The Nocturnum
Episode 14: Things Fall Apart
Original Air Date: 5/29/2005This episode is an original work, which may be found here. Unfortunately, it's very much specific to my story this season, and most folks won't get much use out of it. Still, it's there to mine for ideas. I should also mention that this adventure contains serious spoilers for the Armageddon Role Playing Game timeline. Be forewarned.
Special Guest Stars:
Marisa Tomei as Amara Dolunay
Nicole Kidman as Michele
Vladimir Kulich as Odin
Richard Easton as Ben Franklin
W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Synopsis
The episode begins as Anita rolls out of bed in the morning. Her shift at the Hive is not to start until noon, so it’s roughly 9 am when she awakens, showers, gets dressed and heads downstairs for coffee. As she goes down the stairs, she hears a strange noise coming from the back room: a sort of half-coherent moaning.
Investigating the sound, she discovers Alan, beaten and bruised, in her dining room. His clothes are tattered and he looks much the worse for wear. He looks up at her and says simply, “I failed.”
He will not have her call anyone; he’s utterly paranoid at this point and she is the only one he trusts. His story is that he finally tracked down the Black Sorcerer and tried to kill him, but failed, and now is in grave danger. He’s going deep underground, but will be back very soon. He may need her help to put an end to this once and for all.
Things get even darker. Alan reveals that it was none other than Daniel he had to go after.
As they talk, Anita sees a figure in black outside her window, leveling a silenced gun at either her or Alan (she can’t tell which). She dives for Alan, knocking him to the floor as the shot breaks through the window. Two Combine agents attack Anita in her house. She defeats the first by giving him an out of body experience and capping him in the head; the second goes after Alan. Anita jumps on the assassin’s back and puts her gun to his head, ending his career.
Meanwhile, arriving at the Hive early, Drake finds Jamie talking to Father Bob, terrified. She can’t find Daniel and certain members of her Wiccan Coven have decided that it’s time to fight back against the other Covenants, particularly the Rosicrucians, who they seem to believe have been keeping them down for centuries. They’re calling this a second Burning Time and are determined not to let it happen.
Not long after, John is approached upstairs by Sandra, who needs his help. She’s just rescued Carrie and Kay Hito from a massacre and has them, “someplace safe.” She asks John to come with her to talk. If he is hesitant, she tells him that Drake is welcome to come along as well, and tells him that caution is likely well-founded right now.
Once John agrees to go along, she takes him to the Upstage, which is closed this time of the morning. Sandra produces a key and unlocks the back door, explaining, “I’m friendly with the owner. He lets me crash sometimes.”
Inside, Carrie and Kay Hito sit quietly at a table. The two girls are beaten and bruised, but their injuries don’t seem serious. They are very shaken up. Sandra begins the story. She has quit the Sentinels. She has a story about how they’ve declared war on all the other Covenants as enemies of Heaven and are collapsing in on themselves. When she was ordered to spy on her friends in other Covenants, she stormed out. She suspected that the corruption couldn’t just be in the Sentinels and went to find Carrie and Kay at one of the Cabal’s safe houses. When she arrived, she found a group of unknown assailants attacking the place. Carrie speaks up, saying that she and Kay were coming out of their morning meditation when the attack happened. It caught everyone off guard. Kay’s foresight enabled the two of them to escape more serious injury, and Carrie’s telekinesis enabled them to fight their way towards the door. They met Sandra halfway, brandishing her flaming sword and trying desperately to get as many people out as she could. The two girls hail Sandra as a hero, and Sandra looks as embarrassed as John has ever seen her, insisting that she just did what she had to do. They dove down a sewer grate and made for safety, avoiding the demon underworld as best they could. Sandra brought them here so they could think a bit and track down help.
As they tell their tale, Drake hears the quiet rattling of the locks to the front door. Someone is picking the lock. John takes up a position beside the door, and as a Combine agent enters, he shoots the man in the head.
At this moment, a Combine strike team bursts into the room and attacks. There are fifteen agents, covering all three possible exits. Drake goes down in a hail of gunfire, but Sandra takes position over him, both to fight the agents with a sword of fire, and to heal Drake. Between Sandra, John, Drake, and Kay, the group finishes off the Combine agents and makes for the Hive. Sandra insists that they weren’t followed and she has no idea how the Combine found them. Kay, thanks to her Remote Viewing powers, notes that someone has put a mystical trace on John and Drake, and probably their other friends as well.
As the group deliberates this alarming turn of events, Amara shows up. Except it’s not just Amara. It’s Amara, sharing her body with Katherine. Drake moves to attack Amara, when Katherine speaks through the vampire, saying, “I’d appreciate it if ye wouldn’t be doin’ that, love.” Drake is aghast, and Katherine explains: some Tainted force is reinforcing the wall between the Threshold and Death Realms, and Malkuth. If Katherine didn’t create an anchor, she might not be able to get back to Earth. Because Amara is an ensouled undead, Katherine was able to create a more permanent bond with Amara, and Amara agreed.
