Nocturnum
Episode 1: Brave New World (Part One)
Original Air Date: 7/17/2006Original Episode will be posted following the completion of Part 2.
Special Guest Stars:
James Gandolfini as Joe Knonaem
Mia Kirschner as Sandra Stevens
Synopsis
It has been almost nine months since the end of Season 3. Over the course of these months, much has changed. Drake, with the help of John and the Templars, has reclaimed many of his ancestral holdings in Ireland, and has become a media darling under his real name: Alexander Tudor. He is Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich, now. He has what financial advisors like to call, "Screw You Money." The big news about him (other than falsely-reputed affairs with Katie Holmes, Paris Hilton, and Kate Hudson) is that he's funneled a great deal of his newly-recovered wealth into setting up charitable organizations for the re-acquisition and preservation of historic buildings and locales.
Back on the homefront, Cyan is nearing the end of her pregnancy with her and John's Gifted twins. No one save Drake has seen or heard from Anita in months. Klaus is living in Anita's house still, and has established more firm connections with the local Pariahs.
Following the end of last season, Detective Joe Knonaem and Lexie Carver spent several months in Western Psychiatric, recovering from the trauma of the battle at Point State Park. In that time, news footage aired of vampire attacks and demon incursions. Even with this live news evidence, most of the public still passes the supernatural off as a great hoax. The big difference is that the government and police can now be more open in their dealings with otherworldly phenomena. Upon Joe's release from Western Psych and the resuption of his duties on the force, he was put in charge of a Special Unit for Supernatural Investigations (SUSI), for which the Cast are paid consultants. SUSI worked for several months cleaning up the remnants of the Church of Revelations in Pittsburgh, which has been silent ever since.
As the story opens, John and Cyan arrive at the Hive Arcana for an early day; they are set to pick up Drake at the airport when his flight to Pittsburgh arrives at 1:00. He is coming into town to be present for the birth of the twins. The two of them notice a familiar-looking black Jaguar XKE with a Union Jack bumper sticker in Anita's parking spot...the car once belonged to Alan Collins III, the Black Sorcerer. This is cause for concern, but with his usual stoicism, John walks Cyan into the Hive, where Dana is looking very worried. She informs John that someone was in Anita's office last night, that the door was open this morning, and Klaus is up there trying to get things sorted out.
John heads upstairs, where he finds Klaus in Anita's office, grinning. Also present is Anita, her feet up on the desk, reading the morning paper and drinking coffee. There is a large sign on the door that says, "BLAKE INVESTIGATIONS OPEN FOR BUSINESS." The two exchange a typically guarded greeting and a few moments of awkward smalltalk, before they hear Cyan struggling up the stairs. Anita positions herself so that she will be the first person Cyan sees as she rounds the corner in the stairwell. Cyan is overjoyed to see her friend, and the two embrace. Anita presents the Cast with gifts, and they go to breakfast, then shopping (at Cyan's very pregnant insistence) before heading to pick up Drake. When John inquires about the legality of the car she's driving, Anita explains the Jaguar was a gift from Alan's parents and is hers, title and all.
Drake arrives around 2:30, and the group is reunited. It doesn't take long for things to fall immediately back into the old routine: Joe Knonaem calls John (who is dismayed to discover his cell phone ring has changed on its own from "The Marine Corps Hymn," to "Secret Agent Man") to ask help on a case that reeks of supernatural invovlement. The Cast agree to meet him after lunch, and around 4:00, they head back to the Hive for their meeting with Joe.
Joe is gratified to see Anita and Drake, and apologetic about dragging them into this mess when they've only just returned to town, but they all quickly get down to business. There have been a series of three sets of serial killings, all involving mothers and their twin children (which naturally upsets Cyan and John more than a bit). The first set of slayings saw a message written in blood upon the walls: "V.F.A.C.3". The second set of slayings had a mysterious mantra carved into the mother's flesh: "Know the Gate. Be the Gate. Past, Present, and Future, all are one." Anita recognizes this phrase as a reference to the Great Old One, Yog-Sothoth, in the Necronomicon. Yog-Sothoth is known for being associated with gateways to other places and times.
The third set of slayings is where things got completely out of hand. The police noticed a tape recorder playing a strange chant when they entered the place. Suddenly, the three bodies left behind leapt back to life and attacked the cops, screaming, "We'll swallow your souls!" Only Joe and one other cop (currently gibbering in Mayview State Hospital) survived, with the help of copious shotgun blasts. They got the tape back to SUSI, where cryptolinguists were trying to translate it. Joe turns over a partial transliteration to Klaus, who is able to determine two things: the language is a proto-Sumerian dialect, and playing that tape again is a Very Bad Thing. The group rushes to the SUSI offices, where they find the place a shambles, and everyone eviscerated, with the exception of the two crypto-linguists, who are missing. En route, Joe gives them the final piece of information he has: the Mark of Leviathan had been carved into the palms of the three zombies who attacked the police at the third murder scene.
The group watch surveillance tapes, and witness the crypto-linguists become possessed by strange demonic entities after listening to the tape, and they murder everyone in the joint, then escape into the streets. Strangely, they somehow caused no panic on the streets when they ran out. The Cast leaves in hot pursuit, but the demons are nowhere to be found.
Klaus looks over the notes and finds references to a city called Kandar. They decide to send Cyan back to the Hive to research Kandar, while John, Drake, and Joe attempt to hunt the rampaging demons and Anita and Klaus follow the only solid lead they have: The mark of Leviathan. Klaus and Anita head for the now-abandoned CoR headquarters in the city, in the old St. Vladimir's Church on the South Side.
