One Last Thing

Hey there, Things. Been awhile, hasn't it?

I've been laying low for awhile-- ever since Senator Wells' death, really, but I've been doing what I can to help out from behind the scenes.

Until recently.

A little while after the smoke started clearing after Operation: Damned Throne, Dracula called me up personally and “invited” me to check out the strange 'Four Sided Door' at the center of the island. Naturally, since ancient super-vampires fucking terrify me, I did exactly what he asked.

Thankfully, I wasn't the only one there-- Dracula brought together Accordists of every stripe to check that shit out. Just from the people I recognized, there was F13, Cora Kirkwood, Irene Norton, Selma, Ingrid Madrazo, Blue Mudra, Badger, Lilith, Silas Magnus, Simon, and probably a whole bunch more people who will undoubtedly start swearing at me for forgetting to mention them. Let's just call it 'an assload,' and leave it at that.

So yeah. At first, I was a little more terrified than usual when I started hearing about this door-- I figured that as one of the token RQ 0 mortals I'd get shoved through the weird creepy door first, but it turns out as soon as somebody gave the go ahead, people started piling through the door like a Wal Mart on Black Friday.

Inside, we found ... a room. Clocks and watches stopped inside, and any outside transmissions like cell signals or radio waves immediately cut out. Oh, and apparently everyone who set foot in the room instantly lost all of their 'wooj' and was reduced in capacity to a lowly human. How terrible.

The room itself was stuffed with mementos-- photos, letters, and even flash drives from dozens of different realities. Turns out, the room is something of a bottleneck between universes-- it was the last stop for the final survivors of at least 70 different universes (to judge by the coin-flip chart), if not more.

I don't know who any of these people were, but they deserve to be remembered.  

Honestly, the amount of information there was overwhelming-- I tried to take in as much as I could, but I know I missed a lot. So if any of you Things out there hung onto the flash drives or letters or whatever, I encourage you to share them with the Accord at large-- I'd like to set up an archive of all that somewhere before I go-- but I'm getting ahead of myself.

So yeah. The documents and recordings we found didn't paint a pretty picture-- they were all from realities that had fallen to The Truth-- with or without Smith's presence. There was even a 'map' (which I should have taken a picture of it) showing how Smith's travels through the multiverse cause The Truth to ripple out into 'adjacent' universes he's never visited. So, y'know, fuck that guy.

The fallen realities each had their own stories ... of which we only got bits and pieces. Hell, there was even a reality where I was the final survivor, so ... uh, I guess I'm kind of proud of that? Then again, there was also a reality where Cora was the last survivor and apparently in that one other-me made out with Lilith once which terrifies me because, again, ancient super-vampire.

The real find in the room, however, was a series of recordings that Smith left for us. In these, he explained multiversal theory, and how The Truth is more a force of nature than anything as dimensions try to consolidate themselves. Furthermore, according to Smith, our reality has come closest to 'winning.' Thing is, we all know how Belief works, so our reality will never be truly safe from The Truth until something's done about all the believers (i.e: us).

And, people have mentioned this before on the mailing list, but I'm gonna break down the three options for anyone who doesn't feel like digging through however the hell many messages that are clogging up your inbox right now.

FIRST OPTION, ESCAPE. Through the use of the 'Magnus Tunnels,' developed by Silas Magnus from weirdo shit brought over from the Technocrat dimension, it's possible (through the use of a shitload of Unreality Fuel) to leave our dimension and show up in another one where the battle against The Truth is already underway. Thing is, the way dimensional bullshit works, the Magnus Tunnels will scatter their 'passengers' through infinite realities. Two Believers who step through the same tunnel will wind up in different universes, though there's an infinitesimally small chance two Believers who go through two different tunnels may wind up in the same place. So it's you, alone, in a completely new world, off to fight The Truth some more. Hope you like playing John Connor.

SECOND OPTION, FORGET: So there's this technique called 'Averment.' Basically, it's capable of cleansing someone of Belief. Great! The catch is, it also gives the subject a case of amnesia for the whole period of time they were a Believer. This, of course, ranges from 'inconvenient' to 'fucking impossible' from person to person. Oh, and if you ever do get those memories back, you're a Believer again, and The Truth can start pounding on the walls to reality again. Oops. Just from a personal perspective, this option's out of the question for me. I may be a puny mortal, but I'm also a damned good investigator. If I woke up one day, missing five years of my life ... I don't know how, but I would find out what the hell happened, and then I'd be responsible for starting the War for Reality all over again. And damned if I'm gonna let myself do that after all this time. Which brings us to the next option ...

