JFGI: Fallen Research

[Mish Witnessing] Okay, let's see. Roll Int + Investigation, Diff 6. Specialty applies, WP may be used.

[Emily] (Int [Analytical] + Investigation: Tell me, Internet, what you know of Demons and Tarot cards... [dif 6, WP])
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]

[Mish Witnessing] Ahh... the internet knows many, many things about Demons and Tarot Cards. The plethora of 'hits' is staggering. And, Emily knows, the grand majority of it will be outright garbage. Most of it silliness... some of it rather terrifying in the kinds of interest and followings it garners. As one might expect of such a subject [Demons more so than the Tarot], there's a lot of filth to wade through leaving one feeling rather scummy, shocked and sullied. Certainly she wants to avoid this. So she pays attention to the dates on blogs, articles, etc that come up. There are a few that catch her eyes, one that seems promising is a website for a rather obscure Chicago newsletter website that deals - rather morbidly - with deaths of 'interest' in the city. Murders. Suicides. Odd 'natural causes'. Disappearances, too. 10 of the articles on the site come up with hits involving 'Demonic' and 'Tarot' in the last two weeks... a daunting number. She'll need to skim the articles, though, to see if anything seems particularly relevant.

[Emily] The internet is full of all sorts of filth. That's why this endeavour is started on a clean virtual machine, without any of her information on it, with a generic login and her native partion locked down hard. She's got ad blockers and virus checkers and all the usual safeguards. No use ruining her mundane and professional lives over a curiousity in her magical one.

Emily is an excellent student. She's detail-oriented and fastidious. She's a perfectionist about small things and large things alike. She takes notes in a spiral bound notebook, her handwriting neat and tidy, her lines equally indented. Dates, times, cards mentioned, locations. She notes where the articles are all written by the same person, and if so whether that person has contact information listed on the journal's site.

Even still, skimming the articles takes time and a careful eye. She's looking for anything familiar, anything that calls back to what they've encountered recently.

[Emily] ((Perception + Awareness)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Emily] (No, really. Per + Aware, +1dif for re-rolling)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Mish Witnessing] [[Seriously Kahseeno?]]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Emily] ...

...

Nothing. Emily's coming up with nothing. She's coming up with a fantastic lot of nothing. Casting a glance around her workspace, the Orphan immediately notices what's missing. Caffeine.

Making a cup of coffee in Emily's apartment requires a certain amount of ritual. She doesn't own a coffee maker, or even a stove-top percolator. First you boil water, then steep it in a french press. It takes time, but it's oh so very worth it.

Returning to her laptop with a freshly brewed (and perfect) cup of coffee, the Orphan takes another stab at her googlefu.

[Emily] (Perception + Awareness, WP -- not fooling around this time!)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) [WP]

[Mish Witnessing] Caffeine aids with all things; especially going over articles about a subject of which you are relatively new and, let's be honest, would probably rather not be aware of, still, let alone investigating. Awakened life comes slow to some people; others, like Emily, it hits fast and hard, throwing you into a vortex of changes, of newness, of perceptions once denied. It is thrilling. It is wonderful in its magnitude. And it is brutal and hard and heartbreaking and....
...is it any wonder some people go Mad? Some people throw in the towel and go for the easy-fixes; the fast[and cruel] road to Power? That some long so for a return to Slumber that they wither away to nothingness?

No, Emily fixes herself [exquisite] coffee, goes through the ritual of it, inhales the rich aromas and takes her first few sips before she settles down to try again. Try harder. This is a puzzle. With the right pieces you can solve any puzzle, yes?

She'd glanced over the article the first time and moved on from it. But when she sits down again she sees it pop up again on a database and returns her attention to it with fresh eyes. It is an article dealing with the suicide of a local Reverend that shocked his small congregation and held some trace elements of scandal: Below where he hung himself was the pentacle, so often associated with devil-worship. Demonic connotations. Alright, well enough...
...but there, a comment left on the article.
"I'm so upset to hear about this!!!! Reverend Masterson was such a lovely human being. I don't believe this devil nonsense. I read his blog all the time: Its messages and thoughts and scripture was so uplifting!"
Beneath that, a few comments down, another mention.
"Uplifting?! You apparently didn't read his last entry!! Here: [a link provided]"
And, a sub-comment soon thereafter.
"Link doesn't work, dumbass."
And,
"It was up there last night! Shit, the cops probably took it down. Who knows what that 'Jesus Man' was REALLY up to."

And so it degenerates further into insults, name calling. The norm for the internet masses. But Emily can feel, with an intuitive certainty, that finding out what was on that last blog update would be worth the time and effort.

[Mish Witnessing] [[switching names for logging purposes]]

[Emily] Oh internet hate wars. She imagines that this is a lot like High school was, for people who went. She imagines it's like High School without consequences. Anonymity tends to make people into assholes. The problem being that no one is really as anonymous online as they think they are, not without a great deal of effort. Just like nothing ever committed to electrons truly disappears. You can't just burn the books and snuff out the story, no, you'd have to tear it out of every server and every hard-drive that ever saw it.

