[CLOSED] The Secret Cottage - Chicago - Mage [12/29/25]
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Dante - Moros Detective
Dice Pool: Investigation = Wits (4) + Investigation (4) = 8d10 (9 again)
Action: Discern any clues from the information from the server that would lead to the arson and Nightwatch's Murderer
Health: ///XX**
Mana/Vitae: 3
Willpower: 6
Conditions: Fucked upDante doesn’t comment on the food, the bathrobe, or Ken squaring up with a server like it might swing back. He just rubs the sleep out of his eyes and lets his senses settle, the way you do when you wake up somewhere that isn’t supposed to exist. He steps closer to the case as Ken works, one hand resting lightly against the armored shell, eyes unfocusing as he listens past the room and into the resonance clinging to the machine.
“What the hell were you hiding Nightwatch,” Dante murmurs, half to himself. He tires to follow the threads: scorched fear, panic layered over cold precision, the echo of fire that wasn’t just fire. Apartment blaze, sure — but guided, shaped. He traces it like a fingerprint smudged across time. “This thing wasn’t just caught in the blaze. I bet it was the reason there was a fire in the first place.” His jaw tightens. “Someone expected investigators. Wanted us chasing smoke while they destroyed any evidence.”
As the gauntlet ripples under Ken’s coercion and the case begins to yield, Dante straightens, already cataloging what they’ll need to look for once it’s open. “Logs around the timestamp of the fire. External access. Anything that looks like a magistrate’s idea of subtle.” He glances once toward Ashbriar on the phone, then back to the server. “If I’m right, this box doesn’t just tell us who lit the match.” A pause. “It tells us who thought they were untouchable while they did it.”
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Dosbox has two screens set up in the small confines of the place. One for him to tap away at and whisper sweet nothings to, and the other to show everyone what he has found.
There are a lot of files. He opens a couple and they are very rough notes from field agents, news reports, rumors, and interviews. Ashbriar would sigh when looking at them, probably at the mess. Dosbox does something, and the machine begins to make summaries for all the files. This elicits a short whistle from Ashbiar.
As they watch, a number of items come up. As time goes one, different mages begin to ask questions, and Dosbox does what he can to find, filter, and then share the information. It's impressive, as if the computer itself is trying to prove something to Dosbox like a pet retrieving a ball.
The night of the incident shows the culprits, some kind of skin stealing doppelganger of Dante, although able to replicate his aura as well as appearance, and a nondescript woman who... splits into three people all with less defined features.
The dante duplicate stabs the Adamantine Arrow guard repeatedly while the woman smashes Night Watch's apprentices, killing them with a single strike that caves in their heads or chests.
Night Watch throws some impressive spells, and shoots one of the ladies while knocking another through a wall. He kicks the shot one out of the same hole, sending them both falling to their deaths before he rushes for the window which shimmers with a Space portal. The Dante doppelganger kneels, touching the floor with both hands, and Night Watch slams into the window, falling backwards. The shimmering light of window seems blocked by something. The Dante clone stands and closes before the video feed goes out.
Looking at other footage, the Dante clone threw some things out of the elevator on a couple floors. Using some tools, the items look to be gas cans and fireworks which glimmer with spiritual riders. The Dante clone clearly brought fire spirits to make the fire spread fast, run very hot, and consume the building entirely, magic or otherwise.
In the elevator, the Dante clone turns to the camera and with incredibly bright blue eyes, winks at the camera. Dante does not have blue eyes.
The only sign of the magistrate was the woman; a fired employee of the office some 6 months past.
Other information:
There isn't a ton of time, so the team will have to inquire deeper after Dosbox has had some time to work on the server.
there is a file, called the Whispers of Azoth. It will take some time to parse it, but it looks like some kind of cult that the Guardians were trying to infiltrate, and failing. The Magistrate's name is mentioned multiple times.
There are maps of Abyssal Verges throughout the city, and they have a clear pattern. It looks like a path, like that from a tornado, that goes through the city and its heart. It is dated to the Blackout, and compared to some maps from before where none of the Verges existed. Night Watch has some musings on the Verges, that they are tied to the storm and that it has something to do with Reality itself being stretched and broken, not by a singular actor, but by the supernatural actions in the city at large over the previous 2 decades. He is looking at some kind of key that would unlock the dimensional rifts. This references another file.
