The Gothic Journals

Fiction about Ravenloft or Gothic Earth
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High Priest Mikhal
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Jan. 31, 2008)
It's been ten days since I called the BSAA West Africa branch for help in researching something. Not that I expect them to get back to me any time soon. The area I need information from is the Kijuju Autonomous Zone, held privately by Umbrella and now TriCell since the Sixties. Plus what I requested is a bit broad. Legends of a "fireball in the sky" from the Ndipaya people or even fossil records unique to the area. The latter is a long shot but it's worth a try. The former could form a library depending on how prolific any such legends are. And at any rate it's just for a theory that I couldn't tell many others without being laughed at or thought of as crazy.

In the meantime I've been looking at some of the weapon modifications Jill brought back from the Queen Zenobia. After the fiasco with the FBC we forgot all about them in the reorganization as a part of the UN. Most of them are simply field kits to modify weapons in ways that can be done in a decent gun shop; smoother firing actions, extended magazines, barrel modifications to use the round's propellant better, nothing special. Except for something known as a "Charge" kit. What it does is turn a normal, chemical propellant firearm into a quasi-rail gun by adding magnets to help fire a round off at higher velocities than with the propellant alone. It takes a few seconds to get charged up but can fire off rounds at supersonic velocities. My own people use more refined and potent versions with caseless ammunition. These modifications are crude and highly dangerous to use. Nitrocellulose doesn't exactly like the kind of heat produced and the long warm up times make it impractical.

My Sun Gun has something similar, albeit magical in nature. Only I never use it; the energy to fire an already potent shot at even greater power must be drawn from the wielder. It literally drains one's stamina and resilience to fire off a round on par with a HEAT gun. That kind of sheer power was meant for atropals and other abominations, not creatures that are usually barely the size of an adult man. Well, other than some unique creations. Even then it usually doesn't take an anti-tank gun to take such things down.

So I had to recommend that the Charge kit be scrapped. It's expensive, unstable, and takes far too much time to charge fully. We would be better off implementing everything else to push the existing technology to its limits. I know some of the grunts would like to have access, but they'd probably think twice when the slide on their sidearm is ejected backwards into their faces during a malfunction. And having seen that happen no less than three times on test dummies it's a very real risk. Never mind the carnage I saw when we tried the Windham shotgun's Charge. I know it's just ballistics gel but it's still a graphic demonstration of what would happen to a person. The upper half of the head was gone!

Then there's the Plagas. People think parasites are mindless invaders, sucking the life out of their hosts. They're wrong. Parasites show a cunning and evolution that scares me. Some infect prey animals and literally alter their behaviors so they're more vulnerable to specific predators, what a parasite really wants to infect. And those are just the natural ones. Unnatural ones are far more insidious for things already nefarious. From the research Kyra and I "liberated" from the computer Los Illuminados used we've all learned a lot. Las Plagas matures from an egg in the body, first by attaching itself to the spine and eventually devouring the brain and taking its place. This is eerie in how it parallels illithid tadpoles' maturation. Only it doesn't transform the outer body so much as embalm it alive. Left to its own devices it can resemble a normal human being down to some of the most complex behaviors like speech, operating complex machines, and using weapons. The devoured brain provides all the necessary cognitive skills, though physical skills that rely more on muscle memory only work if the host body was trained similarly.

That's just a basic compatibility. Those whose genetic makeup is more compatible can undergo a partial metamorphosis into larger, stronger human-like beings. Like those chainsaw-wielding freaks in the Spanish isles. Only in such cases the face loses its flesh and leaves raw, sensitive muscle and sinew. And of course those whose genetics are completely incompatible are mutated by the activation of vestigial genes into something more compatible, like the Novistadors. How a parasite can alter its hosts very DNA is unknown. The Viruses do it by destabilizing the host cells with the organelle they carry, allowing them to literally rewrite the code. In the Plagas I've found nothing analogous to the organelle. It may be a part of the parasite's nature but without a pure Plaga I can't say for sure. The only samples we have were taken from the various Ganado and in a few cases some of their more disturbing creations like the Iron Maidens. The ability to manipulate the genetic expressions, unfortunately, is not that far-fetched. It's basic genetic engineering. Something TriCell no doubt has advanced knowledge of. Their own databases are all cold--offline--and can't be hacked remotely. So I can't access them unless I broke in physically and hooked up directly. Just trying to find out where the research is done would paint a big bull's-eye on my chest so my chances of finding anything out are slim to nil.

With access to both a pure Plaga and the G-Virus, not to mention if and when they find where the Progenitor lies, it's a completely different ballgame to boot. Who knows what abominations they're creating? And with research the US government helped fund and back with Umbrella? The possibilities are terrifying with just one of any of the three. All of them together is Armageddon in a petri dish. Now throw in the sociopathic genius of Wesker and Excella Gionne's own amoral brilliance. Kijuju is looking like the best place to find them and their research. Only the BSAA can't afford to tip them off. They would likely just pick up and move after harvesting enough Progenitor. I don't envy whoever gets sent in for that job; it's the blackest of black ops with no backup from HQ if things go sour.

Sometimes I really wonder why I took this job.
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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High Priest Mikhal
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, April 14, 2008)
There was scant little the BSAA labs could tell me about the Viruses that I didn't already know from my own research. So I began work on firearms and ways to upgrade them to their limits as well as close quarters weapons. I now regret that as it highlighted how poor our gear is. Survival knives are standard, but the stamped stainless steel is not going to cause a BOW much of a problem. Especially in extreme cold when the steel becomes as brittle as dry wood. I've argued for upgraded weaponry but I get the same old arguments: it's too expensive, it would complicate existing logistics, the BSAA has a contract with the maker, all sorts of bull. Even subjecting the blades to chemical vapor deposition to strengthen the blade, a process the manufacturer already does on more expensive models, would be an improvement. To the talking heads in charge it's all about money--namely, how much can they line their pockets with as they suckle at the teat of the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium. Everything we use is made by members of the GPC! We aren't equipped to handle a major bio-weapons outbreak on par with something as small and isolated as Raccoon City, let alone anything bigger.

Those of us who can afford it have bought superior gear, but the majority are using shoddy guns and body armor from the lowest bidders. A shipment of supposed Glocks had to be shipped back--with me in tow--after two agents died when they tried to test fire them and the weapons turned into bombs due to shoddy plastics and assembly. They weren't even real! They were knock-offs made in sweatshops in Southeast Asia. After laying into the company's heads I did the same with the BSAA leaders, along with backing from every chapter on the planet and international outcry as a live streaming feed was broadcast during it all. Half the existing council that manages the BSAA from the UN Building in New York were unceremoniously kicked out and then replaced with handpicked members by the UN Security Council with no input from the GPC. The latter did not take that very well. I get the feeling they want me out of the picture, but I hold large percentages of stock in each company. If I were to, say, sell my shares at low prices, other investors would do the same and devalue the company in seconds. They know it, too, and can't do a thing but try to buy my shares. It's sick, but I find a great deal of pleasure in watching as executives who thought themselves invulnerable squirm in helplessness as they realize one person can bring them down.

For now, at least, any real progress will have to be done in-house. Towards that end I've begun to organize efforts to refurbish existing weapons for improved performance or simply to make them safe to use. This BSAA-GPC deal has us as much at their mercies as we were when they held our leash; the increasing antagonisms on both sides have led them to sell us the garbage even as we increasingly ignore their "sovereignty" when it comes to possible bio-weapons sightings. If the UN would just tell the GPC where to stick it and cut off relations we could start doing more. But the countries of the UN have no idea how bad a real outbreak would be. I've seen their own simulations during the seasonal security meetings. Some of them laughed when I told them their simulations were best-case scenarios. Even the Terragrigia Incident hasn't gotten the message through. It took a satellite focusing a solar beam powerful enough to destroy a city to stop that outbreak and that was relatively minor.

Goddess help me, I could strangle the security advisors of some of the member states!

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Aug. 22, 2008)
The West African branch of the BSAA sent me a crate--not a package, not a box, but a two-ton crate!--of bizarre archaeological finds and a single folio of myths about a fire in the sky. Before it was cut off under Umbrella and now TriCell, Kijuju was infamous in archaeological circles for some of the most bizarre, inexplicable finds in the fossil records. The world largely forgot about it after as more accessible places were available. What they did find, however, only confirms some of my worst fears about the nature of the Progenitor Virus. The fossils, several hundred in all, appear to be the remains of otherwise normal animals but show severe mutations. Crocodiles with six or more limbs, two-headed birds, fish with as many as nine eyes, insects the size of adult arms, even fossilized eggs showing various birds and reptiles with things too horrid to mention. What is amazing is that these fossils are all carbon dated to thirty-thousand years ago and occur only in a very short span of time, about four months give or take.

The folio tells of a legend the Ndipaya tell of "a great ball of fire in the sky that preceded rapid and appalling fecundity. Women conceived and gave birth in days, crops ripened in hours and rotted before they could be harvested, and the animals were born malformed. The shamans said it was the fire in the sky and that it must be destroyed. The most powerful magicians and warriors traveled on roads of solid sunlight to the heavens. For days those below could only wait and hope. Then the fire in the sky began to recede even as a chunk of fleshy stone fell and created a hole open to the sky. On that site flowers grew which could grant one great power and strength if they could survive its trials."

It goes on to describe how the Ndipaya people built massive stone structures around the flowers and even carved diamonds as large as boulders to channel the sun's light. Modern scholars don't pay much heed to tales of ancient engineers but this was millennia before the Red Death arrived and corrupted magic. I can see the ancients using such to aid in building things modern humans would be hard pressed to copy without massive machines. In the end the Ndipaya saw what had become of their tribes, bowing to the whims of those strengthened by the flowers in a massive stone city that celebrated their power, and decided it was actually an evil that had to be sealed off forever. It's hard to say how long this civilization lasted but the shamans were able to call upon massive earthquakes that sank the city below the ground. From then on they guarded the site and warned of the dangers hidden below. At least until Umbrella arrived in the Sixties.

From mystical testing I was able to determine an aura of corrupted positive energy lingering in all of the fossils. Taking that with the story I can only assume that Ragnorra, Mother of Monsters, once visited this world. Corrupted positive energy is life unbound to the point of bleeding forms of life together before breaking down into negative energy. In a sick way it explains the organelles in the Viruses. The negative energy present cancels out the corrupt positive energy in the living half until said Virus has found a host cell and the corrupt positive energy can then overwhelm the negative energy as it rewrites the DNA. My original theory was all wrong; the negative energy doesn't destabilize anything. It only becomes dominant when the living half has been killed by oxygen exposure. Even then the other half of it still grants that measure of resistance to turning as well as spells and powers that specifically use positive energy to harm the undead.

Suddenly those rumors about Uroboros seem all too plausible. If the Progenitor really does use corrupt positive energy...I'm shaking at the thought. The potential mutations would outstrip even the G-Virus in potential. My only hope is that Wesker doesn't realize what he really has. His knowledge of the supernatural is vast compared to most on this world, but still infinitesimal when compared to those from outside. Especially devoted scholars like Kyra. It sickens me to bring her into this but I need her expertise. We need a way of destroying the source and only she has the rarified knowledge of how to do so.

