Log:Test Your Metal, Scene 9

Test Your Metal 2016/12/12

9

"I dunno- my money is this guy is just secretly filthy." Daemon says as he gazes upwards to make sure the ceiling isn't as cluttered & disgusting as the slanted floor.

He leaps upwards as stands in nearly the same location. "Maybe you can do something to... get better reception? Or is there a 'Wipe' button? Just asking- if we need a plan B, or you know- we find what we need and want to clean up before turning out the lights." He saysin a faux-East Coast accent. And despite the accent, it doesn't sound like he's joking- though that doesn't mean he's not. Sometimes he's just difficult for the sake of it.

As he takes a look around this Crack-Addled Artist's rendition of the Professor's Den of Mystical Evil he crouches down and wipes whatever ichor or film he's imagining on him on to the ceiling at his feet.

"-ean Winthrop! No! I REFUSE! This has gone too far!"

Professor Mysterion appears, shrieking into his smartphone as he emerges into the main room of the loft. Somehow he is correctly angled relative to the force of gravity as he strides through the middle of the apartment. He sounds very nearly hysterical as he kicks several antique books out of his way and throws a fist at an imaginary face, snarling in disgust.

"I refuse to calm down, Dean! They ransacked my apartment and blew up the whole building's waste lines!"

There is a brief pause as the markedly younger version of Mysterion seems to regard something being said on the other end of the line. Shifting his weight about anxiously, Mysterion knocks loose another small avalanche of aged books. With a langorous, but suffering sigh, he shakes his fist roughly in Daemon's direction.

"No, I don't have proof that it was Rho Delta Sigma or any of the fraternities. How would... No, no. Of course I believe in due process. I also believe in a correlation between college students making threats and my apartment being trashed soon thereafter."

"...and what's what threw the deranged maniac over the edge. Frat pranks," Grimm comments dryly to Daemon as she folds her arms over her chest. She cocks her head just so to regard the upside down Daemon, struck oddly by his question. Her jaw works around as though she were chewing on something tangible rather than the moral dilemma of his question.

"I...never tried wiping anyone's mind before. Or rewriting memories. Maybe planted a nightmare or two, but I never went that far."

"Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy." Daemon says still looking at his nano-sheathed hands. "Hmmm..." He says with his attention diverted from another quip or snide comment.

Daemon's eidetic memory don't require him to get any closer to see the image any better. So his next words are pretty certain.

"Looks like this nonsense goes way back... look at that book." He points to the partial cover of one of the books brought down in the Professor's ire. Grimm should notice a book that is covered in engravings looking very much like the same one's Mysterion used in his final Museum Heist.

Mysterion, who is clearly not at all Mysterion yet in this memory, continues to argue with Dean Winthrop on the phone. Blessedly he moves back out of the main room and into a side room in the loft. The volume and dialogue immediately drops to tolerable, almost white noise levels after he slams a door angrily.

Once again, Grimm and Daemon are left alone in the awkwardly twisted apartment memory. Perhaps they can inspect the "good" professor's collection of books in peace now?

Grimm turns her head, eyes searching about in the general direction he's pointing to. And then she sees it. The book with those strange engravings. Has she come across these anywhere else? Maybe Frankie knows.

Gabrielle treads towards the book, stepping over scattered papers and waste, until she's close enough to reach out for it.

"I wonder where he even got ahold of something like this," she ponders as she plucks it from the stack. She turns the book over in her hand a few times, carefully reviewing the markings before opening the book.

Daemon drops to the ground, flipping to bring his feet down first.

He immediately springs towards a cleared area not too dirty or covered in books, but near enough that he can see whatever he needs to. He crosses his arms as he waits for Grimm to sully herself with the filth of this man's memories.

[GM to Grimm] You are, of course, examining this book through the lens of Mysterion's memories so you're not 100% sure how much of what you sense you take as gospel truth. What strikes you, however, is just how powerful the book feels. It resonates with mystical force that seems strikingly familiar - similar to Malcolm's magical aura as a matter of fact, but subtly different. Very few magical books that you know of actually resonate with power, most of those that you do know of come either from alternate dimensions; most of those come from dimensions where all magical objects must be endowed with magical power in order to be of any use to their owners. (continued)

[GM to Grimm] Because Mysterion lacks some of your abilities, you cannot determine the book's dimension of origin. There's simply no way to assess a thing in a memory that does not contain such a sense memory. On the plus side, you recognize the general style of the book itself. It's a dyed in the wool genuine ancient mystical tome, probably late middle ages if you were to guess, in the general vein of a grimoire. Where on Earth Mysterion got this thing is anyone's guess, but it is a very nice example of its kind. (continued)

[GM to Grimm] The cover appears to be marked with a ward against natural forces - the better to prevent it from aging - though the style is novel to you. It uses a lot of complex rune work that you're pretty sure was unknown at the time. Once you open the book, you get the impression that Mysterion must have skimmed through sections of it; the pages are sometimes indistinct or visibly jumbled together in unintelligible fashion. What sticks out, however, are all of the pages near the middle where the author of the tome seems to begin treating it as a kind of journal chronicling his or her descent into obsessive madness over acquiring untold magical power from a strange mystical dimension encountered quite accidentally during some sort of astral projection ceremony to learn the True Name of some kind of malignant magical entity.

