>> I know you’re still out there. I still see your face in my head. That second on the street before you disappeared.
How disappointed you looked. Almost heartbroken.
I can unsee what you showed me, what I found down there, what I didn’t find.
Why me? Why did you pick me? Because you thought I’d be up for the job? Because you watched my films and thought you knew how far I’d go to get to the truth of the story?
Or was it because of my parents?
I never had much use for them after giving us up, my brother, sister, and me. I was basically an adult already, they had me pretty young, but my sister was put in the foster system, and our baby brother grew up with a great family in Utah. He looked for me when he turned eighteen. He just wanted to talk. I wasn’t ready. He invited me to his wedding a few years ago, but I was on the other side of the world in Aksum, working on the film about the Tabota Seyon. That was my excuse anyway.
I know my parents died. I don’t know how or when exactly. My sister kept looking for them, telling me over the years that they were either homeless or in hospice or finally getting their shit together after years of drug abuse.
I flew up to see her last week. I told her I wanted to meet her kids, but I really wanted to see if she still had a bunch of shit from when we were kids that she’d hauled around from foster home to foster home. She had. Most of it was junk. Drawings, school pictures, report cards. But I was looking for something from my parents, anything that might scratch this itch I’ve had in the back of my head since I read The Monarch Papers.
Since I read about the original Mountaineers.
My little brother doesn’t remember them at all, my parents. My sister is still hanging on to whatever’s left of her childhood, blaming them for everything that’s gone wrong in her life since. But I just remember who they were in all the years before they gave us up and how everything changed in the span of a year. 1998.
We went through everything together, my sister crying over the same memories, asking the same old questions.
There wasn’t much from my parents. A couple things they wrote, a letter to us which was basically nonsense, but then I found ripped out pages from a notebook they kept by the kitchen phone.
It had usernames and passwords. Usernames I remembered reading after they surrendered us. It was like they’d been swapped out with strangers. They weren’t mom and dad anymore. They were the names they’d written on that page.
Kilvesh and Pippete.
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Did we ever learn more about Bruce and his videos? Since he’s back in the spotlight it would seem that might be an important bit of knowledge and research.
It’s also notable to me when I look through the previous message thread that the second person, who I propose we call “Mystery” because that’s the closest thing they gave us to a name, underwent a change in personality not unlike Eaves.
As a final thought, is it possible that the Cagliostro ostracon is related to the stele that Carew was working with? Perhaps it is contained within; the object that rattled when he dropped the stele?
Not to say all things are connected, but coincidence and magiq tend to look awfully similar.
So Bruce’s parents were ’94 Mountaineers. That definitely seems like a magimystic “coincidence,” but I wonder if the patron knew when they first reached out to him?
I would love if this was somehow connected to the changes with Eaves, simply because it might give us more insight into what’s happening with him, but to be honest, I didn’t notice a dramatic change in the patron’s tone in the last series of messages. I think they were playing coy in the beginning until Bruce demanded answers, and then they gave him more than he bargained for, but nothing quite as stark as Eaves’ recent change. Though, I know Eaves pretty well. Or I guess I knew him pretty well.
Regardless, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ostracon Bruce was looking for is somehow inside the stele Carew had in 1846.
Two hunts for the same object unfolding across two different timelines?
For reference:
Kilvesh in our wiki
Pippette
I’d guess what little Bruce remembered, or inherited from his parents turned him into the sort of person the patron would contact to do this kind of thing. I’m not sure he was selected because of them, per se. But that’s just a guess.
So for options to consider, we might be able to find out what Carew did with the Stele and that might lead us to where it is today.
Or if we had access to Wanderer’s abilities somehow we could just yoink it from the past, assuming we could find a tolerable cost. Probably outside our toolset right now.
As for Eaves, I have no idea what’s going on. I can’t tell if he’s just tired from leading, depressed, or under some sort of influence. I think it’s strange as his mood seems to become more detached the castle is acting up more and more. I wonder if it’s fighting him, or visa versa.
All I can suggest for now is don’t give him your home address to let him send you that codex. I’m not sure who or what would show up at your front door and I hate myself for thinking that.
I’m of the same mind – Bruce does what he does and was the right person for the job because of “what he is”, not because of “who he is”.
And yes @Endri, Bruce’s ostracton = Carew’s stele somehow; the W.E.L.L. is probably predictable enough in that regard to be pulling details about related items.
I’m going to throw it out there simply becasue these tinfoil thoughts should be put to the test, but there’s no way our patron might be a ’94 right?
Right?
That’s an interesting question. I don’t see why they couldn’t be. Now if they were…then that may very well change the answer of whether or not Bruce was picked because of his parents.
>>> I didn’t know your parents were Mountaineers.
>> You’re telling me it was just a coincidence?
>>> There are no coincidences.
>> So magic brought us together.
>>> Purpose brought us together. Your connection to everything that’s come before, your drive to find the truth because of that invisible connection, me seeking you out because of that drive… even me being chosen as Lauren’s patron, it is all because purpose set us on a hidden path, and on it, we have found ourselves walking together.
>> Paths again? Are you with the Silver? Or Monarch’s Mountain?
>>> No. Those paths ended along with the last age.
>> You mean “The Book of Kings?” How do you know they’re gone?
>>> Because like I told you from the start, I’m also a truth seeker.
>> Why are you finally answering me now? It’s been months.
>>> I think you know why.
>> Because there’s some new insane way I might be able to help you.
>>> A way you can help Lauren.
>> I need to meet you. I need to hear it from you.
>>> It’s not as easy as that.
>> Why not?
>>> Because I’m not who you think I am.
>> What do you mean?
>>> Lauren is running out of time. I’m here to help her. To right a wrong. If you help me do that, I’ll tell you everything I can.
>> Can you at least tell me your name?
>>> Maya.
>> That’s beautiful. What do you need me to do?
>>> First, I need you to find the House of Blackweather.
The Blackweathers!
I’m not sure what the significance of that name is. Have we heard it before?
TMP: Time (and at the Complete Translation). Martin ran into them a couple times, Lauren hung out with them for a bit, and (my favorite) Lady Blackweather tossed that quarter at him because he’s a well.
Huh, I have no recollection of any of that. Alrighty then. Thank you for the update!
I think other than possibly being on the guest list that most mention is in the books (and double-checking the name when we were speculating the patron now known as Maya, and if they were affiliated with any previously known problematic groups kept it fresh).
Also, I believe that with the Blackweathers being at The Complete Translation – this is purely from memory and I’ll have to cross reference it – but I believe pre-Lauren Cags did something to Lady Blackweather on stage where the color (red maybe?) drained from her dress that seemed more symbolic than a simple wardrobe change.
The previous Cagliostro did it, yup it was red, and the Lady Celia was weeping afterward so definitely seems like there was more going on then a dress losing color. I would think the house would be relatively easy to find 5 story building in Greenwich Village with a facade made up of wood and brick with a weird door knocker, can’t be too many of those. Now Bruce just needs to figure that out, but Martin said it was hard to track them down when he was trying to interview people before the show so they know how to hide well and the house is protective so there might be a way for it to “hide” itself in a way. On another note, after reading that chapter it sounds like the House of Blackweather is a lot like Lion’s Heart, not quite alive but definitely something else.
Maybe a Well?
It’s definitely possible and would make sense. It fits Sullivan’s descriptions of Wells.
What I gathered from his rambling was that there are places in the world “touched by magic” in a way that leaves an indelible mark. He and his associates use them as barometers to measure magimystic energy. He says that very recently wells have begun growing deeper, stronger, and behaving more strangely. He says that wells growing deeper might sound like a good thing, but in fact, it may also mean that magic is trying to dig in and take hold as something attempts to take it. Or destroy it.’
What better place for Lauren to hide than a Well while she was recovering.
Does this all then imply the Blackweathers, and by extension probably other rich types that attended the Translation are part of the Cult?
It feels (to me) like the CoC and these patrons are not the same, or that the patrons are loyal to the person rather than the power of the Cags.
>> Do you know the history of the House of Blackweather? If you do, you’d probably be the only one because there’s no evidence of the house on public record, at least not in New York.
With nothing else to go on, I started with The Monarch Papers. Martin doesn’t mention precisely how he found the house, but Greenwich Village is only twelve city blocks, so I figured I could use street view to scour the neighborhood. Given his description, I assumed it wouldn’t be too hard to track down.
It was.
In fact, it was impossible.
I couldn’t find a townhouse even remotely close to how he described it. I reached out to some contacts, but not surprisingly, my NYC friends are no longer returning my phone calls after what happened the last time I was in town, and they only heard about the breaking and entering part.
So I flew back.
It was my third or fourth trip around the village when I heard knocking from a fourth-floor window across from a vacant lot that had been turned into a community garden. I found an old woman waving me over to her apartment building.
She asked me if I was looking for the house over the building intercom. I told her I was, and she buzzed me up. The apartment door was open, and she introduced herself from across the room.
Lady Celia Blackweather.
She was draped over an Ikea sofa in a 400 square foot apartment dressed like a Downtown Abbey dinner guest and her husband was nowhere to be seen. I asked about him. She said he was gone. I offered my condolences, but she said he wasn’t dead.
He’d gone looking for the house.
She then started waxing and waning about the history of the house of Blackweather, and when I could finally get a word in, I asked her if I could start recording and if she could start again, from the beginning.
Below’s a transcript, though it doesn’t make it any less unbelievable. I’m boarding a plane now, but I’ll update more when I can, when I land.
B: So tell me again what happened to the house.
C: It’s gone.
B: Why? What happened?
C: Who knows why the house does what it does, though someone at some point must have had an inkling. All those histories get lost in the ages and the minds of the aging.
B: You’re saying the house was there, across the street, where the garden is now, then one day it just got up and left?
C: No, dear. We knew it had been preparing to do so for some time. It all started up while Lauren was with us, just before Martin came to visit. In the book, you know. At first, we thought the house was protecting itself from her. Then furnishings and entire rooms began to vanish, off on their way to wherever the house was heading, like bees set to swarm. But you’d know something about bees, wouldn’t you, after last year’s odyssey in the Midwest.”
B: What do you mean?
