ic Azathoth Remix

[trollthumper]

"Spontaneous songs." There were so many ways that could go. The revelries of bacchantes, entities that traveled through the winds of the cosmos as songs and other sapient memes... Nick tried to trace through the various means that something could be called down through a song like that, in case he needed to fill in the blanks between what Aquarius knew and what they knew. But then, it turned out Aquarius knew quite a lot - it always helped when parties to the disaster were happy to share what they knew. It saved a lot of time, and he didn't really think an office at mid-day was a great place to be intimidating.

"All right, so," he said, "that thing. What do you know about it? How might it have gotten out? And, if it has gotten out... where might it take shelter next?" 

[Raveled]

Professor Aquarius looked between the heroes, mouth agap. “It was all… it was in the Seventies, you have to understand. We all lived in Father Yod’s compound, in Hawaii. He’d, he’d bring out these musicians, like Sky Saxon, and we’d all perform. Twenty or thirty people all at once, on pipes and drums and chanting all in a circle. It was… it was a transformative experience.” Aquarius reached into his patched jacket and pulled out a pipe. He bit on the end of it; even unlit, it seemed to calm him down. “When Father Yod died, the music died with him. I stayed another year or so, then I picked up a few recordings that were special to me and left. This one was… was…” He realized that he was stroking the surface of the album cover and purposefully put it aside. “I could never quite get it out of my head.”

 

“Who else would know about this recording,” Miras asked, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “How many records did Father Yod release?”

Aquarius looked up at her. “Oh, he never released this one,” he said, patting the album cover. “This is the master disc. We made this one a few days before he killed himself, and in the mess after that no one thought to release it. The only people who know about it,” he added, “would be other people who were in the Source family, who lived on the compound.”

 

“Professor Eric?” The heroes turned and saw a young man with a short green mohawk, face pierced in several interesting areas, standing in hall. “Is everything copacetic, Professor Eric?”

 

Aquarius waved him off. “It’s alright, Holiday,” he said. “These heroes were just… just looking into a stolen record.” He waved the album cover in the air by way of further explanation.

 

Holiday didn’t look relieved. In fact, the color drained out of his face and he was suddenly pale as a sheet. “Oh,” he squeaked. “That’s, yeah, that’s good. I just had some papers to talk to you about, but, uh, I can come back.” He turned on his heel and started power-walking away.

[trollthumper]

Father Yod. Nick had heard the name before. He tried to rack his brain... Ah. There. The Source Family. A group of hippies, eclectic, and other odd sorts in an odd time, drawn together by the sound and culture of the Sunset Strip in the Seventies. Their leader, Father Yod, was a soldier turned mystic, a combination that often tended to produce would-be arcane magisters back in those days. But Yod hadn't just been a spiritual leader - he'd been a band leader. His group, Ya Ho Wha 13, had produced mind-bending psychedelic rock of its most pure stripe. It wasn't exactly Nick's thing, but it did have a reputation. The group had continued after Father Yod's death - he'd apparently decided to take up hanggliding without practice - but apparently the magic was gone. And apparently it had been real magic...

All right, so they'd tried to let the starshine in and got something really, really weird, he thought. But that doesn't tell us who got their hands on it, or what they're aiming to do beyond attain cosmic bliss. So what--

He was cut off by the student appearing, then swiftly departing with concern on his face. He shot Miras a look, as if you ask, "You think...?"

[Raveled]

"Oh, I think it," Miras agreed. There was a blur of motion and she was standing in front of the fleeing student. She let him bump into and off her substantial frame, grabbing him before he could fall. "Hi there, buddy. Seems like you're a big fan of that record! Did you, maybe, take it home to listen to it a couple of times?"

"No! I never listened to it. I, uh..." Holiday looked between the superheroes and Eric Aquarius, eventually dropping his gaze to his feet. "Brian wanted help with his paper, and I knew Professor Eric had a bunch of that stuff from his old days, so I just sort of grabbed the first album I saw and ran off a recording for Brian."

"Uh-huhn," Miras grunted, suddenly very happy that Brian Akanu's computer was now a pile of smashed components. "So you have the record now?"

"Um. No. See, there was this lady, Irene Aquarius? I thought maybe she was Eric's sister or something, and she... well, she offered me a hundred gees for the album!" Holiday looked back at Eric. "I'm sorry, Professor, but it's really expensive to keep going here, and it was a lot of money..."

