All Roads/Session 9

ST: The morning finds the City and the Tower in the sanctum, as usual, as each member of the cabal readies themselves for the day ahead.

Isis: Isis is late in appearing for breakfast, red eyed and moving with a nervous energy and exaggerated precision speaking of mental augmentations. Her pattern, for those with mage sights, is strained under the weight of spells upon her.

Nebuchadnezzar: has for once slept soundlessly and looks almost well-rested. He is sipping tea and reading the Guardian.

Nebuchadnezzar: "You look like I normally do in the morning, Isis. Did you sleep at all?" He asks disapprovingl looking over his paper. "A child your age needs their rest."

Kenan: comes down after morning spellcasting with an uncertain look on his face, but otherwise seems to be fine

Isis: "Good morning, Neb." Isis gathers up various parts of her breakfast and then sits down.

Kenan: "good morning to you both"

Isis: "No, I haven't slept." There's a small shadow of annoyance at the remark but it passes in a heartbeat. "Good morning, Kenan."

Kenan: "Isis, Neb's got a point, what have you been doing all night?" Kenan seems worried

Isis: "I had to ..." Isis hesitates for a moment before continuing. "I was invoking a ritual to better shield my mind and to seal my oneiros."

"It appears that someone or something has got to me." She grimaces, not liking the admission. "Most likely the same mage who attacked me during the vision ritual."

Kenan: looks alarmed "if that's the case, you should have asked for assistance already during the night - please describe what exactly happened"

Isis: Isis looks down on the food she is absently preparing for herself and sighs. "In matters of the Mind arcanum I fear you would not have been able to help me much." She looks up at the others. "But if you can give me your help now, that would be good."

Nebuchadnezzar: looks up alarmed but curious, saying nothing at the moment.

Nebuchadnezzar: Lowering the paper to the table he folds it down and asks "What do you need."

Kenan: also looks expectantly on Isis

Isis: "What happened is that I noticed that foreign memories had been inserted into my mind, similar in some ways to the vision that was forced on me at the Guardians' ritual."

Kenan: "can you describe them in more detail?"

Isis: "It took me a number of hours to narrow it all down, but it appears that whoever they are they are bypassing most protections we have by intruding on my Oneiros from the Astral and there muddying the waters of my mind."

Isis speaks more quickly, more precisely than usual and her slight Romanic accent has almost disappeared entirely.

"I can't think of any rational reason to go through so much trouble - the effort required to accomplish something like this is enormous."

Nebuchadnezzar: "Messy." Neb says weaving the Imago for Mind's Eye

Isis: She pauses briefly and takes a deep breath. "Sadly I can't completely rule out some form of of possession." The thought visibly frightens her, but she does not shy away from it.

Kenan: Kenan puts up Prime sight

Nebuchadnezzar: A more serious thought crosses his face and he scrawls high speech in tea on his glasses and begins the imago for Eye of the Magus as well

Kenan: "I'll go and check the library and storage area for any items that might help with shielding mind"

"or perhaps we could try and make something on the spot"

Isis: "I think I have that in hand as best is possible without truly extraordinary measures. I have shielded mind and soul to the best of my ability. What I would ask your help with is finding the one who is doing this and making them stop."

Kenan: "I have no idea how we could even start going about this - and you can't possibly manage to maintain all these protections indefinitely, you will need to rest and let your guard down long before we can eliminate this threat"

"if you have any specific suggestions, though, please share them, maybe we can work something out after all"

Isis: "My work endures so long as it is possible for a spell remain on a living pattern. I was hoping it wouldn't be a matter of months."

Kenan: "hmm" kenan is not entirely convinced, but doesn't press the issue of protection "it would be helpful if you described in detail the nature of memories that were being pushed into your mind"

Isis: "I think these attacks are connected to the incident at Orchard Street and Brewer's Hall. In the memories they planted that man, the Scelestus, from Orchad Street appeared. You said you were talking to Arclight, Kenan. Do they know anything new?"

Kenan: "not beside what I already told you. At least, nothing he'd share"

Nebuchadnezzar: continues to examine Isis intently, a look of concentration on his face

Isis: "Perhaps you could cast the bones of prophecy? Either to help find a timeline in which we find the attacker ... or to pinpoint the time of the next attack, to allow me - us, if you would help me - to intercept their astral form."

"Assuming that we can get access to a Demesne or a Hallow more powerful than our own, that is," she adds after a moment.

Kenan: "As usual with examining the future, the question is very important - the answer might be at the same time truthful and useless, or even worse, misguiding"

"I will try, of course"

"as for a more powerful hallow or demesne, why would these help? our hallow is quite potent anyway"

Isis: "Meditating into the Astral requires one of those, at least it does since the Fall."

Nebuchadnezzar: quickly scribbles a piece of high speech on his newspaper, fashions a hat of it and drops it on Isis' head before recasting an imago

Kenan: "true, true..."

Isis: tilts her head slightly, rolling her eyes up to look at the hat

Kenan: "I think tinfoil hats are traditionally used for this purpose"

Nebuchadnezzar: "Bah!" He says in disgust. "The spells are too bright and everything else to dim. Even with the high speech. You can take the hat off now."

Isis: takes the hat off again. "Sorry."

Isis: "I'm pretty sure it's not a direct spell, though. I could observe the attacking force at work, it almost certainly originated from within."

