M20 Chronicle: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream Episode 1

Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition Chronicle: 

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

CAST

Dresden: A former Order of Hermes initiate that left the order to pursue what his own path, because he believe that books themselves could hold magick regardless of the knowledge within them. His mentor kicked him out for not following directions.

Joe Nerius: A former member of the Society of Ether. He became disillusioned with the organizations SCIENCE! at all costs mentality when a group of Etherites convinced his wife and son to participate in an experiment without informing him. The experiment went wrong and Joe could no longer follow such a foolishly unsafe organization.

SETTING

Time in the M20 World of Darkness Universe: The Ascension War concluded a few years ago. The battle at Dossiestep lead to the destruction of the Horizon Realm on which the Mage stronghold was built. The losses on both sides were great, but the Technocracy was quick to fill the power void and declare victory on the earthly realm. They began to wipe out the mystics in the earthly realm in a cull that followed the end of the Ascension War.

Geographical Location: Southern California: Los Angeles County Area

Flash forward to now: Joe Nerius and Dresden have been hiding in the desert outside of Los Angeles for the past 6 years. The Ascension War between the Technocracy and the Mystic Traditions had become too intense. Many of the most powerful mystic mages they once knew had disappeared, along with many well known elite Technocratic agents. 

Joe’s wife and son had just been lost to an experiment conducted by members of his previous sect of Etherites. The Technocracy began their cull shortly after he had heard the news of their disappearance. He had no time to investigate things while the trail was still warm. While he was hiding out in the desert town he grew up with his wife in, Joe began to be visited by a gigantic beagle that reminds him of the dog he’d always envisioned getting for his son one day. He began to plot his quest to find out what happened to his family and seek revenge on those that caused it with guidance from the great direbeagle. 

Dresden was disillusioned with the Order of Hermes’ brand of academic magick. He needed a place to begin collecting his books and creating his own path to Ascension. He went with Joe to the desert and in the high school, he was able to find a giftshrank/confiscated property room in the library where he found a sizable collection of banned books. He set this area up to be attuned with his magick focus and made it his sanctuary. He was determined to discover the books of power he theorized existed in the world that he mentor had refused to acknowledge even the possibility that they existed.

The pair passed their time, drinking at a local dive bar Rusty Shackleford’s Bar and Lounge. Once the jewel of Twentynine Palms, it has long ago seen it’s busiest night. It wasn’t much, but Rusty seemed to understand the pair’s need to remain away from LA and anonymous. Rusty’s bar was their first stop when news of the cull subsiding finally reached them. They wanted to see if Rusty might know anything about where they could start looking for those responsible for what happened to Joe’s family.

When they arrived at the bar Rusty was not at his usual spot behind the bar. Instead his waitress Ler-Lee-Anne was standing in his place looking nervous. Joe took a seat in their regular booth and Dresden approached the bar to ask about Rusty.

“Uh… ya’ll ‘ill have tuh come back later. Rusty’s in the back...he’s...uh...he ain’t feelin well. He’s just restin back there for a spell. He’ll be on back up front inna bit. What can I git ya tuh drink?”

Dresden was curious about what was making her so apprehensive to talk about Rusty. He ordered a shot of the rotgut moonshine whiskey they kept there. He winced and began to stroke his beard while holding eye contact with Ler-Lee-Anne. A moment later he was seeing her memories from a first person perspective:

Walking down the hallway. “Gotta get another case of Strawberry Ripple for the bar. Where has that Rusty been? I can hear his voice in the back.” The door to the back opens into the stockroom that doubled as Rusty’s office and bedroom. His living area was a mess, which stood in contrast to the orderly racks of bar supplies on the other side of the room. She looked up and saw him standing in front of the mirror arguing with a reflection, but the reflection wasn’t Rusty. It gave her an uncomfortable feeling to see the reflection. Rusty turned and screamed at her to get out.

Dresden thanked her for talking to him, paid for his shot, bought a round of beers and headed to the booth with Joe, “Looks like something’s up with Rusty. Ler-Lee-Anne saw him arguing with some sort of mysterious figure in the mirror back there. I don’t think she knows what’s up.”

“We should check on Rusty. See what’s up with him. Maybe if we can create some sort of distraction I could sneak in the back to see what’s going on,” Joe started looking around the room.

“I could jump on the table and deliver a soliloquy from the sage Spider Jerusalem while flapping my arms like a flightless bird,” Dresden suggested without any ideas on how to make it work.

“That won’t be necessary,” Joe’s eyes had settled on the antique video poker machine. He reached out and sensed the faulty flow of electricity, “This should be too hard.”

Joe knocked back and shot of Fireball whisky, felt the burn in his mouth travel down into his stomach. He tried to focus that heat and transform the feeling into a surge of static electricity he could use to fry the electronics of the video poker machine. Something distracted him though and the static was discharged throughout his body instead of through the air to the video poker machine. Joe just felt very hot, like he was suddenly in a sauna and his skin was flushed. 

Flushed and flustered, he rushed off to the bathroom to splash some water on his face. Looking in the mirror as the water dripped off his face, “Okay plan B”

Making the water from the faucet extra cold he wet a paper towel and ran it across his head. Cooling himself off and at the same time bend the light around himself to make him appear as nothing more than a faint heat shimmer. He crept slowly behind the bar and eased his way into the stockroom unseen. From behind a shelf Joe could see Rusty arguing with a shadowy figure in the mirror over the sink. He could only hear Rusty speaking, but not whatever the shadowy figure was saying in reply.

