Nomadic:Sessions:20180421
Marcus offers each of the five lingering patrons at Mountain Peak $100 cash to vacate the premises. Three of them gladly take the money. A fourth demands $150, but withers beneath Marcus' steely gaze and slinks away. The remaining man hands Marcus his business card and offers to "spread the story" over media outlets and the internet. Marcus assures him we're not looking for publicity, and the man finally leaves.
Valerie has set up her sniper post in a tree outside. She sends Carmella to Vincente, suggesting she make herself useful. Vincente has Carmella form a chain with all the 42 ghosts in and around the bar, then casts Soul Rider and looks through each one's eyes.
A sedan pulls into the parking lot, and a man and woman get out and enter the bar. The man is someone the group had seen among Veritas people earlier; the woman is disguised. Both are armed. Marcus: "Are you two with Veritas?" The man chatters, "No, what is that? Doesn't that mean 'truth'? I have a BS in liberal arts..." Marcus remarks as he fast-draws his pistol and briefly places it on the table with his hand over it, "Liberal arts, huh? Nice weapons. Here's mine." He then lists the locations of their weapons. He gets the two to give their names, Isabella Davis and Lynn York, then asks, "What are you doing with the ghosts?" Isabella gives a vague answer about "learning things" and "connecting to the living."
Pierre Barlow and Elma Allan make an entrance. Rick reports that two other people in the car that had pulled in right behind them have not gotten out. Valerie notes that a car parked on Emigrant Street; two men were sneaking toward the back of the building, and a third, decked out in combat gear, had gone off in another direction.
Vincente murmurs, "They're going to use anti-magic. They don't know I'm just going to shoot." Aloud to Elma and Pierre: "I suggest your guys don't get too close. We can't tell the difference between them and Veritas." Elma: "This city's spiritual energy is off the charts." Vincente: "If I stop Veritas' evil plan and you take up the baton, then what will I have accomplished? No matter how many I kill, they send more." Barlow: "They don't like healthy competition."
Marcus brings over and introduces "Elma from the Collective" to York and Davis. York: "I don't know who you've mistaken us for." Marcus: "Try not to kill each other."
Vincente introduces Barlow to Wade Miller. Vincente warns Miller to back off his people; Miller claims "They haven't arrived from Sacramento yet." Vincente: "I think your input into this will be invaluable... I'm not here to guarantee anyone's safety. There are no non-combatants here. We're all 'alphas'... Do you feel the ghosts in here?" Miller: "I got goosebumps."
In an aside, Vincente has Carmella touch Miller. She says, "He's intense." Vincente: "Do you think you could take him over?" Carmella: "Yes." Vincente (testing whether Miller could hear her): "She said 'no'." Miller shows no reaction.
Rick reports another car has pulled up and four people are getting out: Lori Griffith, Glen Aguirre, and the pretend detectives 'Asimov' and 'Campbell'. Marcus: "Isabella, Lynn, your bosses are here."
When she spots Barlow, Griffith does a double-take, then frowns. She glances over at Davis and York and says, "Drop the act." They pointedly move away from Elma Allan.
Vincente greets Lori. "Have a seat. You know Pierre Barlow?" LG: "I like to be punctual. He was quicker than I was."
Vincente gathers Marcus, WM, LG, and PB all at one table. "Let's all hold hands for a minute." He casts Medium so they can see all the ghosts in the room. LG: "Are you a 'ghost whisperer' or something?" Vincente: "Want to look through their eyes?" LG: "No, but I get that you can." Vincente: "These are only the ones inside this room..."
Vincente: "Tell me what you hope to gain... Somehow you're getting time from the ghosts." LG: "You've been persistent. I will be candid. Working with spirits is hard. Our process only works in certain places, such as Stonehenge. Bodie and the rest of Mono County is very spiritual. The tiki torches let us gather 'stuff'. As for 'why', what does everyone want? Immortality! It would make billions. The dead don't need time." Vincente: It's not the money. You're making a weapon." PB: "There's a lot I could do with time on a person... age, de-age, then retrain... Tonight we could take over the world."
