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Bloody Revelations     With the research expedition of last time, the ultimate objective, decided on a bit of extrapolation and guesswork, was to deal with whatever remains of this Anjei Marama person, on the hunch that she is probably the fixation of Achiba's that binds him to eternal unlife. It may very well be true. A cruel executioner that put a proud and vicious career warrior to death in such an ignoble way would definitely be a believable cause to cling to revenge after the grave, to not move beyond the territory in which those executions happened, and to build a force large and strong enough to search and destroy throughout the whole shadowland.

    Nazri, the Sidereal handler from before, seems to agree, and has actually dispatched one of his Sidereal subordinates; a woman from something called the Division of Endings, who is apparently one of the few Sidereals to have learned any sort of Necromancy, apparently a valid tool in the superspy agency that monitors and tries to un-fuck Creation as much as possible. Their objective is to see if Anjei Marama's ghost still exists, and if not, locate any magically resonant things that might be associated with her, and exorcise them, provided the party can find either.

    This unfortunately entails going to the absolute heart of the Fell, further than they've gone before, and thus is a crack of dawn journey to not lose daylight due to its immense size. The same road as before seems to be a safe bet, and the complex from last time remains abandoned, without any visits from sketchy and unwanted visitors.

    Going beyond it doesn't lead to any area more dense and tangled and overgrown, like one would expect from venturing deep into the oldest, most long-abandoned territory. It is the absolute opposite. The further one goes, the more it becomes a flat, barren wasteland, without even ancient, petrified tree stumps to mark the progress of thousands of years old clearcutting, and where the shadowland snow barely ripples in texture, seeming more like frigid white-grey sand.

    You're menaced a few times on the way there. A few times are by what might as well be 'native creatures', however that could *possibly* work, including a horse-like headless skeleton the size of a mammoth, a swarm of carnivorous worms made of snow-slush that swim through the air, a couple of encounters with wandering humanoids made of jagged ice that repeat the same disjointed mad phrases over and over, and at one point, a floating, decayed fetus sat in a cloud of yellowish grey fog that dessicates everything it touches.

    The random encounters get worse the further one goes, until you arrive at what must have been some kind of central command post, built up over many years, into a sort of five storey McMansion-esque gilded factory tower, old bleached banners still fluttering from its posts, steel doors chained firmly shut, and windows giving glimpses of faded grand furnishings within. It's surrounded by a small town of sprawling barracks, administrative buildings, bookkeeping offices, stockpiles, workshops, and surrounding those, what must be half a mile of earth that still somehow looks freshly dug, despite being millennia old mass graves. Here in the reflection of the Underworld, the ground is sticky like a movie theatre floor with phantasmal blood soaked into the soil.
N'Raha     The Warrior of Light is DONE with this place. Like, utterly done. This place is awful, no good, and what's worse he can't even bring his Chocobo here anymore. Not that he'd WANT Catmeat in this awful place, but it's the principle of the thing. Which is why, the Warrior of Light is sitting in something else. A tall, bipedal piece of Magitek Ride Armor, liberated from god knows what Imperial Castrum, painted a bright red because of course it is, and stamped with the symbol of the Garlond Ironworks. It's also big enough for Inga to sit in there with him, provided she does not mind his lap.

    He's lazily looking around him as the Ride Armor stomp stomps its way around with the rest of the party, a spyglass out as he tries to peer into the buildings for any sign of life or unlife. "...This place is awful."
Gawain Gawain is way too cheerful for how awful this is. He's frowned a /few/ times, especially after he saw that horrible fetus monster and had to slay it with Galatine, but otherwise, he's optimistically moving forward. "Ah, a town!" He says as they reach the Marama McMansion, heading up to the doors. When he sees they're chained, he frowns again. The knight's in full armor, because of the danger, brushing a hand through his blonde hair as he summons Excalibur Galatine to his hand.

Checking briefly to make sure the chain isn't made of magical material like soulsteel or something, Gawain moves to slice through it with Galatine as if they were butter, removing any remnants from the door carefully and putting them on the ground, and opening the door so they can progress. "The chains make it clear that this is an important location. We should head inside and see if this was Marama's residence!"
Inga Freyjasdottir The further they go, the further they are all sure that this is a horrible place filled with abominations and nightmare fuel. At least there's no fishmen or filth, she supposes.

Yet!?

Inga is absolutely riding on the Magitek armor even if she has to sit in Raha's lap, because it is a long ride and her horse was wisely sent home where things are extremely less horrifying. "Agreed," she sighs. "All the more reason to get this done quickly and well--so we need never return," she continues, looking down at the soil and sniffing. "Blood in the soil," she remarks, shaking her head before looking toward the others. At least Gawain is taking careo f the chains so they can continue inside what is absolutely a haunted mansion.
Tomoe The plan was to deal with a man who was already dead a man made by the long-dead Solars of the first age to be very good at one thing. Fighting and fighting alone, they had dug up some information in the concentration camps remaining buildings. At least one thing of importance came to her mind and stuck with Tomoe this Anjei Marama the one who ran the camp. She was key in the plan to deal with Achiba.

Achiba's fate was unjust but everything she'd seen so far pointed that they did have to get him to move on to his next life.

That would entail finding Marama's ghost, remains or something magically resonant enough with her that they could exorcise them. Maybe then the warrior could move on and the issue would be settled?

, Either way, the going has kept Tomoe alert as they pressed forward to the heart of this dead place they get menace from time to times. Creatures that would leave Tomoe unable to forget the horror of them for some times. The Fetus would alone haunt her nightmares for years to come after this day.

things only get worse as they press in and she does her best to cover her allies and keep them in fighting shape as much as possible. The ruins are way too fresh the bloody soil only drives it home along with everything else she has seen so far.

She looks to the Warrior of Light, who after all this she is considering a friend. His choice to bring a Reaper unit to help cross this hellscape was a good one she thinks.

"Aye I have to agree, this place is hell on earth. I'm going to start scouting ahead."

With Gawain going for the chains she will turn her own blade to aid him if needed if he gets the chains on his own she's going to head in taking point if no one stops her.

"Right shall we then Sir Gawain?"
Empty Tidings "What a tremendous understatement," says Empty Tidings.

