Episode Six: Affairs of the Heart

Session One (4.22.11)

• Back at the Regina, after our fight with the vampires, Rasayana uses Mind to give himself surgical skills. Issa contacts Malcolm Bruide, who also has some medical training. The two of them work on getting Autumn and Serafina stitched up.
• Malachite waits impatiently for Valentina to wake up. Once she's conscious and sober, he has a “conversation” with her about getting her act together and taking better care of her sister.
• After Autumn & Serafina have recovered some, we have a long discussion about joining or founding a consilium and about Autumn establishing an athenaeum on the grounds.
• Malachite breaks down and asks Issa to attempt scrying for his brother Daniel. Issa finds Danny living in LA and swipes his cell phone for Malachite to copy.
• Malachite calls Danny. Unlike his brother, Danny was adopted by a good family. He has a foster brother named Mickey. He's divorced and works in construction. He seemed surprised but pleased to hear from Malachite.
• Two weeks after we run the vampires out of Astoria, Malachite wake up in the middle of the night to find a gun pointed at his face by the shadowy figure connected to outlaw Cole's six-shooter. The figure vanishes as Malachite bolts upright, but the smell of cordite lingers in the air, as if the gun had truly been fired. When Malachite gets the gun out of its case, it feels slightly warm to the touch. Using Fate, Rasayana learns that Malachite has an intimate, soul-deep connection to the six-shooter.
• Issa is going with Stoughton to attend a Guardians of the Veil caucus meeting. When Stoughton arrives, he asks to speak with Serafina. He wants Serafina to go to the upcoming Adamantine Arrow caucus and discredit Adder as a candidate for Adamant Sage. He tells her that Adder was involved in a battle in Denver where he used massively vulgar magic in view of a dozen or more sleepers. He's still wanted there for his violations. A couple of years later, he was charged with clearing out a nest of Celesti in LA. He took four junior Arrows in with him, but he's the only one who came out alive. Serafina asks if there's anyone Stoughton does want in the position, but he says he only wants Adder out of the running.
• Rasayana asks Stoughton if they've had any luck running down Wai Chi. They haven't, nor have they figured out how he's teleporting himself from place to place.
• At the caucus, Issa attends a lecture by a Guardian named Akbar. Akbar has heard of the Regina and asks Issa if he's found the Garden of Passages, a rumored series of gateways to various points in the Columbia Consilium.
• At the cemetery that night, Autumn sees two guys drive up in a car that he realizes he used to own. They seem to be speaking Russian. They are approached by a third man who gives them a duffel bag full of drugs.
• Using post-cog, Autumn learns that one of the men has had dealings with a Mr. Jones, the drug dealer Autumn himself used to work for. They are likely using Astoria as a drop-off because its port has little in the way of security.
• Autumn decays the carburetor of the car so the first two men can't leave with it, then follows the third man back to the docks. He manages to get a lock of the guy's hair for Issa to scry with. Autumn heads back to the Regina to get Malachite's opinion on what to do next.
• After he gets back from the caucus, Issa goes looking for the Garden of Passages. He realizes that some of the statues in the garden are making specific hand gestures and the fence surrounding the garden has musical notation on it. Making one of the hand signs and whistling the tune lets Issa open one of the gates, which leads to a cave in Chinook, WA.
• Autumn & Malachite go out into the garden just in time to see Issa disappear into the gate. Autumn uses post-cog to see what happened, then repeats Issa's actions to reopen the gate. We can't see through to the other side.
• We wake our cabalmates to help us investigate. Serafina calls Issa's cell phone to find out where he is and if he can open the gate from the other side. By repeating the hand sign and whistled tune, he can.