Veronicia Fallisci’s Diary
Altamira Mission

8-10th Septimus

Ok, mission report so far can be summed up simply as much ado about nothing. We’re still in the information gathering stage at the moment, which is not really my area. Our Kreuzritter leader Father Alfredo, (who insists everyone calls him so will probably be referred to throughout this report as Father Fred or FF) has got a job as a cleaner in the building and has discovered there are more floors on one bit of info about the building than there are about on another one. He’s heard spook stories coming from the floor where “Glass and co” the lawyer company that look like they’re behind this work.

Bron, the Explorer’s Society bloke who FF knows from way back and who FF trusts implicitly has confirmed that “Glass and co” are definitely using a genuine Syrneth symbol as their logo which is definitely suspicious. He’s got a job working as a barman in a local bar, but hasn’t turned up anything concrete so far.

Francis (the Sidhe guy) doesn’t seem too happy about being roped into this mission, he mutters angrily about family and FF is a bit worried about him as he seems to have a bit of a temper and makes suggestions about blowing up the building which worry him. FF seems like a good bloke, I told him a bit about the Sidhe trying to get across the idea that they’re not bad it’s just they don’t feel a lot, not sure if that was the right thing to do but he’s a Black Cross Knight and if you can’t trust a Black Knight who can you trust. Besides he told everyone about the barrier (including Vito who’d blagged his way along again.)

I told Vito that if he blabs about the barrier I will give him a kicking and I know if I don’t the Kreuzritter will (although obviously I hope it won’t come to that). I know I should tell him to sod off but he’s family and very insistent sometimes. Vito did manage to hack into some databases and has found out that old Francis the Sidhe guy has a criminal record and used to be married to Francesca. Francesca is the Rilasciare agent on the job and she thinks me and Alan are there because she hired us. FF says I shouldn’t destroy her illusions but it’s a bit hard as she seems to think I’m a bit of a moron. Anyway she seems to be good at computers and has put together a fake dotcom company so she, Vito and Frank can get into the offices. She is going to plant a few bugs in the office and generally around the place.

My only real contribution so far has been to get a pass off one of the blokes who works in the post room and that was an afterthought really as I was in one of the local bars gathering information about the building and I noticed that there were lots of guys giving me the eye and some of them were not bad looking. Having got as much info as I was going to get I thought I may as well have a bit of fun, it was then it occurred to me that if I pulled someone from the building I could “borrow” their pass as Francesca was talking about copying passes if she could get her hands on one. So I did, I can now see why there are so many Jennys amongst the Daughters, it does help you get to things.

Francesca seemed quite happy with the pass and has already done a couple of copies, one of which she’s happy with, so I might be a bit more in the good books than I was before. At her request I had a sniff around for someone who can make copies with photos of us in case we need them but I didn’t find anything. I might get Francis to have a try. Alan has managed to infiltrate the security team which is good because he’s the guy who knows about security systems so we’ll see what he can find out tomorrow.

11th-12th Septimus

It’s been an eventful couple of days. Vito disappeared into the great blue yonder yesterday. I know it’s a lot to ask but can you guys keep an eye on him and try to keep him safe as I don’t think the Kreuzritter will be too happy with him knowing about “barrier stuff” and will probably try to make sure he doesn’t blab by shutting his yap permanently. I understand their concern but he is family and it seems a bit extreme if he’s prepared to keep stum.

Alan managed to get chummy with a guy in security with access to the key to the basement area and I followed one guy home to find out where he lives. We would find out more through FF’s efforts though. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to tell you guys about this so if the Kreuzritter ask you, you don’t know, if anyone’s reading this from the Rilasciare I don’t think there’s any harm in you knowing but for Theus sake don’t blab about it, it’s sensitive info and might well get you gunned down if the wrong people know you know.

