Oh hey, this is still a thing.

So last time we were all going to get together, in October, we kind of got hit by the remnants of a hurricane, which kind of put a damper on the Third Annual Houston Monster Mash. Thankfully, it looks like the CUT got rained in too, so reality didn't collapse. Good for that.

But, with November, it was time to get shit back on track. Part of that involved the somewhat delayed That Is A Thing Official Movie Game. The rules, for anyone who's not familiar, are simple. We watch a movie, and then all you horrible monsters get to nitpick it and write down what the movie got right, and what the movie got wrong. And this time around, we turned to that classic of 80's cinema, The Monster Squad. Artemis complained because the movie didn't have any wizards in it, but eh, what can you do. Wizards, for the record, are bullshit.

On a side note, I think this movie may somehow be the secret origin of our own Major Brayker. Seriously, there's a kid with a leather jacket and a bow and arrow and everything.

It's a good thing we did have another round of the That Is a Thing Movie Game, as, once again, we got a new recruit. A new recruit who, despite being a sparkly flower-fairy or something, was even more clueless than I was when I first showed up. I mean, seriously, I was (and still am) overwhelmed, but at least I didn't say shit like “why can't we just get along with The Truth?”

Here's what we learned.

Somehow, sparkly flower man got dubbed “New New Guy.” So you guys need to make sure you say “new” TWICE whenever you talk to him. New New Guy said I was a mean asshole, and he was right on that account. You jerks have made me this way. If he survives long enough, maybe he'll get properly jaded like I am, and he'll do heroic responsible shit. I kind of doubt it, because Tinkerbell bullshit. Like if he ever gets grumpy he'll probably just ask all the kids in the audience to clap their hands, and he'll be fine, while all I've got is alcohol.

And if you'll excuse me, I need another drink.

So yeah, we had more shit to do on top of the That Is A Thing Movie Game. Apparently, some kids on a Church of Ultimate Truth scholarship went to a techno dance party, which Father Frank, Artemis, Anc, and Kendrick went to investigate. Apparently this guy named DJ Unreal was broadcasting Truthy songs, or something? Frank and company got that shit in line, and so we can add four dead Servants to our scorecard. Good on them.

While that was going on, Ash and Cora went to go check out our haunted ladies' room, where a Halloween Goblin was actually trying to get our help, or something? As apparently there was a big haunted Abomination tree in the fairy magic forest dimension. Ash, Wolf (who is not a werewolf), Penny, Jared, and probably a couple more people whose names I didn't catch went and killed the shit out of it. Good on them, too. Though I will note, for the record, dressing up in a frilly Alice in Wonderland dress apparently doesn't do anything to scare goblin-abominations or whatever. Sorry Ash.

Once everyone got to stretch their legs and go do violent things, we reconvened back at the Citadel, at which point we needed to do some announcements and elections and stuff.

Cora, for the record, stepped down as Quartermaster, and so Artemis was elected to take her place. So go bother her in order to get in on some of that sweet, sweet Menat action.

Seeing as of how I've got a lot on my plate, Sasha has stepped up to act as the Cavalry's new Voice- updates will still be posted here, it's just that she'll be the boots on the ground for it. I may also provide “editorial commentary” (read: drunken sarcasm) as needed.

Oh, and I stepped down as Cell Leader, too.

This isn't due to any fuck-up on my part, mind you. Rather, I think it's because I'm too competent. In the fucked up world of The Accord, I've actually been approached by Important People on the Council for an assignment. I'm not gonna go into the details, (you know, it being important classified shit), but it's the kind of thing from the kind of people that you can't really say “no” to. All you guys need to know is that I won't be in Houston very often. Maybe things will change, maybe not. We'll see.

A properly proctored election ensued, at which point Apophis was elected as Cell Leader. And as fucked up as it is, he's the best man (to use a loose definition of the term) for the job. I'd say I expect the lot of you to treat him with the same respect you did to me; but that would mean you'd just treat him with no respect, which is probably a bad idea. Seriously, if you fuck with Apophis, I'm pretty sure he will eat you, and you'll probably even deserve it. But, here's the thing. Apophis may be a horrible greebly squid monster- but he's a professional. He knows if reality breaks, he'll go with it, so he's going to make sure reality doesn't break. No matter what.

So yeah. I'm … kind of back to where I started in the Accord. No office. No responsibilities. It's just that I now have all the experience and cynicism to kind of sort of deal with this shit. It honestly feels kind of great. Fucked up, I know. And shit is still fucked, I know. It's just … well, if Houston gets Quarantined, it's not my fault. It's yours. I'm gonna try to make it back to Houston every now and again, but I'm making no guarantees. I just have the feeling that, if I try to return in a couple of months, I'm gonna come back and find everything on fire and Abominations running around and otherwise shit is gonna look like Redemption. Which, in case you didn't make it, was fucking apocalyptic awful.

So y'know what? Get your shit together. Prove me wrong, you fucking maniacs.

I'll be in touch. 

“Hey New Guy,” Cora said, “let's go to Vegas!”

I almost did. I mean, well … Vegas. And someone would've had to keep an eye on our resident psychic heartbreaker, right? But then I thought about the times I'd run off on other big Accord schindigs, and I remembered how awful they were- and in Vegas, it'd probably be awful and I'd wind up broke, so I decided to stay in Houston. And lo and behold, Vegas was a real shitshow, albeit one I didn't see firsthand, so you're gonna have to ask Cora or Father Frank on exactly WTF happened.

Me, I at least had the excuse of important Cell Leadery stuff to do.

Namely, the fact that the local RQ was climbing towards 700- which would be a Bad Thing. Like shit I'm gonna let myself be known as the Cell Leader who let Houston get Quarantined, so I started last Saturday night's schindig with two basic directives: 1) Don't fuck up the local RQ with reality-breaking shit, and 2) Let's go kill some Servants.

