A Very Cavalry Christmas

I spent the 24^th and the 25^th holed up in my apartment, well stocked with booze and guns in case of Christmas Ghosts or Santa Slashers or Krampuses or that angel from It's a Wonderful Life. Also, Die Hard was on.

That's the kind of life I live now.

I mean, it's not like I can go to Christmas dinner and be all like “Oh, by the way, I hang out with werewolves and psychics and shit and fight an extradimensional cult for the fate of all reality,” whenever someone asks me what I've been doing with myself lately.

But, perhaps through some Hallmark holiday special twist of fate, or mostly because I'd run out of whiskey, I went ahead and hit up the Cavalry's Christmas party, 'cause Cavalry Christmas is a thing now.

Kudos to whoever decorated the place, I have to say. With trees and garlands and bows and stuff around, the place looked actually festive. There was even mistletoe, which I have on good authority was put to use throughout the evening. I mean, what else do you expect when you get a bunch of drunk-ass monsters together?

We had guests, too- a bunch of out of towners from as far as Lake Charles, Miami, Phoenix, and Boston. Hell, we even had some vampire fly in from Switzerland, and I think he's gonna stick around for awhile.

This was a pretty interesting experience for me, as I really haven't talked to folks in other cells very often (what, with being terrified of mostly everything outside of Houston...and most things inside Houston, but I digress), and it's kind of gratifying to note that other cities are just as confusingly fucked up as things are down here in Houston. For example, I learned one should never go to Cincinnati. Horrible things happen there.

Things were quiet, which wasn't surprising. We kicked the teeth in of the local CUT goons last month, and I imagine they're still scrambling to recover. Unfortunately, I realized a couple of hours in that this meant that all you psychopath murdermachines didn't have anything to do. On a normal month, I could expect some horrible crisis to come up and distract everyone...but for Christmas? No.

And so, everyone turned to their favorite game of “taunt the puny mortal.” With ideas presented such as:

Let's give New Guy magic eyes! (Bad idea)

Let's make New Guy into a wizard! It's okay if he dies when we're doing it, because we can bring him back! (REALLY BAD IDEA)

Let's set New Guy up on a blind date! (This one didn't seem so bad until Striker decided to play Big Sister Supercommando Highlander, which kind of soured the whole prospect).

Let's show off S&M toys! (Why the fuck would you bring those to a Christmas party? Also, I do NOT have a thing for dominatrixes, not matter what anyone tells you. Assholes).

In a slightly more “productive,” avenue, Penny dug up that vampire guy who vampirized him a few months back, then un-staked him so they could have a “discussion.” In the torture chamber. I'd almost forgotten we had a torture chamber. Because nothing says “Merry Fucking Christmas” like our very own abattoir.

Anyway, since this vampire asshole is a Believer now, we can't just stake him and leave him out for the sun- but apparently, Penny's got some vampire mind control magic he can do to him to keep him on a leash. Maybe? We've at least got enough scary stabby people around to re-stake the vamp, if things really go to shit.

I'm sure there was a bunch of other stuff accomplished as well, as people periodically veered off here or there to have Division meetings or have emotional heart to hearts or whatever. A disturbing number of people decided to have these meetings in the torture chamber, though. What the hell, people- we do have couches and offices and shit. That's what they're for.

There were discussions of theology or time mechanics or who has the worst love life (I think that title still goes to Cora, though Ben the half-demon from Miami comes close), all lubricated by copious amounts of liquor. For once, I wasn't the drunkest dude in the room, which kind of threw me off.

We had a champagne toast (well, I stuck to whiskey at that point, since champagne and hard liquor will make me puke), and, of course, it fell on me to speech stuff up. And so, off the cuff, I came up with:

“To battles hard fought, to battles won, and to the battles yet to come.”

The meter's all off, but I never claimed to be a poet. Still, I'm proud of it. It's fitting. Because while we had enough time for a breather, I'm sure some new crisis is going to spring up before long. We've still got two names we didn't cross off the list, Wayngro's still got his whole 'open a portal to hell' scheme in the works, and I bet there's even more shit I couldn't even begin to explain because of bullshit magic.

See you next year, monsters. 

I'm getting kind of good at this.

 Last night, I was sure I was gonna die.

Obviously, I didn't, as I'm writing this report right now. I'm glad I survived, too- not just for the obvious reasons, but also because I had a sappy 'If you're reading this, I'm already dead' post-mortem letter written up that would've been a sendoff for this blog or something. But yeah, impending death puts a pretty weird take on things. I mean, when what could be your last meal on earth is some leftover fried chicken and stale coffee, you start thinking about how the hell you wound up in this situation. I would've sprung for steak, but I was too busy getting ready (also, sort of broke).

Last night was a mission that we've been building up to for the last year or so- an out and out commando raid on the CUT headquarters. To be honest, we had a little less manpower on deck than I hoped for, but we still pulled it off. Here's the breakdown:

We started with Apophis, Dr. Watts, his buddy Rick, and another viking-wizard-apprentice guy named Jose teleporting to the roof of the CUT church where they beat up a spirit ghost thing. I think. I really don't know how this crap works, but apparently they did a good job of it, so kudos to them.

Meanwhile, everybody else- (me, Brayker, Kendrick, Artemis, Jacques, Weylin, Ash, and Luke the demon guy) pile into a stolen van and drive up to the Church building. After Ash and Artemis did some spirity-magic stuff to make us harder to detect, we roll up to the back door. I managed to jimmy the lock (surprising what you can do with a credit card) and we're in.

Things went pretty smoothly until we got to the basement- where we find none other than Spiers (the fucking brain teleporting wizard) waiting for us, along with two SWAT looking dudes and some kind of black-hole anti-magic ghost ninja (who was also that wizard ninja Lance guy we thought we killed a few months ago). From what she told me, Artemis' magic prevented Spiers from teleporting us to wherever, so things came down to an old fashioned shootout.

I killed one of the tactical goons. I'm not sure what to feel about this. Or really, I don't feel anything about it, which has got me kind of worried that I'm going to turn into some kind of creepy monstery sociopath now. But on the other hand, the dude was obviously a Servant, so I guess splattering his head across the wall is okay?

I didn't have much time to think about it at the time, as next thing I knew I'm getting kicked in the ribs by the fucking antimatter ninja dude. Somewhere along the line Kendrick went down, but after a nasty brawl, Jacques and Weylin ripped Spiers and Lance to bits. Werewolves are fucking scary, for the record. I may have also accidentally grazed Luke. But he's not dead either, so no harm, no foul, right?

We wrapped up that fight, hooked up with Apophis' team, and patched ourselves up with crazy magic shit (like, Jacques used his Harry Potter spirit owl to put my ribs back together, and I don't even know how that works). Luke pulled some hard drives off the Church's servers, so that'll hopefully be a great source of intel later.

There was some big warded door thingie, which Artemis managed to open...and that's when we met Romanati. Mr. Big Fancy himself. He had two of the remaining CUT board members with him (only all mutated so they had big bitey mouths) and a pair of Abominations: The Lone Ranger and Tanto.

Romanti yelled at us loud enough to make our noses bleed- but we pressed on, blasting the shit out of him and his minions. Dr. Watts breathed fire (does that mean he's a viking-dragon-wizard?), and Jacques and Weylin hulked out and ripped the shit out of Romanati before the dude could do anything more. The rest of the monsters there were pretty nasty too- but at the same time, there were more of us than there was of them, so we were able to take them out after a hard, hard fight. Weylin nearly died, I think- like, I don't know how werewolf anatomy works, but I don't think you're supposed to see what color their bones are (white, for the record). Watts did some healy stuff to help him pull through.

