S2 Ep5: Snake Song

[00:00:30] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Aubrey, and I play Isabelle. [00:00:33] Speaker B: Hi, I am Scott, and I play Arthur. [00:00:36] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Termite, and I play Piper. [00:00:40] Speaker D: And I'm bloody porcelain. I will be your storyteller for the evening. It is, in many ways the same story. For every center, there is a single thread. They begin to pull and pull and pull, and the thread never breaks. It branches becomes more threads, which they also follow. Signs warn of continuing to pull. And with each tug, more and more is revealed. The thread connects a dozen points of intersection. Ghosts. Vampires. Werewolves. Wizards. As each new secret is revealed, there are less and less warnings to turn back. And the madman who persists is left to wonder. Is it because they have drawn back the curtain? Or because they have pulled themselves into the spider web? And who or what exactly, will be the spider when their endeavors come to a close? Tonight, let's tell a story about the mad men. Good evening, players. During our last session, there were some interesting revelations, and I am realizing that the danger is wrong. When did that happen? [00:02:04] Speaker C: Oh, thank God. [00:02:07] Speaker D: That should definitely not be at five. That should definitely have been at three. [00:02:11] Speaker B: Okay, letting us know that gunshot was more dangerous than we assumed. [00:02:18] Speaker A: The rv blows up as he leaps. [00:02:21] Speaker C: Rock fall, everybody dies. [00:02:24] Speaker D: There were a good number of revelations last episode. You explored a little bit more about. Explored a little bit more in terms of the puzzles that you all were given to solve. We learned a little bit more about everybody, really, through some insight provided not only by the members of the cell having an in depth discussion about all of the things going on with them, but also because they met a new acquaintance who brought along with him the body of a departed cellmate, who seems to have gone a little bit off as rocker, maybe, and ended up in the clutches of who Arthur is certain was the speaker of the Church of the rising star, the cult that he left when he began his journey as a hunter and in whose clutches his wife remains. Gunshop, perhaps purposefully, maybe a little inadvertently, presented facts about each person in the cell, things that they may not have known about who and what they are, and informed them that he had never seen a death like the one Zephyr suffered before. He's not entirely sure what could have caused such a thing. Also informed them that people who die like Zephyr disappear in every sense of the word, except their physical husk. There is no soul left behind to be called upon after death. They packed up their things and headed for New Orleans. Upon arriving in New Orleans, Rosanna parked their new rv. Their very shiny new rv, stood up to stretch. And immediately crumpled like a rag doll. Upon seeing this gun shop, took a look at Rosanna, took a look at the rest of you, and went, wow, that seems like a problem. Y'all should probably get on that. And then he headed for the door. I have people to see, things to take care of. I'll be back when I'm ready or when I'm able. And he leaves. [00:05:25] Speaker A: As the trained medical professional, I would like to make sure Rosanna is okay. [00:05:30] Speaker D: Make me an intelligence and medicine check. [00:05:35] Speaker B: I mean, Arthur's gonna head that way as well, but he won't stop Isabel from doing her job. [00:05:44] Speaker A: I almost made a vampire roll. That's the wrong commit. [00:05:47] Speaker D: That is definitely the wrong command. [00:05:54] Speaker A: If it is, it's news to me as well. That is eight successes. [00:06:00] Speaker D: Holy cow. All right, so at first, you actually panic a little bit because you go to get a pulse and you can't find one. But you are very good at what you do, and part of what you do is ensuring that people are, in fact, dead and not just one of those weird fringe cases. And it turns out that Rosanna is one of those weird fringe cases. It takes a couple of minutes, but with your stethoscope, you are able to get a very faint, very slow heartbeat. So she's alive. She doesn't appear to be in any kind of distress or danger, but there is something about the state that she has fallen into that it's like her body has started to kind of slow down to preserve itself. [00:06:53] Speaker A: Yeah. As I'm learning these things and realizing these things, definitely keeping a running commentary going of, she's okay for now. When somebody gets really cold, all the body sort of slows down in a way that it can just sort of keep going with very little energy. It's strange. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Is it safe to move her, or should we keep her? [00:07:23] Speaker D: It is absolutely. [00:07:25] Speaker A: I would absolutely recommend we move her to a more comfortable space. [00:07:31] Speaker B: Okay. Arthur's going to help pick her up. If he can't just pick her up on his own and carry her to whatever bed has been claimed as hers, whichever that is. [00:07:44] Speaker D: It's probably the biggest bed in the rv, if we're being honest, because she tends to curl up with Gozer, so she needs more space than everybody else. [00:07:54] Speaker B: I'll take her there. And along the way, sort of try to ask, do you have any idea of what might have caused us? Do you think this is another vision? But, like, a harder one? Should we be suspecting, I don't know, evil cabal of vampires and mages? Perhaps may have taken Victoria's body or something. [00:08:19] Speaker A: I honestly know about as much as medically. Last time she had a vision, I didn't take any notes. I don't know if this is guessing through just that. It is probably a vision of some kind. Hopefully wakes up soon. I don't know if anything else. I'm. I mean, I really don't know in some of those. Is there any way I could roll to see if I can understand anything? Like occult wise? [00:08:59] Speaker C: I mean, I could try to sense the unnatural, see if that. [00:09:05] Speaker D: Is probably more in tune with that than you are. [00:09:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:10] Speaker D: Is there a role for your sense, Piper? Every time you do this and I keep. [00:09:16] Speaker C: That's fine. I keep forgetting. I want to say it. To which technology. Yes. Or which science? [00:09:24] Speaker D: Roll it. I can't believe you got eight successes. [00:09:33] Speaker C: Jesus. That's unfortunate. [00:09:39] Speaker D: There doesn't appear to be anything occulty going on. Your sensors and everything are not turning anything up. Unless you want to reroll failures. [00:09:49] Speaker C: I have two unspent willpower. I'm good. [00:09:54] Speaker D: Oh, okay. [00:09:56] Speaker A: Even after our beginning of the session refresh? [00:10:00] Speaker D: It's not beginning of the session. It's when you guys sleep. [00:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a rest. [00:10:05] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's fair. [00:10:09] Speaker D: And Piper was very specifically up and doing things the whole drive. We talked at length about that. So maybe once Piper takes a nap, she'll be better able to do that. She looks a little brain fried right now after everything that has happened today. Okay, well, you guys are in New Orleans. Gun shop has fucked off to wherever it is that gun shop is going to fuck off to. Rosanna is unconscious but stable and doesn't show any signs of distress. Know anything that Isabel thinks y'all need to worry. Like, you know, as long as we check in and she continues to have a heartbeat, she should be all. Unfortunately, for all Isabelle knows, this is how Rosanna is every time. She kind of has a particularly strong vision. But she hasn't been around to know. Does that make sense? [00:11:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I've only seen one vision before that I'm aware of. [00:11:09] Speaker D: Yeah, my point is that you don't have a real basis of comparison. [00:11:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:20] Speaker D: That said. Okay, what do you guys want to work on? Oh, Piper, when you guys settle and you manage to set up your security and stuff again, and you're on a more secure connection than you could have been while moving, you have email from cricket. [00:11:49] Speaker C: All right. [00:11:53] Speaker D: You obviously don't have to answer it right away, but it's basically like a heads up. Whenever you have time, we can talk right. So here's my question for the rest of you, or for all of you, I should say, what do you want to work on first? Because you all have a list of things that need to be accomplished. [00:12:15] Speaker A: I think that the first thing Isabel is going to work on is I want to take a full look at Zephyr's body, do as close to an autopsy as I can. Probably no cutting open, but a full making all of my notes, collecting samples and anything like that I can do. [00:12:40] Speaker D: I'll say that you could probably, like. You can't do like, a full on. I'm going to remove all the organ style autopsy, but you could do some light surgery. When you guys bought the RV and started making your changes and stuff last session, you made sure that you were at least pseudo outfitted for that. The RV is one of the ones that's got, like. They call it a quote unquote garage at the back of the rV. That's meant to be, like, where a car would park or whatever, and that's kind of been converted into your surgery because it's the easiest part to clean. It's also partially the lab you guys have been wanting working on getting set up. It's not fully outfitted yet because you've only had the rv for a day, but you have some basics set up. [00:13:35] Speaker C: We did finish those puzzles, so if we want to look at where that goes. [00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I just want to take a look at the body before it starts really smelling. [00:13:45] Speaker D: That's very fair. [00:13:47] Speaker A: And somebody's like, that smells like a body. [00:13:52] Speaker D: Arthur. [00:13:55] Speaker B: Well, right now he's super concerned about Rosanna, but following the puzzles and then looking into the local version of the Church of the rising star would be what he wants to do. But if others are tangled and things, he's going to help with that. [00:14:19] Speaker D: Well, I'm going to say that we will start with the autopsy because that is Isabel specific. The puzzles are everybody. Piper, I know you also started to dig into the church's finances, but haven't quite gotten there, gotten through it. I will say that, you know, that Nico could be of great help with that because it's a lot of data to sift through. You're better at unpacking it. But Nico is very good at aggregating and collating data. I apologize. Not Nico. Not Nico. [00:14:53] Speaker E: Cricket. [00:14:53] Speaker D: Cricket is very good at that. Nico plays cricket. Sorry. It's been a day. Okay. You know that cricket can help you. You are better with the finances and hacking bank account stuff. That's some pretty high end risky stuff that generally if they need that level of information, they come to you for it. But now that you have the information, they are one of those people who would be very good at helping you to go through it, aggregate it and figure out what it all means. So Isabelle. [00:15:39] Speaker C: Yes. [00:15:41] Speaker D: Make me an I'm going to look at your sheet int and medicine role. I don't think pathology super fits with what you're looking at because this is weird, but yes. [00:16:07] Speaker A: Would coldly logical give me any bonuses to this? [00:16:10] Speaker D: Absolutely. [00:16:12] Speaker A: Cool. [00:16:14] Speaker C: All. [00:16:24] Speaker A: And coliological just reduces the difficulty, right? [00:16:30] Speaker D: I believe so, yeah. [00:16:31] Speaker A: If I look at my sheet. Yeah. Minus one difficulty on all related roles call. It's still six successes. [00:16:46] Speaker C: Well. [00:16:48] Speaker D: You are just on fire today. Good lord. Okay, it's still time. So we kind of talked about this a little bit last time. There are a number of injuries, but they are in various states of healing. So none of them look super recent, except some of the bruising. None of them look like they happened like in the minutes or even hours before he died. And none of them look. Trying to think of the right way to put this. None of them look post mortem. If this was a body that was put on your table at your normal job and you didn't know that there was something supernatural that had done this, you would be incredibly perplexed because there are signs that this person would have to be like, old hair is shock white, the skin is kind of like almost shriveled. In some places they look aged. But you also know from having spoken to Arthur and looking at the skeletal structure that there's no way like this person couldn't be much more than maybe early thirty s at the latest. They're young and should have been really healthy, but it's like something hit a switch. And in the last moments of their life they aged pretty significantly, maybe. Or only parts of them aged. It's very, very od. You would not be able to give a cause of death on this if you were at work. There is nothing specific about this. You can tell that in the last few months they've definitely had at least one bone that got fractured and was never casted like it should have been. Yeah. So they were probably living with some significant pain at times. You find like various healing scars and things like that that are probably within the last few months to the last few weeks old. But there's nothing. Yeah. Even with six successes, there's no clear sign of death. And you're not even like, this isn't even. I don't have a sign of death because I can't. A cause of death because I can't find one. You are 99% certain that there isn't one to be found. [00:19:43] Speaker A: It's just. They just did. [00:19:45] Speaker D: Yeah. It's literally like somebody reached inside of them and just pulled the life out of them. Like a switch got flipped. [00:20:05] Speaker A: And take requisite samples and hope to get somebody to or get to place or get Allison to help me with analyzing them, figure out if there's anything that way I could use. [00:20:21] Speaker D: Okay, awesome. You are able to take the samples with six successes. I'm not even going to make you roll to make sure that they're fine. Like, that was so good. And I feel bad that I couldn't give you more information, but it's genuinely because there's no more information to give you. [00:20:37] Speaker C: Yes. [00:20:38] Speaker A: I mean, it takes things off of the table. [00:20:43] Speaker D: It takes a lot of things off of the table. You know for certain that there's definitely as much blood in this body as there should be? [00:20:51] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:20:52] Speaker D: You know that much. So this was not a blank body, that's for damn sure. [00:20:55] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:20:57] Speaker C: Yeah, not a blank body. Probably wasn't a werewolf because the body's mostly in one piece. Yeah. [00:21:05] Speaker B: That'S good to know. That just leads me back to confirming that speaker is definitely involved here. Still know what it is, what he is? [00:21:19] Speaker D: No. [00:21:19] Speaker C: I think you were right the first time. [00:21:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:23] Speaker A: Do you want me to ask my contact, see if she's encountered anything like this before? [00:21:33] Speaker B: Yeah, any information would be helpful because I'm still very in the dark and that worries me because. Means I don't know how to handle it. [00:21:44] Speaker A: Yeah. No, it is a big fucking question mark. [00:21:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:53] Speaker A: And I guess the other big question is we don't exactly have a place to store the body. What would you like to do with it? [00:22:05] Speaker B: Well, I think that we either need to bury it or burn it. And I don't know what Zephyr's preference would be. [00:22:20] Speaker C: Burning it would probably be safer for us. [00:22:23] Speaker A: And also probably we're in New Orleans. You can't bury a body. [00:22:27] Speaker B: Oh, well, then I guess burning it is. Well, I mean, we can take care of it. Now. I'd like to maybe have a little time with him. [00:22:45] Speaker A: Yeah, take all the time you need. I'd say if we're going to burn it, it's probably better middle of the night in an area where we're not going to be interrupted. [00:22:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And if Rosanna is fine and she wakes up, then we'll have a little memorial for him. And I think it would be great if the both of you could be with us with that. We did that for Jillian. We haven't done it for Victoria yet, but we should. [00:23:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Just let me know when. [00:23:26] Speaker C: Thanks. [00:23:32] Speaker D: Okay. All right, I suppose we will move on to the puzzles, yes? [00:23:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:43] Speaker D: All right. Piper, information or information intelligence and technology, please. I almost definitely didn't say information technology. [00:24:01] Speaker C: Of course not. [00:24:05] Speaker D: I never make mistakes like that. [00:24:09] Speaker C: Four. Success service. [00:24:11] Speaker D: Four. Okay. So getting back to the server actually takes some doing. There is new security, and you have to work your way past it. So it's more time consuming