Forgive me, my love. I don't want to endanger you but there's no other choice.
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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High Priest Mikhal
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Aug. 29, 2008)
Kyra has been working on discerning what she can from the bizarre fossils. In the meantime I've been sidetracked by BSAA Intelligence after suspected industrial spies for the GPC tracked down the shipments. Their cover as "antiquities detectives" didn't hold well under scrutiny from our own network. Despite putting in the order through secure channels the BSAA didn't do much to deflect potential problems. Ongoing reorganization has left Counterintelligence badly understaffed to cover much. So I got the task of shredding their self-confidence into confetti until they finally confessed everything. The talking heads must think I enjoy it; the term "Archer's Tongue" is now slang among the BSAA for anything cuts someone's ego down to the quick. Some of them found out Archer's Fist is literally something that can split a solid hardwood desk in half. Even if my right arm is mithral it still hurts! If they want someone to continue the tirades they can get someone else. I don't like it and frankly I'm tired of being so feared all I have to do is raise my eyebrows and people stiffen.

As for the fossils, Kyra confirmed Ragnorra's taint and produced some interesting new results. If a fossil were to run through a mystical filter the corrupt positive energy could be removed and potentially used if it were contained. Without something to hold it, it just dissipates. This explains the spies being adepts and mystics; they likely knew what we'd find if we knew what to look for. But it's not like I can really share this news with anyone. They'd think me insane. What I could do, after Kyra had run several through some spell I didn't recognize, was submit the inert ones to R&D and label the rest as "potential biohazards" so they'd be incinerated. Technology is not going to help them detect the true agent at work. That's one part I do miss about the Office and their focus on magic; they had the tools and knew what to look for. The BSAA...it's so firmly grounded in mundane science that it may never realize how the Viruses do what they do.

This job has been so draining this year. Nothing to fight but internal corruption, no developments beyond what I could get approved from those penny-pinching yahoos, and there's still four more months left. I just want to crawl in bed and sleep until after the new year.

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Oct. 13, 2008)
Wall Street has all but crashed. Things had been shaky since last year but the major financial institutions all declaring bankruptcy at the same time has sparked a downward spiral unlike any since the Great Depression. Already the world is feeling the effects of the US economy crashing down and there's enormous outrage at groups like Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac both here and abroad. Anti-American sentiment is likewise spiking across the world even in countries showing economic growth. I guess they just needed a reason to express outrage at the country. We've been knocked down more than a peg; more like off the whole coat rack and we're taking it with us. I hope Clinton is fully aware it was his decision to deregulate the real estate market that is a huge factor in this.

And yet, as sick as it may sound, there's truth to what Dogbert once said in the ill-fated series, Dilbert. "The characters in Chinese for "crisis" are made up of "danger" and opportunity."" In pulling my own stocks out of several companies in time--maybe helping precipitate things--I was able to save me and Kyra from total bankruptcy. I was also able to buy Sarah's mortage from Bank of America for pennies on the dollar, saving her from losing her condo and ruining her life before it really had a chance to start. I wish I could have done the same for others but this...it's gone beyond anything anyone but the most elderly can remember. I was also barely able to buy out Bo's mortgage on the sly and pay it off; he would have refused if he knew, but I'm not going to let the only person in the BSAA besides Chris who has any real idea of what's really going on lose everything. It's selfish, but he's become an anchor for me as I see past the scientific jargon to a far darker force at work with the Viruses and other forms of bioterrorism.

As for the BSAA, the effects have had some interesting benefits. We nearly nailed a man called Ricardo Irving for selling bio-weapons on the black market. Irving is also the head researcher for TriCell Africa and is known to have contacted Wesker. Unfortunately the little weasel sniffed us out before we could catch him personally. Instead he left behind some patsies who revealed that Irving was trying to cash in on the crisis by selling his own developments as well as samples of a pair of modified Plagas. One was identified as Type 2, the other is potentially the Type 3 we've been unable to secure samples of. A victory if a bit hollow; had we captured him I would have gladly probed his mind until I knew what size his socks were and driving him insane be damned! As is we've got work to do setting up observations on the Kijuju Autonomous Zone while R&D does its best to learn what it can from the samples.

One weird thing. When he was running away he was nabbed by someone in a cloak and wearing a beaked mask like a medieval medical mask. Whoever they were, they were fast--inhumanly so. Surveillance cameras picked up a blur when they moved. One of TriCell's little lab projects? Or an all new weapon?
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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High Priest Mikhal
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Jan. 1, 2009)
In hindsight it feels as though the year rushed by, yet during it I wondered if it would ever end. Things started out optimistic enough, but the year began to sour almost from the start. Looking into new weapons technology led to half the council in charge being replaced by actual leaders instead of corporate lackeys, leading to serious stalls in operations as the rest gummed up the works. Study on fossils from Kijuju revealing the true source of the Progenitor. The Wall Street Crash. Almost nabbing of TriCell's leading researchers before they pulled him out of the fire. One of the miners working for TriCell started a blog and the BSAA is building up enough hard evidence to get the green light on Kijuju based on his posts but not before "diplomatic solutions" were exhausted. It's been a year of things just plain going wrong.

The annual New Year's Eve party at the Black Kitty Cat club turned out to be fairly sober. Both figuratively and literally. Peg had a bottle of perfectly aged champagne but no one popped the cork. Half the members have had to quit thanks to the banks foreclosing on their homes, corps getting bailed out and instead of paying off their debts the execs give themselves massive bonuses, and of course it was an election year. I always hate those. Once the economy failed a lot of voters pulled their heads out of the sand but not enough did to bring any level unity to Congress as we're still deadlocked with the two parties who refuse to agree on anything holding up everything.

Adam Benford was named the next President and he seems to have the balls necessary to start the painful changes that the country needs. Already Congress hates his guts because he'll dare to rock the boat and get their corporate puppet masters upset. That's saying nothing of his role in the Anti-Umbrella Investigation and Pursuit Team that was formed after Raccoon City as an attempt to further cover up the US involvment in bio-weapons research and development by Umbrella. He knows all of it, he has a moral compass, and he has a spine. If only he'd been in power in '08.

This whole last year has left me feeling utterly helpless to do anything to stop the evils I see on a daily basis. At least within the legal confines of the bureaucracies that pass for governments in most developed nations. Worse is how tangled the evils are with the innocents. I pull apart the tapestry of a corrupt institution or person and it's innocent people who will pay the price. Worse still is the Red Death has nothing to do with most of it. It's all human. Likely it realizes it doesn't have to do much more than supply the rope and the world will hang itself. Or perhaps it's still on the rebound from the failure of the Ritual all those years ago. Either way I haven't felt it exert a lot of influence on the world since the turn of the century. Humanity is doing a fine job on its own of advancing the cause of evil.

Yet the world is overdue for something to happen to swing the scales of karma back towards a balance. Call it instinct but I can almost feel the winds of change growing into a hurricane. Will this be the year that the world realizes how closely it teeters on the brink of Apocalypse? Likely not, but that itself isn't too far off. Instead it feels more like the shackles those of us in the BSAA suffer will be shattered and our efforts will be rewarded. At a great cost, though. Nothing in this world is without its cost in blood and suffering.

Logic dictates that things will begin in the Kijuju Autonomous Zone. Whatever we find there will be the catalyst.
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Jan. 30, 2009)
The blog poster, who only goes by "Adam," has been our greatest source of information on what is going on in Kijuju. Anti-foreigner sentiment is up in the form of riots and even public executions yet the agitators include a number of foreigners! Current theories are that there's a Plagas outbreak but nothing hard. Even Reynard Fisher, an undercover agent there supposedly finding out what's going on, hasn't reported any of this yet. Either he's being thorough or he's being sloppy.

Another post by "Adam" today revealed that one of his coworkers in the mines, a foreigner, was seen in the anti-foreigner mob. The constant is a native in sunglasses who gives inflammatory speeches using a megaphone. I'm beginning to believe he's infected with a Control Plaga and the rest are infected with Subordinate, as they've been relabeled. This is certainly enough to give the BSAA probable cause to investigate, but to date the Nigerian government is refusing to let us in. They claim they have things under control and won't let us interfere with "their problems." A little ungrateful? Or puppets dancing to TriCell's tune?

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Feb. 21, 2009)
Fisher finally issued a report eight days ago, though by now it's too little, too late. Already the Nigerian government has erected walls to keep the rioting Kijujuans in. Anarchy is reigning inside and public murder is now common. Worse still we got a picture of the rioters and among them was Ricardo Irving! He's wanted by Interpol and several national agencies for selling bio-weapons on the black market. That's cause enough to ignore national boundaries and go in armed to the teeth to arrest him. But there's been some interference from within the BSAA as well as without.

On every level there has been one or more agents who have been doing their best to stop any of this information from getting out. Only the network is so distributed and decentralized they're attempts are truly Sisyphean in nature. Bo and I have activated a hidden network to detain and question anyone who tried to stall reports or interfere with other efforts. Some have already confessed to being corporate plants, hoping to cut deals, but the UN is unwilling to make deals with the corporations anymore. Instead those who confess, or are found guilty by tribunals, will be sentenced to life without parole at various international supermax prisons for bioterrorism. The hammer is coming down hard and the corporations will not be getting out of this one. People are beginning to wake up to the reality as economies collapse and they realize big businesses are ultimately responsible by preying on consumers. Anti-corporate sentiment is growing across the world and the people are making their displeasure known by boycotting them and selling off shares. I wish that was a good thing but it's going to make the situation worse in the short-term. At least these companies are realizing there's no such thing as "too big to fail."

Frankly this is getting too hot for me. I survived two mansions, Raccoon City, and Rockfort Island and the Antarctic. Getting into another situation like those is not terribly appealing. Plus I'm on TriCell's short list of people they want to see strung up by the neck. I can't risk going in without sparking something worse.

Then there's a photo someone snapped of the woman who abducted Irving. She wasn't wearing a mask this time. It's Jill! Her hair is blonde now but it's definitely her! Only she's working for TriCell and is displaying superhuman strength and speed. Chris would love to know about this but I can't tell him. Not until we've got some sort of support structure in place. Otherwise he'll just get himself killed, or worse, infected. And there's the question of why Jill is working for the bad guys. The photo was high but under the spandex jumpsuit on her chest was the top of some sort of sparkling red...thing lined in silver. An implant? That's what it looks like. It also ties with some disturbing reports of a combat drug called P30 by TriCell researchers. It grants the imbiber superhuman strength and agility and renders them highly susceptible to suggestion. It wears off in a few seconds and reports of implants that administer the drug were being thrown around. It looks like Jill is their guinea pig. If true then her mind must be tearing itself apart; I was magically dominated for a century and a half and it took years for my mind to recover fully. The sheer emotional drain will be staggering when she's disconnected. I don't know if she'll be able to return to active duty once rescued.

For now all we can do is wait and plan. And when we finally do go in I hope we oust TriCell and expose them for the world to see. Plus the Stairway to the Sun--the flowers the Progenitor lives in--must be destroyed. How I do that I don't know. A sufficient blast of negative energy would work but neither Kyra nor I know any spells or powers utilizing such; we've both avoided them as the plague they are. Finding the chunk of Ragnorra's flesh that spawned them and removing it would cause them to wither and die, but how far down is it? Miles? Tens of miles? Is it still the main source or has it infected the minerals around it? Until we know we won't be able to do much besides prevent others from ever gaining access again. If we can even do more than that.
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Kijuju, Nigeria, March 8, 2009)
It's over. Just like that. Nearly a decade of hunting, years of dreading, and now karma has come around to bring everything to justice. I guess I'm still in shock. Just hearing the words...