I got the killing blow off on the Lone Ranger, for the record. So that's two notches I can put in my proverbial gunbelt, I guess. Is there an official Accordy way of keeping track? Can I use this to get free drinks?

For the record, here's the 'score'

1 Corrupted Spirit Thing, DEAD...or dispelled, or whatever happens to spirits when you hit them a lot.

Spiers, the crazy ass space wizard, DEAD

2 Servant minion dudes with shotguns, DEAD

Damien Romanati, Head Honcho and Church of Ultimate Truth Pope Candidate, DEAD

That Lance guy, who turned into an anti-magic ninja ghost, DEAD (or dispelled?)

Melissa Redding, DEAD

Miriam MacDonald, DEAD

2 Abominations, in the form of the Lone Ranger and Tanto, DEAD (or melted, or whatever)

It's worth noting, however, that Lester guy (the half vampire) and that Pine kid (the one Miss T. has a doorway into his brain) are still at large. So I guess we need to keep an eye out for them- still, hell of a haul this month. Yay us.

So yeah. We won. Nobody died (even though Weylin came damn close). We pushed through another door...where we find an evil artifact TV, with twelve little chairs in front of it (conveniently labeled with the CUT's board names on them), and a tear. So, like, I guess Romanati and his culty bastards sat down to watch TV, which is what made all those Lone Ranger and Batman and other TV based abominations we've been fighting all this time. Proof Television rots your brain.

Again, it was one of those tears that can be closed through the almighty power of Pessimism, so we wrapped that shit up pretty quickly.

This done, we set the church compound on fire and booked it out of there commando-style, courtesy of the helicopter Ash was able to flag down with her Quicksilver Knight contacts. Go her.

On a side note, technically the Council didn't want us killing Romanati, as they would've rather had us slander him instead- but it's not like we can really tell the evil Boss Monster Servant “Hey, just hang tight and don't fight us because Dracula said we weren't supposed to kill you yet.” (And now I'm talking like Dr. Watts).

BUT.

Because I'm a fucking brilliant criminal mastermind, I've realized how we can get the best of both worlds out of this. See, it's not like there were any witnesses to the brawl, since, y'know, it was in a basement. It's the sort of thing that'll probably get filed under 'mysterious circumstances.'

BUT.

I've already got people working on forging some documents showing that Romanati took out a multi-million dollar insurance policy on the CUT building about a week ago. Once we have something properly incriminating, we'll leak it to the media, and pitch it as 'Romanati dies while trying to pull off insurance scam.' Dude's still dead, and we can have him remembered as a crook, instead of a martyr. Everyone wins.

Man. The longer I hang out with you guys, the better I'm getting at this 'secret occult conspiracy' bullshit. Does anyone else find that disturbing? 'cause it feels pretty damn disturbing to me.

I'll worry about that later, though. Right now, I'm going to pour myself a drink. And probably a few more drinks after that. It's just that this time this is 'celebratory' booze, instead of 'oh god what the fuck just happened' booze.

 There's a difference.

Halloween II: This Time It's Personal.

Halloween. I'm not quite sure if it's like Christmas or St. Patrick's day or what for you monsters. But it happens. And, with another October, the Cavalry has thrown our SECOND annual Monster Mash. Do other Cells throw Halloween parties? I mean, I can't be the only guy to have thought of a costume party with actual creepy crawlies. Or maybe other Cells are just boring, I dunno.

It was kind of a small turnout, about a dozen or so of us- so, y'know, it's a good thing we had a party instead of invading the CUT church this month. Still, food and drinks were brought, and good times were had. Brayker was even there, which meant I didn't have to be in charge! Whew.

We started the party with the second round of the official That Is a Thing Monster Movie game! It's a pretty simple setup, if you're not familiar with it. Basically, you put on a movie, and then the various monsters (read: you) get to complain about what it gets right, and what it gets wrong, and record your thoughts on a big poster for posterity.

This year, we got all classy.

And the results!

And as you can see from the fact that the movie apparently got more right than it did wrong, that means Abbot & Costello were making a documentary. Maybe Abbot and Costello were Hunters themselves. Who knows? 

Meanwhile, Cora got into the Halloween spirit by sharing some genuinely horrible tales of terror about her (convoluted) love life. It kinda reminded me of watching a slasher flick, only instead of yelling “WHY ARE YOU GOING INTO THE HAUNTED BASEMENT ALONE?” at the screen, it's more like “WHY WOULD YOU DATE A VAMPIRE WHO THINKS YOU LOOK LIKE YOUR GRANDMA?”

Still, soap opera shenanigans might be better than my own complete lack of a social life. It's...kind of hard to relate to other people who aren't caught up in this insane conspiracy business. On the other hand, I'm mostly terrified by everyone I meet who is in this insane conspiracy business, so it's kind of a catch 22. Reminds me of high school for some reason.

But enough about me. If I just wanted to bitch about my feelings, I'd get a Livejournal.

Back to Halloween stuff! Our Citadel bathrooms are haunted by Halloween Goblins. Again. I think this is going to be a Thing, guys. They slunk around, making prank phone calls (quoting Scream doesn't work when you're genre savvy like me), and otherwise being a creepy nuisance until Ellie the sharkgirl and Artemis and a few other people went into a hedge and told them to cut that shit out. So, y'know, good job on them.

Apart from the Halloween Goblins, the party was going really well until about 10. That's when the zombie horde showed up. Abomination zombie horde. Straight up Romero shit.

Cora and Artemis did some scry-y kind of stuff, and found out the zombies were coming from a ritual conducted by some random kids, who in turn got the book from a weird antique bookstore. We split up into three teams- Apophis, Mary the ghost-witch, and Ash marched out and killed the shit out of the zombies with fire and explosions. Kind of glad I missed that one.

Brayker, Cora, George, Weylin, and I went to investigate the bookstore itself. (Cora also texts and drives). Turns out, some doppleganger Servant dude killed the original bookstore owner, and took his place so he could pass the evil magic book onto some unsuspecting kids. We busted down the door, took the guy down (well, Weylin and Brayker did. I mostly stood guard), and then Cora pulled the releveant info out of his mind before we killed him. Brayker is kind of scary when he goes on away team missions, and George has got to hit the shooting range before he goes on another mission. Seriously. It's embarrassing. 

Artemis, Ellie, and anyone else I missed stayed back at the base, where they were able to disrupt the evil ritual and teleport the creepy magic book away from the kids. Yay magic. Is there anything it can't do? That's an actual question. I really have no idea how this shit works.

With the ritual reversed, the zombies melted into goo. This was particularly good, as we weren't the only ones the zombies went after- they were marauding after any Believers in the city, so now said Believers owe us one for saving their asses, or something. None of our people died (even if some of us got a little banged up), so we should definitely chalk this one up in the 'win' column.

This said, we need to get our shit together. This is the first time our new Citadel's been attacked directly, and something tells me it's not going to be the last. Our front gate got ripped apart during the zombie attack, so those of you with engineering skills (or at least those of you with lots of money to hire people with engineering skills) should get on repair duty ASAP.

Right now, the jury's still out on whether or not we're going to kick down the door of the CUT church next month- it's Brayker's call, ultimately, but I think a lot of it is gonna depend on what kind of backup we can get from Lex Talionis. Still, I can't imagine any of Dr. Watts' buddies passing up on an opportunity to go break shit, so hopefully things should go smoothly. Or, well, as smoothly as you can expect from the Accord.

