Events (Season 1)

A timeline of events from 'Season 1,' beginning from mid-October 2019 and ending on December 21st 2019. Out of game, this 'season' ran from April 2020 to early January 2021.

The Ponticus Event
Sometime in mid-late October, Katie Greensborough, Charlotte Odette, and Kieran Anville all found themselves present at the Alpha Phi sorority house for a party, with member Ellison Prince present as hostess. Lucius Zann arrived late in the evening to meet up with his Adderall dealer, Josh, and attempted to crash the party. He was swiftly apprehended by Ellison, who asked him to leave. They were interrupted by shouting from another room; a boy named Dylan had suddenly collapsed. As medical students, Kieran and Lucius determined that Dylan was stable but unconscious, and had him moved and attended while they waited for the paramedics to arrive.

Katie began to take charge of the investigation, questioning witnesses but finding no clear explanation for Dylan's fainting. After the EMS took Dylan out of the house, she recovered his dropped soda cup. A mysterious voice asked her what she was doing, spooking her; when she fled into the bathroom, the word 'PONTICUS' appeared in bright letters on the mirror.

One by one, all the other PCs began to see the strange writing, appearing only when they were alone and disappearing soon after. They began to discuss investigating the sorority house, tensions running high as Ellison accused Lucius or Charlotte of setting events in motion to ruin her party, and as other rumors came to light: Lucius's potential connection to Madison King, who had disappeared several weeks ago; a dorm break-in by Charlotte to dig for dirt on a fellow student; and the possibility that Kieran is a necrophile. Eventually, mutually frustrated, Ellison attempted to find her friends to discuss the strange events of the evening and Lucius attempted to leave the house. He was waylaid going out by Katie, and began helping her with her investigation.

Meanwhile, Ellison realized that nobody else was downstairs anymore, and went up to the second floor to find her sorority sisters. At the top of the stairs, she instead found herself in an empty auditorium. She then proceeded to have a mental breakdown.

The remaining PCs joined up to continue the investigation together, attempting to remove the bathroom mirrors to check for any cameras or projection devices- unsuccessfully, because it's magic. Katie and Charlotte exchanged words, with Charlotte attempting to bribe Katie for information about Ellison in exchange for information about Katie: hesitantly, Katie said that she heard Ellison had the clap; in turn, Charlotte accused Katie of using steroids. Angered, Katie stormed upstairs and was also transported to the auditorium. The others were unable to find anything useful downstairs, and followed shortly.

Katie panicked, finding herself trapped in a strange place with no exits, and climbed into the booth to deactivate the lights. Five spotlights remained onstage, which burned to the touch when Kieran tried to stand in one. Ellison activated the lights by playing a piano onstage, which aimed them towards the back of the theater where they caught fire to the back curtain. It burned up and crumbled away, leaving a passage into a forest. Ellison stormed ahead, with Katie picking up the far rear when she sprained her ankle jumping down from the booth.

Walking deeper into the woods, Ellison was the first to encounter a figure in bright red monk's robes. She initially tried to deceive him about her identity, but he correctly marked her out as Ellison Prince; when the remaining PCs joined her, he identified them as well. The robed figure, Ponticus, gave his sermon:"'The first thought of all is that of love of self. Then, the eight: gluttony, lust, greed, sorrow, acedia, anger, vainglory, and pride.'"He demanded that they repent and they refused. Ellison attempted to flirt with him, and he drew deeper into the woods away from her. They approached a stream, and when Katie dipped her ankle in the water the injury was healed. However, soon after discovering the healing stream they were surrounded by a ring of fire and Ponticus, demanding that they repent. Again, they refused. Katie jumped out of the fire and into the river; when Charlotte attempted to do the same, she nearly lost her life, but was saved by Katie pulling her into the water. Ellison and Lucius followed with minimal injury. Left alone in the circle, Kieran was asked to repent one more time. He bent over and screamed that he was "fucking sorry." Both he and the ring of fire vanished.

Kieran appeared back in the sorority house and found that a whole 12 hours had passed, and that only he had returned. When the ring returned, this time impossible to escape, one by one the rest of the group began to repent: Katie by saying the word 'sorry' incidentally; Lucius by shedding real tears of remorse; and Charlotte and Ellison, holding each other in the river, flipping each other off and saying, "I'm sorry", in unison.

Everyone returned to the normal world more or less safely, though with time gaps of hours or days between them. Later, with some dark web research, Katie found a forum conversation about someone called The Judge, commenting that he was 'still doing his Ponticus routine.'

The Museum
Several weeks after the Ponticus incident, the crew began to see fliers around the FSU campus for a study into experiences of paranormal activity, hosted by Robin Fairchild. Around this time, they all received an email from an Eve Taylor requesting a meeting at a local hipster bar, The Rusty Cup Emporium. Having formed a group chat to discuss events for safety, the crew- sans Ellison, who was determined to avoid anything magic- agreed to go together to the RCE. Ellison ended up going anyway on a date with a man.

At the bar, Eve explained that she was an Australian expat who had also had an experience with Ponticus in college, during which two of her friends went missing and are presumed dead. Dozens of people around the world for years have had similar experiences, all groups of college-aged acquaintances. Nearly all of them lost members in Ponticus's Otherspace; it is pretty rare, in fact, that all of the crew escaped with their lives. She advised the crew to speak to Adeline Vance for more information and passed along her business card. A meeting was arranged at the Phoenix Jackson Museum of Curiosities, and Ellison reluctantly agreed to go along with them.

The preliminary museum meeting was fairly successful. Adeline explained a little about the purpose of the Museum, and invited the crew to apply as interns with the promise of magical knowledge. She also advised highly against any kind of meeting with Robin Fairchild, as she was likely affiliated with a dangerous organization called the Sleepers. Kieran, Katie, and Charlotte took their applications eagerly, and Lucius with some reluctance. Ellison took the paperwork out of politeness, but had no interest in actually applying.

The next day, Eve Taylor was found dead of unidentifiable causes, on the floor of the RCE. She had been posed on her side with her finger to her lips- a calling card of hits carried out by the Sleepers.

