Maple Shade Timeline S1C3

Session Thirteen: 08/31/2018

Thursday, August 12th, 1976

• The site of the event is a private section of land connected to Tillamook State Forest about two hours from Portland.
• Rose, Shirley, and Isaiah all show up early on Thursday to help set up the event site.
• Matthew is also there early, getting his shop set up and ready to go.
• Lucas arrives with his gaming group, who set up a circle of tents and a pavilion while Lucas sulks at being "forced" to be out in nature.
• Carol and Nancy arrive that afternoon. Nancy shows up with a mass of pink chiffon that she reveals is her "princess dress" for the event.
  • They see Matthew, and then Rose, who greets them and helps them get set up and sorted in their camping spot.
  • On their way, they also see Lucas and his gaming group, and Nancy falls in love with their "King Arthur tent" (the pavilion). She also marvels at the garb everyone has, and the stands with actual armor out from of their tents.
  • Rose then puts together an outfit from bits and pieces borrowed from here and there for Carol, who seems surly about wearing the weird clothing. Nancy convinces her, however.
• Setup completed, the encampment settles in for some food and a little booze, but nothing too crazy, as the event opens tomorrow.

Friday, August 13th, 1976

• Event starts.
• Matthew sees Aaron browsing the goods, and he seems a little embarrassed, basically leaves quickly.
  

  Aaron
  • Shortly after, someone who is already at his booth shakes his head and says: "Don't chase too hard after that one, friend. He's so far in the closet, he's basically in Narnia."
    • The fellow introduces himself as Cedrick, and he is wearing garb with a small blue feather pinned to his lapel. He mentions that he tried dating Aaron once, but spooked him.
      

      Cedrick
    • He does mention that Aaron will be 'round their campsite tonight, and that he should stop by if he wants to try chatting him up when he's a bit more relaxed (i.e. has had a couple of drinks).
  • While he is chatting with Cedrick, Matthew gets a quick mental flash from someone in the crowd.
    • Their thoughts are suffused with greed and excitement.
    • He gets the image of someone wandering in the woods nearby and finding a cave in a ravine. Inside the ravine is a strange stone, with what looks like a small disk of petrified wood sitting atop it, with weird scrawled patterns like writing on it.
    • He knows that the person grabbed it, and intends to sell it, thinking it's something from the Indian tribes that used to be in the area, or something.
• Lucas and Danny are hanging around with the rest of the gaming crew.
  • Tracy and Reuben are basically following the belly-dancers around, flirting.
  • Chris and Laurie are hanging out with Lucas and Danny, and telling them about the best parties to go to (the Viking camp always has real mead, and you can't miss that, but the gypsies have music all night, and it's really good).
• Carol and Nancy walk around, and Nancy alternates between having a blast, and wishing Harry were there.
  • While they are feeding the ravens that a handler has brought, she tells her that someone started asking her questions about her the other day while she was down doing laundry in the laundromat. One of their neighbors, Benjamin? He seemed really interested in finding out more about Carol.
  • She then notices that they are doing a jewelry making workshop in the next spot over, and gets very excited about doing that!
• Rose is practicing, and a man comes up wearing an outfit of a Templar, armor included. He speaks with a French accent.
  

  "Hughes de Payin"
  • He asks if she's competing in tomorrow's melee competition, introducing himself as Hughes de Payins. He asks if she's willing to spar with him a bit.
  • He draws his sword and shield, and they fight for a bit. He's clearly really quite good, with a whole host of impressive footwork.
  • At one point, he slams the shield into her face, stunning her and knocking her to the ground. As she's dazed and trying to recover, he says to her: "You do well, though you've got the same blind spot your father had before his training began."
  • And then he disappears into the crowd.
  • While she is searching for him, someone shows up, with a slight bump on his head, asking if they've seen someone wearing a Templar's garb. Someone stole his.
• Lucas wins second place in an archery competition, with his gaming group and friends cheering him on.
• That night, Lucas, Danny, and the gaming group play their game.
  • Tracy hits on Rose a little, but is shot down and warned away. He takes the hint placidly.
  • At one point, a friend of theirs comes by, looking for a friend of theirs, Landon, who they can't seem to find. They move on.
• Matthew ends up over at the Viking camp.
  • Cedrick flirts heavily with him, deliberately so, in front of Aaron.
  • Once Aaron gets some mead in him, he makes his move, and he and Matthew end up spending the night together in Aaron's tent.

