Penny — Roleplayer Guild

That Which is Written

Prologue

The bray of hounds echoed off the darkened walls, reflecting and multiplying as they came closer. She leaped over a hedge of rose bushes, scraping her exposed legs as she went. The lights were on in every building, burning out into the damp heat of the night like watch fires. Women stood in the windows, their silhouettes searching the patches of darkness for the fugitive, for her. The men were already out in force, calling to each other or speaking into radios as they swept the grounds. It was a good thing there was no moon, the darkness the only reason she hadn't been caught already. She had to get out of here. This was the story of a lifetime, but only if she lived to publish it. There was no point going for the motor pool or trying any of the cars in the driveways. The former was guarded and the latter had their keys removed with the pedantic attention to detail these brethren paid to all their tasks. If it were not for the hounds, she might have considered hiding in the trunk of one of the cars, but there could be no hiding from the snuffling nostrils of those slavering beasts. No, her only hope was to reach the chain-link and go over. It was a hike of a mile and a half to the road, a mile and a half through thick scrub and then, with luck she could hitch a ride to some place safe. It was a desperate longshot, but it was her only option. Where in the world could be safe from these people? If ‘people’ was even the right term.

“Sweep west from Luke!” a voice called, harsh and grating ahead of the squelch of a radio.  She pressed herself back against the wall of a potting shed a moment before the speaker, an indistinct shape with a big military flashlight rounded the corner. The walkie talkie in his hand squawked something that was too distorted for her to make out as he tramped through the flower bed. It seemed impossible he couldn’t hear her heart hammering in her chest, but he walked past without seeing her, the frosty white beam of the flashlight sweeping back and forth closer to the wire. Fuck, how was she going to get out of here? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Desperate she risked a look at her burner phone, cupping a hand tightly around the display to block any light. No bars. Fuck. The hounds were closer now. No time left. She edged along the wall of the potting shed, all her control employed to stop herself from shaking.

“All clear to the wire from Luke,” the patrolling man said into his walkie talkie. He was only six paces from her, his back turned, the flannel of his shirt black on gray in the gloom. She could smell the scent of bleach and woodsmoke on him. He sighed, playing the beam of his flashlight across the woods a hundred yards from the wire. Owls hooted in annoyance and there was a chitter from some other animal. Just a hundred yards. Now or never.

“Where is this bitch,” the man muttered to himself. In a movie she would have made some witty remark, but this was no fairy tale, at least not the kid friendly Disney kind. She jammed her taser into his back, right between his shoulder blades where the nerves sprayed out from his choroid plexus. His body spasmed and he dropped to the ground with a thump where he continued to thrash and spasm until the butt of his mag light cracked into the back of his skull, and he went slack.

“Right here,” she allowed herself, buoyed by her own success, but she wasted no time rifling his pockets and retrieving a small caliber handgun from his waistband and a leatherman multitool from his pocket. Boyscout assholes. The hounds howled again, close now, no further than the end of the street. She ran for the wire and began clipping the links with the cutter as quickly as she could. Click-click, click-click.

“There! STOP!” someone shouted, but there was no force on earth that could have stopped her now. She snipped one more link and shoved herself through the gap. The jagged edges of the short vertical incision raked cuts across her thighs and arms that burned like fire. A gunshot cracked out and something whined past her head but she was free now, running like the college athlete she had been, though the sophomore long distance championship’s had never motivated her like flight from this nightmare. Two more shots cracked behind her before she reached the treeline but she didn’t look back. She crashed into the undergrowth, the mag light held in front of her as hurdled over fallen trees and wove around stringy saplings. Branches scratched at her like skeletal hands, a vine caught her across the forehead stripping back skin as effectively as a burn. Her breath burned in her chest, her muscles screamed with lactic acid, behind her the bark of the dogs and the bloodthirsty shouts of their masters. The only thought in her head was flight, flight and escape from this horrible night. Any hurt, any pain, was worth it if it meant getting away from this place. 

Run, weave between the trees, don’t slow down. Not for anything. Time lost its meaning. Every second took her further from the horror behind her. Just keep running.

The ground suddenly gave way beneath her. Screaming she tumbled, the flashlight was smashed from her hand as it struck a rock with a crack that probably meant a fractured wrist. The night sky and the dark earth cartwheeled as she careened down the steep slope, long grass ripping at her like stinging nettle. She crashed violently into a ditch, the impact driving the air from her lungs. Gravel cuts covered her arms and blood was leaking from above her right eye, though scratched on something in the forest or in the fall she couldn’t tell. She was in the drainage culvert on the side of a paved road. Lights were approaching. She staggered to her feet ignoring the pain, waving her arms and shouting herself hoarse. The lights dimmed to low beams and began to slow. An old but well-maintained Buick rolled to a halt in front of her and she ran to the door, ripping it open frantically.
“Help you missy?” An older man with salt and pepper hair asked in concern, reaching up to squelch the harangue of talk radio pouring from its ancient sound system. He had a kindly face that was contorted in concern by the mask of blood and dirt worn by the woman before him.

“I need to get away from here, now!” she cried, finally pulling the passenger door open and hopping in, heedless of the small avalanche of trash and personal possessions she caused.