Anita arrives, and Amara calls the Cast into the theater, where she informs them that the House of Thanatos is actively recruiting undead from the demon underworld, gearing up for war. Their first targets are to be the Twilight Order and the Iscariots. She suggests that Anita warn the Order, but asks that she return before dinner time. Amara has a few friends coming with whom she’d like the Cast to meet. If the Cast tells Amara about their misadventures this morning, she will be grim, but unsurprised. “It was only a matter of time,” she says, “before our enemies targeted you. You are the only thing standing in their way. But there will be time to discuss this later. Now, the Twilight Order must be warned.”
Anita goes to warn the Order, but John insists she swing by his house first, and get a bullet-proof vest. Given the situation, he’s not willing to risk any of his team. She agrees, and informs John that Daniel is the Black Sorcerer.
After leaving John’s, she goes to the Order where she’s greeted by a panicked supervisor and ushered into the office, where she’s shown a surveillance tape of a battle in an alley. The fight is between two agents of the Order that Anita knows personally, and two Rosicrucians that she’s seen in the store. The Rosicrucians brutally murder the agents of the Order. She’s told that the tape represents only one of several attacks on the Order by various Covenants and that the Order is going to war. She’s ordered unequivocally to cease any and all contact with members of other Covenants. If she refuses, she’ll be expelled from the Order and branded their enemy. Anita notices a subtle corrupting/manipulating influence on the necromancers in the Chapel House. She tries to reveal this and talk some sense into her superior, who says, “how do I know you’re telling me the truth? Perhaps it’s you who are being manipulated.”
He then informs her that if she’s not with him, she’s against him. He pulls out a pistol and tries to shoot her. She dives for cover, and makes for the front exit. On her way out, another (weaker) Necromancer tries to hit her with her own medicine: for an instant, Anita sees her body from above, but her formidable necromantic powers enable her to shake off the attack, and she gets away.
At 4:00 PM, Amara’s friends arrive. Amara suggests they hold council in the theater. The newcomers are none other than the Archangel Michele and two other unusual characters: a huge one-eyed man dressed in a brown poet’s blouse, breeches, and suede boots, who reeks of power and claims to be Odin himself; and the ghost of Benjamin Franklin. They have a story to tell and are looking to take the Cast in as a “war council” of sorts. For several years now, they have been preparing for the Reckoning, which they believed to be closer than anyone could’ve imagined. They believe that the Combine is behind it, and that in a twist of dramatic irony, the Combine has been infiltrated by a dark supernatural power.
Michele also has a dark revelation for the Cast: the Combine was founded by none other than the archangel Gabriel; this is the very reason Michele went into exile. Gabriel is one of the leading members of the Heavenly Host, and has manipulated his way into too much power for her to touch him. She has fallen out of favor with the Host and has gone underground until the time is right for her to come forward again. They also believe that a dark force rising within the Rosicrucian Order—the Black Sorcerer—is in league with the power behind the Combine’s push, though they don’t know exactly who this Black Sorcerer is. By way of sparing Jamie’s feelings, Anita and John forego revealing the Sorcerer’s identity; they merely say it’s someone they know and trusted.
The Alliance has come to the Cast because the heroes are embroiled in this plot up to their eyeballs, and the time for the power players has not yet arrived. “As horrible as things look now,” Amara will say, “There are far worse terrors on the horizon, and to tip our hand now would be the destruction of what may be the world’s only hope in the near future. The forces of darkness must not learn that the Old Gods have returned, and that an Alliance is being formed in the wake of the coming storm.”
John asks her to elaborate, and she responds, “think of myself, Michele, Odin, and Benjamin as four aces. Would you reveal your hand before all the bets are in?” John concedes it’s a strong strategy.
“Besides,” Odin adds, “the time for the gods to rule the world is long gone. The world belongs to man, now, and it is man who must fight to save it. It is merely our domain to help to create the alliance that will stand against the darkness.”
Right now the Templars, the one organization thus far untouched by the corruption of the war, are forming the backbone of this Alliance, and will be helping to absorb the castoffs from the coming storm into the organization. John then reveals to the Cast that he is a member of the Templars.
A final bit of information from their council horrifies the Cast. The Church of Revelations has gone public. It’s now protected by the First Amendment, and untouchable without severe legal repercussions. As they chat in the theater, they hear screams from the café proper, and as they race for the theater doors, an explosion rocks the place. Rushing outside after they get up, they’ll see the front room in a shambles, with bodies laying about the rubble. Father Bob, Jamie, and Dana are barely alive under the mess. In an ironic twist, while the Gifted barely survived, Jim is dead. The story the Cast gets from various survivors is the same: a black automobile pulled up in front of the store, the window rolled down, and a man in a black suit threw a hand grenade into the place. The car then sped off.
Michele and Amara are grim: it seems that the Cast has been targeted as enemies of the conspiracy. Not unexpected, but disheartening that it should’ve happened so soon and so suddenly.
It occurs to Anita that there may be some clues as to this whole mess left behind at Alan’s house. She goes to Alan’s and is sifting through the rubble. At that very moment, back at the Hive, Drake has a psychic vision of the scene playing out at Alan’s.