The Death of Eve Taylor
Sometime after Eve's death, Ellison was brought in by police under suspicion of murder. The officers, among them Cletus Crowe, showed her the security footage of a figure who appeared to be Ellison approaching the RCE shortly before Eve died; she adamantly insisted it was not her, even though her lawyer and the other officer present seemed easily convinced that it was. Having appeared at the RCE recently and met up with Ellison there, the crew were brought in separately for questioning. Ellison was advised by the police not to leave town.

The crew all met with Phoenix Jackson to discuss the terms of their employment and Ellison's predicament. Phoenix offered extremely good compensation for working at the museum, retrieving magical items, and to Ellison he gave assurances that she would be protected as long as she was affiliated with him. However, Phoenix Jackson is an unreliable old hippie, and Ellison and Lucius remained skeptical of him. Phoenix asked Lucius to come by and experience some of his works, and Kieran invited himself along. He put it to the rest of the museum employees to go on an initial mission: to go back to the RCE and steal a magical item for him. Phoenix failed to elaborate on what the item was or where it could be found.

The crew also met Donald, the other employee of the museum, and he was a huge creep. Donald showed him the current artefact storage at the museum, which includes: an old camera; a Colt revolver with the words 'you did it' carved into the handle; a paper mask; a video showing a person removing the mask and transforming from one person to another; a white silk glove with 2 rings knotted on the fingers; a taxidermy rabbit's foot; and 3 strands of braided horse hair tucked into a snakeskin, labeled 'Storm Cat talisman: nature's viagra.' Ellison agreed to go on a date with Donald and watch Brideshead Revisited with him (which he claimed to be writing his thesis about despite clearly being an undergrad), in order to manipulate him into giving her information about the occult underground and the museum.

Lucius and Kieran returned later that evening where Phoenix revealed that he is a narco-alchemist, a type of magic worker who specializes in magic drugs. He gave both boys a Universal Perceptual Solvent, a magically laced LSD tab which allowed them to see auras. Lucius's aura was concentrated in a purple crown, but was kinda jank; Phoenix explained that this was because he was an intellectual, but not all there. Kieran had the same purple crown in addition to a green mark over his heart, which was a sign of a nurturing spirit. Phoenix's aura was mostly red through his chest and stomach, and was kind of stinky, but he did not give an explanation for himself.

During this session, Adeline came into the room. Her aura was so powerful that it sent Lucius into a temporary panic, while Kieran was able to stay calm enough to identify her as "The Necessary Servant." Adeline seemed displeased with him declaring that kind of thing out loud. After Lucius had calmed down, he agreed to come and train with Phoenix as a narco-alchemist, and he and Kieran walked home together. They seemed to have become closer as friends, somehow.

Meanwhile, Ellison had her date with Donald. Donald had bad opinions about literature because he's a weird little homophobe. The two ended up fighting and Donald asked her to leave his dorm or else he would call campus security, and eventually Ellison went home.

Olives
Concurrent to this, Katie and Charlotte went out to the RCE to attempt to retrieve whatever item Phoenix wanted. While there, they managed to find a jar of olives that gave off a weird vibe, but their search for anything more valuable was interrupted when Cletus Crowe arrived at the bar. Charlotte began sneakily recording. He revealed himself to be a member of the Sleepers and explained the organization's intentions. He cast a spell on Charlotte which temporarily inserted memories into her mind of knowing Cletus as a family friend, which made her panic. Katie asked Cletus to let them leave quietly, and he agreed to let them off with a warning as long as they would come to a meeting with his boss, Angela Forsythe. Katie managed to smuggle the olives out in her sweatshirt.

Lucius began training with Phoenix. The initial training to become an adept involves 'breaking one's brain' by taking a permanent trauma, so over the course of a few weeks Phoenix would have Lucius take a drug of his choice and then begin to make him panic by provoking his fear of helplessness, holding him down and touching his face or making him feel cornered. Additionally, Phoenix demonstrated some simple narco-alchemy spells like being able to open locked doors or holding people in place in an invisible 'mime box.' Kieran attended several early sessions, to record the process and out of protectiveness over Lucius. Lucius also attempted to ask Adeline what a Necessary Servant was and why she was that, and she explained why that kind of thing was rude by asking him to think about how he would feel if someone asked why he was autistic. This was Lucius's first real experience with social etiquette, and also the first time he had considered that he might be autistic.

Katie and Charlotte were picked up by Daoud, another Sleeper, and brought to a meeting with Angela Forsythe. There, she offered to allow Katie and Charlotte to trade allegiances and made what sounded like casual threats on Phoenix's life, citing the power of the Sleepers as a group in the occult underground. Katie and Charlotte refused and were let go. Throughout, Katie and Ellison were sending veiled messages in the group chat about being picked up by the Sleepers, just in case they were in danger, but not understanding what they were talking about, Kieran got frustrated and muted Ellison.

Katie and Charlotte made their way back to the museum with the stolen cocktail olives, where Kieran and Lucius were already waiting. When Ellison attempted to meet them there, she was apprehended by Angela in her car. Angela made a similar deal to the one she had made Katie and Charlotte that day, and Ellison also rejected her, sassily. The sass was a bad idea. She released Ellison at the museum without further incident.

Adeline greeted the crew at the museum, and congratulated Charlotte before immediately getting embarrassed about it. Unbeknownst to the rest of the crew, Charlotte had recently become a Chronicler archetype avatar. The crew attempted to discuss the Sleepers and the olives, but some members noticed Charlotte recording their conversation. They were all understandably upset and suspicious, and pushed Charlotte to explain what Adeline had meant- aside from Kieran, who took up a white knight role to shout down everyone trying to get Charlotte to admit guilt. Eventually Adeline came and dispersed the argument, taking Charlotte aside into the staff kitchen.

Adequately distracted, the sexually active band geeks (Kieran, Katie, and Lucius) began to try and figure out the olives, while Ellison went to try and talk to Donald. She had received a love letter from him full of bad poetry, after she had previously dropped off a ream of academic papers about Brideshead which discussed its queer themes, out of spite. Donald went and hid in the bathroom. Meanwhile, Kieran and Lucius spent a bunch of time fucking around trying to experiment on the olives before Katie ate one while they were distracted. Lucius followed suit, and neither of them would react to Kieran when he got increasingly upset and noisy about it.