Okay, organize my thoughts. Start from the beginning. BSAA HQ decided to try and apprehend Ricardo Irving three days ago and sent in a team to cover Chris and another agent from the West Africa branch, Sheva Alomar. Irving must have sniffed us out and unleashed some sort of a BOW made with his Uroboros Virus to kill Alpha Team and nearly killed Chris and Sheva. Yet they survived and managed to kill the BOW, even acquiring files from TriCell's computers. Research on the Progenitor, Uroboros, and a picture of Jill! Seeing her alive must have renewed Chris because he and Sheva went on to kill some sort of a giant, explore the marshlands where the Ndipaya had settled and were now infected by Type-3 Plagas, and kill Irving when he injected himself and tried to kill them. His dying words led them to Excella Gionne.

They discovered the ruins of the Ndipaya Kingdom and witnessed firsthand the power of their unique sun-catching diamonds. They also found the garden housing the Stairway to the Sun--the flowers that house the Progenitor Virus. When Wesker sicced Jill on them they were able to pull off the device implanted on her chest and restore her free will. Then they witnessed him use Excella as she'd used the Kijujuans--poetic--and, in a live volcano, finally destroyed the man we had come to hate more than anything.

Albert Wesker is well and truly dead.

I got the call early this morning and only learned the details as Kyra and I were flown via private jet to Kijuju. Of the dozens of men sent in only Chris, Sheva, Jill, and a local agent named Joshua Stone survived. It's been a serious wake-up call to the talking heads. The incident has also put TriCell and the Gionne Family firmly in the international spotlight at a time when corporations and the rich are vilified. News of their research into bio-weapons, development of BOWs, and even the near-genocide of an entire people has prompted countries across the world to freeze all their assets and arrest everyone from janitors to the Chairman of TriCell. Already they've had their stock plummet to a fraction of a cent per share and caused several blue bloods in Europe to declare bankruptcy. Even the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium is feeling serious heat as many are asking how much they knew and were complicit in? The GPC is already fracturing into its constituent companies as some sell out TriCell to make themselves look good or cut deals, which isn't working out too well. Admitting to having information about the Kijuju Incident is probable cause for their own assets to be frozen pending full investigations by the BSAA and UN.

The global economy is going to take a major hit from this at a time when it's already in dire straits. But at the same time it's causing governments to rethink their relationships with any and all corporations. Dirty laundry from all manner of companies are being aired even as they start to turn on each other in a frenzy of buyouts, hostile takeovers, and industrial espionage. This has kept them from burying the bodies, so to speak, and giving us time to find out who is involved in illegal research. At the same time the UN has invested the BSAA with more power and authority to investigate allegations of bioterror, bio-weapons research, and BOW outbreaks. Especially as the black market is going to be flooded with the things soon enough.

For now, though, Kyra and I are at the ruins to investigate the Stairway to the Sun. They're just flowers but linked to one of the Elder Evils and to so many horrors that have plagued the world over the past twenty years. Science teams have brought in ground penetrating radar and found their root system is highly localized but extends miles underground. Far deeper than the GPR can read. It wouldn't surprise me if they're roots are entangled around the piece of Ragnorra's flesh. It doesn't look like we'll be able to do much to permanently destroy them, though. Poisons don't work, insects won't touch them, and no disease or parasitic fungus can take hold. The corrupted positive energy feeding them will somehow need to be neutralized first. Furthermore handling them unprotected has caused researchers to develop warts and other harmless growths.

Up above it's a nightmare as we hunt down any remaining Infected people or wildlife. Most of the Ndipaya nearby have been wiped out, but already others have come forward to take their place and preserve their culture. It's a noble gesture but one that will have to wait until we're sure it's safe and we've figured out how to destroy the source of the Progenitor. Acid, cold, and fire work on samples but that's no guarantee any will destroy the flowers for good. Utilizing electricity had the effect of causing a sample to actually grow. Something in the back of my mind is bugging me about that but I can't figure out what. I guess I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything that's happened.

As for Chris and Jill, that's another story. His crusade to find her has finally ended and I could see the emotional exhaustion in his face. Pending a full psychological evaluation he's been put on paid leave. His psychological state is already showing signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome. She, however, is dealing with the effects of being dominated for three years and has been asleep for almost twenty-four hours now. It would be surprising if she didn't sleep for days. Fortunately she's receiving the best medical care possible. Her memory is remarkably unclouded and will be of great value in prosecuting TriCell when she's ready to testify.

Most interesting to me, however, are the giant diamonds the ancient Ndipaya used to capture and focus sunlight into a coherent beam. Amazing! It's a primitive laser, able to re-focus light as it travels through the crystal matrices of the diamonds and keep it from dispersing. I also found a hidden niche that holds the chips and shavings of these diamonds. They're all perfect, colorless, and easily worth millions of US dollars per carat. And there are piles of them reaching twenty feet high. One handful would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Which is why I haven't said a thing to anyone but Kyra. The value of these diamonds goes far beyond the monetary; they're perfect on the atomic level and could catapult research into a working scanner years ahead. The need for a particle accelerator to create Synchrotron radiation could be bypassed if gamma radiation were fed through the atomic structure of a sufficiently pure gem. These surpass even my highest hopes for finding an alternative to dream crystal. A single piece of plutonium just a few millimeters in size could produce enough to fully read a creature's biological and cellular structure in just a few seconds. More than enough for a computer to extrapolate strengths and weaknesses in the field. Plus the plutonium wouldn't need to be replaced for nearly fifty millennia.

For now, though, I've hidden the niche behind a wall of stone. It wouldn't much take to use magic and psionics to turn the piles into sheets, spheres, or other shapes for easy transport out without altering their atomic structure. It sounds greedy, but letting knowledge of that cache out would trigger a far worse economic catastrophe than even the fall of the GPC. Diamonds aren't as rare as groups like DeBeers would have us believe and they and other suppliers carefully regulate the market so the price remains high. It's sickening and contributes to "blood diamond" production here in Africa, but diamonds are often as much the wealth of countries as gold and silver. If the world were to be flooded with such perfect, natural diamonds they would become worthless and countries all over the world would be bankrupted. Plus I don't want to think of how much more powerful groups like the Family would become if they got their grubby hands on the cache. It would be far better if no one knows about them even as they're put to good use in various technologies and to help bankroll actual charities and efforts to improve the world.

For now, though, Kyra and I both are exhausted. We spent the better part of the day turning the five biggest piles into faceted gems the size of Hummers and weighing about as much. There are about twenty other smaller piles to deal with. There's still a nagging question in my mind about where the ancient Ndipaya got such huge stones. Geologically speaking gems of that size shouldn't exist on the Earth's crust, only in the deep mantle and the core. So where did they come from?
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

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(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Kijuju, Nigeria, March 9, 2009)
I awoke this morning from a memory dream, suddenly aware of the answers to two questions that I hadn't been able to answer yesterday. The huge diamonds, the electric spark causing the flowers to grow, I'm such an idiot! The quasi-elemental planes! Lightning where air and positive energy meet, Mineral where earth and positive energy do. It's planar correspondence. Whether or not it's corrupted, positive energy would still trigger the energetic reactions that create gems and the flowers' ties to a font of raw positive energy means they would absorb electricity. That's why there were diamonds so large this close to the surface.

By the same token, negative correspondences would likely kill the flowers by negating the flow of corrupted positive energy. But that itself is a problem. Creating a vacuum in the chamber is all but impossible, ash would have to come from the incinerated remains of an undead creature to be truly lifeless, and only the dust of earth sucked completely dry of life would work. Salt from a lifeless source would be easiest to acquire and even distribute through the irrigation system. The Dead Sea can't support life so its salt deposits would work. The science team is a bit confused by my assertions that we specifically use Dead Sea salt, but they're willing to give it a try since nothing else is working. These flowers are adapted to freshwater, after all, so saltwater would kill the roots.

While we work on that bizarre order I've been reading the reports Umbrella and TriCell left behind about their research into the Progenitor and the Plagas. Apparently the latter were not modified by the use of any Viruses; the Type-2 Plaga was created by combining it with leech DNA and thus allowing for faster maturation and maturation outside a host. Once it had reached a certain point the mature Plaga would be force-fed to its host, causing instantaneous control that could not be resisted with drugs or will. Sunlight wouldn't kill it, but intense flashes of light would still work. This is the Plaga that was used to create the majority of the Majini and related BOWs like the Ndesa, a giant created by implanting three different Plagas into one subject.

Type-3 was created by implanting the control gene into a Subordinate Plaga, giving it immunity to light. Unfortunately this is the type that couldn't adhere to women and young children, killing them. The marshlands Ndipaya were the ones infected with this new strain. It sickens me how a single individual or even a group trying to play god can murder so many others in cold blood. The soul of Excella Gionne, if it wasn't consumed by the Uroboros Virus, is most certainly finding out how little her station in life means in the Nine Hells and suffering torments she deserves.

Attempts to use the Progenitor to augment existing BOWs, like the Lickers, didn't work out quite as well as TriCell seemed to hope. There's only so much that even it could do to something that was already mutated by its descendents. Thus the creation of Uroboros by combining the T-Virus antibodies in Jill's blood with the Progenitor. That must have been Wesker's motivation for luring us to Spencer's estate in Spain. It would have been easier to use the vaccine on someone else and derive their antibodies, but not as satisfying to his ego. Plus it was a chance to finish off his beef with Sir Spencer and attempt to kill Chris whom he blamed for his fall. The man was easily the biggest narcissist I've ever met. He failed to actually kill anyone, but did get what he wanted with Jill.

As for the Uroboros Virus itself, all of the BOWs it spawned were people who failed to bond with it as Wesker and Excella envisioned. By all accounts it would have only bonded with one-millionth of one percent of the world's population. Seven-thousand people would have evolved and be left in a world filled with horrible genetic mutations that would likely tear them apart. I'm never going to get used to the ideas of the insane. Yet somehow I doubt that's a world the Red Death wants and it's been bugging me in the back of my mind how quickly those responsible were sold out and arrested. Like its forces were helping us to make sure knowledge of this was suppressed and the group that could recreate it would never get a chance to.

Whatever the case a literal Apocalypse was averted and the world is going through yet another watershed moment.

On a personal note, Kyra has successfully teleported the five largest gems back to the magic mansion and turned the rest into piles of smaller gems, save a few shavings that can be used to build the new scanners I've already been designing in my head. If I'm right we could field test new versions in as little as a year. Refining the design will take far longer, though. Two or three at least. And given the mistrust generated by the Genesis Scanners it may take a great deal longer for most field agents to trust them enough to use them.

Kyra will remain here as a "special consultant" long enough to finish teleporting the gems before heading home. I forgot she hates roughing it unless there's a hot shower and soft bed to greet her at the end of the day. Meanwhile I'm staying here to make sure the hypothesis about salt from a lifeless source truly will permanently kill off the flowers. Plus there are still Majini and other BOWs lurking around. We can't leave the region until they've been completely destroyed and all of TriCell's assets have been seized or destroyed. Plus we're getting heat from eco-groups like Green Peace over the accidental destruction of the gas and oil refineries still spewing toxic smoke into the air. Looks like I've got to put on my best face and explain that we weren't the ones who destroyed those; that was Irving trying to kill Chris, Sheva, and Joshua.

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, March 28, 2009)
It feels so good to be home! No more press conferences to mollify people, no more watching as flowers wilt and roots shrivel, and several thousand Ndipaya given the tools to rebuild their culture to what it was prior to Umbrella and then TriCell. That much, at least, has brought some good out of this whole fiasco. The continuing investigations into several corporations and even governments, as well as the hype surrounding TriCell's rapid dissolution and tribunals trying and sentencing those who knew about Excella Gionne's activities, are proving to be a circus. Just as the world needs a scapecoat for its woes it gets one and blames every problem under the sun as well as some things made up on them.