What the father borrowed was a cloak; it came in this big metal box sealed with a very good lock. Obviously a very important item, it had the texture of very fine silk but the heaviness of velvet. The father told us it was for walking in “The Dark Paths” which from what he said seem to be a sort of shadowy zone between our world and the barrier. There were Syrneth on the dark paths so we had to be able to handle ourselves and guns (or anything that required any sort of flame or spark to function) were useless and electronics unpredictable. (It seems from what he was prepared to say that the knights discovered this area when they were running away from the carnage at Tannen). We had to hold onto to the cloak at all times or risk something called “Shadow burn” which because we had to let go of the cloak in order to go through doors in this zone and because the father mildly stuffed up (he sort of mentally teleported us through the floor but we all lost our grip on the cloak) moving into the basement feels like someone is choking the life out of you with an ice cold hand, and it hurts – a lot. If you are wearing a cloak like the one the father had you can move through the dark paths or at least through floors by focusing on where you want to go and moving yourselves through power of the mind although it’s probably easier just to walk around and use doors and stairs. I’m not sure you can move through walls of buildings either. You enter it by flipping up the hood of the clock and leave by talking it down. The area itself looks like a negative of the real world you can only see the bare outlines of buildings and structures and everything looks either black or grey. Francis can smell glamour and said that there was an overpowering smell of very old glamour in there.

Anyway to cut a long story short we got into the secret basement and there was this gateway surrounding by old looking devices which looked pitch black with flaring black tentacles. Francis said it did not smell good and I think we could all guess it was a gateway from getting lots of Syrneth in. It was when someone was taking photos of this thing (I think it was Francesca but might have been Bron) we attracted attention and the Syrneth which had been surrounding this thing piled in to have a go at us. The father decided it was time to go and flipped up the cloak hood and did the mental projection back to his hotel room. Unfortunately only Bron and I were holding on to the cloak at the time and so FF had to go back and rescue Frank and Francesca. I wanted to go with FF but he pointed out that since I had to hang onto the cloak in order not to choke I was likely to be more a nuisance than a help so I helped Bron prepare makeshift bandages and we hoped the two Frankies wouldn’t be too badly beaten up when they got back.

It turns out we had other problems, from what I could work out from through all the shouting and panic Francesca had opened a Porté doorway in there (despite being shown all the bloody tears in the barrier caused by Porté and being warned not to do it by FF) and had seen into our world long enough to a notice a nuke strapped to the gateway, which not unreasonably had made her bloody hysterical. The father was extremely pissed off with her, again not unreasonably and Francis who was also very angry at the poor cow and threatened to kill her. I tried to get people to calm down and do something about the nuke without success and managed to keep my temper until Bron started blabbing on about fascinating opportunities to study the Syrneth at which point I lost it and starting shouting at him.

At this point everyone stomped off to their rooms and we went to ring our set of friends except Francesca who left town, which I don’t think was a wise move. Again, can you guys keep an eye out for her if you can, she was married to Francis who’s surname is O’Connell so she may still be going by that name and if she’s not than it might give you some leads as to what she changed it too when she got divorced. I’ve an inkling that her ex-husband would like to see her dead and the Kreuzritter are probably not too keen on her either, which is a pretty bad combination of enemies. She doesn’t seem a bad person to me just a bit of a stupid one.

After having a word with his amigos FF informed us that a crack unit of Black Crosses (actually he never said who his mates were to the others, but I’ll refer to them here for convenience) were on their way but they wanted us to secure the lobby of the office for them and get them into the basement. Whether we helped them or not from that point was up to us, but everyone (except the departed Francesca) was up for it. Me and Alan are handy in a fight, Frank knows a bit about bombs and of course Bron knows about the Syrneth and could patch us up if we needed it.