THIRD OPTION, THE BLACK DOOR: On the other side of the 'Waiting Room of Realities,' there was a black door-- complete with that 'Abandon all Hope All Ye who Enter Here' quote from Dante above it. According to Smith (and I don't see any reason for him to lie-- especially if he laid out the other two options), the Door leads to The Truth ... which is the 'Primary' reality that the universe wants to return itself to. The 'Primary' world is much like ours-- cars, jobs, stupid cat videos, beer, whatever ... it's just completely void of any supernatural shit whatsoever. So if you step through that door, you retain all your memories, you're still you ... just without any crazy magical bullshit wizard powers you've gotten over the years. You get to live out the rest of your life as a powerless, fragile human like me. How terrible.

Suffice it to say, people didn't take these options very well. Soon enough, F13 started holding an impromptu referendum on just what the fuck we-- and the Accord in general –were going to do. Seeing as of how the average cell can't order pizza without some ancient topping-based grudges being brought up (vampires aren't fans of roasted garlic, y'know), it goes without saying there's no 'one size fits all' solution for The Accord. Ultimately, every Accordist will have to make their own decision. But they're going to have to make that decision fast, because New Lebanon is slowly collapsing, and it (along with the freaky Waiting Room of Reality) will disappear within two months.

To be honest, a lot of the stuff brought up at the meeting went way over my head-- there was talk of super-realms and a wizard named Janice (or was it Janus?) and somebody who once met Fate and a bunch of other shit that my mere mortal brain couldn't follow. F13 (at least I think it was F13?) gave me some notes from the meeting to pass on to you at large. 

So, uh ... yeah. Some people went through The Black Door and there (including that crazy asshole who took Smith's hourglass). Others swore they never would, and started making plans on how to clean up this reality and what they'd do in the next. And somehow through it all there was a disturbing amount of discussion regarding Cora getting laid in the Waiting Room of Reality where her powers didn't work and/or me making out with Lilith in THIS reality (which, I should note, I absolutely did not on account of the terrifying ancient super vampire thing) just because Other-Me apparently had a thing for Other-Lilith, and also maybe fucking Badger will turn you into a wizard.

Some of y'all got fucked up priorities, is what I'm saying.

It's also worth noting I'm like five beers in as I write this.

Hold on. Six.

As the discussions went back and forth, I realized just why Dracula had picked a puny little mortal like me for the team. I can't throw fireballs or turn into a bite-monster or see ghosts ... but I'm a journalist, dammit, and so I'm doing what little I can to spread the word of just what the fuck happened, and what the fuck we have to do next. Even still, I'm just one guy, so I know I missed a lot of what happened. So again, if you hung onto any letters, or any recordings, or ... well, anything else that was there, let's work together and get that shit archived. These things deserve to be remembered.

As for the rest if you, you've got two months to make up your mind. If you stick around in this reality, fine ... but you've got a shitload of work to do. But if you wanted things to be easy, you wouldn't have joined the Accord, would you?

Me, I've made up my mind ... but I'm not telling you just what I'm gonna do. It's not that I don't trust you-- oh, wait, that's exactly it. Still, the last five years have been a hell of a ride, and I ... guess I can thank you for it? I mean, at least I survived, so that's saying something. Still, apart from some possible archiving, this will be my last post.

F13 always said that I stopped being the 'New Guy' a long, long time ago. She was right (as she usually is). So, as I say goodbye, I might as well do it under my own name. Godspeed and good luck, you terrifying bunch of haunted house maniacs.

Peter Willis

-Network Zero

-Accord Investigative Services

-Houston Cavalry

Hello all and welcome to the September edition of the Voice report for Houston!  As always, I am Sasha, your constantly distracted college student of a Voice.  Before we get into the minutae of last month's meeting, I want to remind our readers that the annual Monster Mash meeting is coming up.  If you don't know what that means, it's our annual Halloween party!  There's going to be food (for those of you that eat), costumes, a cheesy movie where we say what Hollywood got wrong, right, or other, and all the candy (and diabetic blood for our vampires) that we can handle.  It's a potluck, so bring food/drink if you feel like it.  We'll also have someone get carryout pizza if you feel more like chipping in a couple of bucks than buying something.  It's important to keep the spirits up, even in these darker times.  I hope to see ya'll there!  Now, on to the minutae.