Session Fourteen: 09/21/2018

Saturday, August 14th, 1976

• Melee competition is held in the afternoon to determine the Sheriff's Champion of An Tir.
  • Though the competition is tough, Rose wins the melee and is made the Champion.
• Afterwards, a couple of people discover that their cars won't turn over. When they seek jumps from other people, those people find their batteries drained as well.
  • In short order, it's discovered that all batteries are dead throughout the encampment: cars, flashlights, walkie-talkies and all the rest of them.
  • Nancy and Carol join the horseback expedition to the roadside store a couple of miles away to use the phone.
  • Nancy calls Harry and tells him what is going on, asking him to come out.
• Harry arrives a few hours before sunset, and starts helping people jump their cars.
• Right around nightfall, they all hear a loud scream.
  • Someone begins talking about seeing something huge, with big teeth, in the dark watching the camp.
• Lucas, Danny, Matthew, Harry, Rose, and Carol arm themselves to investigate.
  

  Sabretoothed Monster
  • They find some extraordinarily large tracks and follow them.
  • They find a massive hunting cat, with huge smilodon-like tusk-fangs. Its skin is split all over its body like an overcooked sausage, like someone tried to cram too much cat into too little hide.
  • They surround and attack the thing. It mauls Carol some, but they take it down.
  • Once it dies, they see a strange thing like an entity made of jumbled together claws and fangs, rise from it and disappear.
  • The cat's body shrinks back down into a regular mountain lion, though it remains quite dead.

Session Fifteen: 10/19/2018

Sunday, August 15th, 1976

• Carol leaves the campground and heads directly over to Patrick Meeks place, where she talks a little about her experiences, in vague ways.
  • She also shows him her pistol, which jammed the night before. He shows her how to clean it and help keep it from jamming in the future.
  • She naps some while she is there, feeling safe.
• Rose comes back with a hangover from partying the night before. She spends a sedate day at home recovering.
• Matthew gets home and unpacks. Eli has run the shop just fine while he was gone.
• Harry and Nancy get home as well. Nancy is very excited over her experience at the event, and talks a lot about making jewelry and maybe getting a raven?
• When Carol gets home, there is a woman waiting for her at her door.
  • She introduces herself as Damiana and asks to speak with her.
  • She is there representing some of the people in the city who've helped her recently: specifically, the ones who pulled the strings to get her two friends out of cuffs, and the ones who helped her get access to the Special Collection (Damiana asks her how that was, saying she's always been fascinated with its existence).
  • She asks to come inside, and hands her a manila folder with some photocopies and a photo of a man in a suit. (Intelligence + Politics + Connections: Local Government marks him as Commissioner Solomon Powell, one of the city council members.)
  • Damiana says that their mutual friends in city government want her to find out everything she can about him. She's well-regarded as a journalist who can find what she's after, so they want her to put that acumen to work for them: except that she'll be giving them the results of her investigation instead of writing an article about it.

Patrick Meeks

"Damiana"

Solomon Powell

Session Sixteen: 10/26/2018

Monday, August 16th, 1976

• Matthew is contacted by Paul Wilson, a former flame, who invites him out to lunch.
  

