge and identifying likely ringleaders in the event to note when providing an explanation for the tragedy to them. 

I will be in the field for at least another week, following up on remaining leads and awaiting the results of the latest search. Please reach out immediately with any further questions. 

* * *

Nereus has a fascinating, expansive consciousness. Most of its cognition occurs on a level parallel to physical neural activity, and when exposed to the basic principle it rapidly developed a way to ‘slide’ this cognition into more-or-less compatible bodies it could perceive. Beyond an overpowering sense of cosmic curiosity, it has so far evidenced strong interest in philosophical principles of autonomy and self-determination, and a natural aversion to its own pain or injury. Beyond a single tense discussion (following which it was decided that only vegan staff should directly interact with it, as a matter of courtesy), relations between Project staff and Nereus have been friendly, collaborative, and strictly positive. It seems psychologically and physically stable, and capable of far more than either it or we are aware of. 

It has so far remained content not to extend its awareness beyond the confines of the Project complex, and firmly committed to not acting through helpless human proxies. Still, given the speed of its development and the predominance of curiosity and problem-solving in its emotional make-up, it seems imprudent to let it feel like it is being confined or allowed to stagnate. 

We would therefore like to formally invite Director Galatea to tour and review the project. We confidently expect that she will judge Nereus to be the Echidna Group’s first genuine success, and approve moving on to socializing and educating it as a true Successor Candidate. 

[some-small-mercy]

Shadows in the Cave - Threat Analysis - Civic Virtue

Good morning, my gallant knight.

Oh I kid, and do be sure not to mention any select societies you might be part of while working. It’s a discipline you should cultivate, to begin with, and it’s neither your nor any other Institute staff’s business how I might have heard your name. I am, in any event, so very pleased to have a young man of such fine potential to dedicate to this project. As you shall see, it is deserving of the utmost attention and care. 

You may begin by considering a general principle: why do we so desperately wish to be ruled? What is the true appeal of a king?

It is primeval and enduring even, especially, among those wretched of the earth who will suffer and starve for the sake of his royal splendour. I have an academic interest in these things, so indulge me when I say that there is a deep need in the human psyche, psychological or spiritual or however you might care to describe it, to be ruled. This is especially the case among those who are aware, or cannot help but be confronted with evidence of the fact, that they are not fit to govern their own lives, and cannot be trusted with decisions of any real import. 

As you and I both know, this is a category that will grow far, far larger in the years to come, as the true nature of Creation becomes impossible to ignore. 

A king is, then, a sacred figure, idol and sin-eater both. He (or she, though there are clear natural tendencies here) defends his subjects against the terrible strangeness and unspeakable horrors of the world beyond what they know and from the terror and misery of ordering their own lives and facing the evidence of their inadequacies. He makes the world sensible and safe, providing a trustworthy authority they can rely upon while they focus on things within their own capacities. 

You understand, I hope? Lovely. Now, finding men suitable for the weight of a crown is no easy task, and you are the heir to wisdom won from several unfortunate messes before your time. Over the last year, though, I have seen a very encouraging success that I hope to entrust to your guidance. 

First, decide where you want to get lunch. Then we can talk about saving America’s small towns. 

* * *

Dawesford is a town of 1,266 (as of Jan 1) in rural West Virginia. A classic mining town, its fortunes have always been tied to the nearby Grayfeather Ridge coal mine. For the last several decades, this has meant structural unemployment, population decline, and elevated rates of drug use and most categories of violent and property crime. None of this makes it particularly noteworthy. 

What sets Dawesford apart is its post-pandemic revival and the reversal of almost every socioeconomic and demographic trend that had previously affected it. Over the last three years rates of violent crime and drug use have plummeted, marriage and birth rates have increased, and the local high school graduation rates have risen to among the top 20% for the state. Most immediately relevant, the local mine has returned to profitable operation after more than a decade. 

Grayfeather Ridge Mine is now being considered for acquisition by Lindwyrm Resources International’s Special Projects Division. The Division has thoroughly justified its existence through the dramatically increased margins achieved by the two Special Sites discovered already under LRI ownership, but identifying and leading the acquisition of a third Site is an exciting new opportunity for both the Division and LRI as a whole. Grayfeather Ridge triggered several alerts recommended by the Division’s corporate partners for this purpose: most notably 1) the improbability of a large, easily tapped seam being suddenly discovered so long after the mine was considered exhausted and 2) the civic and economic revival of Dawesford preceding the reopening of the mine, rather than being an effect of it. 

* * *

This is an after-action report by R Cell for operation…PRAIRIE FIRE, apparently. Feels a bit tasteless now. Agent Rose reporting. Never written one of these before, not even sure I’m leaving it in the right place. Agent Richard was the normal point of contact with whoever reads these, but he’s not exactly around to handle the paperwork. 

Palo Seco is - was, I guess - a nowhere town in west Texas. Richard pointed us at it to poke at something that could have been signs of the supernatural or could have just been garden-variety human horror shows. Wouldn’t have much minded dealing out a bit of rough justice either way, but turns out we were in the right place to do our job. 

I say it was a nowhere town, and I mean it. There was one place to rent a couple rooms in the whole place, and it wasn’t exactly booked solid. It was also the sort of place where three different people in the first hour felt the need to ask how exactly the five of us travelling together (men and women, at least) were married or related so that it wasn’t scandalous. Flashing the fake Fed IDs didn’t seem helpful for staying under the radar, so we just smiled and played along. Lot of that kind of thing. I was already joking that everyone in the whole town just seemed to be copies of the same personality. That started feeling tasteless. 

Getting anything useful out of anybody there wasn’t easy, but there was a bar, and Renata and Richard could both get gossip out of a mute. Mostly by trading off all the questions they were asking about us, but that turned out to be useful too. Town was full of all that neighborly feeling and civic pride that’s always a show you put on for the tourists, but they did a damn sight better pretending than most. All sounded like a cult, talking about how the new mayor had turned the whole place around and saved the town from turning into one more tumbleweed. Combined with how a handful of middle aged drunks lounging around after work was the closest thing to ‘troublemakers’ any of us could find, and Richard and I had a pretty solid guess what was going on. 

Realizing that the nosy clerks and checkout girls the rest of us were trying to talk to seemed to know the bullshit answers those two were feeding the bar without anyone pulling out a phone or leaving the room was another solid clue. So, of course we needed to go see just how this Mayor did his work. People had been happy to brag about how everyone showed up to the weekly town hall meetings, so that made it easy enough to pick a where and when. 

Frankly, we were not anywhere fucking close to prepared for how fast things escalated once we got there. 

* * *

Harold, he will insist you call him ‘Hal’, Whitcomb hardly fits my image of what a great man should look like. Yet by their works shall ye know them, and he has accomplished what none before ever did. Twice before a man such as him has grown arbitrary and decadent, and a town has fallen into ruin, and suffered themselves accordingly. Being a king means absorbing responsibility in both good times and bad; times in Dawesford are good, and so Whitcomb as yet walks a path strewn with rose petals. 

Once you have done all the readings (don’t think you can get away with skimming), handling Whitcomb and our relationship with him will be your only priority. The Municipal Policy Institute exists to support and advise. Whatever delusions of grandeur you young bucks entertain over drinks, it is men like Whitcomb and places like Dawesford where any hope for humanity can be found. Sneer at the salt of the earth all you like; you, I and all the rest of this misshapen city will succumb to our vanity and be consumed by the dark while humble and chastised eyes never stray from the flickering fires we have helped them build. 

Whitcomb is one such flame, and a bright enough one to deserve every hope and effort you are capable of in his support. We do, you do, have more advice to give, and he remains deeply grateful for our guidance and support. He, and Dawesford as a whole, is acutely aware of all the rough edges that remain and eager for any policy proposals you have to sand them smooth. The support and guidance he will need in executing those proposals will be an excellent learning experience for you as well. 

Whitcomb has no idea of the true tests he (and all the world) will soon face, but he must be prepared for them nonetheless. 

* * *

The centerpiece of Dawesford’s revival is the expansive suite of ‘civic renewal’ programs the current mayor was elected to implement. For the past several years, the town has consciously adopted dozens of newly invented or imported traditions and fought the ‘atomization of modern life’ with deliberate policy. Neighborhood associations and social clubs are ubiquitous, and the whole town joins the mayor for his daily morning and evening livestreams (a news update and a communal moment of thanksgiving, respectively). 

Defying the predictions of skeptics across the state, these brute force measures have proven effective. The drain of high school graduates to larger population centres has stopped entirely, despite the massive increases in the number of graduates who might choose to move. For the first time in decades, the population has begun growing as births exceed deaths. Serious crime is increasingly unheard of, and good samaritans intervene to stop the overwhelming majority of petty offenses before they begin. Even the economy has flourished, with an extraordinarily efficient economic renewal fund used to support a main street full of locally owned small businesses. 

The economic fundamentals of the region did not actually change until very recently, with the seeming revival of the town’s businesses being mostly downstream of the plummeting crime rate and the aggressive acquisition and efficient use of every available source of government funding. The unsustainable nature of this is the context which Greyfeather Ridge’s miraculous reopening should be understood in. Which is not to say it is fraudulent - the coal is of good commercial quality and the first shipments have been sold without issue. Division analysts believe this to be a manifestation of the same phenomenon that explains how ever known attempts to ship narcotics into Dawesford in the past two years have coincidentally each involved drugs so impure every user required (at best) immediate hospitalization. 