"Irene Aquarius? Oh my." He sat back heavily in his chair. "I remember Irene, oh yes. She was always very eager to become more than a drummer. She was still with the group when I left. She really took Father Yod's death hard, but... Why would she want these records?"

[trollthumper]

"I'm guessing she wants to call down the music of the spheres," Nick said, "preferably with herself as the band leader." He felt like he was starting to put it together. Maybe she had tried to set up an earlier rehearsal with Brian, and they'd managed to hit a sour note, picking up something from outside reality rather than some form of enhanced consciousness. Or - and this was the worse possibility - the performance had gone exactly as intended. And in that case, Nick really didn't want to see what she was capable of for an encore.

"All right, so you made a deal and handed over arcane knowledge for a lot of cash," he said. "We'll deal with that later. Do you know where we can find her?" 

[Raveled]

"I have no idea what Irene would want the record for," Eric insisted. "I haven't talked to her for -- for twenty years, at least! It's not like there's a Facebook page for people like us."

Miras was busy on her smartphone, tapping away laboriously at a Google search. She landed at one page and felt the blood draining out of her face, quickly stepping up to Nick and showing him the smartphone's cracked screen. "Irene Aquarius," she said, for the benefit of the necromancer and Eric Aquarius. "Opera singer. Mostly works out of Los Angeles County, but she's announced a show at the Beauderie Opera House." Miras checked the time, her phone disappearing somewhere into her robes. "Curtain's in one hour. Whatever Irene has planned, she's going to have an audience for it."

[trollthumper]

Oh. Crap. Nick didn't know much about the summoning rituals that called down the more squamous varieties of extradimensional entities, but he did have some details to go on. Given the musical theme, rituals like this would typically be pompous, grandiose, and bombastic. They also tended to draw power from audience involvement, working low-level glamours in the early pieces so that those witnessing would be more likely to give in and show their devotion to aberrations beyond the veil. Which resulted in a sort of exponential effect, which tended to result in city blocks either getting destroyed or driven mad.

"I'll go grab the car," he said to Miras. "If I floor it, there's a very good chance we may be able to make curtain. You got any specially prepared tricks for driving back these kinds of abominations?" 

[Raveled]

"I can punch 'em in the nose," she said. "I bet I can even break a nose. You know, before we're all devoured whole." She followed Nick to the car, throwing herself into the passenger seat while she punched up a map program. "Okay, so you want to end up going south..."

The drive was short and the route straightforward, so Miras didn't really have to navigate for Nick. That gave her plenty of time to fret, to drum her fingers on the dashboard and tie her guts into knots trying to think up a foolproof plan. She didn't know any kind of summoning or dimensional magic. Maybe if she could get her hands on the record she could age it into dust, but she didn't think that an insane cultist who had waited forty years to summon her god was going to let Miras march right up and smash it. They'd have to fight through some mooks, either summoned tentacle monsters or else other cultists just as devoted to her weird, insane, apocalyptic god.

The sky was still pink over in the west, but it was well and truly night by the time Nick's ghostmobile pulled up in front of the opera house. The building was neoclassical, all straight pillars and ablaq facing and marble statues, and lit up in the evening light it was actually rather pretty. If you ignored that there was an insane cult inside ready to rip open reality, it might even be inspiring. Miras climbed out and shook out her arms, getting ready to throw some power around. "Okay," she said to Nick. "I doubt Irene's working on her own. We might run into some flunkies; how do you want to play it?"

[trollthumper]

Nick knew that, when it came to "flunkies," there were a variety of options. There would probably be the standard-issue cultists, who would be armed with anything from dull knives to assault rifles. Then there might be the people who actually knew a thing or two, who could call down the kind of magic that would make your senses betray themselves and your brain run out your ears. And then there may be one or two of the things like he and Miras had dealt with earlier than the day, aberrations who were trying to impose their own personal reality on this plane of existence. And, of course, there may be civilians to deal with...

"Keep it contained," he said, "and try to usher out anyone who shouldn't be caught in the crossfire. If we've got a variety of targets, prioritize the ones with too many eyeballs and tentacles. If we're dealing with humans, aim for incapacitating tactics - scatter them, bind them, just take them out of the picture so they're not offering backup to the master." 

