The Abyss Gazes Also
| The Abyss Gazes Also | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Delta Green | The Church of Starry Wisdom | ||||||||
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All Gods Must Fall Hunter Wychking Asura |
1 Star Vampire Numerous Cultists Leader Bowan 4 mind-controlled DG Agents | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Numerous injuries, but no death | All agents recovered, cultists and Star Vampire neutralized | ||||||||
Summary
A reformed Church of Starry Wisdom commandeered a quicksilver photo of the stars, the void, the truth
They would seek to open a gate to that which must not be seen, and those who first tried could not stop them.
Left with no other option and limited time, they reached out to the Shadowhaven, so that these foul magic could be unmade before that work was complete.
Background
A quicksilver photograph was taken by the Eagle Eye II Telescope of the Great Beyond, a step in the right direction for learning more about the stars. But something is amiss. The module housing its lens is sabotaged, and it is sent careening into the waters below, where a certain group awaits its arrival for their grand design.
This group was the reformed Church of Starry Wisdom, an occult sect that had reconstituted under the leadership of a former astronaut who went by Bowan. This astronaut was actually the first aware to go into space! To say he was forever changed by the experience would be an understatement. Whatever he saw in those stars, whatever dark truth revealed itself to him in that moment, it guides his much more powerful magic now as he leads the Church into a scheme to open up a gateway to Yog-Sothoth. To do so, they planned on taking the quicksilver photograph they stole into a former historical building in Providence and using its power in a ritual to open the path.
Delta Green noticed this activity and sent a team of four agents in to investigate, and while they managed to track down the place and noticed the anomaly of the terrain inside (a displacement alchera warping the historic home into a labyrinth of corridors), but unfortunately it seems the Church was ready for them, and Delta Green lost contact to what they assumed was a matter of mental control.
Agent Anderson was left with a choice: send in another one of her teams, or escalate and call in freelancers who could handle the situation. Hopefully. And, with time being of the essence, she decided to escalate things before the matter got truly out of hand.
The Meet
The group called in was in many ways known for their prior work against cults and the potently arcane. Wychking, world famous bug hunter. All Gods Must Fall, cosmological expert and explorer who could handle spirits. Hunter, a renowned null wizard and spirit hunter in his own right. And, finally, Asura, known for her prior work in stopping a cult in Seattle some months prior. They were called into a parking lot, tense as they awaited the briefing. Anderson filled them in curtly, not wanting to skimp on details when the matter was so time sensitive: Kill Bowan, retrieve or destroy the photograph, and for a bonus rescue the former team that had been sent in and were presumably still in there and in danger. It would be 20k nuyen for a successful job, with a 10k bonus should the team manage to retrieve the agents.
The group had no objections, and so the government was willing to transport them on their own jet and turn a generous blind eye to the illegal equipment they bring along (for now). The team prepares themselves and sorts out their equipment beforehand, and then they touch down in Providence. For whatever awaited them.
The Plan
The plan was...frankly rather simple. Scope the place out from the outside to see what they might be dealing with. Go in.
Kill Bowan.
Get the agents out.
Burn the photograph.
(not necessarily in that order)
That, and redistributing and planning out equipment for the venture inside as needed.
The Run
The team had been provided an SUV to transport their equipment, and drove up closer to the historical building in question. Asura and Wychking took a look physically as AGMF took a look through astral projections. The building itself was an oddity in and of itself, given the lack of a ward around their base of operations (which the team realized may have been a matter of them feeling confident in the strange phenomenon they had created), but what stood out to them all was
The Horror.
A Haunting Horror was clinging onto the building, its burning eye having turned its gaze from the liminal space to the Elder God Explorer herself as she made contact with it in the Astral. The team felt...some kind of presence washing over them, and in particular All Gods heard it communicating with her. It warned her that to enter into that labyrinth would lead to their deaths, that they would be lost and ruined by its halls. It offered a way in, a chance to surprise their foe...if they accomplish a small favor for It.
Uncover the Shining Trapezohedron from the bay, and it would allow them safe passage, and a chance to surprise their quarry.
All Gods refused that, as she fucking should, because no one there was going to be willing to work with a fucking Horror.
