The Found Arcana – Chapter 5 [IC]
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The Found Arcana – Chapter 5 [IC]
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Bobby patted his belly after the second hot dog: “That hit the spot. Anyway, as far as I understand this I see two obvious ways to stir up trouble.
First one is, we have to torch the ride of one of the head honchos from those go-gangs. That should get them on the Halloweeners back. If we can tell them somehow convincingly that a CC was responsible – all the better.
The next one is roughing up one of the joyboys or -girls. The 405s likely won’t let that slide. All the better if we can get one of the CCs worked up enough to actually do that.
Maybe a third option is telling the Rusted Stilettos there is something to gain from raiding the CC while their back is turned.”
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AM says bitterly to Jawsey “You were so awed by the dragon in the room that you underperformed the negotiations. That person has a suit worth half our paycheck.“
She skillfully flips the credstick in her fingers and says “Let’s get something warm to eat.”
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Bobby shrugged: “Hot dogs are kinda warm – the name implies it. But yeah I’ve still got some room for dessert.”
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AM responds with a text not wanting to speak about forbidden magic in public “I usually don’t admit it, but I can give a mental push to a violent CC ganger to take his rage on a joy girl/boy. I would normally feel a bit bad about it but these Bankaru suffer worse on a daily basis. I’ll use reagents to make the spell low force and stealthy, but it is best if I can cast it in private. Perhaps I’ll book one of these boys for my own pleasure and influence the guy next to me or something along these lines.”
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“… which reminds me, I’ve got to make a call.”
Bobby turned around while he called up Lysander through his trodes:
<< Hey, gotta attend a party at the Funhouse tonight. Can you find out who is going to be there from the local gangs? I need some names and preferably also short dossiers. The sooner the better. And as always, if there’s something you want to know, I’m game for an exchange.>> -
“I’m for heading home for a bit. I have a call of my own to make, but … not on my link.“
Home was depressingly dark and cold, so Jawsey left on his jacket and added his housecoat and wrapped himself in all of his blankets before going astral.
Free of bodily discomforts he took a couple of minutes to soar the now familiar and comfortable touristville, taking note of small changes. Then he got serious and starting looking for Green Toes. The fae-spirit was not what Jawsey would count as a friend, but he seemed willing to do business — and he liked vibrant astral situations. If the spirit was here and not in the courts currently, and if he could find him, Jawsey figured it shouldn’t be too hard to get a run-down on the astral/magical situation in the Funhouse. He couldn’t imagine that the fae hadn’t at least tried to go there.
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Lysander gets back to Bobby later that morning. A bit of back-and-forth gets the price to ¥300, which is transmitted. Lysander breaks down the scene for Bobby.
<<The Ancients don’t go to the Funhouse. Urubia doesn’t trust elves. She’ll tolerate them but there’s a bias there. There is speculation about a possible falling out during the development of Tír Tairngire but nobody knows for sure. So, if you need to talk to her and you want it to go well, don’t send an elf.>>
<<I wouldn’t expect First Nations there either. Some people think they’re getting big for their britches; I think they’re taking the ‘never deal with a dragon’ adage to heart. You think there might be some sort of affinity there since Urubia owns a ton of land in the Salish-Shidhe Council, but no. It’s not really antipathy, just divergent interests. First Nations doesn’t really need what she has to offer – they have plenty of money, more than they know what do with – so they’re off doing their own thing. I expect they’ll look to hire you for something someday. Keep an eye on them; their trajectory is upward right now.>>
<<Conversely, the Crimson Crush will be there for sure. They need Urubia so they don’t get crushed into a crimson paste by First Nations. They won’t like the look of you, so watch out for them. They have an alliance of sorts with Urubia but nobody really knows what it entails. Their boss is Lawrence ‘Big Stank’ James. The second-in-command is some chica named Straight Edge. She doesn’t go for the chips or the drugs but you might find her at the gambling tables, or maybe the bunraku parlor.>>