Leave it to the sheeple to miss the point. I don't think most even realize TriCell is being ripped apart because of bio-weapons research. They just want to vent their frustrations. At least some groups have kept the real reasons in mind. Congress is going through a purge as members who have any associations with TriCell or other GPC companies are thrown out of office and elections are held to replace them. The BSAA now has several different armament companies competing for juicy contracts to supply arms, armor, materiel, and technology to the point of undercutting themselves in the hopes of being associated with us. Top-grade items at lowball prices with the nasty stipulations in any contracts made that these prices remain set even as the quality still has to meet harsh standards.

Recruitment into the BSAA has doubled across the world as well. Oversight groups to watch the corporations for any signs of research into bio-weapons and viral weaponry have been created across the world as well. It's going to be hard for them to continue mucking around with things best left forgotten.

Only that's just a part of it. Terrorist groups, rogue states, even factions within nations are still not being watched carefully enough. The Family is still out there, with Simmons being a trusted friend of Pres. Benford. Even though she's now technically free, Sherry Birkin hasn't been allowed a normal life and is still under the government's yoke as an agent reporting to Simmons directly. Leon has even written me e-mails reporting that Simmons is visibly disgusted by her charitable and kind nature. Only an utter sociopath would find either repulsive, and it took us ten years to kill one with the same sort of god complex he possesses.

As much as we would all love to believe it's over, none of us truly believes that. If anything this whole affair is just a prelude to things to come. Things can, and most definitely will, get much worse. But when that time comes there will be those of us unwilling to stand by and watch. The evils yet to be unleashed will find that their foes are all the stronger for what we've endured.
(End transcript)
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, June 30, 2009)
In terms of events that have happened lately it's been too long since I wrote in this journal. But for months I've been working long hours, sometimes overnight, to create the prototype of what will become the successor to the Genesis Scanner, the Dawn Scanner. The name "Genesis" is far too loaded for BSAA members, but I did like the connotations of "beginning." So I took a synonym for it distant enough not to cause outright rejection. The hardest part was assembling the casing for the plutonium. It's tiny and had to be done while wearing a radsuit. The diamond lens acts as both the output for the gamma-radiation-turned-synchrotron-radiation and a shield, but the body must be lead to completely shield things. This prototype is also fairly large given that I had to use commercial-grade electronics as opposed to the microelectronics used by the military; the bulk of it is just the computer designed to interpret the scans and turn it into a display on a plasma screen on the body. Eventually I plan on making it a waist- or wrist-mounted unit connected to a computer monocle, but that's ambitious just yet. As is it's the size of a geiger counter and weighs a hefty ten pounds.

I shipped the final product off a week ago to BSAA HQ at the UN Building, along with schematics for a future version. Today I got a call back saying the talking heads were impressed enough to go ahead and give further development the green light. The problem is that the diamond lenses are of a quality very few manmade diamonds can match in terms of molecular lattice density. That's the key to turning the plutonium's gamma radiation into synchrotron radiation without a particle accelerator. Thus the lenses will end up costing more than natural diamonds of the same karats. That's close to twenty-five-million dollars apiece. Throw in the cost of microelectronics as well as the titanium alloy to act as housing and it rises to thirty-million dollars for one Dawn Scanner. The advancement of technology will no doubt lower the price significantly in years to come but that's no consolation. At least the heart of it--the lead encasing the lens and plutonium--is modular and can be swapped to new units as technology improves. And as I predicted using Moore's Law, it will be two years before a field-worthy version is even possible.

Meanwhile things have been happening that I did and didn't expect. TriCell has been dismantled in record time and the vast majority of its research and samples destroyed. Mostly by the company itself. Their computers have had their buffers electronically shredded ten passes each several times. It's impossible to recreate whatever they held. This, however, wasn't enough to save those in the know from what was gathered. The Gionne name is mud in Europe's aristocracy, the shells and fronts the company operated have been exposed, and most of their assets have been granted to the BSAA and Nigeria. Unfortunately a few samples and research files were leaked onto the black market before we could lock things down.

There is strong evidence that one of the countless micro-states in the Baltics, the Eastern Slav Republic, has samples, facilities, and research notes to continue the experiments and BOW production. They're also engaged in a civil war and many of the same rumors say the rebels have gained access to the Plagas, Viruses, and some BOWs. For now the BSAA is too busy handling the fallout of TriCell's rapid dissolution to investigate. Plus there are some bizarre rumors about the ESR's President, Svetlana Belikova. She's believed to be sponsoring terrorism and may be attempting to branch into bioterrorism. One rumor is that she was a trainer for the same shadowy organization that trained Ada Wong. I can't determine anything about Wong prior to her work for a rival of Umbrella in 1998 so I have no clue where to even start looking for information. If she's even half as good as Ada, I pity whoever goes up against her.

Speaking of Ada, she insisted that she hand-deliver a final file on the Family a month ago. We met in Chicago where she insisted we spar for it. I can this: she is good! Her style makes use of a woman's more flexible build to perform acrobatic maneuvers that took me years of conditioning to do. But I wasn't in the mood to mess around and countered her moves hard enough to send her spinning to the ground. I'm not sure why she insisted on it, but she did hand the file over. For a good four weeks I just sat on it. The Dawn Scanner was my priority. With a working prototype as well as plans for a smaller, all-around better version the folks in R&D can handle it from here.

The file turned out to have details on current Family members in light of the dissolution of TriCell. Not all of them were able to wash their hands of things, men--no women, this really is an Old Boys Club--who are even now hiding in fear of "liquidation." Assassinating members to maintain their secrecy. It shouldn't surprise me the Family would be so ruthless. But it's a major gain for me as I can have these men arrested on suspicions of aiding and abetting bioterrorism just to get them to talk in exchange for deals. Provided what they can tell me is worth anything. Other things included are details of off-shore accounts, hidden deposits of hard and liquid assets, and similar things. Given the state of the world economy I'm sure many countries would love to get their hands on the money; the hard assets will need to be seized so no one can use them. Stock manipulations of virtual shares in precious metal reserves have made actual metals and other valuables far more important and much, much more stable. Giving the Family stability is the last thing its opponents want.

All that, though, will take time. I can't afford to let the Family know who is attacking them or from where. I'm not afraid of them coming for me, but the thought of them going after Kyra, Sarah, or my friends terrifies me. Yet they can't be allowed to continue. They're the keys that unlocked the Pandora's box of bio-weapons. So they're the ones who must ultimately pay for it.
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

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(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Aug. 9, 2009)
Things have finally begun to settle down around the world after the Kijuju Incident. The Family is still cleaning house but has begun to notice the drain on its funds. That's actually intentional. More than a few members were skimming off the top, so it was easy to tap into their own backdoors and begin incriminating them even as the funds are now "lost" in cyberspace but then reappear in the accounts of relief organizations, charities, and even within organizations within countries like the US and many parts of Europe, often public education and law enforcement. At the same time they've found their own stores of hard assets--gold, silver, precious gems, I could go on--ordered to be transferred and then disappearing in transit when it fails to be declared at port. Paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, and other items have been "mistakenly" donated to museums. Owners of these pieces can't ask for them back without looking bad and causing investigations that they don't want. Everything else has been stored securely, undeclared, and essentially gone.

The results have been much as I predicted. The Family is at each other's throats as they blame each other for the lost money and items. Worse, for them, is that their own scams to manipulate the value of precious metals have come back to haunt them. Whistle blowers I didn't know about have used this chaos to come forward. Investigations into the illegal trading has caused more of the Family to be cut away like a lizard shedding its tail. The core, the ones with the true power, are scrambling to save themselves. Even more delightful is an investigation into Simmons. His sick obsession with Ada has come to their attentions, as has the hundreds of billions of dollars he's been spending. They can't just cut him out without causing more trouble as he has schemes in place to make sure that they go down if he does. Efforts on their part to compensate may take years but it will be time, energy, and dwindling money they can ill afford to spend.

As for myself, I've been making up for the months I spent working to Kyra. I must admit I missed her and our time together. Not all of it in the bedroom. Going out to restaurants, to see movies, even time at the Black Kitty Cat Club. Plus Jill has asked me to help her with "dream therapy." All those years spent dominated have left her with post-traumatic stress and regular psychiatry and psychology isn't helping. This is something no mundane doctor can understand and treat. The first step has been to help her accept the memories, to face them and accept the ugly truths. Within our dreams we're at our most vulnerable and all I can do is act as a guide. She's tough, tougher than most. Yet progress is invariably slow no matter who it is. Especially with damage this bad.

Chris has consistently turned down even the idea of a psychiatric evaluation. Even after finding Jill he's become fanatic in opposing bioterrorism and BOWs. None of us have pushed the issue but it's just a matter of time before he has a nervous breakdown at this rate. How long--Weeks? Years?--is another question. For now he's heading actions against the black market and seized a number of viral weapons, research, and even scientists. It's certainly cut down the number of people who could develop and use the Viruses and BOWs. Yet it's the stuff that isn't on the black market I'm worried about. The groups that possess what we couldn't capture are what keep me up at night.

Plus if what I learned in Silent Hill is correct then May of next year is when Brianna and Maxine will catch up to me through the gate. The location, so close to what was Raccoon City, is still still hot with radiation strong enough to kill in minutes. I've got a very narrow window to use a teleportation circle to go in, grab them, and get them out in time for Kyra to heal them of any radiation poisoning before it kills them. I don't even want to think about how we're going to help them acclimate to this world. The level of technology, the culture, the nature of this world is all so alien even to that of the Land of Mists it's hard for me to comprehend what their reactions will be. Kyra, at least, has experienced the shock of seeing a world with technology so advanced to almost any other place in the multiverse it boggles the mind. She may be a bigger help than I could hope to be.

For now all I can do is take things as they come. Here's hoping the future turns out brighter.
(End transcript)
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

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(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Oct. 18, 2009)
Leave it to the BSAA's R&D division to pull off a minor miracle. No one expected the prototypes of the Dawn Scanners to be ready this soon but they are. Only there are two problems. Just ten exist and, aside from myself, no agent wants to touch them. Stories of the Genesis Scanners mean that these newer, infinitely safer versions are not trusted. Even financial incentives for agents to test them in real field conditions have met with failure. Or rather, some have answered the call but they're spread across the States and one is in England. Given that the hearts of these things are a multi-million dollar investment they can't afford to break them up across multiple branches. It still remains to be seen how this will work out.

Meanwhile the dream therapy with Jill has revealed some rather disturbing insights into how the Uroboros Virus worked. While she was still under Wesker's total control, Jill administered the Virus to natives to see if anyone had compatible genetics. No one did and the Virus would reject its host violently, forming into a mass of black, worm-like lengths using the tissues of the host itself. This explains the BOW Chris and Sheva faced when they found Alpha Team torn apart. Guilt over these incidents has left her with nightmares and she hasn't been sleeping much. That's only going to make things worse and make her problems feed on themselves. So I've prescribed the strongest sedative I can think of: chloral hydrate, or "knockout drops" from the old cartoons. She insisted on the syrup in lieu of more pills. That's her choice but I've tasted it before and warned her it's vile! Sickly sweet and medicinal in the worst ways. The next day she mentioned that I'd been right about the taste. But it works. For now, at least, she can sleep.