She's lingering near the M-Tek Armor, her entourage of faceless (well... full helmed) guards silently bearing the litter she's decided to employ. No beasts will come this far, and she doesn't have easy access to some sort of automata like this axe-toting feline chef apparently does. Goons will just have to do... though the crowd is slightly thinned after fighting with the hazards on the way over. They were largely beneath her to deal with.

"Hell at least has better decor," Tidings complains. "Let's just get this over with. The sooner we destroy whoever is hiding out here, the faster we can go somewhere warmer." The furs she's wearing only do so much against the cold. Being a southerner is sometimes suffering.
Staren     A long, monster-filled journey? Staren follows N'Raha's lead, piloting his own giant robot through the shadowland and blasting troublesome fauna with railguns.

    When they reach the manor, he disembarks, heavily armed and armored. "Her end has been a long time coming. She deserves worse than Oblivion... but we're here to make things better, not worse."
All-Seeing Eye      Eye is riding side saddle on his hover bike for most of the journey, legs crossed, eyes seemingly fixed on a romance novel while the craft moves. He occasionally 'sneaks' glances at Empty Tidings, if she's nearby, as well as amorous little smiles. He should be distracted, but he never seems surprised when one of the native creatures rears its head to attack. The perceptive will note that the carefree display is exactly that--a display. In truth he hasn't gotten very far in that book, and he always seems a little too ready to shoot. The swarms actually require him to move from his seat, which seems to annoy him.

     Several random encounters later, he's put the book away. His standard issue cold weather combat boots touch upon the sticky soil without much ado. Likewise for the way in which he puts away his bike. The whole thing just folds in on itself and into his palms, as if you're supposed to believe someone designed it to do exactly that.

     "Indeed," says Eye to N'Raha. "Frankly, I find the banners to be particularly gauche. So!" He announces, clapping his hands together like he does. "Tidings, dearest. And Inga, was it? You two seem fairly knowledgeable about these... 'ghosts,' as they're called. Any ideas to draw our quarry out, or should I simply start..." One of his crossbows pops out of its slot. "...redecorating?"

     While he waits for an answer, Eye attempts to peer through the building's upper floors. He figures it's unlikely someone of Marama's station would live on the ground floor of such a monument to excess.
Bloody Revelations     There are no signs of anyone, or anything, moving here. Nothing definite, anyways. N'raha catches barely shimmers through the spyglass, as the only activity here manifests only as odd motion in one's peripheral vision. The semi-constant lurking phenomena is just constant enough to stop being so surprising after the eighth or ninth time, but it hardly inspires confidence.

    Galatine cuts through the door chains with ease, but they turn out to be little more than extra decorations of condemned atmosphere on the abandoned building, and so Gawain has to plunge it down the door seam and sever the locking bolts as well.

    The doors open up into the ground floor of probably the most well-appointed concentration camp office anyone has ever seen. Though it's been bleached and faded to a near-monochrome from ages in the Underworld, like looking into a not-quite black and white photograph, it's no temporary or quickly built affair meant to keep up with rapid expansion.

    The floors are marble, the pillars are fluted oak and trimmed with gold, the ceilings are high and attached with thick silken drapes over tall windows, there are the oddly translucent, ghostly shadows of exotic flowering and fern plants from the south, huge portraits, murals, and busts of military victories and imperious officials decorate the place, all of a distinctly pseudo-feudal Chinese style, involving extreme amounts of ornamentation and elemental iconography, and even the triple length front desk bank is still littered in velveteen bound books and probably now-worthless coins and stamps.

    There's a lot of ground to explore, and no map; the place isn't meant for public reception, so you don't get a 'you are here'. It appears to be circularly built around a central shaft of marble spiral stairs that travel up and down the whole thing, with the east and west branches from the front leading to some kind of locked down check station and a postal area respectively. Up the stairs, the facility gets progressively thinner, with higher windows and fewer rooms, with endless individual desks on the second floor, commons and an officer dining area on the third, some complete with esoteric abacus machines and gizmos, private accommodations on the fourth floor, and some sort of astral observatory on the fifth. The first floor of the basement leads to storage lockers and now-defunct bathing and cleaning facilities, and the floor below that is a prison, only filled with old bones, rusted keys, and weapons now more dust than metal. The rusty door at the end probably leads to an interrogation room.

    The Sidereal attache, apparently going by Sazara Tomei, with her dark hair tied up and fastened in oriental pin style and wearing thick layers of violet, flower-patterned robes, stops on the first floor. Taciturn the whole way, she barely changes pace when she stops to wordlessly prick her thumb, and begin smearing little runs of blood in a four corner configuration on the marble. She only breaks her silence to add, about as vociferously as rustling leaves, "If Marama's ghost still exists, she is beyond the means of an ordinary ghost-summoning ritual to reach. A sympathetic link, like a sentimental object or something she used a great deal, may bridge the rest of the gap. If her ghost no longer exists, the fetter is likely something relating to the executed kyzvoi to which Achiba belongs."
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga looks toward All-Seeing, thoughtful. "Normally, I would advise caution and perhaps attempt diplomacy. However, having seen all that this Marama has done I am inclined to, what is the saying...'nuke it from orbit?'" says the norsewoman.

"If she will not come out I can go in as a spirit, as I did before...but first, let me check for wards," she remarks, sliding down from the armor.

Inga takes a position near the front for once, checking everything for wards before they enter. Once inside, Sazara Tomei takes over and Inga examines the use of her blood magic with quiet approval. "Mmm, this is true. Perhaps we may find such an object if we can located her bedroom. It is most likely we will find an object of personal importance there," she says.

Inga clicks her tongue, looking around. Such opulence, built on such horrors. Then, that is the usual way of the world, isn't it?
N'Raha     Said Axe Toting Chef looks to Eye, and grumbles. "You know, I was just going to say this place reminded me of a cross between several haunted cursed places I've been, but also the inside of several Imperial Castrums all sort of mushed together in some awful amalgam of garbage. You've even got the awful banners flying everywhere to remind you that you're stuck here."
    Raha is already done with this place.

    Though as Inga dismounts and heads inside, the catman slides the ride armor to an off position, and hops out, his outfit changing to one of a pure black jacket and tie, and black slacks to go with his sneakers. Very slimming.
    A hand places itself on Inga's back before he takes a breath, and murmurs. "I'll watch in case you get hit with any visions."
Tomoe She mentally goes over the crew she's working with Nara her and Gawain are stupidly durable and tan hopefully tank things. Eye and ET are native and have a good understanding of this world on top of their combat abilities. Inga and Inga as well can help deal with kicking the ghosts off the mortal plain too and Staren? Is a damage dealer who can science things but she's not sure how well science works on a world like this then again Creation does have its own laws which so far as she knows are consistent right? Either way, the team is good and only if they can find what they are looking for? She thinks they have a good shot at putting this problem to rest.