Wychking identified the creature, and how it worshipped a much greater, more problematic horror that would use that trapezohedron as a chance to form some kind of avatar so...good call. With that, the Horror left, and the team was left to prepare for breaching. Knowing that the space inside could be strange, they bought a rope to move through and hopefully stick together as they breached. This fell apart near immediately; The team breached through the door in formation led by Asura, and already found themselves in a much stranger place. A parlor room, with daylight gracing the window where once was night. Hunter was curious to try dispelling the Alchera around them, and found a writhing mass of tentacles greeting him where the wall once was. No one else could see it, but the team agreed to not mess with the interior too much after that. As they attempted to go through the kitchen, they noticed just how troublesome the place was going to be. Asura managed to walk in just fine, but AGMF and Hunter were turned around and could not enter the kitchen immediately. Worse, Wychking was nowhere to be found. She had been transported...elsewhere. Somewhere above, the team would find out shortly after. DNI did not work in here, and so she was forced to work on her own for a moment. Taking in her surroundings, looking on the astral and the physical to keep an eye on her surroundings, cautious. And then she encountered yet another 3rd party. A vampire, apparently just "passing by" using this liminal crossing, yet another person who seemed keen on the events of the night and the ritual perhaps. He seemed to not want it though, and merely...offered advice, apparently. "Listen for the Bells".
With that, Wychking made her way out of the room and down the stairs, meeting up with the others who made sure she was alright. She recounted the advice the strange vampire gave her (worrying the others with how many were congregating in this place at the time) and the group heeded it with a bit of initial skepticism, following the sound down to the basement. A horrid place filled with accoutrements of cursed and evil natures, a number of which the group all decided was too dangerous to leave alone. Well, except for one item: a Latin translation of the Necronomicon, which Wychking was deeply interested in as a chance to find the original, perhaps. The team did not appreciate this, but with arguments wasting time they really did not have the luxury of stopping her at the moment, and with assurances she would destroy it later they were focusing on more pressing matters. The bells seemed to lead down and also to the side, but for now the team made their way down the trapdoor which...led to a hallway...?
Wychking intended to leave the space with a parting gift of a fragmentation rocket once they descended, which alerted a foe the team was not ready to face at the moment. A Star Vampire, a writhing mass of tentacles that was only visible when it drained a victim of its blood through a proboscis on the cups of its tentacles. It dove into the center of the group and gave the crew a difficult fight> And though the team was able to swiftly dispatch of it by overwhelming it with multiple attacks and magical weapons, it exploded into a mess of acid, gore, and black ichor all over the runners. It burned into all of them, almost killing All Gods and burning away the mask which hid her face, revealing her own disfigured self. The team was taken aback, but more focused on saving their comrade and stopping the extent of the damage the acid would do to their armors. After a chance to recover somewhat, regroup and reorganize, the expedition continued again. Following the bells led North of a bend in the hall and into a bar past a door. The team entered just fine, doing a sweep of the area carefully.
But not carefully enough.
The agents removed their RPC cloaks and prepared to assault the runners, armed with preps to decrease logic in order to incapacitate them and bring them presumably to Bowan to become new servants. Wychking managed to barely hold onto her mind and incapacitate them all with a massive casting of Mass Agony, and the team worked to more permanently incapacitate and dispel the mental alterations to the DG members' minds. They were, in the middle of this, accosted by a manifesting Cultist once they noticed the spell being removed, but while they managed to harm Hunter during his hard work freeing these agents, Wychking obliterated them with a manabolt. The team considered how best to keep these incapacitated agents safe, not knowing if they could afford to take them out of the building at this point or leave them here. So Wychking, ever the problem solver, cast levitate on a rag and piled bodies on it to make carrying them easier, heavily taxed at the moment but at the very least holding on somewhat. All Gods did also take one of those preps out of curiosity of what it would do later, which the team didn't approve of but really didn't care enough to argue against and figured "hey, a necronomicon is probably a worse allowance anyhow". So for now, they continued on.
