Rick's Entry for November

(( 4 points. You know the deal. Time. Plot, Subplot. Others. ))

Hello, world!

We're arrived in Europe. We saw many new things, like ferals that could turn into nagas, and vampires... the latest, we had wished we hadn't seen. In fact, we're trying to keep a low profile and stay out of... certain places. We have been threatened and I'm pretty sure those weren't fake threats. Being told that our blood would be part of a grand family meeting was quite charming. Except not really. Other than that, Eastern Europe has a lot of nice things to see... but I have a feeling you guys don't really care about our tourism and the places we did stuff, so I will skip to the other good stuff.

Did you know that things here hide many secrets? Probably nothing like the things Lizzy and Christian found in the Library (which I hope I can see some day, because it does sound really cool), but we've found some interesting people. Vampires aren't the only ones around here, there are werewolves too. We may have had our feud in the past, but we both dislike vampires for different reasons, so we were able to use that to get into their inner circle. Told them about our cause, and they've started spreading the news on their conspiracy website. I think we may be assembling a little army of people willing to help us, but time will tell. After all, things on the net are fleeting, one second something is hot, the next, it's forgotten. Still, saving the world ought to create a few memes and spark some talk, shouldn't it?

That's it for us this month. I know I've been vague about my location, but I don't to say too much. Oh, by the way, we've found gramp in Toronto, got him out of there, he's fine. Amelia was definately happy about that. Anyway... Darrel, you really need to stop travelling places for no reason and get yourself almost killed. I mean, It's probably hypocritical of me to say this, but I think you're pushing it a liiiittle too far. It's not going to help if you're dead, unless Chris can actually bring people back from it. Why don't you come over here? I could give you indications about where we are if you want to come. Werewolves would probably be even more trusting if I had a werewolf here to help me.

Chris and Lizzy... well, glad to see you two are alive. I'm kind of jealous of your little trip, but I'm gonna keep quiet about it... I did say that Amelia kind of didn't like Lizzie, didn't I? Not hate, but... yeah... you two should get together to kills any doubt. :P

Time for me to go now. Be safe everyone, don't get killed too much! And if someone actually do revive Ramira, please tell me as soon as you can.

Austin's entry for the month of November (done)

((4 points, including 1 for world event. The Golden Dawn, a brutish, occult-rideen political party of the extreme right with offices all over Europe, sweeps to power in Greece admist terrible rioting. Part of their platform openly involves reigning in supernatural beings and powers, of which they accuse the rest of the world of being lax, cowardly and slow. The Party is at the forefront of the first real witch-hunts seen in Europe for almost a thousand years))

Where to begin? For once there's so much to talk about I don't know where to start. Hello, hello from northern Ireland, I suppose. Belfast, actually. I could try to deal with things in order, but uh... order of importance, specifically. First, on the subject of the The Enemy. I think I can say with confidence I've changed my tune. Over the last few months I've seen and experienced more than enough to believe in the final victory. It was ridiculous to assume we could ever talk things out. Rather I'm of the mind our fortunes might someday be wholly reversed. We could do so much more than save Ramira. Ultimately we could carve out whole swaths of territory for ourselves; we could expand and change at the Outsiders' expense. They have nothing to gain by extinguishing the flame of life, where as we have everything to gain if we could devour the void itself and make it our foundation.

Our progenitors the Great Old Ones came very close to realizing this goal before the Shaggoths turned on them, and the Shaggoths have come to regret that development. And even if we ought not to trust them we still have a unique edge this time around. It is certainly true that faith is our chiefest ally. Our quest is for the New Realm and the New Man, and we can find them only through faith. Faith in ourselves will carry us to ultimate victory.

Now uh... perhaps I should regale you with some of my recent exploits. Running damage control in Arkham has been costing me a fortune, but that's over with. I don't like the idea of handing it over to Sea Org but I'd rather not piss them off. We packed up everything we could and hauled it over to the oculory. Shop we've got set up now is a bit modest but we'll be making much better use of it, I promise you that. Cookies are even suggesting we could open up a proper underground resturaunt, bring in some extra money and let us keep tabs on all the 'sorts' passin' through Arhkam. Right now though we're just holding together. What's left of us.