  Paul Wilson
  • He is in town for a conference, something to do with the logging industry.
  • While they are at lunch, Matthew intuits that there is something bothering Paul.
  • Paul asks him to be his best man: he is getting married to a woman. Though Matthew knows he's gay, he admits that he's tired to being at the bottom of the corporate heap because he doesn't have a wife and family.
  • Matthew doubts his ability to be happy, but Paul brushes it off. He also won't admit that he hasn't told his wife-to-be that he likes men.
• Harry and Nancy are at home when Nancy calls him over to the television, where the news is on.
  • The image on the screen is a photo of Harry's best friend Dean in his uniform, and a news report about how he was shot in an altercation with some bikers.
  • He is in critical condition at the hospital.

Tuesday, August 17th, 1976

• Early in the morning, as Matthew is opening his shop and has just locked the front door behind him, he realizes that the stranger who has been watching him is standing at the back of the shop in the shadows there.
  

  Barb
  • He hesitates, but the man steps into the light and pulls away the stocking cap, saying "Hello, brother."
  • Though he looks thin, and has the scars and weathering of a rough life, he definitely seems to be Matthew's twin, Michael.
  • Michael explains that their lineage bear the blood of Lucifer in their history, and that heritage is concentrated into one of the twins born every so often into it.
  • The demons come to claim them, but they took the wrong twin. Michael says that they tormented and enslaved him, but he learned enough demonology to find his way free. He offers to teach Matthew what he knows of those arts.
  • Matthew freaks out and asks him to give him time to think. Michael seems disappointed, but leaves.
• A moving van pulls up mid-morning, and burly, handsome movers begin to unload the contents of the van into Apartment B02 (where the boo-hag lived).
  • The new tenant seems to be an older woman, with stylish hair, chunky jewelry, and a flowing caftan, coyly directing the virile young laborers in settling her into her new home.
  • Rose comes upon two of the movers, carrying a massive painting, the moving-cover of which has come loose. It shows a...fascinating image of a thoroughly psychedelic image of a central feminine figure, with a torrent of rainbow light pouring from her genitals.
  • Rose actually recognizes it as a piece in one of her Aunt Lisa's art books.
• Lucas gets a call from Conrad Doom, the owner of Excelsior.
  • He tells Lucas that he's going to be in town tomorrow. He says his girlfriend is throwing a party out at her swank place in the West Hills, and he'd like Lucas to come out and meet her.
  • She's an investor in Excelsior now, so she'd like to meet the person who is in charge.
• Harry is at the shop when Brick's "old lady" Barb shows up.
  • She asks him to fix her bike, as it needs an overhaul, and Brick told her to bring it by to him.
  • She clearly thinks he's cute, and flirts with him boldly, giving him a very solid case of the blue balls (and the Swooning Condition) by the time the bike is done.
• That night, Vivian hears something fall over while she is in her bedroom.
  • Cautiously checking in, she finds that something has shoved several of the boxes aside, as though it had settled between them and pushed them away. There are strange, oily smears on the box surface, but no sign of anyone.