The key takeaway for LRI is that Greyfeather Ridge itself is not exceptional, and no special precautions need to be taken in exploitation and processing. It should however be considered entirely dependent on the town of Dawesford and the mine’s relationship with it. If the mine continues to be a source of employment and relative prosperity for the town, it is likely to remain viable and profitable for the foreseeable future. If anything about that relationship changes, it is expected to run dry near-instantly. SPD will determine a fair market value for the risk profile and put together an acquisition proposal. 

* * *

The town hall was, well, about as bad as we should have expected. Richard tried to attend as an interested out-of-towner while the rest of us waited to crash in and get him if everything went to hell. Which it did. The Mayor noticed him in the audience right away, and the very first order of business was calling him up to shake his hand. Which is when he screamed and our audio link crashed. 

There are a lot of cases where going in guns blazing like that would have been the wrong call, but the whole town had tasted rancid since we’d gotten there. And you know, crashing open the door with an SUV did work better than playing it cool would have. Richard was screaming and clawing at where the Mayor’s hand was running into his like they were both hot wax, right up until he turned around and looked at us, not a bit of light behind his eyes. 

First bullet one of the crowd took, and the wound appeared right on his face instead. Poor Renata’s going to remember that. I’m just glad we had grenades. Soon as bodies started dropping, the whole act fell apart. Like remembering which face went with one which body was an effort that whatever the thing was couldn’t keep up through the hurt. Seeing the Mayor’s used-car-salesman mug on a teenager and a granny side by side as they slammed themselves into the car is going to stick with me for a bit. 

Rupert took the hint and took out the Mayor just after the granny literally sank her teeth into Renata, and that did the trick. Every body in the place dropped like puppets without strings. Total vegetables; Richard included. Their faces didn’t go back to normal. 

We cleaned up. ‘Gas leak’ took out the building, you’ll need tweezers to separate one corpse from another. Then we stocked up and got the hell out of there. 

I guess I’m the senior cell member now? Will monitor the frequency Richard showed me for future orders. 

Filing this on May 6, 2017. 

* * *

It is no exaggeration to say that Mayor Whitcomb might represent the culmination of a lifetime’s labors, and the first ray of hope for the future of our species in just as long. I cannot emphasize enough the sheer good fortune you possess, to have the chance to take part in it. Not that I expect you to appreciate it; the young never do. 

Once you have established a good working relationship with the Mayor, you can move on to testing the limits of his protection. Not to the point of truly endangering the town, of course, but poverty and vials of poison are hardly the worst humanity will soon face. Monsters in the dark, unwelcome revelations and simple intrusions of the alien into the body politic must be weathered without issue. I can assist with the practicalities here, as I doubt you will have the ability yourself.  As a final note, it would be best to restrict your interactions with the citizens of Dawesford besides the mayor to the strictly polite and transactional. Should you see your predecessor, know that she is very happy with her new life; it would be for the best for everyone involved for you to leave well enough alone.

[some-small-mercy]

Shadows in the Cave - Notes on an Incursion - Ghost Hunters

ASSET PIOUS LULLUBY is a pair of FRIENDLIES who have risked life and limb on multiple occasions to limit the damage caused by FOREIGN incursions into America. While not read into the true state of play, they have provided vital assistance to S-CELL on OPERATIONS SHADOWED ZEPHYR and JAUNDICED TRIANGLE. After TRIANGLE, AGENT SAMPSON chose to establish a concrete line of communication and working relationship with them and provide a very limited briefing on the scope of PATRIOT activities in the central United States. This note is being forwarded to F-CELL to act as introduction and dossier to any other Cells who encounter or have reason to contact them. 

PIOUS LULLUBY is a married couple in their late 30s. Originally from Rhode Island, they have spent years travelling across the Heartland for their work. They are, to be crude, professional ghost hunters. Unlike the usual frauds and scam artists going by the title, PIOUS LULLUBY are serious and sincere about their work and know exactly what they are talking about. This is difficult for anyone who hasn’t seen them in action to believe, but the best circumstantial proof S-CELL can offer is that they don’t charge those they help for their service, nor do they maintain any sort of social media presence or attempt to use what their clients suffer through for ‘viral fame’. 

PIOUS LULLUBY does not understand how dire the big picture is or the exact nature of what they deal with, and have a very limited view of the ways FOREIGN agents can manifest in the world. But for a couple who developed their understanding with nothing but their own research skills and Scripture, they’re closer than they have any right to be. Their understanding of the world is roughly as follows: 

God and the Devil are real, and their agents are fighting for the fate of the world

What we call ‘ABROAD’ is Hell, and its agents are the ghosts of witches and sinners, or just outright demons 

They are powerful but limited: forced to haunt places, things or eventually people

They are unable to directly harm those they haunt, but are very capable of driving them mad and manipulating them into horrific acts or (as a worse-case scenario) possessing the corrupt and weak-willed outright

PIOUS LULLUBY and other devout, knowledgeable people like them can intervene and save those being haunted before it's too late

None of the above (except on lucky days the last point) is actually right, but it is close enough that S-CELL has seen no point in straining a valuable working relationship by making the differences a point of principle. The help they have offered PATRIOT operations is much too useful to risk over pointless technicalities. 

* * *

Alright fine, I don’t see why this shit matters to anyone but word came down to be polite. You wanna pay for a ghost story, I can give you a ghost story. 

So, this was back in, shit, the ‘40s? ‘50s? My uncle I got this from was a little brat and his dad was a big man in the neighborhood. And these people are all maybe 10 years from being peasants in the mountains, they’re all dumb as shit, kiss an icon every morning because they think it keeps the milk from spoiling. Fucking dirt for brains, of course they think every bullshit artist telling them ghosts and angels are the cause of all their problems is telling god’s own truth. No offense. 

But anyway. So it happened that one of the rickety old slums everyone was living in back then has this reputation for being haunted - no shit it does, I’ve seen what the wiring and pipes for those places looked like, and they say my properties are bad, can you believe it? - and also everyone is poor, desperate, and half of them are drinking lead or inhaling mould or something. So someone goes insane or dies and their family’s convinced it’s because of ghosts. They got desperate, started going to church, and then going around looking for help from other people too. 

So that’s where the Pembrooke’s come in. They’re this uptight old money New England married couple. ‘Came here on the Mayflower’ types, you know. Old enough for people to take seriously, young and good-looking enough that a smile and seeming like they cared opened a lot of doors. Probably supposed to think we were all going to hell for not being Episocpalian or something, but acted like they just liked everyone who was Christian. Real exorcists or ghost hunters or demonologists, famous across five states, the bone fide experts to come to with all the spooky rattling ducts and bad insulation. And hey you know, fair cop. They were the real experts on demon shit, if you think about it. 

So anyway, the family found them, begged them for help, invited them back to the ratty walk-up and asked them to find all the ghosts and goblins hiding in it. Which is when everything really started going to shit. 

* * *

I hope this letter finds you well, my friend. And I do hope you will forgive my affectation of replying with an actual letter, and a hand-written one at that. Given our mutual interests, a modicum of paranoia in one’s correspondence is hardly the most unbecoming idiosyncrasy you’ve likely encountered. 

Your questions leave me quite curious as to just what you’ve been busying yourself with in the land of sun and cattle, and I would consider it full repayment for this information if you could enlighten me. It took no small amount of research to identify prior cases of the phenomenon, but I prevailed upon Dr. Sinclair - a savant at this sort of archival research I have the privilege to arrange funding and support for - to persevere. You are speaking of what might be called (should you be as horribly dreary as you’re wont to) Phobophages. For those with a bit of poetry in their hearts, they can be called wolves in sheepdog’s skin or (as the sources prefer) devils quoting scripture. 

You are as painfully aware as I that reaching out to the more elevated levels of reality is a troublesome and laborious business, and that is after nearly a century of it becoming steadily easier. You are likewise thoroughly acquainted with how the incitement of great passions and sacrifices of body or mind are profoundly helpful in easing the way for such workings. Our great common endeavor is hardly the first collective to apply a degree of sustained thought to these things. Most of our predecessors were, I’m sorry to say, far less concerned with such trivialities as ethical philosophy and the lives of their fellow men. 

The story begins in England in the 17th century, when witch-hunting was all the rage. Josiah Pell was the rare man who actually deserved the title, and he had the thought that the best way to remove his rivals and help himself to all their arts was to be the one spearheading their denunciation. The eventual testimony of a servant recounts how wrathful he was at finding not a single true practitioner of Higher Arts among the first handful he saw flogged or sent to their graves. Then he made his great innovation - for even if the curses and hauntings the poor ‘witches’ were accused of were all fantasy, it was fantasy most of the accusers believed to their core. 

Roused and heightened, that belief could become precisely the sort of all-consuming obsession that any true Practitioner could make excellent use of. 

* * *

PIOUS LULLUBY have worked in the field for nearly a decade, and intervened in dozens of potential FOREIGN incursions. A large majority were false alarms of some type, but there have been enough actual incidents to make them significantly more experienced than most PATRIOT Agents, and much less insane or crippled than most Agents as experienced as them.  

