09-25-2013, 04:11 PM
"Thank you," Éva to Erich, "Mr. Reinhardt." with a brief flicker of dark brown eyes and the barest twinge of a smile. The expression seems genuine enough, though it is wrapped in a quiet, implicit reserve, a careful formality with strangers, and they are all strangers to her. Acquaintances at best and perhaps not even that. Faces she has seem in the halls of 1999 Broadway for a few months or a few years: all young.
All far too young.
It is evening and a weekday and outside dusk is giving way to an autumnal sunset and there is a chill in the air. Inside everything is bathed in carefully plotted curtains of light. Well appointed, well designed, mild and anonymous and inoffensive, with two layers of curtains open over the windows overlooking downtown, and the final layer of sheers still closed, diffusing the view of the city into a pin-pricked, pointillist scheme. The television was on, tuned to the late local news, but as the Garou begin to arrive it is turned off and there is nothing in the background to compete with their discussions, just the hushed and ruminant breath of the heating and cooling system as it cycles on and off again.
--
"When we last met, there was a spirited debate about why the enemy seemed to obsessed with Cold Crescent. What they sought; whether they merely thought to attack the base of the Nation's power in the city proper; whether, perhaps, these attacks were an elaborate series of maneuvers intended to draw strength away from the Caern proper for a final assault on what seemed a more tempting target.
"I can confidently state that all of these theories were wrong. The truth is much simpler and much more elemental.
--
"1999 Broadway was acquired by the Nation in the mid-2000s, some twenty years after its original construction, in the mid 1980s. I will spare you the duller aspects of the transaction, but as you know it was designed to spare the church at its base, constructed around the Holy Ghost Church instead of over the land the church occupied, as was originally intended.
"The architect Curtis Fentress was responsible for the design and development of the property. Which has forty-three stories aboveground and three more hidden levels below ground.
"If you are like me, you have only been to one of the basement levels. Where the graves are found.
"There are two more levels beneath the graves."
Here her eyes flick over the assembled young Garou. Éva does not know whether any of them had been deeper in the bowels of the building, but is perhaps looking for a flicker of recognition, awareness, familiarity, from any who have.
"Mr. Fentress is also responsible for the design and construction of the Denver International Airport. Another location with strange warrens of tunnels beneath it.
"There have long been rumors about the airport." A brief twist of her mouth. It is not a smile. " - which would be easy to dismiss if they were rumors bandied about by humans along. But Sept members have had a number of encounters with reptialian creatures in the tunnels beneath the airport. No source has ever been found - no particular nest - and yet,
"still they come. Crawl up from the bowls of tunnels beneath the concourses and the runways. Even when there are no reports from Sept members, there are small trails that can be found in police reports, the patterns of particularly gruesome crimes. I have heard speculation that the whole of the airport's design may serves the creatures somehow. Attracts them or shelters them or opens a door to wherever it is they come from to whatever it is that they want. Is a ritual, an invocation, a focus of power. Was built not incidentally over a nest or a dark sinkhole, but instead, was built deliberately to pull them into our world, from wherever they may have come."
A deep, quiet inhalation.
"And Mr. Fentress is also responsible for the design and construction of 1999 Broadway. With its own warren of hidden levels tucked away below ground.
"When you look rather more closely at the Sept's location, similar patterns emerge - in crime, in kidnappings, in disappearances. In encounters with things-below in the neighboring carparks and basements and sewers - the truth becomes really quite clear. The Nation acquired 1999 Broadway in the mid-2000s. No one has ever attempted to raise a Caern on the site for the simple reason that whatever would come to such a call is not something that any of us wish to see awoken.
"The Sept is here not out of convenience, not as a celebration of some minor miracle of new-creation in the end of days, but instead: as a chain and a lock meant to keep closed a very dark box."
--
"The Beloved Horror attack 1999 Broadway with absolute, single-minded devotion for a remarkably simple reason: it belonged to them, once.
"Their murderous kind. Their kin, their cubs, their fell spirits and their dark masters. It belonged to all of them, once."
"And they have come to take it back."
All far too young.
It is evening and a weekday and outside dusk is giving way to an autumnal sunset and there is a chill in the air. Inside everything is bathed in carefully plotted curtains of light. Well appointed, well designed, mild and anonymous and inoffensive, with two layers of curtains open over the windows overlooking downtown, and the final layer of sheers still closed, diffusing the view of the city into a pin-pricked, pointillist scheme. The television was on, tuned to the late local news, but as the Garou begin to arrive it is turned off and there is nothing in the background to compete with their discussions, just the hushed and ruminant breath of the heating and cooling system as it cycles on and off again.
--
"When we last met, there was a spirited debate about why the enemy seemed to obsessed with Cold Crescent. What they sought; whether they merely thought to attack the base of the Nation's power in the city proper; whether, perhaps, these attacks were an elaborate series of maneuvers intended to draw strength away from the Caern proper for a final assault on what seemed a more tempting target.
"I can confidently state that all of these theories were wrong. The truth is much simpler and much more elemental.
--
"1999 Broadway was acquired by the Nation in the mid-2000s, some twenty years after its original construction, in the mid 1980s. I will spare you the duller aspects of the transaction, but as you know it was designed to spare the church at its base, constructed around the Holy Ghost Church instead of over the land the church occupied, as was originally intended.
"The architect Curtis Fentress was responsible for the design and development of the property. Which has forty-three stories aboveground and three more hidden levels below ground.
"If you are like me, you have only been to one of the basement levels. Where the graves are found.
"There are two more levels beneath the graves."
Here her eyes flick over the assembled young Garou. Éva does not know whether any of them had been deeper in the bowels of the building, but is perhaps looking for a flicker of recognition, awareness, familiarity, from any who have.
"Mr. Fentress is also responsible for the design and construction of the Denver International Airport. Another location with strange warrens of tunnels beneath it.
"There have long been rumors about the airport." A brief twist of her mouth. It is not a smile. " - which would be easy to dismiss if they were rumors bandied about by humans along. But Sept members have had a number of encounters with reptialian creatures in the tunnels beneath the airport. No source has ever been found - no particular nest - and yet,
"still they come. Crawl up from the bowls of tunnels beneath the concourses and the runways. Even when there are no reports from Sept members, there are small trails that can be found in police reports, the patterns of particularly gruesome crimes. I have heard speculation that the whole of the airport's design may serves the creatures somehow. Attracts them or shelters them or opens a door to wherever it is they come from to whatever it is that they want. Is a ritual, an invocation, a focus of power. Was built not incidentally over a nest or a dark sinkhole, but instead, was built deliberately to pull them into our world, from wherever they may have come."
A deep, quiet inhalation.
"And Mr. Fentress is also responsible for the design and construction of 1999 Broadway. With its own warren of hidden levels tucked away below ground.
"When you look rather more closely at the Sept's location, similar patterns emerge - in crime, in kidnappings, in disappearances. In encounters with things-below in the neighboring carparks and basements and sewers - the truth becomes really quite clear. The Nation acquired 1999 Broadway in the mid-2000s. No one has ever attempted to raise a Caern on the site for the simple reason that whatever would come to such a call is not something that any of us wish to see awoken.
"The Sept is here not out of convenience, not as a celebration of some minor miracle of new-creation in the end of days, but instead: as a chain and a lock meant to keep closed a very dark box."
--
"The Beloved Horror attack 1999 Broadway with absolute, single-minded devotion for a remarkably simple reason: it belonged to them, once.
"Their murderous kind. Their kin, their cubs, their fell spirits and their dark masters. It belonged to all of them, once."
"And they have come to take it back."
But my heart is wild and my bones are steel
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula