Dear Danial,

About two years ago, shortly after the public storage incident, I was working on a spell, the working name at the time was Kage-Bunshin or “Shadow Clone”. Specifically I was working on the mental re-integration portion of it, when things got a bit out of hand and I apparently got myself bottled in the Oracular array I was using to capture and store clone experiences. So others can learn from my mistakes, don’t try auto-summoning.

While in the array, there was an inescapable sense of time passing, but the next clear experience was of looking up at my body while there was this screeching babble all around, and then floating up into the sky, looking out over the city. That continued for a week or two, and then things started to get fragmented. There were flashes of things, it was like looking at something with the sight but buffered somehow. There were long uninterrupted spans of floating over Bremerton that I can’t get in a working order. There was one horrible day, where things went all spinney, with so many images of this horrible ritual and dead sea creatures everywhere. After that, things calmed down, there was still a chronology problem with some of the views, but there were less of them. Eventually the flashes stopped coming, and it was just time passing.

Start of may I wake up, in my body, in a bed, and I can actually move! There is this note sitting on my chest, addressed to me, but it opens up with “Welcome back Mom!” It goes on at length, someone has apparently been keeping my life going in the interim, but it closes with “I finally worked out who I am, thanks for taking care of me, Love Al”

I’ve since met this Al, or Chuckles. Good kid, but damned if I can follow him, oh, and he’s a bloody dragon, we don’t really get along but, family divinations seem to agree that he’s mine so, I’m glad he’s got his own support structure in place; I’m still figuring out how to take care of my self again, I don’t think I could deal with taking care of a kid right now. Especially not with all the responsibilities I’ve apparently been saddled with, I mean really, who thought it was a good idea to put me on the OC board, never mind the network of organizations I apparently have effective control over. Sorry it’s taken so long to get in touch, I’ve spent the past month and change getting re-acclimated to being able to move, feel and talk, along with trying to get my business affairs into some arrangement that I can actually manage.

What has been going on these past two years, when I ask Chuckles, he breaks down into a fit of laughter and hugs me. Or goes off on this wild babble, it’s getting a bit troublesome. Anything I need to know about?

I’ll be back in Bremerton as soon as I get things into a stable condition here in New York. You can reach me at nnn-nnn-nnnn if there is something urgent.

Avery Quinn

2010-11-?? Animated sock puppet monkeys
2011-01-?? Auction that started the last story (8 year, 10 months
After Storm Front. ~2 months after Small Favor)

18 months lands us on Turncoat
33 months lands us on Changes

https://sites.google.com/site/grymor/home/characters/avery-quinn/timeline

http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php?topic=1592.0

Bremerton

I’d like to advance the timeline a little under a year to December of 9 ASF, which puts us about 6 months before Turn Coat.

Notable events and rumors include:

• The Northwest Passage Project has obtained several large tracts from Weyerhaeuser, both in the Olympics and the Cascades.
• The population of teenaged changeling runaways is growing again. In fact, it’s kind of getting difficult to find a teenage runaway that isn’t a changeling…
• McNeil Island, the last remaining island prison in the United States, is closed … mostly. It’s still closed to the public.
• In the wake of the church fires, some of the Nazirites from the Church of the Living Christ have formed a security company: The Strength of Samson. They’ve been providing additional security for most local churches at-cost, coordinating with neighborhood watch groups, but haven’t found much in the way of profitable business.
• Arson has been an ongoing problem, with another fire very couple months … but these haven’t been churches. A former library building turned community center, a karate school, and an old “adult cinema”.
• The Olympic College Board of Trustees was abruptly emptied, and the charter only allows for nominating a new trustee by the current members of the board. Since OC owns many of the buildings downtown, this kicked off a massive storm of local politics. Nominations were extended to several local investors who had been actively involved in Olympic College’s funding. An offer has been extended to the Quinn family (I’ll work with Steve on the details), and there’s a Nockley on the Board. An offer was made to Abersnikity, but he declined.
• Theo’s search for information about his father was complicated when the Navy claimed that they had never heard of his father, that no sailor existed in their records with that identifying information. After 3 months, the Navy again admitted his existence, and claimed that there had been a “filing mistake”. FOIA requests seem to get slower and more useless every year.

Wardens:

• It’s pretty clear that Dresden and Captain Luccio are involved.
• Some of the younger hotheads look up to Dresden; others remember that he is a Menace.
• Luccio is taking a very active role in Warden training, and letting Donald Morgan take more of the day-to-day leadership.
• Commander Ramirez is MUCH more worried about Red Court activity in California and Chihuahua than Washington. For the PNW, he is encouraging a containment strategy: observe and report any Red Court activity, and any signs that they are setting up a new base of operations should be reported to him, so that the wardens in the area can respond in concert with overwhelming force.
• Vivi has been asked to help on some of these missions in the area (Newport, Sandpoint, and Whitehorse). This has helped establish her reputation with other Wardens in “nearby” cities.