S-CELL first encountered LULLUBY in the course of OPERATION SHADOWED ZEPHYR, when both groups independently investigated a grisly trio of occult murder-suicides. Unlike most similar cases, these deaths actually were ultimately caused by a FOREIGN Entity influencing the actions of men in a sleepy suburban community. PIOUS LULLUBY was already present on the scene at the request of a local church leader when things began escalating and, after AGENT SAMPSON decided to make limited contact using his cover identity, was vital in identifying and quarantining the FOREIGN Entity for S-CELL to eliminate before it could destroy another family. Standard cover protocol for potential Friendly ASSETS was observed, and they were happy to assist what they believed to be an off-the-books FBI Task Force dedicated to the paranatural. They were extremely gratified to hear the government was taking these matters seriously, and enthusiastic in offering their aid for any future OPERATIONS in the region. AGENT SIERRA duly recorded all available information about them for future vetting. 

This became relevant during the recently completed OPERATION JAUNDICED TRIANGLE (see After-Action Report submitted simultaneously with this dossier), just over a year later. S-CELL had been assigned the low-priority case of a pair of disappearances associated with an infamously haunted property within its normal area of operations, and quickly discovered signs of FOREIGN cult activity. However, despite over a week of active investigation, S-CELL was unable to find any actionable leads connecting to them. AGENT SAMPSON contacted LULLBY for advice, and the couple instead volunteered to join S-CELL on-site and assist with the investigation directly. 

With their help, evidence pointing to the source of the FOREIGN incursion was found within 48 hours. Every member of the cult, based around a local daycare both the vanished children had been entrusted to, was identified and apprehended or eliminated over the course of the next week. Careful management of evidence, and the local press and police, allowed for the peripheral members and complicit staff to be arrested and given appropriate treatment by the legal system, while the knowing FOREIGN agents at its heart were confronted in their homes. If there was any doubt about the severity of the situation, the monstrous transformations each of them underwent when in danger and the paraphernalia discovered in their homes settled it. 

* * *

So the building it’s a rickety walk-up, families packed in their like sardines, got torn down for condos in the ‘90s. Way too many kids for anyone to keep track of, everyone working 12 hours a day, everyone kinda relying on each other to make sure no one jumped off the fire escape. The Pembrookes, took one of them two days flat to find newspaper articles and obits proving some crazy bitch back at the turn of the century had fed her kids rat poison. They convince the family who brought them on that their kid died because someone poisoned him, because an evil witch’s ghost was making them do it. And grief makes you stupid, and they were pretty convincing, because all of them basically bought it even though everyone else was pretty sure that it was obvious bullshit. 

Then another kid turned up dead, and someone bothered checking and it was rat poison, brand they didn’t even make any more. That got people worked up. And then another. A couple weeks later, the whole building was taking them pretty damn seriously. 

When they fingered some widow on the fifth floor, whole mob broke her door right in. Y’know what they found? Rat poison. Worse shit too. Shit to make you believe she really was a witch. No one ever bothered calling the cops about it, if you get what I mean. 

A couple weeks later, another kid. Pembrooke’s got called back, said that the ghost must be possessing someone else. Said they would need to do a proper kinda exorcism, and that them being around made it think it was in a real fight and it was time to get the knives out. 

Look, most of my life I thought this was all bullshit. Mould infestation or something. Then Uncle Andre started using me for real work and I met you people so, maybe not. But the stories were just playing the fucking hits, you know? Pentagrams and speaking in tongues and milk spoiling in your mouth. People kept dying, and people kept getting “exorcised”, which didn’t leave them any better off. Was my grandpa, God love him, who finally found a second brain cell somewhere and realized the only people who weren’t being put through the fucking wringer by everything were the Pembrooke’s. 

I mean, God doesn’t love him, seeing as what he did next was go looking for a bigger monster to feed them to. He had sketchy as fuck friends all over already, by then, and one of them put him in touch with Grandmother. She’s got a soft spot for peasant idiots from back home, and took offense at the whole situation, offered to help. It’s how he - and Uncle Andre, and me - started working for her, and then Mr. K. Guessing you’ve got the same sort of story if you look back far enough. 

Weird how a old woman in a headscarf and a pair of rich fucks looking on their way to a wedding can be the scariest people in the whole city, right? Story has a happy ending, ‘cause when they met our monster had the bigger dick. Under the fancy clothing and nice hair, the Pembrookes’ were everything they’d eaten. Grandmother started with their normal faces and kept killing them until they’d burned through every life they’d broken and swallowed up in the building and a few dozen more before that. In the end all was left was this ugly black sewer sludge, nothing that ever coulda passed for human. It hissed and wriggled when you burned it, but even she couldn’t figure out how to do more than put it in a jar. So that’s what we did.

Huh? Oh, Grandmother didn’t want it. She said to give it to a priest. 

* * *

It’s elegant, really. A virtuous cycle, if one of the most vicious kind. Pell and his wife travelled from village to village in that especially feverish stretch of English countryside. In each he roused a witch-hunting frenzy, supped of the fear and rage so provoked, and used a portion of the power to create whatever symptoms and evidence were necessary to escalate the community to even greater feats of rabid self-destruction. The remainder he used as any self-interested practitioner of such arts does; this was not a man possessed of some apocalyptic theology, but one who enjoyed health, long life, material comfort and (most of all) the exercise of power over others. A fine specimen of humanity, in all the most regrettable ways. 

It is a most pleasing bit of dramatic irony, though perhaps inevitable, that he would meet his fate upon the same pyre to which he condemned so many (as indeed would his wife). Or at least his first fate. Power diligently gathered and prudently kept can accomplish a great many things and, if it proved incapable of preserving his flesh, the spirit was far more enduring. 

Oh, that last bit is conjecture, tentatively by the good Dr. Sinclair and much more confidently by myself. There are no other cases that so conveniently ended in a recorded trial with depositions and witness statements, but there are scattered stories across the English speaking world in the centuries since. Agents provocateur who seem to exacerbate the witchcraft they profess to hunt with their very presence, and the like. I believe it is the work of a single ancient sorcerer, having long since abandoned any attachment to a particular body and seizing the life and identity of whoever catches his eye when it is again time to feed and burnish the reserves of his immortality. Most recently, I believe him to have been active in the whole  mess around ‘satanic ritual abuse’ in the ‘80s - a most unpleasant period for our own work, I can say from bitter experience. 

He’s a menace of course, a monster. Impressive in his capabilities, perhaps, but what has he achieved with them except centuries of parasitic misery? No, there is no place for him in our common task, and it would be quite dangerous to inform him of it. In this rare instance, I’m afraid that should you encounter him I must be the one to urge violence; swift, severe and final. 

* * *

PIOUS LULLUBY has no government experience, and a limited understanding of ABROAD and all the ways it threatens our world. Their ability in a firefight is sharply limited, and their ability to deal with the paperwork and bureaucratic warfare that is many PATRIOT’s main theater these days is wholly unproven. S-CELL does not think fully reading them in as AGENTS would be appropriate. Yet, as a FRIENDLY Asset they have already proven their worth providing remote consulting on a case, and S-CELL fully expects them to continue doing so. They have made strong verbal commitments that should any PATRIOT Agent (in their helpfully incorrect understanding of what they are) request it, they will abandon their civilian lives to provide any and all possible support. S-CELL suggests any cells in need of the help take them up on the offer. 

In particular, PIOUS LULLUBY can be called in to consult and provide expert support on:

FOREIGN incursions which match traditional signs of hauntings, possession, etc

FOREIGN presences centered around specific locations or objects

Malicious dreams, visions

Ritual torture or abuse not linked to a known wider cult

FOREIGN Entities which seem compelled or influenced by Christian iconography and ceremonies specifically

S-CELL can happily say these represent the overwhelming majority of OPERATIONS it has undertaken in its current form, especially those originating in evidence discovered by the CELL itself through downtime research. PIOUS LULLUBY is a vital untapped resource to protect America, and it is S-CELL’s hope and plan to use them fully in the weeks and month to have. 

[some-small-mercy]

Shadows in the Cave - Notes on an Incursion - Seeing By Another's Light

Brooke,

Good morning and I hope you had a great long weekend! As requested, I’ve put together a general report and summary of our work with the latest prospect I’ve been working with for the past few months. As I said on Thursday, they’re fascinating and have some potential as a resource but (even leaving aside my own squeamishness) I don’t think we can responsibly consider them for full sponsorship. Still, probably a relationship worth maintaining? 

The Fellowship of the Radiant Unveiling (also referred to as the Radiant Path, the Church of New Light, or simply as Radiants) is a small but flourishing non-denominational spiritual and mindfulness movement of the kind that have always made the Pacific Northwest such a culturally vibrant region. With the Anderson Trust’s generous funding and support, they have been able to establish mindfulness centers and lodges for spiritual retreats across four states. Their senior leadership has demonstrated real foresight and diligence in who they partner with and how they invest, and their future as an organization is (pardon the pun) incredibly bright. 

 Their leadership has been sincere and enthusiastic in their gratitude for our facilitating that support and pointing them towards the right grants and programs to apply for (none of them are really naturals at this sort of bureaucracy and paperwork, which unfortunately means we’ll probably need someone permanently assigned to managing the relationship). They are unfortunately (but understandably!) suspicious about our motives, and seem to seesaw a bit between thinking of me as a dangerous mercenary and just a particularly generous and helpful new client; despite that ambivalence, I have had the incredible privilege of participating in some of their most sacred rites and ceremonies. 

Your hunch was absolutely, 100% correct. There are somewhere between three and five lanterns, discovered more than thirty years ago by the Fellowship’s founders. They burn without fuel, and emit no smoke. The light they cast reveals a whole new world, and not an empty one.