Not knowing the effects of the olives or how long they would last, Kieran asked Adeline to help, and she responded by calling Patrick Cooper, the owner of the RCE. He came by and was very cross about his olives being stolen, because they were his olives that make you not want to fight, and he needs them. Katie clocked him as being functionally wasted. He refused to answer questions put to him by the crew, but flirted with Ellison. Thinking he seemed more promising than the museum as a source of information and protection, Ellison reciprocated. Patrick took his olives and went home.

The Jesus Fish
Ellison began sleeping with Patrick and having really bad, awkward sex. Everyone yelled at her when they found out, because it was actually super unnecessary.

The first real artefact retrieval mission came when Phoenix asked Charlotte to get him a Jesus fish bumper sticker. But this could not just be any old Jesus fish; he specifically wanted the one owned by Corbin Bell, the night manager of the McDonald's on N. Monroe street. Charlotte agreed, and asked Kieran to come to McDonald's with her to pick up coffees for the museum staff, as a pretext to scope the place out. After he paid for the coffee, Charlotte intentionally spilled them on him so she could have an excuse to speak to the day manager, Hannah Jones. Kieran ran to the bathroom to clean up, and then with Charlotte's coaching asked for the coffees to be comped for later in the evening. Hannah wrote him a receipt with the words 'an ashen john' on the back.

Later that day, the rest of the crew joined him and Charlotte at the McDonald's, and they all made fools of themselves trying to talk to Corbin and the other employees and get them to talk about magic. Lucius ate some food while he was there which affected him with a random spell. In this case, it made people extraordinarily attracted to him, causing some awkwardness when Katie was affected by the spell's charm. Katie managed to push through the discomfort and cut a deal with Corbin to get the bumper sticker, which she passed off to Charlotte. Despite not actually retrieving the Jesus fish herself, Charlotte handed it in to Phoenix and left him under the impression that she had been primarily responsible for getting it.

Meanwhile, Ellison had flown back to New York for her grandmother's funeral. Arriving back in Tallahassee a few days later, she received several messages from Patrick advising her that she had gotten too clingy and they should stick to just sex; she informed him that she had been out of town for the last week, and that he had been fucking her Thespian doppelganger.

As Ellison was getting back into town, Katie received a call apparently coming from Ellison's phone asking her to meet at the campus cafe. However, everything about the performance was off, and Katie was immediately tipped off. She informed the group chat that the Thespian had made contact, and Kieran volunteered to come along as backup. At the meeting, Katie tried to confront fake-Ellison about what she was doing and why, and in response ended up on the receiving end of a nasty spell. She disappeared completely, made unaware of her own existence and identity, and was erased from the minds of everyone in the vicinity, including Kieran. Fake-Ellison made her escape. This lasted for 7 minutes, after which Kieran remembered their mission and found her crying in the bathroom; he brought her some water and let her talk about what she had experienced, but Katie was deeply shaken by these events nonetheless.

Kieran and Ellison had a serious argument over this, with Kieran frustrated that she had left them high and dry resulting in Katie getting hurt, and Ellison still grieving over a beloved relative and frustrated at the presumptuousness and invasion of her privacy.

New Orleans
Riding the high of his new employees' successful mission, Phoenix began planning a road trip to New Orleans to retrieve another artefact. However, tensions were running high in the group. Lucius had finally completed the brain-breaking stage of his narco-alchemy training, and while having a prolonged panic attack he told Kieran and Ellison who had attempted to offer him comfort, to go fuck themselves. This activated Kieran's own fear stimulus, rejection, and he tried to cut Lucius off from the trip by not informing him of it when Phoenix asked him to; in the end, Adeline had to invite both Lucius and Ellison onto the trip herself.

The day before Thanksgiving, they set out for New Orleans with the entire group packed into Phoenix's van (now appropriately kitted out with the good driving sticker). Kieran had lied about the other members' driving ability in order to try and arrange himself as the sole driver- to no avail, as Ellison and Adeline insisted on taking shifts as well. Along the way, the group made several stops, the first being at the Ponce de Leon Springs. Adeline insisted on making a stop there in order to retrieve some water from the springs for Patrick, because he believes it is a component to craft the elixir of life. After being removed from the driver's seat, Kieran retaliated by getting absolutely zooted with Phoenix in the backseat.

The second pit stop, somewhere in Alabama, proved somewhat more treacherous. Somehow without being conscious of it, Phoenix, Lucius, Katie, and Ellison were led away from the rest stop and into a strange building. There were no visible exits or windows after walking in: just rows and rows of mirrors. In each mirror, the looker saw twisted versions of themselves. Katie's vision was wide-eyed, bulky, with signs of steroid abuse, and ignoring her boyfriend, Rowan; Ellison's, glassy and dissociated while in the arms of a faceless man; and Lucius's showed him drawn, shaking, and pale, shooting an unknown substance into his arm. Outside the other space, Kieran had successfully asked Charlotte on a date, and then realized that the others had been gone for a really long time. Inside, the group freaked out trying to find some means of escape, before Ellison and Katie started smashing mirrors. When destroyed, the mirrors no longer showed their disturbing reflections. A strange man appeared dressed in ringmaster regalia and informed them that the visions they had seen were their true selves, and that the only way to escape was to eat a piece of the broken glass they had left behind.

One by one, they ate their glass and escaped the other space, a little the worse for wear. Many of the group members were coughing up blood, particularly Ellison and Lucius. Kieran fussed excessively, wanting Lucius in particular to go to a hospital and get looked at in case he had some kind of internal bleeding; Charlotte took this time in the van to snap some compromising pictures of Ellison covered in blood, leading to a drawn-out argument. The van stopped so Lucius could throw up due to the blood gathering in his stomach, and when he rebuffed Kieran's attempts to look after him, Kieran pegged him in the side with a water bottle and turned his attention for the rest of the trip to protecting Charlotte from Ellison. Eventually Charlotte gave in and deleted the picture of Ellison, only to immediately restore it when the attention was off her.