Ethan really liked this plan. I'm not quite sure what to feel about this.

So, acting on some intel we got from that Stain guy, we found a dead drop that Lester Rothstein (that half-vampire bitch guy we've been chasing for entirely too fucking long now) was using. Courtesy of some tracking by a whole shitload of sneaky invisible people, we tracked down Rothstein's safehouse.

So we barge in- at which point a van full of Reaper mercenary bastards show up. This went about as well for them as one could expect. And again, this is where I kind of scare myself because I'm getting used to getting in firefights. What the shit.

Not that I did any fire-fighting myself- I was busy trying to crack open a secret trapdoor to Rothstein's hidey-hole. I'm versatile! Kind of.

Seriously though, I only caught a little bit of the actual fight parts, but it was a nice reminder of how fucking scary you jerks are. Like, “yeah, go ahead and shoot me because your puny human bullets have no effect.” Makes me glad you're on my side.

But yeah. We barge down into Rothstein's hidey-hole, and take him down- I even managed to grab some weird glass ballerina figure that he tried to break when we came barging in. I have no idea what this thing is, but it looked haunted and important. I stowed it in the citadel vault, so, Jacque or somebody Mad Scientisty should go do stuff to it, or something.

As if that wasn't enough, as soon as we captured Rothstein, a countdown on his laptop started. And there was a Tear. Great. Thankfully, you guys were able to close the Tear right before the countdown hit zero- because once it did, the whole house went up in fire. So, uh, I guess that saved Ash some trouble?

But yeah. Either Rothstein saw us coming, or maybe it was a setup. Not that it matters, as we still kicked a lot of ass and took some prisoners, even- Rothstein and one of the Mercs are at the secondary citadel, in the brig. Apophis, Dr. Jones, Penny, Sasha- they're all yours. Find out what they know, and then finish them off. Is it less fucked up to order someone killed if they're a Servant? Probably. At least, I hope it is, because I'm not feeling too torn up about it, and that still kind of scares me. But not much? I'm conflicted at not being conflicted, which probably means I need another drink.

So yeah. We wound our way back to the Citadel, mostly victorious. And apparently when I ducked out to take a call, some Changeling dude named Joe showed up? Jacque said he sold us a jar of that Black Metal stuff, which … is good, I guess? I still don't know what the story behind shit is, but having some handy is a good thing, right? Sasha, Ellen the Sharkgirl, can you find out what this dude's deal is?

But yeah. That was about it. Kind of quiet, once you look past all the bullets and murder?

Oh, and on more pleasant stuff, next month's October, which means we'll be having our Third Annual Cavalry Monster Mash. Bring booze and candy. Wear a costume. It'll be fun.

(We'll also probably have to chase off Goblins in hockey masks but some of you think that's fun too). 

I didn't want to write this.

Then again, I don't want to do a lot of things. Like, you know, hanging out with the Monster Squad and fighting for the very existence of reality. But I do it anyway.

And so here's an entry.

I try to keep at least vaguely up to date on the goings on of other Cells when I can. And a lot of the time, I can at least say “wow, that place sounds fucked up, I'm glad the Cavalry has their shit together.”

And after Saturday night? I can't say that. And I know people outside of Houston read this blog (Hi F13!) so now I'm pretty much telling them “yeah, well, shit is kinda fucked.”

The silver lining (I'm feeling optimistic because I'm only two beers in) is, as fucked up as things were on Saturday, at least it was a kind of low-scale fuckup. Nobody's dead, at least. Seriously, I'm trying to be nice here. That's about the best I can say about it.

First away team went off after the vampire-baby of a former cell member (some vampire who died before I even signed up, which says something). Long story short, things went to shit. The vampire baby guy (who's actually a grown man. Vampire, whatever) got shot in the head by a sniper, and then there was the kind of clusterfuck that resulted in some of our people shooting each other. On purpose. Yep. Second away team fared better, I guess? Nobody got shot, but from what I've gathered, it was still fucked. Not as fucked as the first one, but still. I hear it was bad.

And y'know what? As Cell Leader, ultimately, this kind of shit was my fault, one way or another. See, I've made a horrible, horrible mistake.

I assumed you guys were FUCKING PROFESSIONALS.

Because, you know, there are horrible, unknowing monsters from another dimension clamoring to eat our (literally) goddamned souls, and yet half of you like to play around like this is a fucking game. Some of you? Some of you I can (and do) trust and respect to get the job done. But when the first thing I hear out of a new werewolf recruit's mouth is “I WANT TO EAT YOUR FACE,” it's not exactly encouraging. Shit, there are cells out there that would've put someone down on the spot for that kind of talk. I'm still vaguely wondering if I should've gone for the silver bullets anyway.

As much as I'd just love to run away and hide, or let a bunch of you idiots kill each other, I can't do that. Because for every one of you that dies, the Truth gets stronger, and that's a step closer I get to a horrible otherworldly oblivion that I really, really don't want to know.

Yes, I know, I'm a puny mortal. Yes, I know, I'm pretty much clueless when it comes to your spirit magic bullshit. But you know what? Over these years, I've gone from a terrified mortal with a press pass to a slightly less terrified mortal with a press pass and a shotgun, and goddamit if I haven't actually DONE SHIT. You wouldn't have made me Cell Leader otherwise. Unless you voted for me as a joke, in which case, fuck you.

I'm gonna make lemonade out of these fucking lemons, and then I'm pouring in a shit-ton of vodka. If you can't pull your head out of your fuzzy supernatural ass and treat me with some goddamned respect, you can get the fuck out of Houston now and go fight the Truth in some shithole like Brussels. Oh wait, Brussels (wherever that was) got Quarantined and doesn't exist anymore. OOPS. I wonder if their cell had to deal with a bunch of petty infighting bullshit.