—------------------------------------------------

THREAT SILVERED DEE is a form of FOREIGN influence that manifests on reflective surfaces. Known examples of SILVERED DEE include:

Mirrors (hand, standing, bathroom)

Windows (casement, bay, ribbon)

Water (lake, subterranean) 

Glasses (prescription) 

SILVERED DEE has been observed by AGENTS of D-, L-, and R-CELLs, across the United States and beyond. Its causes are unknown, but once present in a location it buds and spreads organically to viable surfaces that can house it. It shows no signs of being able to control how it spreads, or of true awareness or intelligence in general. 

If an OPERATION seems to involve SILVERED DEE, standard operating procedure is:

Limit time spent observing SILVERED DEE as much as possible

Minimize the number of AGENTS and civilians who observe SILVERED DEE at all

What you see isn’t real

It can hurt you

—------------------------------------------------

The Teiresion Effect is an unusually stable hypergeometric phenomenon that has been observed in several locations across North America, Europe and South and East Asia. Following the events of January 2019, and considering the very real possibility that the Effect could be leveraged to achieve Contact, a compartmentalized branch of the Orpheus Project has been established to study the Effect. Research is tentatively promising but security threats remain a major concern, and we have yet to fully recover from the setbacks suffered during the transition. 

The Effect is hypothesized to emerge from complex informational networks subjected to certain types of exotic radiation. It has to date only been observed on screens showing digital camera feeds in (or close to) real time; video conferencing or streaming software and security camera monitors make up the overwhelming majority of known organically occurring cases. 

The Teiresion Effect occurs in stages, first affecting inanimate objects in the background or out of focus on the display. The effects are in some way anthropomorphic, with the alterations occurring to what’s displayed clearly being in some way influenced by the subconscious fears and anxieties of the viewers. Despite this, the effect remains constant when viewed by multiple witnesses simultaneously, and when recorded (on a separate, air-gapped device) can be viewed without issue at a later time. 

The effect must be strong and sustained for the Contact candidates to appear. Their exact appearance varies wildly, but they are inevitably humanoid, tall, gangly, and have either a mask or face that is rigidly bonelike, ivory-white, and dominated by an exaggerated smile. 

Despite the extreme realism of what is displayed, nothing that occurs on a video subject to the Teiresion Effect in any way affects the people or things ostensibly being recorded. The sole exception to this is if a video stream continues for long enough that the creatures cause the death of a human (or a subset of other animals, excluding most commercial livestock and including but not necessarily limited to certain cetaceans and great apes). In that case, the subject of the video is suddenly and dramatically replaced by their cadaver, in whatever state and whatever location the video feed might show.

Despite (and a piece of evidence against) their potential extraterrestrial origins, the creatures display an incredibly thorough knowledge of human anatomy and various natural tolerances. Review of over a dozen security recordings recovered from Hemdallar Labs give an average of between eight and ten hours between an experimental subject being subdued or restrained and their death. 

Given the usual condition of the subject by the time this occurs, referencing the recordings of what occurred is often a necessity when identifying the bodies. 

—------------------------------------------------

The lanterns are at the very core of the Fellowship’s belief system, and the focus of their most private and sacred rituals. They believe their ochre light reveals the true nature of both people and things; or at least, that it unveils every flaw and imperfection to the naked eye. You can call what it makes initiates (or, in my case, friendly visitors) look like the world’s most unflattering camera - highlighting everything that they should cut away from themselves as they approach enlightenment, to the point of true grostesquerie. Interacting by lantern-light and encouraging each other in self-improvement by pointing out and sharing their reactions to each others’ ‘true selves’ is a key way fully initiated Radiants socialize and bond.

The belief that they have access to the fundamental truth of reality is harmless enough when they’re just analyzing their own shadows (and, being brutally honest, this isn’t a group who would really be helped by a lecture on Unmoved Movers and the different choirs and emanations. I made some polite implications and none seem very intrigued by the idea of a fuller metaphysical picture.) This issue (and the opportunity!) comes from the spirits who already live in the state of being revealed by the lanterns. The Radiants call them demons, which isn’t that wrong, and testers, which very much is. 

They’re a lesser emanation, parallel to and a few steps below humanity in spiritual magnitude. They’re also obligate sadists. I don’t know whether it's what they eat or just an addiction, but they are unable to resist a chance to cause pain. To things of our state of being, especially (and I’d really love to see if we can steer the Fellowship away from animal sacrifice, going forward? At least when I’m visiting). They can’t perceive or touch our world beyond the lantern's light, and when one’s lit they start running to it like moths to a flame (no matter how far they have to run or what doors they need to batter open to get to it). They’re no less intelligent than any other native to the Lower Depths (more than most!) but they don’t understand English, and despite appearances their faces don’t really have mouths to speak with. 

I know you’ve got your mandate, Brooke, but I really think the opportunity here is the Radiants and maybe the lanterns’ other possibilities (doors and walls that don’t exist when you shine the light on them, illnesses and injuries that turn into visible, removable parasites, etc). The literal kitten-torturing demons seem to be specifically the class of spirit we’re trying not to welcome in and get people living with. 

—------------------------------------------------

SILVERED DEE is dangerous mentally and spiritually, as everything seen through surfaces infected by it is warped by FOREIGN power to distract and traumatize. Absolutely do not react to the expressions or pose of fellow AGENTS or vetted civilians as seen through SILVERED DEE. Also do not react to the appearances of strange sores, injuries, or any signs of spontaneous physical mutilation or rot, or to the appearance of messages in the environment, no matter how realistic, targeted or persuasive they seem to be. 

SILVERED DEE will attempt to shock and horrify you. Especially if you are armed or in a position to easily harm other humans, it is imperative you not react to it. Always remember that it is not capable of directly harming you in any immediate way.

The danger begins when SILVERED DEE realizes something is looking at it. Images are easy, but creating FOREIGN entities that can harm reality seems to take it time and effort. Whatever it does, the more people that are looking at it, the faster it can work. 

SILVERED DEE’s weapons look almost human. It creates them with outfits and appearances that fit in with the surroundings, and they will attempt to blend in or to hide in the corner of your vision.  If for some reason you can’t verify who is actually in the area SILVERED DEE is reflecting, you can identify the THREAT by

Too-long limbs, odd gait

Dark clothing, degenerate fashion 

Rigid, bone-white carapace instead of a face

Hands full of razorwire, handcuffs or knives

SILVERED DEE is not an efficient or tactical monster, but it's aware that it can only easily affect those looking into it, and that it gets stronger the longer and the more humans do. The exact subtleties aren’t important just assume that, if you have been staring into SILVERED DEE for long enough to see one of the creatures, it can touch (and hurt) you. You can also assume that it knows that, and that tying you down and restraining you so you’re incapable of looking away will be its first priority. Attempting to resist or attack them directly is pointless, as they don’t exist. The injuries they inflict have no special properties, but they love cutting tendons and otherwise crippling victims to prevent their escape. 

Luckily, SILVERED DEE is easy enough to deal with: shattering the reflective surface prevents it from tainting more victims and from spreading to any other surfaces. It also leaves you totally helpless to see any of the creatures it's created to go after you, which is why SILVERED DEE should be strictly quarantined ASAP when encountered. Depending on how badly the situation has degenerated, drastic action might be necessary. Previous cases have required premeditated arson and the controlled collapse of a popular spelunking site to deal with. 

Forward any sightings of SILVERED DEE to L-CELL for archiving and analysis ASAP. 

Under absolutely no circumstances attempt to communicate or make a deal with SILVERED DEE or its creations. 

—------------------------------------------------

The Effect was first discovered - or at least seriously studied - by a private company in 2013. The company - founded by former members of a cult in Washington who stumbled upon a genuine hypergeometric phenomenon in the course of their enforced trauma-bonding - was quickly discovered and acquired by a representative of the Volundr Group. From 2018-2022 the company - refounded as Hemdallar Labs and relocated to an easier-to-support jurisdiction in central Texas - worked with significant funding and support from Volundr. Unfortunately, they failed comprehensively in auditing and oversight of corporate operations and in managing Hemdallar’s corporate culture. The Volundr associate handling the file proved entirely out of their depth in a crisis, and it was only at great risk and expense that any amount of Hemdallar’s research was recovered. 

Among the - absolutely vital - information lost is what exactly catalyzed the fatal crisis. All that has been recovered is that at some time in late December 2022 or early January 2023, the Teiresion Effect cascaded across Hemdallar’s entire secure computer network and intranet. The paranoid security shown by the founders proved to be fatal; the security cameras and recording devices present in nearly every office, lab, or other room used by the company provided a deadly vector through which the Effect could reach almost everyone involved in Hemdallar as they returned from the holidays. 

It is not clear why no one realized what was happening and forcibly shut down the cameras before it was too late. It has been theorized that the strength and concentration of the effect, and the sheer area it affected simultaneously, catalyzed some state change and allowed the Teiresion Entities to affect the material world more immediately and directly than is normally the case. Careful study of the recovered recordings also provides all the best evidence that the Entities are truly extraterrestrial in origin rather than an unusually persistent variety of Hypergeometric Infection - in the recordings they displayed surprising creativity, organization, tool use, and a passable knowledge of small unit tactics. 

If they are intelligent extraterrestrials, they are also uniformly hostile and show no inclination towards non-hostile interaction with humanity - but the potential is tantalizing. If they are a truly extrahuman form of life, then they are one that exists on a roughly human scale and with roughly human capabilities - but despite this, one that seems perfectly capable of surviving in some organized way in some alternate dimension or phase of reality that is to all appearances entirely exposed to Hypergeometric radiation. Even if - as seems likely - they are incapable or uninterested in diplomatic contact, being able to directly study them would allow quantum leaps in nearly every area of the Nyx, Echidna and Daedalus Groups’ research. 