“There’s no way I’m going there…...But you know what’s out there…..It’s not worth it….I don’t care what you say I need it for….But….Alright, I’ll get it done, but I won’t like it,” the shadowy figure vanished like smoke and Rusty was again reflected in the mirror.

On Rusty’s way out he passed by Joe, as Joe backed up he knocked into a shelf causing two bottles to clink together. Joe strained every muscle in his body to the point of pain in order to will the air around the bottle to steady it and hold it in place. Rusty stopped to look only for a second, before muttering something about damned rats before leaving.

Once Joe returned to the front he was trapped behind the bar with Rusty blocking his path to exit. Joe once again tried to short circuit the video poker machine, but he botched it completely and ended up electrocuting himself in the process. Dresden had been waiting to see sign of him in the back, what he saw was a flickering image of Joe being electrocuted by his own magick.

Dresden used a his mind technique with a little mix of time to make the bar see the same thing on a loop for a few moments while they stood motionless. He took the chance to drag an unconscious Joe Nerius back to the bathroom where the cold floor and a few hand fulls of water to the face woke him up. Dresden rushed back to his spot at the bar before his effect stopped and people noticed his absence.

“So I was sayin Rusty, you ever hear about that experiment that went bad a few years ago with the Etherites at LA Trade Tech?” Dresden began speaking as soon as things snapped back to reality to distract Rusty from noticing anything strange had occurred.

“What experiment? You mean that one where they got all that outside help and Nerius’s family got involved? No, I don’t know nothing about Room D-4481 or what might have happened there. I do know that nothing you look for there will put your questions to rest. You ain’t gonna find the answer you want there,” Rusty touched a finger to his nose then began polishing beer glasses.

Dresden returned to the booth. Joe had slipped back in while he was talking to Rusty. The two discussed the events and decided they needed to leave immediately. Rusty was caught up in something complicated and they had other plans. They put their drinks on their running tab with Rusty and left. Without a car, the pair looked for the closest car that would be easy to hot wire. Joe was able to get it going quick enough that they were able to drive away before anyone took notice. 

They returned to Dresden’s sanctum for him to look up a way to be able to see the past events of the room where Rusty had mentioned. He created a formula that would help reveal past conversations that had occurred in the vicinity of the object the spell is cast on. It would reveal the conversation in handwritten text in that resembled the speaker’s own handwriting.

Joe meanwhile worked on creating a device to help him unlock doors. It vibrated at a frequency that opened the locks for quickly getting into places he might need to without making it too much of a hassle.

Joe drove them straight to LA Trade Tech, but did not follow him in. He dropped him off and agreed to meet him later that night. He had to go meet an old friend he hadn’t seen in 6 years and he wanted to check in to see how he was doing. 

“Gotta go check on my man Manolo, make sure nothing happened to him during the cull for helping me out,” Joe said after dropping him off. He steered the car down the 110 to Wilmington. 

Dresden reached room D-4481 without an issue. It was still early enough in the evening that  the buildings were unlocked. Using an equation he’d wrote, Dresden was able to cast a spell on a notebook that made revealed conversations from the past in the lab where the group had convened in after the expirement. He saw the 3 Etherites Jim Johns, Bill Banner, and Simon Sylvester along with their two associates a Virtual Adept named William Case, and a Verbena named Kamal Haasan, arguing about why “it went wrong” “it should have imprinted” “does anyone have the data log?” 

William Case is the only member of the team that doesn’t seem to be participating in the argument, but people keep speaking to him despite him refusing to take a side or point a finger of blame. The entire group was suddenly silent for a moment, and then started arguing again about a different topic entirely. "No communication at all?" "Well did you try the other access point?" "What do you mean everyone is gone? You mean EVERYone!?" Then the group all left the room in a panic.

Dresden tried to use the spell to follow them, but his magick only worked at a fixed point. He wasn't able to move the spell quick enough to follow the retreating Etherites or their associates.

"That's pretty fucking inconvenient," Dresden grimaces as he watched his magick fade when he left the room.

Dresden needed more information and need to understand how to connect his magick with travelling space rather than concrete points. He wandered over to his old mentor’s office to see if he was in, or at least see if his office had anything useful he could help himself to. It had been years since anyone was there. There are notes on the door requesting meetings, as well as postings from administration regarding a leave of absence that he took 5-6 years ago. Dresden didn’t hesitate to break in and began to make himself at him.

Meanwhile, Joe Nerius arrived at Manolo’s Scrapyard to see he had expanded. He had a full crew and his younger brother Menudo was working for him now too. Joe caught up with him for a while. Turns out most of the people from the old days stopped coming around years ago. They either moved off or disappeared. Manolo warned Joe to be careful because the Technocracy still set up checkpoints and sent out patrols, even if they were in fewer numbers.

Manolo had his mother make them some food and presented Joe with a gift. The headlight from a Porsche 550 Spyder with scuffs of "poca plata bastardo" still on it. "You never know my friend, and now that you are back, you will need a place to do business, so I want to make sure you know you are always welcome in Manolo's scrapyard. But do not cross me or my family. You do not want to be on Manolo's bad side."

Menudo as well as the entire crew cringed slightly at the thought of this bad side, but his mother continued on blissfully unaware of the tension that was momentarily in the room.