She's also convinced Chris to at least talk to someone. From preliminary notes his own doctor has taken it looks like he's on the razor's edge of his own breakdown. Only his personality is far less stable. If he does suffer a break it will likely lead to a violent drinking habit. No one can convince him to cut back on his missions, never mind taking a vacation or mood stabilizers. He's taken on a team, the best of the best, but he acts overly protective of them. Sooner or later we're going to face an enemy that we aren't prepared for, encounter a situation no one anticipated, or someone is going to screw up. How will he react to deaths that he has no way of preventing if he can't even remember the first two rules of war? That people die and no one can change that?

Closer to home I've been consulted by the President himself on an anti-bioterrorism agency under US government control. The idea was proposed by--surprise, surprise--Derek Simmons. Have they forgotten the disaster of the Federal Bioterrorism Commission's handling of Terragrigia? No, likely they still remember. This is about power. More specifically, Simmons' power. Benford is a good man but he's an idealist. He can't imagine the darkness behind people like Simmons and that will prove to be his undoing. If others with his ethics and morals were in power I'd be able to believe this has any possible outcome besides disaster. But there aren't. And I can't. So I've recommended he put Leon on a short list for potential agents. Someone with the nerve to do what's right and what's all too necessary. He won't even consider my recommendation that Simmons be locked out of this. He is the National Security Advisor, after all.

All the while it's getting closer and closer to the BKC Club's annual Halloween party. Kyra and Sarah both are dressing up for the costume party as a dual entry, but I drew the short straw for that week and will be on on the BSAA's equivalent of "call." Namely I'm to be ready for a mission at a moment's notice. So while they get to go have fun I'm stuck waiting for something that's all too likely not to happen. I missed Mardis Gras this year because I was working, now I have to miss Halloween? Heads are going to roll for this.
(End transcript)
Last edited by High Priest Mikhal on Sun May 31, 2020 8:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

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(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Jan. 4, 2010)
Poor Kyra. She had a little too much to drink at the BKC New Year's party and is still recovering even days later. Yet our jobs wait for no one. At least the last couple months were quiet. Time to recover for a new year that promises to be so much more fun! Especially when Brianna and Maxine arrive. I've managed to assemble a crude but effective decon chamber that will suffice for cleaning their clothing and exteriors of any trace radiation. But they'll still need heal spells to negate any in their systems. Now we wait.

This is also a day I've been quietly dreading. Just after my last entry one of the investigators tried to tell me something about Carla Radames. Frankly after the year I'd had I didn't want to hear it until after the New Year. Now I've heard: Radames disappeared at the end of April last year. We'd tracked her to an eastern coastal area of China called Lanshiang where she'd been conducting her experiments on cloning Ada from local women. We were able to find that over twelve-thousand attempts had failed. That's twelve-thousand innocent women abducted, subjected to this C-Virus, and potentially mutated into some sort of BOW. Then one day she disappears without any sort of trace? That doesn't make any sense. She's the only one who knows--to my knowledge--of how to create the C-Virus. Simmons should have erupted at the loss of his pet researcher and one hope of cloning Ada.

Unless he ordered her to be used as a template.

Records of Radames' DNA profile we'd recovered from government records before Simmons had her transferred to a private facility were compared to the profile of Ada Wong extracted when I got a single hair from her in that meeting in Chicago. I can see the reasoning behind using women of Chinese descent as templates, but the truth is that genetics are not that predictable. People of a similar genetic makeup can come from any ethnicity. And that's exactly what Simmons must have discovered. Comparing the two there was less than one-millionth of one percent difference in their DNA. Enough that they were distinct people, but close enough for the C-Virus to work. That madman has likely succeeded!

Yet genetics are not the whole, or even the majority, of personality. They do help shape it but the majority is entirely nurture. But the C-Virus is derived from the T-Veronica, the one able to rewrite neural structures and unlock psionic power as evidenced by Alexia Ashford in the Antarctic. It isn't inconceivable a clone would be a mental tabula rasa and able to be shaped and molded. If so then Radames would truly believe she was Ada Wong. On the proviso that all traces of her old memory had been eradicated. Otherwise she would go insane as two different personalities tried to work on the same mind. Something less akin to multiple personalities than schizophrenia where she hears voices. How is that going to play out?

If she truly believes she's Ada then tracking her is going to be doubly difficult. Telling who the real Ada is from the clone won't be easy. Their voice, mannerisms, faces and bodies, even DNA and fingerprints--her prints!--will be identical. Not even identical twins have the same fingerprints. We can't rely on traditional physical forensics. We'll have to rely on psychology. The real Ada is more than a little independent and hates Simmons. Her clone will likely be what he idealizes Ada as. Far more obsequious, slavishly devoted to him, and potentially psychotic. I'll need anything that gives me an insight into her personality before her transformation to build a feasible profile. Research notes would be the most prolific if she's gone through twelve-thousand-plus subjects aiding Simmons. Yet they're likely locked away in the research lab in Lanshiang. All of our data indicates it's in a quad tower there, with the government and local authorities paid to look the other way as well as cold databases only intermittently connected to any external system. Planting a virus to gather copies of the data will be difficult, as will knowing if and when it will have a chance to send anything before it's discovered and destroyed.

This is not what I need at the beginning of another year.

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, March 12, 2010)
The computer virus was able to infiltrate the systems today during a brief--mere nanoseconds--connection to the outside. It's been programmed to gather copies of the oldest data first and work forwards in time. Meanwhile I was able to dig up some records on Radames before she became the pet researcher of Simmons. This woman is a genius; even Rebecca Chambers hadn't earned a doctorate by fifteen. She's been working for Simmons for nine years now, isolating the mutagenic components of the T-, G-, T-Veronica, and T-Abyss Viruses. All in the hope of creating of a newer, more potent version. But it was the neutralized G-Virus in Sherry Birkin's bloodstream, coupled with the T-Veronica, that truly created the earliest C-Virus. Samples of the Progenitor Virus taken from TriCell before last year have only amplified its properties of rapid mutation. The T-Abyss was seen transforming fish in seconds, but that was fish. More complex forms of life still took time, as demonstrated by Rachael Foley on the Queen Zenobia, though at scant minutes that's still millions of times faster than the original T-Virus.

Early mutation times of the first C-Virus put the Chrysalis gestations at one to three minutes for a creature with a severely compromised system. Mutation on par with what it would take to clone Ada is unknown. It could be minutes or it could be days. It's hard to know with such dated notes. Early attempts put gestation at times as long as twenty-four hours, though by the end of just the first year that was halved.

Yet even these early notes have offered insight into her personality. She was cold to begin with and after all these years I can only assume she's become downright cruel. Her intellect is off the charts and she shows signs of being patient, calculating, and cunning to a frightening degree. She prefers to out-think her opponents and use technology over brawn. If she does begin to suffer the schizophrenia I suspect she will then she'll just be all the more dangerous for a lack of anything anyone else could call "logic." Yet there may be a method to her madness before it manifests. The memories of her past self would likely blame Simmons and the Family for betraying her as she no doubt felt when she was made into the last template. The Family made the world into what it is today: industrialized, capitalist, ordered to an insane degree of bureaucracy. What better way to get revenge than to throw the world into chaos? But how? Certainly the C-Virus will play a role but beyond that I can't say for certain. Reliable dispersal of any Virus, save the T-Abyss, has been the key problem. Unlike smallpox or other such diseases they can't be airborne; the cell walls are too weak to survive exposure.

Liquid is feasible. The T-Abyss was able to survive in water and would have spread through the ocean if it ever got out, destroying the food chain from the bottom up. But the spread to land was slow even with BOWs haunting the remains of the Queen Dido on the ocean floor. And then it was only dead and half-dead remains that appeared. Without samples to examine I can only surmise a critical flaw exists in the T-Abyss that prevented its spread when the Queen Dido went down.

Another outbreak like Raccoon City is always possible but that would be isolated at best and then quickly "sterilized" before it spread. Likewise the Harvardville Outbreak was due to infection of a passenger on an airliner with the slower T-Virus. New security measures would protect the pilot and co-pilot from infection anyway.

Solving the problem of getting the Virus airborne seems to be the only way she'll ever cause the level of widespread chaos necessary to threaten the Family. Given her keen mind I can easily see her overcoming even that given time and enough resources. She'd need a team of researchers as well as more money than God. Or the Family! Oh, hell! She could already be working on her plans!

All I can do is pray the computer virus gets something. And Brianna and Maxine are supposed to arive in this world in just five weeks. Things are coming together at the worst possible time.
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, May 21, 2010)
What do you know? Those...things in Silent Hill were right. Brianna and Maxine appeared at the same spot I did as the math said. Only the area is now not far from ground zero of the only attack by a nuclear weapon on an American city. By the American government, no less. I used to wonder why they would nuke the area. A fuel-air explosive would have been just as effective. Now I know and I can't get proof of it because the area is too hot even for me to get close to for more than a few minutes.

Being there brought back all the memories. Of training STARS, of the Estates, the outbreak, all of it. How many people died because of the government's aid in researching bio-weapons? How many others who might have survived but not escaped then died after the "sterilization?" All those feelings of mistrust--of hate--for the government have returned. But I can't do anything. If I tried it'd be the FBI, CIA, NSA, and a dozen other alphabet-soup agencies coming down on me. No justice. Not yet, at least.

For the scant minutes I was there waiting for Brianna and Maxine to appear I began to feel sick. If not for Kyra's spells all three of us would likely be dead. Yet we survived and were able to fully decon. Yet it was after that the full shock of where we were hit the two. In the rush I didn't have time to explain much to the girls. Yet afterwards was when the full, horrific reality set in. They'd escaped with me, as they'd expected, but for them it's been a matter of moments. For me it's been thirty long years. Worse is that we didn't escape completely. Instead one prison has been traded for another. This time one where supernatural powers of any kind are largely unknown and draw massive amounts of attention.

For hours Kyra and I explained what we could. About us, about this world, about the reality that so few realized existed just beyond their perceptions. Understandably they were shocked, even in disbelief, but little things like TV, computers, and electricity showed them that this was no joke. It took me back to my own arrival, but Kyra did prove to be more of an aid in helping them take the first steps towards adjustment. They have no reference for what exists here, and neither did Kyra. Yet she was able to quickly adapt and learn the necessary truths, albeit aided by the OSA. I can only hope they do, too. There are things going on that I can't dismiss for too long in order to help them. Worst possible timing...

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, May 30, 2010)
I may have underestimated their resilience. Brianna and Maxine both are adjusting to this world a lot quicker than I gave them credit for. Admittedly there are things they'll need time to learn--like how to drive--but they're already familiar with most things. Perhaps the hardest has been telling them about the realities of terrorism--of the BSAA, of the World Trade Center attacks, of my part in fighting bioterrorism after the Estates and the Raccoon City Incident. Both have expressed their interests in joining us in our respective fights. In reality it's little different than what we did in the Shining Force, only this time we're recognized and must abide by national and international laws. It puts a real hamper on our old techniques. But not by much, truthfully.

Of the two, I had expected Brianna to join me in the BSAA and Maxine to join Kyra at the OSA. In truth it's the opposite; as a paladin Brianna has abilities that can't easily be explained away and she's aware of that. As a monk, Maxine's abilities are sufficiently subtle--mostly--that she can take more public scrutiny. She'll still need to undergo formal training, and I'll need to create an identity for her so she's "in the system," but that's actually pretty easy to do. What won't be easy is getting her assigned as my partner after the training. As a captain I can't take someone who isn't at least a first lieutenant as a partner. Promotions during training can take her as high as sergeant but a full officer's commission is another matter.

Unless she agrees to join me in the squad still being formed to test and use the Dawn Scanners.