Active studies are ongoing to study the incident and develop a way to reproduce this potential intelligence in a way consistent with the Orpheus Group’s ethical and safety guidelines. We have every expectation of making actionable progress by the end of the quarter. 

—------------------------------------------------

The Radiants think of their spirits as dangerous but intelligent, and able to make deals and do favors in exchange for sacrifices (birds and small mammals left trapped within the lantern-light for them being part of the approved ritual). They’re all very committed to their beliefs, and not particularly interested in explaining the mechanics of how the spirits can actually do any favors for anyone when they’re entirely cut off from the material world outside the lantern’s light. Which I would tentatively take as reason to think they can affect the world through some other means, but I’ve found no clues on exactly how, and my friends among the Fellowship have been unusually tight-lipped about it. 

There’s one case we might be able to dig into, if anyone on your team has the capacity? The way I really convinced the inner circle of my good intentions and willingness to help was sourcing some unusual (and expensive) ritual materials. The ceremony they were for was elaborate (and gruesome) enough that I’m not too sad about not being invited, beseeching the spirits to hunt down and exact vengeance on a pair of apostates. 

However it works, as of January it sounds like the things followed through. Or at least I was invited to the most enthusiastic and celebratory funeral I’ve ever seen a couple weeks afterward. I’ve got the names and photos of the two unlucky runaways to research, if it’s an angle you think is worth digging into, maybe send someone down to take a look? In a pinch, might be a tool we can use (but I have to emphasize that we should exhaust every other option before even thinking about it; ethics aside, no one who was involved in the ritual seems willing or able to do it again any time soon). 

Otherwise, I’ve developed some very solid relationships with initiates who are happy to do me (and the Trust) a favor now and then in recognition of how much help the grants have been. I’ve even connected with Justin and set up a track for a consistent long-term funding stream for as long as we think they’re net-positive to support. But fundamentally? I think we might need to cross them off as a false lead. The Radiants and their Spirits are interesting, potentially useful, sure. 

But they aren’t spreading, they’re not any sort of transcendent being, and they aren’t going to end the world. They certainly aren’t going to be a positive influence on the world if we take the initiative to nurture them ourselves. So as soon as we have a permanent relationship manager assigned to the case and all the introductions made, I’m going to keep looking. 

Take care Brooke, connect in person next time I’m in-state. 

Light in Shadows,

Cynthia Anderson, Anderson Heritage Trust 

[some-small-mercy]

Shadows in the Cave - Truth is a Bitter Freedom

Some of the more paranoid members of PATRIOT leadership (a very high bar indeed) are convinced there is a vast, secret invasion underway; that mad gods and dark prophets have dedicated themselves to unmaking reality and driving all of humanity to cannibalistic madness or empty-eyed thralldom. They are nearly entirely wrong, though at least they are doing better than the Conciliators who construct cosmic hierarchies connecting themselves in a clear line to the dreaming soul of the universe. 

Humanity - and earth as a whole - is beneath the notice of the truly significant denizens of the universe, not in a rhetorical sense but in the way that a cold spot in the closet or an anthill in the backyard is beneath the notice of an absentee landlord. To the species’ immense good fortune this seems unlikely to change any time soon. That’s about it for good news. 

There are layers to these things, and certain hypergeometric entities that exist on a closer to a human scale - as well as a few human groups which have formed some sort of relationship with them. Because the PATRIOTs are only nearly entirely wrong, most cults that last longer than their first misspoken ritual do have the sponsorship of one of a few occult entities with a particular interest in humanity; the best guess from the handful of people alive who have met more than one of them being that the entities in question were once part of it. 

These are the Four Apostles, each a unique entity capable of fully understanding and being understood by humans, and with a reason to desire to communicate with them. While far more powerful than any human, they work under sharp and poorly understood limitations that seem to prevent direct action upon the world. Instead, they act through cults and puppets. Each has their own occult passions and preoccupations, and none show any knowledge of (let alone interest in cooperating with) each other - a high command of the forces of madness, this is not. But were they to learn about them, the PATRIOTs would surely consider them the field generals of the Enemy. 

The Teacher appears as a scholar, a tutor, and a source of lost or forbidden texts. Signs and clues of how to find him are inevitably found by promising students who have dipped their toe into the supernatural, either through shared dreams or libraries and bookstores that only exist when approached at the right angle. He provides those who find him with resources to achieve their wildest dreams - and, perhaps, to guide those dreams in directions amenable to intricate sorcerous rituals. It is truthfully the rituals themselves he values, as the way they interact with the mundane world around them is of far more interest than the swiftly-discarded pupils ruined in their completion. 

The Preacher is the closest to the nemesis that PATRIOT agents imagine - and, in fact, nurses something of a vicious grudge against them for the number of his projects they have spoiled. Appearing in the dreams of those receptive to him, he preaches truth and justice - and so a total unravelling of this world of cruelty and lies. He seems totally reliant on those who heed his message, but he equips them well for their war on all the pillars of the earth. Even if remarkably few actually understand what he is trying to say, at least the others cause some damage on the way out. 

The Merchant is unique among the Apostles in very clearly not wanting to be one. An explorer of cosmic paths beyond any human understanding, some ritual ensures that the sufficiently desperate will always find some way to bend her path to earth. She is never happy about it, but seems obliged to assist them in whatever their request of her is, or at least offer them something that might. She fairly clearly relishes providing eldritch materials and strange artifacts that technically solve the stated problem, and demanding payment that seems calibrated to be more difficult or traumatic to acquire than anything else. Still, among those who survive the fallout of their first deal, a certain type seems to really enjoy bartering with an eldritch devil cheerfully saying she hopes you die in a nuclear holocaust as she waves goodbye. 

Finally, the Muse is the Apostle who appears least limited by the material world. She easily slips into human skin and into the bureaucratic substrate required to exist in the modern world, and just as easily vanishes without a trace but for the memories (and, occasionally, body) left behind. She finds humans with some spark of potential by unknown means, and takes it upon herself to stoke and evoke it - and them - into something transcendent, world-changing, and wholly inhuman. That the effort inevitably seems to end in fiery, bloody disappointment does not seem to have discouraged her. 

Between the four of them, the Apostles are directly responsible for something like a majority of sorcerers and cults that are actively hostile to reality or civilization around them  - or, at least, well over four in five of those that don’t messily end themselves within a month of finding real magic. But while they are the main vectors of the knowledge which will eventually unmake reality, a handful of organizations have organized themselves independently and reached a point of accomplishing some truly impressive things beyond the control (or sight) of any of the larger conspiracies. 

The Sowers are a non-denomination evangelical church, sprouting up in dying small towns across the interior of America (with efforts just beginning to plant new churches in the Canadian prairies and likely-seeming locations in Latin America). The whys and hows are unclear, but they are the rare cult to really, truly deserve the title - a church premised on being able to deliver on feeling the presence of God as you take communion and confess your sins. The God in question is more of a sort of hypergeometric parasite, but the church fathers have fed it so well and spread it so far that the relationship has for them transformed into something genuinely symbiotic. There’s plenty of excess energy for it to feed its favorites enough ichor to keep them happy, healthy, and bursting with worldly success, so long as they in turn provide a much, much larger congregation willing to offer up their entire beings to drink from in turn. So long as the church keeps growing, the cycle is virtuous. The moment it slows, the trendline for everything from hair loss to stillbirths will explode. 

On the other end of the spectrum, New Life Fertility is a small and very elite boutique firm catering to those deeply concerned that their children represent the best possible version of their legacy. Advertising entirely through word of mouth and operating in so many different layers of legal grey area that the ‘clinic’ itself is a luxurious superyacht which spends a lot of time in international waters, they serve an extremely specific but lucrative clientele. 

The small and dedicated staff truly believe they are providing their client (or, being realistic about who is signing the cheque, their client’s wife, girlfriend or paramour) with the best possible child, destined to meet every physical requirement and leap to the top of their class in every field. They are simply also all thoroughly infected by the premonition of a nascent entity in need of material form, and each child they engineer is a chance to practice and experiment aligning their personality and a variety of imperceptible hypergeometric traits for maximum receptiveness to it. Founded in the early 2010s, the first cohort of their subjects is just now growing old enough for their success or failure to be clear. Expect a rash of lurid tragedies in rich families. 

Finally, the Eversion Project is, technically speaking, an informal club of mathematicians (amateur and academic), primarily American but scattered across several countries. They correspond online about both pure theory and entertaining logic puzzles and quirks of cryptography. Beyond being a surprisingly employable skillset, as a group they have become wholly obsessed with what they believe to be a heretofore undiscovered pattern allowing for the reliable prediction of large prime numbers. It looks, to any outside observer with enough sense of the jargon to understand it, like total nonsense. It also seems to work; and, having made it work, becomes a rosetta stone for those who have worked out its implications to understand probability in whole new ways. Ways that spread, as the new principles seem to lead to whole new understandings of mathematics that demand to be derived and written out - and which, having been so eloquently described and demonstrated, cease being crankish nonsense and instead become self-evident truth. 

The real proof of concept occurred last month, when three different members independently won the jackpot of three different lotteries.