Daemon taps his right foot as he watches Grimm work.

Grimm runs her fingers along the cover's edges as she reads through it, flipping from here to there. Sometimes her eyes focus on the page. Sometimes they drift out of focus as she observes the magical aura of the book.

"This...this thing is legit. I can see the magical energy on it. Or Mysterion's memory of its energy. That must've drawn him to the book." She frowns at the familiarity of the magical signature.

"It kind of reminds me of the aura around Malcolm," she murmurs, turning another page. She tries to make sense of some of the glyphs, and comes across some writing she can at least make out. "This thing is old. Middle ages, maybe?" she murmurs, distracted as she tries to focus on reading. Her frown only grows.

After taking some time to read, she mutters, "Well, that's...encouraging. Some of this is a journal. The author starts descending into madness over obtaining vast magical power from a mystic dimension they found by accident. Some sort of astral projection ceremony while they were trying to learn the True Name of some evil magical entity."

She holds her place with a finger, then flips to the front to check for the author's name.

"Oh- why am I not surprised. Can you tell how long it took for him to go crazy? And how young do you think Mysterion is in this memory?" Daemon asks curiously as he remembers Young Not-Yet-Mysterion. "Maybe he hasn't even read this thing yet."

"More importantly, do these books ever make anyone better? Or is it jsut Psychos who get a hold of these ancient tomes?"

[GM to Grimm] The authorship page is garbled and unintelligible. Apparently another page that Mysterion skimmed instead of committing to memory, but there's a trace of magic there... A tracery of something lingers in Mysterion's magical memory... 'Primos Cadmius: Traveller of Realms'.

[GM to Grimm] The 'Traveller of Realms' part seems passingly familiar. You've heard a few tales from other dimensional smugglers about someone who, in antiquity, hopped from dimension to dimension in search of powerful artifacts and esoteric spells. Some dimensions paint him/her/it as a hero while others paint it/her/him as a terrible villain. This is notably not dissimilar from the chronicle of obsession and evil that is Mysterion's life nor that which you've skimmed in Mysterion's memory of the book.

"Ohhh, he's read this thing, because I can only read the parts he has memory of. But I couldn't tell you if that's what he knows in 2016, or what he knew during...this point of his history," Gabrielle waves a hand about non-commitally.

With a frustrated crinkle of her brow, she fails to find the author's name. Mysterion wasn't paying enough attention to the source of the book.

And then, she finds something and murmurs, "Primos Cadmius: Traveller of Realms? Huh...interesting. Seems like there's a pattern of people wanting to seek powerful magic and artifacts in other dimensions after reading this book." She doesn't seem all that alarmed, now that she's read parts of the book.

"And when you say 'this' book- you mean the one you're reading?" Daemon says in a voice that isn't totally absent of concern.

Daemon idly begins looking at the other books in the pile to keep from quipping Grimm to death while she does her thing.

Daemon looks at the pile of books. He can see several latter day copies of alchemical treatises and a second edition copy of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. It is perhaps possible that Mysterion - Dr. Crawfeld - is passingly competent at his job after all.

On the other hand, it still stinks to high heaven in this memory.

"Yeah, this one. Well, the real one. This one's just a memory. I mean...I'm sure it holds no power here," Gabrielle replies as she goes back to flipping through more of the introduction pages.

"It's funny...I've heard of Primos. Just didn't think of them being connected to this. Almost a legend in it sown way. They would travel across dimensions to find magical power. Though the stories kind of mince whether they were a hero or villain, or even what gender Primos was. It -was- from a long time ago, after all." She's too involved with the book to notice the smell, for now.

Or was it that Grimm had heard of a 'Traveller of Realms' before?

The world may never know.

"Oh- good. Good. We can't have you going all Super-Mysterion too. " He crouches down to flip through another book, this one a Bestiary of a Dimension called Hanzig.

"Primos? Someone had a pretty high opinion of themselves. At least that message survived the annals of history. You know, the important stuff."

Grimm starts flipping through the book, skimming pages to try and find any hint of the Blue Sovereign. "Right. That'd be bad," she murmurs. Is she even paying attention!?

"Well I guess it depends on if you're a benevolent power-mad leader & bequeath.... I dunno Tokyo... or maybe Neo-Tokyo to your best-friend." Daemon says with no hint of playing- probably to test if she is even paying attention.

He throws the BEstiary to teh sid and picks up 'The Tome of Dawn's Reich'. He sees the title and immediately puts it down. "Yikes." He says.

[GM to Grimm] You don't find anything that directly mentions a Blue Sovereign, but you do find the ritual that Mysterion was using - will use? Time travel is rough on tenses in the English language - in the Metropolitan Museum. You may need to take some time to digest it since it's part of a larger journal entry.

[GM to Grimm] Or perhaps someone with an eidetic memory and extremely fast reading capabilities memorize this memory.