Vincente: "My objection is that you're stealing time." LG: "Once you take the time, they go back to where they were." Vincente: "No, they don't. They're still here." LG: "We haven't really started harvesting yet." Vincente: "If you pulled up Gandhi's ghost, would that mean he never existed?" LG: "No, he doesn't exist." Vincente: "Why are you hiding? Why not just do it?" LG (pointing at PB): "Without him around, we would have a monopoly." Vincente: "If you're doing it covertly, why are you killing people?" LG: "To avoid exposure."
Vincente: "There's a piece you're not telling me... Either Pierre gets it or you don't get it, and he's happy either way." LG: "We don't share with Collective." PB looks thoughtful. Vincente: "Is a sacrifice needed?" LG: "No." PB: "But it always helps."
Vincente: "How are you holding the energy?" LG: "We have devices that will deploy at the right time." Vincente; "Oh, at the full moon, which is tomorrow." LG: "That is the best time. The equipment is being transshipped in."
LG: "You have cost me too much in assets. What do I have to do..." Vincente: "What if my group flew off and left you alone?" LG: "I would bring in my team on the full moon, make the collection, and make Veritas Inception more influential. We'd buy land in the county and be on site regularly at the full moon." Vincente: "Do you know what the torches are doing?" LG: "Concentrating a crowd of ghosts."
Vincente: "Carmella, how are you feeling?" CJ: "She is talking about killing ghosts. I'm not happy." Vincente: "Go ahead and touch Lori." LG: "You might not want her touching me. It might be bad for her health." CJ: "She has something on her like a tiki torch times 100." Vincente casts Aura (crit) and perceives that LG is "encased in a sphere of death." She has strong will, awareness of psi and magery, is organized and methodical, and does not value other people. LG: "Our mages are merging mystic energy with technology. Most of the ore they need has been destroyed. What I'm wearing is experimental and dangerous. But perhaps I'm the guinea pig." Vincente: "How are you feeling?" LG: "I admit I have a persistent headache."
LG: "You are shutting down this operation. We have lost torches, vehicles, people..." Vincente: "Your two mages were a loss." LG: "We don't know how many of you there are." Vincente: "We are legion! No, I was kidding. But you, you are a suicide bomber. You're here to blow me up." LG: "I am willing to walk away. I value my life." Marcus: "Just bite down on your tooth!" Vincente: "I contemplated teleporting you to our vehicle." LG: "If you could teach our mages teleportation, I might voluntarily shut down this operation." Marcus: "How about Elma and Lori arm-wrestle, loser goes away?" WM: "If they could be driven off, we would interdict this area and prevent any future attempts."
Valerie: "What if they're trying to bring the dead back to life?" Vincente to LG: "Who would you bring back?" LG: "Not just one, but I don't know who was decided on. They had a big debate." Vincente: "Can we have the death thing?" LG:" No. It's a very important part of Veritas Inception tech." EA: "I sense she's dancing around the truth."
Vincente decides that the 'death thing' is wrapped around LG's body beneath her clothes. Vincente casts an illusion; his eyes appear to float out of his head toward LG and stop one foot away. All the Veritas people as well as WM and MC tense up. Vincente: "I want to see what's on your body. Both these Collectives are more powerful than me." LG: "You were trained in a different place." Vincente: "A Shaolin temple. When I snatched the pebble, I could leave. ... Since we won, I guess we can part as non-friends. You're coming with us, right?" LG: "So now I'm with Johnson and Johnson." Vincente: "We won't do physical torture on you." LG: "So all I have to do is agree to leave with you. All right, I will leave with you."
Vincente (over radio): "Fourteen, bring the vehicle to the front and have a blanket ready. Eleven, if those jerkoffs in the car get out, let 'em have it." Valerie: "Can I do it anyway?" Vincente: "Sure, go ahead."
Vincente casts Teleport Other which puts Lori in front of the bar. Rick wraps her up and places her inside the Navigator. Vincente: "Go drive to the road; we'll be fine. Johnson, get her tooth and come back." Marcus can tell that LG is feigning disorientation. He injects her in the back of the neck with a sedative, but it doesn't affect her. He pulls her mouth open and extracts the suicide tooth. When he touches her to ziptie her hands, Marcus experiences an intense jab of pain in his gut; he doesn't let the pain show. When he zipties her feet, the pain is like a twisting knife; this time he grunts softly. He wraps a rope around the blanket, then sits her up and belts her in.