[some-small-mercy]

Shadows in the Cave: Cursing the Darkness

The PATRIOT Network is a classic and classically paranoid cell-based network, with dangerous information strictly quarantined on a need-to-know basis - and nothing is more dangerous than knowing the organization and members of the Network. Codenames and false identities are ubiquitous and fairly strictly enforced in all interactions with even the slightest change of being recorded or overheard, and the legal identities of and contact information for Agents are kept as a sacred trust between cell-mates and their handler. Everyone else gets dead drops, burner phones, and anonymous Signal accounts. This has the intended consequence of preventing compromised or collapsing cells from endangering the rest of the Network, and the unintended consequence that everything within cells is thoroughly non-standardized and would in many cases not be at all to A-Cell’s liking if they had a clear picture of it. 

The Network is a wholly covert organization, without any sort of public or institutional backing. It does, however, recruit heavily from American military and law enforcement (both active duty and veterans), which provides enough of a halo of legitimate authority to mostly get by - a large majority of field agents operate under a vague but firmly held belief that they report to the President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or just ‘Washington’. They actually report to A-Cell, the Network’s ruling triumvirate. Depending on how precisely one tracks the Network’s institutional history, the current crop are either the 2nd or 3rd cohort in the role (with only ARCHIMEDIES having overlapped in tenure with any founders), the longest-serving by some margin and (not coincidentally) the least involved in any sort of actual field work. An active duty marine colonel, a US Attorney and the CEO of a minor but well-connected and profitable government contractor, they devote their days to managing and supervising, arranging material and logistical support and contingencies, and deciding when a potential threat needs proactive action or when a new cell needs to be headhunted and recruited from scratch. Such situations are the closest any field cell is supposed to come to interacting with any of them, but there’s at least one exception for each of them. 

Perhaps tellingly of the Network’s priorities, B-Cell is responsible for internal security, purity-testing and vigorously and proactively plugging any leaks or weak links. Reporting directly to Agent ANNETTE and with access to dizzying amounts of top secret information and private personal data from their day jobs, they are vicious in dealing with agents who they discover have betrayed the cause, or with troublemakers who get too close to uncovering it from the outside. The hands-on (and dirty) work is handled by the nomadic G- (composed of ‘private detectives’ and various other nosy and beneath-notice-profession agents) and H- (functionally the Networks professional cleaners, their legal identities and civilian lives almost wholly covers and exercises in money-laundering) Cells, reporting to Agents BENEDICT and BARRY, respectively. 

The arranging of those fake identities, as well as necessary funding and material, bureaucratic cover, and as much legal and medical support as can be arranged after-the-fact, is the job of C-Cell. They are by far the biggest exception to the Network’s generally strict information quarantining - even if they don’t know the specifics, just by the nature of the requests routed to them it would be difficult not to starting building pictures and guessing some real identities. Because of this - and the necessity of keeping two alphabet soup program managers, one Biglaw senior partner, and one portfolio manager at a life insurance company from being connected to anything potentially suspicious or newsworthy - they have absolutely no direct contact with any field agents. Their exposure instead comes from managing relationships with and graciously accepting patriotic contributions from a variety of military officers, executives, and similar types with the desire and ability to help and a carefully massaged picture of reality. 

E-Cell is actual command and control (or, at least, dispatch and support) as far as the majority of the Network is concerned. They are the other absolutely vital node keeping the whole Network connected, and (despite their reasonably conscientious security measures) the biggest weak link in the whole operation. A larger cell than most really appreciate, it includes a network of ‘friendly’ assets and data tripwires to alert them to potential FOREIGN incursions requiring investigation and the small group of case officers and handlers who each direct and support between two and four cells of field agents. F-Cell is similarly problematic in many ways, the official ‘research and archives’ cell tasked with dealing with all the information and artifacts the Network as a whole would rather not exist, and spitting out actionable dossiers on known threats in response to questions forwarded to them; in addition to being larger than it really should be (with a whole ‘outer circle’ of recruited-on-discretion agents outside the private archives the cell is based in), it includes at least three members who would probably be shot on site by the average field agent if they knew about their private studies. 

The Field Agents (the ‘elite’ D-Cell reporting directly to ALEXANDER, and currently 10 line cells with seemingly randomly assigned letters between G and Y) are the sharp edge and also the actual point of the PATRIOT Network, the brave, selfless, heroic and ruthless men and women who put their lives, minds and (depending on who you ask) souls on the line to defend reality from the madness which seeks to undermine it. There is an ideal template where each is composed of 3-5 agents headhunted for both reliability and dedication and immediately useful skillsets or authority that can be used to aid the cause. This generally holds true for a cell when it’s initially headhunted and formed, and rarely more than a couple years or a couple missions afterwards. The great thing about strict compartimentalization is that basically no one is in any position to realize that almost every field cell has at least one thing that the Network at large would consider (at minimum) a blazing warning light. 

These range from the organizational (the last member of R-Cell with any sort of government clearance - with a job that came with benefits and a pension, really - died in 2018 ;  X-Cell’s membership and areas of operations just entirely overlaps with a certain subdepartment of the DC FBI) to the ethical (besides its monster-hunting duties, J-Cell out of Fort Bragg is fairly hard to distinguish from a criminal enterprise, which is mostly approvingly noted as it not requiring much in the way of funding) to the mission-relevant (Agent LENORE has failed to turn over a piece of FOREIGN-authored writing and is spending her latest six-month deployment studying it furiously) to all of the above (Two members of P-Cell have picked up a useful ritual or two, and leveraged them into turning the Cell into the core of one of the largest and most lucrative deputy gangs in Los Angeles county). Despite this, when the call comes every few months or years and they are activated, every single one of them is willing to kill, die and everything in between for the sake of preserving the world for one more day. 

So far, that’s just about been enough.

[some-small-mercy]

Shadows in the Cave: Humanity's Euthanasia

The Ushers are a cult of cults, as obsessive in their secrecy as the most pathological PATRIOT agent. Which is to say they sprawl, an almost aggressively disorganized confederation of themselves often loosely-knit occult groups scattered across North America. It is only the elite initiated into the Ushers themselves - numbering barely two dozen, and having sworn quite terrible oaths of secrecy and obedience - that any inkling of the true scale of things becomes known. Even still, the conspiracy’s inner circle do not organize weekly status updates or share notes; they only meet at all on specific ritual occasions. 

What joins the conspiracy together is - beyond a deep humanitarian impulse that perhaps does not fully penetrate through the ranks - money. The Beaumont Foundation is a grand old charitable endowment, sanctified by both age (over a century) and scale (well over ten billion dollars). It is the beating heart of the whole Conciliator enterprise; mindless and insensate, yet powering everything. The majority of true Ushers work in its management or legal and grant departments, ensuring that whatever is necessary is done to ensure specific applications each year are fully funded. That money is ultimately controlled and directed by the cult’s Grandmasters, each a warlock of some note with a vague mission to help prepare humanity for its inevitable fate and a budget to support a private empire out of. 

The Magistrate of the Coming End is as sinister and occult a figure as the name implies. They have no public life, no known identity, and seemingly no existence at all outside of the few properties scattered around the country entirely dedicated to the Ushers’ practices. No one’s even particularly sure how long they have held the title or how many have held it before them, let alone what the succession formula is. The religious awe and blind devotion their subordinates in the cult regard them with is partially the result of exhaustive initiation and indoctrination rituals, partly because of the occasional terrifying demonstration of occult power, and mostly because any true initiate into the cult’s inner circle has likely been the beneficiary of at least one vision of a coming personal catastrophe that has saved their or their loved ones’ lives. 

The other four Grandmasters must exist out in the world working changes upon it, and don’t have the luxury of a life entirely hidden behind shadow names and the largess of well-heeled minions. The Shaper of Empty Vessels is one of those well-heeled minions, as it happens. In his public life, Nathaniel Harrow is the heir of one of Chicago’s best families, a prominent philanthropist and fixture of society events. His actual purpose in life is attempting to find some way that children might be raised and inoculated to the bloody, mind-rending horrors of the coming age of the gods so they can survive and thrive in the world they will inherit. The two roles intertwine in his work as a fundraiser, community adviser and general booster of the Caring Hands Foundation, an intermediary charity supporting good works for disadvantaged and difficult youth across the Midwest. Their main success story, the Wild Hearts Adoption Agency works hand-in-glove with child protection services across several states and is if anything rather more conscientious than the foster care experience would be; the stark exceptions being the occasional case where Harrow (an enthusiastic supporter and client himself) makes an enthusiastic recommendation on behalf of some aspiring parent in urgent need of skipped waiting lists and cursory oversight. 

The other organizations supported by Caring Hands are nowhere near as innocent. The Saint Dymphna Academy for Troubled Youth is even more sinister than the name implies, a private school for the ‘non-denominational’ Church of Common Salvation that has lately rebranded to take advantage of state funding for criminal justice diversion programs. The Church is a nasty little cult in its own right, and overwhelmingly of the belief that Caring Hands is as in the dark as the government about the details of the education being provided. They provide their pupils a gradual introduction to the haunted and supernatural, and Harrow keeps up with a contact or two on the staff to monitor what he considers an experiment. Hearthlight Youth Retreat is the new project he has devoted far more of his energy to, a ‘troubled teen rehabilitation’ camp run by a personal friend and located in a state with shockingly permissive regulations for such things. He considers it an attempt to definitively prove one way or another whether the minds and souls of teenagers are malleable and adaptable enough to truly adjust to a world full of gods and monsters; a year (and 3 four-month cohorts) later, evidence remains inconclusive. 