than it was last time, especially because you don't have Rosanna here to help. It's not that you are incapable. It is simply that this is difficult. It was difficult to get into the first time. It is more difficult now that you're alone. But eventually you manage and you take the end results of all of those puzzles and put them into what turns out to be like. It's essentially like a cube on your screen. And the cube has, like. Has, like, buttons, and you click the button, and then it asks you for the answer to one of the puzzles. And assuming that you can put them all in correctly, something will happen. Thankfully, you have all the answers, and being able to put in the answers into the cube is relatively straightforward. It tells you what section it wants. And when you do it, the cube kind of shifts and twists at the same time. You see that it's like there are pieces of it. Like, this is a series of individual shapes that have been put together to create a cube. So when it twists, they all start to come apart. And you watch on your screen as they break. And it's kind of beautiful. At the same time, it is deeply fucking unsetling to watch, because everything so far has been about data. It's been numbers and letters and whatever. You haven't had anything this graphically intensive show up in this whole thing. So the fact that somebody suddenly switched gears to something like this is Od, and it unfolds, and for a second, your entire screen just goes black. And you have to check to make sure that the computer didn't turn off. And then text starts to show up, and you realize that it is names, just hundreds of names, cascading across your screen, and then hundreds becomes thousands. And it's like this constant, almost upwards waterfall of text filling your screen as you are sitting there. And it takes you a minute because there's so much raw data kind of going across the screen. It takes you a minute to really catch what's happening, you realize that there are dates next to all of them, as well as locations. And at one point, you grab a line, just really quickly highlight and copy a line so that you can look at it more precisely later, because it doesn't look like the data is going to stop anytime soon. And when you paste it into, like, a notepad, essentially you realize that it is a name, it is a date, it is a place. And then essentially, what looks like after doing it with a couple more lines, looks like it might have been like a cause of death, except that it's less like a medical examiner's cause of death and more like what you would find in, like, a police report or an action report for a military file. There's one that's drained of blood, you know, August 5, 1967, Baltimore. There's one that's ripped to shreds. December 3, 1922. Germany, that sort of thing. And looking at more and more of these causes of death specifically, you are starting to realize that these are almost certainly all deaths that were caused by some sort of supernatural. [00:29:31] Speaker C: Essentially a giant dossier of supernatural victims. [00:29:35] Speaker D: Seems like it, but they're from all over the place as far as, like, places in the world, times that they could have happened, what caused it. Somebody has been compiling a bunch of this stuff. You don't know why or who, but eventually the scrolling stops, and one of the last ten names on it is a name that none of you immediately recognize. But the location is Raleigh, North Carolina. The date was just a few days ago. And the cause of death is just. [00:30:28] Speaker C: Question mark, question mark, question marking. But seems like somebody's been keeping tabs for a long fucking time. [00:31:01] Speaker B: On victims. [00:31:04] Speaker C: Victims of all kinds of supernatural. This one right here. Pretty sure that's Zephyr. Or if not, one of the other people that was found. [00:31:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And. [00:31:36] Speaker C: It'S entirely possible this is a list of people like us, people that were hunting something, because that's what Sephir was doing. And we know he was with some kind of group. Based on the phone call you received. [00:32:05] Speaker B: He was. [00:32:09] Speaker D: Piper. [00:32:10] Speaker C: Yes. [00:32:11] Speaker D: When you highlighted or when you talked about the line that you were pretty sure was Zephyr, did you click on it? Did you highlight it to make it stand out? [00:32:20] Speaker C: Yes. [00:32:21] Speaker D: When that happens, a number of other lines above that highlight and you notice that their causes of death were victim of. And then that weird name that you don't recognize. And there's. If you scroll up, there's a few dozen at least. There are more details for some of them. For some of them, it's just victim of. For others, it's for one of them. It's like, disemboweled by or beheaded by. One of them is captured and tortured until death by. [00:33:15] Speaker C: And I assume these are all more recent ones? [00:33:18] Speaker D: Yes, they're all within the last three months. Give or take two to three months. [00:33:25] Speaker C: Okay, so maybe not people like us, but this one's definitely Zephyr, if gunshot is to be believed about what Zephyr was doing. [00:33:42] Speaker B: So this is a list of Zephyr's victims? [00:33:46] Speaker C: It's a list of. Well, not all strange causes of death potentially related to the supernatural. [00:33:58] Speaker B: Right? Could all of the victims be supernatural? If this is Zephyr, then, and these are Zephyr's victims described dead in the same way that gunshop described Zephyr's crew doing, then maybe these are all supernatural entities that have been killed by people or other supernatural entities. [00:34:29] Speaker C: It could be, but I think regardless, I think it's worth assuming that there's a group of punters on the other. [00:34:41] Speaker A: Side of it with just a glance over it. Do I recognize any names on it? Like maybe people who have come across my. [00:34:54] Speaker D: So part of the problem is that there are thousands of names here. However, you did find, Piper did find that when she interacted with the line that was specifically, she was pretty sure it was Zephyr's. It highlighted lines that looked like they were connected to Zephyr. So if Piper goes and finds San Diego on that list of locations, she can do that and make me a let's do wits and academics. [00:35:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:35:32] Speaker A: Would my research spec help with that? [00:35:35] Speaker D: Absolutely. [00:35:37] Speaker A: Cool. [00:35:39] Speaker D: And let me look at your advantages, because you've got some. Didn't I give you a. Yeah, I'll say coldly logical will also help. [00:36:02] Speaker A: That is two successes. But I am going to spend a. [00:36:05] Speaker C: Willpower to reroll those failures. [00:36:07] Speaker A: See if I can get anything more. [00:36:08] Speaker D: Okay. Jesus. Isabelle. Isabelle's in her element. Isabelle's like, this is puzzles and bodies, and I am good at this. [00:36:23] Speaker A: Also, the bot is making it up to me for fucking me over on my Monday game. [00:36:29] Speaker D: There are, in fact, a number of names that you recognize, and their causes of death match up. Almost all of their causes of death match up with what you thought they were. There are a couple that you thought were just normal, mundane deaths. It turns out, not so mundane, but for the most part, they match. [00:36:53] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:36:53] Speaker A: And I'll point them all out and just be like, these are bodies that I've had on my table, several of them, and actually realize were related to the supernatural. But definitely somebody's keeping an eye on deaths. Strange deaths all over the US, I guess. [00:37:14] Speaker B: Wasn't there some in Germany too? Maybe it's the whole world. [00:37:17] Speaker A: Whole world. [00:37:19] Speaker D: A quick scroll through definitely suggests that it may not be the whole world, but it is a lot of the world. [00:37:24] Speaker C: Yeah, not just the US. [00:37:30] Speaker A: They also must have somebody who has some sort of either look like Piper or someone like me who has access to files like these. Just to know some of these causes of death and all of these people who die. It's a lot of work. [00:37:51] Speaker B: Wish I knew if anyone who had ascended would be on this list, but I can't think of anyone because once they ascended, we never saw them again or heard from them again. And I wouldn't know what happened to their bodies. And therefore, would anyone that made this list even know that they had existed? Essentially. But I guess it's just kind of a hope that we might see a strange death that resembles the way that Zephyr died. [00:38:19] Speaker C: Only thing I could think of is if we go by unknown causes of death like zephyrs. But that leaves a lot of room for. [00:38:32] Speaker A: Do we have an area where the cult usually operates out of? Maybe we can start with that state and see if anything else pops up. [00:38:41] Speaker B: I know of two locations the cult operates out of. One being not far from here and the other one being California and kind of a ranch compound outside of LA. [00:38:57] Speaker A: Very Charles Manson of them. Yeah. [00:39:01] Speaker B: At the time we just thought it was clever, isolated, inexpensive place. [00:39:07] Speaker C: But I think that from. [00:39:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it's exactly know. Charles Manson chose Spawn ranch. Kind of very isolated. [00:39:18] Speaker D: Piper. [00:39:20] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:39:21] Speaker D: What's in technology? And yes, your specialization in security does apply. [00:39:25] Speaker C: Okay. [00:39:36] Speaker D: Six at a critical. Man, you guys, you're just making it easy for me to tell you all of the things tonight. You realize after a moment that this database, which is what you realize it is after a while. [00:39:53] Speaker C: Yep. [00:39:56] Speaker D: Is being accessed by somebody else actively right this second. And you manage to pull up, essentially the information on the database. Oh, goodness. There's a specific term in tech and I'm just blanking on it. It's essentially the information on, like, the file itself, rather than the information in. [00:40:20] Speaker C: The file itself, like the file's metadata. [00:40:23] Speaker D: Metadata. That was what I was looking for. Yes, most of the metadata is incredibly sparse or just blank. But because you know that they are currently here, you pull it up and you see that there is a list of logins as part of the Metadata. Active logins. Your handle is showing up as one of them. Even though you never typed it in anywhere. And there is another handle called Delphi. And when you look at the database, you realize that there are two new entries at the bottom. [00:41:09] Speaker C: What are the new entries? BP. [00:41:14] Speaker D: Nobody that you recognize. There is somebody in New York City whose cause of death is soul extraction by changeling. And there is one in Japan. It's postdated. So predated. It happened, like, two days ago, but it is listed as having happened in Tokyo, Japan. And it was killed by vampire. And then a little text box pops up on your screen, and it effectively says, congratulations on solving the puzzles. I hope this can be of help. It will be open to you until you give me a reason to believe that you are not someone who is safe, who is well, who is safe, who I can safely entrust it to. Please add entries as you have them and reach out if I can help. Sorry. They're, like, actively typing, so there's pauses every so often. [00:43:01] Speaker C: That's fair. I respond with, understood. Is Victoria's on here? [00:43:11] Speaker D: There is a long moment where nothing happens. No one answers. And then it just says line number such and such. [00:43:26] Speaker C: Okay, I go to that line. [00:43:31] Speaker D: And it's everything that you know about Victoria so far, except that it gives a much more precise state, which isn't super important to the. She was dead a little bit longer than you guys had expected or thought that she was. But Isabel did explain that given where her body was, it was hard to pinpoint, but she was pretty dead on about most of it. And it was the mauled by Lupine, which is one of those names that you guys have stumbled across that is occasionally used for werewolves. [00:44:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:44:20] Speaker B: So we can see this, right? This computer screen? Yeah. Okay, listen. For all I know, Piper keeps. [00:44:28] Speaker D: You are effectively standing behind Piper. Unless Piper tells me otherwise. I'm assuming that she's allowing people to see things on disc. [00:44:35] Speaker C: This was something that one we all worked on and two can all benefit from. [00:44:45] Speaker B: I guess what I would wonder is how did this person get this information if we were the ones that took the body? Curious to know the network and connections that are going on here. [00:45:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to make a greek mythology joke at the name the Oracle of Delphi. [00:45:10] Speaker C: More people like me. Seems like it's something that's available for anybody they deem worthy of it. [00:45:28] Speaker B: All right, so you think we can trust this person? For now. Assuming it's another hunter or something. [00:45:39] Speaker C: I think it's more than we had before. [00:45:43] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:45:48] Speaker D: Piper. [00:45:49] Speaker C: Yes. [00:45:51] Speaker D: Two new entries. Yeah, these are almost up to the minute at this point. [00:46:09] Speaker C: Interesting. [00:46:10] Speaker D: Are you going to say anything in your little text box, or are you just closing it? I'm giving you the opportunity to attempt to interact with Delphi. Or they're just going to log off. [00:46:23] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm going to ask, how are you getting this information so fast? [00:46:36] Speaker D: There's a minute that goes by without an answer. Before you get this is me as the storyteller trying to decide what their answer would be. I apologize. Before you get an answer after about a minute that says, this is what I was created for. [00:47:12] Speaker C: Interesting. [00:47:16] Speaker D: Do you say that? [00:47:18] Speaker B: Yes. [00:47:19] Speaker D: Is. [00:47:34] Speaker C: I don't think we're necessarily dealing with another person on the other side of this. [00:47:41] Speaker B: What do you mean? [00:47:50] Speaker C: They said they were created for this. [00:47:57] Speaker B: Like a frankincense monster, whatever the heck Jillian's group of wraiths were. That kind of thing. [00:48:12] Speaker C: I'm thinking more aligned with technology was essentially something given limited automation to assist with what we do. [00:48:32] Speaker A: Guynet. But it finds monsters. [00:48:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:48:44] Speaker B: Well, that's a new one. But if there's a. Well, this database alone, if this exists, then we might be able to, I mean, fight whatever's out there, right? Just not just like small collectives of those of us who know what's going on, but maybe a bigger sort of scheme plan. [00:49:10] Speaker C: People have tried that. They end up blinded by greed and end up not doing what they set out to do in the first place. Fair? I'm going to type back. Thank you to Delphi. [00:49:30] Speaker D: You're welcome. [00:49:36] Speaker C: Is there anything else we need right now? This could be very helpful for the future. [00:49:45] Speaker B: There was a mention of a soul steel. Is there any information on what the body looked like? Because one thing that's getting me is something that gunshop said. Something about their soul not being anywhere. And I've kind of been wondering that about the speaker and what happens at ascension for a little while. I've been something I've been pondering over since I first. [00:50:18] Speaker A: Like Zephyr's body doesn't. Despite the fact they are dead, medically, they should not be dead. There is no cause of death. So, I mean, soul. Possibly be a soul. Soul steel is a better option than anything else I had. [00:50:38] Speaker B: Sure. I just wondered if there was any details because maybe the soul steel looked entirely different than Zephyr's situation. I'm just thinking out loud on that one, because when we met Jillian again, we discovered that there was something about spirits and souls and what happens to people after they die. And this shroud and this whole thing that I'm still not sure I entirely understand. So there's something going on out there. But gunshop sort of implied that Zephyr's soul is not anywhere. And I assume that gunshop kind of maybe knows more about this metaphysical spirit realm of soul crushing thing going. I'm just. If there's any more information about that, maybe we can see what it says. [00:51:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I would try and find any more information on that specific cause of death, as well as really, any related causes of death due to souls being stolen, devoured. [00:51:54] Speaker D: So what it actually says is soul extraction. Can you be more specific about what you're looking for? Is it, like, anything to do with a soul? [00:52:11] Speaker B: I was looking, trying to see if we could just. On the specific case that it just wrote in, like, the details of any details about the scene. [00:52:20] Speaker C: Stuff like that. [00:52:21] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:52:26] Speaker D: So this is one of those things that's a little bit weird. Most of the entries, if you click on them, open up