"Mm? Yeah, yeah...you'll get Neo-Tokyo, but I get the rest," Gabrielle murmurs, her imagination wandering a bit. She smiles slowly at a thought, but the scent of the place starts to intrude. "Gawd, what is making that awful smell? It's intense enough to be burned into his memory. Can you see what's making that smell?" she snorts irritably.

"Ugh, there's so much. Think you can read this faster than me?" she asks as she breaks her gaze from the book to look at Daemon.

"I'm perfectly fine with that." Daemon says turning back to Grimm.

He's about to answer about seeing what's making the smell when he thinks better of it. "I don't think we want ot know that much about Mysteri- Yes. Yes- I would much rather do that." Daemon says putting his hands out to take the book from Grimm. "And give me the keywords I'm lookin for- besides Blue Sovereign of course."

Grimm hands over the book with a limp turn of her wrist. "This section here is the ritual Mysterion used at the museum. The one where we saw Malcolm taken. It's really dense, and I need some time to really understand it. I was hoping you could memorize it and, I dunno, make me a printed copy later in the real world? Unless you can make any sense of it now."

After the book's handed off, she taps her chin in thought. "Hmmm..other keywords? Sarkterrans. Sauras. Colavrassa. Vreckna. Blessing of metal."

Grimm half smirks as she adds, "And I gotta say, I'm curious about this Primos person."

After Grimm hands over the book and highlights the most important selection - easily a dozen pages or more - for Daemon, the Spider sets to work. It takes him perhaps two minutes to commit the ritual and the text to memory. Retrieving the data later will be easy to do.

Daemon takes the book and opens to the first page. "Alright- I can do that."

Grimm nods as Daemon gets to work. She glances around, fanning her nose. "Did the frats stink bomb this place with dirty laundry or what?" she mutters with a scowl. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other in thought. "Should probably find this book in the material plane and destroy it. Seems like it's a danger to whoever reads it."

He begins flipping pages, slowly at first then once he's certain he's reading it correctly, his pace quickens exponentially. Soon enough he's flipping to the next page as soon as he glances at one.

"You weren't wrong about this Primos Cadmius... the 'Traveller'. He thought that some power could be found in another dimension." Daemon says, "Holes aside- and boy are there a number of holes, the properties of this dimension were in a word 'weird'. So to attain them he had to and I quote, 'bend Fate to his whim'..." Daemon continues, even going so far as to use air quotes.

"...which, come on. 'Bend Fate'?" Daemon says as he continues reading at a super-human pace.

"I'm approximately 85% of the way through this thing and I've yet to find any other information that strikes me as important." He sighs a bit exasperatedly. "And- and I cannot find any reason at all these 'Blessings of the Elements' are important, or why this Primos & Mysterion decided to 'attain power' through ever increasingly devilish acts of evil. SO I'm gonna assume the Pompous Ass was just an Arsehole for the sake of being one."

He drops the book with little regard for it importantance now that he's absorbed its information into his mind.

"Unless the book drives everyone to evil?" Daemon asks a bit uncertainly.

Grimm is nudging trash about with her foot, pondering the nature of astral and the mind, when something Daemon catches her attention. A few somethings. Suddenly, all of her attention is on Daemon.

"Wait...does it say -how- to bend Fate?" she asks with keen interest bordering on obsession.

"Blessings of the Elements...that may be part of the Blessing of Metal. There were claims that Malcolm stole the Blessing of Metal and the Blue Sovereign wanted...wait."

Gabrielle's expression goes through a few iterations of deduction and crazed theories. "They were after the same thing. Could Primos have succeeded and become the Blue Sovereign?"

[GM to Grimm] Nothing about the mystical impressions you can sense suggest to you that it drives everyone - or anyone - that reads it to evil. Its powerful magical aura, however, suggests to you that it may hail from an alternate dimension and that it may be somehow meant to cause magicians to try to find a way to return it to its dimension of origin. You can't be sure about that, but it seems a logical possible theory based on what you can glean from the memory and facts at hand. (continued)

[GM to Grimm] On the other hand, it could be that Daemon doesn't know enough about magic to understand the inherent/implicit necessities of the spells contained within the tome. He may understand what it says, but he may not have the theoretical framework necessary to grasp what he's reading. Certainly the text around the spells and rituals are some of the most dense you've ever encountered, that sort of design work is the sort that's going to be lousy with geasa, runic restrictions, and hermetic pre-conditions.

Idly Daemon picks up another book. He's about to start reading that one, figuring it couldn't hurt to have a better grasp of this stuff- and now he has access to an actual sorcerer's cliff notes.

"Oh- that's a hell of a theory." Daemon says as he recalls the fragments of the book he's absorbed.

"Well, yeah, that's...crazy, but since the Blue Sovereign is seeing the Blessing of Metal that was stolen, maybe it's Primos or another traveller," Gabrielle supposes as she rubs her chin, folding her free arm over her chest.

She stops rubbing and rolls her wrist in a 'moving on' gesture. "But what's more important is that part about bending Fate. I mean, at least to me. Malcolm's cursed by Fate, so if we can bend it to our will..."

What she's saying may be crazy. Or insane. But the weight of what it could mean causes her to speak on quiet awe. "Then maybe I can free Malcolm..."