Alexander Thompson is in some ways Harrow’s opposite (not to mention better liked by his peers and significantly more pleasant to work for). Whereas Harrow has a near-monomaniacal focus on his own projects and almost total disinterest in the workings of the Conspiracy as a whole, Thompson is very likely the single most knowledgeable person alive regarding the Conciliators. As Seer of the Forgotten he is tasked with learning and preserving all the secret arts of the world, every sort of magic and artifice which might help preserve humanity once the scales have fallen from its eyes. Similarly, while neither is exactly fond of large teams, of the two Thompson is quite forthright that he himself is a dabbler and facilitator of those doing focused work. As a board member for and (more importantly) prolific recommendation-writer and grant editor for applicants to the Edward Teller Endowment for Excellence, he is able to ensure modest but sufficient funding for several academics who have both found something real and kept themselves together enough to write professional emails and teach the occasional seminar (he considers this a vital sign whatever they’re working on isn’t too toxic to stomach). As a long-time professor of legal history at Yale and an avid correspondent on just about any topic of interest, he also maintains relationships with independent scholars and figures in different school’s administrations that have served him very well on several occasions. 

As a tenured professor at Yale Law School (and a popular one) and an active, enthusiastic national alumni board member for his old Omega Rho Theta fraternity, Thompson also has a wide variety of people who look fondly on him who have gone on to find success in the corporate and legal worlds. Many know of his love for strange and inexplicable cases and happily forward them on when they encounter him. Many others (alumni from three very specific chapters, all far from Yale) have deep and profound attachments to the ‘ancient traditions’ he carefully introduced to see if they were teachable to and usable by basically average young adults. So far the results have been one utter waste, one tenuous and conditional success, and one utter catastrophe. 

The most successful of Thompson’s students (at least from a certain perspective) is Brooke Asher. As the Emissary to Anathema she enjoys the largest budget and most urgent mission of any of the Conspiracy’s inner circle - identify existing groups where a stable symbiosis already exists between humanity and the entities or phenomena which will inherit the world from it, and do everything she can to support, nurture and domesticate them into a fate future generations might accept without despair. As senior legal counsel and de facto dictator of the Anderson Heritage Trust she (in addition to defending a very valuable portfolio of historical significant properties in the Bay Area) does what you might expect. A small but dedicated staff with a warped but basically accurate idea of their mission search for new religious movements, esoteric societies, and anyone else who might be hiding actual magic somewhere across (mostly) the western United States. When they find them, and determine they are both the real thing and not an irreparably abusive or inhumane culture (both filters which catch a majority of prospects that reach them), plausible contact is made and discrete methods of funding and support set up to encourage both their growth and their development in more humane dimensions. (There are at the moment three organizations being supported, of which two are definitely real and at least one is almost certainly not a monstrous engine of abuse). The Architects of the Sublime Dusk are not included in that total, the great project and lasting success of Asher’s predecessor whose august role in it she has only begun to fill. The Architects are a sort of serial temple-builders, or perhaps supernatural zookeepers, dedicated to creating appropriate housing and means of communing with every sort of supernatural entity they encounter for its own safety and their understanding of creation. They are shockingly successful in this, which is to say that they have had multiple successes and are not all dead. 

Filling out the Conciliator’s inner circle is the Celebrant of the Lost. Their mission is the broadest of any, working to slowly shift and prepare mainstream culture for the coming apocalypse and soften the blow by whatever small account they can. The current holder of the role, Lydia Caldwell-Mercer, responds to questions about why she’s not in Hollywood or music or podcasts by shrugging and saying that humanity is handling that well enough on its own. Unsurprisingly, she works in politics. 

She is, specifically, interested by the idea of Leadership, and of the opinion that the very best way to prepare the masses for the coming end is by presenting them better-adjusted leaders to project onto and follow the lead of; sacral kings and totemic icons to be the intermediary between them and the howling dark, and model how they will need to begin to think and act. To this end, she makes a living as Director of Public Engagement at American Futures, an intentionally vague and inoffensively nonpartisan think tank dedicated to uplifting ‘the inspiring leaders of tomorrow’. This is most clearly implemented through their Municipal Policy Institute, which provides funding and proposals for local governments across the country (mostly the parts of south-east most attracted to the ‘funding’ part) to encourage ‘healthier, more connected civic cultures’ and better relationships between government and governed. Meanwhile, the controlled-at-arms-length New Consciousness Movement provides support for identified social activist thought leaders and change agents. Specifically the ones who get described with terms like ‘cult of personality’ even before the support and supernaturally-tinged advice starts flowing. 

Somewhat separate from (but very convenient to) her work; by virtue of age, breeding and viciously polite intrigue Caldwell-Mercer is also the Queen of Autumn of The Seasons. A self-serious secret society with a pedigree reaching back to the Gilded Age, it is based just outside Richmond and by careful selection has a membership almost entirely composed of mayors, police chiefs, business owners and other local notables across several states. While the truly supernatural elements are attenuated enough that most of the outer circles don’t truly believe in them at all, it does provide an excellent source of trustworthy assistants and favor-trading (enough of it that the magical element of members’ consistent success is easy to dismiss). 

The Conciliators are organized informally and on the basis of trust and relationships far more than strict hierarchies, with most of the inner circle’s projects managed through friendships and conversations rather than anything institutional. This is certainly terrible for efficiency and information-sharing, and they are by far the most likely conspiracy to end up with the right hand blindly stabbing the left in the dark. But whatever else may be said for it, it has kept the Ushers and their works as a whole secure as more than one project has messily self-destructed, or been brutally rolled up by others.

[some-small-mercy]

Abhari: Discourses Upon The Soul

A Soul is a piece of the Divine Substance, imbued from the Heavens unto the Earth to grant whatever is so Ensouled Continuity, Stability and Meaning. Without the Divine Gift of Meaning, the world trends inexorably into Division and Strife, until it gives rise to one of the mad horrors most know as Demons. Some say it is a Soul that grants its bearer the capability for Virtue and Grace, but this is confused and perhaps heresy - better to say that it is Body and Mind which grant a Soul the ability to understand and act upon the Earth. 

There are several strange and exotic Varieties of Soul across the Outer Seas but, with some exceptions such as the Holy Wyrms, within the Inner World there are but two to be found in Nature. These can be crudely called Terrestrial Gods and (the true subject of this Discourse) Mortal Souls. Both serve a vital Role in the Great Chain by providing certain Fragments of the World with divinely-imbued stability and meaning. Terrestrial Gods Ensoul some area of the natural world, and all of the Animals and Plants within it. Mortal Souls, self-evidently, do the same for a specific Ensouled human being. 

Just as Terrestrial Gods vary in Strength and Splendor, so too do Mortal Souls. Incogruency, where Soul is not fit to fully Master its Body or Mind, is the ultimate cause of Lapses of character and Vice. In extreme cases, a damaged, extremely weak, or Malformed Soul is swiftly reflected in Body or Mind as well. Hence comes Madness, Idiocy and the gruesome sight of infants born with disfigured or Unholy forms. Nor is this constant over time and so, should a man Indulge in bodily passions of Wrath and Lust consistently, he will wound and stunt his soul even as he evokes the Demonic potential inchoate within his Flesh. Such failures spiral from one Den of Sin to another, and into a life amounting to little but petty thuggery in the best case and to monstrosity (as with the infamous lycanthorpes of the Eidewilde) in the worst. 

Souls can also, through Piety and Diligence, be strengthened. This, along with instruction in the Virtues, is what the Education Temples and Monasteries offer seeks to achieve with the Commonborn and Indigent Youth they take as pupils. Just as a Soul insufficient to Rightly Ordering its Body and Mind leads to Madness and Degeneracy, so too does one Greater than it is required to be manifest in Ascetic self-discipline, willpower and a Heroic Bearing. The greater part of the Healing Touch said to be possessed by so many Holy Men and Women is best understood as the use of their Soul as an Aegis (however temporary) to cover up the inadequacies of those they grant this Succor to. 

Barring Necromancy, Damnation or a similar Art, a Mortal Soul will perish with its body. This is Natural and Just, allowing the Fragment of the Divine which made it up to return to the Heavens. The matter of what, precisely, occurs once they have done so is a deeply controversial and unsettled one, which the modern Hierarch’s court is careful to not discuss too deeply for fear of branding whole duchies and kingdoms Heretics at a stroke. The vagaries and silence which results is neither honorable nor replete with dignity and, much like poor habits in an individual, have caused much damage to the Character and Virtue of the Church as a whole. Yet it is precisely such unbecoming spectacle which preserves the Church and the blessed peace which even now Imir luxuriates in. 

It is by just such unwieldy compromises that the greatest and most blessed empire that has ever been is preserved, though the very same acts see it grow lesser and more profane by the day.  This is the first and most fatal symptom of Decadence, a topic which later Discourses shall return to in far more exacting detail 

-Discourses Upon the Soul: 1. Introduction by Brother Adrien of the Poor Fellows of the Sacred Pyre

[some-small-mercy]

Shadows in the Cave - Civilization Without Humanity

The Prometheans are far from an integrated, synergistic hierarchy where each component is fully aware of and exists to support other components - but they are several steps closer to it than their peers. At the top are the Steering Committee, the four variably post-human founders and leaders of the conspiracy. Each oversees some aspect of the great common task, and all work together closely and at least with a pretence of friendliness. Information flows up to them and commands flow down. Organizations and cults under their command are created or supported for some specific purpose, and though literally everything is ‘need to know’, quite a few assets do need to know at least the vague shape of other parts of the conspiracy in order to protect, facilitate or fund them. 