<<The Halloweeners will also be there. The Awakened at the Funhouse tend to avoid Nightmare, who isn’t the social type. No known vices either. Actually, Nightmare is a complete fragging mystery. If you told me Nightmare is a vampire, I’d believe it. Absinthe runs the day-to-day operations and is a bit of a drinker. There are more lieutenants – ‘Ragers’ they call them – than I can name. Keep an eye open for Carn-evil, Cadaver, Scary Nurse, Azazel, and Chupacabra, among others. The like to party with the Crimson Crush; they bond over psychotic violence.>>
<<The Rusted Stilettos will be there even though nobody likes them and everyone is scared of them. Even Urubia doesn’t like them much. They’re so irradiated that she refuses to eat them, so they have that going for them. If they get out of line, she usually just scoops them up and tosses them out. Depending what floor they’re on at the time, they might land gently or they might hit the pavement like a burlap sack full of strawberry soycream. They enjoy indulging in BTLs, anything to make them forget that they’re irradiated monsters, if only for a hour.>>
<<The 405 Hellhounds and the Death Heads will both be there. They get along great, or at least much better than you’d expect rival go-gangs to. But their claimed turf – 405 and 520, respectively – cross like a t so they don’t actually step on each other’s toes that much. Instead, they both hate the Red Hot Nukes, who are self-righteous hoopholes who call everyone else “enemies of the people”. The Red Hot Nukes hate everybody, even each other, and everybody hates them, at least while they’re sober. If you get them drunk enough – which takes a while because they’re all dwarves – they’ll stop being so belligerent. They’re happy drunks, not angry drunks. They’ll be there too. Urubia tolerates them because they’re all adepts and she likes the Awakened. The boss is an ex-shadowrunner called Grinder.>>
<<Last but not least, be on the lookout for the Spiders. Or maybe it’s Spyders, I don’t know. They’re a multi-racial gang led by Widow, a female Spider shaman. She hates bug spirits with a loathing that is visceral and personal. It’s an extremely violent gang, one that is lethal and operates silently. Recruitment is done by snatching prospects off the streets and indoctrinating them over several days. It’s a gang of wild-eyed paranoid crazies. They rank-and-file tend to go for crazy cyberware, which they think makes them less susceptible to bugs. Think scissor hands and raptor legs with clawed feet, drek like that.>>
<<That’s ¥300. But, tell you what, if you learn anything interesting while you’re there, plug me in. Nobody knows what Urubia’s plan is, but there’s speculation she wants to unite the gangs into some sort of syndicate. Some people think she could take control of Redmond to the point where it could secede from the UCAS and merge with Salish-Shidhe. I don’t know why the Salish would want Redmond other than to tweak the nose of the UCAS, but that might be reason enough. If you catch a whiff of what Urubia is up to, that could be worth some serious nuyen. But if you don’t get that lucky – and you probably won’t – fill me in on what you learn and my next info dump might be on the house, savvy?>>
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AM replies “Home fine… I’ll charge my deck from the car, and start working on disguises, I don ‘t want to be identified. In case we fuck up. Which gang do you want to be aligned with?”
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Bobby replied: “Can you make me look more like a paleface? Probably won’t help much. I don’t think we should wear colors of anyone that we don’t belong to. If anyone asks we have to be able to say different things to different people, so we can shift blame around.
But before we do that, we should probably talk to the Yak first. He might have a request that runs counter or even perpendicular to what we are trying to do. Lysander ist getting me an info dump. We can pour over that after the meeting.
That said, AM, you better wear something that puts the Yak in a good mood. By the great spirit, we really don’t need more complication today.”
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Jawsey slips out of his physical body, entering the astral realm.
Finding a free spirit is a bit of a needle in a haystack, as he could be anywhere on Earth, and maybe not even there. But, for inscrutable reasons of his own, Green Toes was often somewhere in Seattle. Green Toes had once described the Plane of Faerie “as endless glade perpetually at the cusp of autumn, where cold winds blow.” To the degree that Seattle is in a clearing surrounded by Salish-Shidhe forests – and that cold, autumn winds are blowing – the comparison is reasonably apt.
Jawsey had originally met Green Toes at a concert, a chance encounter. Green Toes liked all sorts of music: classical, contemporary, opera, rock, rock opera, almost anything that could elicit emotion from the performers or the audience. One of his favorite things to watch is the buskers at Pike Place Market, but no such luck today: the Market is closed for the holiday. In fact, zipping around town at the speed of thought, Jawsey notes that things are generally quiet and muted. He wonders if things might be relatively normal on Council Island, so he goes to pay a visit.