“I see,” the kindly old man replied. Something in his tone tipped her off and she glanced over at him and saw it. He gave her a hopeful smile. She pulled the pistol from her pocket, pressed it to his head and pulled the trigger in a single panicked motion. It was very loud. The gunshot blew out the driver’s side window as the round empties his brain case and sprayed the wooden door paneling with gore. The jet of ejecting brain matter lolled the driver's head towards her for a moment before his seat belt snapped him back in a motion curiously reminiscent of a crash test dummy in slow motion, flicking a lazy tail of blood and pulped synapse over her.  The concussion of it shattered two more windows. Luckily the car was too old to have an airbag or a car alarm. Her ears rang tinnily, and the car stank of blood, cordite, and human waste voided when the body died. Her heart seemed to be trying to rip its way out of her chest. Thump-thump, thump-thump. The old man shuddered and then sat up, his face horribly disfigured by the gun shot that had punched through his head. Blood ran down into his face and his thin fringe of hair was on fire from the muzzle flash, his right eyebrow burned away entirely. Grains of burning powder flecked his face, glowing like the coals of damnation.

“Well, that’s just unfriendly,” the man wheezed, its voice hideously distorted by its gunshot opened nasal cavity.  It’s hands grabbed for her, closing around her throat with a maniacal strength, fingers sinking into her neck like a wire noose. The gun rang out three more times before the darkness took her.

Part 1

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To: TEJ@anglefire.com, BCordova@sundaygroup.org, AMires@sundaygroup.org, ABlake@sundaygroup.org
From: ETregellan@sundaygroup.org
BCC: SPriest@PHI.inv.org
Subject: New Case Assignment <urgent>

Let those who look upon this writing {characters degrade into strange incomprehensible glyphs}

Report to 222 West Hubbard Street Chicago. 

E

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The body lay in the alley like a discarded rag. It glistened like a jewel with some liquid tar like substance that covered every inch of it, from teeth to toes and pooled on the asphalt around it besides. Eleanor had seen more than her share of bodies since she joined the Sunday Group but this one was weirder than most. She pulled her coat tighter around her body and sipped coffee from the thermos Emmaline had packed her, both minimally effective against the chill in the air.

The alley was a narrow one between two red brick buildings that lead onto West Hubbard. It was typical of of its kind, trash bins and other unsightly detritus of urban life. Wrought iron fire escapes climbed the sides of the buildings like ugly rusting ivy. There was nothing remarkable about it other than it as a little closer to the affluent down town than was normal to find a corpse. Eleanor wondered who had reported the body and to whom. Possibly it was one of Adri's contacts on the force.

Eleanor drew her cellphone from her pocket and turned it on. She opened a specialized app. Thaumaturgic Actinic Correlation Oscilloscope was one of Jocasta Glyn's projects. It was bad enough that she had engineered the backronym without the whimsical choice of icon. Eleanor tumbled it live and pointed the camera at the corpse. The picture was overlayed with color, not unlike a thermal camera would render but entirely in the magenta range. The background was a deep purple but the corpse glowed a pink so bright it was almost white, clear evidence that magic of some kind had been at play. Eleanor sighed and took a couple of pictures which she shunted into the discord thread for the rest of the team to see. A train rattled passed not far away, momentarily draining out the normal symphony of honking horns, rumbling engines, and raised voices that were soundtrack to Chicago life. Eleanor crossed to the body and knelt beside it, sniffing experimentally. There wasn't any smell of decay, and whatever the black fluid was, it wasn't particularly pungent. Still there was something familiar about the scent.

"Who were you?" Eleanor asked the corpse. It didn't answer, which was less of a certainty in her line of work than you might think.

The group is summoned to an alley in Down Town Chicago. Eleanor is already there along with a body that appears to be covered from head to toe in some kind of black liquid.

Arrive and begin investigating! Feel free to throw in some flavor as to your morning routine and/or homelife. Feel free to ask questions in the OOC or via pm if you feel you need to.

Character Name: Eleanor ‘Ellie’ Tregellan
 
Concept: Managerial Magician
 
Background: 

Ellie started out her career as an academic studying the anthropology of ritual magic, eventually writing her thesis on Mono-myth and Magical Practice in Pacific Prehistory.  How exactly she moved from this to working for the Sunday Group is unclear. What is clear is that she has been active in the Group for nearly a decade, which considering the rate of fatality and madness, is something of an achievement.

 Eleanor currently serves as the team leader of the Sunday group, liaising with clients and running the day to day operations of the team.
 
Ellie is married to Emma Stern, a former Sunday Group member who has retired from field to teach theoretical mathematics.
 
Physical Description: 

Ellie is a handsome, fit looking woman of middling height with the dark auburn hair and green eyes of the Celt. Her skin is pale and lightly dusted with freckles. Ellie comes across as both intense and distant, the two states flipping with disconcerting speed.
 
Powers:
 
Ritual Magician – Ellie specializes in ritual magic, the kind that takes circles and chants and laying naked beneath the summer moon. With enough time and the right conditions she can accomplish remarkable things.
 
Mathamagical – Although Ellie began her career as an intuitive magician, Emma’s influence has had a profound impact on her practice. It used to be that you had to get twelve women in a circle to chant for hours to raise energy – nowadays you can just write a recursive loop and iterate the Mandlebrot sequence to summon the Many Angled Ones. While she is not nearly as proficient in this school of magic as Emma, it is a potent addition to her arsenal.

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