The Prometheans’ powerbase exists in the intersections of the national security state and the high-tech economy, in the sense of engineering, computers and life sciences (with organized crime of a few varieties playing an important secondary role). Minos was in a previous life an exceptionally successful financier, and in his current one is the most honest answer as to who founded and now maintains the conspiracy; shorn of everything else, an unstable and ragged prototype of it remains under him. Without his division, everything else spirals away or collapses in short order. 

Twin reactors power everything, great corporate empires with sufficient flows of funding and material to sustain the majority of Promethean expenses while still burying them under enough legitimate business to escape notice. The Volundr Group is a sprawling corporate conglomerate of the old type, based in Dallas but with some manner of interest just about everywhere. As the ‘VP of Emerging Technologies’, Minos does his part to direct investment and acquisition attempts to pharmaceutical and chemical engineering companies which seem to have stumbled across exploitable hypergeomtric phenomena, and does what he can to ensure any such phenomena that can’t be put to better use is funnelled to its own in-house labs. He does not, meanwhile, technically have any day-to-day management role in Daedelus Investments; but as a silent partner he is the plurality shareholder and was quite careful in selecting the managers of the firm. The Bay Area-based venture capital corporation is something of a meme for how many messianic, utterly implausible pitch decks it has thrown eye-popping amounts of funding at, but a few big hits have been enough to fund the rest. Amid all the harmless con-artists and overblown hyper machines are several start-ups which really have discovered some flaw in reality or aspect of hypergeomtric physics and are, naturally enough, trying to get rich off them. Enough have ended in horrific tragedies of one kind or another to give a dark undertone to the company’s absurd reputation. Amid all the mess, the truly absurd amounts of money that has been funded to various fronts of Prometheus Technologies manages to hide in plain sight. 

Galatea might be (and has been) called the heart, soul or possibly brain of the conspiracy. All overblown, but being by far the most personally dangerous entity attached to the project does buy you a lot of compliments. She has no official role whatsoever in Seattle-based Prometheus Technologies but, as her personal assistant is theoretically the CEO, this rarely comes up. She vets and patronizes the work of esoteric labs and hypergeometric cults which are perfectly well-aware that none of what they’re working on or being paid for will ever make it to market (though what they believe instead to justify the funding and support certainly varies). Improperly channeled government grants and ‘venture capital’ alike is instead used for the ultimate purpose of the conspiracy. That few-to-none of the groups she patronizes understand that’s what that ultimate goal is is neither here nor there. 

Meanwhile, the Babel Initiative is a cult in its own right, at least with regard to the reverence they hold her in as their director. Vaguely associated with (and drawing funding from) a variety of alphabet soup security agencies and overbudget military contracts, the Initiative carries out purely in-house research, either refining and developing leads that other limbs of the conspiracy showed as promising or working on lines of inquiry (forcasting and timetables, making contact with intelligent and potentially friendly hypergeometric life) that no one else could be trusted with (including, notably, maintenance and upkeep on Galatea herself). 

Sisyphus is an awkward fit in the conspiracy, originally a fortuitous ally later integrated into its command structure wholesale. The oldest member of the Steering Committee by something like an order of magnitude, he possesses a type of information and connections none of his colleagues could hope to match. His personal empire lacks both the breadth and institutional heft of his three peers, but being considered a semi-mythical boogeyman by several major organized crime syndicates gives one a certain sway that neither rank nor money can easily bestow. Most directly, the Volkov Syndicate in Miami is thoroughly enmeshed in smuggling, trafficking and assorted other networks across the Americas that both provide a valuable alternate funding stream and provide certain Babel Initiative and Prometheus Tech projects access to various raw materials which no amount of venture capital can easily provide. A similar influence is exerted at one-step removed through his trusted (and inexplicably better at passing as human) lieutenant Gamayun. Mostly known by variations on ‘grandmother’, she is in turns a patron, client, fixer and broker for several of New York’s most superstitious criminal outfits; few of whom are willing to admit they think she’s an immortal witch out loud, though several have prospered by heeding her words very, very carefully. 

While he rarely visits their London or New York offices, Sisyphus is also the enigmatic managing partner of Velos Antiquities, a small, elite and well-financed firm in the business of acquiring ‘unusual items’. Its agents have no particularly coherent theories on why the artifacts they’re set to hunt have the properties they do, but with the salaries and commissions on offer they are if anything more ruthless than most of their peers in organized crime. 

Finally, Myrmidon is the conspiracy’s general, overseeing its sword and shield. She is also by far the closest to human, with a public life as Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office and a CV with a more than passing resemblance to her actual biography. In addition to the sheer institutional power the position itself represents, she uses it as a locus of resources and legitimacy to support the Special Access Program she has painstakingly built across federal security services. Buried in enough top secret clearances and nested joint task forces to have an air of plausible legitimacy (and a budget that can then be discretely supplemented), it is composed of five working groups of around a dozen carefully trained and vetted agents, each based in a major city across the country. In addition to ensuring uninterrupted access to various surveillance feeds and maintaining relationships with a few very carefully nurtured and semi-clued in judges, prosecutors and local authorities, they act as soldiers on the ground to contain or sanitize hypergeomtric threats and destroy or recover their causes. This is only sometimes a matter of cleaning up the conspiracy’s own messes. 

She also maintains close ties with two private corporations. She is semi-formally a board member for Axiom Solutions, is a Volundr subsidiary (though this is not advertised) which does a fine business recruiting combat veterans, equipping them like they’d never left the military, and training them to provide reliable and discrete (if wholly ignorant) security for many of the conspiracy’s other arms-length projects. The other, Benthem Security, is founded and managed by a personal friend and provides valuable domain awareness and information gathering services for areas where government authority is inconvenient or overly blunt to use. 

The conspiracy twists and splits almost randomly, and no part of it has any clear idea what the whole is doing. Few even have a clear picture of what every part of their own branch of it is. Still, above the bottom levels the majority understand they are working for some sort of governmentally-sanctioned institution working tirelessly to prevent the apocalypse and save civilization. This sets them apart from most of their peers, though it does have limits; surprisingly few beyond the Babel Institute understand that every current plan to ‘save civilization’ begins with writing off at least nine in ten currently living humans as a lost cause.

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Scavengers and Successors - Index

It has been more than two centuries since the realm of the Great Kayal was shattered by adventurers from across the sea. The generations since have not been happy ones, filled with endless warfare between conquerors’ heirs and the great cities’ which sponsored them, enserfed (or simply enslaved) peasants dying by the thousands working spectacularly lucrative plantations and mines, and whole kingdoms decimated by famine and plague as collateral damage to the ambitions of vainglorious warlords. Yet some of those warlords have grander dreams and clearer sight than others. Some truly seem to believe they can conquer (or liberate) an empire that spanned most of a continent under their own banner, and (more impressively) have made those around them believe it too. They are, one and all, thoroughly dangerous people to know. 

Captain and Queen-Consor Kari Nev, The Tempest

Velkaal Isidore Lotar sol Cimbri, The Tyrant 

Lady Seeker Felicity Sophia Drell, The Tombkeeper

Great Prophet Mochikya, The Titan

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Successors and Scavengers - the Titan

The Great Prophet Mochikya is the Great Kayal reborn, the bearer of a final judgement on the parasites and tyrants who have bled the land dry for nearly two hundred years, the bearer of a divine mandate and a kingly line. It’s a claim many have made before him, and few have ended well—but then, none before have been so blessed as he.

Mochikya’s early years are shrouded in a dozen contradictory myths, but they converge on the most important point. The gods of sky and mountain called him to an ancient shrine above the clouds, where the very air turned to ice. There he partook of the essence of one of the divine hero-kings who founded the Great Kayal, which even today leaves descendants of the royal line strong and healthy. Mochikya descended from the mountains taller and broader than any mortal man, towering over the half-starved serfs of the terraced estate he found first. He spoke of pride, liberation and justice with a thundering voice—and, far more convincingly, called upon the gods of the land to shatter the locks and fetters which oppressed them, and to burn the scraps of paper (and the manor house around them) describing their bondage. And so in the course of a single night he had the beginnings of his army.

Mochikya has by now liberated a whole swathe of the former Kayal heartland, native serfs and the land itself alike rebelling to join his banner as soon as the obviously blessed giant of a man sets foot in a new field or valley. His soldiers are hardly the best armed or disciplined, but every day his nomadic court is not marching is another day of drill and training for the day it comes to pitched battle.

The Great Prophet’s rebellion has benefited, so far, from disorganization and underestimation on the part of his enemies—and the dramatic miracles he is able to invoke, as no lord's militia so far has been prepared to deal with fire from the sky or their steel shattering like glass—but it does not take divine revelation to see that won’t last for much longer. He is confident that he is working the will of the gods, but he isn’t a fool; one does not rebuild an empire without facing real rivals for the crown.

Mochikya truly is blessed—the sheer number of assassination attempts he has already survived is proof enough of that. Lurid tales of his followers' atrocities and his demonic nature are the subject of broadsheets all the way over the sea, and the Velkaals that are his most hated foes have thrown no end of silver at anyone who promises to kill him. They have reason to—just the whisper of his arrival has emboldened more than one ‘loyal servant’ to poison their master’s next meal.