C: Oh— no, that’s right. You weren’t, well, you aren’t— the point of fact is that the house is gone, and Teniman is off in search of it. And searching for the House of Blackweather, I’m afraid to say, is not an old man’s game. We thought it had finally settled down here in Manhattan, as had we, in the social sense. Then all our friends were killed in the Translation that dreadful night and I suppose our wanderlust might’ve given the house ideas, though no one really knows why the house does what it does, when it does. Where had it been before Manhattan? Perhaps London? Before the fire?
B: Which fire?
C: THE fire. The Great Fire. Or was it after the reef off Borneo? Tales from that era sound like absolute surrealist nightmares, but every Blackweather since has become a certified diver. I haven’t been diving in ages, though I’ve done a bit of snorkeling, in the Hudson, the well where Sansivory Island stood is still rife with ever-kinder relics, and I— well, I’m a collector.
B: The other Blackweather records I found; Marseille, Buenos Aires…
C: Minsk, Cabo Verde, the Kharga Oasis… yes. You’ve done your research, but those were a long time ago.
B: You’re saying they’re all the same house.
C: Correct.
B: The Blackweather family doesn’t move. The house does.
C: Well, no. It’s just the house moves first. What were you looking for?
B: What?
C: You came looking for something, and I happened to find you looking for it outside my window.
B: Someone told me to look for the House of Blackweather.
C: Did they mean the House or the house? The residence or the genetic lineage that lives in it?
B: They— I don’t know. They sent me to find something to help Lauren.
C: Ah, patron matters. So you’re a sneaky little loophole.
B: Do you know her? Maya?
C: Maya? No, I’m not— not personally. You seem taken with her.
B: I don’t even know her.
C: What does knowing have to do with anything?
B: I saw her. Once. For a second.
C: And it was all over from that moment on.
B: I’m looking for an ostracon. Do you know what that—
C: The Lineage of the Ka Lustra. That’s clever. It might help her separate who she is from who she isn’t, and who she once was. I knew she shouldn’t have gone looking back, certainly not that far, but we’d all be curious, I suppose.
B: Maya thought it was in the Crimson Hall, but it wasn’t.
C: Oh no, it hasn’t been on display for years. I recall that it’s part of a private collection now— You know, thinking, maybe we could help each other. I feel confident I have a record of the whereabouts of that ostracon, in the house. If you could assist Teniman in tracking it down, I’d be more than happy to share whatever I’m able to dig out of my diary.
B: If I help find your house.
C: Yes. It would be wise to start where Teniman did.
B: Which is?
C: Well, there are two things the House of Blackweather is prone to leave behind. Its inhabitants and its plumbing.
B: Plumbing?
C: I was being clever, dear. The house leaves behind wells in its wake.
There is A LOT to unpack from the transcript.
I think the real take home message, though, is that the ever-kinder are still on Sansivory Island in the Hudson, which I still think about from back in our Book of Kings days.
Kidding. Still a lot to unpack.
I’m still unpacking it all and up until this very minute hadn’t realized that Lady Blackweather should have NO CLUE about the bees at Bash’s family farmhouse, but apparently, somehow, she does.
When Bruce seemed to have no clue what she was talking about, LB said:
“Weren’t” what? “Aren’t” what?
I know I might be reaching, but did she almost say something to the effect of:
“Oh— no, that’s right. You weren’t [a member], well, you aren’t [a member].”
Meaning: A member of the Briar Society?
Inferring: She is?
Coming down off the ledge: Or is at least somehow aware of us?
I’m still unpacking it all and up until this very minute hadn’t realized that Lady Blackweather should have NO CLUE about the bees at Bash’s family farmhouse, but apparently, somehow, she does.
But more importantly, when Bruce had no clue what she was talking about, LB said:
“Weren’t” what? “Aren’t” what?
Involved? Aware? A bee?
I know I might be reaching, but could she have almost been saying something to the effect of:
“Oh— no, that’s right. You weren’t [a member], well, you aren’t [a member].”
Meaning: A member of the Briar Society?
Inferring: She is?
Coming down off the ledge: Or is at least somehow aware of us?
I guess that represents a significant flaw in my understanding of what constitutes being part of the Briar Society – if only Briar Society members can see our activity here on the forum (e.g. Bash and the Bees), it means that either Lady Blackweather is one of the folks here with a forum account who signed and swore to the charter (in that case, Hello Ms. Blackweather! We have questions! We would love for you to answer them! Please let us know which account you’re reading/posting under.) – or – it means that membership is not exclusive to signatories here on our forum.
Edit – there is also a lot more I would like to discuss about the transcript (my comment about the everkinder was a joke. well, mostly a joke), and I’m hoping to do a point-by-point analysis, but I’m dealing with some significant crises at work right now. I hope to get to it pretty soon.
This is where my mind has been heading, to be honest. I hope that Mrs. Blackweather is one of “us” but I don’t feel that’s accurate. The historical documents we’ve been given access to, and what we’ve gotten from Sabe’s return note lead me to believe that we are but a small fraction of something greater
Frankly, it’s most likely to be a combination of the two.
I’m not sure it’s too complicated (well it is, but let’s just call it easy to summarize).
She knew about him being a loophole.
She knew he had a patron.
She seems to know Maya
She knows about a lot of previous wells
She knows about Ka Lustra
She knows what got Laureen into her current predictament
She know about the Ostracon
She has info on where it is in her house
She knows about the Briar Society.
Heck, she probably knows we’re reading the transctipt and mentioned the bees just as a wink to us
Also, fun detail. She refers to herself as a collector. Now Bruce didn’t capitalize it, but why would he? It’d be kind of interesting if she was the Collector of Monarch’s Mountain. After all, she seems to know everything and have a general detachment to things.
@Endri – does this add up at all with what you and Ascender found with the Monarchs?
During our time at the manor, our closest brush with the Collector turned out to be Marjory Morrow pretending to be the Collector while controlling someone else’s mind.
But Lady Blackweather is an interesting theory. She certainly seems to know a lot, as @Robert summarized, but I don’t know, after everything we found there, everything they were sitting on, I can’t help but think of the Book of Kings Monarchs as a bunch of do-nothing thumb-twiddlers (versus the “Monarchs” from Bash’s ancestor’s memories.)
On the other hand, the Collector said “himself” that he was bound by the role of the Collector to not take action without the Monarchs’ consent, which, again,
.
In other news, Eaves. The message from Gav, in case you all haven’t seen it.
I have to be honest, while I too have never heard Eaves raise his voice, Gav’s description was the first time in a while that Eaves seemed like… Eaves, or at least not some distant, distracted, and emotionless version of himself. Eaves has big feelings and always has.
But what do I do? What do we do?
I tried reaching out subtly on that earlier thread, and more obviously, in private messages that he didn’t respond to, and even Gav didn’t really ask for our help. He just wanted to give us a heads up.
And it’s not like we have some solution for the problem even if someone did ask for help.
We don’t even know what the problem is!
EDIT: I just realized I started this reply trying to lightheartedly join in on the tin-foiling and, by the end, had roped you all into the murky nightmare landscape of my current frame of mind.
Eaves hates magic, and I hate knowing that a good friend is hurting and, as far as I can tell, either doesn’t want my help or doesn’t trust that I could.
Though it does make me laugh a little at the absurdity of you all signing on to help save the world and protect magic from the forces of evil, and instead, it’s just magimystic Facebook with all the oversharing, interpersonal drama, vague posting, and memes.
I need Drag Race and a bottle of wine.
So Eaves isn’t in a Secret Society. At least, not one I think any of us want to be in …
So something I take as relatively important here is that there is nearly certain confirmation of a well in Greenwich Village. Would it be worth our time to have someone look into that?
I noticed that too. I checked the WELL map and there’s no new pin so finding the new well might be challenging, but we should try to find it – others might go looking too.
No, not reaching. That’s how I took it as well. I honestly don’t know anything about the Blackweathers but they sound like they know a lot.
I don’t know, I’m still really worried about Eaves. Something is going on, that’s for sure. Something he’s not sharing or isn’t conscious of or can’t share or… I don’t know. But something.
What strikes me as weird was that Gav didn’t seem to really mention Eaves being… not Eaves, or acting out of character before this. I don’t know if it was just a language thing, or just Gav still processing what’s happened, or I’m reading too much into it or whatever but, I don’t know… If anybody would have noticed something significant being up with Eaves, it would have been his boyfriend, right?
Also, why the heck did all the lights go out right when they did? Was it just the castle reacting to the fight? Is Eaves somehow connecting to Lion’s Heart in some way? My tinfoil hat brain wonders if maybe Eaves has been rejecting magic and struggling to accept it, the castle has responded by refusing to accept technology. But maybe that’s me just looking for themes and connections where there are none.
Oh no, I completely agree, something is up, and that’s why this disconnection and lack of communication is all the more frustrating, but, more importantly–
Um, why don’t you all stop being the cleverest? (yes, I have already enjoyed >1 glasses of wine since my earlier reply.)
I know that I was the first to suggest Eaves was possessed or somehow otherwise overtaken by something in the castle or the castle itself, but what if @Cynical is right and it’s the other way around?
Eaves has an insane capacity for empathy and an even more intense longing for connection, and love, and now, at Lion’s Heart, he has all of that.
And then poof a wall falls over and surprise, there’s another magical mystery to get embroiled in.
(Yes, I’m quoting myself from 45 minutes ago.) Big feelings and even bigger dreams. He would’ve been the first person on that Mounty bus you all were dreaming up during The Monarch Papers, and now, he has everything he ever wanted. Community, connection, love, hell, even gardening and communal dinners…
What if Eaves is scared to let magic pierce the idyllic life he’s always dreamed about and finally built, and the castle is somehow being influenced by him?
I suppose one solution would be to find a way to detach the castle from him and perhaps attach it to someone else who doesn’t hate magic?
I wouldn’t even consider that without the new owners consent…and we can’t talk to anyone. I doubt Eaves would be happy if we put it on Gav.
Replying to myself. I can’t hide behind @Endri’s excuse of wine though. I’m just a narcissist.
Let us assume for a moment Cynical and Endri are correct, and this is Eaves not wanting to upend the happy life he created for himself, okay. I get that.