files with more information. This one has very sparse information attached to it. There is no police reports. Most of these have police reports or coroners reports. There is nothing like that. Delphi is still connected. If you wanted to try to ask them about this. [00:53:06] Speaker C: Yes. Is there any more information on this entry, or is this everything? [00:53:18] Speaker D: That is all of the information that I have. I provide anything else I get when I can'those? Entries rarely have more information. As far as I can tell, they rarely have bodies. And then you see the search bar on your screen has soul extraction typed into it. And the database, what you're seeing, suddenly shrinks to nothing but soul extraction entries. And there aren't a ton of them, but there's a fair few. And it's all the same thing. And if you click on any of them, there's little to no information. But occasionally you click on one where the date for the soul extraction was 60, 70 years ago. But when you open it, the date of death is much more recent. [00:54:33] Speaker C: Oh, that. So they managed to live without the filming intact. [00:54:47] Speaker A: Only it quite possibly be people who appear to have some sort of break with reality, or people who are comatose, left comatose after the event, and eventually just, you know. [00:55:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So they're just alive, soulless. [00:55:21] Speaker C: They're physically alive, but nothing alive. [00:55:26] Speaker A: Lights on. No one's home. [00:55:35] Speaker B: It's. [00:55:37] Speaker A: I mean. [00:55:40] Speaker B: Starting to sound like a Romero film or something. Zombies running around, kind of. [00:55:50] Speaker A: I mean, I think this is a good database. And maybe, Piper, you can have your friend look at it, see if they can get any more information from it. [00:56:02] Speaker C: I don't know if that's a good idea, though. [00:56:06] Speaker A: That's your call. They're your friend. [00:56:12] Speaker C: I think this is one of its things that they would need to find themselves. [00:56:17] Speaker A: Okay, well, it's something, and it gives us a direction to move in. [00:56:25] Speaker B: Certainly a tool. Yeah. [00:56:28] Speaker C: I have more information than we could ever reasonably expect to. [00:56:36] Speaker A: Got. I also got a contact here in, well, supposed to meet the contact of Allison's here. And they're going to hopefully put me in a direction to deal with this curse. But also, maybe they know things about that are going around here. Maybe they know anything about the church's activities. I'd be able to figure something out. [00:57:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I surveilled them for a couple of months and I didn't get a whole lot, so if anyone had anything would be helpful. [00:57:12] Speaker A: Apparently this is a person who's more in touch with the magical stuff. [00:57:20] Speaker D: Maybe. [00:57:24] Speaker C: I do hope you understand you're not gone for that meeting alone. [00:57:29] Speaker A: I was about to ask who wanted to go with me. Because one of us should stay with Rosanna. [00:57:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we're not leaving Rosanna this time. Not like we did Victoria. [00:57:38] Speaker A: Either that or, I don't know, maybe Gozer will go with me. Big scary. [00:57:48] Speaker B: I mean, I guess the rv is a little conspicuous. [00:57:52] Speaker C: Take. [00:57:52] Speaker A: Go there. [00:57:54] Speaker C: Take the drone. [00:57:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:03] Speaker C: I imagine they wouldn't take kindly to extra people showing up. [00:58:07] Speaker A: It's probably a good idea. [00:58:13] Speaker D: Okay. Are you closing out of the database? You're going to ask Delphi any more questions? [00:58:19] Speaker C: No, I don't think we have anything else for now. So we're going to close out. [00:58:22] Speaker D: Okay. [00:58:23] Speaker A: We need more information to ask more questions. [00:58:26] Speaker D: Understood. All right, you close out of the database, what exactly is next? [00:58:40] Speaker B: It sounds like there's a meeting planned that is going to happen. [00:58:44] Speaker A: I will reach out and figure out exactly where this person that Allison knows, where to meet them and all of that. [00:58:57] Speaker D: Okay, so when you call Allison, at first you don't get an answer. But a couple of minutes later, you get a text message that says, I'm in a meeting. Are you and Nola? [00:59:11] Speaker A: And I'll just reply, yes. [00:59:16] Speaker D: They will message you back with an address and a time that's about 3 hours from now. They're sending you to a bar. And then the next message is, strictly speaking, you didn't get this name from. [00:59:32] Speaker A: Me, of course. [00:59:37] Speaker D: But tell them I sent you. Um, you know, and then she follows up with a, good luck. Let me know how it goes. [00:59:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I will. [00:59:53] Speaker D: Okay. All right, so you've got a little bit before that happens. Is there anything you guys want to do or are we fast forwarding. [01:00:09] Speaker C: I could meet with the cricket or get that out of the way. [01:00:16] Speaker D: That is a fair point. So I'm going to ask because this has come up already. Once the session, are you positioning yourself so that nobody else can see, or are you going to allow people for this? [01:00:33] Speaker C: This is going to be. Nobody else gets to see what's going on? [01:00:39] Speaker B: You're not going to display it on all of our cool screens in our rv? [01:00:42] Speaker C: No. [01:00:45] Speaker D: All righty. All right. Make sure that I've got this set up correctly. [01:01:01] Speaker B: Well, in that case, while that's happening, Arthur is going to try to figure out, based on the maps that he has, where this bar is, to see if he can figure out where he can park the rv close enough to be inconspicuous in his typical mean. [01:01:23] Speaker C: On the upside, we can just bring Rosanna with us. [01:01:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean. She'll be in the rv, it'll be fine. [01:01:31] Speaker D: So there are definitely places you could park the rv, but the rv is never going to be inconspicuous. It's a big ass bus, effectively, especially. [01:01:38] Speaker C: Not in New Orleans. [01:01:43] Speaker D: Okay. All right. So you do your thing, make your connections. Cricket, you are working, as you usually are, on your 10th cup of coffee for the day, and you get a ping from Piper, who you had sent an email to, effectively, this morning, and it looks like they are getting back to you. [01:02:20] Speaker E: And it's absolutely the same bullshit. Different day. [01:02:25] Speaker D: What's your word? [01:02:27] Speaker E: Your mother's maiden name? First pet in the street you grew up in in high school. It's always dumb Facebook shit, basic security questions. And then of course, inevitably, the password for the actual connecting onto the video call comes through. [01:02:54] Speaker C: Jesus fucking Christ. [01:02:58] Speaker D: I'm going to say that that's the answer to each question. The first one is Jesus, the second one is fucking, and the last one is Christ. Doesn't matter the question every time. [01:03:10] Speaker E: Look, if you ever answer one of those in any way correctly, I know it's not you. Easy burner. I get it out of the way quickly. So what do you want to talk about first? Because I got, like, four different leads. [01:03:32] Speaker C: Let's see, we have to go work on the church. That's probably going to be the best thing since we're close. [01:03:40] Speaker E: All right, so speaker boy has a name. It's probably, if not his real name, it's at least the one that's as close to as he's going to get. Goes by Liam Key in polite society and possibly impolite society. Like I said, it's either a really good alternate, or it's actually his name. He has records going back to, like, young child with this name. So as good as I can get for now on it. I can keep working, but at least for now, that's about as good as it gets. He's not a blank. He has a very good moisturizer, but he's not a blank. He doesn't really have much by way of personal finances. It looks like most of what he gets, he gets from the cult. Sorry, the church, the society. [01:04:38] Speaker C: Yeah, he gets a lot more than he should from that. Yeah. [01:04:43] Speaker E: That seems to be his primary source of funding. His portfolio is not diversified. [01:04:51] Speaker C: Interesting. [01:04:53] Speaker E: The church in and of itself has two separate filings. It's not two branches of the same church as far as the government's concerned, it is two separate churches with the same name. Like, they're both connected, but they're not under the same organization as far as the government's concerned. [01:05:18] Speaker C: Now, is that just tax evasion or. Let's be honest, there's probably something else going on. [01:05:26] Speaker E: If we look into the money that's more your bag, not mine. [01:05:29] Speaker C: I'm already working on that, but there's a lot. [01:05:37] Speaker E: As for our good friend Mr. Key, we have other friends who have files on him. Yeah, either the government or the catholic church. But the intersection by which they meet, I believe the colloquial name for them is. The second inquisition has separate files on him. They know he's something. He's not a blank. They don't think he's a major or a fay, which is wild. He certainly doesn't look any werewolf I've ever had the pleasure of looking into. [01:06:17] Speaker C: He's definitely not a werewolf. [01:06:21] Speaker E: I feel like he'd be hairier if he was. [01:06:25] Speaker C: What else would be less likely to drain the very life out of people? We had a corpse dropped on our doorstep. Seemed to be one of his doing. No clear cause of death. Should be perfectly healthy. But they weren't. And there's nothing left of them other than the corpse. [01:07:02] Speaker E: I hate everything about that. And we'll absolutely continue to look into it for you. [01:07:06] Speaker C: Thank you. [01:07:10] Speaker E: Let's see. Um. That's pretty much what I got on that. Looking through the last of my little notes. Yeah, that's what I got there. Once I get everything set up here. Sorry. Reset up here. I can do a little bit more deep diving. I had to shift a bit. You have some enemies, and now I have some enemies. [01:07:53] Speaker C: Which one of them is after you? [01:07:55] Speaker E: That's a great question. When I know. I'll tell you again. Once I get things rejiggered over here, I'll be able to look into some of the little snippets of badges I could see. Badges is the wrong word. Identifiers. Identifiers. All right, so as soon as I know, you'll know. Especially because if they're coming after me, then they'll likely eventually trace. Like, maybe, maybe not. It's always good to be prepared. All right, so that is our friend Mr. Key. That is our friends at the church. We also have that one person you wanted me to look into, and we have the Linnaeus society also. Which one would you like to hear first? [01:09:02] Speaker C: What do you got on the guy I asked you to look into? [01:09:06] Speaker E: So I can neither confirm nor deny that he's a blank. I can confirm that he's been missing from Chicago for a hot second, so it's more likely than not. Like, I would err on the side of caution on this one. Caution being that he's gonna rip your throat out? Not caution, like, don't assume he's been missing in Chicago since before. Remember those explosions? Yeah, before that, but not by much. Like couple days. He used to be a medical examiner. His name, actual name, is Vincent Pendleton. It's very likely he's got a pseudonym going on. In fact, he probably has multiples. If he's been missing for this long and no one's caught on, really, he's probably shifting through a couple of identities. I would imagine. No one found his body, so he was listed as missing. Everyone thought he died during the explosions. And by everyone, I mean, like, the people who were looking for him, and no one actually found his body. I'll forward you a couple of names. If you want to look into personal finances, see if any of them have tax records, things like that. I will forward you those they are. And there's a file that comes along with all of this info as well, so that you've got it digitally, and it has his name, as well as a couple of pseudonyms. Edward Carnby, Stephen Sharp, and Jonathan Turlo. Yeah, that seems to be most of it. There is also the. That covers everything with him, so can't confirm ties to him to any particular blank organization like setup. But if he's not, then he has gone through a hell of a lot of trouble to just not be in Chicago anymore, which is also not great. [01:11:17] Speaker C: Yeah, either he is, or he's working very closely with some very dangerous things. [01:11:26] Speaker E: Yeah, that was my thought. Linnaeus society is a couple of files so they're fun. And by fun, I mean the fucking worst. Because the nice thing about blanks is you can expect certain behaviors. They're not going to show up on scans. They're not going to walk around during the daytime. They don't typically have appointments set four in the afternoon. Linnaeus society does have some of those. So they are absolutely tied to blank bodies, but not necessarily every member is one. There are records of some of their members checking in at the airport for their flight. At one going to the doctors and getting mris and x rays. There are some who look like they should be right. They look like they have records going back, like photos or paintings of them in the 18 hundreds. And yet they went to some dude's little league game at noon. So, like I said, a fun little conundrum. They have a decent number of people on their staff. Staff is a strong word. There are a decent number of people in their particular society that are specifically experts in genealogy. They seem to be doing some sort of genealogical research, looking for specific people. That's about as far as I've been able to tease that out. Whatever they do with that information is offline. And I can do many things, but hack a paper file, I cannot. Not everyone who starts to join their society makes it, but people that do. Not all people, but some people that do end up getting blanked later. So there is definitely a recruitment to turning to turning pipeline, but it's not necessarily a one to one. So whatever it is, it's not just a churn of blanking people. [01:13:59] Speaker C: Okay? [01:14:02] Speaker E: They do seem to have an actual society front to them, which is better than not, I imagine. Better that than just all of their recreational activities being the blood sucking kind. [01:14:16] Speaker C: Yeah. They at least have some dedication to keeping up a face. [01:14:27] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:14:32] Speaker E: The fact that people wash out is also very encouraging, for lack of a better word. People can actually fail. They can flunk out of the Linnae society. Who knew? [01:14:43] Speaker C: Now, when you say that, do they just go back to their normal lives or do they not wake up later? [01:14:56] Speaker D: Some of them just disappear, cricket. [01:15:04] Speaker E: Some go back to their normal lives. Not all of them. I would say a not insignificant number disappear. But some do. I imagine it depends on how far into things they get. [01:15:20] Speaker C: Yeah. It depends on how much they learn. [01:15:23] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:15:24] Speaker C: Too much. It's easier to just get rid of them than to let them go. [01:15:32] Speaker E: As callous as this is going to sound, and trust me, I do understand that this comes from a deep seated place of seeing too many of these. Not the worst, as far as secret societies go with regards to what they do with the dropouts. [01:15:48] Speaker D: Not the best. [01:15:49] Speaker C: At least some of them get to leave. [01:15:51] Speaker E: Yeah. So, any additional things you would like me to peruse in my downtime? [01:16:04] Speaker C: There was one person I believe I sent a picture of them with. My close friend is mine. I'm not sure how often he uses this name, but. Matt Greenbrier, if you could look into that name. [01:16:32] Speaker E: I can give it a whirl. [01:16:35] Speaker C: He might not be one of the ones that's after you, but he's definitely one of the ones that's after me. [01:16:44] Speaker D: Cricket, the name Greenbriar, it's a little bit of a delayed reaction, because you're kind of in the process of looking through all of the things that you've collected and sharing everything, but after a moment, it hits you. You didn't run into a greenbriar, but one of the people who was looking into you and you got word about identified themselves as Agent Blackbriar. You knew the locals where you were, and somebody tipped you off that somebody was asking about you and was going by Agent Blackbriar. And you were like, that's a really corny name. But also, I have to go. [01:17:38] Speaker E: In that case, trade for trade, I'll. [01:17:40] Speaker D: Look out for a green briar, you. [01:17:41] Speaker E: Look out for a black briar, and we'll see how many more colors of the rainbow he gets. [01:17:47] Speaker C: Probably quite a few. [01:17:51] Speaker E: We get to red Briar, does that mean, like, we shut everything down? [01:17:56] Speaker C: Battery is already dead. [01:17:59] Speaker E: I prefer the second one. [01:18:02] Speaker C: We'll just have to see how things go. [01:18:07] Speaker E: Seems like you're definitely keeping safer than I am. So in this case, I'm going to wish myself. [01:18:16] Speaker D: Keep safe. I will look into