The gang made it to New Orleans in mostly one piece. Before heading to the hotel, Adeline stopped them off for Starbucks, and the girl at the window, Blossom, was shocked to see them there. She warned them that they had better get out of town before sundown on Thanksgiving, because a war would be starting between the Mermaids faction (Starbucks) and the Scotsman (McDonald's).

The Scalpel
At the hotel, the gang arranged themselves into rooms and debriefed for the mission. The object they would steal the next day was a historical scalpel from the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum. This would only be possible on that day for various security reasons, and Phoenix himself did not know exactly which scalpel he needed. Ellison was not interested in taking part in the heist and as a non-employee of the museum she was not obligated to. Instead, while the rest of the crew were doing the heist, she decided to go back to the Starbucks Adeline had visited and try to inquire about the war. The Mermaids staff didn't take very kindly to the snooping, and she was threatened and locked in the back room under suspicion of being some kind of spy.

On Thanksgiving Day, they discovered that the venue was being rented out for a wedding. They decided that Kieran would use the museum's camera artefact to pose as a photographer assistant and make his way to the inner part of the museum, while Katie and Lucius would watch the building and potentially run interference. Kieran made his way inside easily and talked his way into the inner part of the museum, only to be yelled at while trying to jam a brochure into the lock so that someone else would be able to enter more easily later. He fled the museum in embarrassment and went to calm down in the van. Guests were beginning to arrive for the wedding, and Lucius and Phoenix slipped in with the crowd and into the body of the museum with Phoenix's lockpicking spell.

They found the scalpels, and Lucius instinctively picked out the magical scalpel they needed. While making their escape, Katie pulled the fire alarm in an attempt to distract the security and catering who had previously kicked her out of the back seating where the wedding was being held. Unfortunately, Lucius and Phoenix were spotted getting into his distinctive van as they drove away. Ellison informed Adeline of her predicament and they were forced to exchange some of Phoenix's charges to the Mermaids for Ellison's release. In the car as the transaction was going down, the other four were curious about the scalpel's effects. Against Adeline's advice, they opted to test it out. Kieran volunteered, saying that he was the most disposable member of the group due to his lack of magic, only for Adeline to inform him with some exasperation that he had some magic too; however, there was not enough time for that to really sink in before they started experimenting with the scalpel. When Lucius ran the blade against Kieran's finger, it was severed perfectly from the knuckle but with both halves fully cauterized and without pain. Adeline was disappointed.

They returned to the hotel and Adeline and Phoenix left town with Ellison; the rest of the group were too interested in the possibility of a war between the fast food factions. While waiting for the shift change when the war was supposed to start, they attempted to reattach the part of Kieran's finger that had been cut off, but were unsuccessful and simply ended up inflicting further damage on him. Knowing that magical fast food joints are built along ley lines to harvest their power, according to Adeline, Katie determined the ley lines running through New Orleans by pendulum, and by mapping the local McDonald's restaurants they were able to find the most likely location for the war to kick off.

Pyramid Schemes
The gang arrived slightly before shift change and ended up tipping the Scotsman employees off to the Mermaids' impending attack. Katie got some nuggets. As they were waiting, a very tall, handsome man in a cheap suit and a very nice watch entered the McDonald's, and the crew found him suspicious enough to try and lightly interrogate. He introduced himself as Cephus Mamiodes, and he took an instant liking to Kieran when he flexed his Pilgrim sparkle and asked him to explain what he was doing there and what was up with all of this fast food war business. Cephus explained that he essentially ran corporate team building seminars, using the power of pyramid magic to sharpen all the participants. He also said that he would be able to heal Kieran's injury and restore his finger.

However, Cephus didn't have much time to explain anything else, as gunshots rang out from the back of the McDonald's. The crew rushed back with Cephus and found a handgun-toting Mermaid in the back who had just fatally shot a girl. Cephus, Katie, and Kieran attempted to fend off the shooter while Lucius tried to save the employee who had been shot. A second Mermaid revealed herself, a Thespian who attacked Katie with a spell that revealed her true self: a literal knight in shining armor. Kieran wrestled with the shooter, accomplishing little, and Charlotte continued trying to document the event on her phone and almost got shot for her trouble. While she had dropped her phone and Katie was preoccupied with the Thespian, Cephus took out, legally speaking, a knife (but colloquially, a smallish sword), and killed the gunman with a definitive blow to the neck.

The Thespian, Connie, surrendered and was tied up. The police had been called and were on route, and Lucius had been spotted earlier in connection to a crime, so he quickly borrowed a jacket to hide the blood and walked back to the hotel; Katie joined him soon after. Cephus got Kieran and Charlotte to take Connie into his trunk. They drove her to an underpass and interrogated her, but were unwilling to actually kill her in cold blood. The interrogation finally ended with an agreement to let bygones be bygones: if they spared her and did not come back to New Orleans in the future, the ire of the Mermaids would not be brought down on the museum.

Cephus dropped Charlotte off at her hotel to prepare her things and get the others ready to go, while Kieran went back to Cephus's room to help him disassemble his pyramid. The furniture in his room had all been moved aside to make space for the wooden skeleton of a large pyramid around his bed and several other small pyramids for other sharpening purposes. Charlotte did not get Katie and Lucius ready; instead, she took pictures of them napping on Katie's bed, hoping to keep it for something incriminating in the future. Eventually though, everyone packed themselves into Cephus's Lexus and were driven back to Tallahassee.

Robin Fairchild
Coming back from their New Orleans mission, Ellison discovered that Patrick had mistaken fake-Ellison for her again, and that the two of them had slept together in her dorm room. Katie discovered, upon trying to take a shower, that she had been afflicted by a curse due to eating the nuggets back in New Orleans which prevented her from being able to touch water. Frustrated, and feeling it was unfair to Rowan that she had been leaving him out of the loop and ignoring him because of the magic events in her life, called him and asked him to come over so she could show him what was going on. Rowan arrived and she showed him the effects of her curse and explained everything that had happened to her these last few weeks. However, something seemed off to her, and she realized after a test that this was not Rowan. They had a skirmish which ended when the real Rowan opened the door and saw what appeared to be himself pinning Katie to the ground. He ran away in a panic, and fake-Rowan followed soon after, transforming back into her real body: a petite young woman with long, dark hair.