Dimensional Rifts: Night Watch has a file from Fayne that discusses Dimensional Tears and Rifts. It looks like is based on previous research of Fayne's referencing his mentor and a temporal rift from years past, but that this is much larger and widespread. It looks to be the results of a clashing of energies that, like enormous hot and cold fronts, created a massive mystical event that rent the dimensional barriers and seemed to be drawn especially to those with strong magical resonance. The supernatural denizens of the city. Fayne supposes that they have been sucked into a kind of dimensional vortex that has left them in the fabrics between magical spaces, like a journey with a portal but becoming locked in the portal path itself before arriving at the destination. He thinks that they may all be in different locked zones based on their resonance and may be retrievable. However, the method of retrieving, well, even the method of confirming these theories is yet lost to him. He asks Night Watch to review the research and provide some feedback on methods that might be used to determine the truth of the theories.
Notes from the Free Council and Adamantine Arrow point to a Spirit war currently going on in the city. When the supernaturals all vanished, the local spirit lords immediately struck out to claim territory, resources, hallows, verges, and loci. They utilized urged and ridden to isolate areas, and began striking each other with packs of hybrid mutant spirit monsters as well as claimed, possessed, people to disrupt each other's efforts to secure areas and to destroy one another's agents. It looks chaotic and messy. The Adamantine Arrow has dedicated themselves to pressuring the Spirit Lords to confine their territory and reduce their use of human agents, as the injuries and deaths, the mental trauma, of these actions has caused major problems for the mortal city itself.
He has notes of werewolf sightings, but they look to be scouts, and are careful about being seen or disrupting the spirits. He has a letter he sent to New York stating that there are records of some werewolves keeping the spirits in check, and that they may have been what kept the spirit lords from doing just this before the Blackout. However, there are also some werewolves that willingly serve the spirit lords, or work with them, and if they come in and make deals it would be difficult to push them back. That would mean giving up a great deal of resources and reducing the mage influence in the city, as well as greatly restricting travel to different areas. He asks for some assistance in ascertaining the nature of the werewolves and some muscle to push them out before they can move in and make a foothold.
The Lakeborn Wraiths rising from the water and haunting the Navy Pier. He requests a clean up crew. More importantly, he wants a dive team to go into the lake and see if there is something pushing ghosts out of the lake and onto land.
Each person present can do one inquiry before the scene closes. I'll add a new scene for Dosbox to research and answer inquiries.
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Richard "Ricky Dee" Davenport - DosBox
Dice Pool: Intelligence (4) + Computers (4) = 8
Potential Applicable Merits: Familiar(••••)
Potential Applicable Praxes: One Mind, Two Thoughts
Action: Inquiring on the various acts the Spirit Lords are inflicting on innocentsMana Pool: 12 [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] (Spend 3/Turn) [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Health: 7 [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Willpower: 5 [X] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Conditions: NoneDescription: DosBox was a member of the Silver Ladder, briefly, because he believed in the ascension of people to a better state of being. He joined the Free Council due to conflicts with his Mentor's methods; people are people, even if they aren't yet mages. He recently joined the Guardians of the Veil because they were, currently, doing their best to protect everyone they could, which was what he was trying to do all along. The fact that the Spirit Lords were targeting innocents ignites a fury in him.
DosBox would wordlessly work on following an inquiry into what the Spirit Lords have been doing to innocents in the hopes that he might find ways to prevent that from happening in the future.
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• Ken(Hideki Takashi)
Dice Pool: resolve(4) + occult(3) + willpower(3)
Action: examining the Abyssal verses pattern. To see where it began and the likely next occurrence.
Health: full
Mana/Vitae: 13
Willpower: 6
Conditions:
Description
Ashbriar pens and paper please, Ken quickly traces the maps, the city now laid out before him in overlapping transparencies.
The Abyssal Verges cut across it like scars.
Red pen lines marked confirmed rifts; black dots marked disappearances, deaths, sites where Reality had failed just enough to kill someone. Names were written in the margins—some carefully, some hastily—until he stopped writing them altogether. Names invited emotional connection.
Ken’s eyes followed the pattern instead.
At first glance, it looked chaotic, the way storms always did when viewed too close. But distance brought clarity. He stepped back, arms folded, letting the human cost blur into abstraction. Victims became data points. Lives reduced to coordinates, timestamps, resonance readings.
Cold. Necessary.
“There,” he murmured.
The first occurrence wasn’t where the reports said it was. Not really. Those files marked the first catastrophic breach, the one no one could ignore. But the map told a different story. A faint Verge, barely measurable, two weeks earlier. Smaller. Quieter. One casualty, written off as an industrial accident.
A test. Or a stress fracture.
Ken traced the line forward with his finger, not thinking about the people who’d been standing there when the world gave way. He thought about strain. About accumulated resonance. About twenty years of spells, summoning circles, reckless workings piling pressure onto the Lie until the Blackout finally forced it to snap.