But yeah. Clean your guns, sharpen your knives, polish your crystal balls, brush your fangs or whatever- 'cause I've got the feeling the rest of the year's gonna get rough.  

Perspective

The other day, I was sitting at a bar, about three beers in (so, y'know, “lunch”), when the guy a few stools down started going on about how terrible the Astros are. He was right (not that I cared, I'm more of a Cardinals fan than anything), but the thing that struck me was just how passionate he was about the whole thing. The fact that the local baseball team was pretty terrible seemed to effect this dude on the personal level, even though he knew things probably weren't going to get better anytime soon.

And I couldn't help but think to myself, “Y'know, it'd be really nice if all I had to worry about was how shitty the local sports teams are, as opposed to this whole 'otherworldly threat against all of reality' thing I've gotten swept up into.” It's the kind of thought that makes the pistol you've got hidden beneath your shirt suddenly seem a whole lot heavier. And now I don't know what's worse; the fact I'm making analogies about concealed weapons, or the fact that I fully expect you readers to know exactly what the hell I'm talking about.

It's all about perspective, I guess. 'cause no matter how bad things may be for you, there's always going to be somebody having a shittier day than you are. So, uh, more on that later.

Anyway! Brayker was out doing more secret agent shit, which left me and/or Apophis in charge. It's not a bad split, really, I can handle investigative and logistical things, and Apophis can handle hitting things and/or stuff that's screebly and horrifying.

I was running a little late-ish, so apparently I missed the full recap of whatever the shit happened in Nashville. Cora, Fr. Frank, and Mr. Kendrick (and probably a few more who I'm missing) had gone. From what I heard, there was some crazy-ass adventures through time and space, in which Cora wore a sexy red dress, and then a bunch of Accordists got split into random groups and met Satan and were forced to fight the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Pretty sure that was a game for Super Nintendo, but I digress. It's also worth noting that Cavalry members got in the killing blows on at least two out of the four horsemen. Maybe more. So, y'know, yay team.

We started with some pretty simple Cell business- Fr. Frank gave a report on Parliament (spoiler alert: they're not really accomplishing much). The current issues up for discussion in Parliament are something about minimum standards of combat competency (yay?) and also perhaps the establishment of some kind of code duello so all the crazy-ass killmonsters running around the Accord have designated rules with which to murder each other after they start calling each other names on the national mailing list (boo).

Dr. Watts brought up a fairly interesting (if depressing) point, using me as an example of...well, vague competency. In fact, by his assessment, I've already surpassed the proposed guidelines for minimum fightiness in the Accord. So, uh, hurray for low standards, I guess? This is actually kind of worrying, as that means there are Accordians who have less of an idea of what they're doing than I do. Also, as per Dr. Watts, the Cavalry is unique in the fact that just about everyone knows some way to hurt things? Maybe it's 'cause we live in Texas, I dunno. Now I kind of want to get a cowboy hat and some hip-holsters if I ever go to another big Operation, but that'd just be silly. I'd look terrible in spurs.

In other cell business, we had an election for a new Myrmidon, which Ash won. So everyone congratulate her, and make sure she gets to have an easy job of things by not trying to kill each other and all that.

So yeah. Penny originally started putting a plan in motion in which we'd scope out the chief of the local purist werewolves so we could see if they were down with the CUT or not. But...we got a little sidetracked.

See, some kind of vampire serial killer rolled into town, ate one of Penny's vampire buddies, and then vampirized Penny. And since the dude ate Penny's vampire buddy's soul, that means he leaned everything that the vampire buddy knew, and...well, it ended up with the vampire serial killer writing 'I BELIEVE' on the wall. In blood. Yeah.

A team set out through the Hedge to intercept vampire serial killer guy, and subsequently subdued him, so good job there. Right now, we have this comatose vampire locked up in a box in one of our holding cells as we figure out what to do with him. As I see it, we have three options:

1. We get someone with crazy mind powers to scan him while he's still dormant, so we can figure out what his deal is.
2. We wake the guy up one way or another (read: we invite some Lex vampires from out of town to do crazy vampire shit) and then interrogate him to figure out what his deal is.
3. OR, Penny eats the dude's soul, which will allow him to know what the guy knows, which is a thing Penny can do because he's a full vampire instead of a half vampire. Also other vampires don't like this?

Thankfully, comatose vampires keep for a long-ass time, so we don't have to make a decision right away. I get the feeling we're going to need some help on this one. Paging Dr. Helsing. Which makes me wonder now if there's an actual Van Helsing family out there- I mean, Dracula moderates our mailing list (which is a hilarious image if there ever was one), so...uh, yeah.

As to be expected, Penny isn't taking the whole 'vampire' thing very well. So, y'know, someone's always having a shittier day than you are (unless you just got turned into a vampire). Hopefully, thanks to the efforts of Ash, we've gotten it handled. It's not like we haven't had vampires hanging around before, right? Just as long as he doesn't go around eating people or making more half-vampire bitches, I'm sure Penny can continue to be a productive member of the Cavalry.

Meanwhile, Artemis and Dr. Weylin and Mr. Kendrick went and played doctor- wait, no, that sounds bad. They went and played House- wait, no, also bad. They went and touched on their medical contacts and did some research, confirming that the weird magic-flu thing going around is indeed caused by The Truth, as they're using random people as 'cameras' to observe on stuff. So, y'know, watch your ass around people with the sniffles, guys. However, Weylin did bring up the idea of using known infected people as means of delivering disinformation, which is a really good idea. So yay for that.

Also, Mr. Kendrick and one of the Sin Eaters whose name escapes me went and scoped out the local puritan werewolf chief to see if he was in cahoots with the CUT- and the test came back negative. So, y'know, when the local werewolves are trying to kill us, now we know it's 'cause they're assholes, and not 'cause they're in with the Truth. That's...kind of good, I guess?

Oh, and we got another new recruit. A woman named Ellen (or was it Ellie?) who's some kind of changeling shark-mermaid, or something. 'cause that's a thing.

Aaaanyway, next month's October, which means we'll be having our second annual official Accordist Monster Mash! I'll be posting a separate entry to coordinate logistics and stuff shortly.

Of course, we're also talking about getting a bit possee together to kick down the CUT HQ's door in October, too- Dr. Watts is supposed to be organizing that stuff right now, though he still needs to meet up with Brayker to hack out the details.

So yeah. Gonna be a busy night next month. Don't miss it.  

Valuable life lessons in Simplicity and Cynicism.

I should've stayed home last night.

Admittedly, I could say that about any given time I hang out with you crazy monsters, but last night was particularly memorable. I had a cold, for one. Dr. Weylin says it's not this magic cold that's going around, at least, so there's that. I'll get to that later.

Anyway, since Brayker was running late, and Barrett's ditched us to shack up with Wayngro (demons, man), this kinda left me in charge. At least as much as anyone can be in charge of an Accord Cell. Seriously, it's like herding cats with you people.

And y'know what? I fucked up. See, I figured we should go after this Lester guy, from The List. But since he was a ghoul in the employ of The King Vampire or someone else who's important in Houston, my original idea was to have those Puritan werewolves do the dirty work for us.

This was a bad plan.

After setting up this long and convoluted, it turned out that the Puritans and Lester the ghoul-guy are actually best buds, so those fuckers just tipped Lester off and then ran away with the bribe we gave them. So, y'know, so much for that.