 I want all of you to sit down and think of just what you've done for the Accord lately. (Except for Dr. Watts, because I don't have the time to sit down and listen to his latest heroic ballad. Not that there's anything wrong with viking ballads or whatever, but I'm fresh out of mead). I'm not saying you have to go out and kill abominations- but we're going to need each and every one of you to be an asset to the Accord, whether it's as a fighter, a healer, an investigator, a resource guy, whatever. If you can't think of a simple sentence to say how you help the Accord, fix that shit.

I don't expect you to be military-level spit-polish drill sergeant, but I expect you to act like fucking adults who are here to do a goddamn job. So, I'm laying out some general rules on how we do Missions and shit.

Check it:

NEW GUY'S RULES ON HOW NOT TO BE A FUCK UP

1. LISTEN TO WHOEVER'S IN CHARGE

Each mission will have a designated Away Team Leader, as appointed by myself, or whoever I put in charge of the evening in the event that I can't make it. Whoever's in charge of a given mission will likely vary, depending on who's around, who has experience, etc. Volunteering is encouraged. Hell, I'll probably wind up leading some of these myself. Either way, the Away Team Leader will be the one responsible for the mission. What they say, goes. If you have a problem with how a mission goes, bring it to my attention, and we'll deal with that shit when you get back to the Citadel. Either way, you better not go off fucking half-cocked just because you think your awesome mojo bullshit can solve all problems ever.

2. HAVE A ROSTER

Just as the Away Team Leader has to be approved by me (or whoever I leave in charge), so's the roster. Because SOME of you can't get along for whatever reasons, I'm gonna start separating you. On top of that, this is a good way to make sure that the most qualified people go on a given mission. Like, if the mission statement is “We're going to Hell to punch some ghosts,” then I personally would be woefully unqualified to lead, or even to go on such a mission myself, because of my puny mortalness and lack of ghost-punching skills. It's usually good to at least bring one person who can fight and one healer on a given mission, just in case. Sometimes you even luck out and your fighter/healer is the same guy. But at least know what everyone's niche is before you go do a thing.

3. HAVE A PLAN

I know nothing ever goes to plan, but seriously. At least figure out what the primary goal of an encounter is. Preferably in a one-sentence statement. “We're going to investigate this creepy house,” or “we're going to kill this Servant,” or whatever. If you've got more in-depth ideas, great. Run them by me. But “let's do whatever” is not a plan.

4. DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE

If your mission goes well, you may get your bloodstained claws on a creepy Truthy artifact, or a Servant prisoner, or even some poor bastard who's gotten caught up in the crossfire. In which case, I'm laying out the following guidelines:

Creepy ass artifacts and Black Metal cubes and other weird objects go in the Vault, where Jacque can poke them with his science stick.

Servant prisoners are to be kept in the brig at the Secondary Citadel, until an interrogation team can question them. Based on availability, some combination of Apophis, Dr. Jones, Sasha, or Penny should be our go-to people for that.

We should offer refuge to any Believers caught in the crossfire- but if they don't want to take it, let them the fuck go. Immediately beating the shit out of someone 'for their own good,' doesn't do much to make us friends. However, I know some of you can be very persuasive, so this is definitely something that our talkers can do. Once we have them tucked away somewhere, let me know, and I will interview them personally. If they're a Servant, I'll know. And if they're not, hopefully I'll be able to convince them to help us.

Hope you read that, because I may quiz you on this shit later. Of course, I'm sure some of you are nitpicking and finding loopholes already, but I'm just trying to lay out some simple guidelines that I wish I didn't have to.

We can do better than this, Houston. We're going to have to do better than this. If just one wizard, vampire, werewolf, or any other singular supernatural thing could've defeated the Truth, we wouldn't need the Accord. But as it is, we're all in this together, and it'd be really fucking nice if we could act like it. I know for certain I can't fight the Truth all by myself, so I'm counting on the lot of you to get on board with me so we can theoretically, someday, piss on the Truth's proverbial grave and then bugger off so we never see each other again.

Don't fuck this up.

New Guy gets a new gig.

If the best leaders are the ones who don't want the position to begin with, that must make me George Fucking Washington by now. A year after I was first 'recruited' into The Accord, I somehow wound up in charge of the cell as a sort of backup thing when Brayker couldn't make it. Two years later, I'm the official Cavalry Cell Leader.

At this rate, I'll be running a division by next year, and the year after that, someone's going to put me on the High Council, and this is the kind of life I live now.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So yeah. If you haven't been paying attention to the local list, Apophis started talking about replacing Brayker as cell leader- which, to be fair, was an entirely legitimate issue, since Brayker's running around doing MIB shit. And, because the Cavalry is a model cell (no, really), we were able to actually work this out in an organized and democratic manner. Seriously, people have been been murdered in other cells over this sort of thing.

But yeah. Once everybody got together, the first thing on the agenda was a debate over just who should be in charge. Apophis stepped forward, I was nominated, as was Dr. Watts. The three of us wound up sitting in front of everyone else and fielding questions in what was pretty much the worst episode of the Dating Game ever. “Contestant number one, just how many people have you murdered in the past three hundred years?”

After the debate, Father Frank put together a vote, and, after an initial tie and a runoff (you can thank Bob the Hobo Werewolf for writing in “Batman,” and screwing things up), I was chosen to be the new Cell Leader.

FUCK.

Not that I wasn't kind of doing the job off and on before, but still. Rest assured, I'm going to do everything I can to keep things running smoothly, and to keep the lot of you horrible monsters alive, but it's not like being the Commanding Officer of the Monster Squad was something I dreamed about doing when I was a little kid.

But anyway! We had a bunch of new faces show up tonight- some changeling girl named Sasha, Penny's new half-vampire “assistant,” Dr. Watts' newest apprentice Tyra, a vampire named Dracs, and Dammit the Wizard.