Not one culprit. Never one.
His gaze moved to the most recent Verge. Fresh ink. Still warm, metaphorically speaking. And beyond it—empty space. The map ended there, but the pattern didn’t. The angles suggested a continuation, a next point where Reality would fail again if nothing changed.
Prediction replaced grief.
Ken turned to DosBox asking if he could cross-referencing symbols, ley line distortions, historical rituals performed nearby. Ken shut down the part of himself that wanted to linger on faces, on aftermath photos, on the question of whether any of this could have been prevented sooner.
That line of thought was useless.
Understanding the pattern wasn’t cruelty. It was triage.
“Can you find the first?,” he asked quietly, “Then we can find the next.”
And if that meant seeing the city as a diagram instead of a home—
if it meant treating the dead as markers rather than tragedies—
Ken accepted the cost.
Emotion wouldn’t close the rifts.
Knowledge might. -
This part doesnt make sense in the scene: Ken turned to the adjacent board, already pulling occult texts and case files, cross-referencing symbols, ley distortions, historical rituals performed nearby. He shut down the part of himself that wanted to linger on faces, on aftermath photos, on the question of whether any of this could have been prevented sooner.
That line of thought was useless.Ken doesn't have computers, and its just DosBox's screen that he's running, and based on Night Watch's files which dont have occult texts.
I'm just going to have you ask Dosbox to do it, at least with what info is there.
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The files are what Night Watch could find, scrounge together, and then put together from the 18 months of investigations.
Much of the spirit files are signed off by Ashbriar. There are a couple other names as well, and much like hers, mostly observations and short discussions with different entities. Many of the Verges you are looking for are merely supposition based on Abyssal spirit sightings, or terrible stories in the news, and haven't been confirmed. Many more were confirmed long ago, and have no updates in months. It is not the concrete data set you were hoping for. Additionally, it reads like a police database, and is lacking in supplemental information regarding anything occult.
The main sites look to be in the Southwest, where the storm first reached a catalyst. These were confirmed recently by Chance, and are definitely very, very dangerous, and very bad. A massive abyssal wound is down there, and has been spreading through the influence of the foul things that crawled out.
The others look small, but the dates for them are unreliable. It is noted how difficult it is to get reliable Time data on Wounds and Abyssal Verges, as they warp magic and the world around them, making spells go haywire or act strangely.
As far as DosBox can report, the first major opening was the large one to the Southwest, called Hellpit in the files. There is another old one, much smaller north of it. The small sites look to trace the edges of the storm as it passed over the city and onto the Lake, where it seems to have lost most of its strength before going over Michigan and eastward. It does not appear that any new sites are opening, just that older sites are getting bigger. In fact, the files describing 'new sites' look to be discoveries of ones that were from the storm, meaning that the Cabal can assume that no new abyssal verges have opened since the storm passed over.
DosBox can find a number of files on Spirit activity. The large spirits have grown bigger and bolder in the city, and have staked territory vs each other. They are using people to battle one another's territory in a bid to expand their influence and power. This gives them more access to essence, essence generating places, and spirits that must swear fealty or be devoured, growing their armies.
There are five spirits in the city that seem to be the strongest, and would be most likely the spirits being referenced when saying Spirit Lords.
One is the weakest, and Ashbriar notes signs of a werewolf conflict that has decimated that spirits territory and deminished it greatly.
The Neon Crown, a powerful spirit of commerce and money. It squats like a bloated goblin king in the financial district in a massive 5/3rd bank, absolutely glutting itself on investments and loans.
Neon Crown
Domain: Money(wealth), Commerce, and Surveillance
Epithets: The Lord of Eyes, The Crown of Gold, The First Head of the City
Appearance: A radiant humanoid spirit formed from streetlight filaments, gold coins, and shattered lenses. Its face constantly shifts between dozens of human visages, all smiling. A crown of neon glass lights hovers above its head.
Resonance: Obsession with money, content, and fame. It prefers digital content, pushing influencers, digital transactions, and TV viewers to glue themselves to their screens and bet big.
Seat of Power: Downtown Chicago, the 5/3rd Building in the Loop and Magnificent Mile, where lights never die and windows always reflect.The Drowned Host
Domains: Water, Memory, and Surrender
Epithets: The Voice Below the Lake, Mother of the Undertow, The Second Head of the City
Appearance: A shifting tide of drowned bodies that speak in unison, eyes glowing like lanterns beneath the waves. Its surface changes to reflect whoever looks into it last.
Resonance: Forgetting and surrender — it feeds on lost things and the relief of letting go.