Katie resolved that she would never be caught unawares like that again, and asked Adeline to point her in the direction of someone who could give her magic self-defense tools. Adeline recommended Corbin from the N. Monroe Street McDonald's, a cut wizard (epideromancer); he agreed to take Katie on as a student, though her initial training as a cut wizard would involve self-harm. Ellison began seeing a magic-oriented therapist, Annette, also on Adeline's recommendation. Patrick and Ellison came to an agreement that if he was contacted again by the Thespian, he would let her know so that they could capture her.

Cephus offered to host a team-building seminar for the museum crew in order to strengthen their bond, as well as to undo the magic that had removed Kieran's finger. He brought Kieran into his pyramid setup at his hotel and performed a ritual, feeding him diamonds and chanting with him for several hours, and by the end of it Kieran's finger had healed completely. Although classes had by this point resumed, Kieran was no longer attending nor studying for finals, instead using most of his free time to investigate magical theories.

Teamwork
Cephus ran his seminar, inviting all of the museum interns (including Donald) and Ellison. The purpose of the seminar was to perform a sharpening ritual which would make them all better teammates, and more successful when working together. They were assigned a variety of team-building activities, all of them pyramid-themed, during most of which they would work in pairs with a different partner every time. The seminar appeared to be progressing decently (though with not a little passive aggression) until Lucius rejected Kieran's request to buddy up, seeing it as a demand, and chose to partner with Ellison instead. At the end of the session, Kieran knocked his cup pyramid over, called Lucius a bitch, and stormed out of the room; Lucius followed and engaged in a shouting match with him in the hallway which Cephus had to break up.

Cephus had just offered to give Kieran and Lucius a private session to resolve their personal issues when Ellison received a text from Patrick with his code word, telling her that the Thespian had made contact and was on her way to see him. The gang (plus Cephus and sans Donald) went to Patrick's apartment and hid in various places to try and catch the Thespian. Charlotte recorded audio and later video from her position in the bathroom. After a few minutes, they realized that Patrick had completely forgotten they were trying to capture the Thespian and was going to make a move on her again, at which point they all burst out of their hiding places and grabbed her. The moment Ellison came into the Thespian's line of sight, her mask lost its power and she was transformed back into a person whom Ellison recognized as Robin Fairchild.

Robin was tied up and interrogated, though she remained fairly tight-lipped about her motivations. The general consensus had been that they would turn Robin over to the Sleepers to get them off of Ellison's case, but during this time Kieran pulled Charlotte aside and told her that the two of them could look for a second solution and leave Ellison to fend for herself, because Robin was more useful to them. Charlotte agreed. Kieran was allowed to have a private conversation with Robin for a few minutes where she revealed, perhaps unintentionally, that her goal is to be needed (and that Kieran in particular seemed to be her 'type' to be needed by). Charlotte then got her own short interview with Robin. She cut a deal with her that she would let Robin go if she could give Charlotte some kind of incriminating evidence to photograph. Initially Charlotte wanted her to transform into Madison King, but as this was impossible, she settled for simply photographing Robin tied up on Patrick's bed. She untied Robin and told her to make her escape look convincing; Robin responded by unexisting her.

Outside the room, the gang suddenly registered that they had left Robin alone in the room unsupervised, and rushed in to find her climbing out the window. Ellison fired at her using the bleeding gun she had taken from the museum storage, while Lucius gave chase and Kieran and Katie ran down to the bottom floor to head her off. Robin was apprehended, retied, and shoved into Cephus's trunk so they could take her back to the museum. As they arrived, the spell wore off, and Kieran flew into a rage at Robin for 'making his girlfriend disappear.' He and Lucius attempted to stab her, and had to be fended off by Cephus; he picked Kieran up and led him away to cool down, while Katie helped Lucius chill out. He broke down and confessed to her that he felt crazy, and that he was being driven insane by the lack of direct answers and the mind games people had been playing with him since the Ponticus incident, and Katie reassured him that she would be there to help him keep his head on straight.

Charlotte reappeared in Patrick's apartment, seriously dissociated from her experience. They had a short conversation during which he called her a 'Chronicler' naming her avatar title for the first time.

The Pill
Adeline agreed to keep Robin in the secret museum basement which only she could access, while they figured out what to do with her. Cephus insisted that turning Robin over to the Sleepers would be a bad idea, and now having calmed down from his initial rage, Kieran was unwilling to kill her. With some nudging from Adeline, Lucius decided that he and Phoenix would try to invent a work that would remove Robin's memories. It would take at least a week of constant work to prepare.

In the interim, Kieran had several more conversations with Robin, once with Charlotte accompanying him to document, though by this point he was behaving coldly towards her, having realized that she had let Robin go on purpose without asking him first. Robin told them that she had been hired by the Sleepers to kill Eve and make it look like it wasn't the Sleepers (despite posing Eve in the Sleepers' calling card position). Cephus asked Kieran to come back to Miami with him, and Kieran tentatively agreed and tried to invite Lucius along. This created a miscommunication for some time until Lucius realized that Kieran was going for magic reasons, and did not intend to come back to Tallahassee.

Katie began training in earnest with Corbin, in addition to growing closer to him as a friend. She confided in him about her difficulties handling the situation, especially with regards to her boyfriend and the lies she had had to tell him. Corbin eventually advised her that her relationship to magic was a lot more intense than the average person in the underground, and that if Rowan wasn't someone she considered important enough to get involved, she should probably break up with him. In addition to her therapy, Ellison began attending krav maga classes to build up her self-defense. Ellison wanted nothing to do with the underground, and asked for resources to help get her totally extricated, and Annette gave her a business card for Shae Savage's "Things Done" service. A meeting was arranged for the afternoon of Friday the 13th.