Vincente: "Glen, I'm going to take Wade and Maya." PB: "We'll leave with you, also." GA: "She signaled that she wasn't mind-controlled." Vincente: "Carmella, you can leave and go back to the one you love. If the ghosts can find the machine and let me know where it is, that'd be good. ... Glen, nobody here has to die right now. If I become upset, your people will become ghosts."
Vincente lays several hundred dollars cash in front of the bartender. "Forget the past hour. We didn't break anything."
As he heads for the door, Vincente mutters, "It's almost like Lori was stalling." EA agrees. Marcus checks his A/V and hears Glen saying, "We follow the plan. She's a tough bitch and she wants to live." PB and EA get in their car and head into town.
Vincente and Marcus climb into the Navigator. Vincente tells Rick, "Head to the airport. I don't want to be caught in town." To Marcus, indicating LG: "Is she out?" Aloud, Marcus says "Yes" while shaking his head "no." Vincente: "Did you pat her down?" Marcus: "I left her for you."
As the Navigator rolls past the airport toward Garbage Pit Road, Vincente removes LG's shoes, then unties the rope, removes the blanket, and carefully unbuttons her blouse. There is something like a corset around her body, next to her skin, with wires running around to the small of her back. The apparatus is apparently anchored to her breastbone. He casts Levitation but the spell is resisted. "I thought you said she was out." He tries again and this time it works. He raises her up to look at her back. There's a box about the size of a cigarette case at the base of her spine. With his switchblade he cuts her blouse up the back, exposing the box and wires, which are made of refined metal from the strange ore. Vincente takes some wire cutters and starts to clip the wires. Searing pain makes him cry out, "Man, that hurt!"
Vincente: "I apologize in advance, Lori." He casts a lightning bolt into the box. LG's eyes pop open, she convulses, and emits a muffled scream. There are smells of burnt metal and burnt flesh and ozone. Marcus: "What are you doing?!" Vincente: "Foreplay."
Now the box shows as magical, where it didn't before. Vincente: "How are your mages doing that?" LG: "I told you, it's a prototype. I'm not a mage." Vincente: "It hurt me." Marcus: "Yeah, hurts like a B, doesn't it?" LG: "It anchored itself when I pierced my skin with the wire." Marcus: "That's not creepy at all." LG says at this point she has been wearing the device for six hours, and her headache is getting worse. (Valerie: "Twelve, why wouldn't they have put it on a mage?" Vincente: "There are side effects.") LG: "Scott ran for home, Los Angeles. Veritas won't be pleased."
Vincente casts Dispel Magic on the device. The magic is dispelled. LG screams and appears to be having a seizure. Vincente casts Minor Healing on her. Suddenly everyone in the Navigator is stunned and experiences a Death Vision. Rick manages to pull the Navigator over and stop it on the side of the road. Marcus is strapped to a chair being tortured to death. Vincente is being hacked to death by two swordsmen in medieval costume.
LG lies limp, not breathing. Vincente tentatively touches her neck; there's no pulse. He casts Lightning which causes burn damage but jolts her heart into beating again. Marcus: "Seriously, warn me next time!" Vincente cuts away the wires and pulls the connector out of LG's sternum.
Vincente calls "Lori?" but again she has stopped breathing. "They're trying to make her dead, so I want to make sure she lives." He pulls her out of the car and lays her on the ground, then performs CPR and casts Minor Healing. Finally her vital signs stabilize. He bundles her back into the Navigator and tells Rick to start driving.
Vincente: "Why did you want to die?" LG: "The goal was to kill you and as many of your team as possible. It was not as effective as they said. I got a couple of jolts into you." Vincente: "You must know something worth dying for." LG is silent. Vincente: "We're headed to Bodie."