But like…what problem are we fixing? Sanctuary was built entirely on the principle of the Search for Magic and a refuge for people with magic. That’s why they are all there. Magic kept them alive when the wards fell and they had to make the trek to Lion’s Heart while under constant threat from the Silver. Now perhaps the only safe group of unaffiliated adepts on the planet are in one place (okay that’s likely hyperbole). They can’t talk to us for whatever reason, or likely anyone else. And now they have no electricty…because Eaves just decided he hates magic? Eaves happy dream means no one else at Lion’s Heart gets to do anything?
I just can’t get past the idea that the guy who’s de facto in charge of magic town hates magic. But he won’t step down or leave because he wants to keep what he has?..
If Eaves isn’t being influenced or controlled by someone then the only problem that’s really here…is Eaves. We can’t fix that with magic.
Therefore, I suppose I have to conclude Eaves IS being influenced by the castle. Perhaps he and the castle are feeding off one another? The castle wants a world of magic, and Eaves want’s one without and they are just constantly butting heads all the time. That would take a toll on anyone I assume. If Eaves is highly empathic, then this would make all the more sense.
Eaves is a Gossmere after all. Maybe he’s just…too empathic for a place that dense in magic?
I think the goal, if we’re correct, is to somehow disconnect the castle from Eaves and his current emotional state so that Lion’s Heart can continue being a bastion for adepts, sensitives, and anyone else looking for sanctuary in the new age.
Whether it’s a manipulation of some kind or just bottled-up emotions, we all know Eaves wouldn’t allow this to go on if he was fully aware of his part in it, again, if we’re right. Eaves cares too much about these people—about everyone.
Yes, maybe he’s selfish for wanting to hang onto something important to him without thinking about how it affects other people, but who hasn’t felt that way?
For Eaves, though, for most Gossmere, I imagine, it might be especially tough to deal with. And that might have something to do with what’s happening. It might even be the key.
Well shoot, never mind then, guess it may just be as simple as disconnecting Eaves. Although let it be known I’m still totally on board with also just calling him on it, or at least telling someone else at Lion’s Heart so they can try talking to him on our behalf or something. Seeing if we can ‘wake him up’ enough that he’s willing to have a conversation could lead to getting better insight into Eaves’ perspective on the matter.
What made the castle latch on so heavily with Eaves in the first place? Is it latched on this hard to everybody up there? If somebody else starts having a meltdown, are we going to need to run through all this again? Or did it single him out specifically since he sort of a de facto leader up there? I feel like that information may also be able to help us figure out how to undo it.
I just don’t know how easy that disconnection might be?
That I’m not sure about how to do this because we don’t have a direct line of contact to him right now. Honestly, even if we did, I’m not sure if I would have an inspired idea on how to do it. I think calling people out has an important place, but when someone is already frustrated about their situation and potentially themselves, calling them out can just make them hostile towards you because they think you’re attacking them. We could have Gav call him out, but we need to make sure we also call him back in to make sure he feels like he’s part of the solution, too.
It’s difficult because I think what’s causing the “problems” at Lion’s Heart are what have made him a successful leader and led to his bond with the castle. He’s intensely loyal, caring, and empathetic, and as Endri said, he’s got BIG feelings. All of those things are good, but they can also cause problems in certain situations. He reminds me of Magneto when he was the headmaster for the New Mutants – he had many of those same traits listed above and they made him good at parts of his role. But they also eventually destroyed his relationship with The New Mutants because his desire to keep them safe and just how he wanted them went against the team’s desire, and that’s clearly what’s happening at Lion’s Heart (apologies for my X-Men tangent, I have so few opportunities to apply my knowledge
).
No matter what we do to “fix” this situation, I don’t think uncoupling Eaves and the castle will be easy. However, I think it might be necessary for the safety of everyone at Lion’s Heart, especially Eaves. I totally understand the desire to remain in a happy situation forever, but I think Eaves needs to recognize stagnation brings its own problems. Sometimes you have to keep following the path laid before you even when you feel content where you are. With all that being said, what lengths are we willing to go to to remedy this? Are we willing to go as far as sending the Codex back to encourage Eaves to trust the flow of magiq? Or was the flow always meant to bring the codex here?
Do we need to solve all our problems with magic though? I don’t know what the prerequisite for ‘problems the mountaineers can fix’ is, but what about just, say, calling Eaves on it?
Call me cynical (har har), but I have a hunch this problem isn’t going to be as easily solved as just ‘disconnect/remove Eaves from the castle’. Maybe Eaves and the castle need to have a talk? Maybe Eaves just needs therapy. I dunno. The other question is: Should we tell anyone at Lion’s Heart, like Gav, our theory on what’s wrong with Eaves? Maybe they can talk some sense into him, or at least convince him to actually open up about what’s been going on.
What’s the spell for getting somebody to understand ‘we love you and we hear you and we’re so sorry you’re going through this, but also we need you to realize you’ve linked yourself to an at least partially sentient castle and your emotions are causing a feedback loop’?
We call that a 42-B/5C, @Cynical
Seriously though, this honestly sounds like it would benefit from Calling the Corners.
We’ve used it in the past to separate Saberlane and Woolie’s consciousnesses when they were mixing together and allowing them to function better independently. Except this time we’d need to do it with Eaves and the castles emotions. That might give Eaves breathing space to find himself.
Some caveats I see right off the top of my head:
We’ve never done this with a location before…I’m not sure how we’d even ward an entire castle.
We don’t know how the castle will react to this. We can’t talk to or reason with it. It might see us separating Eaves from it as an attack. It might decide to clamp down even more on what it allows or doesn’t.
We’ve always known where our target was. Technically we’re drawing a hexagon ‘around’ the subject of the spell. We don’t know where Lion’s Heart exactly is…possibly a region is enough. Or maybe we just focus our center on the ‘semi-sentient magic castle Eaves is in’ and that’s enough. Not sure.
I wonder if this is necessarily a problem. The first CtC we encountered was on Deirdre alone and was to separate her from magiq. Given that being the case, wouldn’t we just need to use it in the same way on Eaves?
This one is the biggest problem I think we’re going to have. I would be jumping at the chance to cast a spell if it weren’t for the fact that we don’t remotely understand the link the castle has with Eaves. Given the way they both react to different situations it’s possible they’re both affecting each other. Maybe what we need to do is cast the Corners on Eaves and the Joradian on the castle at the same time?
I think it’s likely that the castle would see us casting protective measures as what we mean it to be — a gesture of care and kindness.
And maybe us trying to help Eaves will show Lion’s Heart that he needs help in some way. It’s also an expression of our connection with the Basecamp folks that isn’t solely technological — up until now, our interactions have all been over the internet, which the castle isn’t a huge fan of to begin with. It might not understand that we’re here to help, or that we’re here at all.
Why cast it on the castle and not on Eaves? If Eaves wants a non-magical existence, maybe we can grant him just that. It would be hard for him, though, to live the ideal life he’s built for himself in that state (surrounded by magic as he is). But, it created a magic-free world for DG all those years ago…
My thinking was to shield Eaves from the castle and the castle from Eaves. Kind of like we did for Saberlane and Woolie.
I’m all for trying Eaves first.
And calling the corners is more a grounding than removing him from magic. What was done to deeds was another, bigger step.
I think we should see what he says to Gav before we do anything. I agree that calling the corners and grounding Eaves is probably the way to go, but I want to know a little more of what’s going on before we cast a spell on someone who has explicitly expressed having a negative attitude toward magic right now. Hopefully, Gavril will be able to talk to him and get more information on his feelings and thoughts than we have.
Hello, tis I, a fellow BIG FEELS and I’ve finally caught up on the current happenings.
Gonna ramble for a bit, indulge or dismiss as you desire.
Feelings
I don’t know y’all. I FEEL for Eaves a lot right now. More precisely, I think I’m actually in the group with Gav about understanding both sides but being unsure how to help, but just gonna focus on Eaves for a hot sec.
Eaves has one (1) outburst and you all are just casually discussing removing him ??? Lol okay.
Of COURSE he’s sick of magic. Think about how his life has been the past handful of years.
He joins the Mountaineers, finds community and acceptance, then the Storm threatens all of that. For a while Ascender just DIPPED on the leaders, who themselves ended up in the four corners dealing with who knows what. Eaves found Sanctuary, but was literally living on the run until Lion’s Heart? Doing his best to protect those around him. Did you all just casually forget that massive spell we did to shield them long enough to evade those who hunted them?
Not to dismiss what any of us have gone through or experienced but Eaves has been through A LOT. Probably loads we will never know about.
Even just read his old bio on his forum profile, Eaves has always put everyone else first. Other than the choice to join the Mountaineers, did he really have a choice in where he ended up? Or did magic just catch him up in it’s currents and whisk him away to where it wanted. I don’t know, but all of this is to further the point that Eaves had what? A handful of months where they were relatively settled in Lion’s Heart to actually breathe and allow himself to enjoy a Sunday dinner or two?
I think it’s really easy to dismiss what Eaves has had to go through, and just the amount of work it is to be a defacto leader. Every problem, every issue, it’s all on Eaves. Every time we want a post or a response from him, it makes things difficult for the people he’s trying to help. Not to say that he doesn’t want to or shouldn’t help us, but we have no idea how much they struggle at BC34 every time he works with us – and we wouldn’t have known they did at all until Gav said as much. How frustrating must it be to have to constantly be choosing who needs your help the most when you care about everyone involved. Maybe it’s Eaves trying to be selfish for once, but maybe Eaves is just burnt out and exhausted. Maybe he’s just tired of being caught in the middle of a game without knowing the rules and having the people you care about bear the penalties.
He didn’t say he hated magic, and I think it’s unfair of us to put that on him.
He said he’s sick of it. Of course he is.
He doesn’t hate magic, he’s sick of what it costs him.
Shouldn’t we be the people who understand that more than anyone?
We talk about it a lot in our hidden threads, but Eaves doesn’t know that. I know he isn’t exactly making it easy to tell him as much. I don’t know, maybe I’m just doing the classic misinterpretation on intention when solely using text based communications, but I feel like there was a lot of prodding at Eaves because we were reliant on him to give us information and then when he didn’t react favourably to that it’s suddenly a lot of something is really wrong with Eaves we gotta get to the bottom of it.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to help our friend, I’m just saying sometimes the only thing you can do is be there while a friend rides out the waves.