With Gawain just utterly takes down the door and she's in she'll take note of the various things on display, the shadows of plants, the murals catch some notice as well.

"The people who built this place, had a lot of cash to burn, didn't they? As for that, she should have had an office around here somewhere right I'll bet we could find something in such a place that would link to her if only by virtue of all the paperwork she had to do right?"

Inga brings up her ideas.

"That's another solid one you try to find her quarters I'll hunt for her office."

They could be one and the same but there's a chance they are not after all. With that in mind, Tomoe's heading up to the fourth floor to see what she can find it's likely if there was a private office it would be somewhere on that floor at least to her.

"Raha you got Inga covered? Good."

Sazara Tomei also notes another good idea of where to search.

"That's a good one too, Eye? Staren think you could check up on that?"

With that she heads to the fourth floor to start her search.
Staren     Staren will MAKE the map. He offers the others goggles or tablets that will help with the mapping if they like.

    The facility is... interesting, but not especially enlightening. Once they've got the layout, Staren checks the cells and wherever prisoners' effects are kept, and searching the personal quarters as well, for... anything that seems like it really meant something to anyone. Even if it helps summon the wrong ghost, maybe they'll know something...
Empty Tidings Tidings only generally drifts near the Magitek Armor to offer color commentary, otherwise spending her time in All-Seeing Eye's general vicinity. He's a better conversationalist than most, even in the middle of a particularly colorful novel and while not driving his vehicle off what passes for a road. More like a zombie game trail, maybe.

"In my experience, the Dead will arrive precisely in time to harass the living once it becomes ideally irritating that they exist at all." Empty Tidings gestures, and her retinue stops. One deploys a fancy-looking box for her to step down on, and she heads for the front door now that she's no longer lazing around en route to their destination. "I suppose a large enough expenditure of Essence should get the attention of some of them, especially aspected towards something that isn't death. We'll put that to plan 'B', I think."

Tidings looks up the stairs. "If I had built this place, I would definitely stay somewhere up high," she murmurs. She starts to ascend, intending on going upwards until she can raid private rooms and the observatory for potential interesting tidbits. Locked doors don't really pose a problem to her; she has a way with getting them to open for her.
Gawain The door's a bit of a hassle, not just being chains, but Gawain cuts through the locks anyways, opening it up for the group. Desummoning Galatine, Gawain grabs a tablet from Staren, and uses it for mapping. Joining Staren, he heads downstairs towards the prison, but doesn't focus on the cells or anything inside. Instaed...if they're looking for something belonging to someone executed, perhaps...

Gawain carefully moves to opem the door to the interrogation room, forcing it open with a sheer superhuman shoulder-check if it won't open on its own. There's a possibility of something horrifying or grotesque in there, he thinks. Alternatively, it's super clean and just decayed. Either way, he's not excited to see what lies inside.
All-Seeing Eye      "Ah yes," says Eye merrily to the Sidereal. "We have an expert. How silly of me to forget!" It's probably meant to be a little passive aggressive. Still, he takes it all under advisement--Inga's, Tomei's and Tidings'--enters. "Naturally," he says to Tomoe. The crossbow retracts. He passes on the offer of a tablet from Staren, heading up the spiral staircase with Tidings.

     Where Tidings looks for personal rooms, however, Eye looks for a personal office. It's there, he assumes, he will find something that Marama used every day. People in the business of efficient murder tend to make it into so much bureaucratic drudgery, that they might remove themselves from it to aid in their sleep at night. He searches for something suitably droll--a favorite pen, a personal signet ring, wax seal, or such like.
Bloody Revelations     As far as Staren can tell, none of the prisoners were the created races that this whole death camp was built to put to death. They wouldn't be houses under the main command post, it seems. The cells all look to be places where humans were put, and judging by the presence of low-ranking uniforms, most likely all spies, deserters, or well-meaning petty officers caught attempting to smuggle non-humans out. There's one in particular as a noted stay for 'sedition', but already executed long ago, in the guards' logbook.

    The interrogation room is expectedly bloodstained, but not especially unusual beyond that, with all of its equipment and records having been deemed sensitive enough to clean out. The last person to be here, whoever they were, left a badge behind on the floor, likely not worth picking up for the Shogunate officers who ran this place thousands of years ago.

    The observatory is an oddity. Though it's all standard, top of the line stuff manufactured in the Shogunate era, with powerful crystal telescopes, holographic star displays that sputter to life with an application of magic, dense charts of constellations, precision perpetual timekeeping devices, and the like, it's all been used to plot the stars in the sky. That is, currently in the sky. In other words, the stars that are visible in the Underworld, and not Creation. Someone was filling out a book by the telescope.

    The offices aren't tremendously helpful, as there is even more paperwork that All-Seeing Eye feared. There are minor artifacts around to help keep track of it all, with some projecting crystals still intact, tallying up literally millions of processed inmates and constant, never-ending plans for new construction, without rhyme or reason to it, as if the planner constantly changed their mind. Simple beheadings and firing walls replaced with drowning pools replaced with ordnance sites replaced with terrorsaur enclosures replaced with electric fields replaced with mass burners replaced with gas chambers replaced with soul nets replaced with-

    If Marama had a personal office, it wasn't for much work. The closest candidate is a small room mostly dominated by a broad map of the surrounding miles of land, with said plans pinned all over it, overlapping each other in their haste and density.


    There are no wards about the building. When Inga goes to check, Sazara offhandedly comments that "This heart of the Fell long predates the death that seeped into the land after it. Only the mad would have stayed behind once it became plagued with ghosts." It's going to take her a while to finish what she's doing, completing several blood circles, setting out small mirrors and lighting black candles, gathering up death-aspected magic from the ground, and going through verses of a chant with each candle.
Bloody Revelations     Heading to the fourth floor and looking around personal quarters is an even more trivial task than expected. All of them except for one have been scraped bare. Somehow, even to the present day, there are bare marks in the dust on desks and windowsills where high officers picked up their ornaments, medals, and pictures of home, before bailing out of this place, abandoning with ample warning. Only one is still fully appointed, indicating the one person crazy enough to stay behind, though it's not in the greatest state.

