The Nocturnum
Episode 18: The Renders of the Veil
Original Air Date: 7/31/2005This episode is an original work, which can be found Here. As with many of our recent episodes, the events herein are rather specific to this season and my cast, but the episode notes include several passages from the Voynich Manuscript, which could be useful as generic passages from arcane books, and includes a new spell to open a portal to another dimension. Enjoy.
Special Guest Stars:
(LOTS this week!)
Omar Sharif as Dr. Armedt
Tony Shalhoub as Ebonor
Nicole Kidman as Michele
Marisa Tomei as Amara
Mia Kirshner as Sandra
Kirsten Dunst as Carrie
Lea Salonga as Kay Hito
Marc Blucas as Riley
Keanu Reeves as Max
Amy Lee as Lisa
Synopsis
En route back to Pittsburgh from Egypt, the group receives another visit from their old friend Ebonor, who assures them that things are "getting very interesting" on the home front.
When they arrive at the Pittsburgh International Airport, the group is greeted by James, one of Dr. Armedt's most trusted aides, and by two Templars who have been dispatched to aid the group. The gang narrowly averts a Combine attempt on Armedt's life, and gets back to the city, where they discover all the power is out and the streets are deserted.
Upon arrival back at the Hive, they find the place closed for business and full to bursting with Gifted in various states of physical and mental health. Jamie is sitting in a corner, catatonic, staring at the wall. Father Bob is upstairs, keeping Meghan occupied.
Carrie and Sandra see the group enter, and run up to the group in tears, Carrie throwing her arms about Kay and Sandra embracing Anita. At Anita's gentle prodding, Sandra exclaims through sobs that "The Sentinels did this! How could they? They were friends...allies! I trusted them with my life and my faith!"
At this point, James and the Templars usher the Cast into John's security office where they explain that the Sentinels went on a rampage last night, murdering Gifted all over the city as enemies of Heaven. The authorities as of now are calling it a terrorist rampage and several terrorist organizations have in fact stepped forward to take credit for the mass murders throughout the city. The assault coincided with a lightning strike that took out a power transformer, knocking out power all over the city. All the Rosicrucians' diviners confirmed that the lightning strike was not magically induced; the Sentinels, it seemed, merely took advantage of the situation and escalated the war between the Covenants. Some witnesses--Sandra included--report that somehow the Sentinels were still able to use their miracles, despite the clear corruption of their ideals. There are conflicting reports of Taint that lead the group to suspect that Leviathan is secretly granting Miracles to certain members of the Sentinels. The Twilight Order chapel house in Mt. Lebanon is destroyed, as are the strongholds of almost every Covenant in the city, save the Rosicrucians.
The city government has called in the National Guard to attempt to maintain peace should the attacks begin again the next night.
It gets worse; the Church of Revelations has also taken advantage of the situation. James plays for the group a security tape which clearly shows Alan and a mysterious new female ally from whom he is apparently taking orders. Alan and the woman kidnapped Daniel and the cipher manuscript, along with all the translation notes while the Sentinels stormed the library.
Just as all hope seems lost, Amara enters the picture, waving a USB stick which contains files that Daniel e-mailed to her moments before his kidnapping. The files contain every last one of his translation notes. Anita remembers that the original Voynich manuscript is still in existence at Yale. Amara confirms that she and her allies have called upon the Templars to guard the book until the Cast can get there, and that she has a cryptolinguist waiting to help the Cast translate the book. John wants to stay and wipe out the Sentinels until it's pointed out that such an act is likely exactly what Leviathan wants, and that the Sentinels are as much pawns being played in this mess as the other factions.
A knock at the door sends John upstairs, where he sees an old friend has come to join the party: Riley Finn has been dispatched with a group of troops to keep an eye on the National Guard units. He wants John's recommendations for supernaturally-gifted humans to help with the peacekeeping efforts. Dana, Kay, Carrie, Sandra, and Father Bob all volunteer.