that. [01:18:18] Speaker E: I'll forward anything I find to you. And if you need me, you know how to reach me. [01:18:22] Speaker C: Yeah. Don't do anything that would put yourself in more danger than you already know by helping me. [01:18:28] Speaker E: Too late. [01:18:33] Speaker D: It always is. [01:18:37] Speaker E: With that. There's, like, no other sign off. It's just the video closes down. [01:18:41] Speaker C: Yes. [01:18:42] Speaker D: Okay, perfect. All right, Piper, are you going to have a discussion with your friends, or are you just going to pack up and take Isabelle to her appointment? [01:19:07] Speaker C: Yes. No. We're going to talk about the stuff that we learned, especially about the speaker and the fact that he does at least have a name that he's using. So we've gotten some information on a few of the things going around. We have a name for the speaker, which we might be able to use in quite a few different ways. So keep an eye out for a man named Liam Key if you run into him. [01:19:56] Speaker B: Key. [01:19:57] Speaker C: If you run into somebody going by that name, it's probably best that you rom Liam Key. [01:20:12] Speaker A: Ring a bell for you, aren't there? [01:20:16] Speaker B: No, it really doesn't. [01:20:20] Speaker A: You just always call him the speaker. Mr. Speaker, sir. Speaker. [01:20:29] Speaker B: The speaker. There's only one in the entire world. [01:20:34] Speaker C: We do have confirmation that he's not blank. He's not Faye, not a mage. And obviously, based on what he did to Zephyr, not a werewolf. And that information is coming from our friends over at the second in position, because they've apparently been at least keeping some eye on him. So they've got some files on him. [01:21:05] Speaker A: That's good to know. [01:21:07] Speaker C: Beyond that, it seems like all of most, if not all of his finances come from the church. [01:21:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's kind of what I expected to hear. How does that match with what we found? [01:21:30] Speaker C: But I wouldn't be surprised if we see some of the churches donations as a personal bank account, or at least as close to it as he's got. [01:21:53] Speaker A: Makes sense. Very classic cult leader behavior. [01:22:01] Speaker C: As for our friend that gave isabelle her lovely little curse, well, apparently, the two of you have something in common. He was a medical examiner. He's been missing from Chicago. For. The two of you have any recollection of. [01:22:32] Speaker D: It's been several months. There was an explosion, or there were a number of explosions in Chicago several months ago. Goodness. It was a few months before season one, I believe. Nobody really knew. Like the. The news media said that it was obviously some sort of terror attack. A number of terrorist organizations took responsibility, but those with a little bit more know. How about the stuff that goes on behind the scenes are reasonably certain it's probably not. It probably wasn't them. But you don't know for sure who did it? Just that it seemed a little too sudden and a little too. Despite it being several buildings that got leveled and quite a lot of bodies, it seemed almost too organized to just be terrorists. [01:23:46] Speaker C: Yeah. So he's been missing since a bit before that. [01:23:53] Speaker D: Literally. The file that you have says that he went missing a few days beforehand, maybe a week. [01:24:01] Speaker A: Do you think it's worth me trying to get in contact with somebody there? As if asking any questions? [01:24:13] Speaker C: It might be worth it. For now, what we do have is we have a few names. His actual name, which I doubt if the name is going by, it's Vincent Pendleton. The names that I think we should keep an eye out for are Edward Carne, Stephen Sharp, and Jonathan Turlow. These are all pseudonyms that he's been using? I'd be surprised if there weren't at least a half dozen more. But for now, that's what we have. [01:24:52] Speaker A: Yeah. I can probably tomorrow, after it's a more reasonable hour, reach out to see if I know anybody or have any connections, or just the fact that, hey, I'm an Mme. I need to ask one of your m's some questions about something that's appeared on my table. [01:25:12] Speaker C: Yep. And then last thing I got was one of friends at the linese society. They're not all lengths, but as we saw, there are definitely some ties to them. At least some on their number are. And I'm sure there are more connections beyond just those that are a part of the society. Their recruitment process isn't foolproof. Not everybody makes it through. Some of those that fail to make it through go back to their normal life. Some of them disappear, they're gone. [01:26:07] Speaker A: Ods are. [01:26:08] Speaker C: Depends on how much they learn about the society. But if nothing else, it means we might be able to find somebody that can give us some information that isn't directly a part of it. [01:26:26] Speaker B: Some other rejects that manage to go back to the normal life, you're saying? [01:26:31] Speaker C: Yeah, it's not likely. And even if we do, I doubt they'll know anything terribly useful. But almost anything is better than what we have right now. At least in terms of recruitment. [01:26:45] Speaker B: Yeah, just a whole lot of nothing. [01:26:48] Speaker C: Speaking of recruitment, those that do make it through, some of them. Some of them get turned into blanks later on. I would imagine it's a similar process to what your speaker does with ascension. Essentially, those that prove themselves properly get, at least in the eyes of their society, rewarded with. [01:27:29] Speaker B: This. [01:27:34] Speaker C: Essentially, it's the carrot on the stick, trying to get people to do good by the society. [01:27:43] Speaker B: So they can become a vampire and be vampire like. [01:27:48] Speaker C: Yes. I'm not sure I would be surprised if they're open about what it is or if it's kept vague, but regardless. [01:28:00] Speaker B: Like ascension. That's what you mean? [01:28:02] Speaker C: Yeah, regardless. It happens. And the fun thing that they've been doing is genealogy. They've been doing research, I'm assuming fairly wide research, wide branching genealogical research, looking for very specific people. I'm not sure who exactly they're looking. [01:28:31] Speaker D: For, but, Piper, as you're looking through these files and kind of showing them some of the stuff the cricket found, it's not just genealogists, it's also geneticists. [01:28:46] Speaker C: Yeah, genealogy and genetics. So they're looking for something very specific. [01:28:56] Speaker D: Isabelle given your training as a medical professional, you have a better understanding than Piper and Arthur do. About what some of the names after these or some of the acronyms after these names mean. Some of these people have, like, full on doc. A number of these people have full on doctorates, but not just like, medical doctorates. Some of them are more academically oriented. Some of them have multiple doctorates. These are some seriously well trained people in branches of STem research that are very competitive and difficult to get through it. [01:29:53] Speaker A: Nano. Sort of like that. I'm just being like. I mean, it might be worth it seeing if we can look into any of these people. And maybe they publish dissertations, maybe figure out what exactly they're doing for the society through that, looking into them and what they do. [01:30:17] Speaker C: And if nothing else, we could probably find out how long they've been working for society. [01:30:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not like they list on LinkedIn, but generally, I doubt the society. [01:30:31] Speaker C: Likes to do much outside of it. I'm sure if we find an abnormal gap. [01:30:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:30:42] Speaker B: So they're just looking through genes in family history, looking for something. Yeah, some kind of queasy, hotter, rock type situation or something. I read Dune. I know what that means. [01:30:59] Speaker C: I have no clue, but they're looking for something. Oh, one thing I did forget to mention. The society, at least some of the members seem to have portraits dating back centuries. But from the sounds of it, those same people have been seen walking into the sun. [01:31:32] Speaker A: Would I know about ghouls and how ghouls were at least? Kind of a vague idea about ghouls? [01:31:38] Speaker D: Check. [01:31:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:31:44] Speaker D: You have a vampire specialization, don't you? [01:31:47] Speaker A: I probably should, but I didn't. I really should. I should spend that experience six dice, nothing to cough at. [01:32:01] Speaker D: Arthur, I just want you to know that I lost it. [01:32:05] Speaker C: That's pretty. [01:32:06] Speaker D: I read Dune. I know what that means. I've lost my mind. [01:32:11] Speaker B: Listen, Dune came out at a time when. [01:32:20] Speaker D: Yeah, you have heard about ghouls. You don't know the details. But you do know that vampires can do something with human servants that makes them long lived, strong, and gives them a small amount of the blank bodies. Supernatural and preternatural gifts. [01:32:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't fully know, but a lot of blank bodies do have the ability to share some of what they have through something to do with their blood. [01:33:04] Speaker C: Well, that makes this lesson mystery. That. [01:33:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's quite a good possibility that they're vampire know, Renfield kind of thing. [01:33:15] Speaker B: Okay, that a reference I get to? [01:33:17] Speaker C: Yeah. I read Dracula. I know what that means. She's staring at Arthur. [01:33:24] Speaker B: I read it, too. I know what that means. [01:33:27] Speaker C: Renfield is Dracula's servants. [01:33:32] Speaker B: No, I said I read Dracula. I know what that means. [01:33:35] Speaker C: Yeah, I will be completely honest. I don't believe. [01:33:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it stars a young lawyer who goes to take over or take the accounts on for a vampire whose name is Dracula. He has a servant. There's a whole thing with Renfield. And the lawyer's wife or fiance was named Mina. I read the book. Okay. [01:34:00] Speaker A: I saw the movie. [01:34:07] Speaker D: Okay, cool. Anything else? I'm assuming, Piper, that you're going to want to come back to the banking stuff, be it. [01:34:21] Speaker C: I need to go to bed. Okay, not now. But there are other things that need to be done now. [01:34:30] Speaker D: Right. Okay, so what's the plan? Are you guys all going with Isabelle? Is Isabelle and one person going and another person is staying. What is the plan? [01:34:44] Speaker C: If it's going to be in a bar, Piper would want to go, just to keep an eye on things, but not, like, be with Isabelle. [01:34:55] Speaker A: Enter, like, 30 seconds after I do, sit far enough away that we don't look like we're in the same group. [01:35:04] Speaker D: Yeah, because the two vaguely goth chicks with brightly colored hair could never possibly be together. But I get mean. [01:35:11] Speaker A: Arthur would probably be the better one to send less. [01:35:17] Speaker D: But it's also Arthur who has a habit of glaring at everybody. [01:35:22] Speaker B: Listen, he can blend in a crowd. It's true. He can blend. [01:35:28] Speaker A: It was either the letter, I think. Ozer and Pascozer, office of service dog. [01:35:32] Speaker B: I mean. No. Whichever. It makes sense. [01:35:38] Speaker D: I am just giving Arthur no end of shit because it's what I do. That's like half of my marching orders with this show, is to give Arthur problems. [01:35:50] Speaker B: You're making a point, though, that it seems while it's kind of a toss up, because on one side, Arthur would want to stay near Rosanna to protect her, and then on the other side, he'd want to go into the case just to punch someone in the face. So, either way, it's kind of a toss up. So I guess it really comes down to what? [01:36:07] Speaker D: Piper? [01:36:09] Speaker A: Isabel's not expecting this to go pear shaped like that. Like beating a contact. [01:36:18] Speaker B: Murphy's law. [01:36:23] Speaker D: I'll leave it up to you guys. What do you want to do? [01:36:27] Speaker B: No, I guess it really boils down to what Piper wants to do, because Arthur really would rather probably protect Rosanna. [01:36:33] Speaker C: Yeah. Piper would go along with Isabelle. [01:36:36] Speaker D: Okay, then I'm going to say that it's Piper and Isabelle and Arthur is going to stay at the rv. They will park close enough by that if Arthur absolutely has to drop everything and run in and beat the crap out of somebody, he's not too far away, but there will still be a delay to him getting to you if something goes wrong. [01:36:59] Speaker B: Also, just remember that Zaffer's body is also in the rv, so that's two people he has to protect. [01:37:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:37:07] Speaker D: Yes. Protects the corpse. Okay, cool. [01:37:11] Speaker C: Protects the corpse, but definitely not a corpse. [01:37:14] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we have problems with corpses walking away. [01:37:18] Speaker C: She's just a little catatonic. [01:37:20] Speaker D: Tiny bit catatonic. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. [01:37:24] Speaker C: She'll wake up. It'll be fine. [01:37:26] Speaker A: It's fine. [01:37:27] Speaker D: Okay. All right, so Isabelle and Piper, you guys drive the rv over. Get as close as you can. Arthur's going to be about a block away, and you two hop out. Isabelle walks. Isabelle leaves about 30, couple minutes ahead of time to give piper some space before she leaves. You walk into a bar. It is kind of one of those, like, you can tell the second you get there that it's kind of one of those little hole in the wall bars like the locals go because they pour with a heavy hand, and only locals come here. And it is not a tourist trap. The second thing that you realize is that it's not a tourist trap. It's also very much a local bar, because when you walk in, everybody kind of stops and looks over at you because you are not somebody that they recognize. [01:38:36] Speaker A: I stand out. [01:38:38] Speaker D: You do? Most of the people in this bar are african American. Um, and nobody really says anything, but they're all kind of eyeing you, like, what the fuck is this white chick with green hair doing here? You know? And then they sort of, like, kind of not quite as a group, but one by one, start to go back to their drinks and their conversations. But you can tell that their conversations are significantly quieter than they were when you walked in. [01:39:16] Speaker A: Just idle up to the bar and order a drink. I don't know who I'm meeting, so I'm guessing they know who I am. [01:39:24] Speaker D: When you sit down, what are you ordering? First of all. [01:39:33] Speaker A: Honestly, this feels like a place where Isabelle would probably just order whatever's on, know wouldn't get a mixed drink, or know it'd probably be like, a vodka soda if she did, but it's probably know whatever. Goods on. [01:39:48] Speaker D: Okay, so you order one of the local beers, it looks like, and then a woman sits down next to you and says she'll have a bourbon. And when you look over it is this gorgeous woman who's she's a gorgeous black woman with, like, long dreads, but they've been kind of swept up in this really cool, like, twisted style. Above her head, she's got long nails that are. That are painted this dark dark, like burgundy. In fact, in the dim lighting, at first you think they're black, before you realize that it's actually, like, red. And she kind of looks you over and she goes, they did get you bad, didn't they? [01:40:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been a rough couple of days. Saying the bourbon is appreciated. [01:40:58] Speaker D: You're going to need it if this is going to go the way I think it is. [01:41:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Allison sends her. [01:41:13] Speaker D: Nod. Well, she got me out of a tight spot a few years ago, so I owe her. And with this, I will be out of her debt. She can take her skinny white ass up, out of my business. All right, let's see. And she kind of, like. She reaches up and takes your chin and does that thing where she's like, turning your face one way and the next, you don't know what she's looking at, but she seems to know what she's looking at. And Piper, that's kind of what you walk into, is Isabelle and this woman talking, and this woman, like, manhandling Isabelle's face. There's another one of those moments where everybody kind of stops and looks over at you, except the woman at the bar. But, like, everybody kind of turns and they kind of stare at you, and they all kind of look at Isabelle, and then they stare at you, and there's a grumble, and then everybody kind of turns back to what they were doing. The woman who is studying you, Isabel, kind of looks over at Piper, arches a brow for a minute. Friend of yours? [01:42:35] Speaker A: We've had bad things happen when we go off on our own. Buddy system. [01:42:43] Speaker D: Well, tell her to come over here. Trying to walk in looking like you don't belong together doesn't exactly work. [01:42:48] Speaker A: Just wave you over then. [01:42:51] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah. Shrugs. [01:42:54] Speaker A: All right. [01:42:57] Speaker D: All right. Well, finish your bourbon and then we will go. [01:43:04] Speaker A: I'm going to just knock that thing back. [01:43:10] Speaker D: She'll kind of turn to Piper. You're