Interlude Two: Autumn in San Francisco

Session One (1.17.11)

• Hypatia arranges a visit for Autumn to the Golden Gate Atheneum, within the San Francisco Consilium of the Mists to facilitate his study and training as a mystogogue.
• A small key (with sympathy to the landing point for a portal) is sent to the Fivefold Vigil's Sanctum in Astoria. Glaucon visits Astoria to set up the portal and Autumn bids his cabal-mates a temporary farewell.
• A young mage, Pan, meets him in the courtyard of an apartment building. The portal has let out within a small closet set up to look like an apartment -- the floor is slightly covered in junk mail.
• Pan is talkative and friendly. He takes Autumn to meet the Consilium's herald, Seshat.
• Seshat has an unmarked office within a building devoted to a small newspaper. She greets Autumn and asks him about the circumstances of his visit. Autumn is paranoid, as usual, and only notes that he is under a geas preventing him from visiting Portland. He notes that it was placed on him and his cabal as a matter of protection, rather than as a way of getting rid of him. Seshat seems satisfied and welcomes him to the city.
• Pan takes Autumn to the Golden Gate Atheneum -- a large private library with an internal garden. After settling in to his room, Pan calls him to meet with the Head Curator, Baba Petra, who was Hypatia's mentor. She also asks him about the circumstances of his visit, and he once again only reveals the minimal amount of detail necessary, though he does mention that his cabal has been having trouble with Seers. Baba Petra is friendly and officially welcomes him to the Atheneum. Hungry for awakened knowledge, he asks her where the histories are and she points the way.
• Autumn voraciously indulges himself in research.
• First he researches his mysterious mentor from the past, Kang Lu. He finds the following:
  • Kang Lu spent a lot of time in the Babylon Gardens, in the cemetary.
  • He was a Taoist priest in Sleeper society.
  • He was also a Master of the Wraiths of Epochs.
  • He had been heard to say that he had a student "coming," but none ever showed up.
  • He had a tomb built in the Babylon Gardens, but according to the "Queen's Own" -- the last cabal to own the Hotel Regina -- they went looking for his tomb but could never find it.
• Researching the cabal called "The Queen's Own," Autumn is initially unable to find anything material.
• He turns to researching the Hotel Regina and finds the following:
  • The hotel was built on the site of a totem pole of the Chinook tribe, which was topped with a fecund celestial mother figure, painted black. Its eyes were painted to be stars.
  • Kang Lu was said to have seen this hotel in his dreams and showed up shortly after the hotel was constructed. He worked for a long time trying to acquire it.
  • A couple letters from Kang Lu (translated into English) described his efforts to acquire the hotel because of its powerful hallow. He eventually succeeded, but there were Seers working against him. The Seers were very secretive, however, and accepted defeat rather than letting their fellows know they were trying to acquire the hotel.
  • Letters from Mother Gamayun -- of the Tri Ptitsy -- noted the death of master Kang Lu and asked if the Golden Gate Atheneum had ever heard of a Mystogogue named "Autumn?" Her mentor had mentioned him, but she could never get any details out of him.
  • Also found a photo of four people standing out on the piazza that is the front porch out in front of the Hotel Regina. Two men and two women. The two women stand side by side, holding arms. The two women are clearly related. The older woman looks like a somewhat younger Eos (This is Auctorita, though Autumn doesn't know this at the time)... but it's much too early for it to be her, unless she is much older than what is commonly understood. One of the men has salt & pepper hair, a waxed mustache, and a bowler hat. The other man has features that might be half-Indian. He wears a distinctive cowboy hat. The photo is dated 1912 and has the inscription "The Queen's Own" on the back.
  • The Tri Ptitsy had the hotel until 1908, or that's the last mention of their ownership
• Autumn tries to research when the Columbia Consilium went away, but he is unable to find anything useful before he is interrupted by Pan, who insists on getting him some dinner and then taking him out for a night on the town.
• As they eat dinner, Autumn confides in Pan about his strange mentor from the past, Kang Lu, and how he came into the long-dead mage's tutilage. Pan is enthralled, and even more so when Autumn points out the reference to himself in the letter from Mother Gamayun.
• After dinner, he puts on his funeral suit. Before they go, Pan musses up Autumn's hair and puts eyeliner on him.
• Pan drags him to a number of clubs and it's fun to see the spectacle. There is more drinking than Autumn has done in a long time and, at some point, he and Pan are dancing together... and then making out. That's all he remembers.
• When he wakes up -- next to Pan -- there is an insane storm raging outside. At least three tornadoes have touched down in the city and the wind and rain are blowing to beat hell.
• As he and Pan rush out into the hallway, Seshat rushes up. She says that the "hall" is exposed. She asks if Autumn is a moros and, when he confirms it, hands him a shard of obsidian glass.
• He and Pan rush down to the basement, where there is a broken standing mirror of obsidian glass missing a single shard. When Autumn snaps the shard back into place, the cracks close and the whole thing takes on a watery quality.