Council Island is densely wooded, and reminiscent of what the land must have been like centuries ago. The astral scene is a wonder: spirits cavort and play, wild and free. The trees are filled with all sorts of animals, even shifters. The Island is also patrolled by Salish spirits who act as security, but Jawsey is known to them, both as a traveler and as a Native. They acknowledge him and let him pass.
Business on the Island is not quite normal. Instead of Thanksgiving, the Salish recognize a National Day of Mourning, a counter-protest that commemorates the genocide of the Native Americans centuries ago. Jawsey finds a gathering of diplomats and dignitaries on the north end of the Island, on the shore of Lake Washington just outside the Council Island Inn. They listen and watch as dancers slowly move around in a circle, accompanied by singers, frame drums, and rattles. The beat mimics a metahuman heart. Every minute or so, a dancer falls over and one of the singers or instruments falls silent. Finally there is one dancer left, one voice, one drum. The dancer falls over and tries to rise. The singer carries on, plaintively, as the drum slows. The dancer collapses to the Earth, the drum stops, and the singer falls mute as the rattle shakes into silence. The assembled crowd is deeply moved. After a moment of reflection, they break up and disperse as the dancers remain still, spread across the grass and the pebbly beach. Cold waves from the lake lap up over a few but they remain motionless as a cold wind blows over them.
Jawsey finds Green Toes a short distance away, watching intently from underneath a huge evergreen tree. Fae emotions are not human emotions, but he seems affected by the scene.
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AM rants“Bobby!” she is definitely not going to dress in an accessible manner for the meeting. “I don’t have the boobs for cleavage anyhow” she says half-way to herself.
She takes an hour of rest and then begins planning her outfit for the party. She does not want to be identified there, so she is going to look different. A human party girl, she’ll have to cover the ears and change the nose a little bit, make her chin line more rounded. She begins sketching a disguise, borrowing items from her kit, and browsing her clothes for the meeting.
To the meeting with Andrew, she dresses modestly in unisex fashion She allows her gentle facial figures, and a slight cosmetic use to be the only visible indication for her femininity.
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Green Toes notices Jawsey immediately; the fae is a practiced observer and doesn’t miss much. Another visitor might have earned a stony silence, but Green Toes finds Jawsey interesting and so he doesn’t turn away or race off.
“It is the story of your people, is it not?” he asks about the dance.“Not just your vanquishing, but also your victory.” After a moment, Jawsey realizes he means the Great Ghost Dance. “What a thing it is to spend your life to subdue your enemies. To seize control by slaying yourselves. It is a delicious dichotomy. I wish very much that I had seen it.”
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Jawsey shudders at the mere thought of witnessing the great sacrifice. “It is, and it isn’t. It is the story — not history — that the NAN tells itself. There is a lot of truth to the story, but at the same time few were directly involved, and many wanted the rebels to stop, thinking that by fighting back the rebels just made the oppression worse for the rest.
I have friends who are from the Sioux nation, maybe they identify with it more closely? But my family is from the islands further north along the coast. That was a bad time for them, but they were fighting in the law courts against the government of Canada instead of fighting in the hills and the astral against the government of the United States. And once we were separate from Canada, our oppression got worse at the hands of people who should have been our brothers.. But yet, in a way, yes it is the story of my people.”
For a moment Jawsey soaks in the fading emotions in the astral. There is no doubt that the ceremony had been deeply meaningful to many of those gathered here. There was plenty of reverence and sadness, some understandable degrees of bitterness and triumph, and a few surprising streaks of contempt and anger. Well, whoever that had been and whatever it had been about, that wasn’t Jawsey’s job today.
“The world turns in surprising ways. I have never gone to Urubia’s Funhouse, its dangers always weighed more heavily on me than its promised pleasures. I think its dangers no less than before and its pleasures no more compelling — but I will be going there tonight because not going has become the greater danger. I think you are familiar with the place? Would you be my tutor to its nature in the astral? In turn I have seen some things lately which you might find interesting.“
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Green Toes listens attentively and nods solemnly at Jawsey’s explanation. His eyes – or what pass for his eyes on the astral – flare slightly when Urubia’s Funhouse is mentioned.