September's meeting opened with us rolling up to Vintage Park to take care of an abomination.  That thing was huge, like the size of a thanksgiving day balloon!  I gave a few people some boons before they went off to fight it and watched the fireworks after civilians got shooed out of the area.  The problem was...there were more believers in the area that weren't with the Accord and ended up ogling, fighting alongside our close combatants, or trying to stay out of the way.  After a bit of rushed negotiations once the abomination was taken care of, we brought them back to the Citadel for vetting and confirmation.  Thankfully everyone agreed, though some were reluctant to do so.

With that we had 17(!) people show up to meeting, including myself and the regulars, a couple from Austin, and I think a few from another town close to here.  I didn't get to talk to them much.  We had a couple of new vampires show up, a ghost-girl that wasn't Ash, some new Bastet (the werekitties), a mortal (you'd like him New Guy, he's a scientist that was really confused with all the input that was happening), and a changeling that was fresh from the hedge.  Yeah, I had to take point on talking with him.  Whatever his blade is had sealed away most of his personality and was using this giant as a doll.  Yeah, the True Fae are real monsters.

Anyways, once everyone was in the Citadel and settled, One of the new vampires was helping out some of our old hands on a servant/"angel" body and then someone sliced their hand accidentally and things got a little crazy.  Luckily the new vampire lady calmed down enough to step out ofthe room after a while.  After that, there was something to do in the spiritual world and a battle where I didn't hear the details.  I tried to get into the DPS database when asked, but was locked out, and whomever else tried was locked out.  Damn sysadmins, I guess I'll have to try when no sane person would be awake.  Unless they have shifts, then I'm fucked.  Most of my time at meeting was spent dealing with The Blade Ineffable and trying to get him out of the mindset that his Keeper put into him so he could become more human again.

The meeting ended pretty peacefully, all things considered.  Hopefully those that attended will come back to help out with the bigger things we haven't had the manpower for this month, along with the party.  Hope to see you there this month.

Sasha

New Guy's October Update

I saved Halloween.

Maybe I should put that in context.

I know I've been pretty incommunicado-- I've mostly been running around playing troubleshooter. Sometimes proverbially, sometimes literally. This is the life I live now.

Anyway, I happened to be passing through Missouri on secret mission stuff, at which point I hear that there's a fledgling cell getting its shit together in Jefferson City. Like, they'd been stuck in the shadow world for awhile, or some crazy bullshit? I have no clue.

It's a small cell (for now). There was a werewolf, a lady who turned into a flock of crows (or was it a flock of crows who turned into a lady?), a zombie-ghost, and a woman who said she was normal but after I saw her zing around some brain-powers and show up with a cowboy ghost sidekick, I'm pretty sure she's a zombie-ghost too. Maybe she doesn't know it yet? I don't know how this works. Also I'm not including their names for security reasons (and also because I may be a little drunk and can't recall them properly).

But yeah. By the time I showed up, shit was already going bad. As apparently, the Church of Ultimate Truth set up a nine-block Halloween party literally next door to the Citadel. Hoo-boy. And I thought Houston was bad.

And just to make things worse, as soon as people streamed into the Halloween block-party, they got transported to one of those pocket-dimension things set up to look just like the couple of blocks. We blunder around for a bit, and take a quick trip over into the spirit-world, at which point we see the LITERAL SPIRIT OF HALLOWEEN flailing and vomiting and being taunted by lesser asshole spirits and otherwise having a shitty day. Seriously, it was this twenty foot tall skinny dude with a giant pumpkin head. What the fuck.

So naturally, I take one look at the horrible giant spirit monster, and I realize “Oh hey, I bet some Truthy assholes are trying to summon him through some kind of corrupted ritual in the physical realm.”

I don't know what's worse, the fact that -I- knew this, or the fact that the other Accordists hanging around didn't. Seriously, that's your job, weird things! I'm just supposed to be the guy with the press pass and a drinking problem.

So yeah. At this point the werewolf went chasing off after one of the lesser spirits like he was chasing a squirrel, ghost-zombie dude went invisible, and we kind of left ghost-zombie-girl-in-denial in the spirit world for a bit. So it was just down to me and the bird-lady to run around and start destroying the weird Halloween totem-poles that were the physical components of the summoning ritual. Oh, and the crowd had been mind-controlled into doing the thriller dance, plus there were some asshole Servants running around-- some kind of weirdo wizard and a werewolf made of silver.

Eventually, we manage to regroup at a CUT church at the epicenter of the weirdness-- I pull the fire alarm to get any mundane folks out, and I manage to talk/sneak my way to the basement … at which point everything just goes to shit.