Avery

And here are the rough notes on Avery’s plans. These may get changed
or lengthened out depending on the intensity of activities in
Bremerton.

One Week: Invest in a certain bar to make sure it’s available for
Neph’s agreement. Start researching the transfiguration documentation.
Start analyzing the Crest with an eye to abandoning it.
Two Weeks: Disassemble the Seagull Panopticon, keeping some of the
brighter birds but returning the vast majority to their unagumented
template.
One Season: Internalize that my family finances are on unknown ground
(blind trust makes payments, but who knows what it’s based on), and
start seriosly investing locally and in Seattle, fill in some of the
local business vacume. Experiment with ‘off’ days, sans Crest
Six Months: Continue uplift experiments, but avoid wide scale
application, more of an ‘enhanced pets and allies’ rather than ‘single
purpose tools’. Work on identity preserving
transformations/enhancements/protections/idealizations. Relegate Crest
to an ‘In time of Emergency’ item (Drop the IoP, keep the aspect,
sometimes use temporary Power Rules (or compels))
One Year:
Two Years:
Three Years:

(Still pondering the longer term work, mostly it will be the results
of the projects started in the first year).

Neph

I don’t have a lot of plans for Neph. Her focuses are:

• Improving the lot of the unfortunate in Bremerton
• Counseling students at the college.
• Finding out what the hell is in the Gnome’s basement that her goddess wants her to discover.
• Minimizing the negative impact of mystical things on the city in general and the people who can’t protect themselves in specific.

Re – Board of trustees: If Neph can be involved in that, she’ll want to be. She’s probably not in a position to be offered a seat but she is interested in being involved on some level.

She’s also going to see what she can do about extending her circle of direct influence. I’m not sure how that works, exactly, but with a little under a year, she’ll be looking to make the safe zone that is her house extend further – especially with all of the changeling runaways. If she can scrape together the funds, she might even start an official sort of ‘safe place to run’ for mystically inclined kids.

Daniel

1. Run interference between Neph and The Gnome with a primary goal of avoiding a conflict that would force him to pick sides.
2. Recover the knife bearing the names of certain demons. The boss tasked him with getting it, and damned if he’s going to be frustrated by a bunch of Jonny-come-latelys who are likely to try to recover it just because it’s a horrendously dangerous item in the wrong hands.
3. Failing that, pursue business as usual and keep the peace.
4. Try to uncover the history and deeper nature of the silver needle. Certain demon-possessed persons wanted it, which suggests that it has uses beyond casting illusions and frying minds.
5. Tutor Theo in Lore, with a focus on practical knowledge of That Which Goes Bump.
6. Design and assemble a kit for general “neighborhood committee” use in identifying and dealing with assorted nasties. This should include a briefcase-sized “field kit” with some diagnostic tools, a bestiary, and some common Catch-busting tools (iron nails, etc.), but also a larger assembly of collected materials such as multiple two-liter bottles of holy water. This is going to become something of a hobby. He’ll enlist Avery’s aid (and resources) in assembling this. In fact, should the master of the house be willing, the “larger assembly” is likely to occupy one of Avery’s closets.

Vivienne

1. Fight the war, in whatever form that takes. They also serve who only stand and wait.
2. Study and learn. Magic, scholastics, and military skills, for the most part. (And in that order.)
3. Become more involved with the people in Bremerton and outer areas. This is probably starting with joining Star of the Sea’s Social Justice and Outreach committee and volunteering. For lots of things.
4. In general, try to stay aware of wierdness going on in the area and stop the stuff that harms people.

Theo

• Repairing and maintaining the boat
• Digging more into what happened to his dad
• Trying to pay off any debt he may have incurred over the last few adventures.

Fast-forward to late January, 8 ASF

Notable events in the interval:

• David Morris: is trying to take advantage of this “opening” to keep drug delers from re-establishing in Bremerton. Stepping up patrols of known drug-dealing locations, watching for grow houses, midnight prayer sessions at the rink, mall, and movie theatre parking lots. Accountability pledges. He wants at least one person from the church in every soup kitchen and shelter in the city. The Church of the Living Christ is taking on a more pronounced two-tier structure, with an outer “lay ministry” highly visible and active in the community and “Nazirites” who carry on the “spiritual warfare”
• Halloween: toy store is overtaken by possessed, knife-wielding sock monkeys. Easily dealt with, but worrying details came up in the investigation: there are small summoning circles all over the store, as if the sock monkeys themselves were summoning the demons to possess other sock moneys.
• Winter Solstice: A few days before Christmas, it becomes clear that a significant chunk of Bremerton’s homeless youth population. With a little investigation, it becomes clear that the Winter Lady blustered through, forcing many changelings to Choose.