We should take this as a lesson, then- namely, keep it simple. So from here on out, when we set out to whack a guy, we get to do it ourselves. This should make a lot of you psychopaths fairly happy.

Anyway, while we were running around in circles trying to make things work, Apophis went out with the Jacques and Dr. Weylin and Artemis and probably some other people I'm missing to go hunt some big statue that was stolen a few days ago. Only, the statue stole itself, because it's actually made of alchemy, or something? I don't fucking understand this shit, you guys. I don't think they got it because Apophis warned everyone to be on the lookout for an angel-thing, so yeah.

In any case, given the colossal failure of the convoluted plan, we geared up and went for something a little more straightforward. Namely, we were going to track down Pierce, the guy from Pierce Security, and shoot him 'til he stopped moving.

So me, George, Dr. Watts, Mummy Guy, Penny, and Tinker (the grubby dude with the goggles) tool up to go track this down.

This was a bad idea.

Well, here's the thing. The plan was a good one, for it's simplicity. The problem was I went with them. I don't know what the hell I was thinking right there because holy shit I'm a dumbass. I think I've been hanging out with you bastards too long, so I get to the point where thinking this sort of thing is 'normal.' That, or I somehow decided I needed to 'prove' myself by going on one of these kill-team missions.

So, y'know, learning experience. See, the thing is, I'm a halfway decent shot, but this pales in comparison to the kind of hurt that the monsters can throw around- or the kind of hurt that the Truth can throw back at us. Which means I nearly fucking died back there. See, we got the drop on Pierce and his goons, but then these two green-army-men toy-abomination things come out of fucking nowhere, and they shoot me full of unreality-bullets, and the next thing I know I'm on the ground and there's Dr. Watts' giant ghost-viking-horse spitting lightning at me to make me not-die. Or maybe I did die, and now my own personal hell means I have to deal with You People for all eternity, because that's a fitting punishment. Then again, I doubt hell has beer or wi-fi connectivity, and I've got both, so I think I'm ok.

I guess I filled a valuable part of the plan by soaking up all the horrible painful hurting that otherwise would have hit the actual fighty people. Anyway, we shoot the place up, kill Pierce, kill his goons (Penny did his thing on that- seriously, dude's kind of creepy with a knife. I think it's because he's half-vampire), and kill the abominations. And, sure enough, there's a tear there. Dr. Watts sizes it up, and he's like “Pessimism will close this tear!”

I say, “done.”

I guess there was a reason I went on that mission after all. Seriously, I'm like the 'Heart' kid from Captain Planet, only I'm running on booze and cynicism.

So, that happened. We grabbed some shiny things on the way out (Penny got a laptop, so the technically minded can mine that for intel) and ran the fuck away before the cops could show up.

Speaking of the police, they're probably gonna be pretty busy, given the fact the gang war between the Purist Werewolves and the Vampires is heating up, courtesy of the hardware vampire bitch-lady Cassandra is stockpiling. Seriously, my sources are telling me they're digging silver bullets out of the walls in a lot of these gang-shootout scenes.

Meanwhile, while I'm off getting shot and hating everything, a bunch of other folks went and checked out that magic flu (which, I might add, I don't have), and apparently they discovered it's all in people's heads. In that, they think they're sick, which makes them sick, because of spirit magic bullshit. This also turns them into spy cameras for...somebody. We don't know yet. This is still being worked on. This is probably the expedition I should have gone on, but then again I don't know how well I could've contributed because I don't know how magic bullshit works. Would've beaten gotten shot, at least.

So yeah. Another name off The List. That's kind of productive. We're working on other stuff- George is still gearing up for his fancy-pants party to get his hooks into some of the City Councilmen who're on The List. Also, David Pine's a capital-s Servant now...but this is kind of good, because Miss Tomorrow has a back-door into his dream-brain, or...something.

I also hear Miss T is going into the Hedge to sell buttons. Don't go with her.

Anyway, I'm still trying to throw this cold, so I'm gonna go pound a couple of screwdrivers. Vitamin C and vodka are both essential, you know.

See you in September, you horrible monsters. 

Happy Anniversary! Everything is still horrible.

A year ago, I learned about the Truth. And that's when someone gave me an anonymous address, and said “go here, and you'll get your answers.”

I'm still regretting it.

Because seriously, a year ago, I remained blissfully unaware about vampires and werewolves and Frankensteins and ghost zombies and whatever the shit else is out there. And, of course, the Truth. And so since then my life has pretty much been a first-hand crash course in learning about crazy ass supernatural shit that shouldn't exist in the first place.

I'm pretty sure I've learned at least enough to drive me crazy at this point, if it weren't for the booze. In fact, I think that's why everyone goes mad at the end of a Lovecraft story; they didn't have enough liquor to deal with all the otherworldly squids, or something. This is why I made sure the Citadel bar stays stocked.

But you know what the worst part of this is?

After a year, I'm a fucking veteran.

See, Brayker had MIB shit to do last night, and Apophis was down in whatever creepy hole he lives in...and so you know what happened?

THEY PUT ME IN CHARGE.

How fucked up is that? Unless it was some sick joke someone came up with, which wouldn't surprise me because, y'know, monsters.

But y'know what? Fuck all of you hater-ass monsters, sneering at the “puny mortal,” with his lack of superpowers and general squishiness. Because I actually did a halfway decent job of Cell Leader-ing, dammit. I mean, nobody died. Well, none of our people died, so that's a start, right?

To be fair, Barrett was pretty invaluable, as he and I were kind of, like, co-leaders. He did the “war leader,” thing (and did a pretty good job of it, I might add), while I was left to the less-killy shit.

So, here's what we accomplished on the 26^th:

OPERATION: KILL A NINJA

So, Artemis, that witchy-lady who showed up a few months ago, managed to pull some info on one of the dudes on the most recent Wayngro list. That Lance guy, of the Adamantium Arrow or whatever. According (har har) to Artemis, the Adamantium Wizards are a bunch of militant assholes who like to fight everyone. And Lance was their go-to hitman kind of dude, who only leaves his wizard castle when it's time to go beat someone up.

Also, he was a ninja. Because that's a thing.

So, after a bit of deliberating, a plan was hatched in which Artemis would piss the Adamantium Ninja Wizards off by spying on them with her magic, at which point they'd tool up to go kick her ass- which would lead them into an ambush at Dr. Watts' theater. Dr. Watts', Ethan Little, Dr. Watts' buddy Rick, Barrett, that new Frankenstein dude, and probably one or two other folks who I missed went off, fought the ninjas, and wrapped things up pretty well. So good on them.

I'd particularly like to commend team Kill a Ninja for their restraint- see, Lance was the only Servant amongst the lot- he had a couple of goons who didn't know the first thing about the Truth, so they got to live to see another day (most of them, at least).

I hate fucking around with supernatural politics, since I have no idea what's going on with them most of the time.

Meanwhile, I stayed at the citadel, along with a handful of the less-fighty people. We got a pair of Changeling recruits- a dude named Tinker, who's twitchy-crazy, and a lady named Evanescence or something, who's quiet-crazy. Welcome them aboard, everyone.

Of course, not content to just sit around, we proceeded to set out for a TOP SECRET NO QUESTIONS ASKED CONFIDENTIAL SECRECY MISSION.

Seriously, don't ask.