• Pan takes Autumn's hand and pulls him through the Gate of Blackness... and into the Hall of Bones.
• Skulls line the walls of the Golden Gate Atheneum's "Sageorium," and the room is thick with the ghosts anchored to them. A large hole is letting in rain, muddy water, and debris. One of the skulls is destroyed and the ghost of a Roman centurion unravels.
• Speaking the dark language of Atlantean, and biting his finger so that he can inscribe bloody runes on the Sageorium's walls, Autumn calls up the shadows in the room and welds them into a solid structure to plug the hole. His first attempt fails, but he gathers his will and pulls off the spell, sealing the opening for about an hour. The shadows bulge obscenely inwards from the force of the storm.
• Several of the skulls are badly damaged and won't last, so Autumn begins ripping the buttons off his shirt, inscribing them with bloody runes. He uses them as temporary replacement anchors for the ghosts tethered to the fragmented skulls. He is able, just barely, to save all of them. He seals the buttons up in a plastic bag so that the runes won't wash off and turns to give them to Pan.
• There is a horrifying, floating monstrosity in Twilight -- spectral and made of skulls with eyeballs in each of its claws -- which has a wickedly hooked tail buried in Pan's chest. Pan is shaking as though seizing and bleeding from his eyes.
• Autumn attempts to command the specter, but it ignores him -- it is like a ghost, but somehow not the same. Autumn uses death magic to begin unraveling its pattern. The ghost-monster screams and charges for him. He casts once again and rips out a more sizable portion of the thing's pattern. It screeches and flies out, passing insubstantially through the shadow-sealed hole. A nearby ghost of the Sageorium bemoans that "the Dreamer" has escaped.
• Autumn checks that Pan is okay. Pan says it's like he was reliving every bad trip he's ever had, only a lot worse. The ghost repeats that the Dreamer has escaped and admonishes Autumn to tell Pan. He does so.
• Pan is suddenly very worried and says that they've got to go find someone he knows. Autumn doesn't want to leave the Sageorium, as his shadow seal won't last, but Pan tells him that people are going to die.
• Thinking fast, Autumn decides that if he could open a Ghost Gate, the Sageorium ghosts could carry their own anchors to safety. He reaches up the Watchtower and pulls the gate open, but his hubris proves costly to his Wisdom, though he is able to maintain his mental stability in the face of this awesome rush of power.
• Pan and Autumn race off to a Russian district of the city to a fortune teller's shop. A woman wearing a number of veils greets them. Pan introduces her as "Miss Blacklace." Pan tells her that the Dreamer is free. She is concerned, but says that she will only offer her help if they agree to destroy it rather than recapture it. Autumn hesitates and she tersely states that people are probably dying as he waits. He finally stammers out an agreement.
• As they prepare to go, she explains that the Dreamer is a "Geist" (though she doesn't use that word initially). During her description, Autumn notices that she is exceedingly strange, appearing solid both to his mortal sight and to his ghost sight.
• At Golden Gate Park, in the place where the Dreamer's urban legend was built up, Miss Blacklace sketches out a chalk circle and has Autumn stand inside. She tells him to summon the Dreamer and then to leave the circle, being careful not to scuff it. He does so and the Dreamer comes, followed by two crazed mortals who attempt to smudge the binding circle. Pan holds them off. Autumn jumps out of the circle and only smudges it ever so slightly, but it doesn't seem to have any detrimental effect. Miss Blacklace puts bent, rusty nails in her mouth and then spits them at the ground, which seems to damage the creature. Autumn, meanwhile, uses his death magic to unravel it further. Soon, it is entirely gone.
• Pan sees to the two mortals, who have suddenly come back to their senses.
• Autumn asks Miss Blacklace what she is. She tells him about Geists and Sin-Eaters, though she explains that she is not entirely sure what to make of her own condition. She also notes that while Magi -- though she doesn't use this word -- have existed since ancient times, she has heard that there might have been times when there were no Sin-Eaters. They seem to appear, she says, in the time before a great tragedy. She says that she came to be shortly before Chernobyl exploded, though she only looks like she's seventeen. She also manifests her Geist -- the Widow -- briefly for Autumn to witness. She asks him to keep her a secret from the Magi and he agrees, but asks her to remain in contact with him so that he might eventually help her understand her condition better. She agrees.
• Miss Blacklace leaves, fading into the crowds. Soon after, Magi arrive, sensing the Dreamer's death. Pan does all the talking and, without lying, spins a half-narrative which describes how Autumn destroyed the beast.
• Back at the Atheneum, wrapped in blankets by the fire, the two sip warm beverages and Pan leans his head on Autumn's shoulder.
• Later, Autumn gets in a bit more research before he needs to head back to Astoria. He also follows up on the Wraiths of Epochs, discovering that there are two local Wraiths and that they share the same master, who lives in Nevada. They tell him that they will notify their master to expect a visit from him and give him directions to their master's home -- an old Nevada ghost town.