On to the business of the evening! Kendrick made contact with the lady from LDI we met with a few months ago. She's not too happy about us wrecking up her Truthy mad science experiments from awhile back, so she's been leaning on our contacts, trying to apply a little pressure. Apparently, in restitution, LDI wants us to capture a mummy (one of the walking around ones) for them, so they can do more mad science bullshit. This is going to be a problem we're gonna have to deal with. The lady we're talking to isn't a Believer or anything (yet), but she's also just the middle woman on the proverbial pyramid- we're gonna have to find out who's pulling her strings, and work to throw a wrench into the gears from there. I'm mixing my metaphors like I'm mixing my drinks right now. Shut up.

Dammit the Wizard (who's like a super creepy death-wizard or something) went on about how he'd found some corrupted artifact at the funerary museum, so Jacque and Weylin and Wolf (who is not a werewolf) and Ethan took off to investigate. They found the artifact had been turned into a tear. Jacque called me up asking for that block of black metal we had laying around in the vault- so I grabbed that, along with a posse of other people who weren't doing anything (seriously, like hell I'm gonna travel alone to a Tear if I can help it). With the added fancy-power of the second group, we were able to close the Tear. Go team.

Of course, when we started heading out of the museum to chase down another lead, we got fucking ambushed. Things got pretty hairy, and once again, Wolf (who is not a werewolf) did a bang up job of keeping everyone alive while Weylin, Ellen the Sharkgirl, and myself killed the Truth goons who were sent to attack us. They were decked out in full out combat gear- by their tattoos, I think they'd been in the French Foreign Legion, so it looks like the Truth is calling in some hardcore sons of bitches to go after us. We (or, rather, Ellen) took one alive, at least- he's being held in a secure offsite location right now- those of you with, let's say, 'persuasive' methods should go and have a chat with him, see what you can find out.

All and all, I guess it's an okay start to my term as the Cavalry's Cell Leader. None of our people died, we managed to off a couple of Servants, and closed a Tear. Good job, people. Hell, if we can keep this up, maybe we can actually win this damn war, and then I'll just disappear and never have to worry about any of you crazy monster bastards ever again.

That's about as inspirational as I get.

Die Hard with fangs.

I guess I have superpowers now.

“Oh no!” you say, terribly concerned. “What happened to New Guy? He's been bitten by a vampire/werewolf/radioactive spider, and thusly is cursed with terrible powers of the supernatural!”

Thankfully, this isn't what happened (not like any of you care much about what's biting me anyway)- rather...because of some shenanigans with time cubes in India or something (seriously, ask Cora), there's been another one of those reality 'tweaks.' It's got something to do with low RQ- and seeing as of how my personal RQ is a whopping ZERO (and I intend to keep it that way), it changes the nature of reality or...something. Basically, I'm SO NORMAL I've gone all the way around the bend to having fancy powers.

Or, well, a fancy power. Whenever there's a Servant around, I get a piercing headache. And trust me, I know the difference between a hangover headache and a servant headache already. I'll go more into this later.

Anyway. Saturday! It was a pretty small gathering- Brayker was off doing MIB shit, which left me and Apophis in charge. We also had some new faces show up- some kind of hobo-wizard named Anc (I'm still not sure if that's supposed to be like ancient Sumerian or something), and a vampire named Jared or something. I'm not entirely sure if Jared's actually a vampire, though. He's a creepy bastard, sure, but he doesn't have a eurotrash accent or a cape or anything. Dude certainly doesn't talk like a vampire, but what do I know.

So yeah. We socialize, fill Anc and Jared in on the whole 'war for reality' business- and then I got a phone call from Wayngro. See, apparently, some fancy-pants vampire dude named Aldo Santorum or something wanted to set up a meeting with Brayker & Co at our chosen place and time. Of course, life being what it is, Wayngro told me that this Aldo guy was a Servant- he's Lester's vampire-boss, or whatever the term is. I passed this info along to everybody else. We decided to put this off until we had Brayker and/or Penny handy, so I guess that'll be on the agenda in June? My feeling is it's gonna go to shit, but hey, if it's an ambush, hopefully we can kill some Servants or something.

It's a good thing we didn't go, however. A little while after we discussed this phone call, my Servant-Sense starts going off. Luke checked the security system...and found it was down. Then, Artemis found a dead body in the bathroom- Agent Tam, the TFV guard we had watching The Captain.

Yeah, that was definitely an “oh shit” kind of moment.

Jacques and I run down to check on The Captain- and, low and behold, his cell's empty. And on top of that, we also found the door to the armory was open, and a quick check of the inventory reveals a pair of big-ass pistols and some incendiary ammo missing. Greeeat.

We start searching the Citadel- at which point Jacques and Apophis and some of the others find that the big greebly chimera thing we captured a few months ago has been let out of the vault. Another “oh shit” kind of moment. Thankfully, they killed it...only to have it turn into a bunch of scorpions so they had to kill those too. Very messy.

Eventually, we get everyone together to start another sweep of the Citadel, since I at least knew the bastard was still there. That's when gravity turned sideways. As in, the wall is now the floor. We see The Captain strut out from a hallway 'above' us, and he starts blazing away with those giant guns of his. It was a nasty fight- we managed to take the bastard down, but not before Apophis kind of exploded. But he's better now, so that's good.

(On a side note, everyone who packs a gun should carry Luck Bugs).

Ellen the Sharkgirl got in the killing blow when she bit the bastard's jugular out. Only she didn't turn into a shark or anything, it was just, uh, her. Pretty impressive, but also horrifying, so that means Ellen really is a good fit for the cell.