not. No, you are not. Okay, I will let you come with us, but you've got to stand a good 20ft back while this is working or you'll probably fuck it up. [01:43:29] Speaker A: We did bring the antimagic person. [01:43:31] Speaker D: Did. On the bright side, if something goes wrong, she could run in and hug you, and hopefully everything will be okay. You'll still be cursed, but at least nothing else bad will happen. Hopefully. [01:43:45] Speaker C: All right, I can stay back. [01:43:52] Speaker D: She kind of hops off of her stool, and you realize that she is quite short. She seemed somewhat tall as she was coming up beside you. And you realize it's only because she was wearing heels. So once she's up on the stool and she doesn't have the benefit of the heels to help make her taller anymore, you realize that she's rather on the petite side. But she leads you both kind of out, and you follow her for a good block and a half, two blocks, to just this very nondescript, like, townhouse. Like, it's still like that french architecture, that parisian architecture, but it's effectively a townhouse. And she leads you in and through the main floor because it's a straight shot from the front door to the back door and out into this little backyard area. The first thing you notice upon getting out there is that there are a number of terrariums and cages with different reptiles in them. And there is like a fire pit in the middle of all of it. And there is the distinct tinge of. The distinct tinge of old blood back here. It's not overwhelming, but it's definitely like there's got to be, like, a residue of the stuff somewhere. And you've been around blood enough in your job that you kind of recognize immediately what it is. Um. She sort of looks over at you again and shakes her head a little bit. I can't promise that I can fix this. This is a whole lot deeper than your friend Allison said it was going to be. [01:45:56] Speaker A: Honestly, I will take anything right now I have. You're my only lead. Well, not the only lead, but it is the best I have right now. [01:46:11] Speaker D: Well, have a seat. You can sit over there. She kind of gestures piper towards, like, a shaded spot. [01:46:19] Speaker C: Okay. [01:46:20] Speaker D: That's as far on the other side of this little yard area as she could manage. What follows is a complex series of things. There's everything from her bringing a book out, out from. From inside that looks like a heavy, heavy, leather bound, wrapped Tome that she sort of flips through. She doesn't quite burn sage, but does something very similar to, like, you've seen people burn sage. There's a lot of chanting at some point. She talks about some of the things that she's doing. Like, she casts what she says is a protective circle. But I'll be honest with you, you don't track most of it because you have a fairly scientific mind. So I'm not going to go into every little thing. But you can tell that by the end of it. She has used a book. At one point, she pulls out one of the reptiles. She pulls out a rather hefty snake that she kind of drapes around her neck while she's chanting. And by the time it is over, you feel. You slip into the state that. Have you ever been under twilight anesthesia? [01:47:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:47:55] Speaker D: Where you're in that kind of like not really awake, but not really asleep. Everything feels vaguely dreamlike. You kind of fall into that space, and that's when the pain starts. You fall into that state mentally, but unfortunately, the pain in your body is still very much there, and you feel all of it. It feels like almost the opposite of what I described, the curse taking hold. Feeling like where when the curse took hold, it felt like you were cold, and it was like the kind of cold that burns. This is fire getting pumped through your brain, your veins, like liquid fire. It is agony of a different kind, because when it was cold, it was like you were in so much pain, you couldn't move this. You feel like you have to move, but every move makes your nerve ending scream. She was not wrong when she said you were going to need the bourbon. She probably should have let you have the whole fucking bottle, though, probably. And by the time it's over, you are exhausted. The pain is still there, but it's like an echo. It is slowly kind of going away as the magic fades. Piper, your senses, assuming that you had them up, were going ballistic throughout all of this. This was a lot of magic. It was not like it's very much mage magic, for reference, with the way that your sensors and stuff are set up, like you recognize the tone that is playing in your ear. She's a mage. She's a weird flavor of mage that you've never encountered before, but she's a fucking mage, to be fair, that brings. [01:49:49] Speaker C: The number of mages I've encountered up to two. [01:49:52] Speaker D: That's fair. [01:49:55] Speaker A: Same. [01:49:56] Speaker D: Her magic does not feel like gun chops, not even a little bit, or I should say, does it feel it? It does not sound like gun chops, but it is still very obviously mage magic. By the time it is over, Isabelle, she walks over, and she cuts off a piece of hair towards the back of your neck. She is kind enough not to chomp off the front of it, takes a piece off the back, wraps it around what you realize when she hands it to you, or what you realize as she's working on it, wraps it around what looks like a large snake's fang that she has dripped a couple of drops of her own blood into the hollow of. And then she takes all of that and a few other sundry pieces and drops them into, like, a bag, like a leather pouch, which she ties tight and hands over. I couldn't remove it. I tried, but this'll buy you some relief when you need it. [01:51:16] Speaker A: Thank you. We'll take it from her, kind of probably with rather shaking hands. [01:51:30] Speaker D: I could have maybe made it slightly more effective if I'd had help, but I can't exactly tell the people that I work with about you or your contact. [01:51:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's fair. I will take anything at this moment. Yeah. [01:51:53] Speaker D: Mechanically, Isabel, what you have is a grigri bag. And if you spend a willpower point, you can turn off the effects of the curse for a scene. If you spend two willpower points, you can shut it down for a day. It won't always be a 100% thing. Essentially, you can shut it down for the day, but there are things that could potentially override it or make it glitchy is the best way I can put it. [01:52:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:52:37] Speaker D: And she kind of explains that the stuff that makes it glitchy is specifically like encountering that type of magic again to some degree. There's a chance that being super close to piper could do it. So maybe. Yeah, so maybe don't get intimate if that's the way you swing, is essentially how she explains it. She's not 100% sure, but there is a chance that if you are too close to piper, it might not work. If you encounter something that is in some way, shape, or form tied to whatever the curse was making, you see, and she very specifically says, I can tell that the curse is tapping. I can tell that the curse is tied to your trauma. It's infecting your blood, but it reaches into your psyche. [01:53:54] Speaker A: Something it is grabbing. [01:53:57] Speaker D: On to your worst fear, and it's feeding off of it. And that's why you see what you see. If it had happened to her, and she points at Piper, assuming that it could have, which I don't think it could, but if it could have taken root in her, she'd see something different. She'd see what she fears most. [01:54:23] Speaker A: I guess I just have more reasons to find a fucker who did this. And I guess put them in the ground again. [01:54:35] Speaker D: Yeah. Would not surprise me if it was one of those blood. [01:54:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:54:46] Speaker D: Someone post enough magic or another type of another vampire who is capable of replicating that sort of spell, and they might be able to break it or at least tell you how. But there are also people and things with stronger magic than I got. [01:55:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:55:14] Speaker A: Thank you. [01:55:18] Speaker D: Yeah. You tell your contact that we are settled and she is not to message me again. Nespa. [01:55:28] Speaker A: Of course I will tell her. Probably tonight. [01:55:35] Speaker D: Good. She will see you all back to the door. Looks over at Piper. Don't ever come in my house again. You make me uncomfortable. [01:55:45] Speaker C: I don't think I did anything. [01:55:49] Speaker D: It is not what you did. It is what you are. You are just a brick wall. I don't like it. I have no not realize. [01:56:04] Speaker C: Realized what? [01:56:07] Speaker D: Magic. Just. I could throw everything I have at you magically and it would just hit you and dissipate. It's not like you reflect it. It just doesn't do anything. [01:56:29] Speaker C: No, I was not aware of that. I'm not exactly sure how I would be aware of that. [01:56:35] Speaker D: I don't even think you have an aura. If you do, it is very faint. I'm not the best at seeing those tings, though. [01:56:47] Speaker C: In that case, I am sorry. [01:56:52] Speaker D: Well, if you did it on purpose, then you should be. If not, then I'm sorry for you. A life without magic is empty. And she sort of waves you out the door. [01:57:10] Speaker C: Thank you. [01:57:13] Speaker D: You are welcome. And she will shut the door. And as you are walking away, you hear something along the lines of freakish little white girls up in my house, and that's the last thing you hear of her. All right. Isabella and Piper, you walk out of this woman's house. That took a while. It is late. Piper. You are exhausted. It has been a fucking day. You are ready to fall into whatever the nearest bed is. You now have the note that you cannot sleep too close to Isabel, probably because there's a chance that the thing that she was given her little bag won't work. Maybe. Noted. Not that you were planning to be cuddle buddies, right? [01:58:10] Speaker C: It wasn't on the docket. Wasn't in the plan. [01:58:17] Speaker B: It wasn't, but now it's not. [01:58:20] Speaker C: Exactly. [01:58:22] Speaker D: It wasn't not on the plan, but. [01:58:25] Speaker C: Now it still isn't. [01:58:29] Speaker A: And now it's on the board of don'ts. [01:58:32] Speaker C: Yes, it is now on the plan of something we're not doing. [01:58:37] Speaker D: There's a part of me that is a little sad that that means that we probably won't have an Isabella and Piper sloppy drunk episode like we had an Arthur Rosanna sloppy drunk episode in season one. [01:58:48] Speaker A: It could still happen. [01:58:49] Speaker D: But it could. That's going to be real fucking awkward. [01:58:53] Speaker C: I got five episodes to break the curse. Or we stop relying on the bag, and Piper just turns the curse off for us. [01:59:03] Speaker D: Okay, you make it back to the rv. It is late as fuck. You, climb in. I'm going to assume that you were going to make Arthur drive the rv back to the campground while you guys crawl into bed and pass the fuck out. Isabel, because that level of pain for that level of time is exhausting. And Piper, because it's been a long fucking day and you've been doing a lot of mental heavy lifting and. You sleepy. [01:59:31] Speaker A: I did want to just quickly check on Rosanna, make sure, do the whole real quick pulse, check the eyes or whatever, breathing. Everything fine? [01:59:44] Speaker D: Yeah, she's fine. It's another one of those situations where, once again, it takes a couple of minutes to verify the pulse, but once you find it. Yeah, no, she's good. She's very still. Like, her breathing is so shallow that you almost can't see her chest move. I. [02:00:05] Speaker B: You also find that Arthur put a blanket over her while you were. [02:00:09] Speaker D: Oh. [02:00:10] Speaker C: Before passing out, Piper is going to send a quick text to Melanie just. [02:00:14] Speaker D: To let her know that she's okay. Um, Melanie texts back, thank you for checking in. Love you very much. Be safe. Go to bed. It's late. There. Arthur, just to be clear, was there anything you wanted to do while they were busy? [02:00:37] Speaker B: No. The only things that Arthur did was have a moment where he just kind of sat with Zephyr and stared at him and got angry that Zephyr's not around to stop them if things go badly. And then he checked on Rosanna and put a blanket on her, brushed a hair out of her face kind of thing, and then waited while he wrote in his journal. That's all he did while they were gone. [02:01:03] Speaker D: Okay, cool. You get back to the campground. You park. Hook everything up the way that it needs to be hooked up. Expand the parts of the rv that expand so that you guys have plenty of room and comfort and everybody goes to bed. For those of you who are sleeping, I'm hoping it is all of you. You regain as many willpower points as you have in either resolve or composure, whichever is higher. [02:01:40] Speaker B: Before going to bed, Arthur will check all the security things to make sure that the rv is good to go locked up and whatnot. Because apparently, I don't know, mages just show up and throw confetti at us. [02:01:53] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, we don't mention the other mage to. [02:02:00] Speaker D: Like, that's probably a conversation that was had on the way home where you're just like, we're not telling Arthur about. Right? [02:02:07] Speaker C: We don't mention this to Arthur. Apparently, I'm some kind of magical dead zone. That's fun. I'm going to unpack that later. [02:02:18] Speaker A: No time to unpack it right now. [02:02:21] Speaker C: No need to unpack it right now. [02:02:24] Speaker D: Piper is like, I'm happy to be a magical dead zone. I am okay with people with magic around lately. [02:02:32] Speaker A: Okay, look, just hug the magical people. Maybe that'll stop them. [02:02:40] Speaker D: Piper out here defeating mages through the power of friendship and warm hugs. Okay. You get some sleep. Regain your willpower as needed. The next morning, everybody wakes up. What's everybody's plan for the day? [02:03:10] Speaker C: It. [02:03:11] Speaker A: I don't know what we were planning to do for Zephyr or anything. At some point I will call, you know, probably be later in the day. [02:03:25] Speaker D: Right? Because she is 3 hours behind. [02:03:32] Speaker B: We had. We did have a plan to take care of the body at night, but we all were too exhausted. [02:03:37] Speaker C: I think we also want to Roseanne. Yeah. [02:03:45] Speaker B: Fair. [02:03:46] Speaker D: Okay. [02:03:49] Speaker B: Arthur's only planned for today is continue to wait to see what happens with Rosanna and see if there's anything he could find out about the cult. So he has some information, but he doesn't really know how to Google. Very know. [02:04:07] Speaker C: Does Arthur also want to be a part of destroying the cult's finances? [02:04:11] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It would be something he would be part of. [02:04:17] Speaker D: Okay, well, I guess we'll start, huh? We'll start with the finances. Piper, I assume you were calling in backup. Yeah, we're going to reach out through all this information. [02:04:30] Speaker C: Yeah, going to reach out to cricket. Be like, hey, remember that financial information I had? [02:04:40] Speaker D: Cricket, you get a message that says, hey, do you remember all of that financial information I had? [02:04:48] Speaker E: Yes. Just three question marks. [02:04:54] Speaker C: Yeah, we're going over it. [02:05:00] Speaker E: There's like a brief pause, so it's not an immediate send, but like 2 seconds later, there is a. [02:05:07] Speaker C: Don't you fucking dare. Okay. [02:05:12] Speaker E: It's the temptation is there, but also like, no. And just sends the link over. [02:05:21] Speaker C: Cool. All right. [02:05:25] Speaker D: You pulled the thing up. So this is an important question. Your screen, is it facing towards everybody so that they can help? [02:05:33] Speaker C: Yes. [02:05:34] Speaker D: All right. Everybody sees cricket filter up on the screen. And cricket also sees everybody. And cricket. There's somebody missing who should be here. [02:05:49] Speaker E: I don't think I've met any of either. [02:05:52] Speaker D: You have heard of them, but you have not met them. You may not have heard about Isabelle. [02:05:58] Speaker E: There's definitely been the, like, the count, the. I know that Rosanna got me her handle spacing on it. Thank you, Thorn. So we're down a thorn, and we're up two people. Explain. [02:06:23] Speaker C: Point using the camera. Arthur, Isabelle. [02:06:28] Speaker D: And then, as if he is annoyed that he has been left out, a very large head that looks more wolf than dog inserts itself between Piper and the screen as goes. Like, tries to be a lap dog. [02:06:45] Speaker C: And Gozer. [02:06:48] Speaker B: Gozer is an important member of the team. [02:06:53] Speaker A: Mascot. [02:06:55] Speaker E: I would argue the most important member. [02:06:59] Speaker B: I don't know that I would go that far. And Arthur and Gozer just have a look with each other. What I'm barely getting. [02:07:09] Speaker D: Gozer snorts at you. [02:07:13] Speaker E: So all information is going through Gozer from now. Sorry, but that's the rules. [02:07:20] Speaker C: No, that's understandable. [02:07:22] Speaker D: Cool. [02:07:24] Speaker E: So, Gozer, what information do you need me to sort? [02:07:32] Speaker D: This does that thing where his ears tilt forward towards the camera, and then he tilts his