The plan was that Alan blagged his way into the guy with the keys house, knocked him out and took his key. He would then chloroform the guys in the camera room of the building whilst the rest of took care of the ones on the front gate. We would then go with the Kreuzritter go and sort the bomb. Everyone knows that a plan never goes to plan, Alan went to the guy’s house who closed the door on him and so Alan and FF with some not very effective help from yours truly had to break down the door and then FF and Alan ended up in a fire fight with lots of guys with guns. Since we were mainly expecting to be fighting Syrneth claws we all got slash-proof rather than bullet-proof armour, not a lot of use. We got rid of all the guys eventually but Alan who was only supposed to blow the guys leg off to paralyse him ended up creaming him. He turned out to a Syrneth in disguise.

This is slightly off the topic of what happened but I keep forgetting to stick it in so I will tell you what Bron told us about Syrneth. The Explorers have found out that there are several species of Syrneth (although the ones we saw all looked like insects) and here’s the really interesting bit, they all can and do disguise themselves as people (in fact they can take on any form they wish, apparently). Bron reckons you can spot they don’t look quite right if you see out of the corner of your eye. The fact there are several species of Syrneth makes you wonder if they co-operate or compete with each other and the fact that they disguise themselves as people makes you wonder about “people” like the notorious Reis.

Anyway we got the key off the Syrneth guy’s body and headed out of there. The key burnt Frank’s hand as he picked it up. Bron had called the fire brigade so Francis blew up the Syrneth guy’s house to maintain our cover. Bron had to patch Alan up a bit before he went into the office. Alan managed to knock out the two guys in security booth with no probs but FF stuffed up getting stealthily into building. Between them Frank and FF killed the guys in the front. I feel a bit bad about that but see FF’s point that we had to do it in order to get the job done.

Once the lobby was secured the Kreuzritter guys went down to the basement first then we followed. The whole thing was a complete firefight down there and we did a sneak for the bomb. Bron did some what I can only assume was Vesten magic but it was a bit scary as we heard this very old and powerful sounding dragon roar. Alan was stupid enough to throw a flash bang towards us. He had heard from Bron that the Syrneth don’t like light so he thought he’d stun them a bit. Unfortunately he managed to blind Francis, the only one who could deal with the bomb. There were 2 Syrneth near the bomb, one programming it. Alan got one and FF the other one, I arsed up my shot on the one programming the bomb.

The firefight reached a stalemate and eventually Francis got to the bomb while Bron fiddled with the gate. We weren’t in luck the timer had been started on the bomb and Frank had to wait until it was on 2 minutes until he could see well enough to sort it, which I think he did. Bron fixed the gate but fixed it so it was sucking us into it. Most of us managed to get a grip on something except Alan and Francis who was holding the bomb. FF gripped the bomb which stopped Francis from shooting into the gateway and I managed to grab Alan but fuck it was scary. I wasn’t sure how long we would be able to hang on and Bron couldn’t get back to the gate to piss around with it. Francis then lost his grip on the bomb and shot into the gateway and which point we all thought he was fucked but then something strange happened. He had this silver glow around him (I think it was then his hands hit the gate because I remember his feet had disappeared through the gateway) and the gateway seemed to become solid almost like it was freezing over until it because like a giant mirror. The “mirror” then started cracking and we all ran for it. Bron had a bit of a play with the gateway to try to stop it apparently and then realised he couldn’t do anything else and joined the mad scramble out. FF took the bomb in the first wave out.

We were then “arrested” by some waiting Kreuzritter disguised as cops and FF shouted something about free Castille so the separatist lot got blamed for the fact the building was now on fire. Alan and I dragged out the unconscious security guards and apart from the three poor bastards on the front desk no one innocent got hurt.

I don’t feel like I was an abyss of a lot of use on this mission but at the risk of sounding like Bron, it was interesting and I’ve learned a lot, which I hope can be put to good use by us in the good fight, so thanks for sending me on the mission. One final thought, both the incident of what Francis could smell and the effect he had on the Syrneth gateway have confirmed suspicions that the barrier was erected and may be maintained by the Sidhe, which would certainly explain why it’s weakening as the Sidhe realm moves away.