“The Funhouse. Fun depends on your point of view, I suppose. Sometimes the fun comes at the expense or the pain of another.”
Jawsey can’t really read Green Toes on this one. Is he moralizing (do the fae even have morals?) or does the dichotomy somehow make it more interesting to watch on the astral?
“It is a dangerous place, but the dangers are not the obvious ones. You are wise to ask for a guide. I can tell you what I know, but it must be reciprocated.”
Jawsey can see the fae’s aura shifting. It’s full of curiosity, but also hunger.
“What would you like to know? The dangers I can tell you in exchange for a favor. A trifling, really, requiring no effort of your own.”
There’s a pregnant pause. Jawsey indicates that he should continue.
“I would like to follow you around during one of your jobs. Not to the Funhouse, no. But a job where you affect people. One where you learn secrets, or divulge the secrets of others. One where you harm someone, or save another. I wish to study the effects of what you do in the world. I will just observe, not involving myself or interfering in any way.”
This seems easy enough, as Green Toes could just do this anyway, couldn’t he? For all Jawsey knows, Green Toes follows him around all the time without his knowledge. Or is there something different or hidden about this request? It does mean that someone (something) else would be aware of the team’s actions.
“That’s the price of the dangers. If you want to know the secrets…” The look of hunger returns. “… the cost is more substantial.”
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Jawsey knew what Greentoes meant, but the problem was that he knew it two ways, leaving him feeling two different ways.
The small amount of magical education he’d managed to gather as an adult suggested that spirits were tricky and greedy, eager to take part of a metahuman potential in return for the equivalent of magical beans. Jawsey had avoided making such bargains since learning this view point.
As a child, when he’d thought he was daydreaming his way out of his bleak apartment to explore the world, he’d encountered what he had called the dream people. Chased some, been chased by others, played with some, been played by others. A couple of times there was something he’d wanted so badly that he ached with it, and a dream person had been willing to offer it … for a price. With his child’s eyes it had been obvious how much the dream people wanted that payment, but all Jawsey knew was that after making such a deal he was listless and unfocused for days or even months afterward. Once it had been for a particular toy, which he’d never ended up playing with much, and he’d learned the perils of making such deals. But the first time, that had been to hide his father from the thugs who were hunting him. Jawsey had never told his father, or anyone, what he’d done — but it was the one time he’d been able to do something for his father, and he’d never regretted it.
Was this a new toy, or was it actually important?
Maybe his father would have gotten away on his own, but know that he’d helped him had carried Jawsey through some rough days. Lately he’d felt that he was not pulling his weight at the agency, maybe getting this information could be the same? He’d not have to tell others the cost, just show up with the information?
Jawsey was aware that he was possibly deluding himself about the importance, and in the end decided that he should check with the team. “I am interested in both. I understand what sort of price you are talking about for the secrets, and it is a price I can pay … but I am part of a team. Would you be willing to give me a short time to talk with them? Perhaps one or more of them would even be interested in meeting you after I explain the potential arrangement?“
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The hunger flashes again in Green Toes. The possibility of extending the deal to others has him blood in the water, metaphorically. He nods to Jawsey.
“I’ll be here,” he says casually, although there’s no hiding your true feelings on the astral – at least not without a much better way to mask your aura. Jawsey sees the craving in Green Toes. It’s not a pleasant sensation, but it’s one that Jawsey could use to his advantage now and then.
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Once back in his body, Jawsey had some doubts. He spent a few minutes thinking through how he could sell the appeal of the idea, and a few more thinking about how he might be able to manipulate the others to say yes, but finally decided that using those sorts of tactics within the team was simply not a good idea.
He found AM and asked her to come with him so he could explain a situation to her and Bobby. He tried hard not to read anything into the look that she gave him.