While I'm not at liberty to give the details, I'll just have you all know this was a mission of deception and infiltration, with masks and disguises and bribes and everything. Like James Bond, only shittier.

What I will reveal is what I learned: namely, there's a vampire-lady named Cassandra who's apparently stockpiling weapons and heavy-duty specialized ammo (like, fire bullets hollowpoints and stuff). I've got the feeling she's working for Shabetta and the other vampire assholes- probably tooling up to do something big against the Puritan werewolves. Or something. Somebody get Penny on this, 'cause he's our go-to vampire intel guy.

So those were the two main 'missions' we had- though there's still a bunch of other shit to worry about. A quick breakdown:

THE LIST

Go read the previous blog entry, and look at those names. See if you can dig up some dirt on those people. Find out where they live, their schedules, their vices, whatever. Anything we know can be useful.

OPERATION: HOITY TOITY FANCY PANTS

Tangentially related to The List, one of our guys, George, is going to put together some fancy-ass social schindig to see if he can pull any dirt on the CUT members- or if nothing else, it'll get some of them in one place at one time, and we can make use of that. So if that's something you'd be able to help with, let George know, and we can get the ball rolling on that.

TURN YOUR HEAD AND COUGH

So I've heard some reports of some kind of unseasonal summer cold going around...only it's not a cold, it's more of a nose-bleedy...thing without any proper explanation. From the little info I was able to gather, there wasn't any real set pattern to it, and it's not deadly, so...that's something? Still, if somebody who has crazy ass magic powers can look into it, just to be safe, that'd be great. Like, could it be some kind of disease-spirit or demon or something? Is that a thing?

(For the record, the fact that I think of these questions now means I've gone a little bit nuts, I think. I need another beer).

Anyway, that's about all I've got right now. Really, I'm in a surprisingly good mood, all things considered. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm still pretty much terrified of you people, not to mention how okay I am with thinking about things in terms of spirits and magic and wizards and shit.

But hey, it only took one drink this time to make my hands stop shaking, so that's something, right?

Na na na na na na na na ABOMINATION!

I'm kind of getting the hang of this. You know, get together with a bunch of terrible monsters, fight against a horrible death-cult conspiracy thing, and then blog about it a day or two later. How fucked up is that?

It helps (so much as these sort of things can be helped) that things are running...semi smoothly. I attribute this to a pretty simple rule- I don't know if it's official yet, but damn if it shouldn't be, because things are working. But yeah, the rule is as follows:

DON'T DO SHIT IF YOU DON'T HAVE A PLAN.

That simple.

See, earlier in the evening, Mummy Guy was all like 'Let's go kill Spiers!' At which point I noted 'Hey, the last time we went up and knocked on his door, he just teleported the hit squad away and then killed one of us for kicks, because he is a fucking 110 RQ brain wizard.'

Knocking on Spiers' door is a bad plan.

So either due to my veteran wisdom, or something, disaster was averted. Don't get me wrong, I want Spiers as dead as the next guy, but it's gonna take some doing.

That's not to say we can't get shit done, however! As Ethan and some of his zombie ghost buddies and Jacques and Barrett and probably a bunch of other people I'm forgetting (don't blame me, I wasn't there) went after Detective Keller- who we all learned was a fire ghost changeling thing last month. However, as they went after Keller, a Tear opened- at which point they ran into Batman and Robin.

No, really.

I...kind of wish I'd been there, maybe? Not really, as Abominations terrify me (as most everything does), but still. Batman and Robin. 1960's version, because of course it was. From what I heard, people got BIFF'd and POW'd and otherwise knocked around until they were able to tear the Bat-abominations apart.

That's yet another old-timey pop culture Abomination we've had to deal with- thus far, we've fought The Lone Ranger & Tanto, a Redshirt from Star Trek, a stop motion animated dinosaur, and now Batman & Robin. I'm kicking around a few theories about this right now, but honestly it's probably some other whack-ass thing I've never heard of like TV gremlins or some shit. Somebody's probably going to fight Evil Mr. Ed next, or something. So if a talking horse tries to kill you, let me know.

So yeah. I wasn't at the Abomination-fight, as Cora and Dr. Jones and Michelle and I wound up doing some investigating on that dude who got stabbed up at NASA. See, that dude was apparently a Changeling watching over it, or something- and Wayngro wanted him out of the way.

I had THOUGHT Barrett had taken care of this last month, but I was wrong. See, Barrett had the bright idea of taunting Wayngro and trying to fuck him over out of the deal, so Wayngro took matters into his own hands and murdered the NASA dude- and he made sure to frame Barrett for it. OOPS.

Yeah.

Thankfully, that shit's handled now- but, to make the local changelings happy, we had to get a changeling of our own as a co-caretaker or something. Seeing as of how we only had the one changeling handy, this fell on Michelle. It's all in an expansive, 'signed in blood' kind of contract, because, you know, demons.

Funnily enough, I'm kind of cool with this (at least since I wasn't the one who had to sign the contract). Wayngro may be a fucked up demon creature, but from everything I've seen so far, the dude's on the level. Sure, he's not a member of the Accord, but he knows about the Truth, and he hates and fears them as much as we do. It's just that it's in his nature to be a greedy bastard (because, you know, demon) so he's gonna work the angles. According to him, his goal is to take control of all these power-places in town so he can open a gateway to hell so he can go back home, and run away from the truth. The thing is, I get the feeling he doesn't completely know what the fuck he's doing so here's to hoping he doesn't drag the entire damned city into hell with him. Houston's hot enough as is.

What I'm trying to say, really, is DON'T FUCK WITH WAYNGRO. He's dangerous, of course, but he can also get us legit intel, which is something we can definitely use. Case in point, here's the current list of CUT bad guys we need to worry about:

1) The Reverend Damian Rominati, head of the local CUT.

2) Christopher Spiers, chief assistant to Rominati.

3) Miriam MacDonald, City Councilman.

4) Melissa Redding, City Councilman.

5) Mr. Lester Rothstein, ghoul in the employ of Alder Stentorius

6) Patrick Pierce, a former Marine and head of Pierce Protection.

7) Lieutenant Christopher Keller, newly appointed head of Arson. (DEAD)

8) David Pine, Board member and majority share-holder of Pine Pharmaceuticals.

9) Lance, Obrimos Mage of the Adamantine Arrow

I don't know what an Adamantine Arrow mage is, but it sounds bad.

But yeah, general orders are, go out and pull info on these guys as best you can, be it by digging up records or bribing people or looking into a crystal ball or whatever the fuck it is you can do. With any luck, we'll know enough to get a Plan together by the end of July.

Which is when the Evil Talking Horse will show up, and everything will go to shit, I'm guessing. 

I just realized I wrote this while (mostly) sober, so I don't say "fuck" as much as I usually do. My journalistic integrity must be slipping.

Speaking of journalistic integrity, it's been brought to my attention that I misquoted someone in my earlier report on Operation: Redemption. Namely, it was Chance Master who told me he was a Superhero, not Frankie Miles. Consider this the official correction since it's not like I have (or want) an actual editor on this thing.

Anyway, for our monthly get-together, Brayker couldn't make it, so he put Apophis in charge, who...also couldn't make it, so things sort of fell on Barrett & Jacques to keep things running. I'm just glad they showed up, so it didn't fall on, like, me to run things.

Because holy shit guys, there was a lot to keep track of.