Once he went down, my headache stopped, gravity went back to normal, and we were left to clean up. Turns out, “The Captain” was an impostor- he had some weird magic going on to just make him look like “our” Captain. See, after some weird psychic investigation from Cora and Artemis, best we can figure, somehow this wizard jerkass made himself look like The Captain, then switched places using weird teleporty magic, and then he started sabotaging everything. We stopped him before he could do any more damage, but it was pretty rough. The real Captain's still MIA- I think Artemis said something about using her magic to track him, though? Anybody with weird bloodhound powers should probably get started on that.

Just another day in The Accord. We've got a lot to run down in June, looks like. I'd say “I wouldn't have it any other way,” but that would be a fucking lie.

A Grab Bag of Awful

It's weird, coming back to Houston.

I know everything is still the same as it was before (read: terrible), but it still takes some getting used to after the crazy ass bullshit that went down in Atlanta. I'm not entirely sure if 'normal' is the right word, but...I guess it's nice getting back to dealing with the monsters I know, as opposed to the monsters I don't.

So yeah. Saturday was kind of a grab bag of random shit. I guess that's a good thing, since Brayker wasn't able to make it, and since I was running late. Not only would I hate to be on deck when things really go to shit, but I'd also hate to be late for it. Then again, I pretty much hate this whole 'war for reality' thing in general, but hell, not like anyone else is gonna do it.

By the time I showed up, Ash and Penny and Ellie the Sharkgirl and the werewolves ran off to investigate some creepy ass haunted house that Lester the half-vampire Servant had sold to the CUT, or....something? I dunno. It turned out to be a trap, because of course it did. More on that later.

Meanwhile, Wayngro gave us a call. See, remember those labs we kind of burned down a few months ago? The ones that were researching Truthy artifacts and had monsters that bled BEES? Well, the owner of said labs kind of found us out. She's from Egypt (I think?) and has a burqua-ninja kind of style, with the face veil and everything. Oh, and goons. She's got goons.

And no RQ. So she's not a Believer or a Servant. Yet.

So Artemis, Luke the Hacker Demon, and myself roll up to Wayngro's tower to have a face to face (or, well, face to veil) meeting, which...didn't go well. She's somehow got an idea that we were behind burning down her science projects and broke some fancy shit...which, we did, but I thought we covered our tracks better than that.

She's got some idea of the Weird Shit out there, and she knows she's getting funding from the Church of Ultimate Truth, and...well, we tried to hint at why this was a Bad Thing- but before we could really get into threatening or bribing or properly negotiating, Ash texts me.

See, apparently everyone on Team Haunted House got trapped in the basement, which then started to fill with blood, and then everyone started hallucinating, because...trap. This kind of cut our little meet and greet a bit short. I don't think Miss Burqua Ninja was very happy with us jetting out. I tried to just bluff her, and make her think I was a harmless, clueless idiot. You wouldn't think this would be hard, but she was pretty much the only person I've met in two years who actually thinks I know what I'm doing. Shows what she knows, right?

But yeah. I dragged everyone out of the meeting, jumped in the car, and tore-ass up to the north side of town. Thankfully, by the time we got there, everything was wrapped up. Apparently everyone had stopped tripping balls, and they'd captured the Servant who was watching the house, at which Penny killed the bastard. So, y'know, good for the killing servants thing, but we didn't get the chance to interrogate him, first, so...yeah. None of our people died, at least, so there's something to be said for that. Ash was pretty horrifingly stabbed, but she said she was cool with it, because ghost zombie, I guess?

So yeah. Everyone packs up and heads back to the Citadel- but, of course, nothing's ever easy.

Apparently, one of those Purist Werewolves flagged down Jacques and Weylin, which only didn't go to shit because the Purist werewolf was a Believer...but not an Accordist. He warned them (and, by association, us) to stay the fuck away from him where he's hanging out in some dive-ass bar on the south side of town called the Living Inn or the Living End or...something. I forget the name, but if you're ever in some shithole bar on the south side that smells like wet dog, get the hell out of there.

And on top of that, here's where things get REALLY weird. See, on the drive up, Kendrick nearly ran over some guy with a dog. Like, the guy (and the dog) didn't notice him. At all. Which I'd just write off as just 'weird' until I nearly ran over the same fucking guy, with the same fucking dog, and he didn't notice me. He also gave me a real bitch of a headache, too, which...well, I've kind of learned to stop asking questions at this point.

Anyway, after I gave a brief lecture on why “I USE WIZARD VISION” shouldn't be the first answer to all your problems (Apophis says it raises the RQ, so fuck that shit), we do a little normal-mortal digging on Guy-With-A-Dog...and, uh, it's fishy, but we weren't able to really pin anything down on the guy. Yet. Maybe it's Truthy, maybe it's just general weirdness, I dunno.

But yeah. To recap, shit went down, and I (thankfully) missed a lot of it. I got the feeling that things are gonna get worse, but that's pretty much my default setting.

So, y'know, be careful, you terrifying monsters. If you get killed, I won't have anyone to hide behind.   

New Guy went down to Georgia (and thankfully there was no fiddling involved)

“You should get out of Houston,” Cora said.

“Come to Atlanta!” Cora said.

“It'll be a fun and fancy party!” Cora said.

I should've known better.

Against my better judgement (read: crippling paranoia), I listened to Cora, and I went to the fancy party in Atlanta. I just got back, and now I'm slowly working my way through a bottle of gas station whiskey because of what went down.

I bet you want details.