Nebuchadnezzar: "Not your fault," he says absently patting her on the head. Slowly and clamly he looks at her and tries one last time.

Kenan: "i'll go focus on spellcasting for a bit" - Kenan goes to cast Prophecy

Kenan comes back after two hours, with a blank look on his face, the spell just having been completed "what do you wish to know about your future?"

Isis: "There is something else," Isis says quietly after Kenan has gone to call upon Arcadia.

There is the whisper of a telepathic connection, a composite image/impression/information offered for Nebuchadnezzar to look at if he accepts.

Isis' mental voice is lightning fast today, the power of her mind augmented beyond human limits. /I was employing the Scale of Ma'at to look at the health of my soul and I found this:/ *Image: Your soul is unhealthy, and perhaps you see why. You catch a glimpse of something insidious in you. It's tiny, but at the same time pervasive in the way that your soul defies spatial description. You quickly lose it though.*

- /As one on the Path of the Lead Coin, maybe you can make more sense of this than I can? It doesn't look like the soul of an astral intruder. Could it be a sign of possession?/

Nebuchadnezzar: .//An interesting question// He stops to think

Isis: ./I am worried that it might be some sort of aftereffect related to the Manifestation we witnesssed/

Nebuchadnezzar: ./A wise worry. I will see what I can find on it in the library./

./And conuslt some more bone focused Moros/

Isis: ./I would rather not draw in anyone else, at least not for now. If it really is something like that then I wouldn't want for it to become public knowledge./

Nebuchadnezzar: ./Understandable, I had intended to ask about the consition hypothetically, after all it ties somewhat into my... several images flash through his mind as he struggles to avoid lying or telling the truth about what he is up to./

Isis: ./You don't have to tell me./

As Kenan asks her what she wants to know Isis thinks for a moment, then says "is there an easier way than travelling into my Oneiros to identify the root of the foreign influence over me?"

Kenan: "too vague. It all depends on a specific action, or event, taking place"

"I could formulate a question based on that, though"

Isis: ./I am not convinced it is a problem we cannot solve, working together. Perhaps a ritual of revelation, worked in concert by both of us? It could get us a clearer picture of what is at work./

Kenan: "if Isis identifies the foreign influence, will it involve travelling to Oneiros?"

Isis: "Then ... 'Will travelling into my Oneiros allow us to identify the root of the foreign influence over me?' I posit an action taken and ask after the outcome."

"But you are the expert in Time, you will know best."

Nebuchadnezzar: ./certainly, was their any specific ritual you had in mind./ He listens intently to Kenan.

Kenan: "assuming successful outcome can make it easier to see the path leading to it than asking about the path itself"

Nebuchadnezzar: "Travelling into her Onerious will be tricky. We will require a Demense, do we know anyone with one we can beg the use of?"

Isis: ./The Scales of Ma'at, I thought. Soul Marks. They allowed me to see this far - perhaps with a more powerful imago it would allow us to perceive even deeper./

Kenan: "Guardians? though it might be unusable for a while, what with the soulstone being tampered with"

Isis: Isis smiles a strained smile. "That's why we're asking if that path will lead to success beforehand."

Nebuchadnezzar: ./When after this Augury?/

Isis: ./If you can spare the time. Not going to Sleeper school is easy for me, but you have obligations ...?/

Nebuchadnezzar: "While Kenan's spell may point to it being the best solution, I was merely pointing out it is not necessarily a practical solution unless we can secure the use of a Demense."

Isis: "We can ask more than one question, I think, with this sort of spell?"

Nebuchadnezzar: ./No meetings today. I can catch up on work later anyway. It is important to see that you are safe/

Kenan: "yes, we can try multiple questions. if there's not enough answers, we can try again tomorrow"

Isis: "Then why don't we ask 'How quickly would this action allow us to identify the root of the influence' and do that for all possible ways we can think of?"

"Then we would see which one is the shortest path."

"If it is impossible, then the answer would be 'it would take eternity', wouldn't it?"

Kenan: "again, it's a too direct question. I could ask, 'if we look for the answer for a month, will we find it?'"

Isis: ./Thank you. I really want to solve this quickly./ Though Isis' control over the thoughts conveyed is complete, she cannot keep her deep worry from showing in her expression.

Nebuchadnezzar: "Is the cause of the problem we have within 5 miles? Is it witihin 10 miles? Is it within 1 mile?"

Isis: "So, would 'If we meditate into the Astral and pursue the matter to the best of our ability for as long as necessary, how quickly would this allow us to identify the root of the influence?' work?"

• into the Astral, starting with my Oneiros,

"And what about 'If I sort through all sympathetic connections directed towards me I can perceive and scrying back through them, how long would it take me to find the mage who attacked me at Brewer's Hall in that way?'"

Kenan: Kenan seems engrossed in a vision for a moment, then speaks in a strangely modulated voice "you will go on a long voyage... I see a dark, handsome stranger... just joking!" Kenan's voice becomes normal again "it seems like you won't be able to track down the perpertrator soon that way. It might take years, or won't happen at all"

"perhaps a question related directly to Oneiros would yield a better result"

Isis: "I did mean searching my Oneiros or intercepting the perpetrator there ..."

"And about the scrying?"

Kenan: "ah, now that's different. It won't take more than a day or two if you search directly through Oneiros. Although something tells me it won't be easy. Won't be easy at all"

Isis: "Naturally," Isis nods seriously.