    That is to say, it was smashed to pieces a long time ago, in a fit closer to the damage done by a wild animal than what a person would do. Curtains have been ripped through and torn down, sheets pulled in half, the mattress slashed through, and there are holes in the walls. Broken glass litters the floor from a full vanity, which lies in several pieces, its drawers scattered about and surrounded by the pieces of gem-studded counting machines, shattered vials of tonics and perfumes, what look like they could have almost been photographs before they were torn to shreds, as well as a notebook in similar condition, the markers of some sort of expensive board game, various jewelry, a cracked complex mechanical item sort of like a pocketwatch, and a similarly cracked egg-shaped thing made of jade. The closet is mostly ash, having been actively torched by high heat, but the coat stand where they'd be a uniform is simply bare of dust, as if it were the only thing taken.

    Beholding it slams Inga in the head with a vision, most definitely of the past, but of somewhere far away from here, and even longer ago. A somehow vastly more lavish bedroom, decorated in gold, glowing with the reflections of half-melted candles in the hours before sunlight. A woman sitting upright in the sheets, dark-skinned, with intricate tattoos and aesthetic scarification, nude, drenched in sweat, visibly exhausted, beaten black and blue, blood dripping from cuts on her upper arms and back. A man stands with his back to the candles, fastening a shirt, the shadow making most of his features indistinguishable in shadow, save for a golden glowing mark on his forehead standing out, shining with active magical energy, in the shape of a sunburst. "There's no reason to be upset. You don't hate it." says the male figure, in a low, perfectly even, perfectly confident tone. "You'll do just fine. Like your mother, and your mother's mother, and her mother too."
Staren     No prisoners' stuff, no officer's stuff... except an already-trashed room. Staren takes the two cracked objects, since they're relatively intact, but this doesn't inspire much hope. Then he notices Inga's out. "Inga? are you okay?"
Empty Tidings Tidings is vaguely put out by the fact that this place had been so thoroughly cleared out when whoever was stationed here got the word to abandon it. She was hoping for more carnage and decay, not this orderly dust-spots routine. "Most of these rooms are empty," she tells Eye on her way between the various chambers. "Thoroughly empty. But maybe..." She ascends to the top.

"Aha."

Tidings examines the equipment, careful not to touch anything to knock it out of alignment. She'll check the book after that, paging through it to see how recently it was used and by whom, if there's any indication. She suspects it's someone doing astrology, but doesn't really want to ask the Sidereal about it if she doesn't have to. "Someone was definitely here."
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga looks up and over her shoulder to Raha. She flashes him a sheepish look. "Up the stairs we go...might I have a lift?" she asks. Otherwise, she'll fall far behind the others.

She does not fight it when the vision comes, as she'd been open to it, almost welcoming any visions to show themselves.

Inga goes still, her hand tightening on Raha's arm, her pupils growing to swallow the hazel of her irises.

It's a bit of a doozy. She has seen plenty more immediately traumatizing things, but the implications of this particular vision makes her blood run cold and a shiver of disgust run through her. Still, she watches, she experiences...the smell of sweat and blood, the heat from the candles...she notes all the details she can, and shudders.

She groans as the vision leaves her. "I've seen the past. Long ago...and not this place," she says quietly.

Once she has the attention of the others in the area, she describes it all.
Tomoe Tomoe will take the tablet Staren offers her and will at least know how to work it. Tomoe takes note, that Tiding and All-Seeing Eye is also going up? Tidings is looking for personal rooms? That's fine with her much like All-Seeing Eye? She has begun her own hunt for any offices that are on this floor as well and much like him she's looking for a favourite pen, document sealers and the like hell maybe even a very beloved office chair. She's seen office wars over a good chair when she was working for Yamir.

The offices have more paperwork than Tomoe could even guess was here so much paperwork that they needed minor artifacts to deal with it all as she looks over the plans she starts to pale more and more at it.

"...If I didn't know this hadn't happened some of this stuff... no all of this stuff."

She trails off at this the sheer scale of the butchery here was horrific. She pushes that down and takes the time to focus on searching the smaller office. She'll take care to give the place a sweep before moving on looking for items that might confirm whose office it is. Checking for personal effects or signs of whom used this place.
N'Raha     Strong Miqo'te hands lightly catch Inga and hold her safe as she suffers her Vision, with Raha looking around the wrecked room as she has it. The damage here is... familiar some how. Familiar in a way he doesn't like. Whether that's sympathy touches from Inga's vision or something else, the Warrior can't tell but...

    "Hate. So much hate here. and not just... active hatred. Just hatred for... everything. That sort of hate you get for being alive for too long. Doing... /this/ for too long."
    A pet at Inga's hair. "Entrenched bureaucratic hatred." As she comes back to the land of the living, he just listens, and then looks around. "...I guess Solars aren't always the heroes people keep making them out to be, unless other sorts of people had..." He makes a sunburst at his forehead.
Gawain Just bloodsplatter. Not actually as bad - Gawain's seen plenty of blood in war, so he doesn't blanch. He looks over the area, and then takes the medal despite the relative worthlessness, rubbing at it and trying to make it glimmer again. This was awful.

When he reaches upstairs and to Inga, he listens to her story, frowning with disgust. He replies to N'raha. "From the stories I know, many Solars abused their position. But at the same time, there were heroes among them. Some gods still believe in them. Whitewall's goddess among them."

Heading over to Staren, Gawain removes something from his pocket that he always carries with him in Creation - his Solar-aspected essence token. "Allow me to check those devices, Staren, and see if they still work." First Gawain will try to just channel mana through them regularly, via the fact he's a magical ghost. If that doesn't do anything and they appear restricted instead of just not artifacts, he'll attempt to do the same with his essence token - but won't waste it if it doesn't seem necessary.
All-Seeing Eye      "Of course," says Eye to Tidings, with the certainty of a career secret policeman. There are a number of reasons the place might have been cleaned out. Looters, undead or otherwise... an effort on the part of the living to escape justice, perhaps... though the latter seems unlikely, when he comes across the map.

     "Oh, Ms. Tomei!~" It looks to be an object which speaks almost to a mania, rather than an effort to hide atrocities in layers of drudgery. The cluttered network of notes and plans seems almost as if the owner enjoyed their work. Or, he ponders, hands clasped behind his back, perhaps they were trying desperately to convince themselves they enjoyed it. Either way...