It's funny how so many of us got the idea to head off to Europe at about the same time. Interesting. Tis' what you call a coincidence. Darrel will have left for England or Wales by now. I'd have been in Belfast over a month ago if I could help it. At the moment I'm getting about read to leave for my next stop. I may not have been here very long but I'm sure I left a good impression on the N-I-R-A. In their company, uh... well many false lives have been extinguished. Now I don't have the patience or the time for every little detail, and anyway the whole affair ought rightly to remain hush-hush lest I endanger you all, so instead here's a rundown of exactly the sort of thoughts I was thinking in the order I thought them while I was in mortal danger. You're all intelligent enough to piece things together on your own. Also it was my birthday last month, so consider this my birthday present from me, me, to you. You.

Ahem. Irish cops aren't allowed to carry any guns! They'd rather waste time in the wilderness following a poltergeist blood clot than solve any crimes! They also hang out at the docks welding shit together since they make pretty much no money. They trap their women in a storage hole to protect them from their trouser lust! So, we're gonna' want guns, of course, we're gonna' have to talk to the Cranberries for that. AND we're gonna' want drugs, we're gonna' also have to talk to the Cranberries for THAT. These bro-skates are gonna' have to get really fuckin' high to deal with United Irish isles. This place freakin' sucks and I'm going to have to inject a TON of [REDACTED]. Are they really gonna' try and pidgeon-dick me into one of THESE shity rolls? They even have trentals in this town. That's what they call them over here. Trentals.

Oh no, ghosts and badguys came! Ring the dinner bell, it's time for your shit! Look at these jokers, everyone stays just followin' each other around, it's 'cause Irish people STILL don't have their independence! Whatever, just dose up and forget about it, mate. And never shake that gory bridge at me. NEVER SHAKE! Irish people would interrupt the best gym job of their lives to go to church. Dammit it's so dark it's harder to tell what's going than a pregnancy test, which I could deal with if I wasn't gonna' be a DAD soon!

The stockings get hung by the chimney with kerosine, cause Irish people only like that shit when it burns! Dangit I told you idiots if you just stay together you're gonna' be a bunch of sitting dogs! You gotta' split up and go in the darkness so they approach you in a line single file. So you're dead, stupid, I know how to work every weapon that was ever born! Damn, Christmas Cracker, a white person's worst nightmare.

Suddenly from the menstrual miasma they strike! Do you even want to know what THAT is?

I think that about covers it, honestly. Part one of my little holiday is now successfully complete. Next stop will be to the south-west, followed by a trip to the Black Forest, then Lapland, and finally northern Russia. Seeing a pattern? I wish I'd thought of Europe months ago. Vampires. Werewolves. The Hosts of Heaven. My sort of crowd; exultant, ruthless and VIRILE! Actually if I can I'm going to try and make my way yo Greece. You have heard a thing or two about the Golden Dawn. Securing their good offices might allow us to finally ween ourselves off the puss-laden teet of Scientology. Naveou Europa! The Kingdom of Noise TREMBLES at our advance.


Happy hunting, gentlemen. Your affectionate comrade, A. A. Merit.

Christian's Entry for November 2012

((Four points, as I meet all the requirements for such. I hope to have my short story into Kirby soon, the entry that’s due at the end of January. That means a little bit of a dip into the future with things, but that’s okay. It just means everybody is going to know what I’m gonna find in my December entry. And End, in no uncertain terms, you don't need to stress too much about the rules. We're dealing with threats at such a cosmic scale that the rules are largely irrelevant anyways. I've had a short back-and-forth RP going with Kirby for the last two months to figure out this entry, and not once did we even consult rules for it. Don't stress out. And yes, other races do have weaknesses. Cold Iron, Fire, Sunlight, Humans (Prometheans). Only mages and Sin-Eaters don’t. But enough about rules. Onto the story!))

Dear Everyone,

We only just got out. Tired, weak, drained. Barely alive I think. But we are alive, both of us. And we've done it! So no doubt you will remember that I talked about proving that the magic we have is greater than the Outsiders. Prove that cthulhu and the rest did not have true dominion over everything, even if that's the way it looks right now. The only way to prove that would be to use the magic of any of the races to try and the Outsiders directly. My small-scale test is going to be bringing back Ramira. In order to accomplish this, I wanted to find one of the Oracles, which is easier said than done. Mages have been trying to find the Oracles since Atlantis fell, without much success. Of course I came up with a different approach to solving the conundrum I hoped might be more effective.