So, Cora, Brayker, and I all trucked out to Georgia for some big high-class schindig put on by the Samaritan Group. It was supposed to be an Accord social- a chance for people (to use the term loosely) from different cells to talk to each other and share notes and swap stories and all that good stuff. I actually ran into some folks I'd met before there- and I also got to put faces to a lot of names. I got to meet F13 (who doesn't look like a robot), Lilith (yes, THAT Lilith), Set (who you can tell he's ancient because he only buttons like two buttons to his shirt because they didn't invent shirts in ancient Egypt I guess), and Selma the Succubus (who looks exactly like what you're thinking. I know she's a demon and all, but still. Damn) and a bunch of other people. I even managed to piss off the Cell Leader of Cincinatti when I told him that I heard horrible time travel bullshit happens in his city, which he got a little pissy about, but then he didn't really help his case when he mentioned there was a giant cybernetic squid living at the bottom of a lake somewhere in town. So yeah. Don't go to Cincinnati.

And, because you can't get a bunch of vampires and werewolves and mummies and lord knows what else together without shit getting weird (well, weirder), no sooner had everyone gotten settled in and done their introductions, this super-old vampire dude with a skull-stick and a Mike Tyson face tattoo teleported in outta nowhere. Ancient Vampire Dude said he used to be a member of the High Council, but he left before they went big. So, yknow, a Fifth Beatle sort of thing, I guess?

The vampire wanted to recruit us to help him with some crazy-ass idea; he needed some magic doohickeys in order to perform a ritual that would summon the spirits (but not the ghosts, those are different?) of fallen Accordists in order to help us fight the Truth. Given how I've always been told the Truth eats your soul when you die...I was a little leery of the idea.

Somehow or another, people agree to this crazy-ass idea (partially because I think the sociopaths were getting bored and wanted to kill something), and split off into groups to go track the magic whatzits down. And somehow or another, I decided I wanted to see what the fuck was going on myself, so I fell in with one of the away teams. Lilith (yes, THAT Lilith) was leading this one, and I understood it was gonna be more of an investigative thing.

Once again, I was wrong.

So we truck down to some dank catacomb in the sub-sub-sub basement, and we wind up with two doors. One's got blood on it. The other one doesn't. All the magic-psychic-whatever people kept squinting at the damn doors, at which point I finally said, “Hey, why don't we go through the one that hasn't got blood on it?”

So they decide to go through the blood door.

And lo and behold, the blood door leads to a horrible torture dungeon where a giant hate face yelled lightning at us.

This is why you should listen to me.

There was a fight (and I contributed! I think. Hate face spirits aren't bulletproof, apparently), and we make it out of there relatively unscathed (or, uh, at least I did, and that's the important part). We finally made it back to the ballroom where all of this was going down- I think we were the last team back, because it took us longer because we weren't actually supposed to be a kill team, but I digress.

By the time we get back, Ancient Vampire Dude has got his crazy eyes on, and he started ranting about making history. Has this ever been a good thing? Ever?

And the gathered crowd still let him go through with his goddamn magic ritual. What the fuck? Did anyone at this point think it was a good idea? Anybody? Whatever.

Cora at least had the good sense to corral off a bunch of the less fighty people (so, y'know, me) in a side ballroom, so at least someone wouldn't get killed if Ancient Vampire Dude exploded everyone else.

The people in this picture all have common sense and healthy survival instincts. So if you ever meet them, LISTEN TO WHAT THEY HAVE TO SAY. Except for the dude in the top hat. He was weird and sparkly.

And indeed, lo and behold, shit got awful. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Ancient Vampire Dude performs the ritual, and all of a sudden the whole top floor (with all of us in it) is teleported into the Dark Dimension- someone called it the Abyss, maybe? That's a thing? Anyway, Ancient Vampire Dude then yelled at everyone and scared the shit out of like half the people there and made them run away- but then the other half of the crowd who wasn't scared (including our very own Major Brayker, 'cause he's a badass) proceeded to kill the shit out of Ancient Vampire Dude until he melted into a pile of that Black Jello Metal that people have been finding. Someone opened up a portal back to the real world, thankfully, and we all went back to Atlanta without much fuss. 

And that was that.

Back in Houston now, and I'm rather glad for it. Because, horrible as it is, I...kind of like it here. I mean, at least here in Houston, I know who I'm dealing with, and what they can do, and people even sometimes listen to me when they feel like it. You're all still terrifying of course, but it's the terror you know, right? Meanwhile, in Atlanta, it was like 'oh hey here are more scary bullshit monsters that you've never seen before, have fun!'

I mean, seriously, you guys. If some weirdo showed up on our doorstep and started going on about his mad scientist plan, I bet we wouldn't put up with that shit. You're professionals, dammit. So, uh, keep up the good work, I guess.

See you Saturday. 

Cora called it the “excuse to drink” party.

Because, you know, being one of a handful of people (to use the term loosely) who have blundered into defending the very existence of reality from greebly horrible otherdimensional monsters isn't a good enough reason.

It's just that this time we had tiki torches and tiny umbrellas in our drinks.

Flamingo Straws are a horribly inefficient way of drinking beer.

Still, as parties went, things went fairly well. We had a couple of guests from afar (Mari was in town, as was Cora's Three-Quarters-Demon Boyfriend), and another trio of new recruits: a wizard-lady named Gant, a guy from Minnesota named Fletch, and one of Brayker's old buddies who I will refer to as Agent Beltbuckle. Drinks were drunk, food was eaten, and conversations were conversed. Artemis tried explaining the difference between wizard magic and vampire magic to me, but I didn't quite get it. Apparently having hypno-eyes and being able to turn into a bat doesn't count as magic? Whatever.

So yeah, we did the generally social thing- that is, until Penny caught word that Lester Rothstein (the half-vampire ghoul-bitch Servant from Wayngro's list), was classing it up down at the Houston Opera. Artemis, Ash, and Penny went and tailed him...at which point they realized it wasn't really Lester, but rather a body double who'd been hired to pretend to be Lester. I can only hope that the real half-vampire Lester was hiding in a basement somewhere, and not getting up to crazy nefarious shit.

Oh, and there was some crazy nefarious shit going on, too. Dunno if Lester had anything to do with it.