Werewolf guy went off beserker-ing at the wizard (but didn't catch him) and zombie-ghost-in-denial lady chased off after him trying to play damage control. Meanwhile, in the basement, there's a full-out Evil Ceremony going down, complete with robes and chanting and a line of hypnotized bystanders getting sacrificed. Oh, and there's some kind of corrupted artifact that looked like one of those orange buckets of kids candy. And the Pumpkin King is getting sucked through a giant portal in the basement. That kind of day.

Bird-lady and zombie-ghost-dude managed to keep the heat off of me long enough to empty my .357 into the artifact-bucket and destroy it. That's when things really got crazy, at which point it pretty much descended into a shitshow of a brawl, in which I got:

Stabbed. Multiple times.

Bitten by a werewolf who gave me a weird foot disease (but not lycanthropy, thank god).

Cursed (but not badly?)

And I picked up a minor mutation, to boot. Woo. Silver lining is I'm working on getting that shit fixed, but it still sucks.

And again, this is the part where I realize I've been in the Accord for too damn long. Because the Jeff City Accordists were flapping around wondering 'wait, should we kill this guy?' I had to note: “These assholes are ritually cutting throats and chanting and wearing robes in a church basement. They are the literal definition of cultists. Fucking SHOOT THEM.” The one time indiscriminate slaughter is the legit solution, and I wind up working with the only Things in the Accord who have sudden pangs of conscience.

I will at least note bird-lady was the MVP of the night, doing all kinds of bird stuff (like, say, going all Alfred Hitchcock on mobs of cultists), and otherwise keeping her head in the game. Jeff City, you should give her shiny things or cash money or something else for being good at her job.

So yeah. I nearly died, which sucked. But by then The Spirit of Halloween came all the way through the portal to the material world. But, since I had the foresight to destroy all the physical components, including the artifact-bucket, The Spirit of Halloween gave us a little assist (also: candy), and bought us the time we needed to escape. I pumped a few silver bullets into the Servant-werewolf on my way out, for good measure, so there's some more RQ lowering for you.

And now, I'm just going to hole up in an undisclosed location with an undisclosed amount of hard liquor until I can take these stitches out. Silver lining: chicks dig scars, right?

But still. Seriously. I SAVED A HOLIDAY. How crazy is that?

Now I'm really fucking paranoid I'm gonna have to go to the North Pole come December. 

Late report, I know. Been busy. Not dead yet.

-New Guy.

Hello to all my fellow Accordists, it's time for the voice report for Houston for June and August!  First, I want to apologize for taking so long on the June side of things, I had several summer things going on and usually passed out on the couch when I got home from work or the freehold.

June's meeting went off without much trouble, with a new weretiger joining us (and husband to our current weretiger).  Their team went on an adventure in the umbra to quell the fire in the spiritual side of the world, stealing a spirit's core and feeding it to another, bigger spirit of the oil and gas industry.

Annabelle and I were contacted by a few of my people that I owe favors to about an abduction.  I did some trace and checked each of the people on the missing list and they all came back to the same church.  We met with the church leader (who happened to be a non-believer vampire), who gave us the task of finding his missing board members and returning them.  We were able to track the guy down to a storage facility, where he had been performing bizarre experiments on his own kind, keeping them in a state of frenzy.  Annabelle and I were able to subdue him, and he was seriously Truthy.  After contacting the non-believer to pick up his frenzying followers, we shoved the servant vamp in the trunk and then into the brig.  We were going to wait to interrogate him until the next few days, but then I got busy with work.

We didn't have a meeting in July, as a decent majority of members were either sick, out of town, or just plain busy.  I was praying that the vamps or DPS wouldn't try to find my apartment.

We finally had a meeting in August, one that introduced us to a new survivor of the Truth's prior dealings.  Said person is a green metal man that I will end up calling robo-Robin Hood, because I didn't really catch his name.  Needless to say, he's a Changeling, and one of my court besides.

Oh yeah, Wolf came back!  I guess he got some much needed healing from what jerkface did to him, as he was a lot more jovial than the last time I saw him.  There weren't very many at the meeting this time around, but I blame that on the start of school and DPS being more dickish than usual.