Unless the possession/ manipulation theory holds weight, then just ignore all of that.
Now that ~ F E E L I N G S ~ are out of the way, I think we should consult Eaves on the choice.
It’s up to him and what he wants at the end of the day. There’s been some wonderful things already discussed in this thread, and I agree with the sentiment of we can’t force our help on him. He’s probably stubborn and doesn’t want to show that he’s struggling, or doesn’t know what help he needs but forcing his hand isn’t going to suddenly put him in a better place either.
I think we should try to talk to him or Gav, like some of you have suggested. Maybe he’s been so caught up in his internal struggle that he hasn’t realized we could do something like Call the Corners to help. Or maybe he won’t want us to use more magic to help him when he says his problem is with magic. We won’t know unless we can get him to talk to … anybody really at this point.
As always I do not offer anything akin to a solution, just my feelings vomited into a wall of text.
Oh and tinfoil!
Here’s my tinfoil for the day:
We assume Eaves isn’t an adept because he hasn’t told us of struggling like the others, right? (Or maybe Eaves actually said something in the past idk)
Have we ever considered that maybe he’s a well?
Maybe that’s why the castle reacts to him?
Or maybe he just has a very specific brand of magic that the castle was like “me likey”
I mean, that’s much more plausible, but I’ve read the word well way too many times today to not have that thought cross my head despite the knowledge of how rare an occurrence that probably is
I may have misinterpreted what other people were discussing, but I don’t think we were talking about removing Eaves entirely. I don’t think we can actually remove him, even if we wanted to. My impression was that we would call the corners to help Eaves stay grounded and help keep him from any negative influences that might be affecting the way he was thinking and feeling without his consent or understanding. And adding the Joradian wouldn’t necessarily keep him out unless he was explicitly a threat, which I think we can rule out pretty quickly.
And I totally agree with you on your ~ F E E L I N G S ~! I worry that he’s just overwhelmed, as really anyone would be in his situation. It would be amazing if we could just talk to him like Gav can. I would be willing to bet that part of the issue is how isolated BC34 is. When you can only talk through an online forum and you have shaky internet at best, it’s really a recipe for loneliness. He’s also surrounded on all sides by threats and pressures. Just thinking about it is overwhelming, and I’m not even living in a magical castle with a literal mind of its own.
2pence worth, we 100% need Eaves consent to do this.
Just because we’re potentially negating other magics being applied to him without consent, does not make it ok for us to do the same.
I’m with @Ginger that this is burnout rather than something malicious.
But I’m also with the group on re-applying the Joradian safegaurd with the caveat that we have a back up method for communicating with lions heart and brownstone and anyone else we know to have a tentative link to the forum. They’re our allies and if the safeguard does block them, they need to be warned that something hinky is going on.
I don’t want to reapply the safeguard because of Eaves, debate about Eaves just happens to be the stick that got the thought wheels turning.
Magic has changed, we see that with the adepts, as such i think its a little naive of us to rely on protections applied in the last age, they may not be working as expected or intended and that leaves us venerable.
We may also find that with the change in magic that we cant work the spells of the past in the same way, the rules may have changed.
New fresh protection spell or a failed attempt are both useful outcomes, the latter just raised a lot more questions.
So we finally heard back from Eaves! While I don’t think he’s totally out of the woods, it seems like he’s feeling a lot better and isn’t feeling like he’s in as much of a funk as before. However, it does seem like there’s something going on with the castle itself which probably bled into how Eaves has been feeling. I know we’re still waiting to hear what the rest of BC34 learns in town, but does anyone have thoughts on what we could do next?
I think we should ask Eaves about whether they think Calling the Corners on the castle might help them settle into their situation. Now that we know what was going on with him, I think it makes sense to bring him into the discussion about that. I still think CtC might help the situation in some way, since it seems emotions are a bit volatile at the moment, and we’re dealing with mysterious forces we don’t quite understand.
>> I don’t know if you got my other messages.
I’ve been in a lot of places with spotty reception, and I didn’t pack my satellite phone or other backpacking equipment because I didn’t think I’d need it in the West Village.
When you first wrote me, told me everything, I assumed you were with Lauren, physically, or at least knew where she was, but with everything Celia told me in the apartment, and everything Teniman told me since, maybe you aren’t, maybe you don’t.
Are you alone? Are you okay?
Why do you go weeks without answering me? Where do you go when you’re gone? What are you doing now? And what happens when Lauren wakes up? If she wakes up? Do you just go back to your everyday non-patron life, or are you her right-hand woman forever? I don’t know how any of this works, and, I don’t know, you seemed so haunted the night I was supposed to bring you the ostracon, that brief flash. The silences are just as haunting as the times you do respond, and yeah, I know, I don’t know you. But I feel for you.
It’s late, and jet lag is crushing me, and I can’t sleep.
In case you don’t know:
I didn’t find anything in the garden across from Celia’s apartment. I don’t even know how to “look down” a well, as Teniman calls it. Look beyond what you see in a place to what’s really there, or what’s been left behind. I figured he must have found something, though, because he was already off somewhere looking for the house, and that’s when I got his call. Celia. She said Teniman just called, and he was in Denmark, something about the daisies in the garden where the house had been. I still don’t understand. He’d been in the Canary Islands looking for the house, but when nothing turned up, he thought Denmark was promising, and she said he was “very cross” that I was tagging along because he could manage on his own, but he’d meet me in Copenhagen when I landed.
I transcribed my recording with Celia, sent it to you, then started a 20 hour trip to Copenhagen by way of Istanbul, which was all I could book on such short notice.
Teniman was waiting for me in a blood-red suit. Despite how he dresses, he’s a lot less out there than Celia but also a lot less forthcoming. He doesn’t seem to show his hand unless absolutely necessary, and he seems resentful that this “young man,” as he calls me, is here to babysit him. I told him to treat me like an assistant. He thought valet was more appropriate. He’d somehow tracked down a bunch of kids who claimed to have found a weird old house in the forest, and when they went back the next day to play in it, it was gone. The kids took us to the spot, then Teniman sent them away and started searching the clearing. I had no idea what the hell I was doing or looking for or how to look down a well, but I put on a good show. He called me over and showed me a stone tablet he found stuck in a giant fir tree trunk, almost entirely eaten up by the bark. It had writing carved in it that neither one of us recognized. It seemed familiar to Teniman, but he said it wasn’t left there by the house.
It had been there a lot longer.
We looked around until the sun went down, and he politely told me to go back to the hotel because I was distracting him. I wrote you that night, but we were in a middle-of-nowhere village on the northern edge of Rold Skov, and I wasn’t sure it went through. I fell asleep at some point and woke up to Teniman in my room, making a cocktail at about four in the morning, looking completely refreshed, telling me to pack my bag. We were heading to Asia.
He flew first class. I didn’t. Three connections, twenty-plus hours in the air, and we were in Taiwan. Then China, then Cambodia, with Teniman never telling me any more than absolutely necessary, and my patience quickly running out.
I spent a week of days wandering around neighborhoods and parks with him ignoring me, or scolding me, or telling me to do or hold or fetch one thing or another, and a week of nights on my own. Some of these cities I’ve been to before, for work, for shoots, but now, knowing what I know about the world, about my parents, everything seems like it’s made out of paper. Like a painting you could punch through. It’s all just brush strokes. It’s the insane world beyond it that’s real.
I found Teniman in a market stall, feasting on local food. I joined him, telling him what I just told you, and he told me that’s the first step in seeing what no one else does. Looking past the painting. We ended up getting drunk together, sweating in the Myanmar heat. At least I was drunk. I don’t think this man could drown.
At some point, he told me I talk too much to see what’s around me. He told me endless chatter is what simple people do to seem smart, but listening is how one learns. He says it’s how he integrated into the Blackweathers. By listening more than he spoke. What he said didn’t make sense at first, but then he told me the Blackweather name is matrilineal. It’s passed down by female-identifying family members. He married into the Blackweathers, and his original last name became his first.
He proposed a toast to his old first name, which I can’t remember now because I was hammered, and then told me to shower and pack up (again) because we were leaving for Laos at midnight.
Which is where we are now.
And I’m just lying here wondering what the hell I’m doing, who the hell I’m doing it for, and where on Earth you are.
I always thought Teniman was an odd first name…
Weren’t we looking for a stone tablet with an unknown language on it? That little thrown away detail seemed oddly important to mention.
>>> I am never far from Lauren. She’s not my daughter, but that’s the best way I can describe it. She’s my responsibility, and I’m bound to her, but she isn’t here with me, not exactly. She has slipped into a fold she created for herself, hiding between moments in time to try and escape billions of thoughts flooding her mind. I can sometimes see her, hear her, but not always, never clearly, and getting too close to her when I can is dangerous.
But yes, I’m okay. I’m safe.
However, Lauren isn’t, and my fate is tied to hers. All of her predecessors have struggled to some degree. Still, most see the potential, the possibility of the title, and being human, they often crave power, or fortune, or adoration, and use the power granted them by the title to attain it. Of course, some tremble in the presence of the title, seeking to rid themselves of it, cursed with greatness as it were.
But Lauren isn’t like any of them. She is seeking something else.
Before her rebirth, Lauren was a powerful telemantic, as you know. She was able to listen to the minds of others and even bend the thoughts and actions of the weaker-willed. Sometime after the Crimson Hall, she must’ve realized she could also hear her predecessors. The minds of all the previous iterations are bound to the entity, but they aren’t frozen in time like memories. They’re more like spirits, still part of the whole. Lauren started reaching further and further back, to earlier and earlier memories, looking for an answer to a question only she knows, using the power of her title to amplify her own adept talent to dig deeper into the past. But that amplification also let in every other thought in the world. She’s down there, lost in a million memories happening at once, drowning under a sea of centuries, while the endless thoughts of every mind here in the present crash down on her like waves.
She’s reached out to me with her mind to act on her behalf or be her voice, but she can’t surface on her own now, and the only thing I could think to do is try to help her see her way back through the waves, to the present.
The ostracon, the names who came before her, may be the only way to save her, like a ladder leading back to now. If it doesn’t work, or you don’t find it, I don’t know what will happen. The known world has never been without a Cagliostro, and I don’t know what will happen without her.