head to the side like a confused puppy. [02:07:43] Speaker C: I may have to be a translator, of course. And a document with at least the information that we've gotten so far is sent over about the cult's finances. [02:07:59] Speaker D: So here's the thing. The cult have a lot of finances. It's more than one document. It's like several zip files, that sort of thing. Cricket, as you pull stuff up on your screen, you realize that. Yeah. I mean, she wasn't fucking kidding when she said that she was handling the finance stuff for the cult. There are many accounts here that are tied to. Some are tied to the cult, some are tied to llcs that are kind of, sort of tied to the cult, that sort of thing. It's a lot. Whoever set this up knows what they're doing in order to avoid all kinds of legal loopholes and issues with taxes and things like that. This isn't even something that you'd have to really roll. Like, you can tell that there is a fairly significant amount of probably, money laundering going on. There is a lot of money in and out, but it's never huge. None of the transfers are huge. Like, they're all under. I think it's. Ten grand is usually the limit before a transaction gets looked at for a minute by government. So they're all various sizes, and they're all under ten grand, but some of these accounts are worth millions. Now, that being said, piper is going to be making some rolls. [02:09:45] Speaker C: Yes. [02:09:46] Speaker D: The fact that you are helping her is going to give her two extra dice. If Isabelle would like to help, because Isabelle, you have research specialization. I will give her one extra die for that. Arthur, there is help that you'll be able to give later, but this is not. That is. This is very out of your Wheelhouse. [02:10:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:10:13] Speaker D: Given that you have no dots in finances. [02:10:17] Speaker B: He's just staring at the screen, wondering how they have enough mattresses to fit all this money in. [02:10:24] Speaker C: Looking at the fact that they're obviously not storing it in mattresses. [02:10:31] Speaker D: All right, give me intelligence and finance with those three extra dice. [02:10:47] Speaker C: And then can I use desperation? [02:10:51] Speaker D: You can absolutely use desperation. All right, y'all are on session five. And this is what, like, the third time anybody has used desperation? I think all of the times it's been used this season, it's been you. [02:11:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so. Is there a specific difficulty you want me to roll against? [02:11:09] Speaker D: No, just roll. [02:11:14] Speaker C: Six successes. [02:11:16] Speaker D: That's not bad. That's pretty good. Okay. It. Wow. Six successes. All right. Are you sure you don't want to try for more? [02:11:31] Speaker C: Eight successes. [02:11:32] Speaker D: Excellent. Awesome. You didn't have to, but I was curious if you wanted to because you had some dice that weren't successes. [02:11:38] Speaker C: True. [02:11:40] Speaker D: Okay. Oh, dear. Cricket has a spider loose in their desk. [02:11:56] Speaker B: Somewhere. [02:11:57] Speaker C: Wild. Fugitive. [02:12:00] Speaker D: All right. Sorry, I got distracted. Same. Okay, so the first thing that we're going to talk about is stuff that cricket is going to notice, and it's only because cricket is the one who has done the deep dive into the cult's other side of things along with some other organizations. So the first thing that cricket picks up on is cricket is looking at some of the accounts that some of this money is coming from, specifically incoming money, into some of these accounts, and is kind of cross referencing with things. Cricket. There is an account that looks very familiar to you, that has a name that you recognize, and there are three payments from this account. The name on it is. This is me trying to find the thing. But Jonathan Turlow. [02:13:18] Speaker E: That would immediately get forwarded over to piper, just sent over. And also verbally, like, I imagine that there's a little bit of back and forth going on as we're searching through. Um. But just like, without any hesitation and not even bothering to make sure that I'm not interrupting anyone, just like Turlow is one of our buddies. [02:13:51] Speaker C: From Chicago. [02:13:52] Speaker D: Yep. [02:13:55] Speaker E: Sending you this now and isolating that and sending that directly over. [02:14:02] Speaker D: So there are two payments from Jonathan Turlow into one of these accounts. They are for different amounts, but are in roughly the same range. They're both between, like, eight and nine grand. [02:14:36] Speaker C: Couple options here. Either the Linnaeus Society and the Church of the Rising star are working together, or the Linnaeus society isn't the one that had something to do with Victoria's death or disappearance, rather. [02:14:57] Speaker B: Hold on. Did you say that either they're connected or the society had nothing to do with their disappearance. [02:15:04] Speaker C: Yes. Either the two are working together or the Church of the Rising star exposes Victoria's body. [02:15:15] Speaker A: How would they steal Victoria's body? [02:15:18] Speaker B: How would they even know who Victor. Oh, that could be. [02:15:31] Speaker A: Please explain. [02:15:32] Speaker B: Could be. [02:15:33] Speaker C: Well, the speaker, at least at one point, had access to Sephir, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised. Got information from them? [02:15:51] Speaker B: Yeah, and it's. [02:15:56] Speaker C: Let's be honest, we're not exactly difficult to track most of the time. [02:16:02] Speaker A: Incredibly. [02:16:10] Speaker B: There'S a few things happening with the speaker that I've begun to think. On the one side, I do think that the Linnae society may be involved with the speaker, but that's more of the information that you would be trying to find for us. Are they linked in some kind of span? If they have similar styles, maybe they're another pseudo religious organization. Maybe they're friends or partnerships. [02:16:37] Speaker C: But the problem with that is the link between ascension and people turning blank is just how cold operates. There's got to be some sort of paradoxic. That's how they get people in. It's how they keep them in. [02:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fair. But the speaker has been, from what I understand, doing a couple of moves. And I'm not entirely unconvinced that these aren't traps for me specifically. I thought for potentially maybe Zephyr and I. But Zephyr is dead. He's brought my wife into his closer connection. Which means that either he plans to ascend her or he knows that I communicate with her. Or thinks that I can communicate with her and is trying to get me to move on him when I'm not ready. Or he can set the terms. So there is a possibility that the speaker took Victoria's body just like he went after Sephir. If all of them. [02:18:09] Speaker C: Especially if he's trying to set a trap. If your wife doesn't work with Victoria's. [02:18:16] Speaker B: Body, enough redundancies in the system that eventually get caught by the trap. [02:18:35] Speaker D: Actually, we're going to say, isabel, because you were also helping to look over some of these files. I'd like you to make an intelligence in academics. And your research specialty does apply. [02:18:46] Speaker A: Cool successes. But I'm going to spend a willpower to reroll. [02:19:00] Speaker D: Question. Did you wake up and use your new toy? [02:19:05] Speaker A: Yes, I would have. Especially if we're looking at things that I need to actually see with my real eyes. [02:19:11] Speaker D: Are you doing it for a scene or are you doing it for the day? [02:19:14] Speaker A: I will have done it for a scene. [02:19:15] Speaker D: Okay, awesome. Did you say you were going to reroll. [02:19:20] Speaker C: Yes. [02:19:22] Speaker A: So I'll be down to willpower. And that's five successes with a critical. [02:19:27] Speaker D: Holy cow. All right, then you notice this for one very specific reason. Isabel cricket is helping with a lot of this by kind of taking a lot of these account numbers and helping to run them to find names attached to those accounts. And it's just like not even really looking at the names at most of the names as they're getting spit out a lot of the time. It's just like a running feed that's up next to cricket's camera view. And you are taking these pages that are getting spit out by this little portable printer thing that Piper has and looking. And the name that jumps out of you. Jumps out of you. Jumps out at you is a name of an outgoing payment of eight grand to a Rin labelle. You know that name because that is Rosanna's twin sister who has been missing for years. [02:20:35] Speaker A: Immediately turn the paper around and just point to the name book. Wren Labelle. [02:20:45] Speaker C: So with Sam'sisters involved with the church. [02:20:47] Speaker A: Too, I mean, it makes sense what our friend said. [02:20:54] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:20:59] Speaker B: So Rosanna's sister is connected to all this web of whatever this Arthur is. [02:21:04] Speaker C: Church of the rise, and still are typically christian or catholic in denomination. [02:21:12] Speaker B: Not Catholic, but Christian for certain. [02:21:15] Speaker C: Okay. [02:21:16] Speaker B: There's a slightly pagan version, or more paganish version of it here in Louisiana, but at least the California group that I was part of was christian. [02:21:30] Speaker C: Only reason I asked is because our friend said that when she last celebrated, he was pissed as a nun or. [02:21:41] Speaker B: Right. [02:21:42] Speaker C: That's what we assumed. [02:21:44] Speaker B: Right. Or could it just have been older, conservative religious garb that would look very. [02:21:54] Speaker E: Similar to and case in point, gestures at her nerve. [02:22:00] Speaker C: Yeah, from the sound of. She was also bearing a cross in the rosary. [02:22:13] Speaker D: Cricket. As a reminder, the last time you spoke with them before yesterday, you sent Rosanna a file where her name popped up in some of the research and digging you were doing on the catholic church. [02:22:30] Speaker E: Yes. So it would not be too far fetched to assume that there is that connection with her sister as well. [02:22:38] Speaker D: Yep. [02:22:38] Speaker C: Didn't catch a word of that. [02:22:44] Speaker E: Last go round. Given that I have already sent thorn a docket on the catholic church's interest in her, it would not be given every. It's just good practice to keep in handle speak as opposed to now I know all of your names. It would not be far fetched to believe that her sister would also have some affiliation. I can do some digging, see what files pop up there that the catholic church might have on her as well. [02:23:33] Speaker D: Is that something you guys would like to do right now? Because we can do that right now. I can have Piper roll and cricket can provide extra dice since we don't have a sheet for cricket. [02:23:46] Speaker C: Yeah, we want to do it right now. [02:23:49] Speaker D: Yeah, do it. [02:23:53] Speaker E: Rosanna wakes up. [02:23:54] Speaker D: It's just. [02:23:54] Speaker E: Here's all this info on your sister. [02:23:55] Speaker D: Surprise. Piper int and technology. And you will get two extra dice from cricket. [02:24:11] Speaker C: Will this count as data mining for the purpose of using our lab that we got? [02:24:17] Speaker D: Yes. [02:24:18] Speaker C: All right. That's another extra die. Five successes. That's terrible. [02:24:28] Speaker D: Five is actually not bad. Five is fairly solid. Okay. Especially when it's critical. [02:24:35] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, just looking at the dice, not good. [02:24:38] Speaker D: Yeah. The fact that you got five on three dice isn't like that. I mean, it's both impressive and a little sad, considering the size of that dice pool. Okay. Jesus. Ten dice and three dice showed successes. Crimeany Piper. So there isn't a lot on Rosanna's sister in the standard files that you readily have access to. You can choose to dig deeper, but you are risking. You're going to have to contend with security if you do that. With more security if you do that. So think of it like. So here's the thing. The Catholic Church is one of the biggest and most well funded organizations in the world, right? Yeah. You also know from experience that they are one of the most well protected organizations in the world. You have dug enough to know that it is not something that you just like. One does not just walk into Mordor. One does not just hack the Vatican. Right? [02:25:50] Speaker C: Yeah, and I don't like that look. [02:26:05] Speaker D: So the first layer of security is effectively what you just. What you just hacked through. What you find is that there's a mention of her in a registry, like, effectively, like a members list for a church. It is a very small church in Ireland. And cross referencing that with the history that you know from Rosanna, it was shortly after Wren went missing, is when this name popped up in the ledgers. Beyond that, we would have to make a couple more roles for you to dig deeper into further layers of security to see if she's there, see if you can find her is a better way of putting it. [02:27:04] Speaker C: How deep do we want to go on this right now? [02:27:09] Speaker D: For what it's worth, you have time in the session. I'm just letting you know that every time you dig a little bit deeper, there's a chance that you are going to get noticed. [02:27:23] Speaker C: Yeah, that was in character. Like, do we want to keep focusing on this, or do we want to save this for later and deal with the finances? Finish dealing with that first. [02:27:39] Speaker A: I think the finances are, as much as I want to see where this goes, I think the finances are slightly more important right now, especially. [02:27:50] Speaker C: Likely involved putting us in less danger. Yeah. [02:27:59] Speaker D: Okay. So we are not digging any deeper? [02:28:03] Speaker C: No. [02:28:08] Speaker D: All right. What is the next thing you guys want to look into? [02:28:16] Speaker C: Well, if there was nothing else interesting about finances, then there's plenty more interesting. [02:28:22] Speaker D: I kind of need more, like. So you have to understand that you guys are dealing. We're dealing with gigs of data, so I need you to be more specific. [02:28:34] Speaker C: I. [02:28:44] Speaker B: What about. Okay, so we know that there's some outgoing payments. We know there is some ingoing payments. Is there any. Is there any. We got. We have some recurring names, but is there anything that links to, like, I don't know, non government organizations or something that may have strangely or known false names for. [02:29:10] Speaker C: Yeah, because we have a front for the Linnaeus society. Don't. [02:29:15] Speaker D: Do you do. [02:29:17] Speaker C: Yeah. Can we find that anywhere in the. [02:29:21] Speaker D: So here's the thing. The Linnaeus society is one of those places where they have, like, a public facing front. And it's mostly that their public facing front is a number of businesses and organizations and things like that. There are a number that are involved in education. There are some that are involved in, what do you call them, clinics, like free clinics and things like that, research grants and all of that stuff. They've kind of got their fingers in many pies, and they're almost all in education, research, medicine, you find that there is a. So you find that there are the occasional transfers between some of those and this and the church. They're really sporadic, though. There's no pattern. And they tend to be of all different sizes. And you know how when someone does an electronic check or whatever, they can put a reason down. When you pull up those electronic checks to look at the reasons that were given in the transfer line, most of it is like donation. They're just marked as donations most of the time. [02:30:55] Speaker C: Okay, what about going for something more specific? Like some of people involved with the Lineus Society of research into genealogy and genetics. [02:31:10] Speaker A: And a. I think it's a good route to go down, see if we can track down any of the. [02:31:17] Speaker C: Especially if there are some connections between the society and church. And we know that there's something with Rosanna's family looking for something like that might be why they're doing all of this research. And if and nothing else, this will at least give us another credential. [02:31:59] Speaker D: Would you guys like to research into the Linnaeus society front's finances? Is that what I'm hearing? [02:32:06] Speaker C: I was thinking more. Are there any direct transactions between some of the names we've gotten of the doctors working for the Linnaeic society and the Church of the rising star? [02:32:21] Speaker D: Okay. No, not between the doctors. Mostly it is people that cricket has managed to peg as obvious, like pseudonyms and masks. But none between the doctors. Okay, and the church. [02:32:51] Speaker B: Well, I guess the only other thing that I could think of is, is there any information on in this find all this financial stuff where there might be? I'm thinking of the local cult. Any seemingly reoccurring payments to a store or deliveries or something that might help those motions? [02:33:18] Speaker D: Yes, both churches have reoccurring payments, usually to businesses that tend to provide things on, like, an industrial level, like big deliveries of things like toilet paper and other paper goods that they can't produce themselves. Yeah, there are things that. There are