Nocturnum
Episode 4: Who Mourns the Lost?
Original Air Date: 8/27/2006Original Episode notes can be found Here.
Special Guest Stars:
Kari Wuhrer as Katherine Forsythe
Zack Ward as William/Nectanebus
And introducing...
Hayden Christensen as Matthew
(Played by Mike Vogel)
Synopsis
John awakens from being ambushed in a barren room with a bed. At the far end of the room sits Drake, looking aged, with a silver-headed cane. He attempts to greet John, but John is too overcome with rage over the tales William has told him, and attacks Drake viciously, with murder in his eyes. Drake, however, knows John well enough to have anticipated this, and has prepared in advance, using his Chi abilities to increase his own strength and agility. He manages (rather easily) to subdue John, as the door opens and Anita and Klaus enter the room with a third man John doesn't recognize, trailing behind. Anita is sporting a streak of white hair on the front of her head, and has an apparent glass eye--her left eye is blue where her right is its usual brown--where a scar runs down her left cheek. She also has a scar across her throat. Other than that, she looks as though she hasn't aged much. Klaus, for his part, is missing an arm and looks 20 years older.
At this moment, an enraged young woman with fiery red hair and dark eyes--another amalgam of John and Cyan--flies into the room, begging "Uncle Drake" not to kill her father, and demanding to know why she hadn't been told that they'd brought him back. Anita attempts to calm the girl, and John is stricken by the sight of his daughter Katherine, apparently alive and well.
Katherine's being apparently alive allows the group to convince John to hear them out before he tries to kill them; Drake actually hands John a knife and offers John his life if John doesn't believe their tale. Finally, Amara enters the room, and to John's utter shock, greets Drake with a passionate kiss, which Drake returns in kind.
John calms down enough to listen, and the group spins an incredible story. It seems that William is the black sorcerer Nectanebus, with whom Cyan had struck a bargain over twenty years ago. Nectanebus managed to enter the unborn fetus of John and Cyan's son, William, before an independent soul could develop within, and thus was reborn. And while he certainly was an ally against Xalotun, that doesn't make him a good guy.
History of the Future
At the same time John leapt through the portal after the so-called Faceless Monk, twenty years ago, and vanished, the comatose Cyan went into labor. She gave birth without ever having seen her childrens' faces. The Cast kept her on life support at Presbyterian Hospital, unwilling to let her go, hoping against hope that some day she might return to them. Anita managed to get herself appointed legal guardian of the children, and Drake and Klaus agreed to help her raise the kids. When the children were young, it quickly became apparent that Katherine was a kind-hearted and fiery soul, with the abilities of a Slayer, and Anita was appointed Katherine's Watcher by the council. William, on the other hand, was always somewhat slight and had a cruel streak, but had a strong affinity for the magical arts. He entered tutelage under the Rosicricians and the Cast's old friend Silas.
As a side note, when the children were two years old, World War III began, spurred on by none other than the Church of Revelations.
As the kids grew older, William's power grew and his experiments became darker. When Drake, Klaus, and Dr. Armedt caught William with copies of the Necronomicon and Unaussprichlechen Kulten at the age of 14, they restricted his access to the library unless a tutor was with him. At the age of 15, William ran away. Anita, Klaus, and Drake moved Heaven and Earth to try and find the boy, but to no avail. Several months later, the Cast found Silas's body, his demonic essence having been bled from him.
A few months after the twins' 16th birthday, a call came in about a massive disturbance at Point State Park...the Hellmouth. The heroes raced there, only to find William, standing directly at the center of the Hellmouth, his hands raised, a copy of an ancient Sumerian tome called Morturom Demonto floating before him. As he read from the tome, William announced himself as the resurrected Nectanebus, and completed a ritual that tore open the Hellmouth.
The Rosicrucians had been preparing for such a disaster for quite some time, and quickly acted to perform a massive Invocation that would trap the demonic forces unleashed within the city, while allowing the humans to escape. Unfortunately, Nectanebus had been under their tutelage, and himself had prepared a counter to their ritual; in the end, the humans were trapped as well as the demons.
Within 24 hours, 80% of the people in Pittsburgh had been murdered or possessed by incorporeal demons from the Hellmouth. These demons, known as deadites, swore allegiance to Nectanebus, who immediately set himself up as lord of the city, while the survivors (many Gifted) formed a resistance force against him. The war remained in stalemate for four years. Then, a few nights ago, a massive surge of power was detected and Amara went to investigate. It seemed as though Nectanebus had somehow managed to tear open a hole in time and enter the past; when he returned, John followed and the mystery of what had happened to John twenty years ago was solved. The Cast did what they could to get him back, and that brings them up to the present.
John is wracked by a storm of emotions within, but manages to keep a lid on it, as always, as he tells the Cast his version of events as related by William. Anita is devastated that John could believe she was such a villain and leaves the room. Katherine, too, is angered that John could see Anita in such a harsh way (after all, to her Anita is like her mother), but this is tempered by her joy at seeing her father alive at long last, and for the first time.
At this point, John is introduced to the third man who entered with Anita and Klaus. The young man's name is Matthew, and he claims his role in the group is to do "whatever needs done." John can tell he's Gifted, more than human somehow, but isn't sure exactly what that means. Matthew feels different from anyone he's ever met before. Strangely familiar, yet utterly alien at the same time.
The Cast retire to bed. Each one has horrible nightmares in which the souls of those loved ones they have lost over the course of the war scream out that William is torturing them and bleeding them dry, and begging the Cast to save them. Anita sees Sandra, Klaus sees Megan, John sees Cyan, and Drake sees his wife, Katherine, who should have moved on to the Death Realms decades earlier. Drake and Matthew also receive nocturnal visitations, or visions, that paint a disturbing picture of the events at hand.