In case you missed the Saturday night news, somebody decided to blow up a CUT church on the north side of town. And before you start cheering, we weren't the ones who did it. In fact, within minutes of the bombing, the cops got an anonymous message pinning the blame on one Mr. Glass.

In case the name doesn't ring a bell, Mr. Glass is one of the stars on our Wall of the Fallen; he died back in 2009, during the Case of the Voodoo Doll of Baron S. I never knew the guy, as I was blissfully unaware of all this magic bullshit way back then. Ah, better days. The fact I can count on one hand the number of people who were around Houston at the time isn't an encouraging fact when you start thinking about turnover, though...and you wonder why I drink so much?

Just kidding. Nobody wonders. Or cares. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get another beer.

The most prominent theory on Glass' sudden appearance was the fact that the bombing was probably done by his “fetcher” clone, because all fairy Changelings have clones made out of sticks or something? Miss T may have tried to explain it to me once but I didn't listen very carefully because I was too busy being creeped the hell out. (Seriously, she looks like she's made of spiders). Stick-clone or whatever, fake-Glass' records held up from the checking I did, which either meant someone was doing a hell of a job covering their tracks, or he's been kicking around since 2009 in one way or the other.

After some magic-scrying stuff, Dr. Watts tracked fake-Glass down to a big cargo ship in the harbor. A ship registered to Diadem Logistics (a Truth-affiliated company), which word on the street says is moving assault rifles. Greeeat.

More scrying tells us that not only is Glass on the big boat, but there's also a Tear, an Abomination made of Fire and Hate, and like half a dozen dudes called 'Reapers,' which are apparently government trained commandos with explosive vests and death wishes (thanks to Cora's 75% demon boyfriend for the lowdown on those dudes, by the way). You'll understand why I decided to sit that one out.

Hell, from what I heard about it, things were even worse than it sounded. As apparently, the FireHate Abomination was tough enough that even Dr. Watts had trouble hitting it, and the Tear was bigger than any other Tear we've encountered up until this point. And, if it weren't for the efforts of Wolf (who is not a werewolf) and his healing magic, I'd probably be writing some obituaries right now. Props to him (even if he probably won't be reading this because he lives in a hole somewhere and doesn't know how computers work).

So yeah. Party's over, folks. I've got the feeling that things are gonna get worse before they get better. Or, shit, do things ever get better? After we took out Romanati and fucked the CUT's shit up back in November, I bet those squiddy bastards are bringing in the big guns (or tentacles, or whatever) to start pushing back. Lucky us.

And there's my excuse to drink, right there. 

I have a cold so that means I hate everything even more than usual right now.

“So New Guy, how was your Valentine's day?” Penny asked me, because he is an asshole.

And, you know, it was actually kind of normal. Not too different from most other years, as I spent this Valentine's day alone and kind of drunk. Except that this time I was alone and kind of drunk and armed to the goddamn teeth in case a cupid monster attacked.

This is how I live now.

Despite the Hallmark-invented holiday, there wasn't any love potion drama or any bullshit like that. Just another meeting of the Houston Cavalry. Of course, since I've been trying to throw off this cold I've gotten (more of that 'puny mortal weakness' for you), I got a little jacked up on cough syrup and took a nap and then slept a little later than I thought I would. I guess I should thank Cora and Kendrick for being somewhat concerned about my well being, though?

Since I ran late, I missed most of Cora's big miracle-berry teambuilding...thing. Basically she found these weird-ass berries (which are supposedly not magic) which make things taste sweeter after you get the juice in your mouth, which was...weird. I guess it's one thing to see weird shit (which I do all the fucking time now), and something else to taste it. Or something.

I also missed some discussion of the local vampire politics- there's a ghoul named Lester out there who's a Wayngro-confirmed Servant, so we've got to whack him. Eventually- right now by the sound of it he's laying low, so we're gonna have to get to work on that. Dude's also working with some of the Puritan werewolves, so that's gonna be something to watch out for too.

I at least got to meet some new faces that showed up- a dude named Wolf (who is not a werewolf), a woman who turns into a dog (who is also not a werewolf) and Frank (who is exactly what you think he is). Seriously, it's depressing how many weirdos we keep pulling in.

In other stuff, we've also been getting reports of a weird Chimera...thing running around. Like, it's trickled down into the pulp-tabloids that I write for, so you know it's not being very subtle. A similar snake-cat creature was also sighted in the Magic Forest, and the Shadowworld, and also the Underworld, which are all different things apparently? Artemis tried explaining all this to me but I still don't get it. I should draw a picture.

So yeah. Jacques followed the weird-ass snake-cat to some big warehouse facility, where, surprise surprise, he saw a car belonging to a CUT member. Further stuff from Artemis prompted me to look into the holding company, an environmental research company that got like 15% of its operationg funds as a donation from the CUT. Based on this, we decided to play Scooby Doo.

We split up into two teams- I took an investigation team to sniff around the company's main offices, while Brayker led another to the weird warehouse itself.

The first team had a fairly easy time of it (even if Hobo Bob's definition of 'stealthy' may leave something to be desired). Luke turned off the security systems, Hobo Bob and Penny non-lethally subdued the guards, and then the rest of us snuck in and started snooping around. We confirmed the CUT funding, as well as the delivery of some weird fancy pocketwatch, which had already been delivered to the warehouse.

Special kudos to Kendrick and Ellie the Sharkgirl for getting their science on and figuring out what the hell they were researching- it appeared to be mostly normal stuff, except for the occasional file that mentioned splicing human and lion DNA, or controlling killer bees, or...whatever. Like I said, weird shit. We copied their data, destroyed their samples, and left a virus on their computer system, just in case. Oh, and we left a bunch of Ecoterrorist graffiti around to throw the authorities off our trail. All and all, a fairly smooth operation.

