'RELIQUARY': THE CLUB
"Reliquary" will probably be a coda in Falling Towers, counting coup and costs after the main campaign. I ran an early version for Dead Channels. That found many things to improve. I'll probably post a fuller version here sometime. This is the opening scene. —Shane Ivey
We open with each Agent losing 1/1D6 SAN for a horror that just ended, its details mercifully opaque.
The Agents stand breathless in a room lit only by flashlights. It’s 14 AUG 2003, just after 10:00 P.M. A power surge today blacked out New York City and much of the northeast. The Agents are beneath what's left of Club Apocalypse. A private room in one of the lower levels. Highly exclusive. At least it was, when the place was open for business.
That mess in the corner, all organs and slime, was what the Network called a Lord. A mover and a shaker. A hitter. A sorcerer. What happened to her, what you just went through, are best not remembered.
The one on the overstuffed sofa over there is young, maybe 22. Stylish. All-American girl under all the makeup and leather and attitude. Bleeding bad, despite the best first aid you could do. Wounds you cannot see. She was what the Network called a Neophyte. An apprentice to a Lord. To that Lord in the corner. Not much loyalty in the Network.
The Neophyte was born Nicole Amanda Miller. Honest. You’ve seen her birth certificate. In the Network and around the Club they called her Nicks. She was going to grab her place at the top. But when things started falling apart, she struck a deal with Delta Green. She protects you and leads you to targets. You protect her.
She shares Bonds with every Agent in this room.
Now she’s turning a peculiarly unnatural shade of mauve in the extremities, faintly glowing, pulsing, spreading. Something worse than shock is setting in.
Things went wrong. She wants you to make them right.
She talks quickly. She is fading while the mauve only brightens. Use or adapt this monologue.
“I got nothing that can stop this. But we made promises, right? I look out for you. You look out for me. Right?
“These tunnels. They keep going down. Way down. They get weird. Old. Nobody goes down there. I’ll give you directions. Left here and right there, that kind of thing.
“I got a friend down there. Maybe not a friend. But he has something. A box. Jasper wood. And the way to open the box. Got to make a deal with him to get both. The box and how to open it.
“Inside the box. A treasure. No shit. It can bring back the dead. You lost a grandma? A kid? You can see them again. But first you use it on me. Bring me back first. That’s the deal. Swear it! When I’m back, I’ll help you with whoever you want.”
(If an Agent objects that jasper is a mineral and not a kind of wood, she says that shows how much they know.)
The mauve keeps spreading.
“The box, the way you open it—it’s going to be weird. It needs all of you. Like an old-fashioned prayer circle, right? Going to be weird. But it won’t take long. I’ll help from the other side.
“So you go down those tunnels. I’ll give you directions. When the walls change, turn off your lights. Don’t turn them back on til you go back out. It’ll be pitch black. Spooky. Got to talk to somebody you can’t see. You won’t like it. But handle it.
"You turn off the lights, give it a few minutes, then say this, nice and loud: ‘Dooia Nogha niis toatar.’ Let me hear you say it. ‘Dooia Nogha niis toatar.’ OK. Whoever shows up, tell them you’re there for Everd.
"OK. Here are the turns you have to take.”
She tells them. They’ll remember. The mauve seems to pulse with her slowing heartbeat.
The wall has a photo of Stephen Alzis, legendary head of the Fate, the Network, everything. Short, trim, dark, confident, smiling like you and he are the only ones in on a joke. He’s standing with David Bowie and Lou Reed in the early Seventies. The picture has all their autographs. Some in Delta Green think Alzis was not human. The glass over the picture is shattered. The Neophyte stares at it.
“You know the last time I saw him? Alzis, I mean. The Man. God, we loved him. You looked at him and you saw it, he just knew. All the secrets of the world. Last time I saw him? 9/11. Yeah. The second tower. Right up on the roof.
“A news chopper zoomed in. Got a great look. I always wondered if you people snagged that tape. Kept it quiet. Up there all alone while it burned. Dancing. Like he won the lottery. Dancing with joy. He was still dancing when the thing went down.”
The mauve glow flickers, some flickers intense, some faint. Nicks is going fast.
“Some of you dummies thought he did 9/11. Ha. Haha. No. He could give a shit about all that. Bigger picture. Ever since he first showed up. The fucking Fifties. He wanted more. Turned out, though, what he wanted? Those fuckers delivered. Haha.
“He wanted to show us who we are.”
She seizes up. There’s a cascading spasm of mauve flashes all over, brightest in her spinal column and deep in her skull. She’s dead.
Each Agent loses 1/1D8 SAN from helplessness for seeing a Bond die so gruesomely.
Not to worry. They can get it back. They just have to do what she said.