After everyone gets a night's rest and John settles in as best he can, the Cast holds council. John informs them of William's intent to secure Cyan's body, ostensibly to resurrect her. He believes that if he obtains the orb with Cyan's soul and returns to 2006, this whole mess will be averted. Several times the Cast tries to convince him that such a portal takes years to build, and that even William couldn't do it again. When John insists this is the way to go, Matthew speaks up, revealing that he had a vision last night which told him that if John returns to 2006 with the orb, without first repairing the breach in time, that the walls between worlds will collapse and Earth will be flooded by Hell dimensions. Drake then speaks up and informs John that he, too, has had a vision that the Orb cannot return to 2006. He also knows that William's plan is to merge with John and Cyan and Ascend to true demonhood, after which he'll have unspeakable power, maybe enough to destroy the CoR and Leviathan, and return all of the Old Ones back to the world. Drake wants to destroy the orb to cripple William's power. John still isn't convinced.
The discussion then turns to the possibility of retrieving Cyan's body before William, then gaining the Orb and somehow resurrecting her, if that is at all possible. Anita doesn't think it's possible to get Cyan's soul out of the orb without destroying the orb, which would free all the souls within. John doesn't want to hear anything about destroying the orb; he wants it home and the soul back in Cyan's body, and isn't able (yet) to process the idea that she is really gone. He does, however, agree to retrieve her body so that William doesn't have it. In the meanwhile, Amara, who has infiltrated Nectanebus' organization disguised as an ancient Gypsy Seer, agrees to try and find out where William is keeping the Orb of Thessulah containing the trapped souls of the departed.
The Cast journey to the ruins of Presby, where they do battle with a contingent of Deadites left behind to guard the dig, and enter the hospital. John is impressed by Matthew's battle skills, and by his obviously ancient and magical sword. After battling their way through the floors of the submerged building (which seems to have survived sinking beneath the ground largely intact, miraculously), they come to Cyan's room. They are shocked to discover that Cyan has been perfectly preserved, not having decayed an ounce over the intervening years, though she is quite dead. They manage to transport her back to their home base and set her up in Katherine's room. Now all that remains is to await news from Amara and retrieve the orb.
Great Quotes:
Anita (first words, upon seeing John alive, offers him a snack): Cheerios?Anita: I'm always the bad guy.
(On hearing John's story)
Anita (laughs uproariously): Your son told you I did this? I tore open the Hellmouth and destroyed the city...and that actually sounded reasonable to you!?
John: I've always said that one day you would read the wrong book and I'd have to...
Anita: You're a tool, John. (Walks away)
Drake (Tossing John a knife): Time to choose, John.
John (thinks for a moment): William may be 20, but I think it's time Dad gave him a spanking.
Klaus: And frankly, Kathering, I'm very glad Anita has never spanked me.
John (Points at Matthew): Okay, so who's he?
Drake: That's Matthew.
John: Matthew, not Matt?
Drake: No, he actually uses his full name.
John: dammit, I use my full name! John is my full name!
John: So, what do you do, Matthew?
Matthew (grins): Whatever needs done.
Klaus: So...you want to use the book [to go back in time] that your son used to open the Hellmouth and make demons possess people...and you think Anita's the crazy one?
Anita (to Matthew): When Kat died, it was awful. It sucked so much. And then Alan disappeared, and I thought it can't get any worse than that. What he [John] said...the fact that he thinks I could be capable of this...I can't even describe how much it hurts.
Katherine: Okay, Dad, you want me to be mad about something? You're being an asshole to Anita. She raised both your kids. Did you even bother to say 'thank you'? Or were you too busy being ignorant?
Anita: He might not be so happy about how I raised you, Sweetie.
Anita: No, thanks. I've been through the heart-crushing, soul-sucking abandonment twice now with the men I've loved. I think I'll pass.
John (Holds up decapitated deadite head): Alas, poor Yorick, I...
Deadite head: I'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!
John (Smacks the head against a wall): Quiet, you. Alas, poor Yorick, I...
Katherine: I've known you all my life.
Anita: Yes, but you haven't known me all of mine.
Anita: Did I mention I hate hospitals?
John: So...anyone wanna yell, "hey, mole people, take me to your king"?
Katherine: HEY, MOLE PEOPLE, TA-MMPH! (Drake covers her mouth)
Anita: It's so quiet...
Katherine (yells): Hey, you guys coming or what?
Klaus: Hey, you're stronger than me. Why don't you boost me up?
Katherine: Well because I want to look!
John: So how do we prevent William from following us down, now that we've opened the shaft?
Katherine: Go really fast and get out before he gets here!
Matthew: Good answer.
Anita: Hold me (falls unconscious as she astral projects)
John (Catches her): I hate when she does that.
Anita: OOOH! OOH! I'm having an idea! Wait...here it comes...
Anita (re: opening portals through time): What you're talking about doing...you could get all the Rosicricians in the world and have them stand in a big circle and all at the same time and they could all orgasm in one great heaving wave of energy, and it STILL wouldn't be enough Essence to do that!
(Out of Game conversation)
Julie (Anita): Oooh, could I raise her as a zombie?
Jason (Director): Yes, you're perfectly capable of doing that.
Julie: He'd [John] probably be upset about that, huh?
Jason: You're smart enough to know you might want to run it past him first.
John: Could he draw power from her soul if it was on the other side of a portal?
Anita: Huh? What are you talking about?
John: My plan. We have to find the portal and...
Anita: There is no portal, John. Say goodbye to the portal.