I’ve failed once and been given a second chance I don’t deserve. I can’t fail again.
Thank you for helping me. I don’t know that anyone else would.
The Mountie side of me feels really bad for Lauren. She didn’t seek this out. She wasn’t groomed since birth for the position. She didn’t seek it out of power or prestige. She was handed it because the old Cags decided he wanted to buck whatever system the Cagliiostro’s have been following and made sure she got it, without any warning. And then when she tried to use her new powers she got in way over her head apparently.
The Balimoran side of me though…really gets it’s feathers ruffled when someone tells me how the world ‘should’ be. The known world has never been without a Cagliostro? Don’t know what might happen? Is that a threat? Is Maya guilt tripping Bruce into thinking the world will end if he doesn’t find her rock? I say we find out what happens. Can’t be much worse than the whole destruction of magic that’s been going on in our Book under their watch til now.
It’s sort of moot which side of me wins this eventual argument (it’s a safe bet the Mountie side wins in the end though). I can’t see how we can possibly help her. I guess we’ll see how it goes.
I don’t disagree with you Robert (I guess the Bali is a bit strong in me
) – why cant the world have a Cagliostro? Who made you the boss?
I do know that we should try to help Lauren – we didn’t get her into this mess, but we’ve kind of been with her through it and I think we’re the only people who can help; otherwise, why do we have this deeper access to the world and to these conversations? (oh, Hi Ebbie
) Not to mention, if the world’s never been without a Cags, how much worse can it get? Not sure I want to know.
I’m on the exact same page on this one.
I don’t think it’s fair for us to let her slip away like this, regardless of her status as the Cagliostro. It sounds horrifying for her, like drowning in your own head or slipping into a corn silo, and I wouldn’t want anyone to go down like that (with perhaps a few exceptions). She deserves our help here as much as anyone else would and I think the fact that she’s the Cagliostro has little to no bearing on that at the moment.
Not to mention the fact that with all these memories of previous iterations, she’ll have a lot of information that she might be willing to share with us once she recovers.
Oh don’t get me wrong. If I could think of a way to help I’d be all over it to help Lauren, Cagliostro or no. I’m not entirely malicious. Heck I was even thinking maybe we could block her from magic like Deidre done and separate Cags from her, so I wasn’t trying to condem Lauren, just this yoke that may be around our neck. “The world may not survive if I’m gone” is excactly what every evil person says…ever.
The simple solution would be we find the Ostracon for Bruce. To do that we have to find the House. Perhaps using our knowledge of previous wells as possible places the House of Blackweather has been before and maybe find some common thread in them all, or little hints or clues about Blackweathers in each of the locations. Even if we could find the house for them, how would we tell Bruce though?
I’ve poked, ever so briefly at known wells we have to see if I could find any reason to suspect I can guess where the house is. But there’s a whole lot we don’t know, and I can’t imagine Teniman doesn’t know an almost infinite more about the house than we do.
Also I thought maybe the stone tablet in the fir tree might be a useful thing to search for but I couldn’t find that.
Overall, we’re … pretty darn good at finding common threads among seemingly disparate locations.
But it also makes me wonder … what are the possibilities for a Consolatory Teatime for someone who isn’t physically present? Could that be another way to help Lauren re-climb that ladder of memory?
I’m sure none of us thought you were being malicious at all!
I’m definitely curious about that stone tablet – who just leaves something like that unexamined?! And yes, I think the ostracon is at the center of this all, to many things are pointing in that direction.
I need more time to really pull all this together & organize it so my brain can analyze. I need a vacation to just focus on this.
I think you all make good points, but for me, Maya seems less evil and more… scared? I’ve definitely had “rose-colored glasses” about people in the past who wound up being not so rosy, but she seems sad, worried, maybe desperate, but yeah, scared.
The thing about the world not having a Cagliostro felt more like, would it be bad if all the oak trees in the world disappeared overnight? and less like what if the sun didn’t rise tomorrow?
At least, I hope. But then again, Gossmere here.
I don’t disagree at all, but I’m also a suspicious female dog who is prepared to be burned no matter how innocent someone seems
I also feel very disjointed. Everything is connected, but I can’t see the pattern because so many of the pieces seem to be from different puzzles.
Not an Ebenguard providing perfect balance to this all-too-trusting Goss!
Can we build the leader of names for Lauren?
Do we know Lauren’s full name or the true name of her predecessor?
Count Alessandro di Cagliostro was the alias for Giuseppe Balsamo. Cagliostro was an Italian adventurer and self-styled magician.
This seems like a plausible candidate for at least one name.
He’s credited with the creation of Egyptian freemasonry.
Do we have any masonic contacts who might know and be willing to share any information about him and if his alias was passed down in any way? Any secret histories etc
Masons are pretty old, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re one of the unknown groups linked into everything were swimming through.
I don’t know about the former Cags’ name, but Lauren’s name is Lauren Ellsworth! I think she grew up in Kansas (?), but that’s all I really remember. I think your lead on who the Cagliostro before Lauren was is a good one, but Maya seems to be intimating that Lauren has gone even deeper than that identity. I’m not sure if I’m understanding that totally correctly, but it seems like she’s trying to dig deep into the spirits/entities of the previous Cagliostros to find something- sort of like when Korra reflected all the way back to Avatar Wan to find the true purpose of the Avatar. I might be totally off-base on that interpretation, though
No, I took it that way too. Although the reincarnation cycle is perhaps a bit easier to track since it was somewhat location-based
The way you framed this made it sound an awful lot like tracking Blackweather house (and House) through different locations and families ….
That’s how I read it too.
We know the most recent avatar (kora/Lauren) we have a plausible first avatar (Giuseppe Balsamo) I’m wondering if we can fill the gaps.
If Giuseppe Balsamo is the first and his link to masonry is true, the masons might have a record of all the Cagliostros (avatars) names. Lauren then has a ladder of identities she can climb back to herself.
If we could get that list and get it to Lauren somehow then she can do a metaphorical rollcall and gain some order in the chaos.
Unfortunately, I suspect it goes further than that. The title Ka Lustra seems to imply a continuity through Hellenistic Egypt and probably before then; perhaps related to the pharaohs (concept of a god-king fits pretty well all things considered) or perhaps a priesthood? I guess my biggest fear at this point is it goes back to mt-Eve or LUCA or something similarly incomprehensible
It very probably does go back further.
But he’s potentially a way point…
Sorry, not to discount your point. If we were to try to reconstruct the line you’re absolutely correct that he’s the earliest starting point we seem to have
It looks like something reflected in two mirrors at 90 degrees to each other, but I can’t quite place what it is. But it is also worth not forgetting a purple of other parts: “Why do you haunt the dead?” she said. And also—this felt like one of the lost memories we’ve been experiencing. They have been revealing bits and pieces of magic to us—maybe this is another one?
I had a similar thought to this. Tried copying the symbol freehand for a good ten minutes before remembering I could just crop the thing
>> You didn’t fail. Hell, it wasn’t even my fault. We had no way of knowing the ostracon wouldn’t be in the Crimson Hall. Unless you mean you failed Lauren before. Is that what you mean? How the hell did you get roped into this in the first place? Is there another secret society just dedicated to patrons of the Cagliostro? I wouldn’t doubt it at this point.
But I doubt you could tell me. Secret and all.
Seems everybody in the magical underworld plays it close to the vest. Teniman’s stringing me along with breadcrumbs, pretending he knows a lot less than he does. He’s warming up to me, but I still have no idea what I’m doing here. Maybe there’s no “why.” No secret reason. I mean, I know I’m helping you, but physically, I’m just along for the Blackweather ride.
Last night, Teniman called my room to tell me he’d booked us a boat to Northern Laos because the cousin of the bartender at a place down the street heard from a friend of a friend that a week or two ago they’d spotted an old house on a cliff overlooking paddy fields in Vang Vieng. The cliff the house was on had been inaccessible to cars for decades. They said the house was there for days, then one morning, gone.
We were on the boat before dawn, made it up to the cliffs as the sun came up. They were right. It was a hike and a half, with no way to get up there except by foot. We found where the house had been spotted. The ground was all churned up, and the grass was bent and broken. We looked around for a while, but it was pretty high up, really close to the cliff edge, and it was getting dark. Teniman decided we’d come back in the morning.
Only I didn’t believe him. I don’t know if he even sleeps. He’s out wandering all hours of the night, dressed to kill, at this bar, that cafe, popping up out of nowhere with just the right detail to set us on the next step of the trail.
So I stayed up. It was almost morning when he slipped out of the house we were staying in carrying a shovel. I followed him all the way back up the cliff. I stayed back, so by the time I got up to the clearing where the house was, he’d probably been there 15 minutes.
He was pacing, waving his arms in the air, talking to himself. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I think he was speaking some kind of Spanish. Then he started digging. The sun was breaking over the mountains in the distance, and I could see he’d dug up a flat stone, kind of like the one we found in the woods in Denmark.
He whispered for a while, then he put the stone back in the ground, along with a small box he’d had in his breast pocket. He covered it up again, and then he called me over without even looking in my direction. He knew I’d followed him. He asked if I could hear it, the music, but I couldn’t. He said the lyrics were in Spanish.
I asked him what he was doing up here alone and why he brought a shovel.
He just said, “Corners, young man. Corners. The house has business, and so do we. Do you know your flowers?”
Not really, I told him.
He pointed down to the ground. We’d been surrounded by white flowers that hadn’t been there a second ago. Even the hole he’d dug was gone and covered in them.
He told me they were white ginger lilies, or “hedychium coronarium”, and that he has a bit of a green thumb. He said the house isn’t aware like how we think of awareness. It’s closer to dreaming than thinking. He also said that isn’t right at all, but I wouldn’t understand the truth if I told him.
The flowers, the music, they’re remnants of the house “dreaming” where it would go next, and Teniman can somehow coax those dreams from the well the house left behind. I don’t even know if I’m explaining that right.
I asked him how he learned magic. He told me it was time for sleep, and then we needed to figure out where we were going next. I asked how we were going to do that, and he said we had everything we needed. We just had to catch up.
I’ll let you know when I know, as soon as I know.
