Date: [1-15-2026] -- Early Oct, 2014
Location: The Cottage

Player Characters Present: Dosbox
Open Spots: 3

NPCs Present: Ashbriar
Current Scenario: Dosbox is parsing all of the files, creating summaries using his technology spirit and some programs, and then copying them onto hard drives.

Suggested Dice Pools: Computer stuff, knowledge checks
End Trigger: Each participating player finishes a single inquiry

Opener: The apartment shouldn’t exist — at least, not exactly where it is.

Wedged between realities, it occupies a narrow space that feels slightly out of sync with both the material world and whatever bleeds through from the Shadow. The walls shimmer faintly, as if light is filtering through layers of unseen glass. Sometimes the angle of the room doesn’t quite match itself — the corners feel off, and if you stare too long, the geometry seems to breathe.

At the center of this half-place, Dosbox hunches over a battered laptop that hums with the sound of a hundred hidden processes. He’s a lanky guy — shoulders slightly curved inward, hair messy from too many nights awake, a hoodie zipped up to his chin despite the room’s stuffy heat. His glasses reflect green lines of code scrolling across the screen like ghostly runes. Empty cans of Red Bull and ramen cups clutter the desk beside him, and beneath the table, a tangle of wires snakes outward into something monstrous.

The server — the heart of the operation — sits in the corner like a caged beast. Its armored shell, scavenged from some old Night Watch black project, hums low and deep, as though remembering the man who once owned it. Jagged scratches mar its surface where something sharp once struck it; faint glyphs shimmer along its seams, more protective ward than ornament. A handful of external drives blink softly — pulsing in uneven rhythm, like artificial heartbeats.

Two external monitors mirror the contents of Dosbox’s screen so the mages gathered behind him can see. Each monitor shows fragments of corrupted video logs, encrypted reports, and strange spectral readings — flashes of faces, symbols, coordinates, dates that suddenly stop mid-sentence. The filenames read like code names and cover-ups: OP_Threnody, Blackwater_Resurgence, Chicago_Null_Zone, Subject_Dustline.

The air smells faintly of solder, dust, and ozone — and beneath that, something older, something wrong. The boundary between here and the Shadow feels thin. Every so often, the lights dim for just a breath too long, and when they flicker back, the mages see brief afterimages of ghostly hands tapping on the screens, echoing Dosbox’s movements.

Dosbox mutters under his breath, typing furiously. “Most of the logs are fractured — some overwritten, some wiped intentionally. Whoever hit Night Watch didn’t just kill him, they wanted this buried.”

He stops, glancing up at the group of Awakened behind him. The monitors glow against his pale face, throwing lines of code across his eyes like arcane sigils.

“I’m pulling everything I can before the system locks me out,” he says, voice hoarse from caffeine and tension. “There’s something here about the Storm Event. Something big. Night Watch was tracking it before he got hit.”

The room hums louder — the server fans whirring, reality itself tightening around the edges.

It feels like something is listening from the other side of the glass.

And as the mages prepare to ask their questions, the monitors flicker — just once — and a single new folder appears on the desktop, unprompted:

“DO NOT OPEN UNTIL THEY ASK.”