Wolf and I finally got to interrogate the vampire servant, who gave us information on where to find Waynegro.  We didn't find him there at the Houston Zoo, but found a cult that was exacerbating the problem.  The regular cultists weren't the problem, but the leader was.  He got his ass kicked, and then I had to go chasing a cultist that got set on fire with a fire extinguisher as Father Frank and Wolf tried to heal the wound by the tree.  Most of us either ducked into the different places that we could access to avoid the DPS, stealthed it, or faced the music.  I still feel sorry for Father Frank on that.  Once we got back to the citadel, I had to hack the system to erase the evidence, but I was locked out by the sysadmin.  Robin Hood tried it as well, but to no avail.  It was like they had a top level IT guy on duty.

The vampire servant went to the hell of the truth after everyone assembled back at the citadel, and we got a few chunks of black that raised the RQ of the city when the were broken up from a circle.  ...Shit, just what we need, higher RQ.  I need to try and erase that security footage again when I'm on my desktop if it hasn't spread all over the net by now.

Also guys, I hope to see ya'll at meeting this Saturday, we really need all the help we can get if we're going to apply roundup to stop Waynegro.

Sasha

Old Habits Die Hard

I'm not Cell Leader anymore.

I'm not even Voice anymore.

But I'm writing this anyway. Lucky you?

Anyway, after all the business in Tulsa, I had some free time. Which … I naturally used to start muckraking, because I might not remember how to function in normal society anymore. It's your fault. Yes, you.

ANYWAY.

So in my digging around, I find out that one of Houston's City Councilmen is not only pulling funding from the CUT, but he also declared he was going to unveil some big-ass art instillation in the middle of downtown. This immediately set off my 'bad shit' detector … so I figured I'd drop into Houston to give y'all a head's up.

And hell, it's barely been six months since I left, but holy crap have things changed. I mean, meeting in Ash's bar is one thing. But it was kind of weird stumbling across a bunch of new faces. Which is kind of depressing-- as meeting new people (and/or monsters) is nice, I guess, but every new 'recruit' means the Truth is getting that much stronger. Fuck. Oh, and y'all had a mole or something? So, y'know, double-fuck.

Some dude named Simon gave me the third degree as soon as I showed up. I can't fault him, I guess, because paranoia is a fucking virtue in our line of work. Still, I can't help but find this slightly hilarious in retrospect. “OH SHIT, IS THIS COMPLETELY, TOTALLY NORMAL HUMAN IN LEAGUE WITH THE TRUTH!?” Not to mention I've been at this longer than a lot of you sons of bitches, but that's just me getting drunk and belligerent.

I came back clean, by the way.

So yeah. Having made my not-quite-triumphant return, I lent my particular investigative talents to the mole-hunt. In what might have been the easiest investigation I ever did, I verifed Cora, Ethan, and Aiden Black the scary vampire ninja murderhobo were assuredly NOT working for The Truth. Oh, and some new zombie-ghost dude named Hector showed up, and he's not a Servant either.

So yeah. After I vetted some folks, Ash put me in charge of the away team to go chase after Councilman Truthy's art project. Great. Simon gave us all some kind of magical pep talk, and then I set off with Fr. Frank, Scruffy the Bear, Alia the not-bitey werewolf, and Hector the zombie-ghost. Heck of a team.

So yeah. We rolled up on the big thing downtown, and SHIT IS FUCKED. Like, Councilman Truthy Dude wasn't just truthy, he was a straight up Abomination. Like, one of the more gnarly, scary ones I've seen. Only in disguise. So as the 'human' part of him was shaking hands, this big knobbly mask-monster thing was like licking faces and marking people and I honestly don't want to know how the fuck that shit works. We kept track of who the Abomination spirit-face-licked, at least, so that's gonna be something to look into later.

So yeah. We tailed Councilman Abomination for a little while … and when we had our shot, we took it. And not only was the COUNCILMAN an Abomination, he had a smaller, scrappier abomination in his suitcase. After a lot of gunfire and flailing and actual regular fire, we killed them both. So, y'know, go us. It was a little cagey, and Hector and Scruffy both got lit on fire, but we still won. Somebody write us a fucking ballad already.

MEANWHILE, while I was leading a commando monster assault team, shit went down at Ash's joint. As apparently, Jacques or somebody stumbled across some bugs (as in the listening device kind) that had been planted in the walls. Cora did her psychic stuff, and found out that Stain, that vampire dude we rescued awhile back, was the one who planted them.

Stain was the mole.

So, y'know, fuck vampires.