Many of his books and artifacts are still intact, including a few that she didn’t know he had. A few which are somewhat…dark…in nature. Anita discovers a few loose floorboards. Hidden under the floor, she’ll discover two books. The first is an ancient manuscript written in a proto-Germanic language. It’ll take time to translate, but deals with something called the Deeper Dark, a Black Stone, and an ancient sorcerer named Xalotun. It seems to be Hyborian in origin.
The other book is far more shocking, and Anita’s heart sinks as she lifts it from the floor.
It is the very copy of the John Dee Necronomicon that had gone missing from the Rosicrucians after Anita turned it over 2 years ago.
As Anita looks at the books, a quiet voice rings out behind her, “I’d really hoped you wouldn’t come here, Anita. I’m surprised the Rosicrucians didn’t discover those after I got away.”
As Anita turns, her worst fears are confirmed: Alan stands behind her, cloaked in black. He looks sad as he says, “You weren’t ready for this revelation, yet.”
Alan isn’t looking to fight; he’d much rather seduce her into joining him, and makes some very Darth-Vaderesque offers of power and glory to her if only she’ll accept Leviathan into her heart. Anita has been through a great deal and she’s seen what Leviathan can do; she is sorely tempted to accept his offer. In the end, she quietly says, “Alan, you know I can’t do this.” She begs him to come away with her and leave all this behind.
Alan simply says, “I’d hoped you would see it differently,” and unleashes a blast of Taint that blows Anita off her feet, across the room, and into a wall. But then, as she lays on the ground, bloodied, barely conscious, and waiting for him to finish her, she sees a touch of sadness, mercy, and conflict in his eyes, and he merely says, “I really do love you,” and proceeds to bind, gag, and blindfold her, and drag her down to the basement, where he chains her to the furnace.
As she lies there, beaten and broken, consciousness slowly returns and another quiet, pained voice sounds from the darkness. “Anita? Is that you?”
It’s Daniel, also chained in the basement and severely injured, but conscious. He reveals that he was the one who tracked down Alan and discovered that he is the Black Sorcerer. Daniel came here to put an end to Alan’s madness, and was unprepared for the strength of the sorcerer’s Taint. Alan beat him badly, but couldn’t bring himself to kill Daniel, and so dragged him down here and chained him up while he debated what to do with the man. “Now,” Daniel says, “It looks like we’ll be sharing the same fate, whatever that is. Anita, I’m so sorry.”
Alan knows the rest of the Cast will eventually track Anita and Daniel down; he leaves a few surprises behind to guard the prisoners, and buy him the time he needs to get away. Before he leaves, he summons a Shaitan, and six tainted creatures known as Serpent Hounds, and leaves them behind to torment and guard the prisoners.
Drake’s psychic vision of the exchange, along with some directions from Amara (who followed Anita there once before) leads the Cast to Alan’s house, where they have to deal with the welcoming party. After they have rescued the two, Daniel tells his story: Alan had disappeared months ago, and was always suspected of being in league with an Old One, but Daniel wasn’t able to tell the Cast for two reasons: first, the Rosicrucians forbade him reveal his mission to find Alan, and second, he knew Anita would never believe him. He’s also aware of the shadow war between the Covenants, and believes that Alan and Leviathan are behind it. He’s willing to set up a meeting between the Cast and the leaders of the Rosicrucians to exchange notes and see if his organization can help.
Anita is taken to hospital, where the rest of the victims from the attack on the Hive are recovering. John has left Sandra and Carrie behind as guards to ensure the Combine doesn’t try again. Sandra stays at Anita’s bedside until she’s released from the hospital.
Drake has another flash of memory from Draco: the secondary book that Anita found, the Black Sorcerer told Draco, is the book upon which Von Junzt based his own Black Book, Unaussprechlichen Kulten. If the Cast can get hold of a copy of that book, they might be able to get a clue what Alan’s next move is. Anita recalls that there is one in the University of Pittsburgh’s Darlington Memorial Library, for access to which they’ll need an appointment.
And things fall apart…
Great Quotes:
(Out of Game comment, reading Kay's character sheet)
Drake: Daniel is missing. (points to Jamie) Hers, not, you know...(makes stereotypical Indian noise with hand and mouth).
(After the Combine attack on her house, Alan leaves to go underground. Anita surveys the damage to the house)
(OOC comment, after Bob rolls 3 "10's" in a row)
(Phone conversation)
(On finding out the Combine were founded by an archangel)
Alan: He'll give you anything you want, Anita. Anything.
Kalie: OOh! I have Boys Kinesis!
Jason: *sigh* Biokinesis.
Anita: Just like all the men in my life. Steal my heart, leave everything a mess.
Kalie: See, for me to roll something like that would be like, "you're drunk. Roll your ability to walk."
Anita: How are you?
Drake: Feeling hole-y, and not in a biblical sense.
Anita: That makes sense. Cuz, you know, the Combine's a real holy order.
Anita: All I want is to be with you. Do I have to sell my soul for that, too?
Great Moments:
The Black Sorcerer is revealed to be Anita's beloved, Alan Collins III.