White ginger flower appears to be the national flower of Cuba. The white flowers are called “mariposas” or butterflies.
Cuba would also explain the Spanish lyrics he was hearing.
We might want to make a list of where they’ve searched for the house. If it’s following the planted stones it might be using the “corners” for some greater purpose.
I did you one better:
Now that I think about it, should I include the original NYC location? (I did make a note about the daisies on the pin in Denmark)
Just when you thought the new age couldn’t get weirder: Coaxing the dreams of a house out of a magical black hole it left behind after it disappeared.
>> Woke up to Teniman waiting at the dock, bags packed, suited up, telling me to “make haste” because we have to catch a flight.
I don’t know what dawned on him in the middle of the night, but apparently, we’re on our way to Cuba.
Please follow up when you can.
In today’s episode of ‘things that make you go “hmmmm”’.
Is it a coincidence Teniman didn’t seem to immediately announce he knew the significance of the white ginger flowers, and something only “dawned on him in the middle of the night” right after @Lexington posted about Cuba? I mean we know they can either see this forum, or The Well shares our findings with others just like it shares information with us.
Of course, I’m not intimating Teniman wouldn’t have come to that conclusion on his own trivially. Just…a stray interesting thought I had.
>>We’re kind of stuck.
It took us days to get into Cuba, with Teniman finally pulling strings to gain access while we cooled our heels in Turks and Caicos (the trip itself has been a bear, but Teniman doesn’t skimp when it comes to accommodations.)
We were finally granted entry, took a boat over, and have now followed bad tips to Havana, Santa Clara, Esmerelda, and Camaguey, which we’re now wandering around (or at least I am. I might lose Teniman for days at a time, just to stumble onto him at some nowhere bar or cafe like no time has passed.)
I found him at a bar yesterday, and that’s where this local psychic found us.
She had to be 90-years-old, at least. She lives in the hills outside town but said she knew we’d be there, that I’d be there, so she made the journey into Camaguey because she was meant to bring me something. I mean, maybe she heard we were looking for a disappearing house and figured she could grift us out of a few hundred pesos, but she said it was out there, with her in the hills, the house, and now it’s gone, but it left behind a memory. A memory she was supposed to give to me.
She pulled out this old deck of cards and told me to focus on them as she shuffled them in all these weird ways. While I was watching her, I had this perfect memory of my childhood. My mom, shuffling cards, just like that. I got so lost in it that Teniman had to nudge me when the old woman asked me to cut the deck. She spread the cards across the table. I chose one, face down, and she told me not to look at it until the sun had set and I could see the moon in the sky. I put it in my shirt pocket, still kind of dazed, I guess, thinking about my mom when the old woman took my hand and pulled me to her and whispered, “Why do you haunt the dead?”
Teniman told me to go back to the hotel while he helped her back to her house in the woods. I knew he was going to look for the spot where the house was, to search for stone tablets buried in tree trunks or in the ground, but I was too shaken up by what she said to follow him and too tired to try and figure out what the hell he’s up to out there.
I went back to my room and watched the sun slowly peel away from the ceiling. When it was well past sunset, I looked at the card. It had this hand-drawn symbol on it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s also, somehow, familiar, but I can’t for the life of me place what it is or where I’ve seen it.
The next morning, I showed Teniman. He was having breakfast in my room when I woke up, which I’m used to at this point.
He suggested I share it with you. I don’t know why, I haven’t heard from you in almost two weeks, but when it comes to all this, I guess it’s best to do what I’m told.
I feel so lost.
The shape as a whole reminds me of Aztec-style pyramids (assuming I’m remembering the design correctly). Whether or not any would have something circular at the top…
Considering the sun was a major focus point in Aztec culture, I would say a circle fits well in this interpretation
It may also be worth pointing out a couple of other features:
To me, it appears traced.
There are a couple of incomplete lines (in red here).
It’s also of note that it isn’t radially symmetric. Note the line placement on the “pyramid” portions
I noticed that too, @Lexington. I wonder if this is Bruce’s trace of the card design, not the actual card? He didn’t mention having trouble taking a pic of the card, but that’s often the case with magimystic objects, assuming that a blank, choose-your-own-fortune deck of cards is magimystic, of course.
@Robert, that’s a good point. This could be somehow connected to Bruce’s parents or maybe his childhood in general? Siblings? We know his parents pursued knowledge of the magimystic. Was his mom sensitive or maybe practiced divination with cards?
Also, I went down a two-hour rabbit hole based on Nim’s comment above, sure I was on to something, only to find that the bottom of the rabbit hole was Wewelsburg, not Wittenberg. I was hoping there was a connection there because I’ve always been fascinated by that letter.
I had a change of heart on this, it is absolutely directed at Bruce. From the very beginning, he got roped into this from Maya hearing about his investigations of all those mysterious disappearances/deaths. He has been haunting all of the dead.
Lucky them staying at T&C while they waited to get into Cuba. I honeymooned there & it’s gorgeous. I hope Bruce enjoyed some conch & oxtail, no matter how fancy the accommodations Teniman set them up with.
Into the task at hand though. That symbol doesn’t strike me as one of the glyphs from the secret language. Or feels like some kind of focusing device.
Save for the circle in the center it almost looks like an unfolded origami figure. Those triangular bits on each side scream “pyramid” to me, but I’m probably just projecting for the sake of finding connections
I mean, we’ve done a lot of papercraft in the past that it’s not out of the realm of possibility for origami. Anyone good with origami and got paper to try it out? Another thing that just crossed my mind was a city layout or something from above. IDK, just ideas.
Edit: Second thought that just passed through my head was the patterns audio frequencies makes, but that’s probably not gonna help us help them find the house. They’re really cool if you’ve never seen them though.
music notation with cymatics | MASTERPROEF (wordpress.com)
I wonder if you’re not on to something (and if not it’s a really interesting rabbit hole to fall into)
The two circled are similar, though nothing exact. I just found out they’re called Chladni patterns/figures after Ernst Chladni. He’s from Wittenberg, Germany if that’s any help, though his family is from Kremnica. I don’t think this is what we’re looking for though it’s a possibility, but just to have the info here.
When I focus on the octagon part in the middle it feels like a mandala to me. I can’t find any example that simple though and given how many cultures use mandala that doesn’t exactly narrow down a location.
When Bruce drew the card he saw a clear image of his mother performing a similar ritual with the cards. Perhaps his mother has something to do with the card itself? Maybe the image somehow relates to the names Kilvesh and Pippete?
>> I’m just gonna keep following up here, assuming you’ll read all of this at some point.
I have no idea what the image on the card is supposed to be or where it’s supposed to lead us, but we got a separate lead, so we’re in Mexico City now. We’ll be flying to the west coast tomorrow, heading for Ensenada. Teniman says he got a tip that the house may have been spotted there. We don’t know if it was in Mexico first or the place this card is supposed to lead us to, but he says the order is less important than the locations themselves. Whatever that means. From what I can tell, the house is ending up at places where these stone things were left behind, and we’re just following its lead. Copenhagen, Vang Vieng, Camaguey, Ensenada (we hope), wherever my fortune is supposed to take us… I have no idea who left them or what they do, except for “ Corners, young man. Corners.” He never says anything you can hold onto. Though, we did have a long talk on the boat ride from Havana. Or at least Teniman did. He asked me a bunch of random questions about myself, my parents, my childhood in Oregon… And weird stuff about magic, origami, the Aztecs… have you ever heard of a chladni pattern? Cause I hadn’t until he asked me about them.
He asked me what I was doing, here, with him. I told him I was looking for the truth. He told me I was smart enough to know that no one would believe any of this if I put it to film. I had forgotten that’s how this all started. It’s like a lifetime ago. Disproving the unbelievable. It’s funny. What’s the point of trying to analyze and dissect some insane possibility when I’ve seen it firsthand?
“Why do you haunt the dead?”
Maybe it is about my parents. They lost their minds searching for all this, and we lost them because of it. Lost everything. And we never recovered. At least I didn’t. I’m a grown man wondering if I’d do the same things they did for the truth, and a scared kid wondering why my mom and dad didn’t want me anymore.
I guess that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing, following a house and a ghost and a piece of ancient pottery in circles around the world. I assumed I was chasing the truth, but maybe it’s the other way around. And has been my whole life.
I’ll let you know what we find in Ensenada and if I ever figure out what the fortune teller was trying to show me.
Okay, updated my map (and searched up Ensenada for a temporary pin)!
And methinks the Blackweathers know we can see Bruce’s correspondence with Maya, only reason I can really think of for why Teniman would low-key encourage him to share the sketch. Lady Blackweather knew about the goings on from last year; who knows how “current” she was able to keep? Did she know as it happened, with some sort of time delay to the information? This is making it feel more the former (and depending on how in detail this knowledge is, Hi! Love your sense of humor!)
And on documenting that question from the psychic woman, “why do you haunt the dead?,” it got me thinking. Is that meant solely for Bruce? It feels very much like the aftermath of the Wellspring, when some of us (guilty as charged) refused to believe Saberlane was completely gone without some sort of evidence. And from a different, less navel-gazing point of view, it could be directed at Lauren and her getting lost down the rabbit hole of previous Cagliostros.
(Also, sorry for all the “and” starts
)
That chronic illness life has been keeping me away from the forums for a while, but I think I’m officially all caught up! Now we see if I can shake the fog free from my brain long enough to write anything coherent about my thoughts:
May just be early morning brain but I had honestly not even considered these points being indicators of his reading our discussions. My immediate thought was to suggest entrapping him by bringing up some topic and see if it pops up, but of course any discussion of that would be read anyway so that’s not particularly useful.
Anyway, if you’re reading this Tenny, can you bring up something incredibly specific but entirely tangential like… tesseracts or something?
Okay. I’m sure this was obvious to everyone but me, and I’m slow, but I just figured it out so I thought I’d share my “I participated” trophy.
Teniman isn’t just reading our posts and making idle conversation with them as a wink to us. He’s actively using what we’re discussing to try to jog Bruce’s memory of what that symbol is. Bruce said he’s seen the symbol before (perhaps only in a Book of the Wild sense) and he just can’t remember where. We came up with a bunch of ideas, and Teniman ran them all by Bruce to see if that rang any bells.