Last week the talking heads announced they'd found more than enough people willing to take their chances in exchange for doubled salaries. They've left it up to me to screen those I feel will be the best suited. With myself and Maxine that's two positions filled, eight left. And there are twenty-four applicants. This is a squad meant for far more than merely testing prototype gear; if the scanners work as I hope, we'll be responsible for collecting practical intelligence on the foes that the BSAA will be facing in the field. Especially new BOWs. I know Maxine has what it takes but I'm not so sure who else does. Even Chris is looking suspect lately. So I've been designing a sort of training regimen to weed out those who can't handle the stress, who lack the ethical and moral integrity, and even the sheer physical and mental strength. And I have to choose by the end of the year.

Already the new squad has earned the derogatory name "Gamma Squad." Others think we'll die of gamma radiation poisoning using technology rooted in the ideas of the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium. That really sets my teeth grinding. I designed the Dawn Scanners to accomplish more than the Genesis Scanners ever did and in a much safer way. So I have a vested interest in this. If I can make Gamma Squad a name to be proud of, that should silence my detractors. For that I'll need the best of the best.

But that can wait until after Maxine's been through training. And, admittedly, after more driving lessons.

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Sept. 4, 2010)
Maxine has made me proud. She graduated at the top of her platoon and more than earned her place in the BSAA. Now she's officially my partner. During her training, though, it became policy for agents to begin wearing portable cameras during official BSAA business so HQ can keep tabs on them. Admittedly the broadcasts are highly encrypted, but I find the idea a little disturbing. No encryption is perfect and it does feel like a violation of privacy. But it does serve with my journals to include recordings now and again. Like today's little "orientation" for those hoping to join in the newly forming Gamma Squad.

//Begin File Attachment//

::View of a group of people in BSAA fatigues milling about and talking amongst themselves. Cut to the close-up view of a redhead woman wearing a bandanna::

Alexander Archer: I've always hated this.

Maxine Summers: You'll do fine. Remember, this is to separate the wheat from the chaff.

AA: I know. Well, here goes.

::Camera moves to a folding metal chair, which is picked up as the camera cuts to the crowd. A loud crashing is heard as the group instantly forms a neat line::

AA: Welcome, potential Gamma Squad recruits! I am Captain Alex Archer. But you will address me as Captain or sir. This is my second-in-command, Lieutenant Summers. You will address her as Lieutenant or ma'am. Is that perfectly clear?!

Group: Sir! Yes, Sir!

AA: Good. Now that that's clear, let's cut to the chase. Beginning today you will be given training supplemental to what you've already received in the BSAA. You will be tested constantly. On your abilities, on your scruples, on your tolerance for (deleted) that would send most others to the nut house! You may think you've seen some (deleted) up (deleted) on your missions before. But I'm here to tell you that is nothing! The Lieutenant and I have seen things, faced enemies and situations that none of you can imagine in your worst (deleted) nightmares! Some of you joined as a promise of doubled wages. If that's your only reason I kindly invite you to get the hell out now! Gamma Squad won't just be about testing the Dawn Scanners and other experimental gear. We'll be the ones responsible for the worst (deleted) storms that bioterrorists throw at us, the ones who go in and gather information on the bad guys so those who come after us won't get themselves killed because someone in Intelligence couldn't have had a clue about the new monsters we'll face!

::Image pans across the group::

AA: One last thing before you're put through the wringer. I will not tolerate (deleted) from my unit! That includes sexual harassment, bigotry, and other such things! So forget about gender, skin color, religion, ethnicity, or any of that. This is your only warning. One of you steps out of line, all of you will pay the price. That goes for all of you now and for those who make it out of the training. The person who causes trouble will earn demerits. Too many and you're out. No second chances, no bargains, no exceptions. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the abattoir. If you make it, I'll see you again in three months. Dismissed!

//End File Attachment//

If it sounds like I laid it on thick, the truth is I didn't. The nine kinds of hell they'll go through will be a warm up for the kinds of missions we'll be facing. Few things are more terrifying than the unknown. And that's what we'll be dealing with. Like I said, we're charged with finding out what we can about new BOWs. Sometimes even the Dawn Scanners won't be enough. Gathering tissue samples will be required. And given what I've seen of the Neo Plagas, as well as reports on how exothermic the C-Virus is, those samples will need to come from "live" subjects. Regardless of if the subject actually is alive or not.

At the earliest the lot of them will be ready by December. And even then I hope to give those who make it some time off. Then there's my ongoing maneuvers against the Family. By now they've got a lock on their hard assets and have eliminated several of the computer bots draining money from their accounts. Some of their lessers have had their own assets seized by those with power enough to do so. Yet even this has had fallout they didn't expect. New financial laws are making it harder for them to simply explain away their gains as the public trust in the system continues to drop to all-time lows. At least three members have been hung out to dry when questions about virtual gold shares revealed there was no gold. Even the government is feeling the pinch even as they release "gold proof" coins less than one percent actual gold and work through fronts to obtain gold from citizens by "cash for gold" schemes. Times are looking desperate, and desperation is when people make mistakes. Mistakes that will likely involve the BSAA. After all, countries that have consistently bought up gold and silver reserves--like China, India, North Korea--will gladly trade them back for things like the secrets of bio-weapons development. Gold won't exactly help you kill your perceived enemies; it just buys the things that do.
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Maria Santos, Bahamas, Oct. 3, 2010) (Part One of Two)
Maxine and I got a call to investigate a cruise liner that had gone silent in the Bahamas after a frantic radio call said passengers and crew alike were going crazy, attacking people, and seeing hallucinations of "ghosts" and "spirits." Naturally the authorities think it's bioterror-related. But as I reviewed the course the ship plotted I saw that they'd passed through the Devil's Triangle--more commonly known as the Bermuda Triangle. Even during my time at the Office I never learned a lot about the place. Expeditions by them and other paranormal agencies had identified the area as being practically soaked in mystic energies. In particular energies from the Negative Energy Plane. The entropic energies would explain why electronics failed without any scientific reason, and that area is known for sudden, severe weather in mere moments at the best of times.

But the majority of the world doesn't profess belief in the supernatural. No, it has to be some sort of mundane reason. Plus the charter company was sending in their own team as well. We were to liaise with them and figure out what happened together. It was like something out of Lost Voyage (which I rather liked, even if most people didn't). Frankly I was sure this wasn't some act of bioterrorism. Yet the BSAA insisted we check it out. Officially because I was one of the more senior members and Maxine needed field experience; unofficially even the BSAA has become quite aware that the supernatural is real and they know some of its agents are better equipped to tackle such. Whatever the reason it was from on high and they were offering a substantial bonus. After the shopping spree Brianna and Maxine went on for clothes shortly after arriving my credit card is in dire need of a transfusion of money. So much in hard assets that I can't declare...

//Begin File Attachment//
::Images of a helicopter interior as well as five men armed with assault rifles, another unarmed and visibly overweight with a greasy mustache::

Alex Archer: Gamma One to HQ. How's the feed?

HQ: HQ here. Feed's good, signal is strong. We're picking up atmospheric disturbances converging on your location. It looks like an electrical storm.

::Camera pans to a window with clear skies::

AA: No visual confirmation on that. But my ears are popping. There's definitely a pressure change going on.

HQ: Copy that. We may lose contact during the storm. Keep those cameras recording. HQ out.

Man 1: (in Australian accent) So what's the high and mighty BSAA doing on this mission? The sea makes people flip out all the time. There's no bioterrorism here.

Maxine Summers: Tell that to the yapping heads.

AA: Talking heads.

MS: Whatever. They want us to confirm there's no biological agent at work.

::Camera pans upwards and back, followed by a blue flask appearing briefly::

Man 2: (American accent) Not a good idea to mix seasickness pills with booze. But how about a swig?

AA: It's not booze. I'm allergic.

Man 2: Right. Just give it here.

::Flask is handed over::

Man 2: This thing's ice cold. Electric?

AA: Materials used to make it.

::The man takes a gulp, then spits it out violently. Others laugh::

Man 2: (Deleted)! This is cold coffee!

AA: Told you. And these are ginger pills, not pharmaceuticals.

Man 6: You know the rules. Do the job first, get drunk second. And you.

::Man 6 stares directly at Alex::

Man 6: What the hell is with that weapon? Does the BSAA always equip its agents with bizarre items?

AA: This happens to be something that was custom-made just for me as a reward for exemplary service. And not to the BSAA but another organization I belonged to before that. Long before.

Pilot: Target spotted. ETA two minutes. Strap in, we're hitting some turbulence.

::All six men pull down harness straps and click them into receivers. Image shakes violenty as the chopper hits rough air::

AA: This is starting out well.
//End File Attachment//

The storm had begun to stir the waters and make the ship dangerous to land on. We had to rappel down, which was something of a struggle for the fat man. I didn't really trust any of them, but he made my instincts scream there was something very, very wrong. Why was he unarmed when his men were carrying military-grade gear? And why send someone so obviously out of shape on a dangerous mission like this? Something was going on that the charter company hadn't told us.

As for the ship itself, it resembled about a thousand other cruise liners. Deck pool, shuffleboard, railing on the sides, and deck chairs. What didn't make any sense was how...pristine it all looked. The radio call had reported mass violence and hysteria. But we'd never have known by the look of things. Further there were anomalous readings with the Dawn Scanners. Normally they're constantly picking up signs of ambient bacteria and fungi. But other than the eight of us there was nothing. The place was sterile enough to perform surgery. Another bad sign this ship was infected with negative energy. When even the most primitive life can't survive it's bad. The Near Ethereal was also lit up. More vividly than anything I could remember encountering. The lack of phantasms was another bad sign. No psychic impressions of people were visible.

Like I'd said, this was starting out well.

We barely had time to make it inside before the sky turned dark and opened up. Our first stop was the bridge. Aside from scattered charts and the captain's log on the floor it was as if nothing had happened. There was also no main power. The ship's engines were shut down even though backup power was showing half-full fuel tanks on a computer screen. Other than the navigational charters that matched up with satellite tracking there was just the captain's log.

His entries certainly didn't support the idea of bioterrorism. A week ago they'd made a cut through the Devil's Triangle after engine troubles. Things seemed fine at first. The next day held an entry about a passenger who had to be sedated after freaking out about where they'd gone. Then the day after reported the first "hallucinations." The captain seemed skeptical that these were truly hallucinations. Nobody hallucinates the exact same thing. Further these were crew and even passengers who reported the hallucinations at the exact same time. He chalked it up to a sick joke at the time.

The day after was when things picked up serious speed. Dozens more, both crew and passengers, reported the same hallucinations. Further one of the crew apparently snapped and began to shoot at anyone and everyone he saw. Ship security was forced to kill him to stop his rampage. Radio messages were sent but apparently never received. Over the next two days the hallucinations and rampages spread like a disease. Even the captain was seeing things. Two dozen passengers and half as many crew likewise went on sprees of murder using whatever they could acquire. Fire axes, large wrenches, golf clubs, even letter openers. An estimated thirty people died before the ship's security was able to subdue or neutralize the targets. Those that weren't shot were sedated and put in the brig. Radio messages were again sent, but no response.

Then the ship's navigation went haywire the next day as almost everyone was now seeing ghosts. Not hallucinations but actual ghosts. One person doesn't see someone talking to a hallucination and then see said hallucination themselves. That simply doesn't happen. Finally, just yesterday, the ghosts themselves turned violent. People were visibly aged until they turned to dust, others were thrown into "pits of utter darkness so deep they must surely be gateways to Hell." The log ends by saying that ninety-percent of the crew is unaccounted for and no passengers could be found. In one of the cabins they found a satellite phone and were able to get the message out just before a storm rolled in and cut off the signal. The captain's last orders were for the crew to hide and pray someone responded.