Seat of Power: The Navy Pier and its surrounding area, especially the area off the coast and in the lake.The Rust Regent
Domains: Decay, Abandonment, and Forgotten Industry
Epithets: The Iron Skeleton, The Patron of Broken Things, The Third Head of the City
Appearance: A massive spirit made of rusted machinery and corroded steel, its form slumped like an old king on a collapsing throne. Its voice is the grinding of metal and old wind.
Resonance: Neglect and entropy — feeds on abandoned places, failed infrastructure, forgotten hopes.
Seat of Power: The South Side industrial ruins, old rail yards, and decommissioned factories.The Conductor of Echoes
Domain: Sound, Transit, and Repetition
Epithets: The Rail-Wraith, The Voice of Motion, The Fourth Head of the City
Appearance: A skeletal, train-like spirit coiled through endless rails of sound and vibration. Its face flickers like a stuttering signal, and its voice is a dozen tones out of sync.
Resonance: Routine, rhythm, and endless movement without destination. It feeds on the patterns of commuters, sirens, and songs played too often.
Seat of Power: The O’Hare tunnels, L tracks, and the subsonic pulse of the city’s train lines.The Glass Widow
Domain: Faith, Reflection, and Connection
Epithets: The Veiled Saint, Mother of the Empty Pews, The Fifth Head of the City
Appearance: A tall, veiled figure made of stained glass and light, her hands perpetually clasped in prayer. Her face is cracked, but from within shines a divine blue fire.
Resonance: Worship without understanding. She thrives where belief persists after meaning dies.
Seat of Power: The city’s churches, cathedrals, and forgotten sanctuaries — especially those still lit but no longer visited.The files note some of Night Watches worries. He sees that the werewolves are fighting over territory and Loci in the different territories, and depending on what those werewolves want, they may empower one of the spirits over the others, or push them all into hiding. He doesn't know which, but is afraid to contact the werewolves as they are very famous for attacking the allies and support of their foes. That would put his mages into the target sights, and he needs to try and keep them safe until they know more.
the majority of claimed, and violence, is clearly on the borders between these spirit's territory, as they try to damage sources of essence, create resonance changes to weaken their adversaries, bring the public eye onto areas which seems to make it harder for the spirits to operate (Ashbriar notes, when humans congregate or put extra attention to an area, it raises the Gauntlet, strengthening the barrier between worlds and makes it harder for them to operate. She notes also it would be impossible to use this as a weapon except on very targeted areas and with media contacts.)
There are also some Loci, spiritual reservoirs of essence that feed the local spirit population, that they are fighting over. Some have been noted as having been destroyed in the conflict as well, causing strange effects in the material world.
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• Ken(Hideki Takashi)
Dice Pool: wits(3)+Academics(1)+ willpower(3)=7
Action: Ask dosbox to bring up any information regarding the spirit lord's specification who's the weakest after the storm and who significantly jumped up after the storm.
Health: 8/8
Mana/Vitae: 13
Willpower: 6/7
Conditions:
Description
Eyes on the monitors, Ken asks “Dosbox. Can you bring up anymore on the Spirit Lords."I am looking for who is the current weakest and who made a big jump in power after the storm.
Ken then waits patiently for answers.
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DosBox can put in the inquiry, as there is a bit of info on them. There are lesser powerful spirits who have territories, but those five by far are the most powerful and making all the plays.
They were listed in order of power, with the Neon Crown ahead by a fair stretch, as it basks in the money, and the 24 hour news cycle, promoting violence, corruption, and greed to create scandals and stories that the News eats up from coast to coast, and flooding its domain with Essence and new spirits.
They all made a big jump in power after the storm. It seems they were all content to sit on their hill and not bother anyone, then all over supernaturals vanished, and they snapped up Loci (spiritual places of power that spirits can cross over at and produce Essence, spirit energy that is both food and currency to them), as well as territory in the sudden absence of everything else.
The Neon Crown took the largest jump, as it has tried to get Chicago on the news every day in some form or fashion. The Glass Widow though seems to gaining great strength with a rising group of Evangelicals in the region who are binding together under some pretty hateful ideology and trying to push on others and cause problems.
There is also note of Night King that has risen from the Hellpit on the Southwest side. Much of the file is empty, as it seems NightWatch was having trouble getting any real intel outside of rumors and hearsay. Chance can attest to the difficulty in inspecting the area, and there in undoubtably a great deal of fear in the local spirit world regarding the rise of an Abyssal Spirit, which it does note the other spirit lords are not fond of.
NightWatch makes multiple mentions that the spirit lords grabs for power and rise may be a reaction to the arrival of the Abyssals. They are preparing for war or attack by something dark and horrible.