Anonymity. Impermanence. These are the lies of the Internet Generation. It takes someone like Chuck, like Riley, like Jon to make things disappear for real. And you're lucky if you know one, and can trust that they're on your side.

She starts down the list of usual suspects. Google's cached pages. The way back machine. The archive project. Searches for the name and date, to see if it was linked back to with a citation at anyone else's site.

[Emily] (Int [Analytical] + Computers)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1

[Fallen] It takes time, this, but for Emily it takes a mere fraction of the time it might have taken someone else to backtrack the same information. The deletion was done not long ago and the information is still out there, cycling, cycling, cycling through. It exists, yes, and she retrieves it from, of all places, the website that belongs to Psychology student in Sydney, Australia who is, apparently, gathering information from the internet for her thesis which deals with the usage of Blogs as therapeutic journals. It's filed away, tucked away in a section involving potential displays of psychosis, open for view to the masses; as yet there are no notations or commentary. The user found the interesting blog entry and tucked it away for later research it seems. Not that it really matters. What matters is that Emily can read it; Emily can try to decipher why something, something, something tells her it is important.

It's disjointed, these words, this out pouring of torment from what appears to be a sensitive soul. It's hard to follow any line of logic, indeed, he's largely forgotten much by way of punctuation or any other kind of grammatical tools so that it flows like the worst kind of stream of consciousness.
the dreams won't stop They won't stop they just go on and on and on and on i pray for guidance but it doesn't come. I pray i pray i pray i pray. I devour I tear I kill, kill, kill. No not me not me not me it isn't me but i see it, i dream it, i know it. the souls in torment souls he'll steal them i'll steal them? he'll steal them i see this. WHAT PROPHESY IS THIS? I cannot stop it solve it fix it so what good is it god what good is it? last night was worst the worst i couldn't awaken from it, the screaming, the red the red the red. this is madness this is insanity i don't know i don't know. god is dead, he whispers, god is dead. tear it down, break it down. traffic in souls, shepherd of the dead.
It goes on.. on... on...
and in the midst of such ramblings [anguish], a line that sticks out because of its [relative] clarity. Its [comparative] precision.
"It's name. I saw a portion of its name, I don't think I was meant to. I think it is important. It must be. The poison is in me and I will not let it transform me to his will, no, never. But the name. I must tell you the name. You will use it. You must. Someone stronger than I. Keep it close. Keep it dear. Oh, child of God, take care. There's no language I know to place it here, so this is how it sounds: Meph-tile. Ru-ar-loth-tim-ee-ay. Ee-on-hile.
the loam of the tree. the dead stuff the wasted, oh god oh god its coming its coming, the reaper, the whirlwind, the jewel, the chalice, he has it, hidden, safe oh god forgive me forgive me the carnage the violation forgive forgive forgive..."

...it ends abruptly with. "Look kindly on my soul, O God. I can bear no more."

[Emily] Emily never quite understood run on typing. Rambling, vocally, was almost cathartic. Taking the trouble to type it all out, all that repetition, and then to post it somewhere public? It seemed like a vaguely pathological behavior to her, not that she was any expert on the subject. So the first section has her wondering whether the psych student was on to something...

... and then clarity. The suddenly lucid prose rises above the prattle with an almost harrowing sense of purpose. Even alone, in her apartment, worlds away from the server hosting this information, it sends a chill up her spine. The girl shifts in her chair, brings both feet down to press flat against the floor. Her back straightens, the line of her jaw and the set of her eyes become stern, watchful.

As she readies the stylus to mark out the words, copy them from the digital page to the tangible one, the girl gasps in sudden pain. The feeling of talons, gripping deep into her heart shudders her breathing, causes her to recoil. There's an angry flutter of wings, an unvoiced and shrill cawing. It doesn't reverberate in the room, but Emily can feel it in her skin, hear it as surely in her mind as if it were true sound.

The Dove does nothing to spare her the Raven's enmity. Emily presses both hands down onto the tabletop and waits for the pain to pass. Now that the pen lies elsewhere, the flurry in her chest stills. It's watchful. Warning. And should she move to pick up the stylus once more -- repetition. Sooner or later its host will learn. Some things are not to be committed to memory, to the page, to any form of human communication.

Meph-tile. Ru-ar-loth-tim-ee-ay. Ee-on-hile.

Emily shapes the sounds with her tongue, but does not dare speak them aloud. Not after that little interlude with her Avatar. She runs her eyes over the letters, time and time again, such that they are burned into her Mind. It is a name. It is a strange and slippery sounding name. And if it's caused this much fuss, well, then it must be important.

Somehow.

Perhaps it's that bit about Words that Ashley is always going on about. Names are the truest, most potent types of Words. Names are indicators, not just descriptors. Perhaps this Name points toward the something that's been tormenting them. Emily's not sure what to do with that, but she can run it up the flagpole and see what the Singers think.