     "I believe I've found something that was used /quite/ often," he says to the Sidereal, over the party's radio frequency. "Perhaps you'd be a dear and have a look?"
Bloody Revelations     Staren pokes at the objects lying on the floor. When Gawain uses magic on them, the pocket device glows and flickered with several attempts at producing a 3d display, likely being some kind of PDA substitute, but is pretty badly damaged for such a delicate device. The egg doesn't seem to do anything until shaken around, until a string of coins suddenly pops out of midair and jangles all over the place by Staren's feet. Personal storage?

    Empty Tidings, not being an astrologer herself, can only check so far as 'those sure are stars'. The fine toothed gears that calibrate the scope's position are clogged with dust, so whenever it was last used, it was after everyone left, but still a very, very long time ago. The charts appear to be an initiate's attempts to map out the basics of the Underworld stars, and divine prophecies from them like proper astrology, picking up some experience throughout what might be a year of attempts. The book is largely filled with esoteric equations, until the last half-page is abruptly terminated by the violent scribble of its Q.E.D

    "THE LIVING SHALL NEVER TRIUMPH OVER THE NEVERBORN"

    Searching the smaller office, it seems likely that Anjei Marama did use it at some point, but the effects such as the quills and binders and communications stones are all dead cold, scarcely, if ever, used. The map and its detritus lovingly plastered all over the wall seems to be the only thing that has received tender love and care, scribbled on and pinned monthly, then weekly, then daily, as brand new ideas on how to exterminate more people at once apparently came faster and faster towards the end and the camp's decommissioning, in manic fits and starts.

    Around the same time, N'raha, holding Inga, shares a second, painfully impactful vision through his Echo. The two of them can tell that it must be through someone's eyes, by how it blinks and shifts around and loses tiny slivers of time, and both have the uncanny sense those eyes must belong to the woman from before.

    An alabaster altar. Golden banners. Finely dressed guests. A man with dark clothes and a golden sunburst on his shadowed face. A woman with silver tattoos across her body, they and her incongruous cat's tail more distinct than her features and her white dress. A formal occasion. Another woman --a young lady-- that curtsies before him with the quietest sounds of a million little gears tinkling like glass, unearthly beautiful. Applause and murmured appreciation for the gift. Bubbling, tar-like, viscerally sickening revulsion. Smouldering coals of hatred fanning white hot. Stabbing, gut-wrenching self-loathing. The vision attempts to focus on the man's face, and direct its hatred, but slides over and over off of its glowing sunburst, latching onto the perfectly beautiful artificial girl over and over again.

    Gawain dusts off the badge. It once belonged to a lower ranked officer 'Ho Chi'. The name sounds vaguely familiar in the context of a previous logbook about executions and sedition. Nobody had really read it in detail back then, but it'd been just before the camp had shut down, and made public. Apparently whatever lie he told was especially unjust. That, or whatever truth he blew the whistle on was too much to be accepted.

    Tomei also responds over the radio, being too deep in 45 minutes of Necromancy to leave in person, mostly just in the affirmative. "Please, bring it here, if you would. The ritual will only retain its potency for an hour after I pause it."
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga sighs, leaning into Raha for both physical and emotional support. "Disgusting," is all she has to say about the vision for the time being, if it is all it appears to be.

Not long after, they are both pulled into the next vision. Inga gasps softly, pulled into the moment. She tries not to completely lose herself, listening for names, anything that would help her put these visions in context.

When she's back in the present again, she slides to the floor. "Who are these people?" she asks quietly.

She'll describe the vision again for those present, communicating to the others over radio as well so that those downstairs can know what they have seen.
N'Raha     Raha sighs as the Echo takes him again, and just... feels very small indeed. As much as Hydaelyn tries to use him for good and for noble purposes. Sometimess th things he has to see to bring that about are crap.
    He sucks down a breath and then looks around. "W-we're looking for a clockwork girl. D-dancer or something. She's very pretty. A poppet or machina or something." A hand grips at Inga, and he hauls himself up to his feet with her, leaning on a busted desk for support. "Ideas?"
Empty Tidings Tidings has just enough astrological knowledge to fake it with people who know even less than she does. As such, the book doesn't offer any illuminating secrets besides an insane scrawl in the back. She rolls her eyes and snaps it closed, tucking it under an arm and departing the observatory for the lower levels again.

She puts it down nearby for their Sidereal accomplice to examine at her leisure. "You'll have better fortune with this, I expect." She slips outside for a second, speaking quietly to her lingering retinue and sending them to keep watch on the immediate vicinity. They'll raise an alarm if something shows up unexpectedly, and also won't get in the way of a hasty retreat at the front door if they're not all clogging it up.
Staren     Suddenly, coins! Staren picks them up to look at them. He tries to channel his own PPE into the storage device, then remembers he's a robot. "Can you do that again? Might as well see what's in this..." He'll follow along when they're called to the ritual site. "A clockwork girl? I guess she could be anywhere we haven't looked yet..." He'll deploy quadrotors to check any area noone with glasses has checked yet.
Gawain As the coins pop out and the broken PDA flickers, Gawain nods, and tries to channel magic again into the storage device to see if it has more stuff inside. After that, Gawain travels to the ritual site with Staren, checking over the badge as he does so.

"Ho Chi. This name is familiar. Seditious traitor...a liar, or perhaps a whistleblower? Either way, I believe I'll hold onto this badge. It's nothing important, but, ah...I don't know. It's a bit of a trifle, I guess." Gawain smiles as he explains it to Staren, before pocketing the badge for his own keeping, and repocketing the essence token.

"A clockwork girl. Hopefully after all these years, her mind would still be stable! Perhaps we can find an ally in this horrible place!"
Tomoe Tomoe replies to All-Seeing Eye's message. <<Good to hear Eye shall I link back up with you I think I'm almost done here.>>

Lucky for her she's not stuck out entirely. She does score something useful. The map could be something useful.