The work was completed. Lucius and Kieran forced the pill into Robin's mouth, threatening her with the scalpel if she did not comply. Shortly after taking the pill, she fell unconscious and stopped breathing. Panicking, they laid her out on the floor and began CPR, only realizing when Adeline brought them a handheld defib machine that her heart rate was normal. Not knowing what else to do with her and not wanting her to wake up in the museum, they resolved to take her to Lucius's apartment (with some protests from Lucius). Naturally, throughout this time, Charlotte was recording.

After driving the van to Lucius's place, Kieran waited until Lucius and Katie were taking Robin inside and then confronted Charlotte about the part she had played in Robin's escape. He terminated whatever budding relationship they might have had, and doubled down when Charlotte attempted to distract him with 'blackmail' of Katie and Lucius napping in bed together. Kieran deflected her claim that they were having an affair with his insistence that Lucius was gay.

Lucius made sure not to be in his apartment much for the following few days, not wanting to be implicated in any kidnapping. Katie and Kieran stayed there whenever possible to keep an eye on her instead. On Thursday the 12th, Robin woke up with no memory since the Alpha Phi party (which she had apparently also attended). Kieran and Katie didn't have their story straight, and while Katie tried to play it off like it was still October, Kieran jumped to telling Robin that it was December and she was suffering some kind of amnesia. This understandably freaked her out, and she demanded to know if this was Lucius Zann's apartment, which neither of them could convincingly deny. She stormed out of the apartment and went to go report her kidnapping to the police. Lucius flipped the fuck out about it, furious that they had messed up the one thing he had asked them to do by accidentally tying this to Madison King.

CHARLOTTE ODETTE IS A DEAD BITCH
On Friday the 13th of December, the crew woke up to find that a website had been dropped ARG style in the middle of the night. It billed itself as the Madison King Memorial Website and contained, in summary, photos and audio recordings implicating Lucius, Katie, Kieran, Ellison, and Patrick in several murders and kidnappings including Madison King, Eve Taylor, and Robin Fairchild.

The Chronicler
Slowly, one by one, the members of the museum crew became aware of the website and its contents. Lucius, frayed from pulling all-nighters to prepare for finals, threw up in a trash can before he could make his way home. Katie broke up with her boyfriend over the phone in the middle of finals and then made plans with Corbin to finish breaking her brain so she could have even the slightest amount of magic to hunt her down. Kieran started getting in Facebook slap fights with The Chronicler- the title 'Charlotte' had now taken on full time, rejecting the Charlotte identity. He went to a FSU public meme page and made a post simply titled 'CHARLOTTE ODETTE IS A DEAD BITCH,' to which The Chronicler responded with a blingee'd picture of him covered in blood after the McDonald's incident with the same caption. He continued trying to fight back against her until Lucius got home. Lucius and Kieran resolved that they would kill The Chronicler, but before they could leave to try and track her down, Lucius received notice from the police that he would need to report to the station sometime that afternoon.

Around noon, Ellison met with representatives from Things Done to arrange a contract for them to represent her in court in defense against the charges of murdering Eve Taylor, and to neutralize The Chronicler. In return, she would deliver information about the actions of Adeline, Phoenix, and Patrick on a weekly basis for Things Done and their parent company to monitor their actions. She began a group call and tried to inform everyone that she had "solved" their problems, which Lucius, Katie, and Kieran soundly rejected. Kieran tried to tell Katie not to go to the Sleepers, but she was not interested in what he had to say, and called a meeting with Angela Forsythe.

At the police station, Lucius was interrogated by Cletus, who insisted that he had murdered Madison King in addition to the accusations of kidnapping Robin, and attempted to plant false memories into his head. This only managed to fail because the memory Cletus attempted to plant was of Lucius threatening Madison King with the magic scalpel, which had only been recently acquired. However, Lucius was booked anyway because he refused to call for a lawyer and kept trying to argue with Cletus. Around this time, Katie was meeting with Forsythe, who told her that Lucius was in custody and that if they didn't want him to go to prison for the rest of his life, they would bring The Chronicler to her before the Sleepers' assassins got there first. Soon after, Kieran had a similar conversation with Cletus. He attempted to bargain with him by offering information about Cephus and the Scotsman, and was mocked as a squealer.

The Chronicler went to the Museum as normal, and was advised by Phoenix to go up to Chicago to get an artefact he wanted (a magic pillow). She cut her hair, arranged for Donald to pick up some of her things from her dorm, and left town in the van before Katie or Ellison could catch up to her. Kieran went back to Lucius's apartment and called Cephus to confess what he had done, and that Cephus would not want to take him to Miami; then, he attempted suicide with some mystery pills in Lucius's drawer before panicking and calling an ambulance. He was hospitalized for three days, with Cephus staying at his side as his advocate despite his fear of the Sleepers.

Later that evening, Adeline paid for Lucius's roughly million dollar bail. Ellison had offered her assistance, but Adeline insisted that there was no need. She drove Lucius back to the museum and informed him obliquely of Kieran's suicide attempt. He was disquieted by this, and agreed to stay at the museum overnight so that Adeline could prevent him from calling his mother.

Goddess
The Chronicler made her way up to Chicago with little difficulty, and Katie and Ellison followed behind her roughly two day lead. Cephus managed to sneak Kieran his phone, where he found several provocative pictures from the Chronicler in states of undress in his messages. She had sent other pictures to the rest of the group, though mostly less flirty (aside from one selfie in a bathrobe to Ellison). He advised the group that they could find her based on the metadata in her pictures, and her location was pinned down to a Staypineapple hotel in Chicago. Adeline confirmed, though roundabout due to her taboo, that there seemed to be an 'erroneous' charge to the company card in Chicago, and sent Katie and Ellison out to investigate the 'potential fraud.' It quickly became apparent that The Chronicler was baiting them to come and find her. Throughout the trip, Katie and Ellison had a lot of bonding time, and became closer as friends with a hint of romantic tension building between them.

While in Chicago, The Chronicler began to reinvent herself, starting with her wild fashion sense. Her research into a magic pillow lead her to the Sect of the Naked Goddess, where she was mistaken for a new acolyte. The Sect, she discovered, worship an ascended avatar- formerly a porn star- whose ascension had been caught on tape. Their worship involves recreating the Naked Goddess's life, particularly her pornography career. The Chronicler was recruited into filming on set, and afterwards went back with one of the sect members, Andrea, to watch her first generation ascension tape. (The original ascension tape is incredibly powerful and holds an irresistible draw; each successive copy-of-a-copy is somewhat poorer in quality, and adepts who even glimpse a tape become obsessed with finding a copy of better quality.) She took a tape home with her and mailed it back to the museum.