We had a bunch of new people, which is good because more boots on the ground to fight the Truth, rah rah...but also bad because the more people who know about the Truth the shittier things get. It was like, a couple of wizards, a mummy (mummies are a thing, I learned), and some honest to god normal people. Oh, and some of the guys from Lake Charles, too, but they're not really new or anything.

After introductions were dealt with, the Heart-Taker Magic Serial Killer Guy showed up on our doorstep...carrying a chess set. Considering his MO was 'challenge somebody to chess, then kill them when they lose,' this...was a problem.

At this point, Dr. Watts and his Assistant were able to kill the shit out of the Heart-Taking dude before any chess could be played or any hearts could be taken. I guess that's good? The jury's still out on it, since the Heart Taker seemed to be focusing on Servants before, but I can't fault the good Doctor for being thorough.

Further investigation revealed the Heart Taker had taken a heart with him- and through the application of something called 'sympathetic magic,' we were able to find out whose heart it belonged to: Charles Gunther, that guy who we disgraced and was going to write a tell-all about the CUT.

An investigation of his apartment revealed his heartless corpse- along with some other blood spatters, showing a fight. Based on some magicy stuff, we figured out that it was panda blood. And given the height at which the blood was smeared on the walls, they were baby pandas. And apparently magic-vision revealed a Tear which had been sealed, maybe? So they were abomination baby pandas.

Abomination Baby Pandas are a thing, apparently.

The guy's apartment had been ransacked- somebody (the baby panda monsters, by my guess) made off with his computer's hard drive. I haven't figured out an exact timeline yet, but it looks like Heart Taker dude fought with the baby pandas before driving them off, maybe? Either way, Gunther's still dead, which...kind of helps, I guess?

Meanwhile, as we were investigating this, it came about that the Wayngro Demon guy had offered another list of CUT cultists for us to go after- and we'd have to get some changeling over at NASA to give up his spot in order to get the list? Or something? Barrett and Michelle and some other folks managed to take care of it, from what I was told. Good on them.

And on ANOTHER Meanwhile, apparently the local Vampires had a meeting with the 'good guy' Werewolves (at least the dudes Jacques and Weylin hang out with) to go after the Puritan Werewolves- or at least that was the plan, until the Puritans smashed through the window started wrecking shit up. The local Vampire boss made it out okay, from what I was told, so that's good? This wasn't before a hotel got lit on fire, though.

And, as luck would have it, one of the local Servants was one Detective Keller- an arson investigator (who I've actually crossed paths with before, no thanks to you jerks). I cooked up a quick-but-efficient plan to capture him, which would've worked if it didn't turn out Keller was a fire ghost or a fire-changeling or...something made of fire.

It goes without saying that the hotel got lit on fire again. But apparently the mummy fixed it, so that's good?

Finally, Michael (the wizard dude), Michelle, and Luke (the hacker demon with the hat) all went into Weylin's brain, because he had a tear in it too, because he couldn't remember somebody, I think? It's all weird and magical and sounds really bad.

So yeah. Looks like we'll be getting a New List to post up here pretty soon. People have also been making some noise about going after Damien Spiers, which (if anyone asks me), we shouldn't do very lightly, as the dude is a TELEPORTING BRAIN WIZARD. We may only have one real shot at the dude, so it won't help us to go off half-cocked.

Whenever we do go after him, though, I'm betting Dr. Watts'll be leading the way. And that's just fine with me. 

Normal is relative.

And it's back to normal.

I'm using the term “Normal” really loosely here, given that every few weeks I get together with the Munsters' extended family to fight against horrible otherworldly monsters from another dimension. It's just that this time around I'm hanging out with local monsters as opposed to creatures from all around the world coming together for poorly organized expeditions into time-bubbles. I've re-read that last sentence three or four times now, and it still reads like I just started saying random crazy-people words. And yet, it makes sense.

I hate that it makes sense.

ANYWAY.

So it was a fairly low turnout tonight- I guess most of you horrible monsters were out doing horrible monster things, or something. There was some new dude named Michael or something- he was a friend of Dr. Watts'. He's a wizard, but like a different kind of wizard, I think? He's not a viking, at least.

But, no sooner do I walk into the citadel, I get a call from one of my Sources (I have a lot of those, for the record), letting me know that something weird is going down at this monster movie festival out in Katy. Naturally, I assume the worst, and I ask the gathered bunch: “Hey, anyone want to fight a dinosaur?”

Everybody volunteered.

So we all tool up and head out- and hell, because we were kind of shorthanded, even -I- went out on a fighty away team expedition (not to mention I got the lead to begin with). And, sure enough, there was a goddamn rubber dinosaur monster stomping out of a giant fucking Tear in the middle of a drive-in theater screen.

So we throw down, and we killed the shit out of the movie monster- at which point I should note that I actually pulled my gun and shot the thing and hurt it which proves I'm not totally useless. So we wrap up the brawl, and we close the tear, and that was the most action-y thing I've been part of so far. I mean, usually, I just dig around and come up with a brilliant plan and point some of you psychopaths at the bad guys.

Also, I kind of think that dude Sam, with the cowboy hat, is kind of bullshit. Like, he's a feelings wizard or something. So he was like “You know when you were feeling bad, when there was a giant monster trying to kill you, and a tear in the fabric of reality? I DID THAT.” And then “Oh, and you know when you felt kind of proud of yourself when we killed the monster? I DID THAT TOO.” Seriously, dude's like the Heart-kid from the Planeteers. Feelings are not a superpower.

So we get back to the Citadel, and...well, The Captain wants to talk to us. Yeah, that guy. See, after the shit went down in Redemption, he wound up in our custody. Local matter, that is. So, he laid out just what he did, which was this:

The Captain was from Redemption, TX- so when Redemption got Quarantined, he forgot where he was from, who his family was, and even his name. He went on doing MIB shit for the One World Government or whatever, until a Spirit of Secrets (that's a thing?) showed up and told him where he was really from.

The Captain then procured a Null Zone Generator, and performed a ritual called a Long Walk which allowed him to go into a Quarantine zone. However, the gimmick is, the Null Zone Generator allowed him to create a way OUT of the Quarantine zone, allowing several trapped Accordists (like that Mr. Kent vampire dude) to escape.

Thing was, he fucked it up, which culminated in the whole goddamn country having to go to Redemption TX to fix it (see previous blog entry).

So, the Captain is chilling in an undisclosed location, as we figure out what the hell to do with him. However, here's the thing...we don't know who sent the Secret Spirit to The Captain in the first place. It had to be somebody with some serious goddamn mojo, and it PROBABLY was someone who knew what Quarantine was...which means somebody on the National Council. I never trusted the National Council to begin with, because, you know, THEY HAVE A DRACULA, but nobody listens to New Guy.

We're still trying to figure out what to do with The Captain as he awaits trial in the aforementioned Undisclosed Location.

Once The Captain laid all that out, we sort of milled about for a bit, discussing the matter- until we found out that Luke (that new guy from last month) was now a Demon (dumbass) and he also had a Tear in his Brain. Michelle and Michael the Wizard Inception'd into his head, though, and fixed it, I guess? At least that's what they told me. I have no idea what you Things are doing half the time.

Oh, and January announced that she's leaving us forever. I think it's because the magnets in her head are turned the opposite way from the magnets in Apophis' head, so that makes them repel each other or something. Fucking Frankensteins, how do they work?

But yeah. Just another day of horrible adventure, I guess. I'm sure something worse will come up in may.

Things always get worse. 

Operation: Redemption

West Texas is an awful place.