Session Seventeen: 11/09/2018

Wednesday, August 18th, 1976

• Vivian's apartment still being a wreck, she wanders down to the courtyard to get some meditation in.
  • When she is there, she encounters Winnie Suttle, who introduces herself and asks her what she's doing. When Vivian explains that she is meditating, Winnie invites herself to be taught.
  • Just as they are settling in to do so, Carol comes downstairs, intended to head in to work a little early and get some researching done. She is intercepted by Winnie, however, who insists that she sit with them and learn to meditate.
  • Vivian guides them in the meditation, which Winnie seems to latch onto with alacrity.
  • Carol, however, unexpectedly enters a fugue state, standing up without a word (and even leaving her purse under the bench) and walking away, disappearing all day.
  • For her part, Vivian got nothing out of the efforts, and vows to have her puja space cleared and set up before tomorrow.
• As Rose comes out of her bedroom, having just showered and changed for the day, her mother is getting off the phone.
  • "Did you fight someone?" she asks. "Just recently? Did you fight a...a duel?"
  • She becomes very upset, accusing Rose of lying when she said the SCA was only "play fighting" and not for real.
  • She forbids her from returning to the SCA, imploring her to focus on her education, and then leaves quickly, very overwrought.
  • Rose asks her grandmother about it. Her grandmother does a lot of hedging, but eventually mentions that her father "had a mission that was greater than that assigned to him by the U.S. military."
• Lucas notices someone slipping into Matthew's apartment, with a key.
  • He promptly follows him in, and discovers Michael, Matthew's twin, about to enter his library.
  • Lucas confronts him, and calls Matthew. Matthew gets Eli to watch the shop and heads upstairs to confront Michael.
  • Michael reveals more about his reason for being at the Maple Shade: there is a type of demon called an Earthbound, which is tied to a place on Earth instead of in hell.
  • The building that used to stand where the apartments do now had such an entity. Someone or something sequestered the part of the world to which it was tied into its own "pocket", separating it from the rest of the world and locking it away.
  • The demon is slowly waking up, and trying to escape its prison. It was the demon that killed Natalie. He even mentions that it likely stole her bodily away, which is why there was blood but no body.
  • He wants to bind it, to entrap it, and to take it with him. But he'll need Matthew's help doing so. He's willing to teach Matthew all the demonology he needs to learn it.
  • Matthew asks for some additional time to consider what is going on. Michael agrees, but warns him that the demon is waking, and the more it wakes of its own accord, the harder binding it is going to be.
• Michael goes to leave, opening the door, and a crossbow bolt slams into his chest!
  • He falls backward, hissing and twitching, claiming the bolt is blessed and burns him terribly!
  • Lucas peeks outside and sees someone on the roof overlooking their floor, darting away. He makes a dash for the stairs to the roof.
  • He sees a woman in loose grey clothing fleeing, and gives chase. Before she gets to the stairs down on the other side of the building, she turns and deliberately fires a crossbow bolt into Lucas's thigh, dropping him.
  • Haywood gets to the top of the stairs at that point, and returns fire on her with his service pistol. She darts down the stairs, and Hayweed gets Lucas back to the apartment.
  • While they were gone, Matthew pulled the crossbow bolt from Michael's chest, and he passes out. He does his best to apply pressure to the injury.
  • Rose hears the gunshots and grabs her bag, heading over immediately to Matthew's. She sees the blood from Haywood dragging Lucas back to the apartment and gets in there to patch them both back up.
• Carol wakes in the Witch House in Forest Park, just as the sun is setting.
  • She has no recollection of what she's done all day, nor what caused the lapse of time. She doesn't even have her purse on her.
  • She walks out of the park and to a pay phone, calling Harry to come and get her.
• After resting for a few hours, Lucas goes to the party feeling a great deal better.
  

  Anupet
  • It's a trendy shindig, with a bunch of people dressed up really nicely, though they all seem sort of odd and distant.
  • Conrad finds him, and immediately introduces him to his girlfriend, Anupet. Lucas and she chat casually, though it's hard not to feel like she's measuring him, especially with Conrad hovering nervously nearby.
  • They go their separate ways for a few, before Conrad waves him over into a side bedroom.
  • Conrad immediately begins cutting some lines of cocaine for both of them, though Lucas demurs.
  • Conrad tells him that he really impressed "his girl," and that he's going to start having some packages come into the store specifically addressed to him. He's supposed to find a corner to keep them in, and Conrad will have someone pick them up the day after they're delivered.
  • Lucas immediately suspects this is a drug thing, and calls Conrad out on it, refusing to have any part.
  • After some tenseness between them, Conrad insists that he's the boss, and Lucas needs to do as he's told. Besides, this is the only way Excelsior is staying open.
  • With that ultimatum, and some harsh words between them (including Lucas threatening to go to the police about it, and Conrad warning him that very bad people with guns will do something to him if he does), Lucas leaves.
  • He calls Harry to ask him to come get him, and waits outside.
  • Nancy tells him that she'll tell Harry as soon as he gets back from picking up Carol.

Session Eighteen: 11/16/2018

Wednesday, August 18th, 1976

Thursday, August 19th, 1976