Makes me glad I wasn't at the warehouse. That's where the really nasty shit went down. As apparently there were some scientists there working on the shit that we'd just read about at the office site. The big snake-cat-chimera was there. Naturally, Team Warehouse killed the shit out of it...except once they did, it started bleeding BEES, because...that's a thing?

And on top of that, there were some weird-ass invisible monsters that only Wizards could see. They're not ghosts, not spirits, just...things. Dr. Watts didn't even know what they were, and that kind of freaks me out because he's been doing his Astounding thing for like a thousand years so if he hasn't seen it, then it's really weird. I think since we got all the 'regular' monsters like werewolves and vampires and shit, the Truth is just making things up.

So yeah. Dr. Watts went into the spirit world and killed a bunch of the things, and our triumphant heroes returned to the Citadel with the evil pocketwatch and a Chimera corpse, so the more research-y amongst us should get right on that.

All and all, it looks like things went fairly smoothly. So, y'know, go us. Because if you haven't been paying attention to the National Lists (and you shouldn't, because they're terrible), it seems like The Cavalry is a model cell when it comes to Getting Shit Done. Seriously, I still don't know what the fuck is going on in Connecticut, and I don't even want to ask. So pat yourselves on your proverbial backs there, guys, because there are people out there who are even fucking crazier than you are.

(Note, this is not a challenge to be more crazy, you maniacs).

Anyway, we recapped the night, went over a couple of announcements- While the official 'Minimum Combat Competence' decree is still dragging its way through Parliament, Brayker went ahead and said that we're gonna be early adopters. The gist is pretty simple: learn how to hurt people. Guns, knives, swords, fists, whatever- you're going to learn how to fight. Quickly. Preferably, you should know how to fight without fireballs or magic bullshit or whatever, too. As terrifying as your force lightning or whatever may be, there's something to be said for the 'fundementals,' especially if you run out of magic-juice or if you get stuck in a null zone or whatever. It's worth noting Dr. Watts has offered training in killiness to anyone who's so inclined to take him up on it. 

Because seriously, you guys. I can handle myself enough to meet the proposed guidelines. Me. How embarrassing is it going to be when the puny human with a cold is better at fighting than you are?

Oh, and next month, we're having a party, because...reasons? Don't drink Kendrick's fizzy girly drinks. They're like all rum and sugar and will probably give you a horrible hangover. 

New year, new problems.

I've been dreading our January meeting for awhile now.

See, after all the shit went down in November, and after things were quiet for the Christmas party in December, I had a feeling things would get back to their typically shitty state of affairs before long.

And guess what? I was right. Again. I hate it when I'm right. I'm not sure if this means I'm just getting my veteran-cred on or whatever, or if it means I'm suddenly developing vague precognitive powers. I really, really hope it's the former. Last thing I need is to start getting mutant brain powers from hanging around you radioactive jerks for too long.

But yeah. Things are starting to heat up again. It was one of those 'dominoes falling on each other' sort of things. Apparently, some jackass rogue demon went and offed a fancy-pants vampire lady. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem (because fuck vampires, that's why), but the dead vampire's vampire friends went and leaned on the HPD, who leaned on one Detective Eaton, who in turn leaned on me. Eaton's a contact of mine, see, and he started shaking me down for answers on weird shit, threatening to put me under 24/7 surveillance if he didn't start getting answers. He's also connected a big long list of murdered/disappeared/dead CUT fancy people to this vampire bidness, because you can't throw a rock without hitting some weird shit in Houston these days.

I hope you understand why this would be a bad thing.

And, for the record, Eaton's got contingency plans in effect for if he suddenly disappears, or gets brain wiped, or whatever, so don't even think about it you sick bastards. Besides, Eaton's a friend of mine (or at least a friendly acquaintance).

We went at the problem from two ends- tracking down the demon, and hacking out a deal with Eaton. We found the demon first, with a little help from Wayngro (who I guess is the head demon in town? Do demons have heirarchies and shit? Is that a thing?), and killed the stupid bastard without much ado. So that was half the problem taken care of.

On the other side of things, I set up a meeting between Brayker and Eaton- Brayker flashed his big scary MIB badge and medals and shit, which should work well enough as a cover story (because it's true) to get Eaton on our side. Though I will note that Eaton remains blissfully unaware of The Truth, and like hell we're going to actually make a Believer out of him. This said, if everything goes well, Eaton should be a valuable asset- if one we'll have to handle with a light touch. And by 'light touch' I mean 'Nobody fucking even LOOK at this guy unless you clear it by me or Brayker first.' Situation's handled. Mostly.

Oh, and we got some new recruits, as well. There's Doc Charles, who's a plain human (and apparently more clueless than I am), Some Mercenary Changeling of Army Pants, and Bob, the hobo werewolf. Hobo lobo? Bob's set up shop with a bunch of cardboard boxes in a corner of the citadel, so, y'know, if the place starts smelling weird (well, weirder), blame him.

Anyway, at some point or another, Mercenary Changeling Army Pants Guy decided to lead a bunch of people into a hedge, for...no apparent reason. Everyone made it back alive and intact, by the look of it, but I'm still not sure what that accomplished. Which, in turn, brings me to a new rule/piece of advice:

Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD do something. I'm sure all of you weird-ass critters want to show off your greebly powers, but seriously. Think about what you're going to accomplish before you do these things. Last thing we need is someone opening up a portal to fairy hell or whatever just because they just read about it in their spellbook or whatever.

So yeah. New year. New problems. And I've got the feeling that it's not getting any better, either.

I mean, February’s coming up, so now I bet we're gonna run into some goddamn succubuses or evil cupids or love potions or some other crazy Valentine's day bullshit. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I'm not going on any dates anytime soon.

See, I'm being a loser out of saftey this time around, and not just because I'm turning into a bitter conspiracy theorist. Really.