Meaning, we don’t have to figure out what it is EXACTLY. We just have to give ideas. If we get close enough, they will trigger a memory…hopefully.
So get creative, Mountaineers. It’s not like any if our tin foil ideas won’t sound out of place coming out of Teniman’s mouth.
Here’s my crazy idea that I’ve been avoiding sharing for days. If I stare at the circle in the center, and assume the picture extends beyond the frame, that looks remarkably like a windmill to me. So maybe Holland?
The thing that bothers me about the symbol is the lines halfway through the diagonal sections. Gonna try colouring some of the lines and see if it helps to pull up patterns/shapes I’m missing. But a windmill is an idea, though the triangles sections with the diamonds seem out of place in that scenario. Worth a try though.
Edit: Well, that’s done nothing other than make me think of road layout again (may have been playing too many games recently). Think I’m out of ideas on this one.
Yeah I had a problem with that for a while. I finally rationalized it as maybe the 4 diamonds are actually meant to be the 4 corners of a square that’s behind the blades.
FYI this entire theory is based on the windmill in The Witness that I spent way too long staring at.
Now I’m seeing it like a weird pyramid with some kind of oblique square at the center and… I guess a propeller on top?
Bruce? Well? Someone? I’m going to need new context
Also, did I miss when we found out that Bruce was from Oregon, or is that new?
Have I missed lore?!
I also thought I just missed that somewhere else, but it definitely got me thinking about all the stuff you did last year around Mt. St. Helen’s last year, Spirit!
I wonder where Bruce’s parents are buried? Assuming they’re dead.
>> I’m tired, jetlagged, and drunk.
It took three days to get a flight to the west coast.
Finding the spot where the house ended up here was pretty easy this time. It appeared half-inside a cliff face overlooking All Saints Bay, and when it disappeared, it created a rockslide that blocked Punta Baja for almost two days. So, finding it was easy, getting to the spot, less so. There was next to nothing left because of the collapse.
It took nearly two days of scrambling around in the dark, but Teniman found two pieces of a stone tablet like the ones he found at the other places. Usually, he does his esoteric work alone, but he asked me to stay tonight. He even had me hold the pieces together for him while he recited some incantation. Something about life and death moving together in a minuet of violence. The wind picked up when he said it, and after, the two pieces of stone were fused together again. We buried it and climbed back down to town.
I asked if he knew where we were heading next, and he said yes, a bar. He said maybe getting me to loosen up would help me figure out what the image on the card meant. The old man is not only spry, well-dressed, and never seems to get tired, but he can drink me under the damned table.
He just kept ordering, and I kept drinking, and for every bottom of a glass we made it to, we agreed to take turns answering each other’s questions.
I can’t remember what he told me, but I told him all about growing up in the suburbs of Portland. How much I used to love to swim. I’d ride my bike to the Willamette and swim to meet my friends at Poet’s Beach when I was younger or sneak onto Ross Island in the middle of the night to do god knows what with god knows who when I was older. I told him how the older I got, the less I remember my parents being around. I didn’t know why at the time, losing them, not knowing why, being so scared, having to take care of my brother and sister. But now I know they were off mountaineering, just like I am now, literally and figuratively.
Teniman says we should head to Portland next, but I don’t know why. I haven’t been back in nearly 20 years.
Too many ghosts waiting for me, I guess.
Well, I know that phrase at least! With this being Wilds, wouldn’t this suggest that the spell is done? I thought we only had 5 locations?
Could it have also been a bit of Bali magic to put the stone back together?
If it was the end of the Corners, and they do need to go in order, perhaps Teniman hit light and aether before Bruce caught up? Either that, or we aren’t quite in order, and NYC and Portland will count as corners 1 and 6?
Technically from the first time we called the corners we figured they didn’t need to be I’m order. I think some one said something like. “It doesn’t matter which order the lines of a hexagon are drawn. Only that they are drawn clearly and with purpose. “
Edit: we may have added that requirement later for our version but Tenimen may be old school.
Since the tablets were already in these locations, does it seem to anyone else like the house is checking in on an existing set of called corners? And if so, who originally cast them, and why is the house visiting them now?
This is a really interesting idea, especially since someone (Teniman?) said the order didn’t matter, only the locations …
I am 100% in tinfoil hat territory over here, but is it possible that the line “why do you haunt the dead?” has something to do with Bruce’s personal history? Something to do with dead parents, expectations left on his shoulders, or people he’s left behind still being reliant on him? If the ‘you’ here is literal and the fortune teller was talking directly to Bruce, maybe he’s got some unfinished business with someone who is dead, or may as well be dead to him?
So if the lines represent something in Portland that might be worth trying to search for something looking like that that’s been around for more than 20 years in/around the city.
Random find that’s probably not it, but is cool. A design was created in 1990 in the deserts in Oregon that reminds me of the tarot card. It’s 7 hours away from Portland and visually it’s clearly not the same design, but it was a fun find.
Even when they’re mundanely created, geoglyphs are the coolest. There need to be more
Found this signpost in Pioneer Square in Portland.
Maybe if you look at it from the top? You’d have a circle in the middle and arrows in each of the 4 cardinal directions, with a lot of lines coming off it at angles. Also the square (and I assume the signpost) were built in 1984.
I have 2 major problems with this idea though. First, I can’t explain the octagon in the drawing at all. Second, I can’t explain why baby-bruce would have been flying over top of the thing to get this perspective. Okay, lunch time dallying is over. Back to work!
If this has been mentioned before, forgive me, but…
A quest to unearth and restore a specific set of Corners seems pretty timely, considering we’re approaching the Day of Change again. Coincidence? Magiq? Magimystic coincidence?
++TW++
>> I dreamed about my sister a couple nights ago.
After I saw her back in July, she relapsed. I didn’t know until I got a voicemail from her ex-husband when I was somewhere between Denmark and Laos. She even told me when I visited that recovering addicts sometimes try and use as much as they used to use when they relapse, not realizing they can’t handle it anymore. She knew. She did it anyway.
She’s gone.
She was still a kid in my dream. I was riding my bike behind her, past all the old Victorians near where we grew up. Past the old rose garden that seemed to always be in bloom. The city of roses, Portland.
I couldn’t catch up to her no matter how hard I pedaled. She turned a corner, and by the time I caught up, she was gone.
Ladd’s Addition. That was the name of the neighborhood. She led me right to it. I rode my bike through it a thousand times as a kid, on my way to downtown, or back home sopping wet from the river, but you never think what a neighborhood looks like from above, at least not when you’re a kid.
Despite all the stories I’ve chased, the artifacts and cultures and cryptids, I’ve never wound up anywhere close to the truth because it’s the one thing that’s never left behind. The truth is in memories and experiences and stories. And dreams.
The Wool, the Silver, the Monarchs. All the Cagliostro that came before Lauren. All the people who came to see the previous Cagliostro give his final performance in the Crimson Hall. All those Mountaineers. My mom and dad. Now my sister.
Why do I haunt the dead?
Because they take the truth with them.
If I died today, there wouldn’t be a damned thing left behind to say who I really was or what I really wanted. What my life was worth. The movies I’ve made don’t mean anything because they never led to anything.
The house had been there, in Ladd’s Addition, just a day before we landed. Just like my sister showed me in the dream. We found the tablet in the old rose garden. Tomorrow we head back to New York.
Last night we found a beautiful, hundred-year-old bar, all wood paneling and paintings of dead white people no one remembers anymore. I excused myself to the bathroom and told the bartender that I wasn’t drinking, but my friend didn’t need to know that.
For the first time since I started following him around the world, Teniman got drunk, and I got answers.
He told me there’s something alive and growing just beneath our feet. Teniman called it “the bloom” because no one knows what it’s really called. He said the Silver, the Storm, all the societies and structures we’ve seen so far, they’re just the outer petals protecting what’s deeper inside the bud, and if we don’t stop it before it finally unfolds, this age could be in more danger than the last.
The truth is in the heart of that flower. Here, now, with the living. It’s the end of all the paths we’ve read about. The source of all the secrets and the storm that destroyed my family.
I’m done chasing ghosts, Maya.
I want the truth.
And we absolutely know what the Bloom looks like.
A light for Bruce tonight.
It would have been useful before to be able to communicate directly with him, but after this… This sucks.
And Scott. I don’t take responsibility for whatever happened to any of the people on that list. Scott’s on us though. We opened the door for him to the ancient evil. Let’s find out what’s going on for Scott.
Also, are they just giving up going back to NYC or do they think the house went home? (that’s a weird phrase ‘the house went home’)? Or they just figure they’ve travelled enough and with Bruce’s revelation they are done? I suppose we’ll see.
Oh, Bruce…
I feel so trapped behind this computer screen. I just wish we could tell him that he’s not alone, and that at the very least, we would care if he died, and his life is worth something to us. Maybe I’ll light a candle for Bruce tonight. Not sure it will help any, but maybe a little light can get through the barrier to reach him. A little reminder of what he’s fighting for. At the very least, I suppose, it sounds like the trip to Oregon yielded results.
So, this might be one of the times where my newbie status is showing but: The Bloom… is this the first time we’ve heard that term? We’ve known about some great evil growing and potentially threatening this new age for a while now, but is the first time we’ve heard it referred to as anything specific?
On a related train of thought, the concept of a ‘bud’ at the center and petals surrounding and protecting it makes me wonder if there are roots, nourishing and supporting its growth. If we can’t get to the bud, maybe we can find the roots?
I can find mentions of a ‘bloom’ related to the diagram back to March in our archives. I believe the term was coined by Endri . So for all we know Teniman is just calling it that cause he read Endri call it that.
Tinker went on to use the Bloom as the name for it in May in a very nice diagram highlighting what we knew about it. So maybe she formalized it.
Yeah, that felt like another “tip of the hat” to us since that’s something we all came up with here in our little corner of the Briar Society.
@Ashburn or someone with access to a non-restricted computer (I’m at the library at the moment), did the five locations seem to line up or intersect in any way on the map?
I just feel so lost without the full use of the W.E.L.L. and no clear sign what we should be doing right now, if anything. It would be nice to have direction or some next step to take.
Yeah, that absolutely felt like another “tip of the hat” to us since that’s something we all came up with here in our little corner of the Briar Society.