Then again, I'm beginning to think that everything is terrible everywhere, what, with a horrible demon-cult conspiring to tear down the fabric of reality and all. I really hate west Texas. I have my reasons. Very, very good ones.

But I went anyway.

Part of it was morbid curiosity, part of it was the opportunity. It's not like I'm going to Costa Rica or Tokyo or any other of those hotbeds anytime soon. I can't afford the airfare, and from what I've heard, I sure as hell don't wanna go.

So I grab my gun and my camera, and head on out to this hotel out in the middle of nowhere. I wasn't the only one from the Cavalry there, thank god. In no particular order: myself, Jaques, Michelle, Apophis, Barrett, Dr. Jones, Cora, Mary the Ghost-Witch Lady, Mr. Scalpel, Dr. Watts, Dr. Watts' buddy whose name I forget, and, of course, Brayker. Ethan and some of the Lake Charles murderhobos were there too.

And then there was everybody else.

You know that scene in Star Wars, where they go into the space bar and see all the crazy-ass monsters hanging out? It was like that, only with less booze and shittier music. Note: somebody important work on this for the next big apocalyptic throwdown.

I'm not sure if some Thing was blurring the picture, or if I'm just a shitty photographer.

By my figure, I saw: Werewolves, Vampires, Frankensteins, Ghost-Zombies, Wizards, FBI Agents, Ninjas, Demons, Changelings, and some guy who looked like Darth Maul. (I'll stop making Star Wars references, I promise). There were probably even more Things running around that I missed due to the feeling of impending doom bearing down on me. Must have been at least a hundred “people” there, from all over the damn country.

The whole thing had been organized by one Mr. Warden (who, for the record, knew my name, which makes me wonder who's keeping dossiers on me)...and The Captain. Yeah, that one. I freaked out when I saw him roaming around, because who wouldn't? I guess he figured out that he fucked up the Quarantine when he broke it?

So this makeshift supernatural army assembled to make shit right, so the hordes of Abominations wouldn't come screaming out of the time-space-tear-thingies. I know there's a better term for it but I'm honestly afraid if I start researching the proper terminology my brain will explode.

It was a simple plan, as far as these things go. Mr. Warden would do his wizard shit to shift the entire hotel (and the poor bastards in it) into the Quarantine pocket dimension whatever. At that point, it was up to us to fan out and collect these crystal-whatsits that were part of a null zone generator so we could seal the tears and now I'm giving you the plot of a video game.

There was a time limit, of course. See, since things are all Groundhog Day inside a Quarantine, you have the advantage of knowing exactly when and where things are going to happen. Which meant we knew a slavering horde of abominations was coming for us a little after midnight. We could see everything going to shit outside- fires in the streets, abominations chasing down pedestrians; it's a glimpse of what's going to happen if we fuck up and lose this war.

This map was pretty much the extent of the planning we had. That's one map for a good hundred people. We had enough firepower to conquer a small eastern European country, but nobody thought to set up a powerpoint presentation. That's how organized the Accord is, people. We're doomed.

...which, of course, meant it took us like two goddamn hours to get parties organized and sent out. Seriously, it was fucking embarrassing. Everyone was wandering around either trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, or crowding around the Big Kids table and yelling for things to happen. Some dude named Dave from the Vault was nominally in charge,

You know how bad it was? I almost went tearing off with Ethan to start Doing Shit. I was instigating, even. Ethan, the paramilitary zombie ghost was impressed with me. Do you know how terrifying that is?

So after dithering around for entirely too long, the Munsters family reunion split into three groups to pursue three different targets:

Team A went downtown to go toe to toe with some giant abomination.

Team B went out to a suburb full of brainwashed people.

Team C went to a refinery crawling with flammable oil-monsters.

I went on Team B, along with about thirty other Accordists. We blundered around like so many drunken cats, splitting up into smaller sub-squads as we went. Apophis and Jacques managed to find the crystal gizmo, though, so good on them.

While our mission went smooth-ish, the others didn't. People died. Barret died. Mary died.

Kinda.

See, whenever one of ours got killed inside Redemption, they'd get spit right out of the same portal that Mr. Warden used to keep in contact with us from the real world. Don't ask me how this works because I'm not a fucking wizard. Magic is inexplicable bullshit like that. I think they're gonna keep Barret in a cell for a few weeks and poke him with sticks in case he mutates or something.

The three teams returned to the hotel with no time to spare- Cora pieced the pieces of the crystal together, which made a bunch of Things squirm and bitch (it was a null zone, maybe?) until she threw it into the portal.

Finally, we got a message back from Mr. Warden- there needed to be a sacrifice. See, there were seven Accordists in Redemption when it first got Quarantined, so there needed to be seven when we closed the tear. Seven people, doomed to fight and die, day after day, because that's how Quarantine works. There wasn't any shortage of volunteers.

Here's who stayed:

Daniel Kiev, from Boston.

He Who Takes All

Slide, from San Antonio

Nathaniel, from Redemption

Garn

Chance Master, from Lake Charles

Frankie Miles, from Lake Charles.

It's funny, as earlier that evening, I asked Frankie what kind of Thing he was. He told me he was a superhero.

I'm inclined to believe him.

March!

I dodged a bullet tonight, folks. Okay, maybe not literally, but still. More on that later.

I missed the last schindig. I had my reasons (it's just entirely coincidental that we went and kicked the CUT beehive the month before). As I understand it, things pretty much went to hell without me, which is both depressing and not surprising. But apparently January's still alive? Or Apophis managed to stitch her back together and jump-started her off an old car battery? I dunno.

Anyway, here's a rundown of last night's shenanigans, in case you were lucky enough to miss it.

INTRODUCTIONS:

Jackie: Apparently, one of Weylin's ex-girlfriends or something? Or at least she beat him up once. Father Frank made the crack that he was “pussy whipped.” (And here I didn't know Inquisitor priests could make jokes?) Lady allegedly turns into a tiger, and I really hope I'll never see her do it.

Mr. Scalpel: Dude's a surgeon (and he'll be sure to tell you about it). Cool guy, though. Showed up last month but whatever, I just met him. Also he has super bullets in his gun, which is kinda cool I guess? With any luck I won't be in need in of his services, like...ever.

Hacker Dude: For the record, I was not nearly as clueless as this guy when I first showed up. Seriously. At least I have a thrilling and horrific origin story, as opposed to “I clicked on Lovecraft.exe, and now I am joining the Accord.”

POLITICS

Okay, so, it USED to be, the Accord was set up by semi-autonomous regional councils, all under the “guidance” of the High Council, which, I might add, includes a Dracula.

But now, somebody (probably Dracula) got the great idea to dissolve the regional councils, so now there's a “Parliament” in which each cell has somebody to argue on the internet lists for them to try to decide policy, or something.

So yeah. We talked about this a little bit at the meeting, and held a preliminary vote for who our Parlimentarian (or whatever the term is) would be. I was nominated, but thankfully, not elected, 'cause I really have no idea what I'm talking about and it's really all I can do to deal with you horrible monsters as opposed to more assholes from out of town. As of this moment, Father Frank's in the lead, and more power to him. Brayker will probably make the official announcement thing at...some point. Yeah.

CASE FILES

And, because it's never a quiet evening whenever I hang out with a bunch of werewolves and changelings and paramilitary ghost-zombies or whatever, here's a general breakdown of WTF's going down right now:

THE HEART THIEF

Okay, so apparently Ethan whatshisface, the murderhobo from Lake Charles, went poking around and he found that Craig Singleton (from the Wayngro List) just got whacked (along with his guard dogs and guard...guards).