<<I found something as well it looks like this map and a lot of the planning for it was ... very well loved. Disturbing stuff but I think this might be Marama's handy work I'd bet.>>

When Tomei notes it needs to be brought to her, Tomoe pauses for a moment and hums

<<Right I'll do my best to not damage it.>>

She will carefully attempt to in careful portions load up the map and plans into her inventory and head down to where the Sideral has asked All Seeing Eye to go, she would go there the moment she'd finished collecting the map and assorted works.
All-Seeing Eye      Eye chews on his lip, concealing a grin as he peers at the map and listens to Tomei. His free hand wanders up to twirl his braided hair around a finger. "You don't say," he says, pacing slowly around the room. "I don't suppose there's enough... significance there to... force an appearance by our departed host?"

     "Or, better yet," says the Exalt with a hopeful inflection, "Could we destroy it and be rid of her? Hm? And by extension, Achiba?" He assumes not. These 'ghosts' are a self-important lot. But it never hurts to aim for the most efficient solution!
N'Raha     There's a look from N'raha to the rest of the people. "There's got to be a thaumaturge here with enough juice to blow up this whole damn building."
Empty Tidings MEANWHILE
JUST OUTSIDE

Empty Tidings looks up at the front of the building and very seriously wonders how long it would take her to tear it down and fling the bricks at Whitewall with her bare hands.
Inga Freyjasdottir "Give me time, I could bring it down," she grumbles. "Bit of fire, bit of lightning..."
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga shakes her head. "Perhaps we should go back downstairs...unless there is more to show," she says, turning her eyes back around the room again, opening herself to any further visions, as mentally exhausting as that is. They need to bring all of this to an end, and to do that they need as much information as they can get. "The one downstairs may know more...she is preparing a ritual, and I believe it should be nearly ready. If there's nothing else here, perhaps I should assist." Mostly, she doesn't want to be in this room anymore.

If no other visions assault them, downstairs she goes.
Bloody Revelations     Quadrotors are basically a formality. They've already seen a couple of fine, Solar-made, First Age automata partially disassembled or otherwise decommissioned in workshops as a means of exterminating them as well, putting an end to artificial beings that could still be loyal to their Exalted masters after their usurpation, or programmed with other dead switches, save that, unlike the flesh and blood beings put to death, the Shogunate took some care to leave them intact enough to study and hopefully reactivate some day. The situation outside, where Staren can find the rare automata, is much the same. Intricate, bespoke machine people, of a hundred different individual designs, sit lifeless and taken partly to pieces in storage facilities and workshops, as the still-functional one, Impeccable Abacus, had told the group before.

    Gawain starts fiddling with the pocket dimension device. Out comes an engraved pipe. A medicinal kit. A bottle of rice wine. An embellished jade dagger. Some sort of silk outfit fastened with a jade clasp still shimmering with magic. The porcelain white head of a young girl frozen in an expression of terror, savagely torn off at the neck and exposing thousands of tiny silver gears and wires.

    Oh.

    After a discussion with Sazara over the radio, Tomoe and All-Seeing Eye end up pulling down the loving updated map and its annotations, and Empty Tidings comes in with the astrology book, which Sazara flips through with a half measure of interest. Examining all of it together, she concludes "The ancient rumours were most likely true then. Some of these annotations are dated later than when Marama's Fell was evacuated, for turning into a shadowland from so much death. The entire astrology record is as well. Some of these designs involve Necromantic principles that Terrestrial Exalted like Anjei Marama shouldn't be able to learn of."

    "It seems very likely that something from the Underworld compromised her mind, drawn to her hate and the mental damage inflicted by the Solar magic of her lord, if those visions are to be believed. It sadly wasn't uncommon in those days, to bend the minds of close confidants to be incapable of betraying or acting against their masters." She does spend a while lingering on that star book though, flipping back and forth between the last four pages, frowning intensely.
Bloody Revelations     She then takes the extra time to perform smaller, minute long spells on the gathered items, identifying the book and posters as viable fetters to a ghost, and the head distastefully as a powerful sympathetic connection, if Anjei was so far gone by then that she'd carry a severed head around with her as a personal possession.

    From there, she requests quiet, and spends the next ten minutes combining the retrieved objects into the circle, and settling in for a long string of unbroken arcane recitation, with each of the black candles going out one by one in a clockwise fashion around her. Pale mist shapes itself in the circle, dredged up through the solid marble as if through cracks in floorboards, at first just a cold, creeping fog on the floor, but slowly building up into a mound of protean, colourless smoke. Sazara Tomei recites Anjei Marama's name several times, each one seeming to cut away at the cloud, carving away bits and pieces until it finally resembles human form, and then with the snuffing of the last candle, it *becomes* human, emitting a powerful, chilling prickle in all directions as the dead energy of the Underworld's weave ripples.

    It's just as Inga had wondered. The woman knelt and slumped over in the circle, albeit pale as ash, is just the one she remembers from her visions. Rather than wearing the officer's uniform she left with however, she's wearing the risque jeweled silks from much longer ago, through whatever facet of self image it is that makes ghosts. There is no sign of a fatal injury or sickness on her at all, simply looking somewhat faint and insubstantial, but even stirring slowly from her kneeling, semi-collapsed position, head rolling on her shoulders to straighten up, her eyes remain invisible in deep shadow.

    "Ah . . . the promised day? . . . No, not yet. There are still more of them alive, aren't there?" She slowly straightens enough to lean back and stare at the ceiling. "Who would bother . . . I was having the most wonderful dream . . . what do you want? What could you possibly want?"
Inga Freyjasdottir It does not seem her help is needed, so Inga is a respectful and consciencious observer of the ritual, watching as the woman in her vision form before them. So that is her, Marama. Her hate twisted and further corrupted. There's always some reason someone took the path they did. As a Seer, she knows this well. Marama was twisted, but she is not innocent. There is some sympathy, knowing what she was put through...but she has done more than enough damage in this world. It is time for this ghost to move on.

Inga looks to the caster of this ritual expectantly, her hands on her staff, ready to add her energy to the ritual should it be needed.
N'Raha     And now we come down to it. Raha sighs a bit as he steps up next to Inga, his black suit looking the part tonight as he wills his axe into existance in his hands, the giant curved blade looking for all the world like an executioner's weapon. A fitting thought, he considers, as he listens to the damned soul comlpain about being called up again.
Gawain Gawain actually slightly blanches as he pulls out a head. Sure, it's a robot head, but it's realistic, and she had feelings, and was a person (in his eyes), and, well, it's no worse than finding a human head. He immediately drops the storage device, it skittering to the ground, as he holds the head, grimacing. "I see."