The next day, The Chronicler returned to the sect and met Ivan the construct. He was fascinated by her and offered to take her out to lunch. They talked about philosophy and souls, and he explained that to survive, he needs to have sex at least once every 24 hours. Katie and Ellison arrived at the Staypineapple and booked a room, and after a nap decided to stake out the hotel to try and catch the Chronicler. When she returned with Ivan in tow, they panicked and left the hotel, called Adeline for advice, and eventually resolved they would have to just try and get her on her own. The next day, they went to the Sect demanding information about the pillow, which the Sect did not have. At the time the Sect were in disarray due to their leading man, Ivan, not showing up for work. Katie and Ellison did not communicate themselves very eloquently, leading Andrea to entrance Katie with the sight of a Goddess tape. She was lead away to watch it and came away with her own copy while Ellison tried to get Corbin to tell them how to exchange charges, which he was unable to do over the phone. Ellison threw Katie's tape in the garbage and made her go back to the hotel. Later, Katie went back to retrieve her tape, and when she returned, Ellison was gone.

Meanwhile, back in Tallahassee, Kieran had been released from the hospital and returned to Lucius's place because he had already broken his lease and had nowhere else to stay on the cheap. Cephus left town, and Lucius was in a funk due to being stuck in the state himself under threat of arrest. He spent the majority of the following week working on magic drugs with Phoenix (first inventing a mushroom work, then on making more magic cocaine, Lucius's drug of choice). In addition, Adeline showed him some specialty 9mm bullets hidden in the museum basement that were meant to deal specifically with magic users. He purchased a gun from Patrick in exchange for some minerals he wanted, which Lucius planned to receive from his mother, Margawse.

Kieran, in between sulking around Lucius's house in fits of destructiveness, made contact with Robin to ask for her help. They made an arrangement that she would make a Charlotte mask and perform as her for Kieran's plan, and he would reimburse her by helping her farm the charges necessary to pull it off. He went to The Chronicler's dorm (with her permission- she gave him her room number) and was caught breaking in by Lulu Miller, a very annoying girl from her floor who constantly pestered her for RA intervention. He lied quickly about picking up some stuff from her room while she was out of town, and she agreed not to rat him out as long as she got to take The Chronicler's old laptop. He went into her room to pick up some clothes and makeup as well as a hairbrush with hair for the mask, and was in the midst of being lovestruck about her all over again when he received a very sexual picture of her and Ivan. He took a juice from her fridge and poured it into her desktop tower and then lit some of her other belongings on fire in a trash can. Unbeknownst to him, this fire would spread throughout the dorm, causing significant damage. Kieran crashed at Patrick's after having a small argument with Lucius, and then the next day crashed at Robin's.

To generate her charges, Robin had to impersonate Charlotte at the museum and in front of Phoenix and Donald etc., for two workdays. During this time, the two of them developed a strange camaraderie as Charlotte openly made fun of Kieran for his pathetic behavior and desperation but also agreed to help him and seemed to enjoy bantering with him. She revealed through her mention of Cephus that her memories were returning, and so the effects of the amnesia drug were only temporary. Additionally, while trying to understand avatars and his own path after discovering The Chronicler's title, Adeline revealed to Kieran that his role was the Pilgrim, but that he ought to learn things like that out on his own.

Back in Chicago, The Chronicler and Ivan went to a museum and met a mysterious person who gave them a weird dirty old pillow. The Chronicler invited Katie and Ellison to double-date her and Ivan for dinner. Because Ellison wasn't around and Katie had been advised not to let her get too close, she attempted to stake them out from another restaurant, but was caught. She sulkily joined them, and at The Chronicler's prompting using her avatar channel explained why she was there and what she wanted. Ivan invited her to a threesome and Katie did not pick up the implications until she had gotten to their hotel room and bailed. The next day, Ellison was still gone, and feeling abandoned, Katie went to ask the Sect for help again. They agreed to give her a place to stay the night in exchange for operating the boom mic. Her business concluded, The Chronicler decided to head back to Tallahassee, disappointed that Ivan was not joining her.

Crashing Out
Ellison walked into the elevator at the Staypineapple hotel on Wednesday afternoon, and walked out into a forest. This forest was unlike Ponticus's, with many trees marked for cutting and signs of animal and insect life, as well as human presences. She walked through the forest until she found an old logging camp staffed by two old-timey lumberjacks. They advised her that plenty of people had died there before, and the only way out was to pick up and axe and chop your way through, or grab a shovel and dig. Ellison opted for the axe, and over the course of an hour began chopping into one of the handful of marked trees.

On her way out of the city, The Chronicler attempted to bait Katie into meeting up with her again with a puzzle, but Katie did not pick up the message in time and ended up letting her go totally free again. In Tallahassee, Lucius had not finished the magic cocaine when he learned that The Chronicler- now Vanessa on Phoenix's suggestion- was on her way back. He decided to take a break from the magic work, knowing it wouldn't be finished in time, and went to learn some quick gun handling from Patrick. Kieran found better luck, with Robin's new mask complete and her performance as Charlotte shockingly convincing. Kieran shot a video of Charlotte confessing to faking all of the footage used in the video to start rumors and kick up harassment towards Lucius, and of Robin exonerating Lucius by saying she believed he was not responsible but that Charlotte had actually held and drugged her without her consent to make the video realistic. He posted this video on the same FSU meme page where he had announced Charlotte's imminent death a week prior.

Kieran additionally sent a picture of Charlotte to Vanessa, mockingly proclaiming he had raised her from the dead. Vanessa checked her phone while driving and saw this picture, causing her to have a complete panic attack and total the van. This was the final straw in her 'self' category, leaving her with a permanent madness. At the same, Ellison chopped her way through the other space tree, and into the passenger seat of the rental car while Katie was driving; she crashed as well and sustained a broken collarbone. She nearly refused medical treatment due to wanting to keep her charges, but was convinced by Kieran and Corbin not to try and set the bone herself and to suck it up and go to the hospital. Vanessa was taken to a hospital as well, having sustained whiplash. Ellison passed out as the adrenaline wore off and her body realized that she had not eaten in days.