Avery Quinn fills in Nefertiri and Vivienne on the investigation to date, and discovers that Daniel Nockley went to talk to the Skavis on his own, and is now overdue. Consultation with the Gnome on his wayward asset leads to a visit to the Skavis mansion and a, happily, civil conversation. The kidnappers had sought protection from the Skavis and been refused, the grabbed Danial and headed out in a u-haul. Maria calls in a favor to track down the truck while Avery breaks out one of Daniel’s hairs, stashed for just such an emergency, and tracks hid friend down with one last locator. Both paths converge on a house. Battle ensues, one kidnapper blows himself and the house up, Avery puts a jagged bottle in another’s brain and Vivi forces one to surrender. Breena’s nephew, Hope and Daniel are recovered, mostly unharmed, and returned. Significant cleanup ensues.

Avery discovers that two bodies left in the Nevernever have been removed by shoe wearing creatures of tiny stature.

Maria is contacted by Constance Black whose daughter, Hope, has gone missing, the names of three of her delinquent friends are provided, Alston, Allison and Janice.
Daniel s confronted by Breena, whose nephew is missing. She will rip the Gnome’s territory apart looking for him if he is not located and returned in two days.
Avery notes that Alston is likely the missing changeling and discovers that all four are missing.
Allison and Janice, frequented Bud’s Roadhouse, a local Were bar.
Some of Allison’s hair is retrieved and the now assembled party tracks it’s owner to a well shielded house where Allison and Janice’s trails were lost.
Some foolishness and violence later, and the cremated remains of Allison and Janice are located in little sealed boxs in a hidden basement of the house. Janice’s ghost joins us, and after a protracted battle, a pair of unconscious renfields are the basis for tracking down their creator.
The trail ends at the block of the house Skavis mansion, which lights up the Sight with the strength of it’s wards.
Returning to Avery’s, plans are hatched, a young ghost is given sanctuary and an excessively overpowered tracking spell on some of Hope’s hair points right back to Skavis land.

Persona:
Constance Black – Wheelchair bound Gulf war vet, former Marine
Mrs Skavis – Jaded highschool councilor?
Breena – Petty Sylph ascended to the position of Shidh, politically powerful
Hope Black – Nephalim, 16 year old, rebelious high school sophomore
Alston – Freshmen, fashionable, skiny light build, probably our wayward changeling
Janice – Sophmore, punk, brawler, suspended, shifter
Allison – Sophmore, heavy set, muscular, got teased a lot, shifter

• Negotiations with the business ghoul from XN (ghoul management via education and job placement?)
• Caught dispatch for a code 7xg on the police scanner
• Used the key in Nefertiri bathroom door to go to the City
• Met by the messenger s Spectre, taken past the Ziggeraut to the Guardian at the Gates’s beachhead
• Guardian is at war with the Ghouls, as a whole, whether they know it or not
• Guardian wants an aprentice and would consider a warden for the position after the war
• Guardian has been summoning things that Theo Demopoulos describes as ghost kelp (probably necromancy)
• After long negotiation, extracted an oath from the Guardian and gave her the key.
• Vivienne went off to do something withCharley K, doesn’t want non council help

2012-04-22

• Messenger Spectre showed up from the Guardian at the Gates. Throwing rocks at Theo’s house
• Research was done on the guardian, Bablyon and the ghoul city
• Vivienne observed a well dressed business ghoul hunting through bookstores with two thugs
• The guardian is the highest position in a rosecrution/egyption cross cult
• Three of Maria’s kids were accosted by ghouls.
• Maria got attacked by a feral Ghouls, drove it off with faith and was patched up by Avery Quinn
• Communicated via enchanted cell phone with the guardian.

• Assisting Charley K with a troublesome Draugen (on Anderson rock in Ostrich Bay).
• Nefertiri finds the key.
• Locking down Nefertiri’s home.
• A little divination goes a long way.

• Locking down the mordite.
• Investigating the house.
• Race to the storage locker.
• Red Court Vampire goes “squish”.

• Angela Zimmerman’s Apartment: Not what it should be.
• Maybe we should go back to the old Sears building?