When the ritual begins, everyone likely has questions. The others will ask Marama the intel. Gawain...follows his heart, and asks what he wants to know.

Gawain shows Marama the head. "This girl. Did you know her? Did you kill her?" There's no real anger or accusation, though there's certainly emotion. Gawain simply wants to know if Marama is a monster. How she reacts to this. Even with all the signs that she is...perhaps she can be redeemed, he thought before. But seeing this has made his heart shake.

What type of person was Anjel Marama, truly?
Empty Tidings Empty Tidings comes back inside once she's decided not to commit violence against the architecture.

(It's a near thing.)

She stands just outside the area of the summoning ritual, carefully stepping around it and avoiding disturbing the trappings. Contaminating or disrupting it would be a waste of all of their time, and she isn't totally certain if being inside its bounds will do something negative, given her particularly Primordial Essence.

I mean Solar. Definitely Solar. Yeah.

"We want Achiba," Empty Tidings says, once the spectre is called. "And have reason to believe you are a way for us to get what we want." She steps gingerly over a bloody line. Tidings cants her head slightly, tears welling up seemingly out of nowhere while her smile grows. They fall to wet the floor, streaming uncontrollably down her cheeks. She's looking closely to see if there are any more overt ties that bind this ghost besides merely a summoning, though the only indication of that is the sudden weeping.
Staren     The head makes Staren jump slightly in surprise, but, yes, it's not really different from an organic head as far as horror factor and he's been surrounded by dead people before. Staren picks the storage device back up. He can study it and the watch(?) later.

    The ghost is summoned. Staren's considering what to say to her when Tidings speaks up and, uh, starts smile-weeping. "Um, are you okay?"
Tomoe Tomoe can get why people want to level this place but she also thinks about events on her one world, an era some of her family had lived and she'd know before they passed due to old age. She thinks for a moment as she more. She will move to deliver the items he's taken down and will turn them over to Sazara once she arrives she takes stock of what's said.

"Bloody hell that is the height of paranoia."

The talk of levelling the place is put aside by Tomoe as the ritual finishes and they summon the very person they were looking for. She wonders how many of the dead might pass on, once she's been sent on herself.

The woman is dead they have merely dragged her ghost away so they can send her on her way hopefully causing their main target to move on as well and who knows how many others might move on too.

Gawain's example tempers Tomoe's own response a fair bit as she looks at the damned soul speaks up.

"She's right it's all due to Achiba is why you were fished up."
Empty Tidings "Corpse dust in my eyes," Tidings asides somewhat dismissively, apparently distracted. "This place hasn't been properly cleaned in an Age."
Bloody Revelations     Being bothered by the living after called from whatever sort of incredible torpor a ghost like Anjei Marama would fall into after literal millennia takes a bit of doing before she finally starts to stir more. She displays limited comprehension of her surroundings, as if still half-asleep, or only partially there. It might be no wonder, given that it was established that nobody in the Underworld has ever seen her ghost. Where was she even called from?

    "Ah . . . huh? That thing . . . of course I hated that thing. Of course I killed her. A long time . . . a long time before Camp 17. Even before we plunged our daggers into the backs of the Solars . . . such a long, long time ago. Why wouldn't I? Four generations. Four generations of Anjei Scions . . . that man's playthings . . . raised just to be his stewards and objects of desire . . . fifteen hundred of years of our house's service to Lord Tyraeth . . . and just like that . . . replaced by a servitor. An *anniversary gift* . . . ah . . . for a thousand years married to that woman."

    "I bet she did it on purpose . . . just to spite me . . . all of us. An affront to the entire Dragon-Blooded race. They wanted to replace us, you see. Replace us all with . . . things. Things from labs and workshops . . . dismissed for a machine. I couldn't hate him, so I hated them. Lots of us did . . . back at the temples . . . ahhhh . . . we'd kill any of those things we could find at night. Their inhuman pets and servants, treated better than our entire Exalted line. I just couldn't rest until they were all dead, you see, because if my sole purpose was to serve Lord Tyraeth with excellence and diligence, then I can't fulfil it with those things as competition. They all had to die."

    She eventually lolls towards Empty Tidings, losing interest in a less important question, albeit still compelled to answer it. "Who? . . . Is that someone I'm . . . supposed to know? Dragons know I killed so many, I couldn't . . . couldn't possibly remember them all. He has to be dead, if I have anything to do with him . . . dead and bound to this cursed place too. This place . . . brings back memories . . . but I want to go back."

    "Back to the place with the voice that sings me to sleep. To the one that loves me. The voice that told me it loved me more when I killed them, so I killed more and more and more . . . I don't want to be away from that voice."

    Even Tomei looks a little put off by all this business. "I've never summoned a ghost this old before. I've barely summoned them at all, actually. As much as the Bureau likes the idea of having Necromancy on their side, once you learn it, they don't like you using it. What's your choice? Should this one pass on to Lethe and break Achiba's immortal ties, or do you think you can use her to get to him first? Her mind is polluted by the Whispers, that much I can tell, but the magic I have can only shut them out for perhaps a day at a time. I can't restore her sanity permanently."
All-Seeing Eye      The Exalt's augmented hearing allows him to catch Tomei's remark about 'unfortunate mind control.' "Yes..." says Eye, peering at the palm which hides his Personality Override Spike. "Tragic." He rolls his eyes, standing in the doorway of the office with the map. He is otherwise quiet when Tomei works--even though he's standing a ways away.

     When the ghost of Marama appears, he finally approaches. The spike is quietly ejected, held behind his back. Both gloved hands turn it over, and over again. "Anjei Marama," says Eye solemnly. Almost like a teacher disciplining a child. It seems odd, given the difference in age that surely exists. If Eye is aware of that, he doesn't seem to care. "There is one who still lives... in a way."

     He nods towards Empty Tidings. The Spike is kept in one hand. The other moves up and rests upon Tidings' shoulder consolingly. "/Thrice-Dead/ Achiba, he's called now, and he burns with hatred of you and everything you've done. Even now he plots your destruction. If you want to be rid of the last of them, you must give yourself up--'pass on' or whatever it is you people do." Eye turns up his nose at her.