After the video was posted, Robin informed Kieran that she had stolen a bottle-demon called Steve from Patrick's apartment, but that someone else had stolen him from her and she believed him to now be roaming free. In order to catch him, she asked him to get the camera from the museum storage. Around this time, Vanessa had checked herself out of the hospital, though without her phone or any personal effects, and was forced to walk back to the museum. She had a very bad time due in part to being dressed for a Chicago winter, and ended up vomiting during her walk before she made it back. Adeline took pity on her despite very much wanting her dead, and allowed her to nap in the back room.

Lucius and Kieran arrived at the museum around the same time, and Lucius first confronted Vanessa with his gun. He persistently called her by her birth name, Ruth, as he had previously done some digging into her past while he had used up the last of the magic cocaine. He demanded to know why she had done what she had done, and then Kieran walked in. He tried to convince Lucius to let her go because he had already provided a way out through his video with Robin; he also revealed his belief that this was a setup by Adeline, as Kieran was convinced that she had hired Robin to kill Eve Taylor.

Unable to talk Lucius into putting the gun away, Kieran sat next to Ness on the cot and shielded her with his body while Lucius continued to interrogate her. He revealed some information about her past: that she had been born into some kind of Christian cult; that her grandfather was a priest and faith healer; and that there had been some kind of trial resulting in a restraining order between him and her, due to allegations of abuse on the compound. Vanessa admitted that she had been somewhat misguided with the website, and that she had been motivated partly by a desire to protect the crew by cutting them off from the mundane world, and partly by jealousy over Kieran for paying more attention to Lucius and Cephus.

Phoenix came in to greet Vanessa and ask about the pillow and the van, seemingly oblivious to Lucius threatening her. He offered them a hit from his bong, and Kieran and Vanessa partook. This turned out to be Phoenix's special magic weed, the pinnacle of narco-alchemic achievement, which gave Ness and Kieran secret insights into the universe (which have yet to be revealed). When Lucius wanted some time alone to talk to Vanessa, Kieran and he agreed that he would give them ten minutes provided that Lucius wouldn't do anything to her. Kieran kissed her before leaving the room. During those ten minutes, Kieran begged Adeline to help him stop Lucius from killing Ness, and she reluctantly put in a call to a mysterious number, giving them only the museum's address.

Returning to the room, Kieran talked his way into getting to sit next to Ness again, upon which he immediately shielded her with his body. Kieran demanded that Lucius shoot him because he wanted to die and was the perfect victim profile, and Lucius was openly distressed but not willing to waste his chance to kill her just to spare Kieran. Lucius attempted to shoot Kieran in the leg. However, he had taken magic-imbued ecstacy which caused him to have a panic attack over his own violent actions, and he missed. Everyone started crying and panicking and so on, until Adeline informed them over the intercom that someone had arrived for Lucius, and Margawse, his mother, entered the scene.

Margawse and Lucius had, arguably, a conversation, which allowed Kieran and Vanessa to slip out of the museum and retrieve the pillow and her belongings from the towed van. Lucius confronted Margawse about the fact that he is autistic and likely suffers from psychosis, and was never given adequate resources or treatment due to her new age hippie beliefs. Kieran asked Vanessa if she wanted to get married, and she accepted, though they would have to wait 3 days according to Florida law for the paperwork to go through. They retrieved the camera and pillow and decided to hole up in a hotel, though after a text confrontation Kieran messaged Cephus to ask him to come play getaway car. Cephus informed him that he would be there 8am the next day, so Kieran opted to do what he could to track down Steve that night before leaving, with the help of Vanessa's Chronicler powers helping him narrow down the search area.

Still determined to do murder, Lucius asked Patrick for a silencer, and Patrick offered his services as a boozehound which would allow him to put Vanessa in a bottle, effectively killing her and rendering her a ghost or demon. They both went to the hotel, as Adeline informed them indirectly that Kieran, Vanessa, and Margawse were all there, to stake them out. Patrick attempted to arrange a meeting with Vanessa as an ambush, but Kieran arrived instead. That night, after showing Vanessa the footage from the facebook video, Kieran attempted to make up with Lucius and beg him to leave them alone, only to be triggered into a meltdown by Lucius declaring that he was "not worth the effort" when Kieran started saying some pretty wack shit.

The next morning, Lucius and Patrick arranged themselves in the hotel hallway to be able to corner them. Kieran woke up from a pillow-induced nightmare and prepared to get breakfast for the two of them before they had to leave, and he spotted Patrick, who was too drunk to hide in time. He locked himself in the hotel room and told Vanessa to hide and call the cops, and then told Cephus and Katie that Lucius was there with a gun. There was a confrontation which involved: Patrick shooting through the door lock, Kieran disarming Lucius and taking the clip out of the gun, Kieran being pinned and having his soul sucked out, and Margawse, Cephus, and Katie all arriving and forcing everyone to lay their weapons down. Initially, Kieran's loss of soul turned him into a feral animal, completely unable to control himself, and the second round of the spell rendered him borderline comatose.

Cephus created a ward which kept the police from finding them as he asked them all to decide how they were going to get out of this situation. Lucius explained the situation from his perspective while tending to Kieran's injuries and waiting for him to wake up. Everyone agreed, to Cephus's chagrin, to call the Sleepers and turn Vanessa over to them in exchange for not being arrested. Everyone, that is, except Kieran, who upon waking up and returning to his feral-animal soul state immediately tried to attack Katie as she called Angela Forsythe. She knocked him on his ass with a clean kick, after which the remainder of his soul returned. Margawse, Katie, and Lucius escorted Vanessa down to the street and found that the hotel had been emptied of both guests and police, and turned her over to Forsythe. Kieran collapsed onto Cephus, miserable, before packing up his things (including the gun, the camera, and the pillow) and skipping town with him."And that's what you missed on Glee."