Speaking of vampires, Penny tracked Stain down to some hotel, beat the shit out of him, and drug his ass back to Ash's bar. Interrogations were done, at which point we learned Stain was working for some crazy fuckers called 'The Penitents of Samael' or … something. There's something about an eyeless angel, I think, which has something to do with Apophis' tentacle-baby, I think? At least there were no Japanese schoolgirls involved, but seriously, what the shit. Squid-Frankensteins are the worst.

But yeah. We killed Stain, so that's one less thing to worry about. And apparently Stain was carrying around a little glass ballerina. Just like the kind of glass ballerina we took off of Lester Rothschild before we whacked him awhile back. So this shit's been going on for awhile.

Oh, and we also put together a team to collect the big scary sculpture from downtown. (For the record, Ellen the Sharkgirl is terrifying. Girl can bench press trucks) And, uh … once we pulled it out of the ground, it started going RQ-y … so we broke it … which made the RQ go UP. Oops. I think we may have killed a Believer that got Medusa'd or something. (Are Medusas a thing?) Thankfully, Aiden did his Lex Talionis voodoo to make it less terrible, but still. Watch out for Medusa'd people in the future, I guess?

So … the running theory is, that little glass ballerina is the key to Penitent of Samael HQ. Again, I'm not Cell Leader anymore, but I've got the feeling this is gonna be a nasty, nasty op. So clean your guns, sharpen your knives, and listen to whatever crazy story Simon has to tell you, 'cause it's gonna be rough.

And y'know what the worst part is? I'd probably be locking and loading with you guys next month, if I could.

Be careful.

-New Guy.  

EDITOR'S NOTE: Okay, I admit it, this is a bit late. Blame Sasha. I was kind of busy with the Tulsa business. -New Guy

Hello all, this is Sasha and it's time for a very belated March Houston Accord cell report.  I apologize, as class hasn't been letting up and I've barely had time for work between all the papers and such, let alone accord things.  I just want to let you all know that once finals are done next month, I should hopefully be back up to a better posting schedule, assuming work keeps a normal pace.  This means that whatever happens at meeting this month most likely will be reported late, as finals start on May 3rd.  Ugh, up to my muzzle in papers and it feels like I'm in a school drama.  Anyways, to the report!

I was late this meeting, as I got the email that we were meeting at Ash's place as I was driving to dinner, which is the opposite direction of Ash's place and was out towards the Katy area.  Just a note kids, don't check your email on the freeway, you might almost hit a Red Bull truck too.  So I get there finally after grabbing a burger and am promptly accosted by a puppy before realizing that the mini-freehold is all together again.  Apparently one of the True Fae has become a believer, which is very very very bad and had me in a right panic for a few minutes.  Also our resident paranoid hunter in a wheelchair showed up (who has now been dubbed Wheels by several of the cell) wearing a Trump hat.  There was also an officer meeting going on that since I'm apparently one with the status as Voice that I get to attend that I meandered over to.

In the meeting, there was a proposal that a demon named Waingro (I think that's how it's spelt, stupid name sounds like a fertilizer to me) wanted and I believe there was also a vampire thing going on as well. 

ANOTHER EDITOR'S NOTE: It's Waynegro. 

 As always, please feel free to correct me on these things, my memory can be hazy at times.  Anyways, Waingro wanted us to help him open a hell gate to let him go back home because the cell had gotten some valuable information from him well before I was recruited, and this was his calling in the favor.  We also had a very big threat/thorn in side with a Pure pack, and specifically Broken Maw, their pack leader, that the vampire prince had contacted us about.  It was decided that we would accept the request from the prince, take the locus of the Pure pack that wouldn't be needing it anymore and give it to Waingro in order to open the hell gate.

We split into 2-3 teams, with one dealing with the vampires, one staying at Ash's place to defend the fort (so to speak), and a very combat oriented group to deal with the Pure pack.  In all, the meeting with the vampires went well.  Home front just used the time to shoot the shit and had no real threats happen.  There was recon at the Houston Zoo for the combat team, then the action took place.  The Pure didn't go down without a fight, but the combat team wiped them out mostly, save for a few that escaped into a spiritual realm or some sort of Yu Yu Hakusho stuff.  Some of the combat team pursued them there, but the locus was gotten and delivered to Waingro, who opened the gate and then subsequently was attacked by the Apophis *hiss* thing and got taken to gods knows where.  The team was able to close the gate and the chasers followed the chthulu knockoff to the Bay where they lost it.  Then there was some frantic negotiating with the spirit of finance at JP Morgan Chase and a video hunt for the footage at the Houston Zoo where the pack had been.