[Raveled]

"Right. Okay." Miras licked her lips. "Time to get everyone outside, without yelling 'fire' in a crowded fire." She walked up confidently to the front door, opening the tall doors and striding inside. Immediately her feet sank into plush carpets, brass finishings gleaming under bright lights, styling straight out of the 1930s surrounding her with another generation's idea of opulence. She glanced around, trying to figure out where she could find Irene or at least the main stage, but the first thing she spotted was a trio of men coming walking over to her. They were in nice suits and the one in the lead smiled, but their entire manner screamed security.

"Can we help you tonight, ma'am?" The lead suit spoke softly and smiled, but his back up stayed a few steps away, one of them with a hand in his jacket.

Miras forced herself to breathe calmly and not lash out. "I need to speak to Irene Aquarius," she said. "It's very urgent."

The lead suit checked his watch. "She's just about to start her set," he said. "It's going to have to wait for a couple of hours until the intermission."

Miras felt her heartbeat go up a notch, involuntarily curling her hands into fists. "That's really not going to work for me."

[trollthumper]

"All right, so." Nick tried to figure out how to precede from here - he was more used to sneaking around in rundown buildings, dark alleys, and graveyards. Not trying to get past guards in suits with smooth talk. That said, he might have gotten away with it under normal circumstances - but normal circumstances didn't involve showing up to a formal performance in skull makeup. Still, that skull makeup could open certain doors...

"Gentlemen. I take it you're Freedom City natives. If so, you may have heard of me. And if that's so, you may have a good understanding of what I deal with. That haunting at the Piedmont. The giant snake-lady at Pyramid Plaza. You know. Those sorts of things. So, if I'm here, I can see one of two reasons for that. One - I have decided to gate crash a fairly impressive performance. Two - it's one of those things. So. I might recommend relaxing the hardware, and trying to get the innocent people here out of the crossfire before whatever's going down, goes down."

[Raveled]

"I am afraid," the smiling man said, "that we cannot allow you into the theater while the teacher is playing."

"Her playing is the reason we have to get into --" Miras stopped suddenly and blinked, her mind catching up to all the implications. "Did you just call her the teacher?"

"Our teacher and our prophet," the smiling man confirmed. The two silent types behind him reached into their suit jackets and removed pistols with long, nasty-looking silencers attached to them. "And I think we should all sit out here and listen to her sing!"

Miras set her jaw, gathered her power -- and reached out and tapped the man on the forehead. He suddenly glinted, like he was metal reflecting the noonday sun, and he froze. It didn't even look like he was breathing. It looked like someone had hit pause on the movie of his life. Miras sniffed dismissively and slapped his head; the huge body teetered, toppled, and fell to the plush carpeting. "You're going to miss the big night," she spat, "but don't feel bad. You're not going to be the only one."

[trollthumper]

Nick looked over the fallen guards, shaking his head - he couldn't believe he'd fallen for such an obvious cover. "Well, good news," he said, "we don't necessarily have to worry about getting everyone out, because not everyone is going to want to leave the party. Bad news - that means they're probably gonna want to keep some of the other guests around, whether they want to stay or not." Nick dug deep, trying to pull up the old voice, establish a connection with the Fates. He didn't want to try digging into the past - especially in a place where spacetime stood a good chance of getting horribly knotted - but he did wish to dig on that fear of inevitability, in case he needed to flush a lot of people out very fast. The shriek rang out across the hall, away from Miras but washing over the cultists, barraging them with the crushing weight of inevitability.

Edited June 27, 2015 by trollthumper

[Raveled]

The guards drew and aimed at Miras and Nick, but before either one could pull the trigger the necromancer's wave of terror swept over them. Flashes of their own deaths, of tragedy and misfortune, of a lifetime's worth of bad luck and tragedy, were channeled into their brains all at once. The suits dropped their weapons, turned, and ran deeper into the building. The magos nodded at Nick and opened the double doors leading into the main auditorium.

The setting was Spartan, a simple purple curtain drawn over the length of the stage. The only things up there were an old-fashioned gramophone with a polished jade speaker, and an older woman in a dark dress. As the heroes entered the woman's vocalizations climbed higher and high, matching the dissonant music emanating from the speaker horn. The seats were entirely full of men in suits and women in long dresses, and their eyes were fixed on the stage and the spinning record.

Even as they watched, the air above the recordplayer began to shimmer like a heat mirage. What Miras felt wasn't heat, though; it was cold, cold so deep it burned her, cold that was slimy and grasping and hungry. Before the mages could rush the stage, though, toughs in suits appeared from every corner and began rushing towards them. The layout funneled them somewhat, but the heroes were still facing three large groups coming from stage right, stage left, and straight ahead.