payments to goodness, like auto dealerships and stuff. You can see payments to credit card companies that match up Arthur with the kind of patterns that you saw because you were given a card when you were traveling. Yeah, it's stuff like them paying off the travel cards for the members who go out and proselytize. That sort of thing. Something to be aware of is that for as much as going on here, Piper and cricket, especially the records that you guys are finding, are immaculately well kept and precisely detailed. There is nothing sloppy about this operation. Whoever is doing this, more likely whatever team is doing this is very good at what they do. [02:34:49] Speaker C: So where do we go from here? [02:34:58] Speaker E: One of the things that easily done is take away anything like those payments for toilet paper, like the payments for things that they would need in moss. See what's left on donations. See what's left on payments to specific people. I can look for Vincent's other pseudonyms, other names can pull those, separate those out. I could separate out just in general by pseudonym, see if there's any other connections. Because once we get those names, I can start running those, seeing if there's any connections there between them and whoever else you want, Linnea society or otherwise. [02:35:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:35:42] Speaker E: So I think that would be my next move would be. And that might take a second. That's up to you, St. But pulling out anything that is listed as donations as one bulk thing. If it's listed as, like, going to donations and doesn't have a name attached, it goes one. If it's very clearly a bulk shipping that gets listed in another thing, and then from there, sorting out anything that has a name attached to it and running any of those names that I can find with specific flags for the ones that I know are Vincent. Pseudonyms? [02:36:21] Speaker D: Yeah. This is a fairly significant amount of data. To collate like, this is not something you're going to be able to sit and do in a day like this. This is definitely a time consuming process. This is one of those things where even as good as you are, you wish that you had some of the shit that some of those old hacker tales talk about. People who are just infinitely good at being able to take massive amounts of data and seem to know everything that nobody could ever possibly know. [02:37:02] Speaker C: Cricket, I do have a very important question. You're backing up all this data, right? [02:37:08] Speaker E: Of course. [02:37:09] Speaker C: Awesome. I'm not sure how much longer it'll stay up, as I would like to start prepping to essentially just start draining bank accounts. [02:37:22] Speaker E: Would you like a separate backup for yourself? [02:37:26] Speaker C: Yes. [02:37:27] Speaker D: Cool. [02:37:28] Speaker E: I can have someone dead drop that to you eventually. Let me get set up here, and I can make that happen. [02:37:34] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm just not sure how much longer they're going to keep things up once things start going missing. [02:37:41] Speaker D: Here's my question. You realize that if you start siphoning money out of this, you are going to lose any potential new information that having access to these accounts could bring you. I'm just going to throw that out there. Like, I am happy. If you want to do it, we can do it right now. But I think that Piper is smart enough to know that once this bridge is burnt, it's burnt. [02:38:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And Arthur had the realization, right as you started talking about draining accounts, that there's a whole bunch of people in these places that rely on this money. And while he may want to destroy the speaker, he doesn't want to just have a bunch of kids in a cult starving because they can't get access to the food, because they can't buy or pay the payments to the shipping people. It does create a problem. [02:38:36] Speaker D: You still need to collate data and look at your cross referencing and stuff like that, but you guys don't find anything that suggests that the speaker is throwing away money on frivolous shit. This does not seem like one of those incidences where the head of the cult is, like, buying themselves luxury jets and shit like that. [02:38:55] Speaker E: Which, on the one hand, is good because that does mean that money is going someplace. On the other hand, is bad because it means that money is going. [02:39:06] Speaker D: Yes. [02:39:08] Speaker A: Just follow the money. [02:39:13] Speaker C: That'd be much easier if there wasn't so much of it to follow. [02:39:17] Speaker A: That's fair. [02:39:21] Speaker C: Nice. [02:39:27] Speaker B: I would say that life inside of the compound didn't seem to reflect this much money, but at the same time, I'm not exactly sure how much it costs to get toilet paper for the amount of people that lived in a compound over the year. [02:39:45] Speaker C: Not this much. This is. Oh, sure. [02:39:52] Speaker B: I do believe this is more money here. [02:39:55] Speaker C: A group that pulled together, period, full stop. [02:40:01] Speaker B: But if there's connections to the Linnae society and Rin and others, then this is a bigger account network than just one group. [02:40:13] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:40:16] Speaker B: I'm understanding. [02:40:21] Speaker C: So, yeah, if you can run these names, start finding obvious pseudonyms, or especially ones tied to people that we already know about. [02:40:38] Speaker E: Absolutely. [02:40:40] Speaker B: I'm not sure what your abilities are, the two of you here, but is there any kind of way to, I don't know, do like? I heard that there's ways to have a bank contact you when someone was trying to steal your identity, kind of thing, where they thought there was fraud. Is there a way to maybe tag some of these accounts where maybe the travel accounts or anything where we would be notified and we can just confirm and everything would be fine? And they could just continue going over their business, but it would give us the ability to track when these accounts are being used. [02:41:20] Speaker E: Yeah. [02:41:21] Speaker C: Should be able to make that happen. [02:41:23] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:41:27] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. [02:41:29] Speaker D: In theory, there is absolutely a way to do just the off risk. And both Piper and cricket would know is that if anybody goes in to look at who the contacts know, because maybe they should have gotten notified on something and they didn't, and they go in and they look at who it's set to contact, they're going to know that somebody's been fucking around. Again, not dissuading you, but that is a danger to be aware of. Yes, I am being upfront with this information because Piper would absolutely know this, given Piper's specializations. [02:42:13] Speaker B: But that's a risk. And the reward is if we. Yes, this is very much being able to track movement. [02:42:22] Speaker D: Yes, this is very much a. You can get something out of this, but you should also be aware that there is a chance that you will lose something from this. [02:42:30] Speaker B: But I think it will put us on a more offensive stance. Right. Being able to be more proactive than reactive. [02:42:39] Speaker D: Absolutely. [02:42:39] Speaker C: And it'll also get us the information faster when starts moving. [02:42:46] Speaker D: Okay. Are we setting up you guys as the contact when, quote, unquote, suspicious transactions happen? [02:42:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so. [02:42:59] Speaker D: Okay. Between sessions, I would like you guys to figure out what the triggers for those suspicious transactions should be. I'm not just going to give it to you, Arthur. Okay, great idea. But you're going to have to put some thought in. [02:43:15] Speaker C: Sure. [02:43:16] Speaker D: And I will make sure that those are in place for next session. All right. Is there anything else that you guys want to do? Want to look into? You have time? Or we can go do something else. [02:43:33] Speaker A: I can't think of anything else that Isabel can think of to do with the financial. [02:43:38] Speaker C: I'm not sure how pressing it is, and it's not related to what we're doing right now, but starting to look into the Linnaeus society finances could help, too. [02:43:49] Speaker D: Okay. [02:43:52] Speaker C: But that's another this will take time kind of thing. [02:44:01] Speaker D: Oh, sh. Are you okay? [02:44:07] Speaker C: Yeah. I am dumb because I'm bad at taking my own notes most of the time. Hey, cricket, you ever heard of somebody going by the handle of Delphi? As in the oracle of. [02:44:29] Speaker E: I mean, I don't know about a person going by the handle. I've definitely heard. [02:44:36] Speaker C: Well, person is. Yes. Not exactly correct, from what I've heard. [02:44:42] Speaker E: Yeah, there's, like, old wives tale status about some shit going by Delphi. Like, I don't know if it's AI. I don't know if it's a person claiming to be all knowing, frames themselves as some old wivestail bullshit of, like, I know everything. Just kind of there. Like, no one's ever really talked to it. Not in my circles, at least. It's just a know. It's the El Dorado bullshit. [02:45:21] Speaker D: I have a friend who has a friend who has a cousin that definitely spoke to Delphi. [02:45:25] Speaker C: Well, you can cut down that list to. I have a friend who spoke to Delphi. [02:45:32] Speaker E: I call. [02:45:35] Speaker B: Actually, this is the one tech thing I do know that there was a chat happening between them earlier and confirmed. [02:45:48] Speaker E: We're going to have words. We're going to have words. They're going to happen later, because right now I need to process the fact that Atlantis is real. [02:45:57] Speaker C: Apparently, all knowing is, given what we found, not inaccurate. [02:46:13] Speaker D: Okay. [02:46:19] Speaker E: I think there's just a long stare of silence, because it really is. [02:46:25] Speaker D: Cricket is trying to parse the idea that it was you and not them that got to talk to Delphi. [02:46:33] Speaker E: It's the forking emotions. It's. On the one hand, it really is like someone being like, yeah, I went to El Dorado, actually. And on the other hand being like, no, they're fucking. I've been in this game how long? And I don't get to go to El Dorado. So it's this weird, like, forking emotions? [02:46:53] Speaker D: Yeah, it's. [02:47:00] Speaker C: Weirdly closely related to what we're doing. [02:47:08] Speaker E: Okay, good. I think maybe good for you. [02:47:15] Speaker C: Helpful. Also dangerous. If anybody finds out about us. [02:47:22] Speaker E: I'd say my lips are sealed, but that assumes I talk to people unless they contact me. [02:47:31] Speaker B: I screen my calls, too. [02:47:34] Speaker C: You don't take calls. Arthur, you barely understand how a cell phone works. [02:47:39] Speaker B: I understand how a cell phone works, but no, I also screen my call, so I have for years. [02:47:48] Speaker E: Calls will do that to you. [02:47:50] Speaker C: But, yeah, you know, the people. At least some of the people that you definitely shouldn't talk to. She's going to turn to the other people. By the way, if you ever encounter somebody using any variation of the name Briar. So far, the two we've had encountered are green briar and black Briar. Be polite, but engage as little as possible. [02:48:22] Speaker A: The name doesn't mean anything to me, does it? [02:48:26] Speaker D: Nope. [02:48:27] Speaker A: Cool. Let's not say that's a weird name. Yeah, like, Briar Rose. [02:48:43] Speaker E: Briar seems to come after the color they pick so far. I mean, we have a data set of two, so, like, who knows? Maybe he'll switch it up so we. [02:48:53] Speaker B: Could run into a blue briar or an orange briar or something. [02:48:57] Speaker E: Gold briar. Go fancy. [02:49:02] Speaker C: Yeah, but regardless, like I said, there are a lot of people after me, and that's one of the ones that I know is actively after me right now. So keep an eye out. [02:49:26] Speaker D: All right? If you guys don't need cricket anymore, cricket is going to return to their conspiracy hovel. [02:49:36] Speaker E: Focus all that computer power on doing the processing. [02:49:43] Speaker D: Cricket is going to go make a database that they wish was as good as Delphi's. [02:49:50] Speaker A: One day. [02:49:53] Speaker D: Okay. Goodbye, cricket. All right, you three are alone once again. [02:50:02] Speaker B: Your friends seem jealous that you talked to Delphi. [02:50:09] Speaker C: Well, I'm sure there are a lot of things that I do that they wish they could do. And there's a lot of things that they do that I wish I could do. [02:50:18] Speaker B: Let's mutual. [02:50:19] Speaker A: Then. [02:50:24] Speaker C: What's the next step? Where do we go from here? [02:50:30] Speaker A: Think we look into some things. I need to make a phone call. I think we should figure out what exactly the cult's presence in the area is. [02:50:44] Speaker C: Yeah. Arthur, you said you were looking into them in the. [02:50:51] Speaker B: Yes. I also have an apartment near here somewhere. [02:50:58] Speaker C: I legally now know you do not, because you don't use that name anymore. And if you do, then I will personally kill you. [02:51:09] Speaker B: Oh, you understand. It wasn't that kind of place. If I walk into the bar, barttender sees my face. Lets me mean, he knew my first name because Arthur. But I don't think he even looked at my driver's license at any point. My id. [02:51:36] Speaker C: Interesting. [02:51:37] Speaker A: Well, there'd be any bucks on his. [02:51:40] Speaker B: Bar each month, and they kept it open. [02:51:44] Speaker A: Okay. I think it's been a bit since your last page. [02:51:51] Speaker B: No, it's only been. [02:51:53] Speaker D: You've only been gone for a week or two. [02:51:58] Speaker A: Okay. [02:52:02] Speaker C: Do we want to pay a visit there, if anything? [02:52:07] Speaker B: Nothing there, but, I mean, I guess we could empty less the rv supplies or whatever. [02:52:14] Speaker C: Yeah, more of a bar. [02:52:17] Speaker B: It is close enough to where the cult is, though, that we could then go from there to look into. [02:52:24] Speaker A: We're not traveling around in a very obvious rv. [02:52:30] Speaker D: All right, well, before we do that, we are going to do Isabelle's phone call, because it's been a few hours, so Allison is probably awake by now. [02:52:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:52:40] Speaker D: Are you going to stay in the rv? You stepping outside to make the call in private? [02:52:44] Speaker A: I'll step outside to make a call in private. [02:52:46] Speaker D: Okay. You call, and the phone picks up immediately. Hey, are you okay? I worried when I didn't hear from you yesterday. [02:52:57] Speaker A: Sorry, I kind of just passed out. It was not exactly comfortable. It. Yeah, sorry. I meant to. It was just. I had enough energy to crawl back to where we were and sleep. [02:53:28] Speaker D: How did it go? [02:53:33] Speaker A: Said that she couldn't break the curse, but has given me something that at least is going to give me some relief from it temporarily. [02:53:52] Speaker D: Okay. All right. Well, that's something, right? [02:54:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And said it was tied to my trauma. My blood. An interesting way to put it. [02:54:12] Speaker D: Well, we do think it's a blank body that did the spell, so it being tied to your blood isn't surprising. Their magic is going to tap into that. And I guess pulling on somebody's trauma is a way to curse them. Yeah, that means that to some degree, if it's tied to trauma, then it's probably not you specific. [02:54:44] Speaker A: I think. I think she said that no matter who it affected, it would have been different. [02:54:50] Speaker D: Right. [02:54:56] Speaker A: I also have quite possibly a name in several aliases of the blank body and a little bit of information. The name Vincent Pendleton. Apparently, he was a former Emmy out of Chicago that went missing shortly before those bombings a few months ago. [02:55:29] Speaker D: Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. And you can hear, like, feverish typing in the background. And then after a minute, she goes, I fucking knew it. Okay. Yeah. Vincent Pendleton was an me there. And he went missing a few days before the bombing. We were 99% sure that he was one of the blank bodies, but I was hoping that we got him in the palming. [02:56:08] Speaker A: Yeah, he is still kicking. [02:56:14] Speaker D: Okay. My bosses aren't going to be thrilled. [02:56:16] Speaker A: To hear about that, but he's a. [02:56:19] Speaker D: Baby at least, so worse things have happened. [02:56:22] Speaker A: Yeah. I have a couple of aliases that he seems to be going under. Edward Carnby, Stephen Sharp, or Jonathan Turlow. Those seem to be his current aliases. Seeing if those pop up in anything. [02:56:42] Speaker D: Do you mind if I pass these along so that it's updated in our files that he's still mean? [02:56:49] Speaker A: I think it's helpful for everyone if the files are updated, because maybe if somebody else can take them out, maybe this will go away. I would personally like to get my hands on him first, but I will take what I can get. [02:57:07] Speaker D: Okay. All right, well, I'm going to make sure that our files are updated with his status. And my boss knows because my boss was part of the team. Well, part of the planning that went into the Chicago strike. It was a little last minute. We got this. Get this. So we got a metric fuck ton of information