The fact is, if the Oracles really existed, they were all ordinary people before they ascended and became the godlike beings they are (presumably) now. Instead of looking for them directly, I figured the easiest way to find them would be to track down someone made while they were still human, made by their own hands. A spell, or a tool, or a sandwich, it wouldn't matter. Find it, knowing what it was, and use it to target them with sympathetic magic. Simple, yes? Not at all. It requires the knowledge of who the Oracles were /before/ they became who they are. Obviously that knowledge has been dead for some time. As such, we had only one place to turn: The Athenaeum. I've been hoping to get together with Liz to travel down there, since I don’t know the first thing about the underworld. Well that happened. Not much to report before that. The mages here are mostly speculating and postulating, and dealing with relocating our number that had been living in Boston and Toronto. The possibility of partnerships with local military, and this insane suggestion of an alliance with the True Fae (not my idea) have been proposed. As it stands, we're still waiting on the Guardians of the Veil, along with the Mysterium. I think I know how I will win the support of the Guardians, actually. Their job already lines up with what we're trying to do, so all that I have to do is prove to them that I'm this guy called the... nevermind. I think this will play right into our hands, though. If I can bring Rami back from the dead, it would be all the proof they need, and we'll only be two orders short of a pentacle.

But nothing really happened in that space, just lots of talking. The Yakuza keep the streets clear here, for which we thank them. The Silver Ladder already has agreements in place with the vampires here. I just wish we could make those worldwide. But none of the other races seem to have such a unified structure. You couldn't unite them the same way... which is unfortunate.

So what happened? Well, not being judicious with the details, Lizzie knows what she's doing around the Underworld. Getting into the Library was much harder than I had thought. Here I thought that we could just ride a train or something (a dead train, spooky) straight in. But no. Apparently there are all these rules down there called the Old Laws that you can't break. Like, can't. I didn't even see the Others down there. When you do try to break them, there are these horrible monsters that try to kill you. We had to wander through several different little dead kingdoms, each one with their own rules. It's /insane/ down there. I suspect that the Underworld will probably be the last part of our world to fall. Maybe if we need to run we should follow the Sin Eaters. They'll probably live longer than any of the rest of us. Though they might not want to.

We made it there eventually, though. The Athenaeum was guarded by a pair of gigantic sphinxes... and no, that isn't a joke or an exaggeration. The supposedly mythical creature. Getting in was not easy - it was give them something new or die. I was glad I've been on a quest for knowledge for basically a year now, so I had something to share. Something true, and terrible. If only telling them made me forget.

When we got inside, things didn't get any easier. Turns out the information had been stolen by an ancient mage, who had been cursed and trapped as a result. We managed to track him down, and he agreed to show us what we needed so long as we would free him. This was... easier said than done, since the only way to do that was with magic, and one of the laws of the place was that magic cannot be used. He made us promise, though... and I thought we were dead. Or we might be. Honestly, I was surprised. Liz stuck with me. She could have left me to it... if she had, I'd be dead, but... once he had led us to the scroll we needed, I digitized it, and it was time to make good on the bargain. Which meant breaking the Old Laws. You should have felt the ground shake when that thing started coming. That poor mage’s body was still fading to his final reward when it came, knocking over shelves and screaming to get at us, hidden away as we were.

You would not believe the sort of damage that thing took and seemed not even to notice. It wasn’t as though we had much of our power left by the time we got there to start with. It was all we could do to run. Fly, actually, as that seemed more worthwhile than wasting energy on fruitless attacks. In the end, though, it was a ghost who saved us. I wish I could properly thank her... I will let Liz talk more about her, since she was her friend. She got us out. Helped us escape. I don't even know what sort of magic that was... but we weren't in the Underworld anymore. And we have what we need. The work of translation is going to begin soon, once Liz and I get a chance to rest. A long, well—deserved rest. I think I know why the Athenaeum hates mages now, though.

I wish all of you a safe month. I am glad that Zeus was able to kill that thing, whatever it was. The Arrow will help as long as they can, but they won’t be able to stay forever. Their unit will he needed somewhere else, perhaps they already have other orders. I’m sure they won’t abandon you, though. Once you get out, you are gonna need somewhere new. My suggestion would be somewhere new. Somewhere in the wilderness, without a rotten history of corruption and evil. As for Europe, Ricky, it is definitely worth exploring, but there are not many of your kind there. It may be dangerous for you. Europe is the old world and is ruled primarily by the old races. Vampires are in the distinct majority among all races there (except human) so watch out if you decide to travel there!

As for everyone else, I hope you’re safe. Be patient. I will soon have the solution to this predicament of ours. Let Cthulhu try and stop us!

-Christian