Various investigations both physical and supernatural showed that this was all the work of The Heart Taker- a dude who came across the Houston Accord's radar back in like 2011? (On a sidenote, do we even have anyone in the cell who was active in the Accord back in 2011? If not, this says rather depressing things about Accordion turnover).

Anyway, the general thought is that the Heart Taker is a Slasher, which is a Thing. So, y'know, Jason Vorhees shit. You'd think he'd stick to chopping up horny teenagers, but apparently that's not the Heart Taker's M.O. No, instead, this is some real Ingmar Bergman shit, in that the Heart Taker challenges you to a game of chess, and if you lose (which happens like 80 percent of the time, dude's really good at Chess), he eats your heart. My guess is that the Heart Taker does this to get your power or soul or something. The good news is, he at least just ate a Servant, so...that kind of helps? Maybe?

MEMORY WIPE

So Michelle and a few other folks mentioned that they...kind of remembered someone, but not really? Like they knew that there was a “someone” who was important, with a phone number and an address and stuff, but looks into said phone numbers and addresses revealed...nothing. Like someone had been just written out of reality. Sounds kind of like a more focused version of Quarantine, maybe? Though if it were a proper Quarantine, there wouldn't be any trace left for us to figure it out. There's probably some more important stuff to note here, but I forgot.

Wait.

Fuck.

FUR ON FANG

So, remember how the local Purist Werewolves and the local Vampires are all mad at each other? Well, it looks like they're going from a proxy war to an actual war. Normally, I wouldn't care, because apparently Purist Werewolves are jerks, and so are Vampires, but there might be a believer or two scattered in on either side, and if they died, that would be bad. They went and had a West Side Story kind of rumble in the zoo anyway last night, which was quick and dirty and we really don't have any idea about besides that. Huh.

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Michael's dead.

He was that creepy vampire guy in the leather jacket who just hung out in the back of the room. Honestly, I didn't know him that well, but folks said he was pretty useful on 'away team' missions, which means he was good at killing shit. Good on him.

But he's dead now. As apparently, when he was on the way to the big Werewolf vs. Vampire throwdown, Spiers teleported Michael and his car right off of the highway and...well, into somewhere else. Somewhere else where a bunch of CUT cultists killed the shit out of him in some some horrible and painful way.

So yeah, another star on the board. Touching memorial, sure. But...here's the thing. At our little memorial service thing, someone asked “does anyone know Michael's last name?”

Nobody did.

I hope you bastards remember more about me when the time comes.

But let's not be fatalistic, because I've lasted this long with pretty much no idea what I'm doing, so there's that?

…but now I'm getting morbidly curious about this shit that's going down in Redemption in a few weeks.

So yeah. For the record, my last name is Willis. 

Shit, meet Fan.

Yes, I know, I missed the December entry. I'm sure all of you horrible monsters were just beside yourselves with concern. Or maybe you were just salivating at the chance to feast upon my succulent blood/internal organs/feelings/whatever else you eat. But, thankfully, I'm still here! I'm just gonna say that I didn't post in December because of that Reality-Wave-Time-Paradox anomaly that's going around. 'cause that's a Thing, apparently.


(Actually, to tell the truth, I just didn't post in December 'cause I was busy moving to a newer, more fireproof apartment).


Anyway, January! The month, that is, not the Frankenstein (more on her later). There was a LOT going on, so here's a quick rundown:

Turns out that my old apartment complex WASN'T taken over by Michael Jackson loving lizard people. In fact, it was taken over by people in the thrall of a Michael Jackson loving Sloth Demon. 'cause...that's a Thing. And the infection/cult/whatever had spread to the hospital by some of the people who got run over during the last debacle. Thankfully, the Amazing Dr. Watts led an expedition to contain the situation, so now the Sloth Demon (which is a thing) is no longer a problem. Though apparently this Sloth Demon might have been a Believer...but apparently Dr. Watts knows a ritual to make it less bad when a Believer dies? I find this both practical and more than a little disturbing, because that's like a loophole for when you inevitably want to murder each other. Yeeeah.


Oh, and some new girl named Grayson (who, might I add, is a Thing), totally made Maya cry. Seriously, that's low. (And for the record, Maya doesn't eat babies. Probably).

In more good news, courtesy of the Lake Charles Deathsquad Patrol (and some of our local guys like Ivan), we can cross three names off of The List. To whit, here's an update for anyone keeping score:

1) Reverend Damian Rominati, located at the CUT
2) Christopher Spiers, located at the CUT, RQ 110 WTF IS THIS SHIT PROBABLY A BRAIN WIZARD (more on this later)
3) Julie Wick, deputy assistant to the Mayor, RQ 10
4) Adam Voss, Houston PD Deputy of Operations [Deceased]
5) Charles Gunther, Former City Councilman [Currently out of the State, Because Prostitute Scandal]
6) Miriam MacDonald, City Councilwoman, RQ 10
7) Melissa Redding, City Councilwoman, RQ 10
8) Robert Gage, Firm of Gage Whitney Ross [Deceased]
9) Craig Singleton, CEO of Atlas Energy
10) Allison Van Fleet, CFO of Alliance Financial Solutions [Deceased]
11) Michael Pine, Board member of Pine Pharmaceuticals
12) Antonio Cruz, owner of Cruz Construction [Deceased]

Yeah. Notice something up there, guys? This gets to the...not good but not totally bad news part. In that, myself, and two of the other normal people (there are damnably few of us in Houston these days) went on a recon mission to CUT HQ. And, I might add, things would've gone off without a hitch if we hadn't run into Christopher Spiers, who, I may mention, is a fucking BRAIN WIZARD or some shit, who was able to ID us as soon as we rolled up there through his weird-ass mind reading powers.

Thankfully, we managed to get our asses out of there in one piece, but we had to abort the recon. And, might I add, I got a read on Spiers, showing he's the first CUT member we're up against who's definitely a Thing. Anyway, Spiers did some supervillain-y gloating, going on about how we're all misguided and we're all going to die. Also, apparently the bad guys call us 'Accordians' which is kind of hilarious? Maybe Weird Al's on our side. I'm willing to believe anything at this point.

Aaaand now we're on to the bad news. See, last few months, we've been working a kind of...cold war sort of situation. Gathering intel, putting out fires, biding our time...and now, well, now the 'cold' part isn't that applicable anymore. As, not only does the CUT know what we're up to, but it was SOMEONE'S bright idea to run a raid on the CUT church mere hours after the aborted recon mission. As one would expect, this unplanned, front-on assault went to shit, which resulted in half the Lake Charles Deathsquad Patrol getting magically teleported to Galveston, and January walking into the CUT base itself, where she was summarily killed by something even scarier than she was. Yeesh.

Now...Apophis said that January could come back, because that's what Frankensteins do, apparently? But it's complicated, and for all we know, maybe she'll come back...wrong. Like, corrupted or mutated or something. The jury's still out if she'll go on the memorial wall just yet. And as much as she creeped me the fuck out, I kind of hope we can staple her back together or jump start her or however the hell that works. We need a mad scientist on staff to explain this kind of shit.

On the other hand, January dying in January would be fittingly dramatic.

I hate drama.

Long story short, it looks like we're going into an actual shooting-war now, so all of you horrible night creatures be careful. I have the feeling that things are going to get worse before they get better. January might not be the last name we'll have to add to the wall.