     "Then he will have nothing left to hate, and your work will finally be done."
Inga Freyjasdottir There are things happening that she does not entirely understand, but choices must be made. "I say, send her forth to her rest or...wherever it is she will pass on to. She is long, long dead. As you say, her sanity is gone. How can she help us get to him? She barely has memory of what she has done," she replies. Though All-Seeing seems to have some plan...
Staren     Staren frowns. "Baseless hate. One machine replaced you, in an act you claim isn't even related to your own competence, so you want to destroy them all. Innocent people." Staren looks away. "Well. I suppose if you were twisted with mind control, who's to say you really had control over your actions. It doesn't matter anymore -- either way, you go to Lethe. Take that as you will, it won't matter soon."
Gawain Gawain kneels, and places the head away, before returning to Marama. She's...far more sympathetic than he would have imagined, but perhaps it's the torpor instead of pure insanity making him think that. "You were bound to a monster, weren't you? I can't hate you. I'm sorry."

And then Gawain turns to the others. "We should give her a chance at redemption. Allow her to help us reach Achiba before she returns to Lethe. It's only right." His mind is made up, clearly, even if it's based more on sympathy than utility. Even he hasn't figured out yet how she'd find Achiba.
Tomoe So Tomoe hears the story of Anjel Marama, and she just stares at her without a word she listens though starting to get some idea about that. The ghost talks about wanting to go back somewhere. Then the more she talks the more of a sinking feeling Tomoe gets and the idea of where she might have been, this thought troubled her.

"I say we send her on to the Lethe it seems to be the best way to handle it I doubt it would be wise to let the whispers have her back."

She notes she watches All-Seeing Eye for a moment but he knows more about these things than she does she has bouts of wondering given the nature of her world if she even has what could be considered a soul.

She looks back to this butcher and shudders as names of butchers on her own world come to mind, and their body counts may end up paling in comparison to what this woman did. Staren's own comments on the radio are not unheard and she will not forget that little revelation about her /friend's/ activities. She now looks to Staren.

"Aye I agree as I said. Time for her to move on..."
Empty Tidings Tidings turns her head to smile appreciatively at All-Seeing Eye, her momentary dismissiveness at her apparent distress changed to a demeanor of craving that momentary comfort. She looks back at the ghost, drying her eyes with a swipe of her fingertips. She clears her throat momentarily, apparently recovering from... whatever that was.

"Oh, you /poor thing/..." She steps closer. "Those things that speak to you -- that sing to you." Empty Tidings reaches out, touching the ghost's hand with hers. She finds it solid, her tear-wet fingers limned with flickers of color like light on an oil slick. They stick to the ghost's corpus, fading like the spots were fast-drying. "They don't love you. They just want you to do their work for them. If you go back now, the song..." She trails off, shaking her head, looking distraught.

"Remember," she urges. "Think of him. Just the one. The warrior. The gladiator. A killer, through and through, still walking Creation. You have the chance to /do/ something about it, and for your own satisfaction instead of some... /creature's/. Whatever he is now, I doubt some spawn of a servant race is any match for you."

Empty Tidings smiles wide. "Doesn't that sound nice?"

To the ghost, it almost certainly does. She's making sure of it.
N'Raha     To say that Raha is feeling /very/ upset about the shit that's going on in front of him, as people argue over what to do with the corpse-soul of a dead mass murderer, whether there's redemption, or whatever the hell Staren is going on about, he very nearly just steps forward. That axe of his is glowing with some very baleful light, at least, the sort of thing you Send a spirit on with along their way, or whatever sort of mojo Raha's got that can put Primals down.

    It's only as Tidings actually steps forward to DO SOMETHING that he 'stands down', but he's still already 3 paces forward with that axe hefted. His ears are fluffed out, his tail fluffed out, he's in full hackles mode with a tendency to DO SOMETHING.

    You better Do Somethnig there, Tidings.
Bloody Revelations     Anjei's shoulders rise and fall with the motions of a jerky, silent laugh to Gawain. "Of course he was a monster. They were all monsters. That's why they had to die. That's why so many had to die so that they would die. But . . . I couldn't hate him all the same. I just . . . couldn't . . . even if I tried. Even when I wanted to . . . the words never came out . . . my body froze. I knew he was, but it didn't make a difference. I think it must have been the same . . . for my mother too . . . and hers . . . and hers. Killing their pets . . . their servants . . . their things . . . it was probably just a way of killing him in effigy. Even if they were innocent . . . even if they did nothing wrong . . . it was like hurting him. Hurting all of them."

    When being pressed about Achiba though, she seems to regain some vague sort of lucidity at Empty Tidings' touch, and slowly slurs out "One of . . . those things . . . pets for blood sport . . . ahh . . . the sickest of their entertainments . . . what depravities those things got up to . . . I remember . . . can't . . . can't leave that half-finished . . . I'll kill him again . . . it'll feel twice as good . . . ahh . . . his tracker, of course . . . like a dog . . . hahaha . . . he can't run from me."

    Tomei looks between the members of the group, with the course seemingly settled on. She pulls out a piece of intricately carved bone and rubs her blood into the etched glyphs, then carves Anjei's name into it in Old Realm lettering. "This one will stay for a little while longer. I'll prepare the contingencies to sever her Fetters and send her on the moment we've no more use for her."
Empty Tidings Tidings holds out a hand towards N'Raha in a subtle placating gesture without actually looking at him. Don't ruin this, Catmaster Axechef, or your goblin name will be thusly invoked.

She smiles still at their new ghostly... asset. "No. No, he cannot. Not for long, at any rate."
N'Raha     Raha growls a bit, and the energy dissipates from that axe, the Threatening Aura of God Ending fading from his being. He sighs and slumps his shoulders, and then... looks over to Inga. His ax vanishes int othe aether again, and he shuffles over to Inga. "I am taking us home." He holds out a hand. "I hate this place."

    A pointed look at Staren and ASE and all the others... and when Inga /does/ grab his hand, the pair will twist and vanish into the aether, and poof.
Inga Freyjasdottir "Well, you know where to find me," she says to the others, then takes Raha's hand and takes the crazy crystal highway out of this terrible place.
Tomoe Tomoe looks to N'raha with concern she then watched him and Inga leaves by some sort of spell. She'll have to catch up with them later the plan has been me she rather send her own true but this isn't her world she doesn't know everything about what's going on. So she errs on the side of trusting the locals who know more. She's going to pull out a teleport crystal call out the of the capital of ALO and vanishes in a burst of light herself. She's got to get out of here, for now, they will finish this and prays they can end this.