Once they were all together he explained “There is a spirit that I know. A free spirit. It says it is from the Fae Courts, but I just have to take its word for it. A lot of spirits like places of heavy human emotion, and Green Toes seems especially interested. The long and short of it is that it has been to the Funhouse, and it has some dangers it can advise us about. The price for that is letting it tag along on a future mission where we do interesting things. How we know before hand that they will be interesting I’m not so sure. That is the easy part of the offer to consider.“
“It also says it knows about a secret about the Funhouse. For that piece of info it wants a more … personal… payment. Nothing dirty, just a piece of, well, I don’t know. Some people talk about it as a piece of your soul but that is an exaggeration I’m sure. Others talk about ‘potential’ or ‘experience’ or ‘inspiration.’ Whatever you call it, I did this sort of deal a few times as a kid, and it leaves you kind of flat for a while, kind of in a rut, or lacking motivation, or something. At least a bit, depends on how much you give, I think, not that you can really measure that. You get over it, but you do feel the loss in some way.“
“Anyway, I’m already feeling a bit burnt out. I’ve been working hard at trying to get better with magic and computers and stuff, I’m not sure how much it could even get from me right now. I’m willing to go ahead with the deal to learn this secret, but I’m not even sure if I can make the payment on my own. Would either of you be interested in a shared sacrifice? Of course I don’t know if it will be worth it, since I don’t know what the secret is about. But if nothing else I figure a secret about the Funhouse should be worth something to someone — Lysander if nobody else.“
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AM’s face grows pale, and she stays silent. She feels terrified because she only recently figured about the sacrifice which is required to create a permanent construct. You want to create something permanent, you need to give up what you learned in a year. While abstract, she figured it out eventually by a lot of meditating, and a lot of matrix research – after all, she is not the only sorcerer that attempted this.
What Jawsey is suggesting would set back her project, and while all her money goes toward the debt, her experiences are her own, her ability to learn and improve, and to birth a spirit. It seems that the world has figured a way to drain her of the one comfort she has in the life of stress and fear. She takes a few deep breathes, trying to calm herself, and not shout or explode.
AM responds “I know very well about this process, I recently figured how to create such a transaction myself. Turns out, it is the essence of spirits, their most valued commodity and the very thing that makes them what they are. They feed on us, and it is a very real – and very measurable thing that we pay them.”
She pauses to think about it
The wise Iktomi teaches us not to trust spirts, not even himself. You are negotiating with an immortal being which means it has more expirience than yourself and is likely more cunning than yourself.
I am willing to enter such a negotiation because I’ll do anything to pay my debt – but I would not hand over my potential if the economic value of the secret is questionable. I do not trust a spirit to understand how valuable the secret is – but given my recent advancements in magic theory, I am willing to agree to pay on the secret based on its monetary value. Kind of like exchanging one currency for the other. “
She pauses and then comments “… but you need to get a grip of yourself, don’t be overeager or distracted like the last negotiation. It has to be a good deal or you will rob me of my ability to create my construct, months of obsession goes into a hungry spirit for nothing.”
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Bobby looked ponderously at the proposal: “I know exactly what you mean – the ordeal I took was a way to lessen the strain of my initiation on my ability to change. Because that is in essence what the spirits are after – your ability to grow and change. As far as I can tell, it’s a function of our mortality – Spirits don’t have it and so are locked in stasis unless they gain it from mortals.
That said, I’m down to give up a bit of mine – but after my ordeal I’m really tapped out. I’d first have to make new experiences that resonate with my soul, before I have the ability to actually change again.
So, if you negotiate, make sure to defer the payment to after we went to the Funhouse and had our dealings. And also limit it to at most a tenth of whatever we gain there.”
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As Jawsey headed back through the astral he was sure his aura was disturbed. AM’s words had gotten under his skin, and the whole concept of making the sacrifice to learn a secret about the Funhouse …. after they had to be there, rubbed him wrong too.
But the truth was that the team was stretched thin, not in a good position to make the sacrifice. Still, once the spirit had the scent of soul, would it accept the lesser trade for the information and a promise of the big trade later?
He found the spirit easily enough, it didn’t actually look like it had moved at all. Maybe it hadn’t; as best as Jawsey had been able to tell it had once spent a week watching a Stuffer Shack.
Jawsey explained “My team agrees to the price for the information. And we are interested in the Secret too. We have another commitment to go to now, and the rest of them cannot come here so easily, since their bodies might not be allowed here. I would suggest, we meet halfway between highest-sun and sun-down to do the ritual. ” There followed the usual challenge of giving an address to a spirit, but eventually they identified the place to meet, and Jawsey returned to tell the team.
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