from people like your group, like freelancers. I mean, when I say a ton, I'm talking like a big ass duffel bag full of hard drives and photos and just everything you could think of, right? And they were like, Chicago's infested. Here's information on close to 100 kindred and their primary hangouts and who's who in the hierarchy. And I don't even know how they got this kind of information because we sure as hell don't have this kind of information. But it was just like a treasure trove. And they said that some of the blanks got personal information on them, so they were leaving. They were like, we can't take on a whole city on our own. So here you go. Here you guys go. It was the easiest, like, payday we've ever had. [02:58:40] Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah. [02:58:45] Speaker D: I'm a little disappointed that that one got away, though. My understanding is that he was part of the group that made trouble for the hunters that helped us. I was kind of hoping that we could do them a solid, but, you know. [02:59:01] Speaker A: I will look into that as well, see if I can. He definitely seems to have some sort of connection to this group that we're investigating right now. Show up. [02:59:17] Speaker D: What group? [02:59:21] Speaker A: The Church of the rising star. [02:59:27] Speaker D: Really? Pesant little cult. [02:59:33] Speaker A: Yeah. We have reason to believe that their leader is some sort of creature being. [02:59:45] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. No, he's totally a soup. We don't know what he is. [02:59:48] Speaker A: Yeah, leaving bodies and things. We just had a body dropped on our doorstep yesterday. That is one of the victims, and it's honestly unlike anything I've ever seen before. [03:00:04] Speaker D: I don't suppose you got samples? [03:00:10] Speaker A: I do, and I will be sending them your way the first chance I get. [03:00:14] Speaker D: It is. Oh, speaking of, I ran the ones that I got from you, and I'm sorry. I was so worried about you that I sort of didn't think about it yesterday when you texted me, because I finished running them yesterday afternoon. So for the most part, she was normal, you know, type a. Most of her, like, hormone levels and stuff were. Were pretty healthy. What I found that was OD, though. Is that her? I'm having a specialist look into this, but when I ran her dna, it came up a little weird. But I'm not an expert on that particular front. So I've got somebody digging in to try and figure out what the markers that I couldn't place are. What? Our system. The markers that our system couldn't place, I should say, but I'm not sure. So one of the. One of the things that you sent us was this, like the. Oh, my goodness, what's it called? Like, residue on one of the. That was around, like, the edges of one of the wounds. You were going to believe this. There were, like, flakes of, like, the same stuff that makes up, like, nails and claws. Like, our nails and. And, like, animal claws, out of character. There's a specific name for it, but I'm spacing so hard on what it's called. Um. [03:02:40] Speaker B: It's keratin. [03:02:41] Speaker D: Yes. [03:02:43] Speaker A: My brain said that. And my brain went, that's not right. And I just go, yeah. [03:02:49] Speaker D: She would know what it's called. But as the storyteller was just like, I can see the word, but I can't remember what it says. Yeah, there was, like, flakes of keratin in it, but it was like a very specific makeup. It was a little bit more animal than human. [03:03:11] Speaker A: Yeah, we definitely got a lead, and we're relatively, like 90 something percent sure that it was a lupine that did this. [03:03:25] Speaker D: Okay? So don't be mad at me for what I'm about to say or think that I'm trying to baby you. You know, lupines are like murder machines. I'm very aware, like, big and angry and can tear through, like, 20 people in a minute kind of at murder machines. [03:03:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [03:04:00] Speaker D: We'Ve tangled with a couple and never again as far as I'm concerned, I would very much prefer to avoid them whenever possible. And especially because if you've got this curse on you that's messing with your psyche, you don't want to encounter one of those in person. [03:04:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not on my list. And I certainly hope that the killing is definitely. We're not going to run into our furry friends anytime soon, if ever. [03:04:37] Speaker D: Okay, well, if your friends are dumb enough to go after lupines, you should be smart enough to walk away. That's all I'm going to say. [03:04:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it hasn't come up, but I definitely would be in the camp against that, at least for now. [03:05:00] Speaker D: Okay. All right, well, that makes me feel at least a little bit better. Is there anything else I should know or should I just wait on the next package? [03:05:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll have the package sent out today, probably. And there is a person that one of my cell members is connected to, and we were. We believe that this person has connections to the church. We were going to try to see if you'd maybe encountered anything about them before. [03:05:54] Speaker D: Okay, who? [03:05:57] Speaker A: Rin Labelle. [03:06:03] Speaker D: Don't know the name. I can look into the files. [03:06:12] Speaker A: Anything. [03:06:14] Speaker D: They get a little cranky when we go poking around in their business, but I kind of like making them mad. [03:06:20] Speaker A: That's fair. And that's for one of the members. And we also learned that this Rin person may also have connections to the Church of the rising star, so. Trying to figure out what's up with them. [03:06:41] Speaker D: Okay, well, I will look into it and I'll let you know. [03:06:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I hope everything's good on your end. Not causing you too much problems. [03:06:53] Speaker D: Nah, honestly, things are a little boring around here until they're suddenly very. Not as close to a nine to five as you can get in this life. You really should consider that job offer. [03:07:14] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll see how things go after I'm done here. [03:07:23] Speaker D: You could actually have a life and not spend all of your time buried in a shitty little dark office with nothing else going on or on the road with a bunch of weirdos who can't hold down a steady job. [03:07:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Once this is over and I've seen it through, I'll give it a thought. [03:07:56] Speaker D: Just make sure that seeing it through doesn't see you through. Okay? [03:07:59] Speaker A: I'll do my best. [03:08:01] Speaker D: All right, well, I will be here if you need me. And I eagerly look forward to the package. [03:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah, look forward to hearing what you think about this. [03:08:16] Speaker D: Yeah, we'll have to see. All right, go be with your weirdo. Unemployed friends. I will love you lots. [03:08:27] Speaker A: Love you, too. [03:08:28] Speaker D: She will hang up. Okay. All right. I believe next on the list was you guys were going by Arthur's old apartment. Was there anything specific that was happening there? Or is it like you're going to stop in and see if anything weird has happened and then move on? [03:08:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Realistically, it was just a matter of check in with the triple tap on the bar to be like, yo, hey. To the bartender to let them know that I'm around and see if there was anyone that came around looking or if anything weird happened in the apartment. [03:09:10] Speaker C: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Mostly check around for anybody that came looking for. [03:09:16] Speaker D: So we don't have to role play anything out for that. I will tell you that you run by and nobody has come looking for you. [03:09:22] Speaker B: Exactly what Arthur wanted to know. The beer bottle that's sitting upside down on his door handle, still sitting there kind of thing. [03:09:32] Speaker E: Yes. [03:09:35] Speaker D: You run up and check it. Everything seems fine. The measures that you put in place to alarm you if anybody tried to get in are still there, though you. [03:09:46] Speaker B: Might want to taped over the door. [03:09:49] Speaker D: You might want to consider moving some of them so that you don't hurt the poor landlord because I'm assuming you're probably not coming back, but that's about that. And from there, you guys are able to park the rv and head over to where the cult compound is. What exactly are you guys looking for while you are there? [03:10:12] Speaker A: I don't know. But also somewhere along the way, I will send off a package. [03:10:17] Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. I'm not going to make you roll for that. You are much closer to home here than you were. Well, no, you're not incredibly close. I don't know why I was thinking that for just a moment, Louisiana, in my head, was much closer to California. Yeah. I'm just saying, for some reason, in my head, for just a minute, New Orleans was on the west coast and I was like, wait, no, that's wrong. [03:10:46] Speaker B: Louisiana is just know. Arizona is. [03:10:50] Speaker D: Listen, between Arthur drifting off on stream and me not knowing where New Orleans is, you were definitely half asleep. I watched. This is not the first time this has happened. We have video evidence. We're going to clip that and send it to legacy so that they never let you live that one down either. That one's also going to get turned into a clip that ends up on, like, twitch or something. Okay. You head to the compound, at least. [03:11:28] Speaker B: As close as I safely would like to get. I don't like going too close. [03:11:33] Speaker D: Yeah, I'll say that over the months that you had to kind of look at this place, kind of surveil this place and whatever, you found a few places that are kind of up high that kind of let you look over and down into parts of the compound. Would Arthur, specifically, would you please make. Oh, no, wait. You know what? All of you can do this. I would like all of you to make a wits and awareness. [03:12:06] Speaker C: Got it. [03:12:12] Speaker A: Would my thing have worn off by now? [03:12:16] Speaker D: Yes. [03:12:19] Speaker A: And yeah, I definitely would be getting penalties for this. Right. [03:12:24] Speaker D: Unless you want to use the thing again. [03:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm going to use it again, just so I don't have those penalties. [03:12:32] Speaker D: Okay. [03:12:39] Speaker A: It one success. I don't have the willpower. Well, I have the willpower to reroll. I just don't want to use it. [03:12:47] Speaker D: I. I understand. Okay, so we have one, three, and had two. [03:12:55] Speaker B: And I used willpower and got three successes. [03:12:57] Speaker D: Yeah, I saw that the button was gone. [03:13:01] Speaker B: I wasn't going to try to hide it. I just was talking. [03:13:05] Speaker D: Isabel, the thing that you notice is that there is a lot of activity kind of in, like, the central square. There's just a lot of people moving around, which seems a little odd because it's hot. It's the middle of the fucking day. You would assume that people in a place like this would be in the shade or air conditioning if they have it. Not standing in the open under the hot sun with the humidity and the bugs and everything else that's going on. Piper, you see somebody familiar, if only from pictures. You see the person you recognize as Liam Key, aka the speaker. Arthur. [03:14:00] Speaker B: Yo. [03:14:01] Speaker D: You see a box truck. And next to the box truck are two familiar figures. You see the speaker, and you see standing next to him is Katie Lin. And Katie Lin is, like, talking to the men who are going into the truck, and they're coming off of it and they're moving. What you realize is, like, furniture and boxes and things. And Katie Lynn is kind of, like, pointing them towards where to go and whatever, and she and the speaker are clearly talking. In between her having to tell people where to put things and whatnot. She looks happy, excited, even. At one point, he says something, and she gives one of those laughs that you used to live for. That laugh that can light up a room when you're having a bad day and makes you feel like the center of the universe. [03:15:23] Speaker B: Arthur's fists just clench incredibly tight. And even though he's trying to maintain a stoic face, it's pretty obvious that he's not happy about what he's looking at. [03:15:40] Speaker C: Do we want to get a closer eye. [03:15:47] Speaker B: If it's safe. [03:15:50] Speaker C: Well, it doesn't involve us moving one bit. [03:15:54] Speaker B: Well, I mean, if it's safe for her. [03:16:01] Speaker D: When he says, that is when Piper, you put two and two together and you realize that there's a woman standing next to the speaker and he has his hand on her shoulder. [03:16:29] Speaker B: If we do something to get a closer look, it can't be found, it can't be noticed. He could move and do something that we're a little too far to stop. And that can't happen. If I'm making myself clear, until we're ready. [03:17:14] Speaker C: It. Nothing will happen if we just sit here and wait. So I think we should see if we can get more information. Um, we should. We should be far away. If we're anywhere close, then it's more likely that things will get put together. [03:17:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [03:17:46] Speaker C: I'm going to set up a drone and hopefully we're going to drive off somewhere else. And I'm going to scout. [03:17:56] Speaker D: Okay, you guys head back to the RV. Piper sends out her drone. It takes a little bit for the drone to get there. [03:18:08] Speaker B: Arthur reiterates one more time before Piper launches it, how safe this needs to be. But he will trust in Piper. [03:18:19] Speaker C: Yeah. It's worth noting this drone is like palm of your hand, so it's not big. [03:18:28] Speaker D: Okay. Given how tiny it is, it is going to take a little bit to get there. And my understanding is that Arthur wanted to take a moment to sit with Rosanna. So we will address that. [03:18:43] Speaker B: Now, this is a good time. While the drone is off doing a thing, Arthur can't sit still. So this is a perfect time for him to visit. He goes into the room and just goes up, kind of stands near the bed. He's just watching Rosanna for a minute because he's trying to see if she'll wake up. And when she doesn't wake up initially, unless she does. Does she wake up? [03:19:14] Speaker D: Nope, she does not. [03:19:16] Speaker B: Okay, then he's just gonna start talking to her and see if he can just wake her up by talking to her and just say, rosanna, you really need to wake up because we need you. Things are. Things are getting pretty intense right now, and we're very close to something happening. We found out a lot. And I can't. We can't have you. We need you. We can't. We can't have you gone. I can't have you gone. Not right now. So you need to wake up. [03:20:29] Speaker D: You. [03:20:30] Speaker B: Whatever it takes. And then she's just going to stare at her for a very long time. [03:20:40] Speaker D: Okay. While that's happening, Piper, you are watching your drone on your screen. You're watching your drone's view. I have a couple of questions before I can tell you what needs to be rolled. Things like that. How close are you planning to get? [03:21:03] Speaker C: I would like to be able to get close enough to potentially overhear whatever's happening. [03:21:10] Speaker D: Okay, so pretty close. [03:21:12] Speaker C: Pretty close. [03:21:13] Speaker D: All right. Do your drones have a dice pool? [03:21:21] Speaker C: Yes, my drones for this drone, specifically for awareness, stealth and larceny. Use my wits plus technology. [03:21:34] Speaker D: Okay, so let's roll that. [03:21:51] Speaker C: Five. Success. [03:21:53] Speaker D: Okay, I have to roll something behind the screen. Cool. But hyper. You sweep in over what's going on, and you start out pretty high up. And you realize that the only sounds you're really getting is just the general mumble of conversation, because there's so many people. So you've got to get closer if you want to get this specific conversation. And so you start to slowly descend. Random cat swipes at you as you get to the top of the box truck. But you get in close and you get a snippet of conversation. It seems fairly light hearted. They are talking about. It seems like they are talking about the house that Katie Lynn is going to be moving into here. And there is the discussion that it's bigger than the last house that she had. It's nicer and it's newer built, and that it will serve the needs of a growing family very well. And it is about this time that that cat that was on the top of the box truck swipes at the drone, and you aren't quite fast enough to avoid it. And you watch your drone's camera view as it kind of plummets, as it's knocked out of the air. And you watch the view of a pair of men's loafers. Style shoes. Oxford style shoes, not loafers. I'm sorry. That was the word I was looking for. Turn in the direction of the camera, or in the direction of the drone. Walk towards it. You see a hand for a moment, and then the drone gets picked up. And you see the speaker's face up close, and he sort of gives a little wave, and you distinctly hear, hello, Miss Piper. And that is where we are going to end it for the evening. Please join us next week when we will continue. And hopefully, maybe Rosanna will wake up. Good night.