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Couple notes on Spirits in general:
Rank - spirit ranks is a term given to spirits by werewolves and mages, and allows them to be categorized roughly by their power.
Rank 0 are small non-intelligent spirits very similar in analogue to grass, insects, and krill. They are the primary food stuff of the spirit world. Any strong emotion, or powerful resonance spawns a cloud of Rank 0 spirits, often referred to as Motes, which are then gobbled up by the surrounding spirit world. Some spirits travel to areas for specific feasting times, like whales migrating to annual krill blooms. These take the form of large events, or very intense events. Strong rivalry sports games, casinos during tax season, military bases before deployment, business during bankruptcies and layoffs, or concerts with especially frenzied fan bases. Some motes survive, eating other spirits and motes to grow large enough to become a higher ranks.
As spirits become more powerful they become more distinct and specific in their influence, type, command, and weaknesses. A Rank 1 spirit may have a weakness like getting it wet, or holding a type of material to become immune to their abilities while a Rank 5 spirit would require the water to be from rain water twice blessed by a priest from a specific part of the city, or the material to be mined from a certain place, mined in a certain way, and formed into a specific shape at a certain time,
Rank 1 spirits are basically small prey animals, and are very generic spirt like light, water on the shore, rain drops, money, commerce, pain, darkness, rabbits, squirrels, cows, etc.
Rank 2 spirits are larger and usually more predatory, but still completely animalistic. They are more specific, such as a specific kind of the thing that they were before. Roof Rust, Burrowing Eater (rabbit), Night Stalker (fox), Melancholy Rain (water), Crashing Wave (water), Unyielding Fire (fire).
Rank 3 spirits become sentient, and are the most common to cross the gauntlet, the wall that separates spirit world and material world, and also the most common to influence, ride, and possess people, animals, or objects. They have specific names each and are individuals. These can be spoken with, reasoned with, bartered with, and make up the primary servants and agents of more powerful spirits.
Rank 4 are the most powerful spirits that can still move around. They tend to be potent locations that feed by luring in other spirits, or large geographic features like an area of a forest, river, an ancient tree, a small mountain, a park, a large mall, a finance building, and most spirit lords are in this Rank.
Rank 5 are the most powerful spirits mortals will come across. These are the most powerful of earthly spirits and include things like city spirits, forest spirits, large mountain spirits, the most powerful of spirit lords, large lakes, ocean currents, werewolf lodge totems, some tribal totems, and should not be casually approached if they can be approached at all.
Spirits don't understand the Ranking system, and will not know what it means, but Mages and Werewolves use it as it a quick reference to categorize and understand the flora and fauna of the spirit world. Spirits deal aggravated damage to lower ranking spirits, and often use this as a means of controlling lesser spirits. Many spirits also instinctively prefer hierarchies or groups, like ants, wolves, and fish in a school. Spirits instinctively know if another spirit is more or less powerful than they are.
the spirit world is like a giant high school in the woods. Rank 0-2 spirits are in the background just living their lives, while Rank 3-4 spirits are vying for pecking order, trying to get into cliches, moving around as need be, and picking on each other. Rank 5 spirits rarely move, or do so in specific paths (ocean currents, depth spirits, very high altitude wind spirits, large rivers).
Most spirits have etiquette and customs built into their nature, or specific behaviors that can be used to their disadvantage. These are usually compulsions or instinctual behaviors that they cannot resist, or formal behaviors that will make them more friendly.
Each spirit has a Ban and a Bane. A Ban is a weakness that is special to that type of spirit or that individual spirit depending on Rank, and have a unique effect which could be making the user immune to that spirits powers, to putting the spirit to sleep, to forcing it out of an area, to bleeding its essence out, to any other myriad of things. A Bane is a substance that is anathema to the spirit and cause Aggravated damage to it while also burning off its essence.
Spirits are very hard to kill. When they take physical form, destroying their form only sends them back to Twilight (non-material, like a ghost), or back to the spirit world. In the spirit world, destroying them usually discorporates them, where they will reform over a given period of time depending on the strength of the spirit. Most Rank 0 and 1 spirits won't reform, but some Rank 2 and most Rank 3 and higher will. The secrets of killing them are not well known, but it is much harder than simply destroying them in the spirit world.
Most spirits aren't friendly, but also aren't immediately dangerous. Offering a Tithe [Mage] is usually the best way to speak to one. This is either an item that resonates with them that can be destroyed to create essence for them, or a gift of Essence (not mana). Spirit magic can be used to convert mana into Essence, but spirits cannot use raw Mana. They need it cooked first.
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