They marched onwards towards winding halls and lying bells. Sounds all around, bound to confound. Bend after bend after bend after bend. The corners turned into halls into stairs into dead ends into circles. They could see themselves looping and looping and it was never going to end at this rate. It was a maddening maze on the mind, and they needed something else to assist. Navigation was a problem, but a mix of AGMF's divination and Wychking's Detect Enemies spells, they got something of a direction and an actual place to look for: A oaken double door to a cathedral. And with that, barely, they were able to get through this goddamned crossroads and find themselves on a balcony, where a note and a "gift" was set up by their...friend, again. Inside the box were goggles, that seemed to have a feed on a screen of what was on the space in front of one's self and then projected the astral over a screen. The team did not fully trust the gift, but seeing as they were at least tentative...allies, for this job, All God's Must Fall put the goggles on carefully and the team used their flying carpet to carefully descend to the cathedral below , avoiding major mishaps from the strange ways this place played with the mind and warped others around.
The team made sure the four agents were not in the direct line of fire, but rushed in to try and get things settled quickly. Asura was loaned the rocket launcher and led a maneuver to try and blow the cultists into pieces immediately, only to be met by a barrier and forced to stop her assault. The cultists had prepared 3 different barriers, 1 physical and 2 magical, with the photograph on an altar at the far end and a gateway forcing everyone to perceive into the astral, to bear witness to the truth awaiting the world. Bowan gave his grand speech to his followers as he worked dutifully, the other 5 cultists preparing to defend this great task with their lives. The Stargazers fired a rocket as soon as Hunter took down the barrier and forced the team of runners to scatter, but they quickly began pushing back against the forces of the Church with spell craft and technique alike to counter them. Asura, despite not being heavily effected by two of the spells slung at her by the lower level cultists who were marred by their own barrier, seemed incapacitated for some reason, as All God's prepared to dive in and destroy the astronaut making a terrible mistake by projecting herself to reach him. Hunter reflected two would-be devastating spells to the cultists as Wychking launched a massive Slash spell to massacre the majority of the cultists save for Bowan. That fool was forced into his own portal by All Gods, eager to teach him a lesson about how cruel his masters truly were. For a moment, things were quiet. Until Wychking rose from the backlash of her own spell with an axe in hand, her Deathly Aura even managing to snap Asura out of her stupor and forcing both her and Hunter to retreat back immediately. She managed to desperately calm herself down seeing her foes slaughtered, and the team had a few moments to calm themselves before the Alchera was ripped asunder without the power of the Void instilled in it from the photograph, destroyed by the massive Slash spell.
Aftermath
The group found themselves in front of an actual cathedral in Providence after the Alchera collapsed, surrounded by cops whom arrested them and took them into custody. Thankfully, Anderson had no intention of just leaving them there (especially when she needed a debriefing).
She got them out and got individual debriefs from each member (whom, in solidarity, told the truth save for the parts where they took a few things like a prep, some goggles from a vampire, and a copy of the damn Necronomicon), and made sure they were able to get home safely and with their illicit gear still in tow.
The Church of the Wisdom has been stopped with Bowan's death, the gateway closed and the agents recovered safely from their clutches.
The Shining Trapezohedron remains slumbering in the bay. Waiting.
And the runners have learned more of a foe that awaits in the end of times.
Rewards
REWARDS for "The Abyss Gazes Also":
30,000 nuyen (15 RVP)
3 karma (3 RVP)
6 CDP (2 RVP + 2 base)
+2 Delta Green reputation
+2 Black Lodge reputation
May take History Is Not As Certain As We Thought + 1 rank in The Enemy if desired
Narrative Consequences:
-The (Reformed) Church of Starry Wisdom's operations have been disrupted with the loss of the sect's leader; the quicksilver photograph of The Void is destroyed.
-The compromised team of Delta Green agents are successfully recovered.
-The Shining Trapezohedron remains on the bottom of Narragansett Bay. For now.
-Wychking takes a Latin Necronomicon from the Lovecraft House. This is fine.
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Asura "...The more I learn, the more I feel I do not know. The more I feel as if I am going to shatter. And somehow? Somehow it is the things that plainly seek to end me which bring me the most comfort; with them, I know where I stand, and what I must do."