Valerie had hung back at Mountain Peak and shot out tires on each opponent's car before they could pursue the Navigator. She warns, "Agent Twelve, Elma and Pierre are following you." Vincente phones PB who says, "I'm following Lori. It's something I'm good at." Vincente: "Lori is mine. What do you want with her?" PB: "I thought you might dump her." Vincente: "It's not a consensus that she should live." EA: "I recommend to Pierre that we get some rest. We have more people arriving later today."
At Bodie, thousands of ghosts are in the area. Marcus notes that a "clean team" has collected the corpses and bikes. In the cemetery, Malachi Johnson's tombstone has been moved again and topped with a new capstone. "Why?" wonders Vincente. LG: "It's the optimal place." Vincente: "Not anymore." LG: "We have the instructions and equipment and the time to bring it from L.A." Vincente: "Malachi, what is it about your headstone?" Malachi shrugs, "I don't know." Vincente casts Medium on LG so she can see the multitude of ghosts.
Marcus spots a flash 200 yards to the west, a silenced rifle shot. Vincente steps in front of LG and the shot misses.
Marcus acquires the shooter and vectors in Valerie. Vincente turns and hugs LG to him; she kicks at his belly and misses (he still has Levitation on her). Valerie runs over both the sniper and the spotter with her hypercycle. Marcus fires and the sniper dies. Twenty feet to her right Valerie glimpses a man with a handgun; his three shots at her all miss.
Valerie runs over the stupid guy holding a handgun. Marcus spots another observer to Valerie's left; aiming carefully, he fires twice and brings the observer down.
All four of the men are Veritas. LG: "They should have had bullets that get through your shield." Vincente: "They were trying to kill you." LG: "I'm number one on the hit list if I appear here." Vincente: "I don't understand. I know I have something valuable, I just don't know what. ... Malachi, I'm going to have to destroy your headstone so they can't use it any more. I apologize in advance. Fourteen, I'll need a sledgehammer."
Vincente: "Is the capstone doing it?" LG: "No, it's part of the equipment for the final process. Having it here beforehand makes it more efficient." Vincente knocks off the capstone, then picks it up and touches LG with it. She passes out.
Valerie sends Carmella to ask the ghosts why they have gathered here.
Vincente wakes up LG. LG: "Those things store a charge that has different effects on different people." Vincente: "You came to us to die. Wouldn't you want to understand? Did you want to be used as a battery?" LG: "There are risks, but the payoff has been worth it." Vincente drapes Marcus' jacket over LG's shoulders. He notes that the presence of unrefined ore may be keeping the ghosts at bay. He calls out, "Ghosts, find someone who was alive when the mine and stamp mill were operational." A couple of ghosts mouth off. Marcus: "You know you look insane when you do that." Vincente: "I know."
Marcus points out several small metallic 'doodads' scattered around. LG: "They're probably amplifiers." Marcus pokes at a few of them with a stick. They are completely sealed. He picks one up and feels a slight tingle. "We should probably collect them all." Vincente: "They do show as magic." Marcus finds an old toolbox and starts putting the doodads in it. LG: "They are amplifying the gathering. They're backup in case the capstone is lost again." Vincente: "How many ghosts do you need? Is there a critical mass?" LG: "At minimum, five thousand. ... You're getting in the way of an important project to gather energy for aging/de-aging." Vincente: "Where's the machine supposed to be set up?" LG: "It'd be easy if the two gerbils in your head would run together."
Vincente: "I feel you're delaying us." Marcus: "If we just kill her, someone higher up will come." Vincente: "We'll return to the cemetery -- I'm a poet." Marcus: "Are you ready to die?" LG: "I'm not ready, but I expect it." Vincente insists on going to the gift shop and getting a shirt for LG.
Back inside the cemetery, Vincente removes the zipties from LG, has her raise her arms, and slips the shirt on over her head. He leads her to Malachi's grave. He does Body Reading on her and detects trace amounts of metal. He draws Diane Addison's pistol which is loaded with Milo Monteroi's bullets. LG: "The bullets negate a mage's shield and do extra damage to a mage. Some of the bullets prevent a psi from deflecting them. They're very expensive to make, by the way."