In all of this, Wheels had gone out with the combat team.  Apparently he got so scared at the sight of werewolves changing that he shot our Myrmidon in the back, fell out of his chair and kept shooting wildly in the air while Sam (I think that's our Myrmidon's name) was majestically yelling at people.  Wheels apparently was drunk enough to think that hitting one of our own werewolves constituted as hitting one of the Pure weres and that he could brag about it.  He also thought that he was the leader of us changelings in the cell after repeated attempts of us saying no.  Sam caught wind of the bragging and almost smacked him, but Father Frank intervened and calmed both down.  I could almost see the sweatdrop on Father Frank because of how much Wheels reminded him of how he was when he started in the accord.  In all this, I had had enough of Wheels' BS about conspiracy theories and the government being controlled by lizard people (it's not), so I decided to prank him.  I whipped out my laptop, erased his conspiracy bs blog and any cache that it was ever what it was, reregistered the domain and made a little fan page for Pika, the komodo dragon at the Malaysian Zoo.  The page did have a dummy link that lead to a white page that basically said Wheels is a paranoid asshole that I deleted later when I was home sick on Monday.  Most of the annoyed cell members I showed it to got a laugh out of it.  Penny also convinced him to vote for Hillary Clinton.

What ended off the night was a brain/thought scan, as a good amount of leadership think that with all the citadel breeches that's happened recently that we may have a traitor in our midst.  I don't know the results of it, but I'm sure it will come to a head this month.  Also, if Wheels is reading this, no amount of walling yourself in will save you from a changeling who has a knack for hacking, a will to prank, and reflective surfaces.  Expect some Jigglypuff level things.  >:P

YET ANOTHER EDITOR'S NOTE: Sasha, if I find out you're fucking with puny mortals out of some sense of weird-ass whimsical fairy bullshit, I'm going to lace your catnip with iron shavings. -NG 

After Action Report: Operation Tide Turner

F13 doesn't think I should be called New Guy anymore.

I've kind of been doing this Accord thing for a few years now. She says that you guys should call me like “Wise Guy” (which makes me sound like a mobster) or maybe “News Guy” or something. Personally, I prefer the irony in a multi-year veteran of the war for reality still going by “New Guy,” kind of like how the biggest dude in the gang is called “Tiny,” but still. Also, y'know, I'm justifiably paranoid for all sorts of reasons.

Anyway, in case you haven't been paying attention to The Lists, some shit just went down in Tulsa. The local cell leader put up a flare (metaphorically), based on two things. One, that Hathaway guy was doing a rally in town, and two, there was a Research and Applied Technologies (RAT for short) super-underground base thing full of monsters to deal with. Like, RAT has two main branches, one that makes killer robots out of The Black, and the other that does weird combo-monster stuff by stapling two different monsters together. Nasty shit.

Just add more killer robots and insane cultists. 

And so, Operation Tide Turner was kicked off. From Houston, I ran into Cora, Ash, and Kendrick-- as well as a bunch of other operatives from places as far off as Japan. There honestly weren't as many people there as I'd seen in, say, Operation Redemption, but you still had everything from were-cougars (the literal feline kind, not the “your mom is kinda hot” kind), to demons, to changelings, to various wizards, and probably more shit I don't even know about. No vampires, though, 'cause Hathaway's rally was during the daytime. Oh, and some changeling dude thought I was a wizard, which made me laugh so hard beer came out of my nose.

As it happened, I was able to take a break from my SUPER SECRET MISSION-ing, so I swung by Tulsa to help out. And no sooner have I arrived in town, F13 finds me and appoints me as the operation's Myrmidon, because I am responsible and shit. Great.

I got to start Myrmidon-ing right at the start of things, as these two dudes appear out of nowhere and set a microphone down in front of F13. This … goes about as well as one would expect. Thankfully, nobody got shot or bitten or whatever. Turns out these two dudes, Bob and Neil, were a pair of weirdo bullshit-wizards who were refugees from one of those other dimensions. Because, y'know. That's a thing. Still, they were Accordists (even if they were really bad at explaining themselves).

Tits were calmed, and explanations were made. I eventually managed to connect with them as a fellow Journalist (even though I'm more of a Newspaperman at heart), and sat them down in a little corner somewhere and let them, well, report. I explained the whole secure protocols I've got going for this blog, so eventually, they'll send me what they've put together, and I'll post it up here. Building a veritable journalism empire here, man.

So yeah. We then split up into teams-- three to take on the RAT super lab, and another team to go after Hathaway. Given my particular press expertise (along with my general puny mortal squishiness), I went on the Hathaway op, which was led by Selma.