@Ashburn or someone with access to a non-restricted computer (I’m at the library at the moment), did the five locations seem to line up or intersect in any way on the map?
I just feel so lost without the full use of the W.E.L.L. and no clear sign what we should be doing right now, if anything. It would be nice to have direction or some next step to take.
Can’t make the map go bigger on my phone
, but all points (including our start) come to a six-pointed shape.
Edit: Here’s a proper view of it, complete with MSPaint lines
so I didn’t have to fight with the curves doing it straight on the Google map.>> I lost sight of Teniman for about two seconds after we landed at JFK and never found him again.
I waited outside Arrivals for two hours before I finally accepted that he meant to lose me. It actually hurt my feelings, which is stupid given that I don’t really know this man, but we’d just spent over a month together. I figured I was at least owed courtesy, if not respect.
I’m staying in Times Square for a couple days. Turns out, it’s not as easy to book a flight at a moment’s notice without Teniman’s pull. I hate this part of the city but, well, I don’t know. It’s where I saw you last, so it’s not that it felt right, just that everywhere else felt wrong.
Edit: I’m still trying to catch up from a half-dozen time zones, so I crashed after writing the above, then I got a wild hair to go try and talk to Lady Blackweather, see if she had any idea what Teniman was up to or what I should do next.
Well, turns out the House of Blackweather is back in New York City. In fact, it’s back where I first met Celia.
And the best part? No one’s answering the door.
I don’t know what the hell’s going on, and as of right now, I still have no idea how I’m supposed to get you the information about the ostracon, which is supposed to be in that damned house.
I may not know the Blackweathers, but if they think I’m just gonna give up now, they don’t know me either.
Is this the part where we pester the Blackweathers into letting Bruce back into their magical traveling anime protagonist house since they can apparently see what we’re writing, and vanishing on him after he’s done so much for them is super rude? Or are we assuming something else is going on? I don’t know the Blackweathers well enough to know if just straight up ghosting the guy who ran around the world chasing your house with you is normal for them.
It could (hopefully
) be a case of “let’s find the thing we thought might be helpful to him before inviting him over only to have it take several days for the house to cough it up.”
If nothing’s happened by day end Thursday, then maybe be a bit concerned.
>> I spent almost two weeks taking the train from my hotel in midtown to the Blackweather house and back again. Waiting for them to answer. Waiting for you to answer. Waiting for me to finally get it through my thick head that I had no business in New York and the world of magic was done with me.
FYI, to date, nobody’s answered that goddamned door, but I have heard from Teniman. Sort of. And just so I don’t bury the lede; they found the name of the family who has the ostracon, and they gave it to me.
Backing up, the Blackweathers are, in my limited experience, a lot of things, but they’re not assholes. Even when Teniman was dragging me from country to country like an unruly dog, his derision was more about my presence generally than me personally.
So I started thinking maybe I had to wait it out. Be patient.
And when my nearly nonexistent patience ran out, I started thinking this was all some kind of test.
It was. Devised by whom, for whom, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I’m the guy who solved it.
I started thinking about all the places the house went, how they might be connected, what made them important.
I couldn’t think of anything.
So instead, I mapped out the locations with a map I bought at the tourist trap gift shop down the block from my hotel. Places in Denmark, Laos, Cuba, Mexico, and Oregon. It dawned on me to add the West Village to the list since that’s where the house ended up. And then I tried connecting them. Not their radius, but how they seemed to have opposing locations on the map. Portland and Laos, Denmark and Mexico, New York and Cuba. I connected them, and at the dead center of the spoke was a couple-hundred-year-old building on the western edge of Tribeca.
Lucky me.
It’s now a bunch of insanely-priced apartments. I couldn’t get past the doorman. But when I searched the address, I saw that one of the upper lofts was for sale. So I called the agent, scheduled a viewing, and then “got lost” on my way out.
The lines from the map intersected on the southern tip of the building, so I started there, knocking on the doors of the southwest corner apartments on every floor, not knowing what the hell I was looking for but knowing I was on to something. I lied to anyone who answered, alternating the names of the friends I was looking for, Celia, Lauren, Maya…
A stay-at-home dad answered, pissed I was knocking during nap time, but his attitude changed when I described “my friend” Lauren. He said there used to be a Lauren that took care of one of the penthouse lofts, and he’d met her briefly when there’d been a leak a few years back. The guy said he hadn’t seen her, or the loft’s owner, in years, but as far as he knew, it hadn’t been sold.
Someone left the door to the loft unlocked for me.
The place was easily 75% of the building’s footprint. The walls were ripped open just like Martin said when he came looking for Lauren after the magic show in the Crimson Hall. It felt weird being there, replaying The Monarch Papers in my head, like they’d made it into a movie and I was visiting the set. Or playing a half-assed book-was-better version of Martin Rank.
It was cold. Dark. What haunted feels like. Most of the lightbulbs had died out over the years, but there was light enough as the sun was setting in the floor-to-ceiling windows to see someone had left an envelope on the kitchen counter with my name on it.
It was from Teniman.
I was right about the places the house went and the Blackweathers not answering the door, but it wasn’t so much a test as it was a trial. He says he’s part of some group trying to save the world, but this isn’t about our screwed-up climate. This, not surprisingly, is about magic, wells, and, from what he says, “the protection of the newborn age and all its potential.”
I can’t say too much more because Teniman told me not to. He even told me to destroy the letter before I left, but he said I should allude to the contents if I happened to speak to any of our “mutual friends,” which I have to assume is you?
He said that what you’ve found is more important than you realize. It was and is the hub of the society, the archive at the heart of our shared cause. He says your initial creation was a valiant effort, but it’s overwhelmed by the magnitude of what it might become.
Whatever it is, it isn’t broken.
It’s upgrading.
And then he said to tell you, verbatim, “As to what it will become, Well, only time will tell.” He said as soon as he knows what next steps to take, he’ll be in touch, through me.
I’m assuming that’s not about Lauren, but does it make any sense to you?
As for the Cagliostro, Teniman said the loft was a sanctuary built by the last one. The places the house was visiting were anchor points for a grounding hex he created when he first came to New York City, to protect the apartment and secretly shield his mind and intentions from his handlers without them knowing. He says the loft’s protections are how his actual plans for the Last Translation unfolded, here where a young Lauren Ellsworth first met a man once called Alexander Carew, and his plan for succession was codified.
Teniman said they think this is where Lauren might be dragged out from under her memories. He doesn’t think the house was traveling on its own. He thinks Lauren somehow sent the house to those sites, so we could follow it and repair the anchors, redouble the spell.
They think Lauren may have found the six locations inside Carew’s memories. He thinks she’s ready to wake up, and she’s using the memories she’s drowning under as a means to climb her way back.
And the ostracon is the ladder.
I have the name of the family, and I’m digging them up now.
There’s more to tell you.
Please meet me.
Teniman does nothing by accident. He’s referring to our W.E.L.L. We were right, i’s overwhelmed.
And here’s a supposition re: Carew family (get your foil ready!) – Dennis found out that the Cags’ Cultists were dangerous, and started the Patrons group to counter them, handing down the ostracon until they could get one of them in place to break the cycle of sorts.
I have SO many thoughts and questions.
Probably. I doubt he signed his paychecks as ‘The Cagliostro’.
Pondering this stuff is what lead to aneurysms three through six. It never even occurred to me Dennis was only in the Book of the Wild. I mean…if the ostracon we read about was in the BoW how do we even know there is one in the BoK…no…not going down that path. Must not break brain…
Retroactively changing history like ‘she who will not be named’ did I suppose could have reached so far back that some ancient spirit decided to sneak into early humans. I suppose that might make it rare case of the Book of Kings actually being “better” than the Book of the Wild? Unless of course the BoW had thousands of Cagliostro-type people who turned their world into a Utopia.
That gives “alternate-Monarchs” energy. The ones @Bash’s ancestors saw during the American Civil War. Not that I think they were also “Ka Lustra,” necessarily, but the more we learn, the more mirrored and reversed people and events we find echoing out from that one spell.
Do we even know how old the last Cags was? Sorry, I’m down on my lore, but for some reason I thought he was kind of very old.
He always talked like Lestat with the oceans of time and echoes of centuries past kind of stuff.
Oh God.
If you think alternate ancestors are brain scrambling, try adding immortality to it. Was Alexander Carew the alternative ancestor of Dennis Carew or was Dennis Carew the alternate ancestor of him?
Didn’t mention it the other day (work never ceases
), but it also occurred to me that in immortal/long-lived fashion, he could have changed his name as he went, to be percieved as a descendant. Or it’s an unmentioned middle name that he chose to go by along the way.
Hi @Aether! Here with lore!
The Cagliostro did intimate he was centuries old, and that killing him was “nearly impossible.” Also, when he detailed to Lauren what would happen to him after the final performance, he wrote:
I never noticed that he said, “A device they bade the Cagliostro itself conjure.” He was hinting at its “otherness” even then. I wonder if he meant a previous Cagliostro or the shining spirit itself?
Hi Spirit!
And yeeeesh.
That was before y’all found me so I managed to miss the drinking-all-of-the-blood part.
Is the last Cagliostro the same Carew who we saw being invited to the briar society?!?
Forgive me if I missed this link earlier
That one was a Dennis, but would not be out of the realm of possibility to be a relation.
how’s everybody doing?
just getting caught up and don’t know if you thought of this, @Aether, but since we built the site to be a well and pull in stuff from other places. what if you built a site with stuff like a dashboard, a reset/reboot UI, or even a progress meter, and then figured out a way to tell the site to absorb part of it or all of it?
might be worth trying
we’re good out here, so good we’re opening a shop in town in January, produce, crafts, candles, and yep, honey.
me and my fam.
Um. I mean.
Yeah. Of course. Of course! Why didn’t any of us non-beekeepers think of that?
We miss you, B.
Ha. Just hit me.
It’s so good to hear from you!
Not going to lie, every time folks bought bee fabric (and all spring when the bee stuff was in season) it made me think of you. So glad to hear all is going well out there.
Missed you, Bash! I have a bit too much brain fog to contribute to theorizing much but I wanted to make sure you knew it was a delight to hear from you. 🙂