Armedt charters a private plane to get the group to New Haven, and explains to John that there will be a blue Jeep Cherokee waiting for the group when they arrive. With the arrangements made, the group heads for New Haven with Amara in tow.
Upon arriving in New Haven, the group finds the town a war zone. Cars are overturned, buildings on fire, bodies litter the ground. It looks like a similar massacre happened here, only ten times worse than the one in Pittsburgh. Realizing that they are conspicuous in the Jeep, they ditch the vehicle and walk to their destination, a brownstone where Amara says she left the cryptolinguist, Klaus, with a friend.
Arriving at the brownstone, the Cast finds an ambush waiting: twenty Combine agents sit in bushes and shadows around the place. Within moments of the Cast's arrival, the battle is joined. Moments in, the Cast finds help from an unexpected source; a brutally scarred and deformed half-human creature with long claws and teeth leaps into the fray, screaming in anguish, as he slices into the Combine agents. Behind this creature walks their old friend the Archangel Michele, who simply stands in the middle of the fray, surveying the scene.
At the battle's end, the "thing" transforms into a fairly attractive man that Amara and Michele introduce as Klaus, the cryptolinguist and a Disciple of the Flesh, one of a group of Gifted who gain their powers from severe abuse and trauma suffered in their past.
The Cast gets into Michele's brownstone and Klaus begins going over the translation key, which he pronounces as legitimate and an astounding find. He spends about an hour looking over the notes before proclaiming that he is ready to go look at the Voynich Manuscript itself. The cast heads for Yale's Beinecke Rare Books library, where John discovers that his friends Max and Lisa are the Templars guarding the book.
Working together, Anita and Klaus translate the opening passage to the book and read it aloud. Upon doing so, the entire book shimmers as a wave of mystic energy shifts through the room, and it is suddenly readable in the Queen's English! The group is both delighted and horrified at the turn of events: does this mean that Alan's book is also now readable?
They get to work studying the tome. It seems that the book Alan has is a corrupted book written by Roger Bacon, dedicated to bringing the Mad Gods forth into the world, and the Voynich Manuscript is a counter to that tome, written by Dr. John Dee. The Voynich Manuscript provides instructions for obtaining the materials for a potion, a sort of mystical grenade, that will disrupt the ritual to summon forth Leviathan. The book also mentions that a massive sacrifice of hundreds or thousands of souls is necessary for the ritual to defeat Leviathan, and that it must be performed at a place of mystical convergence. The group reasons that Alan plans to perform the ritual sometime during the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Festival, when thousands of people gather at Point State Park.
The book also mentions that one of the ingredients for the potion--the Night Rose--is only found in the Twilight Lands, an alternate dimension that the Cast has been once before, and isn't excited about returning to again. Worse, the only spell they have to get there awakens the slumbering Mad God that rules over the place. But then, Anita remembers that earlier this year, the group acquired a tome called the Book of Twilight from the ghouls in New Castle. Such a book, she thinks, may have a spell to get the group to the Twilight Lands.
As the group prepares to return to Pittsburgh with their new information, John learns that sometime in his past, Klaus was horribly abused by the Cult of Revelations, and as such he offers the man a place in the group, which Klaus readily accepts. Cyan, meanwhile, approaches Anita about everything that's been going on, and begins to prod her to reveal why she is unable to simply see Alan as an enemy, and not as the same man she fell in love with. She brings up the ring she found earlier in the year in Anita's house, and Anita is far from forthcoming about her emotional scars. Eventually, however, en route back to Pittsburgh, Anita gives in and reveals her past to the group.
In the end, the group discovers a spell that will get them safely to the Twilight Lands, and prepares to make their sojourn to that hellish place...
Great Quotes:
(Sadly, I've misplaced the quotes from our last session. If I find them, I'll post them.)
Great Moments:
Anita's Back Story is revealed