So the ORIGINAL plan was to distract a dude named Dr. Buckley, Hathaway's RQ-pinging advisor, and get Hathaway alone. At which point Selma would do her shapeshifty succubus thing to seduce the guy (while posing as a sexy hispanic male intern). Get it on tape, and boom, scandal/blackmail material. Simple. Easy.

So, Hathaway does his speech, which was TRUTHY AS FUCK. Seriously, dude was going on about the various “Rays” of the church and other bad guy lingo. Hathaway himself still doesn't ping on the RQ-ometer, though, so he's being used as a patsy. I'm pretty sure the bullshit-wizard radio dudes from another dimension recorded said speech-- I'll hopefully post it later, if their sound quality isn't all jacked up. Seriously, once you point them in the right direction, they do good work.

Anyway, during said speech, I notice a twitchy looking guy in the front row. With RQ. And another twitchy looking guy at the other end of the audience. And then I noticed the glint of a rifle scope up in the rafters.

So much for the original plan.

I clue in the other folks, and we moved to intercept. Angel, the were-cougar, and a local out of Tulsa by the name of Detective Henry took out the sniper easy. As for the other two, we managed to keep them away from Hathaway … but we weren't able to keep them from EXPLODING THEMSELVES INTO TEARS. Yeesh.

Naturally, everything went to shit. We immediately went on damage control, and sealed the tears, while another Tulsa local by the name of Lola did some weirdo feelings magic to make the bystanders calm down. Tulsa's cell leader, Martin Dean, also pulled a solid, using his ties as the local Chief of Police to help control the situation. Selma and I did our best to control the media reaction, but with all the phones that were getting pulled out, people are already comparing this to the shit that went down in Vegas last year. Apparently the would-be assassins were some of Langley's weirdo Pilgrim dudes, which … are a thing, I guess?

Speaking of Vegas, once these tears were closed, they left little shiny crystal whatsits, just like they did in Vegas, apparently. Detective Henry had a brilliant surge of insight (being a detective and all) and said that they were somehow, like, Truthy menats. Greeeeat. That's a thing now.

Bob and Neil popped back in a few minutes later, as they'd apparently done some weirdo psychic bullshit to track down Buckley, who was alone in his hotel room. So, I wound up leading Selma, Angel, Detective Henry, and Lola to said hotel to take care of him.

I'd like to say I put together a masterful plan, but it really just boiled down to 'open up the door and go in hot.' I was a little concerned, as Lola's spirit magic mojo detected a vague presence of Death in the room, but for lack of a better plan, we went in anyway.

Buckley went down easy, but the ninja-ghoul guy who appeared out of nowhere managed to chop Angel up pretty bad before we took him down. She got better, though, so there's that. Detective Henry took the lead on the cover-up, and also scooped up a bunch of CUT-y clues, including Buckley's phone, which Henry said she'd turn over to Icarus and The Vault to go all hacker on it.

And we had the easy gig.

I can't give you a play-by-play on the raid on the RAT facility, since I wasn't there. From what I've gathered, it was fucking batshit crazy. Like 'giant robot spiders' and 'zero gravity rooms' and 'naked clones/Alternate Reality Duplicates/Whatevers' of other Accordists, such as Ben the Were-Eagle with the Worst Love Life Ever. F13 got an arm ripped off by an abomination, but … then somebody sewed it back on and she got better? Seems like more of a Frankenstein thing than a Robot thing, but what do I know. I thought there'd be more bolts and shit.

It was a hard fought battle-- and not without casualties, either. There was a guy by the name of Deus, from Puerto Rico, who got himself killed … but he got better. Unfortunately, Arco, the Cell Leader of the Tokyo cell, wasn't so lucky. I never knew the man, but we all know every time one of us dies, The Truth gets a little stronger. Luckily, this goes both ways, so let's see about making Arco's sacrifice worth it.

So yeah. The RAT team hit the big red self destruct button on the evil lab, and blew the whole thing the fuck up. Good for them. I think somebody managed to get some weird Black crystal … thing? More things for The Vault to poke, at the very least.

With our jobs done, an exhausted and bleeding bunch of crazies trailed back to home base, and … well, that was it. It's weird, getting back to a normal routine (well, 'normal' as my life is these days), but that's about all we can do. So keep up the good work, Accordists. Tulsa was a win. Tulsa shows we can, we will, and we must win.

The Truth is out there, and we just kicked it in the balls.