Upon entering, Anita and Klaus hear strange foreign chanting in the Sanctuary and decide to exit the building, watch the doors, and call John for backup. When John arrives the group enters and soon finds themselves in mortal combat with three flying creatures (which Anita identifies as two Shantaks and one Byakhee, Mythos creatures) and five of the demon-possessed deadites. The brush with the Outer Dark briefly sends Anita back into a fit of madness, but Klaus draws her out and they join the fight. Victorious, they search for clues and find in the offices a list of names of well-known demon contacts. Out in the Sanctuary, Drake notes that the wounds on the possessed are beginning to close up and their bodies are twitching. While John, Anita and Joe are searching, Drake hacks the bodies to bits.
Meanwhile, back at the Hive, Cyan finds information on Kandar: once a gleaming city in ancient Sumeria, it fell under the sway of a priest (or priestess, the details are unclear) of Ereshkigal, the goddess of death and slaughter, and was overrun by demons. The priestess completed a book entitled Morturom Demonto which reputedly had the ability to summon cthonic entities from their millennia-old slumber and give them reign to possess the bodies of the living and the dead. Kandar was consumed in flame and vanished from the Earth.
Upon completing her research, Cyan decides to go next door to get some food. Once she is away from the safety incantations protecting the Hive, she is accosted by five vampires. She roasts four, but the fifth manages to punch her in the stomach and bite her. Blackness closes in...
St. Vladimir's. Anita gets a call on her cell phone (she is irritated that her ring tone seems to have changed from "The Muppet Show Theme" to "Crazy Train"). It's Sandra, in hysterics. She found Cyan bleeding in an alley after what appeared to be a vampire attack, and took Cyan to Presbyterian University Hospital. She has no idea how Cyan is, because the doctor's won't tell her anything. The group rushes to Cyan's side, and John as Cyan's husband is able to secure an update: the children are going to be okay, and Cyan is in critical, but stable condition and the doctors think she'll recover fine. John maneuvers his way in to see Cyan and uses his healing magicks on her when they're alone. The doctors are amazed at the miracle recovery, but want her to stay for tests.
Cyan scolds John for using healing magic on her, informing him that the way magic works, he could have caused more harm than good by permanently fusing the twins to her, or to each other. She makes him promise not to do that again, until after the birth. He reluctantly agrees. The two of them also agree that Cyan will stay in the hospital until this mess is passed, with various Gifted friends to sit with her at all times.
While John is with Cyan, the rest of the crew (Anita, Drake, Joe, Sandra, and Klaus) decide to head for the Lava Lounge to track down some demon snitches. They find and convince a local snitch named Louie to talk: it seems the guy after Cyan is some sort of faceless monk who is holed up under City Books on the South Side, a place where the group has faced dark forces before...
Great Quotes:
Klaus: I don't have a drinking problem. I'm just German!
(John asks why Anita is so thin)
Drake: This is cause for an aneurism, isn't it?
Klaus: Ja, even I know not to mention a woman's weight!
(Someone suggests Anita have a beer. Ebonor appears)
Ebonor: That'll put some pounds on! (Vanishes)
Anita (to thin air): Oh, who asked you!?
(Re: Cyan's pregancy-related mood swings)
Anita: Birth control is a miraculous thing...
Klaus: Who needs an abortion clinic, when you have "Reshape?"
(Anita's phone rings)
Sandra: You're back, and you didn't even call me?
Anita: Uh...I'm sorry?
Sandara: Sorry? I don't hear from you in nine months! You disappear off the face of the earth and have Carrie, Kay, and I worried sick, and you're sorry?
Anita: There was a pregnant lady. You don't understand. And I'm driving at very high speeds.
Anita: Since when is murder more important than donuts?
Joe: So how've you been?
Anita: Good. I got a Jaguar.
Joe: Really? More than I got.
Anita: I know.
(Re: the ancient Sumerian chant)
Drake: What else could it be? The theme song for the new Smurf show?
(OOC COMMENT, after Julie figures out that A.C.3 is "Alan Collins III")
Julie (to Jason): You suck. You really suck. Like a fricking Hoover vacuum cleaner, you suck."
Anita: Hey, can we put on some Johnny Cash so I can SHOOT MYSELF!?
(After Anita suffers a bout of madness and flees St. Vladimir's)
Klaus: Anita, what is it? What's wrong?
Anita (rocking): It's bad. They're baaaaad. From the Dark. The Old Ones, the Dark Ones. Tell me a joke.
Klaus: What!?
Anita: Tell...me...a...JOKE!
Klaus: Okay...uhm...zere are zese three men, and zey valk into a bar and zey say, "ow!"
(Anita bursts into raucous, hysterical laughter)
Anita: Okay, I'm better, now. That's great. Okay, let's go (Re-enters church).
Klaus: Anita, I am sorry. I lose my temper sometimes. I know you vere just concerned vit everyone in here. You vere just trying to cope.
Anita (to John): You were right. We should've just blown up the building.
John: You don't get it. We dismembered them...and they still bitched at us about it!
Cyan: We have lots of friends who can come sit with me. But not your army buddies. Last time they were here all they did was yell at each other about who did what in which battle.
John: Marine buddies.
(Drake, trying to pay off Louie, puts a wad of $100 bills on the table).
Drake: Look, there are two ways we can handle this. You can deal with me and my friends, Ben Franklin, and tell us what we want to know, or I can leave you alone here to deal with her. (points to Anita, who blows Louie a kiss)
Louie (takes money): Okay, here's how it went down...