So we had around twenty possible survivors. Yet none of them were near a radio if they were still alive. Aside from the obvious supernatural factors, a couple things bothered me. What was wrong with the engines that they would cut through the Triangle? What had killed their powerful radio but not silenced a weaker satellite phone? And why was the fat man now intent on checking on the cargo hold instead of looking for survivors? At this point I didn't care what he and his men did as long as they didn't get in our way. Survivors were top priority and the captain's quarters were our first stop.

The door was locked and barricaded. But we could both hear movement on the other side. A prayer to the Virgin Mary. A simple knock and announcement of who we were was enough for the person on the other side to clear the doorway and let us in. Captain Jesus Antonio was alive if still scared out of his mind. His quarters were covered in drawings of the crucifix that looked recent. It was probably a wasted effort. What had likely kept the ghosts at bay was an altar case with both consecrate and hallow spells containing a death ward effect affixed to it. When I pointed it out he said it had been given to him by his grandmother, a bruja (witch) that worked minor miracles of healing and protection. Somehow both were permanent and untainted by the Red Death.

Stranger still is that he recognized me as a spirit. I couldn't lie to the man, his soul was pure. That seemed to put him more at ease than if I'd told him an army had arrived. In fact I got the feeling he'd be panicked if an army did arrive. Especially after what had happened to the majority of the people. Hearing that the charter company had sent the fat man and his cronies put him on edge again. William Bose, the fat man, was the one who'd ordered him to pick up some sort of cargo at St. George's, Bermuda port when the ship made its scheduled stop there. A large freight container guarded by men in military-grade armor and carrying assault weapons was loaded and he was told not to mention it in his log. He said the men reminded him of drug cartel soldiers in his native Mexico. He'd planned to tell the authorities when the ship arrived at Puerto Vallarta but then they had the engine problems that led to this whole ghost business.

What little he did learn was that the cargo had been smuggled out of Afghanistan. Most likely it was pure heroin, and enough to fill a freight container would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars on the streets. Before it was cut to stretch the supply. That would push it into the billions in potential profit. Potentially more if the market intended wasn't the streets but the upper crust who would pay a lot more to ensure a "clean" product. No wonder he'd been so eager to check on the cargo hold. If it was drugs then I couldn't let him have it. I would disintegrate the whole container if I had to. But that could wait; our first priority was simply surviving.
(End transcript)
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Maria Santos, Bahamas, Oct. 5(?), 2010) (Part Two of Two)
With the captain in tow we began using the Dawn Scanners to look for other survivors. The first mate's quarters held a nasty little surprise in the form of a mummified corpse wearing the tattered remains of a ship unform. By my estimates the body was two centuries old. An attack by a ghost? I've encountered some with attacks that age victims and anything they're wearing or holding. But if so, where was the ghost? In fact, where was any ghost? The Near Ethereal was empty. Not one spectral entity had been seen.

The first mate's diary held a clue. In three pages of his final entry the handwriting grew more and more unsteady as if the hand writing was becoming increasingly arthritic. The contents were also disturbing. In it he wrote about "feeling myself age years every minute." He seemed convinced he was seeing things like the USS Cyclops, the Carrol A. Deering, Flight Nineteen and the tanker sent to rescue them, even the Witchcraft. All had disappeared in the Devil's Triangle. It's possible he did see them; if the Near Ethereal becomes too charged it can cause temporal warping. That could explain how his corpse was also so aged.

His final words were, "Don't trust the ship. It's not a thing anymore. It's alive."

As we left I mulled over that until I ran smack into a wall that wasn't there before. The corridor had been cut off by a section that looked like part of the ship. After that near miss with the ceiling coming down and the doors reflecting a disintegration ray I wasn't about to risk it. That was merely a Sinkhole of Evil; this place was even more charged. A phantasmagorum. I'd encountered one before and counted myself lucky to escape alive. Now I was trapped on one as a ship! And the issue with the fat man and his heroin was still to be resolved. Forget pressing charges, we had to get out of here!

A sudden return of the power scared us all a bit. The crackling of the ship's intercom was likewise a startle. The man with the Australian accent was trying to raise us. His relief was palpable when I responded. There was something he wanted us to see but we were still sweeping for survivors. He then said he'd meet up with us but not where. The most likely place would be the passenger cabins. And after that incident with the first mate's corpse we weren't going to investigate a place unless we got life signs. Sadly there were none in the officer's cabins or the crew cabins as we headed towards the passenger area. The man, Quint Arkham, was able to shed some light on the situation regarding Mario Pecci, the fat man.

//Begin File Attachment//
::Face of Quint Arkham in the wood panel corridor of the ship appears::

AA: What's this about.

QA: (holds up a bag of white powder) This is what Pecci hired me and my mates to help him find. Pure heroin. There must be a couple kilotons in a container in the hold. And look at the stamp.

::Camera pans to a stylized stamp of a snake::

QA: This same stamp was on a bag of heroin that my sister overdosed on. The (deleted) a Mafia drug lord! Wanted by Interpol and several nations as well. There's a six-million dollar bounty on his head.

AA: So what do you need me for? Just have your men overwhelm him and take the bounty.

QA: That's just it. He's paying us two-million each. And my men are mercenaries first and last. Money talks, (deleted) walks. I know the BSAA works under Interpol, mate. You can arrest him.

AA: Have you looked around?! Two-hundred passengers and all the crew except the captain gone! We've got bigger problems right now! Where would I even put him if I did arrest him?

Jesus Antonio: The brig's on the same level as the cargo hold. We could put him there.

QA: And my men if they don't agree. I was looking for an excuse to get out of ther merc business. Think the BSAA could use an old hand at combat?

AA: (sighs) We'll discuss that after we get out of here. For now let's take care of Pecci. And your men if it comes to that.
//End File Attachment//

We made our way to the cargo hold where Pecci and the other four mercs were gathered at the gate to a freight container. Pecci put on a good act of civility and asking what happened to all the passengers and crew. But it crumbled when I drew the Sun Gun and declared him under arrest for drug smuggling. As Quint had predicted his men simply held up their assault rifles and acted to defend their new boss. I doubt any of them were expecting silver-white bolts of energy to be shot from my free hand, destroying their weapons instantly. And that close to the hull. It must not pay to be have brains as a mercenary.

I'd expected more of a fight as we escorted them to the brig and locked them all in one cell. I was not feeling very merciful just then and they were going to have to get used to a tiny cell with roommates. That is, if the ship didn't kill them. They were a distraction at worst compared to this ship. Figuring out what happened to the engines and communications came first. It turns out that had an explanation of sorts. Though the perpetrator of some very real sabotage did raise more of those unnerving questions.

Among the Afghani heroin there had been a stowaway, what looked to be a member of al-Qaeda. Only he, too, was a mummified corpse. He'd cut several cables linking comms to the outside array as well as blown the engine's control computer's electronics. A leather bag, now dry and tattered, holding bricks of plastique and detonators was next to him. In his hands was an aged copy of the Qu'ran printed on modern paper. On the last page was a message in Arabic.

"Allah has abandoned me and this ship. Shaytan has trapped me for what feels like days. I've not had food or water in all that time. But I saw it! The dark heart of this place. A pulsing black thing like the masses of infidels that threaten my people's way of life. It lies in the container I hid in. If I could just reach it I could destroy it..."

After that the writing trails off. The man died of thirst. A fate I wouldn't wish on anyone. But he'd left a vital clue. The freight container was the heart of the ethereal resonance. I knew terrorists did whatever it took to earn money for their actions, even forcing their own people into slavery to grow drugs like hashish, marijuana, and opium all while claiming it was to "free them from the oppression of the West." If only they knew how grateful their own people often were when armed forces moved in and displaced them...who's the real oppressor?

That much despair, hate, and sorrow focused on something would certainly create ethereal resonance. But not to this degree. This place was far too charged. Maybe passing through the Devil's Triangle gave it a massive jolt? The place is a locus of superstitious fears for millions of people around the world and has been for decades when its legend took off in the last century. The container may not be the source so much as the catalyst that triggered something admittedly rare even on this world. Destroy the heart of a phantasmagorum and the rest of it dies as well. So we destroy the freight container and all's well, right?

In a word, no. Even after disintegrating the entire thing and its contents the place was still charged. The heart was no longer the container; it was part of the ship's ethereal resonance. As I focused I could see the pulsing black mass the dead terrorist had spoken of. It was a bulbous, lumpy thing of rotten flesh. Screams issued from inside as faces pressed against it. It had trapped the souls of the crew and passengers! What kind of an abomination was this?! And what about the bodies? Where were they?

Captain Antonio answered that when he rested against a wall and began to be pulled in. Maxine and I had to pull with all of our might to free him from unseen dead hands. Living walls! When I cut into it the wall literally began to bleed as the illusion faded. No longer dull gray but a mass of half-melted flesh, bone, gristle, and blood. The ship had absorbed them into itself. Worse still was the blood; it formed itself into a vaguely humanoid shape and began to lash out at us. Yet the Sun Gun wasn't hurting it as much as I'd hoped. It was only when the captain threw a magnesium flare at it that it at all acted like it was in pain. I was getting sloppy forgetting such a basic weakness. Without even realizing it I'd withdrawn my flask and willed the contents to be kerosene before using one of my rings to cast burning hands and set the thing completely on fire.

Nothing smells quite like burning blood. A nauseating mix of copper and char that sticks in your nose long after the fire has burnt out.

One danger down, but we still had to deal with the ship itself. Now that it perceived us as threats it would stop at nothing to destroy us. Violence had created this thing, so violence would only give it power. Entering the Near Ethereal and cutting open the black heart would likely only serve to create more elementals. That's when it hit me. An act of peace and mercy would rupture the black heart and free the souls it held captive. But it would require entry into the Near Ethereal. Into its very backyard. There was also the chance I had it all wrong. But if we didn't stop it, it would reach port sooner or later and claim more victims.

I did what I had to do. I manifested psionic etherealness and stood before it, praying in the Words of Creation for the souls of the dead to find peace even as I overcharged a healing power to touch to it. When I finished my prayer I touched it with the blinding ball of positive energy in my hand. All at once the flesh of it turned gray and brittle even as I fell to the ground, barely able to cover my ears as it groaned and howled in agony. Then the flesh cracked as balls of light began to pour out and upwards, fading away. One stood before me, the face of a little boy, and said, "Thank you."

My time in the Near Ethereal ended and I was dumped back into the Material Plane. Quint and Maxine helped me up as my legs gave out under me. That was stupid of me, invoking a Wild Surge at the end. Now I was too weak to move by myself. Yet when I looked back at the wall the fusion of flesh was gone and only the char on the floor marked where the blood elemental had been. That's when I realized the captain wasn't there and looked around until the lights suddenly turned on again. The captain was able to replace the blown boards and even activated a bypass of the main cables on the comms array.

That's when I heard a crackling in my ear.

//Begin File Attachment//

HQ: HQ to Gamma. Come in.

AA: Gamma One to HQ. We copy.

HQ: Gamma, we lost your signal for two days. Is everything alright there?

AA: The situation has been res...two days?! We just landed on the ship six hours ago.

HQ: Negative, Gamma One. Two days have passed. We've even dispatched a search and rescue. Is everything okay?

AA: Situation resolved. It's...complicated, HQ. Can the team hone in on the ship's transponder?