Vincente quickly raises the pistol and fires three times; LG collapses to the ground, dead. Valerie immediately sends Carmella after LG's ghost; she and some other ghosts surround LG and close in. Vincente: "Do you still have the same attitude?" LG: "Yes. Why not?" Vincente: "You have, literally, no skin in the game." LG: "I was going to try another technique -- possession." Carmella and four other ghosts take LG away.
Vincente dials LG's number. His call is answered by an electronically disguised voice. Vincente: "May I speak to Cyrus? Where is the machine?" Voice: "In its storage case, safe. We have all left Bodie and Bridgeport. Current personnel are disengaging. The ghosts will eventually disperse over the course of a month. This was decided late yesterday. Lori Griffith was distracting from the operation." Vincente: "Lori probably won't be back." Voice: "I assume she is dead." Vincente: "She went to a higher or lower plane. If you're telling the truth, I won't call back."
By 4:00am the group has checked into hotel rooms in Bridgeport. Wade Miller phones Vincente. "How did it go?" Vincente: "They said they're disengaging." WM: "The ones at the bar headed south out of Bridgeport." Vincente: "They said they gave up, but I don't believe them. It was late and I was getting punchy. We'll know tomorrow if they lied. I could have blamed it on you, but they would have tried harder. They want to fight it out tomorrow. I'm going to step back and let Marcus take the lead."
Around noon Marcus awakens, groggy and befuddled, struggling to recall where he is and what he did the night before. Valerie becomes aware she has two sets of memories of yesterday -- one where Vincente finally executed LG, another where the group had spent the spent the entire time chasing down leads. Vincente clearly recalls two sets of memories; yesterday's investigations had been frustrating as the group encountered one 'brick wall' after another, as though their targets had expected them and the group were being 'led by the nose'.
Vincente gathers the group for lunch. Rick points out that the current president is Al Gore and not Barack Obama, Bodie is a thriving city (with an economy based on mining) and not a ghost town, and Veritas Inception is the largest corporation in the world.
Vincente dials the number he has for Lori Griffith and says to the functionary who answers, "Tell her that Agent Johnson is calling." A familiar female voice comes on the line. Vincente: "Congratulations. I remember everything; do you?" LG: "I remember, and I know what is necessary." Vincente: "Do you remember how I saved you?" LG:" You should walk away so I don't have you arrested. I know that you saved me." Vincente: "But you don't remember."
Next he phones Pierre Barlow, who immediately demands, "How did you get this number?" and denies ever giving it to Vincente. He claims "Threepoint saved me" and "Empowerment Collective was squashed before you were ever born." The name Elma Allan doesn't mean anything to him. Veritas Inception had discovered him as a teenager, trained him, but didn't like his attitude (he demanded his own 'piece of the pie'). He had had to get rid of his French accent and now lives in New Chicago ("The old one fell into the lake.") He accepts Vincente's revelation that Veritas had altered the timeline.
Vincente: "I'm part of a multi-dimensional force aiming to change things back to the way they were." PB: "You say that in this alternate timeline I was a powerful individual. Do you need my help?" Vincente: "I'll find Elma and give you a call." Vincente hangs up and remarks to the group, "I feel less evil already."
Vincente calls Wade Miller, who doesn't remember him. ("Vincente Carbone? Of the New Chicago Carbones? They run that city.") WM is very nervous that Vincente identifies him with Threepoint, which has been 'driven underground' by Veritas. Vincente: "What if I told you that Veritas changed the timeline?" WM: "If you can prove that, Threepoint will help you." Vincente, with a hint of a smirk: "What, all four of you?"
WM explains that Threepoint has been in existence since 1830. In 1880 a special type of ore was discovered in Bodie, California, and its use has become quite prevalent. Vincente: "You might be helpful. I'll be in touch. Meanwhile, why don't you take a vacation to Bridgeport?"
Vincente obtains a phone number for Carmella Johnson and calls her. "We met in San Francisco at a cosplay convention. You were Vampirella. We clicked and you gave me your number." She doesn't remember him, but she mentions that she will be attending another cosplay event over Labor Day weekend. Vincente; "Maybe I'll see you there. Meanwhile, be careful." After he hangs up he says to ghost Carmella, "I figured you'd want to know."
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