HQ: Affirmative. A chopper is on its way.

AA: We also have a criminal wanted by Interpol in the ship's brig. Full credit for his capture goes to Quint Arkham and Captain Jesus Antonio. Arkham's men are also in the brig for conspiracy. Five perps in all.

HQ: Roger that. We'll alert the team to be ready to take them into custody. We're glad your back. HQ out.
//End File Attachment//

Two days? I suppose I should be grateful the temporal distortions weren't worse. And how were we going to explain where the bodies were?

It turns out that, aside from the corpse of the first mate and the terrorist, the bodies were back to where they'd fallen. Not as decomposed as would be thought but at this point I'm not asking too many questions. We'd survived, stopped a phantasmagorum, and brought an international criminal to justice. My strength is returning as I write this from the bridge. In reviewing the video it seems it captured everything. The living wall, the blood elemental, even my jaunt into the Near Ethereal. Likely it will be edited and cut so the truly weird stuff isn't there for the evidence against Pecci and the mercs. The fully copy...well, the OSA gets that, I guess. Just more weirdness that science and logic can't fully explain.

Note to self: do not go near the Devil's Triangle again. And if HQ asks for another seaborne mission, tell them where to stick it. I'm too old for this.
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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High Priest Mikhal
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Re: The Gothic Journals v2

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Nov. 17, 2010)
HQ can't make heads or tails of what we recorded. The time stamps are from when the cameras lost contact with the atomic clock in Boulder and just recorded time as it passed. They can be fooled but that requires hardware no one had access to. Save for those recordings and our word all the evidence is gone. The ship was scuttled and declared a danger zone when we got back. The friends and family of the passengers and crew are not happy. I can't blame them; they have no closure and didn't get a chance to say good-bye. Yet the authorities are right on one thing: that ship was a danger zone. I don't care if I killed the dark heart of it, nothing ever endures that kind of evil without some lingering taint.

Pecci has already been convicted of murder in the first degree, conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree, smuggling, and a veritable laundry list of other crimes as well in other countries. He never had time to get settled into prison, though. From what I'm told he was murdered in such a brutal way they had to use DNA testing to verify the pulpy remains. Organized crime is brutal but this speaks of a malevolence far worse. I think he was made an example of by something far more evil than the Mafia, something that felt the need to impress on the others what they had gotten themselves involved with. Even prison would have been a mercy compared to this.

When I joined the BSAA I had hoped my time dealing with supernatural evil was done, beyond the nature of the Viruses. Human evils are bad enough. Yet even here I find myself facing things I'm not able to fight as openly as I'd like. And as if to add insult to injury the BSAA has "awarded" me and Maxine both with promotions in rank. They practically had to force the clusters on me to get me to accept. A promotion? Just for surviving that ship of horrors? No, the ones who deserve all the recognition are Capt. Antonio and Quint Arkham for going above and beyond the call of duty. I just did my job. It's a backhanded insult to both me and Maxine and to those who died that we're recognized but they aren't. But try talking about honor, duty, and justice to bureaucrats. It's all about numbers to them. Not people, not lives, numbers.

As for the would-be members of Gamma Squad, fifteen have already dropped out after facing the ongoing training and trials. The only ones left are the eight I practically handpicked and one other, a cocky little thing who seems to be doing too well. Drug tests have come back negative but he's far too strong, too tough, and too agile for any normal human being. Which is why I paid them a surprise visit at the training facility in the desert of central Utah. It turns out he's been cheating with an enchanted pair of boots and a belt, things made here and thus tainted by the Red Death. It may seem hypocritical for me to say that's cheating, but I completed my own training without the aid of such beyond my arm of Nyr. Worse is the toll they're taking; the trainers said he'd been acting bizarrely lately. That's partially what prompted the latest round of drug tests. He may not actually be on steroids, but he is showing all the physical and psychological signs of such like aggressive behavior, mania, testicular atrophy, and after a blood test, dangerously high levels of low-density lipoproteins ("bad" cholesterol). High blood pressure was detected before but not to a degree unlike that of soldiers in combat; that is what they're training for. This time his blood pressure was nearly 190 over 130, emergency hypertension. He should be in intensive care, not in training.

When we informed him of his condition he grew violent and had to be tranquilized with a massive dosage. There was something more to those items as well, though it took me a minute to puzzle it out of its aura. They weren't just tainted, they were outright cursed. Using aura alteration I was able to undo their hold on him as he was recovering in the hospital. His prognosis is not good: permanent heart damage, one kidney shut down, and his liver looking like that of an alcoholic. While the doctors were away I was able to psionically heal the worst damage and give him a second chance at life. But I've had to disqualify him. Even if it was due to a curse, his behavior alone has earned him a dishonorable discharge for conduct unbecoming a soldier. He didn't seem too surprised when he came to, saying he was in a fugue-like state and aware of his actions but unable to control them. When I asked where he got them he said they'd been given to him as a gift for his acceptance to the BSAA. The giver was an older gentleman who claimed to be a friend of his late-grandfather's. The kid has a good memory and was able to give me enough to make a sketch. The OSA will want to find out who this man is and if he's knowingly giving cursed items away.

Eight left and two weeks left in training, the part where they're tested on how they handle ethical and moral dillemas. Not the least of which is how they handle infected children. I try not to think about that one as it dredges up so many other memories of Raccoon City. Damn Umbrella and damn Simmons and Radames for their continued research!

(Excerpt from the journals of Alexander Dreamfire, Draper, UT, Dec. 2, 2010)
//Begin File Attachment//
::An image of eight soldiers in line comes into view, hands held behind their backs as they stand at ease::

Alex Archer: So here you are. The last eight to make it through the training. Congratulations. You are now full members of Gamma Squad.

::Camera pans swiftly to a folding chair then back to the soldiers who look tense and then ease as the chair is audibly unfolded::

AA: Now that I know I've got the quality of soldiers needed I'm relaxing standard etiquette within the Squad. You all can take chairs if you wish.

::The soldiers break the line and grab chairs, sitting in relaxed positions::

AA: You may have noticed the major's clusters on my sleeves and the captain's bars on Maxine's. Yes, we were promoted and no, I'd rather not talk about it. It...was undeserved. The mission was irregular and we didn't actually accomplish much. Damned bureaucrats. We're just numbers to them.

::One soldier, a woman with dirty blonde hair, stands up::

Silvia Winters: (in crisp British accent) Permission to speak freely, sir.

AA: Granted, Miss Winters. As I said, etiquette is relaxed so none of you need to ask permission or use formal address. Alex is fine.

SW: What was the mission, sir...Alex, I mean?

AA: The talking heads won't like it, but it's easier to just show you. Maxine?

::Maxine hands out smartphones to each soldier::

AA: These are your new issued phones and computers. I've loaded the recordings of what we saw and encountered on that ship. Before anyone asks, no, this is not a joke and it's very, very real. I hope you all watch it. The things we'll be facing will be no less straining to your views of reality and fact. But that's for another time. Today is all about you eight. So name your meal and we'll order out. Not so sound like a movie character, but I expect the best and I give the best.
//End File Attachment//

That's how final introductions began. If any of them felt like it was their last meal that's because it may well be. We haven't had a mission together yet but I wanted to build the camaraderie needed for any squadron to work together effectively. Brian Stone, combat engineer and demolitions expert, I chose as first lieutenant both in spite and because of his background. Stone was born to a teen mother and raised in gang life, becoming a leader of a minor gang by fifteen before he went through the Scared Straight program and turned his life around and revealed a mind like a steel trap. His SAT score was 994, putting him into the top ten percentile and earning him a partial scholarship that the US Army helped pay. Looking at him, a built black man with a bald head and angular face you'd think he was a bruiser. In reality he's one of the most intelligent and gentle people I've ever met. He even helped his mother put herself through college while he served three tours of duty in Afghanistan. He's combat-hardened and a natural leader. Maxine is technically his superior, but she agrees it's better to defer to him if I'm not able to take charge.

Silvia Winters is another interesting member. Her paperwork says she was with Britain's MI-6 as a medic and field surgeon, but she's actually a former member of MI-7, an elf, and a cleric. She was raised by outlander parents who taught her the ways of Lathander, granting her a fuller grasp of magic than native mystics and none of the drawbacks of having to tap into the spirit world. At first she denied it but seemed genuinely relieved when I spoke to her in Elven. Carrying around that kind of secret is hard without anyone to share it with. She's just over a century old, making her quite young for an elf as active in her vocation as she is. Of everyone I expect she'll understand the things Maxine and I saw and faced on the Maria Santos. Gods help us if she needs to use her magic instead of her training in medicine.

Joshua Banks, another Briton, is formerly of MI-5 with a clipped accent native to Liverpool. He's an old hand at physical and electronic infiltration as well as an expert at close quarters combat. A knife, tactical tomahawk, or even his bare hands can be lethal weapons. He's also a crack shot with most firearms, though he has specialized in bayonet combat. Anybody can thrust and slash with a mounted bayonet, few can truly utilize their full potential.

Emily Smith is actually a native Utahn and another medical specialist, though her true specialty is in genetics as well as mechanics. She seems to enjoy understanding how and why things work the way they do, be it living or mechanical. This includes maintenance on some of the more advanced weapons systems and vehicles. A gear head on the team is always a good idea.

William Hunt is young but has already earned high marks for bravery under fire and lateral thinking. Even I've heard of his almost MacGyver-esque solutions to problems. Sodium isn't going to blow a hole in a wall but it does make an effective smoke bomb and people still talk about how he rigged wires from a wall socket to a warlord's chair in his tactical room to take the man down without killing him. Personally I'd like to know how he did that; the amperage should have killed the guy but somehow Will was able to compensate for it.

Yosef Awe is an Israeli and former member of Mossad before joining the BSAA. He's an expert at "extractions," a military euphemism for kidnapping enemy personnel, as well as tactical assault and urban combat. He's also one of the few BSAA members who've had experience with BOWs on a personal basis. A failed al-Qaeda plot to use what sound like Hunters and likely the T-Virus put a small village in Kuwait into dire straits. He was there to investigate and ended up saving most of the women and children--and earning the grudging respect of their families. I don't claim to fully understand the situation between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, but I do know that he did something truly remarkable by showing them not all Israelis are enemies.

Justin Krale and Amanda Whitesmith are actually scout-snipers from the Marines. Very, very few snipers can make a shot at long distances without a spotter, which is why they're paired up in modern militaries and police SWAT and Fast Response Units. Both have earned several bronze stars for marksmanship and make their own ammunition for their custom rifles as well as other, less standard rounds. I've tried to get the BSAA to make explosive incendiary rounds available to soldiers but the cost has always convinced the talking heads not to. That's forced me to make my own for my custom Desert Eagle and thus limits my supply. Even in my time off I'm usually far too busy with paperwork or other things to devote the time necessary to create them. They've agreed to help out the team with that, given that they themselves have had problems taking down certain BOWs even with .500 caliber sniper rounds. Things that can pierce an engine block like it was soft clay. Most things can't stand a shot from a Magnum handgun, let alone rifle. What they described sounds like Tyrants. I've seen those things take rockets to the face and keep coming. If we're going to be facing those...I'd as soon not think about it.

I gave the team the rest of the month off to enjoy the holidays and relax. Starting after the New Year we go on active duty. And I'm already hearing things I don't like about Umbrella's old facility in the Antarctic. Chris, Claire, and I destroyed it already. What, if anything, could still be there?
(End transcript)
"Money is the root of all evil...I think I need more money."
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